By Daniel Hooker Right now, the stories we are being fed are conflicting and dividing us. We are just human beings, trying to have happy daily lives, enjoying the peacefulness of our communities. Vashon Island, with its diverse cultural and artistic nuances, is our home, and our neighbors are our friends. We have to remember…
February 2026, Island Voices
Giving Up Hopelessness for Lent
By Mike Ivaska The church I pastor has historically had, at best, a tenuous relationship with the church calendar. The generation before me was iconoclastic in every way. Many were former hippies and, in their own words, “recovering Catholics.” When I started at the church, we practiced Advent (the season leading to Christmas), Christmas Eve,…
February 2026, Island Voices
Parallel Lives / Wayside Concerns
Tige and Daisy Leamer outside Leamer’s Shopping CenterCourtesy of Candace BrownPhotographer: Howard Willsie By Richard Odell Did I imagine Daisy’s? My father liked to circulate. He had me in tow, at age three or four, deep in the 1950s. I remember an interior scene where today is Minglement. The presence of several adults, their voices…
Island Voices, January 2026
Thanks, Uncle Sam
By Michael Shook With the holidays a memory, the New Year upon us, and the light returning, the days are ripe with all manner of possibility. The resolute among us are excited to enact their resolutions. I wish them all success. No resolution for me, since I resolved to give up resolutions some time ago…
Island Voices, January 2026
Deep Space Rendezvous, Part 2
By Mike Curtin My article last November discussed 3I/ATLAS – what it was made of, where it traveled from, and ways it behaved differently than other comets we have seen. Some people say 3I/ATLAS is a ship, or even a consciousness, come to observe us here on earth as we make a major transition. 3I/ATLAS…
Island Voices, January 2026
After Surgery, I Am Now Metal Mom
By Pam “Gates” Johnson Well, I made it to the other side of surgery. About 4 weeks post and to say it has been a challenge is an understatement. Let me walk you through the last few weeks. My surgery was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. December 8th. Had to be at the hospital at 5:30…
Island Voices, January 2026
I Have Questions, Part Two
The Holiday Addition By Dave B. I realize this is now January and I should have created this for the December issue of The Loop, but maybe we could pose these questions for the New Year and decide if we even have answers for the below silliness. After all, the holidays can be trying and…
Island Voices, January 2026
Where Have All the Grammas Gone?
By Suzanna Leigh Gramma Stoltz – Illustration by Suzanna Leigh We called her Gramma Stoltz. She lived in a one-bedroom trailer across the road from her son’s auto wrecking yard and the big house on Cemetery Road where she had raised her children. Here, she tended her quarter-acre garden and a passel of chickens. She…
Island Voices, January 2026
A New Life, A New Year Embracing Forgiveness
By Daniel Hooker On June 8th 1972, a young girl ran screaming in agony, her body engulfed in flames by bombs dropped full of napalm. The world would be forever changed by the Pulitzer Prize photograph of this. It was one of many horrific instances created by the insanity we call war. The young girl’s…
Island Voices, January 2026
Nothing Says “New” Like 1960
By Richard Odell I’ve always associated the 1940s with the color blue. Why, I don’t know. The 1930s I’ve seen always as dull green. Picture books, maybe, dated objects, impressed indelibly the child’s perception. That I associate the 1950s with black and white seems obvious enough, for the greater world first came to this child’s…