It was a fascinating, raucous Vashon community meeting last night about changing the semi-legally-binding "town plan" to allow marijuana production in the central business districts of Vashon and the proposed marjiuana edibles plant in the K2 building. Many, many perspectives were expressed.
It was very frustrating to me that, even though the distillery's violation of the current town plan was discussed at length, no one made the connection between what the distillery does and what Edipure would do. The disterillery makes intoxicating drinks, Edipure will make intoxicating foods. They are the same under the law now, except that marijuana products have much more stringent security and retail regulation. If you are opposed to marijuana processing in the K2 plant because it is so close to the schools and will send a message to kids, the distillery already does essentially the same thing. The overwhelming sentiment last night was to allow the distillery to continue operations at their current location.
As it currently stands, nobody has applied for a retail marijuana permit on the island. Therefore it won't even be possible to purchase Edipure's products here. How they could somehow increase access to marijuana for youth on the island when they will be in secure facilities or in sealed containers on trucks at all times is very hard to comprehend. If and when there is a marijuana retail location, they may choose to retail Edipure's products. They will assuredly sell sweet marijuana infused treats regardless, whether they be Edipure's products or products from off-island producers, because that is a huge part of the market for legal marijuana (see Colorado).
The degree of industrial-scale production will be less than K2 at its heyday. It will be no less aesthetically appealing than the ski-factory was. The aging K2 site is currently producing no economic activity for the island. For those with comfortable white-collar jobs on or off island, the economic life of Vashon seems secure and comfortable, but those without that security longingly look back to the days when there were jobs on Vashon actually producing things to sell elsewhere. Edipure has projected that they would employ approximately 45 people at the plant in the first stage of operations, and that up to 3 million dollars in renovation work would be available to island contractors. It seem extremely unlikely that another industry is going to come along and want to set up production on the island given the high costs of using ferries.
All the arguments raised in opposition to this project have been quite narrow and break down in the light of the larger context.
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens next.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
stupid idea
You get this stupid idea that just because you've trained school teachers in a second language, just because you worked with the mayor, school district administrators, and community committee to open the first ever library in a town of 20,000 people, just because you learned an indigenous South American language to improve the outcomes of your work with the teachers and library, just because you scored in the 97th percentile on the GRE, just because you've never been arrested, used any hard drug, or been fired from a job, just because you graduated and from a good college, just because you have recommendations from successful, well-regarded, influential people, that someone would want to pay you more than minimum wage or give you a job that took advantage of more than the fact that you have a human body and are conscious.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
the Federation for sprawl
From the Publicola blog:
"the Seattle Community Council Federation—an umbrella group for anti-growth neighborhood organizations—is mobilizing in advance of Mayor Ed Murray's April "neighborhood summit" for a February 25 summit of their own at the Central Area Senior Center.
There is palpable opposition to development and increasing density in Seattle. It's not hard to understand this reaction to seeing South Lake Union transform before our eyes in the last few years. On top of that rent prices are rising very rapidly in neighborhoods around the city, leading to many people feeling that they are being forced out of their communities.
These two occurrences are linked, but it is not the case that the first is driving the second. Rather both phenomena are caused by the same thing: the desirability of urban living in the post-millennium in general and of Seattle in particular. And rather than high rents being the result of increasing development, it is the lack of development that drives up rents. The alternative to greater density in the city is sprawl in the suburbs, and it is the rightful disdain for suburban sprawl that is leading people to want to living in the city.
What these neighborhood groups are fighting for is increased suburban sprawl. They are rightly happy to have had the luck to have a place in the city and now they don't want everyone else coming in and ruining it for them. They like things how they are thank-you-very-much, and everyone else who wants to be able to live a low-car life in a vibrant, walkable, diverse community can go screw themselves.
"the Seattle Community Council Federation—an umbrella group for anti-growth neighborhood organizations—is mobilizing in advance of Mayor Ed Murray's April "neighborhood summit" for a February 25 summit of their own at the Central Area Senior Center.
