When rumors circulated that Olympia would install an ice rink on the isthmus once county buildings were demolished, no one could fathom it. But on November 16, a rink opened across from Bayview grocery. It turns out that it’s a temporary, seasonal rink built, installed, equipped and operated by a…
Posts published in “Issue: December 2018”
Quite a lot of Americans seem to be worried about the looming threat of Sharia Law—at least 14 states have adopted statutes that prohibit recourse to “foreign law” as a means to reassure their citizens that Sharia Law will not be allowed to encroach on America’s freedoms. In any case,…
Then the City of Aberdeen decided to make it worse. People experiencing homelessness in Aberdeen have been camping out and living on the banks of the Chehalis River for decades. More and more people have joined the encampment over recent years as they got squeezed out of a dwindling housing market....
The theme for January is "Political work in the context of the midterm election results". The February theme is "Rural life and the urban/rural divide". --
Elections are about power. They are a barometer of relative strength of different social and political forces; and within certain constraints, they can shift that power....
You can’t say ‘hereafter’ without saying ‘here’. The role of faith in our nation’s politics and governance has long been contested, even though the separation between church and state is a founding principle. In practice, the two, religion and governance, have always been intertwined. We might want to explore what that means by asking what we would be doing if we were a “Christian nation.” And then to contrast that with the direction that religion has prescribed for us....
In our secularized and technological society, religion is seen by some as superstitious nonsense, something people made up to explain natural phenomena and conquer their fears of the unknown. By others it is seen as the opiate of the masses, used to subjugate the lower classes with promises of eternal…