Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal injury for people 65 years of age and older, according to a news release from WhidbeyHealth. The medical center is partnering with Oak Harbor Senior Center and Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue for the event.

Nationally, every 11 seconds, an older adult is seen in an emergency department for a fall-related injury, which translates to two million fall-related injuries each year, according to the release. WhidbeyHealth Medical Center’s Emergency Department says it saw an estimated 1,500 patients last year for falls-related injuries.

The event awareness day hopes to drive home studies show that a combination of behavior changes can significantly reduce falls among older adults, including participation in a physical activity regimen, assessing one’s risk for falling, having medication reviewed periodically, keeping up to date on eye and ear checks and keeping the home environment safe from falling hazards.

All these topics and more will be included in discussions and demonstrations at the National Falls Prevention Awareness Day event. WhidbeyHealth presenters will include paramedic Robert May, Lifeline Services Coordinator Emilly MacCormick and physical therapist Jennifer Wesley. Also in attendance will be members of the Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue team.

The public is welcome to participate in this free event. Oak Harbor Senior Center is located at 51 SE Jerome St. in Oak Harbor. For more information on this event or on falls prevention, email mayrob@whidbeyhealth.org.
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In addition, property-related crimes have increased. Many local families are struggling with loved ones addicted to the drug. Between 2004-2013 the number of opiate-attributed deaths for Island County increased by 77 percent, Price Johnson said.

“I am proud to report that the Human Services Department of Island County is responding to this problem in collaboration with first responders and service providers,” Price Johnson said. “An Opioid Outreach Worker, funded through a regional grant, will soon deliver short-term support for people with opioid addiction until treatment is provided.”

The intent of the program is to help people in need of services navigate the complex treatment and recovery system and serve 100-200 people per year. The Opioid Outreach Program will serve all of Island County, with an initial focus and attention to South Whidbey and Camano communities.

For more information, contact Island County Human Services.

The next course, NRA Basics of Pistol Shooting, will be held 6-9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, and continuing 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept 17 at the NWSA range located at 886 Gun Club Rd. off Oak Harbor Rd. This course uses the the new NRA format, an online e-learning portion the student completes at home, which introduces students to the knowledge, skills and attitude necessary for owning and using a pistol safely.

The pistol handling and shooting portion is completed at the NWSA range where students will learn about safe gun handling, pistol shooting fundamentals and pistol shooting activities. The Basics of Pistol Shooting Course will also help prepare the student for participation in other NRA courses.

This class includes shooting on the NWSA Pistol Range. The cost of the class is $25.  Students can start the online portion of the class at onlinetraining.nra.org. For questions or to register call NRA instructor John Hellmann at 675-8397 or email NWSA.Training@gmail.com  Additional information can be found at www.northwhidbeysportsmen.org.

The Useless Bay Women’s Golf Association presented $12,748 to the WhidbeyHealth Foundation this month after their Links for Life fundraiser in Langley.

The Links for Life funds were raised to support WhidbeyHealth cancer care and its new cancer rehabilitation program, one of the first state-certified cancer survivorship programs in the state. This program, which officially launches this fall, will help patients cope with the fatigue, pain or impairment that often accompanies a cancer diagnosis, with the ultimate goal of enabling patients to get back to their normal daily routine in the period following treatment.

The 2016 festivities start with an all-ages open mic and poetry slam held 7 p.m. Friday the Whidbey Children’s Theater Blackbox space. This performance is youth-driven and youth-organized, hosted by Whidbey Youth Support and Empowerment and South Whidbey High School Equality Club.

The weekend continues with the Queer Open Space Unconference, noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at Langley United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. Participants will experience an open format conference, where they can talk about a specific topic or participate in organic conversations and stories.

“People want a venue to have conversations about the queer community and lifestyle,” said event co-founder and coordinator Kathryn Lynn Morgen. “Instead of deciding what folks would want to hear or talk about, it makes more sense to open it up.”

New this year is the Saturday Night Soirée, featuring drag, burlesque and cabaret performances for mature audiences. Morgen will curate this event, held at 7 p.m. on the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts Mainstage. Audiences will enjoy performances by Ricki Sparxx, ChrisGina Touché and other performers as well as show-host Patrovna, a drag queen from Coupeville and winner of the 2016 Skagit Valley College Rainbow Alliance Drag Show.

The signature event of the weekend is the Queer Pride Parade, which starts at 2 p.m. Sunday in downtown Langley. Over the past two years, hundreds of community members have marched in the parade, which has drawn almost a thousand attendees. A new component for the parade is the booth fair, featuring work by local arts and educational organizations, artists and food vendors.

The weekend will wrap up with a volunteer appreciation potluck at 4 p.m. Sunday after the parade, held  PM at Langley United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. This event is also open to the public.

