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 … Read more
Serena [Trigger warning] Reporter Shaun King is helping to document on Twitter a rash of hate crimes—some of them at schools, between children—in the wake of the US presidential election [/end trigger warning], and the Southern Poverty Law Center is collecting reports of hate crimes, should you witness or (goodness forbid) be victim to one. … Read more
Eric In the midst of the wettest October on record, the right poem made its way to me. It would be easy to imagine that Robert Frost wrote “A Line-Storm Song” about this season in the Northwest, though of course he didn’t and it’s about much more than the weather. The last stanza breaks my … Read more
Anna I recommend listening to two great interviews from this past week on the CBC Radio show, Q. Both feature young indigenous artists talking about making it big as part of a new generation of writers, actors, artists, and musicians gaining recognition alongside the aboriginal social justice movement, Idle No More. An encouraging cultural reawakening … Read more
Kristin E. An economics professor lays out the devastating facts about inequality in America: people of color are disadvantaged from the very beginning of their lives. No, make that from well before they are born. Surely, even the hardest-core advocate of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mindset could not in good faith argue that … Read more
Alan In April, we recommended this superb Stranger article by Seattle teacher Sean Riley about the huge potential benefits of returning to mandatory racial integration of public schools, aka, bussing. These past few months, I have been catching up on public radio podcasts. I was spellbound by this 2015 edition of This American Life. It’s … Read more
Dan Huge news for housing and urbanism: on Monday President Obama came out as a YIMBY with the release of a new “Housing Development Toolkit” for breaking down local barriers to home building: The accumulation of such barriers – including zoning, other land use regulations, and lengthy development approval processes – has reduced the ability … Read more
Serena A wonderful friend of mine just became a US citizen last week. Lucky America to now count him as one of us! Which got me to wondering: what’s on that citizenship test anyway? Redaction: forget the mushroom suit when I die. Recompose me, please! Alan If you (like me) haven’t yet found time to … Read more
Keiko A must-watch video on how Obama’s climate policy efforts will be his most valuable legacy and why we must act on climate now. Bill McKibben in the New Yorker on the Standing Rock Sioux pipeline fight: The events at Standing Rock also allow Americans to realize who some of the nation’s most important leaders really are. The … Read more
Serena I heard this fascinating interview last week on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” How can we get to a cleaner energy future? Build lots and lots more renewables? Well, sure, but even more than that—and first—we need a smarter, stronger, more distributed energy grid. Gretchen Bakke, author of The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and … Read more