George Macris loved his city. There is no doubt that if George were alive today, he’d be all over the North Bend Block Party, selling cookies and bread, or mingling with the crowd. Probably both.
Everybody had a reason to be there. For cancer survivor Dave Sharpy, those reasons have names, starting with his friends Sharon Larson and Tall Bill Blakely, who he lost in the last year to cancer.
“Yesterday, my stepdaughter started her chemotherapy,” said Sharpy, among the survivors and supporters who shared their experience at the 2014 Snoqualmie Valley Relay for Life. “She’s going to be going through that struggle. Once again, I have a new reason to Relay.”
Snoqualmie Valley School District is currently deep in the thorny thicket of bond planning, hoping to come up with a measure to build a new Valley school. It’s been 11 years since voters in Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City passed a measure building a real, brick-and-mortar school, as opposed to portables.
The district’s latest survey sheds some light on why we have such trouble passing a bond.
The foundation is poured, the walls are up and the tower cap freshly lifted in place at what, for now, is the future Snoqualmie Valley Hospital. When it opens, however, the new hospital may be a branch of Bellevue’s Overlake Hospital Medical Center.
King County Public Hospital District No. 4, the rural district centered on Snoqualmie, is considering selling its hospital and clinics to Overlake. The district’s board of commissioners approved a letter of intent to negotiate a sale at their Thursday, July 3, regular meeting.
Jerri Johnson walks right up to the hives, abuzz with hundreds of thousands of bees. No mask. No gloves. No bee suit. And he’s as calm as can be.
“We’re in harmony,” says Johnson, who keeps four hives in his sprawling Snoqualmie garden. “I would never be a threat to them. They’re not a threat to me. I can get just as close as I want.”
Like any beekeeper, Johnson occasionally gets stung. The last time was a few hours ago. It didn’t faze him, and he approaches one busy hive without mask or gloves to make a point: that these wild bees are pretty cool.
The Fourth of July is a time for parades, barbecues—and loud bangs.
Fireworks are a time-honored American tradition on the Fourth, but one accompanying tradition that I tire of is when people don’t follow the rules, and wind up bothering their neighbors, making a big mess, and hurting themselves or others.
There were 45 fireworks related fires and 54 injuries reported in King County in 2013—down from 70 fires and 51 injuries in 2012.
Bravely voyaging into uncharted waters is the common thread that links North Bend resident Dave Olson’s life to three generations of his family.
Olson explores how he, his father, the Reverend Roy Olson, his brother Ken, and his daughter Jenifer each took paths less traveled, and changed lives around them, in his new book, part memoir, part anthology.
A young mother with a 1-year-old baby, Sarah Webb didn’t have a driver’s license. But she did have a bike. So, every morning last summer, she loaded her little son, Elliott, into a trailer, then hopped on her bike for the two-mile ride to Two Rivers School.
“It took some getting used to,” Webb said of the commute. “But I needed to get to school.”
Webb, like many of her classmates in the Two Rivers School Class of 2014, had to face a challenge to get to this moment.
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The year 1889 was a big one for the Valley.
It was the year that Washington territory became the 42nd state. It was also the year that trains rolled into the Valley for the first time. Railroads transformed daily life for the people here, opening the local economy up to a wider world. The train came here mainly due to tourism—big city folk wanted to see the wonders of the Snoqualmie waterfall.
“Isn’t it cool?” Cindy Walker asks. The North Bend Theatre owner is justly proud of her new digital projector.
Its high-tech computer system and 4,000-watt bulb took the local moviehouse out of the old days of film and into the modern era. Bought with the assistance of Walker’s neighbors and customers, this $100,000 machine shows how much locals love the business.
After exactly 10 and a half years on the Snoqualmie City Council, councilman Jeff MacNichols, the longest-serving council member, has left city government.
MacNichols, who works as an attorney, is moving his family to Redmond; his last day was May 31.
“It is with a very heavy heart,” he told the council last Monday, May 26, “but I ask that you accept the resignation.”
Consider this a confession. My headline last week, “Vandals behind fish caper,” really didn’t do the story justice. As I thought about it, after the pages had gone to press, I realized that those four words didn’t fit the strange and interesting situation that happened May 13 at the Tokul Creek fish hatchery near Snoqualmie.
The next few months are going to be interesting ones for the Valley voter.
We’ve got a four-way primary shaping up in the local State Representative race—in Position 2, incumbent Chad Magendanz faces a challenge from an Issaquah resident, Ryan Dean Burkett, and a Fall City man and Mount Si High School alumnus, Colin Alexander. David Spring, North Bend, who has unsuccessfully challenged for a seat in 2008, 2010 and 2012, and tried for school board in 2013, is also back for another go.
