Seeing with Fresh Eyes

Between having more activities than usual and the recent cold winter weather, I’ve had little time or inspiration to blip, and I haven’t been keeping up on the journals I follow as well as I’d like. I was determined to blip today, but couldn't think of a good subject.

When  I left the YMCA just after noon today, I stood at the first intersection I had to cross to get back to my car, looked right, and thought to myself, “If I take a photo of this, it might be of interest to blippers in other countries, as I always enjoy seeing street scenes in other places posted by folks I follow here.”

 This is a major intersection in downtown Bellingham. As you can see, we don’t have the traffic problems that many other cities face. There’s a nice mix of old and new buildings, and clearly-marked crosswalks for pedestrians. There are a variety of interesting places to eat downtown, as well as the Whatcom Museum, the Bellingham Library, the Mount Baker Theater, the Pickford Film Center and the Limelight Cinema, the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention, and much more.

As our country approaches the inauguration of a president like none we’ve seen before, I feel blessed to live in a city and a county where many people are committed to making a positive difference. For example, earlier this month the Sikh temple  in Lynden, a farming community of about 12,000 people north of Bellingham, held an interfaith prayer service. The keynote address was given by Noemi Ban, age 94, a Holocaust survivor and Bellingham resident. You can read more about in the Cascadia Weekly.

A lot has changed here since September 1907 when two hundred South Asian migrant workers, including Sikhs, most of whom worked in the lumber mills, were attacked and driven out of Bellingham by a mob of white workers — but there's still much to be done. Our work is cut out for us.


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