Artist Harold Cohen will begin the 2010-2011 Crossroads Lecture Series

The Orcas Crossroads Lecture Series announces its 2010-11 season of lecture events.  Now in its fourth season, Crossroads offers diverse topics, of local and global relevance, explored by expert speakers of some renown.  All lectures will be held at Orcas Center and followed by a question and answer period and a public reception with the speaker.

The series begins with acclaimed visual artist Harold Cohen, exploring the topic Computers, Cognition and Creativity in the Visual Arts on Sunday, September 26 at 2 p.m.  Cohen has developed a computer program, named Aaron, to create art.

Art by Harold Cohen

The second fall lecture is by Louis E. Wolcher, on Sunday, October 10 at 2 p.m.  Author and  Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Wolcher’s topic is The Meaning of Justice in the World Today.

A nationally recognized authority on ecosystem management, Gloria Flora will speak on the topic From Depletion to Sustainability on Friday, November 19, at 7:30 p.m.

The season continues in March with Ned Brines, former investment banker and one of the country’s top fund managers, speaking on the topic The Economy:  How Are We Going to Get Out of This Mess? This lecture will be held on Friday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Renowned author, broadcaster, journalist and traveler Simon Winchester presents The Man Who Loved China on Sunday, April 3 at 2 p.m.

David Kennedy, Emeritus Professor of History at Stanford University, will lecture on Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m.  His topic is The Tale of Three Cities:  How the U.S. Won WWII and Created the World We Have Lived in Ever After.

Afghanistan: Understanding the Relationship between Aid and Security is the final lecture topic of the season, presented by Andrew Wilder on Sunday, May 22 at 2 p.m.  Wilder is the Research Director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University.

Season tickets are now available for $50 at the Orcas Island Library, Darvill’s Bookstore and online at orcascrossroads.org.  Season tickets include all seven lecture events.  Individual tickets for the Fall lectures are also available now, for $10, at the Library or Darvill’s Bookstore.

The Crossroads Lecture Series is supported by the Crossroads Associates Circle, the Friends of the Orcas Island Library in cooperation with the Orcas Island Public Library, the Daniel and Margaret Carper Foundation, the Orcas Center and individual contributors.  It is also supported in part by a grant from Humanities Washington, a statewide organization dedicated to providing and supporting cultural education programs in local communities.

Registration will begin after Labor Day at the Senior Center. The fee for this class is $25, payable by check to Ruthie Newman at the first class. As always, any surplus will be donated to the high school’s college scholarship or English program.

According to Richard Fadem: “George Eliot is a great English writer and in the 19th century second as a novelist only to Dickens. But as a novelist she is very nearly unique because she is first of all an intellectual who happens also to be a superb imaginative writer. Her thought as much as her imagination permeates her fiction.  She read widely in philosophy, history, and of course literature and she possessed a brilliant mind.

“Everything George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) has written is exceptional in its intelligence and understanding. Her mind is capacious and deep, philosophical, subtle, and humane, and she takes seriously the notion articulated by the Roman poet Horace that literature should both delight and instruct.

“Daniel Deronda is the first English novel by a major novelist that has a Jewish protagonist. The novel takes place during two years, 1864-66, a momentous time that includes the end of the American Civil War and, under Bismarck, Germany’s expansionism and demonstration of military and industrial strength. A united America to the west, a nationalistic Germany to the east are simultaneously rising powers that dominate England’s horizon and, the English understand, will threaten Great Britain’s dominion over palm and pine. Eliot takes for her protagonist an exotic, not entirely “English” figure, someone who incarnates a very old, wise world and yet exemplifies the new.

“Because the novel is rich in allusion to other writers, from the Hebrew Testament’s authors to Moses Maimonides, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Rousseau, Paley, Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Robert Browning, We’ll devote the eight weeks to Deronda, We’ll then have time for brief excursions into reading some of the works, especially poetry, to which she alludes.”

Work was completed this month at the Orcas Island High School for the energy conservation upgrades provided by the State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction grant awarded earlier in the year. Now the Orcas School Board must decide how to “match” the awarded grant funds to pay the $150,000 costs.

