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Eric dP: For Northwest history geeks, I recommend reading the introduction to this assessment of Latinos in Washington. It traces the history of Latinos in the region from the earliest Spanish explorers in the region, through settlement, the mid-century Bracero program, and up to the present day. I learned more than a couple of things. Plus, all kinds of fun stuff related to coal trains. Over at Climate Solutions, Ross MacFarlane...

This spring marks the release of new editions of introductory economics textbooks, so it’s a good time to update our 2010 review of the treatment of climate change in economics textbooks. As in 2010, some hit the mark while others are wildly misleading, but we’re happy to say that there’s plenty of good news: about half of the books improved their treatment of climate change.

Editor’s note: Eric posted Seattle and Vancouver follow ups to this piece. Whatever you’re craving, you can probably find it on sale at a parking lot in Portland. Barbecue jackfruit fried pie? Try Whiffies on Hawthorne. Foie gras over potato chips? Eurotrash on Belmont. Kimchi quesadilla? Koi Fusion on Mississippi. It’s no wonder Portland has been heralded as a world-class purveyor of street food. But North American attention to the Rose City’s...

The people of Cascadia are living longer than ever before—a sign of robust and improving health. As of 2012, Cascadians’ lifespans had grown to 80.5 years—an increase of more than 5 years since 1980. Unlike many other quality of life indicators in Cascadia, life expectancy has improved steadily for decades. These improvements show little sign of abating, as the toll from virtually every major cause of death continues to decline.

Cascadia’s fertility rate—the average number of births over a woman’s lifetime, given current patterns of child-bearing—inched upwards in the mid-2000s, but declined again when the economy soured in 2008. Yet these trends were minor, compared with the massive fertility spike of the baby boom, when Northwest fertility rates peaked at nearly 4 lifetime births per woman. Since the mid-1970s fertility rates in the Northwest have remained comparatively stable, ranging between...

By now, almost everyone’s heard of using goats to clear unwanted weeds. It’s popular enough in Northwest precincts to have spawned a friendly lampoon by Pemco insurance. Yet goats are a lot more than a lifestyle choice in a quirky region. Local and regional governments are, of course, responsible for managing their own properties, such as parks, playgrounds, and schoolyards.

How do we talk about climate impacts so that people start to pay a bit more attention and put their support behind solutions? Make it local, concrete, and personal, say the experts. But fear of drought or sea level rise doesn’t seem to do the trick. And news about receding glaciers—even here in the Northwest—doesn’t touch people’s day to day lives either. Yet. But what if we told you to...

Portland, OR has a national reputation as a transit powerhouse. Despite some recent funding woes—which are depressingly common for US transit systems—the City of Roses’ combination of bus, light rail, street car, and most recently aerial tram transit has earned national kudos. US News and World Report, for example, recently ranked Portland’s transit system as the the fifth-best in the country, trailing cities like New York and Boston. Yet as we’ve...

Eric dP: As inspiration for the upcoming Mercer Island Half Marathon, I read Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” in which he describes his discipline of long distance running. Literary types will recognize that the title is a nod to Raymond Carver, whose work Murakami has translated into Japanese. That Murakami is a student of Carver’s writing has always seemed to me to be entirely...

Starting today, people across the globe will give up something for Lent. (For example, Newt Gingrich won’t have any dessert. A colleague of mine is giving up meat.) My family is fasting from consumerism. Not just for Lent, but all year long. And what better time than the day after Mardi Gras to write about how we’re faring. Maybe we’ll inspire someone to join us—if not for a whole year,...