Clark

John Oliver shows us how the media should be handling debates between climate scientists and climate deniers:

A white girl remembers Billy Frank.

Jen

This long, personal, and wildly popular essay from Bike Portland’s Michael Andersen on the evolution of Portland’s bike culture shows just how compelling it can be when people who normally write about policy write from the heart.

As someone who just yesterday found herself rescuing (successfully!) a strawberry ice cream cone that landed in the dirt, I was glad to see my faith in the five-second rule confirmed yet again.

And these arresting images of what the human body looks like at the age of 100 have stayed with me all week.

Alan

Cascadian transportation policy’s top priority, like Sweden’s, should be zero traffic deaths. No one should die for moving around. No one. New York City is already emulating Sweden’s program, with dramatic results. The New York Times reports that “Others [in Sweden] appreciate the country’s zeal for traffic safety only in hindsight. In 1998, . . . a driver who had survived after crashing into a newly constructed barrier sent the transport administration a cake.”

Clothesline slam, the movie. Buried in the Sightline comment string on an old article about clotheslines came a note this week from ElizaG:

I am a performance poet (aka slam). I’m also a clothesline lover. When I moved into the old mill town of Cohoes, New York, I was amazed by the two-story-high iron posts and cross ties of the old brick tenements. My own apartment’s clothesline was rotten so I asked the landlord to replace it. He did, but I wondered and worried about all the other rotting clotheslines. We’re a working class town. People often complain about their utility bills.

So I made this performance poem exhorting my neighbors to use their clotheslines: The clotheslines of Cohoes. Please enjoy and feel free to share. It’s working here and might work elsewhere… people are using their clotheslines more and, even better, are sharing stories… about hanging clothes.

Serena

BC documentary filmmaker Robert Alstead is currently working on a project about the Pacific Northwest’s “thin green line” and our opportunity to play an outsized role in the battle against climate change. The film will explore different aspects of action: parliamentary, direct action and civil disobedience, and the market-based carbon tracker initiative approach. They’re coming up on their last week of their crowdfunding campaign, so take a look, and if you like what you see, pitch in!