📢 Cascadia Voices 05/09/26

Constant Comment: Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s tallest president at 6-foot-4, was known to quip when asked about his height that his legs were “long enough to reach the ground.” Likewise, his speeches were long enough to make their points; the Gettysburg Address, for example, is all of 271 words. Lincoln’s address would just about make the cut as a letter for Cascadia Daily News, which asks writers to keep to about 250 words. (We might have asked Abe to tighten up his prose a bit; why write “four score and seven years ago” when you mean 87?)

Still, some subjects do require more than 250 words to fully discuss what’s at issue, which is why our Opinion pages invite members of the community to submit guest commentaries, which can run up to 800 words.

For example, this week:

Susan Kane-Ronning, a longtime advocate for Lake Whatcom, notes recent progress to protect the health of that lake’s watershed but finds that pledges by local governments to reduce phosphorus and other pollutants are falling short of goals, seeking more urgency from the community and its leaders for the lake’s protection. “Delayed progress also increases long-term costs for ratepayers and taxpayers,” Kane-Ronning warns. (Read in the May 8 print paper or click this link on Monday, May 11.)

Dr. Gurdev Singh, a Bellingham internal medicine physician, reports the encouraging news that fatal drug overdose doses in Whatcom County fell by 37% in 2024, yet now is not the time to let up on efforts to address fentanyl and other opioids, especially as those with substance-use disorders have adapted their methods of consumption, and new drugs — including xylazine and medetomidine — are now on the street. Local officials in Whatcom and Skagit counties and their residents must adapt to the new challenges, he writes. “The overdose crisis has changed shape, and parts of our local response have not kept pace. That gap is costing lives,” he says.

Both the mayor and the county executive are on the WTA governing board that decided to double WTA fares. By the way, everybody on the governing board, including mayor and county executive, city council and county council members, gets free passes, compliments of — you guessed it — the governing board.

Actually, the huge increase in fares will decrease ridership and the proportion of revenue that comes from fares. Though people who have no car will be forced to continue riding the bus (as long as they can afford it, anyway), people who have a car but ride the bus in order to save money (and help the environment) will realize that they are no longer saving anything by taking the bus. For example, a round trip to Lake Padden from my home consumes $0.73 in gas, whereas the bus will cost $8 (two buses, so two fares each way.) Even the monthly $60 cap is too high on a sub-median income. By the way, more car driving will contribute to climate change in addition to our leaders' salaries.

If you think such an increase is unfair, contact your council member now: cob.org/gov/council.

John Holstein
Bellingham

Read more letters to the editor here.

Submit a letter to the editor (250 words max) or guest commentary (500–800 words) online at cascadiadaily.com/submissions.

Residents of Whatcom and Skagit counties, following December’s devastating floods, perhaps are following the news regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency more closely, noting the opening of applications for millions of dollars in federal disaster aid through the agency, as well as news that the Trump administration has, at the same time, denied a state request for disaster preparation funds. Acknowledging past talk by the Trump administration to shutter or limit FEMA, consider this question:

A history of disaster: Last week, I recommended listening to the public radio show and podcast “On The Media.” This week, I’m repeating the advice, particularly to catch a new four-part series that OTM launched May 1 on the history and future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. To further your education on a consequential — as well as controversial — institution, take a listen to the first two segments of the special report now available, “American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA,” by OTM’s Micah Loewinger and Eloise Blondiau.

‘Of oppression, belonging and exile’: This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing went to M. Gessen, opinion columnist for The New York Times, notably for seven columns centered on authoritarian regimes. Among the essays: “This is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know it Well,” which recounts the nonbinary journalist’s decision to leave Russia 13 years ago to protect their family from a campaign to take children away from LGBT parents. Find this and the other entries from Gessen here.

Down to the pocket square: I can’t tell a Christian Dior from an outhouse door, but I knew enough to take my mother and wife to see “The Devil Wears Prada 2” ahead of Mother’s Day. Fashion is not my handbag, but a guy in Levi’s and a Carhartt T-shirt can still aspire to approach something close to the sartorial gravitas of Stanley Tucci in the Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway sequel of the 2006 original. "Prada 2" accessorizes smartly by at least touching on print journalism's existential crises, even amongst the fashion world's excess. Two snaps up.