My husband and I had the good fortune to spend a week in a remote small French village early in the century. One morning, we were in the town’s only bakery buying our daily freshly baked baguette when we met another American couple. They, like us, lived in Sequim.

To this day, I meet people outside of Sequim whose face or voice light up with recognition when I mention Sequim. They’ve usually visited the Lavender Festival or have a friend or relative who lives in Sequim. Just last week, the person calling from my husband’s drug insurance regarding a prior approval told me her grandmother’s sister lived in Sequim and she planned to visit soon.

Long ago, I rephrased an old motto to read “All roads lead to Sequim” in honor of our small but newsworthy town …

Sequim and The Nation

Just this month, The Nation — a national magazine self-described as “progressive” — featured Sequim on its cover with the heading “The Town that QAnon Nearly Swallowed.” Inside was a lengthy article by Sasha Abramsky that went on to detail or air what we could call our town’s dirty laundry.

Among them were the mayor’s endorsement of QAnon, his command of the Sequim City Council, the medication-assistant treatment (MAT) facility controversy, the family stalked in Forks, the threats to our health officer over masks and indoor dining and the mayor’s T-shirt.

Sequim’s name familiarity soared again when the more progressive than not MSNBC featured the article’s author in a segment. Anyone considering a move to Sequim who saw it or read this article may be having second thoughts.

The article did end with the reassuring community-led development of the Sequim Good governance League (SGGL) in response to the City Council and the subsequent civic activism that turned the mayor’s appointed council members out of office.

I thought the title was hyperbolic and the article a bit over the top in its description of a town “spiraling” down but clear-eyed in its reporting the success of people coming together to change the course of their community.

We must admit that greater Sequim seems like a magnet for national news. In 2020, Clallam County made news as the only county in the entire country who has voted for the candidate who was elected president since Reagan.

Speaking of roads …

A new roundabout is nearly completed at the intersection of Woodcock and Sequim-Dungeness Way. The roundabout solves the serious problem of an intersection in wait for the next accident to happen.

The road has become more traveled as housing increased in the area. We drive it often since it is our main access to town and east. We used it often during the construction period and thought the project and traffic flow was managed well with people directing traffic and large orange stripped cones preventing inadvertent drives into unsafe zones.

The road part is finished except for large crevasses between new and old roads remaining to be smoothly connected. I have two theories about the crevasses. One is they were left to give us the time to establish driver habits of slowing down on entry into the roundabout; the other is the crew who will make the repairs belongs to a different union and is on another job.

Either way, I think the planners and crew did an exceptional job in design and execution. The roundabout has good visual fields, space to navigate and actual time to use a turn signal unlike its sister roundabout south of it. Thank you to those that make a safer greater Sequim.

Schadenfreude

As mentioned, national media reported on our community’s mixed and often political responses to the pandemic and related restrictions although we’re not unlike many communities in America. I’ve written about it. My last column was about my experience of having COVID-19.

I had a few responses, most of which were from people like me who were the main support for another person. They and I share the double fear of becoming ill with COVID and transmitting to someone so vulnerable they could die or becoming too ill to help the other in our home despite our vaccination status.

Last week, the Gazette published a submitted letter that claimed my experience indicated all data about COVID, masks and vaccines was bunk, that I, as a health care professional with a public health background should know better now. Even though it was the only response to do so, I am certain the writer was not alone in the opinions expressed.

The writer intended to hurt with his ill-fitting use of ironies barely hiding his schadenfreude and going so far as to imply my staying with my husband meant I didn’t care if I put him in danger.

I imagined him laughing about it over beers with like-minded friends. How much better the story would have been for them if I or my husband died from COVID. Alas, we didn’t because we were vaccinated, boosted and practiced precautions since the beginning.

Not all roads to and in Sequim are smooth. We don’t all have to travel the same road. We don’t have to share the same politics or opinions about grapefruit. We can’t expect everyone to feel or care about our pain, especially when dealing with their own pain.

We can, like I do, be sad that others so deliberately dismiss the pain of others to further their own ends or just for fun.

We can move through hoping the crevasses will be united and smoothed at some point or we can just move on.

Bertha Cooper, a featured columnist in the Sequim Gazette, spent her career years in health care administration, program development and consultation and it the author of the award-winning “Women, We’re Only Old Once.” Cooper and her husband have lived in Sequim more than 20 years. Reach her at columnists@sequimgazette.com.