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You are reading about last weekend's 10th annual Friday Harbor Film Festival in part to get nudged to click on and watch on demand over 30 films through Oct. 30. They are worth your time. For $75 you can gorge on them all or start with one for $12. In Friday Harbor the Film Festival lit up four theaters Oct. 21-23, gloriously in person after two years of films online only, imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Starting Friday morning at 10 a.m., 27 feature and 13 shorts were shown over three...
La Conner High School volleyball fans were in the mood to celebrate Thursday night. And that was before the defending state 2B champions knocked off 4A Glacier Peak in straight sets in front of a supportive home crowd at Landy James Gym. It was a festive mood that filled the arena Oct. 13 as Washington Hall of Fame Coach Suzanne Marble was formally honored courtside on her 30-year career here, a tenure marked by six state titles, three academic state championships, 17 state tournament trophies...
A long dry season has been a mixed blessing for local farmers. Back in June, when the Skagit Valley was so cold and drenched some fields could not even be planted, Dean Swanson thought we would never hit 80 degrees. “Farmers asked for a warm dry fall to recover from the late start,” he said, “but we forgot to ask for a couple of timely rains.” Fortunately, copious spring rains gave plants a good start. A deep snowpack kept river levels high all summer, making more water available for irrigating corn, pasture and potatoes. Heat helped. While Swa...
The La Conner High School homecoming football game last Friday was full of bright shining moments. Not so much in the final score, but certainly during isolated moments of a 67-18 grid loss to league foe Friday Harbor and at intermission when the royal court led by King Jacob Pommels and Queen Makayla Herrera was introduced to a large Whittaker Field crowd. While the homecoming royalty could not decree a second straight Braves win a week after the team broke a lengthy scoring drought in a...
The defending state 2B La Conner High School volleyball team is used to posting big numbers when it takes the floor. But none bigger than last Wednesday at Landy James Gym. The Lady Braves swept Mount Vernon High School in straight sets Oct. 12 and raised more than $1,000 for breast cancer research as part of their annual Dig Pink/Senior Night match. The Dig Pink effort shows head coach Suzanne Marble's commitment to providing public service projects for her players. As for Senior Night, fans...
Early morning fog and mist lent a magical twist Thursday to streams of students hauling books from the old to the new La Conner Swinomish Library. The rumble of wheels along Morris Street from carts packed with books began three days of magic – the spell of the written word. Though not part of the Skagit River Poetry Festival itself, it seemed a fitting start. The festival, canceled twice due to COVID-19, brought in dozens of poets from as far away as Argentina and Scotland, hundreds of s...
It's so important to know how our legislators have voted when we are deciding whether to re-elect or re-place them. That is really important in our 10th legislative district this year. Clyde Shavers is running against incumbent Greg Gilday. With that in mind, you need to know that Gilday voted: “No” to prohibit carrying firearms on school property or school transportation, government buildings or government property, voter registration office or ballot counting. “No” to prohibit sale of high capacity firearm magazines. “No” to expand and...
Betty May Jackman Wilson left La Conner, Washington for her next adventure on her 95th birthday, September, 23, 2022. She was born at home in Dayton, Oregon in 1927 to May and Walter Jackman. Her family moved to McMinnville so she could attend school. They lived in the Methodist Parsonage until her father built them a house (hand digging out the basement at night after work). Betty loved music and was always singing; she sang in the school choir, played in the band and also played piano. Later...
The La Conner High School volleyball team turned in another capital performance last weekend. Facing teams from larger schools, including undefeated 4A power Puyallup High School, the defending state 2B net champs placed first in the silver division of the Capitol City Invitational Volleyball Tournament in Olympia last Saturday, Oct. 8. La Conner went 1-2 in pool play, including a two-set defeat to Puyallup, before rebounding to sweep three straight matches in the tourney's silver bracket,...
It’s never too early to plan for a special event. That includes Halloween, even as an unseasonably warm start to fall saw temperatures reach the upper 70s throughout Puget Sound when the calendar flipped to October. Despite the summer-like conditions, there was no cold shoulder toward preparations for what has long been a favorite La Conner holiday. The La Conner Parent Teacher Student Association members are organizing this year’s downtown costumed Halloween parade. This year’s Oct. 31 parade is scheduled from 12-1 p.m. and coincides with an 1...
It wasn't yellow flags that dotted dry and brownish Whittaker Field Friday morning. It was instead the orange shirts worn by La Conner students and staff that colored the school district's football field on Sept. 30 in honor of Native American youth who, over generations, suffered cultural trauma while attending residential campuses in the U.S. and Canada. La Conner Schools is one of the first districts in western Washington to observe Orange Shirt Day, which in Canada is a national day of...
Because Jean Markert has always enjoyed reading and books, the next chapter in her career could not have been better scripted. Markert, previously an instructor at Skagit Valley College and manager of the Northwest Workforce Council, has been named the new director of the La Conner-Swinomish Library set to open on Morris Street in mid-October. The La Conner resident had served for just over a month as interim library director. That interim label is now lifted from Markert's job title, library bo...
La Conner High School volleyball players have given their fans plenty of reasons to celebrate over the past three decades – starting with six state titles. Now the La Conner community has an opportunity to celebrate the Hall of Fame coach who since 1993 has been the program's guiding force. Suzanne Marble, who topped the 500-career win mark two years ago, again has her team aiming for top state honors in her 30th and final net campaign. In recognition of Marble's many contributions here as a t...
