Mayor, city deserve kudos for helping community

I have seen a lot of negativity being thrown at our mayor and city council. We need to look at what they have done for our community.

As a business owner, I want to express appreciation for the funds the mayor and city council used from the rainy day fund to help keep my business, as well as others here in Sequim, afloat through the shutdown.

We serve the Sequim area with locksmith services, and as a result of the forced lockdown for many, our business has suffered greatly.

The fact that our mayor and city council saw the need of the small businesses in our community has been a tremendous help to remaining in business so we can continue to offer our services as the only “brick-and-mortar” locksmith and safe store in Sequim.

Greg Rash

President, The Master Locksmith

Sequim

Appreciation for vaccination clinic efforts

I got my COVID-19 shot on Tuesday morning (Feb. 9) and was pleasantly surprised by the whole process.

It was well organized by Fire District 3, and more than 200 volunteers and staff from the fire district, its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), the City of Sequim Police and Public Works, Trinity United Methodist Church, and the S’Klallam Tribe’s Jamestown Family Health Clinic, assuring that the COVID shots would be safely and conveniently administered to us!

It was 31 degrees at 9 a.m. and the volunteers were cold, but they were also cheerful and helpful.

This is America at its best, serving one another at a grassroots level. CERT members directed us from point to point, the Sequim Police walked along Blake Avenue monitoring the traffic, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe provided nurses for our shots and Fire District 3’s EMT checked us afterwards to insure we had no reactions, and Trinity United Methodist Church allowing the use of their property as the holding area for this community effort along with their hospitality volunteers.

A total of more than 200 Sequim responders and volunteers giving of their time and helping other Americans in a time of need. Don’t you just love it?

Vern Frykholm, Jr.

Sequim

Thank you, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe

Thank you for featuring Jamestown Tribal Chair W. Ron Allen’s “Reflections on 40 Years of Federal Recognition” (Sequim Gazette, Feb. 10, page A-15).

It opened a 40-year era of economic growth, Allen writes, that includes Seven Cedars Casino and Resort, the Jamestown Family Health Center, enterprises that employ 800 workers. The opioid Healing Campus is under construction. Thank the tribe, too, for vaccinating thousands against COVID-19.

I visited the Jamestown S’Klallam web page, reading the Treaty of Point No Point. Signed Jan. 26, 1855 by Washington’s first Governor, Isaac Stevens, and by several tribal chiefs, it forced the Native American Indians to cede all claims to the Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas in exchange for a 3,840-acre reservation and cash payment of $60,000, to be doled out over a decade “under the direction of the President of the United States who may … determine at his discretion upon what beneficial objects to expend the same.”

The treaty orders the tribes to “free all slaves now held by them and not to purchase or acquire others hereafter.” This was 1855, when slave owners in the United States owned three million chattel slaves, and instigated civil war to keep this “property.”

The Jamestown S’Klallams refused the order that they move to the reservation. Homeless, in 1874, they pooled every penny, $500 in gold coins, and purchased 210 acres of recently logged timberland. They named their beachfront property “Jamestown” after then-Chief, Lord Jim Balch, land that had been theirs for 10,000 years.

So yes, celebrate!

Tim Wheeler

Sequim

Reasons to not wear a mask

Quite a rant from Bertha Cooper regarding “pandemic deniers fueled by opportunistic elected officials (who) have pride in going mask-less and … have no conscience about becoming a vector of death.”

A vector of death — how melodramatic!

There are several good reasons for not wearing a mask.

First, Governor Inslee’s mask diktat itself provides several exceptions to the rule. Ms. Cooper has no idea whether a particular scary, bare-faced individual qualifies for an exception.

Next, coronavirus survivors – which include between 99.5 and 99.997 percent of people 69 years old or younger (CDC estimates, Oct. 20, 2020) – have immunity for at least several months after recovery, and it is pointless to wear a mask.

Third, people who have completed the two-shot series of the coronavirus vaccine similarly have no need to wear a mask.*

Additionally, we know masks do not fully prevent the spread of the disease.

Get a copy of former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s booklet “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns, Part 3: Masks” to follow the science.

If you can’t spare the $10 cost, just open your mind and remember that when the nation was masked up to the gills in late 2020, daily coronavirus cases and deaths skyrocketed to new heights.

Or simply note that our health geniuses now say one mask is not good enough, you have to wear two, or is it three?

Wear a mask if you want, but the end is in sight for cult of the mask, and none too soon.

Jerry Ludke

Port Angeles

* — Editor’s note: The CDC recommends those who have two COVID-19 vaccinations to continue to wear masks and avoid close contact with others: “Not enough information is currently available to say if or when CDC will stop recommending that people wear masks and avoid close contact with others to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.” (cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html)