OLD Whidbey Life Magazine

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Play That Song Again || Poems, movies, songs and the laws of attraction

BY ERIK CHRISTENSEN
May 27, 2015

“One good thing about music
When it hits, you feel no pain….”
—Bob Marley

We’ve all heard Bob Marley sing these lines, yes? And if not, we can probably relate to music and art that can soothe the pain or help us get through hard times. I, and many others, have written about the emotional impact of music and how it makes you feel.

But today I’d like to talk about the middle of that phrase—“when it hits…”

I’ve always been fascinated with the first impressions of music and art. It seems there are two schools of thought, two ways to go: either “love at first sight,” or “Whoa, at first I hated that thing.”

So which is better? Would you prefer a casual friendship to blossom into the love of your life, or a five-alarm fire, a passionate, instant attraction? Love is love, and art is no different—sometimes it happens quickly, other times it may take a while.

Interesting how these things work out—as a mountain climber friend once told me, “You have to go through A LOT of ugly landscape before you get to Machu Picchu.”

* * * *

So how does this artistic attraction happen?

Fall, 1991: Driving south from Oak Harbor on Highway 20, I pop in the cassette I had bought on a whim the night before: Richard Thompson’s “Rumor and Sigh.” I had watched one song on MTV, read a couple of glowing reviews in Rolling Stone about this brilliant, unknown guitarist and… “click” went the cassette into the Pontiac’s tape deck.

Image courtesy of the author

First song—great. “Read About Love,” a young male wondering why love (as portrayed in smutty magazines) isn’t working out for him; next was “I Feel So Good,” a persona song with an evil narrator:

I feel so good I’m gonna break somebody’s heart tonight

I feel so good I’m gonna take someone apart tonight

On and on it went, each song better than the last—amazing lyrics and drop-dead guitar playing. By the time I got to the classic motorcycle song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” I almost drove my car into Penn Cove. How could music this good exist? How could I have not known about it? Almost 25 years later, I still play “52 Vincent” at most of my acoustic shows.

* * * *

On the flip side, there are songs I didn’t like right away. On Bruce Springsteen’s “The River,” I always thought the track “Drive All Night” was a ponderous, repetitive ballad, a throwaway on a record filled with good songs.

That is, until I heard him play it live.

At the Key Arena (as it’s now known) this song that I had always skipped over became a deep, haunting cry of longing and desperation—you could hear a pin drop, in an arena filled with 15,000 people. The lights faded blue as the keyboards floated out the melody:

There’s machines and there’s fire
Waiting on the edge of town

Out there for hire
But baby, they can’t hurt us now….

For a real treat, check out Glen Hansard’s version, which he couples with my favorite Irish ballad “The Parting Glass.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgTRi7guFdU

* * * *

Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters“ is the film version of my “Drive All Night” experience.

Image courtesy of the author

First viewing, I think I fell asleep—Woody Allen plays a whiny New York hypochondriac (way to stretch, Woody) and I dismissed the film as a typical piece of relationship angst. Bleah. On a second, more wide-awake viewing, with other people in the room, I came to love it. Woody’s hypochondriac character gets a for-real cancer diagnosis, and he has no idea what to do—he’s been faking and over-exaggerating all his life.

The three sisters each have their own journey to make and, in a pivotal scene, Eliot (played by Michael Caine) gives a book of poetry to a woman he’s infatuated with. It’s the collected works of e e cummings, and the poem he shows her ends with the line, “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.” Brilliant! Since I didn’t know the name of the poem, I went to the library to search for it. (Yes, kids, this is what we did before the internet. We left the house and looked for stuff.)

Image courtesy of the author

This led to, once again, the “instant” love: I pulled the book, “Complete Poems, 1904-1962,” from the shelf and—cringing at its 1,136 pages (!)—began flipping through, looking at the last line of each poem. One of these had to have that “nobody, not even the rain” line that I had been repeating for days.

My experience with cummings was minimal at best—I had only read a couple of his poems that show up in classroom anthologies. I eventually found the poem, but it took forever, since each poem was a gift, an instant favorite. I would look at the last line of a poem and be blown away, then end up reading the whole page twice before moving on.

I would highly recommend this as a technique: flip through a book of poetry, and just read the last line of each poem. Billy Collins has said he likes poems that take him somewhere new by the end, and cummings poems all have wonderful last lines.

* * * *

So, instant attraction or the slow burn? We’ll let the man himself have the last word:

…(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
—e e cummings

Erik Christensen teaches English at Oak Harbor High School, writes songs and poetry, and is finally coming around on the designated hitter rule.

Erik Christensen Band plays at Blooms winery in Bayview from 3 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 5, and at the Bayview Farmer’s Market at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 25.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

May 24, 2015
Sirithiri || Rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose

BY SIRI BARDARSON
May 20, 2015

Downsizing is big these days and I have done it. A year ago I moved from 1700 sq. ft. to 665 sq. ft. and from 18 rosebushes to one.

According to the Census, the average American will move 11.7 times in a lifetime. Mobility and a shortage of usable space have inspired cozy Manhattan studios measuring less than 300 sq. ft. and a popular “tiny house” movement.

What is livable? What is living?