“I support and take action through Queer Pride on Whidbey, because I love that gorgeous melty feeling of belonging to a part of something bigger than myself and my own experience with queerness,” said co-organizer Ann Johnson. “I get to share queer culture in all its glory with my growing, discovering, strong daughters, my patient and loving husband, and found family members new and old in the community that I have adopted as my own.”

For more information about registering for the parade, participating in and volunteering for the event, please visit www.queerparade.com.

“We’re putting up signs that say ‘Welcome Pokémon Trainers,’” said Dawn Rutherford, teen services coordinator for the library district. Library staff are asking that players respect other library users while capturing Pokémon, training or resupplying.

“Pokémon GO players can be very focused on the game,” Rutherford said. “We are also hearing stories of people making it out of the house more and families walking around playing the game together. We are thrilled to be a place Pokémon trainers can safely connect and discover.”

Libraries and other public places figure prominently in the world of Pokémon GO. Players go in search of Pokémon figures, which they capture and then train at Pokémon GO Gyms. Along the way, they may need supplies, which are available at PokéStops.

Libraries can be any or all of those things and Sno-Isle Libraries welcomes players on their quests.

Rutherford added that it appears that most if not all Sno-Isle Libraries facilities are identified in some way in Pokémon GO.

“Some of our libraries are Gyms, many are PokéStops and I’m pretty sure all have Pokémon waiting to be caught.”

The Child and Babysitter Safety Training courses will be offered on a monthly basis in Oak Harbor and on South Whidbey. The CABS classes are aimed at children who are old enough to babysit and children who might be caring for a younger sibling.

“We want our students to think proactively and positively,” said Rick Stratton, American Heart Association and American Safety and Health Institute instructor and co-founder of the Heartbeat Safety Center. “We don’t call them babysitters. We train them to be injury prevention and activity coordination specialists.”

The CABS classes will cover a multitude of safety and injury prevention topics, as well as basic caregiving skills and first aid. But there will be even more for youth to learn, like the business side of babysitting.

“It really is a business,” said Stratton. “So we’ll talk about how you’re going to market your business, what are you going to charge? We’re going to give them ten suggestions to kind of get them pointed in the right direction.”

Times have changed for babysitting just as they have for many other things. Today some people will demand a babysitter has a resume or references, they may want them to have a CPR card.

“We don’t want people to think of this as babysitting,” he said. “Babysitting sounds reactive, like you’re sitting there waiting for something to happen. We want them to keep that child entertained and engaged and distracted while Mom and Dad are away so the baby doesn’t get hurt. It changes it from reactive to proactive.”

According to press release from HBSC, the CABS classes are being offered island wide in order to help fill a need.

“The American Red Cross used to provide this kind of training, but its expanded mission has left a gap here on the island,” said HBSC co-founder Robert May, a 28-year Island County first responder and paramedic. “Our nationally accredited CABS class is designed to focus on supervising, caring for and keeping children occupied and safe in babysitting settings.

“Babysitting is very often a child’s first job,” he continued. “We help our students get off to a good start by building a strong foundation of safety, knowledge and preparedness.”

The five-hour class will help prepare students to be in charge, how to handle conflict and to be able to react to situations with confidence “born of good training,” said May.

Even though many parents have talked about a lot of the things covered in the CABS class, Stratton said kids will sometimes learn more from a neutral third party or professional.

Cost for the nationally accredited course is $30. Children between the ages of 11 and 18 are eligible to attend. Classes will be offered regularly on both North and South Whidbey. Information is available online at www.heartbeatsafetycenter.com or by calling the Heartbeat Safety Center at 360-639-8205.

The seabird is so popular, in fact, Pigeon Guillemot Appreciation Day was just observed at Ott and Murphy’s Winery and Tasting Room in Langley. The event was put on by the Guillemot Research Group, a citizen science project of the Whidbey Audubon Society.

The group, founded by Whidbey Island author and naturalist Frances Wood, along with professor Phyllis Kind, has been conducting an annual breeding survey of the seabirds the past 12 years.

”This is the only regularly breeding seabird in Puget Sound,” said Wood, adding that about 1,000 of the seabirds nest annually on Whidbey Island. “It’s important to monitor them because this is the only seabird that has been identified as an indicator species.”

That is important because it means the Pigeon Guillemot, or PIGUs, for short, is a great indicator as to the health of the environment in general and Puget Sound in particular.

“They are like the proverbial canary in the coal mine,” said Govinda Rosling, a past intern with Guillemot Research Group and current volunteer. “It’s nice to keep tabs on the bird’s population; if it’s down, we know there could be a larger problem that needs to be addressed.”