“This changeover to more efficient [energy] will save us money in [heat] and water costs and have also earned us an energy incentive through OPALCO,” said Orcas Island School District Superintendent Barbara Kline.

Weather-stripping, motion-sensitive lights and water-saving fixtures have been installed. The heating-ventilation-air conditioning (HVAC) system has been retooled.

Unlike the high school, more extensive repair and renovation to the utility systems in the elementary school will require more extensive funding.

The district had applied for a grant to the State Department of Commerce for $1.5 million for HVAC and plumbing replacements in the elementary school. But Orcas did not get that grant “largely due to our inability to do a three-to-one match for the grant funds,” said District Superintendent Barbara Kline late last month.

“This money would have taken some of the pressure off of the bond funds. Now that we do not have bond funds, we cannot write for the energy grants due in late August and then in November. Unless we can find another source for matching money, we will not be able to get these funds.”

At the August 26 OISD board meeting, Kline asked the  board if it wanted to pay the “match” required for the high school energy grant which paid for the high school repairs from OISD’s Capital Projects Fund,  or if it preferred to pursue state loan programs and preserve the capital fund budget

“ Our original plan was to match the energy grant funds for the high school repairs with capital project funds. Our other option is to pursue matching funds through the state loan project. Given that we are not getting bond funds, we may want to preserve our capital project fund and request a state loan.

“The total bill is more than $150,ooo: we either pay that from own funds [capital projects funds]; or take out a loan. The”negative” to any loan is you have to pay it back,” Kline said.

The capital projects fund balance is $352,371, as stated in the August Business Manager’s Report.

Business Manager Keith Whitaker noted that loan rates are currently “very reasonable,” and Kline said that a decision needed to come from the Board soon whether to apply for a loan and “preserve capital projects money for large projects or not.

“What are our next steps? I wanted to put the subject on the table so people can be thinking about it,” Kline said.

The next school board meeting is Sept. 23, and the OISD board will hold an all-day public retreat on Oct. 19.

Lieutenant Alden and the Active, circa 1852

By Tom Welch

The United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Charles Wilkes, was the first government expression of interest in the San Juan Islands. Surveying the islands in 1841, Wilkes and the Expedition (also known as the U.S. Ex Ex) named many of our local features and landmarks. Shaw, Blakely, Decatur, Waldron, and other Islands were named in honor of heroes of the War of 1812 by Wilkes. He also named Mount Constitution for one of the successful U.S. Navy vessels in that war. Lieutenant James Alden was a member of the Expedition, on board the ‘Porpoise’, and was later active in our area in another capacity.

In 1855 James Alden was Captain of the U.S. Survey and Revenue Vessel ‘Active’, engaged in survey work for the Joint U.S.-British Boundary Commission. The ‘Active’ was a wooden-paddle steamer, converted from a schooner-rigged vessel purchased from a commercial west coast firm and refitted at Mare Island.  (Active Pass, between Galiano and Mayne Islands in the Canadian Gulf Islands, was named for Captain Alden’s vessel.)

One day in 1857, the ‘Active’, in company with the British steamer ‘Plumper’, was surveying to fix the boundary line in Semiahmoo Bay near Bellingham when sailors from the ‘Plumper’ arrested a white man named Macauley. Wanted for selling liquor to the survey camps, Macauley was to be transported to Fort Victoria for trial. Aboard the vessel on the way to Victoria, Macauley entertained the sailors with tales of the riches in gold to be found along the Fraser River…and backed his stories up by showing a very large amount of gold dust he claimed to have gotten in trade from the Fraser River Indians. When the sailors reached San Francisco on assignment later that year, tales of the fabulous gold find sparked the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1858.

Many of the earliest pioneer settlers of the San Juan Islands claimed their first views of these islands were seen while heading for the Fraser River from Port Townsend or Victoria. Stringent measures by the local authorities prevented many from reaching the upper gold regions of the river, and disappointed goldseekers meandered back through the islands as they left the area. Some, seeing opportunity in the free land available, stayed and married local native women. Louis Cayou of Deer Harbor, William Moore of Olga, and George Miller of Crow Valley were all very early pioneers on Orcas who had been to the Fraser before settling here.

