Deb­bi wrote and says she’s look­ing to make a com­plete guide for kids about what they can do this sum­mer — and she needs your help. Here’s more:

Hey, Ian!

I have a favor to ask.

I’m work­ing on the SJI Sum­mer Activ­i­ty Cal­en­dar for our Youth 2009. This will be our third year to offer this to par­ents, fam­i­lies and to our com­mu­ni­ty. The cal­en­dar is FREE with the help of the San Juan Island Pre­ven­tion Coali­tion. I’m in the midst of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion from var­i­ous peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions, but thought, maybe I’m miss­ing some­one! Would you be able to inquire if some­one is offer­ing a new or unad­ver­tised youth pro­gram this sum­mer on SJI, they could con­tact me to add it to the calendar?

Last year’s cal­en­dar came out of neces­si­ty for me. I found some pro­grams weren’t adver­tised well, so they were can­celled because of low par­tic­i­pa­tion, or oth­ers would fill up before I heard about them. So, hav­ing all the infor­ma­tion in one place, made it a bet­ter sum­mer for my kids! The cal­en­dars will be avail­able at the Children’s Fes­ti­val (May 2) at the SJIPC booth and will be mailed out from the SJISD parent/guardian mail­ing list and var­i­ous email groups.

I feel the more pro­grams we can add, the more use­ful this tool becomes for fam­i­lies! I put mine on the refrig­er­a­tor and we kept on top of what was avail­able through­out the summer!

Thanks again, Ian, for your sup­port of the pro­grams we’ve been involved in. It takes a Village…

Deb­bi (fincher@rockisland.com)

Have you noticed that what­ev­er sport you’re try­ing to learn, some earnest per­son is always telling you to keep your knees bent?
Dave Bar­ry

Tom Doenges, AKA Tom Henry

Last Fri­day, CNN aired a report on their iRe­ports sec­tion about Tom Doenges’ song, “Look­ing for a Bailout”.… I got reports from all over the coun­try (Chris­tiane Bier­mann was the first, writ­ing from Port­land, and remind­ing me that Vikky Dau­ci­u­nas did the real­ly cool video work. Way to go, Tom!)

You can see the CNN report by going to this page and look­ing for “Rockin’ the Reces­sion” — (it’s after the Dust Storm sto­ry, and before “Bar­bie Turns 50”), or you can go straight to the YouTube ver­sion, so you can see the song with­out all those reporters talking.

Enrique won't be here this week, but the presentation at the Library is still on.

Lin­da & Mau­reen have been help­ing the folks with the Slow Food Project & the cool direc­tion that healthy eat­ing is going on the island (I love it! Have you eat­en at the high school late­ly? It rocks!) Here’s more from our friends:

Please see our lat­est update: http://slowfoodlandandsea.blogspot.com/

Enrique Cer­da, the truf­fle mak­er from the Kallari choco­late cooperative
who was to vis­it SJI won’t be here. The U.S. embassy in Ecuador has been
hold­ing up his pass­port and visa. (Con­tact info for the embassy is on our
web page).

His trans­la­tor and intern Bec­ca Roeb­ber, who also lives and works with
Kallari coop­er­a­tive in Ecuador, will have a choco­late tast­ing and
pre­sen­ta­tion about Ecuador, sus­tain­able farm­ing, indige­nous rights, the
very suc­cess­ful Kallari choco­late farm­ers’ coop­er­a­tive, and prob­a­bly a
lit­tle about the pol­i­tics that hold up visas. The pre­sen­ta­tion is called:

“FROM BEAN TO BAR”
WED. 3/18 at the SJI LIBRARY MEETING ROOM from 3:15–4:45 pm.
1010 Guard St. Fri­day Har­bor 360–378-2798
Admis­sion is free, and the meet­ing room holds 35 people.

Kids love chocolate....

Bec­ca will bring a lot of Kallari choco­late — “the best choco­late on earth”.

The truf­fle class sched­uled for 3/18 was full, but is can­celed due to
Enrique’s absence. He hopes to vis­it next year…

Our Youth web page has pic­tures of some of our recent activ­i­ties. We’ll
post more pic­tures and sto­ries soon -

http://sites.google.com/site/landandseayouth/pictures‑1

Best wish­es,

Lin­da and Maureen
Land & Sea Slow Food Fri­day Harbor/San Juan
slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com
360–472-0880 Maureen/360–317-5890 Linda

Chocolate beans.....

