Cascadia Daily, Sept. 26, 2018

In October YOU can help Cascadia Magazine continue

We appreciate that you’re a reader of Cascadia Daily, and our online publication  Cascadia Magazine. We’re dedicated to crossing borders: not just covering issues across national and state borders in the Pacific Northwest, but also crossing the cultural divides between rural and urban, between people who’ve been here a long time and newcomers, between east and west of the mountains.

Each day we bring you this curated collection of news, arts, and culture from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and a few places beyond. In addition, Cascadia Magazine publishes original long-form journalism on issues that matter to our region, whether it’s First Nations opposition to salmon farms, the importance of racial equity in the legal cannabis industry, or the crisis of people living in their vehicles in Seattle.

We’re also a cultural magazine, featuring interviews with writers and artists, as well publishing original essays, works of fiction, and poetry (like Paul Nelson’s amazing poem Elegy for Tahlequah’s Calf). Like you, we love living in the Cascadia region, and we want explore the amazing creative work that goes on here.

Next week, we’ll be starting a fund raising drive to encourage our readers to help us out financially so we can continue to publish great writing and to pay our writers and photographers a fair rate for their work.

If you appreciate this newsletter and Cascadia Magazine, consider making a contribution at our donate page. And if you know of friends who’d also like to receive this free newsletter, forward it on to them. If you’ve received this email from one of those friends, you can sign up for a free email subscription here.

Cascadia Magazine original:
I’ll Never Own a Home in Vancouver

Poet Chelene Knight has lived in Vancouver most of her life, and she’s seen communities pulled apart by skyrocketing housing costs. In a lyrical essay for Cascadia Magazine, she reflects on the realization she may never own a home in Vancouver, and what uncertainties about risings rents do to people on the margins. We’re very proud to publish this timely essay. Read it online now at this link.

Task force offers recommendations for orca recovery

Crosscut reports on a draft report about steps to save endangered orcas in the Salish Sea. The Washington governor-appointed panel recommended reducing marine vehicle noise and interaction, reducing pollution, and considering removal of some smaller regional dams–but the panel was split on the more controversial issue:removing four dams on the lower Snake River. Meanwhile the WA state Department of Ecology is calling on the Canadian government to fix deficiencies in a spur of the Trans Mountain pipeline that leads to Anacortes, WA.

Seattle bike commuting hits ten-year low

Gene Balk at the Seattle Times reports that the percentage of people who bike commute in Seattledeclined in 2017, but the numbers could reflect a particularly bad winter, and the fact that a network of bike lanes downtown has been delayed. Meanwhile, a forum in the Vancouver mayor’s race included a heated discussion about removing bike lanes. And someone has been cutting the brake cables on bike shares in Seattle. Seriously, what is  wrong with people? Especially when you consider that 10 hours of cycling per week shows proven health benefits and reduction in chronic disease. ? Just sayin’.

Oregon will log trees accidentally killed with herbicide

According to OPB, the US Forest Service is working out a plan to log a stand of ponderosa pines accidentally killed by the Oregon Dept. of Transportation after they sprayed an herbicide along a stretch of highway near Sisters OR.

Seattle health care event demonstrates need for single-payer

Writing for the South Seattle Emerald, Susan Fried observes that the popular Seattle/King County free medical and dental care event at KeyArena last week demonstrates what the state really needs is a single-payer universal health care system. Crosscut reports on how the WA state legislature is finally funding programs to improve access to dental care.

New documentary on Idaho’s religions sects refusing medical care

High Country News reports on a new documentary on the disturbing proliferation of Christian sects in Idaho that refuse medical care — and the state laws that allow these groups to do this even as children die of treatable ailments.

An excerpt from Robert Michael Pyle’s novel Magdalena Mountain

Noted nature writer Robert Michael Pyle, who lives in Grays River, Washington has his first novel out, Magdalena Mountain, in which several very different characters converge in a place where a very rare butterfly exists. You can read an excerpt at Literary Hub: “Even the rocks seem to close ranks, preparing for the storms, whose unblunted breath only they can withstand, and even then not unscathed.”


That’s all the Cascadia news & arts that can fit into a tiny newsletter today! See you tomorrow!  –Andrew Engelson


Photo credit: crosswalk and bike lane by Adam Coppola, courtesy of Green Lane Project,