Welcome to Inside Bainbridge, your homegrown online source for what’s up on the rock. Here you will find local news, information, events, profiles, and insider tips, written by Bainbridge Islanders for Bainbridge Island residents and friends.

An independent partner of The Seattle Times and King5.com, Inside Bainbridge also offers a comprehensive online events calendar, local business directory, and up-to-date Bainbridge Island information, including a News in Brief section, weather forecast, ferry schedule and cams, tide chart, map, movie times, stock quotes, and an Island-wide energy-use dashboard—all accessible from the home page. Our goal is to help you plug in to all the unique experiences and resources that our vibrant community offers, and to keep you “on the inside.”

We want to earn your enthusiastic support by providing you with information that you will enjoy and rely on. Here are ten ways you can help us develop Inside Bainbridge into your online resource for Bainbridge Island living:

1. Post a comment in response to an article. Send us your thoughts and get people talking!
2. Submit calendar events, business directory entries, and classified ads. Don’t be shy; we want to list you and what you’re up to!
3. Chat with us and other Inside Bainbridge readers in our Facebook forums and Like us on Facebook.
4. Subscribe to our online weekly news update.
5. Follow us on Twitter.
6. Subscribe to our (free) RSS feed to get articles sent automatically in your favorite online reader or e-mail.
7. Send us news tips on our Home page News Tip link.
8. Send us your news releases, questions, and ideas by e-mailing us at contact [at] insidebainbridge [dot] com.
9. Send us your best photos of life on Bainbridge (one at a time, please) as jpgs, and we will consider featuring them: contact [at] insidebainbridge [dot] com.
10. Tell your neighbors, family, and friends about us.

Thank you for visiting, and come back soon!

Founders

We launched Inside Bainbridge in the spring of 2011 to provide a smart, inclusive, practical, and positive online resource for and about the extraordinary community of Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Julie Hall is CoPublisher of Inside Bainbridge. She was Editorial Director at Rand McNally and Writing Department Director for the educational development house Proof Positive, overseeing projects for publisher clients such as Glencoe McGraw-Hill. She ran her own writing and editing business for twenty years, covering a wide range of topics, including sustainable living, literature, science, social justice, education, and travel. Her clients included Scholastic, The Mountaineers Books, A.C. Nielsen (Ratings), Boston University, and many others. She cofounded the online eco-store ProgressiveKid, which sold its wholesale products to Whole Foods and retailers around the world. She cofounded the blogs ProgressiveKid Reader and On a Ledge, and her articles have been published by The Chicago Sun Times, Reuters, The Seattle Times, and Riverwired. She has a BA in English from Northwestern University and an MFA in Writing from Goddard College. Her poetry has won numerous awards, most recently the 2011 River Styx International Poetry Contest, and has appeared in magazines such as The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Bloom . She has written many nonfiction books for children, most recently A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids, endorsed by the PEW Center on Global Climate Change and the National Association of Science Teachers. She moved to Bainbridge in 1994 for the trees. She loves biking, cooking simple fresh food, smelling the nootka roses with her partner and daughter, and being walked by their dogs.

CoPublisher of Inside Bainbridge, Sarah Lane is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer, and website builder. She founded the blogs On a Ledge and ProgressiveKid Reader and has written extensively on environmental and social justice issues. Her articles have been picked up by national publications, including Mother Earth News. She illustrated A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids, A Story of Witchery (Les Figues Press), and Omiyage (AMIE). Sarah trained teachers through the Chicago-based Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Education Program and taught English and writing to inner city high school and college students. She was Editorial Director of a textbook development company in Chicago, overseeing projects for publishers such as Glencoe, McDougal Littell, and McGraw-Hill. She has over twenty years of experience editing and writing educational, business, and website copy. She also is a green-business pioneer and cofounded ProgressiveKid.com, an early online eco-store that sold its wholesale products to Whole Foods and retailers around the world. Her fiction has been anthologized and has won awards, including a writer-in-residence grant from Hedgebrook. She has an MFA in Writing from Antioch University and a BA in English from Carleton College. Sarah grew up in Spain and is fluent in Spanish and French. Bainbridge Island has been her home for 17 years. She is a fan of art projects with her daughter and chortling with her partner on their shared daily comedy.

Advertising Accounts Manager

Bill Lane is Advertising Accounts Manager at Inside Bainbridge. He is overqualified for this job. He has 36 years of marketing and upper management experience for Kodak, including stints in Argentina, Spain, and Greece. He completes the New York Times crossword puzzle every Sunday and is a long-time Cardinals fan.

