Editor,

I’ve been gone from Coupeville for three years now, but I smiled and had to shake my head as I read Harry Anderson’s column about the dividing line between North and South Whidbey and the language used to describe it.

The more things change (or don’t), the more they stay the same.

Now that I live in San Diego where there are a number of lively, unique communities and nobody minds driving from one to another, Whidbey’s internal provincialism seems amazingly small-minded.

When I lived in Langley for the first years I was on the island, I used to shock my “down-island” friends by saying without a quiver that I was headed to Oak Harbor to shop — especially after I discovered the great little places on Pioneer Way. Egad! Always seemed it was North Whidbey’s tie with the Navy more than anything else that got South Whidbey folks going.

After I moved from Langley to Coupeville, I became acutely aware of the division. Organizations that promote themselves as “Whidbey Island” this or that, mostly mean South Whidbey. Folks to the north of Greenbank Farm are rarely included in the membership.

The division makes for good material for a column, but one has to wonder about the desire to perpetuate such non-inclusive thinking.

Amusing. Amazing. Archaic. Provincial.

Molly Larson Cook

San Diego, Calif.