Between 60 and 70 volunteers with the research group spend one hour in the morning each week on the beach near the PIGUs burrows, beginning in June and lasting until late August or early September. They count the birds and burrows, track when the eggs hatch by when the adults begin delivering food to the burrow, track the type of fish being eaten and how frequently they deliver the fish to the burrow.

“It helps us monitor the population and the breeding success,” said Wood.

All of this research is collected, tabulated and presented to the Puget Sound Partnership, which monitors all marine species in the Sound. The data is also presented to the Island County Marine Resources Committee.
“It is citizen science at its best,” said Wood.

The group has one paid intern each year. It is their job to spend three hours on the beach from 6 to 9 a.m. each weekday morning, collecting even more specific data. Emily Terao is this year’s intern, a self-described “huge bird nerd.”

“I love to watch birds and thought this would be the perfect way to get involved and pursue my passion,” she said. “Every half hour I count the birds I see, I record any time there is a fish in an adult’s mouth, what kind of fish it is, what burrow they bring it to and what time they deliver it.”

By watching this behavior, volunteers can determine when the eggs have hatched, how many hatchlings there are (typically two) and when they have fledged, or left the nest.

Terao also takes photographs and videos of the birds and their behavior.

“I’ve seen some really cool things,” she said. “They are really adorable. They have distinct personalities, they play. And a lot of people don’t even know what they are.”

According to Wood, PIGUs do resemble pigeons in terms of the shape of their head and necks, which probably explains their name. However, they are slightly larger than a pigeon, reaching about 13-inches. They are dark brown, have white wing patches and bright red feet.

PIGU’s mate for life. They typically spend most of the year offshore, although they can be found on Whidbey year round. They return in May or June to nest in burrows dug into the island’s bluffs. There are approximately 25 colonies on Whidbey, stretching the entire length of the island, from Deception Pass Bridge to Possession Point. Most of the colonies are located along the western shore of the island, but there are several colonies on the East, from Mariner’s Cove and Crescent Harbor to Penn Cove to Pratt’s Bluff.

Anyone who is interested can get involved in the research project and get more information from the group’s website at www.pigeonguillemot.org or on its Facebook page.

“I think our volunteers enjoy how much fun they are to watch,” said Kind. “They are charming. We all fall in love with them.”

“The Guillemots are easy to fall in love with,” agreed Rosling. “They are so much fun to watch and they’re a very important seabird. It is definitely a labor of love.”

According to a press release from the office of Mayor Bob Severns, the grove was vandalized on the night of July 1 by someone riding an all-terrain vehicle.

The rider drove over approximately 100 Garry Oak seedlings and their blue protective tree tubes, crushing the tubes, breaking their bamboo stakes, and damaging the trees, said the release. A witness driving by the grove saw the ATV rider at about 9:30 p.m. last Friday and pulled over along Fakkema Road. When the witness pulled over, the ATV driver left the grove via a trail on the eastern side and headed south. ATV tracks indicated the vehicle entered a nearby neighborhood, according to the release.

The driver of the ATV is described as a young adult male with a lanky build and dirty blonde, slightly longer hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt. Anyone with information as to the identity of the rider is asked to contact Oak Harbor Police Sergeant Cedric Niiro at (360) 279-4600.

The grove was planted in phases last fall and early winter as a community project to honor the City’s Centennial.  The first phase was the planting of 100 six-foot-tall saplings closer to Highway 20 and Fakkema Road, to representing the 100 years of incorporation as a city.

The second phase included planting 237 seedlings behind the larger trees.  Most of the saplings were funded by donations from the community, and some of the materials such as mulch, soil, and fertilizer were donated by local businesses.

All of the seedlings were collected as acorns from local trees and grown in pots by local citizens, including members of the Oak Harbor Garden Club and the Oak Harbor Garry Oak Society.

The grove, located near the static display of U.S. Navy aircraft, was intended to help welcome visitors to Oak Harbor.

City staff members that shepherded the grove planting believe that most of the damaged seedlings can be saved, but that it will require new stakes and several hours of labor resetting the tubes.

The annual event in Oak Harbor was named in the top ten best in the newspaper’s Reader’s Choice contest under the “Old Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration” category.

Starting Friday with the opening of the carnival, the weekend’s festivities culminate to a series of events on Monday, July 4.

The parade, which begins at 11 a.m. on Bayshore Drive, was organized by Oak Harbor Rotary and Chamber of Commerce, will have more than 100 entries.

The parade sponsor is REMAX Who will be giving out 9,000 American flags along the parade route.
Following the parade, a community photo will be taken at Windjammer Park.

Music, a beer garden and children’s activities will be available from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday with the fireworks show starting at 10:30 p.m.

Community members and businesses contributed $20,000 to the fireworks show with Dan Ollis of Whidbey Coffee as the title sponsor.

For more information, visit www.oakharborchamber.com.