Don’t miss ‘Silent Sky’

Olympic Theater Arts in Sequim is currently staging a show not-to-be-missed.

“Silent Sky” is a mostly true story of an early twentieth century woman ahead of her time as an astronomer and subsequent Nobel Prize nominee.

This story line may not seem very exciting. What is exciting is the how the author brought this piece of history to script and how our local theater brought the script to performance.

There is a small cast of five. The lead, Ginny Holladay Jessee, is new to the OTA stage but not new to theater. She is perfection in her part. Matt Forrest plays the imaginative love interest and “after shaking off the dust” from high school acting brings both depth and hilarity to his supporting role. Emma Jane Garcia, Marissa LeAnn Rose and Tia Stephens round out the cast with excellent acting and timing. Josh Sutcliffe is the very able director.

The accompanying message concerns the over all struggle of women in America. Effort, persistence and courage are the three words that come to my mind.

The last performance is Nov. 24. Don’t miss it. You won’t be disappointed.

George Will

Sequim

Consider the evidence

What the opponents of the Jamestown Healing Campus all have in common is the assumption that it will have a negative impact on public safety and quality of life in Sequim.

Rather than provide evidence, Save Our Sequim (SOS) has opted to provide frightening images of the drug problem and homelessness in other areas.

Below is evidence that facilities like this do not bring problems:

1) None of the businesses or residents around the didgwalic Wellness Center at Anacortes, which is a model for what is planned in Sequim, have expressed opposition to plans to expand the program.

2) The assumed link between medically-assisted drug treatment facilities and crime has been studied scientifically around 53 such facilities in Baltimore, with no link found (www.newswise.com/articles/violent-crime-lower-near-drug-treatment-centers-than-other-com mercial-areas).

3) This study reports reduced crime around drug treatment centers: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009411901830007X.

4) The National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 20537 reaches the conclusion that “ … improved SUD treatment use can effectively and cost-effectively promote public safety through crime reduction.”

5) The National Safety Council has issued this statement, www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-statement-on-the-proposed-opening-of-a-drug-treatment-and-rehabilitation-center-in- itasca-ill, in favor of a proposed drug treatment facility down the street from their headquarters, in response to NIMBY opposition to that facility.

What is the real motivation of the outside agitators who are tearing our community apart with this misinformation campaign? Are they creating a wedge issue for use in Jodi Wilke’s 2020 campaign for the Washington Legislature?

Ted Lund

Sequim

Evidence for climate change is obvious

It took 200,000 years of human history for the world’s population to reach one billion; and only 200 years to reach almost eight billion.

One can easily assess these masses will necessitate land acquisition for housing and sustenance, more specifically, water.

Deforestation through clear-cutting, tracking for oil as well as a dependency on foreign oil to sustain the masses will prevail unless, in the interim, alternatives to fossil fuels can preclude such dependency.

The recent fires in California are primarily from the sustained drought making dry brush the culprit.

These are unmitigated facts. Yet, it remains unclear to some that climate change is impacted by it. That, like gravity, it remains a “theory.”

As philosopher, Bertrand Russell once said, “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

Roger B. Huntman

Sequim

Proud to be Americans

At my age, I grew up taught that our founding fathers were heroic men of virtue. Most of their blemishes were glossed over in our school text. The message was that we should be proud of our country and proud to be Americans.

Now it seems the laudable thing is to find something that Americans should be ashamed of or embarrassed of being Americans. Of course, our forefathers were not pillars of virtue, but neither were they colonizing, land-grabbing, slave-owning scoundrels.

History should be viewed through the “lens of time of the events” and not the lens of our own time and values. Naturally, historical figures were flawed, but it does not prevent acknowledging their great achievements.

This is not a world where there is only good or only bad. All men and women are flawed, but it is not rational that only flawed “bad results” can come from flawed men or women. This seems to be the popular notion today.

Travis Williams

Sequim

Opioid treatment stats less than stellar

Everyone wants to see opioid addicts recover from their addiction and regain their lives. However, it has been found that one year after the treatment with suboxone is finished, less than 10 percent of the patients remain drug-free! (www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/painkiller-abuse-treated-sustained-buprenorphine/naloxone)

Knowing that the treatment is so ineffective, we need to ask whether opioid addicts are being given a legitimate chance at recovery or are clinic providers just generating enormous amounts of revenue at the expense of the taxpayers and the citizens living in the towns where the clinics are located?

People in every new location for a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) Facility are told that, “This time it will be different.” In our case, we are told the patients will be given “wrap around care.” A study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was done with 600 patients divided into two groups of 300 that all received the suboxone treatment. One of the groups also received intensive addiction counseling by trained substance abuse or medical health professionals.

After the treatment was finished neither group did better than the other. Both groups had a success rate of less than 10 percent!

The question now is, with such a dismal recovery rate, what happens to the other 90 percent of the patients that are still addicted?

Is this what we want for Sequim?

John Mackay

Sequim