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Holiday lights abound. As Ray Stevens said about Santa Claus, they’re everywhere! They’re everywhere! They’re all over La Conner’s homes, streetlight posts and various public spaces. The big Christmas tree in Gilkey Square dominates the north end of downtown. The tiny tree auction has come and gone at the La Conner Swinomish Library. Thousands of years ago, the tradition of holiday lighting started with simple oil or candle menorahs, which were (and still are) used by Jewish families to mark Hanukkah. In the 18th century, central Europea...
Dear Greater La Conner Community, Welcome to the La Conner Weekly News. If you are getting the paper for the first time, I hope you will find your community newspaper an enjoyable and worthwhile read. Valued subscribers, I hope this issue meets your expectations and needs. Thank you, subscribers, for your ongoing engagement with the community through these pages. This newspaper exists for everyone reading it this week That is you. Decades ago, when the local paper was The Puget Sound Mail, every issue said “Covers La Conner and its Rich A...
This is the week we sit down with family and friends and give thanks, typically for the abundant bounty that so many Americans are privileged to have. At this time of American thanksgiving, lifting our eyes past the laden table is as necessary for our souls as it is good for the souls not attending Thursday’s feasts.. We live in, for and with the immediate world surrounding us: our home, work and community, but whether we hold it close or only hear faintly at a distance, the large world beyond our community borders exists. Many people in many p...
What is more American than the post office? The post office is older than the United States, established the year before the Declaration of Independence, in 1775 by perhaps the wisest and most practical of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. He understood that to knit not only each community – say a town like La Conner – together but to forge a new nation, we had to be in communication – connected – with each other, from Rhode Island to Georgia. What leads this week’s page one news? The terrorist attack on the Skagit County Elections...
It is a week after the school children of La Conner and many of their parents, families and friends swarmed up First Street in the town’s annual Halloween parade. Last weekend kids of all ages were on stage at the Lincoln Theatre, performing as Munchkins, crows, poppies, snowflakes and many more imaginative characters in wonderful performances of “The Wizard of Oz.” These are exactly the activities every child everywhere needs to be engaged in. How fortunate and privileged these Skagit Valley families are to enjoy these opportunities. And,...
October was National Co-op Month, the annual celebration of this alternative way to engage with each other in our business dealings and thus as people in relationship with each other. National Co-op Month offers the time to reflect on and promote a more humane and sustainable way of living. The 2023 theme, “Owning Our Identity,” is, its champions write, “a chance to lift up what makes cooperative businesses unique in the marketplace. Guided by a set of shared principles and values – among them democracy, equity and solidarity – co-ops ar...
Last week I talked about electric vehicle chargers in rural British Columbia. Charger availability there is still improving. Flo.com’s map shows that the charger in Woss, BC (population about 200), has been upgraded since Jenelle and I traveled there about a year ago. Woss now has a Level 3 (fast, 50 kilowatt) charger, with two Level 3 plugs. It’s about 40 miles from the nearest larger town, Port McNeill (population about 2,000). Port McNeill also has a public Level 3 charger. For ref...
No. No more military aid to Israel, not $14 billion, not 14 cents. Write President Joe Biden, Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen and tell them more weapons will neither stop the killing nor end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Biden is wrong in his easy rhetoric. Sure Hamas is a terrorist organization. Yes their actions are absolutely despicable. Rightfully call the kidnapping and murder of innocent evil. But wars on terrorism are efforts to kill ideas, pain, anger and memories brought about by decades...
Ballots will be arriving in the mail soon. We have very few choices in this year of municipal elections. There is only one contested seat: the La Conner school district Director 2 position. The rest of the positions in greater La Conner, for school director positions 1 and 4, Port of Skagit commissioner position 2 and Town of La Conner mayor and council positions 1 and 5 are all decided when the candidates cast their ballots. That is our bad, residents and constituents of those jurisdictions. It may be that school board member Kim Pedroza and...
All of a sudden there are a slew of opportunities to be active civically – democratically – in the community. You do not have to live in La Conner to involve yourself. And the October activities end, appropriately, with our school children – indeed anyone with a costume, with or without a child – parading up First Street for the Halloween parade. Come on out for that, for sure. Activities extend into Nov. 7 election day. Because only one area resident chose to contest only one of the La Conner school board or Town of La Conner council seats,...