That book about Fri­day Har­bor that Mike & Julia Vouri (right) wrote with the His­tor­i­cal Muse­um con­tin­ues to sell well…Museum Direc­tor Kevin Lof­tus says you can still pick up your copy at the Muse­um, so drop by & get it.

The book starts with a pic­ture of Fri­day Har­bor from the har­bor in 1883, and tells the sto­ry of the town’s growth through the first half of the last cen­tu­ry. It’s a good read, to find out where today’s town came from, and how our fore­bears envi­sioned things. I sat down and read my copy in a cou­ple of hours one Sun­day, and the choice of old pho­tos & com­pelling, well-writ­ten nar­ra­tive that goes with them is won­der­ful. Get yours now!

Mike tells me Richard Walk­er is doing a sim­i­lar book for Roche Har­bor’s his­to­ry, so I called Richard, who says it’s been a blast to com­plile the pic­tures & sto­ries of the com­mu­ni­ty there, over the years. He says the book should be avail­able in late June — I know I’m look­ing for­ward to check­ing it out.

The Vis­i­tors’ Bureau here in the islands is pret­ty active when it comes to spread­ing the word.…last week they were in Olympia vis­it­ing with our new­ly-mint­ed state sen­a­tor Kevin. Here’s more from Robin:

On March 9, Deb­o­rah Hop­kins and Robin Jacob­son of the San Juan Islands Vis­i­tors Bureau, as well as Car­ol and Bog­dan Kul­min­s­ki of the Blue Heron B&B on Orcas Island, rep­re­sent­ed the San Juan Islands dur­ing “Tourism Day” in Olympia, with more than 250 tourism indus­try pro­fes­sion­als from around the state.

They took part in the “Why Tourism Mat­ters” ral­ly on the Capi­tol steps, met with Dis­trict 40 leg­is­la­tors Sen­a­tor Kevin Ranker, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeff Mor­ris and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Quall, then enjoyed a recep­tion at the Governor’s Man­sion.  Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire spoke at the recep­tion, with enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of the tourism indus­try, which is Washington’s 4th largest indus­try (fol­low­ing soft­ware, aero­space and agriculture/food/wine).

Left to Right – Robin Jacobson, Carol Kulminski, Deborah Hopkins, Sen. Kevin Ranker, Bogdan Kulminski

The news release below con­tains fur­ther infor­ma­tion, fol­lowed by the list of media cov­er­age received so far.  The day was coor­di­nat­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Des­ti­na­tion Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion and Seattle’s Con­ven­tion & Vis­i­tors Bureau.

(The pho­to was tak­en in Sen Ranker’s office.  Left to Right – Robin Jacob­son, Car­ol Kul­min­s­ki, Deb­o­rah Hop­kins, Sen. Kevin Ranker, Bog­dan Kulminski)

++++++++++++++++++++++
News Release & Media Report By David Bland­ford, Direc­tor of Pub­lic Rela­tions, Seattle’s Con­ven­tion & Vis­i­tors Bureau

Wash­ing­ton State’s Tourism Indus­try Unites in Olympia
New Statewide Advo­ca­cy Cam­paign to be Announced on Capi­tol Steps,
Gov­er­nor Pro­claims “Tourism Day in Wash­ing­ton State”

OLYMPIA, WASH. – Today more than 250 tourism indus­try pro­fes­sion­als from Taco­ma, Spokane, Belling­ham, Yaki­ma, Van­cou­ver, Seat­tle and many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties across Wash­ing­ton will con­verge on the state capi­tol to tell leg­is­la­tors Why Tourism Matters.

An indus­try ral­ly and press con­fer­ence will be held on the state capitol’s north steps at 1:30 p.m. by a coali­tion of con­ven­tion and vis­i­tor bureaus, cham­bers of com­merce and oth­er des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions from across the state.

The effort inau­gu­rates the statewide roll-out of the Why Tourism Mat­ters pub­lic out­reach and advo­ca­cy cam­paign which will con­vey the impor­tance of tourism by way of adver­tis­ing, online con­tent, pub­lic rela­tions and coop­er­a­tive communications.

The cam­paign web­site at www.whytourismmatters.com will go live today at 1:30 p.m., fea­tur­ing the lat­est tourism sta­tis­tics for the state and many com­mu­ni­ties, indus­try news and links to nation­al ini­tia­tives. Much of the web site is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­files of local tourism indus­try pro­fes­sion­als, or “tourism ambas­sadors,” who work on the front­lines and serve as the industry’s face of tourism.

