History Rhymes and the Center Does Not Hold
A few of my favorite things came together this week: the 1890s in Washington State, partisan labels and Yeats. I’ll admit I tossed Yeats in there later on in...
Maytown and the Long Tide
My favorite thing about the geography that I wrote about this week is the Mima Mounds of it all. When you look at the LIDAR image I chose to illustrate the...
Glad You Made It (Poetry)
Another busy summer week, so instead of a long essay, I’m going to give you another poem. This one is from a collection I’ll release at the end of the year....
It could have been much, much worse
Sometimes its nice to dream about what could have been, sometimes you need to explore the worst-case scenarios. In this week’s essay, we imagine if Olympia...
Annexing the Future
One of my favorite days of the year is when the Office of Financial Management releases the April 1 Population Estimates in late June. In the past few years,...
Freedom, Washington
Robert Ficken died too soon, wrote too little and today’s post is tribute to him. His work, Washington Territory, is is a deep reminder about when we think...
Bob Blume, Olympia and the New State
There were a handful of new folks who signed up here since yesterday morning when I released this post on the blog and social media. Welcome! And please...
If Olympia Had Rails (copy)
I had a busy week this week, so I am going to do something different. I am going to give you a poem I wrote that will be part of a collection I release at...
If Olympia Had Rails
I’ve written alternative history before, most recently about how the Grays Harbor labor war didn’t need to necessarily launch us into Trump. I really enjoyed...
Democratic Party Dominance in Washington State, Ireland 100 Years Ago and Mark Reed
When I posted the essay below yesterday on my blog, I was accused of taking a deep cut. I suppose this is true, but I wanted to point out how exactly I was...
The Knox Hotel and the Fading of Distance and how to support striking reporters
If you read this newsletter, you are probably also a supporter of local journalism. So it is big news this week that reporters at The Olympian (and other...
Howard Schultz and the Demons of Ambition
A couple of weeks ago, I appeared on a friend’s podcast (mostly to pre-emptively defend my play as a rec soccer player). In the episode, he mentioned Fred...
The Power and the Truth: Our Long History of Owning Electricity
The Power and the Truth: Our Long History of Owning Electricity Somewhere in Thurston County right now, someone's staring at their Puget Sound Energy bill...
Speak out on Whitman and Deeper into TRL and the Evergreen Pool
We have a packed agenda this week. First: Here is something small you can do this week to advance justice and defend history in Washington State. Either send...
Gerry Lemon and what history gifts to the future
Gerry Lemon and what history gifts to the future The General Administration Building is being torn down. This is despite it being perhaps the most important...
Going Closer to Home
One of the dark secrets of Washington State politics is that in the 1960s and 70s it took a court to force the state legislature to redistrict. The state...
Turning the corner at Block 46
I want to, first off, acknowledge a lot of people who are reading this email this morning because they found me through the post I wrote last week about the...
The Timberland Regional Library doesn't face a stand-off, it faces some sort of evolution
These are not happy times. The Timberland Regional Library has fallen on hard leadership times. Not a full complement of trustees, lacking an executive...
We Fought Iron Giants. And Won. We Fought Hardwood Oligarchs.
This is a post that comes with age. I’ve been writing my blog for well over 20 years, and when I looked back at the Sonics tag for posts around the time Clay...
The Carlton and the Choices We Made to Get Here
Parking lots are our civic negative space. We create empty space for car storage so we can more easily access the places that remain after we build parking...
