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Thanks for signing up for the Pacific Northwest’s tastiest selection of news, culture, and thought-provoking writing. Each weekday, we hand-pick an assortment of stories relevant to life in the Cascadia region (encompassing Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and parts of Idaho and Northern California). Every day you’ll find a selection of links to news stories, essays, fiction, poetry, and art — spanning the wide diversity of cultures and people in Cascadia.
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Now online at Cascadia Magazine: Coring the Forest
An all-female crew works in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon taking tree core samples to learn more about human impacts on forest ecology. In a well-crafted feature by Paul Lask, you’ll learn what it’s like to work in the natural beauty of the Umatilla National forest gathering data about wildfire cycles and climate change — all locked deep inside grand fir, ponderosa, and Douglas fir.
” I was handed a bark chip and asked if I could smell the vanilla. It smelled as if I was holding a bowl of ice cream. Laura’s description of the smell of a spruce sample was a “thunderstorm mixed with the garden section at Walmart.””
Read the full article online here at Cascadia Magazine.
Seattle Mariners: 1, affordable housing: 0
King county voted today to give $135 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies to the Seattle Mariners for stadium upgrades, defying housing activists who asserted the money would have been better spent creating affordable housing. In related news, a US court of appeals ruled that Boise, Idaho can’t arrest homeless people for sleeping in public when there aren’t other viable housing options available. Meanwhile, housing costs in Vancouver declined slightly in the past two months, while in Eugene, Oregon people with good incomes are struggling to find affordable housing.
Should Indigenous people have more say on oil & gas projects?
After a Canadian court last week rejected plans to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline across British Columbia, The Narwhal looks at how Indigenous assessments (in which First Nations make their own reviews of projects) could improve treaty-mandated input on oil and gas projects that affect Cascadia. Andrew Nikiforuk at the Tyee looks at how the awkward alliance of Alberta premier Rachel Notley and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau produced the disastrous purchase of Trans Mountain. And Ricochet Media asserts finds taxpayers could get out of the pipeline boondoggle for just $10 million.
Portland-based Nike takes a gamble on Kaepernick
The Oregonian looks at Nike’s bold gamble to accept activist football quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a marketing icon — instantly upsetting Trump voters and gaining cred with supporters of Black Lives Matter. Don’t look to the Seattle Seahawks to pick up Kaepernick, since Seahawks owner Paul Allen is a big fan of the Republican Party. In other news related to obscenely wealthy corporations based in Cascadia, Amazon just crossed the $1,000,000,000,000 mark in total value.
Fixing Washington’s flawed mental health system
Austin Jenkins, reporting for NWPB, profiles Jerri Clark, of Vancouver, WA, who founded Mothers of the Mentally Ill, after her son struggled to get help for his bipolar disorder. Her son’s experience with homelessness and arrests led her to call the state’s mental health system a “miserable underworld.” In related news Portland Tribune reports on efforts to fix Portland’s Unity Center, an emergency psychiatric center that a federal report faulted for “woeful and unsafe” facilities and service.
An essay on growing up in Skamania county
I recently became aware of a very cool literary journal called Cirque, which covers the North Pacific region incorporating Alaska, northern Canada, and much of Cascadia, All the issues are online (but of course you should support them by subscribing). I suggest reading Tara L. Campbell’s great essay on growing up in the struggling lumber communities of Skamania county in southwest Washington. “The nature I quickly adapted to was wild and unpredictable, activating every one of my senses, and alerting me to the subtlest of changes.”
Poetry by Constance Schultz
Empty Mirror has a selection of poems online by Constance Schultz, who lives in Grand Coulee, Washington, including “waiting in the car outside the senior center“:
“hot on the arm
by the window
a breeze
comes in
stirs my hair
dryer air…”
Read the full poems online here.
That’s today’s assortment of links to news, culture, arts, and great writing. Enjoy the cooler evenings… –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: Safeco Field by Wikimedia Commons user Cacophany CC BY-SA 3.0