These tourism ambas­sadors will attend today’s event in Olympia. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants – many clad in work-day uni­forms and cos­tumes — rep­re­sent the spec­trum of the tourism indus­try: from hotel man­agers and house­keep­ing atten­dants to restau­ra­teurs and servers, tour lead­ers, trav­el agents, con­ven­tion cen­ter pres­i­dents, vint­ners, artists, bell cap­tains, tour boat cap­tains and at least one cabaret performer.

“Today the tourism indus­try in Wash­ing­ton State has many mes­sen­gers but one com­mon mes­sage: tourism mat­ters,” said Kather­ine Kertz­man, Pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton State Des­ti­na­tion Mar­ket­ing Orga­ni­za­tions (WSDMO). “Vis­i­tors to the state spent $15.7 bil­lion here last year and gen­er­at­ed $1 bil­lion in state and local tax­es. Tourists sup­port near­ly 150,000 jobs and gen­er­ate $4.3 bil­lion in earnings.”

Fol­low­ing the ral­ly, the statewide tourism indus­try con­tin­gent will call on state leg­is­la­tors to ask for their sup­port in two areas of con­cern: main­tain­ing cur­rent fund­ing lev­els for the 2009–2011 state tourism office bud­get; and sup­port of SB 5875 and SHB  2297 which call for fund­ing to study expan­sion options for the Wash­ing­ton State Con­ven­tion & Trade Center.

Today’s state ini­tia­tives coin­cide with nation­al news, includ­ing cur­rent tourism indus­try efforts to coun­ter­bal­ance the harm­ful polit­i­cal rhetoric and sen­sa­tion­al­ism that is influ­enc­ing the unnec­es­sary can­cel­la­tion of cor­po­rate meet­ings and events across the U.S.

The U.S. Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca ranks $740 bil­lion trav­el and tourism indus­try fifth in nation among 20 major pri­vate indus­try sec­tors. The indus­try direct­ly employ­ees 7.5 mil­lion peo­ple, gen­er­ates pay­roll of $178 bil­lion and tax rev­enues of about $110 bil­lion. Vis­i­tors to the U.S. spent more here than U.S. res­i­dents trav­el­ing abroad, cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive bal­ance of trade of $8.3 bil­lion for the nation­al economy.

Wash­ing­ton State’s core of pri­vate sec­tor des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions com­pet­i­tive­ly mar­ket their respec­tive cities, coun­ties and regions to leisure trav­el­ers and meet­ing and con­ven­tion groups.  Large­ly non-prof­it eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment agen­cies, these con­ven­tion and vis­i­tor bureaus and cham­bers of com­merce work in tan­dem with the Wash­ing­ton State Tourism Com­mis­sion and Wash­ing­ton State Tourism office to joint­ly posi­tion the state as a pre­mier trav­el des­ti­na­tion.  Direct vis­i­tor spend­ing ben­e­fits hotels, retail­ers, restau­rants, attrac­tions, trans­porta­tion ser­vices and oth­er busi­ness­es, and sup­ports jobs in through­out the state.

++++++++++++++++
To learn more about why tourism mat­ters to Wash­ing­ton State, vis­it www.whytourismmatters.com.

Here’s what we know so far on the news front.  More is com­ing in and we’ll send an update in a day or two. –David Bland­ford, Seat­tle CVB

Yaki­ma Her­ald (page one, 3/9) – “Invis­i­ble Tourism”
http://www.yakimaherald.com/stories/2009/03/08/invisible-tourism

Taco­ma News Tri­bune  (3/9) – “Taco­ma Tourism Sees Mini Boom
http://www.thenewstribune.com/1031/story/651556.html

Taco­ma News Tri­bune (3/8) – Tourism Funding
http://www.thenewstribune.com/voelpel/story/650836.html

KING‑5 TV (3/9, Seattle)

North­west Cable News (3/9, statewide)

KONG TV (Seat­tle, 3/9)
http://www.nwcn.com/video/travel-index.html?nvid=340151

KIRO News­ra­dio
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=11&sid=143136

KAYA Fox TV News (Spokane) – sto­ry about half-way through
http://www.myfoxspokane.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=8371025&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.2.1

KREM TV (Spokane)
http://www.krem.com/news/local/stories/krem2-030609-rallyforeconomy.e1e47c8.html

KSTW TV (Taco­ma) – sto­ry to follow

Q13 TV (Seat­tle) – sto­ry to fol­low 3/9 or 3/10

PR Week (nation­al trade) – sto­ry to fol­low in March

Soci­ety of Amer­i­can Trav­el Writ­ers nation­al newslet­ter – sto­ry to fol­low in March