I bought this tiny condo the first time I saw it. I had searched for anything under 100K and ended up in Oak Harbor. I was scouring a neighborhood near the water and nearly missed the For Sale sign propped up in a window of a building that looked like an old Herfy’s hamburger joint. The place was so 1970s—just like me. The front door was nothing more than a slider and I couldn’t see much through the reflective coating. I jotted down the agent’s number and then I noticed the rosebush at the edge of the concrete patio.

Condo Rose (illustration by Siri Bardarsan)

The rose was lanky and blotched with black spot, like rosebushes get around here with proximity to the saltwater. It had the biggest bright orange rose hips that I’d ever seen, and I broke one off and twiddled the stem in my fingers while I stared 25 yards down the driveway to the saltwater of Oak Harbor. I hurried to my car and called the phone number from the sign and stuck the rose hip in my visor.

The next day, my real estate agent yammered at me as I stood in the living room. The condo was crummy with inexpensive faux oak laminate on the floor that was cupped on the seams. It had been freshly painted in dull sage in high gloss, the ancient uneven taping of the overhead drywall illuminated by the shine like zits on a greasy 16-year-old nose. It had a four-by-four foot kitchen that had a smell, but there was a view of the saltwater and the rose bush.

“I’ll buy it,” I said.

The offer was a short sale and I immediately had buyer’s remorse and suffered for the six months to closing. One evening after teaching, I grabbed some fast food and sat in my car in the February darkness at the end of the condo driveway on the street by the water.

What the heck had I done? My house in Freeland was a mile from the beach on an acre of land with 18 roses in my overgrown veggie garden and more Great Horned owls than one long night could stand. We had lived there for 20 years.

I took a bite of my sandwich and rolled down my window to breathe in the cold salty air of Oak Harbor. On the water in a puddle of streetlight floated the largest raft of Hooded Mergansers I had every seen. I calmed down.

Do you know Edgar Albert Guest’s poem, “Home”? The one that starts—“It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home?”

Here is the last verse:

Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ play,
An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day;
Even the roses ’round the porch must blossom year by year
Afore they ’come a part o’ ye, suggestin’ someone dear
Who used t’ love ’em long ago, an’ trained ’em jes’ t’ run
The way they do, so’s they would get the early mornin’ sun;
Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ dome:
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.

Maybe with the new paradigm, our experience with what we love, like roses, will be fleeting. Maybe we will pick up where that last stanza left off.

Best Rose Rosette (illustration by Siri Bardarsan)

Many years ago, I won “Best Rose” at the Island County Fair. I know it’s near impossible to kill a rose bush. Does it have to be “new,” does it have to be “mine” to love it just as much and take care of it just as well?

I have a piece of a rose thorn embedded on the inside of my forearm from some rose wrangling in my old garden. It is like a tiny black tattoo on my white skin. I tried to get it out and I dug at it with a needle. It got infected and I figured it would disappear after time. Ten years later, it is still in my arm.

It’s the only bit of rose I’m ever really taking with me. I think about this deep in the night while I listen to the Great Horned owl outside the condo.

A Pacific Northwest native, Siri Bardarson is a writer with an emotional hotline to the vibrant magic of the Puget Sound area. She writes about the importance of the wild blackberry, daisies and natural time and how we are all in this together, and she plays her cello a lot. Siri loves her Whidbey Island home but she feels prepared to live just about anywhere.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

May 20, 2015
Rock Bottom Line || Happily Living as My Grandpa on Whidbey

BY HARRY ANDERSON
May 20, 2015

Since I moved to Whidbey Island six years ago, a strange but wonderful phenomenon has overtaken me. I am becoming my grandpa.

To some extent, it’s understandable. I recently celebrated a birthday with a zero in it. The one they call “the new 50.” Hear me chuckle about that, as my knees hurt and my shoulders ache and I fall asleep in my chair at 9 p.m.

I remember my grandpa as being old, very old, and always “retired.” But he was always busy, always doing something. Washing and waxing his 1962 Chevrolet Impala, which he sometimes did weekly—at least in summer. Building or expanding shelves to hold my grandmother’s prolific home canning in their cellar. Pruning his magnificent roses. Tending his beautiful tomatoes, beans and carrots in his 10-by-20-foot garden plot next to the garage. Fixing the same leaky faucet he’d fixed a hundred times, unsuccessfully.

My grandpa stands with my grandma Esther and two of their three sons in 1922. My dad is on the right, his brother Ken on the left. (photo courtesy of the author)

Taking an annual drive with my grandmother to Reno so she could play the slot machines. Drinking a pot of black coffee and smoking a pack of Pall Malls every day. Talking back to the nightly news on his 16-inch black-and-white television. “World’s gone to hell in a hand basket,” was one of his favorite comebacks.

Harry Waldemar Anderson was born in Marquette, Michigan, on Nov. 3, 1890. His mother died when he was two years old and his father soon remarried a woman who, according to him, didn’t think much of her new stepson. As he told it, she ordered him out of her sight from 7 a.m. until dusk. He sold morning newspapers on the trolley cars to make pocket money, went to school, sold afternoon newspapers on the trolley cars, then dozed in the atrium of a bank building until it was dark enough to go home.

By the time he was 14, he had left home for good. For a while, he slept in the back room of a local saloon and earned cash by cleaning spittoons. A couple years later, he and a friend briefly tried their hands as vaudeville song-and-dance men. Then he drove a hay wagon.