The group is planning to come up with a unified agenda to check what they see as a city plagued by "runaway development, upzones, gentrification, small lot development, skinny houses, high-rise development, loss of tree canopy, lack of adequate services/infrastructure etc."
The group, which includes the Seattle Displacement Coalition, Livable Ballard, Reasonable Density Seattle (a Capitol Hill group), and Seattle Speaks Up (a new group from Phinney Ridge), is planning to hold a press conference a week before Murray's summit to frame the city's agenda with its own "tough growth controls" agenda."There is palpable opposition to development and increasing density in Seattle. It's not hard to understand this reaction to seeing South Lake Union transform before our eyes in the last few years. On top of that rent prices are rising very rapidly in neighborhoods around the city, leading to many people feeling that they are being forced out of their communities.
These two occurrences are linked, but it is not the case that the first is driving the second. Rather both phenomena are caused by the same thing: the desirability of urban living in the post-millennium in general and of Seattle in particular. And rather than high rents being the result of increasing development, it is the lack of development that drives up rents. The alternative to greater density in the city is sprawl in the suburbs, and it is the rightful disdain for suburban sprawl that is leading people to want to living in the city.
What these neighborhood groups are fighting for is increased suburban sprawl. They are rightly happy to have had the luck to have a place in the city and now they don't want everyone else coming in and ruining it for them. They like things how they are thank-you-very-much, and everyone else who wants to be able to live a low-car life in a vibrant, walkable, diverse community can go screw themselves.
Puget Sound
In the rain, in the night, across the water are the orange lights of the airport and Burien. The sky is orange too from their glow, or rather it's that color-wheel defying purple-orange. It is raining in the light northwestern way. I am high up on a balcony, on a hill, over the beach and the waves. It is windy tonight and you can hear the rushing of the water on the shore.
The spirit and vigor of the ocean is in the Puget sound expressed subtler tones. The plants and animals are the same, but gone are the massive rocks and the unending crash of the breakers. The weather is bleak, but less so. The waters of the sound calmer, navigable and in fact pacific.
The sound is so much more amenable to human settlement that it feels almost that man must have made it so. If the ocean is wild and untamed, the sound appears to be its domesticated form, shaped by thousands of years of careful human cultivation and selection for its most fruitful and benign traits.
It's not hard to imagine that the Salish people who lived in the inland waters of the northwest might have conceived of their home in the same way that other cultures regarded domesticated crops like wheat or corn, as a gift from the gods that elevates man above the rank of animals.
The spirit and vigor of the ocean is in the Puget sound expressed subtler tones. The plants and animals are the same, but gone are the massive rocks and the unending crash of the breakers. The weather is bleak, but less so. The waters of the sound calmer, navigable and in fact pacific.
The sound is so much more amenable to human settlement that it feels almost that man must have made it so. If the ocean is wild and untamed, the sound appears to be its domesticated form, shaped by thousands of years of careful human cultivation and selection for its most fruitful and benign traits.
It's not hard to imagine that the Salish people who lived in the inland waters of the northwest might have conceived of their home in the same way that other cultures regarded domesticated crops like wheat or corn, as a gift from the gods that elevates man above the rank of animals.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Population Growth Raters of American Cities
We know that these days metropolitan area population numbers are more important that city numbers themselves. What I'm really going for here is an illustration of American history as told by the establishment of our major cities. In the chart you can see the old eastern seaboard cities, the rise of the mid-west, then the west, and then the sun-belt, as well as the hollowing out of rust-belt cities.
City selection is non-scientific, but I've tried to select cities that clearly represent different epochs, regions, or growth patterns.
I hope you enjoy.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Columbus
Last Monday was Columbus Day, a national holiday. As a history nerd and a kneejerk contrarian, post-modern interpretations of Columbus have always bothered me a little bit. After going the whole day without a single conversation or aknowledgement, apart from the lack of mail, of the holiday and so I posted on facebook:
Columbus day thoughts:
1. He did discover America, as did did the wanderers of the Bering land-bridge, some wayward vikings and possibly some Polynesians. Stuff can be discovered multiple times. He was the last one to discover it though, because he came back and told everybody about it. He also committed genocide, mass rape and pillage, but he's hardly unique in history for that.
