It’s That Time of the Year: You get up in the morning, it’s dark. You go home from work, it’s dark. You crack open a Kulshan Kitten Mittens, it's … you’re way ahead of us here.

They Deliver For You: A Jan. 11 letter from Congresspeople Rick Larsen and Suzan DelBene, addressed to the Honorable Louis DeJoy, postmaster of the United States of America, asks what the hell is up with mail nondelivery in Whatcom County throughout December. Nice of the congressional reps to take this on, but the letter raises a couple important questions, including: 1) What is honorable about Louis DeJoy? and 2) Why in God's name is he still heading the U.S. Postal Service?

Meanwhile, Up in Ferny Gulch: Ferndale Director of Communications and Broken Promises Riley Sweeney had this to say to a CDN reporter about his employers’ prolific use of the federal “1033” program, which provides a bounty of arguably useful equipment to local governments, including things like mine-resistant vehicles: “There’s not a landmine problem in Ferndale. That is not a frequent issue that we deal with.”

To Which We Feel the Need to Add: As far as he knows.

There Was Darkness on the Edge of York: If your lights went out for the entire evening Monday night in the York neighborhood, you might be pleased to learn that the outage was caused by “equipment failure.” Or as PSE's insurance carrier would describe it: An act of God. 

Historical Note: Lots of mail in the Hammer's inbox this week supportive of a column calling for WWU to correct its own historical record — 1938 Board of Trustees' minutes — as a first step toward restoring the institutionally damaged reputation of foundational figure Charles H. Fisher. 

Some Have Noted: The university has a campus feature, Fisher Fountain, named after the fourth president. But it was organized and paid for by friends and colleagues, not the university. It was all the then-college allowed to occur to honor the man. And its presence in “Red Square” has probably (unintentionally) contributed to Fisher's presumed guilt by association.

Others Have Noted: Western has a large building housing its journalism department, the poetically named Communications Facility, that already appears as “CF” on campus maps. Seems sort of serendipitous.

The Hammer is swung on Wednesdays, or when the red flag goes up.