After he met my grandmother Esther, he hired on as a railroad bookkeeper and they eloped to Minneapolis in 1916. They raised three sons and had seven grandchildren. They moved first to Montana, and then to Tacoma. Harry retired from the Chicago, St. Paul, Milwaukee & Pacific Railroad after 40 years, and he died peacefully in 1977 at the home in Tacoma that he and Esther had shared for more than 50 years.

Before Whidbey, my life was not much like my Grandpa Harry’s, especially not his Dickensian childhood. I grew up in an Ozzie-and-Harriet environment with mom, dad, sister, brother and picket fence. I moved around a lot, living in Washington, California, Oklahoma and Texas. I had an all-expenses-paid year in Vietnam and Japan, courtesy of the Army. I spent my working years in journalism and public relations. (Grandpa Harry liked to brag about his journalist grandson; he said I reminded him of how much he enjoyed being editor of the railroad employee newsletter back in the 1940s.)

My grandpa in 1964, as I remember him best (photo courtesy of the author)

But now, retired and living blissfully on this beautiful island, I have come to understand why my grandpa seemed to enjoy his old age so much. He knew how fortunate he was to have survived so long with good health. He learned a trick that too few seem to learn: Life is simpler and sweeter when you’re older, but you have to figure it out.

And Whidbey is a sensational spot to grow old. It’s an active place where your days fill up with good works and interesting people. Before you know it, you volunteer to clean up roads, help the less fortunate, serve on a County board or assist at a local food bank. Or else you’re attending a local history lecture, hanging out with neighbors at the farmer’s market, indulging in the artist expressions you never had time for, or even writing a blog for Whidbey Life Magazine.

Unlike my grandpa, I don’t wash my car every week or take annual trips to Reno. But I am as inept as he was at plumbing, and I do love to talk back to the television, especially those annoying talking heads on cable news.

My Whidbey garden is every bit as lush as Grandpa Harry’s garage-side plot in Tacoma. Like him, I harvest enough food to last us well into the winter months. My canning abilities, though not as exemplary as Grandma Esther’s, have come along nicely. I am particularly proud of my pickled beets.

Time has a different meaning on this island. It’s not slower but it’s less rushed, more reverently passed. Whidbey sometimes has a feeling less like 2015 and more like 1955, the year my grandpa retired. That’s especially true once the TV, Wi-Fi and cell phone are ignored. Six hours of pulling weeds here brings a unique sense of satisfaction that is amplified by not competing with five other things that must be “multi-tasked” simultaneously.

Fast food drive-throughs and cheap eats are scarce here, so we cook at home most of the time. We even eat together. There are only four indoor movie screens on Whidbey (a rather sad three-screen multiplex in Oak Harbor and the nostalgic Clyde in Langley). That limits our away-from-home filmed entertainment options, except for the wonderful Blue Fox Drive-In where 1955 lives in glory. Touring Broadway musicals don’t stop here, but WICA and the Whidbey Playhouse give us a chance to see our friends gallantly emoting and singing.

Like my grandpa, I also manage to live decently on what’s euphemistically called a “fixed income.” Lower cost of living is another great benefit of Rock dwelling.

So, thanks Whidbey Island, for making my Golden Years comfortable and fulfilling. And thanks, Grandpa Harry, for showing me how to live long and prosper.

Once upon a time, Harry Anderson made an honest living as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in central Whidbey, where he spends his time gardening and ruminating on things that interest him.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

May 20, 2015
Pigment, Perspectives and Pandas || Taking The Long View

BY ANNE BELOV
May 13, 2015

I’ve been thinking about trees recently. I moved into my house almost 15 years ago and—like many garden-obsessed Northwesterners—immediately started planting things, especially trees.

“I own the dirt! I can plant trees!” (…trees being a long-term investment, of course).

Since I didn’t have much money to invest in my trees, most of them were very small when I planted them. Some were hardly bigger around than a pencil. During a rather flush financial period, I bought some birches that were as big as I could (barely) wrestle into the ground.

Most of my trees, but not all, survived. Some were unidentified hand-me-downs from friends who had gotten them from other friends. One of those turned out to be a tree on my most-wanted list, a multicolored peeling bark Heritage River Birch, which—in the 14 years since I planted it—has gone from just about one foot tall to over 30 feet. I sure hope I put it in the right place, because if I didn’t, I’m in big trouble now.

One of the things that has led my thoughts into all things arboreal is that my Davidia Involucrata (known as a Dove Tree or Handkerchief Tree to those of you who don’t speak horticultural Latin) has bloomed for the first time, having been in the ground for 14 years.

Yep, planting trees is not for those seeking instant gratification. Kind of like choosing to be a painter, don’t cha know? (You knew I was going to work that in somehow, didn’t you?) But on a recent trip, I saw that I am a mere neophyte in the “planting for the future” arena.

Darlington Spanish Chestnuts (photo by Anne Belov)

One of the most wonderful things about visiting the English countryside is seeing trees that are hundreds of years old. We visited an old manor house and gardens once owned by someone who probably wouldn’t have let me through the front door. Now it’s a very upscale hotel and conference center with the grounds and gardens open to the public.

