As Issaquah’s annual Salmon Days begins Saturday, Oct. 1, and the city celebrates the return of salmon to the area, Paul Ascherl will celebrate a court victory, by returning to the festival to distribute religious literature.
Ascherl, of Snoqualmie, was the named plaintiff in a lawsuit claiming infringement of his First Amendment rights by the city of Issaquah.
His attorneys claimed the city’s 12-year-old law, IMC 5.40.040, effectively banned free speech in public areas, and in a September 21 ruling, federal judge Marsha Pechman concurred. Judge Pechman upheld an injunction against the city’s enforcement.
A thick fog muffled the warning siren, but it was loud enough. By the time Carnation Elementary Principal Doug Poage was done announcing that the Tolt Dam breach evacuation drill was in progress Wednesday morning, students and teachers were filing down the sidewalk toward the class checkpoint.
Never lose sleep over a hairstyle, is calendar girl Jill Holen’s advice.
“There’s no such thing as a bad hair day, because it just isn’t that important,” says Holen, a former professional hairstylist. Neither, for that matter, is posing nearly nude in a fund-raising calendar.
Holen, whose own hair is shiny, blonde and beautiful, has fought hard for this perspective over the past 10 years, ever since she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and thought she was going to die.
Bruno, a 170-pound Malamute, is not impressed with the newcomer. The wolf-like dog strains at the end of his leash, growls, howls, and stares the stranger down. If he hadn’t looked like a huge stuffed toy, it might have been completely intimidating.
Intelligent brown eyes, enormous paws, and a dense fluffy coat all made Bruno seem more huggable than threatening, though, and it turned out he, like most Malamutes, was all talk. After a couple more “woos” and a sniff, he settled down on the grass with his people, Jim and Connie Ross. Most of his act was intended to impress Roxy and Clyde, the two Malamutes he was visiting, anyway.
“It’s all about the show, the drama,” Connie explained.
As a final treat for his dance class, Glen Blomgren decides to show his students how they’ll look when they’ve learned the “Tush Push.” He points the remote at the sound system, and as soon as the music comes up, his wife Julia, jumps in to the dance, and the two spin, stomp, and waggle their hips to the open-mouthed awe of their class.
“Do you get that stuff better when you do it more often?” a student rushed up to Julia and asked after class.
Definitely, Julia answers, which is why she and Glen hope to offer more than just one weekly dance class at the Mount Si Senior Center.
Since the center’s primary focus is to offer activities for the community, not just senior citizens, they’ll probably get the chance.
When Janet Fosness changed jobs in 1990, she was looking for something more fulfilling. What she found was a second family, and a career she could love.
Now the interim director of the Mount Si Senior Center, Fosness was hired then by her friend, Ruth Tolmasoff, to help her run and grow the community center. At the time, she probably didn’t realize she’d stay for 21 years, and counting.
Fire District 38, serving areas east of North Bend, is expanding.
Within a year, seven parcels of land totaling more than 20,000 acres will be added to the taxpayer-supported fire district’s service area, some by annexation, part by formalizing a state action that gave it forest lands eight years ago.
The fire district board is inviting public testimony on the expansion at its next meeting, 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 4, at the North Bend Depot.
All the dancing stopped when Julia Blomgren announced “High-five for Carol!” Her husband, Glen obligingly slid over to his blushing student – she’d just mastered a tricky combination of steps — for a high hand slap, and then he slid right back into the dance steps.
And that is how the Blomgrens, the new dance teachers at the Mount Si Senior Center on Tuesday mornings, run a class. While Glen directs the large group, Julia can work with one or two students independently, until they all know the moves.
After his brain tumor was removed, Al Clarke of North Bend lost a few things. His peripheral vision in his left eye was diminished, and the taste for onions and garlic that he shared with his wife and two daughters was just gone.
“When he did the chemo, everything tasted bad,” said Jenn Clarke, Al’s oldest daughter, and the spokesperson for this year’s Brain Cancer Walk in Seattle. When he finished his treatment, Al could enjoy food again, except for the onions and garlic. “Now he doesn’t like them,” Jenn said.
Results from the 2010-11 school year assessments showed dramatic increases in science and math scores from 2009 throughout the Snoqualmie Valley School District. Areas such as reading and writing showed less improvement and some declines, however.
As District Curriculum Director Don McConkey presented the overall results to the School Board of Directors Thursday, Sept. 8, he encouraged board members to remember, “One or two years does not make a trend, you really have to look at the long term.”
With the excitement of a 5-year-old exploring on his first day of school, Riverview School Superintendent Conrad Robertson gave a tour of his district’s newest building.
Striding briskly down the hall, he pointed out some of the 14,000 square-foot Riverview Learning Center’s best features: a fully equipped science lab, a creative room plus kiln for student potters, adjoining teacher offices between classrooms, multiple computer labs, a parent-teacher meeting room, and, down the home-school program hall, a parent curriculum library and three separate classrooms, one each for elementary, middle school and high school students.
Eighteen times in August, Snoqualmie Police officers were dispatched to Snoqualmie Ridge homes to handle a bear sighting. “That’s not all of them either,” said Becky Munson, administrator with the Snoqualmie Police Department. “Some people called the next day.” Munson has been recording the locations and times of day that people have been reporting wildlife sightings to the police, and although she can’t say her list is definitive, she is certain about the type of sightings.
“It’s all bears,” she said, and the numbers seem to be rising.
State Department of Fish and Wildlife Officer Chris Moszeter, who serves this region, doesn’t think there’s been any increase.
When Julie Harris realized her horse was going blind, she didn’t know what to do. Smokey had been a beloved family member for years on her Snoqualmie farm, but she worried that she couldn’t keep him safe if he lost his eyesight completely. Putting him down was not an option, but neither was keeping him in the barn all day. “We still wanted him to have his freedom,” she said.
It was a big problem, and Smokey helped to solve it.