The busy summer season is upon our Island.
Editor’s note: This column ran a few years ago. Tressa asked that it run again in part because of the strong response it stirred when it first appeared in The Beachcomber.
I recently reported that my red bicycle was stolen while I was working late one night at The Beachcomber. It was a disappointing moment — to walk out of the office on a summer night, looking forward to a quick, brisk ride home, only to find my bike no longer in front of the paper’s storefront office.
When The Beachcomber heard Monday that a patron had been fined more than $1,000 for allegedly drinking too much at the Strawberry Festival’s beer garden, we thought it was likely the stuff of rumor — an urban legend, Vashon-style. It turns out it’s true.
When The Beachcomber heard Monday that a patron had been fined more than $1,000 for allegedly drinking too much at the Strawberry Festival’s beer garden, we thought it was likely the stuff of rumor — an urban legend, Vashon-style. It turns out it’s true.
Would a ferry reservation system work for Vashon? The Transportation Commission, appointed by the governor, has been pushing this approach to find ways to fund the ferry system.
Washington State Ferries (WSF) was mandated to ask the question, given the traffic congestion at a number of ferry docks and the challenge of filling every boat to capacity. And how can they do this andkeep ferry tolls reasonable (which they aren’t now)?
This past week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined it would permit Glacier’s proposed barge-loading facility within Maury’s sensitive shoreline. The agency refused to require a federal environmental impact statement. With the federal government having listed the chinook as a threatened species and our beloved orcas as endangered, this decision casts a major shadow over efforts to recover these species and Puget Sound.
Last week, this paper reported some of the first good news in a few years about the long, hard, Quixote-like struggle to keep Glacier Northwest at bay. Preserve Our Islands, the grassroots group opposing Glacier, had successfully convinced state regulators to hold the sand and gravel company to the highest standard possible under the state’s voter-approved toxic cleanup law.
Traditions are important. The things we do as each year follows another can be the ties that bind families, organizations, cultures and nations, to name a few possibilities. In a world that more and more crosses national boundaries, where people live in places they were not born, traditions can be strengths that hold one’s roots. They can be shared experiences that cross all national, racial and cultural boundaries and bring people together in celebrations of human ethos.
Shoulder-To-Shoulder Farm, one of Vashon’s hidden treasures, spreads out behind Vashon Cohousing on land leased from the Roseballen Community Land Trust.
t And what if they all went on strike?
I predict the next edition of Webster’s Dictionary will contain a word born from this economic period: ‘staycation.’ You’ve likely heard this new word beat to death by the media as the answer to the cost-prohibitive summer vacation of 2008. Instead of paying skyrocketing fuel costs to jet or drive off to get away from it all, many of us are planning to hunker down in our own domains for a long staycation.
“You can always tell the English. You can always tell the Dutch. You can always tell Lubahn’s class, but you can’t tell much. Thank goodness it’s Friday!”
