Kitsap County – remember them?
Chris Endresen, county commissioner representing Bainbridge and North Kitsap, hopes islanders do – and that they still see enough value in county services to support a property tax hike for 2003.
“I think they’re all applicable to Bainbridge,” Endresen said, particularly criminal justice services that are imperiled by budget cuts.
On the Nov. 5 general ballot, Kitsap voters will decide a property tax levy “lid lift” that would head off some county budget cuts slated for 2003.
Its national marketing campaign leads one to believe that the Boys and Girls Club is aimed at keeping inner-city kids off the mean streets of urban America.
So what’s a nice, suburban Bainbridge kid doing in a program like that? Kids come in all stripes, but their needs are consistent:
“They need a safe, supervised place to go wherever they live. They need activities to keep them occupied, where they feel welcome. That’s no different in an urban, suburban or rural setting.”
At the heart of Paul Lewis’ new musical lie love letters half a century old.
Reading his father’s World War II correspondence to his mother sparked Lewis to write the music, lyrics and book that became “The Recollection of Flight,” which premieres Oct. 18 at Bainbridge Performing Arts.
“When I first opened the letters, I was just fascinated and floored by the raw emotion pouring through the words,” Lewis said. “I sat down that very day to write the ballad ‘My Star,’ about a soldier dreaming of a girl back home.”
Higher-than-anticipated project costs have pushed back pedestrian improvements around Winslow, at least until next year.
The Bainbridge Island City Council had earlier approved construction of median islands and crosswalks at several points on Madison Avenue and High School Road.
The contemporary photograph shows a modest and rather unprepossessing building, the powerplant that is the only edifice left of the Port Blakely lumber mill.
Then the photograph dissolves into the sepia-tones of the 19th century, and the building is surrounded by the multitude of imposing structures that once formed the world’s biggest lumber mill, built in 1888, after the first mill burned.
The mill is the subject of the “Port Blakely: Memories of a Mill Town” by award-winning documentary film maker Lucy Ostrander and her husband Don Sellers, a former PBS “Frontline” cinematographer and editor.
Mary Harmon’s work takes a soft touch.
Sitting at her spindle, the creator of Harmony Yarns hefts a handful of the delicate and feather-light llama wool she’ll use in a new line of handspun items that debuts this weekend.
“Llama wool doesn’t have lanolins like other wools, so it isn’t sticky. It’s closer to human hair,” Harmon said, deftly drafting the fine strands of fleece into a tight coil.
Scattered along the shoreline are the landmarks of Mary Hall’s youth.
The twin pilings left over from an old Mosquito Fleet dock, the apple tree laden with tart autumn fruit, the big round rock she and her siblings used to clamber up for plunges into the cold waters of Eagle Harbor.
And while Hall had the privilege of growing up with a waterfront playground, she recognizes that those opportunities are increasingly rare.
“It’s so sad when you’re driving around the island, trying to get to the water,” Hall said. “There’s so little, it’s only attainable by the wealthy or those who were able to buy it years ago.”
Carole d’Inverno turns glimpses of strangers into paintings.
People she notes in passing may send the Bainbridge artist into the studio to mix memory with paint.
“I was waiting for the 2 a.m. boat home,” d’Inverno said, “when I noticed the man. He had a real ‘boxer’s nose’ and a big, square jaw. There was some story there, about who he was, but I didn’t want to spell it all out.
“Memory distills certain things, and not just physical characteristics.”
Bainbridge Island would get $1.5 million for sports facilities and other “active” recreation projects, if voters approve a countywide sales tax hike on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Proposition 1 would raise the Kitsap County tax on retail sales by one-tenth of 1 percent – 10 cents on a $100 purchase. The current tax is 8.5 percent.
Park advocates are lining up behind the measure, and hope to rally youth sports families to the cause. Dave Lewis, Bainbridge Island Park and Recreation District director, said the proposal has “no downside that I can see, for consumers or property taxpayers.”
It’s not often we can say this about the Bainbridge Island community, so it may sound a bit foreign.
Brace yourself, here it comes:
We can do better.
A near-capacity crowd fills Bainbridge Island’s largest movie theater on a Sunday morning.
On-screen images of trees and water give way first to scripture, then prayer, then the lyrics to contemporary Christian music, played by electric piano, guitar and bass.
This is Cross Sound Church, and if you think it’s old-time religion in a modern setting, you’re getting the idea.
“We ask what the resources of classic, historic, Bible-based Christianity can bring to the questions of today,” pastor Paul Schuler said. “We are trying to adapt our communication without changing the content, and our service is a visual of that.”
A team-building exercise in Scott Orness’ Leadership Class may resemble the answer to a riddle:
What has 10 heads and 20 legs and is all thumbs?
The three groups of about 10 Woodward Middle School students who crowd together to stand on three flattened trash bags, must do more than just stay upright.
Pianists are playing in the key of G, for “grateful.”
They’ll strike that note, among others, in a benefit concert Sunday to help complete the purchase of a new Yamaha grand piano at the Bainbridge Commons.
The instrument was delivered this week, after an 18-month drive by a group calling itself the Piano Fund Committee.