At Klipsun, we don’t assign stories to our reporters. We editors toss out ideas and suggest ways to focus or expand stories, but our reporters are pretty much free to write about anything. Hence, we never know if dominant themes will exist until we pick seven or eight for publication and look at them together. Sometimes themes are obvious and sometimes it takes a little work and imagination to see them.
As hard as I looked, I just couldn’t find any grand unifying themes in these stories. Sorry. What I can say is that they’re all about interesting people doing interesting things in and around Bellingham (Yes, the artificial reef story centers on Nanaimo, British Columbia, but it’s still fairly close. Give me a break. I’m trying.).
For a relatively small city, Bellingham is blessed with an incredible variety of stories. Perhaps it has to do with being a college town or its proximity to an international border or its juxtaposition between the mountains and the water. Whatever the reason, this is a great town in which to be a writer.
Several of these stories caught me by surprise. I’ve driven by Joe’s Garden countless times without ever thinking about the people who work there. It was my loss. I had no idea I could find out about my past lives or have my aura smoothed at the Church of Divine Man. I haven’t paid as much attention to Western’s sculpture collection as I should have. The folks living in Bellingham’s co-housing community are redefining domestic life just a few miles from my house and I didn’t know anything about them. I obviously need to get out more.
Come to think of it, maybe Bellingham doesn’t have any more good stories than any other town. Maybe interesting people and stories are anywhere you really look for them. Either way, it bodes well for our magazine.https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1213/thumbnail.jp
