OLD Whidbey Life Magazine

Tag: Whidbey nonprofits

  • Grimm’s True Tales: Whidbey Island Back Roads

    Grimm’s True Tales: Whidbey Island Back Roads

    BY SHAWN BERIT
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    June 7, 2017

    The afternoon sun shone brightly on the walls of historic Bayview Hall, and on the baseball cap that read “Cool Bayview Nights Car Show.” In the shadow of the hat’s bill, thoughtful, smiling eyes looked to the white structure that still stands since its 1928 opening. “My grandfather helped build that,” he says, “And he used to show movies in there too.”

    Bayview Hall was built with the help of Brian Grimm’s grandfather. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    Whidbey Island history runs deep in Brian Grimm, as it does for many families here. The evidence rests in the island’s back roads. Throughout South Whidbey, you can cross and drive down roads with names like Campbell, Porter, Clyde, and yes, Grimm.  His uncle settled on the island in 1912 and “My grandfather moved to the island in 1914,” Grimm says.

    Grimm was in first grade with many kids from families that had streets named after them. From a young age, he found that fascinating. Memories of his youth included driving the roads and back roads with friends and family. He talks of teenage antics with a grin and glint in his eyes. Yet Grimm’s true appreciation of the roads would come later in life.

    In 2009, as president of Bayview Hall, he started a research project built on determining just who owns the hall and also who helped found it. Recalling his childhood friends, he realized that the deepest roots on the island are reflected in the names of its roads. As families moved to the island to homestead, they applied to the county to have their names used to identify the roads they lived on. “Roads” predate lanes, circles, or drives, and thus the names followed by “road” have their origins in the island’s oldest families. This fact gave Grimm his starting point.

    An arial photo that includes Bayview Hall (at the tip of the red arrow) and the surrounding area taken in 1963 (Photo courtesy of Brian Grimm)

    As Grimm contacted local families and learned their histories, it also gave him the chance to get to know his neighbors better. His sense of community, and love of the people here, only grew with his research. He experienced another enjoyable benefit, he says: He got to know his dad and grandfather through the eyes of others.

    Yet, in the midst of his research, a tragic event brought his work to a halt. On a cold November 11, 2011, a Chevy Malibu was headed south on Wilkinson Road just a mile south of Langley. The driver, who had been drinking, and her three passengers had left a house party together. Around midnight, the driver lost control and ran into a tree. Bystanders at the scene were able to pull her from the car, but as it went up in flames, the three young men inside could not be saved.

    These were people Grimm knew. The huge loss to the community, to his friends, family, and neighbors, gave Grimm a new mission. He became president of Island County Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Then, just as his grandfather helped found Bayview Hall for the community, Brian founded the Safe Ride Home program.

    Grimm Road is one of two that will be the focus of July’s back roads potluck (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    Preventing a recurrence of the tragedy that took place that November night became Grimm’s passion. The Safe Ride Home program is simple. Residents of South Whidbey who feel threatened or unsafe getting into a car, as either a passenger or driver, can call the Safe Ride Home phone number and get a free ride home. The number is (360) 395-8714.

    As with any nonprofit group, funding is a concern. Grimm started with car washes as fundraisers, but in time, he created the Cool Bayview Nights car show. Car entry fees from the show benefit Safe Ride Home and other nonprofits such as Good Cheer. This year, visitors will be asked to donate a can of food for the food bank as an entry donation. The show will take place at the Island Country Fair Grounds in Langley on July 8 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

    History caught up to Brian Grimm again, however. In 2016, he partnered with the Island County Historical Society to revive the Back Roads Community Potlucks. He was happy to return to the story of Whidbey Island. He says Whidbey’s history is like a good book that you just want to keep picking up again.

    The origin of Clyde Road will be discussed at the July potluck as well. (Photo by Shawn Berit)

    The potlucks started up again in January, with the next one coming up on July 30 at 2 p.m. at Bayview Community Hall. It is truly a community potluck: everyone is welcome and encouraged to bring a dish of their choice. The July gathering explores the history of Grimm Road and Clyde Road.

