UPDATE – 04/27/13

Justin & Alice

Justin died peacefully on April 27, surrounded by his family. On April 20, he was able to fulfill his lifelong dream of having his art exhibited. He was well enough to attend the opening of his show in Atlanta, and he raised $1,000 for his charity fund. His aunt describes him as being “on cloud nine.” Another exhibit is scheduled for August.

A memorial service will be held in Georgia on April 30th. Sometime later, his family will come to the island for another memorial service and to bury his ashes, next to his beloved Alice, who died of lymphoma in 2011.

Donations may be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. At some time this site will also have T-shirts and prints of Justin’s art available, the proceeds from which will go to the fund.

The Guemes Island Fire Department is also putting together a team from Skagit County that will participate in next year’s Columbia Tower Stair Climb, a renowned event that raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. They will be taking pledges for next year’s March event.

Justin James

In 2008, 25-year-old Justin James decided to leave his native Georgia to explore another part of the country. Justin, his German shepherd puppy, Alice, and a friend from Arkansas drove nonstop to arrive in Anacortes in time to volunteer at the What the Heck Fest in July. Justin knew about Anacortes’s artist-run community at the Department of Safety and wanted to participate there. When he tired of dormitory-style living, someone suggested that he check out Guemes Island.

He loved it there and spent the rest of the summer living with Alice in a tree house in exchange for landscaping work on the tree-house owners’ property. He became fully immersed in island life during the next three years, volunteering for seemingly everything. He joined the Guemes Island Historical Society, the Men’s Breakfast, and was an active volunteer for the Guemes Island Library. He became a volunteer firefighter with the Guemes Island Fire Department and completed the rigorous training at the Skagit County Fire Training Academy. He was a founding member of the island’s monthly newspaper, The Guemes Tide.

In 2011, Justin returned to Georgia to take a job. While there, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After going through extensive treatment, Justin, now 29, is losing his battle with cancer. He had very much wanted to return to the island with his family for one last visit. Unfortunately, his health is declining rapidly and he is not strong enough to make such a long trip.

In an effort to bring the island to Justin, friends organized an all-island photograph on March 23, on the lawn in front of Anderson’s General Store. At least 160 people, 13 dogs, and 1 horse showed up for the photo. Four people sent full-size head shots that were held up on sticks. Islanders outlined a large heart on the lawn, and photographers Ken Davenport and Chris Terrell from How It Works donated their time to take and print the photo. Jordan Yeager, a junior at Anacortes High School in the Digital Media Program, volunteered to film the event.

On April 2, an emissary from the island flew to Georgia to hand-deliver an 18 by 24″ enlargement of the all-island photo to Justin, along with 150 field-cut daffodils, 30 field-cut tulips, apple cider and pie filling from an island orchard, and the smoked salmon and stinging nettles Justin had specifically requested, plus cards, letters, and gifts that islanders sent along.

For four days, the island was brought to Georgia. Family streamed in to see the photo, which always elicited stunned, astonished, and amazed silence, and then tears. Even the Hospice nurse cried, and then said, “I want to live THERE!” The days were filled with love and joy and laughter.

Justin helped make huge quantities of nettle soup and nettle pesto to share with his family (and freeze for later). His dad loved the dishes so much he got online the next day and ordered live nettle plants sent straight to Georgia so he could start his own nettle patch, ignoring the ribbing about the comparison to Northwesterners ordering kudzu.

Courtesy of an island family, takeout BBQ was ordered for the whole family one night from one of the top BBQ places in Atlanta. Lots more joy, laughing, and finger-licking.

“WOW! How do I begin to thank you and the island for the best week Justin has had in a long time,” his stepmother wrote, following the visit. “His spirits were lifted so high and he loved all the gifts everyone sent. Jordan is a special person and I do hope she wins for the wonderful video she shot.
… I am so glad Justin had the experience of meeting so many wonderful people. He is very special and does seem to touch many lives in many ways. Please tell everyone on the island how much love he felt.”

Justin is currently preparing an art exhibit that will open in Atlanta on April 20. See his profile here. Proceeds from his work will go to his fund for lymphoma research.

On the day of the photo, one islander commented that it was great to have an opportunity to give such a gift where all you had to do was “show up.” Justin’s gift to the island was all the “showing up” and helping out that he contributed while he lived there. In his time of need, the island “showed up” for him, in the best way that counts—with love.