It is interesting to note the connection of Captain Alden to the Wilkes Expedition, and the linkage between the original survey work of the U.S. Ex Ex, the later fixing of the boundary line by the Boundary Commission, and the Fraser River Gold Rush, which contributed significantly to the original white settlement of these islands.

(Welch will tell more stories from Salish Sea lore as he hosts the cruise tracing the path of the 1841 Wilkes expedition on September 12. To sign up for the cruise, call 376-6566)

Each coordinator will be responsible for recruiting and training volunteers to help with the annual giving campaign that gears up in September. Two hours per week from August through December required, with stipend. 99% of all proceeds benefit United Way locally.

Job Description Duties:

• Become familiar with United Way mission and policies
• Work with the Board and Executive Director to ensure a minimum of five local presentations at businesses, schools and /or community events are completed by December 1, 2010.
• Assist with coordinating our annual Day of Caring and other community events.
• May help with various office projects
• Promote volunteerism as a way of helping United Way and as a way of building one’s own personal skills

If you or someone you know is interested in learning more, contact United Way Executive Director, Joy Goldberg at the United Way office at 360-378-4121 or by email at unitedwaysjc@rockisland.com.

The agenda calls for filling empty positions, updates from County Council Members Gene Knapp and/or Richard Fralick, solid waste, Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) update, Road Transfer to Public Works, and new issues.

Chair Gulliver Rankin described the EPRC goals to create better communication with the County Council on:

• 2009/2010 priorities;
• Pending ordinances affecting Eastsound

A request to change the Uniform Development Code (UDC) to remove the airport overlay zone from the Gerard Property will be presented by Francine Shaw.

John Campbell and Lisa Byers will address the EPRC on affordable housing with the goal of understanding the context and issues of housing in Eastsound in developing a housing element.

EPRC Member Audrey Moreland will give an update on the “Streetscape” plan for Eastsound; EPRC Member Patty Miller will give an update on the “A” Street to Main Street and Mount Property stormwater treatment project.

Finally the EPRC will review 2010 priorities in light of county budget constraints and refocus on one priority. They will also identify possible priorities for 2011.

The public is encouraged to attend the meeting. Public Comment on matters not on the agenda is scheduled for 3:15 p.m.

A new group now needs to be added to the “Losers.” That will be the “Taxpayers.” It is regrettable that the cartoon was so prescient.

In order for the owners of the property adjacent to the airport to protect their deeded access to the runway it appears the Port of Orcas and the FAA are backing the landowners into a corner which will inevitably lead to expensive lawsuits defending the Ferris Deed. This will not only be costly to the landowners; it will ultimately result in taxpayers paying to defend the Port’s and FAA’s position.

In all likelihood, the landowners will prevail. The 1959 Ferris Deed is a legal document clearly stating that the property owners shall have the right of access and the use of the airstrip for aviational purposes only. It is clear from the intent of the deed that Harold and Virginia Ferris desired the airstrip to be part of an aviation community with residences having access to the airport.

Now that the Port has received FAA grants, the FAA has threatened numerous times to rescind funding to the Port because residential development and access to the airport is “incompatible” with its Airport Improvement Plan (AIP) even though the FAA has consistently allowed for such operations over the years.

This gargantuan document, FAA Order 5190.6A, makes it clear that “as a general principle, FAA will recommend that airport owners (the Port) refrain from entering into any agreement which grants access to the public landing area by aircraft normally stored and serviced on adjacent property.” It is reasoned that such practice leads to noise abatement and land zoning issues.

Since the owners of the properties concerned are pilots, I fail to follow this logic. Pilots having access to the runway are not going to complain about the noise or encourage zoning changes incompatible with aviation use.

The AIP is a “one plan fits all” prescription — what is good for Boeing Field is equally applicable to Orcas. On the contrary, it hardly applies to a small rural airport such as Orcas.

What is plainly clear is that the FAA is using its funding ability to bully the Port. The Ferris Deed executed in 1959 will pre-empt the FAA from doing so. It is too bad that the owners and the taxpayers will bear the unnecessary costs of defending the rights of the property owners.

