Posted Thu, Apr 26, 7:32 p.m.

Is Inslee for acid and amnesty too?

Posted Wed, Apr 25, 11:05 p.m.

Sarcastic? ......BLAM!

Posted Sun, Apr 22, 1:55 a.m.

Keep in mind those lab rats who, when starved, live way longer and get sick way less. Most people eat way more than is necessary. Once you are used to eating less, you don't miss anything, you wonder how people can consume so much.

Posted Fri, Apr 20, 6:35 p.m.

These species, along with Japanese Knotweed and others, could make our forests virtually unrecognizable within a few decades. A big holly orchard at the foot of Mt Si north of North Bend produces probably millions of berries each year. These have resulted in a rapidly growing infestation in the nearby ...

Posted Sun, Apr 8, 12:42 p.m.

All this talk of "high speed" rail strikes me as trying to not just run, but fly before we have even learned to walk. (or re-learned...) We need just regular old "rail" transportation, not this dream of super fast trains that would consume vastly more energy than "regular" rail. Regular ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 7:50 p.m.

The "crime and dime" series was certainly good, though I'm not quite sure I'd agree it rises to the heights of the old Bullitt-owned KING. But maybe, just maybe, it will encourage them to start looking at those who are out there stealing not just dimes but dollars.

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 7:59 p.m.

As someone who started a job in one of Everett's waterfront mills the night after graduating from high school, I can say that any notion of the nobility of labor was entirely lacking there. The mill cited in the article, referred to back then as "Scott's" was famous for its ...

Posted Tue, Mar 27, 6:07 p.m.

Not another monorail attempt! There are countless good reasons why few monorails have ever been built. Difficulty in switching, oddball one-of-a-kind designs and the utter lack of availability of any part for one off any shelf anywhere are just a few. Steel rails, two of them, in parallel, is a ...

Posted Mon, Mar 26, 9:48 p.m.

Minor typo today, coal "plant" should be coal "port," unless you want to alarm a lot of 'hamster downwinders. We'll all get to breathe the exhaust from the plants in China however.....

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 12:40 p.m.

Vive la France. Someday all this flying around will end, or at least become the preserve of the wealthy. Maybe if we're lucky we will see a return of ocean liners if there is any profit in them again. Trains, too..... Wouldn't that be fun? There would be time for ...

Posted Mon, Mar 19, 11:31 p.m.

You might almost think that the real objective here isn't to build a bridge so much as to keep an army of bureaucrats and consultants employed.

Posted Sat, Mar 10, 5:37 p.m.

Interesting article, thanks. A little more explanation of the "vandalized" trees would have helped, though. Upon first reading I thought they were destroyed by those nasty drug and alcohol using miscreants. But those type of people seldom take foliage off 60 trees without killing them outright. Even re-reading it doesn't ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 6:20 p.m.

Its a good idea that should run all year. Let the sun cross the meridian at 1 p.m. rather than 12. Heck, lets make it 2 p.m.

Posted Sat, Mar 3, 2:02 a.m.

Wasn't it Walter Mondale who once joked that if elected he would insist that at least half the Federal budget be spent outside Washington state? Norm Dicks' departure marks the end of an era, the last prince of the Scoop and Maggie dynasty. He was a pork barreler par excellence. ...

Posted Fri, Mar 2, 2:15 a.m.

Interesting article about a little known creature, thanks much.

Posted Wed, Feb 29, 7:48 p.m.

This piece has some rather contradictory statements in it. "No access" to the west side of the Glacier Peak Wilderness? Yet the wilderness is "de facto" bigger? Seems to me like the wilderness begins where the roads end. What many people seem to want isn't access to wilderness, it is ...

Posted Sat, Feb 25, 10:45 p.m.

Very encouraging to read about people taking on this important job. It's not just Seattle parks that need this kind of help. Ivy, holly and all kind of nasty life forms are invading the forests of the Cascades also. We may have protected many forests from logging with the designation ...

Posted Tue, Feb 21, 10:52 p.m.

With the amount of money now being printed, it might not be too long before gasoline reaches that $9 per gallon level in today's money. In tomorrow's money who knows what it will be? I don't think many people are very aware of just what thin ice we are on ...

Posted Wed, Feb 15, 12:40 p.m.

Very informative and interesting article about a complex subject, where "garbage in, garbage out" studies have been the norm for years. This isn't the only attempt by eastern Washington irrigators to fleece the taxpayers. Several proposed pumped storage projects near Yakima would make even the project described in this article ...

Posted Tue, Feb 14, 10:11 p.m.

Hmmm, a "sweatheart?" Midday Scan keeps challenging my skills at finding the hidden, or not so hidden meanings between the lines. Or letters in this case.

Posted Sat, Feb 11, 3:37 a.m.

Maybe we need a bunch more small hydro dams, like Snohomish PUD plans to build, so BPA can also pay them not to produce power, as during spring runoff which is about the only time thye can produce power anyway. Ahhh, free markets!

Posted Thu, Feb 9, 5:55 p.m.

This prurient obsession with the private lives of public leaders seems to be a very American trait.

Posted Tue, Feb 7, 3:20 a.m.

"Gilt trip?" I like it. The only thing Darcy Burner is likely to win is the Heidi Behrens Benedict award for most unsuccessful runs for Congress. Maybe in future it will become the Darcy Burner award.

Posted Sun, Feb 5, 10:14 p.m.

It might also be useful to look at the titanic, unprecedented levels of debt. I've read different figures, but it appears that only half or so of US Gov't expenditures are now covered by taxes. The rest is from debt issuance. Or perhaps it is better to say was from ...

Posted Sun, Feb 5, 3:51 a.m.

It would be interesting to know how long these wells produce gas. I have read in other places that production often declines steeply after a year or two. Why there has never been a real effort to superinsulate buildings so they don't need so much energy I will never understand.

Posted Tue, Jan 31, 11:31 p.m.

I do miss the days when we had a two party system, when there were rational Republicans who were not wacko Bible bangers. Seems like Mark Hatfield from Oregon lived in the real world. Hard to believe he was a Republican (he was, wasn't he?) We even had some from ...

Posted Tue, Jan 31, 5:20 a.m.

Aren't you being a little hard on "uncle Paul?" Who else is out there calling for an end to rule by the Military Industrial complex? I'll admit some of what he says is disturbing, but he is the only candidate to even mention the central issues of our times.

Posted Fri, Jan 27, 6:25 p.m.

I fear that Newt will gain traction simply because he comes across as someone who believes what he says, will act accordingly, and has passion about him. No doubt it's all fake, but in the mainstream media it may come across better than the anti-passion and pro-Wall Street actions of ...

Posted Tue, Jan 24, 7:02 p.m.

Does anyone else find it irritating how the U.S. and its envoys continue to lecture the rest of the world as if we have a monopoly on virtue? Glass houses.....

Posted Sun, Jan 22, 1:16 p.m.

Boeing leaving Seattle two decades from now? How about two years from now?

Posted Sat, Jan 21, 10:58 p.m.

There was some effort to put things on a more sustainable track back in the 70's. But Jimmy Carter was declared a wimp for doing so, Newt Gingrich is still milking that, and the last round of cheap oil and easy credit allowed an illusory vacation from reality for the ...

Posted Sun, Jan 15, 7:21 p.m.

Yet another Darcy Burner run? The spirit of Heidi Behrens Benedict lives on.

Posted Fri, Jan 13, 7:45 p.m.

Much as I hate to see the Keystone pipeline from Alberta to Texas go ahead, I can't help but think that if it is stopped then it absolutely guarantees that the "All Canadian" route to Kitimat will be built. Anyone who has ever been to BC's north coast will know ...

Posted Thu, Jan 12, 7:39 p.m.

Thanks for gathering and publishing these gems. All are memorable, and I particularly like his attitude toward outdoor guidebooks and how they shredded much of the mystery that once so characterized the Cascades.

