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Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Latest Print Edition Is off the Press

WHIDBEY LIFE MAGAZINE STAFF
May 10, 2017

Do you know who Whidbey’s king and queen of trash are? Have you ever wondered how to get a horse out of a bathtub? Do you know who designed the home on the hill that you’ve always dreamed of living in? And what’s the secret to the amazing scones at that shop in Coupeville on the corner of Coveland and Alexander?

You’ll find the answers to these and other questions in the Spring/Summer 2017 print edition of Whidbey Life Magazine, which was delivered to the island today. To get your copy by mail, subscribe online, or pick up a copy at these on-island retailers this weekend.

For a sneak peek at this issue’s contents, scroll on.

After waiting in a ferry line for hours, photographer Holly Davison finally made it to the ferry lot, grabbed her camera, jumped out of her vehicle, and captured this photo of the ferry coming into the dock.

A Lavender Wind Wafts Over Whidbey

Lavender Wind Farm is located on Ebey’s Reserve, and its adjunct garden shop is located in historic Coupeville. Owner Sarah Richards created five acres of “lavender fields forever” to share her passion for this winsome but rugged plant. Writer Shawn Berit reveals one of the shop’s best-kept secrets. (Hint: it’s of the edible kind.)

Owner Sarah Richards in the Lavender Wind Farm shop. The display case holds lavender soaps, shampoos, and other personal care products. (Photo by Marsha Morgan)

A Place to Call Home: The Imagination and Influence of Whidbey Island Architects

Is there a style or type of house that represents the quintessential Whidbey Island home? Does the influence of place exert a unifying effect? Or any effect at all? Writer Tom Trimbath interviews four island architects — Stig Carlson, Ross Chapin, Mira Steinbrecher, and Matthew Swett — about their notions of residential design and how the spirit of place shapes their aesthetic.

Mira Steinbrecher’s modern interpretation of a Scandinavian farmhouse commands full views of the shipping lanes. (Photo by David Duncan Livingston)

Crossing the Waters

As we travel from one shore to another on our ferries, it’s easy to take for granted the sights along the way and lapse into the habit of not seeing what’s all around us. We’re especially grateful to our island photographers — their heightened sensitivity to details, angles, perspective, and light — who help us refresh our vision and boost our appreciation. In a photo essay about crossing the water, they present our familiar and beloved ferries in a way you may never have seen before.

The Washington State Ferry system serves 10 routes, 20 terminals, and 23 million passengers annually. (Photo by David Welton)

The Art of Upcycling: A Hunt for Beautiful Junque

When artists apply their creative minds and skillful hands to what the rest of us might consider trash, the results can amaze. Join writer Kate Poss and photographer David Welton as they follow six artists on a scavenger hunt at Island Recycling, an emporium of castoffs. Along the way, meet the reigning couple of recycling; their perspective on “junque” is sure to amuse you.

Blacksmith Brendan McHugh makes art out of scrap metal that he finds at Island Recycling as well as castoffs from a Harley Davidson factory. (Photo by David Welton)

These Doctors Make Horse Calls

The agricultural history of Whidbey, combined with our affinity for animals, has produced a flourishing population of horses, cows, sheep, goats, llamas, and other “four-footeds.” Writer Harry Anderson and photographer Marcia Wesley introduce you to the folks who care for our working animals, livestock, and barn-resident pets. The stories from our large-animal veterinarians will have you laughing and perhaps nodding your head in recognition.

Say ahhhhhhhhhh: Dr. Ken Leisher practices horse dentistry. (Photo by Marcia Wesley)

The Products of Whidbey’s Wee Winged Wonders

Most everyone appreciates bees for the honey they produce, but they also produce wax, propolis, “bee bread,” and royal jelly. Meet some Whidbey Island artists who use beeswax for lanterns and encaustic painting, an artisan who uses it for making candles, and another who uses honey for making soap.

