City of Edmonds-Historical Commission

Thursday afternoon I met with the City of Edomonds Historical Commission to show them a video I found while researching the history of our neighborhood. The footage showed vintage cars, sparsely populated city streets and even a little footage of Main Street with the 1940's era merchants. The city councilman who invited me said the video was "nothing less than extraordinary".

One shot showed billowing smoke rising from smoke stakes from lumber mills along the waterfront. Those mills are long gone and replaced by multi-million dollar view homes.

The Commission asked the question, how do we motivate our community to engage in Historical preservation? After receiving a grant from the National Park Service to identify historically significant properties, the need to preserve the property still remains.

I suggested sharing the story behind the buildings as a way to bring people together. Obviously those stories are easily lost, but when connected to a building or monument or art that people see everyday it becomes part of the fabric of life in a city.

How do historical sites, buildings and monuments add to the sense of community people experience in a City?

Snohomish County Exec - Aaron Reardon

Meeting with County Executive

Last week representives from NeighborhoodsWork had an informal meeting with Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon to discuss his vision for needs and improvements in the county. The meeting lasted about an hour over lunch. We talked about ways that Faith Based orgainizations might help organize "Town Hall" type meetings through diverse networks of relationships. Many FBO's have the uniqueness of a diverse population with connections into a great number of citizen groups in the region.

We are making a plans to organize at least one event that would include a presentation from the Executive regarding the State of the County from is point of view. The event would also be designed to facilitate feedback from participants and help give direction to the future decisions in the county.

If you would like to be notified about the times and dates send an email to info@neighborhoodswork.com. Request to be notified about the Snohomish County "town hall" meeting.

One of our great neighbors with stories to tell. 

Edmond History Project

As a personal project I've taken on the role of gathering historical artifacts for our neighborhood. I enjoy the stories I hear from older residents and sadly remember a few elderly friends who are no longer with us, but still had stories to tell .

This week I viewed a video of our neighborhood with an Edmonds City councilman. The video footage was "archived" at the home of a neighbor's mother. It shows scenes of our city taken 60+ years ago when it was a largely rural community. Chickens can be seen running free around the neighbor's yard.

The councilman proclaimed it a treasure and asked if I could bring it to the historic commission meeting on February 10th. It will be a special surprise. WE have more plans too.

More later,

Neil