Posted Wed, Jan 11, 3:05 a.m.

Something's gotta give. We can't afford such a military anymore, a military that seems to exist mostly to insure the continued flow of oil to the U.S. Too bad we have done nothing to kick the oil addiction.

Posted Wed, Jan 11, 2:53 a.m.

Perhaps a few facts might enlighten the debate over flooding the forests at Bumping Lake. It's more like 2000 acres of old growth that would get flooded there, not 400, and it is mostly on flat ground, not the steep mountainsides where most other surviving old growth is found. And ...

Posted Mon, Jan 9, 4:48 p.m.

Maybe once they stop spraying thousands of gallons of water per day on the golf courses of Kittitas County, and do something about the unrestricted well water pumping that goes on there, and do something about the colossal waste of water in the whole Yakima, it will be time to ...

Posted Tue, Jan 3, 1:22 p.m.

Interesting article, thanks. Moscow is indeed a fascinating place in many ways. The traffic, and drivers (and police,) may be terrifying, but at least there is a good alternative to it and them in the Metro. For those who have not read him, Dimitri Orlov has a very good blog ...

Posted Sun, Jan 1, 8:39 p.m.

Comments are certainly a highlight of Crosscut, and usually of quite high quality. I hope it always stays so.

Posted Sun, Jan 1, 8:34 p.m.

I won't even attempt a rhythmic response, but will say thanks, good show.

Posted Fri, Dec 30, 6:55 p.m.

I appreciate the frequency with which Josef Stalin's name turns up on Midday Scan.

Posted Fri, Dec 23, 5:30 p.m.

Great comment, Wells. I wish it weren't so...... As the author alludes in his first paragraph, it is unfortunate that the curse of natural beauty has led Seattle to operate on the premise that nothing people do could possibly uglify the place. Sadly, people have indeed managed to create vast ...

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 11:13 a.m.

Gary P has it right here. One Big Fish Trap is what makes sense. So much sense, in fact, that few of us will probably live to see it. "Catch and Release" does great harm, and should be stopped. Take the fish you need, no more, and let the others ...

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 10:51 a.m.

Most of the railroads were given their lands, which encompassed far more than just the narrow track rights of way, back in the 19th century as an incentive to build the lines and open up the country. The Northern Pacific land grant, which privatized millions of acres, was challenged in ...

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 9:55 a.m.

We have been very lucky these last few decades in terms of having an abundance of relatively clean fuels. Most Crosscut readers have doubtless read the stories of what the air was like back when people burned coal in big cities. My Boston grandmother thought the air there was wonderfully ...

Posted Wed, Dec 7, 7:24 p.m.

I very much enjoy it, and went from avoiding it totally to dedicated listening. I hope others who enjoy it will volunteer a few dollars.

Posted Wed, Dec 7, 4:42 a.m.

After several pages these all start looking like the same generic big snowy mountain. "Silent" repose? Flying around in a noisy machine to get these pictures in "every nook and cranny" of what should be a quiet place seems like cheating.

Posted Wed, Dec 7, 4:28 a.m.

Those pests should have been gotten rid of years ago. They are destroying the place. Surely the animal lovers can choose from an endless list of more deserving species for their sympathy.

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 9:53 p.m.

I wouldn't quite agree with the assertion that we went to war in Iraq because of "mistaken intelligence." I'd say it was more like a pack of outright and obvious lies. And anyone with half a brain could see right through them. Patty Murray did, and voted against the madness. ...

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 9:29 p.m.

I agree, though I'd add that it is more than a disaster, it is madness on a colossal, make that planetary, scale. But what makes you think "they" could kill a pipeline to Kitimat? It's an "all-Canadian" route. They may have single payer health insurance in Canada but they don't ...

Posted Mon, Dec 5, 7:12 p.m.

Salmon "farming" is just another depressing variant on the same old story of private profits and socialized costs. In this case those costs could very well be the end of wild salmon and all that goes with them. Seems like only a matter of time. Regarding Aaron Reardon, what was ...

Posted Fri, Dec 2, 11:54 a.m.

It's great that they got the pipeline rerouted. Should they manage to kill it, it is practically guaranteed that a line will be constructed to Kitimat on the northern British Columbia coast, putting supertankers through the long narrow inlets there. A big spill is a question of when, not if. ...

Posted Tue, Nov 29, 6:01 p.m.

I hadn't heard that Svetlana Alliluyeva had died, thanks for mentioning it and for the link. It's almost beyond imagining, having Stalin for a father. Apparently he was quite the traditional Georgian when it came to his paternal disposition. It must have taken a special bravery, or foolishness, to court ...

Posted Sat, Nov 26, 12:09 a.m.

Yes, but.....how about just a real passenger rail network. Doesn't have to be "high speed" (over 80 mph.) The energy consumption advantage over air transport declines steeply at very high speeds. Mostly, a train just needs to keep moving along and you get there (unlike Amtrak.) I rather doubt we ...

Posted Fri, Nov 25, 7 p.m.

Seems to me that in order to be against transit, one must assume that 5% of the world's population in the US will continue to be able to burn 20 to 25% of the world's oil. Not an assumption I am comfortable making. No doubt the planning and implementation of ...

Posted Fri, Nov 25, 6:42 p.m.

Finally! Someone with the courage to come out and say that the heavyweights should pay their way. It's an injustice for those of moderate girth to subsidize the obese. Even worse, it's just not fair to have a 350 pounder settle in next to one and start taking over the ...

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 6:31 p.m.

So there is a real planetarium at the UW?

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 6:26 p.m.

Interesting piece, yes. Grizzly bears like to live in places where people don't go, "core security habitat" in biologist-speak. Unfortunately the Forest Service, at least, treats the need to protect that undisturbed and un-peopled habitat as just another obstacle to be gotten around. We had a valley on the west ...

Posted Sun, Nov 20, 6:35 p.m.

It's an open question how long the U.S. will be able to continue to subsidize agribiz and factory farms. At some point all that expensive lunacy will end, possibly quite suddenly, when the money dries up, or inflates away. Let's hope these good people in Mexico can hold on long ...

Posted Sat, Nov 19, 1:32 a.m.

What about heat? Do you rely pretty much on getting it warm before you unplug it? What about if you park somewhere away from a charger then start up again? How much does using the heat decrease the range? Can you keep the windshield from fogging up in wet weather? ...

Posted Tue, Nov 15, 9:25 p.m.

Interesting piece, thanks much. The subsidies to industrial agriculture will most assuredly end, along with every other unsustainable subsidy, numberless though they seem. Can't say when or how, but it's a 100% sure bet. That end could be quite sudden when it comes. But what should I feed to my ...

Posted Tue, Nov 8, 5:21 p.m.

Interesting report. Some of these efforts may seem small when compared to the scale of the problems, but you gotta start somewhere.

Posted Tue, Nov 8, 3:04 p.m.

Perhaps Crosscut is not advancing the broader cause of NW journalism here? Pete Jackson now takes care of the midday scanning I once had to do all for myself...meaning I look at fewer sources these days. But it works for me, I like it, keep it up!

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 5:26 p.m.

Burner may not be a Harold Stassen but maybe she's a Heidi Behrens Benedict? Who is Richard Pope?

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 5:11 p.m.

That's one bucolic looking logging road in the picture, kinda makes you want to stroll along down its leafy way. Most of them aren't nearly so pretty.

Posted Wed, Nov 2, 9:46 a.m.

This article could have used more facts and especially context, and less Snohomish PUD press release. Seven megawatts? Maybe, but for how long? That number is only at peak flow in June, for a week or two. The "power" rating for a dam is meaningless, it is only "energy" that ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 8:56 p.m.

It's great that the Elwha dams are coming down. How much of the total costs have actually been appropriated? One dam may be down, but there is a second, and it would seem like we are still at the mercy of continued money coming from the other Washington. Perhaps we ...

Posted Wed, Oct 26, 8:18 p.m.