Candlemaker Kim Hodges holds one of her finished products. (Photo by David Welton)

An Island’s Island

An eight-foot high acre of land floating in the mouth of a harbor might not sound like much of a destination, but Tom Trimbath’s exploration of Baby Island will have you longing to walk its clamshell-strewn beaches. This small bit of land has a long and storied history in which rum-running, poker, and impossible schemes play a part. Even if you never manage to set foot on Baby Island, our spectacular scenic photographs and historical snapshots will bring it to your doorstep.

Those who can read a tide table can reach Baby Island on foot by walking along a peninsula that’s exposed when the tides are low. (Photo by Linda Schwarz)

Whidbey Life Magazine online congratulates the print team for a job well done: managing editor Dianna MacLeod, graphic designer Claire Moore, photo editor and photographer Marsha Morgan, photographers David Welton and Marcia Wesley, and writers Harry Anderson, Shawn Berit, Kate Poss, and Tom Trimbath.

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WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, please contact us.

May 10, 2017
From the Publisher || Coming Home

BY DEBORAH NEDELMAN
Whidbey Life Magazine Publisher
November 24, 2016

For more than 30 years, I lived in Mukilteo, in a house with windows looking out across the water to Columbia Beach and Possession Point. I loved that house, and Mukilteo worked for our family, but the magic of Whidbey called to me in a slow, seductive song for all those years. When I finally yielded, it felt like coming home.

Something similar, though far less prolonged, happened in my relationship with Whidbey Life Magazine. I had only known WLM as a reader when Sue Taves offered me the position of publisher. I’d been on the editorial team of Soundings Review, the literary magazine of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, for several years and was editor-in-chief when NILA, and consequently Soundings, died. I wasn’t really looking for a new gig. But Sue and the editorial team worked their own brand of magic on me and, before I knew it, I found myself jumping onto the moving train that is WLM. Now that I’ve taken the leap, I am thrilled to be on this journey with a talented and dedicated team to help me guide Whidbey Life Magazine into the future.

Many of you have been reading WLM since it began, and you’ve seen it morph from an online resource for local artists to a semi-annual glossy print magazine with a website where we publish new content every week. It began as a purely volunteer effort and is now a professional endeavor. As we look toward the future, our plans include expanding our distribution and fostering greater inclusion of voices from all parts of our island. We also hope to upgrade our website to make your reading experience more engaging and user-friendly. Stay tuned!

Whidbey Life Magazine is an organic, evolving enterprise dedicated to celebrating the treasures of art, culture, and people of our island. It has always been our intention to facilitate connections across our island community rather than to highlight divisions, and as we move forward, we are committed to maintaining the values on which the magazine was founded. While we have encouraged writers to share personal perspectives through their blogs, we have never been a platform for political issues. If you’re looking for controversy and divisiveness, look elsewhere.

Whidbey is a place full of its own brand of complex, surprising stories we are eager to share with you. Whether we are writing about Oak Harbor’s 50-year-old playhouse, folks who brew beer from nettles, fiddle players who farm, elegant wearable art made from flowers, or the life of our local bees, we are building bridges, shining light on beauty, and embracing the glory of our island life.

This is what we plan to keep doing, through dark times and when the sun returns. We hope you’ll come along for the ride.

As you read this, my house will be filling with Thanksgiving aromas and my heart with gratitude to be able to spend this holiday with loving family, to live on this beautiful island, and to be part of this community of inspiring, creative, caring people. I wish you all the greatest of blessings of the holiday!

Before becoming publisher and editor-in-chief at Whidbey Life Magazine, Deborah Nedelman, Ph.D., MFA, spent most of her time writing, editing, coaching writers, leading writing groups, and collecting advanced degrees. There was even a time when she worked as a clinical psychologist and raised two kids. These days, she wakes earlier, gets to bed later, and has Whidbey Island on her mind most of the time.

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To read more WLM stories and blogs, click here. Have a great story idea? Let us know at info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.

November 22, 2016
A Subscription for the Season

Every week I relish the arrival of Whidbey Life Magazine online. It is so well done, always full of interesting events and blogs and creative efforts. Time after time, the Magazine seems to capture the sweetness and specialness of Whidbey Island, and I am so grateful to have this ongoing reminder of all that I love about the island. I often find myself sharing articles or blog posts with friends who have never been to Whidbey, but for whom I know there will be a high resonance. -Kim Tyler

For WLM publisher and staff, reading this recent letter from a subscriber was like opening a gift. While we are pleased to bring you the best of Whidbey Island, week after week online and twice annually in print, hearing from readers is a special pleasure that never fails to thrill us.

