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 Scottish accent about half the time.

Abrams also maintains the glistening visuals of his earlier film; Into Darkness is slathered in so much lens flare it looks like a Kylie Minogue video. And the flashes of crackling, knowing comedy have been retained, punctuating the shuddering fight scenes and chase sequences that are the very currency of the action blockbuster.

The film picks up shortly after its predecessor left off. Kirk is firmly installed in the Enterprise chair, Spock his first officer, and a mission is in progress. Abrams orchestrates an opening scene that mixes all the above-mentioned ingredients in a 100-proof cocktail, designed to get the audience instantly drunk.

Still burdened by the destruction of Vulcan, Spock is attempting to prevent a planet’s incineration by a giant volcano; Kirk flouts the Starfleet prime directive by allowing the primitive inhabitants to clap eyes on the USS Enterprise as it rises from the seabed to deliver Spock from the point of death.

This conflict between military regulation and personal loyalty is allowed to run through the story; it becomes a wedge driven in the overt Kirk-Spock bromance that was such an entertaining feature of the first film. After Spock sends in an official report that exposes Kirk’s fibbing, the rupture is worthy of a tycoon’s divorce. Kirk, furious, is deprived of his command, while Spock is transferred elsewhere. But they can’t stay mad at each other for long, and fortunately a murderous cataclysm erupts that has the happy effect of reuniting them. Benedict Cumberbatch essays the latest in a long line of British supervillains as he arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, to lay waste to a Starfleet base in future London, and follows it up with his own sequel, devastating a military conference in San Francisco. Within seconds, it would seem, Kirk and Spock are reinstalled on the Enterprise bridge, vowing to take Cumberbatch down.

At this point it’s necessary to draw a veil over the plot’s subsequent revelations, though plenty of rumors have been swirling as to how this Star Trek film—the 12th, incredibly—locks together with a much earlier entry in the sequence. Suffice it to say that it’s not actually all that interesting—one supervillain, these days, is very much like another, whatever their superficial attributes may be.

The real grit is provided, as ever, by the emotional politics, always Star Trek’s strength. Abrams threw everyone a curveball by getting Spock and Uhuru together in the first film; here, their relationship is knottier, thickened, while Kirk aims his bee-sting pout in the direction of newbie Alice Eve, as a not entirely convincing science officer. (Perhaps Kirk’s lack of success with the ladies will become a major theme of a third Star Trek reboot; despite his puppyish eagerness, and occasional bout of bedroom action with an alien chick or two, women never seem as keen on him as he is on them.)

There’s consequently a palpable air of world-weariness about this Star Trek; it’s as if Abrams and his writers concluded they couldn’t replicate the cockiness and bounce of the first film, and opted instead to allow their characters to grow up a little.

Everyone is a little more battered, a little less dewy-eyed. People are unlikely to charge out of the cinema with quite the same level of glee as they did in 2009, but this is certainly an astute, exhilarating concoction.

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 together with your gal pals that night, you make an effort to wear the color purple.

“Attendees are encouraged to wear purple, painting downtown with the color that represents power, passion and purpose for empowering women,” organizers said in a recent press release. This is apropos, as funds raised during the course of the evening will support the YWCA, Lydia Place, Women Build (an extension of Habitat for Humanity), and Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services.

Whether your purple posse is large, small or somewhere in between, there’ll be plenty of events to choose from. Attendees are encouraged to “Primp, Shop, Sip!,” and the night’s happenings feature both shopping and food and drink specials at a variety of businesses such as Mi Shoes, Gary’s Men’s and Women’s Wear, the Greenhouse, Bayou on Bay, Buffalo Exchange, Ideal, Kids Northwest, Downtown Emporium, Backcountry Essentials, Brandywine Kitchen, Toni & Guy, Kulshan Cycles, Honey Salon, the Real McCoy, Lulu, Sojourn, Bellingham Jazzercise, Shrimp Shack, Perch & Play, and Hilton’s Shoes.

For a mere $5 each, your canny crowd can also join the history hussies known as the Good Time Girls for 30-minute tours of the Downtown Arts District. The saucily costumed tour leaders will discuss how the lives of early “modern” Whatcom women influenced fashion in Bellingham, as well as visit the sites of former department stores and view photos of what area women were doing—and wearing—all those many decades ago.

It’s inevitable that after traipsing around for two or three hours, you and your Ladies Night Out crowd are going to want to settle in somewhere afterwards for some serious party time. When the festivities come to an end at 8pm, either continue to hang out with your friends at one of the bars and restaurants on the roster, or patronize one of the many other fine establishments populating downtown Bellingham.

If you’re a mom who wants to take part in the festivities, but can’t find a sitter, the humanitarians at Perch & Play will allow you to get in on the fun. Women who want to participate can drop off their youngsters and, for $20, employees at the kid-friendly State Street venue will feed them dinner, lead them in craft time and show an age-appropriate movie.

Now that you know what’s happening, all that remains is to get on the phone and start finding out who’s available to join you for Ladies Night Out. Tell them it’s for a good cause, and sweeten the deal with promises of quality gossip and drink specials. That gets them every time.

An earlier version of this article touted a Ladies Night Out after-party at the Underground. Please note that there is no after-party at this year’s Ladies Night Out in downtown Bellingham—other than the ones your create yourselves. The list of participants has also been updated. We regret the errors.

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 moment—and they call themselves Bellingham United. 

They play in the Pacific Coast Soccer League (PCSL). Their team colors are black and white. And their nickname—thank the sweet Lord—isn’t the “Hamsters.” It’s the “Hammers.”

Sure, our home team likes to scamper around. But they also like to kick some serious ball. 