Dams a-fallin in the west, but still a-buildin in the east, if Yakima agribiz gets its way with Bumping Lake. Not so much New Deal as crony-socialism. To them that already has, much more must be given.

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 6:23 p.m.

Thank God someone in Seattle government has finally woken up and seen that painting cute bike symbols on arterials is lunacy. Bikeways should be laid out on sidestreets wherever possible, which is most places. Those "sharrows" are nothing more than invitations to injury and death when painted on busy arterials. ...

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 6:19 p.m.

It's great to see some (not all!) dams come down, especially those that yield so few benefits compared to their costs. But, sad to see the governor and the Feds apparently fixed on raising the dam at Bumping Lake east of Mt. Rainier, which will destroy some of the last ...

Posted Fri, Oct 14, 6:42 p.m.

Very interesting piece indeed. While the grape growers are much less of a problem than the hay growers and their sprinklers where half the water can blow away, the irrigators as a whole are demanding more and more water and threatening what's left of the Yakima River and its basin. ...

Posted Wed, Oct 12, 9:03 p.m.

I have really come to enjoy having Pete Jackson relieve me of much of the tedium of winnowing out the interesting stories from the chaff that dominates so much of the MSM. Regarding the "New West" and its housing boom, the thing that amazes me is that it lasted so ...

Posted Tue, Oct 4, 8:22 p.m.

I don't understand why most or all plans still use the uppermost Middle Fork Snoqualmie river as a dividing line. The Skykomish - Snoqualmie watershed divide would make much more sense. The bill in Congress now to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in that area is weirdly truncated because of ...

Posted Sun, Oct 2, 9:16 p.m.

The author could have also mentioned that Taft's campaign slogan was "Get On the Raft with Taft!"

Posted Thu, Sep 29, 1:13 p.m.

The Forest service seems to have plenty of money to keep rebuilding many of their thousands of miles of crumbling logging roads-to-nowhere. For how much longer will we see good money poured after bad on them, while roads and everything else where people actually live deteriorate?

Posted Thu, Sep 29, 12:57 p.m.

So we are losing 26 police officers while meanwhile Seattle Public Utilities has how many (dozens?) of people planning and executing "restoration" logging (it's kinda related to "research" whaling,) in the Cedar River watershed, where there was supposed to be no more logging? Just how many people do they actually ...

Posted Mon, Sep 26, 2:19 p.m.

Maybe it's pretty but it would have made way more sense to put it on the Sound. But the developers wanted, and I guess got Point Wells, so the rest of us got to pay to put the thing however many miles inland, and we'll pay forevermore to pump the ...

Posted Thu, Sep 15, 1:06 a.m.

At risk of tarring and feathering (or maybe mossing?) I will agree with most of the list, walrus gargoyles especially, but not Rainier. It's a vast shapeless heap of rubble. Sure, it's big, but so what? Send it to Texas. Give me the symmetry of Glacier Peak, the classic flattop ...

Posted Wed, Sep 14, 1:25 a.m.

Wyatt, how many moons are there revolving around that planet you are living on?

Posted Sun, Sep 11, 11:39 p.m.

Unfortunately, the North Cascades grizzly bear recovery zone has little or no effect on what happens on the ground. The theory is to protect "core security habitat," i.e., blank spots on the map, places without roads or trails. Places where people don't go much, bears not really liking people. It's ...

Posted Tue, Sep 6, 8:44 p.m.

Dismaying. There are many many hard working and productive people at the UW. But there is also a lot of fat. During my time there (admittedly long ago,) I never mixed with anyone at the lofty levels of the people discussed in this article, but I did deal with many ...

Posted Sun, Sep 4, 2:34 a.m.

I don't find the Central District or Capitol Hill the slightest bit dreary. Dingy, maybe, in places, but not dreary.

Posted Fri, Sep 2, 12:16 a.m.

I can hardly imagine anyplace more dreary than most of those "rural clusters." Cheapo, stapled together strand board. Future slums? More like instant slums I'd say. There won't be much to salvage from them, and one thing they will never be is photogenic ruins. Just a pile of sheetrock dust ...

Posted Tue, Aug 30, 10:40 p.m.

Ron Paul is right on (IMHO) on some issues, such as calling for the reigning in of big banks and bringing home the Imperial troops scattered all around the globe. Hugely important issues that just about everyone else ignores totally. Yet he seems to be an utter nutcase in other ...

Posted Tue, Aug 30, 10:24 p.m.

"the winners are the Libyan people..." I hope you are right. This is an issue where good and bad seem so thoroughly mixed up that I don't know how to even begin to form an opinion. Would NATO have bombed Qaddafi if Libya didn't have light sweet crude? I'd like ...

Posted Tue, Aug 30, 10:14 p.m.

It's amazing to see many of the autoroutes in Europe where tunnels and viaducts make the road hardly a barrier at all to crossing animals, wild and domestic. Here all we do is move earth, lots and lots of it. And another huge problem here is the hundreds of thousands ...

Posted Mon, Aug 22, 8:52 a.m.

I wouldn't worry too much about the loss of ruins, though I agree those ones have a certain charm. We'll have plenty of ruins once fuel gets expensive.

Posted Thu, Aug 18, 12:54 a.m.

I thought "the West" ended at the crests of the Cascades and Sierra - "the West" being that mythic place where real Americans live subsidized lives while ranting on about getting the gubmint off their backs. Or am I confusing the map of Ronald Reagan's view of America with that ...

Posted Wed, Aug 17, 12:18 p.m.

Good to hear some good news for a change. Go 'Hamsters!

Posted Wed, Aug 17, 4:04 a.m.

Time to sell up and move out I think, before getting taxed to death to pay for a hole that will never be finished.

Posted Tue, Aug 16, 11:14 p.m.

Thank you, crossrip, for the distressing take on rail finances. At least we will hopefully get something useful out of it, unlike the car tunnel. Oil is getting scarce and the dollars we buy it with are being printed by the trillions. Can the 5 percent of the world's population ...

Posted Mon, Aug 15, 8:53 p.m.

It is interesting how so few of those who profess concern about climate change seem inclined to make any personal changes to slow their contributions to it. Likely none of us are without sin, but one almost hopes there is a special circle in hell reserved for those who make ...

Posted Mon, Aug 15, 8:16 p.m.

Hard to believe, when you see the Rapture awaiting crazies who have taken over the party these days, just how many good Republicans there once were. Rep. John Saylor of Pennsylvania fought for years to save places and pass the Wilderness Act. He'd be run out of today's Republican party ...

Posted Sat, Aug 13, 2:27 a.m.

France offers beauty and charm in many of the things that have been made by its people. The U.S. offers a million indistinguishable strip malls, the "geography of nowhere." Here in the NW we do have ancient forests and reasonably wild places that people haven't yet gotten their hands on ...

Posted Sat, Aug 13, 2:05 a.m.

Regarding the idea of letting side streets revert to gravel, there are a number of things to consider. Gravel is nothing at all like vegetated soil, it is practically impermeable. Not only does water run off of it like it does off pavement, it also takes a lot of the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 10, 4:22 a.m.

Would that be a cashectomy? There are plenty of good reasons not to put a coal port in Whatcom county but this may not be one of them.

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 10:23 p.m.

Saying he "championed timber policies...opposed by enviros" is an understatement. Hatfield, Scoop and Maggie funneled hundreds of millions every year to carve logging roads across NW National Forests, a legacy that will never go away. But that was just business as usual. Hard to believe the Republican tent was big ...

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 10:05 p.m.

Great article, thanks. Even out here in lil' ole' Lake City I will occasionally waken to the sound of eagles in one of the tall fir trees, before the inevitable murder of crows shows up. I too have noticed, happily, the decline of starling numbers. Twenty years ago they were ...

Posted Thu, Aug 4, 2:12 a.m.

