Category: Whidbey Island

Here’s a little upbeat news from the isle of milk and honey to counteract the present negative energy pervading our country. And this negativity is not just confined to our borders. Sometimes it’s difficult to be philosophical or even optimistic when so much destruction, death, and hatred is rampant in the world. What can I do about it? Forget it, it’s hopeless, you say.

But is it? So you’re just one person. You can choose to be depressed and discouraged and a naysayer or you can find what makes you and others happy and throw yourself into it. Like a pebble in the lake, your ripple, a small ripple to be sure, will eventually reach the shore, and added to all the others, make a sizeable difference. Look around at your neighbor, or find people who are working one-to-one with young people in one of a hundred ways to add excitement, meaning, and color to their lives. All it takes is one person over a period of time to make a child feel acknowledged, loved, and special. And sometimes that’s all it takes for us.

Then there are the hundreds of people on South Whidbey Island involved in the care and feeding of the homeless and those families who are having a struggle economically.

I had an opportunity to observe two exciting projects right in my own backyard over the weekend.

One was the May Day Celebration at the Good Cheer Garden, an organic garden that provides fresh produce for the Good Cheer Food Bank. It is run by young people who are dedicated to community-based sustainable agriculture. They have now expanded to a second garden where the celebration was held. For the occasion they added a maypole, face painting, rock painting, music, and lots of fresh food. I loved it! Finally somebody painted a goatee over my chin and I looked thirty, again. Well, maybe more like sixty.

Here are a few pictures as we waltz around the maypole. Click a picture to start slide show.

The week before, April 22nd, I witnessed 500 students celebrating Earth Day at the South Whidbey School Farm started three years ago by my daughter, Cary Peterson. What a success it has been! Elementary School youngsters get to grow the vegetables that are now served for lunch in the school cafeteria (Michael Moore take notice!), and stuff themselves with home-grown veggie tacos, which they make on the spot using kale leaves and filling them with assorted fresh vegetables they pick from the garden. This not only gives young people an appreciation of fresh food and how it is produced, but gives them a chance to learn about soil, garden insects, and how healthy food is produced.

Oh, and you can’t imagine how great the pea shoot pesto was, grown and made by the children. There was also spinach pesto and kale pesto. All so delicious! And the children had a contest to see which was the favorite.

There were many activities from planting plants that attracted pollinators, to making garden flags, bugs, spirals, fairy houses, and rock friends. The boys, especially, enjoyed digging ditches and spearheading trench composting, and everybody got into planting winter squash.

The School Farm website has many photos of this delightful event… click HERE to see them!

To read more about the School Farm, click HERE for a report on King 5 news. The Facebook site has over 47,000 views as of May 15th!

September in Langley can be dizzying as we move from heady summer into crisp autumn. The smell of fallen apples, the waning gardens, the hint of harvest, the bright moon dancing on the Sound. There’s a nostalgia that creeps in toward the end despite the variety of activities swirling around us.  The outdoor Shakespeare Festival has come to an end and leaves are falling on Goss Lake. But we move on. There are the abundant art gallery openings and the two major theaters in town that present unusual and superb modern plays. So far this season I’ve enjoyed Looped by Matthew Lombardo and Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Then there is a gala open house at the retreat for women writers, Hedgebrook, the international Django Fest Northwest, and the inimitable Soupbox Derby (yes, you read that right). And let’s not forget Seattle, a ferry ride across the water, with its plethora of art exhibits and full cultural menu.

I started September with a flying visit from two of my favorite musician buddies, Coleen and Neal Walters, who have been spearheading the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering I try to attend every year in Pennsylvania. They came by for lunch after performing at Pete d’Aigle’s Workshop in Seattle (Pete and Polly Daigle publish the Autoharp Quarterly), and we had a great time catching up.

The streets were alive with music for ten days for a bigger and better DjangoFest Northwest than ever before. Langley was the center for topnotch players from all around the world. My favorites were the French contingent, highlighting Bireli Lagrene, thought to be the greatest known guitar player in the Gypsy Jazz genre. Musicians hosted a variety of workshops during the day and concerts every evening. There wasn’t a coffee shop or empty spot in town that wasn’t full of guitar players, fiddlers, bassists, and assorted wind players…and enthusiastic onlookers clapping and dancing to the music.

