Crosscut

If anyone were to doubt that there really are two Washingtons — that the Seattle metropolitan core (and its playgrounds) are another world from most rural to small-city Washington, and especially from east of the Cascade crest — a look at the vote on Referendum 71 should be persuasive. These are not subtle, marginal differences, but indisputable polarization in what we might call the modernist ... Full Story »

Future historians may mark 2009 as the year when, despite ourselves, the American financial and economic systems proved sufficiently resilient to withstand and survive crises with less damage than feared. For now, however, we understandably are still focused on blame-placing and on the unfairness associated with some of the steps taken to move us back toward growth. One such step is the blank ... Full Story »

During my first years in Seattle a young Italian named Ciro taught my then-husband to make bread. The guys worked the dough and talked and laughed in the kitchen all afternoon, and at night my husband would wake up once or twice to punch the dough down again and turn it. When the bread was baked the next day, what a feast! But even such a huge mound of dough wasn’t enough to make seven whole ... Full Story »

When Peter Buza opened his Georgetown diner in 1993, he intended to cook what he knew, the kind of informal dishes he and his father-in-law made in their restaurant in rural Kauai: simple, hearty, unfussy food. But he doubted how well the comfort food of Hawaii would translate with his working-class, Seattle customers. As luck would have it, a burger joint a few doors down had just closed ... Full Story »

We have a taxation identity problem in Washington. When it comes to taxing the poor we are the worst in the country. Solutions have stalled for decades, in part because of the language we use to talk about it. As the state budget careens toward hitting the wall — hard — we need to find a more compelling way to talk about inequity in taxation. At a Crosscut editorial meeting this week, tax reform ... Full Story »

Crosscut is now a nonprofit, community-owned, member-supported media organization. Here at the end of the tax year, I hope you will become an annual member by making a tax-deductible donation. It's easy to do online. These are tough times for media organizations, so I hope you can be generous, as members are the main source of our support. One of the member benefits is frequent members-only free ... Full Story »

Travel writers used to feast on freebies, trips to faraway destinations, resorts, or other vacation spots that are fully comped in the expectation of publicity. Travel writers are notorious for the sense of entitlement this breeds. One rule at a press event: Get between a group of travel writers and the buffet and you'll be torn apart in the ensuing feeding frenzy. You can take a freebie too far ... Full Story »

Technology forces new behavior, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the increasingly ubiquitous digital photography trend has eroded privacy. You walk into any room and six out of 10 people might be carrying a camera. Anything you do in public can be filmed, edited, and posted online without your knowledge or permission. Once this occurs there is nothing you can do to pull it back. We should be ... Full Story »

Barbara Snow was alone in her home by the lake on that January morning. She awoke at 5 o'clock to a terrifying scraping and hammering at the sides of her house. She opened the door to her carport to see what was going on. Tons of muddy, ice-cold water rushed into the house. In moments the water was chest high and she was struggling in the darkness to get out. "I thought I was dying," Snow ... Full Story »

Editor's note: State Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Seattle Democrat, has been a prolific blogger at his website, reuvencarlyle36.com , since his election in 2008. This commentary appeared there on Sunday. I’m not embarrassed to speak openly of my deep embrace of hope, the essence of a more just society, the idealism of change. We face a time of tremendous change in our nation as families struggle and ... Full Story »

It was 10:30 p.m. on Friday, March 7, 1941. With tensions rising in the Pacific and bombs falling on blacked out London — described poetically from the scene by local boy Edward R. Murrow — downtown Seattle itself was now suddenly plunged into darkness. Though the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was still nine months away, the city was the first in the nation to mount an intentional blackout of ... Full Story »

“I’ve gotta get outta here.” My husband Jim — a photographer, not a writer — uttered these words a couple of hours into Saturday’s "Write-o-Rama," a twice-yearly marathon day of writing that raises much-needed money for Seattle's Richard Hugo House . I found the same words in a quote about four hours later during a zine-making workshop and felt they set an oddly appropriate tone for questions ... Full Story »

In Seattle, we like to think we’re quirky, different, original, inventive. From tattoos to grunge rock to coffee culture, we’re a trendsetting city. Once we exported lumber and jet planes; now we export ideas, content, and intellectual property. We’ve gone from a working-class port to a haven for the so-called “creative class.” We’re proud of our brainpower. Some say that Seattle is full of ... Full Story »

It was youth night earlier this week at the UW World series chamber music program, with a youngish piano trio playing works from great composers’ adolescence or early adulthood. The Amelia Trio, who have been playing together for a decade or so and who have enjoyed a prestigious National Public Radio residency, programmed trios by Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Chopin written when their composers ... Full Story »