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Monday's weekly La Conner Rotary Club meeting at the Farmhouse Restaurant was brightened from its bleak midwinter darkness by its guests and the occasion: The poster reveal for the 2024 Skagit River Poetry Festival. Artist Anne Schreivogl is championing October's biannual gathering with the title "A bird is a poem with feathers." Perched on the keyboard of a big black Underwood typewriter in the lower corner of the poster is a puff of a green bird. Swirling in the bright red commanding the cente...
MOUNT VERNON — The Skagit County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday that the remains recovered from the La Conner Channel Jan. 23 were those of a 27 year old Kirkland woman missing since New Years Day, the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office reported. The Sheriff’s Office thanks the La Conner community for their support and patience during the lengthy search and recovery efforts....
OLYMPIA — The Washington State Department of Commerce announced $47 million in funding for infrastructure improvements Jan. 30 to support 43 construction projects that will provide more than 3,000 units of affordable housing statewide. Washington state is projected to need 1.1 million new units of housing over the next 20 years. Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program grants help local governments reduce per unit connection fees, which are used to pay for area-wide improvements to municipal sewer, water and stormwater systems. Grants p...
The La Conner Drug Store opened for the last time Monday, Jan. 22, but there were few customers shopping and not much on the shelves to purchase – though that was a years long reality. Late morning, customers were trickling in to pick up prescriptions or transfer their accounts to Rite Aid, the new owner. There was the air of a failed garage sale that was devoid of bargain hunters because there were no bargains to hunt for. Resident Lysa Sherman wandered through with an armful of products, s...
A Swinomish fisherman has netted national attention for his 47-foot crabber built from an in-house design at Full Time Fabrication in Sedro-Woolley. Matt Johnston's new boat, Wild West, is featured in National Fisherman magazine, which covers the U.S. and Canadian fishing industries and whose target audience includes commercial fishermen, academics, government staffers, sport fishermen and environmental advocates. Wild West was to begin sea trials in late January. National Fisherman...
This editorial is as timely and critical as when a version was published in 2022, during the last short session of our state legislature. It is updated. Your actions are still needed and needed today. Here is a nonpartisan issue that this community – and indeed, every resident in the state – can rally around in agreement: putting our Washington on standard time year round. That is right: legislation will ditch the semi-annual spring ahead fall-back scenario of artificially changing sunrise and sunset by moving clocks ahead an hour in March and... Full story
The Local Journalism Committee of the League of Women Voters of Skagit County is planning four presentations to further public knowledge about elections. Each of the events will be open to the public. There will not be any speeches by any candidates. The first includes Gabrielle Clay, Skagit County supervisor of the elections office. She will explain Washington state’s process of the Presidential Preference Primary– how the ballot is created, how the votes are counted and what the parties do afterward. It is Monday, Feb. 12, 6:30-8 p.m. at the... Full story
The Unified Command, consisting of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Department of Ecology, the Skagit County Department of Emergency Management, bp, and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, is hosting two community meetings for the public to learn about: cleanup progress, air monitoring, water quality monitoring, wildlife impacts, and the plans and timeline for removing the remaining impacted soil and sediment. In-person: Tuesday, Feb. 6, 5:30-7:30 p.m.,Conway School cafeteria, 19710 State Route 534, Mount Vernon.... Full story
There is only one area of the North Fork of the Skagit River used by the tribes for gill netting. It is from Blake’s Resort downstream of the mouth. The tribes have found the river above Blake’s Resort to the forks is not conducive to netting because of the snags and underwater pilings driven in the 1920s and 1930s on both sides of the river for produce loading docks. When the Hatchery King season is open for king salmon above the Mount Vernon bridge for hook and line fishermen it should also be open for the North Fork from Blake’s Resor...
Looking to give your community a Valentine gift? Giving blood takes under ten minutes and truly saves lives. There is no substitute. Please donate on Feb. 23 at the La Conner High School gym. Please call me, 360-421-9233, or Lori Buher, 360-630-0809. Either of us would love to talk with you about the process and benefits and provide you details. Thanks, Dorothy Downes, RN MSW La Conner For more information: https://www.townoflaconner.org...
Thank you for your coverage of the closing of La Conner Drugs. Your writer exposed the real reason medications cost so much in the U.S. I would like to add one additional perspective. Having served on a hospital board and chaired a local clinical board, I value the pharmacist, a local pharmacist familiar with the maladies being faced by her community and her customer/patients. The risks of unanticipated drug interactions can be critical and sometimes lethal. Having a local pharmacist manage all your prescriptions is the best guardian against...
There will be a community presentation about a feasibility study for a grant to allow solar and the storage of energy at the Town’s Fire Hall and at the La Conner School District campus Saturday, Feb. 3 at 10 a.m. at the La Conner Swinomish Library. The presentation aims to explore solar and storage opportunities and how they can help build resilience and support community needs. The Town of La Conner Emergency Management Commission will share details on their work with emergency preparedness. I encourage you to attend. And if you haven’t alr...