    Reflecting on years of pouring himself into the community, Grimm took off his hat to show the initials embroidered on the back: D.G.T. “It means do good things,” he says, “My goal in life is to make things right.”

    Seems like the back roads of Whidbey Island was the perfect place to start.

    Shawn Berit lives near Maxwelton Beach on the south end of Whidbey Island. He freelances as a social media manager for churches and organizations. A father of three and an all-around creative, Shawn paints and draws fantastical scenery, story illustrations, and science fiction concept art. He is a nature photographer, a vocalist wanting to start a band, a science fiction writer working on his first novel, and a television and voiceover actor wishing the island had a radio station. He is also one-half of the Dakota Guys on YouTube and in love with all things Whidbey Island.

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  • Lumens || Science, Politics and Spirituality: A Perfect Trifecta

    Lumens || Science, Politics and Spirituality: A Perfect Trifecta

    BY SHARON BETCHER
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    October 28, 2015

    While sociologists of religion speak of the Pacific Northwest as the epitome of “the none zone” (where the majority of persons register no official religious preference on a census), most residents know Whidbey Island to home contemplatives, mystics, naturalists and activists of many religio-spiritual strains with a paradisal dream of living in intimate reciprocity with all beings. Lumens lifts up the voices and wisdom of those who live among us—the creatives whose very creativity, their luminescence, opens out from the taproot of the spiritual path and/or religious faith.

    Science, politics and spirituality: Can these creatively mix? Rationalism itches to snuff out religion, and politics can seem heartless. Yet for Freeland resident Elise Miller, who speaks of phthalates and symbionts while participating in meetings at the New York Academy of Medicine and the White House, spirituality serves as the organizing breath of her environmental activism. “Spirituality is like 90 percent of it. My journey is one of becoming more aware. I want to be more conscious when I grow up,” Miller teases, punctuating her intensity with a chuckle.

    Miller at the first White House Conference on Climate Change, June, 2015
    Miller at the first White House Summit on Climate Change and Health, June, 2015 (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)

    Not long after arriving on Whidbey in 1998, Miller founded a nonprofit to promote children’s environmental health. She now serves as director of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE). Speaking of those occasions where her political and intellectual acumen are called upon to address the effects of pharmaceuticals, pesticides and myriad other pollutants on health, she describes her specific contribution: “I midwife the policy conversation. That’s my activism. I’m not on the front lines of protest, but I hold the space for diverse stakeholders to discuss the best available science in order to create policies that shift markets towards healthier practices.” That non-reactive breathing room she holds is her spirituality at work.

    Miller’s philosophy of life is one cobbled and crafted, rather than the inheritance of cradle or creedal path, if even of Buddhism. “Buddhist cosmology most closely aligns with how I want to be in the world,” Miller explains, “but I don’t consider myself a Buddhist. Labels bother me. There are so many ways of making meaning; I want to remain open.”

    Miller speaking at the New York Academy of Medicine, June 2012 (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)
    Miller speaking at the New York Academy of Medicine, June 2012 (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)

    Science also opens onto the awe of our intimate communion with life, Miller notes. We literally “con-spire,” or breathe together, with the universe. But, Miller advises, “Science can, like religion, assume certainty where it is just not possible.” Miller consequently subscribes to the precautionary principle—a principle that embraces the fundamental uncertainty that characterizes the scientific method and underlies our very existence as creatures. As a principle, it incorporates an awareness of unknowing—as much spiritual humility as scientific confession. Upward trends in a number of diseases and disabilities suggest that taking precautions to minimize childhood exposures to toxic chemicals—now ubiquitous in our air, water, soil and consumer products—must be, Miller suggests, as much of a global concern as inadequate nutrition and poverty.

