Today, March 18, us kids remember our dad’s birthday. It was on our dad’s birthday, eight years ago, that my brother and I rowed our regular four-miler on American Lake. It was only our fifth time together in the double racing shell. Down the course we weaved among buoys and small islands, hugging the shoreline, […]
Letter: The Red Helmet, Part II
The baseball players of the Clover Park High School Timberwolves take the field today for the first game of their 2023 season. The Lil’ Crushers t-ball team from Tillicum also step onto the diamond today for their first ever opportunity to play organized baseball. Like the connection between a 74 mile per hour fastball and […]
Letter: God Keeps A Journal
The ink well on heaven’s desk, does it contain ink? No, it contains tears. Our tears. With them God puts pen to paper to record our story. The Psalmist David wrote, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” […]
Letter: We’ll Fly Away
A worker bee flies from flower to flower as she works to ensure the survival of the hive. After its brief life span of eight weeks, it flies away – never to be seen again. This fact may have crossed the mind of Albert Brumley as he worked the rows of cotton on his father’s […]
Letter: Brothers
On a weathered board high up in the North Cascades at the terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail, there is scrawled a message that reads, “Never reach the end of your life only to discover you have not lived.” My younger – and only – brother hiked that trail from Lake Tahoe to the end. […]
Letter: Yet
‘Yet’ is such a lovely little word although, typically, the context is one of turmoil. The “Are We There Yet?” nursery rhyme, for example, takes the incessant and insistent backseat question of the impatient traveling companions and turns groans into games: “Let’s play a game. Look at where we are. Won’t you look with me? And tell […]
Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Association to meet March 6
Monday, March 6, at 6:30 p.m. we will meet again at the Tillicum Community Center, 14916 Washington Ave. SW and the featured presentation will be that of the Claudia Thomas Legacy House, a Habitat for Humanity project here in Tillicum. Police, schools, and library will also provide updates of community goings-on. Coming to our April […]
Letter: The End of the Journey
If the sun hadn’t risen, I would not have seen them. If I’d not been so tired, pausing to catch my breath at the end of this early morning run, bent over with hands on my knees, I would not have happened to glance sideways and discover their beauty clinging momentarily to the dried stalks. […]
Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Meetings are back
We’ve not met since March of 2020 but we are excited to announce that Feb. 6, 2023, 6:30 p.m., our Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Meetings will begin with first-Mondays-of-every-month gatherings to discuss neighborhood goings-on! This Feb. 6 meeting will be held at the Tillicum Community Center, 14916 Washington Ave. SW. In the following newsletter, you’ll read […]
Letter: Learning Life’s Lessons
The youngster was out in front, paddling furiously, plowing the otherwise placid surface into a mini frenzy of ripples into which dad, trailing a bit behind, slowly but effortlessly kept pace, while grandpa lagged a bit. Later the little fellow would be taught how to dive, to leap forward in an arc to plunge beneath the […]
Letter: Frosty the Facsimile Snowman
Frosty, our fondly dubbed Fairytale Facsimile (from Latin fac simile, “to make alike”) was not, in fact, “alike” the real thing, but then of course it’s not like the real thing was real either. Still, when the snow falls but there’s not enough, or the snow won’t pack, and yet the grandchildren insist on having […]
Letter: Entering the Forest We’ve Been Taught to Fear
“Our character is not defined by the battles we win or lose, but by the battles we dare to fight.” – Robert Beatty, “Serafina and the Black Cloak,” 2015. At its first meeting of the new year, January 9, 2023, the Board of Directors of the Clover Park School District (CPSD) unanimously approved the motion […]