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Oregon national monument next on Trump’s chopping block?
The day after the Trump administration announced it was substantially shrinking two national monuments in Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — wilderness activists await a decision by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on the Cascade-Siskiyou national monumnent in southern Oregon. Former Interior Secretary and Seattle resident Sally Jewell spoke out against the un-protecting of monuments, and Crosscut has a study in how president Wilson decreased the size of Mount Olympus national monument in Washington with disastrous results.
Cascadia nervous about federal cutbacks to children’s health
The fallout from the Republican-sponsored tax bill continue to be felt in the Northwest. Senator Orrin Hatch says there’s no money for the federal CHIP program for children’s health, which expired two months ago. States are very nervous about losing the program, since 1 in 10 children in Oregon are covered by CHIP. Gov. Kate Brown is urging the state’s congressional to fight for the program. Mark Trahant at Crosscut notes that eliminating CHIP would hit Indian country hard since more than half of Native American children are on Medicaid or CHIP.
Decision on controversial British Columbia dam expected soon
British Columbia’s provincial government is set to decide whether to proceed on a $9 billion dam project in northeast BC. Greens are nervous that premier John Horgan is leaning toward approval as a gift to construction trade unions, while environmentalists argue the the dam is a boondoggle when there are cheaper forms of truly clean energy.
Kristi Coulter blasts Amazon’s tech bro culture
The Seattle Times profiles Amazon exec and writer Kristi Coulter, whose acerbic posts have hit at sexual harassment, as well as the obnoxious bro culture of the tech industry. She reports to Nina Shapiro that she hasn’t been silenced by men at Amazon; it’s just hard to get a word in edgewise: “this is a room of dudes practically yelling at each other.”
Fonda Lee on how to successfully mash-up East & West
Portland fantasy writer Fonda Lee writes an essay for Powell’s books on her love-affair with American movies, and how many of her favorites draw inspiration from Asian literature and film. “…there is a sometimes subtle but important difference between borrowing another culture’s traditions or customs for garish exploitation,” she writes, “and the potentially wonderful creative fruits of genuine cross-cultural inspiration.”
New fiction from Seattle writer Anca Szilágyi
Over at Tin House you can read an excerpt from Seattle writer Anca Szilágyi‘s new novel Daughters of the Air, — a vivid scene in which a boarding school misfit makes her getaway: “Oncoming night chilled the air, which bore the herbal scent of a fragrant bush she couldn’t make out in the dark; she crushed its feathery branches, inhaling. The scent reminded her of something, of grass and of nickel, of her father or Lolo or something between her ideas of them.” You can hear Szilágyi read from her debut novel tonight at the Hotel Sorrento in Seattle.
That’s all for today from Cascadia Daily world headquarters, where there’s a delicious dose of December sun. ? –Andrew Engelson Photo credit: hiker in Cascade-Siskiyou national monument by Bureau of Land Management