I’m waiting with bated breath for the day Governor Jay Inslee decrees yard sales are an “essential service,” but in the meantime I’ll make do with celebrating the good news that farmers markets throughout Washington state have been given the green light to proceed.

When the Bellingham Farmers Market kicked off in mid-April—a week later than their typical opening day—they were paving the way for what a modified market would look like in the face of a pandemic. To make sure booths were…

Authors and publishers have learned that if you add a lengthy, intriguing subtitle to your book, you increase the chances of someone picking it up. Investigative journalist Ryan Jacobs put this into practice with his first full-length work, The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulations in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus.

With a title that dramatic, it’s important to deliver, and Jacobs does, crafting a fast-paced, fascinating…

On a typical Memorial Day weekend, a drive or bicycle ride around the eight-mile land mass of Lummi Island might reveal stunning views of Mt. Baker and Orcas Island, bald eagles perched regally atop tall trees, and colorful balloons placed by the roadside that signal stops on the Artists’ Studio Tour.

Three times a year, the event highlights a number of the creative humans who call the island their home by opening up their studios or galleries to the public for perusal. The late-May…

The conundrum of having a bicycle that needs some major work, but not having a vehicle big enough to ferry it to the fix-it place, has been weighing on me lately.

I gaze longingly at my sky-blue Trek cruiser and ponder how easy it would be to just walk the hobbled conveyance to a nearby bike shop—the Hub Community Bike Shop, Kona Bike Shop, Fanatik Bike Co., Trek Bicycle Bellingham, and Jack’s Bicycle Center are all within strolling distance of my house, and as essential businesses…

While Seattle boasts its fair share of cultural icons, its relationship with those legends tends to be, well, complicated. Folks such as Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, while bright, blazing talents, burned out long before they had the chance to fade away. Seattle Seahawk Marshawn Lynch, aka Beast Mode, a widely embraced sports superhero, wore his fame uncomfortably, and his utterance of “I’m just here so I won’t get fined” is as much a part of his legacy as his exploits on the…

Aireekah Laudert is a woman of many talents, all of which focus on using her abundance of creativity and proven ability to bring people together in the name of having fun. Few people can being a walking, talking human party into a business, but that’s exactly what she’s done with Glitt3r Lyfe, which offers a range of services that won’t exactly save your life or anything, but they’ll certainly help make it worth living.

However, when the pandemic struck, Glitt3r Lyfe was one of…