Month: April, 2023

Are Our Students Being Heard?
Editorial Page

Are Our Students Being Heard?

Our society champions the “freedom to love who you wish” with great consistency. The movie “Loving” portrays the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose arrest for interracial marriage in 1960s Virginia began a legal battle that would end with a historic Supreme Court decision in 1967. The documentary film, “The Case Against…

Coyote Solution in the Works
Editorial Page

Coyote Solution in the Works

Local experts, inspired by Yellowstone National Park, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, have formulated an innovative plan to simultaneously curb Vashon Island’s growing coyote and deer populations. “These intelligent and adaptable animals now manage to occupy almost every conceivable habitat type, from…

In Lockdown With “A Gentleman From Moscow”
Literary

In Lockdown With “A Gentleman From Moscow”

I invite you back to mid-March 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdown started. It was seasonable on Vashon. But because it was not yet really spring, it was still easy to feel cold, especially at night.  Most notable at that time was a sense of worry and waitfulness. An uncertainty regarding what would come next, combined…

News

Vashon Park District Levy – To Renew or Not To Renew?

“Despite living on Vashon Island for close to 20 years, I find our levy system confusing,” I said. “I understand,” laughed Elaine Ott-Rocheford, Vashon Park District Executive Director. “Our property tax system is one of the most complicated in the country.” After a two-hour meeting, and some seriously mind-bending exercises, I began to understand how…

AtWork! Part 2 – An Interview with Brette
Island Voices

AtWork! Part 2 – An Interview with Brette

Brette is a smart, bold, funny islander who always speaks her mind. Brette recently began working at Vashon Thriftway and utilizes a job coach accommodation through AtWork! – a supported-employment nonprofit organization that works throughout Washington state to match people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with good jobs in their communities. Brette and I shared…

Cowzilla
Literary

Cowzilla

In last month’s “Farming Is Easy,” we introduced our foster cow Minnie, the purebred yearling Holstein whose name was upgraded on delivery to Leslie Lou Minnie Moo. Standing barely shy of six feet at the shoulder, my personal code name for her, “Cowzilla,” was rejected by one and all as too negative, human-centric, and bovine-shaming….

What Bankers Want
Island Voices, News

What Bankers Want

The world of money has gone wild in recent years. The Loop planned a sequence of articles on the subject, starting with the basics – what is money? How is it created? However, we’ve decided to jump forward to a discussion of a new, particularly dangerous proposal that would impact how we keep and spend…

Evolution of a Gun Owner
Editorial Page

Evolution of a Gun Owner

The path leading to my first gun purchase has been long. It began in the summer of 1992. I was a young, healthy, and carefree college student, riding my bike along the American River Bike Trail in Sacramento, CA every day, to and from college, work, and just for the fun of it. Until the…

Student Debt
Island Voices

Student Debt

Tuition loans have more than doubled in the last two decades, causing a myriad of problems for our country’s economy. And worst of all, a majority of this burden is held by people 20 to 30 years of age, a time in one’s life that should not be spent at the mercy of unpayable debts….

Saving on Cell
Island Voices

Saving on Cell

This month my “big” column is about money. But I don’t want to leave the world of tech commentary entirely behind, and I have found a surprising way to save money on technology. There are roughly four major cellular companies – that is, companies who put up cell towers and run the radios which talk…

1 2