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Sorted by date Results 702 - 726 of 1886
I was blown away this winter by the number of birds that I passed by as I drove all around Skagit Valley, including fields filled with snow geese and eagles in trees being photographed by many birdwatchers. Hooray, I thought, birds are making a comeback! I checked with my friend Libby Mills who is a leading bird expert and has been teaching people about birds for 50 years or so. Libby is a naturalist who is associated with the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center, the North Cascades Institute and a f...
La Conner residents are invited to a public forum addressing “Growing Pains” in town March 31 at 6 p.m. in the school district’s Bruce Auditorium. The forum is the first effort of the town council’s communication committee to both provide information to residents on pressing issues and to engage the community in discussion. Councilmember MaryLee Chamberlain started championing getting information on town plans and projects to residents last fall. With fellow Councilmember Rick Dole, a committee started discussing ways residents can get accurat...
I found it concerning when I read the recent letters by Mr. O’Donnell on March 9 and by Mr. Elliott on March 16 about taxes paid by Shelter Bay. Anyone buying a home here on leased land is clearly informed that we live here because the Swinomish Nation has granted us the privilege. In any lease situation, we do not presume to tell our landlord how to use their income. But even more than that, a non-native living here should not be taking the same position (or taking the same for granted) as we would living on land that is solely part of the U...
Dear friends, I want to recommend World Central Kitchens, founded by chef Jose Andres, as an organization worthy of your support for citizens of Ukraine and their abouts. You can find it easily online. It’s been in place for several years. I donate regularly. They have established cooking and serving stations, at least eight on the Polish Ukraine border at major refugee receiving spots, to help feed and comfort thousands and thousands of those fleeing war. WCK has also been providing the same care in other spots in the world where folks are h...
Congratulations to the planning commission for recognizing when a staff report is inadequate and should be ignored. Your vote to reject the Center Street project as too large and too impactful on the neighbors was the right thing to do. Thank you. I know how hard that was for you. The PC has been running short - three members (still a quorum) instead of five at this meeting. (One member was unable to attend). The vacancy which has existed since fall has still not been filled. Two good people from town offered to fill the role on the...
Humans are so resilient. After early shocks to us, individually or collectively, humans find a new equilibrium, developing a new normal. If the disruption is not too great, say a coronavirus pandemic, kids, teachers, businesses, fire fighters and even healthcare workers develop alternatives that in time stop being new and become routine. It is two years ago last week that the world – the world – ground to a halt, everyone – even New Zealand – floored by the coronavirus pandemic. Locked down was the term, the policy and...
We got a gift Sunday morning, at the start of daylight savings time – bright sun and a springlike breeze. Ah, that sun. It is clearly moving north, heading for next week’s equinox. Its journey will take it both higher and farther into the northern sky for the next three months. Shadows really stand out; they are brighter, bolder, more distinct, creating twins of trees and fences. The breeze is not warm yet, but was not cold. Sunday morning it was a tease, whispering winter is over, which it almost is. At 9:30 a.m., which is really 8:30 a...
Introduction: As John Leaver wrote last week of his family members (still) in Kyiv, we all live in an internationally connected world. We here feel Ukrainians’ pain as TV and the internet bring their lives home to us. “Why?” being my favorite word from before two on, it came out of me the moment the all-clear siren sounded. May 1940, England’s southeast coast, inside our garden’s air raid shelter, mummy, baby Peter and me. “Why do they drop bombs on us?” Not till we were in the kitchen with Peter safe again in his cradle and mummy making...
Kudos to La Conner resident Dan O’Donnell for his persistent and astute analysis of local and county financial matters, especially regarding taxation (letter, March 9 Weekly News). The Swinomish taxation of Shelter Bay “improvements” – only the homes, not the land – is an anomaly. For those who do not know the history or have forgotten, it is the consequence of a lawsuit brought in Thurston County by the Chehalis Tribe over property taxation of Great Wolf Lodge, in which they had a majority interest. Local courts ruled in favor...
We, the citizens of La Conner, elect a mayor and a town council. The mayor appoints a town administrator and a planning director. Regarding the oversized and imposing 20 unit development proposal in the 300 block of Center Street, Town Planner Michael Davolio has made a few statements that are troubling, at best. (Weekly News, March 9): 1. Davolio informed the duly elected town council, that they will have no role in the approval process of said proposal. 2. Davolio stated that “the staff recommendations will rest solely on our determination a...
Everyone agrees that all of us are tired of the coronavirus pandemic, now in its third year. Fortunately, the omicron variant has waned, case numbers are down and hospitalizations are following that pattern of decline. Pattern. Waning. Alas, the coronavirus, like the moon, shrinks before, in predictable fashion, it grows into its full phase again. Until the moon is blasted out of the night sky, it will cycle through its changes monthly, like clockwork. In Washington and Skagit County the total reductions and dramatic fall in the case rate are...
Oh, how the pandemic has kicked me in the head, let me count the ways. I was just about to start a tour guide business, when COVID-19 kept the tourists from the tulips and daffodil fields, which was probably the safest place to breathe. Nope, couldn’t even peacefully breathe out on a deserted bayside dike, got quite harshly booted by a minion from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, “didn’t” you read the sign!? Yeah, nobody within a half a mile, I guess it’s best that my at-risk ass, go get closer to the virus, that I thought we were supp...
The Firefighters and Commissioners of District 13 would like to thank The Marathon Petroleum Foundation for their generous donation of $22,000 towards the purchase of our new structure firefighting personal protective equipment. The old gear was well out of date, some as much as 20 years old. In addition, much of the gear was worn out from years of structure fires. This new turnout gear allows us to engage fires with the knowledge that our gear is up to date and structurally sound.. Thanks to the Marathon refinery in Anacortes and the Marathon...
