This Week
The Gristle
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP: In 2011, Lummi Nation and other tribal authorities requested a declaratory judgement by the federal government on their treaty-reserved water rights, concerned that the oversubscription of water withdrawals threatened tribal fisheries. While the tribes wait for a federal response, case law continues to accumulate that suggests the federal government will indeed take their tribal water claims very seriously, including a decision in March of last year that requires the state to
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Music
Record Store Day
Hooked on the needle
By Carey Ross · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Back in 2007, the year Record Store Day was founded, independent music stores were in freefall, decimated by the ready availability of all the music on Earth on the World Wide Web, just a click—or, more likely, an illegal download—away. Like a fast-moving train they could see coming from a mile away but were powerless to avoid, independent record stores, not just in the United States but the world over, could only react to the digital revolution after impact. Indeed, many did not survive,
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Food
Skagit Surprises
Shopping and snacking on the tulip route
Story and photos by Jessamyn Tuttle · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
One of the interesting things about living in Skagit Valley is watching the traffic patterns during the Tulip Festival. Most people, following instructions from their GPS, all get to the fields the same way, crawling through downtown Mount Vernon and onward through the several-mile-long traffic jam that Memorial Highway and McLean Road turn into every April. Those in the know, however, get off the freeway at Conway and take Fir Island Road, a route that adds a small amount of distance but has
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Words
Money Matters
Walking away from legal tender
Reviewed by Lisa Gresham · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
April is here, the longer days are evident, rain is broken up by occasional deliciously warm and sunshiny days and our collective thoughts turn to…taxes.
It’s a fact that Americans in April have money on our minds. As frustrating as tax time can be, have you ever really considered what it would mean to live without money? Not without income, but actually without using money in any form.
Daniel Suelo thought about it much of his life, but it wasn’t until he was 39 years old that he
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Outdoors
Spring Migration
David Allen Sibley is for the birds
By Christian Martin · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
It’s that time of the year again, when millions of birds are on the wing.
The night skies are filled with flocks heading north, empty roosts are filling up again and our local wildlands and neighborhoods are reignited with the songs of our feathered friends taking up residence in their seasonal homes.
Spring migration is underway, and many different avian species are either passing through on their way to points farther north, or else arriving in the Fourth Corner with intentions to stick
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On Stage
Taking Flight
Grief and acceptance in Women of Lockerbie
By Amy Kepferle · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Although the powers that be at the Bellingham Theatre Guild couldn’t possibly have known that their spring production, The Women of Lockerbie, would coincide with a remarkably related major news story, that’s exactly what happened.
The recent event I’m referring to is the ongoing search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth more than a month ago on what was supposed to be a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The Women of Lockerbie,
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Visual
Quintessential Skagit
Treasure hunting at River Gallery
By Stephen Hunter · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
You must be resourceful to find the River Gallery on Landing Road, just south of La Conner. From a low ridge, the gallery looks out over mysterious, forested hummocks forming islands in the Skagit flats, where peaceful sheep and black and white cows graze. On my visit, it stood in glorious sun, backed by billowy, white clouds.
Formerly a small commercial greenhouse, the gallery is the creation of Silvia Strong. For a dozen years it has been a magnet for creative artists and the sophisticated
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Film
Finding Vivian Maier
A portrait of an enigma
Reviewed by Peter Rainier · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
When Vivian Maier, who worked most of her life as a nanny in the tony suburbs of Chicago’s North Shore, died in 2009 at the age of 83, a storage facility auctioned off her voluminous personal effects. John Maloof, a 26-year-old amateur historian, purchased a box of undeveloped negatives of hers, then set them aside after a cursory look-see. Two years later, he revisited the trove and realized Maier’s work was as good as anything by Weegee, Helen Levitt, or Dorothea Lange.
Finding Vivian
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Film
The Unknown Known
Errol Morris vs. Donald Rumsfeld
Reviewed by Mick LaSalle · Wednesday, April 16, 2014
People will walk out of The Unknown Known convinced that Donald Rumsfeld is an awful man—and just as convinced that others will love him. They will be dispirited, imagining that he dominated filmmaker Errol Morris, not realizing that they have just witnessed one of the great rope-a-dopes in documentary history—one all the more impressive, because Rumsfeld is no dope.
Yes, Morris could have confronted him. He could have pressed him on his insistence that the Iraq War would be a cakewalk, that
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Best of Bellingham
The center of gravity has shifted in Bellingham.
In the years we’ve been polling readers on their favorite haunts and hidey-holes, we’ve seen the focus crawl from the Southside to Columbia, veer south again to the central district and now eastward to what was not so very long ago perhaps the least likely of favorite neighborhoods, Sunnyland. Why Sunnyland? Well, Trader Joe’s, for starters. HomeSkillet. Kulshan Brewery and StrEAT Food. Hardware Sales. In fact, it is that delightful mix of residence and industrial-strength business that yields Sunnyland its wondrous, quirky charm. Artists work from their back of their homes and sell from their commercial storefronts—their efforts showcased each summer in the Sunnyland Stomp.
But favorite places are found all over Bellingham. Here again we present our readers picks of the best, brightest and boldest in the City of Subdued Excitement.
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