Lava and pyroclastic flows (avalanches of hot rocks and gasses), mudslides and lahars (flowing, concrete-like soups of rock fragments and water), highway realignments and lane closures! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

On Thurs., Feb. 19, representatives from Whatcom County Sheriff’s Division of Emergency Management and others gathered at the East Whatcom Resource Center in Maple Falls for short talks on disaster preparedness in light of the State Highway 542 Realignment Project and

Roughly midway through The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a lovesick Bill Nighy notes that Judi Dench’s character has “checked out,” referring of course to her status at the hotel. Still, the pun hangs in the air, suggesting a possible euphemism for a more permanent condition. The imminence of death serves as a source of both comedy and poignant self-reflection in this spirited sequel to the unexpected 2012 success.

If the first Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was all about seeking rest

For me, one of life’s greatest luxuries is finding time to read. On a recent Hawaiian getaway—in between whale- and sea-gazing, plentiful swimming expeditions and sunset cocktail hour—I spent two weeks doing just that.

My trusty Kindle provided me with some of my reading material—such as Alice Munro’s award-winning 1986 short story collection, The Progress of Love; Caitlin Moran’s intriguing and salacious How to Build a Girl; and a spooky tale dubbed The Regulators by Richard Bachman

In Twilight, in True Blood, in Hammer horror titles and Draculas down through the decades, vampires have functioned as a metaphor for sexual hunger, passion above reason, seduction, temptation, addiction, infection and the lure of immortality, not to mention the pluses of pointy dentition.

The vampires in What We Do in the Shadows are symbolic of something else altogether: epic unkemptness.

A you-are-there mockumentary about a trio of bloodsuckers who inhabit a creaky abode in Wellington, New

We were headed to the beach for some midwinter R&R. A couple of days beside the hissing surf—that kind of thing.

Sure, there was a storm in the forecast. Heavy rain. High winds. But maybe it would hold off for a few days. We were feeling lucky.

Although it was only 3pm when we reached road’s end at Rialto Beach, the light was already fading. We quickly donned our backpacks and headed north up the beach on an outgoing tide. After a mile and a half our progress was halted by Ellen Creek,

Although Pablo Picasso is never seen onstage in Lojo Simon’s Adoration of Dora, the legacy of the world-famous painter looms large in the play—and not always in a good way.

While it’s long been known that Picasso was a serial philanderer, Simon brings his amorous pursuits to light in a way that drives home the sometimes devastating consequences of his actions. Specifically, how they affected his longtime lover and muse Dora Marr, an artist in her own right both before and after meeting

In a large painting titled “Nightmares,” a horde of black horses seems to be materializing out of thin air; there doesn’t appear to be any solid ground beneath their feet, and the sky above them is a nebulous, hazy white.

Longtime Bellingham artist Michelle Schutte says the painting—part of her “Love and Other Demons” exhibit currently on display at Honey Salon—has nothing to do with a fear or distrust of those of the equine persuasion, but rather is part of a bigger picture.

Lentils are a humble ingredient that appear in many earthy foods; simple, nourishing foods like Indian dal or hippie mush—the kind of food that feeds villages.

It turns out that lentils come from a plant that has a similarly beneficial impact on the land where it grows, and on the communities that cultivate it.

During the height of the 1980s farm crisis, four Montana farmers joined forces in a hunt for alternatives to the commodity agriculture system that was destroying their land and

Vladimir Putin’s Russia—brutal, carnivorous, delusional, but monstrously well-evolved for crushing both spirits and lives large and small—is taken to task in this excoriating portrait of the state’s omnivorous hunger for control in a far-flung northern fishing community on the Barents Sea. The Russian Federation’s 2015 Academy Award entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category (it lost to Poland’s Ida) lives up to its title and then some.

Director Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return)

Bellingham is rife with people who possess great skills and talents, are generous with their time and expertise, unselfishly work for the good of the whole of the music community, and are just plain delightful to be around.

I’d like to say that we could not do without them, but all too often we know these treasures are really only on loan to us, their stay here is finite and at some point they will leave to seek other opportunities, different landscapes, new lives.

When this happens, we