Drop by the Ale HOuse for a good time with tonight's play. Or tomorrow night. See ya there!

You’ve seen & laughed at Chris DeStaffany’s plays in the Playwrights’ Festival – well, here’s another one this weekend, at the Ale House, which is a fundraiser for Battery D…here’s more, from Oren:

Dinner Theater Fri. & Sat. April 17th & 18th Top Side
Paradise, Lane Ten, On Overload.
“”Washington State Ferries, where we fixed the food service, now we’ll fix the rest.”

Once again the Ale House Dinner Theater Players present a play satirizing life on San Juan  Island.  This funny, irreverent satirical play takes an irreverent swipe at just about every aspect of island life.  Find out what we think the ferry system is really up to. It’s worse than you thought. How are you going to know what’s really happening right here on Fantasy Island if you miss this production? Opening Weekend – Fri. & Sat. April 17th & 18th, Ale House Top Side.

Dinner a’la cart. Special Menu. Tickets on sale NOW! 30- per table of 4/or 10– each. 6:30 show time. Fundraiser for Battery D Foundation, proud underwriters of Elliott Bay Pipe Band’s annual performance in Friday Harbor’s Memorial Day Services, & a non-profit 501C-3 partner & sponsor of San Juan Island National Historical Park’s living history programs.

Kent Morrill brings "Pretty Baby" and other Orbison songs to life.

Every so often there is a good reason to get out & see a show. This Sunday you now have a reason, at the Community Theatre…since it’s a fundraiser for the Class of 2009, I know I’ll go – hope to see you there! Here’s more:

Kent Morrill brings his award-winning tribute to the legendary Roy Orbison to Friday Harbor’s Whittier stage for two appearances on Sunday, April 19 (at 4pm and 7:30pm).

The island’s Pat O’Day has coordinated Morrill’s stopover via the San Juan Celebrity Golf Classic. Money raised from the concert will be used to help the Friday Harbor High School Class of 2009 with their graduation activities, including the Alcohol-Free Senior Class Party.

Morrill, an original member of the Northwest’s legendary Wailers band, started his Orbison tribute with the internationally acclaimed show, Legends in Concert and was voted “Entertainer of the Year” two years in a row in Las Vegas. Now taking the show on tour, he has packed theaters in Bremerton and Bellevue, and all over the Northwest. It’ll be great to have him here on San Juan Island.

Wave at the folks below, driving from the ferry....

Hey, here’s an idea – do a weekend in the City by FLYING there…if you’re gonna, this is the weekend to do it. Here’s more from Craig at Kenmore:

Kenmore Air “Spring Steals” This Weekend! This weekend, Kenmore Air is conducting its annual “airlift” of campers and parents to YMCA Camp Orkila on Orcas Island, which means they have lots of empty seaplane seats to Seattle on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, and from Seattle on Sunday, April 19.

While they last, take advantage of $59 one-way fares on selected flights from Friday Harbor Marina to Seattle Lake Union!

This is almost 50% off regular fares . . . how can you afford not to go to Seattle?

If the destruction of the natural world isn’t making us happy, then why are we doing it?
Derrick Jensen

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
Mohandas Gandhi

Ever since I saw the end of Slumdog Millionaire, I’ve been wishing we could have everybody dance next to the ferry landing (since we don’t have a train station to dance in.) Great way to end a movie, or start things up on an island.

In Antwerp, they have no such problem – check it out as we get a train station dance as Julie Andrews goes techno (that’s in the middle of the bit):

One of the cool things here on the island is that if you have cancer, there have been two ways to get ferry tickets so you can get to treatment on the mainland: The Susan G. Komen Foundation (for folks with breast cancer) and the Soroptimists’ program (for everyone else). Both have provided hundreds of trips over the years.

Now comes news that the Komen folks have had to scale back, so they are no longer providing that service as of the end of last month. The Soroptimist Club hopes to pick up the slack – here’s more from Vicky Thalacker:

Can you imagine a man, woman or child finding out that he or she has cancer and that they have to go to the mainland for chemotherapy or radiation?  Their treatment is for eight weeks, every day, for 40 days.  And then they find out it will cost them up to $1,500.00 to travel by ferry, plus countless hours of waiting and worrying. Continue Reading

FHHS' baseball senior pitcher Richie Ochoa mows 'em down....