That’s precisely what I got to watch them do on Cinco de Mayo, when I joined a small but enthusiastic posse of neighbors for a quality afternoon of festive spectatorship in the stands, and in the beer garden, at Civic Stadium.

Truth be told, it had been at least 30 years since I’d attended my first professional-level soccer match on North American soil. I was barely old enough to remember it at the time, but I’ve never forgotten it. 

It was a sweltering mid-August afternoon in the late 1970s and the Seattle Sounders were visiting Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Minneapolis to wrangle with my then-home team, the Minnesota Kicks, in a decisive playoff match for the now-defunct North American Soccer League.

With less than a minute remaining in regulation, the Kicks held a 1-0 lead when suddenly, and much to my enduring chagrin, a strident swarm of pass-happy Sounders bum-rushed through our back line and scored.   
   
Unfortunately, my first experience with sudden-death overtime proved heartbreaking at best. Just a few minutes later, we lost the match, and our season, when one of our own players made a seriously ill-conceived pass to our goalkeeper, who inexplicably let the ball go dribbling into the net right behind him.

We didn’t just get beaten by the Sounders, we got beaten by ourselves. And, for quite a long while after that, even just reading or hearing the word “Seattle” made me cringe. But humiliation, much like childhood itself, tends to be fleeting. So I grew out of it. Eventually.

Subsequent maturity regardless, I could not stop the sheer, catastrophic enormity of my inaugural soccer experience from bubbling into the forefront of my mind as our own ad hoc support crew of black-and-white-clad ‘hamsters mingled into the vigorously flag- and scarf-brandishing crowd of 1,800 to cheer on the Hammers in their 2013 home opener against a Burnaby, B.C.-based team called Estrella de Chile.

For the first few minutes, everything went hunky-dory. But then, during Estrella de Chile’s first attack, came a deja vu moment when one of our defenders made a seriously ill-conceived pass back to our goalkeeper that resulted in an “own goal” of stupendous, stadium-deflating proportions.

For a few split seconds, I could have sworn I was back at the Kicks game, circa 1977. But then, all at once, as the rallying crowd of ‘hamsters began singing and chanting and waving their zebra stripes for the Hammers, I knew exactly where I was, and precisely which team to root for. 

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 the wherewithal to peer at anybody’s handheld screens.

I thought about the scene on the bus ride a little later, when I was in the audience at WWU’s Performing Arts Center watching Soapbox, a collaboratively created production devised and performed by 24 students who spent nearly a year researching, creating, developing and rehearsing the work before debuting it last week.

Director Rich Brown had told me that Soapbox explores “how we fill our immaterial needs with material things as we pursue sustainable happiness,” but I wasn’t prepared for the level of self-awareness I saw unfold onstage—particularly when it came to the dependence students have on modern technology.

Told through a series of short vignettes, Soapbox tells a variety of stories—many of which the actors returned to throughout the two-hour performance, but some that were just long enough to get minds thinking about the subject matter at hand.

A sampling of the storylines explored included the tale of a couple that, before they were even introduced in “real life,” had already sussed each other out on Facebook. Their relationship went well until she gave him an iPhone for Christmas and he was introduced to a siren named Siri.

Other plotlines and scenes included a lesbian couple struggling to understand each other (one was a grad student who wanted to save the world and the other worked a corporate job and didn’t understand why her girlfriend wanted her to quit it and move to Africa to volunteer with her), a funeral for dead cell phones, a fast-track couple who were trying to learn to live with less, and drunk texting (among other things).

Although Soapbox was created with a later college-age audience in mind, I found that many of the themes it explored were universal in nature and could connect with viewers of many ages—even those who went to college before cell phones were a necessity if you wanted to know what was happening on any given night.

In addition to being enlightening, the show is also entertaining, and incorporates everything from song and dance to comedy, drama and a few things in between. It may even cause you, upon exiting, to think about what you’d say if had your own soapbox to get on.

“I’ve learned a lot from this company,” Brown wrote in the program notes for Soapbox, which ultimately urges audience members to simplify their lives and get involved with the real world—not just the material one.

“It’s courageous to question your values,” Brown writes, “to examine the lessons you’ve been taught by your culture and family, to consciously consider if time and relationships or money and material things will produce personal, sustained happiness.”

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 juxtaposed—is maximized. The hard prose of cinema—dialogue, plot, climax—is minimized.

It’s a high-stakes game Malick is playing here—just how much can you pare away from a story and still have a story?—and it’s had some audiences shaking their heads. And, true, it doesn’t always pay off. But it’s still a fascinating piece of art and—for an ever-evolving artist—a personal breakthrough.

Malick’s story is simple. An American meets and falls in love with a single mother in Paris. He brings her back home, to Oklahoma. She’s lonely, amidst the alien corn. Visa troubles arise; temptations, too. Slowly, they drift apart.

It could have been a silent film, once. In some ways, it almost is, now. That’s because, while there’s talking in the movie, there’s hardly any dialogue—if, by dialogue, you mean a scene in which two people exchange lines. Instead, someone speaks in voiceover, or another person says a few words.

No one really listens. No one really responds.

Partnering this story on a troubled romance is one about a shaken faith, as we see a Catholic priest in this small town trying to reconnect with his belief. Can he see Christ in the faces of the sick and broken people he ministers to? Can he find God’s love in such ugliness?

And although no two characters in the movie really engage each other in conversation, this is the film’s true dialogue, as the pair of stories comment on each other.

True, there’s more music, even dance here, than dramatic performance. Malick is not an actor’s director. Several stars who shot footage for this film—from Rachel Weisz to Jessica Chastain—had their roles recast or their parts cut. Others, like Ben Affleck—who plays the Oklahoman—seem lost onscreen.

