Act I, Scene I: Wherein you get the crazy notion that it would be fun and challenging to direct a full production on The Merc Playhouse stage, never having done anything remotely like that before. Oh sure, you’ve done some acting — and doesn’t every actor, in their heart of hearts, believe they can be a director? […]
No Bad Days
Holding adults accountable
The kids are worried — and they should be. They are watching their inhabitable world disintegrate at an increasing pace. They’re angry, and have every right to be. They are not seeing any meaningful global effort to preserve a planet for them to exist on. They don’t trust the grown-up power structure, and who can […]
Not too soon
It’s a good thing the Methow Watershed Council is prodding us all to talk about the future of water use and availability in the valley, because 2066 is going to be here sooner than you think. The Watershed Council is working on a project it calls Water 2066: A Vision for the Methow, and is […]
Radio silence
Dan, tell me ain’t so. Because you just disappeared without warning, and I had no idea how much I’d miss you until you were gone. Like most of your fans, I didn’t see it coming. For nearly all the time I’ve been here, whenever I could I tuned into “Inland Folk with Dan Maher,” coming […]
Elections, 2019
Electioneering in the valley got off to an earlier start than usual this year, especially in the races for seats on the Twisp Town Council and a seat on the Okanogan County Fire District 6 board of commissioners. In each case, an incumbent has a challenger. With two months to go before the Nov. 5 […]
New name in the neighborhood
Most of you don’t follow journalism industry news as closely as we do, so while you may be generally aware of how newspapers are doing, you may not be especially familiar with the particulars. I track the newspaper business pretty closely, as you might expect, and much of the news about the news is depressing. […]
So far …
Last summer, someone dubbed it “smogust” – a seemingly interminable month of wildfire smoke that settled in the valley like it owned the place. Day after day, we peered through, tried to breathe and hoped to endure a smelly miasma that drove tourists away and forced some residents to flee, literally for their lives. It […]
Within hearing range
We hear stuff all the time. We encourage it. That’s because we’re in the hearing stuff business, and we’re in a small community, and people are as thirsty for knowledge here as they are anywhere else. We take calls, talk to people in the coffee shop or market, exchange emails, occasionally get an actual letter […]
Over and out
We almost made it to August. As the clock ran down on the last day of July, another summer month with no major fires in the valley, a grass fire was reported in the Rendezvous area — which we all know has lots of grass. The Rendezvous can also be rather windswept. So as we listened the […]
Thought process
What do you think? Seems like somebody is always posing that question about one topic or another. More people than you think might be interested in what you think. Opportunities to have your say are plentiful and come in the form of surveys, information forums, online commenting or public hearings. Government and nonprofit organizations alike […]
