Bill Nye’s Advice: Dig In, Don’t Look for Rail Lines
Humorist Bill Nye weighs in on the local obsession with railroad speculation in Fairhaven and New Whatcom.
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Bill Nye is not always funny and not always wise. But we have a word to say in favor of the bald-headed individual who endeavors once a week to amuse a section of the great American people, and that is that to keep up even an appearance of fun week in and week out is no laughing matter. But the observation of this more or less distinguished personage which we desire to quote is one made in connection with Fairhaven and New Whatcom. Mr. Nye remarks: 'More honest sweat and less scanning of the horizon for railroads would work well.' This is not funny, but it is solemnly true. We have railroads enough, and if we have not we soon will have. These railroads came of their own accord, and others will come in the same way. No man feels it to be his duty to get up at two o'clock in the morning and watch to see if the sun is going to rise. He knows he cannot make it rise by looking for it. No more can the people out here on the Sound bring railroads by looking for them. What everybody ought to do is to get in and dig at something which will make business.
“No more can the people out here on the Sound bring railroads by looking for them. What everybody ought to do is to get in and dig at something which will make business.”
Bill Nye's critique of the 'growth machine' mentality—where residents look for external salvation like rail lines or mega-projects rather than local production—remains a core tension in Pacific Northwest civic life. The struggle to move from speculative boom-bust cycles to sustainable local economies defined Aberdeen’s history as much as it defines the modern region.
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