Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, October 3, 2014
www.issaquahreporter.com
Central carnival joins 2014 Salmon Days Neighbors
work to restore Eagle Ridge
BY DANIEL NASH ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER
Tears for Fears was right: Everybody wants to rule the world, even the organizers of Salmon Days. Salmon Days enters its 45th festival — taking place Saturday and Sunday — on a high, having won its second consecutive Grand Pinnacle Award for the 2013 festival. Continuing its upward trajectory of growth for Salmon Days 2014, festival leadership has added a 12-ride carnival. The carnival will be held in the Front Street Staples parking lot, and rides will require admission. The festival is harkening back to its early days with an early ‘70s mod theme, dubbed “Coho Mojo.” Today, Salmon Days is a huge draw for the city of Issaquah, bringing in nearly 200,000 tourists a year. But it began more humbly. In 1970, the Chamber of Commerce was desperately seeking a replacement for the Labor Day Festival. The Labor Day Festival, begun in 1936, had once been a
DANIEL NASH, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
A tourist observes salmon in the Issaquah State Salmon Hatchery’s portion of Issaquah Creek.
Teens reach out to the disabled through art BY BRYAN TRUDE
ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER
A common complaint parents can have of young teens is that they lack ambition and a sense of service to their community. That something the parents of Skyline High School’s Amol Garg, Isha Kshirsagar and Nihal Sandadi will never get to say. The trio of 14-year-old freshmen artists are the founders of “Art by Heart” (ABH) a community service organization devoted to raising funds, raising awareness, and reaching out to people with developmental disabilities through the “second language” of art. This weekend, ABH will be hosting their first awareness and fundraising effort with a booth at the Issaquah Salmon Days festival. This year, ABH is focusing their efforts on autism. Back in June Garg, Kshirsagar and Sandadi started ABH on their own, without the aid of a higher organization such as a
religious or community service group, after noticing a lack of outreach to the developmentally disabled. “We noticed there were not very many organizations to directly help very many conditions,” Garg said. “We say that organizations that directly help specific groups like autistic kids did not work as much towards awareness. An important part of working with autism is to work with the kids, and to provide awareness throughout the community.” The group noticed that there was a gap between the community and autistic kids, whereas ABH believes everybody should be equal, he said, leading to the choice to use art to try and close that gap, a medium to help autistic kids interact with the world around them. Autism is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “pervasive developmental disorder,” typically manifesting in early childhood, that is marked
by difficulty with social interaction and communication, along with restricted and repetitive behaviors. It is ABH’s goal to ease that communication barrier. “Art is almost like a second language,” Garg said. “It’s a language that everybody speaks, whether it is through arts, through dance, through music, it is something that all of us can understand. It breaks that barrier and lets us all join together.” In working with autism, ABH is partnering with the Autistic Society of Washington (ASW), a group they were introduced to when ABH volunteered at a water table during the “Heroes for Autism” marathon in Seattle on Aug. 30. “They reached out to us first and wanted to help,” ASW Executive Director Corrine Daffern said. “They bring a lot of energy.” For their part, the trio said they receive a lot of support from their parents. Garg’s
Under grey skies and cool, damp air, Woody Hertzog walks up a wood chip trail up the side of a steep hill near his Sammamish home. Along the way, he points out several areas where Washington-native plant species are making a comeback on ground that, just a few months ago, was choked by blackberry bushes. The entrepreneur and youth football coach for Skyline High School is leading the charge to restore this pocket of the plateau’s natural beauty, nestled away in the Eagle Ridge addition hanging over the shores of Lake Sammamish. Joined by his neighbors and even a local Cub Scout pack, Hertzog has been working for two years to change the 3.5-acre site from a bush-choked hillside to a beautiful pocket of native wetlands. “I was running on the East Lake Sammamish trail every day,” Hertzog said. “I got sick of it, I got bored seeing the same tree, the same bush go by. At the same time my son asked if I could cut a hole through the blackberries so that he could see the creeks that used to run through there.” After cutting through the blackberry bushes in the summer of 2013, Hertzog realized he got a full day’s workout. Clearing blackberries on land owned by the Eagle Ridge Homeowner’s Association across the road from his house, Hertzog replaced running alongside Lake Sammamish as his daily exercise. Reaching back to an area where a small native spring and creek formed a small wetlands area, Hertzog planted native species of plants to keep the blackberries from regrowing and choking out the land again. At the same time, he began laying down paths to keep from trampling the plants he put in. As Hertzog worked, neighbors began to see the natural beauty he was uncovering, asking how they could help. As neighbors began to chip in with labor and helpSEE EAGLE RIDGE, 3
SEE ART, 3
OPENING IN NOVEMBER
NOW HIRING...
UNCLE SI’S PIZZA & BARISTA • LAKE SIDE PLAZA NEXT TO 7-11 • 425.396.7975 • UNCLESIS.COM
• Cooks • Servers • Drivers
1141476
SEE SALMON, 11
BY BRYAN TRUDE ISSAQUAH/SAMMAMISH REPORTER