The folks updating the city of Bellingham Web page about historic buildings in Fairhaven need your help.

They’ve run into questions that remain unanswered about two buildings.

If you have details or photographs that can solve the mysteries, contact researcher Neelie Nelson at 393-6447.

Building #1: The E.M. Day Building (now Dirty Dan Harris’ Restaurant, 1211 11th St.), apparently built in 1890.

Researchers have a 1905 photo that shows a wood-frame building with the main floor 2 to 3 feet above the sidewalk.

They also have a 1930s photo showing a brick building (today’s structure) with the main floor at sidewalk level and with different doors, windows and cornice.

What they don’t have are details about when and how the wood-frame building was demolished and replaced with the current brick structure.

Building #2: The South Bellingham Post Office building (now Skylarks Hidden Café, 1308 11th St.).

Researchers have a late 1960s to early 1970s photo of a stucco building on the site.

Researchers know the building was brick underneath, because they have photos of the brick walls falling over after a fire in the early 1980s.

Researchers also know that the late 1960s building front must be a remodel, because the window and door pattern wouldn’t have been built in 1890, when the building was constructed. (They later learned it was remodeled in 1985.)

What researchers don’t have are photographs of the building before it was stucco and remodeled.

Again, if you have help answer these questions, call Neelie Nelson at 393-6447.

“On a Wing and a Prayer: An American Muslim Learns to Fly” — the locally made documentary about Monem and Iman Salam, a Bellingham Muslim family — has just been reviewed by The New York Times.

The Times gave it a friendly but so-so reception. Read the review here.

In my view, the Times reviewer was too fixated on the flight school where Monem took pilot’s lessons, and missed the film’s charm and surprising degree of humor.

To read my May 5 story about the movie, click here.

My column Monday describes how a makeover of North Shore Drive in Silver Beach neighborhood is designed to treat runoff in a way that’s environmentally friendly and also less expensive than the standard approach.

Sand and gravel underground will cleanse runoff that seeps through porous concrete to be used for new bike lanes and a new sidewalk along the road.

That’s one example of “low-impact” design to deal with runoff – a major source of pollution in Northwest water bodies.

For more on the subject, check out an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a legal battle over whether such techniques should be required in new projects. (By the way, Art Castle, a familiar figure to Whatcom business folk, appears in the article.)

See the P-I story here.

Click here to see my North Shore story.

Here is information that was supposed to run with my Sunday column but didn’t make it into the paper.

The column is about Hans Erchinger-Davis, who just finished his one-hour film documentary about the Lummi carvers who made and delivered to the Pentagon a Sept. 11 memorial totem pole in 2004.

What was left out:

(1) His film, “The American Carver,” will be shown at Pickford Cinema in October.

(2) Call Hans at 510-8055 if you want to add your name to the waiting list for a copy of the film. It is not yet available for public purchase.

Summer is the time for neighborhood association picnics and, in some cases, canceled meetings.

Lettered Streets Neighborhood Association will hold its regular meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 8, at the Washington Square highrise, 2501 E St.

Fairhaven Neighbors’ summer picnic will be 1 to 4 p.m. July 13, a Sunday, at Marine Park, at the foot of Harris Avenue.

There will be a grill going with hot dogs and brats, and lemonade and paper plates will be provided. People are asked to bring a potluck dish and lawn or beach chairs.

If you have an item to donate for a raffle at the picnic, contact Vince Biciunas at 671-1559 or vbiciunas@mac.com.

Birchwood Neighborhood Association will hold its summer picnic from 4 to 6 p.m. July 27, a Sunday, at Birchwood Park, 2709 Cedarwood Ave. Dinner and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided.

Edgemoor Neighborhood Association has decided to forgo with its monthly board meetings during the summer. The next monthly meeting will be Sept. 4.

Megahomes — houses so large that they cast a psychic and sometimes a real shadow on their neighbors — have been an issue in several Bellingham neighborhoods, and they’re a hot topic in Seattle, too.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer story today discusses the debate in the Emerald City, and details some proposals designed to address the problem.

Why the problem? As Seattle land prices soar sky high, people want to squeeze as much new house as possible onto their expensive slice of real estate.

The Seattle proposals strike me as rather cumbersome, and it’s not clear they would do much to resolve the situation.

After reading the P-I story, (click here to read it) the idea of using “floor area ratio” (see my previous blog) seems more and more logical.

