News In Brief

Group donates $500 to family service center
Members of Sixty-Five Sisterhood Helping Hands (SSHHH), recently presented a donation of $500 to the Blaine Family Service Center. SSHHH is a group of seven women who graduated from Blaine high school in 1965. The group was formed a year ago, with hopes of raising money for local charities through various activities. The members are Brooke Finley, Candis Haws, Jan Vogt Boykin, Marie Bishop Dohner, Dianna Hawkins Seeklander, Barbara Brann Love and Carrillee Reid Fischer. The money raised for the first beneficiary, Blaine Family Service Center, was earned at the annual Birch Bay Village garage sale. SSHHH plans on making the garage sale a yearly event and would appreciate any donations of garage sale merchandise. For more information, call 371-2090.

Groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for skate park
Blaine Extreme Sports Club will have their ground breaking ceremony on November 15 at noon for the skateboard park. The event will take place behind the Blaine library. The club will also be having a free dessert social that evening with a silent auction from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Blaine middle school cafeteria. Merchandise and gift certificates have been donated by local and Bellingham merchants for this event.

Terrell Creek work party scheduled for Saturday
Join the Terrell Creek Stream Stewards and the Chums of Terrell Creek rain or shine at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of the Birch Bay Bible Community Church to kick-off Terrell Creek�s salmon restoration with a tree-planting party. A barbecue from noon to 2 p.m. will follow your hard work to bring the salmon back to Terrell Creek. Wear your tree-planting clothes. For more information, call Elie at 371-3441.

Blaine�s head librarian retiring after 29 years
Kathy Richardson, head librarian at the Blaine library, will be retiring at the end of November 2003 after 29 years. There will be a farewell reception for Kathy hosted by the Blaine Friends of the Library on Saturday, November 15 from 1 to 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served. The Blaine community is invited to drop by to wish Kathy a long and happy retirement. For more information, call Sue Sturgill, co-chair of the Friends of the Library, at 332-5742.

Birch Bay resident awarded master gardener
David Simonson, a long-time Birch Bay Village resident, recently received the Washington State master gardener of the year award at the state convention held in Port Townsend. About 500 master gardeners from all over the state were in attendance. Simonson is a Whatcom County master gardener and has been responsible for the demonstration garden at Hovander county park in Ferndale for the past 13 years.�After retiring from teaching business at the Blaine high school, he joined the master gardener program.

Blaine elementary school receives $500 grant
Blaine elementary school has received a $500 grant from the ExxonMobil educational alliance program to support a visit from an author. Matt Yorkston of Yorky�s 7, 1307 Boblett Street in Blaine, worked with school officials to secure the grant which is one of 4,000 available to schools across the country served by Exxon or Mobil stations. �Blaine elementary school works hard to make learning interesting and fun,� Yorkston said. �As an Exxon retailer, I am proud to help the young people of Blaine.�

Local filmmaker debuts work at film festival
The film work of Sketch Pasinski, a 1990 graduate of Blaine high school, will hit the screen this weekend at the Projections Film Festival. His seven-minute film entitled �reefnet� was shot entirely on 16mm film and describes the environmentally sound method of commercial fishing that is practiced solely in the San Juan Islands. The film captures the memories of the eight remaining reefnet fishermen and their crews and is a first look at what Pasinski hopes to turn into a 50-minute feature length film. The film will be shown on Friday, November 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Wild Buffalo at 208 W. Holly Street in Bellingham and on Saturday, November 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Whatcom County film association theater at 1316 Bay Street in Bellingham.
�I�ve been around reefnetting my entire life - it�s such a beautiful way to fish but also somewhat of a mystery to most people around Whatcom County,� Pasinski said. �My goal for the feature film is to look at what makes these fishermen so passionate about this unique trade. Showing at Projections will give me feedback to move forward.�

Several bicycles found in Blaine last week
Three different reports of abandoned bicycles were made to the Blaine police department last week, following the recent rash of stolen bicycles throughout the community. On October 28, an officer received an abandoned white Mongoose boy�s bicycle, which had been painted over gray or silver, according to police reports. Two blue bikes � one girls and one men�s � were reported in the 200 block of Marine Drive on November 1. The following day, a Blaine officer recovered a 21-speed bicycle from an open shed in the 100 block of Blaine Avenue, where the bike had been for several days. All of the bikes were taken by the Blaine police department for safekeeping. Only one bike, in the 600 block of Alder Street, was noted in police reports last week to have been stolen. For more information on the bikes, call 332-6769.

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