Bigger and better are the buzzwords for this year’s Railroad Days fun runs. Registration for the 5K, 10K and kids’ 1K race has increased about 15 percent over last year, race organizer Sean Sundwall of Run Snoqualmie told the Railroad Days committee. He’s expecting 1,100 to 1,200 racers, “plus 800 to 1,000 spectators” for the Saturday races, he said. “It’s going to be the biggest we’ve had so far.” The level of competition has also increased, especially in the 10K race.
Snoqualmie didn’t forget the tunes for Railroad Days. The line-up of bands for the weekend fills two stages, and crosses a world of genres.
On the main stage, the music starts Friday night with the Love Jacks playing a mix of current and classic rock, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., followed by Notorious Sensation. Playing dance hits from the 80s, the band claims to “transport you back to the decade of big hair, skinny ties, and neon.” Saturday after the parade, the 20-plus member Clan Gordon Pipe Band will add a Scottish note to the day. The band, formed in 1955, has travelled the U.S., as well as representing our country in the International Highland Games in New Zealand in 2000. The pipers play from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“You’re here, so you’re a leader in the community,” says Debby Peterman of the Snoqualmie Valley Community Network. The network, SVCN, hosted a gathering of more than 100 such community leaders on Monday, Aug. 8, to identify and tackle some of the Valley’s challenges.
The Key Leaders Summet met at the Meadowbrook Farm Interpretive Center and, after a brief introduction, participants were invited to propose discussion items.
She was a strong person, they said. A beautiful person, a brilliant person. Yet Annie Nelson, who would have been 20 next month, could also be serious, stubborn, empathetic and silly. Remembering this, friends who attended her memorial service last Wednesday at Mount Si High School honored her memory by lightening the mood at the event whenever it turned somber.
Two of the best ballroom dancers in the world, and certainly the greatest to call the Snoqualmie Valley home, will show audiences how music feels when they perform for the opening night of The Arts in Festival Hall this Friday at 7 p.m. “I enjoy making music visual, I enjoy creating emotion within my audience, I enjoy seeing tears in my audience’s eyes,” dancer Kora Stoynova wrote in an e-mail message to the Valley Record. “Dance has been my life since I was 5 years old, it’s a part of my soul.”
Hands and voice trembling, Lynne Keohi asked the North Bend City Council not to forget about her and other people like her. “We’re not stoners,” she said, just before the council revised its June 7 moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries. “We’re just trying to get by from day to day, and trying to do it legally.”
“If North Bend doesn’t reinvest in its own community, then other people aren’t going to want to invest in our community, either.” With those words, Councilmember Chris Garcia recommended that the North Bend City Council act to place a sales tax increase on the November ballot. They did so unanimously Tuesday, Aug. 2.
Four rafters from out of the area were rescued from the Snoqualmie River around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 4. They had been rafting down the river when their raft deflated on a snag in the river, in approximately the 34900 block of David Powell Road, near Fall City.
To the Upper Valley organizations helping low-income families with children, summer is no time for vacation. It’s a time to take on new projects and fill unexpected needs. When public school classes ended in June, Mount Si Food Bank Director Heidi Dukich was surprised to find a big summer gap left by the Snoqualmie Valley School District’s free and reduced-cost lunch program.
When class was in session, about 860 children got a hot breakfast and lunch every weekday. Until school starts again, the closest equivalents are in Bellevue, Renton, or Kent.
North Bend’s moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries is illegal, claims medical marijuana proponent Steve Sarich. Further, if the city upholds the moratorium, approved as an emergency action June 7, he threatens a lawsuit.
Sarich, a North Bend resident, addressed the council at its July 19 public hearing on the issue. Although the hearing was held after the moratorium was approved, City Administrator Duncan Wilson said the hearing’s testimony would be considered, and he expected that “we will be coming back to (council) at your next meeting with any necessary findings of fact, conclusions of law, and alterations to the moratorium, up to and including repealing it.”
The Riverview School District Board of Directors will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, at the start of the regularly scheduled board meeting. The purpose of the hearing is to gather feedback on proposed changes to school board director district boundaries based on recently released 2010 census data.
Riverview School District has five school board director districts. While all board members are elected from the district at large and represent the entire district, each school board position must come from one of the five school board director districts.
North Bend is back in the movie business, at least until the end of the week. Friday is the last day of filming in rural North Bend for the independent film “Mine Games,” due to be released early next year.
The movie, billed as a “Deliverance meets Donnie Darko” atmospheric thriller, is the first major film production to come to North Bend since the 1992 Twin Peaks movie “Fire Walk with Me,” and a real coup for the city, says realtor and North Bend City Councilmember David Cook.
“We’re pretty proud that we were able to grab this from Enumclaw,” he said before a visit to the set, a spectacular log home that Cook helped to locate for the filming. The movie had been scheduled to start filming two weeks ago in a house in Enumclaw, but changed to the North Bend home just a day before they were scheduled to start, because of the advantages North Bend had to offer.
Guys, it’s time to dust off your jeans and stomp the mud from your boots, because your moment has arrived. Photographer Robin Woelz wants to make stars of you, and your tractors if you have them, in a fun and funny new calendar.
The 2012 “Tractor Men of Snoqualmie Valley Calendar” coming out later this year will feature 12 of the Snoqualmie Valley’s finest farmers and would-be farmers, as a fund-raiser for one or more Valley-based charities for children. The calendar is inspired partly by Ballard Firefighters fund-raising calendar, partly by the Carnation 4th of July parade.
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