This Week
The Gristle
Bottled Up
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
BOTTLED UP: In ways both mirroring and anticipating Whatcom’s debate on coal exports, Skagit County and the City of Anacortes held a series of recent public meetings in response to a proposal to build the largest bottling plant in North America on 38 acres bordering a sensitive salmon estuary near Turner Bay as it empties into Similk Bay on Fidalgo Island south of the city. The proposal would require the annexation and consolidation of 11.15 acres of county land adjacent to Anacortes’ urban
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Music
Back 2 Bellingham
Something 4 everyone
By Carey Ross · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
I live near enough to Western Washington University that I can exit my front door, meander a block or two down the street and view the institution of higher learning in all its storied glory. In fact, any journey that takes me to downtown Bellingham for any reason involves walking or driving by the college, and many of my errands are made that much quicker by cutting right through campus.
Despite all that, I tend to take Western’s presence as a given, expending little or no energy on
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Food
Know Thy Onions
Tricky tips for the kitchen and garden
By Ari LeVaux · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Onions can be tricky to grow, which is why a farmer’s onions have long been considered a litmus test for agricultural skill. Hence the expression, “He knows his onions,” which is like saying, “He knows the ropes.” Knowing one’s onions in a literal sense is a great thing to aspire to, and this applies as much in the kitchen as it does in the garden.
Onions are absolutely fundamental to cooking. I may love garlic more, but I need onions. When I’m in the kitchen, I know my onions like Adam knew
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Visual
Welding Rodeo
From scrap to sculpture
By Amy Kepferle · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
If you set your alarm early enough this coming Friday or Saturday morning, you can make it to the Bellingham Technical College campus in time to see a spectacle that comes but twice a year.
At approximately 8am each morning, a loud horn will sound, and teams who have gathered to compete in the 12th annual Welding Rodeo will scurry forth to paw through mounds upon mounds of scrap metal. When they’ve found what they think they’ll need among the various hunks of discarded steel, the teams of
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Film
To the Wonder
Malick goes all in
Reviewed by Stephen Whitty · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Some audiences have trouble with experimental films. I have trouble with experimental films that aren’t experimental enough.
Truthfully, I prefer straight-up, linear narratives. Character, conflict, catharsis—you know, all those things Aristotle used to yammer on about. Those still work for me, time after time. But if you’re going to gamble, go big. And Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is a true, all-in bet.
The poetry of movies—visuals, sounds, movements and how they can be joined or
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On Stage
Soapbox
Get up on it
By Amy Kepferle · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The college kids who crammed the bus to capacity on the ride from downtown Bellingham to Western Washington University’s Viking Union Friday night were busy making plans for the weekend.
I know this because I could hear them bellowing at each other about where the parties were going to be later and chatting loudly on their cell phones so as to be heard above the throng of commuters. I’m assuming the frenzy of texting was also focused on who was doing what, and where, but I didn’t have
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Outdoors
Hammer Time
United in soccer
Story and photo by Trail Rat · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The European Soccer Pyramid is full of “hams.” In England, they have football clubs based in Fulham, West Ham, Tottenham, Oldham, Rotherham, Nottingham, Gillingham, and Birmingham.
Meanwhile, here in the North American Pyramid—where towns attached to that particular suffix lay scattered few and far between across the land—the “ham” is conspicuously lacking.
In fact, only one American soccer team that I know of can lay claim to any sort of ham-affiliated home ground at the
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Words
Seeing Purple
On the town for Ladies Night Out
By Amy Kepferle · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The first rule of Ladies Night Out is: You do talk about Ladies Night Out. The second rule is that sometime during the course of the evening, you share an amusing story about your significant other (or lack thereof).
A third rule has just surfaced, thanks to Downtown Bellingham’s 5th annual Ladies Night Out, which happens from 5-8pm Thurs., May 16 throughout the urban core. While this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule—merely a suggestion—the powers that be are asking that if you’re getting
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Film
Star Trek Into Darkness
The bromance continues
Reviewed by Andrew Pulver · Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Director JJ Abrams has followed up his sensational 2009 Star Trek reboot with a sparkling 3D sequel.
The core of the earlier film is present and correct: Chris Pine as the unfeasibly handsome junior Kirk; Zachary Quinto as the fringed logician Spock; Zoe Saldana—her status subtly enhanced after her leading role in James Cameron’s Avatar—as the lissome Uhuru; Karl Urban as grandstanding medical officer Bones; and Britain’s Simon Pegg as engine-room supremo Scotty, gamely approximating a
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