In a Nutshell

This week, it seemed like fall had come early. Since Sunday, it has been grey, very rainy, and unseasonably cold. Everyone with a wood stove is staring at the woodstove grumpily, thinking it is way too early to have to start having a fire. And then, most of us march outdoors to bring in some wood to start a fire because someone in the house keeps talking about how cold it is. But then, this afternoon, the rain and grey and cold disappeared and it was a summer afternoon again. This is life in a nutshell, here, as far as weather goes. Never quite what you expect or have in mind, even when it’s the same every year. Reliably, come April, say, I start to point out that it’s really pretty cold this spring. But that’s always true. This is a place with a long, cold spring. This is not, say, Pennsylvania.

Because it’s the end days of the month, the monthly paper is now in our mailbox, telling us what happened last month. I always think of September as the real beginning of the year because of school starting, even though I haven’t been in school or had anyone in the house who was in school for many a year. The September All Point Bulletin is pretty wonderful this year, looking more forward than backward as it should at the beginning of the year, and--another nutshell--contains what I suspect is a fine compendium of everything we’ll be obsessing about for the next twelve months, when we’re not obsessing about the weather.

Article after article reminds us of what we’re not through arguing about and what we’re just starting to argue about. There’s the cell phone tower that some folks are still fighting against, though they seem to be on the losing end of the fight. And there's the curbside recycling problem which is more of a draw at the moment but looks to have a lot of life left in the dispute. There’s an argument between the Parks Board and the Seniors Group over who gets some money that didn’t get spent for what it was allocated for, a dispute in its very initial phase. We’re revisiting the need to keep boats from chasing the orcas off the coastline of Point Roberts. The Voters’ Association is trying to become an active group again by collecting up-to-the-minute news on all the ‘hot button’ items that all the other groups are already arguing about. And, finally, the Taxpayers’/Property Owners’ Association is re-emerging from its semi-dormant state in order to oppose the fabulous Stanton Northwest ‘Beach Club’ development and its 100+ million dollar houses.

I can hardly wait for fall to start, all things considered. The ‘Beach Club’ development, I suspect, will generate the most energy. One speaker at the Voters’ Association commented that Stanton Northwest’s publicity brochures about this fabulous development indicated that Stanton Northwest doesn’t have a clue about what it’s like to live in Point Roberts. “Picturesque,’ says the brochure; ‘at once, convenient and isolated.’ Convenient to what, I can’t imagine. To the border, I guess.

It's too late to help them with their brochures, but what I’m thinking for a fall and winter plan is this: I get Stanton Northwest to hire me as someone who can meet with their clients to explain to them exactly what it’s like to live in Point Roberts, so that said clients will be able to give genuine informed consent to their million dollar purchases. I’ll start with telling them about the really long, cold spring, and then work up to the September All Point Bulletin. That effort alone ought to be enough to stop the ‘Beach Club’ in its tracks.