Being Tasered once was enough. I remember slipping the lead into my left hip pocket, linking hands with a row of civic officials taking the test, and awaiting the blast that I had been nervously mentally preparing myself for over the last few days. I felt a tingle, then found myself flat on my face. It wasn’t painful, though the probe did leave a mark where the voltage had arced into my hip. Needless to say, I never want to go through that again.
Oh, how far we’ve come. The tablet PCs that people carry on the bus have more power than that old Powermac did. So, too, do the iPads that students are using in our schools. We use and rely on technology more than ever.
As drawn-out bargaining sessions between the Valley teacher’s association and Snoqualmie Valley School District near their climax, some educators have questioned local priorities. One question is whether we’re valuing tech more than people. After all, teachers and volunteers had to scrabble last spring to find enough school supplies, yet there is funding to pay for two days of technology training last week, and the gadgets to implement it.
Every few months, a press release rolls into my inbox proudly announcing the latest credit rating upgrade for a local city, agency or business. Only a few days before the Standard and Poor’s rating agency downgraded the United States government, S&P had given Snoqualmie a ratings bump—timed for the issuance of a $5 million tax bond for a big street and pipes project. North Bend got a similar bump a few months ago when it issued bonds for its new fire hall.
Today, both Upper Valley cities hold AA- ratings, just two slots lower than that of the vast federal government, AA+. It amazes me that these modest-sized cities command nearly the same credit confidence as the mighty feds.
Maybe the neighbor was being nosy. But if he hadn’t called police that early June morning, there’d be one more gang of prowlers stalking the Valley’s streets.
It was 5:15 a.m. on Snoqualmie Ridge’s Cortland Avenue, too early for a bunch of strangers to be hanging out in an open garage. So a neighbor called the cops to describe the situation. They duly respond, a car chase ensues, one man is zapped with a Tazer, all are arrested and police end up recovering a Ford Explorer full of stolen goods.
We all carry around our ideas of how the world works. We’ve all heard that drugs are dangerous, that they wreck people’s lives. Many of us may also have our mental image of a drug user—a doper, a derelict, somebody we wouldn’t willingly spend a moment with.
But if you talk to some of the people who meet and work with drug abusers—the people who are so dependent on needle drugs and pain pills that their lives unravel—one of the things you’ll be surprised to learn is that these people are not caricatures. They do not fit any single description. They could be anyone. Given a misstep, an accident, a bad choice, they could be you, too.
It was a darkening evening in November 2008 when a couple of us from the Record marched down River Street to what was supposed to be the first groundbreaking for the Snoqualmie Valley Veteran’s Memorial.
The photo session captured a line of men, local officials and uniformed dignitaries, hefting shovels along a gravel strip, a crowd of families watching in the background.
One hallmark Valley event is now upon us, one that attempts to take the negative and the tragic and from it create something positive and uplifting. I’m referring to the Snoqualmie Valley Relay for Life.
Now in its ninth year, the Relay gives people whose lives have been touched by cancer—the folks who have survived the disease, and the many who have lost friends and family members to it—a day to meet, share their experiences, raise funds for the American Cancer Society’s research and help programs, and ultimately revel in the bittersweet reality of life. Tears are always shed, but for many, they are happy tears, shed for the love and smiles that were shared.
There are a lot of ways that locals regularly remind out-of-towners that the Valley is not the big city. But there is one thing we have in common with the big towns: Drugs. Valley communities see a lot of the same stuff they’ve got: Alcohol, pills, meth, and now heroin.
If there’s one area where I want to see Valley teens lag behind the state average, it’s drug use. Always an eye-opener, the latest biannual Healthy Youth Survey results show that local youth are insulated from drugs for much of their childhood, but then catch up fast to the state average as teens.
I had a few pangs of conscience writing this week’s story on surveillance cameras at the North Bend library. Pang…
Worry at it, not about it, the old saw goes.
For those who’d like to bring change to their communities, to worry at the issue of the day instead of about them, this week is for you. Specifically, filing week, the time for candidates to throw their names in the ring for local office, including school board and city council seats. There are races in every Valley city council and on local school boards, including some spots in North Bend, Carnation and the Riverview school district completely open to challengers.
Around the time I graduated from college, an unusual song popped into frequent rotation on the local pop radio station….
If there’s a local dream team, the 2011 Mount Si High School baseball team is it. The senior-heavy varsity team’s…
This week marks the return of our annual Valley Record Visitor’s Guide. In it, we’ve collected a series of stories…