BlueLight, I doubt that the "salmon savers" (by that I assume you mean the hatchery crowd,) want the state to go bankrupt. If it does, there goes their gravy train. Like most parasites, they want to extract the maximum nourishment from their host without killing it. But there are so ...

Posted Wed, Aug 3, 2:36 a.m.

Just think, in serious countries passenger trains aren't the mistreated orphans they are here, forced to wait for coal trains, pig trains, garbage trains. In serious countries passenger trains actually have their own, dedicated rights of way - can you believe it? It's true, I've seen it, I tell you ...

Posted Wed, Aug 3, 1:14 a.m.

Very informative article. Let's remember that the U.S. is five percent of the world's population burning twenty five percent of its oil, paid for by little more than printing up things called dollars by the trillions. Not a situation likely to last much longer. Must we burn up the last ...

Posted Wed, Aug 3, 12:37 a.m.

Unbelievable how people just can't leave anything alone. What a way to squander the opportunity of getting those dams out. Just like the forestry crowd that always, always thinks it can grow forests better than unassisted nature, the fish crowd always thinks they know better too. No amount of evidence ...

Posted Sun, Jul 31, 12:40 a.m.

Say what you will about the place, it is possessed of the finest views of the Cascades to be had of any place on Puget Sound. From there one looks upon them in their serried ranks, a glorious panoply marred not by blocking foothills. A scene of beauty, where every ...

Posted Wed, Jul 27, 10:58 p.m.

It's too bad there is little or no requirement to build quality buildings. When I see what is being built in Vancouver BC and compare it to the soon-to-be-if-not-already slums that have gone up in my "urban village" of Lake City, I cringe.

Posted Wed, Jul 27, 10:24 p.m.

Give me good surface water, stuff that has bounced its way down a creekbed, nice and churned up and aerated. Pity those poor souls who live in fear of giardia, fearing to drink the best water in the world, lugging around filters, throwing iodine in, boiling (ugh!) Does it even ...

Posted Sat, Jul 23, 4:24 p.m.

So Emmett Watson was a........phony? What tangled webs we weave here. Tell people to stay away because you really want them to come. But maybe they'll see through that one, meaning we should really tell them to come, if we want them to stay away. In any case. tourists and ...

Posted Tue, Jul 19, 5:50 p.m.

If the deep tunnel gets the go ahead it seems the most likely outcome is failure, just like with the crazy decision to put Brightwater miles away from Puget Sound. Expect Seattle property taxes to go parabolic. I think it will be time to sell up and get away while ...

Posted Tue, Jul 19, 3:33 a.m.

As well as yet another misuse of that hackneyed phrase "perfect storm."

Posted Thu, Jul 14, 2:33 p.m.

It's just madness that we have soldiers in those far away places, apparently so a very few people can grow very rich off it. Comparing Iraq and Afghanistan to Nazi Germany is beyond ludicrous. I don't see how there is any chance of getting through to someone who thinks there ...

Posted Thu, Jul 14, 10:38 a.m.

Since when is coal "harvested?" I guess there are no longer such things as mining or logging, or extraction of organs from condemned Chinese prisoners. Just "harvesting."

Posted Fri, Jul 8, 11:07 p.m.

I just wonder how much longer the USA will be able to get all sorts of things from the rest of the world in exchange for dollars, which we create by the trillions out of nothing. I guess it will go on until one day it doesn't.

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 11:41 p.m.

This tunnel idea is so twentieth century. Does anyone really think America will continue to burn 25% of the world's oil output much longer? If we're going to go in debt, let's at least do it for something that will be of some use post-Happy Motoring. Are we going to ...

Posted Sun, Jul 3, midnight

You can add putting the "Brightwater" sewage plant in Woodinville rather than on the shore at Point Wells to that list of lunacies. If and when oil gets expensive (probably not much "if" there,) we'll see minds concentrated to where the Milwaukee grade and many others may be rebuilt for ...

Posted Sat, Jul 2, 6:20 p.m.

Thanks, John Crosby. I well remember teenaged journeys east from Everett to Wenatchee through the Stevens Pass tunnel back when there were still open boxcars on almost every train, and friendly employees who rather enjoyed having the occasional "passenger." I also remember staggering to the door upon exiting the tunnel ...

Posted Fri, Jul 1, 9:43 p.m.

Great story. Y'all know that putting rails back down on the "Iron Horse Trail," and some others too, may make a lot of sense to people in the future. Meanwhile, it is a wonderful trail. The tunnel is open to mtn. bikes. The gradient on the west side seems just ...

Posted Fri, Jul 1, 12:05 a.m.

Yes, really quite a wonderful place despite the ring roads, and not really all that "far" from the downtown. And one that would be much improved by pushing cars out. No doubt Mossback (oh, sorry, I see he didn't write this,) remembers the days when one could drive all the ...

Posted Mon, Jun 27, 10:38 p.m.

Oh dear, not another hiker worried that he might have to share the Cascades with grizzly bears. Didn't Ed Abbey say something along the lines of "it ain't Wilderness unless there is something that can kill you and eat you?" Just kidding, just kidding! Not that it happens much, or ...

Posted Tue, Jun 21, 7:25 p.m.

The author notes that people don't seem to have stopped driving, here or anywhere. I've noticed the same thing. But were oil to be more properly priced, as in accounting for the destruction in the tar sands country, or the costs of the giant military machine the U.S. maintains in ...

Posted Mon, Jun 20, 2:47 a.m.

I suppose one has to draw a line somewhere when making a map, but it does seem a bit arbitrary to exclude the entire Fraser watershed above the Nahatlatch River. I like your northern boundary near Yuculta rapids, where the Douglas firs and madronas abruptly end, and suddenly one is ...

Posted Sat, Jun 18, 12:43 a.m.

Why aren't we doing it? Probably because a small number of wealthy and influential people are determined to squeeze as much money as possible from continuing to do it the way we have been - or, "not do" it, as the case may be.

Posted Fri, Jun 10, 7:31 p.m.

I thank the gods that McGinn is doing what he can to stand up to the tunnel lobbies. Ever heard of Peak Oil? Ever thought of where most oil comes from (hint: not the U.S.A.) Ever thought about what we trade for that oil (answer: pieces of paper, or nowadays ...

Posted Thu, Jun 9, 12:31 p.m.

If Mt. Rainier National Park had been shifted 20 miles in any direction instead of encompassing just that heap of rubble, we'd have had a far finer National Park. But alas, it was not to be. In those days giant trees were looked upon as pernicious weeds to be gotten ...

Posted Mon, Jun 6, 9:16 p.m.

Well, GaryP, didn't Ronald Reagan and James Watt tell us all along how polluting those dirty trees were?

Posted Sun, May 22, 1:11 a.m.

Seems like just about every institution ends up being captured by the people who run it, turning it into a nice little earner. Not just KUOW, but far too much of the whole UW.

Posted Mon, May 16, 5:32 p.m.

I don't think anyone is saying it's not a great place, or that it doesn't deserve protection. It's just that this plan gives away way too much in exchange for protecting a smallish part of it. Rhapsodize, but verify!

Posted Sun, May 15, 11:31 a.m.

ChickenButt, thanks again, I have read everything I can find on your website about this and studied the map. It still looks to me like a deal for 215,000 acres of Wilderness (good) for tripling the timber cut elsewhere (not so good.) Sorry, but I just don't believe your vision ...

Posted Sat, May 14, 8:28 p.m.

Since I'm on the internet right now, and never use my computer when I'm not, it sounds fine to me. And, if it means no more suffering with the ever-decaying Windows OS (which I assume it does,) so much the better.

Posted Sat, May 14, 7:56 p.m.

Thanks for the info, ChickenButt. I'm sorry to say this still sounds full of holes to me. The Colville National Forest website says that there are 1.1 million acres there. So I'm not sure how you would be "protecting two thirds of the landscape." I think I understand the 215,000 ...

Posted Fri, May 13, 7:36 p.m.

