same colour, isn't it.........................
Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Kazuo Ishiguro is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
What's your opinion?
Is it a good decision?
By the way did Betty MacDonald receive any International Awards?
Let us know, please and you might be our Betty MacDonald fan club Sunday surprise winner.
Good luck!
There are still some Betty MacDonald fan club fans who seem to have problems answering the recent Betty MacDonald fan club contest questions.
Regarding the mysterious couple it wouldn't be a bad idea to to listen to Wolfgang Hampel's wonderful interview with Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett.
Alison Bard Burnett mentions this couple several times in this unique intereview.
The other Betty MacDonald fan club contest question: Who is this very beautiful lady? is easy to answer after reading the recent essay by Anita and Eartha Kitt II.
I guess you won't have any problems now.
By the way if you join us a follower of Betty MacDonald fan club blog during October you'll get a real Betty MacDonald fan club treasure.
It's very easy.
You only have to push the ' join' button on this page.
Don't miss it, please.
Send us your email-adress, please and we are going to send this very special Betty MacDonald fan club gift to you.
Good luck in anwering our Betty MacDonald fan club contest questiones.
Maybe you will be our next Betty MacDonald fan club surprise winners.
Vashon and Maury islands got their first mountain bike park.
Dockton Forest has beginner and intermediate trails worth the trip.
Pieter
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
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Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
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Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
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A Trip Across Water, and Time, From Seattle
UNBEKNOWNST
to the rest of us, the Washington State Department of Transportation
has invented a time machine. Sure, it looks like a ferry, running the
route between Seattle and Vashon Island dozens of times a day. But how
else to explain what you find when you arrive on Vashon?
Only
22 minutes from downtown Seattle and with a land mass the size of
Manhattan, the hilly, woodsy island has a population of just 10,000.
It’s home to over a dozen small family farms — the kind that in most
places were swallowed up by big agribusiness decades ago — selling their
kale and beets and free-range eggs through unmanned farm stands that
accept payment on the honor system. In the island’s main town,
shopkeepers greet their patrons by name, and the only traffic jams are
found on the sidewalk where townsfolk stop to chat unhurriedly with
their friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers.
The
ferry may not be an actual time machine, but it is the only way on or
off the island. Unlike its more developed island counterparts, Mercer
and Bainbridge, Vashon has no bridge connecting it to the mainland — a
crucial part of its unspoiled character. Residents even went so far as
to fight a plan to build one when it was proposed in 1992. As a result,
Vashon retains its Mayberry-meets-Burning-Man character, a place where
Seattleites (and in-the-know visitors) can get a taste of small-town
life along with, say, a glass of bright and fruity Vashon wine at a
local exhibition of painted silks, or a handful of blackberries picked
from the trail on one of the island’s parks, beaches and nature
preserves.
From
Seattle, Vashon makes a great overnight trip, just enough time to
explore the island by bike and kayak and, in general, sample life in
Puget Sound at an old-fashioned pace. I made just that sort of visit
last summer. But I decided I wanted more than a taste of that life. So
with my wife starting a job at the University of Washington, we moved to
the island last September.
I
spent the first few weeks exploring the island’s galleries, forests and
beaches, playing the role of tourist in my new home. The hub of
activity, I soon learned, is the main town, which is in the northern
third of the island and is also called Vashon. Many locals simply refer
to it as Uptown. Viewed from one angle, Vashon is your average small
town, with three banks, a hardware store, a post office, a theater, a
bookstore and a couple of supermarkets. From another perspective, it is
an enclave of hippies, with a gluten-free/vegan cafe, a fair-trade gift
store selling items like woven root place mats and hand-thrown pottery, a
yoga studio, a Saturday farmers’ market and a half-dozen art galleries
showing everything from wildlife photographs to works consisting
entirely of words.
If
you want to experience that artistic quality firsthand, you can base
yourself near Vashon where you’ll find the Artist’s Studio Loft. If
you’re looking for a rural getaway, there are a number of B&Bs that
offer solitude and spectacular views (weather permitting).
Outside
Vashon town, the island is full of small communities, most of which
don’t have so much as a general store. The main exception is Burton, a
few miles south of town along two-lane Vashon Highway, which is lined
with horse farms and red-barked madrona trees. If you include Maury
Island (which was a separate island until an isthmus was built in 1916
connecting the two), the shape of Vashon is like a lobster claw. The
space between the pincers is Quartermaster Harbor, at whose innermost
point rests the village of Burton. Burton makes the town of Vashon look
like a metropolis, offering just the necessities: a post office, a
general store, a garage and, this being Vashon, an art gallery and an
antiques store.
It’s
also home to the Burton Coffee Stand, perhaps the best place for an
outsider to experience the island’s spirit. A small shack and portico
decorated with clematis vines and Adirondack chairs, each day the Stand
hosts the writers, programmers, mothers and farmers who come to joke and
trade gossip with their friends. Kathy Kush, the owner and proprietor,
seems to know everyone’s name, but even if she forgets, she still
remembers their usual drink orders. If Kathy or the regulars see someone
they don’t recognize, they’ll often sweep them right up into the
conversation, as they did with me the first time I visited. The Burton
folks wanted to know all about my writing and my wife’s research; they
tried to outdo one another with jokes about the culture shock of moving
from Brooklyn to Vashon.
