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If my parents were alive, they would be stepping through their second century in America. My mom, born in 1920, would be 103. My dad would be 109. They were children of the Depression. I have long called myself a child of children of the Depression, typically recalling my mother’s insistence on buying on sale everything from clothes to Kleenex. She did not waste and collected cottage cheese container and egg cartons. The United Auto Workers on strike made me think of my dad. My family grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where Jeeps are made. Jeeps are r...
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...
On Oct. 19 at 9 a.m. 800,000 or so folks in Washington will take part in the Great Shakeout drill to practice the steps necessary to effectively respond to a major earthquake. Unlike floods and maybe wild fires, there is no way science has discovered to prevent earthquakes. There are rumors that Italian scientists are experimenting with warning signs of oncoming earthquakes, but so far the warnings are limited to Italian earthquakes and they can’t warn more than a few minutes before the shaking starts. The only available option in W...
A friend and I had the good fortune to attend The Wayfinder Market’s “First supper club of the fall season” on Friday night Sept. 29. I say fortunate because if you missed out you are truly unlucky. We had a fabulous time. Twenty guests sat at a big L-shaped table and spent 2-1/2 hours getting to know each other over a delicious five-course meal. Food was fantastic. The company was fabulous. The staff members were wonderful. If you get the chance to make reservations for one of these supper club meals I say go for it. It was 2-1/2 hours well...
When I first started reading Mel Damski’s column today, I thought he was going to say that the Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) estate had sued the La Conner Weekly News for plagiarizing the beloved author’s book title. Yikes! That didn’t happen, but why doesn’t Damski take this as a perfect opportunity to come up with a new name for his column? He is a writer, after all. I’m sure he could come up with something original. Annabelle Massey Malloy Shelter Bay...
Thank you for covering the Sept. 24 Fire District 13 Open House event and for consistently providing your readers with information from and about this outstanding group of firefighter/EMTs who serve the community. Your article centers on the dedication of a new residence facility that will house FD 13 volunteer first responders when they commit to a 24 hour, or perhaps 48 hour, shift and become part of a team that answers emergency fire and medical 911calls every hour, every day of the year. That residence will see to the personal care and...
Every September the Weekly News focuses an editorial on Banned Books Week. The Week starts Sunday, Oct. 1 this year. Visit the La Conner Swinomish library next week. Heck, go to a library every single day through Oct. 7. We are fortunate to have good libraries throughout the county. It is unfortunate that our county commissioners have not shown the dedicated, long-term leadership citizens need to be led into the countywide, single library district that living in the 21st century requires. But that is another editorial. Banned Books Week...
When I became a columnist many years ago for this newspaper, I borrowed the title “If I Ran The Zoo” from a delightful book by Dr. Seuss. For me, it was just the perfect title for a column in which I could express my views on anything and everything. Well, Seuss Enterprises, still run by his descendants, has just removed “If I Ran The Zoo” and five other books from publication due to controversy surrounding racist images within these books. In a 1988 biography of Seuss, Ruth K. MacDona...
One of the joys in my year of health challenges was the fun and exciting opportunity to honor “our own” Tom Robbins on Sept. 2. It was a real blast! Tom enjoyed it, he and Alexa rocked it, the library’s programs benefited and everyone entered into the sweet, happy, excellent spirit of the day. Some of us came from far away to celebrate the occasion and we celebrated with all our hearts. That’s why, when I read your recent Musing about the day, I was aghast at the last unfunny paragraph suggesting pushing a mummy of Tom through the streets...
I did not appreciate your musings on Tom Robbins Day. Tom has been our friend for 49 years and is the funniest man we know. He’s still in better shape than many of his friends 20 years younger then he is. To say he was propped up is ageist. He recently went through another bought of COVID-19 and fared well. Tom has always been there for our community, greater area and issues that matter to our world. All we ever had to do is call him when we needed him to entertain us. I asked him many times to help and he did, to stop the nuclear plants h...
Dear town council, planning commission - and citizens: It has been mentioned on the council and planning commission recently that it would be a great idea (said they) to have all the traffic thru town exit on First Street along the water next to the blue building that would be removed for this to occur. They also keep toying with a one way First Street. This idea ignores some important realities: primarily, the Shoreline Master Plan. That land next to old blue (derelict blue building) and which is along the water does indeed partially belong...
La Conner staff and the planning commission are updating the Town’s short-term rental regulations. These rentals are only permitted in the commercial zone – in commercial buildings. What purpose will changing these regulations serve? Whom will benefit? What is broken that has to be fixed? Google “short term rental critique” and this article is near the top: “Affordable Housing and the Impact of Short-Term Rentals.” Staff at the Municipal Research and Services Center wrote it for local officials. That is an in-state nonprofit organizatio...
