All illustrations by Jessica Randklev.

All illustrations by Jessica Randklev.

Dear Logger: I’m sorry to hear fate dropped you back where you belong. But, if we’re being honest, you must have seen it coming. Now, let me breakdown my response in the listicle fashion that is the only way you people know how to communicate:

1. I knew things were bad in Bremerton, but only in Bremerton is word that the EPA has listed your neighborhood a superfund site filed in the good news bin. But, to your point, I’m glad Bremerton has found another federal agency to dump money into it. Now that Norm has left congress and taken his pork with him (he hasn’t been far from cured meats in three decades), and no private money is making a go of it in town, you’ll be looking for plenty more opportunities. Wait, I guess you’re right: Jara has found a way to lure Bremertonians back to the mothership: booze. Real shocker there. Bremerton needs another place to tip a glass about as much as it needs another above-ground artificial reef. Oh, well. Give the people what they want, I guess.

2. I don’t see how you label what’s going on in your town as “progress.” Far as I can tell, it’s more or less same-o-same-o. For example, I looked up that new bank you spoke so enthusiastically about and found this headline: “Kitsap Bank’s new building could be seed for Wheaton Way revitalization.” What year is this? Still beating the “revitalization” drum? Let’s be clear: “revitalization” is Bremerton’s “shovel ready.” If Cary Bozeman taught us anything, it’s that if a Starbucks with a tunnel can’t revitalize a town, a new branch of a regional bank ain’t gonna do it.

3. And I really don’t think I should have to say anything here at all, but I’m glad you finally figured out a way to grown Bremerton’s population: f*&^%ing. I’d congratulate you, but, no, I don’t think I will. You’ve decided to bring a child up in a town where the preferred topic of conversation among parents is “how to we get our children out of the Bremerton school district?” My advice to you is to, as the kids say in Portland: put a bag on it.

Reluctantly yours,

— Winslow

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