Twenty years ago, on Sept. 11, I was just beginning a vacation in Spain and Portugal with my daughters. It was frightening to be so far from home and not know what was happening. Here’s the account of my vacation that appeared in The Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune on Oct. 3, 2001: Read more →
It’s the 101st anniversary of women in the United States being guaranteed the right to vote. The 72-year-long political movement was carried out by tens of thousands of women and men working for equal rights for women. The women were called suffragists, meaning the right to vote in political elections. Read more →
As the result of an Environmental Protection Agency ban on chlorpyrifos on food, it will be illegal for any traces of it to be present on produce or food. Even in small amounts, exposure to chlorpyrifos during pregnancy and early life harms the developing brain. Read more →
What can we as consumers do about the future of food and agriculture systems? There’s no one answer, no one starting point, and certainly no one silver-bullet solution, said Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a think tank on food. Read more →
Corporations escaped punishment at record levels during President Trump’s last year in office, when federal prosecutions of corporate criminals fell to just 94 – the lowest on record since the government started tracking corporate prosecution statistics in 1996, a Public Citizen report found. Read more →
When I was growing up, we used to make May Day baskets out of construction paper and hang them on peoples’ door knobs. Growing up in Central Washington, we often had lilacs blooming, so we’d put those in our May Day baskets along with tulips, irises, and other flowers from my mom’s gardens. Read more →
It was an exciting time. The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. The Environmental Protection Agency began operation on December 2, 1970. The League of Women Voters of Washington was having discussions on how to define the term “environment” for its studies. Read more →
Facebook and Amazon are now the two biggest corporate lobbying spenders in the country. Big Tech has bypassed Big Oil and Big Tobacco, two historically big federal lobbying spenders, with Amazon and Facebook having spent nearly twice as much as Exxon and Philip Morris on lobbying in 2020. Read more →
Presidents Day celebrates the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Washington’s birthday was Feb. 22 and Lincoln’s was on Feb. 12. Presidents Day is a good time to look at this country and it’s government. Read more →
It’s nice to not have a president who spews hate and calls people names on Twitter every day. It’s also nice that he’s not sitting in the oval office signing harmful executive orders and causing other trouble. Read more →