2. For everyone that is not of indigenous, or viking, roots, can we get away with not celebrating Columbus, or at least what he made possible? I'm really glad I live in North America. There's no way around that. Someone from the old world would have happened upon the Americas eventually, but Columbus actually did it. It probably would have gone down more or less the same regardless of who it was. It was as a result of the old world finding and conquering the new that I, you, Barack Obama, Dilma Rousseff, José Mujica, Beyoncé, and Louis C K are all here. I can't say I wish it didn't happen.
The first point doesn't require any further development apart from a reference to the dictionary:
of which the second two definitions clearly apply.
The second "thought" is quite a bit more controversial, and prompted some spirited facebook debate. I appreciate my friend's comments for helping me to better realize what it was I found unseemly about the popular dismissal of Columbus.
My initial reaction was to say that although arguably lead a genocide, mass rape, and societal collapse in the carribean, that this is not really that out of character for the time. It has always bothered me that people tend to treat pre-modern historical figures with modern morals. I not comfortable saying morality is completely relative, but it cannot be denied that our understanding of morality has developed and changed substantially over the centuries. 15th century Spain was about as far as you could get from a peaceful, cosmopolitan, democratic society. We should remember jews and muslims had just been expelled from Spain, the Inquisition was in full force, and that much of the flowering of the rennasaince had hed to begin (Cervantes and Galileo had not yet been born, Leonardo hadn't painted the Monalisa, Michelangelo was 17 years old in 1492). Columbus was a man from a brutal time and place.
My mistake however was to use all that to dismiss Columbus' crimes. Murder, rape, certainly genocide, cannot be explained away. It is repugnant across all cultures in all times.
I then made the argument that:I want to celebrate that the United States exists, that Brazil exists, that Mexico exists, that Paraguay exists, and all the people that live and have lived in these countries, that would not have existed without the columbian exchange.
to which my friend Leah replied:
I think it's okay to love the USA and people and places and think of it more like... This all happened in spite of all the past and present tragedies and injustices. There are lots of random things that effected each one of us coming into the world and we can never know how things would have gone otherwise. My sister for example drastically changed life plans because she was packing the car to move to NYC on September 11th. She changed her mind that day and switched plans choosing to move to a small coastal town and work at a book store. She met a great guy there.. fell in love and now ten years later is still happily married w two kids. Yes, the attacks on the twin towers effected her decision, but she doesn't have to be grateful that they happened in order to be grateful for her family... I think it's okay to accept that these sorts of contradictions. We can be grateful for the good things in our lives without being grateful for cristobal colon. The world would be a different place if he were never born but I can't say I'm glad for his actions
Which makes an excellent point. However, 9/11 in itself has nothing to do with Leah's sister's marriage. It was merely the accidental cause. Columbus has a great deal to do with the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and every other state in the Americas. These countries were founded by the descendants of European colonists. Indigenous populations were oppressed in every one. Their modern cultures are based on a European context and indigenous cultures merely supplement the dominant culture. Every citizen that is not part of a culturally intact indigenous nation in the Americas is essentially living in the model that Columbus laid down, of foreign domination and suppression of indigenous peoples.
Even those who are not of, or of only partial, European ancestry are living Columbus' legacy. Their speech, forms of dress, systems of government and even much of thier art are based on the forms brought over by early European conquerors and colonists. To say that they have been further developed, modified, hybridized, and in some cases supplanted is certainly true, but I challenge anyone to point out a single state in North or South America that is more indigenous American, African or Asian than it is European.
So what actually bothers me about the way people condemn Columbus inhuman actions is that they do so without self-awareness. It's hipocritical to condemn Columbus when your entire life, when your very act of being follows in the model he established and is essentially a endorsement of what he began.
YOU ARE Columbus. I am Columbus. Deny it if you like. But it's true.
Columbus day thoughts:
1. He did discover America, as did did the wanderers of the Bering land-bridge, some wayward vikings and possibly some Polynesians. Stuff can be discovered multiple times. He was the last one to discover it though, because he came back and told everybody about it. He also committed genocide, mass rape and pillage, but he's hardly unique in history for that.