I remember my grown daughter as a four-year-old riding with her father in a handmade cart down a steep hill in Clarksburg, VA, and my young sons a few years later doing the same crazy thing in what they called the Soapbox Derby in Summit, NJ. So you can imagine my surprise to find that my new home town was continuing the tradition with its own special name (Soupbox) and even more elaborate vehicles to scare every mother and onlooker to death. Thank heaven for those bales of straw to save the young ones if the brakes failed. But, actually, it was the older ones who seemed to have the most trouble. What a hoot it was, and what a great way to usher out the month!

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Poor me. That’s what happens when you have a hip replaced during the height of vacation season. I’m chafing at the bit, but that’s my only complaint. I can do jumping jacks and climb the hills around town, and as soon as my scar is totally healed so you can drive a Mack truck over it, the doc says I can go into the water. And he’s some doc. That’s all I can’t do!

So I sit on my deck, when I’m not trudging to town for the mail, and admire the fir trees and the flowers—and Puget Sound and Mt. Baker. After a year my orchid plant bloomed and you’d think it was the Hope diamond. It was my first success ever, so don’t laugh.

  

Maybe I’ll take up horticulture. After seeing the botanical gardens of Sydney, Australia, and the national Kandawgyi orchid greenhouses in the Hill Station, Pin Oo Lwin, in Myanmar (2007), I’ve had a new appreciation of these exotic plants. Son Tom is an expert in the care and breeding and feeding of orchids, but only now that I’ve been on the sidelines have I been able to take the time to appreciate their beauty. It’s never too late….

This has also been a summer of wonderful theater: Oscar Wilde’s inimitable old chestnut, The Importance of Being Ernest, and two favorite Shakespeare plays, Taming of the Shrew and Richard III. All done in an open air settling reminiscent of the Central Park venue. Add to that concerts by the Whidbey Island Music Festival, specializing in early music played on authentic period instruments by artists from far and wide, and you know that I haven’t been languishing…swimming or no swimming!

I continue to struggle with the mysteries of computers and the intricacies of editing videos and photos…something that an eight-year-old would find amusing. I have, however, a computer guru, Steve Trembley, who not only understands technology, but can also play a mean guitar if his clients are driven to distraction. A superb musician with a technological bent…how lucky can I get?

So, for those of you who are familiar with the New Yorker cartoon that symbolizes my computer angst, or should I say rage, you’ll be glad to know that I’m growing out of it. Still, I keep it on my refrigerator to keep me humble.

Now, on to my birthday party, which I promised to share with you so long ago. I needn’t relate my age, for it’s all over the cake. I recall as a child that I couldn’t even count that high, but I was never good at math. More the artistic type who believed that age was simply a number that kept getting higher every year. Nice attitude, which grows more appealing all the time. I remember when I hit 40 and started counting backwards when my children asked my age. They, like me, were also not good at math.

Here are some photos taken by Wendy Ashford and Lee Compton, set up as a slide show, now that I’ve figured out how to make one. That only took me about a year! A second slide show has photos taken by son Robert during my birthday week. It was a great time, having my whole family join me on the island. We’re planning on making this a yearly affair. Unfortunately, I didn’t go on the zip line at the party this year, for my overbearing children were sure I’d shatter my hip before the doc could cut off my femur properly and install the new hardware. Isn’t it funny how roles change?

 

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Ebey’s Landing, here we come! One of many such glorious walks on this island.

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As I’ve told you before, Whidbey abounds in art shows, poetry readings, musical events, and workshops of all kinds. It also has a very vital Buddhist sangha that has been having a celebration this past week. On the last day there is a festival and banquet called a tsok, or feast offering. I thought you all would enjoy seeing me being blessed by His Holiness Dodrupchen Rinpoche, considered by many to be enlightened at the same level as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It’s my proof to my children that, in fact, I CAN behave!