The free presentation is part of the monthly meeting of the Whatcom County Historical Society. The public is welcome.

Members of the guild have recorded interviews with Whatcom County elders, and create oral history narratives for public presentation.

If you are interested, contact museum curator Troy Luginbill at 354-3675 or troy@lyndenpioneermuseum.org.

Her talk from 2 to 3 p.m. at Bellingham Public Library is part of the “Memory Makers” series organized by the Alzheimer Society of Washington.

Coffee and cookies will be provided. Admission free, but donations to the society are accepted.

Other sponsors are the public library, the Herald, Alderwood Convalescent Care, The Courtyard Dementia Care, KVOS-TV 12, The Leopold Retirement Center and Quicksilver Photo Lab.

Rather, I’m taking on some new duties here in the newsroom, so next Monday, March 9, will be the last day for this blog.

I admit I haven’t been a frequent contributor to this blog, and most of my postings have been strictly informational - not much debate or glamor to be found here.

But if you’ve been sending me neighborhood- or history-related notices, please continue to do so. I can usually find a place in the paper or on our Web site for your information, or can relay your info to the appropriate person here.

Don’t let that deter you, however, from entering your community event info yourself via our online calendar posting system.

Thanks,

Dean Kahn

The workshops will be held at Fountain Community Church, 2100 Broadway.

Each will run 6 to 8 p.m. on these dates:

April 1 — Topics: introduction, district character, urban village boundary.

April 15 — Topics: streets, neighborhood connections, public spaces.

April 22 — Topics: land uses, design, scale, neighborhood transitions.

May 6 — Topics: summary of input and discussion of alternatives.

If the project stays on schedule, urban village details will be unveiled at a neighborhood meeting in early fall, with Planning Commission hearings in late fall and City Council hearings early in 2010.

Information on the effort will soon be posted at the city of Bellingham’s Web site. Go to cob.org and search for “urban village planning.”

For more details, contact city planner Katie Franks at 778-8388 or kfranks@cob.org.

The second hour has been set aside for a discussion of the Chuckanut Ridge housing proposal in south Bellingham. Slated to attend are City Council members Barbara Ryan and Jack Weiss.

Hard feelings and disputed recollections continue over whether the voter-approved Greenways III levy contained a committment to spend up to $8 million to buy some portion of the Chuckanut Ridge property.

Ryan, along with council members Terry Bornemann and Gene Knutson, recently submitted an article to Northwest Citizen, an online news and opinion site, saying up to $8 million had been promised by a council majority during levy discussions, but the money was not specifically detailed in levy ballot details.

The article prompted a reply from Weiss, who says the council is not, and has never been, obligated to spend a particular sum on Chuckanut Ridge, and he wonders if the levy would have passed if it included a commitment to spend a large sum on the south Bellingham property at a time when many north Bellingham residents were lobbying for more open space and parks in their part of town.

In his piece, McKay cites studies showing that people’s views become more rigid when they are amongst like-minded people.

A similar tendency, it’s feared, occurs when people get more and more of their news from narrow-audience online sources, rather than more general media like newspapers and network television.

To read McKay’s article, click here.

Thanks, Dean Kahn

Featured speaker will be David Drummond of the Merlin Falcon Foundation, presenting a program on “Urban Merlins of the Northwest.”

A local expert on raptors, Drummond will share his recent research on local merlins.

Other topics include brief discussion of Fairhaven’s neighborhood plan amendment, and the city’s “infill toolkit” for new housing types.

For details, call 671-1559.

For those of you interested in the subject, here are a few suggestions for sources to stay abreast of state lawmakers, and a couple of suggestions from readers.

My suggestions:

Read The Bellingham Herald, especially Sam Taylor’s politics blog. Lots of area lawmakers do.

Check out the Olympian’s Web site at www.theolympian.com, because state government is Olympia’s biggest local industry.

Follow bills and the announcements of our 40th and 42nd district lawmakers at http://access.wa.gov/government/state_legislature.aspx.

Grab a bag of popcorn, settle in and watch legislative meetings at www.tvw.org.

After my column appeared, I was pleased to receive an e-mail from Mike Bay, vice president for programming at TVW, the nonprofit TV station that provides lots of coverage of the Legislature and state agencies.

