The theme for this week’s column is photography: specifically, a call for photos, photographers, and those who are willing to have the camera focused on them.
First, Friends of the Pool — which aims to keep Wagner Memorial Pool in Twisp open and thriving — is seeking your pool photos for a slide show commemorating this community treasure, and has opened a photo contest to solicit entries.
You may be aware that Ernst and Katherine Wagner donated the pool in 1966 in the wake of the drowning of a young local child. The Wagners wanted Methow Valley community members to have the opportunity to learn to swim in a safe environment, and in the intervening half-century, thousands of people have learned to swim, maintained their fitness, trained as lifeguards, become racers, and wiled away many a pleasant hot summer afternoon at the Wagner Pool.
Please look through your archives and dredge up photos from any era of the Wagner Pool’s existence, from its opening to the present. Photos of swimmers, swim lessons, water aerobics, swim team and any other pool-related images — all are useful. In particular, Friends of the Pool is seeking vintage photos from the pool’s early days.
To enter the Friends of the Pool photo contest (or simply to contribute to the slide show) email your photos to foptwisp@gmail.com by March 31, along with the photo credit for each picture. The winning photographer will receive either a 2019 season pass to the pool or a different prize.
From the moving picture department, two young local emerging videographers are looking for an older man to play the lead role in a short film they are making. The film’s plot grapples with the concept and certainty of mortality, so the ideal actor is someone who is comfortable exploring issues raised by the topic of death and portraying a person actively contemplating the subject. If you’re a male senior citizen who enjoys being in front of the camera and this project intrigues you, you can schedule a low-key audition with Rylee Langton at rylee.langton@gmail.com.
Finally, there’s no proof that the actions of a skier I witnessed on Sunday in the Rendezvous were a direct result of my colleague Erika Kar’s announcement of the “One Pinecone Campaign” (a citizens’ initiative to clear the Nordic trails of pesky pinecones), but since I like to believe that we gossip columnists wield untold amounts of civic power, I’m going to call that a direct correlation. I trailed a skier from nearly Mazama up to Fawn Hill and each time she reached a pinecone she paused to clear it off the trail, leaving behind a pristine surface for the next skier. There are certainly benefits to being a follower sometimes.
