COMMUNITY | Workshop will focus on advance directives. [4] COMMENTARY | Pot legalization could have consequences. [6] ARTS | Civil rights stories come [12] to life in a play.
TEENS ON STAGE Young musicians open for a Seattle band. Page 14
EYE FOR DESIGN Islander moves her home design business to town. Page 5
BEACHCOMBER VASHON-MAURY ISLAND
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2014
Vol. 59, No. 03
www.vashonbeachcomber.com
75¢
New credit union to open in former bank location By SUSAN RIEMER Staff Writer
Juli Goetz Morser/Staff Photo
Performers Martha Enson, Janet McAlpin and Leah Mann collaborated for “50 Sense Circus,” a new theatrical hybrid show at the Open Space for Arts & Community.
Island women share their ‘sense’ Three multi-talented 50 year olds tell their stories in a new show
SEE CREDIT UNION, 11
War in Sudan hits close to home for some islanders
By JULI GOETZ MORSER Staff Writer
When island aerialists Martha Enson, Janet McAlpin and Leah Mann all turned 50 last year, they saw an opportunity. While most performers who depend on their bodies to create their art retire in their 30s, these women had already beaten the odds and were ready to talk about it. Talk about it, that is, in their own language of physical storytelling, a tale they plan to tell in a new show called “50 Sense Circus.” One week before the scheduled performances, these three vibrant women greet each other with energetic hugs in the lightfilled, high-ceiling gym built by McAlpin and strewn with heaps of aerial harnesses and yoga mats, large colorful balls and a ladder that the women climb to clip into hanging bungee cords to rehearse their act. These are veteran performers equally at ease upside down and
Vashon’s second credit union is set to open in the former home of Bank of America later this month. The Shelton-based Our Community Credit Union (OCCU) has renovated the building and has hired four islanders to staff the new office, according to Daris Devaney, an OCCU spokeswoman. The branch will open Jan. 27 and is a full-service financial institution, Devaney said, offering loans, credit cards, checking accounts, businesses services and more. “I think we are going to meet a lot of the island’s financial needs,” she said. To serve as the branch manager, OCCU hired Margi Amstrup, who has worked at Bank of America, US Bank and Northwest Bank, Devaney said.
Carole Sussman, who will be the assistant branch manager, is the only employee from Bank of America who chose to apply for a position at the credit union, and Kirsten Bachant and Jacquie Perry will be member service representatives. OCCU first announced its plans to expand to Vashon last summer, after Bank of America gave notice it would leave the island after 35 years of service. Norm Mathews, the owner of Thriftway and the managing partner of Vashon East Shopping Center, where the bank was located, approached OCCU representatives because he felt that there was still a need for a financial institution in that building, Clay Gleb, one of Mathews’ associates, said at the time.
By SARAH LOW Staff Writer
Juli Goetz Morser/Staff Photo
Janet McAlpin, Leah Mann and Martha Enson rehearse for the show. hanging off each other’s arms or legs as they are assuming a yoga pigeon pose or arching in a backstretch across an exercise ball. These are women with finely tuned skills and, unlike their ingenue counterparts, have a combined count of 90 years of experience behind them, which in the words of Martha Enson means they’ve paid the price of admission, the admission to tell their own stories. “It’s the accumulation of liv-
ing that gives you something to say,” she said. “With the price of admission you get to admit who you are and not pretend, to be at home with that and the freedom it brings.” Whether they paid the price or earned the right, there’s little doubt that these women have impressive dossiers to back them up. As the artistic director of Enjoy SEE PERFORMERS, 19
In what can only be described as a cruel twist of fate, islander and former Lost Boy Peter “Deng Deng” Dut must wait and worry from afar, as unexpected violence in South Sudan threatens his newly repatriated family. “This was my dream for years to make this happen, to help my family get back home. Nobody was expecting the coup,” Dut said. Last month Dut, a former Sudanese refugee who lives on Vashon with his cousin, hosted a screening of the documentary “The Lost Boys of Sudan” — in which he is featured — to raise money to help move his family back to their home village in South Sudan after being displaced for more than two decades. As Dut explains it, with the money that was raised at the
Peter “Deng Deng” Dut film fundraiser, a gift from fellow Lost Boy and cousin Jacob Acier’s South Sudan Village Development foundation and funds he had saved on his own, there was enough to move his family back to their home. There SEE SOUTH SUDAN, 20