PATRIOT BREMERTON
KITSAP WEEK: Port Orchard keeps the past alive
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015 | Vol. 17, No. 48 | WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢
Use of education to overcome adversity a focus at MLK Day BY CHRIS TUCKER CTUCKER@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
Over 300 people gathered to reflect on the life, work and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 21st annual Kitsap County MLK Jr. Day Celebration at the county fairgrounds. The event was held Jan. 19 and hosted by the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bremerton. Olympic College student Drayton Jackson told those assembled that King used education and wisdom to out-think his opponents. King played chess while others were playing checkers, he said.
“Imagine what it was like to be non-violent when violence is all around you,” Drayton said. “Every time he was attacked and didn’t react, he won.” King’s intelligence meant he belonged in the same rank as other great thinkers such as Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, he said. “Education is the great key for advancing the community,” Drayton said, noting that the state of Washington needed to do more to fund education. Students with Bud Hawk Elementary sang “We are the World” and members of the Suquamish Tribe performed a warrior song in King’s honor.
Chris Tucker / staff photos
Ruth Jones of Bremerton belts out a song titled ‘I love Him’ with the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir at the fairgrounds on Jan. 19. Jones goes by the name Ruth Frances for her album ‘Now Unto Him!!!’
Lu-uk Joe-Lanham-McCloud, 17, Ah-Nika-Leesh Chiquiti, 12, Kate Ahvakana and Bobby Ray Pondelick, 7, with the Suquamish Tribe perform the warrior song during the event. They represent the Renewal Powwow Royalty.
Sculpting tiny trees into works of art is the goal of Bonsai Club Cutters, aluminum wire and driftwood used to shape ‘shimpaku’ into desired form
BY PETER O’CAIN POCAIN@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
Mark Stephens said he dabbles in bonsai. He’s been doing it for 25 years, but he only dabbles. Stephens, 56, sits before a juniper bonsai tree, or “shimpaku.” It’s jagged and unkempt, the result of a season spent shaded by a wisteria plant. He has black framed glasses and a closely trimmed beard that runs red along jawline and fades into grey around his mouth. He runs his fingers along the branches, feeling for dieback, clipping away the dead branches. Stephens is a member of the Evergreen Bonsai Club. They met Friday Jan. 16 at the Crossroads Neighborhood Church in Bremerton. About 25 members showed up to hear a lecture about repotting bonsai trees by John Conn, a local expert. Everyone is sitting side by side listening to Conn. Everyone except for Stephens, who’s in the back dabbling. Make no mistake, Stephens is listening. He laughs the loudest and makes the most comments.
12 COMMUNIT Y DELIV ERED
Stephens first became interested in bonsai as a kid after seeing an ad in the back of a comic book. He started in the mid-80s and then joined the Evergreen Bonsai Club in the early90s. He compares bonsai to a cartoon from the comic strip “For Better or Worse.” “In one of the cartoon strips he went into a hobby shop and told the guy ‘I want a new hobby, I thought I’d get into trains’ and the guy said ‘My dear sir, model trains aren’t a hobby, they’re a way of life,’” Stephens said. “And that’s what I look like with bonsai too.” Stephens lives in Poulsbo and works at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard as an engineer. He’s been there since 1987. Before that he was in the Navy. Using a tool called an angle cutter, Stephens cuts away the base of a large branch. Later, he’ll peel away the surrounding bark. The idea is to make the branch appear dead, similar to a wild bonsai. The effect is called a “jin.” Adapting to the tree’s growth and changes in weather make bonsai an
Peter O’Cain / staff photo
Mark Stephens of Poulsbo clips a juniper bonsai tree at a meeting of the Evergreen Bonsai Club Jan. 16. The club meets the third Friday of each month at the Crossroads Neighborhood Church in Bremerton. intricate and never-ending combination of art and horticulture. “The only finished bonsai is a dead bonsai,” Conn said. “They’re always growing, they’re always changing.
LOUD & PROUD
You’re always re-sculpting them, you’re always reworking them.” Stephens is experiencing just that. “My problem was I left it covered and it didn’t get much sun so this year
it’ll be on a bench where it gets more sunshine,” Stephens said. “So if I cut these back now, with some sunshine it’ll push growth back out in these other places and then I can start cutting branches off where I don’t want them and then the growth elsewhere will start pushing in.” Merrill Evans, 73, of Bremerton, has a juniper that hints at what’s capable in bonsai. Aluminum wire spirals around thin branches, curving them down and then up with patches of green raised toward the sun. He’s grown his tree around a piece of driftwood, giving it a half-dead appearance. It’s called a Phoenix graft. If done right, it’ll be hard to tell where the living tree begins and the deadwood ends. His tree pulls this off, as one new member was surprised to learn his tree was both living and dead. Evans has had the wire on his tree for about two years. He has to be watchful of the wiring; if left on too long it can cut into the tree. “Some trees you put that wire on and it cuts in in six months,” Evans said. Stephens admires Evans’ tree.
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