The world he photographs is vast. Landscape photographer, Lance Ekhart, sees his world through a wide-angle point of view. 

In his work, you will see, textures and shapes, rich colors and depth and intense beauty. The details in his images will reach out and grab your attention.

today….A 6 year old girl in our community named Madelyn Kuhnlein has been battling cancer for two years. On Friday February 1st she had her last chemo treatment….today… a parade was held in Anacortes to celebrate…Madelyn is cancer free!!!

Read more in the Anacortes American.

When it comes to photography, she is dedicated to her craft, but if you look closely, you can also see the fun that TerylMonson has with her photography. Team her up with Lois Farrington, and you have twice the fun and twice as many stunning images.

Lois Farrington and Teryl Monson are girls who just wanna have fun. When they pack up their gear and take off for parts that beg to be photographed, it’s laughter that gets their creative juices flowing. Yet, they are all business when it comes time to snap the shutter. The result from a girls-just-wanna-have-fun photography trip? Stunning photographs.

Anacortes Word Waves 2012 was a joint community collaboration for a public poetry literacy project that resulted in several public poetry events benefitting our community members, students and artists. Word Waves was designed to incorporate the spoken word, written word and word play.

For the word play portion of the project, local merchants and businesses helped to bring awareness through a Pen-A-Poem word game.   A community word form was designed to involve as many community members as possible and offered kids and adults the opportunity to have the same word fun by creating their own poetry art works and submitting them to the word waves panel for choosing the winners.

The Pen-A-Poem form provided a list of 78 words that players could choose from and mix with their own words to create poems. There were five game categories that players could pick to write poetry about:

• Best Island, water or forest theme
• Best poem with the most list words used
• Most humorous poem
• Best junior poem (age 12 and under)
• Best poem about an Anacortes business

During the month of October, the Pen-A-Poem forms were placed at 20 plus businesses and the Senior Center, made available to teachers on the Anacortes School District website and used as a teaching tool at the Boys and Girls Club. The staff at the Boys and Girls Club made actual magnetic poetry pieces out of the game words and placed them on a class board for the kids to work on throughout the month of October.

We received about 300 entries. A few of highlights from the entries are:

• Of those entries about 180 came from the Anacortes School District students, Boys & Girls Club, Home School students and youth from the Fidalgo Island Writers Guild.
• From those 180 students about 110 were in the Junior (age 12 and under category).  There were many excellent entries in this category and about 20 made it into the finalist cut.
• For the Most words used category, 3 entries were submitted that used all 78 of the game words.
• We decided on a tie (two winners) in the Humor Category.
• None of the winners were previously published poets.

Winners were selected in each category by a word waves panel and notified.  The winners were invited to the ‘Evening of Poetry’ event at the Anacortes Library last night and asked to read their own poems.

Best Island, Water, Forest Theme:
Arlene R. Wechezak, “Anacortes Forest Lands”

Best written by a Junior:
Madison Berris, “Untitled”

Best Humor (tie):
Joanne Jones, “If I Were Queen of Dewey Beach”

Best Humor (tie):
Linda Henley, “Fishing in Anacortes”

Best Anacortes Business:
Margo Hurth, “Shore”

Best with Most Words used:
Marcia Neu, “This Rainy Place”

The winners were all very excited to have been selected.  Five of the winners showed up to the ‘Evening of Poetry’ event to read their poems. The junior winner showed up with her whole family and stayed for the entire 2 hour poetry reading with smiling support from her family.

Winner, Marcia Neu, had this to say, “I wrote a poem a day (not nearly as long as my entry!) for 5+ years, but had been in a dry spell for the last year. Your contest gave me the impetus to get back into poetry writing again – thanks so much!”

Other notes of success from the 2012 word waves project.

• Permanent Public Poetry Installations: Three or four ‘forest’ themed poems were selected from regional poetry works for permanent installation by City of Anacortes at Washington Park along the loop road.  This installation should be installed in the first half 2013.
• Permanent Public Poetry Installations: Three or four ‘sea’ themed poems were selected from regional poetry works for permanent installation by the Port of Anacortes at the Cap Sante Marina area and will be installed in the first half of 2013.
• Kathleen Flenniken, WA Poet Laureate worked for two days with students in the Anacortes School District.
• Anchor Art Space hosted a successful installation of mixed media (fiber, paper and other media) poetry/art works for the month of October and first half of November.
• The Depot hosted an evening of “word art” displays during the November 1st Friday Art Walk.
• The ‘forest’ and ‘sea’ themed poems selected for permanent installation by the City and the Port were displayed during the 1st Friday November Art Walk by local galleries and businesses.
• ‘Evening of Poetry’ was successfully attended by many members of our community.  Three published poets including Kathleen Flenniken, treated the audience by reading selected poetry works.

