Priced Out

The cities of Cascadia are facing a housing affordability crisis, as rents and home prices climbing steeply in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. In as essay for the Tyee, journalist Jessica Barrett writes about how, even with a full-time job, she was priced out of Vancouver, a city she came to love. ” I was a card-carrying West Coast cliché, and proud of it. I did yoga, planted guerilla vegetable gardens and rode my bike everywhere, even in the rain.” But Barrett couldn’t afford rent there, and found the attitude of the city’s elite discouraging: “if young people couldn’t afford it here [they implied], they should just leave.”
The Great Outdoors Just Got More Expensive
The Trump administration has proposed a steep increase in admission fees for 17 of the most popular national parks, including two jewels in the Pacific Northwest: Olympic and Mount Rainier. The proposed hike from $25 to $70 per car will deter folks who need the parks the most, but face hurdles to getting there, argues Glenn Nelson at Crosscut. “If national parks aren’t your thing, a $70 price tag is not going to help make it one.”

Seattle’s Fight over Homeless Sweeps

Two years after Seattle declared a “state of emergency” on homelessness, the crisis continues, and the city finds itself in a heated debate about sweeps. Mayor Tim Burgess claims they’re for safety and sanitation, but activists are urging the city to stop clearing unauthorized encampments.

Putting Science in Poetry

Portland poet Samiya Bashir’s work is a dizzying blend of science, mathematics, race relations, and contemporary culture. In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting Bashir talks about how her book Field Theories ranges from imagining herself a woolly mammoth in a taxicab to the intersection of probability theory and gun violence.
(Samiya Bashir participates in a panel on science, pop culture, and mythology in poetry at Portland’s Wordstock festival on Nov. 11.)

Shadowbox

Meanwhile, Seattle poet Susan Rich has a poem, Shadowbox, featured on Poem-a-Day from the American Academy of Poets. It’s a raw meditation on choices made and regretted: “new land of unalterable decisions/like a retinue of assassins coming right for me.”
That’s all for now. Enjoy what’s left of the fall colors!