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Cascadia Daily: Crossing borders
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, southeast Alaska, 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.
Cascadia Daily is dedicated to crossing borders. Not just state and national boundaries, but also bridging the gap between rural and urban, between the people who live east and west of the mountains. We’re committed to covering the complete bioregion and the issues that affect all of us.
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Ode to the Stump: poetry by Howard White
Have you ever seen stumps in the forests of Cascadia that have mysterious notches cut into them? Those notches have historical significance: they’re evidence of loggers using springboards to cut down the tree. Longtime BC poet and publisher Howard White has been fascinated with the logging culture of his father’s generation and pens a poem, “Ode to the Stump,” now online at Cascadia Magazine:
“Grand old relic of days gone by
Of my father’s time and my father’s work
Rising bravely from the mossy carpet
Tall as a monument to someone great
Bark thick as grizzly fur…”
Read the full poem here.
New report gives thumbs up to high-speed rail across Cascadia
Travis Lupick at the Georgia Straight reports on a WA state business analysis that envisions an ultra-high-speed rail line that would connect Vancouver BC, Seattle, and Portland with trains traveling at 400 km per hour, connecting the the major cities of the region in an unprecedented way. The transit line is expected to radically cut travel time (Vancouver to Seattle in less than an hour!) and increase overall economic growth. The News Tribune has more on what it would mean to have high speed rail linking Portland and Seattle (and the cities in between).
US company pleads guilty in BC oil spill case
CBC has an update on an ongoing case in which a US company, Kirby Corp., will be sentenced for an 110,000-litre oil spill in October 2016 that devastated the Heiltsuk Nation’s fishing territory on the Nothern BC coast. The legal victory is little solace for First Nation members who still cannot fish in the territory–not to mention evident lack of progress in the oil spill response system.
Alarming decline in local media in southern Oregon
April Ehrlich at Jefferson Public Radio scrutinizes the deep financial relationship between Steven Saslow, the current owner of Medford Tribune Mail, and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, one of the largest, conservative-leaning broadcast media companies in the US. Ehrlich’s concern is how much longer Oregon’s Rogue Valley will be able to maintain a truly local newspaper. “Localism is really important, but it’s not cheap,” Southern Oregon University journalism professor Chris Lucas said.
Surprising openness to dam removal in Idaho
The Christian Science Monitor has a detailed feature on the possibility of removing dams on the lower Snake River to recover rapidly dwindling salmon populations, and a surprising supporter of the idea: Idaho GOP congressional rep Mike Simpson. The challenge going forward will be to figure out strategies to appease all the interest groups into consensus. In related news an editorial at the Lost Coast Outpost points out that scientists have found that dam removal on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and northern California would vastly increase water quality.
Keeping hopeful as an activist in a dark time
Ashli Akins, a human rights professional from Vancouver, writes an essay for the Tyee criticizing activism culture today that builds legitimacy on pessimism and being “realistic.” Akins eloquently makes the case for building trust in the capacity of hope.
A review of Ian Williams’ “Reproduction”
BC BookLook has a detailed review of Vancouver-based writer Ian Williams’ innovative novel Reproduction. Of it, reviewer Theo Dombrowski says “Most striking in terms of the flex and play in the narrative development, though, is the deft way that Williams leaps forward in time, disorienting us in a suddenly unintroduced context of detailed thoughts and characters, only later filling in helpful information.” You can also read a great interview with Williams about his transition from poet to novelist and the challenge of writing unlikeable characters in this Q&A at Cascadia Magazine.
That’s today’s grab bag of arts, news, and culture from across the great Northwest, curated by Eun Hye Kim and Andrew Engelson at Cascadia Daily’s temporary headquarters at Hing Hay Coworks in Seattle’s International District. Have a great evening, and see you tomorrow!
Photo credit: high speed trains in Taiwan by Chi-Hung Lin via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0,