I’d never had anybody say this to me. But these were the words Russ Levine was shouting as he pulled up behind my little sailboat in Fisherman Bay one Tuesday night this summer. It turns out Russ wasn’t referring to my posterior. This was his way of telling my sailing partner and me to move…
“I was a goner. They sent me home to die.” This is how Randall Waugh, founder of Chicaoji, started to tell me the story of the event that changed his life. In 2010, Randall’s liver failed. After preventing him from dying immediately, the doctors at St. Joseph Hospital gave Randall a few months to live,…
Anybody who has traveled by ferry to the San Juan Islands is familiar with this type of announcement over the ferry’s loudspeaker: “Would the owner of a white Volvo station wagon please report to the car deck.” It’s usually followed by the owner’s walk of shame down the ferry’s stairs, which is followed by their…
When entering a library, one expects a calm, quiet atmosphere. Maybe a few hushed voices and the occasional sound of books being stacked on a counter. As I entered the Lopez Island Library last Saturday, the environment was a cross between a circus and a concert. When I first became acquainted with the Lopez Island…
At a potluck dinner on Lopez Island late in the summer of 2014, Sandy Bishop, executive director of the Lopez Community Land Trust, and one of LCLT’s farm interns, Ezra Fradkin, were having a conversation about a hot topic – eating locally-sourced food. Sandy told Ezra she guessed that Lopezians probably only get about 5-10% of…
“This is the best thing I did for my old age,” proclaimed Gale McCallum, age 91, about her little cottage in The Hamlet. In 1971 Gale and her husband bought a house on the South End of Lopez – a big old Victorian on Alec Bay Road. They moved there permanently in 1986, when they retired.…
One afternoon in the summer of 2009, Lisa and her father, William, walked into the Lopez Island Historical Museum, a small building with an old fishing boat in front, nestled in the middle of Lopez Village. William absolutely did not want be there. He had spent quite a bit of time on Lopez as a child,…
Ah, the simple life. Pigs with abscesses. Ewes that die at birth. Sheep with mastitis. Rows of lettuce plagued by wire worms. Allergies triggered by the ever present dust and pollen in the fields. Though they make it look simple, life on Horse Drawn Farm for Ken Akopiantz and Kathryn Thomas is anything but. I had lunch the…
If you asked most Lopezians what they consider to be top essential services that keep the island running day-to-day, responses would probably include: OPALCO, The Washington State Ferries, the grocery stores. Ok, maybe Holly B’s and Isabelle’s Espresso. Most probably wouldn’t put the Lopez Children’s Center at the top of their list. But they should. I…
When Blossom Grocery moves into its new location in early 2016, it will at once be the newest and oldest natural foods grocery store in San Juan County. Since Jeff Nichols opened Blossom in 1977, Lopez has watched the store grow and change – along with the consumption habits of the island. When I recently asked Blossom co-owner,…
Project 468 