Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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The Mason County Forest Festival returns to its full format for the first time in three years, kicking off today with the carnival at a new location on First Street, and culminating with the Shelton Car Show Off and the Duck Race on Sunday. The COVID pandemic cancelled the event in 2020. Last year, the event was dubbed Timber Days and staged over three weekends in June, July and August. Fittingly, “Back to Our Roots” is the theme of this weekend’s festival. “We’re excited to be back,” said Amy Cooper, vice president of the Mason County Fore...
The City of Shelton is considering amending its codes on camping on private property that could grant community groups permits to accommodate up to 30 people - with many proposed rules and regulations. The proposed requirements would include an around-the-clock host, visual screening from the neighbors, exterior lighting pointed down, and a posted code of conduct. People with police warrants would not be allowed. The Shelton City Council talked about the proposed code amendment changes at a...
I’m not a violent person. I’m a flighter, not a fighter. I don’t like to be intimately involved in the slaying of anything, even vermin in our home. I’ll escort spiders and moths to the door. I tell them to find somewhere else to play. However, I did liquidate a stump near our front door a couple of summers ago that housed a wasps’ nest. When wasps sting a couple of times, you tend to lose your convictions. So I’m mystified by a tendency my brain has, and I wonder how common this tendency is...
Correction A story on page A-1 of the May 26 edition of the Shelton-Mason County Journal incorrectly stated 35th Legislative District Pos. 2 candidate Sandy Kaiser's hometown. Kaiser is a resident of Olympia, however her campaign address is a post office box in Shelton. The Journal regrets the error. Labels don't explain Editor, the Journal, Labels, badges and buttons, the subtle saboteurs. Question: Can a singular label describe who you are or how you think? Will the badge you wear or the...
When I gave presentations on permaculture last year, I mentioned that Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, the Australians who first codified what became known as "permaculture," borrowed heavily from indigenous knowledge. "Borrowing" is the most charitable term I can use. I also stated that decolonizing permaculture is ongoing today. I understand "decolonizing" to mean that the knowledge permaculture has appropriated is being recontextualized and properly attributed. If there are profits to be...
Harstine theater group offers scholarship The Harstine Island Theatre Club is offering a $500 scholarship. Applications and guidelines are available at CHOICE, Cedar, Shelton, Mary M. Knight and North Mason high schools, and at Olympic College Shelton. Aug. 1 is the deadline to apply, and the winner will be notified by Aug. 15. Completed applications can be mailed to Scholarship Committee, Chair Dee Ann Meacham, 12 East Wilson Road, Shelton 98584 or emailed to [email protected]. Mary M. Knight offers free meals to summer attendees The Mary M....
Make appointment to give blood People can donate blood today and Friday at the Church of Nazarene, 1331 E. Shelton Springs Road. To make an appointment, go to www.Schedule.BloodworksNW.org or call 1-800-398-7888. Love INC offers free life skills workshops The Shelton-based nonprofit Love In the Name of Christ (INC) and its 25 partner churches in Mason County are offering free life skills workshops. The group and the churches work together to connect people in need with goods and services that...
County administrator approved to sign services agreement County Administrator Mark Neary has been approved by Mason County commissioners to sign a professional services agreement with Cabot Dow Associates for labor employment services. According to the information packet, the services will not exceed $50,000. The request for proposals for labor employment services closed April 29, with the only response from Cabot Dow Associates. Cabot Dow is a small sole-proprietor that has extensive experience specializing in representing public sector...
Tahuya Peninsula outage will affect 2,300 customers Mason PUD 3 announced an outage on June 14 that will affect about 2,300 customers on the Tahuya Peninsula for 10 hours. According to a news release, the outage is for a maintenance project to replace transmission poles in the area and requires two substations to be offline. The outage will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will require all of PUD 3's line crews working on the project and a mutual-aid crew from Grays Harbor PUD. The work is...
A resident’s proposal to work with the Port of Hoodsport on creating a public dog park was tabled after port commissioners voted 2-1 on May 11 not to proceed with investigating the proposal. While Port Commissioner Terry Brazil said he intended to investigate further on his own, he and Port Commissioner Lori Kincannon voted against the port moving forward with the proposal. Port Commissioner Cody Morris voted in favor. Dog park proponent Bill Long expressed interest in using an acre and a h...
