For years, I was a (mostly) strict vegetarian who lived in Idaho.

I say “mostly” because I’d suspend my dietary dictates on my annual sojourn to our family’s cabin on Lummi Island—where we purchased sockeye salmon directly from the reefnetters who caught them, scooped up Dungeness crabs on the beach and in pots dropped in the waters in front of our property, and coaxed clams and the occasional geoduck from the low-tide muck.

I’m not willing to declare that easy access to fresh…

Before opening up the door of her coveted corner space in Fairhaven’s Morgan Block Studios to the public during the Whatcom Artist Studio Tour (WAST), Nancy Canyon admits to getting a little nervous, wondering if her studio looks presentable and if the selection of paintings she’s put aside to sell will tempt patrons of the arts.

Soon enough, though, Canyon gets into the groove of the annual event, which for the past 22 years has put a spotlight on Whatcom County artists for two…

By now, everyone knows that when I’m not executing my Cascadia Weekly duties, I’m moonlighting as a projectionist at the Pickford Film Center.

While the Pickford is currently offering its customary selection of top-notch indie movies, behind the scenes, all conversation revolves around a single topic: Doctober. Posters have been hung, documentaries are being delivered to the theater on the daily and stores of popcorn seeds and nutritional yeast are being accumulated. The staff is…

What do the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Groucho Marx, gangsters, suffragettes, Mamie Eisenhower, an elephant and a donkey have in common?

You’ll find the definitive answer by procuring tickets to Bellingham Music Club’s new cabaret-style musical, Broadway Takes on Politics, which runs Oct. 6-8 at the Firehouse Performing Arts Center—just in time to provide some much-needed levity to the shit-show of an election season. 

“We started with 100 Broadway shows with political…

The view from the Winchester lookout is sublime.

From this northern vantage point, the great fangs of the North Cascades are revealed in all of their wild grandeur, with the dramatic summit of Goat Mountain rising in the foreground to the east.

To the north, the great Border Peaks are up close and personal—this is perhaps the most dramatic viewpoint of these stupendous mountains. And the hike up from Twin Lakes is short and immensely scenic, with virtually the entire way above the…

This week, if she’s lucky, Hilary Franz may get to summit the Oyster Dome and view the forested trust lands of Blanchard Mountain in autumn. In November, she may become responsible for that expanse and many others as the 14th Commissioner of Public Lands.

As the head of the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the commissioner is responsible for healthy public aquatic reserves, forests, parks and more. The department leases out land to provide money to schools and…

There’s something extremely charming about a miserable, sassy almost-10-year-old bent on living her dream to become a jazz chanteuse. 

In Marie-Helene Bertino’s debut novel, 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas, Madeleine Altimari is no average kid. She’s a potty-mouthed chain smoker, dodging cockroaches in her Philadelphia apartment while her father holes up in his bedroom, nearly catatonic after his wife’s death from cancer. Though Madeleine deeply misses her mom, she has purpose: to…

Shortly after I moved to Bellingham all those millions of years ago, I learned it was widely believed that the movie Footloose was based, in part, on Lynden. If the finer plot point of the ’80s classic aren’t as alive for you as they are for me, allow me to refresh your memory.

In the movie, handsome outsider Ren (Kevin Bacon, at the height of his powers) moves from the big city to a small farm town full of bullies and rubes where dancing is illegal because it causes teenagers to…