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Oh how I wish I didn’t think about our little town’s budget, but as a businessman, I can’t help myself. I had to manage a small farm’s budget, and I didn’t get any grants from either the state or the feds, and I had to educate my employees, since they hadn’t been educated by the education system in place. I employed many college grads who had no understanding of economics, even with their four-year degrees. So, it was with great interest that I read La Conner Schools Superintendent Will Makoyiisaaminaa (Nelson)’s letter of recognition to our sc...
By Glen Johnson Agritourism, is it a good thing or bad? A wedding in a farmer’s backyard is a great place and time to congratulate the couple, while also putting the spready on the table. Foods from area farms could be shared, marketed and sold to these wedding attendees. Most smaller farms still have a farmyard with a barn and a storage shed or two with space between them that allows for parking that doesn’t encroach on or impede the production of crops in the field. I was in the business about two decades ago, or at least I gave it a try...
So the slough slowly flows, back and forth it goes, out to the Salish Sea and Pacific Ocean, before it returns as rain and tidal slosh. So effortless and timeless, it stimulates the phosphorous’ sparkly glow. It’s quite simple really, we just have to have a spinning orb, that tilts this way and that. Yeah, one with a moon and numerous planets, affecting how our waters cycle and flow. Wind whipped waves lap and lash at our shores, sometimes smashing, sometimes as smooth as glass, giving us glimpses of our past, before we crashed ashore. Wha...
I have been a part of our local farming community for sixty plus years now. I’ve seen more than half of the farm history in the region. I was able to observe the demise of peas, sweet corn and carrots. Now I’ve seen the arrival of dry beans, peppers, specialty grains and brussels sprouts. What new crop will we someday learn to grow, perhaps a new variety of quinoa or cauliflower? We could grow fish, but we’d rather grow cows and chickens. When I was young I worked the land, planted and tended the peas until they brought the industry to its knee...
So, Sept. 2 came and went, there couldn’t have been a finer day in La Conner spent. There was a “King” in town, complete with a crown, and a shiny white old fire truck. Yeah, mega author Tom Robbins was kinda awestruck. The town was full of its regular crew and then there were the curious and people who didn’t have a clue. Who’s this fella anyways, what did he write, what did he say? Well he wrote words that he turned into novels and one into a movie! Yeah, he wrote about eclectic characters and notions that could raise your eyebrows and maybe...
The day dawned cloudy and there was an up-valley smokey haze. It would be less hot than it has been. I was destined for the Cascadian Farm Home Farm, a famous place, a fertile bench of farmland near Rockport across Highway 20 from the emerald green waters of the mighty Skagit River. The farm was the brainchild of one Gene Kahn who, in 1972, as a recent college graduate and student of history, spied the uniquely beautiful property and put his plan into motion. Old friends followed him from the east coast and new friends joined his budding...
I read your editorial “La Conner needs to plan for more than just floods,” (Weekly News July 12) with great interest, and your words raised my eyebrows more than once. You see, you made a blanket statement, “No one in La Conner, elected officials, town staff, activists, or this paper, saw, much less grasped the opportunity and possibilities for working family housing when Dave Hedlin offered to sell his family’s Maple Avenue property in 2020.” Now, I think of myself as an activist, and I did see an alternative plan, even went out of my way to...
Music, what’s it to you, does it shiver your timbers, does it cause you to snap your fingers and tap your toes or make you breathe more easily through your nose? Certainly, one person’s music is another person’s noise, yet even in rip tearing rap, can be found a soft slap. Yeah, in righteous rock and roll can be found smooth harmonics and rad riffs and then there’s the country twang, the nasty slide guitar, harmonica, sax, drums and bass, they all can bring smiles to my face. Heck, I even enjoy karaoke, again, more as a listener, than partici...
Hey, now here’s a curveball for you, instead of larky snark about dikes and missing fish, music is the subject of the day. No, Sloughmander is not going to miraculously re-appear, unless he does, but don’t hold your breath. Heck, some of you only know me as a mean writer, when I’m actually a mean dancer, I kick everyone else off the dance floor (not really), I mostly share the space quite nicely. Sunday music in Gilkey Square is not enough for this dancer man, the music in the Tav is okay, for coming from a box, but we have such great music...
Thank you, Jacques. The giving of all this time to your community is more than commendable. Towns of any size are not easy to manage. Council members are challenged every day to do their due diligence and make the best decisions they can. Some are extremely challenging, while others are easy, or at least somewhat so. Your concern about the ring dike is completely justified. We are the lowest lying town around, so without this dike we could realistically get washed into the slough. Yeah, I appreciate your tenacity. It is not an easy subject to...
Hooray! Most of us have survived both the virus, and the election. Life is not easy when we divide ourselves the way we do, some of us believe the science, some believe the storyteller. Some folks think we do not much affect the climate, while another bunch of us thinks that we do. Some of us study what makes us live, some of us study what kills us dead. Bulbs that grow beautiful blooms, bombs that kill us when they go boom! We are as diverse as this, there is no wonder we struggle to get us to come to the center of the room. It is there where...
Here we sit, giving thanks for what we have, hoping that our lives are lived in relative peace and harmony. I pray for this myself, daily. Unfortunately, prayer alone is not always going to do the trick; sometimes we have to educate ourselves about practical risks, and how we might prepare for them. Thus, this letter: It’s about the risk of our little beautiful town being torn asunder by the impending disaster that can’t be denied. I do not want to be a dooms-sayer, but a huge earthquake is headed our way and we are ill prepared for it and the...
