Wednesday night, rock celebrities the Foo Fighters played Port Orchard. That’s right. Port Orchard.
As part of a promotional tour for their new album Wasting Light, they’ve been playing in fans’ garages, one of whom apparently lives in Port Orchard. The show got an immediate post-show mention by radio station 107.7 The End and shortly after, a video posted by one of the lucky 50 who got in to see the show:
To help those affected by the earthquake and tusnami (and impending nuclear crisis) in Japan, businesses and individuals from the Kitsap Peninsula have started donation drives and offering help through the Navy and relief organizations. Here are several efforts that we know of so far.
• Poulsbo Company Grounds for Change has created a Japan Relief Blend to raise money for Mercy Corps. It will donate $2 from each $10 bag sold.
• Members of the Peninsula Japanese Women’s Club started calling friends and family Monday to collect donations, which they will give to the Red Cross. The club is comprised mainly of older women who were born in Japan and came to the Kitsap Peninsula, often with their Navy husbands. (Disclaimer: My grandma belongs to this group, which is how I know about and trust it enough to mention it.)
• Bainbridge Gardens will match up to $1,000 of customers’ donations to the American Red Cross. People can drop off their donations at the gardens at 9415 Miller Road NE.
• Naturally 4Paws in Silverdale has set out a donation jar and will pledge 100 percent of Thursday’s profits to benefit the World Vets organization.
If you know of other local fundraisers, please let everyone know about it in the comments or e-mail sunnews@kitsapsun.com.
Additionally, dozens of nonprofit relief agencies are collecting donations online:
As always, be careful to whom you donate money. Donations scams started popping up shortly after this disaster. The Secretary of State’s Office has a good guide on how to avoid scams while helping earthquake and tsunami victims.
There she was, tied to a tree, in a park in a town she didn’t know very well.
There he was, on a horse riding across a field.
He, Josh Diamond of Bremerton, blond-haired, with wide, blue eyes and rising at what would be an imposing 6-foot, 6-inches if you didn’t see the never-too-old-to-be-a-kid kind of grin and the classic Mickey Mouse watch. She, Taylore Leas of Texas, a 5-foot tall brunette, and as Josh describes her, the kind of girl with a bubbly personality you see in the movies, “a princess.”
Both were by Island Lake under a cloudy winter sky, and surrounded by marauders.
This, in one way, is the beginning of the end of this story.
The beginning was a continent away, under the sunny skies of Orlando, Fla. at Walt Disney World.
Josh grew up singing Disney songs — his favorite is Hakuna Matata — and thought he may one day become a high school band director until he learned he could work for Disney.
Taylore has been a fan of Disney since before she could talk. When she was in the sixth grade, she visited Disney World for the first time, and when she saw the Disney wedding pavilion, its bright white steeples overlooking a cerulean lagoon, she thought, “that’s where I want to get married.”
It’s a place where fantasy and reality collide, and where, in 2009, the two were interning as entertainers.
When they first met, “she absolutely hated me,” Josh said. She offered a more tempered assessment. She thought he was “nice.” He asked her to hang out. She repeatedly turned him down.
But, “He was persistent,” she said.
He convinced her to hang out, which eventually became an every day thing. They’d go out, get ice cream and watch the fireworks burst over Cinderella Castle. At on Dec. 29, 2009, they officially started dating.
And soon after, as happens in all good stories, they faced a big challenge.
Four days later, Josh returned to Washington State University, where he studies music and marketing. She stayed in Orlando.
They vowed, though, to continue dating. They decided to write
each other weekly letters describing scenes from their
childhood.
The letters, though, gave way to text messages spilling the
contents of the letters. There were daily phone or Skype calls and
a spring break visit. Josh returned to Orlando during the summer
for seasonal work then came back to Washington. Taylore went back
to Texas to finish her liberal studies degree with concentrations
in English and math.
The texts and calls continued.
Long-distance relationships don’t always make it. They’re a lot of work; keeping up communication can be difficult. But Josh “had this feeling that she is the only girl who makes me happy,” he said.
So in October, he began to plan.
He began to write a story, a script, about a princess sent on a quest in which she would outwit a master of trickery, kill a prince of thieves and be kidnapped by a band of pirates. It included a treasure, swords and parts for 18 people including, of course, a prince.
He hand-drew and aged a heart-shaped map. He tore it in three pieces that would have to be found along the way in places otherwise known as NAD Park, the Fairgrounds playground and Island Lake Camp. For two months, it was all he talked about with friends and family. He instructed them to keep it secret, make it as real as possible and gave them all a copy of his script.
And on the morning of Dec. 29, Taylore, who had come to visit for Christmas break, was awoken by two “handmaidens.” Taylore wasn’t sure what to think. She thought at first that it was an elaborate celebration of their one-year anniversary.
“It was Josh. You never know what’s going to happen,” she said.
What happened was recorded on video:
Josh wanted to give her a fairy tale. He wanted to be, for her, a prince literally riding in on a horse.
As he rode toward her, she still wasn’t sure what was coming next. He brandished a sword and fought with the pirates that had tied her to the tree and regained control of a locked black box that contained another little black box with a ring nestled inside. She started to cry and could barely speak a “yes”.
“You just picture that perfect romantic moment from the time you’re five or six years old. You want it to be nothing less than perfect,” she said.
By the time she was atop the horse and walking away with Josh,
she was grinning.
A video that recorded the event — which has gotten 17,500 views on YouTube in the month it’s been up — closes with “The End.” But Josh and Taylore say they’re not so naive as to think that their story ends here.
Even after the wedding, which they hope they can have at that shining Disney chapel, they are far closer to “Once Upon a Time.” The dating and the proposal merely an exciting lead to start the story of their journey.
“If I was going to go on a quest with anyone, it would definitely be Taylore,” Josh said.
There will be ups, downs, quarrels and more real life, they say. It’ll be work.
But, they both said in separate conversations, in the end it will be “happily ever after.”