Yet Olga Kurylenko, who plays the woman he brings back to America, is charismatic (albeit in an occasionally confusing part). Rachel McAdams, as Affleck’s hometown love, is simply incandescent.

And Javier Bardem is a surprising, morose presence as the questioning priest, wandering through the dirty mazelike streets of his parish, his huge melancholy minotaur’s head bowed as he tries desperately to find something he cannot see.

Of course, because this is a Malick film, it’s about more than just people. It’s about their relationship to nature. And so there are myriad shots of water, rushing past like life itself only to suddenly eddy and swirl. There are seas of grass, rustling in the wind. (There are, thankfully, no dinosaurs, as there were in Malick’s last, even more perplexing Tree of Life—although a giant tortoise does make an appearance.)

So yes, sometimes the film does seem unnecessarily confusing. Flashbacks suddenly appear, some events are unexplained and a few characters act uncharacteristically. Yet, for all its quirks, Malick’s most daring movie is in some ways his most accessible.

It serves up real emotion, and striking grace. It has moments of simple beauty, and thorny questions. And it shows what real, risk-it-all experimentation—and true artistic success—is all about.

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 Eve.

This time of year presents unique opportunities for onion knowers, in both kitchen and garden, because last year’s crop is starting to sprout. In your pantry, on the counter, in mesh bags at the local grocery store before you even bring them home, the onion’s yearly urge to grow will no longer be denied.

At the very least, what you need to know about sprouting onion season is that you should give your prospective bulbs another squeeze before putting them in the cart, because onions usually soften as they sprout. If you find yourself with some sprouting onions on your hands, and you probably will, it’s worth letting them do their thing on the counter.

The sprouts are edible, and taste like scallions. Both sprouted onions and scallions, which are grown from seed, are forms of green onion, and for culinary purposes are virtually identical. Unlike the flesh of the onion bulb, which rarely steals the show in a meal, green onions often stand out, adding bitter pungency where bulbs add sweetness. Green onions are at their best when served raw, when they taste sharp and spicy, and have a bright green radiance. Just a few thin slices of green onion on your miso soup, for example, will crank up the contrast and make it significantly more interesting and beautiful.

Those with garden space can and should plant their sprouted onions and watch them grow into rejuvenated, non-rotting versions of themselves. Depending on the onion, and when you plant it, you might get a full-sized bulb again, or a small bulb with a big, stunningly beautiful flower attached.

Those without dirt can place their sprouting onions on the windowsill. There you can enjoy their beauty, and do a little pruning anytime you need some green onion pizzazz in your food. If you’re really into it, plant the sprouting onions indoors in pots.

If you happen to find a sprouting onion bulb that’s still firm, it’s possible to carefully cut the bulb from around the sprout, leaving the roots at the bottom of the bulb attached to the sprouted part. The firm flesh of the bulb can be eaten, while the sprout can be planted.

An important part of knowing one’s onions is knowing one’s limitations. Even if the greens of sprouted onions aren’t in your cards, their scallion cousins are coming into season, at the farmers markets and the grocery store.

Knowing your onions can mean a lot of things, like how to cut them without crying, how to caramelize them without burning, and what raw onions—bulb or green—do in conjunction with browned meat (hint: it’s awesome). This path of discovery is long, but rewarding. To know your onions is more than how you grow, cook, and eat them, it’s remembering how much you need them.

[Recipe]
Steamed Fish with Ginger, Scallion and Soy Sauce

Ingredients

One whole fish, 1-2 lbs, preferably white-fleshed, like red snapper, branzino, or Pacific cod, cleaned and scaled.       
A handful of shitake mushrooms, sliced                        
1 tablespoon (or so) of brown sugar      
1 cup (or so) of soy sauce    
A handful of green onions, chopped. Keep the lower, solid parts of the onion green separate from the upper, hollow parts.          
A cubic inch of ginger, julienned    
A few drops of toasted sesame oil.

Directions

Make slits, crosswise, on each side of the fish, 1.5 inches apart. Stuff pieces of ginger into each slit. Steam the fish for 10 minutes. If you don’t have a steamer, put the fish on a plate on top of a bowl, or some other prop, inside a pot with water beneath a tight-fitting lid, so the fish steams on the plate.

While the fish is steaming, sauté the mushrooms in oil over medium heat. If you want to add a little butter, I won’t tell. When the mushrooms are done, add the solid chopped scallions and let them sauté with the mushrooms for two minutes. Add the soy sauce, the sugar, the rest of the ginger, and kill the heat. Stir the sauce to dissolve the sugar.

Move the steamed fish onto a serving plate. Pour the sauce over it. Garnish with the chopped hollow onion greens

Despite all that, I tend to take Western’s presence as a given, expending little or no energy on consideration of the details that make up its continued existence.

Oh sure, I’ve extolled the virtues of living in a college town to all and sundry—especially those who question my continued and enthusiastic tenure here. However, while trying to explain the peculiar magic that a venerated institution such as Western lends to life in this smallish town, I have to confess that I don’t spend a lot of time considering the college itself.

This is especially criminal given the fact that 1. As with so many of you, WWU is the reason I moved to Bellingham in the first place, and 2. I spent four-plus years soaking up its knowledge and exploring every inch of its campus. As well, I’m actually employed in the field in which I gained my education—and happily, I might add—meaning I owe Western a debt bigger than my as-yet-unpaid student loans.

It occurs to me that I probably shouldn’t take Western so much for granted.

However, the university knows its relationship with our town is a long-term one, and, as such, it has to work to keep the spark alive. As it turns out, Western knows how to woo. And its charms are many.

