Back in 2007, the year Record Store Day was founded, independent music stores were in freefall, decimated by the ready availability of all the music on Earth on the World Wide Web, just a click—or, more likely, an illegal download—away. Like a fast-moving train they could see coming from a mile away but were powerless to avoid, independent record stores, not just in the United States but the world over, could only react to the digital revolution after impact. Indeed, many did not survive,

One of the interesting things about living in Skagit Valley is watching the traffic patterns during the Tulip Festival. Most people, following instructions from their GPS, all get to the fields the same way, crawling through downtown Mount Vernon and onward through the several-mile-long traffic jam that Memorial Highway and McLean Road turn into every April. Those in the know, however, get off the freeway at Conway and take Fir Island Road, a route that adds a small amount of distance but has

It’s that time of the year again, when millions of birds are on the wing.

The night skies are filled with flocks heading north, empty roosts are filling up again and our local wildlands and neighborhoods are reignited with the songs of our feathered friends taking up residence in their seasonal homes.

Spring migration is underway, and many different avian species are either passing through on their way to points farther north, or else arriving in the Fourth Corner with intentions to stick

Although the powers that be at the Bellingham Theatre Guild couldn’t possibly have known that their spring production, The Women of Lockerbie, would coincide with a remarkably related major news story, that’s exactly what happened.

The recent event I’m referring to is the ongoing search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth more than a month ago on what was supposed to be a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The Women of Lockerbie,

You must be resourceful to find the River Gallery on Landing Road, just south of La Conner. From a low ridge, the gallery looks out over mysterious, forested hummocks forming islands in the Skagit flats, where peaceful sheep and black and white cows graze. On my visit, it stood in glorious sun, backed by billowy, white clouds.

Formerly a small commercial greenhouse, the gallery is the creation of Silvia Strong. For a dozen years it has been a magnet for creative artists and the sophisticated

People will walk out of The Unknown Known convinced that Donald Rumsfeld is an awful man—and just as convinced that others will love him. They will be dispirited, imagining that he dominated filmmaker Errol Morris, not realizing that they have just witnessed one of the great rope-a-dopes in documentary history—one all the more impressive, because Rumsfeld is no dope.

Yes, Morris could have confronted him. He could have pressed him on his insistence that the Iraq War would be a cakewalk, that