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Eric Madeline Ostrander (yes, a former Sightline staffer) has a terrific feature story in Seattle Metropolitan magazine, Quiet: A Soldier’s Fight for the Most Silent Place in America. It’s the story of the military’s plan to send newer, more disruptive jet planes over the Hoh and Quinault rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula, and the veterans who thought they’d found a refuge. If you want to know what the Trump...

Kristin Rebecca Solnit, writing about why people insist on asking her, not about the life she leads and the important work she does, but about the life she doesn’t lead (mothering children). She describes a tension I have felt between being a mother, and the other work to be done in this world: “People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children...

Alan William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, both Brookings scholars and veterans of the (Bill) Clinton administration, have an intriguing critique of American capitalism in the fall edition of Democracy. Their accusation is short-termism—a fixation on near-term results at the expense of the future. Their argument, furthermore, is refreshingly practical. It puts the blame squarely on laws, regulations, and other institutional factors that have, together, cut private sector investment...

Kristin Lessig raised $1 million and is running as a referendum presidential candidate to Fix Democracy First. His “Citizen Equality Act” mirrors Sightline’s democracy work! It aims to embody the idea that, in a democracy, every citizen is equal, using a three-pronged strategy: (1) every citizen has equal freedom to vote, (2) every citizen should get equal representation in Congress, achieved through multi-member districts and ranked choice voting (sound familiar?),...

Alan The ever-hilarious Oatmeal writes an actually important analysis of self-driving cars, which also happens to be funny: “I’m ready for our army of Skynet Marshmallow Bumper Bots.” In the Northwest, or at least in Washington, white people are whiter—and so are black people, according to a big new genetic study of African, European, and Native American ancestry. South Carolina, though? The homeland of truculent racists like Strom Thurmond is the place...

Ted Have you wondered why the cast, promos, and maybe even the audiences for the new hit movie “Wild” (based on the 2012 memoir by Cheryl Strayed) include so few nonwhite faces? African-American writer Brandon Harris did; his essay “Why is Camping a White Thing?” poses a question that lingers like the proverbial pebble in the boot. Could Forest Schools offer affordable early learning in settings intended to connect the...

Editor’s note: Sightline is excited to feature the work of artist Nina Montenegro, of ghosttide.com, as the series images for Weekend Reading. We couldn’t help but jump the gun on sharing the more springtime/summer version of her graphic for the series, too! Enjoy the sun this weekend! -SL Clark I harp on traffic declines in the Northwest a lot. But they’re happening elsewhere, too. Check out what’s happening in Pennsylvania: [T]urnpike traffic is...

Clark Remember when we wrote about 26 ways to store your bike?  Well, here’s a 27th. Alan My old friend Jewel James, master carver of the Lummi Nation, continues his inspired art and activism, accompanying a new totem pole along the route of the coal trains. He was in Olympia earlier this week, and the Olympian did a good job of writing it up.

I’m just hours away from the end of my year of buying nothing new. But there’s no shopping spree on my to-do list tomorrow. At midnight the experiment officially ends, but it’s safe to say that my family has pushed the “reset” button on our attitudes about buying stuff—and by all indications, the effect will be lasting. In fact, swearing off new purchases was one of the best things I’ve...