Letters to the Editor: February

The Editor and new Publisher:

Thank you for taking on the job of running our local paper. We know that many small local papers have folded in recent years leaving many communities devoid of local reporting. The loss of a local source for information and advocacy can have a detrimental effect on a community.

Having a local newspaper in a community is one element in the glue that helps define local identity. Keeping a local newspaper helps our community by providing a means for discourse on local issues, helps promote local activities, allows our local businesses and civic organizations a means of communicating with our residents and creates a historical archive of Point Roberts.

The basic precepts of reporting (Who, What, Why, Where, When and How) should always remain the key to success in having the All Point Bulletin continue to remain a vibrant participant in how we, as Point Roberts residents, see ourselves and how people from outside our community perceive us.

Welcome to our very unique community. We can be quirky at times, so we hope you can not only capture the news and information that we need but the also the humor and humanity of our daily lives.

Bennett Blaustein

Point Roberts

The Editor:

Dear good people of Blaine, Point Roberts, Semiahmoo and Birch Bay,

I am impressed by the long history of news coverage serving your communities. In fact, I was not aware until recently of the newspaper legacy in your region of our state!

La Conner, where I have loved living since 2007, also has a historical news presence with the longest continuous publication of a weekly newspaper in our state. That status could have changed at the end of 2024 were it not for a group of community members who came together, committed to keeping news alive in our small but mighty town and surrounding communities, including the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

That perseverance was met with vision, smarts, talent and drive by current publisher and editor-in-chief Kari Mar, who listened and heard how much we value our local, printed paper. Fast forward to early 2025, and we were seeing an email newsletter and website from La Conner Community News.

Then the first weekly issue began publishing in March!

I am excited for you all that The Northern Light will continue publishing so that you can continue to read local news that matters, about the people, services and happenings that you would not find covered elsewhere.

We are excited to be working with you!

Onward!

Susan Macek, board member of La Conner Community News

La Conner

The Editor:

Local news that’s trusted and accessible to everyone without paywall is essential to the health of a community. Salish Current was founded and operates with those principles serving local communities, and will work with other groups and stakeholders to support local news in The Northern Light’s community readership area.

Amy Nelson, Salish Current publisher and co-founder

Bellingham

The Editor:

A twitch is a tool used by farriers and veterinarians when working with a horse as a substitute for a tranquilizer. A loop of rope, attached to a stick is put around the animal’s upper lip and twisted. It calms the horse and distracts it from the pain it would otherwise experience. President Trump’s attacks on Venezuela have twitched the American people again.

Donald Trump, a convicted felon, and a man scared of what will be revealed in the Epstein papers, has just twitched American. He hopes we’ll all forget about his possible role in the Epstein scandal with his illegal takeover of Venezuela, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, the murder of foreign sailors in international waters, and the promise of huge profits from the theft of Venezuela’s oil reserves. His “drug-driven war” is his mask, and he hopes for a sufficient distraction so that the American people will set aside the threat of criminal behavior that could lead to his third impeachment. He hopes the drug war twitch will cover the shame that the Epstein papers will undoubtedly bring his way.

We’ve seen this war twitch before when the distraction was the threat of “communists” in Vietnam and the prize was rubber, and once again in Iraq when the twitch was the search for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction after 9/11, and the prize was once again oil. Each time a standing president was covering domestic failings with a convenient war as the twitch to divert and mask his embarrassment.

Please America, wake up to the president’s latest scam (remember Canada, the 51st state). Surely we Americans are smarter than a horse with a twitch on its lip. Contact your congressman and senator and let them know you’re tired of this repeating insanity.

Ronald Snyder

Blaine