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Cascadia Magazine original: Two poems by Fiona Tinwei Lam
Cascadia Magazine is thrilled to publish two poems by Vancouver’s Fiona Tinwei Lam: “Sea Star,” and “Ode to a Crow.” The latter is a tribute to East Vancouver’s most famous corvid: Canuck the Crow, who’s become world famous for his antics harassing and befriending humans:
“Dark star of the show,
prankster, terror, tease, bad boy,
you ride the Skytrain for free, dive-bomb letter carriers,
target cyclists’ backpacks between rest stops at McDonalds…”
Read the full poems online here.
Idaho legislature moves to limit citizen initiatives
After Idaho voters overwhelmingly passed an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program last year, the state’s Republican legislators are now working to curtain citizen initiatives, changing the process to make it the most restrictive in the US. High Country News has more on how Idaho and other GOP-led western states are trying to roll back recent expansion of state-based medical programs despite their overwhelming popularity.
How a BC politician may bring down Trudeau
There’s complex political scandal going on in Canada right now, and British Columbia is in the thick of it. For those unfamiliar, the story is this: prime minister Trudeau is accused of asking his justice minister of going easy on huge construction corporation accused of bribery and corruption. That fired justice minister, who made accusations against Trudeau, is Jody Wilson-Raybould, who represents a Vancouver neighborhood in Parliament–and this week the plot thickened as Trudeau kicked her out of the Liberal party caucus. The Tyee says this was a dumb move, and plenty of people in Vancouver agreed that firing one of the party’s highest-profile Indigenous politicians may backfire.
Schools south of Seattle failing to prepare students for college
The Seattle Times covers a new report that finds the schools in King county south of Seattle–many with large populations of students of color–are seeing rates of graduates going to college stagnating. In related news, a group of parents have accused a district superintendent in south King county of financial mismanagement. And special education programs in Washington have some of the lowest outcomes in the US, and some are calling for increased spending.
Oregon looks to ban aerial herbicide spraying on forests
The Oregon legislature is considering a bill that would ban spraying of weed-killing chemicals on commercial timber operations on state-owned lands. Lawmakers in Salem are also looking to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that threatens children and farmworkers. And the New York Times recently reported that officials in the Trump administration’s Interior department blocked a report finding that chlorpyrifos was endangering thousands of species, including migrating salmon in Washington’s rivers.
Sci-fi author Vonda McIntyre dies
Seattle Review of Books reported the sad news that sci-fi writer Vonda McIntyre, a longtime resident of Seattle, passed away after a short struggle with pancreatic cancer. A prolific author, she founded the Seattle-based Clarion Writers Workshop, which has mentored scores of fantasy/sci-fi authors in the region. If you want a taste McIntyre’s work, read “Little Faces,” online at Strange Horizons.
Ijeoma Oluo: confronting racism isn’t about white people’s feelings
Seattle-based author Ijeoma Oluo writes an essay for the Guardian about the talks she gives on ending white supremacy–and how often audiences turn the discussion toward how to help white people feel better, rather than ending racism. “Just once I want to speak to a room of white people who know they are there because they are the problem…”
That’s today’s mix-tape of news, arts, and culture from across the Pacific Northwest. See you tomorrow. –Andrew Engelson