In the Media

Dick Stark, a businessman and radio announcer who was the beloved voice of Whatcom County sports for six decades, died Tuesday, July 19, in Bellingham.

He was 88, and the cause was brain and lung cancer, said his longtime friend and colleague Keith Shipman, who is president and CEO of the Washington State Association of Broadcasters.

“He’s a guy who had such a profound impact on the county over the years,” Shipman told The Bellingham Herald.

A lifelong Bellingham resident, Stark graduated from Bellingham High and Western Washington State College, which eventually became Western Washington University, according to biographical information provided by Shipman, and from a March 2021 tribute produced by Puget Sound Media.

Stark was an advertising sales executive and account manager for KPUG-AM, where he worked his entire career, from 1962 until 2018. 

In addition, he ran a TV and video store in the 1980s and 90s, founded the Mavericks youth basketball league, and was instrumental in bringing the Boys and Girls Clubs to Bellingham, Shipman said.

But it was his radio broadcasts for Whatcom County high schools and for WWU football and basketball on KPUG-AM and KGMI-AM that brought him acclaim.

The rapid evolution of the coronavirus into an alphabet soup of subvariants presents a vexing challenge to health officials: They must make far-reaching policy decisions based on little biological certainty of which viral variants will be dominant this fall or winter.

The Food and Drug Administration said at the end of June that it would update virus vaccines for a booster campaign in the fall targeting highly contagious omicron subvariants. But the ground is shifting beneath its feet.

In just eight weeks, the subvariant known as BA.5 has gone from a blip in U.S. case counts to the dominant version of the virus, now making up more than three-quarters of new cases. Perhaps the most transmissible subvariant yet, it is pushing up positive tests, hospitalizations and intensive care admissions across the country,

There is no evidence that BA.5 causes more severe disease, but the latest metrics certainly bust the myth that the virus will become milder as it evolves.

For those who know how to read them, the signs have long been there. Like the towering mound of 20 million oyster shells all but obscured by the lush greenery of central Florida’s Gulf Coast. Or the arcing lines of wave-weathered stone walls strung along British Columbia’s shores like a necklace. Such features, hidden in the landscape, tell a rich and varied story of Indigenous stewardship. They reveal how humans carefully transformed the world’s coasts into gardens of the sea—gardens that produced vibrant, varied communities of marine life that sustained Indigenous peoples for millennia. And in certain places, like on the west coast of North America in what is now Washington State and where the Swinomish are building a new sea garden, these ancient practices are poised to sustain them once again.

“I see it as a way for our people to be reconnected to our place, to be reconnected to each other, and to have a purpose, to have a responsibility that goes beyond us,” says Alana Quintasket (siwəlcəʔ) of the Swinomish Tribal Senate.

These gardening efforts included a continuum of features, such as seasonal or size limits on harvest, that may be invisible to the eye, Salomon says. And as Marco Hatch, a member of the Samish Indian Nation and a marine ecologist at Western Washington University who was involved in Rick’s study of oyster gardens points out, “these features aren’t just physical features, they’re cultural features and spiritual features.”

The cultural and spiritual aspects make recent momentum to revitalize sea gardening especially meaningful. “All of these practices, I think, are centered around this idea of growing food and growing community,” says Hatch. A community focus—passing on traditional knowledge between generations and improving health through access to local foods—is at the heart of the effort to build what is likely the first modern clam garden in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from experiencing a premier for the first film she was a part of, but there was no way Bellingham mountain biker Hannah Bergemann was going to let an opportunity for her second film pass — especially when it’s being shown in the town she now calls home.

Bergemann will be one of several current and future stars of mountain biking featured in Teton Gravity Research’s latest film “Esperanto,” which will have a special showing at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, at the Mount Baker Theatre. The movie takes its name from a new language created in 1887 by Polish-Jewish doctor LL. Zamenhoff, according to a news release on the movie, after he combined a number of existing, widely-spoken European languages.

In a way, Bergemann said mountain biking has been her own personal universal language — or Esperanto — right here in Bellingham or when she travels as a professional rider. “I go to a variety of locations to ride around the world, and wherever you go you have this form of connecting with people that is really strong,” Bergemann said.

Bergemann grew up in Hood River, Oregon, but it was her love of mountain biking that drew her to Western Washington University and Bellingham when she was choosing a college in 2015. She never left Bellingham after graduating in 2019.

State revenue from logging public land would no longer be used for building and remodeling schools in urban areas under a new set of recommendations from Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal.

Instead, the money generated by timber sales and leasing on public school trust lands would go toward school construction in rural districts and be used for sustaining healthy forests. 

During a news briefing Tuesday, Reykdal outlined several proposals for the Legislature to decouple the state’s K-12 Common School Trust revenue from statewide school construction funding support and ensure dollars generated in rural areas go toward supporting schools there.

