One Of Our Sunsets

In spite of a lot of complaining about the weather this summer we did enjoy many of these sunsets!

Some States Baked In Heat This Summer...We Froze

This photo is typical of what our summer was like this year, with the addition of fog that normally hangs over the Sound most mornings in the fall & winter, obscuring the water. Every day, when I got to the back page of the newspaper & looked at the temperature map of the United States just about every state was colored gold, which meant "hot", while the coastline of Washington, Oregon & Northern California were green strips, signifying around 50F.

I doubt that we had more than 10 really nice days this summer, so we feel cheated. I think it made us crabby because we also felt cheated when the county commissioners told us they were going to put a tax referendum on the ballot since they had cut the budget all they could & there was no alternative to raising our taxes. Well, the tax referendum failed & the county commissioner for our island was roundly turned out of office in favor of a candidate who vowed NOT to raise taxes. (Now there are 3 women commissioners: 2 Democrats from the other island in our county, and our 1 Republican, whom, I'm afraid, will be constantly outnumbered when she differs from the other 2 on the subject of taxes.)

Other than throwing a commissioner out of office--a man who had been a well liked & respected newspaper editor before he ran for the commissioner job & was handily elected--other than that excitement, the island got a new bridge to the mainland, which is good news & much appreciated; the result of our state senator "bringing home the pork". None of the locals who benefit from pork complain when their elected representative bring it home. It's only other people's pork that's bad!