Notes from the publisher

I was just asked an interesting question– which article published during the past 15 months of writing stories in the magazine was the most personally compelling. In reflection, I have two answers to that– one that I wrote and the other written by Kelsey bowlby. Stangly, for a magazine that deals with the positive aspects of life in our community, both of these articles had the death of a valued love one at their core.

Kelsey wrote in our first edition about the death of her brother Justin from an accidental overdose of perscription drugs. She then went on to describe how the SAMA (Science and Management of Addiction) organization has been founded to eliminate the disease of substance addiction in youth by advancing research, education and treatment.

I was very moved by the quiet strength Kelsey showed in writing the article as I have been very motivated by the efforts of the entire Bowlby family to openly face the issues surrounding Justin’s death and to support the mission of SAMA.

In January of this year, I profiled Dellan Elliott and the challenges she faced helping her husband Chris battle with brain cancer. Again, another sad death, but in both cases it is what the survivors have done since then that is so motivating to me. In Dellann’s case she has developed programs for other families facing the same type of terminal brain cancer and has raised over $1,000,000 to fund research.

While I plan to provide many years of great stories about our community and the people who make it such a great place to live, these two storoes will always remain close to my heart.

The newest edition of the Issaquah Sammamish Magazine is in the postal service as I write this. I do believe it to be the best of the six edition we have published over the past 15 months.

There are some subtle things that we have redesigned inside the magazine as well as several new sections we added to this edition. There is now a What IS Happening section to feature new businesses, anniversaries, and speceial events that we think you should be aware of– have also added a community calendar–this first one focused more on activities with kids, but we will continue to expand this to cover events for all ages that are happening during the two months following each editon.

If you are part of an organization and are planning some events, please send me info so that we might be able to include them in the calendar section.