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La Conner, flooded with poets and students from eight area school districts, hosted the 10th Biennial Skagit Valley Poetry Festival last weekend. The Poets Table Soiree kicked off the event Thursday night at Maple Hall with appetizers, wine and dinner. Random Acts of Food catered it. Hot Damn Scandal broke into song at the elementary school gym – musical poetry – singing their “outlaw ballads, dirty jazz, circus freak outs, shanty-rags, string band funk, lonesome heart-breakers a...
Tim Bruce was back on the La Conner School District campus last Wednesday. Some 50 friends, colleagues and past school board members came to cheer and applaud as School Board President Kate Szurek announced, “it is with great appreciation that we chose to name this building the Bruce Performing Arts Center – in honor of you, your work, and all you have left to us.” Bruce had been superintendent of the school district for 26 years, from 1990 to 2015. He supported and led efforts for a great expansion of drama and theatre. Szurek rec...
To La Conner Food Bank Friends: Over 3,400 pounds a week. That is how much food your neighborhood food bank distributes to families each Monday. That is why the 905pounds of donations, through the post office’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, were so critical to our operation. Our all-volunteer LaConner Sunrise Food Bank gives a heartfelt thank you to the many out-of-town food donors, the post office carriers and our local friendly post office staff that made this food drive happen. Again, a sincere thank you to you all. Susan Widdop, director F...
What a fantastic, well prepared, fun event Shirley and Brent brought to La Conner! This event brought the nicest, coolest people to town! Thank you Shirley and Brent from all of us at La Conner Pub & Eatery. Julie Lennartz...
How sad that the Tribe has not cleaned up their eyesore property on 1st Street. Apparently, they have no interest in developing its commercial value. Why not partner with the Town of La Conner in developing some kind of Tribal cultural park? Provide public access to the boardwalk while promoting the Swinomish culture. Perhaps relocate the dugout canoe display that is now hidden down below Town Hall. Allow the Art Commission to install some Native art. Encourage the Tribe to provide periodic cultural displays and events. Jim...
Shalom Circle is a liberal Jewish Community founded and co-led by Cantor Miriam Fein and Simme Bobrosky. We share spirited services, classes and festival celebrations. Our gatherings are filled with song, story, ritual and fellowship. Together we explore the wisdom, peace and joy of Jewish spirituality. On Saturday, June 2, 10:30 a.m.-12: p.m. we will be having our Shabbat Morning Service at our new location which is Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 500 West Section Street in Mount Vernon. We want to take this opportunity to thank...
The Skagit River Poetry Festival was nigh, and so the volunteers came, fluttering in, silently, unsung, no trumpets, just a steady trudging from one venue to another. They planted signs of poetry, literally, and an occasional feather left in a room, randomly. It was a different spring migration, this one biennially, with a flock of odd ducks, not in any birder’s book, attracting a different breed of tourists. Poems started popping up, opening like mid-spring flowers, around town last Wednesday, as volunteers started digging into their tasks. T...
Last week art, ceremony and truth telling were ongoing in our little town. Significant voices spoke on both sides of the Swinomish Channel. On the Reservation Thursday the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community welcomed everyone to a luncheon feast and then their Canoe Family, elders and four chosen youth led the gathering down to the water for the Blessing of the Fleet and the First Salmon Ceremony. In Maple Hall, students and audiences gathered Thursday through Saturday as poets seeped into La Conner’s reality. Friday it was students in w...
HAVE WE REACHED WAKANDA YET? – Somewhere in the western Skagit Valley, indeed somewhere in La Conner, this double rock face can be found. Find it and report its location to the Weekly News by June 2. Winners will be entered in a drawing for a year’s subscription to the paper. – Photo by Ken Stern...
In a stirring and powerful presentation at the Shelter Bay clubhouse last Saturday, Matika Wilbur shared her vision and her ongoing quest “To Change the Way We See Native America” with over 80 people, primarily Shelter Bay residents and family friends. She has created Project 562, to “visit, engage and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States.” While showing photographs of her five years of traveling the country, visiting tribes and reservations, she told a deeply personal story, integrating her bio...
Call it a win-win situation. La Conner Elementary students raised money for supplemental learning materials and classroom supplies while getting exercise at Whittaker Field Friday afternoon. It was all part of the school’s annual walk-a-thon, which raises funds based on the number of laps students run or walk around the quarter-mile campus track. Students gleefully circled the oval – some strolling, others jogging, and a few even sprinting – to upbeat music piped through an o...
What’s old is new again. And, in the case of the Swinomish Tribal Community’s Blessing of the Fleet and First Salmon Ceremony last Thursday, it was a case of perfect timing. Ideal weather conditions, a large turnout and bountiful feast aligned nicely for the special occasion. The Tribal celebration, which evoked spiritual and festive responses in equal measure, has roots dating to ancestral times, according to Swinomish Archivist and Records Manager Theresa Trebon. It was revived after a len...