Yes, those mountains in the picture are somewhere else all right. Not mentioned in the article is that this "collaboration" would triple the timber cut on the Colville National Forest, taking it way beyond what even the traditionally timber-mad Forest Service thinks it ought to be. The areas that would ...

Posted Fri, Mar 18, 12:56 a.m.

When the day comes that 5 percent of the world's population in the US no longer gets to burn 25 percent of the world's oil, then we'll see who is "telling people how to live." It won't be pretty.

Posted Thu, Feb 24, 9:18 p.m.

I am in favor of high density urban living. For other people.

Posted Thu, Feb 24, 8:49 p.m.

While it sounds as though the BNSF railroad chose not to assist the author, this article could benefit from some study of where rail lines are, and what kind of terrain they cross, none of which is any secret. Some basic map reading skills could really help. The author states ...

Posted Thu, Feb 24, 7:56 p.m.

Let's think before encouraging renting cars to visitors from mainland China, though. Red lights don't mean the same thing there as they supposedly do here.

Posted Thu, Feb 24, 7:37 p.m.

And there is good reason for that reluctance to celebrate, that anti-hubris. Boeing's loyalty to the "hometown" is zero, and they could build the thing in South Carolina, or farther away. Somehow I doubt they'll learn much from the 787 snap-together disaster.

Posted Sat, Feb 19, 1:33 a.m.

The Valhalla Wilderness Society in British Columbia has been trying to save part of the Incomappleux River valley in the Selkirk Mountains just south of tiny Glacier National Park. They call it "inland rainforest." Among some of the amazing cedar trees there (in places you'd swear you were within a ...

Posted Thu, Feb 3, 3:06 a.m.

Glad you told me it was Mt. Baker, I never would have guessed.

Posted Fri, Jan 28, 11:57 p.m.

Cocktails42, I agree wholeheartedly, the option of retrofitting the viaduct has gotten very short shrift. The deep tunnel they want to bore will be below sea level. It will forever depend on high-maintenance pumps and power systems to stay dry, lit and usable. As we enter the era of ever ...

Posted Wed, Jan 26, 2:55 a.m.

Not to be too blunt about it, but in the above photo Wilbur certainly looks like someone from the hard riight. Appearance-wise, that is.

Posted Tue, Jan 25, 8:09 p.m.

I was very interested and pleased to learn that Reagan's ranch has been successfully preserved. I well remember how he was regarded as a very good steward of the place, even as he appointed James Watt and Anne Gorsuch to take care of the lands that belong to the rest ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 1:24 a.m.

Someday, hopefully before the oil entirely runs out, we'll need to bring back yet more of these abandoned lines, like the former Milwaukee Road (it was even electrified,) route over Snoqualmie, which is also a (very nice) bike trail apart from its strange monicker of "John Wayne Trail" (don't ask...) ...

Posted Wed, Jan 19, 10:52 p.m.

How much did they sink in to the ill conceived Sonic Cruiser program, to produce a plane that would have burned 40 percent more fuel to go ten (or less,) percent faster? Only people who believed oil would stay at 10 bucks a barrel forever could have believed in it. ...

Posted Wed, Jan 12, 6 a.m.

Seems like "housing prices through the stratosphere" are the least of anyone's worries.

Posted Wed, Jan 12, 5:40 a.m.

With the state and country littered with McMansions that nobody wants, who will be buying all this sprawl development? It seems this land is so overbuilt with single family housing that half the country could move in with the other half and hardly be inconvenienced. I suppose the very last ...

Posted Wed, Jan 12, 5:02 a.m.

What pray tell are DBT and CRC?

Posted Sat, Jan 8, 7:55 p.m.

The previous commenter is correct. U.S. passenger rail is a joke but even the Economist magazine in a recent analysis seems to think that freight is the best in the world. So it's not the infrastructure that's bad, it's the way the owners of it choose to use it. As ...

Posted Fri, Dec 31, 1:25 a.m.

Interesting. They really managed to create and maintain the illusion that they were doing good for many decades. Anyone know where one might find some of their old calendars, the ones with happy animals playing in a near-pristine landscape with maybe a tiny bit of logging visible way off in ...

Posted Tue, Dec 28, 6:44 p.m.

Isn't the traditional way to deal with east - west spillover to run the connection along the Columbia? Makes more sense than a jump across the Cascades anywhere north. The NE King County idea is intriguing. A couple of related questions come to mind. The current 2nd / 8th boundary ...

Posted Sun, Dec 26, 4:26 p.m.

Not often I agree with Blue Light but he raises some tough questions. Hard to believe, but just maybe David Dicks was the person for PSP and the person for UW but still it looks bad bad bad......hard to see how this kind of stuff helps Puget Sound or anywhere ...

Posted Wed, Dec 22, 11:32 p.m.

Good! That really is a remarkable change.

Posted Tue, Dec 21, 5:51 p.m.

Calling this article "a bit of a PR piece" is a model of understatement. Why is this person at REI when she should be travelling the land laying hands upon the halt, sick and lame? If only one tenth of this article is true then it marks a huge transformation ...

Posted Sat, Dec 11, 4:31 p.m.

Why on Earth are we still subsidizing the logging of National Forests, which provides a hndful of jobs at best, at tremendous cost?

Posted Wed, Dec 8, 5:29 p.m.

Very interesting article. Should "leak hydrogen," be "leak nitrogen?"

Posted Wed, Dec 8, 5:17 p.m.

I just hope we get something usable in place, low, moderate or "high' speed. The cheap oil's gonna disappear...soon. Besides all the many efficiencies of scale that trains have over buses, they are just way more attractive to travel on in numerous ways, as several commenters note. No one has ...

Posted Tue, Dec 7, 9:03 p.m.

I fear that someday, perhaps not long off, the paving over of the best soils near Seattle will look like a very bad decision. The "food fairy trucks" not only depend on cheap oil themselves, but so does the whole infrastructure of converting calories of fossil fuel into calories of ...

Posted Tue, Dec 7, 8:38 p.m.

We absolutely need to fully fund LWCF. What is the Obama administration doing to make it happen? Something, I hope. Closer to home, we have an admittedly modest but loclly very significant bill to add Pratt River and Middle Fork Snoqualmie lowland forests to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Passed the ...

Posted Sat, Dec 4, 9:33 p.m.

It seems like a strange kind of journalism that demands secrets stay secret.

Posted Mon, Nov 29, 8:52 p.m.

Another interesting piece from Bob Simmons, one of my favorite Crosscut writers. I just hope it isn't too late to salvage something closer to self sufficiency from the wreckage of what was once a real economy. There was never any real need to export and dismantle the productive part of ...

Posted Wed, Nov 17, 4:47 p.m.

I'm sure the KING operation was less than perfect even in "Camelot" days, but it was way better than any TV operation I have ever dealt with subsequently. Bob Simmons was a big part of that. No doubt the Bullitt foundation has done many good things but I have been ...

Posted Fri, Nov 12, 2:35 a.m.

Let's hope the new lines are better than the old ones, which include some really strange anomalies, such as the upper Middle Fork Snoqualmie river forming a totally illogical boundary between the 2nd and 8th. A result of that is that the bill currently in Congress to expand the Alpine ...

Posted Fri, Nov 12, 2:22 a.m.

I just thank God that the water from the tar sands flows the other way... I just hope God helps those on the receiving end. Why indeed did they choose this particular route? Why not east from Prince Rupert?

Posted Sat, Nov 6, 5:59 p.m.

I was lucky to meet Epstein once and lucky to have spent some time near Yesler in the late 70's. A remarkable number of stately trees (now sadly mostly gone,) made it a very pleasant place, not at all like one imagines "the projects." I suppose next time around they ...

Posted Sun, Oct 31, 1:10 a.m.

Not too many years ago one could with just a tiny bit of surrepetition enjoy almost all of the wonderful coastline between Seattle and Everett thanks to the RR having kept houses off most of it. But a few people who wanted to end it all but still let their ...

