Books Apr 30, 2014 at 4:00 am

Can a Poetry Festival Identify What Being from Cascadia Really Means?

Comments

1
First, there is nothing whatsoever in Dune hinting that the desert planet got that way by environmental damage. There are no cautions that your nice planet is going to turn into Dune. The central message about that planet is adaptation to the reality of the desert.

And in the later, lesser, books, they do start to turn the desert green. Which some thought was lame because they liked it the way it used to be, while others were more, 'meh, was it really so fun living like that?'

The Harkonnen world Giedi Prime is a big industrial waste, of course. The opposite of the lush Atriedes Caladan. Because simpleminded symbolism, appropriate for tween readers. Dune is good as far as books for younger readers go, but don't get carried away.

But I really came here to say Cascadia is a douchebag concept, by douches for douches. Washington is a fucking state. Oregon is a fucking state. British Columbia is a fucking whatever they call them in Canada. That's how it is. You have to be a seriously privileged white douche to think this social-political pseudo-problem needs a solution.

Neighboring states have things in common. Get over it.
2
Ah, another carefully-reasoned defense of the status quo. Stranger comments don't disappoint.
3
Ecology doesn't recognize political boundaries, and because of this organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Cascade Land Trust, and Wildlife Conservation Society (just a few among many others) are currently working with partners across state boundaries, and trans-nationally to ensure ecological sanity. Maps have been produced by them showing the true shape of various bioregions.

It is easily arguable that some of the environmental problems we have come from artificial political boundaries... "I can dump my toxic waste over there, in the other county" ..despite the fact that every one drinks the same water. Hanford leaks into the same Columbia River shared by Oregon.

Cascadia makes sense on this level: It is largely defined by a specific bioregion.. the Georgia Straight-Puget Trough-Willamette Valley Area (look at a satellite map, this is immediately obvious). We share similar geology, weather, flora and fauna. We get our water from the same places (the mountains), and we have many similar needs.

It also makes sense on a political level: The dry side of the Cascades, for all their awesome qualities, have very different political priorities than we do on the wet side. Let's amicably go our own directions and quit preventing each other from forging our respective destinies.

Furthering the concept still: I propose that instead of constantly gerrymandered artificial political districts, Cascadia move to using watersheds as political districts. These don't change very rapidly, and so can't be 'gamed', and they direct political attention on the one critical thing in life - and for the future: Water.
4
@1.....wow....just......wow....
5
#1

Damm...I didn't know I was white!

Could you tell that to the cops in Bellingham and Seattle who randomly frisk me? That would help me out so much.

Sincerely,

Robert Lashley

(Participant in the beer slam)
6
Robert, you may be a black man, but you have an angry, if not doucheified, honky in your heart.
7
I've never made it to the festival yet (when will they hold it up in Vancouver?) but I've heard Paul Nelson & Steve Collis talk about it a few times. The thing that always comes to mind as a possible origin for 'Cascadian' literature would be all of the newspapers ("Wawa"s) written in Chinook jargon back when there were more natives than settlers in this part of the world. Though the big problem with this is that this origin is almost unknown at this point, so it'd be something we'd have to return to (the way Israeli writers had to return to Hebrew - and a few writers from this region have done this, like Fred Wah [not white! Current Canadian poet Laureate!] in Diamond Grill).

Someone wrote about this for the Tyee not that long ago: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2006/01/10/StillS…

& the wikipedia page has a neat index of Chinook words that are still used regionally in English.
8
Correction: Fred Wah was the last Canadian poet Laureate - the current one is Michel Pleau (I tend to not notice major Canadian events when they primarily effect Francophones - which is awful enough that I really should rectify it if I end up taking the citizenship test).

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