Eric Gourley

The Orcas Island Writers Festival is fast approaching — it’s third annual festival will take place September 17-19, 2010. The Festival was born in 2008, the brainchild of writer Barbara Lewis, as “a way to enrich and connect readers and writers through classes, lectures, workshops, and the natural beauty of Orcas Island,” says Lewis, who continues as the Festival Director.

It is distinguished among writers festivals as one that focuses on the art and craft of writing, rather than the process and techniques of publishing. “Our festival creates an environment for focus and energy, designed to bring the writer – whether a novice writer or experienced author – to deeper, more effective, and more fulfilling expression,” says Lewis

Festival events will again take place in Eastsound venues. This year the Writers Festival  faculty is from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, which Poets and Writers Magazine called the top low-residency writing program in the country. David Jauss and Sue Silverman teach the workshops (which had one opening as of this week)  and Nance Van Winckel, will again teach the Jumpstart! classes, as she did last year.

David Jauss’s recent works include Black Maps and Crimes of Passion. The recipient of the AWP Award for Short Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, among other awards, he teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Sue Silverman is the author of two memoirs and Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Nance Van Winckel teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Eastern Washington  University and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program. This year’s Jumpstart! will focus on mixed-genre forms: flash fiction, prose poetry, and beyond-the-page visual/verbal art. Each day covers essential elements of the writing craft, leading writers to focus and enliven their poetry and prose.

The Jumpstart! writing classes teach writers how to focus and enliven their writing, whether poetry or prose. The Jumpstart! classes are taught by Nance Van Winckel. Nance is an accomplished writer of both prose and poetry; her works include After a Spell, which was awarded the Washington State Governor’s Award for Poetry, and Quake, which received the 1998 Paterson Fiction Prize.

This year, the Jumpstart! classes will give particular attention to mixed-genre forms, a particularly lively area of writing today, Lewis explains. ” In particular, we’ll discuss prose poems, flash fiction, and beyond-the-page visual/verbal genres. We will engage in writing exercises, as well, using the different forms, and sharing our work with the group.

“On day one, we’ll study and draft prose poems, primarily. On day two, we’ll examine flash fiction (very, very short stories) and get started on some of our own. On the last day, we will look at examples of off-the-page visual/verbal art and experiment with mixing text and objects or other art media.”

Nance’s recent works include No Starling, After a Spell, and Curtain Creek Farm. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships and a Pushcart Prize, among others. (An interview with Nance Van Winckel follows the festival schedule below.)

Each day’s class pinpoints and exercises different essential elements of writing. One class can be taken as a stand-alone class, or you can come for all three, as a three-day series. If you purchase a Jumpstart! ticket, you have admission to the lectures and panels for that day, as well. The Jumpstart! classes can be taken instead of a workshop, but not in addition to the workshop.

Festival attendees are coming from all across the country, but islanders can attend the festival without leaving home. Panels are open Friday morning and Sunday afternoon, lectures will be held for the public on Saturday afternoon, and the Saturday night faculty reading at the Madrona Room is open to the public, from 7 to 9 pm. Gene Nery will open the evening with music and readings from Sue Silverman, Nance Van Winckel, and David Jauss will follow.

For more information or to register visit orcasislandwritersfestival.com, or contact Festival Director Barbara Lewis at 360-317-4383.

2010 Festival Schedule

Friday, September 17, 2010

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Sunday, September 19, 2010

CD: Does poetry have a purpose?

NANCE: A good poem, I think, serves as a bridge between one’s most private inner life and something outside oneself: another inner life, the natural world, the mysteries of society, culture, politics. The poem forges connections, allows what we don’t quite understand to somehow be more clearly realized, even if still not quite understood.

And . . . empathy. This is an important purpose for all the arts, I believe. Poetry, and fiction too, help us to enter, imaginatively, other lives– lives sometimes very different from our own. We stand inside another consciousness and feel our way around in another world. I think this helps us live our everyday lives, tuning in to the plight of others, broadening our awareness of differences and diversities.

CD: Who are some of your favorite writers?
NANCE: Oh, many, many. I go in bouts of an internse passion for this author, then someone another. Over the years some of those people have included: Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Tomas Transtromer, Rainer Rilke, Elizabeth Bishop. Lately I’ve been keen on poems by Yannis Ritsos, Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Li-Young Lee, Dorothy Barresi, Norman Dubie, Tess Gallagher, and Malena Morling.

