Here’s the Friday preview: Bainbridge edition for Dec. 14. Feel free to give your events a plug in the comment section below. Above, a detail from the 2013 Kids Can Make a Difference calendar, illustrated by Ordway Elementary third graders. The calendars, which benefit programs on Ometepe, are available at Ordway through Dec. 21.

Weather: The National Weather Service predicts rain showers and temperatures in the low 40s this weekend.  Expect a little wind as well, with gusts up to 25 mph.

Sports: Another full slate of winter sports today. Wrestling is away at the Hammerhead Invitational in Silverdale. Bainbridge gymnastics welcomes Bellingham, Mercer Island, Squalicum and Sehome at 6 p.m.

Spartans basketball hosts Franklin. Girls varsity tips off at 6:15, followed by the boys at 8 p.m. A home swim meet was postponed.

See a full Spartans schedule here and follow the Sun’s Prepzone on Facebook for updates. Continue reading →

Street of the Week: Chatham Place

Location: Runs north from Meadowmeer Circle

History: HMS Chatham was a 135-ton armed tender manned by a crew of 45 that sailed the ocean blue under Captain George Vancouver. The ship, considered small in naval terms, arrived in Port Blakely Harbor in 1792 where the crew found a quiet place to make repairs to their vessels.

Source: “Picture Bainbridge,” Jack Swanson, Historical Society, 2002.

This occasional Islander series explores the history of island street names, as compiled by Elinor Ringland and fellow Bainbridge Island Historical Society volunteers. If you have an island road story to share, email Ringland at elinorjoe@msn.com.

Here’s the Friday preview: Bainbridge edition for Nov. 9. Feel free to give your events a plug in the comment section below. Read the Sun’s regional Friday preview here. Above left, Sarah Grundman looks to defend her state title in Federal Way this weekend. (Meegan Reid/File photo)

Weather: Our string of cold clear days should continue through Saturday, with highs in the mid 40s and near-freezing temperatures at night, according to the National Weather Service. A chance of rain is predicted for Veterans Day, with rain likely Sunday night.

Sports: Bainbridge is well represented in the girls state swimming championships, which begin this afternoon in Federal Way. Senior Sarah Grundman looks to defend her 500-yard freestyle title. See a full sports schedule here and follow the Sun’s PrepZone page on Facebook for updates.

Around the island: 

• The public is invited to help the Bainbridge Island Special Needs Foundation celebrate the 10th birthday of Stephens House from 4-7 p.m. Saturday in the Boys & Girls Club space at the Bainbridge Aquatic Center. There will be a DJ, refreshments and cake.

• Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra launches its 40th season this weekend with performances of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, accompanied by other works. Concerts are 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Mezzo soprano Sarah Mattox will also perform.

• The city welcomes new manager Doug Schulze and his family to the island at 3 p.m. Sunday at City Hall. The city is also launching a food drive for Helpline House in conjunction with the event. Donations will be accepted Sunday through Nov. 17 at City Hall and other participating locations. Helpline House is organizing its own three day food drive Nov. 15-17.

• Pick up this week’s Islander for more event listings and tell us about your events in the comment section below.

Inside the Islander: See a roundup of local election results and learn about the history of Agate Point and its many roads.

The week in review: 

• The state and federal government are studying how to remove 1 million gallons of creosote and other chemicals from the Wyckoff Superfund site.
• Former Bainbidge High teacher Rory Wilson safely guided his experimental boat into Hawaii last week.
• Bainbridge Island Land Trust must decide by December whether to purchase 12 acres on Agate Passage.
• Bainbridge Democrat Jay Inslee took a solid lead in the governor’s race Tuesday, but opponent Rob McKenna has yet to concede.
• Island lawyer Sheryl Gordon McCloud was elected to a spot on the state Supreme Court, while fellow island lawyer Karen Klein fell short in her bid for a county Superior Court position.
• The election resulted in no change to Bainbridge’s representation in Olympia.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the week. Contact Bainbridge reporter Tad Sooter at tad.sooter@gmail.com.

Here’s the Friday preview: Bainbridge edition for Oct. 26. Feel free to give your events a plug in the comment section below. Read the Sun’s regional Friday preview here. 

Weather: If you like rain with your clouds you’ll love this weekend’s weather. Rain is likely tonight through Sunday with temperatures in the low 50s, according to the National Weather Service.

Sports:  The Spartans are grinding into postseason and the football team was surprised to find itself in the playoff hunt. Bainbridge plays West Seattle at 5 p.m. Saturday at Memorial Stadium in Seattle for the seventh spot in the district playoffs. The swim team already boasts an impressive list of athletes qualified for state. See a full sports schedule here and follow the Sun’s PrepZone page on Facebook for playoff updates.

