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Will Portland build Cascadia’s tallest skyscraper?

The international groveling match by cities hoping to attract Amazon’s second headquarters has reached  new heights. William Kaven Architecture released a concept for a 970-foot set of towers in Portland’s Pearl District, which the city has set aside in case the online retailer decides to move there. Grandiose plans include  a 280-foot garden walkway connecting the towers. It’s a longshot, since most pundits speculate other cities are higher on the list.

Court orders end to salmon farm protests in BC.

The Tyee reports that the BC Supreme Court has ordered an the end to a First Nations protest occupying two commercial fish farms. Members of the Musgamagw, Namgis, and Mamalililukulla nations claim the farms never received permission to operate. Meanwhile, an environmental group announced it will sue WA fish farms that accidentally released 100,000 Atlantic salmon into the Salish Sea this summer.

Lidia Yuknavitch on misfits and how the body remembers

Powell’s Books posted a superb interview with Portland author Lidia Yuknavitch, in which she talks about her new nonfiction book “The Misfit’s Manifesto,” a meditation on being different. The book collects stories from people who have felt maladjusted all their lives, especially those with atypical bodies.
“Everything that’s ever happened to you is alive inside your body. Your body carries your experiences with you. That ache in your lower back is a story. Where desire ignites on your body is a story. . . . Your body is a walking metaphor of your life.”

Spokane is becoming more progressive… slowly

Columnist Shawn Vestal ponders the results of the recent election in Spokane, in which voters tossed out three ultra-conservative members of the city council. Is Spokane now a solidly left city? Not exactly, Vestal concludes. But the city is also considering decreasing the number of city parking lots, so perhaps Democratic Socialist candidates are next?

Oaks Make a Comeback in Southern Oregon

The Medford Mail Tribune reports on successful conservation efforts to restore the health of oak savannahs in the Klamath-Siskiyou region. Other areas of the state are more dire: the article reports that less than 1 percent of oak habitat in the Willamette Valley and one third of the Umpqaa Valley remain intact.

A poem for all you accountants out there…

And finally, at the Seattle Review of Books you can read Emily Bedard’s fanciful poem “Once Upon an Accountant” in which the numbers suddenly refuse to be crunched:
“Until one day began
the numbers to slip
their shapes, to stand
up off their stools, to spool
into nests of number
and start to nap”

Photo of proposed skyscraper courtesy of William Kaven Architecture.