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

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 heavy hitter lineup of national names. This festival also has tickets you can buy in advance (again, full disclosure: I am on its board).

It is great to morph from tulips to music to poems. Then we will cruise into summer, with its July 4th fireworks. Rebecca Strong is working mightily to gain fuller participation in the monthly Art Walk, making it more robust. She has succeeded admirably in growing the weekly Sunday summer concerts in Gilkey Square.

More Shirleys and Rebeccas are needed to power the Town through the fall and winter. The Chamber’s Heather Carter showed the way with what is now the first annual La Conner Birding Showcase in January.

The Town’s art commission explored a film series last winter, screening Jack Gunter’s documentary in Maple Hall the first Sunday of spring. They have started planning for several films next winter.

Mayor Hayes, like the Maytag repair man of old, waits for people to call on him with their ideas. Surprise him with your visit. Excite the town with your vision. Bring people together to create an interesting new reality.

We are only limited by our imaginations and our willingness to work to make our dreams come true.