At the top border of a sunken garden—big enough to fit most of downtown Langley into it—was a row of Spanish Chestnuts that are more than 500 years old. (Even more impressive is that whoever planted them knew enough to space them so they would look majestic and not crowded 500 years later.) I can barely contemplate the idea that not only would I, as the person causing these trees to be planted, never see them reach maturity, but it would be many generations before someone—Ha! Me, a mere serf to the lord of the manor—would get to see how truly majestic these trees would become.

And this is what makes me think so much about the decision to make art, to make art-making the focal point for my life. I have spent more than half a century working on becoming the artist that I am now, and I’m quite sure that I am not done growing and developing as an artist. I don’t know that in 500 years (give or take a decade or a century) people will still be looking at my paintings, but I hope so.

Choosing to make art forces you to take the long view. Tastes of the art buying and book reading public will change like wind and tides but, as an artist, my vision and focus can’t blow around like a field of grass. And, if today, what I am painting and writing are not fashionable or desired, then I shall be unfashionable.

I choose to be a tree, planted for the future. It’s not a bad thing to take the long view.

Anne Belov blogs about visual art and how it influences her view of the world. She is also the mistress of all-things-panda satire via her blog, The Panda Chronicles. When not chained to her easel or drawing table, you can find her contemplating the mysteries of life in her garden or…um…watching panda videos. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. www.yourbrainonpandas.com.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

May 11, 2015
Chief Milkmaid || A little perspective

BY VICKY BROWN
May 6, 2015

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Last month I had the opportunity to put that theory to a test.

I have been on photo experiences before. I blogged about a farm photo journey I took last fall.

This time I decided to stay a little closer to home; I went on a PhotoAdventure in Coupeville with Whidbey Photo Adventures.

On a perfect morning this April, I played hooky from work and, instead, met a group toting cameras in the middle of Coupeville. Kim Tinuviel led the journey and walked us to the historic Coupeville pier.

We started by learning what the buttons on our cameras meant. A few in the group were already very familiar with their cameras. Some were like me; I had used my camera before but only in automatic mode. I not only learned what MASP means, I learned how to use the different settings. Now you really want to know what MASP means don’t you?*

We took some practice photos around Coupeville:

Coupeville – photo by Vicky Brown

Once we were getting comfortable with our cameras we changed locations and practiced some more.

Playing with different settings, I learned why this happened:

Learning techniques – Photo by Vicky Brown

And how to capture this image instead:

Local farm – Photo by Vicky Brown

And I learned a new way to use my camera:

Breathtaking Flower – Photo by Vicky Brown

On our way to our next stop we did an impromptu stop to capture one of my all-time favorite farms:

Willowood Farm – Photo by Vicky Brown

We were taught things about finding shots:

Finding the Shot – Photo by Vicky Brown

and framing pictures:

Framing the Shot – Photo by Vicky Brown

After a quick bathroom break that some rebellious students turned into a delicious coffee stop, we talked even more about perspective and setting up a photo:

Pilings to Nowhere – Photo by Vicky Brown

On our final stop for the day we picked up a few more tricks, including making cool motion shots. Fortunately, we had a great sport in our group ready to run through the frame for us.

Marsha in Motion – Photo by Vicky Brown

Even catching a bird mid-flight became an option.

Bird in Flight – Photo by Vicky Brown

After three hours I was so excited to see the photos I was able to capture, I couldn’t wait to take my camera out to play again. I’ve always enjoyed snapping shots, but it was so fun to learn so much in one morning; I felt like the camera that had been gathering dust was a new toy.

I’m not sure a photo really is worth a thousand words specifically, but I do hope these images speak to you and maybe even inspire you to pick up a camera and capture a few images of the beauty that surrounds us every day. A camera can bring a fun new way to see the world around us and keeps our neighborhoods from growing drab with familiarity.

Why am I trying to tell you? Let me show you what I mean, from our yard tonight:

New life in our yard – Photo by Tom Brown

*MASP are the non-auto settings on the camera. Manual, Aperture, Shutter, pre-Programmed (for saved, frequently used settings).

Vicky Brown, Chief Milkmaid at the Little Brown Farm, puts her passions on the page writing about food, agriculture and the tender web of community.

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

May 6, 2015
The New Kid on the Block || The Art of Remembering and Waxing Nostalgic

BY LES McCARTHY
April 29, 2015

Every once in a while I am transported to another place and time. No, it’s not magic nor am I being beamed up by aliens—it’s just a blast to the past via a whiff of something in the air.

I have a good nose. Not in the Romanesque way or a rhinoplasty “after” photo…but I have an overly sensitive olfactory system. My kids used to call me The Bloodhound—I could figure out where they’d been and what they’d been doing by just sniffing them! (That came in quite handy when they were teenagers!) I can sniff out just about anything—but mostly just memories.

I have been on this gorgeous island now for ten months and I have to admit I am still discovering new places and shops to explore and enjoy. It’s fascinating to me that an island with so few towns has so much to offer! There is always so much to see and do that I’m usually so busy in the present that my mind doesn’t wander too much in the past.

However, the other day I stepped into a shop in town and some scent wafted my way; instantly I was no longer “here and now” but transported back to some time in my childhood—standing in a tiny grocery store with a worn wooden floor and the dusty, musty smell of wooden crates mingled with the scents of heaped green goods and roasting chicken. I wanted to linger but, with my next step, I was back to the present.

