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Show A7 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, August 19, 2008 VIEWPOINT Opinion and Letters to the Editor EDITOR’S VIEW Montell Seely’s Impact on County Profound James L. Davis Established January 2, 2007 James L. Davis, Publisher & Editor w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w Colleen A. Davis, Co-Publisher, Office & Advertising Manager Josie Luke, Assistant Editor Lyndsay Reid, Advertising Design Kathy P. Ockey, Staff Journalist Casey Wood, Webmaster Our Vision To be a valued member of the communities we serve and to be trusted as an honest, truthful and reliable source of news. w w w Our Mission To inform, entertain and provide a public forum for the discussion of events impacting the people of the Emery County area and to inform with news and features relevant to those who call the Castle Valley area home w w w Our Principles We will be ethical in all of our efforts to provide information to the public. We will be unbiased in our reporting and will report the facts as we see them and do our best to focus on the good news of the county, its people, history and way of life. We will be strong and active members of the community and assist in any way that we are able. We will strive to provide the best quality product possible to our readers and advertisers...always. We will verify the details of news we are reporting and if a mistake is made on our part we will correct it immediately. We will always listen to suggestions on how to do our job better. Editorial Submission Guidelines The Emery County Review welcomes and invites letters to the editor and guest opinion articles on public policy or current events. We welcome letters of thanks to individuals who have helped make our community a better place to live, work and play. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all submissions for space constraints, clarity and errors in fact. Submissions must include author’s name and contact information. Contact information will not be published. Letter’s and opinion articles can be sent to jldavis@theemerycountyreview.com, mailed to The Emery County Review, P.O. Box 487, Orangeville, UT. 84537 or faxed to 435-748-2543. Sometimes a person becomes so ingrained in a community that you don’t really realize the impact they had until they are gone. Such is the case with Montell Seely. I say that without ever truly knowing him. My dad knew him and he fondly recalls that Montell Seely was one of the first to befriend him when he pulled into Huntington more than 40 years ago with a gaggle of kids and hardly a penny to his name. But Montell had a way of being a friend to people he had only just met, and it is one of the many legacies he left behind with his passing. My dad told me years ago that I should sit down and talk with Montell Seely some day, that he had been the man to write the Castle Valley Pageant and that I would find him an interest- ing individual. I did have the chance to talk to him from time to time in the past few years and my dad was right, he was an interesting man. But in the end I knew of him, but I didn’t really know him. I had heard stories of his life, of his accomplishments, of the things he had done, the people he had helped and it seems everyone who knew Montell Seely had a story or two to tell about him. And perhaps that is a tribute to the man in and of itself. For a lover of history, for a storyteller, what better way to be remembered than through stories of your own life? I spoke with Montell when the announcement first came out earlier this year that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had decided that the Castle Valley Pageant would only be held every other year after this year. It was clear that Montell didn’t like the thought of the pageant not continuing every year, just as it had for nearly 31 years. Just before the pageant began this year Montell and his wife, Kathryn, spoke in our church about the pageant and said that perhaps, as a community we could pull together and find a way to attract sponsors to continue the pageant on the years when the church was not sponsoring the event. As he spoke you could see the excitement in his eyes, the determination that the pageant would not miss a year. There are those who have spent many of the summers of their lives taking part in the Castle Valley Pageant. And it is through the pageant itself that a piece of the heritage of Castle Valley, and Montell Seely, will continue to live on. PUBLIC FORUM Pool Manager I spoke with Commissioner Gary Kofford recently about the reason that my wife Marilyn or I did were not even granted an interview for the manager position for the new swimming pool. Marilyn and I both submitted separate resumes. I said that I would like to obtain co-managers position, mostly just helping with the maintenance side of it, and Marilyn submitted hers for simply the manager. Commissioner Kofford informed me that they only wanted one manager and that is the reason the commission did not even consider either myself or Marilyn for the job. It is interesting that even with all her certifications and over 10 years of experience working at the Castle Dale City Swimming pool, the last three years of that as manager with me doing mostly maintenance and keeping the pool clean, that they would not even consider her for the posi- tion. I highly doubt that anyone else in the county even comes close to having the qualifications that she does. Commissioner Kofford also said that because of some things in my past Marilyn was not considered for the job. He said, “I did not want you around all those kids with your background.” This is interesting to me also, because he was referencing a substance abuse charge from the early 1990s, charges that had nothing to do with any form of child abuse. I am very proud of the fact that I have overcome addiction, and have made something of my life. It seemed my community was supportive of my change also, because, when the Emery County Recreation District could not find anyone to coach little league football in 2003, they came to me and asked if I could do it, and I have done so for the last five years. They also did not seem to mind that I coached for the Junior Jazz program for the last seven years. When I was asked to come and sit in on the planning committee and give my expert opinion on chemical and filtration systems for the new pool I did. I was happy to do it because it helped better the community. They did not seem to have a problem with me being on the committee to help get the word out to vote on the grant that paid for the new swimming pool. And they did not seem to mind when the Emery County Fair Board asked Castle Dale City if they could have a free swim day for the fair. I was helping Marilyn co-manage the pool then and we were asked three years in a row to do a fair day at the pool. All of the Castle Dale City Council members knew of my background as well as the mayor. They realized, as the Emery County Commission apparently does not, that all people make mistakes in their lives, and that people can change for the better. Marilyn has a clean background, so this discrimination should not apply to her anyway. It is my opinion that Marilyn is being discriminated against for one reason and one reason only, and that is for being married to me. Even though I have changed for the better I might be able to understand the commissioner’s hesitation in considering my application, but to totally disregard the passion that Marilyn has put into this community and the swimming programs is just absolutely absurd. It will only be the community’s loss if she is not considered for a position at the new pool. The acting Emery County commissioners seem to think they can hire whomever they want and refuse to interview qualified applicants. Marilyn and I did not even receive a phone call to explain to us why we were not considered for the position. This is not how our hard work in the community should be rewarded. - Chris Collard Castle Dale Blowback from Bear-Baiting Patrick J. Buchanan Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours. Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin. Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America’s lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli. Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear. American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don’t get to decide how and when they end. Russia’s response was “disproportionate” and “brutal,” wailed Bush. True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more “disproportionate”? Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi? Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing? When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away? Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia? That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili’s provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia’s nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany. When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do? American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia’s doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members. Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin’s birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia? The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand. We built a Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic “revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus. Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them. Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow. How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior? For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia’s space and getting into Russia’s face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi. (Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.) |