Other Entries

• Giulia Wood
• Maureen Elizabeth Mack
• Indigo Maclavrin
• Kira Oates
• April Davis
• Eden McComber
• Emma Moline
• Abel Chomjak
• Devlin Keough
• Kathryn Coryell
• Hyunbin Seo
• Julia Soes
• Juliann Conrardy
• Katie Collins
• Lauren Metcalf
• Liam Hastings
• Noah Masten
• Matty Johnson
• Meleah Fine
• Mia Lavelle
• Michael Cain
• Jade Thomason
• Michael Hanrahan
• Marley Baker
• Winter Stevens
• Kelsey Aragon
• Logan Scamfer

“This dance turns your eyes into rivers and tears into streams.”
“This booth is still full of wood scraps given new life through a carver’s hand.” “The color of the ocean is like my dad’s eyes…like a shooting star in a bright sky.”
Lines from a list poem demonstrating use of figurative language
by Anacortes Middle School students

Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate, swept into Anacortes on Nov. 13 and 14, with barely enough time to catch her breath before inviting, challenging, and inspiring students in Anacortes classrooms to nurture the poet within.

Flenniken arrived under the auspices of the Anacortes Arts Festival and Peggy Flynn. Students and teachers alike received her visit enthusiastically and appreciated the opportunity to play around with language in new and different ways.

“Kathleen came into my room with energy and joy,” said Becky Motherwell, Anacortes Middle School bloc teacher. “Both days were a great mix of the serious and the silly which helped to engage my students. The poems she selected as models had the same qualities.”

Terri Sommers, an elementary teacher at Fidalgo School, echoed those words and added some of her own.

Kathleen Flenniken, Peggy Flynn, and Bob Rose

“The second graders knew they were in for something special when Kathleen Flenniken entered the room. Her soothing gentle voice calmed and drew the children into the place where they could create their own poems. Many expressed how Kathleen showed them how to paint a picture with their words.”

Flenniken’s secret ambition is “to turn the students (she) works with into a new generation of willing and confident readers of poetry. I bring poems to read to them and ask them to respond. I ask ‘what do you notice,’ and bring writing activities that I hope will be playful, joyful dabbling. I try to demonstrate that word play is as fun and satisfying as it is challenging.”

Flenniken told students upfront that her life had taken two distinct paths: as a civil engineer working 17 years at the Hanford Nuclear Plant near Richland and then beginning her “writing life” as a poet, initially using images and experiences from that earlier time.

The students were eager to share their own ideas about the experience.

“It was inspiring how she turned her life experieinces into poems,” Kaitlin Bisbee, an eighth grader said.

“Her constructive criticism helped me add detail,” remarked Mia LaVelle.

Some Middle School boys had a different take on the time spent with Flenniken. Eighth grader Carson Paddock appreciated that she wove the silly and the absurd into her lesson, “She made the monkeys in my mind happy. She appreciated my dark sense of humor.” Several students noted how the examples Flenniken used were good and demonstrated that you could be funny and descriptive.

In her lesson on Portrait Poems, Flenniken showed various versions of the Mona Lisa as reflected through the eyes of other artists, cartoonists, caricaturists and those who do computer graphics and discussed how various depictions communicate something completely new and unique.

She then guided the students in writing a poem in which they direct and artist about how do a portrait of them. Walking around the room, kids remarked about how freeing this was.

“I can create a poem about how I want to be interpreted”, Clare Martin said. “We can show how we truly are, how we believe and live-our personality.

“It opens my mind to think about things I don’t usually think of,” Dylan Fox added.

“It allows me to portray how I want to be seen, not just how I am seen,” Aubrey Costanza said.

Much was said by students about how Flenniken encouraged creativity and freed up the thinking process by use of examples.

“She showed us that perspectives can be different and that’s fine,” Lyssa Petticlerc remarked.