Posted Wed, Oct 27, 12:56 a.m.

The previous commenter who thinks Oregon has done everything better than Washington overstates things. Yes, some things are better, notably containment of sprawl, but some things are far worse. Take a good look at a map of Oregon and you will find far less "dark green" of National Parks and ...

Posted Wed, Oct 27, 12:23 a.m.

Agree fully with the previous commentor about the anti bike hatred coming too often from a demographic that will hopefully soon be taking it to their graves. I myself hope to avoid an early grave by staying away from cars as much as possible while on a bike. A paint ...

Posted Fri, Oct 22, 8:27 p.m.

Call me contrarian, but I liked it better when Seward Park trails, and many others, were just sorta "out there," and didn't need to be officialized, delineated and named..... But I guess benign neglect can too easily become malignant neglect, so I do get it, to some extent. I do ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 6:04 p.m.

mikerol, there were never goats in the Olympics, just like there were never grizzly bears there, only black bears. Goats were not introduced there to replace anything, they were put there to provide hunting targets.

Posted Sun, Oct 17, 9:19 p.m.

One more reason, not that any are needed, to get rid of these destructive, and now dangerous, non-native animals which were imported to the Olympics from the Selkirk mtns, back in the 1920's. It's bad enough that they are destroying alpine plants not adapted to them, and have multiplied and ...

Posted Thu, Sep 30, 11:16 p.m.

Interesting article. I was fortunate to take a class or two from Prof. Morrill during my college days, and enjoyed them. I just don't understand his continuing love affair with the "freedom of the car" and suburban sprawl. Whatever one thinks of them, they look to soon be overwhelmed by ...

Posted Thu, Sep 30, 12:02 a.m.

It really is saddening to see a blame-the-little-guy piece like this in Crosscut.

Posted Wed, Sep 29, 11:54 p.m.

Serial catowner observes that the price of fuel could double at any time. That seems downright optimistic when one considers that the only reason that Americans, 5% of the world, still manage to consume 20 to 25% of its oil, is that these things called dollars are still of some ...

Posted Wed, Sep 22, 11:26 p.m.

I'm glad to hear that some are finally questioning the "thinning" dogma. Thinning to "reduce fire danger" has been going on for nearly two decades now. The Forest Service loves to show the "before and after" shots of "overgrown, fire-prone thickets" converted into clean, tidy, open forests of well spaced ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 5:44 p.m.

dbreneman, I think he is referring to how freeway roadbeds and bridges are built to withstand (hopefully,) loads of 17,000 pounds per axle, which I believe is the still the chunky N. American truck standard. Obviously, it would be much cheaper to build them to withstand lighter loads, as with ...

Posted Tue, Aug 31, 8:44 p.m.

A good article, except for the potshot against light rail at the end. OK, so it doesn't carry that many people right now. But have MacDonald and the other rail detractors ever heard of peak oil? Ever thought that maybe the five (or so,) percent of the world's population in ...

Posted Tue, Aug 31, 8:19 p.m.

Interesting article, thanks. Would love to try a ride but it's a little pricey. Didn't the U.S. have a monopoly on helium in the 30's? Where does it come from now? There was a PBS program a few years back that seemed to exonerate hydrogen as the culprit in the ...

Posted Sat, Aug 28, 1:11 a.m.

What? Charge more for health insurance for people who allow their bodies to fall into rack and ruin? Makes way too much sense for it to ever happen here.

Posted Mon, Aug 23, 12:21 a.m.

Just a guess, but maybe because there is only one of him? Or, maybe he is doing what he can for faraway places too. This is a great article, just the kind I read Crosscut for.

Posted Sun, Aug 22, 12:40 a.m.

One other item to note is that Ruth, though a wonderful, energetic woman, was of the era and mindset that all trails were good, and that there should be trails pretty much everywhere. She was an advocate of flagging out new routes, and more than once I heard her enthuse ...

Posted Sun, Aug 22, 12:26 a.m.

I stand corrected. Knew about the dam and powerhouse but not that the RR first went up the canyon. Must've been too many curves? Another little known fact about the GN is that they had an informal policy of tolerating freight hopping riders who didn't damage anything, which even lasted ...

Posted Thu, Aug 19, 11:20 p.m.

Interesting history, and the plug for the Highway 99 tunnel at the end took me entirely by surprise! Many tunnels have indeed been dug successfully in the past. But if it's that easy, why is there is now a very expensive machine stuck far below Lake Forest Park? One other ...

Posted Sun, Aug 15, 12:43 a.m.

Yuck. And they are also about the ugliest things afloat.

Posted Fri, Aug 13, 3:12 a.m.

The city isn't helping this potential cottage builder. To convert an "accessory structure" built to code eight years ago into an ADU "cottage," I would need to bring it up to current energy code. Sounds great, but in this case the only possible way to convert the R-11 walls to ...

Posted Tue, Aug 10, 12:35 a.m.

I too wish we could move toward darker skies for the reasons Knute relates. But we don't want to become as dark as N. Korea. Maybe this is off-topic, but some worry that if there is a big landslide into the reservoir behind Mica Dam, farthest upriver of the Columbia ...

Posted Tue, Aug 3, 2:34 a.m.

Interesting article, but I still don't know if it's a good deal for the boreal forest or not. With so many enviro campaigns out there aimed at harvesting money from well meaning but poorly informed donors, skepticism is in order, here and elsewhere.

Posted Sat, Jul 17, 1:35 a.m.

jmrolls has it right. Retrofitting the Viaduct would work. There are just too many things that can, and will, go wrong if a DBT is attempted. Geez, they can't even get the Brightwater tunnel done, and a deep bore downtown tunnel would be far more challenging and risky, orders of ...

Posted Fri, Jul 16, 1:10 a.m.

Wow! Yum! I'm off to get some if I can, having enjoyed them many times in France, where they are commonplace. I like 'em gutted but with the bones and heads on - love that crunch! Lemon, garlic, a little salt....but no butter, please! Let's hope a market develops here ...

Posted Sat, Jul 10, 1:21 p.m.

What I don't understand is why so many bikers choose to duke it out with the cars on arterials when there are usually (though not always,) multiple parallel side streets to ride on? And, why does the city designate as bike routes many of these same arterials that are manifestly ...

Posted Wed, Jul 7, 3:16 a.m.

Never mind "high speed" - if we could just manage to rebuild some semblance of any real rail service in this area and country, that would be miracle enough. Probably won't happen until the oil price climbs sufficiently to put the profit back in it for the private corporations.

Posted Sat, Jul 3, 1:10 p.m.

Another American who thinks the wogs begin at the water's edge. I'd much rather watch a bunch of fit looking guys who actually do something than a bunch of steroid-fed monsters who seem to mostly stand around and/or line up, punctuated by running into each other and falling down once ...

Posted Mon, Jun 28, 12:57 a.m.

Well, EKCRL, speaking of jobs, and "explaining," at least you can take comfort in knowing that this dean we just read about has hired the ex-Regional Director of The Wilderness Society as her flack (excuse me, spokesperson......) no doubt for a salary well into the six figures....... I guess the ...

Posted Wed, May 26, 2:33 a.m.

A trivial point, but I always liked the way you sometimes saw his HHH initials melded together (can't do it on these computer gizmos.)

Posted Thu, May 20, 11:37 a.m.

Oops, make that one decade.

Posted Thu, May 20, 11:37 a.m.

While the Lewis & Clark story will always fascinate, more attention needs to be given to Alexander Mackenzie, who preceded them overland to the Pacific (or salt water, at least, at Bella Coola,) by almost two decades. The Mackenzie story still awaits PR to compete with L & C.

Posted Fri, Apr 23, 2:29 p.m.

The article makes many good points. While Jackson could be considered a conservationist by the standards of his day, it's worth remembering that: The Park and Wilderness areas he is credited with were invariably drawn to exclude trees and dammable rivers. "Wilderness On The Rocks" is something we are trying ...