Around the island: 

• Halloween is officially next Wednesday, but the weekend is packed full of spooky events nonetheless. For the second weekend, visitors can experience “Blackbeard’s Bilge,” a haunted event in the basement of the Battle Point Park Transmitter Building. The “Bilge” is open 7-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and entry is $5 ($10 for a group of three). Consider this event PG-13 rated (not appropriate for young children).

• Island Center Hall hosts a night of live storytelling beginning at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. The fright-level will rise through the evening beginning with stories for very young children and concluding with stories for teens, along with an open mic session. Tickets are $5 in advance or $10 at the door. Find full details here.

• Bring a pumpkin and carving tools to IslandWood from 1-5 p.m. Sunday to craft Jack-o’-lanterns with the help of kitchen staff. Other HOWL-o-ween festival events will spice up the night. Costumes encouraged.

• And finally, we know it’s not a weekend event, but the island’s Trick or Treat Downtown event will be held 4-6 p.m. Oct. 31 in Winslow.

• Pick up this week’s Islander for more event listings and tell us about your events in the comment section below.

Inside the Islander: Julia Bringloe’s bravery in Afghanistan put her among an elite class of flyers.

The week in review: 

• The City Council green-lighted a new crosswalk for Sportsman Club Road schools.
• Islanders welcomed former Bainbridge High student Julia Bringloe who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.
•  The city agreed to pay nearly $1.4 million to the family of the mentally ill man shot by police in 2010.
• WSDOT is studying improvements to the Suquamish Way/Highway 305 intersection (but don’t expect a bridge expansion).
• Property owners want the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their lawsuit over a Blakely Harbor dock ban.
• Islander and state House candidate James Olsen was ordered to stop using the state seal on campaign ads.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the week. Contact Bainbridge reporter Tad Sooter at tad.sooter@gmail.com.

Here’s the Friday preview: Bainbridge edition for Oct. 19. Feel free to give your events a plug in the comment section below. Read the Sun’s regional Friday preview here. Above, a screenshot from “Caldera,” one of the films playing at Celluloid Bainbridge this weekend.

Weather: The National Weather Service is predicting an uninspiring mix of clouds and showers for the weekend. Expect highs in the low 50s and lows in the low 40s.

Sports:  Spartans football took a drubbing from O’Dea last night in the rain. Water polo plays Kentridge Saturday at the Aquatics Center. The full Spartans schedule is online.

Around the island: 

• The Celluloid Bainbridge Film Festival headlines a very busy weekend on the island. Veteran documentarians discuss making films in remote locations at 6 p.m. tonight at the Bainbridge Library. Festival films will be screened at the Historic Lynwood Theatre on Saturday and Sunday. Check the Bainbridge Arts and Humanities Council website for more information.

• Families looking for a not-so-scary October event will appreciate the Bainbridge Gardens Pumpkin Walk. The tour runs 6-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Miller Road gardens. Donations will be accepted for the Boys and Girls Club.

• Former poet laureate Billy Collins will hold a public reading from 3-4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Bainbridge High School gym. Tickets start at $10 and proceeds benefit the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

• Pick up this week’s Islander for more event listings and tell us about your events in the comment section below.

Inside the Islander: Ever wonder how Bainbridge roads got their names? A new Islander column explores the history and legend of island streets.

The week in review: 

• On Monday night a water heater fire forced the evacuation of the Aquatics Center.
•  Candidates for 23rd Legislative District Positions squared off in Poulsbo.
• A merger of hospital groups could lead to a new urgent care center on the island.
• An islander led O’Dea against Bainbridge this week in football.
• The City Council approved a design contract for Eagle Harbor sewer main replacement.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the week. Contact Bainbridge reporter Tad Sooter at tad.sooter@gmail.com.

A salmon, strawberry, fir tree and heron will be emblazoned on the new “Bainbridge Bag.”

Voters chose a design by islander Diane Walker to decorate the reusable cloth bag, which the city will distribute to promote awareness of the fast-approaching ban on plastic shopping bags.

The city put out a call for design ideas in September and received 44 entries, which were displayed at City Hall. Islanders cast 154 votes for their favorite logos and Walker’s illustration emerged the winner.

Her design will be printed on 500 bags to be handed out in Winslow beginning Oct. 31. Merchants can purchase additional bags from the city to sell or give away.

The plastic bag ban takes effect Nov. 1. It prohibits stores from distributing single-use plastic shopping bags at checkout stands. See the city’s website for more information.

Reader David Moore submitted this photo of a whale breaching by his sailboat Monday.

