By Tioga Webb I’m going to keep this vague, because I don’t want any trouble after all these years. If you were around back then, you can fill in the blanks. Some people say Vashon is all boggy spots, at least in the winter. The bog I lived near was called Whispering Firs Bog. It…
By Caitlin Rothermel It’s a serious sign of how culturally messed up we are that we so often defer to experts – sometimes even refusing to take advice from anyone who’s not an expert – while allowing wealthy generalists to claim they have real expertise across a number of areas. This is a big-picture problem…
By Jane Valencia Note: Links within the article are to articles and recipes previously published in the Vashon Loop. As we enter Autumn and the flu season, a responsible thing we can do for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community is to ensure that we ourselves are in excellent health. Here are three avenues…
By Jane Valencia If you stop in at the Food Bank on most Wednesdays, you’ll come upon tables arrayed with clothing, sleeping bags, blankets, and other gear, available for free. Your host is Daniel Hooker, who is not only a humorist, offering jokes as he does here in The Loop pages, but, when asked, sharing…
By Caitlin Rothermel Last month, the Loop Editorial Board reviewed and updated the “Health Disclaimer” run in every issue. We made changes based on input from a writer who pointed out that its language – applied to be legally protective, and typical of what you would see in a health disclaimer – was actually off-putting…
By Andy Valencia Over the years of my life, the US has been shedding ability at a pretty decent pace. We sent manufacturing overseas, and now we have almost nobody who knows how to design for manufacturing, how to set up injection molding, how to use a mill and lathe to fabricate custom parts. We’ve…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman “Hey Mike, he’s hiding under that patch of seaweed.” We were hunting crab with a pitchfork down at Manzanita on the south end of Maury Island. Crabs can move as fast as a person walks on dry land. Mike poked the pitchfork into the seaweed and scared the ten-inch…
There is a reason we are drawn to looking at the ocean. It is said that the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any other mirror – Rick Ruben, The Creative Act: A Way of Being By Suzanna Leigh Behind us, our little 9.9 hp Suzuki outboard left a trail of…
By David Earle Last month, I wrote about Vashon and Washington State’s serious housing problem, offering solutions the King County permitting department could put in place to make it easier for lower-income individuals to buy land and construct housing. This month, I return to my point: “Land hoarding is a thing.” For instance, the Reed…
By Nellie Bly Prologue: This was written over the course of several deployment periods of one to three weeks. Aman Omid Village on Holloman Air Force Base closed at the end of January 2022, having in-processed and placed 16,000 Afghani evacuees. All but eight survived. For the five months it existed, and adjusting for average…