The New Year

I seem to have taken a little two month break from this blog.  I think largely because it was getting cold and Christmas was coming and all that.  But now we are past all that and it is 2015, and how is Point Roberts doing?

It managed New Year's Eve very quietly as far as I could tell: a minimum of explosive sounds at midnight, anyway.  The throngs thronged at the package stores, including a new/replacement one on Tyee...a new name, something like In and Out Mail has replaced The Mail Carrier..and a second new one on Gulf and Tyee which, alas, missed the giant package season of November/December (or any other two months you might choose) because it's not yet open.  But it will open I imagine and in a very fancy restored building.  The old, abandoned, overgrown blue house across from the Post Office has now been brought into new life (I believe that it was a house made of fish traps, which lumber perhaps will last forever) by the owner of the (also) new Valero Gas Station.  I am told that the Valero station still sells cheap butter, which nobody else seems to be doing.

More money was genially raised for the No to the Towers campaign down at Kiniski's place, about the same time as the Radio Station that causes all this radio-tower-grief was being put down both by Canadian authorities and the Whatcom County Planning Dept. Hearing Officer.  Fire Dept. Volunteers raised $1,000 for the Food Bank and then lost it by leaving the door to the building open, from whence someone entered, lifted the dollars, and took them to some other life.  Auntie Pam, offended at the burglary if not the carelessness, raised 3 times as much to replace it, I am told.  The Food Bank's pantry is pretty well filled as a result.

Today, the Artisans' Guild, a group of 5 or 6 folks who put together the Christmas Craft Fair each year announced they were resigning en masse from the (now) essentially non-existent organization since it apparently had no members other than its board of directors.  They have grown tired of producing the craft fair, which has a fairly long history, I am told, of people giving up on it after a few years.  A thankless task,  I imagine, as most such things are.  If I have learned anything in my two decades of living in a small community, it is that taking on responsibility for organizing any organization or activity had better be its own reward because it probably will neither win you many friends nor lead to your being a positive influence.  And people will criticize; it is what we know how to do.

We hope someone will take on this task of organizing the Christmas Craft Fair as many people seem to enjoy it.  But if no one does, then the Christmas season will go on without it, and still we will have the package stores and their customers.  Perhaps they could have musicians in front of their places of businesses, playing Christmas music.  At least if it weren't too cold or too rainy, which it has been.

Happy New Year!