Recently, I sat down with a calendar and a fairly comprehensive list of the very many outdoor music series that are taking place over the course of the summer in Whatcom and Skagit counties. It did not require much hard figuring to discern that a person could, if they were so moved, spend just about every afternoon, evening or night from now until sometime in August at one outdoor venue or another, taking in the variety of music for which this region is known.

One could see a whole…

In Edison this month art patrons can enjoy two excellent exhibits: Smith & Vallee Gallery features the work of Steve Jensen, and graphic works and paintings by Thomas Wood can be viewed at i.e. gallery.

The contrast is profound. Wood is a man who knows many things, while Jensen knows one thing well.

Jensen knows crescent-shaped boats, which are colorful in several media: paintings on wood and plaster, translucent resin boxes and recycled marine aluminum.

The boat images recall the…

When athlete and author Craig Romano was doing research for his new guidebook, Urban Trails: Bellingham, he learned a few things about the area he didn’t know before.

“There are no pine trees at Pine Lake!” Romano says. “There probably were at one time, but so many of our western white pines have succumbed to disease. I also learned the Stimpson Nature Reserve contains some really big trees, and that there are old-growth trees still growing in Lynden, of all places.”

The second in a…

Since late May, I’ve spent an inexplicable amount of time fantasizing about the crab bisque I inhaled with glee at the Old Edison Inn during a birthday lunch date with my significant other at the longtime Skagit Valley eatery.

And although everything we consumed on that sunny spring day was divine—the oyster shooters popped with briny overtones, the fish tacos were fresh and fabulous, and my fella’s patty melt was one of the best he says he’s ever had—I haven’t been able to get…

Rarely have man and the moment collided so ferociously than in the presidency of Donald J. Trump. And few writers have the framework to understand the collision and the shockwaves to follow more than Naomi Klein. The acclaimed journalist, activist and bestselling author has spent two decades studying political shocks and well-branded bullies.

Watching Donald Trump’s rise, she admits in her latest book, she’s had a strange feeling she’s covered this topic before. Klein laid out…

My sister has four kids, and has said many times that the last thing she wants to hear from them when school is out for the summer and they don’t face the daily rigors of institutionalized education is “I’m bored.” She doesn’t live in Bellingham, but if she did, I’d direct her to the following ways to distract her offspring from the ho-hum existence of reality.

At Bellingham Arts Academy for Youth (BAAY), youth as young as 5 and as old as 17 who are interested in being either onstage…

San Juan County officials and others are coming up with ways to protect Southern Resident killer whales. Suggestions at a June 6 council meeting ranged from more enforcement of current state boating regulations to a 10-year moratorium on catching Chinook salmon in the county, the Journal of the San Juan Islands reported.

“If we keep doing things the same way, we’ll get the same result,” said Kendra Smith, manager of the San Juan County Environmental Resources Department, about…

Beatriz at Dinner is a darkly comic fantasy about an empathetic, nature-loving Latina healer who comes face to face with a racist, vulgar, thoroughly despicable member of the 1 percent. I say “fantasy” not because it couldn’t happen, but because the movie is predicated on the rare thrill of seeing an all-too-human monster being made to answer for his crimes, if only for the duration of one surreal and savagely funny evening.

The director, Miguel Arteta, and the screenwriter, Mike…