It had been approximately six months since I last walked through the doors of Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher Building, but when I entered the lobby Sunday afternoon on my way to explore the recently opened exhibit, “Anatomy of a Collection: Recent Acquisitions and Promised Gifts,” it seemed as if almost no time at all had passed.

Inside, of course, there were a number of differences to be found since my last pre-pandemic walk-through. Staff were masked and seated behind plexiglass, and…

We regret to inform you that the Cloud Mountain Farm Center has canceled its annual Fall Fruit Festival—a two-day affair taking place every October in Everson that gives visitors the chance to taste-test more than 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables grown at the teaching farm, purchase plants, query staff about small- and large-scale gardening projects, and take home piles of goodies for use in the kitchen.

Luckily, a Fall Fruit Extravaganza has been planned in its place and will…

In a normal year, the Pickford Film Center staff would be putting the finishing touches on preparations for what is the nonprofit arthouse movie theater’s biggest annual undertaking: Doctober.

Those who manage the calendar would have long since made sure that each piece of the vast scheduling puzzle that is Doctober was in place and as it should be—while troubleshooting the various unforeseen issues that always arise. Those involved in film trafficking would be constantly updating…

In a county often characterized by its divisions, the campaigns for Whatcom’s seats in the state House of Representatives show a remarkably unified focus on issues—fighting through pandemic crisis, and then carefully picking through the state’s damaged budget for priorities.

Incumbent Luanne Van Werven and her challenger Alicia Rule share similar backgrounds and mutligenerational histories in Whatcom County. And fundamentally the Republican and Democrat share similar concerns but…

In Heather “Anish” Anderson’s 2019 memoir, Thirst: 2,600 Miles to Home, the title refers not only to her desire to slake her longing for adventure by traversing the trails of North America, but also to the bodily reaction caused by severe dehydration—a condition that brought the author and adventurer nearly to the brink of death only eight days into a record-breaking thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

When Anish (Anderson’s trail name) set out from the border of Mexico in June of…

After years of pretending to be her own booking agent and writing reviews of her own shows, Northwest-based fiddler, founder of the Bellingham Irish Festival, and highly qualified laptop owner Cayley Miranda Schmid has expanded her self-serving typing skills to include conducting her own interviews.

“It was nerve-wracking at first,” Schmid admitted. “I didn’t know if I had those homerun questions, you know? I wanted this interview to be personal, to get through to the real…