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How Cascadia’s cannabis laws differ
As California prepares for legal pot in January 2018, OPB offers a guide to how legal pot laws differ on the US west coast--including purchase limits, home-growing, and taxation levels. British Columbia will join the club in July 2018 when Canada legalizes cannabis nationwide. The BC government released proposed regulations for the province earlier this month.
A rare visit to BC’s forbidden bird island
In a beautiful multimedia feature at CBC, reporter Chris Corday visits Triangle Island, a bird sanctuary 45 kilometers off the northwest tip of Vancouver Island. Humans, except for a few researchers each year, are forbidden from visiting. It’s a fascinating portrait of one of the richest ecosystems in Cascadia–the breeding ground for 40 percent of all BC seabirds. But climate change is causing alarming drops in Cassin’s auklet populations.
Shawn Vestal: more training won’t stop sexual harassment
Spokesman-Review columnist Shawn Vestal takes some well-needed jabs at responses to the #MeToo revelations of of sexual harassment in the workplace. Men don’t need training to know they shouldn’t hit on subordinates, touch women without asking, or text nude pictures to coworkers, he asserts: “It’s not about what men don’t know. It’s about what men have known too well: That we can get away with it. That it will be excused, hidden, justified and rationalized, and no one will be called to account.”
Twenty years after Elliott Smith’s “Either/Or”
It’s been twenty years since Portland’s Kill Rock Stars released Elliott’s Smith’s breakout album “Either/Or.” In a tribute to the amazingly harsh/gritty/tender album by the singer songwriter who took his own life in 2003, OPB presents interviews and cover performances by Portland musicians.
Seattle Review of Books picks powerful poetry of 2017
Paul Constant, editor at the Seattle Review of Books, despises “best of” list. Instead, he chooses to reflect on several books of poetry he found powerful in 2017, including work by Seattle’s EJ Koh, Bellingham poet Robert Lashley, and the late poet Joan Swift, who died earlier this year.
“Brine,” an essay by Portland’s Judith Barrington
Born in England, but a longtime resident of Portland, writer Judith Barrington has a gorgeous essay, “Brine,” in the latest issue of Gulf Stream. It recalls childhoods by the sea near Brighton and the awakening of adolescent urges. “But despite those rapid forays down to the bottom, the sea was still all surface: I was only flirting. It would take true love to spark desire—the love that brings late night thoughts of entering a body, exploring its darkness in the eternal search for the center.”
(Hat tip to Lydia Yuknavitch for the link.)
That’s all for today from the snow drifts of Seattle. Hope you’re enjoying the holiday season! ❄️ –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: Oregon pot shop by Steve Morgan CC BY-SA 4.0