Poet parses problems

Dear Editor,

I wish to express my appreciation for the investigative journalism that you put into the La Conner Weekly News.

I was especially happy to read the comments of Allan Olson, lead counsel for the Swinomish Tribe [Olson is general manager – editor].

His clarifications helped un-cloud some murky waters, and for that I am happy.

However, it also shed some light on some goblins in the closet.

No matter how we look at us, we can see cracks in our façade, from financing our fixes, to educating our masses, to justly paying our taxes; we have yet to learn from our collective crashes.

Yeah, from the ones that have killed our kids, to the ones that have put Chinook on the skids, and our Orca under a lens.

No, we can’t be content to just sit and lament, or bow our heads and repent, we must muscle our heads, to realize how our money is spent! How we’ve come to be so bent requires reading reality, not a fictional fantasy, there really is such a thing as cause and effect!

If we don’t want transient tourists, and the money they leave behind, then pay no never mind to the smelt-less smelt derby and the Chinook-less channel, and the silt that clouds the waters of the Salish Sea, or the untapped energy of it, as it surges through our community so ceaselessly!

We’re known for our fine art, fancy food, fancy wood and glass, quilts and crafts, but we could be selling new creative technology too, if we could capture it, before someone else steals it from our heads, where it waits so patiently.

Yeah, some of us just die with our wisdom piled high, never to be handed off, all gone, good-bye.

Some of us try to spin stories into yarns, everything from the owls in the barn, to the tulips and tubers on the farm.

Then there are some of us that dance around looking like fools, trying to teach reality to the schools, attempting to reach for the pearled oysters in the pools.

We could do so many things and more, yet we are easily distracted by a couple of ‘Smores,’ and a short bray from a mule.

Glen S. Johnson