La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Earth Day is Monday, April 22. This is not an Earth Day editorial and not because the almost holiday atmosphere and platitudes reverently uttered by politicians and corporate heads have hijacked the original intent. It is the same with Mother’s D...

If there is one thing that is certain in the dominant culture of the United States, it is that we are number one. The best. The greatest. Back in the halcyon days of certainty portrayed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, the metaphor was that we...

In the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the landing of a spaceship on the Washington Mall and the emergence of Klaatu in a spacesuit and helmet immediately changed everything worldwide. By the film’s end, humanity learned valuable lessons...

La Conner School District Director of Finance David Cram offered a realistic assessment last summer when presenting student enrollment numbers and the year’s budget to the school board and Superintendent Will Nelson. The head count in the e...

On Feb. 13, the United State Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill containing military aid of $61 billion for Ukraine and $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is in no hurry to take it up in the...

This modern world. It works against us humans, as individuals, families and communities and in people’s efforts to get along together and build a common place. The norms of living, of doing business, are you aware of how often they work against y...

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...

The La Conner drugstore closed Monday, as reported in the Weekly News, a victim of the ongoing corporatization of the American economy, where small companies are forced out because – in ways too many people don’t see or care to understand – the b...

Town of La Conner residents have two weeks to offer their two cents – or perhaps exceedingly more valuable recommendations – as possible amendments to the town’s comprehensive plan – and the development code, too. Submittals made through Jan. 31...

New Town of La Conner Mayor Marna Hanneman chaired her first town council meeting yesterday, Jan. 9. The council packet she received the week before included a memo from Town Administrator Scott Thomas. Its first point summarized for council the...

From an editor who takes each week’s editorial very seriously, I report that this is one of my most important editorials of the year. Each December ends with shining light on unsung heroes in the community, the critical souls who day after day and e...

Tomorrow, Dec. 21, is the solstice, the shortest day of the year. In BCE, Before the Common Era, and for all the centuries in our Common Era, people have celebrated the end of the year’s dark period and the beginning again of the coming of the l...

For this last subscription drive mailing editorial, because I respect everyone reading this newspaper and take my work seriously, I went to “Deadline Artists,” an anthology of newspaper columns over the last 100 years. The point of reporting is to...

Another holiday season has come to greater La Conner. Santa jump started December, showing up at the La Conner Swinomish Library to read stories to children last Wednesday. He returned twice Saturday, first fortifying himself with pancakes at the...

Perry Sobolik calls himself “an old newspaper junkie.” So he scours the press like a hawk for any scraps about his town, which happens to be the Seattle suburb of Kent. “We still get some attention down here, every once in a while,” he said. “Like w...

Holiday lights abound. As Ray Stevens said about Santa Claus, they’re everywhere! They’re everywhere! They’re all over La Conner’s homes, streetlight posts and various public spaces. The big Christmas tree in Gilkey Square dominates the north e...

Dear Greater La Conner Community, Welcome to the La Conner Weekly News. If you are getting the paper for the first time, I hope you will find your community newspaper an enjoyable and worthwhile read. Valued subscribers, I hope this issue meets your...

This is the week we sit down with family and friends and give thanks, typically for the abundant bounty that so many Americans are privileged to have. At this time of American thanksgiving, lifting our eyes past the laden table is as necessary for ou...

What is more American than the post office? The post office is older than the United States, established the year before the Declaration of Independence, in 1775 by perhaps the wisest and most practical of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. He...

It is a week after the school children of La Conner and many of their parents, families and friends swarmed up First Street in the town’s annual Halloween parade. Last weekend kids of all ages were on stage at the Lincoln Theatre, performing as M...

October was National Co-op Month, the annual celebration of this alternative way to engage with each other in our business dealings and thus as people in relationship with each other. National Co-op Month offers the time to reflect on and promote a...

No. No more military aid to Israel, not $14 billion, not 14 cents. Write President Joe Biden, Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen and tell them more weapons will neither stop the killing nor end the conflict between Israel and...

Ballots will be arriving in the mail soon. We have very few choices in this year of municipal elections. There is only one contested seat: the La Conner school district Director 2 position. The rest of the positions in greater La Conner, for school...