Ester Strijbos moves on from the Tideline

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - After 14 years at the helm, Ester Strijbos is moving on from the Tideline. In one of the archived posts, from the fall of 2011, she wrote:  “Last year June, after careful consideration, Richard Trueman decided to step down from cortesisland.com (Tideline). I took over from Richard in July 2010. Irene Blueth is still Assistant Editor, which means that she takes care of the Tideline when I am away, and also helps make editing decisions.”  Cortes Currents: How did you become the editor of the tideline?  Ester Strijbos: “Richard and I became friends when we met up at the TAC on a weekly basis. We got together with  a bunch of people that were into web stuff and photography. We became friends.  Then after a few years in  2010, he was just done with it. There was a lot of stuff going on, the hall tax , the rezoning of the fish farms and the community plan.”  “So he called and said, 'I need to find someone within a few days because I don't want to do it anymore.’"  “I thought I would do it for a little while and then someone else would take over. ' That was my initial idea because I thought, 'well, we can't not have it. So I'll do it for a while and then we'll figure something out.'  I guess that part never really happened until now.”    Cortes Currents: Has it been a good time?   Ester Strijbos: “Yes. Most of it, yes.”  (Laughs) Cortes Currents: Why? What was good about it?  Ester Strijbos:"Well, it's the community. There's a lot of people that are part of the timeline,  it feels like the whole community.  I loved that about it!” Cortes Currents: What have been the challenges and what have been the successes?   Ester Strijbos: “I think the successes are what you see every day, people communicating with each other and  to our community.”  “The challenges have been the not so nice notes or people just not wanting to understand the policies and the guidelines and staying within them. That's been a challenge. When things happen on the island, and when we lose people that you're really close to, that's hard.”  Cortes Currents: What are you going to miss about it?  Ester Strijbos: “Again, I'm going to miss the community. At this point there's lots of things I'm not going to miss about being editor, but I know I will miss the connections that I had on a daily basis with a lot of people. I won't have that anymore, and so I'll definitely miss that.”