Question: Does Bainbridge Island, where the average household’s income is somewhere around $95,000, take care of its less fortunate? Generally, the island’s social-service professionals and volunteers answer yes. But it’s not an unqualified yes. Donations and volunteers have been reasonably consistent in recent years, they say, but the current economic downturn will test islanders’ benevolence as more people slide toward the poverty line and operational costs increase for service organizations such as Helpline House and Interfatih Volunteer Caregivers.
Ah! A summer Saturday!
Let me list the joys of a sunny summer Saturday on Bainbridge.
First, no socks. We have bare feet in sandals, toes free at last to wiggle and admire. Then, airy clothes, a pair of shorts, a filmy dress or a cooling shirt, and finally a hat to keep sun off completes our summer outfits.
OK. So the Seattle Mariners aren’t exactly selling out Safeco Field, while the Seahawks are still months away from returning to action. As Seattle sports fans, what are we to do?
A real estate broker said at last week’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon that the messenger (the media) was spreading fear that caused potential buyers to become immobilized. Headlines, she said, were a particular culprit since “frequently, the facts (in the story) aren’t as harsh...” No doubt, the media’s ability to influence readers is tremendous, which means we have an important responsibility to get it right.
The current budget shortfall for the city means that very few of the capital projects will get funded this year. To me the most important project is the big dig – the utilities and infrastructure replacement in downtown Winslow. Downtown is the central diamond in the jeweled ring that is Bainbridge Island, an exception to the trend of small downtowns fast disappearing in our car-oriented society.
It certainly pays to own property, especially on Bainbridge Island. Just ask Larry Nakata.
“It’s great to see everything so beautifully grown,” he said. My beautifully grownup son was visiting recently. He was referring to our garden, of course, but I was looking at him when I agreed wholehearted.
BHS “Paint Night” and the lack of set limits for this annual ritual cause many to ask how this got started.
It was bound to happen some day, but its inevitability makes it no less tragic. A woman who says she was hurt when a small metal clip securing a decorative rhinestone heart flew off her powder-blue thong and hit her in the eye has sued Victoria’s Secret, purveyor’s of women’s lingerie. Macrida Patterson, a 52-year old Los Angeles traffic officer with no prior record of underwear incidents, tells the tragic story in her own words: “I was putting on my underwear and the metal popped in my eye. It happened really quickly. I was in excruciating pain. I screamed.”
Considering the entertainment value of the City Council’s recent meetings, perhaps the city should start charging an admission fee. Well, probably not, since most people would just stay home and watch the shenanigans on Bainbridge Island Television.
Councilman Barry Peters recently wrote a letter accusing “a small number” of unnamed island residents of engaging in “personal attack style politics.” Mr. Peters believes that disrespectful citizens are responsible for the recent resignations of several city employees.
The second reading of the 2009 Capital Facilities Plan (CFP) update takes place at tonight’s City Council meeting. This is the first opportunity for the public to offer formal comment to the full council on the draft CFP, and the first opportunity for the council to discuss the plan. Some background is in order.
Emotions were running high and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife at the staging area of the Bainbridge Annual Grande Olde Fourthe of Julye Parade last Fridaye afternoone. Anxious paraders milled about anxiously and anxiously glanced at their watches, all waiting anxiously for the parade to begin. One sign of the rampant pre-parade nervousness was the long line outside the two staging area Porta Potties located on the corner of Madison and Wallace Way. The line outside these Porta Potties was among the longest I saw all day, second perhaps only to the line in front of the booth offering free Obama stickers and the queue in front of the American Marine Bank ATM on Winslow Way.
You have to wonder about the morality of politicians, bureaucrats and Americans of all types who are strongly against torture when it’s done to us while believing the end justifies the means when the U.S. tortures a declared enemy to gather information.
In the spirit of the Fabulous Fifties theme in yesterday’s Grand Old Fourth celebration, let’s revisit a time that, in some ways, doesn’t seem all that different from today. A political advertisement titled, “Walt Woodward on Bazookas and Typewriters,” ran in the Bainbridge Review on July 27, 1950, a few days after publisher Woodward decided to seek the First District seat in Congress. The Republican hoped to win the primary and then run against the incumbent, a Democrat he apparently considered a scourge on the face of the political landscape.
Check out the lounge at the Bainbridge Island Senior Community Center on a Tuesday morning and you’ll often meet several of the Evergreen Singers, a group of about 30 men and women who love to sing. They are there waiting to begin a rehearsal or a concert at the Island Health and Rehabilitation Center, Messenger House or other locale where they are scheduled to entertain that day.
This is the scene. I am sitting at a middle table at Bainbridge Bakers drinking a cup of tea and waiting for the husband to arrive, when I hear foreign accents behind me.
When I was young, a lot of years ago, we would come to Bainbridge for a week’s vacation. The beach was an infinite playground, especially for a city youngster like me. From morning to night we dug clams, fished, hunted for treasures, rode and swam our horses, found new birds for our house list, caught crabs, built driftwood and seaweed palaces, cooked over beach fires, poked at anemones under rafts, collected shells, beach glass and rocks with circles around them. It was a paradise. I vowed I would come back and live here. In 1973 I did.
I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea – except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.
It’s difficult these days to find anyone who is against recycling. There are plenty of people who don’t practice it, perhaps, preferring to feed garbage receptacles with any container or waste of which they no longer have a use. But even the unconscious among us probably wouldn’t admit to actually being against making our environment healthier through recycling.