Progress
World needs more female leaders
For many years now, I’ve been expressing my opinion: We need more female leadership in our world!
Once again, my thoughts arose when I read in a recent issue of The Beachcomber that Chautauqua principal Kate Baehr will resign at the end of the school year.
Coincidence? Moments later, I read Leadership & Management for Women, published by the National Businesswomen’s Leadership Association.
True, the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club, the Vashon-Maury Senior Center and the Vashon Island Quilt Club leaders are females. It’s a start! Just take a look at Hillary Clinton’s fabulous leadership! Then there is Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel, the wonderful leader of Germany.
Let’s keep up progress in the right direction!
— Hans F.W. Stierle
The Island
Vashon offers much to each of us
There are so many letters to the editor on serious topics. Maybe there is room for something lighter. I’m 85, or is it 58; I keep forgetting. On this delightful little Island, I have three chapels that help bring meaning to these joyous latter-day years.
One chapel is the Burton Community Church, which for about 20 years has helped bring extra happiness to my life. Another is the Vashon Bookshop, where I keep finding a certain awe and wonder. This “chapel of bookish delight” found me a copy of the 270-page “Annotated Charlotte’s Web,” with wondrous new information about our favorite spider and that runt of a pig named Wilbur.
Several days a week, I attend caffeine communion at a third chapel, the Burton Coffee Stand. Every day, something new. It’s a center of Island information. Just last week, I learned that from 1904 to 1920 the summer Olympics included tug-of-war. The U.S. won two tug-of-war gold medals. Yes!
This little Island offers so much. We should all get out there and find our own chapels. They are waiting. So many possibilities. Such awe and wonder. Now I remember. I am 85!
— Gordon Fiske
Vashon doctor
He deserves our support
I’d like to register my support for Dr. Sjardo Steneker, a good doctor who, in my opinion, is free to date — and sleep with — any consenting adult.
I find it rather disturbing that professional disciplinary actions are called for if and when these relationships go south, which — based on a conversation I overheard at a café recently — seems to have been the situation that triggered this complaint.
A much-needed doctor on the Island could end up losing his license over this accusation.
Surely, there are less destructive ways for people to resolve the feelings of pain and disappointment that arise when a relationship unravels.
— Willem van Spronsen
