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Earthquake awareness through fiction
Most of us know that a Cascadia earthquake of massive proportions will likely happen in our lifetime. But the region has done little to prepare. To ready people for a 9.0 mega-quake, the Bellingham Herald and retired journalist John Stark embarked on a novel project: writing fiction that imagines what the impacts of might be. KNKX has a series of audio recordings of the series, and you can read the entire 27-segment novella at the Bellingham Herald.
Using former industrial space to house the homeless
Seattle Weekly reports on a project in Seattle’s Harbor Island industrial zone where the site of a former flour mill is going to be converted to space for nonprofits and housing the homeless. Meanwhile, a new project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will provide 39 homes for women. In related news, a judge in Seattle ruled that a frontier-era homestead law can be applied to a truck or motor home and make them immune to seizure by authorities.
Bill Nye the Science Guy asks Trudeau: what’s up with that pipeline?
In a joint appearance in Ottawa, Bill Nye the Science Guy, a popularizer of science, asked Canadian premier Justin Trudeau why, when climate change is a looming threat, he supports building the TransMountain pipeline across British Columbia. The premier answered that until other alternatives are available, he wants to safely deliver oilsands petroleum. Nye disagreed: “The pipeline is, in the big picture, bad.”
Snowpack in Cascadia is declining
OPB reports on a new study from the Oregon Climate Change Institute that finds snowpack in the mountains across western North America has declined 30 percent since 1915. What surprised researchers even more was the steep declines that have happened since 2003: “I wasn’t prepared for how much worse it had gotten in the intervening years.”
Ichiro returns to the Seattle Mariners
Ichiro Suzuki, the star Japanese baseball player who made his mark as a consistent batter, fielder, and base-stealer for the Seattle Mariners before departing for other teams, will return for a one year contract. ESPN has an amazing profile of the intense competitor, and they’re not optimistic about what returning to Seattle will do for Ichiro’s mental health. “I’m not normal,” he says.
How the BC/Alberta border was made
BC BookLook has a review of Surveying the Great Divide, a detailed history of the survey that created the border between British Columbia and Alberta. It was an epic endeavor in the early 20th century, involving mountaineering, photography, and fair amount of moxie.
That’s all the new and culture in Cascadia for today. –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: Ichiro by Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0