It's never too late to join a choir or learn an instrument, and the Great Bend Center for Music in Union is an organization that hopes to help kids and adults find their sound. Founder and general director Matthew Melendez described the organization as "an organization that explores the research-based ways that music can be used as a tool for community development." Melendez said he wanted to create the organization as an institute for applied research, figuring out how to "programitize" the...
My review of "Stranger Things" Season 4, Part 1, will be forthcoming next week. I wasn't about to binge seven episodes in a single weekend. Instead, we'll be looking at another recently released tribute to the 1980s. Even speaking as a self-confessed generational chauvinist on behalf of the Eighties, I keep expecting everyone to get sick of that decade, and to move on from reviving its pop culture. Since the start of 2020, "Bill & Ted" and "Ghostbusters" released critically and commercially...
Mark Woytowich, the outdoors columnist for the Shelton-Mason County Journal for seven years and the author of "Where the Waterfalls and Wild Things Are," was remembered as a gregarious, big-hearted lover of nature and his fellow humans at a memorial celebration Sunday at Rest-A-While RV Park's Art & Music Fair north of Hoodsport. Friends shared their stories of the Lilliwaup resident, who died of a heart attack at age 65 on May 6 at Mason General Hospital in Shelton. The Ohio native who adopted...
The Forest Festival logging show and chainsaw exhibition is staged from noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Loop Field. The logging show is hosting the STIHL Timbersports Western Qualifier for men and women. Events include the standing chop, horizontal chop, springboard, hot saw, stock saw, stock chainsaw and single buck. "I think, with the competition, the event that's most popular is the springboard competition," Forest Festival Board President Mick Sprouffske told the Journal. "You're pairing two...
Shelton's Alauna Carstens ended her senior year with an exclamation point, winning the State 2A 1,600- and 3,200-meter races Thursday and Saturday at the state 2A, 3A and 4A track and field meets at Mount Tahoma High School in Tacoma. Carstens competed in the 1,600-meter race Thursday and pulled ahead in the third lap and was able to narrowly edge Ellensburg's Kate Laurent at the finish line with a time of 4:58.34 to Laurent's 4:58.48. The time was a personal record and school record. "It feels...
North Mason senior Addilyn Varick saved her best for last to earn second place in the state 2A girls javelin throw Thursday at Mount Tahoma High School. Varick's final throw of her high school career measured 116 feet, 4 inches, a personal best and good enough to take second place. Tumwater's Natalie Sumrok won the state title with a toss of 126 feet, 2 inches. "It felt really nice because I've been dealing with really bad rib issues all season and that one was probably my best because I was abl...
After many delays, Mason Transit Authority’s Belfair Park & Ride officially opened May 23 on Northeast Log Yard Road. “I’ve been hearing from a couple of drivers that have been up here that they’re really enjoying having a space to work out of and happy to have a permanent place to be for their breaks and rest breaks up in the north county area,” MTA General Manager Amy Asher told the Herald. “Our park and ride’s getting used. We have a lot of the folks from the worker-driver program parki...
This was a very enjoyable week. Mary and Sam were on the move the whole week and when they got back from their travels, Sam took off with Bill Cady to go fishing. All the places they traveled to brought back wonderful memories from my life being in those places. My boat I live on part time is near the Longview bridge. I caught my first salmon when I was 9 in Pacific City. Forty years ago, I attended a craft fair in Yachats and bought a piece of pottery. Just a couple of months ago I was near...
The North Mason School Board reviewed the redistricting reports and maps produced by Sammamish Data Systems so it could approve moving to the next phase of the school district’s redistricting. North Mason School District Superintendent Dana Rosenbach summed up the report from Sammamish Data Systems, which the district contracted to evaluate the latest U.S. Census information. “We do have a requirement, when the new census comes out, that we have to evaluate the distribution of our director dis...
North Mason School District Transportation Director Maurine Simons shared with the school board May 19 details about the return of the “Fill the Bus” event, scheduled to take place Aug. 20 at the QFC parking lot in Belfair from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. “QFC does a great job of putting together packages that have the school supplies all together, right near the front,” Simons said. “The bus drivers will be out there. It’s all volunteer time.” She added, “We’ll have our little ‘Buster Bus’ out there for...
