The Atkins Diet for Whatcom County

Call me crazy (please take a number, stand in line and be prepared to wait about, oh, two to three weeks), but isn’t it about time for northwest Washington to join the rest of us carbohydrate challenged fatties and go on the Atkins Diet?

Both the Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council always seem to have their plates brimming over with plans for new housing tracts, retail centers, apartment complexes, office buildings, condominiums and the like. And both councils, like good little gluttons, constantly clean their plates and then belch grossly as if to say, “That was way too much—never again!”

But guess what? Next time the kindly developers and real estate speculators push another heaping course of pavement, rebar and dollar signs their way, both the City and County Councils are there, perched at the edge of their dinner chairs, knife in one hand, fork in the other, salivating wildly, eyes ablaze, hardly able to wait for the chance to dig in.

The Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council seem to possess the appetite of a growing young child who eats because it can and grows because it must.

But we in the Fourth Corner are no longer children. We in the Fourth Corner are now young adults. Might we grow some more? Yes, perhaps. But if we keep inhaling the fatty projects that the developers and speculators continue to shove down our throats, we will become bloated, with a belly the size of Los Angeles, and an ass the size of Orange County.

Buildings, like baked potatoes smothered in butter and sour cream, are not necessarily good food; and building, like lying on the couch watching Monday Night Football, is not necessarily good exercise. We in the Fourth Corner need to go on a crash diet. And in order to do that, we need to rediscover what foods are good foods, what activities are good exercise.

Trust me, I know. Ever since I turned thirty (roughly, say, oh, well, some time ago), I’ve been waging a war with weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. No one else in my family seems to have this problem. I’m the lucky one who got all the junk genes. Everyone else is trim and as healthy as a horse. I reckon the best I can hope for is some sort of Seabiscuit comeback.

But do I cry, complain, and bemoan my fate? You be I do! I’m damn good at whining, in case you hadn’t noticed. Nevertheless, amidst the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, I have managed to regain control of my blood pressure and radically reduce my cholesterol via a combination of dietary supplements, exercise and the Atkins Diet. The weight? It’s coming off slowly but surely. Mostly the former, it seems.

Those of you are familiar with the Atkins Diet (and those of you who are not, please reset your internal clocks to the 21st century—you have some catching up to do) know that the emphasis is on consuming good (protein rich) foods versus bad (carbohydrate our City and County Councils have been gorging themselves on the “If you build it, they will come” (aka “Field of Dreams”) philosophy. Well, at the slovenly behest of developers and speculators, we have built it and they did come. We built shopping malls, trendy tracts, retail monoliths, condos, apartments, gas stations, pizza parlors and McDonalds ad infinitum. Our hillsides have vanished, our forests been leveled, our waters despoiled. And still, amazingly, our economy can hardly breathe. Imagine that! What could possible be wrong?

Too much goddamn sugar, that’s what’s wrong. We need to stop building things just to put people in; we need to stop building things that aren’t producing anything; we need to stop building things just for the sake of building things. We need to stop building things just to keep the developers and speculators happy.

At the risk of causing my fellow Greenies to forcibly remove their Birkenstocks and throw them at me, may I suggest that we need to build our economy? We need a manufacturing base, a production complex, something that will provide living wage jobs—whether that be a port, a plant or a hundred-acre hemp farm. And let’s do it right this time. No more Georgia-Pacific’s befouling the waterfront. Just something sensible. Something high-protein.

So, when you go to the polls in a few weeks, conjure up a picture in your mind: Who do you see bellying up to the developers’ and speculators’ table, buying into the well-financed notion that building is progress? Ignore those gluttons; remember, it’s only a sugar high.

Now, who do you see pushing themselves away from that table? Who do you see just saying no to the developers and speculators? Who cannot be bought with brownies and ice cream? They are your real friends, your real representatives in government. They will trim the fat and bring you honest, real, family-wage jobs.

“If you build it, they will come?” We did and they have.

“If you preserve it, they will stay.”

Time to lose some weight. Our children might want to live here. §