The Swinomish Tax Authority used the same levy rate for 2022 as for 2021: $11.98 per thousand. But, the assessed value of homes in Shelter Bay and Pull & Be Damned increased from $178,838,070 to $196,284,197, an increase of $17,446,127. The Swinomish government hopes to collect $2,350,888 in taxes from Shelter Bay, Pull & Be Damned, Thousand Trails and Dunlap Towing. That’s $208,214 higher than last year. Three taxing districts will receive contributions from the Swinomish. These are: Fire District 13 at $300,000 ($100,000 more than last year),...
Events of the last few weeks have made me recall my own travels in Kyiv, then spelled Kiev, and what I saw there in 1970 as a 15 year old girl. What comes to mind most clearly is our visit to Babi Yar and the official denial that it was even there at all. I was traveling through the Soviet Union with my parents, in our own car, heading to visit the tiny Carpathian town where my father had been born. We started in Finland and spent a month driving through what was then the U.S.S.R. In Kyiv, as in every other place, we were provided an official...
If you were to ask me last year what our state’s financial position would be, I likely would have given a fairly grim outlook. However, the state is seeing a boom in tax receipts so large it could make you blush. The opportunity to provide relief or prepare the state for future revenue decreases is ripe for the picking. Unfortunately, the mindset of Olympia’s legislative majority is a poverty of riches. It favors growing an already bloated and unaccountable bureaucracy while doing the bare minimum with our $15 billion surplus to help struggling...
A handful of articles on the local and statewide COVID-19 situation in the Feb. 16 issue of the Weekly News provide confusing messaging on the seriousness of the public’s role in the pandemic. Overall, Skagit County hospitalizations and positive cases are lessening. But per page two and page three articles, hospitalization cases are “still quite high,” local Fire District 13 is forced by the virus crisis to run smaller crews and return to zoom meetings, and the statewide move to end the indoor mask mandate is “in transition” while the manda...
I, too, (Bruce Elliot, letter: “Open space is lost forever,” Dec. 15, 2021) am sickened every time I pass by what used to be our lovely little open space ball field. Whenever my husband and I would drive by and a game was on, he would say “Let’s stop and watch,” and sometimes we would. He had Alzheimer’s and this was a great delight for his deteriorating mind. After he died, I had such bittersweet memories when I drove by the ball field. No more. Am I, as Bruce had said, beating a dead horse on this issue? Yes, but no. It looks to me as thoug...
Paul Farmer, Harvard physician and anthropologist, co-founder of Partners in Health, died on February 21 at the age 62 in Rwanda after a lifetime of caring for the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Siberia and the Navajo Nation. He was quoted (AP) as saying,”I am not cynical, cynicism is a dead end.” I try to hold that admirable thought as we witness the unvaccinated clogging, almost breaking, hospital staffs across the United States claiming vaccination mandates designed to protect the population as a whole are “forced” vaccinations that infring...
War. No one wants it, but the option – or possibility, or hope – is readily and easily bandied about. Now Russia has invaded Ukraine, unleashing the greatest military violence in Europe since Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939. What does it mean? In the long run disaster for Vladimir Putin and disaster for the people of Russia. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 only to retreat in defeat nine years later. The U.S. loses war after war, from Vietnam to our own Afghanistan debacle, 20 years of lives and treasure lost there, o...
A story and a satire I was in the Tav last Friday afternoon having a bourbon and a beer before I went out to Anacortes to get my oil changed, there not being any place in town for automotive work. I was telling my friend McCoy that while I was out I was going to get a couple of bunches of daffodils for the Mrs. She really likes those yellow blooms on the kitchen table this time of year. She says they remind her of the sun when she gets up early in the dark after that damned daylight savings time kicks in. So McCoy says to me “Hat,” cause he kno...
Libraries are magical places. Every book is a window to the world just waiting to be explored. Maybe it’s because I grew up the grandchild of a high school English teacher, who instilled in me a love for language and books – but I’ve always believed libraries are necessities, not luxuries. Not only do they enrich our minds, they also keep our democracy healthy. By providing comprehensive access to recorded details of history, government, philosophy, medicine and countless other topics, libraries protect and defend every citizen’s right to...
Wow, what a time to be alive, so much to see and experience, a worldwide pandemic, international tensions, inflationary pressures again causing our hands to be out to the legislature, thank you, please. Please dear benevolent overlord, can’t you appreciate our need and pleas? Another $625,000, I’m sure we won’t have to ask for anymore, it’ll help us pay for the doors and windows of our new library. I’m sure that it will create more tourist income, it’ll make us cooler than we already are. Maybe someone will come in and read about our missing sa...
I am sure a marketing “icon” in Gilkey Square was proposed for the best of reasons, but it strikes me as wrong-headed in a number of ways: Goal. It’s been suggested to me that the icon will provide a great place for visitor photo ops. If that’s the goal, the icon will probably achieve it, at considerable expense. But if the goal is to attract more visitors and more return visitors, I don’t see how it does that. I don’t see people saying, “Hey, let’s run up to La Conner and get some pics with that icon thing!” It is just not an attraction in...
The quaint town of La Conner has drawn people from the world over. The Skagit Valley, on the whole, is a very special place. The location, climate and the beautiful vistas that come with the changing seasons bring people here every year. What vision are we seeking for the special area that we live in? Do we want to be memorable for what is here? What is the memory we want our visitors to take away from here? When I first heard of the plans for the apartment building going in on Center Street behind The Slider Cafe, I found myself disheartened....