The school will put all those charms on display during one jam-packed, all-singing, all-dancing weekend known as Back 2 Bellingham, which takes place this year Fri.-Sun., May 17-19. And if you think this is an event that holds no personal interest for you, I am here to tell you that you are wrong.

I say that with much confidence as the many people who came together to plan Back 2 Bellingham—spearheaded and wrangled by WWU’s Alumni Association—have managed to cram more than 130 distinct events into one short weekend. The official PR materials for the event talk about “reunions, tours, educational discussions, entertainment opportunities” and the like, but that unassuming wording conceals all the cool stuff to be found within.

So, just what is Back 2 Bellingham? It is planetarium shows and sunset kayak trips, gallery exhibits and birding walks, basketball tournaments and bike tours, improv performances and conversations about social issues. And it’s also happenings that are as offbeat as they are intriguing. When else will you be able to ride a giant inflatable slide called the “Cliffhanger” in Red Square? Or drink pints of Boundary Bay beer and party in the library without fear of being caught and kicked out? Or attend an authentic luau? Or attend a magic show? Or suss out the 13th annual “Ridin’ Low in the 360” low-rider show after brunch? You can do all that during the three days that encompass Back 2 Bellingham while still having ample time to walk a couple of laps or otherwise show your support for Western Relay for Life, which will also be an important part of the giant, multifaceted event.

Of course, as this is a celebration of sorts, music is an integral part of the mix, so much so that it will take place on five separate stages—more, when the off-campus musical offerings that are part of Back 2 Bellingham are taken into account—all weekend long.

Of all the free offerings at Back 2 Bellingham (and many of them are indeed free, and the ones that aren’t are pretty affordable), none is a more unbelievable deal than EndFair. which takes place in Fairhaven College’s courtyard. Kicking off at 11am Saturday and ending more than 12 hours later, the daylong concert features 14 bands, Learning Team, Vervex, Juniper Stills, and the Prime Time Band among them. The Prime Time Band will also play earlier that same day at the Back 2 Bellingham barbecue, while the Relay for Life will also boast a stage and bands that will entertain walkers and watchers alike at regular intervals.

Also taking place during the B2B weekend is LivFest, an annual fundraiser for the Children’s Organ Transplant Association, and this iteration promises entertainment from Gyrating Hips, Vonvettas, and more on Friday, while Walking Stick for a Giant, Gypsters, the Dagwoods, and others will take the stage Saturday. Those who attend Saturday’s Red Square Carnival—where the aforementioned “Cliffhanger” can be found in all its widow-making glory—will slide and scream to a soundtrack of Soccer Mom, the Well Wishers, and more.

For Back 2 Bellingham attendees who favor a bit of an off-campus wander, B2B-related shows can be found Friday at the Underground, where the Walrus will play, and Saturday in the Boundary Bay beer garden, where SpaceBand will entertain alumni, current students and anyone else who happens to come their way.

As some of Back 2 Bellingham’s events happen at the same time, I am sad to report it is likely impossible to attend all 130 of them. But no one will mind if you try. If you happen to renew your romance with Western along the way, well, no one will mind that either.

The 1 million-square-foot bottled beverage manufacturing plant proposed by Tethys Enterprises, Inc., was presented to city leaders as a significant engine for jobs creation; however, the plant would also use a tremendous amount of water that would be treated and used at the facility, on the order of 5 million gallons per day (MGD). One million square feet is about the size of 20 football fields and about four times larger than most beverage companies operating today. If built, the Tethys botting plant will consume a large portion of the city’s industrial land supply and water right, thereby potentially limiting the city’s capacity for future economic growth.

In benefit, the plant would generate manufacturing jobs and produce taxable revenues during construction of about $8.8 million, with roughly two-thirds of that amount generated annually through bottling operations, according to city estimates.

In a pattern by now familiar, city leaders signed on early and eagerly for those potential jobs and revenues in the midst of economic downturn.

In 2010, Anacortes Mayor Dean Maxwell and his City Council agreed to a contract where the city would sell Tethys 5 MGD through 2035, with an option to extend through 2040, if the company could secure the rights to at least 30 acres of land with rail access within the city limits or an area that could be annexed. The city then turned to Skagit commissioners for assistance in securing that property, submitting an initial petition to Skagit County for expansion of the city’s UGA last July.

Anacortes currently supplies approximately 22 million gallons of water per day to about 56,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers, according to city documents, with no crimp in capacity anticipated through 2029—a planning horizon six years short of the contract’s minimum duration.

As the city notes, however, “The city’s water system supports the jobs and economy not only in Anacortes but also La Conner, Mount Vernon, Burlington, Oak Harbor, the Port of Anacortes and March’s Point, and it supports national defense by assuring water to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.” Among those served by city water are farmers in the Skagit Valley, the backbone of the county economy.

For Tethys, though, it’s not just the water, but the capacity to carry that bottled water to market. In a series of emails exchanged as the company scoped the project in 2010, Tethys principals tried to describe what 5 MGD of water would look like:

“It would take over 670 rail cars every day on 7 miles of track to ship the 40 million pounds of water in 10 gallon bags,” visualized Phil Bastien, an attorney for Tethys Enterprises. “That means you would need over a weeks’ worth of shipping packages in stock, stored in a monstrous warehouse or on 4,700 rail cars in a yard requiring 47 miles of track. Then, on the other end, they would have to figure out how to manage 500,000 80-pound bags of water and return the containers within a few days.”

Intending to describe the need for water volume on site, Bastien provided a glimpse into the rail export capacity required for the Tethys plant, a line that eventually links to the BNSF mainline at Burlington—where, according to proposals, trains may battle for daily track space with an additional 18 trains of coal cars moving to and from Cherry Point.

