I came to Whidbey Island as a young man nearly 50 years ago. I am pleased to say that it is nearly as pleasant a place today as it was back then. It was never paradise, but it is still mostly pleasant green forests and fields with scatterings of houses and a picturesque coastline. And the people and the animals are mostly benign, as are the plants.
One must observe greater care when driving these days and expect to be more patient when waiting in the increasingly lengthy ferry lines. Although the ferry back in 1976 was not all that convenient either. The Kulshan’s open deck held about 20 cars and foot passengers huddled in a narrow little building that resembled a submarine conning tower. The crossing took some 25 to 40 minutes depending on the weather.
The powers that be were more lax in days of yore. I remember a ferry ride in about 1986 when I saw a student of mine at the college who was piloting the boat, a boat that maybe held some 40 cars at that time. He invited me up to the bridge and let me steer for a bit. I remember weaving us back and forth to just see how she handled. Passengers must have thought we were avoiding debris or something.
Crime actually seems down these days, at least on the South End. I would attribute it to the aging of the population there. Let’s face it, the older folks get, the more calm and relaxed they tend to become. The cops must find this quite agreeable. One of us might run a car into an occasional brick wall in a moment of absentmindedness, but we are generally less apt to lead one of them on a hundred-mile-an-hour car chase.
I would say that elderly folk here are quite civic minded as well, joining all sorts of service clubs and organizations. Their accumulated skills and varied experience can be a real asset to such groups. They may enjoy an endless round of church and club lunches and potluck dinners, but they give back by leading Audubon field trips or volunteering at a farmers market or a fairground event where young families with their kids and dogs can recreate on a weekend.
North Whidbey has most of the younger folk who round out the weekly police report with an occasional robbery or shooting. Though they mostly end up in the report for just disturbing the peace at some noisy party. The younger people here certainly ought to be appreciated for doing most of the heavy lifting, farming, working on construction crews, serving in stores and in restaurants. They also serve in the Navy or on police patrols or fire crews. We really can’t do without them, so we might want to encourage the construction of housing they can afford.
I have always enjoyed writing to our local newspaper here and reading what others write, and I have been writing columns in this newspaper for nearly a year now. It is no doubt an unhealthy pursuit, fueled by egotism and narcissism among other unsavory traits. But the upcoming election is too important to me to remain silent, particularly concerning the Republican candidate for president, a man who is adored by millions of Americans and disliked by as many of us as well.
His MAGA movement has eery similarities to the movement that brought Hitler to power in Germany in the 1930’s. Adoring crowds delight in his absurd descriptions of his political rivals. When he calls Kamala Harris a “fascist, marxist, communist” all rolled into one. And they roar in approval at a story about horrified parents whose children allegedly go to school in the morning and come home in the evening after sex change operations at school. Or his story about immigrants eating neighborhood pets.
Their unwillingness to let anything he says or does disturb or weaken their devotion to him should alarm us all. I am reminded of the warning of the French philosopher Voltaire, who once said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
But when did I get the absurd notion that human beings are rational, that they process information like a well programmed computer, and all you really have to do is point out the flaws in their logic? I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life studying and promoting the world’s great literature, with its endless stories of jealousy, greed, betrayal, lies and deceit. I am fully aware that many of those works can best be described as cautionary tales – warning us to beware of people who want to use and abuse us. And in this election year they could serve as a warning to be ever so careful about who we select and who we reject among the candidates in the upcoming election.
Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.