But that fleeting memory, that nano-second of time travel, had me reminiscing for most of the afternoon—trying to pull from the cobwebbed archives of my brain certain things that once were everyday delights that now seem like from another lifetime, if not from another planet.

Waxing nostalgic…that’s where I was all afternoon.

My journey into the past made me realize how quickly times change. My dad played with firecrackers and sticks. He thought his first football was a large nut! My kids’ Ninja Turtles, My Little Ponies and neon Super Soakers replaced the toys and means by which I whittled away the hours of my youth. It made me want to play Roly Poly or find a stone with which to play Hopscotch. The mere thought of chalking off the hopscotch “game board” on the sidewalk took me “back.” Way back!

We were a creative lot back then…no hand-held battery operated devices or phones or mini-computers or nano-pets to gobble up our precious time! We were unplugged in so many ways! The neighborhood was our playground and we were free-range and “care-free” and the only stops in our days were for lunch and dinner. We made crafts and rode our bikes and read.

My summertime days were spent at the local pool or up in the large silver maple in the front yard. Hidden in that cool, leafy aerie, I read every book I came across. Nothing like being in a shade tree or cool, crystal water on a hot Midwestern afternoon! Summer evenings were spent catching fireflies or playing outside until the last robins peeped their goodnights; bath time coincided with the street lights coming on.

Memories flooded out of me as if some rusted-shut gate had been pried loose and flung open. I remembered riding our bikes down to “the prairie” with butterfly nets in hand—chasing butterflies in the field and hunting tadpoles and crayfish in the pond. My brother, a budding herpetologist and lepidopterist at the time, did his fair share of weeding out the unsuspecting.

We clipped playing cards to our bike spokes with clothespins…and the click-click-tick-tick sound still resonates in my ears.

We roller skated for hours just going down the slightly inclined front sidewalk—only to walk up again. And again! Half the time we were reclamping our skates onto our gym shoes or trying to find the skate key!

And, every store had a dazzling array of penny candy—that actually cost a penny! Hot dog gum, root beer barrels, butterscotch rounds, bubble gum cigars. Candy cigarettes, wax bottles filled with mystery liquid, small boxes of snaps or Oh Henry! bars might have been three cents or a whole nickel! For a measly seven cents you could sate any sweet tooth!

Ah, the Good Ol’ Days.

And yet, from the depths of my reminiscing, I realized that not only are those Good Old Days different for each of us depending on how, where and when we lived—but more importantly those Good Old Days are now. What we do now will become the Good Old Days of tomorrow.

It made me want to do and explore more and make more memories for later! It made me think that time is precious and we need to preserve for our children and their children not only what was special to us as we have gone along life’s journey (way back when) but our lives now, as well. I want my kids and future grandchildren to have snippets of our family’s childhoods, collections of preserved memories—a small fogged-up window that allows them to look back in time when we are no longer here. I want them to remember. I want them to sniff out the past some day and wax nostalgic.

My folks are visiting for the first time next week. We’ll do the tourist things—drive up island and see Deception Pass, zip down to Ebey’s Landing, grab pie at Greenbank Farm, maybe pet a llama. And on our travels, I’ll make sure we stop in at the Honey Bear shop in Coupeville, with all their toys and trinkets and hard-to-find candies, and get a good dose of “yesteryear.”

While there, I’ll let the nostalgia wash over us and I’ll pick up some wax lips or Necco wafers and we’ll make new memories as we share our walks down our respective memory lanes.

Les McCarthy is an author, entrepreneur and IPPY bronze medalist for her yearly “Healthy Living ~ Healthy Life: 365 Days of Nutrition & Health for the Family” calendars. She is still somewhat new to the island and the NW and loves every bit of it. She joyfully tends to her geriatric fur factory and is happy the slugs are back!

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CLICK HERE to read more WLM stories and blogs. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

April 29, 2015
Creativity Café || It’s All Good!

BY DEB LUND
Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
April 22, 2015

“It’s all good!” We hear that a lot around Whidbey. Because it is all good. But we often say those words to gloss over the times when we’re spinning our wheels instead of getting to where we want to be.

How do you spend your time? Most Whidbey folks I know are busy. Many are too busy, which is hard for some non-Whidbey folks to fathom. They are shocked to hear that we do more than stroll on beaches and watch sunsets, as if we’re all here on an extended vacation. But the “Wherever you go, there you are” statement applies to us, too. And when our busyness keeps us from pursuing our creative projects, we don’t feel very Whidbey-like. We feel off. We can’t put it into words, so we settle for “It’s all good.”

So many meetings, commitments, volunteer opportunities, concerts, arts and nature events… It’s all good. And because we’ve grown to love the Whidbeyites who are involved in all the things we, too, love, we don’t want to miss anything. It’s part of why we live here, after all.

Do you ever say that if you had more time you’d like to paint/write/sing/fill-in-the-blank? Maybe the “it’s all good” isn’t working as well as you’d like.

Deb Lund & Karl Olsen on a Haiti work break (photo courtesy of the author)

My family and I spent time in Haiti this month with a group of 10 young people and five adults. We hauled cement, shoveled gravel and carried buckets of water, sand and dirt until lunch, then either continued through the afternoon on construction projects or worked at a “Kids’ Club” providing music, crafts, games, and snacks for about 100 kids at a time. We focused on goals, worked toward them and saw progress. It was all good.