His e-mail mentions new TVW programs that go beyond the raw footage (popcorn excluded) of legislative hearings and other extended proceedings.

Here is Bay’s e-mail:

“Saw your article on the shrinking Capitol Press Corps here in Olympia. Just as an FYI, we’ve started up a couple new things this year that make it easier for people to follow the Legislature in digestible chunks:

Our new-this-year weekly show The Impact airs Wednesdays at 7 & 10 p.m. – more highly produced than anything TVW has ever done, a magazine style show that gives viewers the top stories of the week in an hour.

Our new blog, thecapitolrecorg.org, is also new this year, a running commentary on legislative highlights.

We’re also continuing the shows we’ve done for years:

Inside Olympia, Thursdays 7 & 10 p.m., in-depth interviews with legislative leaders.

Legislative Review, 11 p.m. weeknights, a daily 10-minute recap of legislative highlights.

We’re trying to do more of these types of programs, which complement our gavel-to-gavel coverage and are much shorter format.”

Thanks for the update, Mike.

In addition, a reader suggested going to www.truelobby.com to follow the Legislature.

I checked it out and signed up (it’s free).

At first blush, truelobby appears to be a bill and politics tracking system, with e-mail alerts, etc., blended with touch of Facebook.

You can communicate with lawmakers, other citizens, interest groups, etc., with state legislation and politics as the focus.

The ordinance is designed to improve the quality of Lake Whatcom water by preserving and increasing the amount of natural vegetation in the watershed and by adopting development rules to reduce the amount of harmful phosphorus entering the lake.

For details on the ordinance, click here.

A volunteer committee from Silver Beach Neighborhood Association has been formed to identify changes in the ordinance and to produce a document that can be distributed to Silver Beach residents so they understand potential changes.

Here’s the schedule of Silver Beach meetings:

March 4 — the Silver Beach committee meets.

March 9 — A special meeting of Silver Beach Neighborhood Association starts at 7 p.m. at Bloedel Donovan Park to review the committee’s work.

March 10 — The association sends its response to the city planning department.

March 12 — The Bellingham Planning Commission meets at 7 p.m. in City Hall for a public hearing on the ordinance.

An awards ceremony will be held May 13 at Whatcom Museum, and winning poems will be displayed at the Bellingham Poetry Walk by the public library, and on WTA buses.

Last year, people submitted more than 475 poems. Winners ranged from a first-grader to an 81-year-old resident. The contest is named for Sue Boynton, a poetry lover and community activist.

Contestants must be county residents, and can submit one previously unpublished poem. Poems can be on any topic and in any form.

Full details are at www.whatcomcf.org and www.alliedarts.org, and at area schools and bookstores.

“Wooden Ships & Fiberglass Boats: A. W. Talbot and the Bellingham Shipyards 1941–1963″ will be shown at 11:30 a.m. this weekend, Feb. 28 and March 1, at The Pickford Cinema, 1416 Cornwall Ave.

The showing at the museum was standing-room-only, a credit to Warger’s quality movie and to the shipyard’s emotional and historical hold on the community.

As the Pickord describes the movie, it “tells the story of Seattle entrepreneur Archibald W. Talbot, a man with no knowledge of boats, or ship construction, yet who built the largest privately owned shipyard in the nation. He was a man of great integrity, much beloved by his employees, invocating the best principals of American ideals during his era.”

For my story about the movie, click here.

If you love local history, especially maritime history, be sure to see the show. Warger and special guests are expected to attend.

Like their earlier book, “Whatcom Then & Now,” their new book is a fascinating collection of local history articles heavily illustrated with “then and now” photos.

Wes and Kent are funny, likable guys who should present an entertaining program.

To read my article about them and their new book, look here.

The public session runs from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 710 S. Samish Way.

A series of public meetings on the urban village was held last summer. Since then, staff and consultants have gathered technical information and put together a draft plan and draft set of rules.

The proposed urban village is along Samish Way between Interstate 5, Bill McDonald Parkway, South 34th Street and Edwards Street.

After public comment is taken on the draft ideas, the package will be reviewed by the Planning Commission and then by the City Council for possible approval.