By Steve Ulvi, Journal contributor
The story of addressing our library expansion needs is convoluted, beginning in earnest in 2015. There are enough twists and turns for the tale to qualify as a small-town saga. A public library is much more than thousands of books, a sanctuary of sorts that reflects community culture and free access to limitless opinions. The first participatory meetings about the new library will be at the Brickworks Wednesday, Oct. 22; first at noon and again at 6 p.m. Jump in!
The Summer of the Cougar is creeping into leaf-drop with additional sightings. Wait for a skiff of snow! The longtailed intruder may be less cautious now, becoming fat and as happy with a smorgasboard of clueless island blacktail deer. This is becoming a “win-win” ecological tale in that multiplying deer are taken out of the gene pool just like in more functional ecosystems elsewhere. And all we lack is another puma of the opposite sex.
OPALCO seems to be enduring a “rope-a-dope” defense in absorbing a pummeling every time they attempt to develop microgrid sites out here to reduce inevitable blackouts. They (we) don’t have any other cards to play! Sadly, all it takes is a chorus of hand-wringing NIMBYs to delay the next best effort. Few seem to understand that the curves of increasing consumption and decreasing hydro production are on a collision course. Our cross-boundary region is welcoming swarms of consumptive suburban retirees, well-paid tech workers, hordes of charging electric vehicles and building voracious data centers while snowpack shrinks. After some 50 years of relying on radiant wood heat, my wife and I are well prepared for increasingly difficult times.
We are proud of our small schools, but hats off to teacher Sam Garson and the award-winning STEM program at Friday Harbor High. Excellence and inspiration in technical education make us all proud. $50,000!
We all empathize with the town on the cringe-worthy demise of another one-term mayor. Since few town residents step up to challenge sitting Council members, we end up with groupthink, getting out ahead of bad ideas and submissively allowing the Town administrator to direct policy in a vacuum. Our current mayor has chosen the sidelines after primary defeat and gross misdemeanor charges for animal cruelty. But there is so much critical work at hand.
Time never rests. A yard sale by Island Stage Left after all these years of grand entertainment on sublime summer evenings, with sounds of laughter and applause rolling in the forest nearby.
If you sometimes feel we are inertial in addressing “resilience” as we stagger toward the troubling decades ahead, stop by Over Marsh Farm Commons in Beaverton Valley. It is an agrarian collaboration between the Grange and Conservation Land Bank and lessee gardeners without land, on prime sun-bathed acreage. The pasture soils are tarped and turned, efficient drip irrigation run, deer fencing installed, compost available, all under the tutelage of a highly experienced local grower. This unique project has been incredibly successful in its first summer, with more land and residents already preparing for next spring.
And this note. A wag says that he had to wait for a bit behind others in their cars and motorcycles one night to try to join the 100-plus mph club on the new Bailer Hill dragstrip. Well done, Public Works!
