Author: Kate Poss | With Photos by David Welton

Note: In November 2021, we ran a story about Caitlin Sullivan, an Ambassador Girl Scout, who created a Peace Garden to serve the mobility impaired, and arranged for a bench to be installed at the Earth Sanctuary in Freeland. Now she’s been honored with a Girl Scout Gold Award. Chuck Pettis, owner and founder of the Earth Sanctuary said it was OK to run the following words he posted in a recent email: For her Girl Scout Gold Award Project, she created an accessible place where people with mobility issues can feel peaceful. It is called the Peace Garden. She…

Note: all photos taken by Kate Poss, except for the ones of Kate and Lise and the selfie of Bill and Kate. Bill Poss took them As a retired couple following our own schedule, we like to recharge by heading out with our trailer Marion into the wild country. Who would have thought that our ‘retirement’ resulted in a busier life at home than when were were employed? Marion is where we feel most at home, even though she’s less than 90 square feet inside. We feel free and embraced in our tiny wheeled fiberglass box that shelters us wherever…

Note: All photos shared by Rowen Stephens, Peter Morton, Fred Lundahl and Nydia Blood. A young man who imagined being a pilot in 2017 has nearly completed training at an Arizona Aeronautical University, nailed a commercial pilot’s license and, recently earned his flight instructor’s license as well. When Rowen Stephens was in eighth grade at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School, he reached out to a trio of mentors who got him started in flying planes: local pilots Fred Lundahl, Aaron Simpson and Peter Morton. The South Whidbey Record ran a story about Stephens’ class project in an April 2017 issue.…

Update June 9, 2023: Coyla Shepard, co-founder of the Tiny Houses in the Name of Christ, sent a text: “Hallelujah. People are moving into the tiny houses today. An idea for workforce housing has become reality with the near completion of  Tiny Houses in the Name of Christ—or THiNC—in the City of Langley. With nine, 264-square-foot cottages circling a landscaped courtyard, the setting is welcoming and attractive. The homes, painted in palettes of blue, green, or grey, feature front porches and flower boxes under the windows. One house is covered in cedar panels. A tenth building painted green, houses a…

Note: Victory Schouten said it was OK to run this press release to celebrate artist Brian Mahieu’s debut exhibition at the Rob Schouten Gallery June 1-26 in Langley. Brian channels the powerful feeling of the Olympic Peninsula through his art. –Kate Explorations of the North Olympic Coast and the Hoh Rainforest are the subject of Brian Mahieu’s debut exhibition at the gallery. While working for many years as a plein-air painter, Mahieu has now added studio work to his repertoire. Working in bold, assertive strokes and intense color Brian views his paintings as the esthetic records of a moment in…

While our island life appears idyllic, we have folks who struggle to find a way out of their dilemmas. People we may think are beautiful and successful on the exterior may be the walking wounded, masking their pain. Having come from difficult family dynamics herself, Jennifer Lovely has discovered tools that helped open a path to a greater  sense of well-being. She has since formed her own practice, which uses therapeutic coaching techniques to help heal past traumas. “Trauma is not what happened to us, it is what happened inside us,” she explained. “I help people look at what goes…

Linda and Leonard Good, who created a lasting legacy of community, music and science, will leave Whidbey Island—where they have lived since the 1960s—and are moving to New York to be closer to family. A street parade in their honor was hosted Saturday May 20. Dozens of well-wishers and former students lined the street to bid the much-loved couple farewell. A parade of drums and violins, guitars and banjos played the Swedish Walking Tune. The band of musicians began at Second Street and Anthes, walked up Second Street to the Langley Library, then serenaded folks at Good Cheer Thrift Store,…

A neglected strip of land outside a Langley elementary school was brought to life with the help of 15 first- and second-graders and their teacher Caris Ristoff. Meanwhile, Andi Kopit guided third through fifth graders at the Organic Farm School in installing pollinator boxes they designed and built. Caris is the lead teacher for the first and second graders with South Whidbey School District’s Alternative Learning Experience Program. Along with Caris’ program Andi is a pollination biologist and community based instructor with the K-8 ALE program. Each of the women teach students in the Alternative Education Experience or ALE program,…

Note–I am printing this press release from the Whidbey Audubon Society. Some of the events have already taken place. This article is a way for us to become acquainted with the amazing birdlife here on Whidbey. –Kate Flock in for some great family fun!  So says the Whidbey Audubon Society which is holding its first ever bird festival, Wings over Whidbey, May 18 to 20 — and it’s free. Based in Coupeville, there are lectures, classes and lots of outdoor field trips. A full schedule is on the society’s website: Wings Over Whidbey Festival. Please visit to learn details and…

I’ve known Cheryl—Cherub—Dr. Love—Zimmermann for 23 years and have long appreciated her connection to a higher power. I first met her in 2000 as the owner of  Langley’s Living Green Natural Food & Apothecary, first housed in a yellow cottage next to Langley’s post office, and later in the Langley building which later hosted Tim Leonard’s former Machine Shop. Cherub’s store was Langley’s haven for health and well being for years. Nowadays, with her husband Denis Zimmermann’s soul-satisfying Ultra House ramen eatery next door, Cherub opened a little temple to better living called Tonic Juice & Remedy. Before I walked…