2. For everyone that is not of indigenous, or viking, roots, can we get away with not celebrating Columbus, or at least what he made possible? I'm really glad I live in North America. There's no way around that. Someone from the old world would have happened upon the Americas eventually, but Columbus actually did it. It probably would have gone down more or less the same regardless of who it was. It was as a result of the old world finding and conquering the new that I, you, Barack Obama, Dilma Rousseff, José Mujica, Beyoncé, and Louis C K are all here. I can't say I wish it didn't happen.
The first point doesn't require any further development apart from a reference to the dictionary:
dis·cov·er
verb \dis-ˈkə-vər\
: to see, find, or become aware of (something) for the first time
: to show the presence of (something hidden or difficult to see) : to make (something) known
: to learn or find out (something surprising or unexpected)
of which the second two definitions clearly apply.
The second "thought" is quite a bit more controversial, and prompted some spirited facebook debate. I appreciate my friend's comments for helping me to better realize what it was I found unseemly about the popular dismissal of Columbus.
My initial reaction was to say that although arguably lead a genocide, mass rape, and societal collapse in the carribean, that this is not really that out of character for the time. It has always bothered me that people tend to treat pre-modern historical figures with modern morals. I not comfortable saying morality is completely relative, but it cannot be denied that our understanding of morality has developed and changed substantially over the centuries. 15th century Spain was about as far as you could get from a peaceful, cosmopolitan, democratic society. We should remember jews and muslims had just been expelled from Spain, the Inquisition was in full force, and that much of the flowering of the rennasaince had hed to begin (Cervantes and Galileo had not yet been born, Leonardo hadn't painted the Monalisa, Michelangelo was 17 years old in 1492). Columbus was a man from a brutal time and place.
My mistake however was to use all that to dismiss Columbus' crimes. Murder, rape, certainly genocide, cannot be explained away. It is repugnant across all cultures in all times.
I then made the argument that:I want to celebrate that the United States exists, that Brazil exists, that Mexico exists, that Paraguay exists, and all the people that live and have lived in these countries, that would not have existed without the columbian exchange.
to which my friend Leah replied:
I think it's okay to love the USA and people and places and think of it more like... This all happened in spite of all the past and present tragedies and injustices. There are lots of random things that effected each one of us coming into the world and we can never know how things would have gone otherwise. My sister for example drastically changed life plans because she was packing the car to move to NYC on September 11th. She changed her mind that day and switched plans choosing to move to a small coastal town and work at a book store. She met a great guy there.. fell in love and now ten years later is still happily married w two kids. Yes, the attacks on the twin towers effected her decision, but she doesn't have to be grateful that they happened in order to be grateful for her family... I think it's okay to accept that these sorts of contradictions. We can be grateful for the good things in our lives without being grateful for cristobal colon. The world would be a different place if he were never born but I can't say I'm glad for his actions
Which makes an excellent point. However, 9/11 in itself has nothing to do with Leah's sister's marriage. It was merely the accidental cause. Columbus has a great deal to do with the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and every other state in the Americas. These countries were founded by the descendants of European colonists. Indigenous populations were oppressed in every one. Their modern cultures are based on a European context and indigenous cultures merely supplement the dominant culture. Every citizen that is not part of a culturally intact indigenous nation in the Americas is essentially living in the model that Columbus laid down, of foreign domination and suppression of indigenous peoples.
Even those who are not of, or of only partial, European ancestry are living Columbus' legacy. Their speech, forms of dress, systems of government and even much of thier art are based on the forms brought over by early European conquerors and colonists. To say that they have been further developed, modified, hybridized, and in some cases supplanted is certainly true, but I challenge anyone to point out a single state in North or South America that is more indigenous American, African or Asian than it is European.
So what actually bothers me about the way people condemn Columbus inhuman actions is that they do so without self-awareness. It's hipocritical to condemn Columbus when your entire life, when your very act of being follows in the model he established and is essentially a endorsement of what he began.
YOU ARE Columbus. I am Columbus. Deny it if you like. But it's true.
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