The Editor:
The Community Assistance Program (CAP) will be providing Thanksgiving Dinner Baskets with ready-to-cook turkey dinners again this year for families in our community with limited financial resources.
Last year over 265 baskets were given out and we anticipate the need will be as great or greater this year, since there will be no community Thanksgiving Dinner.
To fund the Thanksgiving Basket program, which is run completely by volunteers, we rely solely on the generous contributions of community members and businesses. As we receive no government funding, your help is needed.
Donations may be made with a credit or debit card online at blainecap.org or checks may be made to CAP Thanksgiving Basket Fund and mailed to P.O. Box 1067, Blaine, WA 98231. CAP is a 501(c)(3) organization and is registered with the Washington Secretary of State. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.
Thank you for blessing those in our community who need it most.
CAP’s Thanksgiving Basket program focuses on serving families who reside in Blaine, Birch Bay, Custer and Point Roberts whose children qualify for the free or reduced lunch program. Those that do not meet this criteria but need assistance can email us at info@blainecap.org.
To receive a Thanksgiving dinner basket, families should register online at blainecap.org. If you are unable to register online, call the Blaine School District Family Service Center at 360/332-0740 for assistance.
The registration deadline is Tuesday, November 6.
Baskets are to be picked up this year on Tuesday, November 20 between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., at unit 280 of the Cost Cutter Shopping Center.
A specific pick-up time will be assigned once you are registered. Baskets will not be available without a reservation.
Rhyan Lopez
Thanksgiving Basket director
Blaine
The Editor:
Thanks to The Northern Light, Blaine police chief Allen Schubert, officers and staff for the return of the more informative and certainly less boring police report. Yeah! Thank you.
Dorothy Bush
Blaine
The Editor:
On behalf of the entire Kramme family we would like to thank all those responsible for recognizing Curt Kramme during half-time of the football game on September 14 by retiring his number one jersey that he wore in 1978.
We tried to find out who was directly responsible but were told it really was a group effort by a lot of Curt’s teammates that he played with on the state championship team in 1978.
We may not know who exactly is responsible, but those of you who did play a role either large or small, you know who you are, and to you all we say thank you. As well as all the kind words that people offered directly to us that night, and the opportunity to catch up with some Borderites we have not seen in years, it was nice seeing everybody again.
We would also like to thank coach Jay Dodd, the coaching staff, and the administration for agreeing to retire Curt’s number. It is not lost on us that this is a very rare event.
Curt was singled out that night and we believe that he would have wanted the attention to have been not on him, but on those who he shared the field with in 1978.
So, with that in mind, to the players, coaches, cheerleaders, statisticians, trainers, students and community members of the 1978 Borderites, thank you. That was the ultimate team effort both in ‘78 and on the 14th of September 2018.
Go Borderites.
Pat, Wendy, John and Gayla Kramme
Blaine
The Editor:
I was very interested in a short letter written by a person in last weeks edition. She wrote that she was looking “forward to sitting next to the lovely (lit) [outdoor] gas fireplace at Starbucks on chilly Northwest days...”
She went on to write how great she felt all the newer changes to Blaine’s downtown core were. I’m a bit confused.
Was she being satirical or serious? Maybe her letter was a passive aggressive response to a previously written letter by a person who thought that an outdoor fireplace was a waste of energy in the age of climate change – a reasonable belief in my opinion.
Maybe she was chronically claustrophobic and felt that she just couldn’t drink her overpriced, hot, flavored water inside where she would have to share warm air with other humans.
Maybe she just wanted to better hear the sounds of the long coal trains as they regularly rumbled by. Maybe the sound is strangely comforting to her. Was she a denier of man made climate change?
Here maybe is someone who couldn’t afford warm clothes yet could afford expensive coffee, an unsolvable, mind-bending paradox. Or did she own stock in Starbucks?
This is all very confusing to me. I think I’ll have to ponder it more over a cup of coffee at the beautifully quaint Railroad Cafe.
Jim Agnello
Birch Bay
The Editor:
The Blaine Clothing Bank is in need of volunteers to work during our open hours: Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Wednesdays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Duties include greeting and helping customers select items, registering and recording customers and items taken, accepting donations and sorting and displaying donated items.
An orientation to the clothing bank is required prior to starting. Please contact the director, Jan Schlack at 320/221-4004 or janschlack52@gmail.com.
We are also in need of plastic grocery bags large enough to hold several items of clothing. These can be dropped off in the bin at the clothing bank at 500 C Street.
Jan Schlack, director
Blaine
The Editor:
Two major oil companies are trying to manipulate our local election. Chevron and Phillips donated $60,000 to the normally obscure and invisible “42nd Legislative District Committee GOP Exempt” political action committee.
That money will probably be spent in the name of the local Republicans on their favored candidates and issues. It won’t say “Chevron” or “Phillips” on it when it’s spent; it may even be transferred again to an even more obscure political action committee before it is spent.
We don’t want or need big oil interfering in our local elections, just as we don’t want Russia and China interfering in our national elections.
Vote Democrat. They care about you and your family, not just about corporations and profits.
Amy Mckay
Lynden
The Editor:
Over the past few years, our state legislature has increased many fees while telling us that they “didn’t raise taxes.” While this may get votes, I would argue that an increased fee is the same thing as a tax - money out of my pocket and into the Olympia quagmire.
An example of this is the increase in vehicle registration fees. Voters capped these fees years ago, but did you notice about a year or so ago that your vehicle registration fee almost doubled without our vote, and contrary to the ballot measure?
Another new fee happens when you sell a vehicle, you have to pay $8.75 to simply tell the state that you sold your car. Check your car title and you will find that the vehicle report of sale is supposed to be filed for free. Did you hear about this fee increase in the news?
Another example is our state park fees. They used to be free. Now you must purchase a $30 Discover Pass. These fees impact regular people far more than the wealthy, so I believe they are a regressive tax. They were passed very quietly, and now we all have to pay them.
Luanne Van Werven has communicated to me her objection to these types of fees, and has said she will work to eliminate them. If for no other reason than to bring some sanity back into the fees we pay to visit our own parks and drive on the roads that you and I already paid for, I will be voting for Luanne this year, and encourage everyone to ask themselves if they want someone in Olympia standing against the subtle increases in fees we pay.
Brian Smith
Lynden
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