My
Seattle-area friends had led me to expect two things from Vashon: free
love and dreadlocks. Since no one’s hair appeared unwashed, I asked the
Burtonites about the popular perception of the island. They roundly
denied it. “We’re not all crazy hippies!” a sprightly, white-haired
organic farmer declared. Then she handed me a business card that
identified her as the “Contessa of Compost.”
However
you define a hippie, one thing is for sure: Vashon is full of
arts-minded people, both connoisseurs and creators. This is an island
with a fraction of the population of an average New York neighborhood,
yet it has its own opera company, chamber music society, artist studio
tour, a Prairie Home Companion-like variety show called “Church of Great
Rain,” a Shakespeare in the Park program and summer concert series —
not to mention a First Friday Gallery Cruise and a $16.5 million
performing arts center breaking ground this year.
This
sanctuary for artists is also a popular destination for Seattle-area
cyclists and sea kayakers, the former for the island’s backwoods roads,
and the latter for the protected waters of Quartermaster Harbor. The
Vashon Park District rents kayaks from Jensen Point May through
September, but as my new house was right on the water, I bought my own
boat off Craigslist and spent afternoons exploring the harbor. Sea life
was my constant companion, from the swarms of jellyfish I had to
gingerly push away with my paddle, to the flocks of surf scoters whose
wings trilled as they cut the air, to the small harbor seal I didn’t
notice until I was almost upon it, whiskers and speckled nose barely
breaking the waterline. I explored inlets like Judd Creek, where a
reddish-brown two-decker barge sits partly submerged at high tide. This
belonged to a man who, for reasons lost to history, had filled it with
sewing machines as part of his preparations to convert the structure
into a houseboat that he hoped to tow to Alaska.
That’s
not even Vashon’s strangest landmark. The honor belongs to a tree, just
off the highway near the second four-way stop. It appears to have eaten
a small bicycle. That’s not far from the truth: many years ago, a child
left a red bike against the tree, and, this being Vashon, the bike was
left unmolested for so long that the tree grew a branch under the bike
and eventually subsumed the frame into its trunk, leaving only the
wheels and handlebars sticking out. The bicycle tree was made famous by
Berkeley Breathed, of “Bloom County” fame, who wrote a touching
children’s book called “Red Ranger Came Calling” about the bike’s “true”
origin.
Vashon
doesn’t have the culinary offerings of the mainland, but neither is it
your typical small-town restaurant scene. There is a legit sushi joint
(Red Bicycle Bistro, natch), a Chinese restaurant, two Mexican
restaurants, a new Indian place, a farm-to-table establishment and the
island’s most popular spot, the Hardware Store Restaurant, built in the
121-year-old building of Vashon’s former hardware store. Out front hangs
a sign that reads, “Today’s special ... so is tomorrow.”
Inside,
the northern walls are adorned with stained-glass transoms from the
original building advertising, among other things, “Aladdin Lamps and
Accessories” and “Guns and Ammo.” The cuisine is essentially upmarket
comfort food, with signature dishes like buttermilk fried chicken and
Dungeness crab cakes with roasted red pepper aioli.
So
next time you’re in the Seattle area, take a day or so and get lost on
Vashon’s backcountry roads. Have lunch Uptown and then get lost on the
backcountry roads, stopping off to sample a tomato at one of the farm
stands you’ll inevitably encounter before you rediscover the highway.
Pull on a pair of rubber boots and go clamming in Tramp Harbor at low
tide, then, still dressed like a longshoreman, stop in at the Blue Heron
Art Center to see its latest exhibition. You’ll fit right in. Finally,
get down to the Burton Coffee Stand before it closes at 3 and say hi to
Kathy and all those island eccentrics who will treat you like their
long-lost neighbor. And who knows? One of them could be me.
IF YOU GO
Vashon is accessible from the Kitsap Peninsula in the west and also Tacoma in the south, but most people will arrive from the east, via West Seattle. Ferries from West Seattle run every 20 to 60 minutes, depending on the time of day.
For lodging, think about what you’re seeking. Visitors looking to connect with Vashon’s arts scene will want to consider the Artist’s Studio Loft northeast of town (206-463-2583; vashonbedandbreakfast.com;
$119 to $215 a night). Those most interested in Vashon’s small-town
feel will do well staying in Burton, where the Quartermaster Inn is
shutting down, but a new tenant should be opening doors to guests soon.
(Call Vashon Chamber of Commerce, 206-463-6217, for details.) And people
just looking for an escape to rural beauty should try the Swallow’s Nest Guest Cottages (206-463-2646; vashonislandcottages.com; $105 to $230) on Maury, where two of the cottages have great views of the Puget Sound and Mount Rainier.
The Hardware Store Restaurant (17601 Vashon Highway SW; 206-463-1800; thsrestaurant.com) is Vashon’s central hub, and for that reason it’s good to make reservations for a Friday or Saturday. Down the street, the Red Bicycle Bistro (17618 Vashon Highway SW; 206-463-1800; redbicyclebistro.com) has live music on Fridays and great sushi, but the chef gets overloaded fairly often, so you might think about going early or late.
Vashon Island Bicycles (9925 SW 178th Street; 206-463-6225; vashonislandbicycles.com) rents cruisers for $20 a day while the Vashon Park District (vashonparkdistrict.org) rents kayaks at Jensen Point near Burton for $20 an hour or $75 a day.