With city officials moving quickly to seal an agreement, Anacortes City Council didn’t hold a public hearing of their own until August, 2012, a month after they’d signed documents with Tethys. The meeting produced, in the words of one Skagit official, “some serious fireworks.” Critics chided Anacortes leaders—particularly Mayor Maxwell—for not allowing more public comment about the proposal and the contract before the city agreed to sign it.

In April, the Skagit County Board of Commissioners received testimony regarding the docketing of Anacortes’ petition to annex those 11.15 acres to the city’s urban growth area. A public hearing was held on April 9. Again in a familiar pattern, commissioners received hundreds of comments from supporters and critics—mostly critics—detailing a great variety of concerns in more than 400 pages of testimony.

“By chipping away one acre at a time,” one La Conner resident told commissioners, “adding one more train at a time, selling one more gallon of water, we throw away our precious valley and change its character forever.”

”The Tethys issue has presented the question of whether the county must conduct detailed environmental review of the underlying project when considering an Urban Growth Area expansion, something that has been the subject of statewide litigation and legal commentary recently,” noted Skagit’s Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor Will Honea. “This takes on heightened significance given that no environmental analysis occurred when [Anacortes] signed the Tethys contract, despite fairly clear law requiring environmental review.”

Noting aspects of preemption and fait accompli by the City of Anacortes, another citizen warned, “By docketing this project, Skagit County Commissioners will essentially deny the citizens of Skagit County the opportunity to participate in one of the largest land use decisions in the county’s recent history.”

The Bellingham School Board last week approved a plan to close Larrabee Elementary School by 2016, citing concerns about the age and size of the 93-year-old school in the city’s Happy Valley neighborhood. The board had met with more than 100 parents and community leaders the previous day, who urged the board not to close the school, which they said was the center of the community.

The board voted 4-to-1 to proceed with the recommendations of a facilities analysis completed in April. The analysis found Larrabee school is unable to effectively accommodate a modern elementary educational program for students due to its physical size and available classroom capacity.

“In a consultant’s analysis, the facility scored 44 out of a possible 100 in functional adequacy, the lowest of all district facilities for its inability to meet educational program needs,” the report noted. “Larrabee has seven classrooms inside the school with fifth graders in a portable classroom behind the school, for a total of 189 students.”

The report noted schools should optimally have two to three classrooms per grade level to allow teachers to collaborate and use a team-based approach to learning. A newer school would offer greater access to modern teaching tools, the consultant’s report indicated.

“The process to reach this decision was one of the most thorough and inclusive in our school system’s history, deeply involving those most affected,” said Greg Baker, superintendent of Bellingham Public Schools. “We are fortunate to have a courageous school board that listened thoughtfully to opposing viewpoints for months, reflected and made a decision that will not please everyone but holds what is best for children’s learning in the highest regard.”

The board decided school must close sometime between June 2014 and June 2016. Happy Valley, Lowell, and Larrabee elementary schools are within a mile of each other, and the schools compete to have enough students to have consistent class sizes, according to the district. When Larrabee closes, students will be split between Lowell and Happy Valley, which the district hopes to rebuild. In 2009, the board had considered canceling a planned renovation of Lowell and closing that school.

“This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve faced as a board,” board member Kelly Bashaw told listeners on May 8.

Parents disagreed with the facilities analysis in their comments to the board.

School board member Scott Stockburger also disagreed, in particular with the pace of the board’s decision, urging his colleagues to take more time to address community concerns. Stockburger originally ran for the school board to help keep the city’s traditional small neighborhood schools open in the face of a policy of newer, consolidated facilities.

“It’s evident the community is not on board with this, and I think we’ve got some work to do to get them on board,” Stockburger said. “I think we run a big risk of alienating that community.”

“The gym was packed with over 100 people,” noted Wendy Scherrer, an educator and a board member with the Happy Valley Neighborhood Association. “One hundred percent of the speakers were in favor of keeping Larrabee open. No one spoke up who wanted the school to close.”

More than two dozen speakers urged theboard to keep the school open, including parents and current and retired teachers from the Bellingham School District, planning and education professors from Western Washington University, and Happy Valley neighborhood leaders. Several noted that schools form the nucleus of a neighborhood; to close one would cut the heart from that neighborhood, they said.

Several speakers noted the board’s decisions were at odds with the City of Bellingham’s Comprehensive Plan, which calls for tight, walkable neighborhoods. The decision appears additionally at odds with the Happy Valley neighborhood plan, which considers the school an asset and enhancement to community goals.

“Yes, I think it is out of step with the Comp Plan and more generally with efforts to make every part of Bellingham livable, walkable and neighborly,” Michael Lilliquist observed. Lilliquist represents the Happy Valley neighborhood on Bellingham City Council. He spoke in favor of keeping the school open at the May 8 meeting.

“Problem is, the Comp Plan speaks in general principles, so one needs to debate whether any particular situation is in alignment or not,” he commented afterward. “The board appears to believe that size matters. If you read the report, it pretty much says that smaller schools by definition are functionally inadequate because they cannot provide redundant services and multiple classes ate each grade level. It’s an unfortunate tautology, and one that is belied by experience and academic research.”

Larrabee Elementary recently received a $1.5 million renovation and seismic retrofitting for earthquake safety. An additional study identified pedestrian improvements. Approximately 165 children walk and 35 students ride one bus to Larrabee Elementary. By contrast, 120 students ride two buses to Happy Valley Elementary; only one student walks to Cordata Elementary according to studies. The aging school is without an elevator, a complication for children with disabilities.

