Summer island community

I need to go cage the last few trees against rubbing by my ‘deer neighbors’ but first  want to acknowledge a few examples of what makes Lummi Island, for some of us, a great community to live in.

• Thanks to Lynn Dee, Randy Hathaway, Peter Hodges, Al Marshall, Joan Moye, Kent Neilsen, Jyl Peterson and Stuart Rich for their  amazing work on the excellent and well-researched Baker Preserve Advisory Board report for the Lummi Island Heritage Trust.  I’ve rarely read such a clear, well-documented and thoughtful report. The committee members not only met weekly for several months but also spent many, many hours reading, listening, discussing and writing the report, which gives true consideration to all the quite varied islanders who gave input.
• Colleen McCrory’s arranging meals for a neighbor who’d been in a car accident, by calling and asking other neighbors to help out – they did, of course.  Doing this sort of thing is very common, sometimes by phone & sometimes by a sign-up sheet at the Islander.
• Paul Davis‘  invaluable ‘Brown Betty’ news service for paid Tome subscribers (ask if you want this by calling him or emailing TheTome@lummiislandcable.com) – and his diligent mowing the LIHT lawn in preparation for the July Chili cookoff.
• The LIHT for the chili cookoff, which unfortunately I couldn’t make this year.
• Wanda Cuccinotta and others‘ truly heroic efforts at weed-pulling and native vegetation planting at the very dock, despite hot, dry weather. (I punked out in July when temperatures exceeded 80 deg)
• Bob Fodor, Thurid Clark and friends for organizing collective negotiations between numerous islanders and a septic system inspector (an idea suggested in a Brown Betty message), brining individual fees down to $175.  Much better than $300+!

next post will have a few more community activities.

Dry Dock 2009

I’d planned to write a piece about this year’s dry dock but Anne Gibert beat me to it, for her site 20th Century Woman. As usual, Anne has gifted her readers with excellent writing and photos. I especially loved the photo of the car line! There’ll be similar ones like that on the mainland side when the ferry returns at the end of September. Lummi Island definitely  isn’t a place to live for those who absolutely must be able to hop in their car and go whenever they want.

I’ve only two things to add.

2009 Give Burns the Boot Day

From Robb Kahn, who is coordinating this event this year.  (Thanks, Paul & Brown Betty, for sending this out to paid Tome Subscribers.)

“Whatcom County Fire District 11 firefighters on Lummi Island will be collecting your generous donations on Saturday, October 3rd for the ‘2009 Give Burns the Boot’ fund raising drive. The money donated will benefit the Northwest Burn Foundation, and is sponsored by the Washington Fire Chiefs. All fire departments in the State will be circulating their fire boots with the hope that all of us will donate generously to fill them up, and the money will be used to treat victims of burns in our state.

Each year, our Lummi Island neighbors help to raise an impressive amount of money and we are recognized as one of the top fund-raising districts in Whatcom County.
Let’s pull together once again, and when a volunteer firefighter circulates among those waiting in the ferry line on Saturday, October 3rd, please give what you can to help support this important cause.

Fire boots will also be located at the Islander Store, The Tap Root and at the Beach Store Cafe.  Kindly donate by dropping money or checks into these boots!! We depend on your consideration to help those who are injured by burns!!

Thank you….The volunteer firefighters of Lummi Island, Whatcom County District 11.”

Vacation from Lummi Island

Bill and I just returned from a week-long trip down to Oregon – we definitely needed a break from endless homestead chores and Mindport, where Bill works. (If you’ve not visited Mindport in Bellingham, you should: beauty, whimsy, things to touch and play with, plus currently a stunning presentation of bones collected by Ann Morris over the years.)

We missed seeing Mt. St Helens

Nasty dry summer

For many Lummi Island residents and visitors,  summer is the season to live the good life: lots and lots of sun, long warmish days, endless blue skies, no rain, no clouds, no mist, no fog.  It’s good for tourism, too, which many islanders depend on for income.  And good for Lummi Island real estate sales, too, as visitors say, hey, this is great: NO RAIN! LET’S BUY!

