One of the latest joys of living in this largely rural island paradise is that my house smells like a barn. A barn full of sheep. I don’t even know if sheep actually spend time in barns. Do they? Aren’t they supposed to be out grazing the meadows and hillsides in all kinds of weather, rounded up seasonally by border collies way smarter than I’ll ever be?
So I’m out walking the woman-lately-known-as-my-wife’s dog on Burton beach a week or so ago when two exceptionally nasty shore birds start dive-bombing us, and making a terrific racket. They don’t sing, they don’t call, they don’t cry. No, instead they make this crazed croaking sound, like they’d just come from screaming their little lungs out at a Seattle Sounders soccer match.
But when was the last time you saw one of these alleged sea creatures?
I’ve just returned from a two-week trip to far southwest Cornwall, in England, where I was doing research for a…
As we continue to explore the obscure meanings behind each letter in the acronym VASHON, we come now to the…
There may be no place on Earth (except, perhaps, Afghanistan) more dangerous than Vashon with snow. This is not the…
Lately, I have been deep in “island research mode,” digging down through the layers of accumulated history and lore which,…
It has been brought to my attention by alert Islanders — though, given my attention span, why anyone would bother is a mystery — that there has been, within just the last few days, an astonishing 200 percent increase in the acreage of the Island’s scenic viewscape devoted to (some would say blighted by) terrifically distracting, flashing, neon, wide-screen retail video display signs in town. Which is to say they’ve gone from one to two: Thriftway’s trying to outdo Island Lumber. Clash of Titans.
Now that the smoke has cleared and my ears have stopped ringing, I have to say I have mixed feelings about Independence Day.
I’ve been thinking lately about spring.
It was at the moment that the brakes failed on my elderly but beloved VW-GTI that I finally and rather suddenly understood, with the sort of clarity born not of fear but utter exhilaration, what my fundamental responsibility is to my 6-year-old grandson, who was riding behind me in his car seat: To provide excitement.