Reader Chris Beamer Otterson snapped this picture of an orca passing President Point near Kingston Monday. 

Dori Johnson contributed this shot of a mother and calf she took from Fay Bainbridge. 

Thanks to Chris and Dori for sending in photos. If you have a whale pic you’d like to share, please email Tad at tad.sooter@gmail.com or upload it to the Bainbridge Islander page on Facebook.

You can see our whale photos from Monday here and read Chris Dunagan’s piece on orcas in Puget Sound. The orcas belong to the resident J, K and L pods according to whale experts. This was the farthest south the orcas have been spotted this season.

The City Council could pick the next Bainbridge manager before tonight is over.

The council will interview the three finalists for the city manager position in an executive session at the start of its regular study session, which begins at 4:30 p.m. The council may return to open session at 9:30 p.m. to discuss the hiring process. Several council members on Tuesday said they were optimistic a selection could be made at that time.

The three finalists (pictured above) were on Bainbridge for a tour of the island and a public reception Tuesday. About 40 residents attended the meet-and-greet at City Hall. The candidates gave brief introductions then mingled.

Stay tuned for coverage from this evening’s meeting. In the meantime you can read our stories on the background of the three candidates and the short but turbulent history of Bainbridge city managers. The city also has resumes and background documents posted on its city manager search page.

(Tad Sooter photos)

Two months from now, plastic shopping bags will disappear from island checkout stands. In the hopes of not catching shoppers by surprise with the Nov. 1 bag ban, the city has launched an awareness campaign.

The campaign began this week with the announcement of a bag design contest. The city is inviting creatively-inclined islanders to submit logo ideas for a cloth bag, which will become the official “Bainbridge Bag.” About 500 of the bags will be printed up and given away to encourage reusable bag use before the ban begins.

Designs must be no larger than 5 inches wide and 8 inches tall. The city is accepting submissions through Sept. 28 and the public can vote for their favorite logos Oct. 1-12 at City Hall.

The City Council unanimously approved the bag ban back in April. For more information, go to the city’s website or call code enforcement at (206) 780-3769.

Three Bainbridge firefighters are east of the Cascades today, battling wildfires that erupted over the weekend. 

Bainbridge Fire dispatched a water tender crewed by Lt. Sequoia Jones and firefighter Matt Phillips to a large fire outside Wenatchee Sunday evening. Firefighter Jason Livdahl was sent to join a Mason County strike team. He will likely be assisting with a fire in Lincoln County, Bainbridge Assistant Chief Luke Carpenter said. Livdahl is training to become a strike team leader.

The firefighters were dispatched as part of a statewide response, coordinated regionally by North Kitsap Fire & Rescue. Carpenter said Bainbridge units were requested at about 4:30 p.m. Sunday and were en route within two hours.

Lightning sparked scores of wildfires in central Washington Saturday. The largest, west of Wenatchee, spread over 500 acres and forced the evacuation of 180 homes Sunday, according to the Associated Press.

Kitsap County received a much-needed dousing of rain Sunday night, but the precipitation fell west of the Cascades.

“The good news is we got rain here, but the bad news is, not a drop of it made it across the mountains,” Carpenter said.

Bainbridge Fire will post updates it receives from firefighters east of the mountains on its Facebook page.

The unveiling of a “friendlier” Winslow Way hasn’t sparked a resurgence for downtown businesses. At least not yet.

Sales tax figures released for the first six months of 2012 showed receipts from downtown Winslow were down 1.9 percent compared to the same period last year ($211,718 compared to $215,863). That figure might seem insignificant until you recall what Winslow Way looked like in the first half of 2011:

Sales were lower from January to June this year than in 2011, when shoppers braved a jungle of barricades and traffic cones to visit shops. Downtown continued to lose businesses as well, down to 172 from a total of 201 in 2011.

Continue reading →

When fly fishermen approach a stream they watch for a few familiar bugs. A flurry of mayflies, caddisflies or stoneflies tell an experienced angler what food fish are rising for.

When water quality specialists approach a stream they look for the same insects for different reasons. To the trained eye, those water-dwelling macro invertebrates offer clues to the overall health of a creek.

I received a crash course on stream bugs Wednesday as I tagged along with volunteers from the city’s Water Quality and Flow Monitoring Program, in preparation for a story on the city’s State of the Island’s Waters report, which was released with little fanfare earlier this summer.

Five years of data gathered from all 12 Bainbridge watersheds and around the island’s shoreline went into the report. It’s the first comprehensive study of island water health the city has completed. The report confirmed that many island streams still struggle with high levels of harmful bacteria and nutrients, and low dissolved oxygen.

Continue reading →