Friday, March 29, 2024

Author Dar Williams visits Chelan

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CHELAN - On Tuesday, Oct. 2, singer/songwriter and  author Dar Williams visited Chelan. During her time in town she visited Chelan High School students, facilitated a leadership discussion at City Hall and addressed what she observed in the community.

Williams has written many books in which she “explores how communities thrive in the midst of significant change and challenge.”

In her time spent at City Hall with members of the community, Williams touched on three specific subjects: the charm of a small town, cultural bridges and housing.

She suggested to let “outsiders” know how special this town is, as an example she said that business owners should share their story with the people who come into town. “I think that as an outsider, you might be more polite and more supportive, more part of their community,” said Williams. A long those lines, she suggested to include welcome signs throughout town in businesses and in the municipals signage.

Williams also spoke about the Visitor/Resident Ratio (VR Ratio),  she says that small tourist towns usually struggle with that. However, Williams said, “The kids really love it here. They generally sense that the business owners are nice, and that the business owners are nice to each other and that they work together.”

With this information the high schoolers she met with gave her, she was able to figure out that here in Chelan the VR Ratio leans towards the residents, which she said to keep on doing.   

Someone from the audience stated, “When people come out of town and they come from larger towns, in larger towns there are employees, so when they come here the owners kind of disappear and they think they are talking to the employees. They do not get the idea that people who are working in this town and run the business are usually the owners and they have help.”

“They need to understand the culture,” responded Williams.

Continuing on with transmitting the towns story, Williams highlighted the importance of murals in every town, “it shows pride and history, they are beautiful.”

HDCA Director Erin McCardle, explained that Chelan is community of workers and at times, it is very difficult for the community to stay connected, she mentioned that a lot of retired folks are moving here because they love. She asked Williams is any other towns experiencing this and what can Chelan do to bring all the community together.

“The best to do with retired citizens is to put them right to work … when retired citizens volunteer hours and expertise it’s turns everything to gold,” said Williams.

For the worker community, Williams suggested to meet in a place and write down all the events hosted in town and look for three different criteria.
• Do people like it?
•How does each event bridge?
• How does it bring other parts of the community?

Mayor Mike Cooney had the chance to pose a question, “You talked about it in your book and we are facing it in town, it is housing for the middle class … home crisis has risen, wages has stayed the same, people are having to move and commute to our town … and for the seniors as well.”

Williams is not very familiar with affordable housing however, she mentioned that all communities are dealing with a home crisis. However, she mentioned the idea of the “granny flat,” basically a part of a house for example a garage is converted for a person to live and then they would rent out their home.

“Once you put the concept out, people can get very creative about it and then perhaps a zoning board can be a little more looser in response to that,” Williams said.

Lastly, Williams spoke about the “unforgotten Hispanic voice” in Chelan. “If there are projects that bring in the history of the migration, what has people staying here … there’s a way to pull in and harvest a cultural pride,” said Williams.

Williams believes that by  incorporating festivities such as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) different cultures are able bridge together.

HDCA is in fact launching the first Dia de los Muertos event on Nov. 3, “the reason why we decided to do it is to start to merge the gap between the Hispanic community and the Anglo community, it is such an important tradition and it has been really excited to see how many people want to be part of this,” said McCardle.

Cooney ended the discussion by thanking HDCA for sponsoring and bringing Williams to town.

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