Tales of the Magic Skagit

I’ve recently been working on a tribute to the beloved Skagit Valley historian, Dick Fallis, whose stories of local history appeared in the Skagit Valley Herald , The Argus , and the Puget Sound Mail , which he once owned. This is a reading of his story entitled, “Founding Women, Pioneers, Remembered on Mother’s Day,” from the book Bridgeside: Selected Stories of Dick Fallis, Skagit County Histori...

The Magic Skagit has an embarrassment of culinary riches when it comes to the cuisine of Mexico, and a lot of different types of venues to choose from. There are fancy dine-in restaurants, food trucks, mercados and carnecerias , periodic street fair food stands, and even the occasional gas station take-out option. While most of these sources of the south-of-the-border foods so beloved by Americans...

Melissa Stowe’s fascination with a local utopian socialist community known as Equality Colony goes back to her childhood in Bow, Washington. Her family had one of the last of the late 19th century town’s buildings on their property. Her curiosity about Equality Colony’s history grew as she did, and as a thirteen year old she placed third in a statewide history project based on her research into th...

The Skagit Valley Chorale was founded in 1984 by Joan Penney with the support of the Skagit Valley College Foundation. Under the current direction of Dr. Yvette Burdick it numbers 80 some singers. Skagit Valley Chorale's twice annual and highly popular performances are its "Heralding Christmas" concert, presented shortly after Thanksgiving and featuring classical and contemporary cho...

I first met Sgt. Brent Thompson of the Mount Vernon Police Department when I enrolled in the MVPD's Citizens Academy -- a twelve-week program designed to teach folks in our community about how local enforcement works. It's an experience that I recommend for anyone who lives here -- and if you believe that a community gets the law enforcement it deserves, I'm pretty sure you're goin...

Sugar Mama Cafe's website sums up the mission of this new gem in Anacortes, Washington's culinary crown: "Sugar Mama is a place to meet with friends and relax. To enjoy a scrumptious dessert paired with a delicious glass of PNW wine. To share a plate of savory treats with your favorite date. To relax in a comfy chair with a good book and a latte. To catch up with your bae on the weeke...

In part one of our Treaty Day series, “January 22, 1855,” we considered the history behind the Treaty of Point Elliott. In part two, "Why We Celebrate,” we looked at the treaty’s aftermath. We conclude this series with an interview with tsi sq́ʷalʔalq́ʷal (pronounced: tsee sqwal al qwal), also known as Lora Pennington — an elder with the Upper Skagit Tribe. Due to the length of the interview...

This episode of our Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast series marks an important first: it's the first time our Skagit Valley Youth History Project intern, Morgan (Go Bulldogs!) has been involved in an interview. I think you'll agree that she added some additional zest to the conversation. Which is saying something when your interview subject is none other than Señor Ramon Rivera, the man w...

This is the story of the creation of an artwork that is destined to be a part of our Magic Skagit for many years to come: Valley or Our Spirits. In this podcast episode I speak with artist and Upper Skagit Elder Jay Bowen about what is arguably the most recognized piece of public art in Mount Vernon, given its location in the city's riverside plaza. We discuss the artwork's inspiration, th...

The current exhibit at the Skagit County Historical Museum is a tribute to the barbershop as not only a place for tonsorial care, but also as a repository for local history. In this interview with SCHM executive director Jo Wolfe and archivist Mari Densmore, we'll learn about the inspiration for the exhibit, discover interesting facts about the history of barbering, and pay our respects to loc...

Ellen Gamson is the Executive Director of Mount Vernon Downtown Association, a role that she evolved into just as the organization she was instrumental in creating evolved as well. In this Tales of the Magic Skagit interview with Ellen, you'll learn a little about her own Magic Skagit story and the mission of the Mount Vernon Downtown Association (MVDA). She'll also recount some of the mor...

It’s Stave Five, the final chapter of Charles Dickens’ story of Christmas redemption. Scrooge awakens from a nightmare in a graveyard to find himself alive and in his own bed…with the bedcurtains still intact. But Scrooge isn’t the same person he was when he went to bed, and the world no longer looks the same to him as well. For Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is not only the day of birth of a very sp...