We’ve all noticed the trend toward outsourcing, consolidation and homogeneity. Whidbey Island Magazine bucks that trend in a small but important way by employing all local talent—writers, editors, photographers, publisher—to consistently produce a high-quality magazine about local people, places and events. Think of Whidbey Life Magazine as the media equivalent of your local farmer, chef, artist, author, innkeeper, coffee roaster, brewer/distiller/vintner—along with the many others who contribute to our island’s spirit and character. The stories about local folks that appear in Whidbey Life Magazine could only be written by other local folks with a passion for telling those particular stories.

That’s why, in this season of celebration and generosity, we urge you to consider giving the gift of a subscription to Whidbey Life Magazine, either to someone who lives here on the island, someone who loves to visit, or someone who simply appreciates a lively and colorful publication about a magnificent and magical place. While the weekly online magazine is free to anyone anytime, the print editions contain stories that are selected for their timelessness and relevance to the Whidbey Island of tomorrow. When you subscribe, you will receive our print issues in your mailbox as soon as they come out.

We thank you for your support during this and all seasons.

Sue Taves, Publisher and Dianna MacLeod, Print Managing Editor

December 1, 2015
The New Whidbey Life Magazine Is Here!

Whidbey Life Magazine’s Fall/Winter print issue captures the magic of life on Whidbey Island. This issue highlights the way our landscape—farms, valleys, views, vistas—inspires and influences Whidbey Islanders. Musicians, painters, writers, actors, all of us seem to draw something from the sights, sounds and scents of Whidbey.

Fog glides up and over Hill Road in Coupeville. See the article “A Winter Weekend On Whidbey” (photo by Rick Lawler, whidbeyphotos.com)

With summer past and daylight ebbing, winter brings with it the opportunity to make our world a cozy one; we’re here to help with suggestions for projects and places. Whidbey has its own particular beauty in the winter and our weekend tour article helps you discover it.

The “Colonel’s House” at Camp Casey in Coupeville overlooks the fields and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. See the article “Shining a Light on the Past:Whidbey Island’s Fort Casey and Admiralty Head Lighthouse.” (photo by Marsha Morgan)

Plus we highlight several notable historic buildings—Admiralty Lighthouse, Camp Casey, Whidbey Playhouse—and the people who breathe life into them.

Pick up a copy at a local retailer (on newsstands by Oct. 15). You’ll find Whidbey Life Magazine in some of your favorite shops and stores island-wide. This high-quality, 52-page full color magazine is created by talented Whidbey writers, photographers and artists with the goal of sharing the best our beautiful island has to offer.

A student gathers natural materials for a recent dye-making workshop at Pacific NorthWest Art School in Coupeville. See the article “Well Schooled in Art.” (photo by David Welton)

Whether you’re a local or a first-time visitor to our fair isle, Whidbey Life Magazine will help you make the most of your time here. And as an added bonus, 10% of Whidbey Life Magazine print issue sales are earmarked for the WLM grant program. Your purchase helps make great things happen in our community!

Hundreds brave the icy water at Double Bluff beach on New Year’s Day. See the article “A Winter Weekend On Whidbey” (photo by David Welton)

Subscribe now and we’ll mail you two issues each year—in October and May. Your $18 annual subscription includes postage and makes a great gift.

Stay informed between print issues with fresh weekly content on the free online magazine at www.whidbeylifemagazine.org. Register here and we’ll send a weekly Flash email with exciting headlines and events.

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Go to www.whidbeylifemagazine.org for more information and retail locations.

Image at top: Fall 2015/Winter 2015 Cover photo—Admiralty Head Lighthouse sits on a bluff 127 feet above sea level. See the article “Shining a Light on the Past: Whidbey Island’s Fort Casey and Admiralty Head Lighthouse.” (photo by Marsha Morgan)

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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.

