Cascadia Daily Nov. 23, 2017 | Cascadia Magazine

A holiday she can’t trust

In an essay for Electric Literature, writer Elissa Washuta, a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, reflects on her complicated relationship with Thanksgiving. Washuta takes issue with a clip from Addams Family Values that supposedly offers a Native perspective; admits to fearing being trapped in a social situation for more than two hours; and notes how she gradually opened up to finding community during a holiday wrapped up colonialism.

British Columbia has big goals for affordable housing

In the wake of the Trudeau government’s announcement of a plan to dedicate $40 billion to housing over the next ten years, the NDP, which controls the BC legislature, is vowing to create 1,700 new affordable units in four years. Meanwhile, a Vancouver academic claims the housing affordability crisis isn’t linked to supply, noting that Vancouver currently has 66,719 vacant units.

Seattle income tax ruled unconstitutional

King County Superior Court ruled that Seattle’s tax on incomes over $250,000 violates the state constitution. The Stranger reports that Judge John Ruhl rejected the city’s argument that the tax wasn’t an income tax (banned in Washington) but rather an excise on the “privilege” of living in Seattle. The city is expected to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Stories made of rivers

At the Dark Mountain Project, British author Joanna Pocock contemplates the cycles of water that are slowly dying in Montana’s Clark Fork River. “Some [rivers] may look crystal clear but are carrying thousands, if not millions of particles of arsenic, cadmium, phosphorus, nitrogen, mercury and lead.”

Wyeths on display in Seattle and Portland

Seattle Art Museum is showing a huge retrospective of Andrew Wyeth’s quietly strange realist paintings. Seattle Times reviewer Michael Upchurch notes that the iconic pictures are surprisingly small and though realistically depicted, sometimes veer toward abstraction: “a brash experiment in what muted colors can do.”
Meanwhile Portland Art Museum is showing a collection of three generations of Wyeths: not just Andrew, but also works by his father, noted magazine illustrator N.C. Wyeth and his son Jamie Wyeth.

“Riddle” by Thomas McGuane

Longtime Montana writer Thomas McGuane, who lives outside Livingston, has a new story in the New Yorker, a fractured memory of a disturbing incident, as told by a disgruntled architect. “We don’t remember everything,” he says, “but I’d love to know who’s in charge of what we forget.”

That’s all for today. Happy Thanksgiving! –Andrew Engelson