Every sense comes alive and works overtime at a farmers market. The smell of cilantro in the air, the sizzle of lamb kebabs on the grill, the tickle of the stems of freshly picked dahlias held snugly in your palm.

Do you love to sing? Have you ever wondered where you could sing, besides the shower? In 1976, a group of Issaquah friends was pondering the same question when they hatched an idea over a card table to create the Issaquah Singers, to provide more opportunities for them and others to sing.

Twenty-seven years ago I brought my then girlfriend Mardi to Issaquah to show her the little town I had selected to become the new home of my two sons and me. At the time, Mardi was a manager at Seattle’s famous Ray’s Boathouse restaurant and very knowledgeable about fine dining and great wines—a full-fledged foodie.

Eating local. You may have heard the concept referred to in a number of different ways: locavorism, the 100-Mile Diet, farm to table. These terms all refer to the trend of purchasing food that has been grown and processed in one’s own community.

The Greater Issaquah Chamber of Commerce has teamed up with Virginia Mason Medical Center to promote the Chamber’s recently launched Innovation in Issaquah program, helping to showcase the “great innovators in greater Issaquah today.”

This story goes back a few years, to the 1960s, when Jim and Liz Perry were living in Santa Clara, California. Jim was a policeman and Liz was tending to three young children. Looking for spare work, Jim began building workbenches for a local glass studio, which in turn led to a job offer to learn the art of designing and creating fine stained glass.

Pause for a minute and imagine that you have more than 50 acres of prime land open for development right in the middle of the city of Sammamish. What would you do with the forest- and meadow-covered land?

Bringing an afternoon and evening focus on education and the locally available options.

A little yellow caboose sits on the tracks outside the historic Issaquah depot. You may have noticed it on a visit to the Depot Museum. The caboose was once used by the Weyerhaeuser Company, and it is a visible reminder of Issaquah’s railroading and logging history.

Issaquah’s historic downtown, the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, the Issaquah Alps Club, the Lake Sammamish Elks Lodge, the Mountains to Sound Greenway, Save Lake Sammamish, PTSA organizations—these are just a few of the more than 50 local community service and nonprofit organizations which benefit each year from Issaquah Salmon Days.