The Crosscut Blog

The Seattle Mariners launched their odyssey through the nation’s glam capitals by showing those who heart New York and Los Angeles that a beat-up ball club struggling to stay at .500 can win on the road, even with Jack Nicholson rooting against it.

“Winning,” while out of town, paradoxically means breaking even. That’s what the M’s did through six games against the Yankees and Dodgers. Just one “W” against the intrepid Red Sox during Independence Day weekend would be considered within the organization as a “successful” 4-5 bicoastal road trip. A sweep in Beantown would mean a ...

The Northwest native Great White Worm of the Palouse country is rarely found. Does that mean it's endangered? I explored that question in story "Is a species endangered if you can't find it?" in 2007. The rarely seen or captured worm was once reported as "abundant" in the rich Palouse topsoil, yet today is almost never seen, and when found, specimens have sometimes been badly damaged.

Environmentalists have renewed their push to have the worm listed as a federally endangered species, and have filed suit to for the issue. The Associated Press reports:

"The giant Palouse earthworm is ...

When six years ago a close relative succumbed to schizophrenia’s delusions, withdrew from family contact because of his paranoia, and started wandering around homeless, I could hardly bear my helplessness to make any difference in his life. So I began trying to make a difference in one or two other lives by spending a sociable hour each week at cafes with individuals who have mental illnesses or who live in Seattle’s tent cities.

My past volunteering had always been as part of a group — sitting on a nonprofit’s board, serving at a feeding kitchen, phone-banking — the kind ...

I'm going through my notes from the Vancouver/Seattle debate and have found a number of interesting tidbits that weren't in my original story. Here's a notebook dump of some odds and ends.

Call it the Lady Godiva Rule

Seattle's Peter Steinbrueck criticized his home town for allowing high-rises to be built too close together, which ruins views, blocks light, and enrages tenants. He noted that Vancouver had done a better job of tower separation. Vancouver's Gordon Price weighed in saying his test was that towers should be spaced such that residents should be able ...

Oregon's business leaders served notice Friday that they won't go quietly into the dark night of tax increases, and some $733 million that the Oregon Legislature is counting on to balance its 2009-2011 budget suddenly seems in serious jeopardy.

Tax opponents announced plans for a citizen referendum, which will require them to gather more than 55,000 signatures for each of the two measures; total costs for the petitioning and campaign are expected to top $1 million at the minimum.

The history of Oregon referendums favors the tax opponents. Since 1970, of 11 citizen referendums on the ballot ...

The world is watching events in Iran. Are the street demonstrations prelude to the overturning of the theocratic regime? Will they spread to other countries in the region, some governed by regimes sustaining themselves through fixed elections? Can they head off Iran's nuclear ambitions?

The unsatisfactory answer to all these questions is almost certainly no. Thus President Barack Obama's hedged and hesitant first reactions to the protests against national elections sustaining the current regime in power.

Iran, without doubt, has been changed. Better educated and younger Iranians have for a long time sought westernization and moderation in their ...

The Seattle Mariners would leave town from the latest home stand 5-1 after the Thursday (June 25) 9-3 trouncing of the San Diego Padres secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t lose 10 times during the upcoming road trip. That’s because the next three series, with the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox, would only total nine scheduled games.

Despite the home-stand triumph, some in the press box prior to the Thursday matinee were saying the M’s might call it a success if they came home July 6 3-6 from the trip; others said 1-8 might be a ...

The contractors, sub-contractors, and elected officials hereabouts who truly love Sound Transit light rail will be disappointed to learn that the Phoenix light rail system — first cousin to ours — has been stopped in its present tracks by local officials unable to find sufficient revenues to pay for the proposed $273 million extension. The Phoenix system is paid for with local sales-tax receipts, which have plunged recently.

Phoenix officials announced that contracts would not be awarded, as previously planned, for a so-called Northwest Extension of the present "starter line" (yes, that is what they call the city-only line in Phoenix, as ...

So far, so good. Last I checked, the only station broadcasting old-school-style was still KING-TV with its endless post-apocalyptic loop featuring Glenn Farley telling whoever might hear him how to go digital. It's like one of those video tapes they find in bunkers on Lost. I keep wondering if there are people out there watching this repeating how-to video who haven't noticed that it's the only thing on. You know who I'm talking about, the folks who like the sound of TV in the other room while they do the ironing.

Not missing broadcast yet, not ...

A huge complaint of Seattleites over the years has been the proliferation of skinny houses, tall thin abodes jammed onto lots and eating up open space. But skinny houses are proliferating in Portland as part of in-fill strategies there, and some neighborhoods aren't happy about it. The current plan is to encourage the building of hundreds of such homes in the city, whether neighborhoods object or not.

That's infuriated local neighborhood activists like Eric Goranson who complains in an Oregonian op-ed: "Like invasive weeds, infill homes are creeping into more and more Portland neighborhoods. Many, if not most ...

As WW puts it, Gone considers himself "an artist whose work is inked across his entire body." Now art patrons will have a chance to evaluate this medium more fully, during this summer's Portland Ink events: films, demonstrations, exhibits and a photo project linked to Portland Art Museum's event, "Marking Portland: The Art of Tattoo."

Gone, now 38, started tattooing at age 14. The canvas that is his body has been gaining ink steadily. Only his hands and ...

It was almost noon, a perfect Saturday at the Beach of the King. On the sand between the beach houses and the spoiled, sparkling water a narrow pavement ran north, full of skaters rollerblading toward Marina del Rey. Down the street toward the apartment building where my father lived, customers were going in and out of Moose’s Bar, and locals still rumpled from bed moseyed toward the deli in shorts and rubber thongs to pick up beer and bagels, scratching their hairy chests and yawning. Playa del Rey has an all-American shabbiness that feels like home, with its low-key ...

In May, The Lancet asked, “What has the Gates Foundation done for global health?” This Friday, the leading medical journal provides one answer: It helped quadruple funding for global health to $21.8 billion in 2007, up from $5.6 billion in 1990. The study, conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, looked at all health assistance from public and private institutions to low-income and middle-income countries, 1990-2007.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became a major funder — and advocate for expanded government and philanthropic spending — in 1999. At that time, health assistance was already rising, but it took 11 years, beginning in 1990 ...