You were planning to go, and so was I – today’s home baseball game with Nooksack (which was a re-schedule from two weeks ago) has been postponed again – the new re-schedule is on the 23rd, here at Hartman Field.

Over the weekend, the FHHS softball girls swept two with Concrete, while the baseball boys dropped their first of the season with a split of their doubleheader on Saturday.

This afternoon, the Nooksack Valley High scoccer team comes visiting our guys at 4:30pm…it’s our second to last home game, so come check ’em out!

Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, Nature is but another name for health.
Henry David Thoreau

It’s always cool to see how other folks – especially visitors – see us. Check out Melissa Manley’s blog, including pictures from Mount Young….click here. -oo-

Marty Robinson at FHES tells me they want to sign up the little ones next week:

Kindergarten Registration: Friday Harbor Elementary School welcomes the Kindergarten class of 2009-2010!  Registration for next year’s Kindergarten class will be held on Monday and Tuesday, April 20 and 21 in the school office.  Parents who wish to enroll their children for the 2009-010 Kindergarten session should call the school to set up an appointment.  To be eligible, students must be five years of age by August 31, 2000.  Please call the elementary school at 378-5209 X 1 X 1 to make an appointment.

Please bring your child’s birth certificate and immunization records.  If needed, birth certificates may be obtained at the San Juan County Health Department. The Health Department will offer health screenings for Kindergartners later in the spring.  Their number is 378-4474.

Besides all the excitement at Jackson’s Beach, there’s also activities for kids at Roche Harbor – here are all the details, from the Roche Harbor news.

http://www.rocheharbor.com/aboutus_news.html -ooo-

The kids charging for the eggs, last year for Easter.

Are you ready for this year’s Easter Egg Hunt? Here’s what we do each year, from Susan Risser (there are photos from last year’s hunt in the “Galleries” in the column to the right):

The annual Easter egg hunt put on by the Friday Harbor Firefighters will by held at Jackson’s Beach again this year.

The beach will be divided into age groups: 0-3,4-6,7-9,10-12.

There will be almost 2,000 colored eggs hidden in the roped off areas, as well as plastic eggs colored according to age group. To redeem prizes, children are asked to take no more than two plastic eggs from their age group to the appropriate prize box by the fire trucks, where they will exchange the plastic eggs for prizes.

The price for this annual event is a can of food for the Food Bank. There will be boxes for the food near the prize tables on the beach.

For any children who would like to help with the industrial job of dying the eggs, there will be 5 gallon buckets of dyed water ready to dye the eggs at the Friday Harbor Fire Station. The coloring party will be at 5:30 PM on
Friday, April 10. It usually only takes about an hour.

On Easter Sunday, children should be lined up behind the rope in their age groups, ready to go, when the fire trucks blow the air horns at 1:00 P.M.

Abby at Island Rec asked me to tell you to bring extra batteries:

Hi Ian!
Just wanted to remind you that this Saturday is Island Rec’s Teen Flashlight Easter Egg Hunt! 8:30pm at the High School Track. Bring a flashlight and a bag to carry all your goodies home in. This is open to all teens 6th-12th grade. There is a prize in every egg and it’s FREE!

Thanks, Ian!
Abby Spann

Build a man a fire and you’ll warm him for a day – but set a man on fire and you’ll warm him for a lifetime.
Cody Fischer

The mausoleum at Roche Harbor, last Sunday in the sun...

One of the things you gotta drop by & see, if you’re gonna live here, is the mausoleum at Roche Harbor… here’s a description of John’s McMillin’s vision for the structure, from the Roche Harbor website (http://www.rocheharbor.com/walkingtour.html):

John S. McMillin wished to leave to posterity, a memorial to the dreams and aspirations of the things he and his generation believed in. His family, his religious beliefs, his associations are all enshrined here. Continue Reading