by Gay Smith, Hamilton
Here’s a shout out to the folks who make Ravalli County, Hamilton, such a great place to live. In just the last month Ravalli County residents and visitors have been able to attend lectures, concerts, plays, library events, book clubs, visual art galleries, and more. Here are some examples:
Lectures, three at the Marcus Daly Mansion, the last one delivered by volunteer archivist, Maureen Lishke, on the Stock Farm history featured maps of the various ranches absorbed into the Stock Farm.
In another free lecture, this one at the St. Mary’s Mission in Ravalli County, archeologist Carl Davis gave a picture of the nearly 20,000 years of our area’s First Peoples, where they lived, how they lived and what remains of them.
Baroque musicians performed a concert in Episcopal Church, a beautiful space for hearing well the classical music and watching up close the professional and amateur musicians.
Thursday night live concerts at the local brewery give a range of contemporary country/folk/rock/jazz at the local brewery. Come summer there will be the Tuesday lunch concerts on the lawn of the Museum.
Hamilton Players produced in their welcoming 168-seat and community volunteers’ built theatre building in Ravalli County a live musical and readings to post-Covid enthusiastic audiences—and growing. With a staged reading of Shakespeare’s Scottish play coming up.
In addition to the regular Hamilton Library book club readings, a new group of mostly teachers started with a first novel (in translation), by Simone deBeauvoir.
But the shout out goes as well to the unsung heroes of Ravalli County: the Sheriff and his police officers who provide security and safety to public events and to residents’ private homes. In cooperation with Missoula Sheriff and federal intelligence our police assist in the investigation of drug dealers and other local criminals. Discovering that the police in the County and in the town of Hamilton (two separate jurisdictions but sharing the duties of surveillance) are paid such low salaries I have come to understand why there is such a shortage of staff and lack of training for dealing with cyber crimes, especially IdTheft that has made so many of Ravalli County residents victims, including myself.
The low salaries for police are comparable to the underpaying of our school teachers. Thank you to the many teachers who work long days preparing and teaching for nine months of the year and then have to work summer jobs to make it possible to raise a family here and to continue their own education and training for advancement. Thank you to the University of Montana for keeping our local college in operation.
I, a widow, a writer and a retired teacher live in a modest 2-bedroom one-bath historic home here in Hamilton. To all these volunteers and underpaid public servants of Ravalli County who are bettering our living here in Ravalli County I say THANK YOU!