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So much for the generation gap. Local teens and senior citizens were on the same page, literally speaking the same language and spelling the same words, when they met Monday at La Conner Retirement Inn. La Conner Middle and High School students joined with Retirement Inn residents that morning for their second annual Spelling Bee, a friendly competition if there ever was one, and a contest in which both sides came away winners. “The interaction of our students with the residents is w...
Some 75 people spent a beautiful Saturday morning engaged in the essential activity of citizenship at Civil Discourse in the Public Arena, a workshop coordinated by the League of Women Voters, Skagit County. Modeling participation were County Commissioner Ron Wesson, Mount Vernon Mayor Jill Boudreau and Sedro-Woolley city councilman Karl de Jong, among attending elected officials. Keynote speaker Amy Young, chair of the Communication and Theatre Department at Pacific Lutheran University, noted that our contentious political moment is calmer...
The local boating season opened Saturday with a salute to America’s service members. After that, everyone was pretty much at ease. It was a fun-in-the-sun kind of afternoon as crowds gathered along the sun-splashed La Conner waterfront to take in the Swinomish Yacht Club’s annual Opening Day Boat Parade. Sixteen star-spangled vessels cruised the channel, honoring U.S. troops, sailors and veterans while also adding to a festive atmosphere under ideal conditions. While he couldn’t take credit for...
Vivian Valeda Landsman, of La Conner, WA., born May 2, 1928 died on Thursday May 4, 2018 at her home following a battle with Pancreatic cancer. She was able to celebrate her 90th birthday. She is survived by two sisters, Donna Lou Emerson Frye of Sandy, Utah, and Sharon Baynes of Arlington, WA. She was predeceased by her brother, Marvin Simard, Seattle, WA., and a sister Gloria Carlson of Arlington, WA. A Celebration of Life will be held at the La Conner Retirement Inn on Saturday May 12th at 10-11a.m. She will be missed by many family and... Full story
La Conner High School students participating in the nationwide March for Our Lives protest this week, should be granted excused absences. Disciplinary action should also be excused for leaving campus to march to town hall. We’ve excused La Conner High School Principal Todd Torgeson for years while he stacked his weight lifting class with his football players. Leon Fulginiti...
Dear Editor: Every election is important, and our government depends on the quality of the candidates, we elect. Want better government? Become involved, volunteer for committees, and/or file for public office! You may wish to review the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, for all elected officials swear to uphold the latter upon election. Also, knowing about the U.S. Constitution can help get one elected. It would help to understand the role of government, as well; i.e. Article 1, Section 1, Washington State Constitution...
The second annual La Conner guitar festival starts Friday. Producers Shirley Makela and husband Brent McElroy over 1,300 guitar and music enthusiasts to fill the Town’s halls for workshops and concerts and restaurant spaces for cabarets. Lodging spaces will be full. They are up from 1,000 last year. Congratulations guitar enthusiasts. Way to go, Shirley and Brent. We are two weeks out from the 10th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Like the guitar festival, it brings enthusiasts from around the country to La Conner. Similarly, it has a h...
Years before moving to La Conner, I remember my first reaction upon seeing the wood-sided building painted blue with white trim on Morris, signed “La Conner Regional Library.” What a statement about quality of life here, I thought, to have a library in a small community, a safe place that is open to everyone for exploring, learning, reading, discovery and inspiration. Not only was La Conner home to three unique museums, but it had a library located near the entrance to town, close to the schools, easy to walk to and on a bus line! What I did...
Mayor Ramon Hayes is hoping for more festivals in La Conner. This month his dream is fulfilled: we end this week with a second annual guitar festival and the next week with the 10th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Maybe Mayor Hayes wishes for two festivals every off-season month. That is one good, solid view of the future. Tim Bruce’s vision of poetry in the schools and a festival for all of us has been realized. Nothing is more primal to humans than music. Our first songs came from poetry. More art in all of our lives more of the t...
The Lincoln Theater teamed up with the Children’s Museum of Skagit County and Skagit Bag BANd Wagon’s Carol Sullivan to host screening the documentary “A Plastic Ocean” April 26. Sponsored by Skagit County’s Public Works Solid Waste Division and the Skagit Valley Food Co-op, the movie was free for the 300 attendees. Before the movie started, a group of women took turns speaking from the stage. A backdrop of a blue whale diving was behind them. Carol Sullivan wore a necklace made out of plastic b...
Poets see the world with “new eyes”. They make the ordinary extraordinary by paying attention to the particulars, noting the specifics of a feeling or experience and building images that connect and communicate by expressing our common humanity. Jade Carter and Adrianna Garner are poets, and students, at Anacortes High School. They interviewed one another, reflecting on poetry in their lives. What does poetry mean to you? Addi: Poetry is a way to express what the world is to you right now. It’s a way of distilling all this input that you come...
Life is hard and specific situations can be bleak, hopeless. That is true for fairy tale characters as well as you or me. Getting past stuck requires action and taking chances, whether you are Jack, from the Beanstalk story or Red, as in Little Red Riding Hood, or Cinderella, or the newly created Baker and his Wife, brought to life to weave strands of Brothers Grimm fairy tales together by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine in “Into the Woods,” the META musical which opened last weekend at the...
Shelter Bay welcomes nationally recognized artist and lecturer Matika Wilbur sharing an exhibit of her award-winning photography and a lecture in the Shelter Bay Clubhouse on May 19 at 4 p.m. Matika is a member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes and graduated from La Conner High School. The public is invited and admission is free. Wilbur is the creator and director of Project 562 and the only Native American photographer and social documentarian to be welcomed into each of the 562+ Native American sovereign territories in the United States....
Joanna Sikes is the Museum of Northwest Arts Interim Executive Director. Michelle Hurteau, board president, wrote in an email that the board was excited to have Sikes start. Her emphasis will be on “fundraising, financial management, marketing and community relations,” Hurteau wrote. Sikes was called one of Dale Chihuly’s “chief aides” in a 1996 Seattle Times article. In 2012 the Museum of Glass in Tacoma named Sikes its director of external affairs. The Museum’s website stated that Sikes had “worked for more than 20 years at Chihuly Studi...