Contributors

Audrey Barbakoff is an adult services librarian at the Bainbridge Island branch of the Kitsap Regional Library. She is a 2010 graduate of the University of Washington’s Master of Library and Information Science program. Her articles on librarianship have appeared in American Libraries, Public Libraries, Library Philosophy and Practice, and In the Library with the Lead Pipe. She reviews new nonfiction for Library Journal. When it comes to fiction she reads a little bit of everything, but admits to being a science fiction geek. She loves to talk about books, so if you leave a comment about your favorites, she’ll probably chime in with a few suggestions for you.

Leigh Calvez is a naturalist and nature writer turned transformative life/adventure coach. She offers Wild Women Adventures and Next Steps Life Coaching to women who are ready to embrace their most authentic life. As a nature writer her work has been published in American Nature Writing 2003 by Fulcrum Books, Between Species: Celebrating The Dolphin-Human Bond by Sierra Club Books, Ocean Realm, The Ecologist, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Bremerton Sun. For more information about life coaching or Wild Women Adventures, e-mail leighcalvez [at] gmail [dot] com.

Chuck Estin has lived on Bainbridge Island for 28 years with his wife and (now grown) two daughters, incorporating food from perennials, chickens, bees, and annuals on their suburban lot and community garden. He practiced permaculture informally as a high school science teacher for ten years, and over the past six years as a permaculturist teaching workshops, designing and installing edible landscapes, managing a nursery, growing produce for local markets, and mentoring apprentices. He has studied “alternative economics” and complementary currencies over the past decade (“Financial Permaculture”), integrating these understandings into his local community development efforts on Bainbridge. Visit www.BiosDesign.us to learn more about his permaculture business Bios Design.

Kevin Hawkins is an award-winning writer and public relations professional in the fields of technology, financial services, and real estate. He is a technology-centric innovator and early online adopter. He helped launch and grow a prolific Internet start-up, and was a pioneer in deploying audio news reports and “how-to” video content on the Web. He has published dozens of magazine profiles of national business leaders and features on technology and the Internet. He served as a spokesperson for Great Western Bank in the 1980s and Fannie Mae in the 1990s, and during his tenure both were named “Most Admired” by Fortune magazine. For the last eight years he has worked on Bainbridge as a consultant, providing home financing work for local banks, including Sterling Savings, CHASE, and Wells Fargo. Kevin serves on the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation Board, and has served on the Bainbridge Public Library Board, the Housing Resources Board, the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force, and as a coach and assistant coach for Little League and the Park District.

Mark Kruse is manager of Brackenwood Capital Management, LLC, a Washington-registered investment advisor specializing in personal and small business financial planning. As a Certified Financial Planner, Kruse helps clients target their financial goals and better build, protect, or transfer their financial assets.

Tom Lamping and wife Penny have been enjoying the pleasures of wine for two decades. They grew up on the island and have lived here for 50+ years. He graduated from Bainbridge High School in 1967 and Washington State University in 1973 with a B.A. in Communications. He has enjoyed a 30-year career in sales in the Seattle area and currently sells printing for Alphagraphics. He recently donated a 5,000-cork collection to a local artist.

Carina Langstraat is co-owner of the landscape design build firm, Langstraat-Wood, with her husband, Erik Wood. She has been building residential gardens for the past twenty years. The gardens she and her staff have built have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens Magazine, Sunset Magazine, Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, and Pacific Northwest Magazine. She has written articles for The Seattle Times as well as the Northwest Horticultural Society. She has a BA in English from University of Washington and studied horticulture at Edmonds Community College. She and her family moved to Bainbridge Island in 2011. When she is not building gardens for her clients, she and her husband are working on their own garden. They have two daughters and enjoy boating together as a family.

Sue Larkin runs Sue Larkin Photography on Bainbridge Island. As an Island resident, she photographs scenic Bainbridge Island, local sporting events, portraits, and more with vivid precision. She has been married to her husband Chris for 23 years and has three children. Her website is www.suelarkinphoto.com.

Jen Pells is a real estate agent with Windermere on Bainbridge Island. Looking for a change of pace, Jen moved to Bainbridge Island in 2007 with her husband and daughters. Working with Island newcomers is one of her specialties, having relocated to Bainbridge herself from Northern California. Jen enjoys working on the Island for many reasons, but being able to volunteer in her daughters’ schools is one of the greatest perks. A former teacher and writer, she grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, graduated from UC Davis where she majored in English and Anthropology, and earned an MA in Education at Sacramento State University. Jen writes a blog about life and real estate: www.jenniferpells.com/blog.

Ellen Wixted and her family have lived on Bainbridge for more than twenty years. Depending on the time of day, she could be focusing on her role as mom to three boys, working as a product manager on Adobe’s line of professional video and audio tools, editing videos for KEXP or Inside Bainbridge, or working on prints and paintings in her studio.

Featured photo courtesy of Jim Cachules.