Author: Andrew Engelson

Cascadia Daily, Aug 15, 2019

Get Outside: Old Glory Mountain

With fine weather returning to western Cascadia this week, it’s time to plan a summer adventure! If you live in British Columbia and are up for a challenging summit hike, check out Craig Romano’s latest pick at Cascadia Magazine: Old Glory Mountain in the Rossland Range outside of Trail, BC.

It’s not an easy trek, but you’ll be rewarded with fantastic views of peaks on both sides of the BC-Washington border. Not to mention a kaleidoscope of wildflowers on the way to the lookout cabin at the top.

Find the full write-up complete with photos, trail route, and driving directions online at Cascadia Magazine here.

Missing and murdered women of the Yakama Nation

The Yakima Herald-Republic has a detailed on-line feature on the horrible prevalence of murder and disappearance among women of the Yakama Nation in Washington (on some reservations, Indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times the US average). The interactive feature includes individual stories, including the recent murder of Alillia “Lala” Minthorn.

Six opponents of BC’s Trans Mountain pipeline

The Star Vancouver profiles six opponents of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline across BC, looking at next strategies, including legal fights, tiny houses built by First Nations activist Kanahus Manuel, and a young person’s climate-change legal challenge.

Confronting homelessness  through climbing

Crystal Paul at the Seattle Times has a great profile of the Recovery Beyond program, a nonprofit that helps people struggling with homelessness and addiction take control of their lives training for and completing a climb of Washington’s Mount Baker. ““Now I’m climbing up and hiking, surrounded by different people. You’re just going up on this big ol’ mountain away from the city, and I felt free” says a member of the program.

Passionate about the Portland Pickles

While Portland makes a move toward getting a Major League Baseball team, the city’s diehard baseball fans currently flock to see the scrappy Portland Pickles, profiled by OPB. They’re part of the West Coast League that includes a bunch of great Cascadia minor league teams, including the Victoria Harbourcats and the Walla Walla Sweets.

Living on BC’s ferry-less Gulf Islands

Over at BC BookLook you can read Howard Stewart’s review of Joy Davis’ new book Complicated Simplicitty. The book profiles people living on small islands in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands that have no ferry service and often no electricity. Such simplicity of life is often expensive, hence the “complicated” in the title.

That’s tonight’s selection of news & culture from across the Cascadia bioregion. One note of correction: a British Columbia reader pointed out an error in a newsletter this week: the  leader of Canada is not known as a “premier” but rather a “prime minister.” Premiers are heads of states in provinces. Cascadia Daily would like our BC readers to know we’re paying attention and continually learning about life and politics north of the 49th parallel. –Andrew Engelson

Photo credit: logo courtesy of the Portland Pickles.

Cascadia Daily, July 24, 2019

Your daily glimpse of the Cascadia bioregion

Thanks for reading Cascadia Daily,  the Pacific Northwest’s tastiest selection of news, culture, and thought-provoking writing. Each weekday, we hand-pick an assortment of stories relevant to life in the Cascadia bioregion (encompassing Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and parts of Idaho, southeast Alaska and northern California). Every day you’ll find a selection of links to news stories, essays, fiction, poetry, and art — spanning the wide diversity of cultures and people in Cascadia.

For more on just what the Cascadia bioregion is and why it’s important, you can read this brief essay at Casadia Magazine.

Cascadia Daily is dedicated to crossing borders. Not just state and national boundaries, but also bridging the gap between rural and urban, between the people who live east and west of the mountains.  If you like the work we do, you can always send us a few bucks at our donate page. Thanks!

Three poems by Lorna Crozier

Poet Lorna Crozier has been a driving force in British Columbia poetry for decades. She’s received the prestigious Governor General’s Award for poetry, and published 17 books of verse. Cascadia Magazine is thrilled to publish three of Crozier’s poems: “Jellyfish,” “Thoreau Said a Walk Changes the Walker,” and “Wolves.”

The poems evoke the nearly-magical power that the natural world has to transform us, especially if we’re paying attention to the details.
“There are weeks in the forest
when your whole body is
a word even you can’t utter
but the trees, in their
deep listening,
hear.”
Read the full poems online at Cascadia Magazine here.

Lummi Nations asks to talk with Canada about Trans Mountain

CTV reports that Washington’s Lummi Nation is seeking a meeting with Canada’s government over expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline across BC, which would increase tanker traffic in the Salish Sea seven times over. The tribe says the expansion violates the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In related news, the Seattle Times looks at WA governor Jay Inslee’s orca plan one year after Tahlequah’s vigil with her dead calf--and finds only 8 of 36 recommendations have been implemented. And the BC government designated protection for literally just 54 old-growth trees–a nice gesture but nothing compared to the 10,000 hectares of old growth cut on Vancouver Island each year.

New push on affordable housing in Seattle

Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan announced a new, $50 million plan to build affordable housing for the people most at-risk for homelessness, Crosscut reports. The plan is funded by a new program passed by the WA legislature this year. In related news, the Vancouver city council agreed to move forward on a city-wide plan that investigates solutions on affordability, homelessness, and climate policy, although Patrick Condon at the Tyee says the plan relies too much on market-based housing solutions.

A possible local solution for Bend, OR newspaper

OPB reports that in the wake of the bankruptcy of the The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon’s  newspaper (and the only daily in central Oregon), there may be a local solution: EO Media Group, an Oregon company that owns the East Oregonian and Daily Astorian, will be bidding at auction for the paper.

The Oregon women shaking up the sex-toy business

Willamette Week reports on several Oregon-based companies owned by women that are making waves in the growing sex-toy market, including Bend-based Lora DiCarlo, which will be previewing the Osé device this fall, and Quasar, a Portland company that’s developing an anatomically customizable vibrator.

An interview with interviewer David Naimon

Powell’s Book Blog has a great interview with Portland-based author interviewer David Naimon, whose podcast Between the Covers has a loyal following and attracts big-name authors. He talks about his move from KBOO to Tin House (who now hosts the podcast) as well as his first riveting experience with a book: The Monster at the End of the Book featuring Grover from Sesame Street! “I love how supportive and interwoven the Portland literary scene is, how many opportunities there are to hear writers read or to study writing yourself.”

Sasha Penn & Joanne Rixon talk about collaboration

Over at the Malahat Review, you can read a fascinating interview with fiction writers Sasha Penn and Joanne Rixon about how they worked collaboratively on a story, “Cascades,” in the latest edition of the Malahat Review (you can buy a digital or print issue here). The project delves into everything from the Indigenous people who lived on the shore of Puget Sound near what is modern-day Tacoma to the police killing of Jacqueline Salyers in Tacoma in 2016.

That’s all the Cascadia news, arts, and culture in that’s fit to print in a tiny newsletter. Hope you enjoyed it, and we’ll see you tomorrow. –Andrew Engelson

Photo credit: Yesler Terrace grand opening courtesy of Seattle City Council via Flickr (public domain)