We got back from Haiti and I spent two nights in my own bed before going to a conference. The cultural difference was stark. My room at the Redmond Marriott was nothing like the hot and humid room of bunk beds I shared with another adult and five teenage girls in Haiti with intermittent electricity and just one cold shower to share. But no one complained. That room at the Marriott? Once in a while the bathroom light would go out and I’d have to hit the reset button. And yes, though the shower was hot and the air cool, I complained about the much-less intermittent electricity at the Marriott.

And the conference? It was all about the creative work of writing and illustrating kids’ books. For most people in Haiti, there isn’t a lot of time to pursue creative projects. Here on Whidbey, we feel entitled to chase our creative dreams. That’s okay. It’s all good. But working toward a common goal together with our new friends in Haiti? Beyond good.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to live in Haiti, and I don’t have a glamourized view of life there. It’s harsh, full of pain, hunger and death, which we saw multiple examples of during our short stay. And the conference inspired me and fed me in ways that trip couldn’t. Both had a shared sense of purpose, but without the Haiti trip still vivid in my mind, I would have missed the real gift of the conference for me, which was the decision to be more proactive about how I spend my time.

I love Whidbey for what it has to offer. I’m not planning to give up much of what I do here, but I could spend less time online and make better use of smaller increments of time that appear here and there in my busyness. But what else can go? Do you feel this way too?

Here are some questions and thoughts to ponder…

Carol Gannaway and others on bucket brigade (photo courtesy of the author)

Volunteering

We are blessed with opportunities to serve here on Whidbey. If your sense of being too busy is due to wanting more meaning in your life, choose activities that will provide that for you. On the other hand, if you find yourself feeling resentful about your current volunteer work, find something that’s a better match with your gifts and interests. While serving others takes time, you’ll feel better about how your time was spent.

Work

Does your Whidbey-style “multiple streams of income” require too much time to organize and market? If you want to create, to see progress on your goals, does it still make sense to divide your work into bits of time that don’t allow enough real progress in any one area? Perhaps you’d be more productive if you focused more time on your main passion and let go of ones you’re no longer passionate about.

Self Care

What feeds you? Keeping a journal, going on walks, reading, calling a friend? Schedule them into your days, too. Are you getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising and taking care of your health? While it might seem like you don’t have time for self-care, you’ll find that your productivity will soar when you take time for your own needs too.

Kids’ Club at Petit Goave, Haiti (photo courtesy of the author)

Saying No

You know your priorities. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. We all want to help others, to keep them happy with us, to contribute. List your priorities and goals. When you’re tempted to add a new activity to your schedule, weigh it against your list. If the new option doesn’t fit anything on your list, say yes to yourself instead.

If you keep catching yourself creating fillers for your creative time instead of projects, dig deeper. See if there’s a fear or belief you need to haul out. And if that doesn’t work, you could head to Haiti and do a little digging there. Or hauling buckets of rocks and dirt. I’d like to go back there again someday, but for now, I’m going for a taste of that extended vacation feeling right here on Whidbey or wherever I go by valuing my time and using it more intentionally. It won’t happen all at once, and I’ll stumble and regroup as always, but it’s all good.

Deb Lund is a writer, teacher and creativity coach who helps others find more joy and meaning in their lives through claiming their creativity. Wherever you are is the perfect place to begin. It’s all good. You can learn more about Deb and her services at www.deblund.com or hear her speak about creativity at Trinity Lutheran’s Adult Forum at 9:30 a.m. on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 10.

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April 22, 2015
In Search of Truth and Beauty || The roots we cultivate on our travels

BY JONI TAKANIKOS
April 15, 2015

I am writing this from far afield—although these days we are never too far in terms of communication, are we? I am writing this in a tightly packed alley of backyard garden in a quiet residential neighborhood in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam rhodie. (photo by Joni Takanikos)

How did I get here? Am I dreaming? There is a potted rhododendron anchoring the corner of the tiny garden. It’s in a budding state that will see blooms in May, long after I am back with the island rhodies. Next to the rhododendron lies a healthy daphne odora that still has blooms, now only faintly scented, followed by hydrangeas, hellebores..in other words, a very Northwest type garden. The weather here is similar; today we had morning fog that was burned off in the afternoon sun.

I am staying with a cousin of a dear and longtime island friend and Dutch artist, Rob Schouten. Rob and his wife Victory, a poet, are really more like family to me than friends, and so getting to meet and stay with Rob’s cousin Emmy and her daughter Anna is a blessing of wide proportions, giving me a sense of a world without bounds. Emmy and Anna opened their doors to three strangers and now we are strangers no more. In fact, we are probably closer than many people I have known for years.

There is a vulnerability cloak that the traveler wears—being dependent on others to translate a foreign neighborhood. If you are lucky enough to stay with friends, family or friends of friends, they often end up seeing you in the state between waking and sleeping, when the veils are flimsy with the stardust of the evening or the dew of morning.

Garden seat (photo by Joni Takanikos)

The Dutch, besides being incredible artists of all mediums and genres, are also wonderful English speakers; they make it easy to navigate this wondrous city of canals and waterways. It’s not an easy city in which to find your way initially—but it is a lovely city to be lost in—and if you have a general sense of the direction you are headed, then a circular route will eventually land you in the neighborhood you are seeking. During your wander you may discover some charming new neighborhood that you would not have known had you not been lost. So allow yourself time and space to get lost now and then—both abroad and at home.

