By Lau­ren Cohen, San Juan Island The return of our town’s beloved Fourth of July parade was an enor­mous step for­ward in our return to nor­mal life. It was a chance for our com­mu­ni­ty and the vis­i­tors we wel­come every year to come togeth­er and cel­e­brate our nation and the free­doms we enjoy. The San Juan Jour­nal  Con­tin­ue Reading

By David Mark Jenk­ins, Fri­day Har­bor I have worked with Farhad Ghatan for over sev­en years and found him to be extreme­ly reli­able, pro­fes­sion­al, cre­ative and hon­est. More­over, Farhad is a strong advo­cate for the Arts in Fri­day Har­bor, and as in many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, pub­lic art adds great­ly to our visitor’s expe­ri­ence of the  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Learn­er Lim­bach, Orcas Island Have you ever looked at your choic­es on a bal­lot and thought, “I’m just not excit­ed about any of these”? I have, and I’m tired of being coerced into vot­ing for the “less­er evil”. I think many oth­ers are, too. Ranked-choice vot­ing is one idea that is giv­ing me hope, and it  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Dale Heisinger M.D., Noel Monin, John Gey­man M.D., Chris­tine Min­ney, Jamie Stephens, Cindy Wolf, Kyle Davies, San Juan Coun­ty Board of Health   Recent­ly the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion and Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin pub­lished the coun­ty health rank­ings for states.    The rank­ings were based on health out­comes and health fac­tors (see countyhealthrankings.org for com­pre­hen­sive view).    In Wash­ing­ton State,  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Bob Jar­man, chair of the board of com­mis­sion­ers, San Juan Coun­ty Fire Dis­trict 3 On behalf of the elect­ed board mem­bers of San Juan Coun­ty Fire Dis­trict 3, our career staff and our vol­un­teers, we thank the vot­ers of San Juan Island and the Town of Fri­day Har­bor for your over­whelm­ing sup­port in the April  Con­tin­ue Reading

From Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety of Fri­day Har­bor The Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety of Fri­day Har­bor would like to acknowl­edge the San Juan Island Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion for the many oppor­tu­ni­ties it pro­vides for San Juan Island non­prof­its to receive sup­port from the foun­da­tion and its donors. On March 9, the ani­mal shel­ter received two grants from the  Con­tin­ue Reading

 By Janet Wright, San Juan Island I wrote an e‑mail to our state leg­is­la­tors April 14 about the fer­ry sit­u­a­tion. Anoth­er bro­ken-down fer­ry.  Hmmm, I have lived here over 40 years and it has nev­er been this bad. I have two friends who were try­ing to get to the main­land for surg­eries and they were stuck.   Con­tin­ue Reading

By Susan and Peter Riss­er, San Juan Island Since Peter and I had the good for­tune to serve in var­i­ous roles, includ­ing the assis­tant chief for over 20 years with the now-defunct Fri­day Har­bor Fire Depart­ment, we became fair­ly well acquaint­ed with some of the chal­lenges involved in pro­vid­ing good fire pro­tec­tion to our com­mu­ni­ty.   Con­tin­ue Reading