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In these difficult and frightening times, many people have come forward to help our community in a variety of ways. I want to give a BIG thank you to all who have stepped up to help our community, especially all those workers on the front lines, whether in our hospitals, medical clinics, ambulances, law enforcement, or essential businesses. We cannot get through these times without their invaluable contributions. With the Center for Disease Control recommending the wearing of masks, numerous people have volunteered to sew masks. However, it is...
In the past hundred years, our country has faced a number of crises of a world-wide dimension, including the Great Depression and World War II. There was Republican push-back to FDR’s economic and social solutions to help us get out of the Depression, and there was isolationist opposition to entering WW II. But as we look back on those times, one of the characteristics that has become most memorable is the sacrifice that the average American demonstrated then. People united and proudly pulled together. Rather than having a president that p...
It is not a war. It is a health care crisis. A nationally mismanaged healthcare crisis. How do we deal with the uncertainty of it all? We are lucky to be in a state that follows the scientific consensus of how to fight this virus, lucky to be in La Conner where there is enough physical elbow room to walk about, lucky to connect with our friends and neighbors for human warmth. The difficult part is accepting those new rules while we seem to be doing all right. Massive loss of freedom. Businesses closed. Keeping distance in the grocery store. Not...
Ken, I enjoyed your photo this last week; “This Is What Stay At Home Looks Like”. We seem to have the same sense of humor. Richard Raisler...
I was impressed by the insightful and timely article, in the April 15 edition of the La Conner Weekly News, reporting on the rate of Covid-19 virus infection in Skagit County. We are all learning, or should be learning, more every day about the spread of the disease, and the correlation with good health and sanitation practices, and the ever present health risk from human interaction. I was never sure of what exponential growth meant. This, too, we have learned: The epidemic “doubling time” is the rate or time it takes for a disease to inf...
Learning certainly looks and feels different now but it is still happening. Our teachers updated their websites with office hours, class times and learning materials. I encourage you to check it out! There are some great learning resources available. Our office staff is planning how to deliver to and retrieve learning materials from families that are not able to access them electronically. All teachers are identifying what learning standards are the most important to explore with their students. Some creative learning experiences are arising...
“Love in the time of the Cholera” is a book famous in part because of its title. The 1985 novel by the Columbian Gabriel García Márquez traces the complex journey of a couple from their youthful marriage through a lifetime of lovers, beyond any one cholera epidemic. Cholera, a deadly infectious disease, is spread through contaminated water supplies. Best if we recognize laughter in the time of the coronavirus now, in the present moment. Even in this worst hard time, to echo the title of Tim Egan’s 2006 award winning history of th...
Today is the 50h anniversary of Earth Day. Conceived by Wisconsin U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson and brought to life by a 25 years old Denis Hayes, Earth Day burst forth on April 22, 1970, during the then never-ending Vietnam War and two weeks before students were shot dead at Jackson State and Kent State universities as campuses erupted over the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Our country and our planet has known massive strife. In 1970 it was also a very dirty, polluted, world. But Earth Day and follow up actions by millions of Americans of all ages...
It was a rare bright shining moment last Friday for a La Conner High senior class whose school hallways remain darkened by nationwide campus closures through the rest of the academic year in response to the COVID-19 threat. The stadium lights at Whittaker Field were turned on for 20 minutes at 8:20 p.m. – 20:20 military time – to honor the Class of 2020 whose members won’t walk the stage in traditional commencement exercises in June. The “Be the Light” event, which began in Texas...
Andrew Miller and four of his Skagit county high school friends and alumni bought Tulip Town last June from Anthony and Jeannette DeGoede, who owned it for 35 years. The group organized as Spinach Bus Ventures. They felt they could carry on the DeGoede’s tradition, not only as a passion, but as a profitable agricultural business and popular tourist attraction. Miller says, “we are in the smile business here.” Tulip Town provides an opportunity for tourists and locals alike to photograph, film an...
Results from an engineering feasibility study has halted plans to restore the historic Pleasant Ridge School. The study was commissioned by Cemetery District 1, which acquired the school and its surrounding acreage in 2017 from owners who had held it for about 50 years. The District wanted more acreage and hoped to turn the much-beloved schoolhouse into a meeting place for memorial services and other community events. After decades of neglect, including long years of service as a storage shed...
The La Conner Braves’ Club is having a Teddy Bear drive. We are collecting new and gently loved bears to distribute to local children during this unprecedented time. Research indicates how stressful the pandemic is on children. Teddy bears are often given as stress relief for youth. The hope is to gather a huge hug of bears, 250-300. Anyone wishing to donate to the cause can place the bears in plastic bags and leave them at the door of the Braves’ Club. With daily checks of the Club, the bears will not be out in the cold for very long. Each bea...
The second annual Library Giving Day on Thursday is an event that gives library lovers like you a chance to support the new La Conner Swinomish Library. Last year 192 library organizations from 39 US States and four Canadian provinces joined the #LibraryGivingDay movement and more than 4,200 donors contributed a total of $737,000. In these unprecedented times, work continues here in La Conner on the planning and design for the new library. We’re still hopeful of breaking ground later this summer. And that’s thanks to the caring support of gen...
Words matter. That’s been a common refrain heard nationally during a period of tense political division. Here in La Conner, it was two words that especially raised eyebrows the weekend before last. Those were “Locals Only.” The two-word message, which some found too harsh, appeared at the roundabout entrance to town April 11 as part of signage designed to encourage social distancing and limit access here by visitors to help stop spread of the coronavirus. The Locals Only sign was quickly removed after Mayor Ramon Hayes was beset with compl...
Much of the economy has been shut down due to the coronavirus. What still pays, however, is being alert to potential mischief. “We’ve seen an uptick in theft and vandalism,” La Conner Mayor Ramon Hayes told the Weekly News last Thursday. “It’s a strange time. We all feel more vulnerable.” In response, the Town earlier this month hired a private security firm to conduct downtown night patrols through May 4 while the statewide “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” emergency order is in effect. The Town Council has since authorized that the range of those pat...