Last week I visited Coupeville for lunch. While there, I decided to ask a bunch of business owners and workers what they thought of the angled parking on their First Street because there is talk about doing that here. I started on the parking side of the street. “I hate it,” they’d say. And they’d go on to list the problems that they perceived slanted parking caused. “The vehicle bumpers hang over the sidewalk”, they said – and there wasn’t enough room for strollers and wheelchairs; it’s ugly and parking backs up really fast” I crossed t...
Bravo for last week’s articles and letters regarding the pharmacy benefit managers and the unfortunate closure of La Conner Drug Store, which is such a tangible example of rural America being at the mercy of big money and corporate capitalism. I too had a small business in La Conner. Luckily it still prospers, but I remember fighting to get medical insurance companies to recognize a small independent physical therapy clinic. They kept telling me that they had enough service in Mt. Vernon and Anacortes. What happened to small individual capitali...
The complete weather, Swinomish senate election and school board meeting stories from the Jan. 24 issue can be read on the Weekly News website. Subscribers can call the Weekly News office and sign up for free online access, free with their subscriptions. The stories have been made free so Bill Reynolds’ full coverage is available for readers to finish. The editor apologizes for the Jan. 24 issue’s appearance.... Full story
John Martin Strother July 2, 1940 – Jan. 8, 2024 John Martin Strother was born July 2, 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to David and Margaret Strother. He peacefully passed away in Lawrence, Kansas on January 8, 2024. He had two siblings; Jo Strother Frentzel and Anthony Strother, both who have already passed. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Business and shortly thereafter began his career in sales and marketing. John volunteered for the Navy during Vietnam and a...
Emergency management has been a priority here since channel flooding in 2022 swamped waterfront and low-lying areas. Attention turned last week to fears of catastrophes and disaster at the dilapidated former Moore-Clark warehouse building at South First and Caledonia streets. A fixture in La Conner since before the turn of the century – to the 20th century– and once part of a bustling hatchery fish food processing plant and longtime local industrial hub, it was constructed as a grain war...
Our state has long worked to reduce – and ultimately – eliminate fatal car accidents. That should be getting easier, given improvements of safety features on cars over the last few decades. Instead, we're losing ground. Crime makes the news – bank robberies, car thefts and murders always get a lot of attention. But far more Washingtonians die each year on our roads than because of homicides. In 2022, Washington state had 394 homicides. That same year, 745 people died in traffic wrecks. Over...
More people are seeing the light solar energy offers. Members of the La Conner-based Skagit Valley Clean Energy Cooperative are hoping to see that number grow Saturday after a 10 a.m. forum at the La Conner Swinomish Library. The program explores solar and energy storage and how they help build climate resilience and support community needs. They will discuss their approved feasibility study for a grant to fund solarization and energy storage at the La Conner fire station and school campus. If funded, both venues will serve as emergency...
The La Conner High School girls' basketball team enjoyed a banner night on Friday, routing The Northwest School of Seattle 64-11 in non-league hoops action. So did a group of special guests at Landy James Gym. The members of La Conner High School's undefeated 1968 football team and their families and friends were honored during halftime ceremonies highlighted by the unveiling of a banner bearing a photograph of the players and their coaches, the late Jim Frey and Vince Sellen, who now resides...
The Anna's Hummingbirds are year round residents in this region: They expanded from California and don't have the instinct to migrate south. Their habitat is influenced by humans; they enjoy parks and residential neighborhoods with flowers, shrubs, trees and hummingbird feeders. It is important to keep feeders clean and to change sugar water at least once a week, because mold can kill these birds. During extreme cold weather it is essential to keep the liquid thawed, especially early in the morn...
A quick stroll – if climbing three flights of stairs is a stroll – to take in the newly opened "Birds of a Fiber" and then a treat by spending time viewing the other two exhibits at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum proved to be just magnificent Sunday. "Birds" opened to match this week's La Conner Birding Festival Feb. 3-4 in Maple Hall. The exhibit offers 64 pieces of exquisite fiber art celebrating the love we have for birds and art. Six years ago twenty-five local artists sho...
There are two full days of all things Skagit Valley birding and beyond at the La Conner Birding Festival this weekend, Feb. 3-4 in Maple Hall. Doors open at 10 a.m. Saturday winds up with award-winning illustrator and sculptor Tony Angell speaking at 6 p.m. on "For Ravens, Crows, and Other Birds, Timing Is Crucial." Maple Hall will be full, with photographers, painters and other artists displaying their work upstairs. Bird-related activities for kids are on the first floor. Information is at...
Just as regular as the harvest, the time has arrived for the annual Skagit Ag Summit. It will convene Friday, Feb. 9, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Washington State University’s Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. The meeting is an excellent place to learn more about the agricultural community in Skagit County and the issues affecting it, said Don McMoran, director of WSU Skagit County Extension. It also is a place to meet professionals from the field. Scheduled speakers include government employees and officials, academic and s...