Posted Fri, Apr 16, 1:55 a.m.

I hope you are right about trends changing. Mike McGinn has made some missteps, but he is spot on about the need to change the 520 bridge to accommodate rail. Oil comes from faraway places with people who don't much like us. We somehow still manage to suck up a ...

Posted Fri, Apr 16, 1:16 a.m.

Interesting and thought provoking article and proposal. Sending food and rebuilding structures is of course necessary, but unless big steps to rebuild the natural foundations of the country such as those outlined here are taken, Haiti will continue its decline. I wish you success. And no, Captain Church, voodoo is ...

Posted Wed, Apr 14, 2:25 a.m.

The common thread here seems to be that big decisions are driven in large part by the real estate mafia. With the AWV, they want it out of there so as to enhance high priced downtown view properties. With (I would say creepily rather than cheerfully named) Brightwater, why does ...

Posted Sat, Mar 27, 4:36 a.m.

Quinn: Satellite radios are not fiendishly complicated technical devices. You obviously use a computer, which is likely much more complex. Satellite radio requires only a clear view of the southern sky for its antenna, and even that is unnecessary in most areas near Seattle, where ground transmitters offer coverage. You ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 4:48 a.m.

Anything - anything - would be an improvement over what KING FM has sunk to. I can't understand why anyone would listen to it when satellite radio offers straight up commercial free music for a very modest fee. I would never think of subjecting myself to it. Let's hope the ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 4:30 a.m.

There are many unanswered questions here. Both the threat of continuing conversion of forestlands into subdivisions, and of turning wood into energy on a large scale, presuppose the continuing availability of relatively inexpensive fossil fuel energy. Extracting energy from waste streams from things already happening obviously makes sense. I would ...

Posted Sun, Mar 7, 3:06 a.m.

When I read about yet more concern for the Montlake neighborhood I started wondering if Knute wasn't being a bit tongue-in-cheek here. But then he brought up saving the ramps to nowhere and I knew he was serious.

Posted Sat, Feb 6, midnight

It appears the infomercials have metastatized from KING to Crosscut. When I hear KING FM, I hear a cow being mercilessly milked for every last painful drop. The satellite classical offerings are far from perfect, but how anyone could voluntarily choose listening to KING when they are available is beyond ...

Posted Fri, Feb 5, 11:42 p.m.

Please, God, make me good. But not quite yet.

Posted Mon, Jan 11, 12:37 a.m.

Far as I'm concerned, nothing will ever quite compare to real old shortwave. Not only could you hear the most amazing stuff from far away, it sounded like it was coming from far away...which could be good or bad...but almost always interesting. Sadly, it's just about dead now, still hanging ...

Posted Sun, Dec 13, 2:26 a.m.

Thanks for the info. Good comments. Care to share those unrelated reasons as to why no more Nooksack water? One suggestion to all: use the word "cut" instead of the industry's euphemism "harvest," with its overtones of honest toil and peasant life. Score a big one for the industry in ...

Posted Thu, Dec 10, 12:17 a.m.

And isn't there a Russian Tupolev 144 or two still being flown, one by NASA?

Posted Thu, Dec 10, 12:08 a.m.

Interesting piece of good news. Lake Whatcom is "source of Bham's water." Apparently some comes from the Middle Fork Nooksack first? Perhaps the author could explain the mechanics of the system some time.

Posted Tue, Dec 1, 4:42 a.m.

And how about prisons for violent criminals instead of the nonviolent perpetrators of victimless "crimes?"

Posted Wed, Nov 25, 10:57 p.m.

With all the stationbreaks, even "non-commercial" radio can be tiring to listen to. I've been tempted to take a stopwatch and measure how much actual programming there is during some hours, but I'm afraid of what I'd find. I take refuge in BBC via XM / Sirius, but they too ...

Posted Sat, Oct 3, 3:18 a.m.

Thanks, dbreneman, for the history behind the death of KING broadcasting. While I do not doubt that the Bullitt Foundation has probably done worthy things, I believe that Seattle and Washington state would have been far better served had KING TV stayed alive instead. What has the plethora of enviro ...

Posted Fri, Oct 2, 2:57 a.m.

I agree fully with dbreneman. KING has been used as a cash cow, and run dry. The author touches all too briefly on the vulgarity of the commercials that blight its broadcasts. How, or why, anyone would listen is beyond me. The classic offerings on satellite may not be perfect, ...

Posted Wed, Sep 23, 11:52 p.m.

And there was also Dr. Ruth on Sunday nights (I think) and Dr. Demento too. Some of the many "flights of the JET."

Posted Mon, Sep 21, 11:40 p.m.

I agree they are a good idea in principle, but 800 square foot structures on 4000 square foot lots is way too big, and will guarantee the disappearance of much of what is left of Seattle's "urban forest." 800 square feet is a house, not a "cottage." The size of ...

Posted Wed, Sep 16, 11:39 p.m.

Great article. Some of the ideas, like colonizing underused industrial and other areas, are so good one wonders how it didn't happen long ago. And a Seattle without trees is a Seattle I wouldn't want to live in.

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 2:36 a.m.

I wouldn't quite equate Snoqualmie Ridge with Hurricane Ridge - but I take your point.

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 2:31 a.m.

But why the picture of what looks like Mt. Stuart?

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 2:30 a.m.

For sure, it's those days you remember far more than the "perfect" cloudless ones.

Posted Sun, Sep 6, 5:54 a.m.

Why are these dangerous things being painted on to arterial routes when usually there are multiple sidestreets running parallel? Is there some bureaucratic rationale that says sidestreets can't be used because of uncontrolled intersections? One would have to be a suicidal maniac to ride a bike on most of Seattle's ...

Posted Thu, Aug 20, 12:45 p.m.

I for one am glad we made that decision to not burden ourselves with the Olympics. As the previous commenter states, we would have been saddled with decades worth of debt, and property and other taxes would have climbed by more than they otherwise have. I will never understand this ...

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 11:39 p.m.

Yeah, gimme Waterville any day. I've always thought there is something very un-Bavarian about the dryish landscapes around Leavenworth. But hey, reportedly the Germans have more than one Wild West themed tourist trap, so there you have it.

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 11:32 p.m.

I propose another litmus test of Everett street cred: Greenchain. Not as in "do you know what it is (or was?") but as in "did you pull it?" I did.

Posted Fri, Jul 31, 4:04 p.m.

Whatever the details of the algae problem, it's undeniable that Bellingham has been lethargic, if not negligent, about securing its water supply. (The article doesn't mention that water is first diverted from the Middle Fork Nooksack to Lake Whatcom, which although it is a large lake, has itself a relatively ...

Posted Sun, Jul 26, 1:54 a.m.

Everett is, or at least is built on, a beautiful place, with the bay on the west, the Snohomish valley to the east, and the full Baker to Rainier panoply making what I consider to be by far the best mountain view of any city on Puget Sound. A place ...

Posted Wed, Jun 24, 8:23 p.m.

While I think I understand the attractions, I can't help but wonder about whether this new interest in Heritage Areas will really accomplish much. I hadn't heard of the Columbia River one, but the Mountains to Sound Greenway wants to designate the whole I-90 corridor, including the entire city of ...

Posted Wed, Jun 24, 6:59 p.m.

Thanks, JBC, I guess my impressions about the inaccessibility of the North Shore mountains are out of date. I'm glad to hear there are now more ways to get to them 'cuz there sure weren't 15 or 20 years ago. I'm not sure that anything could ever tempt me to ...

Posted Wed, Jun 24, 12:02 a.m.

I know we are mostly talking built environment here, but I find Seattle's natural environment more pleasing. The BC Lower Mainland has always felt confined to me, in many ways. The mountains are closer but seem difficult to get to or otherwise unattractive, with ugly (to me,) ski areas and ...

Posted Sun, Jun 21, 1:36 a.m.

