9/11 and 9/15: Here They Come Again

This year, for the first time, the country doesn’t seem to be obsessing about the 9/11 anniversary, although Obama did note today that Al Quaeda is still hanging around.  Whacked almost a year ago (September 15, when Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy) by the threat of the economy disappearing, we seem less frightened by terrorism than by bankruptcies and foreclosures of one sort or another.

A streak of good weather here this weekend will make it seem a little bit more summery—in summer, we don’t have to think too much about 9/11 or 9/15--but the news on my street is that two of our eating establishments are closing, which doesn’t bode well for the local economic front, such as it is.  We had five restaurants and now we have three, apparently, and only 1 of the 3 routinely provide evening meals.  Although that might change for either or both of the survivors, I suppose, given the vacuum.

Hardly a year ago that we were fussing about the proposed housing development next to Lily Point Reserve where Stanton Northwest Properties was aiming to build a hundred homes of the million dollar each variety so that 100 ROTUS families would be able to participate in the oceanside paradise that is us.  The newspaper reported last month that that development is on hold.  A rather more dire sign is that when you call the main (and only) phone number listed on Stanton Northwest Properties’ website, as I did today, I was informed by a recording that this number is no longer functioning and I was not given some other number to try.

On the other hand, the County has approved permits for yet another 100 house development around the Point Roberts Golf Course.  These developers appear to be moving somewhat cautiously, talking about building only a few houses to begin with, presumably in order to find out if there is a market for paradise yet. 

In the fifteen years we’ve been here, the massive housing development is a constantly looming event, but like an antic pirate ship in a Gilbert and Sullivan comedy, it only looms, it never attacks.  Perhaps just an important engine of the plot line, although the story, ultimately, goes somewhere else.  It's just not yet clear, though,  whether this is going to be a tragedy or a comedy.  Forty-one of fifty-one economists, it is reported today, have announced that we are out of the recession.  But for the moment, it’s not apparent up here.