You know, one of the rea­sons the local killer whales are on the endan­gered species list is a short­age of their main din­ner: salmon. Recov­er­ing the salmon’s pre­vi­ous num­bers is a key to restor­ing a healthy ecosys­tem… and sev­er­al islanders have been key to that recov­ery effort. Here’s more from Bar­bara Rosenkot­ter, who is the Lead Enti­ty Coor­di­na­tor for Salmon Recov­ery for our county:

San Juan Coun­ty Vol­un­teers Receive Salmon Recov­ery Cit­i­zens Awards
On March 10 at the State Capi­tol in Olympia, the Wash­ing­ton State Salmon Recov­ery Lead Enti­ty Pro­gram hon­ored out­stand­ing vol­un­teer cit­i­zens at the ten year anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the Lead Enti­ty.  Eight cit­i­zens and groups from all over the state were select­ed for their ded­i­ca­tion and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion toward salmon recovery.

The San Juan Islands com­mu­ni­ty was well rep­re­sent­ed among the win­ners with awards being giv­en to Jim Slo­comb of San Juan Island and vol­un­teer beach sein­ers from through­out the San Juans.

The first local win­ners were a group of over 44 vol­un­teer “Beach Sein­ers”. The beach sein­ers were rec­og­nized for out­stand­ing and ongo­ing vol­un­teer efforts sup­port­ing crit­i­cal salmon recov­ery projects that assess the use of the San Juan Islands’ nearshore envi­ron­ments by young salmon.

Many of the sein­ers are WSU Beach Watch­ers work­ing with Fish­eries Oceanog­ra­ph­er Dr. Tina Wyl­lie-Echev­er­ria to gath­er data crit­i­cal to the under­stand­ing of salmonid resources and habi­tat use. To do this work, they trav­el via a 20’ research ves­sel and, dur­ing the March through Sep­tem­ber sam­pling sea­son vis­it five or more sites, in all kinds of weath­er, ten times per month. They set over 500 beach seines on nine islands, sam­pling thou­sands of fish includ­ing pink, chum, Coho and Chi­nook salmon as well as impor­tant prey species for fish, marine birds and marine mam­mals such as sand lance, her­ring, surf smelt and shin­er surf perch.

Anoth­er group of beach sein­ers are a part of com­mu­ni­ty cit­i­zen sci­ence teams orga­nized by Kwiaht on Lopez and Wal­dron Islands. This group helped with the project described above and also con­duct­ed a study of the prey used by juve­nile salmon guid­ed by Rus­sel Barsh. These vol­un­teers, work­ing in small groups with micro­scopes on evenings and week­ends, iden­ti­fied and count­ed more than 4,000 bits of fish, crus­taceans, insects and oth­er prey items and devel­oped dig­i­tal tax­o­nom­ic keys and pho­to atlases for ref­er­ence and train­ing future vol­un­teers. More than 35 Lopez and Wal­dron vol­un­teers par­tic­i­pat­ed in exten­sive spe­cial­ized train­ing, field and lab work, con­tribut­ing over 1200 vol­un­teer hours.

Both high­ly ded­i­cat­ed teams plan to mon­i­tor juve­nile salmon abun­dance and prey use over the next few years.

The beach sein­ing vol­un­teers are: Marolyn Mills, Chuck O’Clair, Har­ry Dick­en­son, Rick Ekstom, Martha Dick­en­son,  Mike Kaill, Zach Williams, Mike Grif­fin, Chuck Rust, Mar­tye Green, Robin Don­nely, Tom Don­nely, Phil Green, Mar­ta Branch and Orcas Island stu­dents, Lor­ri Swan­son, Chris Davis, Mike O’Connell, Jim Pat­ton, Andria Hagstrom, Quinn Freed­man, Kim Secun­da, Don­na Adams, Fred Adams, Lance Brit­tain, Isa Delahunt, John Droubay, Lau­rie Glenn, Ann Gwen, Hol­ly Love­joy, David Loyd, Julie Loyd, Daphne Mor­ris, Diane Robert­son, Steve Ruegge, Josie Scru­ton,  Dan Silkiss, Elsie Silkiss, John Swan-Sheer­an, Lor­ri Swan­son, Gretchen Wag­n­er, John Waugh, Susie Waugh, Cathy Wil­son, Susan Wilson.

