…nature’s laws … are the only measures that count…

Capitalism, for all its merits and failings as a 500-year practice, may be better than the alternatives, but may not be able to meet the stringent conditions imposed by nature's laws. These, ultimately, are the only measures that count.From "The Common Sense Canadian" Ray Grigg on anthropologist Ronald Wright. http://thecanadian.org/item/2056-anthropologys-capitalism http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/

Whidbey Island – 1854

Plate 68: Mount Rainier and Whidbey Island. Engraving by John M. Stanley, 1854. (Click to enlarge). From: University of Washington Library Archives #NA4173. Note: We'll go with the spelling of Whidbey.

Northwest Polytheism – James Hillman

"The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths as such—instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore…psychology shows myths in modern …

An Island Neighbor – Haliaeetus leucocephalus washingtoniensis

"The Haida believed both animals and people had souls, which were essentially the same. The bodies of different animals were merely their "canoes" and all were capable of assuming other forms at will; "or better, they possessed a human form, and assumed their other forms when consorting with men." The killer whales were believed to …

Sensing a Path

If genius is profuse, never ending - stuck in the middle of a work is - the wrong track, Genius is the track seen. Once seen it is impossible to keep from it. The superficial definitions, such as "genius is industry, genius is hard work, etc. " are nonsense. It is to see the track, …

John Muir’s Description of The Pacific Northwest in 1901

"The vast Pacific Coast reserves in Washington and Oregon--the Cascade, Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Bull Run, and Ashland, named in order of size--include more than 12,500,000 acres of magnificent forests of beautiful and gigantic trees. They extend over the wild, unexplored Olympic Mountains and both flanks of the Cascade Range, the wet and the dry. …

John Cage – American Inventor

  Photograph by Vincent Mentzel 1988/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux. " Cage requires a fundamentally different mode of listening: you need to relinquish expectations that successive sounds will fall into familiar harmonic relationships, or indeed relationships of any kind, and instead treat each moment in isolation. You “regard” the sounds as you would objects in a gallery. More …

Seattle and Its Mayor, Mike McGinn – Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World?

  Seattle and Its Mayor - Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World? Seattle, like the rest of the nation, has decided that cordiality - respect of opinion and differences - is yesterday's practice. Several months ago a local journalist said this: "I honestly believe that Mayor Mike McGinn is the worst office …

Carmel Point – Robinson Jeffers Tor House

Lead Illustration: Tom Killion BY ROBINSON JEFFERS The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on …

Scientists Adopt Tiny Washington Island as a Warming Bellwether

Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times Cathy Pfister is part of a team of scientists conducting research on Tatoosh Island, Wash. By STACEY SOLIE Published: October 6, 2012 fi Scientists Adopt Tiny Island as a Warming Bellwether By STACEY SOLIE TATOOSH ISLAND, Wash. — From a stretch of rocky shoreline on this tiny island, one …

San Juan Islands in Winter

  This is  a series of photographs taken in the winter of 2012. The San Juan Islands rest between Seattle and Vancouver, BC in the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea is part of a body of water that extends the inland sea of the Pacific from Olympia, Washington to Haines, Alaska.

Northwest Sea Wave

Northwest-style breakers - rugged, choppy, lacking the elegant form of their brothers in the south. But they are orderly, waiting their turn in rows to slam the beach, expressing their power and force. One after another, after another. Defining rhythm, expressing the forces of depth and wind and rise.

Ebey’s Landing – Whidbey Island – Late July

Description The Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve is a rural historic district that preserves and protects the historical record of Puget Sound exploration and settlement from the 19th century to the present. Historic farms, still under cultivation in the prairies of Whidbey Island, reveal land use patterns unchanged since settlers claimed the land in the 1850s under the Donation Land Claim …