The Coupeville High School football team needed just one score and 16 seconds to post an NW2B shutout win over La Conner at Whittaker Field Friday, Sept. 23. Coupeville's Scott Hilborn returned the opening kickoff 78 yards for a touchdown that opened the floodgates to a 46-0 Wolves triumph. Hilborn reeled off a 10-yard scoring jaunt that edged Coupeville 13-0 less than a minute into the game, following one of five La Conner lost fumbles. Coupeville capped its scoring onslaught when quarterback...
The La Conner High School volleyball team split a pair of matches last week but literally won the one that counted. The defending state 2B net champs were edged in three sets at 1A Nooksack Valley Sept. 20 before sweeping Friday Harbor on San Juan Island in La Conner’s NW2B/1B debut on Thursday, Sept. 22. The Lady Braves (3-1), who typically play a challenging non-conference schedule, had earlier defeated 2A Anacortes and Sehome at home. “Nooksack is a very solid team,” La Conner head coach Marble said after the team’s 22-25, 19-25, 23-25 s...
Some of the 37 guest poets and artists participating in this year’s Skagit River Poetry Festival are crossing oceans to reach La Conner. Others just have to cross the Rainbow Bridge. Canadian poet Karen Solie, flying in from St. Andrews, Scotland, is coming the farthest. Katherine Paul of the band Black Belt Eagle Scout can just stroll down the street. Her dad Kevin Paul can commute from Swinomish Village. Father and daughter will open the festival’s Thursday, October 6 program, “Welcome to Indian Country: A Reading to Celebrate our First Natio...
The late Lea McMillan Diacos was truly a gem in her hometown of La Conner. How fitting, then, that her memory is honored here as a posthumous recipient of the Soroptimist International of La Conner Ruby Award in recognition of her steadfast support of local youth. The ruby, after all, is associated with wisdom, importance, vitality, strength, power and love. Diacos, a 1938 La Conner High School graduate, checked all those boxes prior to her passing in 2008. Her love for her community is...
After suffering successive losses to open the season, the La Conner High School girls' soccer team got on the board in a 10-2 non-conference home loss to Oak Harbor Sept. 9. Still, an asterisk is in order. The two La Conner goals were scored by Oak Harbor players on loan to the short-handed Lady Braves, who are still without their full roster due to eligibility and injury issues. Head coach Christian Warman said some players need to complete the required 10 preseason practices to participate in...
A million details make the Skagit River Poetry Festival happen – and they are all coming together. Before the Festival takes place in La Conner Oct. 6-9, there are 34 poets to match to housing, pick up at the airport shuttle and feed. There are half a dozen school buses to arrange so Skagit and Whatcom County high school students can attend for free on Friday, October 7. Not to mention 220 chairs to distribute to Festival venues for a four-day whirlwind of setting up, taking down, setting up a...
The La Conner High School football team lost its season home opener on Saturday – not to non-league opponent Forks but to poor air quality. The Braves' grid contest at Whittaker Field was nixed due to thick, stifling wildfire smoke that began hovering in the La Conner area Friday and lingered through the weekend. The Northwest Clean Air Agency Board issued a Stage 1 air quality burn ban for the Island, Skagit and Whatcom tri-county region Friday morning. That ban, separate from existing fire s...
The roster is different, but the result was the same. The defending state 2B champion La Conner High School volleyball team opened its 2022 season with an impressive triumph over 2A Anacortes at Landy James Gym Thursday, Sept. 8. The most imposing part clearly was a 13-2 run to close out the second set and erase what had been a 20-12 Seahawk lead. "It was a little setback for us," senior middle blocker Makayla Herrera said of the brief deficit midway through the match, "but we were able to come...
By Anna Ferdinand When Rena Priest stood before a crowd at the Lincoln theater Sept. 3, she asked attendees to answer this question: “Where do poems come from?” A theater took pen to paper, writing to the prompt for five minutes, each person free to travel the pathways down which their brains chose to meander, tracking thoughts on the page. The Skagit River Poetry Foundation, a co-sponsor of the poetry reading with Priest, Washington state’s poet laureate, helps us answer the question: For students in and around the Skagit Valley who benef...
August's annual Pioneer Picnic has provided a boost to the Skagit County Historical Museum for the year ahead. The Skagit County Pioneer Association, which for over a century has coordinated the picnic on the first Thursday in August, has contributed $3,000 to the historical museum from proceeds from the picnic. That represents the association's largest contribution to the museum in a decade and is $2,000 more than the amount donated a year ago. Former La Conner mayor Bud Moore, the pioneer...
Creating one of La Conner's most popular works of public art back in the day was no walk in the park. But it began with one. The idea for sprucing up the walking trail beneath the Rainbow Bridge with a colorful thematic mural project evolved from a hike there by La Conner resident Jane Stephens nearly a quarter-century ago. "I've always walked there," Stephens told the Weekly News Sept. 1 during a phone interview from Corvallis, Oregon, where she was visiting family. "Our son Andy, was going to...
What about Langley? Mayor Scott Chaplin is bullish on this seaside town of just over 1,100 residents. Like La Conner, it is a magnet for tourists seeking fine art, eating and shopping. Unlike La Conner, Langley has Langley Creates," one of 11 certified Washington Creative Districts, a program that helps communities turn their artistic, artisanal and cultural/historical assets into economic growth. During conversation with Chaplin in August, he championed his "village-by-the sea." "Our...
