This week’s offering is like a Thanksgiving dinner, without the big bird entrée: a selection of side dishes. We all have our favorites. For me, it’s candied yams or sweet potatoes. I could live on that stuff for a week, which is wrong in so many ways, even if we use only half the sugar […]
No Bad Days
No Bad Days – Taking care of business
The News has some news to relate. This week, we introduce our new Twisp columnist on the Valley Life page. Michelle Schmidtke replaces Sarah Schrock, who was our Twisp correspondent since taking over from the late Sally Gracie in 2016. Michelle will tell you a bit about herself in her inaugural column, on page B8, […]
No Bad Days – Properly greeting winter
Sitting on my desk, with a few last editing marks, is the proofing printout for the Methow Valley Winter 2023-24 magazine, waiting for the final OK — always a gratifying moment, but also a little nerve-wracking as we look for last-minute fixes. By the time you read this, the magazine will probably have already reproduced […]
No Bad Days – Looking in other backyards
Regular readers of these pages know that we often use columns from Writers on the Range, a nonprofit that describes itself as “dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.” It’s a spinoff from High Country News, that excellent chronicler of Western issues of the kind that the Methow Valley faces: land use, water rights, […]
No Bad Days – It’s just a number
For some reason, these days when people talk about their birthday they often cheerily characterize it as “another trip around the sun,” or something akin to that. I suppose that’s a bit more philosophical and contemplative than “I’m not a year older, I’m a day older,” which sounds defensive and dismissive. For me, the completion […]
No Bad Days – Auto-motivated
It died in the Methow Valley Community Center parking lot. My ordinarily reliable 2005 Honda CRV, which I bought in 2007 when it was a mere youngster, has suffered some indignities — most recently a catalytic converterectomy on the mean streets of Seattle — and wears a few scars from nearly 200,000 miles of mostly […]
No Bad Days – Keeping it alive
We ask a lot of our Valley Life columnists. While fulfilling their daily roles as employees, employers, spouses, parents, volunteers, participants and active Methow enthusiasts — which amounts to a full life — we also expect them to deliver, on time and with some substance, a weekly missive of 400-600 words. And photos, if we […]
No Bad Days – A few touch-ups
You may notice changes in the appearance of this week’s newspaper — some subtle, some more obvious. They are part of our rethinking of how the newspaper should look, in some cases updating styles that have been in place for years. It’s an ongoing process, reflecting the changing media scene and a need to stay […]
No Bad Days – Room One tells its story
Twenty-five years ago, a fledgling social services agency set up shop in Room One of the Methow Valley Community Center in Twisp. In time the organization outgrew its original space and moved to a building on Lincoln Street near the TwispWorks campus — and kept the name of its previous address. Now Room One is […]
No Bad Days – 56 years down the road
In June of 1967, some 500 students graduated from Kent-Meridian High School in a packed-gym ceremony that featured the valedictorian lamenting what he called “the rape of the Green River Valley” by developers. Bold words for those days, but prescient as far as many of us were concerned. I was one of the hundreds on […]
