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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
By Jane Valencia Larkspur Conservation Cemetery, Taylor Hollow, TN. Gravestone – photo by Jane Valencia Last year our family researched the possibility of home burial – you know, where, if you have land, you can bury your family the old-fashioned way. Dig a deep hole in the ground and lay your loved one in. Home…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman “Can you bring down my groceries from the Toyota?” Seán asked as I stopped by to visit. The path to Seán’s cabin is all uphill or downhill, depending upon one’s direction. I dragged a few bags out of the back of his pickup and brought them down the path…
By March Twisdale Recently, I attended the first inaugural meeting of Freedom Sisters, hosted by Harborview Fellowship Church in Gig Harbor. Women living in Western Washington gathered on a cold, rainy night in early December to discuss how best to recover and move on from our region’s epidemic of cancel culture, virtue signaling, and skyrocketing…
By Andy Valencia I was writing an article about some undeveloped parcels of Vashon land that are on the market. In case you don’t know, building on Vashon has a history of being expensive and fraught with regulatory delays and other surprises. People might be thinking about building, and an article on the subject could…
By Michael Shook Against all rational judgment, my wife and I again traveled. One would think our journey to France last spring would be enough to put us off of it for a few years, but it was time to visit friends and family in the GREAT STATE OF TEXAS! Which is kind of how…