More than 46 percent of the children at Larrabee Elementary qualify for the free or reduced-price meal program, an indicator of income levels in the surrounding neighborhood. While this is the highest percentage of students who qualify for the program in the Bellingham school district, Larrabee continues to match or exceed other district K-5 schools in academic performance. The intimate environment creates efficiencies not seen at larger schools, parents and educators noted.

“There is strong evidence that students in less-affluent communities perform better when they attend smaller schools,” Scherrer said. “The lower the income of the community, the more student achievement is benefited by smaller schools. Small schools tend to narrow the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged youngsters by raising the achievement of the latter group.”

“In small schools every child is known as an individual,” David Marshak agreed. Author of several books and essays on education, Marshak taught in the College of Education at Seattle University for 14 years and in the Woodring College of Education at WWU for six years.

“No one slips through the cracks,” he continued. “The principal is more likely to know all the children—and all the parents. All the teachers are more likely to know all the children—and many of the parents. The parents are more likely to know each other, and the school is more likely to function as a community rather than as a bureaucracy.”

“I understand that state funding drives districts to big parcels but is a suburban model rather than an urban model and is in absolute contradiction with current urban planning,” said John Blethen, a former president of the Larrabee Parent Teacher Association. ”We got one of the last malls, looks like we are going down with the last of the suburban schools model.”

Nicholas Zaferatos, a planning professor at WWU and former chair of the Bellingham Planning Commission agreed, saying that while the district believes it is pursuing a model for modern education it is following an obsolete method of planning, favoring the suburban development of a distant facility on a large lot, where busing is frequently required. Zaferatos fought to keep Lowell Elementary from being closed in 2009 under similar planning assumptions.

“Despite everything done by the community, the dice were loaded, the community was co-opted,” he noted. “The district has gone corporate. No concern for community policy nor parent/community interests, just corporate models.”

Lilliquist sketched the hard logic of the board’s decision.

“Lowell is bigger and has much more potential for expansion, and is further away from another school,” he said. “Only Larrabee is close to Lowell, whereas both Lowell and Happy Valley are close to Larrabee. Closing Larrabee and saving Lowell makes cold, logical sense if you believe that size matters.”

“Rather than making Larrabee more like newer schools in the district,” one parent told the board, “you should be making newer schools in the district more like Larrabee,”

At the very least, Luhrmann must be given credit for delivering a real interpretation of the famous 1925 novel, something not seriously attempted by the previous two big screen adaptations (there was a now-lost 1926 silent version). Paramount’s long-elusive 1949 release directed by Elliott Nugent suffered from threadbare production values and uneven performances but Alan Ladd was a terrific Gatsby. The same studio’s second attempt, in 1974, felt suffocating and stillborn; it had the wrong director in Jack Clayton and Robert Redford was opaque in the title role.

For many, the thought of Luhrmann tarting up such a revered classic with 3D, anachronistic Jay Z and Beyonce music, techno-spiced party scenes and Australian locations was sacrilegious, if not criminal. Perhaps even fans of what the director did with William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! might have wondered if he was the right guy to take on the work most often proposed as the Great American Novel.

It begins gently, in patchy black-and-white that, accompanied by somber music, turns into a depth-enhancing color 3D frame that provides an equivalent for Luhrmann’s previous red curtains and at length gives way to the famous green light at the end of Daisy’s pier. Curiously, we are introduced to Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as a patient in a sanitarium, where he begins to tell a doctor (Jack Thompson) the story of what happened during the summer of 1922.

Luhrmann’s cultural collisions and dislocations then commence as a synthesis of archival footage and CGI (some of which looks to feature the Empire State Building and other yet-to-be-built skyscrapers a decade before their time, and one shot featuring an unlikely copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses,, which had only just been published in Paris) inflected on the track by modern music, all to the purpose of evoking the Jazz Age that Fitzgerald did so much to name and popularize. A polite lad of modest means trying to find a toehold on Wall Street, Nick was at Yale with rich bruiser Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and has taken a little house in West Egg, Long Island, right across the bay from Tom and his wife Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and in the shadow of the ostentatious mansion owned by the elusive Jay Gatsby.

Everybody from party girls to politicians comes to Gatsby’s extravagant parties, where the booze flows and the music plays and the carousing goes on all night. But no one ever sees the host, whose wealth is surpassed only by his mysteriousness.

In time-honored dramatic fashion, Gatsby’s entrance is delayed for a half-hour and, when the moment comes, there’s something in the way it’s shot combined with the self-possessed I-own-the-world smile on DiCaprio’s face that reminds of the first time you see the young Charles Foster Kane in an earlier film about a fellow with more money than he knows what to do with. Throughout, Luhrmann photographs DiCaprio the way a movie star used to be shot—glamorously and admiringly, taking full advantage of the charismatic attributes with which only the anointed few are blessed.

Brandishing his favorite phrase, “Old sport,” as well as a slightly affected accent no doubt carefully cultivated to disguise his origins, Gatsby befriends the innocent Nick, whom he asks to arrange a rendezvous with Daisy, his sweetheart from five years earlier when he was a soldier off to Europe and the battlefront. Having already been taken into New York by Tom and his mistress Myrtle (Isla Fisher) for a debauched afternoon, Nick now accompanies Gatsby for lunch at a mixed-race speakeasy with notorious gambling associate Meyer Wolfshiem (Indian cinema star Amitabh Bachchan).

Once Gatsby and Daisy reunite, nearly an hour in, the film settles down a bit to focus on Gatsby’s sincere effort to recapture the girl who got away, who, when he went to war, married rich boy Tom. Gatsby wants to believe they can rewind the clock to the moment when they fell in love, to the purity of what they once had. “If I could just get back to the start,” he says, choosing to ignore Nick’s warning that, “You can’t repeat the past.”