I just heard a teapot whistle in the distance from some neighbor here in the alley where I sit on the garden bench. It prompts me to go have a cup myself so I will join you in a few…

A cup of tea and a poem recollected from a walk I took yesterday in the “oud west” district of Amsterdam. “Oud west” translates to the “old west”…yippee ki yay!

Oud West Canal

The swan on the water
Holds her wings close.
Gliding in measures
Cutting across the canal
in a still yet moving frame.

I see her in the distance
As I stand on the small bridge
Yet she is enlarged by my pupils,
the water, the street, the music
that hangs in the Dutch painting
of the sky.

I imagine I can hear her breath,
Sense the lengthening of her neck
as she glides with a grace
I can only dream of.

But when I close my eyes I am gliding too,
and disappearing into the distance,
and when my eyes reopen she is there—
A white swan, larger than ever,
Still so far away

Little hike, blue bike (photo by Virginia Burja-Simpson)

I have four more days to meander along the streets of Amsterdam and I intend to take my time and let the hours glide slowly and gracefully by. I hope that everywhere I am in this world I can inhabit the space with my whole heart and soul.

To connect with a Dutch artist on Whidbey Island, take a springtime drive to the Greenbank Farm and visit the Rob Schouten Gallery: http://www.robschoutengallery.com

Joni Takanikos is a poet, singer, and yoga teacher at Half Moon Yoga in Langley. She is also a traveler here, there and everywhere.

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April 15, 2015
Rock Bottom Line || How we look by the numbers

BY HARRY ANDERSON
April 8, 2015

When a Whidbey tourist sweetly asks me what kind of people live here, I usually give a standard “Kumbaya” answer I hear others spout. “…Lovely, caring, environmentally conscious, giving, artsy folk…devoted to our island’s sustainable, natural, local life style.”

OK, if pressed, I will go beyond what’s in the glossy tri-fold on the ferry, and I will also admit that we’re mostly older and whiter than the rest of the America, but so what? We’re also politically as far apart as Oak Harbor and Langley. And many of us came here either to enjoy our pensions or buy-outs, or to start new mid-life, downsized, work-at-home or hands-in-dirt careers. If it’s the latter, it’s got to be entrepreneurial, of course, and absolutely non-corporate. Unless Kickstarter counts.

The other day I wondered what I’d discover if I had some real demographic information to back up these assertions I am so blasé in making. So I turned to that fount of knowledge, the United States Census Bureau, which maintains a dizzying amount of statistics about us. And I turned up some pretty interesting stuff I didn’t know about our beloved island home.

While the population of the rest of Washington grew by 5 percent to just over seven million from 2010 (when the last formal census was taken) through 2014, Island County grew by just 0.4 percent to 78,801. So much for the early-2000s myth that rich Baby Boomers would transform the island into a geezer paradise of assisted-living condos. That idea seems to have died with the financial collapse of 2008.

Although Island County includes both Whidbey and Camano, Whidbey has the lion’s share of the population, including the largest town, Oak Harbor, which represents 28 percent of the total. (As I write that, I hear knuckle-biting from some in Langley and Clinton, but it’s a simple truth not to be ignored.)

We are split 50-50 between females and males. So much for the myth that the male-dominated military swamps us. And here’s something that really surprised me: As of 2012, the latest year in which statistics are available, women made up almost 58 percent of those with a paying, non-government job on the island. Statewide, that percentage is just under 50 percent.

What accounts for this? In part, it results from the collapse of the island’s construction industry during the financial crisis. Many men who worked in construction trades either left the island or were unemployed. Women, meantime, were able to find or keep jobs in hospitality, retail, health care, finance and insurance businesses.

Overall civilian employment in Island County fell to just over 30,000 in 2013, down from almost 33,000 at its peak in 2008. Our unemployment rate is actually down to about six percent today from a high of 11 percent in 2010, but the overall decline in jobs suggests that some have quit looking for a job or have moved away.

With that employment picture, it’s easy to see why our population skews older and entrepreneurial. In Washington State, the percentage of people 65 and older is just under 14 percent. In Island County, it’s just under 22 percent. In the state, the percentage of people 18 and under is about 30 percent. In Island County, it’s about 25 percent.

The idea that we’re better off financially than others in the state or country also seems to be a myth. Per capita income in Island County last year was $41,350 compared to $46,045 in the state and $43,735 in the United States. (That’s income from all sources, including wages, pensions, government programs, investments, etc.)

That doesn’t translate to a greater amount of poverty, however. The percentage of people in Island County living below the federal poverty line was 9.6 percent last year compared with 14 percent in Washington State. The percentage living without health insurance here was just over 13 percent compared with just over 16 percent in the state.

We’re also slightly better educated than the rest of the state, with almost 95 percent of the adults saying they are high school graduates compared with 90 percent in all of Washington.

Ethnically, we’re not very diverse. Nearly 87 percent of us identify as white compared with 81 percent in the state. Just 2.7 percent identify as African-American (4 percent in the state), 6.7 percent as Hispanic (11.9 percent in the state), 5.3 percent as Asian (8.6 percent in the state), 4.4 percent as mixed race (same as in the state) and 1 percent as Native American (1.9 percent in the state). Not much of a Rainbow Coalition here.