While the weather is pleasant enough, uninterrupted dryness

Lummi Island Grows

On Lummi Island, as all around the country, many people are raising at least some of their food this year.  (For a few pictures of Randy & Linda’s recent harvesting, check out Randy’s blog, Rural Garden/Urban Garden.)

Seed ordering & swapping, pass-along-plants and more have been a highlight of the gardening year for me so far. (Bob & Marnie:  Thanks for the excellent bok choi & radishes this week. I’ll bring over some strawberries in return.)

This trend toward homegrown food isn’t very surprising, given all that we’re learning about about problems with ’standard’ food supplies:  high dependence on toxic pesticides and herbicides, increasing contamination of food supplies and lack of adequate food safety regulation, cost, quality, taste, petrochemical dependence, corporate patenting of food and other plants, GMO contamination of staple crops , lost genetic diversity, the increased probability of food scarcity etc.  (Excellent recent books on our industrial food system  include Pollan’s In Defense of Food and Roberts’  The End of Food, both available from the Island Library, as are many good books on growing and preserving healthy food.)

The good news is that Lummi Islanders have a tradition of food production, be it animal or vegetable (fishing is part of the tradition but now threatened by reduced fish populations).   Many islanders also  are avoiding needless pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, reducing use of external inputs’ (off-island amendments), raising heirloom varieties, saving seeds and sharing kn0wledge, space, labor and tools.

I think it would be great to have some kind of Lummi Island Grows network to facilitate community sharing of  ‘all things food’.  Some low-high tech combination probably would work best to connect people and swap information etc. — informal networking at the Saturday Market and with friends; organizations roups like the Grange, LICA or the  community garden; an online group for discussion and swaps;l plus blogs like Randy’s.

Such sharing used to be necessary in rural communities, often partly facilitated by organizations like the Grange.  The Lummi Island Grange doesn’t focus much on growing these days, but perhaps it will again, as  homegrown security feels increasingly important these days.

It will be interesting to see whether Lummi Islanders continue to rely on our informal networks of friends or develop some other structures, in the next few years.  The advantage of informal networks is that no one has to organize, coordinate or maintain anything, unlike  things like website, groups with monthly meetings, etc.

Orchard mason bees move in

Hurrah!

Orchard mason bees (osmia lignaria) have started filling up the condo nesting block I drilled and put out for them early this spring.  If you look carefully at the photo, you’ll see some of the holes in the block are black and some are grey. The grey holes are filled with mud and, I presume, bee  larvae that will grow into next year’s adults.

Frankly, I had totally given up, despairing that my puny effort had been rebuffed.  After all, it was a pretty crude affair. While I’d put it in a nice, warm sunny spot against a (temporary, I hope) metal plate holding soil for part of a raised bed, I do walk the path in front of it several times daily – might make it bit like living next to a freeway or under an airport flight path.

Besides, I’ve several spots with heavy, partly bare clay slopes peppered with small holes, which I presume are perfect natural homes for bees, beetles, etc.  Plus, mason bees have been building their own Lummi Island condos far longer than people have.  Maybe it was just wishful thinking, combined with the usual dose of human arrogance, for me to think that osmia lignaria would prefer my drilled-out block to more their traditional homes in tree stumps, downed logs and dried clay slopes.

Nonetheless, it looks like almost half of the holes are full of mason bees. I did have a moment’s panic today when I re-visited Washing State University’s site on osmia lignaria (ah, the fluid beauty of those syllables) to check the accuracy of my conclusions about my new condo residents:  Uh-oh: Figure 4 shows both mason bee (rough plugs) and wasp-filled (smooth) nesting hole plugs in the same wooden block.

Afraid that my block had become a wasp home, I rushed out to check.  Whew. The hole plugs are definitely rough; not a smooth one in the bunch.  Peering closely, I saw a tiny black head that quickly retreated into one of the dark, empty holes: another bee! Grabbing my watering can, I soaked the soil where beans are growing above the condo.

If osmia lignaria mommas are nice enough to take a chance on my Lummi Island condo, the least I can do is provide them with fresh mud for solid doors and pollin sources for their babies.