They do try, organizing a nervous lunch to break the news to Tom, then heading into Manhattan on a sweltering afternoon where, in a room at the Plaza, everyone’s truths come tumbling out, followed by tragedy on the road back and, ultimately, in Gatsby’s pool. The precipitating automobile accident is perhaps too sketchily portrayed for full impact and the final stretch is slowed by too much commentary by Nick, who has become a bit of a bore by now.

Narrator/observer characters like Nick, or Stingo in Sophie’s Choice, are almost always uncomfortable fits onscreen. Maguire’s slightly aging boyishness has become tiresome by the film’s second half, and a reduction of Nick’s concluding commentary would have helped.

After a number of roles that, however well acted, may not have been comfortably in his wheelhouse, DiCaprio looks and feels just right as Gatsby; the glamour and allure at one with his film star persona, he’s sufficiently savvy to convince as a successful bootlegger but still young enough to recapture the hopes and innocence of youth.

Daisy is a difficult character for any actress to embody and, accordingly, viewers will debate whether Carey Mulligan has the beauty, the bearing, the dream qualities desired for the part, but she lucidly portrays the desperate tear Daisy feels between her unquestionable love for Gatsby and fear of her husband. Edgerton is excellent as the proud, entitled and seething bully Tom.

Opulence defines the production values, led by the film’s sets and costumes. As for the use of 3D by Luhrmann and cinematographer Simon Duggan, it is probably the most naturalistic aspect of the film; only rarely do you notice it in a pronounced way and yet it really does add something to the experience, drawing you in as if escorting you through a series of opening gates, doors and emotional states.

Such was the case last Sunday, when my guy and I met an old friend, Texas, and her two-year-old daughter for an afternoon tour.

Although she’s spent a significant amount of time in Bellingham, Texas told me that not only had she never visited the 2.5-acre sculpture garden, but she’d also never even heard about it.

While taking care not to fault my friend for her lack of knowledge about the evergreen-shrouded art nook, I pointed out that the beauteous haven has been drawing appreciators of both art and nature since the Drake family founded “Gardens of Art” in 1981.

The City of Bellingham purchased the property in 1993, and, since then, a team of volunteers has helped guide the park’s ongoing development. Sculpture Northwest, a nonprofit promoting cultural tourism in the region through the promotion of opportunities to view and purchase outdoor sculptures, also has a hand in helping keep the artistic side of Big Rock Garden Park flourishing.

In tandem with the Sculptors’ Society of British Columbia and the City of Bellingham, Sculpture Northwest has been hard at work in the past weeks bringing a “Tribute to David Marshall” exhibit to Big Rock in time for its annual Mother’s Day blowout.

The exhibit joins the 30-plus permanent sculptures on display at the outdoor gallery and features a variety of pieces by Marshall, a now-deceased Canadian sculptor who was one of the founders of the program of annual exhibits in Big Rock Garden Park more than 25 years ago. (The exhibit also features works by artists who worked with or studied with Marshall.)

Although not every piece was installed yet, our small group managed to get a sneak peek at what viewers who’ll be attending both the opening ceremony May 9 and the Mother’s Day extravaganza May 12 will see. Pieces both gigantic—I’m talking four-plus-tons gigantic—and small in scale adorned a significant portion of the lower space of the garden, and I can report that visitors are in for a treat.

Throughout our foray, which included just about every inch of the park, Texas kept stopping to take pictures of the way the sun-dappled leaves highlighted the bronze, metal and stone sculptures both on the main path and in a variety of nooks and crannies. Our youngest member handily posed in front of anything we wanted her to, giving a “thumbs-up” to those pieces that seemed to move her.

Given the beauty of our surroundings—which were helped by a 70-plus-degree day and oodles of sunshine—we had a hard time leaving, and paused near the gazebo for a while to feed the kid snacks and watch small groups of humans “ooh” and “aah” over the sculptures and the blooms.

Before we left, Texas told me the next time her mom visited, she was going to bring her to Big Rock Garden Park to show off one of Bellingham’s gems. I told her I’d be happy to come along.

Key won’t be heading to rehab for his habit anytime soon. Instead, he’ll feed his overwhelming need to produce quality theater by continuing to direct cutting-edge plays as part of his fledgling company, Free Key Productions.

“I cannot imagine anything more exciting than bringing a new production to the stage for the first time,” Key says. “It’s the best drug in the world, and it’s legal.”

While he cites artistic and financial challenges in bringing his visions to life under the power of his own steam, the longtime actor and director—who was involved in his first play at the tender age of three and hasn’t looked back in the decades since—says a health scare a few years ago convinced him it was time to cross an item off his bucket list and form his own company already.

Free Key Productions already has one production under its belt—last October’s performances of the two-person play, Love Letters—but the bar was raised when Key decided to direct Evermore, a musical with more than a few twists that opens May 9 at Mount Vernon’s Lincoln Theatre.

“Evermore takes a classic Romeo-and-Juliet love story and projects it 1,000 years into the future, all to the accompaniment of a full rock ensemble,” Key says.

While creating a post-apocalyptic Earth wasn’t an easy thing—in addition to incorporating the musical score, the director had to deal with such conundrums as how to show audiences a City in the Sky and figure out how to grow a magical tree out of a crashed starship—Key stresses that it would have been much more difficult to produce the two-act play without a whole lot of help.

In addition to giving major props to playwright Mark Rostron (who also created much of the score), Key says he couldn’t have put together the epic production without costumer and dance captain Susan Duncan, set dresser Ann Balfour, and music director John French, whom he calls a “genius at making good singers outstanding and outstanding singers even better.”

