I recently finished reading "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism" by James Loewen. It's a fascinating history of residential segregation in the United States that describes how thousands of towns, cities, and suburbs throughout America, and many thousands more neighborhoods in multi-racial cities, were consciously made all-white. ( Read more... )

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Over on Metroblogging, a contributor muses about planting ivy to cover up the ugliness of the viaduct on the Seattle waterfront. The idea is silly even without considering that ivy is an invasive species that is illegal to plant locally. One of the commenters mentioned covering it in moss instead, which sparked in me the following vision:

Because ( Read more... )

From HistoryLink.org:

On July 26, 1924, the Ku Klux Klan, an all-white, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic organization, promises to "put Issaquah on the map" with a rally that draws onlookers conservatively estimated at 13,000. (Issaquah is located in King County, east of Lake Washington and just south of Lake Sammamish.)

According to the ( Read more... )

Global warming is killing the Pacific Northwest Coast.

From the Oregonian:

Ocean scientists took their first look Tuesday into the oxygen-starved "dead zone" spreading off the Oregon Coast and were shocked by what they saw: a lifeless wasteland of thousands of dead crabs, starfish and no live fish at all...

...Dead Dungeness crabs off Cape Perpetua ( Read more... )

I like this new picture, but it doesn't really work at this size.