Editor,
Much praise to you and the paper for your in-depth and quality reporting of local Whatcom County issues!
It is very disappointing recently to hear of the complaints about the sounds of ships being loaded with recycled scrap iron at the Port of Bellingham’s industrial zone. I have been a marine artist and professional mariner most of my life. I grew up in an important mill town and deepwater shipping port on the Columbia River. When I first came here 50 years ago, I worked for Foss [Maritime Company] on our Bellingham waterfront moving logs and docking ships.
We have lived directly in front of WWU and are directly opposite the Port’s North Shipping Terminal where the ship, Ken Spirit, has been loading all last week. Being so close, we can slightly hear the periodic scrunching as the scrap metal is loaded, but it is very negligible.
Watching ships loading cargo from our port is very interesting and does not interfere with our quality of life at all. It is gratifying to see Bellingham’s deepwater port being used again for shipping. Since our port’s shipping terminal is limited in size, innovative ways of utilizing its features must continue to be explored. An excellent example has been the use of the port for the loading of large boulders onto barges for the rebuilding of the jetties at Gray’s Harbor.
The Fairhaven Shipyard with its jobs is already gone. Once a working waterfront is eliminated, it cannot be reclaimed!
Steve Mayo
Bellingham
Editor,
Julia Tellman’s excellent article on Samish Heights development (CDN, April 13, 2024) starts off with the headline that “Bellingham thirsts for more housing.” Her otherwise excellent piece gets that statement wrong. Bellingham doesn’t thirst for more housing. It thirsts for affordable housing. The last thing we need is more expensive single detached homes displacing some of the last remaining intact forests in the city.
We need permanently affordable infill housing where servicing infrastructure is already in place.
We need to have a city where our children don’t have to leave town in order to be able to afford rent.
I shed no tears for the landowners who have been stymied by lack of infrastructure that will allow them to build homes for wealthier folks while working-class people are cost-burdened if they can even afford to live here.
The current real estate system is madness, rigged for the wealthy.
Michael Chiavario
Bellingham
Editor,
Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund is doing an outstanding job for our city. In a time when it is easy and fashionable to bash politicians, I want to acknowledge her excellent leadership.
She has brought fresh energy and great intelligence to the position. She has implemented new and effective programs that have improved our downtown experience. Most importantly, she has demonstrated the courage to think creatively and challenge those special interest groups with the loudest voices.
Elections really do have consequences, and I am so grateful for the positive changes Mayor Lund has brought to our wonderful city!
Ken Mann
Bellingham
Editor,
It just doesn’t add up. Two tiny home villages in Bellingham are to be relocated by the end of 2024. Both are off the beaten path: Swift Haven, located behind Civic Stadium above Frank Geri Fields; and Unity Village, adjacent to the Post Point Wastewater Treatment facility in Fairhaven.
According to Charlotte Alden’s article (CDN April 9, 2024), this will involve about 50 residents moving to new digs. What doesn’t add up is that the new site just purchased by the city has less than half the square footage of the combined footprint of the existing villages. How are people already living cheek by jowl to manage in less than half the space?
And instead of being relatively private, the new location, North Haven, at 3300 Northwest Ave. and West Maplewood, is at a heavy-trafficked intersection. Add to that the lack of available parking on the west side of Northwest Avenue and prevalence of derelict vehicles using up parking on West Maplewood, you have a very congested situation brewing.
Will there be a privacy fence? Will the trees on the property be preserved to provide at least a modicum of shade? Mayor [Kim] Lund, can we avoid this impending debacle?
Steve Bailey
Bellingham
Editor,
After a lifetime of Earth Days, I’m mostly filled with sadness as all the promise of Earth day fades away. Being a teenage college freshman at Western in 1970, the first Earth Day was quite a big deal. So what happened to all those new laws and agencies that inspired me to become an environmental studies major? Technically, not much as we’re still using them.
For example, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Acts were sunset so as to be updated in the 1990s using new evidence-based performance standards and technologies, like Landsat and geocode computer models I was hacking, that were still being developed. According to Douglas Brinkley speaking about his book “Silent Spring Revolution” on Book TV, they were killed by corporate ‘think tanks’.
So instead of being updated, the 1994 Republican’s Contract on America gave the Democrats the choice between letting them die or merely rolling them over. So here we are in 2024 celebrating Crispy Earth Day and pretending the planet killers haven’t won?
John C. Ruth
Bellingham
Editor,
In the book “Childhood Disrupted,” the author [ Donna Jackson Nakazawa ]writes that even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development.” (Page 24).
Thus, failing at parenthood can occur as soon as the decision is made to conceive and carry a baby to term.
By this, I don’t mean they necessarily are or will be ‘bad’ parents. Rather, it’s that too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner.
They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
As liberal democracies, we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who recklessly procreate. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
If nothing else, such curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge?
After all, a mentally, as well as physically, sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter; a world in which Child Abuse Prevention Month [every April] clearly needs to run 365 days of the year.
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, British Columbia
Letters to the Editor are published online Wednesdays; a selection is published in print Fridays. Send to letters@cascadiadaily.com by 10 a.m. Tuesdays. Rules: Maximum 250 words, be civil, have a point and make it clearly. Preference is given to letters about local subjects. CDN reserves the right to reject letters or edit for length, clarity, grammar and style, or removal of personal attacks or offensive content. Letters must include an address/phone number to verify the writer's identity (not for publication).