In Stave Four of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” we are brought into the eerie presence of the Ghost of Christmas Future — the literary character that most scared the bejeezus out of me as a young reader. And more than six decades since discovering the joy of reading Charles Dickens’ holiday classic, I still get creeped out by the ghost that was depicted as the love child of the grim reaper and a sp...

This is the third chapter, or “stave” as Charles Dicken called it, of “A Christmas Carol” — in which we meet the affable but short-lived Ghost of Christmas Present. In the company of this Ghost, Ebenezer Scrooge travels the breadth of the British Isles and beyond in the space of a single night…only to discover a horror that the Ghost has hidden in his robe. Pay particular attention to Dickens’ use...

In this second part of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," we meet the first of the spirits that Marley's ghost had foretold would visit Ebenezer Scrooge: the Ghost of Christmas Past. Dickens pulls off the literary feat of creating a description of this gentle but persistent spirit that reflects the attributes of memory itself. We also attend the ultimate office Christmas party...

Between now and Christmas Eve I’ll be reading a chapter a day of the Charles Dickens holiday classic, “A Christmas Carol” — a timeless tale of love and renewal in keeping with the story of Christmas itself. Dickens divided his yuletide novella into five parts, which he referred to as “staves” rather than as chapters. I’d often wondered about the meaning of the word stave, which typically refers to...

This is the first in what I'm hoping will be many future podcast episodes of interviews with Skagit Valley Vietnam veterans. The majority of these vets are in their seventies and eighties, so within the next couple of decades their voices will become silent, and their first-hand accounts of a conflict that defined a generation will be lost unless recorded. My first interview subject happens to...

Ramon Rivera has a smile that immediately raises your serotonin levels. He may modestly describe himself as "a public school teacher," but the students whose lives he has touched through Mount Vernon High School Mariachi, Folklorico, and Latinos in Action know just how much of an understatement this is. In this freewheeling and delightful conversation with Ramon we learn about his backgr...

“Are you blind to the sacred teachings?” he said to them. “Have you not read this: ‘the tree the lodge builders threw away has become the Chief Lodgepole. This is what the Great spirit has done, and it will fill us with wonder?’” (Matthew 21:33-46 (First Nations Version) My wife and I had the great pleasure of attending Sunday service at Burlington Lutheran Church yesterday. Although we’ve worship...

September 2, 2023, marked the First Annual Tom Robbins Day in La Conner, WA — an event long overdue considering the decades during which its dean of letters has chosen to reside in what he has described as “this little clam-cawed outpost where I continue to follow the Charmer’s pipes down oblique paths of…well, I’m unsure if there is a fitting name for it.” Robbins’ description of La Conner is a t...

Bruce McCormick (known to many as "Honker" for his love of waterfowl) passed away on Thursday, September 21, just a few months shy of his 92nd birthday. His was a larger-than-life personality that embodied so many of the things I appreciate about living in the Magic Skagit. During the time I got to know Bruce, I recorded some podcast interviews with him about pioneer history as he learne...

One of the more curious chapters of Washington State history was the incident known as The Pig War. The name seems a bit of a whimsical misnomer, since only one shot was fired in anger, and its victim was a hog. Nevertheless, it resulted in a military confrontation between Great Britain and the United States that might have led to war between the two countries, nearly half a century following the...

The current exhibit at the Skagit County Historical Museum is called "I Do" -- and as its name suggests, it chronicles the evolving fashions and customs of marriage as witnessed in the Skagit Valley from the late 1800s to the present. More than just a collection of wedding attire, the exhibit offers some fascinating insights into the way we view the institution of matrimony, as well as s...

On the last day of the 2023 Skagit County Fair, Don Wick and I interviewed Mark Howe with the Puget Sound Garden Railroad Society about the perennial joy of model trains. John Christianson shared the story of his beloved Magic Skagit nursery. Ann Ratcliff recalled her childhood on Samish Island and recounted what it took to become a Fair Princess in 1946 (or what it '45?). We learned about the...

On Day 3 of the Skagit County Fair, Don Wick and I had some wonderful conversations. We learned how one fair goer's traumatic experience ensured that gambling would never become a vice. We talked to a photographer with the ambitious goal of photo documenting all the county fairs in Washington. We interviewed the former mayor of Concrete, WA about the revival of a local newspaper, and we ended...