Island library & kids

Watch Lummi Island kids perform amazing feats of creativity, aided and abetted by fairy godmother librarians, aides and island volunteers in this fun video on youtube about the 2009 Whatcom County Library’s “Be Creative at Your Library” summer reading program.  Sound dull & hokey?  It made me smile. (Thanks so much, Rhayma, for sending me the link.)

The Lummi Island Library:  Small in size and unpretentious, large in spirit and service, endless in materials they deliver via inter-library loan. Great librarians, friendly meeting place, community-centered. Friends of the Island Library (FOIL) own and maintain the building and grounds, supported by community-raised funds.

Our public libary — reason to enjoy paying property taxes each year.

Why am I still inside?

The sunny but still reasonably cool weather beacons, and plants very much need water (none from above in sight, unfortunately). The grass inside my anti-deer fences is so high that I can barely see some of the trees I planted at so much effort.  My herd of white 5-gallon weeding and rock buckets need rounding up, weeds need to be pulled, vegies need watering, raspberries need to be staked.

So why am I inside? I wanted to take a few minutes to write something all by myself.  Since Saturday morning, I’ve been working with Mike McKenzie to set up a new (as simple as possible) website/blog to support the Fund Beach School initiative.  It’s mostly up & ready. I hope it’s useful in helping to raise funds we need. Mike’s been great to work with, very patient with my initial bumbling (modifying text that I shouldn’t) and occasional glitches with WordPress, which insisted on backsliding to earlier, incorrect versions of some pages & posts. Thanks, Mike. No worries

I don’t know why I feel so compelled, sometimes, to Do Something to try to help out in the community, but I do. I guess it’s all the Lummi Islanders who are working so diligently on keeping various parts of our community going. While I did (or tried to) contribute to my past-life academic community (Northwestern Univ. Med School), I’ve never before participated in ‘regular’ community activities.  As I’ve said before, the community Bill & I perceived to be here was one of the big draws for moving to Lummi Island.  But it’s a double-edged sword that many islanders feel — it’s really easy to get over-committed.

But boy, have I ever learned a lot since moving here — about the Lummi Island community, about myself (mostly), about how people interact (or don’t), determination, the (sometimes) rush to controversies or The Dark Side, working styles, our local government, about how people who care very deeply about some issue may or may not be interested/willing/able to dig in and work productively to achieve what they care about.

It’s extremely interesting, but (once again, as with some previous situations) I’m about tapped out, in need of a change. So, I’m headed outside to use body parts other than the sitting/typing bits while, I hope, helping some of my “standing people” (tree)  fellow residents to grow strong and healthy (it’ll be good for me, too.)

Help Beach Elementary School’s children

The Ferndale School District is strapped financially and our wonderful Beach Elementary School is facing up to a $151,000 budget reduction this year. Without that money, we lose key personnel, from teachers to aides and support staff for this coming year. And our island kids will suffer educationally.  The Beach School is, absolutely, one of Lummi Island’s central and essential community resources.

This is really crummy.

Fortunately, the heroic Beach School PTO is leading efforts to both negotiate a reduction in that loss and to raise funds from islanders to make up what we can of the shortfall. (Please visit the new Fund Beach School website for more information.)

DONATIONS NEEDED: Goal $151,000 by June 15, 2009

Yes, that’s a lot of money, but the island has raised a more in time frames not much longer than this.  So I say: Yes We Can.  But we need a lot more than bake sales to pull this off.

Lummi Island probably has about 1000 full-time residents (including kids; probably ~500 families) land at least that many part-time residents. Plus visitors, who often bring considerable $$ with them.

If on average (I know not every family can do this), each full-time family donated $300 we’d meet the $150,000 goal.  If all island residents kicked in, that would be about $150 per household.

Bill and I don’t have children and our so-called “investments” have tanked with everyone else’s.  But we received excellent educations as children, courtesy of very generous, consistent support from our parents and grandparents generation. So we’ll support this Beach School initiative to the best of our ability.

Obviously this isn’t ’sustainable’ — other solutions are needed for the long haul.    That is then; this is now.

Please send (tax deductible) donations ASAP to LICA (Lummi Island Community Association), with “Beach School Fund” on the memo line. For more details, visit the Fund Beach School website.