Watch our Defining Cascadia panel discussion online! Plus, Idaho transgender prison case could set precedent, are steps to save orcas enough, court ruling on BC pipeline limits expected, BC failing to protect spotted owls, weird and quirky places to visit in Cascadia this summer and poetry by Jenifer Lawrence.
Where to hike on the Olympic Peninsula over Memorial Day, WA pushes cities to increase housing density, reviving a First Nations fishing technique, OR increases funds to solve murders of Indigenous women. Plus: tree librarians and forest therapists, & an essay by Vancouver writer Stephanie Lo.
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Gray whales are dying at twice the normal rate off the coast of Cascadia, Lynda Mapes at the Seattle Times reports, and researchers are looking for clues as to why the whales– which aren’t endangered but protected by international treaties–aren’t finding enough food. An orca in the endangered southern resident pod is also starving, Crosscut reports, and at the Seattle Times there’s a detailed interactive feature on how boats and shipping vessels interfere with orcas’ ability to use echolocation to feed.
Vancouver Courier reports that electric vehicles are selling at a brisk pace in Vancouver thanks to a BC government rebate. In related news, Portland is going to start paying out over $50 million in clean energy grants and the city’s residents will get to decide how the funds are spent. And those of you in Seattle frustrated by lack of infrastructure for biking, busing, and walking can head over to the Urbanist and vote for Seattle’s worst intersection.
OPB has a very nuanced, fascinating report on how Oregon is reconsidering rules for “civil commitment,” in which people with severe mental illness can be committed to receive treatment. “We’ve reached a point where the bar is so high, that really the only way to enter the Oregon State Hospital, for example, is to be arrested,” says one advocate for reform. Meanwhile, there’s the horrific story of Vernon Gray, a man with mental illness in Seattle who lived in deplorable conditions after his mother died–and who was awarded an $8 million settlement for the impact to his life after many failures of the state’s mental health system.
Justina Ray, writing for The Narwhal, looks at the inadequate 16-year effort to protect endangered mountain caribou in British Columbia, the backlash against First Nations involved, and the difficult economic choices saving the herds from extinction will require.
“The benefits we would realize from saving caribou are simply not as concrete as the value of getting more wood to the mill or allowing another heli-skiing operator to open in another area.”
To find out how you can help the effort to protect the South Selkirk herd visit Conservation Northwest’s website.
Over at Queenmobs, you can read Ellensburg, WA author Maya Jewell Zeller’s surreal but accurate story “The Surgery” concerning what it feels like to be left in love and have to start over and be sliced open by yet another lover: “Each part he treats with the care it deserves, then places it on the table, in turn. He never takes out more than one part at a time. He filets each quietly and completely, and no sooner does he make the first cut than that part tells a story.”
Take a moment with “Whatever an Infinitesimal Dog Tells You,” online at Poetry Northwest, Portland-based poet Dan Kaplan’s poem that unsettles everything it puts into words:
“I hope you can see that,
a candle in the ribcage of the coyote
living in the graveyard.
A surprise, this new trouble with distance.”
Read the full poem here.
That’s today’s assortment of poetry, fiction, environmental reporting, and political news from all across the Great Northwest. Have a lovely, rainy evening! –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: gray whale by Merrill Gosho, NOAA (public domain)
BC investigates rampant money laundering, Seattle police not in compliance on use of force, OR ditches vaccine and gun control bills, protecting silence in Olympic National Park, festivals for lovers of UFOs and film, and poetry by Doug Nufer.
BC Book Prizes awarded, Oregon passes historic $1 billion education boost, why does Jay Inslee support a polluting smelter? drop in Seattle homelessness nothing to celebrate, BC wildfire season starts, and the rad women and non-binary people in Eugene's skate scene.
Oregon Book Awards announced, Portland-area transit unveils electric buses, a WA legislator's conversations with right-wing extremists, a BC First Nations chief goes to the United Nations, Cascadia could learn from Indonesian earthquakes, and an interview with Seattle author David Shields.
New poetry by Susan Rich, playing politics with safe injection, youth sentencing reform in OR, racism in reaction to BC caribou protection plan, remembering two Indigenous carvers, and Portland's Omar El-Akkad on incorporating climate change narratives into fiction.
Alberta-BC feud to get worse after election results, Cascadia is all for ditching the time-switch, saving OR & WA forests by burning them, why are Spokane schools cutting library funding?, a Q & A with Vancouver photographer Jackie Dives, & poetry by John Sibley Williams.
WA looks to boost funding for affordable housing, BC's government not making progress on environment, rates of depression up among WA teens, Makah tribe may hunt whales again, Vancouver photo exhibits showcase Indigenous resilience, & a book about hating birds by Matt Kracht.
Idaho moves to limit citizen initiatives, how a BC politician is making Trudeau nervous, schools south of Seattle not prepping kids for college, OR looks to ban aerial herbicide spraying, Seattle sci-fi author Vonda McIntyre dies, & Ijeoma Oluo on the frustrations of fighting racism.
