ARTS&LEISURE Vashon-Maury
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YUMMY ART: An exhibit of art by Seattle painter Jessie Higgins Murray will grace the walls of Blooms & Things throughout May. The show, titled “Dessert,” is filled with small canvasses depicting chocolates, cake, cupcakes and other delectable treats. Stop by the shop to take a look.
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DON’T MISS
An author shares the tale of a mighty river By ELIZABETH SHEPHERD Arts Editor
I Kathleen Webster Photo
Myra Butler, Charlotte Schoen and Isabel Forest (left to right) perform a scene in “Cinderella.”
Dancers stage ‘Cinderella’ It’s time for another lively, inventive production from DanceVashon and the nimble ballerinas and modern dancers of Vashon Dance Academy. Dozens of dancers will take the stage in the company’s version of the classic fairy tale “Cinderella” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 1:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, at the Vashon High School theater. Tickets to the show, $13 for adults and $11 for students, are on sale at the Vashon Bookshop. The production will star Rachael Thomas and Charlotte Schoen, sharing the title role of the under-loved and overworked heroine of the tale. Other dancers will play characters including Ego, Midnight, Hope and Cinders, as well as the more whimsical roles of bubbles, pumpkin babies and fireflies. Three male dancers from a Port Orchard dance studio have also been recruited to appear in the show. The show has been developed by the young dance students, who have worked with their teachers, Dane Academy artistic director Cheryl Krown and ballet teacher Julie Gibson, to create original choreography to tell the story. “We always choose the show based on which story and characters will most suit our most advanced dancers for that year ... what roles we think will challenge and inspire them. Then we build the show and the other characters for each class from there,” said Krown.
Vashon Opera does Puccini Some tickets are still available for Vashon Opera’s presentation of two Puccini one-act operas, “Il Tabarro” and “Gianni Schicchi.” Shows are set for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, at Bethel Church. Tickets, $32, can be purchased at www.vashonopera.org and Vashon Bookshop. The productions boast a roster of regional opera stars bolstered by an ensemble of local singers, as well as an orchestra of acclaimed players from the region.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 • Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber
slanders can celebrate a monumental environmental victory that is also, quite literally, a fish story, at a reading next week.
Lynda Mapes, an award-winning journalist and author, will appear at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 23, at the Land Trust Building, to read from her new book, “Elwha: A River Reborn” — a much-heralded account of the recent dismantling of two massive dams on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River and the subsequent return of chinook and steelhead salmon to that waterway. The book, co-published by The Mountaineers and The Seattle Times, is based on extensive interviews, field work, historical research and rare period images. The book also contains 125 color photographs by Mapes’ collaborator, Seattle Times photojournalist Steve Ringman. Slides of many of those photographs will be shown during Mapes’ presentation on Vashon. For Mapes, a Seattle Times reporter, telling the complex tale of the river’s restoration on both the pages of her newspaper and in her book has been the chance of a lifetime. “The story had everything — it had characters, setting, history, politics, and it had unanswered questions,” Mapes said in a phone interview. “And
then it also turned out to be a story against type, of a place that has renewal and hope and something positive.” The dams — one of them 108 feet tall and the other 210 feet tall, and both within the boundaries of the Olympic National Park — were built and became operational in the years between 1910 and 1927. In the 1980s, members of the Lower Elwha Kallam tribe and environmentalists petitioned for their removal, setting the stage for a threedecadeslong struggle among policy and law makers, tribal leaders, conservationists, industrialists and lawyers as to how to best accomplish the job of freeing the river. In the end, Mapes said, it was everyday people who brought the dams down. “It was very clear to me how many times this almost didn’t happen,” she said. “But the tribe and ordinary citizens just insisted that this be done.” To cover the Elwha story, Mapes spent years traveling the back country of the Olympics, immersing herself in the history and culture of the region, as well as gaining deep knowledge of the science of the river itself. From the start, she said, The
The Elwha will never again be the Eden it was, and it’s no longer an unmapped wilderness ... what could it mean to restore a river ecosystem, all the way from the mountains to the sea? How did a region synonymous with hydropower become the world’s biggest dambusting pioneer? How would this place, with its human and natural history so intimately connected, be transformed as it was taken apart and put back together? — Lynda Mapes, Elwha: “A River Reborn.” Seattle Times was committed to fully covering the story of the destruction of the dams — support she was grateful for throughout her years of reporting on the subject. Mapes’ beat as a reporter includes Native American tribes, nature and environmental topics, and she has received national and regional awards for her work. Along with her teammates on the Elwha coverage at The Seattle Times, she shared the 2012 award for online journalism from the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. She is also the author of two other books, “Washington: The Spirit of the Land” and “Breaking Ground.” And earlier this month, she was named as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow — part of an elite class of 12 international journalists who will study science, health, environment and technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the next academic year. Joseph Bogaard, president of the Vashon Maury Island Land Trust and deputy director of the Northwest organization Save Our Wild Salmon,
said he is excited to welcome Mapes back to the island — a place she lived from 1992 to 2002 — to share her book. The land trust is co-sponsoring the author event with Vashon Bookshop, where copies of Mapes’ book are available. “This is a story that will be told from various angles for a long time,” Bogaard said. “This is happening in our backyard, and we’ve never taken out dams this big on the planet, and the river’s headwaters are deep in a national park that is in pristine condition. It’s a very historic event with lots of historic implications.”
A benefit show will honor the memory of a hometown hero A concert to raise funds for the 1st Lt. Robert Bennedsen Memorial Scholarship will take place on Saturday night at Red Bicycle Bistro. The Vashon blues band One More Mile will play the concert — the first music event of its kind to raise money for the scholarship, which is given out annually by the Vashon High School class of 2004. Funds are administered through the Vashon Community Scholarship Foundation. Robert Bennedsen, a well-known and
much-loved islander, was killed by a roadside bomb on July 2010, near Qalat, Afganistan, while serving in the U.S. Army. He was 25 years old at the time of his death. The show on Saturday night will start at 8:30 p.m. and there is a suggested donation of $10 to attend. There will also be a 50/50 raffle taking place during the event, with the winner taking home half the pot of money collected for the raffle. The winning ticket will be drawn at 11 p.m. and the winner must be present to claim the prize.
Donations to the scholarship fund can also be made at Vashon’s U.S. Bank — checks should be made payable to 1st Lt. Robert Bennedsen Memorial Project. Donations can also be made by contacting the designated donations team at info@vashonscholarshipfoundation.org. To find out more about Robert Bennedsen and his life, visit www.iraqwarheroes.org/ bennedsen.htm — Elizabeth Shepherd