Big issues have dominated Vashon’s public education narrative of late. Staggering budget cuts and failing facilities are two examples that come to mind. But this focus on big dollar problems has obscured the fact that education is an incremental process. Each child’s knowledge accrues one class, one discovery, one assignment and one experience at a time. And it’s our teachers who create and manage these micro learning opportunities. Isn’t there an effective, low-cost way to support them in this effort?
I want to thank Steve Haworth for stretching our minds about the Oberlin Project and for others who have expressed their opinions about the two proposed arts facilities on our Island. After reading Steve’s columns, getting information about Vashon Allied Arts’ proposed arts center and learning more about the plans for the high school, I recognize the need for two facilities. But I want to express my concerns about building two similarly sized facilities and the siting of the VAA building.
There’s a sweetness in the air as summer gives way to fall. Tomatoes, in glorious shades of reds and oranges, are finally ripening. The fall-bearing raspberry bushes outside our home are yielding just enough fruit for a fresh bowl each morning. Vines are heavy with blackberries. Zucchinis are proliferating.
On a cool February morning in 1998, I volunteered for my first time for Care to Shop, aka, “The Chicken Soup Brigade.” It was a crisp, bright morning on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and folks came back from the store with all sorts of food items for the Lifelong Aids Alliance. In March of that year, I brought Care to Shop to Vashon.
I have made a motion at the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council to send a letter to the state requesting a tideland inventory, but I need your vote.
In a time when there is much apprehension about the future, one of the most soothing exercises for me is action. Focused action is the antidote to fear. The new All Island Forum community group offers Vashon a great vehicle for action. It has the potential to be a voice of the village. A mechanism that can express the thoughts of many. Listen, engage, express, act.
It’s good news that the Vashon Island School District was awarded a contract enabling it to house a professional in the area of teen substance abuse. The new hire, announced last week, represents one more step in an ongoing effort on the community’s part to address a vexing problem on Vashon.
This is what I remember about 9/11, the day it happened, 10 years ago. I was at home with my wife Sheila in our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Our building was situated about five miles north of the World Trade Center.
There are Island moments, and then there are did-that-just-happen? Island moments, the ones that you pass down to your children and grandchildren as family myths, told so many times they morph into wondrous tales that leave listeners awestruck and incredulous.
Closing Island Center Forest for a little more than two weeks for a limited deer hunt makes some sense.
On Monday, Aug. 29, I was arrested in Washington, D.C., for protesting the development of a pipeline that I believe will trigger far-reaching, immoral environmental and cultural damage.
On a recent bright but overcast Saturday, divers explored under the dock in Tramp Harbor, searching for critters to share with the visitors on the wooden deck above.
There’s much about the Vashon Island School District’s first full, formal iteration of a new high school to appreciate. If the design and construction team can deliver this building on time and on budget, it will provide, it appears, a structure that is at once both artful and functional.
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