In poker, a tell is an unconscious behavior that gives away something about a player’s hand. Maybe they scratch their ear every time they’re about to bluff. Or they drum their fingers on the table in a particular rhythm when they’ve got a good hand. The thing about a tell is that it’s a compulsion, not a deliberate behavior. Players often know what their tells are, but are unable to exert control over them.

Tells are not limited to the poker table, however. In fact, I would go…

Recent news stories have drawn attention to the plight of pollinators like the honeybee, and the potential for Colony Collapse Disorder and the endangered status of several bumble bee pollinators to impact our food supply. But how many people understand the world of the honeybee, with its complex and orderly society and absolute allegiance to a queen?

Meredith May, a fifth-generation beekeeper and former journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, gently illuminates this world in her…

Creating dramatic performances using both human and animal images has been a part of the experience of homo sapiens for thousands of years.

“Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets,” a thrilling exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC, displays more than 250 puppets both old and new from 15 countries in Asia and Europe, along with puppetry’s modern incarnation, stop-motion animation.

The storytelling-focused exhibit…

What would you do if you woke up one day and realized you were the only one in the world who remembered the songs of the Beatles? It’s the kind of daydream many of us have had, usually combined with time travel—maybe you’d go back and dribble paint before Jackson Pollock, beat Agatha Christie to the mystery-novel racket or invent Twitter so you’d have the power to ban racist world leaders from the service. If you were screenwriter Richard Curtis, though, and you found yourself in…

There’s a brief but memorable scene in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, director Joe Talbot’s soulfully poignant and magically melancholic feature debut, that sums up much of what the film has to say with minimal dialogue.

Jimmie (Jimmie Fails), the movie’s title character, is seated at a San Francisco bus stop when an elderly nudist sits beside him. Then a party bus pulls up, groaning under the weight of inebriated, monied millennials laughing, pointing and gawking. In that…

When Kelsey Burghoffer joined the Provocateurs last year, she was going through a difficult time in her life and hoped sharing space with the longtime burlesque-focused dance troupe would help her let off some creative steam.

It did, and along the way it also changed her life. She soon discovered that being part of an ensemble that has a mission to “provoke, confront, and elevate” came with a few perks—including renewed self-confidence, empowerment and a continuous flow of positive…

Next time you’re in the mood for some really tasty chicken, you’ll want a table at Bantam 46. The restaurant on Railroad Avenue in downtown Bellingham is the brainchild of Ben Scholtz, who owns Mallard Ice Cream—directly next door.

Scholtz is a serious 48-year-old who approaches his restaurant projects with a deep sense of purpose and strategy. When Mad Hatter Vintage Clothing, the previous neighbor to Mallard, shuttered its doors he knew the time was ripe for a new project.…

It was 1969, the year of Woodstock, the moon landing, and the formation of a slo-pitch team called the Parberry Steelers.

At least two of these three events have already been remembered and celebrated, and we are hoping to celebrate the third from 1pm-5pm Sat., June 29 at Lake Padden Park with a gathering of as many big-ball slo-pitchers as can reunite for an afternoon of memories of athletic endeavors from a golden bygone Bellingham recreational era.

In 1969, Bellingham was becoming…

Skagit is a land of wild rivers, soaring glacier peaks, fertile valleys and forested dots of islands sprinkling an inland sea. Powerful predatory whales live in these waters and feed on the tastiest wild fish on earth, the Chinook. Ours is as exotic as any landscape on the planet, and perhaps it is more threatened than many.

Those whales—the southern resident orcas—aren’t especially shy and can be viewed almost daily, although their numbers are in precipitous decline. Deaths in their pods have exceeded live births, threatening a spiral to extinction. They’re sick, and they’re starving. The cause? Increased human activity around the Puget Sound, as a region that is loved too much and too recklessly.

Alarmed by the decline of these iconic creatures, the Washington Legislature this session passed sweeping protections for the Salish Sea’s ailing orca population. Championed by lawmakers who represent Skagit and the San Juans, a quartet of bills cover a variety of measures, including whale watching, pollution and more. Yet budgets passed by the House and Senate so far contain no funding to continue the governor’s task force on orca recovery. There’s no agreement on plans to increase Chinook runs. And revenue measures to help pay for everything, from increasing hatchery production to enforcement of habitat protections, have yet to be decided.

As we dedicate this issue to celebrate all the best our region has to offer in scenic beauty, in recreation, in menus and samplings that are unique to who we are, let us acknowledge how fragile it is and how fierce we must be in its protection.