CD: What do you like most about living in the Northwest?
NANCE: Buying superb salmon at $2.99 a lb. at the grocery. The smell of pine and cedar when I walk. The views of my mountains when I walk. All the drama of the seasons. Laid-back, kind people. (Maybe they’re everywhere, but they’re definitely here.) Hot springs and cold glacial lakes. Wildflowers. Hummingbird Hawk Moths. Marmots. The Spokane River in May. May.

Here’s Nance talking about how her art pieces connect to her writing. For more go to http://www.nancevanwinckel.com

“My visual art pieces, crafted digital photographs, draw from the traditions of urban landscape photography, collage, mural, and graffiti art. I call these works “pho-toems.” I begin with a digital photo I’ve taken. Then, via Photoshop, I add other images I have created, e.g., black & white images I’ve Xeroxed out of 1930’s sixth-grade textbooks, hand-colored, and scanned back in. Then, I add small bits of my own text— mini-poems, if you will.

“My intent is to have the word elements function first as visual components and secondarily as language. I also aim, overall, to create a synergy whereby the whole pho-toem may be greater than the sum of its parts. I try to make the fusion of elements invisible so that the pho-toem’s reality is its own credible edifice, inviting the viewer to enter, explore, and discover.

“Especially in the tradition of graffiti-artists, I am interested in the urban landscape as a kind of frontier and the graffer as pioneer. The graffer is staking claims to boarded-up buildings that others perceive as wasteland. This is a kind of reclaiming of unclaimed space.

“I’ve published five books of poetry and three collections of short stories. But the page is a by-invitation-only art. The wall is in your face. I’m fascinated by the many ways poetic language may intersect with graffiti. Both are messages, but there’s a primacy I appreciate about graffiti. Graffiti is a message that MUST be conveyed. It’s all about emotions and ideas that are uncontainable.

“Another thing that I’m attempting to “capture” in these pieces is a world that is quickly passing. Many of the buildings I’m photographing are from small towns in Eastern Washington. There’s still a feel of the old west about these buildings. Many were associated with the former financial “engine” of my region: silver mines and lumbering, industries whose demise is reflected in the now dilapidated state of these formerly lovely buildings.

“I’m interested too in how the abandoned building, no longer having a life of “use,” may now open itself to a new stature, albeit one that exists outside the confines of everyday life. Via these pieces, buildings are renewed, but, perhaps paradoxically, only in a dimension that stands at the extreme other end of their former early 20th Century grandeur; they live now just in a digital dimension. Still, released from the bonds of “use,” the buildings—with their new murals (made to look “old”) and their text— completely defy the world of commerce and use and have become, I hope, something entirely “else.”

The Orcas voters have now made a clear statement that they cannot/will not support the current School District development plan.  Those of us who supported the initiative may not like the outcome of the vote, but I do believe that we understand the resistance to the project as it was proposed.  We know that in order to make many of the badly needed repairs and improvements to our campus we will need to reach farther out to the community to develop a new plan that balances the economic, educational and functional needs of our schools.

A new, viable plan will take the support of our community, reaching out and providing the School Board with the answers they need.  A discussion that leads us down a path where our school board members are vilified, criticized and otherwise accused of malfeasance does not move us forward.  I can only imagine that for many of them, a defeat in the next election would signal a relief.  I know that for all of them, this process has caused mental exhaustion and was not done to further their high-paying political careers, but instead in an attempt to do what they felt was right for their community and their constituents.

As the discussion of school buildings, maintenance and  quality of education moves forward in time, I hope that those  vocal in support as well as in resistance step up to help formulate a new plan – one not focused on divisiveness, but instead on the best course of action for our schools.

Justin Paulsen

Students will learn about women in the past, while creating projects and presentations. Reading will include
interesting historical fiction and non-fiction.

The class begins September 23, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00-12:00 at the Reddick Room by the OPAL office at the corner of Enchanted Forest and Lover’s Lane. The instructor is  Didier Gincig, former classroom teacher and recreation program director.

Call or e-mail for questions or registration: 298-0362 or 376-6053; didier@earthball.com.