Sample from lines from the portrait poem demonstrating figurative language included:

You shall paint me as such
My expression will be one as though I have just eaten horseradish!
Thomas Dylan

When you paint me sit outside
Among the fallen trees
And drink a cup of sweet coffee…
Sabrina Poor

My face will be so epic, people will look up and think of the most manly things ever…
Sean Pratt

In the background there should be a fountain
Spraying water into the basin decorated with golden flowers and vines…
Mayson Bray

The ‘what’ Kathleen Flenniken brought to Anacortes classrooms is evident. In these days of high stakes testing and common core standards, the ‘why’ comes from her own words, “Poetry relies on the same good writing techniques we emphasize in prose writing: precise, thoughtful word choice-especially verbs-, detail, figurative language, a strong voice. Training in poetry improves students’ writing. It also paves the way for quicker access to their imagination and sensory impressions.” Anyone walking into a classroom this past week saw Kathleen Flenniken working her special magic with kids. What an enlivening place to be, where the mind and imagination merged in wonderful and dynamic ways.

Learn about Word Waves 2012

For John Parks, a photograph is just the beginning. It is an outline, an inspiration for his art. All computer-generated, John takes his photographs and turns them into masterful pieces of art – paintings, watercolors and pencil drawings. He adds splashes of color, or tones down color adding a striking look, he removes unwanted objects or adds what he thinks is missing to an image, all of this started with a photograph.

Anacortes Arts Festival Board members Lisa Kuhnlein & Teresa Kolp

Though its big celebration is in August, the Anacortes Arts Festival is a perfect example of how a community coming together can have a real impact year-round.

Here is an example of how the Festival has “Given Back” in 2012

• $26,000 in organizational grants that funded cultural performances for school kids, public sculpture, weekly music at the Farmer’s Market and elsewhere, art workshops, dance and theater support
• $6,000 - Art Dash (with partner Parks & Recreation) funded Tommy Thompson Mural Project & community Word Waves Poetry Program
• $1,100 - Anacortes Collects Program partnered with the Port of Anacortes to purchase artwork for their public spaces
• $1000 - The Festival ended the year by presenting over 50 art kits to the Salvation Army for Christmas distribution to encourage creative expression for youth in need. We’d like to thank Faber-Castell who generously matched part of this gift.

Aside from the monetary impact, the Festival is, and always has been, about bringing the community together to celebrate and showcase creativity and innovation. The good that comes out of that is what a successful non-profit is about.

The Festival Board and staff would like to thank ALL of our community partners and participants for another great year!

This Rainy Place

Heresy, maybe, but I like the rain.
The cacophony of its almost tropical beat,
the shoeshine sheen of wet madrone trees,
glistening twigs of huckleberry and rose,
old growth firs, needles laced with wet,
the splashing of water everflowing,
relishing the peace of a quiet gray day.

Drizzle hushes the traffic sounds,
and even the most inveterate tourists
stay inside at the Rockfish or Brown,
dining long and languorously at the Majestic,
dawdling, confused, at the panoply of choices
at the Red Snapper and Watermark Books.

We locals delight especially in misty rain,
striding under the hemlock lined canopy
of the forestlands, skipping over slick roots
on a carpet from big maple leaves, spotting a doe,
running our hands over the bark of a douglas fir,
caressing the giant trunk of a moss-graced cedar.

Looking for shells along deserted Bowman Bay,
a storm brews beyond view on the Salish Sea,
waves chop from a stiff north wind, blowing hard,
we read the tide, it ebbs and shifts just low enough
to dig for clams, we perch on sun-bleached driftwood
to watch eagles soar overhead, adrift on the breeze.

Rivers of springs run beneath our island,
feeding Whistle Lake and summer swimming,
creating the rich habitats of Beaver Pond,
and the green-fringed trail, looping wide
round the shores of Little Cranberry,
spawning native salal, skunk cabbage and ferns.

This thriving, sometimes sunny, often rainy town,
where salmon and orcas leap in its waters,
colorful boats sail the bay, dock at the marinas,
a tugboat with lights like stars in its wheelhouse
passes a tanker, all in motion on a moonlit night,
these prove our compass, our city’s anchor.

The heritage of the Samish living long on this fertile land,
the community that enfold us, sustains our lives,
knit together in a rich quilt of textures, impressing
even visitors who find that we are more than our shops.
more indeed than our port or our forestlands,
stronger and more vibrant certainly than our size.

Living in Anacortes, I can’t help but like the rain,
it is a river that gives life and flows deep in our hearts.
This rainy place.

Marcia Neu
word waves
Best Poem using the most Pen-a-Poem words