At times, Reykdal sounded more like an environmental leader than a superintendent as he talked up the need for healthy forests to capture carbon and efforts to help natural resources withstand climate change. It was unclear how his recommendations to change education-focused public trust spending could affect state timber harvests. 

For the uninitiated, outfitting a college dorm room can be a dizzying experience. Doing it at a time of high inflation can make it even more daunting.

The first step: Meticulously go over what the school allows and provides. If you want a microwave and minifridge, are the energy-saving combo models required? Do you need foam pool noodles to avoid hitting your head under an upper bunk, and if so, might the school provide them? Exactly how thick can a mattress topper be?

“You can see the look of terror on parents’ faces,” said Marianne Szymanski, an independent product researcher who has sent two kids to college. “You know, did I get the right mattress pad? It’s crazy.”

Etsy’s trend expert, Dayna Isom Johnson, said self-expression is top of mind for dorm-bound kids in such things as faux headboards and unique dresser knobs.

“Two of my favorite dorm trends right now are mood-boosting hues that incorporate bright and energetic colors like neon tones, and heritage styles, a nostalgic trend that embodies the traditional collegiate look with items like plaid linens, wood-toned furniture and monograms,” she said.

If a University of Michigan student walks into the school's Ann Arbor health center and learns they're pregnant, the health worker's response is never exactly the same.

"It's easy to list: 'Well, you can continue a pregnancy, or you can consider a medication abortion or ... a surgical procedure,'" says Dr. Susan Dwyer Ernst, chief of gynecology at the University Health Service. "But we take those conversations in the context of the human being who's sitting in front of us."

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, Ernst has been thinking a lot about how those conversations with students will change. Michigan is one of several states with long-standing abortion laws that weren't enforced while Roe guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. Now, as abortion-banning state laws take effect, university health centers across the U.S. are trying to figure out their rights and responsibilities when counseling students.

While Omicron subvariants have evolved to evade antibody responses from the primary COVID-19 vaccine series, a new laboratory study led by researchers at UW Medicine suggests boosters may offer some protection against serious disease.

An international research team analyzed plasma samples from people who had been infected with COVID-19 before vaccines were available, from those who had completed only a primary vaccine series, and from others who had been boosted with currently available vaccines.

Led by the lab of David Veesler, associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, the research team assessed seven of the world’s primary vaccines as well as immunity acquired through previous infection. The team consisted of infectious disease research physicians and scientists from UW Medicine, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and research institutes in California, Argentina, Italy, Pakistan, and Switzerland.

The study, published Tuesday in Science, found a marked improvement in Omicron-neutralizing activity in the plasma of boosted individuals. The authors said this highlights the importance of vaccine boosters in improving antibody responses against Omicron strains, including BA.5.

“Vaccine boosters may provide sufficient protection against Omicron-induced severe disease,” the authors wrote in the study’s summary.

U.S. adults who haven’t gotten any COVID-19 shots yet should consider a new option from Novavax -- a more traditional kind of vaccine, influential government advisers said Tuesday.

Regulators authorized the nation’s first so-called protein vaccine against COVID-19 last week, but Novavax shots cannot begin until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends how to use them.

Most Americans have gotten at least their primary COVID-19 vaccinations by now, but CDC officials said between 26 million and 37 million adults haven’t had a single dose -- the population that Novavax, for now, will be targeting.

“We really need to focus on that population,” said CDC adviser Dr. Oliver Brooks, past president of the National Medical Association. Hopefully, the vaccine “will change them over from being unvaccinated to vaccinated.”

While it’s unclear how many will be persuaded by a more conventional option, “I’m really positive about this vaccine,” agreed fellow adviser Dr. Pablo Sanchez of Ohio State University.

The third cohort of Western Washington University’s (WWU) Sustainability Pathways is engaged with 18 Methow Valley partner businesses and organizations, working to advance sustainability initiatives in the Methow and Okanogan valleys.

By applying their academic learning in paid practicum work experiences, the undergraduate students build professional skills toward eventual careers.

A fellowship program, Sustainability Pathways is place-based. And with the Methow Valley’s broad range of agencies, businesses, schools, organizations and farms, its engaged community, and its strong base of leaders and changemakers willing to mentor students, it’s an ideal place for the Sustainability Pathways program.

This “dynamic rural mountain community … offers amazing opportunities to learn, engage in community events and happenings, recreate, and participate in sustainability work,” a program description reads.

Sustainability Pathways Director Joshua Porter said that the 18 students in the cohort are learning to apply “systems thinking to community solutions” by working with organizations that are “committed to creating change that supports social justice, environmental quality, economic vitality and community health.”