My sense is that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of underworked, overpaid sinecures at the UW. Probably very few of them will be axed, they'll jettison the productive people instead.

Posted Thu, Jun 18, 5:37 p.m.

It's not so much the actual people that adversely affect wild country as the infrastructure required to get them there. Specifically, roads, and even trails in a few instances. There are a number of beauty spots that are normally reached by long roads penetrating deeply into wild country. Often these ...

Posted Sun, May 10, 12:03 a.m.

How about a look at the SPU warm bodies who "manage" the Cedar River watershed through such niceties as "eco-logging?" Eco-logging that loses money and leave behind a mess. And you thought there was no more logging there? Silly you. Eighty plus employees need to justify their paychecks. Can you ...

Posted Tue, May 5, 11:35 p.m.

Well, "Get On The Raft With Taft!" as they used to say.....

Posted Fri, Apr 24, 2:18 a.m.

Wonderful article. I SO miss the old KING TV. Confession: I wish the family had kept it rather than set up the foundation. Especially now. There are plenty of foundations but there was only one KING TV.

Posted Fri, Apr 24, 1:55 a.m.

Thanks for a great article. If something like Falcon Ridge (gotta love that name...) goes ahead, we might as well end the charade, stop worrying about the Sound or anywhere else, and just...give up.

Posted Fri, Apr 24, 1:19 a.m.

Why are we still arguing about this? Good article, though I had to force myself to read it. The National Forests were always the leftovers, the places Friedrich Weyerhaeuser didn't want more than a century ago. The timber industry got, and still has just about all the really good tree ...

Posted Sat, Mar 7, 4:37 a.m.

Right on, kieth. And how about property tax that measures how many minutes per day one is actually in one's house? Maybe the smoke measuring chip and the house monitoring one could be combined for simplicity. A tax for sidewalks could measure how much one walks every day... If Maggie ...

Posted Mon, Feb 16, 6:54 p.m.

What Morrill fails to note is that much of the suburban / exurban infrastructure of the last half century will likely be rendered, if not useless, at least undesirable in future. Will the U.S. be able to continue using 25 to 30 percent of the world's oil for much longer? ...

Posted Mon, Feb 2, 3:26 a.m.

Just about all the good timberland is private land and those lands can easily supply all the wood we will ever need. (See: Timberlands, Industrial) The National Forests were the dregs left over from the Great Barbecue, mountainous, the places Fredrich Weyerhaeuser didn't want. So yeah, let's leave 'em alone, ...

Posted Sun, Feb 1, 3 a.m.

Important facts and context are indeeed missing from this piece, but they probably aren't the ones eastkingcountyrednecklogger is thinking of. The word "restoration" has now been diluted to the point where it can mean just about anything, good or bad. The author mentions the "timber industry" and "Pyramid Lumber" as ...

Posted Tue, Jan 27, 8:30 p.m.

I'm totally in favor of it, Knute, it's an idea that should have legs. It'll take somebody with drive to push it through. And let's change Mt. Baker back to Koma Kulshan while we're at it. Adams and St. Helens should be reconsidered as well. And congratulations to whoever found ...

Posted Thu, Jan 22, 4:06 p.m.

Good article, thanks for shedding some light on the ridiculousness of foresters yet again thinking they can somehow out-do Nature. Gotta hand it to them, they never give up. Maybe this borders on a personal peeve, but how about using the word "cutting" to describe logging rsather than "harvest" with ...

Posted Thu, Jan 22, 3:49 p.m.

It's good to go "back there" every so often (but not too often,) and experience that biting air so you appreciate its mellowness here. P.S. I'm envious.

Posted Sun, Jan 11, 2:24 a.m.

And I'm still missing the old KING broadcasting. At least we got a foundation when we lost that, not that it made up for it. But now this.... thanks Knute, for casting even a little less-than-awful light on it.

Posted Wed, Jan 7, 4:14 a.m.

I couldn't agree more. Go to Europe then come back here and it's amazing how so many things you normally don't notice hit you in the face, from the wastefulness of suburbia, the ugliness of so much of what passes for housing and architecture, the lack of investment in real, ...

Posted Wed, Jan 7, 3:43 a.m.

Let's hear it for steel wheels on steel rails. Two of them, 4 feet 8 1/2 inches apart. Perhaps insufficiently glamorous to some, but it works. Easily switched. 160 years of working out the bugs. Parts available off a shelf. The French have built a wonderful system. Their TGV trains ...

Posted Mon, Jan 5, 2:26 a.m.

Good suggestions all, but as you say, people are people....but I too would sure love to see the legalized loan sharking of the "payday loan" industry curtailed. And for good measure why don't we get rid of the state lottery, which also preys on the poor, though some call it ...

Posted Tue, Dec 16, 7:50 p.m.

Beware "timber Democrats" pushing things like "ecologically based thinning" of forests. DeFazio's proposed legislation, while it might protect some of the few remaining old growth trees, would do so at the expense of greatly increased logging everywhere else. "Ecologically based" logging is a misnomer, sort of along the lines of ...

Posted Tue, Dec 9, 10:43 p.m.

No contest, it's gotta be Bush. As others point out, Nixon did do some good things, some very good things, NEPA for one....Has Bush done anything good at all? I certainly can't think of an example. Nixon may have committed crimes, but nothing remotely on the scale of the colossal ...

Posted Tue, Dec 9, 10:12 p.m.

Sorry, next time I'll read the caption. At least Crosscut isn't following the lead of outlets such as the History Channel, where they regularly insert clips of old silent movies about ancient happenings into "documentaries." I wonder how many Sarah Palin fans think they are seeing actual footage of ancient ...

Posted Tue, Dec 9, 10:05 p.m.

BTW, is that really a photo of Antoine Etienne or just a stock photo of someone else?

Posted Thu, Dec 4, 12:12 a.m.

Antoine wouldn't be a bad name for the creek. While our group (Alpine Lakes Protection Society,) was involved in an effort to keep the Negro Creek valley from being logged 6 or 7 years ago, we looked into the staory behind the name. Antoine Etienne was quite an individual. Born ...

Posted Fri, Nov 28, 10:18 p.m.

Well, perhaps it was a bit gauche considering the audience, but I for one am glad we have someone on our high bench who is unafraid to deliver some home truths.

Posted Mon, Aug 18, 8:10 p.m.

Calendars?: Can anyone tell me where some of Weyerhaeuser's old propaganda calendars might be found? As a kid in Everett I remember seeing them everywhere - they must have been given away by the boatloads. They were classics. Each month outdid the last with some sort of bucolic scene from ...

Posted Mon, Aug 18, 1:02 p.m.

Photo?: That's a photo of Bellevue? I thought it was a photo of the southwest side of Mt. Index........

Posted Sat, Jun 28, 8:12 p.m.

Way Better than the Competition: Whether anonymous or not, I really like that Crosscut's comments are not, at least yet, dominated by the kind of idiots with nothing to say who seem to predominate in all too many of these fora. Not that one can't be a wacko and still ...

Posted Mon, Jun 23, 8:50 p.m.

What About Simplicity?: Thanks, Mr. Berger, for pointing out the slightly less-than-obvious. I have long wondered about the hybrid craze among the presumably enlightened folk who seem to buy and drive the things. A good friend of mine has the same car as me (Honda Civic,) even the same color. ...

Posted Sun, Jun 22, 1:13 a.m.

and......: A note about what that "good stuff" is: mostly 70 to 90 year old formerly railroad logged forest in the lower North Fork Skykomish watershed. Forests that grew back naturally after logging, and that occupy the lowest and most productive sites - which is why they were the first ...

Posted Sun, Jun 22, 1:07 a.m.

A Few More Details: Thank you, Kim, for an interesting essay, I very much like the tone and substance of most of what you say. However....... please allow me to make a few comments, which I hope will be taken positively. First off, thank you for acknowledging that Wilderness is ...