Originally from Los Angeles, Laura Adams came with her husband Steven and their first child (then an infant) to Lopez Island, over twenty five years ago. Like many of us she wanted to raise her family in an environment that was based on values of health, simplicity and community. What she didn’t express, but what was gathered from an interview with her on a rainy Thursday morning in her wood shop, the last value on that list was creativity.
We had just arrived in Milan, on a 12 day trip to Italy.
Bee Callahan lives in a bucolic setting in the Shark Reef area of Lopez Island, amidst ponds, fruit trees, gardens, and chickens. There are plants in every room of her house; especially hoyas which grow up the walls and across the ceiling. Like many Lopezians, she loves to garden and has had a particular passion for tomato plants her whole life. Bee says her first memory is of planting tomato plants with her mother when she was 3 ½ years old.
Farming has been a way of life in the San Juan Islands for a long time: perhaps as long as 2,500 years! Like peasant communities in Europe, native Coast Salish peoples of the islands not only fished, but also raised crops and livestock. Early European explorers observed cultivated fields and flocks of “woolly dogs,” but by the late 19th century, when serious study of Coast Salish languages and cultures began, native peoples had lost most of their land, and exchanged their traditional crops and dogs for potatoes and sheep.
Bite into a slice of apple and ask yourself: crisp or soft; sweet or tart; juicy or dry; fresh or in pie, sauce, juice, or cider? That’s what small groups of Lopezians have been doing at November evening apple tastings hosted by Elf Fay and Eric Hall at their Crowfoot Farm.
How do we choose who we love? Do we choose? Why are we so often attracted to those who are not suitable partners for us? What is the secret of finding stable and fulfilling intimacy?
Local artist Kim Middleton of Orcas Island was jury-selected to exhibit her work, “Harpy Eagle,” in the prestigious 2008 Birds in Art exhibition at Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisc. The show ran from Sept. 6 through Nov. 9.
The Whale Museum will be open extended hours for shopping and kids’ activities on Thursday, Dec. 4 and Friday, Dec. 5 until 8 p.m. Hosted kids’ activities will take place between the hours of 5 and 8. For more information, contact the museum at (360) 378-4710, ext. 30.
Lopez Island
Look Skyward!
On Tuesday, Nov. 24, contractor Steve Orcutt was at a client’s home performing clean up at the work site, and he and a co-worker were getting ready to toss a few odds and ends into the back of their vehicle when, on a whim, one of the men unscrewed the caps on the end of a PVC pipe.
