Community Voices

Local dailies in Northwest Washington are turning into ghosts — ghost newspapers, existing in name but no longer having the staff or the commitment to cover local and regional news. The trend is part of a national crisis that’s been accelerating at warp speed since 1990.

Whatcom County farmers say they view water rights adjudication as an existential threat to their future, in their long-term battle to maintain farming as part of the local economy and culture.

The complex issue of religious freedom as it relates to the gathering of believers during our pandemic times has been in the news these past months as certain religious groups reject the State’s role in limiting events to certain numbers and locations.

As a reporter for Salish Current, I reached out to WA3%’s website in September, looking to speak with a Whatcom County chapter member. I wanted to know who these members were in our community, how they had come to believe what they believe and how they see themselves.

This may surprise you: Water, even in wet Whatcom County, is a scarce resource.

On the evening of March 5, I did a four-minute stand-up set at Bellingham’s Upfront Theatre

In our time of pandemic, the hackneyed phrase, “a good death,” has come to have new meaning and, yes, a new life.

Whatcom County libraries have been closed to the public for over two months now. Despite the closures, staff have been busier than ever, working from home and pitching in wherever possible to provide services to the public.

Very few kids would trade being able to see and hang out with friends, participate in football and other sports, go to restaurants now and then, and even go to school every day for being confined at home with their families, all day, every day. But that’s where they are for now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has closed schools around Washington state.

Family dairies, the annual Ski to Sea race and visitor and shopper traffic from Canada are just a few archetypal activities being disrupted in Whatcom County as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses. Business as usual is not due back in Whatcom County any time soon, said county executive Satpal Sidhu in an April 10 interview.

Our once-in-a-lifetime, 50th anniversary world cruise was sunk by a coronavirus somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Nobody had COVID-19, but our vessel was treated like a plague ship nonetheless.

We asked Salish Current readers and writers to share their stories about how the COVID-19 virus is affecting them in this time of the evolving “new normal” — virtual coffees and happy hours, worries about the vitality of the arts and cultural sphere, isolation and social-distancing rules, and more.