The City of Subdued Excitement
That’s the unofficial nickname of Bellingham and it fits like a custom tailored condom. This is a city of contradictions and, to some of us at least, it’s what makes the place so interesting.
I have been engaging in an internal debate over whether or not to subject my few but faithful readers to exigeses focusing on state and local issues. In some ways, they may seem irrelevant given the issues facing the nation and the world. On the other hand, these provincial issues are symptomatic of what’s going on in the macrocosm.
So I’m giving in to the temptation to editorialize on issues that I am constrained from addressing in the business magazine I edit. No doubt you’ll let me know in no uncertain terms if I’m boring you stupid.
Bellingham is gaining a certain notoriety for harboring terrorists of national and even international scope. First, we gained national attention for having hosted the M & M snipers. That’s Malvo and Mohammed, who spent some time in a homeless shelter here before gaining infamy as the pair who terrorized the east coast with a rash of senseless assassinations. There is a nasty rant fulminating in my brain regarding the barbaric gun laws that enabled this killing spree, but that’s for a later date.
Mohammed, while enjoying our hospitality, also frequented a waterfront bar that allegedly was also a favorite watering hole of mass murderer Ted Bundy. There are decidedly mixed feelings about the publicity that this has generated. The mayor made a fool of himself on national TV by trying to pitch Bellingham as a safe place to visit during the media frenzy surrounding the snipers. The bar, incidentally, is enjoying a level of business the owners never dreamed of as a result of morbid curiosity.
Today, FBI agents arrested a student at our local university, Western Washington, for allegedly plotting to blow up Bellingham’s Coast Guard station, the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, and one of the oil refineries north of town. Fart, Barf and Itch agents tracked the would-be anarchist as he scouted his targets and finally lowered the boom when he tried to pump an undercover agent on where to buy explosives.
Fellow students at Western were equivocal as to whether the terrorist wannabe was capable of carrying out such depredations. The student who was arrested, interestingly enough, was not of Middle Eastern ancestry nor did he seem to have any ties to al-Qaeda or any other obvious cabal.
This time, apparently, a potential Timothy McVeigh was thwarted before he could take his frustrations out on innocent people. Just another reminder, as if we needed one, that it can happen here. Even in this City of Subdued Excitement that is Ecotopia as painted by Norman Rockwell.
No doubt we’ll be subjected to a lot of letters to the editor of what passes for a local newspaper. They’ll be crowing about having been right all along about that hotbed of anarchy and communism called Western Washington University. Ah, the price we sometimes pay for freedom of speech. It places the willfully ignorant on a level playing field with the clueless overeducated. And that’s another topic for the futures file.
You gotta love this town.
1:08:08 AM 
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