Letters to the editor Sept. 24

U.S.-Canada relations

On Feb. 18, 1942, my dad’s destroyer USS Wilkes was part of a convoy thrown by a ferocious winter storm into the granite off southern Newfoundland, barely surviving to limp into the Argentia Naval Base with half her bow torn off below the waterline.

Destroyers USS Truxton and USS Pollock and 203 men were lost, but 186 men were saved from the raging blizzard by the stalwart miners of Lawn and St. Lawrence who went through 5 miles of snow and down over the icy barren cliffs to haul them from the beaches up to the Iron Springs Mine. Scores of families soon arrived with food, blankets and all of their own dry clothes and then took the survivors back into their homes and cared for them until the next day’s St. Lawrence arrival of the U.S. Navy to transfer the men to the Agentia Naval Base.

With profound gratitude, the U.S. government built and presented in St. Lawrence on June 6, 1954 a fully-equipped state-of-the-art hospital where the U.S. Memorial Health Center now stands.

With all the garbage coming out of D.C., and Ottawa, it’s easy to forget.

— Andy Palchak, Kalispell

Common courtesy

Perhaps I am becoming like my parents, but it has become more apparent as each year passes that common sense and common courtesy are no longer common.

An example of this is the decision to put a roundabout at the intersection of Second Street and Woodland in Kalispell. Let’s inconvenience the many, at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers and homeowners, to accommodate the few stupid, ignorant and inconsiderate. I have navigated this intersection daily for a number of years. Perhaps at the busiest time of the day, going to and from my office.  I have never had a problem and have never seen an accident. I have, however, seen examples of the stupid, ignorant and inconsiderate.

There are several issues at play here. All are issues of which every licensed driver should be intimately aware:

1.  It is called reading. Top to bottom, left to right, put words together to form sentences. The stops are clearly marked. Traffic coming up the hill does not stop.

2.  Use of blinkers. All vehicles on the road today are equipped with blinkers and it is the law to use your blinkers when turning or changing lanes. If you have run out of blinker fluid, check aisle 3 at Auto Zone. (Please don’t go and look for it)

3.  How to navigate a multi-stop intersection. First come, first served. If two vehicles arrive from different directions at the same time, the vehicle to your right has the right-of-way.  

4.  If you are uncertain about proceeding, err on the side of caution. No one is in such a hurry that we need to risk life, limb or property.

I understand that the decision has already been made, but I felt compelled to put a voice of reason out there to encourage thinking for those who have stopped to think and forgotten to start again.

— E. A. Ray, Columbia Falls

Habitat destruction

Before defending Trump’s bizarre habitat rule, Tom Opre (Letters to the editor, Sept. 17) should read it. The rule has indeed “essentially done away with the Endangered Species Act.” 

In my Writers on the Range op-ed (Guest Opinion, Sept. 13), I did not report that the rule “removes species from the endangered or threatened lists” or that it “eliminates critical-habitat designations or recovery plans.” 

What I did report (accurately) is that while Section 7 remains verbally intact, the Trump rule renders it toothless. The Trump administration states that “harm” will now be defined by Justice Scalia’s dissent in the Sweet Home case. So violations require intentional harm to individual listed organisms rather than harm caused by habitat destruction. 

The administration will no longer pursue Section 9 enforcement actions based on “take” caused by habitat destruction.

— Ted Williams, Grafton, Mass.