These 44 ded­i­cat­ed cit­i­zen vol­un­teers demon­strate that it tru­ly does take a com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port salmon recov­ery efforts and have pro­vid­ed over 2400 hours of vol­un­teer time.

Anoth­er San Juan Coun­ty award win­ner was Jim Slo­comb. He was hon­ored for his efforts as a ded­i­cat­ed salmon recov­ery project vol­un­teer. He began donat­ing time in 2001 with the For­age Fish Habi­tat Assess­ment project and has con­tin­ued ever since.  Slo­comb has recent­ly vol­un­teered hun­dreds of hours in order to com­plete the very com­plex Geo­graph­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (GIS) mod­el­ing required for the Salmon Habi­tat Pro­tec­tion Blue­print project.

“Many in our com­mu­ni­ty are grate­ful for all the time that Slo­comb ded­i­cates to marine resource pro­tec­tion efforts.  He has served on the coun­ty’s Marine Resources Com­mit­tee (MRC) for ten years and con­tin­ues to pro­vide count­less hours of vol­un­teer ser­vice to help the MRC achieve their goals and pro­gram objec­tives” com­ment­ed Bar­bara Rosenkot­ter, Lead Enti­ty Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for San Juan County.

Jim often donates the use of his boat for sur­vey and mon­i­tor­ing work. For the past two years, Slo­comb has also vol­un­teered hun­dreds of hours sam­pling water qual­i­ty in San Juan County.

Dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion event in Olympia, mem­bers of the pub­lic also had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn more about lead enti­ties, which are local, cit­i­zen-based orga­ni­za­tions that devel­op salmon habi­tat pro­tec­tion and restora­tion projects with the help of tech­ni­cal experts.   Lead enti­ty coor­di­na­tors and vol­un­teers from across the state were on hand to dis­cuss their work and projects.

Estab­lished by the state Leg­is­la­ture in 1998, the Lead Enti­ty pro­gram has grown to 27 lead enti­ties across the state and is con­sid­ered a nation­al mod­el for cre­at­ing effec­tive restora­tion projects at the local level.

“Salmon recov­ery and habi­tat restora­tion in our water­sheds would not be pos­si­ble with­out the part­ner­ships and com­mit­ment cre­at­ed through this crit­i­cal pro­gram,” WDFW Deputy Direc­tor Joe Stohr said.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Bar­bara Rosenkot­ter, San Juan Coun­ty Salmon Recov­ery Lead Enti­ty Coor­di­na­tor, 360–370-7593 or barbarar@sanjuanco.com

Some­body wrote, so I looked it up for you:
This is a good link to book­mark so you can stay on top of this impor­tant issue:

Has the Large Hadron Col­lid­er destroyed the world yet?

Click here. Now.

Pamela Williams biking with Ian.

Tim & Shan­non & the bike club want to hear from you — this is get­ting off to a great start (that’s Pamela Williams out bik­ing with Ian last sum­mer, right):

The San Juan Island bike club is look­ing for input from local bicy­clists and would love to have any­one who is inter­est­ed go to our web­site and click on the Sur­vey link on the home page. We are a new­ly form­ing club here and would like to have more mem­bers and we would like to know what poten­tial mem­bers are inter­est­ed in. So far we haven’t had an offi­cial club meet­ing, but we’re think­ing that when the weath­er gets nicer, and more peo­ple par­tic­i­pate in our group rides, one of these times we’ll have a meet­ing after the ride and start mak­ing this club more of a tan­gi­ble thing.

Could you put a link to our web­site www.bikesanjuan.com on your update, and let your read­ers know about our sur­vey invi­ta­tion? The sur­vey clos­es at the end of March so we’re hop­ing peo­ple will get on there before that.

Thanks so much!

Tim Dus­trude and Shan­non Dean

Glen and Bobbie

It was a nice sur­prise to see Glen and Bob­bie (right) on the fer­ry yes­ter­day — they’re back from their tour of the States (and a chunk of time in sun­ny Flori­da) to move back aboard on their boat & return to work on the island.

Aimee and Cam

That’s hap­py grand­ma Aimee spend­ing the day last Sat­ur­day with her daugh­ter Mis­a’s boy Cam, who, by the way, is two.

A friend sent me this lit­tle video, which I thought you might like.…after you take a peek at it (it’s only a cou­ple of min­utes long), you might check out the Heifer Project & the peo­ple at Kiva for ideas. See what you think. Let’s get things moving.

