By Ivan SnowaTranslated by Marc J. Elzenbeck I see you on the beach so healthywith umbrella yellow and the sunheating strong and rolling overinto my skin with pleasant panic. You’re with the babies smilinglaughing but beckoning me backfrom the waves where I’m drowningI snap awake and grab the wheel. Scraping the mile marker post47 just…
Announcements, March 2024
Mukai Launches Fifth Annual Haiku Festival and Contest
Mukai Farm & Garden’s fifth annual Haiku Festival will kick off on April 1, 2024. Each year, the event draws hundreds of haiku submissions from Vashon residents and poets from abroad. In 2023, Mukai received over 500 hundred haiku submissions from Vashon residents, as well as poets from 13 countries. According to Leah Mann, Mukai…
March 2024, Poetry
The Ladder
By Claudia Hollander-Lucas I love how history can teach us – if only we’d remember it for current times – especially with rising tension around the upcoming presidential election, (re)surging wars on a global scale, and democracy under threat. This alphabet poem is in remembrance of the twentieth century when modernist art-invention, feminism, two world…
February 2024, Island Voices
Dr. King’s Legacy
By Michael Shook It is February, Black History Month. I think January and February dovetail nicely, since last month we celebrated the birthday of one of the great leaders of the twentieth century, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And as I’ve considered the history of recent years, and the legacy of Dr. King,…
February 2024, Island Resilience
Carefully Consider Before Signing PSE’s Easements
By Jenny Bell Under the innocuously named “tree wire project,” Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is masking an easement program that for some will result in a 10-foot-plus wide clear-cut on Island street frontages. One reason this may be happening is to move electric poles and infrastructure from their current locations in the public right of…
Commentary, February 2024
Vashon Trash Can Trial Hits Midpoint
By March Twisdale As we hit the midpoint of the Vashon Trash Can Trial, it’s the perfect time for Islander feedback, but who do we contact? That question is a moving target, but The Loop has dug deep and we have answers! Before we dive down the nearest trash chute (a la Leia, Luke, and…
Editorial Page, February 2024
Big Moves in Northwest Print Media
How does Canada impact our local media? Canada-based corporation Black Press (named after the Black family, currently headed by David Black) has filed for creditor protection in British Columbia, and plans to file a comparable request in Delaware for its U.S.-based operations. Black Press is the current owner of Sound Publishing, which owns 43 newspapers…
February 2024, Island Voices
When College Doesn’t Make Sense
By Andy Valencia I’ll finish this series of articles with some final notes on places to make a living without a college degree. The point isn’t to supply an exhaustive list, but rather to give you a feel for where to look – and who to ask – when you start thinking about your future…
February 2024, Island Voices
CowExist II
By Marc J. Elzenbeck With much care, and over months, our foster cow Leslie’s terrible wound began to heal under daily debriding and cleaning. Amazingly, what had been a deep, two-foot-long gash in her left shoulder, imitating for all appearances a hanging flank steak, gradually closed back together and began smoothing out into short-haired Holstein…
February 2024, Legends of Vashon
Legends of Vashon – Speaking of Trees
By Jane Valencia This story began overseas in the mid-1990s, in mid-Wales. With an Ordnance Survey map in hand, a friend and I sought a cairn circle on farmland in the hills. Lovely views of secluded valleys dotted with sheep opened up to us, and we passed crags of jumbled stone. I finally spotted a…