Two Bainbridge-based businesses were honored with Earth Day Awards from Kitsap County this week for developing and using innovative ways to recycle, reuse and treat the environment carefully.
While we like the notion that island life should be a bit more relaxed and informal than big-city goings on, we’re a bit boggled by the story, reported elsewhere in this issue, that for almost a decade, the city hasn’t been paying Washington State Ferries for the ferry-terminal parking facility known locally as the “city lot.”
The palette may be limited, but the sensibility isn’t.
Bainbridge’s new clothes boutique, Noir et Blanc, proves that black-and-white garb can be stylish and sleek without being outrageously expensive.
“Black and white makes everything look elegant,” said store owner Stephanie Jackson, “but I’m carrying clothes that range from cotton tee-shirts to cocktail dresses, and everything in between.”
Functioning with a chronic disease like lupus, or with a permanent handicap, is a matter of adapting, Mayor Darlene Kordonowy says.
“The disease has taught me a lot,” she said. “You do the best you can with the circumstances you have to deal with.”
Kordonowy was reflecting in the wake of a lupus “flare” last week that resulted in her being airlifted to Virginia Mason hospital after an episode of high blood pressure and rapid heartbeat.
She may paint a single subject, but Michelle Soderstrom, whose equine watercolors are on display at Pegasus through April, can claim to know that subject inside and out.
Soderstrom, who calls herself a “homegrown horse addict,” first fell in love with horses growing up on the island.
“I’m a certified horse freak,” Soderstrom said. “I grew up with them, so they’re like dogs to me… I feel so blessed to have spent my childhood with horses on the island. It kept us out of trouble and created wonderful memories.”
“A Life in the Theater” could be reduced to simple stage directions: John moves center stage and Robert exits stage left.
David Mamet’s 1975 play about the ascent of a young actor and the eclipse of his older mentor frames the universal theme of generational torch-passing with the backstage/onstage business of theater.
Island Theater puts on the production this weekend – something director Kenneth Enright says he has wanted to do since he was introduced to it in 1986.
“Mostly I’m an actor,” Enright said, “but I think it (directing) works with this one because it’s about theater – something I know well.”
The Bainbridge High School Jazz Band, the Wind Ensemble, the Chamber Choir and the Jazz Choir flew to Anaheim, Calif., last week for several days of musical competition with students from 14 states in the Heritage Festival.
They went, they played and sang, they conquered, promoter Carolyn Clucas said.
Director Stephanie Dupuis batoned the Wind Ensemble instrumental group to a first-place finish, a gold medal for high points, and an invitation to play in the festival’s national performance next year.
There’s no substitute for having moved to the island years ago. If you did, your chances were much better of getting the best building lot, the choicest view – and the fewest land use restrictions.
Along those lines, Wednesday’s article on the local strategies for tree retention included a statement to the effect that once a tract of land is subdivided, restrictions on tree-cutting disappear. But eagle-eyed reader Kelly Samson pointed out that the statement was in error.
Matthew Wong shovels soil into plastic buckets from a pile taller than he is, while the home-schooled fourth-grader’s dad, Michael Wong, shovels beside him.
Eighth-grader Max McDermott pokes a neat holes in the soil of pot after pot and classmate Kaza Ansley inserts a tiny sitka spruce seedling in each.
The students work like a seasoned team – and they are.
Although early settlers from Back East marvelled at the beauties of Puget Sound and the surrounding mountains, it wasn’t scenery that brought them to Bainbridge Island.
It was trees – acres and acres of trees. More important, those trees were immediately adjacent to water – water that stretched all the way to San Francisco, where a gold-rush-fueled economy created an incessant demand for lumber, and where delivery by ship was the only feasible way of getting the wood there.
A cache of assault rifles, ammunition and other weapons valued at $32,000 was stolen from a Sunrise Drive home sometime Monday.
Missing weapons include four American-made assault rifles, five semi-automatic handguns, an automatic shotgun, and a 19th-century flintlock rifle inlaid with sterling silver and brass.
Helen Bucey traveled too often to have animals of her own, so she kept them by proxy, pet-sitting for her friends.
“She’d be happy to watch your house,” recalled islander and longtime friend Bitsy Ostenson, “but not if you didn’t have pets.”
As to her keen interest in local history, that came of Bucey’s descendence from the Olsen family, island pioneers who settled at West Blakely before the turn of the last century.
The two friends bow their heads over James Herriot’s “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” while a canary named Caruso pours song into the sunny room.
Interfaith Volunteer Caregiver Elise Goodham reads to Virginia Wainwaring Herriot’s tales of animals, an interest the women share. She visits Wainwaring once a week for several hours at a time.
“I bring a book each time,” Goodham said. “We read them because we’re both animal lovers.”