Pope Francis will release a follow-up document on the environment on Oct. 4, providing an update to his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” “On Care for Our Common Home” – a landmark papal letter that offered a rallying cry for global action in the fight against climate change. Francis said the new document is an effort to help “put an end to the senseless war against our common home” and comes after a summer of record-breaking rising temperatures, wildfires and storms. The pope’s remarks came during his general audience at the Vatican on Aug. 3...
Mikala Staples Hughes spoke for her own interests as an agricultural executive, passionate about the preservation of farm operations, at the Skagit County hearing on agritourism. She is not with Hughes Farms as the Sept. 6 correction in the Weekly News stated. She is the wife of a fourth generation farmer. The editor regrets the error....
La Conner continues to dodge the bullets that so much of small-town America is getting hit by: loss of employers, employees and families moving away, empty storefronts and boarded up homes, loss of hospitals and school closures. No, instead the problems here are employers struggling to fill open positions, employees stuck with commuting long distances and the local government needing robust affordable housing planning, policies and funding. The school district reacts to a smaller student population, but the high cost of housing is a tragedy it...
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...
Here is a backwards rhetorical question: How do your improve on the town’s Tom Robbins celebration and day? Answer: You can’t. Don’t try. Do more and better by organizing something different. What is the necessary alternative roadside attraction? Let’s invent it by next summer. Hopefully this unexpected answer your just read will be embraced and accepted for the necessary challenge it is. More than one person has applauded the complete success of the Sept. 2 celebration, waxed on how wonderful it was to have a day focused on local people...
Tom and I were touched and grateful for everyone who participated in Tom Robbins Day. The event uplifted our community and reminded us to play, imagine and create. The costumes and parade participants were truly delightful. The day emphasized what a great town we are privileged to live in. This event would not have happened without our committee. Gina Torpey (aka lead fairy), Meg Holgate, Betsy Humphrey and Cherie Ware worked tirelessly for three months to make this day possible. Big thanks to Mayor Ramon Hayes for his beautiful proclamation....
Thank you for printing the Tom Robbins graduation address article. I graduated at about the same time and spent my formative years in the Skagit Valley. Although I experienced a traditional high school commencement speech, not a word of which I can remember, I clearly recall soaking up Tom’s books. I moved away from the Valley for graduate school and a satisfying career studying insects that eat trees. I’ve never tired of asking questions of the natural world, a fascination I attribute to having spent so much of my youth pondering the lim...
On Sept. 2 La Conner got our soul back. In honor of Tom Robbins our town came out to honor one of its own. The energy was electric, the costumes outrageous and the best part of the entire day was the sense of community. Truly that is a feeling that has not been present in a very long time for whatever reason. The day was magical, La Conner sparkled in our uniqueness. So from one resident to another please let’s keep that spirit going. With joy and hope Marna Hanneman La Conner...
utheast of Lahaina on Maui with sticky-foot gekkoes and cockroaches for roommates and obnoxious rats as my nearest neighbors. As the embers cool and the tempers flair from the recent Maui wildfires, I can’t help admitting geologists are correct in calling this period of our planet’s history the Anthropocine. Humans not only lit the flames of Maui’s conflagration, Humans provided the fuel. When I first visited the Islands, non-native cane toads hopped through vast plantations of sugar cane that grew where venerable rain forests had been clear...
It’s peak season for food here in La Conner. Let’s start with seafood, crab, oysters, prawns and I tasted some locally caught smoked salmon the other day, yum. La Conner is wonderfully positioned between the water and the farmland. There are so many stands offering sweet corn in our orbit it doesn’t pay to grow it yourself. I will admit the six ears for a buck and the honor stands have gone the way of the Dodo bird, well we can always blame the politicians. Sill, in the grand scheme of things locally grown food is cheap and supports our local...
A typical home in western Washington uses about 10,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. If you add in an electric car, that will increase to about 14,400 kWh. Solar panels in western Washington produce about 1,100 kWh per year, per installed kilowatt (kW) of capacity. To fully power a house and a car, you’d need to install about 13 kW of solar generation capacity. Here in Washington, net metering utility rate tariffs allow you to feed excess power to the grid and be paid for it, s...
Saturday saw the residents of La Conner at their best, gathering for what we all love, a parade. It was made better in that it was organized by us, for us. On this day author Tom Robbins was heralded as a king. The world-famous writer has been living quietly among us for decades. Residents who have known him for a long time and those who have never met him gathered to celebrate, as did those – primarily women – who came from as far away as Ireland, upstate New York, California and everywhere in between, including Indiana and Missouri. Robbins...
I love birds. I have feeders in the front and the back of my house and my office and I refill them every day so that I can continually enjoy watching them in large numbers. Which brings me to a very sad fact that the numbers of birds are severely decreasing. Since the 1500s, birds have been declining both in terms of species numbers (by about 500 species) and numbers of individuals (by about 20-25%). The numbers are staggering – three years after 3 billion birds were lost, America’s birds are...
