Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Sorted by date Results 1805 - 1829 of 3028
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community will contribute $750,000 toward the construction of a new library, the La Conner Regional Library District announced Monday. The facility, located at 520 Morris Street, will be named the La Conner-Swinomish Library. The grant supports the building’s construction over the next two years. Projected opening date is in the fourth quarter of 2021. The library is designed to be a multi-cultural resource center for information and learning. It will double the size of the current building, be wired to provide h...
Yet another chapter in the saga unfolded Saturday. More than $50,000 was added to the cause during the annual A Novel Affair luncheon and auction at Maple Hall keynoted by best-selling Seattle author Robert Dugoni. Support from the sold-out event, which filled the downtown venue to capacity, came on the heels of a recent $720,000 allocation by state lawmakers toward the $3.74 million project, designed to provide La Conner library users expanded floor space and services for all ages. For the...
As told to Anne Basye Farmer, rockhound, horseshoe club founder, birder, hunter, carver, husband, dad and granddad, Fred Mesman will be 95 in August. The patriarch of the Mesman Dairy at Chilberg and Dodge Valley Roads came to LaConner in 1942 when Dutch farmers on Whidbey Island were displaced by Ault Field. The Mesmans were the only family that came to LaConner. We moved from a Dutch community into a Swede community, with Oles and Svens and so forth. I had never heard those names before. But...
School’s out, but learning hasn’t stopped. Local students ages 8-14 spent their first week of summer vacation mastering content shared by the Swinomish Tribal Community Police Department and other area law enforcement agencies, members of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, and local firefighters. Their classroom was the great outdoors. Swinomish Junior Police Camp youth spent a fast-paced four days scaling an obstacle course at Swinomish Yacht Club, boating to Hope Island and visiting Naval Air Sta...
The Town Council gained $100,000 for the Town in less than an hour at its June 11 meeting: After months of negotiating, Council passed having Mayor Ramon Hayes sign an agreement with Crown Castle Cell Tower, a Texas-based company. The 42 year lease, with extensions, includes camouflaging the extension portion of the tower, annual rent increases, a percentage share of the subleases and the signing bonus. An agreement for terms of reimbursements between the Washington State Patrol and the La Conner Fire Department also passed unanimously. Hayes...
The La Conner School District’s unions’ leadership has been invited to meet with the District’s Board of Directors June 25 to start discussion of their no confidence votes in Superintendent Whitney Meissner’s leadership and performance. The format and conditions of the meetings are not what the unions envisioned, however. Monday afternoon emails from Meissner to officers of the La Conner Education Association, LEA, and the Public Support Employees, PSE, read, in part: “Chair Janie Beasley asked me to reach out to the two of you. The board wou...
Mayor Ramon Hayes pitched a $500,000 proposal for Skagit County economic development funds for a new library in La Conner as a catalyst that will bring new businesses that will revitalize Morris Street. In his five minute presentation Monday, Hayes said the library will “foster an environment for advancement, providing workforce education, tech and vocational workshops, meeting space for enhanced collaboration.” Hayes told the County Commissioners their grant would complete funding, and that without it the project “will lose the state and t...
Students and staff vacated La Conner campuses for summer break last week. They weren’t alone. The 25-year-old cedar totem pole that is the signature landmark at La Conner Elementary School was removed for summer restoration during special ceremonies Thursday morning. The weathered but still grand pole will be refurbished by La Conner Schools’ staff member Kevin Paul, who was involved in its initial carving in the mid-1990s. Paul, a master carver whose work has been profiled on national TV bro...
The beat goes on – and will for the next couple weeks. That’s because the Seattle Cascades Drum & Bugle Corps, a world class competitive junior musical group, has returned to La Conner to prep for its upcoming national tour this summer. Comprised of top youth musicians ages 14-21, the Cascades is practicing here daily before going out on the road for an 8,000 mile swing that ends with an appearance at the World Championships at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in August. The Cascades w...
During his more than a quarter-century at La Conner High, Mike Carrigan has tackled a wide range of teaching assignments – from algebra to U.S. history to industrial arts. Turns out, he was a big-time tackler long before arriving here in the early 1990s. A native of Orting, southeast of Tacoma, Carrigan played defensive back at Stanford University, where he squared off against the likes of future Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren and 1968 Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson. His...
La Conner artist Barbara Silverman Summers opens ‘Abstract Skagit’ at Cassera Gallery South, Stanwood, Thursday with a reception 5 p.m. in the Design’s NW/ Cassera Gallery Lobby. The exhibit hangs through July 8. Stephen Hunter wrote about Summers in the Cascadia Weekly a year ago: “Summers personifies the continuity of ‘mystic painting’ in the Skagit Valley. ‘The Beacon’ reprises her previous work with sweeping curves of light; a cascade of broken rectangles drops down. In ‘Nothing is Lost’, cu...
Much planning has gone into developing a safe routes to school program here and elsewhere. But, statistically, the safest way for children to get to campus is riding one of those familiar yellow buses, reports La Conner Schools Transportation Supervisor Kim Pedroza. But it’s not as easy as her drivers make it look. Those drivers safely deliver hundreds of students each day to and from school, on field trips near and far, and to an assortment of extra-curricular events through the full breadth o...