FAR is a ratio of building size, measured in square feet, to property size.

Under FAR, a large lot allows a large house, while a small lot allows only a smaller house.

Of course, there’s a minimum house size, regardless of lot size.

Even on a tiny lot, people need a certain amount of square footage overhead and underfoot to get by comfortably.

And design standards remain important, so, for example, garage doors don’t dominate the front of the house, and so parking is addressed in a smart manner.

You know you’re deep into land-use debates when you can toss around FAR numbers with abandon.

If you’re not in the small group familiar with “Floor Area Ratio,” here’s an intro to the term that’s being used more and more in local land-use meetings:

As the name suggests, FAR refers to the ratio of the floor area of a building divided by the site area.

Imagine a plot of land that is 10,000 feet square. Now plop a one-story, 10,000-square-foot build-ing on top of the land, with the building’s edge flush with the border of the land.

That building on that land has a FAR of 1.0 – because the floor area of the building is equal area of the site.

Now imagine that same chunk of land, but with a two-story building on it that covers half of the land area.

That combo also equals a FAR of 1.0, because you still have 10,000 square feet of floor space (two floors of 5,000 each) atop a 10,000 square foot site.

Same FAR, but a very different looking building.

That’s the beauty of FAR. You can still set limits on building height and set rules for setbacks from the street, etc., but FAR gives builders more flexibility designing a building to accomplish what they want.

That flexibility allows greater variety in the shape and profile of buildings, especially in a high-density area. That’s one reason Bellingham adopted FAR into its development rules for the Old Town urban village.

However, you could still have a variety of ugly buildings with FAR, so you still need design standards so the buildings provide a friendly streetscape, etc.

Another advantage of FAR is that the ratio can be adjusted if developers do more of what the public wants.

If, say, a developer provides more affordable housing units, or provides a public plaza at the corner, the developer could be rewarded with a higher FAR, allowing a building to encompass more space for housing, shops, or whatever.

FAR also can be helpful in residential areas because it ties the overall size of a house to the size of the lot, eliminating the problem of mega-houses being built on tiny lots, and thus being out-of-scale with the neighborhood.

For more on FAR, including various FAR calculations for Old Town, click here.

The Darius and Tabitha Kinsey collection at Whatcom Museum is well-known for logging and forest photographs printed directly from large format negatives. Now it’s time for the rest of the photographic story.

On Sunday, museum photo archivist and history curator Toni Nagel will present an illustrated talk on Darius Kinsey’s non-logging pictures.

Her free talk — “The Kinsey Collection You Have Not Yet Explored: Portraits, Mountain Climbing Expeditions, Stereo Views, and Hand Tinted Scenes” — starts at 2 p.m. in the museum’s Rotunda Room.

Highlights include Kinsey’s work as a traveling photographer for the Seattle, Lakeshore, and Eastern Railway, his attempts to summit Mt. Rainer and Mt. Baker in 1903, and his cross-country “stereo” trip in 1904.

Whatcom Museum bought the Kinsey collection in 1978. Subsequent additions are part of the current exhibit in the Rotunda Room — “Logging Days: Recent Donations of Darius Kinsey Photographs.”

Before George W. Bush fades from memory, let’s not forget all that he did for our corner of the country.

Widely considered a generous, intelligent, hard-working man, Bush made significant contributions to farming and Indian relations in Washington.

For the little-known details, click here.

Doug MacDonald, a former transportation secretary for Washington, has written a fascinating three-part series for Crosscut about mass transit in the Seattle metro area.

For his final article, which argues the merit of “bus rapid transit,” click here.

Of course, Bellingham isn’t the Seattle area, but with Whatcom Transportation Authority having taken big steps in recent years, it’s always helpful to understand the link between growth and transportation.

For riders in Bellingham, the new 15-minute WTA routes feel like “bus rapid transit.” For us here in Whatcom County, MacDonald’s articles remind us of the need for hard data to support major transportation decisions, and the need to understand the growth implications of how we help, or hinder, people’s ability to get from place A to place B.

With all of the talk in Bellingham about future urban villages, leaders of the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood Association recently sent an interesting letter to the City Council about commercial development on the north end of town.

The letter was sent as the council recently considered allowing the modest expansion of some big-box stores beyond the city’s 90,000-square-foot limit.

