CONTENTS 8/28/2020
No-Contact Benefit Yard Sale
Is That Pecking You Hear?
Outdoor Education Programs
Six Feet?
Lock Anyway
Tumbleweed Folk Festival
Fl!p’s Birthday Concert For Later
Radio Free Fl!p: Only Missed It By Two
NO-CONTACT YARD SALE
TO BENEFIT THE BELLINGHAM FOOD BANK
Saturday, August 29, starting at 10:00 A.M.
2231 Williams Street
All items will be offered without prices, and will be on a donation-basis. Please pay what it’s worth to you! I am offering my leftover inventory from my craft booth at the Bellingham Farmers Market, which I had for thirteen years. This will include garden flags, infinity scarves, garlands/bunting, and fabric cards. Some general household items will also be in the mix. Please follow the state requirements of wearing a face mask and keeping your distance from people. I will space the tables accordingly. Bring cash, or a check made out to Bellingham Food Bank. A locked mailbox is attached to the fence for you to drop your payment in. Thank you for helping our community!
Zip Jelineo, corner of Williams and Washington
[Zip makes such beautiful art!!!! ~Fl!p]
IS THAT PECKING YOU HEAR?
We recently heard a gentle rhythmic pecking or tapping sound and, from indoors, our first guess was someone riding a skateboard on the sidewalk. After a few repeat performances, we quietly stepped onto our front porch and discovered that a feathered friend had been pecking on our posts. After comparing our brief sighting with a list of birds observed in Whatcom County and a list of birds that peck, we think we have narrowed him (yes, him) down to a Downy Woodpecker. There are several reasons that birds peck and there are several options for encouraging them to express their birdiness elsewhere. We opted to staple a few shiny streamers near those pecked posts and hope that this mild intervention will be sufficient. Do you hear pecking around your house? Look for splinters on the ground (or deck) and then look upward for confirmation (after all, it could be someone passing on a skateboard). The references we used are linked below. Let’s also remember that birds are our buddies and help to manage the local insect pest population!
https://www.northcascadesaudubon.org/birding/whatcom-checklist
https://www.audubon.org/news/hear-hammering-dont-assume-its-woodpecker
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Downy_Woodpecker/id
Greg Hope, Victor Street
OUTDOOR EDUCATION PROGRAMS
This school year looks very different for most students and many students will be engaging in academic activities online supported by parents and guardians. However, physical activity, time spent outdoors, and connection with peers is vital to mental, physical and emotional health.
Learning and exploring outside can be a powerful complement to classroom time, and we are learning more about how gathering outdoors (with masks and distance) is much safer.
If you are hoping to augment your student’s learning experience this year with outdoor programming, join Wild Whatcom, a local outdoor education non-profit, on our new Weekday Programs. Options include: after-school for K-8; half-day programs M-Th; and Wednesday hikes for highschoolers. Financial assistance available. Registration open today!
Any questions? Feel free to reach out to Wild Whatcom’s Executive Director (and Columbia neighborhood resident) Licia Sahagun at Licia@wildwhatcom.org.
Licia Sahagun
SIX FEET?
I read the Business Insider article referenced in your blog (https://www.businessinsider.com/6-foot-distancing-rule-is-outdated-oxford-mit-new-system-2020-8). To my thinking, it has the potential to mislead and deserves rethinking if not outright rejection.
I have three areas of criticism.[ Disclaimer: this is based on the article quoted, not on the original research paper.]
FIRST, the article encourages people to take a “nuanced” approach to a highly consequential health decision: “What activities are COVID-safe?” It appears to base this on the physics of virus transmission, but I see no consideration of the psychology of decision-making in complex, stressful situations. As we’ve seen with far too many mass COVID transmissions, people’s rational threat analysis can be overridden by what they want to do. The idea of substituting the 6-foot rule with a chart containing 84 discrete situations will encourage fuzzy thinking and more risk taking. It’s like telling a young child “Don’t cross the street without me, unless you have eye contact with the passing drivers and they’re at least 100 feet away and driving no faster than 27 miles per hour and you run at least 6 miles per hour without tripping over something.”
SECOND, the researchers embrace a “traffic light” model with green, yellow, and red coding. But a traffic light is an external device that instantly does the math for you, telling you when to stop, when to go, and when to slow down. The traffic light metaphor implies instant, unambiguous, external direction that doesn’t exist here.
THIRD, even with 84 situations described, the chart is far from definitive. For example, it would lead one to conclude that any outdoor space with low occupancy (which is not defined) is safe without masks for extended conversation at any distance.
MY ADVICE? Establish and follow simple rules that err on the side of safety—the fewer, the better. Revise them only as evolving COVID science demands. In situations where you’re excited or scared, back up, slow down, and think things through.
Marc Hoffman
LOCK ANYWAY
Interesting advice on locking a car. “Okay to leave valuables in car if you lock it.” Not true
John Egbert
TUMBLEWEED FOLK FESTIVAL
The Tumbleweed Music Festival was unable to be live in Richland’s Howard Amon Park this year due to the Covid-19 restrictions. However, the organizing committee has been able to pull together a team to bring the festival to life virtually -TMFVirtual2020! Just like the “regular” festival, there will be musicians, “stages”, MCs, product sales (buttons anyone?!), workshops, dances, a Saturday Night benefit concert, and a live Contra Dance!
Zeke and I will be performing virtually while staying safely at home. I’ll be joining over 60 other performers sharing acoustic music ranging from Folk, Nautical, Blues, Bluegrass, Country, Neo-folk, Blues-Rock, Filk, a little bit of Rock and Roll and more!
It all begins on Thursday, September 3, 2020. See www.tumbleweedmusicfestival.org and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tumbleweedfest/ for more details.
FL!P’S BIRTHDAY CONCERT FOR LATER
Thank you to all the friends and neighbors who tuned in last night! And my apologies to the many who were unable to access. It was a steep learning curve for me, trying to livestream for the first time. I think I’ll need months of practice! We had originally recorded at the Firehouse, with a professional crew of video and audio folks with great equipment in a beautiful space. That performance is being edited and will be available in the fairly near future. I’ll put links here when I get them. Playing an online concert was an amazing thing to do, and a huge gift to me. And I slept almost all day today. Zeke took me out for belated birthday dinner (actually lunch) at Magdalena’s Creperie in Fairhaven. Eaten outdoors. It gave me one more chance to wear my floral garland/crown/wreath. Great food. We’ll be back… And I got to teach my granddaughter Lucy her very first guitar lesson, by Zoom!
RADIO FREE FL!P: ONLY MISSED IT BY TWO
Performed by the Canote twins, and written by Carl Jones. This song reminds me of all the details that went sideways on my concert. I feel so light hearted about the whole thing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcCDtGXHvaY
Love/Fl!p 360-671-4511 2518 Cherry Street flip@columbianeighborhood.org
If you want to ask me to post something, just email me. If it’s urgent, phone. If it’s a real emergency, call 911.