I am an early and strong supporter of Initiative 517, which seeks to protect the initiative process. It guarantees a vote on qualified initiatives, extends time to collect signatures, and stops bullying of people participating in the process.
In three weeks I am getting married to my fiance, Evan Koerner, but sadly, I am without my engagement ring. On Tuesday, Sept. 10, I forgot my engagement ring in the tanning booth at Seattle Sun Tan in North Bend, and before I realized it and rushed back, another woman had gone into the same booth, and the ring was taken.
I find it odd that North Bend prevented a tattoo shop from opening downtown on North Bend Way, but somehow finds a gun store to be an acceptable addition to a downtown core that is meant to attract families and tourists. What is the city thinking? I would prefer the tattoo shop, hand’s down.
In 2012, Brad Toft ran for Washington State Senate. His campaign for a high-level office made him an easy target for political attacks. Modern-day politics have often been described as a “dirty business” and this certainly proved true during the 2012 Senate campaign.
The grueling pressure of last year’s Senate race seems to only have increased his desire to serve his community. During the past nine months Toft has been contributing to the community in many ways.
I am a Vietnam veteran and my son is a U.S. Army captain who has served in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. My brother served in Vietnam. We have served honorably, but I have to scream about my opposition to our potential involvement in Syria.
School was almost interrupted this year by a teachers strike. Frustrated teachers reluctantly voted 59-to-41 percent to return to their classrooms and accept a meager pay increase of 2 percent per year, and high class size trigger numbers in order to return to the students they care deeply about. Understand that health care for Group Health members went up 27 percent for teachers in our district and Aetna members will be paying 7 percent more.
I was very saddened to hear that Dale from North Bend had died last Friday evening, from injuries sustained in the I-90 auto accident, earlier in the afternoon.
I was one of the several motorists who stopped to assist Dale before the medics arrived, some time later. I wanted to send a shout out to those non-professional rescuers who ignored their natural aversion to blood and limited disaster training and stopped to help someone they didn’t know.
Just a thought about our new “assault weapons boutique.” I went in there last week and looked around. It is thoughtfully laid out with a good selection of weapons, ammunition and other related items… even some nifty survival equipment.
But more important, I got to meet Mike Marinos. Here’s a man who comes to you with the education, training and life experiences to responsibly select and present the principles of safe and effective weapons use.
As a candidate for the Snoqualmie Valley School Board who has pledged to reopen Snoqualmie Middle School, I would like to respond to a letter to the editor published on August 22, 2013, asking us to come together in support of closing Snoqualmie Middle School and converting it into an isolated ninth grade campus.
The author apparently wants us to ignore the harm that this isolated ninth grade campus will inflict on more than one thousand students in our school district in order to try this risky experiment. For example, 450 middle school students from the former Snoqualmie Middle School will now be bused to schools far from their homes.
When I opened up the paper tonight, I loved seeing the question, “What new feature would you like to see in our city’s parks?” I’d like to add my answer to those of the others’.
It would be wonderful for some of our parks to include water play areas. The most desirable feature would be an indoor/outdoor pool, but splash pools, fountains and other water play features would all be boons for the summer enjoyment of our town.
The celebrations of 50 years of progress toward realization of Martin Luther King’s “Dream” is already last week’s news. But I’m still glowing from the festivities because I was one of the 250,000 who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to personally hear Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. At the time, I was living in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Virginia was the state of massive resistance to any breakdown of segregation.
I am the parent of two fairly recent district graduates who have gone on to thrive in their respective colleges. I was active in my children’s schools at all levels as part of a wave of parents who created wonderful collaborations with school staff and each other to continually improve the school cultures for all involved (students, staff and parents). It was on the whole, a very positive and rewarding experience. I took this last year off to catch my breath but recently attended one of the bond focus groups and have had some conversations about what is going on in our district that seem to be the antithesis of what so many of us worked so hard to create.
I was thrilled to see the grand opening of the wonderful new assault weapon boutique perched in the center of family-friendly North Bend.
How I’d love to be a fly on the wall (but not in scope range, please) as daddy explains to little Hayley how these weapons are capably used to vaporize living things. Hayley presses her nose to the window and sighs, “I think I’d still rather have a puppy.”