The Sept. 27 story “Skagit Habitat for Humanity buys La Conner lot” incorrectly stated “The Town of La Conner plans to change its comprehensive plan to allow multifamily housing … .” That is an aspiration of Skagit Habitat for Humanity. The sentence: “If all goes as planned, the city will change its comprehensive plan to allow multifamily housing” was edited and revised from the reporter’s submittal. The editor is responsible for accurate editing. The publisher regrets the poor editing....
The La Conner Arts Foundation donated 11 ukeleles to the La Conner School District, not the Town of La Conner’s art commission, as incorrectly reported in the Sept. 27 story “School board reviews service graduation requirement.” The Arts Foundation is a nonprofit doing “Good Deeds Through the Arts.” The editor regrets the error....
The Sept. 13 Clean Energy Cooperative column “EV costs are predictable” stated that net metering in Washington allows people to be paid for power they feed to the grid. That sentence should have ended, “to the grid, up to but not exceeding the amount you actually use each year.” The editor regrets the error....
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy acted rightly as the mature adult in the room last weekend, taking responsibility for passing a spending bill to fund the United States government. When you read this, McCarthy has already been voted out of the speaker’s chair by a cabal of extremist right wing Republican representatives, their retribution for McCarthy committing the act of governing. The Constitution obligates the House of Representatives to initiate budget bills funding the federal government. Voters in 435 districts elect their r...
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...
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...
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...
Yesterday, Aug. 8, was the 49th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as president is the United States. Why did Nixon resign? First for our youth, the ahistorical, those who forgot or cannot remember our 37th president, Nixon’s top White House staff worked with a dirty tricks squad. The tricksters first broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in 1971. Then in June 1972 they burglarized the Democratic Party’s Watergate office and were caught, arrested by Washington, D.C., police. For two years, through Senate and House inv...
I love that phrase. It always makes me smile. It is what brought me to La Conner in March 2017 to look at buying the Weekly News. I will always associate my newspaper publishing career with my best friend, Dick Wittenberg, who loves to see his name in print. My newspaper ownership is fundamentally due to friendship but more, to love and trust. Dick believes in me completely. He knew I could successfully run a newspaper. He was right. Weekly newspaper for sale. This is the second month of my seventh year owning the La Conner Weekly News. You...
Next Monday, July 31, the La Conner school board will approve the school district's 2023-2024 budget. The vote will almost certainly be unanimous but it will not be an easy decision. Board members and staff have known about and been grappling with cutting millions of dollars and reducing teaching, support and administrative staff.. The ongoing decline in student enrollment and the district’s despair at the low number of families with school-age children has been editorialized here before. The difficulty of little available and increasingly e...
Probably not even the most loyal reader of the Weekly News noticed that this issue is volume 10, issue 11. Every week the issue number advances one and on the paper’s birth-anniversary date the volume increases one. This is the 312th issue under my ownership, completing my sixth year editing and managing the Weekly News. Year seven, with issue 313, starts next week. News editor Bill Reynolds has quoted me, “I own it but it is the community's newspaper.” I do own it but my hope for and ask of readers has always been for engagement and parti...
The weather at the start of this week is cool and a bit rainy. Wet is certainly needed, as the year's precipitation deficit is a whooping 6.2 inches as we head into the heart of the Skagit's summer dry season. A damp and cool week is a toe-in-the-water dip into a June gloom. It has been too sunny and too warm the first half of the month and many have turned off their office natural gas heating systems. Once it is gloomy though, it seems to linger. This week's and this month's weather is just that, clouds passing by, not even minutes in the...
The secondary heading for this editorial is "our ossified leadership." The political state – and status – of our country is our society-wide failure, whether you read many newspapers or none and whether you discuss vigorously, halfheartedly or not at all with your neighbors, families and friends. About the ossified leadership: Our accepting presidential candidates on either side of 80-years-old is a failure on Joe Biden and Donald Trump's parts, the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties – and financers – politically involved citiz...
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -Albert Einstein Thursday La Conner High School seniors graduate, 47 of them. Local merchants and institutions recognize them by sponsoring the seniors’ photographs on today's back page. Take a look at these young, confident, about-to-be adults heading into their futures. That future is our future, to be shared with them but so far shaped by us, the elders reading these words. The graduates step into a world not of their making nor choosing. As they start to make choices, we already hear them voic...
