The Bellingham Herald

• Port candidates joust on waterfront issues
  Port commissioners and their challengers debated waterfront redevelopment and other economic issues at a Friday, July 17, forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters that attracted more than 50 people to City Hall.
  Both incumbents, Scott Walker in District 1 and Doug Smith in District 2, have drawn a pair of challengers. The three candidates for both positions will be narrowed down to two in the Aug. 18 primary election.
  All the candidates agreed that the central waterfront should be turned into an inviting place, cleaned up and redeveloped to high environmental standards while also providing residences, marine industries, shops and offices that generate jobs and tax revenues. But not everyone thought it was a good idea to move some Western Washington University facilities to the waterfront, as is now planned.
  Doug Karlberg, also challenging Smith, said university professors could teach students anywhere and need not occupy precious waterfront real estate that might otherwise be available for marine-oriented businesses.
  

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• Artist profile: Trish Harding
  Whatcom County artist and teacher Trish Harding talks about her book, "Letters Alive!" at 4 p.m. Sunday, July 19, at Village Books.
  Question: What's your artistic background?
  Answer: My earliest memories are of drawing so I guess that I was about 4 years old. I drew all the time. I got all the art projects in school, like decorating the solar system bulletin board, pep rally posters, art editor of the school annual and the newspaper. I was lucky enough to have two fabulous teachers that encouraged me to continue with my art, especially my high school art teacher, Cliff McKee. I attended Western Washington State College (now Western Washington University) and went on to the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, majoring in fine art painting and a minor in illustration.
  

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• CEV announces new hire, promotions
  Western Washington University's College of Business and Economics' Center for Economic Vitality has added Nicole Hagerman to its staff of research analysts and has promoted Jennifer Hill and Jenny Kern to senior research analysts.
  

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• Scott Walker, port commissioner candidate questionnaire
  To help readers better understand where candidates stand on the issues in the 2009 election, The Bellingham Herald provided questionnaires to candidates.
  Scott Walker is a candidate for Port of Bellingham.

Seattle P-I

• Researcher focuses on pine cones of the past
  Andy Bunn will walk through a starkly beautiful landscape in September, where twisted and ancient bristlecone pines grow from a dry, rocky land scoured by high winds and blanketed in snow much of the year.
  The Bellingham scientist's aim during those 10 days in Great Basin National Park in Nevada will be to extract small core samplings from as many as 100 trees. The diameter of a pencil, the cores will be taken to his lab at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment.

KGMI Radio

• WWU professor gets grant to study veterans' health
  A Western Washington University sociology professor is studying the impact of military service on health.
  "We're looking at people who served in the '80s and '90s," WWU professor Jay Teachman said. "Now these sort of form a baseline for the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan for a better idea of what military service does."
  Teachman has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the National Science Foundation American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

• Moon walk: A lasting impression
  "It's hard for someone your age to realize the low level of technology in those days," said Pinky Nelson, who grew up in Willmar, Minn., before serving on three space flights as a NASA astronaut. He now teaches science at Western Washington University in Bellingham. "We were still watching black-and-white TVs. There were no portable radios. There were no computers that didn't fill up a room, no hand-held calculators. To pull off a feat like this that required technology so far ahead of where the average citizen was, it was mind-blowing."