The Arco­ra Foun­da­tion — Smile­Mo­bile, a bright­ly paint­ed 39 — foot den­tal clin­ic on wheels, will return to Fri­day Har­bor on Octo­ber 7 – 9 and 12 – 14 and will park at the Fri­day Har­bor High School — 45 Blair Ave. Smile­Mo­bile den­tist – Paul Phillips and den­tal team will pro­vide exam­i­na­tions to babies (first  Con­tin­ue Reading

Deb Lang­hans shares some thoughts about keep­ing your men­tal health… Are you hold­ing your breath these days? With all the med­ical, eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal upheaval upon us, is it any won­der? Breath is life. It might be our most faith­ful life­long com­pan­ion as well as a barom­e­ter of how we’re per­ceiv­ing our world: When  Con­tin­ue Reading

$12,000 giv­en in schol­ar­ships Island Arti­sans is a local non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion whose goal is to raise funds in sup­port of young artists with­in our com­mu­ni­ty. We have served San Juan Coun­ty for approx­i­mate­ly 40 years by grant­i­ng schol­ar­ships to grad­u­at­ing stu­dents and sup­port­ing prac­tic­ing artists. Island Arti­sans Hol­i­day Mar­ket, our pri­ma­ry fundrais­er, has always been  Con­tin­ue Reading

Small busi­ness­es are rely­ing more than ever on your sup­port as they cre­ative­ly cope with COVID.  Here’s the sec­ond of a series of sto­ries about their sur­vival. When COVID-19 became a glob­al pan­dem­ic in March, all of us were sud­den­ly nav­i­gat­ing unchart­ed waters. How­ev­er, San Juan Islands busi­ness­es have respond­ed with com­pas­sion and inge­nu­ity dur­ing these tough times. This  Con­tin­ue Reading

Spe­cial Deliv­er­ies: On One Morn­ing, San Juan Island Fire & Res­cue Joins Part­ner Agen­cies With Two Baby Deliv­er­ies This time, it wasn’t the stork who made the mid­dle of the night call to assist two preg­nant moth­ers. Just before 3:00 a.m. on Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 13, pagers beeped through­out San Juan Island announc­ing an urgent need  Con­tin­ue Reading

Its wild­fire sea­son in the west and air qual­i­ty is bad. Every­one, but espe­cial­ly those of us with com­pro­mis­ing health issues are rec­om­mend­ed to stay indoors with win­dows closed and avoid breath­ing the par­tic­u­lates in the smokey air as much as pos­si­ble. You can check cur­rent air qual­i­ty on the web­site Pur­ple Air. In my  Con­tin­ue Reading

Dean­na from Peace­Health shares this infor­ma­tive arti­cle from their blog with some steps you can take to pro­tect your health when the air qual­i­ty is poor… When wild­fires cre­ate smoky con­di­tions, it’s impor­tant to take extra steps to pro­tect your health. Wild­fire smoke can irri­tate your eyes, nose, throat and lungs. It can make it hard  Con­tin­ue Reading

Islanders, unable to afford den­tal care, can receive it for free thanks to the local non­prof­it Fish For Teeth on Fri­day, Oct. 2 and Sat­ur­day, Oct. 3 at the Mullis Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter on San Juan Island. Due to health pre­cau­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the clin­ic will host half of the num­ber of patients usu­al­ly  Con­tin­ue Reading

Flu shots are now avail­able at Even­tide Health. It’s impor­tant to get yours ear­ly this year. We will be host­ing a few flu clin­ics this year and car­ry­ing on the tra­di­tion of San Juan Health­care and offer­ing the ser­vice as pub­lic health to the com­mu­ni­ty. We will also be par­tic­i­pat­ing in joint flu clin­ics with  Con­tin­ue Reading

Effec­tive Sep­tem­ber 10, San Juan Coun­ty Health Offi­cer Dr. Frank James has signed Order No. 2020–9, lift­ing the 50% capac­i­ty restric­tions on tran­sient lodg­ing. Oper­at­ing at 100% capac­i­ty is allowed imme­di­ate­ly. This order also imme­di­ate­ly lifts the clo­sure of all pub­lic play­grounds and play­ground equip­ment. Dr. James explains, “Island res­i­dents and vis­i­tors have done an  Con­tin­ue Reading

One of the first things on anybody’s list of how to live a good life pan­dem­ic or not is to get some phys­i­cal exer­cise. For me this can be a chal­lenge in the best of times. Being quar­an­tined by myself has made find­ing the moti­va­tion to get mov­ing near­ly impos­si­ble, near­ly, but not entire­ly. I  Con­tin­ue Reading

Do you find Medicare a mys­tery? Are you unsure which Medicare plan is best for you? Join SHIBA online for a vir­tu­al Medicare 101 class where we will cov­er the “A, B, C, Ds” of Medicare. Our cer­ti­fied SHIBA vol­un­teers will be avail­able to answer all of your ques­tions! Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 16, 2020 @ 1PM PST To reg­is­ter,  Con­tin­ue Reading

COVID-19 updates from San Juan Coun­ty around sub­jects on the minds of islanders… In many cul­tures, includ­ing our own, there is a com­mon super­sti­tion that says “if you acknowl­edge good luck, your good luck will end”. We’ll call this the knock-on-wood prin­ci­ple. Well, please knock on wood, because in this long and detailed arti­cle we’ll  Con­tin­ue Reading

From Evan Per­rol­laz for SJC Long-Term Care Coor­di­na­tion Net­work… The San Juan Coun­ty LTC Care Coor­di­na­tion Net­work (Net­work) is pleased to announce a $750,000 three-year grant from the fed­er­al Health Resources and Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (HRSA) for the pur­pose of imple­ment­ing a suite of solu­tions for long-term care in San Juan Coun­ty.  This grant is intend­ed to  Con­tin­ue Reading

A report from the coun­ty… There has been one new con­firmed pos­i­tive test result in San Juan Coun­ty since the last case sum­ma­ry on August 13. This is the 32nd case in San Juan Coun­ty and the 13 th on Orcas Island. The case occurred in a vis­i­tor to Orcas Island. Due to tim­ing of symp­tom onset  Con­tin­ue Reading

We need to wear masks in pub­lic, so let’s make them unique and play­ful!  In March enter­pris­ing vol­un­teers start­ed mak­ing masks to raise funds to sup­port the San Juan Islands Muse­um of Art (SJIMA).  The masks come in all col­ors and delight­ful fab­rics includ­ing ones of famil­iar art by famous artists. Who bet­ter to make  Con­tin­ue Reading