The La Conner School District’s two unions each turned thumbs down on their boss, Superintendent Whitney Meissner, in “no confidence” votes at meetings each held Friday at the school campus. The La Conner Education Association, LEA, voted 35 to 9, with 44 of 48 members present. The support staff, Public School Employees, PSE, voted 22 to 6, with three abstentions, with 31 of 46 members present. The secret ballot votes were 80 and 79 percent yes, respectively. A joint press release believed to contain some of the same language as a letter email...
This corrects and updates the June 5 Weekly News story which inaccurately concluded Georgia Johnson reached an agreement with the La Conner School District to continue as food services director in September for the next school year. Georgia Johnson lost her job without a whisper from her employer June 4 at their specially called School Board meeting. Co-workers, colleagues and friends statements, whether loud and passionate or sent as emails and letters to the La Conner School District Board of Directors, did not win the day. Superintendent...
La Conner High seniors went out with a bang Thursday night. Near the end of the school’s 125th annual commencement exercises the large audience at Landy James Gymnasium was briefly shaken by a loud celebratory confetti blast. The surprise dramatic send-off for the Class of 2019 seemed a fitting salute to a student group noted for having done a bang-up job, reflected in numerous academic and athletic successes and devotion to public service and civic projects. Class speakers had earlier, t...
FINE ART FOR A FINE AUCTION – The winning bidder of this glass piece by La Conner artist Steve Klein bought a package of a 3-piece kiln-formed glass serving set, a studio experience – tour – at Klein’s home, and a meal for six. Docent volunteers are assisting Ian Lindsay, auctioneer. The photographer is an artist, too. – Photo courtesy of CB Bell...
This corrects and updates the printed June 5 Weekly News story which inaccurately concluded Georgia Johnson reached an agreement with the La Conner School District to continue as food services director in September for the next school year. Johnson lost her job without a whisper from her employer June 4 at a specially called School Board meeting. Co-workers, colleagues and friends statements, whether loud and passionate or sent as emails and letters to the La Conner School District Board of Directors, did not win the day. Superintendent...
Town Council members have received their summer reading assignments. They’ll start with the next chapter in the ongoing saga on how to protect La Conner from potential catastrophic Skagit River flooding. Council will study design options for a proposed ring dike at the northeast edge of town. This after a field trip and sit-down Council session last Tuesday. About two dozen people met for a site tour intended to provide a visual perspective of where a new dike section would be located and its p...
Thirty-six La Conner High seniors, including 11 National Honor Society students, will receive diplomas during the school’s 125th annual Commencement Exercises tomorrow night at Landy James Gym. The June 6 program, featuring a mix of inspiring messages and uplifting music, begins at 7 p.m. Class Valedictorian Sophia Benetti and Salutatorian Matty Lagerwey, both of whom are National Honor Society members, will deliver major addresses. Other senior class speakers are to take turns on the podium as well. Class President Erik Nelson will offer t...
Midway through the May 28 La Conner School District town hall, a forum to discuss discipline, safety and prevention/intervention support against vaping, marijuana and drugs, a parent asked the key question: “What is the issue we’re talking about? What is the white elephant in the room? Is it drugs, guns, substance abuse? What’s the issue?” The 50 parents, students and school staff attending had heard presentations from Middle and High School Principal Todd Torgeson Elementary School Principal Bev Bowen, Kathy Herrera, assistant principal and at...
The Skagit Wildlife Area is home to many different types of birds, but also to a man who has studied them most of his life. Bob Hamblin, 80, has been officially birding for 37 years but recalls his first identifications at the age of seven. Now, Hamblin spends his time between his landscaping work during the week and birding on the weekends. Hamblin started professionally birding and photographing birds in 1982. The same year, he remade a three-person camera into one that he could carry and...
Throughout the Skagit Valley are a number of 100-plus year old barns. These structures’ forms are reminders of times past and present, where work takes place in its many qualities. The Carson sisters, Amy and Katie, have such a barn on their property, on the southeast corner of Best and Calhoun Roads, built in the first quarter of the past century. It has lived through many lives: cattle, hay, storage, mechanical works, flowers, art and now wood shop and painting studio as well as their place o...
Water is not changed into wine and loaves do not expand to feed five thousand, but a body is changed into bones and true love is found before the final curtain. This is all done with a light touch by a largely ensemble cast. What more could anyone want in a theater production? It could be 13th century French monks struggling to feed themselves as well as the village’s poor from their monastery in Priseaux. Throw in Jack, the one-eyed juggling minstrel; in fact, entrap him into the priesthood. There’s a plot of sorts and two miracles. Tha...
Gov. Jay Inslee merged from the presidential campaign trail onto the local information superhighway last week. His route Tuesday brought him to Friday Harbor, Anacortes and Skagit Regional Airport in Bayview. At the Skagit County stop Inslee discussed expansion of broadband internet service to remote rural areas with business leaders and public officials. “I’m really encouraged with what I’ve heard,” Inslee said following the nearly hour-long public session, his final stop of the day. “This (broadband) is the greatest small town rural dev...
Warm weather, warm memories. It was a perfect combination for those who gathered at La Conner area cemeteries on Memorial Day to honor deceased veterans and departed loved ones. A large sun-splashed crowd at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery was greeted by Rev. Don Robinson, who said the occasion was an opportunity to embrace both the past and future. “We look back with gratitude,” he said, “for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. We’ve inherited much and have much for which to be g...