When I add it all up, I stand by my Kumbaya descriptions. No matter how you look at us, we’re a patchwork crazy quilt—slightly paler and older maybe, but our patches are fascinating!

Once upon a time, Harry Anderson made an honest living as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in Central Whidbey, where he spends his time gardening and ruminating on things that interest him.

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April 8, 2015
Minding the Sky || Dreaming of Buried Treasure

BY JUDITH WALCUTT
April 1, 2015

I’ve been thinking about summer on Whidbey lately. I am beginning to see it glimmering in the green glow of late afternoon; I am catching a whiff of it in the softening air. We wait all year for it.

In the dead of winter, with its endless shades of gray (so many more than fifty), immersed in infinite purgatorial variations of whiter shades of pale in the palette of a dingy seagull’s wing––we wonder: will this ever end?

Spring brings her proverbial promises. That luscious pink confection of blossoms on the flowering plum trees makes a holy corridor of beauty on the road into Langley and leaves a rosy-tinted snowfall of petals behind when a sudden chill wind comes off the waters of Saratoga Passage and we button our coats back up. Soon, though, the opaque atmosphere cracks open, the sun shines, the sky turns poster-paint blue for the first time in months and, as the sun sets later and later, we know we are headed into the glory days—the Golden Days–– inspiring good times in paradise, soon to be infused with the scent of wild roses everywhere.

Summer on Whidbey Island is Paradise or, as we in our family sometimes refer to it, Brigadoon––that magical, mythical place that appears out of the mist and vanishes again when the weather changes. These lengthened days—I call “golden” because the quality of the light caught in the full bloom of Summer foliage is a deep, rich, yellow-gold, pooling in patches on the forest floor or encircling ferns in the grottos of hidden lakes. Our sky-colored liquid jewels buried in the woods call to us like sirens to thirsty sailors, whispering: Summer is coming…find a bathing suit that fits!

Looking out from Double Bluff Beach at sunset (photo by Judith Walcutt)

In the years the kids were growing up, when school let out, those beautiful Whidbey days were ours to own. We were never at a loss of things to do and we tried hard not to let that precious treasure slip away without some kind of adventure to mark its passing.

One favorite day’s outing was to Double Bluff Beach. We brought our small folding chairs and picnic baskets, inner tubes and buckets with shovels and followed the tide line all the way out to its lowest mark. Then, flopping upon the salt water as it warmed up coming in over the hot sand, we let the waves roll us back to shore. Puddles that the changing tides made were perfect kid-sized pools, good for lolling in and making castles by.

Years after that, the boys went skim boarding on Double Bluff, too, as it is perfect for that purpose with its thin layers of water coming in over hard-pan sand. I’ve also seen people parasail-surfing there. It is quite a sight! Humans turned kites fly up into the sky and careen over frothy waves crashing in rows. With its picnic tables and shore side parking lot, Double Bluff lends itself to such vicarious observational opportunities and can be enjoyed even with a simple brown-bag lunch in hand.

When the tide is low, you can walk a long way around the bluff of Double Bluff and catch a glimpse of Mt. Rainier gleaming to the south and—to the north—the transiting of large container ships bound for Alaska is an eyeful of slow amusement. Sometimes we stayed at the beach until sunset, watching the flourishing of carnelian reds and merlot purples in the sky then reflected on the surface of twilight-smooth waters, providing the ideal ambiance for the practice of calm abiding—unless the dogs start barking.

It is a leash-free dog beach, which makes it nice for the canine population and the people they like to take for walks, offering water-spigots for feet, shower heads for bodies and even bathrooms, built beside the parking lot—very convenient for families of all kinds, furry and human alike.

On a day when we had a Grandma with us, we stayed closer to the picnic tables and easy access to the beach from the parking lot. The kids gathered bits of driftwood and made boats that they then set sail to float away in the rising tide of waves, betting on which would last and which would be dashed.

It was so easy, so free and freeing; the memory of it reminds me of the very best part of summers past and summers ahead—the time we take to enjoy just those few things that require nothing extra, nothing costly, but offer the pleasure of building something out of nothing but sand and stones and flotsam with your hands, while the white noise of waves washes away the heaviness of winter, school years finished, and the expectation of what happens next. Let it go, with a small boat made of driftwood––embrace the coming summer on Whidbey, where days are made of gold and the trees and the sky and the water glitter with the buried treasure of simple beauty.

***

In preparation for those golden days to come, join the volunteer brigade that is covering the island, beach by beach, doing post-winter pick-ups at Keystone Spit East State Park on Saturday, April 4; Ebey’s Landing National Reserve on Friday, April 10; and Windjammer Park on Saturday, April 18. Contact Stinger Anderson, Community Litter Cleanup Program Coordinator before the scheduled days, so he’ll have enough tools for everyone. Email singer.anderson@wsu.edu or phone 360-240-5558 or 360-941-3171.

Judith Walcutt has lived on Whidbey Island for 27 years and counting. A grateful alumna of Hedgebrook, she is an award-winning writer, producer and director for public radio, stage and TV.

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WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

April 1, 2015