October 14, 2015
Clepper goes for DjangoFest jam, decides he needs practice
BY RUSSELL CLEPPER
Whidbey Life Magazine contributor
Sept. 18, 2013

“Anyone is welcome,” said the A-team musician to the C-string player, who had asked to participate in a jam session.

“It’s really irritating; people who don’t play Django style,” the A-teamer said later on. “There’s a certain expectation.”

I could tell very quickly that I didn’t meet those expectations, when I walked up to a jam circle that was already breaking up on Wednesday afternoon, the first day of DjangoFest Northwest. The five-day festival of gypsy jazz music began Wednesday and goes ’til Sunday, Sept. 22 at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts in Langley.

The author goes over gypsy jazz chord progressions with Django-style aficiando Jerry Schneider of Colorado at a South Whidbey Commons jam in Langley. (All photos by David Welton)

“Bend your wrist if you want to play this kind of music,” the young hotshot guitarist said in a tone bordering on disdain, as he ambled off to hook up with a more accomplished player. The guy he had been playing with swept up his guitar case and took off quickly, before I could ask any more questions.

Fortunately for me, another older gypsy jazz aficionado was willing to sit with me for more than an hour, showing me chords and rhythm patterns and techniques. It was a lesson rather than a jam.

“This is the hardest music I’ve ever tried to learn,” said Jerry Schneider who came in from Boulder, Colo.

DjangoFest fan Schneider left his flooded Boulder, Colo. neighborhood to come to the festival in Langley.

After Schneider patiently led me through the progressions on a couple of tunes, I could see that he was right. I won’t be joining any Django jazz jams unless I log a few hundred hours of practice first.

As Troy Chapman said, anyone is welcome, but you better know your stuff if you’re going to sit in on one of the many impromptu jams that spring up all over Langley during DjangoFest. Chapman, a Langley resident and a member of the Seattle jazz manouche group Pearl Django (performing at the festival Friday at 3 p.m.) is also one of the region’s prime expositors of the gypsy jazz genre.

Sitting down to one of these impromptu jams during DjangoFest, you might just find yourself playing alongside Stochelo Rosenberg or Angelo Debarre, a couple of the European world-renowned players with whom Chapman found himself trading licks the first time he sat in on a DjangoFest jam at the Doghouse Tavern in 2002.

There were about 20 players in all, as Chapman recalls, and that was the very first of the impromptu jams that have become such a signature feature of the Langley version of the festival.

That was the second year of the festival’s existence. Since then, DjangoFest has expanded, not only in importance on the national and international scene in the gypsy jazz world, but to many other cities and locations in the States, as well.

Clepper said the Langley “Djams” don’t happen in other cities that hold DjangoFests.

However, I’m told the jam scene here in Langley is a unique phenomenon. It doesn’t happen in other cities that host the festival.

“The business community here embraced it from the beginning,” said Chapman.

“The layout and climate of Langley are conducive to jams,” Chapman added. “In other places you don’t have the opportunity to wander through town. Here, on any given night, who knows how many jams are going on?”

For local players, as well as for visitors who come to town to attend the festival, the jams have become an obvious attraction.

“They give you the opportunity to play with world class players,” Chapman said.

For non-musicians, locals and visitors, they provide exposure to the genre that folks might otherwise not get. It’s an exciting style of music, featuring rapid-fire solos racing over the “boom-chick” backbeat of the rhythm guitars. Often, jams will include violinists and stand-up bass players. The expertise and musicianship of the players is often dazzling.

Clepper and Schneider jammin’ Django style.

Chapman said that there are different levels of jams that develop. Beginners in the genre can usually find a way to sit in on one. He does give one other cautionary statement, however.

“If there are some world class players involved in a jam,” Chapman said, “[inexperienced players] should just step back and let the music happen.”

Now I’m off to DjangoFest and if I run into a jam, I’ll just let it happen.

Russell Clepper is a singer-songwriter who plies his trade locally and around the country. He also is a substitute teacher for the Oak Harbor School District.

Here are some helpful links for DjangoFest info:
September 19, 2013