After dis­cussing whack­ing the spring­time run of the inter­na­tion­al boat, Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries announced today they will run the route, start­ing March 29th. Here’s more, from them:

WSDOT Fer­ries Divi­sion (WSF) will add ser­vice hours and re-open the Anacortes/Sidney, B.C. route with the begin­ning of the spring sail­ing sched­ule on Sun­day, March 29.

WSF will pro­vide one round trip sail­ing per day between Ana­cortes and Sid­ney, B.C. through the spring on the 124-car fer­ry Chelan. Cus­tomers are encour­aged to make reser­va­tions for trav­el on this route on the WSF Web site.

Anacortes to Sidney ferry in Washington State

Just received this note from schools super­in­ten­dent Michael Soltman.…as you know, the school board cut the fund­ing for school-fund­ed sports last week. Now, the schools are look­ing for anoth­er enti­ty to work with on this, so they’re get­ting a cam­paign ready to reach their goals, with Island Rec. Here’s more:

Island Rec and SJISD Announce Part­ner­ship to Fund Ath­let­ic Pro­grams: San Juan Island Park and Recre­ation Dis­trict (“Island Rec”) and the San Juan Island School Dis­trict have announced a part­ner­ship to devel­op a fund­ing strat­e­gy to con­tin­ue an inter­scholas­tic ath­let­ic pro­gram for Island stu­dents.  At a School Board meet­ing last week, the board took action to reduce near­ly $800,000 from its $9 mil­lion oper­at­ing bud­get.  Pro­gram reduc­tions includ­ed sig­nif­i­cant cuts in admin­is­tra­tion and non-instruc­tion­al ser­vices, reduc­tion of 3 teach­ing posi­tions, and the elim­i­na­tion of fund­ing for the ath­let­ic pro­gram.  At the meet­ing, Super­in­ten­dent Solt­man said, “We remain com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing inter­scholas­tic ath­let­ic pro­grams to our Island stu­dents, but we must find a way to fund this pro­gram out­side of the Dis­tric­t’s gen­er­al fund.”

“Island Rec is the com­mu­ni­ty’s Park and Recre­ation Dis­trict and a nat­ur­al part­ner to approach to obtain resources to sus­tain this essen­tial pro­gram for our youth.  Over 289 stu­dents par­tic­i­pate on 14 ath­let­ic teams, annu­al­ly, includ­ing stu­dents from the pub­lic school, pri­vate schools, and home schools through­out the com­mu­ni­ty,” Solt­man said.  Ralph Hahn, Chair of the Island Rec Board of Direc­tors said, “Island Rec’s Board is in full agree­ment of doing what we can to sus­tain the sports pro­gram for our kids.  It is just not an option for our com­mu­ni­ty to elim­i­nate its inter­scholas­tic sports program.”

Details of the fund­ing strat­e­gy will be dis­cussed at a pub­lic meet­ing sched­uled for Wednes­day, March 18th, 7:00 p.m. at the Mid­dle School Com­mons.  “Now is the time for all peo­ple con­cerned about sus­tain­ing this sports pro­gram to join us at this meet­ing,” said Sal­ly Thom­sen, Island Rec Direc­tor. The fund­ing solu­tion must include a plan to renew the Island Rec Park Dis­trict levy in Novem­ber with suf­fi­cient capac­i­ty to sup­port the annu­al cost of the ath­let­ic program. 

football at FHHS

Assum­ing a suc­cess­ful levy in Novem­ber, first tax receipts would be received in April 2010, pro­vid­ing enough rev­enue to fund the win­ter and spring sports sea­sons. How­ev­er, in order to fund the fall 2009 sea­son, $45,000 must be raised this spring.  Pur­ple and Gold and Fri­day Har­bor Ath­let­ic Asso­ci­a­tion have joined this effort as part­ners to con­duct fundrais­ing and serve on the Island Rec. Levy Com­mit­tee.  “It’s up to us as a com­mu­ni­ty to devel­op a sus­tain­able fund­ing source for this pro­gram,” said Elisa Howard, Pres­i­dent of Pur­ple and Gold. “Fri­day Har­bor Ath­let­ic Asso­ci­a­tion is com­mit­ted to this part­ner­ship.  We must insure that a sports pro­gram is avail­able for our kids,” said Don Galt, Jr., Pres­i­dent of FHAA.

Coming into Friday Harbor in late winter.....

All the snow, clouds, driz­zle, and cold were set aside
Sun­day after­noon as the
Sealth pulled into Fri­day Har­bor’s sun­ny waters.