The contemporary male/female landscape doesn’t look like a romantic scene of a summer field of daisies with a young couple walking hand-in-hand in the sunlight. It looks a little more like a mined battlefield with people moving very cautiously, if they move at all.

The billboards, directed at U.S. Reps. Kim Schrier and Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, D-Wash., are an exhibit of the NRCC’s cookie-cutter approach to politics. They use the same words, and make the same allegations, regardless of a House member’s record or what place in America he or she represents.

Eight clowns entered and eight clowns exited two hours later. In the interim, there were stretches of boredom punctuated by regular descents into the hyperpolarized subterranean crazy (where so many Republicans live in these MAGA days), and by a few sharp, revealing, and somewhat entertaining exchanges.

In her seven-year tenure as top Dawg, Cohen made one good football coaching hire -- Kalen DeBoer, the current Huskies coach. Suddenly, she is golden. But until DeBoer delivered an 11-2 record in his rookie year at Montlake, she was a muddle in the middle of the college football industry's hierarchy.

It was only a matter of time before Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin would pay with his life for his mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his disastrous war in Ukraine.

Once again, it was progress, backlash, and repeat again. What occasioned some mid-century breakouts were two things: war – when men left, women flooded newsrooms – and money (since women were paid a fraction of male salaries).

Although America will avoid a classic civil war, it already is in a “cold” civil war of heightened polarization and mistrust between the MAGA base and liberals. That condition has morphed into violence and threatened violence against individuals doing their civic duty.

They don’t have a deliverable, they don’t have a specific mandate, they don’t have the authority to make any decisions,’’ lamented  Warren Hendrickson, Olympia Airport senior manager and a long-time aviation professional, at a recent Port of Seattle commission briefing.  

The new arms race threatens to end as did the old one more than three decades ago. Russian prioritizing of government investment in war-fighting capability over the needs of its population will end with the economic collapse of a state that can no longer afford to keep pace. The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the result of Communist hubris that bankrupted the federation in its failed bid to out-power the United States.

By 1946 when the bank was sold to SeaFirst Bank, the days of personal, patient Ankeny family banking came to an end.

The author proposes not the large institutions of he past, but small supported living units that offer drug treatment, case management, and lockable doors.

“The new normal” in Beautiful British Columbia now means fires consuming forests, vast beetle kills, evacuations, and smoke which pays no respect to the 49th Parallel. Hundred-year fires are being fought in one night.

The Seattle Center finally feels more new than old, and Day In Day Out, the incipient musical festival now in its third year of operation, feels newer than most anything this side of the EMP, or whatever they’re calling Paul Allen’s dusty guitar collection these days.

At least we can go into any number of museums around the globe and feast on Picassos, as I have often done. But turning rare wines into speculative investments means that for the vast majority of wine drinkers they will never be experienced.

Kingsolver says that people in rural America, where she was raised and lives today, “are so mad they want to blow everything up.” She gives some reasons, mainly the shame that urban America cast upon Appalachia and its people.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned that “the Supreme Court could rule that domestic violence survivors today deserve only the protections they had in the 18th century — a time before most women could own property or work outside the home, let alone vote.”

Look for Bob Ferguson to get a solid two cycles of good pub out of this, for which the Ferguson campaign will spend exactly nothing.

With the 2024 election approaching, Harris has been set loose. Washington is a good place to display the message and messenger. 

In a quadfecta, the bettor picks the exact number of felony convictions in each of the four lawsuits. A $100 winning bet would average over $7 million. 

St Paul's, hugely wide and long with immensely high ceilings, requires powerful singing, which the Epiphany choir fully and effectively provided in the hymns, liturgies, and a long and complex anthem during the communions.

How did Hughbanks get the results he did? He nurtured relationships with many hundreds of people. Christmas cards with personal notes, calls on birthdays, and many other ways of remembering his friends which included almost everyone he knew. His frequent smile was genuine. 

Those who care about college football need to get their collective swerve on and demand swift demolition and rapid national reformation.

While losing elections, the state party has moved relentlessly to the right, even as Democrats have locked in control of the levers of government.

On the question of trees versus housing in Seattle, there are many voices, most of them favoring the trees. The dominant thought is that housing versus trees is a false choice, and that Seattle can have more housing and save the big trees.

Readers might not expect a Northwest novel from a book about a midcentury country singer, but The Farewell Tour is very much a story of Washington state, albeit hidden in a star-spangled package.

Port Townsend hoped that the Northern Pacific Railroad Company would choose it as their western terminus, snaking up the west side of Puget Sound to be closer to the Pacific Ocean.  When Tacoma won the railroad prize, residents of Port Townsend turned to the prospect of grain shipments from the Columbia River as the key to Key City.

One of the main instigators of the late-century martini renaissance was Seattle’s annual Classic Martini Challenge. Initiated in 1992, the Challenge was a showdown between five local bars to prove who mixed the best martini.

Yes there are all kinds of discounts sparking quick sales, but discounted wines can do as much damage as good to a winery’s long-term sales and a region’s overall reputation for quality.

The real question is whether your total energy costs, for electricity and for fossil fuels, will grow or decline and it’s a question Bruce Ramsey addresses tangentially and incompletely.

It is an age that seems to come with a certain amount of relaxed interest in life and acceptance of ourselves. As I said, “Nothing left to prove . . .”