T&C buying family land

Town & Country Markets, Inc., is buying 13 acres of land near Winslow from the Nakata family, and could establish an organic farm there.

“We definitely have that intention,” T&C President Larry Nakata said. “It’s one of our desires.”

Now a picturesque fallow field, the property at the northwest corner of Wyatt Way and Weaver Road has been among the Nakata family holdings for years.

Even with the purchase, a family member has retained part of the land for his own use.

Larry Nakata said the company has talked about purchasing the land for the past five years or so. While farming is a goal, T&C “is still working on our vision for the property,” he said.

“We just feel so fortunate that the company has been able to acquire this property,” Nakata said.

– Douglas Crist

Oil supply looks peakish

Peak oil theorists hold that oil production will soon peak, putting humans on an inevitable course that will change life as we know it.

“Peak oil is a geologic reality; it is an event caused by the way we use oil,” said Mel Hutto of the Post Carbon Institute, which promotes awareness of an impending low-energy world. “We built civilization on (a resource with) a finite supply. It’s just that the human race has overshot its habitat.”

Hutto gives a talk on peak oil at 2:30 p.m. this Saturday at Island Center Hall. From 4:30 p.m., other speakers will talk about solar energy, local currency, world opposition to U.S. energy policy and local farming.

Peak oil literature predicts that with the exhaustion of the oil supply, complex, modern society will break down into smaller, simpler communities depending on people with manual skills.

Hutto says the goal of his talk is to be “a big, loud wake-up call.”

Although Hutto says that peak oil is forecasting a doomsday, “you won’t think it’s ‘doomsday’ if you get yourself informed.”

He says starting to conserve energy now or trying to take a political approach is “too slow.”

“You might rather concentrate on your personal situation,” Hutto said. “I don’t have any hope that we could start conserving (energy)” in time.

Hutto wants to “wake up” people to think about three things.

One is “Where am I going to be living?”; since travel will become difficult without oil, it is important to live where you can grow your own food. Two, “Who am I going to be living with?”; will you be close to family and people who have farm, craft or medical skills? Three, realize you can’t do this by yourself and start organizing your neighborhood for defense and to create community gardens.

A former team-building/executive coaching business consultant, 66-year-old Hutto retired 15 months ago, from San Francisco to Bellingham, moving close to arable land and water. He says although he doesn’t know when it will happen, he expects to see the transition in his lifetime.

He also expects to “see higher fuel prices” and the closure of McDonald’s, since the oil crisis will “especially affect low-income people who eat at McDonald’s.”

“I do see it in my lifetime,” Hutto said. “I think we’re living in extraordinary times for our species.”

Co-sponsors of the talk include the Bain­bridge Graduate Institute, LeapFrog Farm, Eagle Harbor Book. Co., Solar Washington, Bainbridge Island Women in Black and Digging Deeper Media Collective. Suggested donation is $5. For more information, contact Jerry George at 842-0278 or jg2@nilbs.com.

– Tina Lieu

‘Voices’ speak out on war

The pen was likely invented shortly after the spear, perhaps to express the pain, anger and wonder the weapon had caused.

While spears have given way to smart bombs, people are still using words to vent their feelings about violence and war. A new documentary, set to screen at Lynwood Theatre Friday, presents a range of poets, soldiers, journalists, historians and war victims letting loose a torrent of words that voice a shared experience.

One common question that creeps into “Voices in Wartime” is simply, “why?”

An ancient Sumerian priestess in what is now Iraq poses this question in the first recorded poem about war. Taking her anger directly to the war gods, Enheduanna writes:

“Your fire wafts over our land,

riding on a beast,

with indomitable commands,

you decide all fate.

You triumph over all our rites.

Who can explain why you go on so?”

More than 3,000 years later, the question is still asked, but few have answers.

Baghdad poet Ali Habash describes a new fire wafting over the land. He sees the sky in Iraq strewn with rockets and a landscape infested by barbed wire and burned steel.

For Habash, questions about war and even life are no longer worth asking.

“Life has no meaning anymore.Just tons of metal and iron.”

Two Careys Productions, an independent film company based in Seattle, crafted the feature-length documentary last year. Earlier East and West Coast screenings elicited praise from the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The New York Times called the film “an elegant statement not only about the devastation of war, but also about poetry’s power to amaze.”

Friday’s 7 p.m. screening will feature an introduction from the documentary’s producer, Jonathan King, and a question-and-answer period afterward. The executive producer of “Voices in Wartime,” Andy Himes, will introduce the film on Saturday at 7 p.m. and sign copies of a related book anthology. The film will run at Lynwood Theatre until June 23.

Visit www.lynwoodtheatre.com for a complete schedule or www.voicesinwartime.org for more information about the film.

– Tristan Baurick

City meeting date change

The city has reannounced the date of the Winslow Tomorrow monthly update.

It will be held at 8 a.m. June 15 at the City Hall council chamber conference room. City staff will provide a project update and be available to answer questions.

For more information, contact winslowtomorrow@ci.bainbridge-isl.wa.us or 780-3718. (Because press deadlines had passed, the Calendar on page B2 has the old date. – Editor)