Italy is a land of family farms, and as expats there we enjoy produce, meats, and dairy products as fresh as possible, with daily deliveries via small trucks that ascend to our hilltop village in the early morning.

In my view, 2024 will be a building year for the Emerald City, adjusting to pandemic scars and changing times, revitalizing downtown. It also could be a fractious year with tugs of war over where to invest scarce resources.

A poll is a snapshot in time, and voters have until August of next year to sample the candidates and make up their minds. The Northwest states of Washington and Oregon have the longest Democratic party winning streaks in America. This state has not elected a Republican governor since John Spellman’s 1980 win.

My guess is that many of Greater Idaho folks would rather be in a red state than a blue one. Apparently, there are now realtors who specialize in relocating people to a state of their political preference. I mean why rub elbows with people you don’t agree with?

It didn’t matter if the criminal defendant had been referred to Community Court a dozen times before, and blown it off each time. Always the system offered another slice of social services.

Frustration with the program’s effectiveness, cost, and dampening effect on housing development has led a broad coalition of housing advocates to call for the curtailment or outright elimination of Design Review.

A May 2 U.S District Court decision looks like the best thing that has happened to Southern Resident Killer Whales – aka Puget Sound orcas -- in the nearly half-century since people stopped trapping them for display at Sea World and other marine parks. 

States Newsroom now has 33 news operations, each with a different name —Alaska Beacon, Daily Montanan, Nevada Current, Oregon Capital Chronicle, Idaho Capital Sun, and so on. The Washington State Standard is named in honor of a newspaper that covered Olympia in the era before statehood.

When Ornette Coleman released The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, the genre marched off into overblown atonality. Were a similarly titled record to drop today, it’d sound an awful lot like Keyon Harrold.

The Republicans did not have a winning strategy.  And they have little to show to voters in the next election.

Way back when Merlot was in the doghouse following the release of the film 'Sideways' it was already known to a handful of producers that Walla Walla was a special place to make this particular Bordeaux red.

Nard Jones once wrote: "It's a hick show that has nothing to do with Seattle's traditions."  With tongue in cheek, Jones recommended that Greater Seattle leaders be strapped into the cockpits of old hydroplanes: "set the throttle wide and aim at the log boom.  The crowd would love it."

Famously, participants will not have engines – none whatsoever. Their 750 mile voyage to Ketchikan, Alaska, will be powered by some combination of wind, muscle and no small amount of human endurance and ingenuity.

Bonker successfully pushed to add Point of Arches and Shi Shi Beach, crowning glory spots of the Pacific Coast, to Olympic National Park. It wasn’t easy.

Letting your partner be other, not requiring they be the same as you, is a big challenge in a marriage.

Baseball fans know well the hoary bromide that player payroll does not automatically convey success. But those in Seattle, with considerable justification, ask: We've tried it one way for 47 years, and remain the only team in MLB never to have made the World Series; can we try it the other way once?

"The Ferryman" won’t overtake "The Passage" on my recommendation list, but it proves that Cronin hasn’t lost his step.

With millions of others, I had been following the fortunes of Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox), a Rupert Murdoch-like media magnate, and trying to guess who would eventually take over Waystar Royco.

By imposing his own definition of the federal Clean Water Act, enacted 51 years ago under the Nixon Administration, Alito has followed a rule defined by onetime Jersey City political boss Frank Hague: “I am the law.”

Among the bright spots: SIFF recently acquired and will restore the Cinerama, adding it to SIFF-run theaters including the Cinema Uptown and Cinema Egyptian.

It may be that Crosscut, which can seem reliably "woke," is seeking to adjust its editorial formula for solid journalistic reasons. 

There’s no amusement in these readings, but in a time of ever-rising misinformation and political division, of lies passing as truth, they are essential.

Outside of Seattle, there’s less of an appetite for more spending, even among more progressive Democrats.

The Pyrrhic victory of taking the destroyed city of Bakhmut after nine months of bloody attrition has emboldened the bombastic mercenary chief to crow about his forces coming to Putin’s rescue in the stumbling 15-month-old invasion.

I have imagined a specific and mythic collision of English professor Charles Samuels and three contemporary business titans -- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos -- freshmen at Williams, forced to take English 101.

Apart from my own enthusiasm at seeing Walla Walla wines reach a new and exciting stage in their ongoing evolution, wines such as these wines challenge me to work past my own limitations, spurred on by the simple excitement of trying something new.

Recently, the Sunshine committee came to the somber conclusion that its quarterly meetings were more trouble than they’re worth. The nine members present wrestled with the idea of voting to disband the advisory body.

The progressive social critique of patriarchy, systemic racism, the history of policing and capitalism — which has some truth in it — is so broad-scale that it overwhelms more modest efforts to make progress..

The founder of Judges for Justice, retired King County Superior Judge Michael Heavey, explains that correcting errors of justice is an effort one person alone cannot accomplish. He concludes, “It takes a bucket brigade.”

Why restrict flights to D.C. National from Western cities? “Political reality,” says Alliance spokesman Brian Walsh. Any change has to pass Congress. “This is not going to pass just by members from the West,” he says.