And, although Key is no stranger to directing, he indicates it took all his various talents to bring Evermore to life.

“This is a groundbreaking production in so many ways,” he says. “No one has ever done this show before, so we have to invent everything as we go along, and that gives it an extra edge. 

“A world-premiere musical doesn’t come along every day and the moment of birth is always magical. Science-fiction fans will love the story, but it’s really all about the music. There are musical moments in this show that still make my hair stand on end even after hearing them repeatedly. People who see this will be talking about it for a long time.”

The bands he fronted—Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and Dio, among them—are some of metal’s most revered. And while all bands share similarities, it is Dio’s instantly recognizable voice and his love of all lyrical content having to do with the mythical—he is frequently credited with unabashedly bringing what author Chuck Klosterman called the “Dungeons & Dragons” ethos to heavy metal—that tie his musical projects together.

But there was more to Dio than just his being a tiny man with a giant voice who loved to sling the devil horns (another thing he’s credited with popularizing). He was a guy who, like so many other rock musicians, started out as a band geek of sorts, playing trumpet and French horn. He even earned a scholarship to Juilliard at one point, but wanted to be a rocker far more than he wished to be a classically trained musician, and turned the scholarship down to start his own bands.

But all those times he was strutting his stuff onstage, wowing millions of people the world over with his incredible voice and astonishing stamina, he wasn’t merely doing it to entertain. Dio also had an ulterior motive, and it was a charitable one. Whether he was raising millions for famine relief in Africa, helping to save young girls from lives of prostitution or assisting animal rescue organizations, Dio’s philanthropy was as strong and as steadfast as his legendary voice. Although he died of stomach cancer in 2010 at the age of 67, Dio’s philanthropic legacy lives on through the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund.

Even before his death, various Dio tribute bands were in existence. And while all of them no doubt try and capture his singular vocal style and throw the horns nonstop, not many of them embrace Dio’s dual mandate of rocking out while giving back.

This is where Rising comes in.

Reportedly five years in the making, Rising is one of those Dio tribute bands—but instead of simply performing the songs of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Elf, et al, Rising also embraces Dio’s charitable outlook, donating proceeds from every show to various nonprofits. In fact, Rising itself operates as a nonprofit—Rising, Inc.—for the sole purpose of spreading both the music and what they see as Dio’s philanthropic message. Toward that end, the target their donations to cancer-research organizations, music-education programs for young people and organizations that address youth homelessness—the very programs and people Dio also provided outreach to, both musically and financially.

Of course, a charitable mandate is nice, but without the ability to re-create Dio’s distinctive music, Rising would be just another Dio tribute band (and there are a few of them out there). Fans of the diminutive rocker will be happy to hear that Rising promises a “note-for-note reproduction of the songs the way you remember them” and their May 11 show at the Mount Baker Theatre will feature “epic stage props and professional production” that will “take you back to the magic of an ’80s-era concert experience.”

Better still, 100 percent of the proceeds from their two-plus-hour Baker show will benefit Northwest Youth Services, which has been providing assistance and support to at-risk youth for almost 40 years.

Something tells me, that between the music and the charitable mandate, Dio himself would throw Rising his fiercest devil-horn salute.

If you’ve lived in Bellingham for any length of time, you’ve probably already noticed that bicycle riders in this burg come in a rainbow of shapes, sizes, abilities and, yes, even fashions. Unlike me, some choose to consistently don racing jerseys and skin-tight Spandex—whether they’re whizzing down Galbraith or just riding from their house to the Farmers Market—while others keep it simple with T-shirts and shorts. 

There’s a whole other genre of riders who manage to look like they’ve just come from a fashion shoot. They don’t seem to sweat much, and their outfits exude confidence in the vein of “Yes, I’m participating in an activity that’s extremely good for me, and also for the environment, and I’m still giving careful thought to what I wear.”

In an effort to move beyond wearing jeans or yoga pants and Target V-necks while commuting to and fro, I’m considering going to Everybody Bike’s upcoming “Belle on Wheels” gathering happening Sat., May 11 at the Depot Market Square during the Bellingham Farmers Market.

The event, which focuses on both fashion and functionality, will feature a variety of spring outfits, handbags and accessories modeled on matching chic bicycles. The clothes will come from such fashion hotspots as 4 Starrs, Sojourn, Black Market, and more, while the sweet rides will be sourced from Kulshan Cycles, Fanatik Bike, Fairhaven Bike & Ski, Earl’s Bike Shop, and Jack’s Bicycle Center. And, for those who want to see what they look like on the bikes they’re drawn to, there’ll be the opportunity to star in your own photo shoot.

Since it’s National Bike Month, reps will also be on hand at “Belle on Wheels” to share information about other biking opportunities that will be happening through the spring and summer—namely Bike to Work and School Day and Summer Rides.

Bike to Work and School Day happens Fri., May 17 throughout Whatcom County, and the premise is simple: In an effort to draw attention to the both the physical and environmental benefits of bike riding, participants can stop by Celebration Stations on their way to work or school and pick up a number of free goodies—whether it’s baked goods, coupons from local businesses, vouchers to ride the bus or reflective tape (among other things). Plus, when each rider arrives, they’ll ring a cow bell in recognition, which is pretty cool. 

Summer Rides have kicked off for the season, as well. Two or three times a month through Aug. 25, riders can gather for site- and theme-specific rides focusing on everything from urban farms to trees to cows. On June 2, there’ll even be “That ’70s Ride,” which calls for attendees to wear polyester shirts or other relics of the hippie era. It’s a decade I’ve never grown tired of, so I think I’ll change out of my yoga pants and join the fun.