The letter questions whether the city is doing enough to guide commercial and residential growth in north Bellingham in the direction of urban villages.

But I’ll let the association speak for itself. Here’s the letter:

Dear Council:

As a follow up to the hearing on June 9, The Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood has more fully developed a position regarding the expansion of existing retail stores beyond the current 90,000 square foot limit.

As we see it, size in itself is not the primary consideration. The real impacts of expansion are in the addition of increased impermeable surfaces, increases in traffic and problems of access, loss of parking area, on site traffic flow and other impacts on city infrastructure.

Read more! »

Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood Association will hold its summer picnic from noon to 4 p.m. this Saturday, June 28, on the lawn next to Kulshan Hall, at the northeast part of Whatcom Community College.

Drop by for music by the Bellingham Youth Jazz Band and for free hot dogs, chips, coffee, popcorn and strawberry shortcake. Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike and Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen are expected to drop by, too.

Fairhaven Neighbors will hold its regular meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. next Wednesday, July 2, at Fairhaven Park Pavilion. Topics include the discussion – but not adoption – of possible bylaw changes, including charging dues and defining the rights of membership.

Fairhaven Neighbors’ summer picnic will be 1 to 4 p.m. July 13, that’s a Sunday, at Marine Park, at the foot of Harris Avenue.

There will be a grill going with hot dogs and brats, and lemonade and paper plates will be provided. People are asked to bring a potluck dish and lawn or beach chairs.

If you have an item to donate for a raffle at the picnic, contact Vince Biciunas at 671-1559 or vbiciunas@mac.com.

Longtime Whatcom County residents will remember John Di Meo for his radio work years ago at KPUG, his support of local sports team, and his two-year stint on the Bellingham City Council in the mid-1950s.

Di Meo, of Lacey, died May 24. He was 81.

A Puyallup native, he served in the Army, then studied speech and communications at Washington State University.

Di Meo began his career broadcasting news and sports at KPUG, in Bellingham. He became the station’s general manager in 1960.

“The on-air guys normally don’t get into management,” said Dick Stark, a local radio figure who worked with Di Meo for about a year.

Di Meo was later transferred to KAYO, a popular country music station in Seattle, where he remained for 20 years.

In time, Di Meo and his wife, Catherine, became the owners and operators of radio stations in Ellensburg, Yakima, Aberdeen, Olympia and St. Helens, Ore.

A prominent figure in the industry, Di Meo served several terms on the board of the Washington State Broadcasters Association, and was its chairman.

An avid golfer, he coached boys’ baseball for many years and held season tickets for the Seattle Mariners, Seahawks and Sonics.

Stark recalled Di Meo as a vibrant, energetic, helpful man.

“He was kind of a Vince Lombardi personality, but he went to bat for you,” Stark said.

People can submit online condolences to the family at www.funeralalternatives.org.

The Whatcom Museum of History & Art has been accepted as a Smithsonian affiliate.

That gives the museum access to the Smithsonian Institution’s collections, education and performing arts programs, speakers, and teacher workshops, along with technical assistance.

According to the museum, Smithsonian affiliates have borrowed more than 7,000 artifacts from the Smithsonian collections since 1997, including the Apollo 13 space capsule, Amelia Earhart’s flight suit, and Ray Bolger’s scarecrow costume from “The Wizard of Oz.”

There are more than 150 Smithsonian Affiliate museums in the country, including three others in the Northwest: Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, Museum of Flight in Seattle, and Northwest Museum of Art & Culture in Spokane.

Are there any Smithsonian exhibits coming here soon?

I left a phone message for museum director Patricia Leach, and will update this story once she calls me back.

UPDATE: Museum director Patricia Leach said talks with Smithsonian folks were held a few week ago, but Smithsonian artifacts won’t show up in Bellingham until after completion of the children’s/art museum building a block south of City Hall. The building is expected to be done around the end of this year.

Gary Meader will discuss the work of fellow photographer Darius Kinsey at a free event this Sunday, June 22, at Whatcom Museum.

Kinsey traveled the Northwest woods to chronicle life in logging camps from the 1890s to the 1940s.

Meader uses some of the same techniques and similar photography equipment as Kinsey.

His talk — “Looking at the Northwest’s Premier Photographic Figure through a Modern Viewfinder” — starts at 2 p.m. in the museum’s Rotunda Room.