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Learn how food gets to your table on a Cascadia “Haycation”
Looking for a fun, family-friendly trip this spring? Farm-stays are a great way to get your hands dirty and experience what it takes to grow food and get it from local farms to your table. In an original travel article for Cascadia Magazine, Northwest travel expert Lauren Braden offers a detailed guide to staying on independent family farms across Cascadia. Whether you’re going for the day, or an overnight, farm visits are a terrific way to support family farms and sustainable, organic agriculture.
Read the whole article here.
Portland’s incentives to create affordable housing aren’t working
The Portland Mercury reports on the city’s inclusionary housing plan, which isn’t creating the numbers of affordable housing units as planned. Though the plan offers incentives to developers, not enough are biting, and mayor Ted Wheeler is looking at changes to tempt more builders. Meanwhile, in other un-affordable housing news, officials swept away the recently constructed “Village of Hope” homeless encampment in northeast Portland.
BC ministers urge turnaround on plans to build Site C dam
Defying the direction taken by their party’s premier John Horgan, a group of NDP ministers urged the provincial government to reconsider its decision to build the $11 billion Site C dam in northeast British Columbia. “There are strong ethical, economic and environmental reasons to terminate the dam,” they insist.
Seattle-area county makes grab for arts organization
Several council member in King County, which includes Seattle and some of its suburbs, are proposing a more direct political involvement in 4Culture, the county’s generous arts program funded by a 1 percent hotel tax. Supporters claim it will provide better oversight, but many arts organizations worry that a politically-appointed board will pressure the organization to revoke funding for controversial projects.
Cascadia museums try to tell richer Indigenous stories
Museums have a controversial relationship with Native American and First Nation people, but some museums in the region, including the Burke Museum of Anthropology in Seattle, are working to tell richer stories of Indigenous culture reports Northwest Public Broadcasting. “For example, instead of simply displaying a basket with the date it was acquired, the object should tell a story.”
In defense of “call-out” culture
In a sharp analysis at City Arts, Seattle writer Shaun Scott breaks down why calling out public figures for racism or sexism is necessary to hold people accountable, and not emblematic of what its critics deem “this strange period of ultra puritanism.”
“Transient,” a poem by Seattle’s Quenton Baker
This one is from a few years ago, but it’s worth returning to: Pacifica Review has a poem online by Seattle-based poet and educator Quenton Baker, called “Transient,” a fast-moving series of riffs on black performance:
“…we built us
this big sound
this black shit
the trunk-thump
of raw truth…”
Read the whole poem here.
(Hat tip to Anca Szilágyi for the link.)
That’s all the news, arts, and farm animals for today. Enjoy your weekend! –Andrew Engelson Photo credits: farm stay photos by Lauren Braden, Portland construction by Wikimedia Commons user Aboutmovies CC BY-SA 3.0, Burke Museum by Wonderlane CC BY-SA 2.0.