Schooner Zodiac celebrates 100 years of exploration and education
Tall ship preserves history, cultivates community on Bellingham Bay
The crew huffed and puffed, folding, shoving, rolling and pulling all corners of the 4,000-square-foot sail between the main gaff and the main beam of the schooner Zodiac. Some pushed from below while others stood atop, using the full force of their body weight to contain the basketball-court-sized piece of canvas.
“First one to get blood on the sail, I’ll buy a beer,” captain Calen Mehrer called out to the crew as they secured the new, stiff sail. Alongside experienced sailors, Mehrer spent the evening training the eager new crop of volunteers for another season in the Salish Sea while cruising Bellingham Bay in late April.
Whatcom students learn empathy from tiny teachers — babies
Roots of Empathy program visits 27 local classrooms
Across 27 classrooms in Whatcom County, the tiniest of teachers — babies — are leading lessons for elementary and middle school students.
The lessons aren’t ones in science or language arts, but ones in empathy and how humans express emotions at the simplest, most easily identifiable level.
At Wade King Elementary on March 7, the lesson began with a circle of John Livezey’s fourth-grade students surrounding a big lime green blanket. They could barely contain their excitement as Victoria and Trevor Oram circled the group with baby Cecelia, allowing each student a moment to say hello and wiggle the child’s foot.
Medieval armored combatants duke it out in flagship Bellingham duels
'Barbarians' host throwback West Coast fighters for ritual club fest
Swords clanged and maces bounced off helmets to a backdrop of cheers, jeers and gasps from an animated, and slightly buzzed, crowd. Punches from metal-clad hands were thrown as competitors fought to breathe in their suits of authentic, medieval armor. Knights wrestled, rolling on the floor, simply working to best the other by almost any means necessary.
The scene was not from a movie, nor was it the result of a time machine, transporting everyone back into medieval Europe. It was a sold-out event — complete with rules, a referee and a time limit — on Saturday, Feb. 24 on a property just outside of Bellingham.
Regionalization is another headache in school funding
Some districts benefit, others suffer from formula
Six years after a “regionalization” factor was introduced as a form of cost-of-living boost for state funding of Washington school districts, critics are seeking changes to a formula they are calling “broken.”
Regionalization was introduced by the Washington Legislature in 2017, with the goal of providing retention pay for teachers and certificated staff in school districts with high costs of living.
However, six years later, some local districts are receiving less money from the state than in 2018 because, critics say, the formula that determines payouts is flawed.
Isolated Point Roberts struggles with labor, border restrictions
Residents try to keep economy afloat
POINT ROBERTS — Isolation has been a universal experience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but no one has experienced isolation quite like Point Roberts and the hundreds of people residing in the small Washington exclave.
Point Roberts juts from the mainland of Canada, just below the 49th parallel. Since the start of the pandemic, the economy of the tourist destination — requiring double border crossings to reach from the U.S. mainland — has been gutted, its population has slumped.