By Ashley Lodato
The hubby came home the other night and made the mistake of asking me for help in crafting the wording on a fun trophy that will be awarded to a volunteer who totally rocked at Methow Recycles’ metal drive last week.
Normally I am quite happy to play around with words and brainstorm phrasing, but as soon as I learned that the volunteer had been using a golf club to direct recyclers to different areas of the drive, and that the trophy would consist of some sort of golf ball mounted on a pedestal, I ceased to be particularly useful and pretty much held my own private linguistic party. Most of my suggestions are probably unfit for print, but I think if you explore some of the vocabulary associated with golf (start with “swing,” for example), I’ll bet you just might land upon some of the same gems that I did.
Former valley residents Harold and Jan Hoem (you may remember having Mrs. Hoem as your art teacher) showed their film Coal Road to China at North Cascades Basecamp on Saturday night. Now living in Missoula, Montana, the Hoems have dedicated their retired lives to climate change issues. As a result of their participation in a group called MELT (Montana Elders for a Livable Tomorrow), the Hoems were inspired to produce a 35-minute documentary film informing audiences about the consequences of the coal mining industry and the plans to export coal to China.
Although the Methow Valley does not lie on any of the travel routes the coal trains take from southeastern Montana to ports on the West Coast, we should be concerned about the extraction and the export of coal nonetheless, and the Hoems’ film provides a thoughtful and provocative look at the complex issues surrounding the coal industry.
First-grader Marit Nelson joined her dad, Andrew, on a trip to Shoreline this past weekend to celebrate Mother’s Day with Andrew’s mom, who will be 82 this summer. The Nelsons attended what will be one of his mom’s last concerts as a cellist in a 44-year run with the Cascade Symphony Orchestra.
Not wanting to pass the daytime idly, Andrew arranged for himself and Marit to run in a 5-kilometer UW Dawg Dash on the Bothell campus. When the race results were posted, Andrew noted that Marit was listed as having placed third in the zero- to 14-year-old year old category. When he tried to confirm the results with the announcer, the man glanced at 6-year-old Marit and said “Yeah, probably not, those top slots were most likely won by 14-year-olds.” And then after a pause he realized, “Well, look at that, she did get third place. Congratulations!”
Marit spent the cooling down period after her race watching the “little kids” in the 7- to 12-year-old age group running the 1K race.
