Had my very own journey of discovery this weekend, returning to my old stomping grounds for the first time in several months (though it's seemed much longer), and seeing it with fresh eyes. Downtown Bellingham is much seedier than I remember. To put it in perspective: I saw more drunk homeless panhandlers on my brief Saturday night visit than I did in ten days in London. But Bellingham is a cool city, really.
Making the walk downtown with Mike and Emily, Mike pointed out that if you stand on one end of State Street and squint your eyes, you can see how the city looked one hundred years ago; all the old brick buildings are still there. And therein lies the the town's greatness--it still has the Old Soul of an early twentieth century logging town.
That is why, despite the urban renewal now occurring there, life downtown seems to be whithering away. That Old Soul is trampled by the soles of new developments.
At any rate, it was good to reconnect with the people I hadn't seen in a quakajillion* years.