    The youngest of three siblings, her baptism was forgotten amidst the dramas of Virginia politics (Miller’s father was Attorney General). Miller describes herself as the “good girl” who, prompted by intuitive impulse, veered creatively off the presumed path. After graduating from Dartmouth (not Princeton, which was considered by her family to be the only Ivy League school worth attending), Miller traveled as a journalist to India. Out of intellectual curiosity, she sat a ten-day meditation retreat in Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha is thought to have attained his enlightenment. That experience opened for Miller an inner, unknown world—one that had not been valued by her family. Miller returned to the U.S. with questions like, Why does the mind so habitually devolve into polarities of either/or, mind/body, us/them?

    Veering away from graduate studies, she signed on as a housekeeper for the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Taught by Sharon Salzburg, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, Miller built a corporeal foundation for her spiritually informed living—a breathing practice that shaped the solar plexus to appreciatively hold the fundamental interconnectedness of all which our defensive minds want to separate. For a child saturated in Calvinist moroseness, this visceral immersion helped Miller experience a sense of deep authenticity: “I know who I am. The ‘small self’ human is connected to the ‘big self’ of the universe.” Around that felt connection, Miller has cultivated her daily discipline—the work of “showing up” with her appreciative intellectual, scientific and political skills and with openness to the potentialities in each moment. She feels that by keeping her heart and mind expansive, the wisest course of action can emerge.

    Bhopal protest after Union Carbide disaster (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)
    Bhopal protest after Union Carbide disaster (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)

    If her spiritual life opened out through breath meditation, inhalation also brought awareness of the chemical horror of Bhopal. Miller arrived in India only ten months after the explosion at the Union Carbide plant that killed 22,000 people and left residual human health problems from chemical contamination. Later, when Miller was head of a small private foundation investing in environmental health initiatives, her work intersected with that of biologist Sandra Steingraber. From Steingraber, Miller learned a startling fact: human breast milk is among the most contaminated of human foods. Riffing on Rebecca Solnit’s essay The Faraway Nearby, Miller points out that the faraway—of moving environmental questionables overseas, for example—is always more nearby than we imagine.

    Miller in 2015 Black Hills Triathalon, Lacey, WA (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)
    Miller in 2015 Black Hills Triathalon, Lacey, WA (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)

    Today, Miller’s way of “con-spiring” with the universe assumes a more kinetic form than Buddhist seated meditation. She is a triathlete, placing first in her age group during the August 2015 Whidbey Island Triathlon. The physics of maintaining serene receptivity even when in motion serves in no small way as “advanced” spiritual practice. Miller, who moved to Whidbey Island because it offered a more human scale of community, turns life experience itself on the lathe of spiritual wisdom. An upcoming trip back to Nepal with son Ravi and husband Dan offers, she explains, a chance not only to contribute human service to the 2015 Nepal earthquake relief efforts, but again to relinquish status—to shed the barnacles of ego—by living as kin with the mass of humanity.

    Miller, son Ravi and husband Dan in Kathmandu, 2005 (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)
    Miller, son Ravi and husband Dan in Kathmandu, 2005 (photo courtesy of Elise Miller)

    Ten-year-old Ravi will be on this trip making a journey back to Kathmandu, the place of his birth. His adoption speaks, like so much else in Miller’s life, to the spiritual kinship and non-dual nature of her spiritual path Speaking of the planet’s swelling human population, Miller notes, “They’re all our kids. ‘Mine’ doesn’t have to be biological. ‘They’ are not other.” With an effervescent chuckle signaling that she is again approaching wonder, Miller adds a concluding thought: “And frankly, I experience the world differently when I walk with Ravi.”

    To support Elise, Ravi and Dan’s relief work in Nepal, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/nepalreliefwork or https://www.facebook.com/elisegmiller.

    Image at top: Elise Miller

    An academic theologian and philosopher by background, Sharon Betcher is now an independent scholar, writer and wannabe farmer living on south Whidbey. As a writer, she won the 2012 Short Story Smash and took first place in the memoir category of the Whidbey Island Writers Association’s 2012 contest. In March 2015, Betcher presented at the annual Women of Whidbey (WOW) Stories Conference.

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