The Editor:
I cannot imagine what prompted the city of Blaine to devise a new director’s position to accommodate a staff member’s “preferred” line of work due to their numerous surgeries over the past year.
Other city departments remain understaffed and poorly equipped to effectively do their jobs. And why pay a recruiting company when our assistant director was highly regarded and more than capable to take the director of public works position – another costly mistake for the city of Blaine.
Now we have three highly paid leadership positions in one department for the city of Blaine, population 5,500. Just does not make sense – and the city leaders are wringing their hands over $700,000 in lost revenue? Our community deserves better leadership!
Mike Lucas
Blaine
The Editor:
My husband and I are a cross-border couple. He is staying in White Rock working and I am staying at our house in Blaine.
We have been overjoyed to be able to meet at the recently opened Peace Arch Park at the border a few times this month.
This past weekend I was chatting with both the U.S. Border Patrol and Ranger Rick, of the Park Services. Unfortunately, there is a chance that the park will be shut down – even perhaps this week – as people are not abiding by or respecting the distancing and numbers of people in their group.
With Memorial Day weekend coming up, I hope The Northern Light might publish a reminder to our community of the importance of following the rules/law. If people do not, then the privilege of the park is closed to everyone, and that especially hurts the separated families.
It was my correct assumption that Peace Arch State Park is the only one in North America to be a “neutral territory” and both Canadian and American citizens are able to enjoy it together.
We need to honor our rare privilege to share this park.
Susan Pendleton
Blaine/White Rock
The Editor:
The evidence is in. Health officials strongly recommend face coverings to help contain the coronavirus’ spread. To reopen society and the economy as seamlessly as possible, face masks should be required – not just recommended – while people are interacting with others outside their homes.
Dr. Frank James, health officer of San Juan County, issued an order supported by the health board, to wear a cloth mask when mingling in public. Community efforts have stopped the coronavirus in the island archipelago. Dr. James wants to keep it that way.
We’ve all heard the idiom “to cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face.” In the context of the raging “masklash” fomented by right wing media figures, the expression aptly describes a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a (manufactured) problem, in which people acting out of pique and political revenge end up causing damage not only to themselves, but potentially to everyone they encounter including their own family members. How can a person justify that?
Those who have turned wearing masks into yet another front in the incessant culture wars will inflict a heavy price, one that will be largely paid by them. If you don’t believe me, Rod Dreher, in The American Conservative, writes that wearing a mask “offers the opportunity to ease back into normal life ... the very thing conservatives want.” Dreher blames “unhinged right-wing ideologues” for creating the backlash against masks.
If we think of masks as a tool towards recovery, and not a symbol of political outrage, there would be greater acceptance. I encourage you to contact the Whatcom County health department, our mayors, our county officials to issue a mask order from a fact-based perspective, as Dr. James did for San Juan County. We need consistent, reliable leadership on this issue.
No shirt, no shoes, no masks ... no service.
Micki Jackson
Bellingham
The Editor:
As an elder citizen trying to survive this dreadful pandemic, I sincerely appreciate the efforts local businesses are making to keep us safer, offering senior shopping hours, increased sanitizing, creating more space in stores to social distance and the like. I am pleased to see more and more store employees and customers wearing face masks. I am spending a good deal of my time at home sewing these masks for family and friends.
Using a mask may slow the spread of the virus, and those who wear them are showing their concern for others, especially the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for doing this despite the personal inconvenience.
Please note, you must cover both your nose and mouth! I am surprised to see some people wearing a mask over the mouth only. No! Your mask is practically useless unless you cover both! Please make sure you wear it correctly!
Nancy K. Sheng
Bellingham
The Editor:
Our country is so divided, and Covid-19 has contributed to the schism. When we combine politics with science in today’s hyper-partisan environment, we end up with politics winning. That’s deadly in this pandemic.
If the virus were a foreign threat, with enemies sending bombing sorties, and governor Inslee told us to turn out our lights for blackout protection, halt economic activity, would people be protesting and keeping lights illuminated because they could? Even if it got us killed? I hope not.
I hope we’d agree that we have an obligation, working together, to protect our community from this invisible threat. We need to protect each other; one way is to wear a mask in public. Some people think wearing a mask infringes on personal freedom.
Many think the death rate for Covid-19 is not a big deal. They should consider the thousands who “survive” the disease but will never return to the lives they had. For example, Nick Cordero, a 41-year-old Tony-nominated actor, is struggling with Covid-19. Nick was admitted to the ER; put into a medically-induced coma; intubated; ventilated; suffered cardiac arrest requiring resuscitation; suffered multiple mini-strokes; restricted blood flow to leg; amputation of right leg; sepsis infection; septic shock; fungus causing holes that make his lungs look like a 50-year smoker. His 10-month-old son and wife are waiting for any good news. Nick is not out of the woods. It’s too soon to know what his cognitive function will be.
Please stay home and, if you must go out, wear a mask!
Sheri Lambert
Laurel
The Editor:
A number of years back, Gerald Baron shifted from jobs cleaning up tragedy-engulfed messes on the records of corporations like BP and Olympic Pipeline Company, to his current role as executive director for Save Family Farming. In a 2018 book, he outlined using radical rules to attack immigrant and farmworker advocate leaders of Community to Community Development (C2C) and Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), with a focus to “defeat them.”
Baron has picked out Rosalinda Guillen of C2C and has gone to lengths of making untrue statements about her that have been allowed to appear in print, uncorrected, by some news media outlets.
Leading up to a recent period of agricultural worker strikes for safety measures and hazard pay at seven fruit packing plants in Yakima Valley during the pandemic, Baron, and Save Family Farming’s communications director Dillon Honcoop have campaigned against protective measures for workers sought to be included in Washington state’s just-released emergency Covid-19 rules for temporary agricultural housing. Instead of recognizing the need for calling for the strongest safeguards possible for frontline workers, they have chosen to denounce the people calling
for them.
Meanwhile, the exemplary reputation created by C2C and FUJ through years of building a community based in dignity does not need any emergency response, but the lives and well-being of our invaluable ag workers do. Contact governor Inslee at 360/902-4111 to insist on funding for meaningful enforcement of Covid-19 agricultural worker housing, workplace, and transportation rules.
Dena Jensen
Birch Bay
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