Each week the Standard-Examiner hashes out issues large and small and takes a thumbs-up, thumbs-down stance. Have a thumbs-up or thumbs-down you’d like to give? Email a submission of 100 words or less to jmccabe@standard.net.

Here’s what we recommend this week for praise and criticism:

THUMBS UP: To Kole Story of Riverdale, Lantzen Toomer of North Ogden, Lydon Toomer of South Weber, Jordon Cissna of Harrisville, Breck Snyder of Syracuse, Antonio Robles of Ogden and Matt Ellis of Brigham City for hitting one of out of park Thursday during the 2018 Ogden Raptors FanFest in the downtown. By hitting a homerun, each of the seven will receive tickets to Raptors games this season.

The Raptors, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, began their season Friday with a four-game series on the road against Idaho Falls. They return to Ogden Tuesday for the home opener.

THUMBS UP: To organizers in Layton who soon will see the dedication of the city’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

The wall, about 80 percent the size of the original national Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C., is being built on the northeast corner of Layton Commons Park, 437 N. Wasatch Drive.

Construction on the monument is scheduled to be finished in the next few weeks, with a dedication ceremony set for 6 p.m. July 14.

The project has been driven by Ogden resident and Vietnam combat veteran Dennis Howland. The president of the Northern Utah chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, Howland began working on the project in earnest in 2014.

Howland said he scoured every possible funding source he could think of for about five years to secure the $500,000 needed to pay for the wall.

THUMBS UP: To Utah State University’s Mike Kuhns for his work to save Utah’s largest English walnut tree, which can be found in Ogden.

Kuhns, the head of Utah State University’s Department of Wildland Resources, said he first spotted the tree while enjoying a beer at Slackwater Pizzeria & Pub.

“You get an eye for what a big tree is,” he said. “Even though this was a couple of blocks away, I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s big.'” He took a closer look, noting the chocolate-brown shells heaped below. He realized it’s an English walnut, standing 85 feet tall, with a trunk 18 feet and 7 inches in circumference and a maximum canopy spread of 100 feet.

It’s probably the biggest tree of its kind in the state.

THUMBS DOWN: To the Sundance Film Festival, as a number of Ogdenites feel snubbed over the choice of film to be screened next month.

Sundance used to make Ogden part of the January film festival, but a few years back changed strategy. That has led this year to a special screening of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” next month.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford are wonderful in the film, but this hardly seems to be a good consolation prize from the Sundance folks.

Amy Wicks, a former Ogden City councilwoman who was on the Egyptian Theatre Foundation board at the time Sundance dropped Ogden, said she’d assumed Sundance would find other ways to bring independent films to the city outside those few days in January every year.

“We’ve been waiting for two years, and then we get ‘Butch Cassidy'”? Wicks said. “I get that it’s Robert Redford, but it’s a 50-yearold film that many of us have seen multiple times and we have easy access to. It’s not new, and it’s not broadening our horizons. It’s just disappointing and sad.”

Others expressed similar sentiments, with the word “snubbed” being used on several occasions.

The film airs July 23.