State Senate leaders pledged Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but did not say how to pay for it.
The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff
OLYMPIA — A group of Washington state senators vowed Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but declined to say how they would get the money at a time when lawmakers are struggling to balance the budget.
Republican Sen. Michael Baumgartner, who developed the plan supported by a GOP-dominated coalition, said it is possible to write a budget that balances state spending while increasing funding for state colleges and universities. He said it will be a matter of prioritizing where government dollars go.
“We’re going to make higher education a priority,” Baumgartner said.
Lawmakers already face a more than $1 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle and are separately under court order to expand funding for K-12 education.
The senators also propose to require a 3 percent reduction in tuition for in-state students. They say this would help manage the long-term financial concerns in the state’s prepaid-tuition program, known as GET, for Guaranteed Education Tuition.
Senate Democrats said they were encouraged that the GOP-leaning majority is embracing increased funding but want to better understand the details of the proposal.
“The bottom line is, we’re open to the conversation — We’re not sure the numbers will add up,” said state Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle.
Margaret Shepherd, director of state relations for the University of Washington, was also waiting for more specific details. However, both she and Frockt said the $300 million appears to largely include money already expected to go to the institutions for general growth.
Shepherd said the proposal adds only about $75 million in new money to the system and that gain is offset by the loss in tuition dollars. Frockt said he thought it would only add about $42 million to $58 million, after the loss of tuition dollars was factored in.
“It will not provide adequate funding for the investments that we need to make in order to provide a high-quality education for our students,” Shepherd said.
Washington’s university presidents said earlier this year that the schools would freeze tuition for two years if lawmakers would add $225 million in extra funding to the system.
The coalition’s plan would award $50 million of the new higher-education money to schools based on how well they did on certain performance metrics, such as the number of undergraduates in degrees such as science or engineering, the retention rate of first-year students, and the average time it takes to complete an undergraduate degree.
Baumgartner said the aim was for the money to go to programs that directly benefit students, and not to faculty salary increases. Most state college faculty have not had a raise in four years; the UW has said that raising faculty salaries this year is a priority.
Frockt also said the $50 million for improving performance is too low to provide much incentive. “I think if you spread it across the system like peanut butter, it’s not that significant,” said Frockt, who himself proposed a bill — which died — that would have created an incentive performance fund.
The proposal would also expand the State Need Grant, the state’s largest grant program for low-income students, by 7 percent, to serve an additional 4,600 students. The State Need Grant currently serves about 70,000 students, but the state has estimated that 30,000 additional students qualify but receive no money.
Associated Press writer Mike Baker and Seattle Times higher-education reporter Katherine Long contributed to this report.
The Organization for Prostitution Survivors, a new Seattle nonprofit, is working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway. The effort has the support of U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert.
By Sara Jean Green, The Seattle Times
PHOTOS BY ERIKA SCHULTZ / The Seattle Times Noel Gomez, a former prostitute who co-founded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is raising money for a memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, who has pleaded guilty to 49 murders. “I feel like they are my sisters,” Gomez said.
By the time a pimp put Noel Gomez to work on the streets of Seattle in the early 1990s, the Green River killer had slowed his killing spree of girls and women, many who were also caught up in the dark underworld of prostitution.
“But he was still out there and whenever I worked Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue, I was very aware that the next car I got into could be the Green River killer’s,” said Gomez, 39, who has been out of the life for seven years now. “I was obsessed with him getting caught.”
She recalls watching “Judge Judy” on TV in her Queen Anne apartment in November 2001 when the program was interrupted by a breaking-news alert: Gary L. Ridgway, a then-52-year-old truck painter from Auburn, had been arrested. Gomez cried at the news.
Now, nearly a dozen years later, long after Ridgway pleaded guilty to 49 murders, Gomez and Peter Qualliotine are working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the girls and women Ridgway strangled and discarded.
The two are co-founders of a new Seattle nonprofit, The Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS). They are hosting a series of community engagements at libraries and community centers throughout the year to help educate the public about the dynamics of prostitution and the extreme sexual violence that prostituted girls and women endure.
In addition to the community engagements, Gomez and Qualliotine are holding weekly art workshops for prostitution survivors and plan to display their works in quarterly art exhibits. The women’s artwork, they said, will influence and inform the design of the memorial.
OPS has so far raised about $10,000 of its $225,000 goal. The money will be used to launch the fledgling organization, pay for supplies and salaries (Gomez and Qualliotine have been working for free), provide housing, job skills and other services to survivors of prostitution and go toward funding the design and siting of the memorial.
“In my world, in the world I roam in … it has not gone away,” Gomez said of the trauma caused by the Green River killings. “I think there’s a lot of people who don’t think about it or even know about it. But what people don’t understand is that in certain circles, it’s still a huge freaking wound.”
Gomez, a chemical-dependency professional who works with juveniles in the King County Juvenile Detention Center, previously worked for The Bridge Program, a Seattle residential-recovery center for prostituted youth.
Qualliotine, who also worked for The Bridge, designed one of the country’s first “john schools” in Portland for men who have been arrested for patronizing prostitutes. The schools examine men’s accountability in creating demand for prostitution.
U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert has pledged to help Gomez and Qualliotine. As a 31-year-old detective in 1982, Reichert began investigating the Green River cases.
Reichert said he thought about a memorial for the victims years ago, but worried the grief was still too raw for families who had to relive horrible memories every time a new victim was found.
There has been no closure for the families whose daughters’ lives were violently cut short, he said. And for law-enforcement officers, there are aspects of the killings that they’ll never forget.
“When you collect remains for years and years and years, and sometimes multiple bodies in a week, those thoughts and visions never go away,” Reichert said. “ … This is about the victims, the families and the relatives — they’re the ones who have lost loved ones — but this has meaning for the detectives, too.”
The Green River killings were “the worst serial murder case in the nation,” with 51 confirmed victims and dozens of other slayings believed to have been committed by Ridgway, he said. More than half of Ridgway’s victims were 18 or younger.
But Ridgway, who preyed on prostitutes and runaways, “doesn’t have the name recognition Ted Bundy has,” Reichert said, referring to the Northwest serial killer who raped and killed female college students in the 1970s. He believes that’s because of the social stigma attached to those involved in prostitution.
“People were driving to and from work on Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue or First Avenue and they were never seeing these young girls on the street,” he said. “There were hundreds of them — you couldn’t miss them — but no one saw them.
“Then they disappeared and no one missed them,” Reichert said.
Maybe Seattle and the county can embrace the idea of a memorial to the victims “as the community’s recognition that they failed these kids and for the future, maybe we will remember our failure,” he said.
Reichert, who as a teen ran away from home to escape his abusive, alcoholic father, said 90 percent of Ridgway’s victims were on the streets because of the abuse they suffered in their own homes.
“There’s a reason those girls were on the streets,” he said. “And it’s still happening.”
It was true for Gomez, whose physically abusive, alcoholic father kicked her out when she became pregnant at 15.
And it was true for Debbie Estes, one of Ridgway’s youngest victims, who along with her two siblings was sexually abused for years by a relative, said Estes’ sister, Virginia “Jenny” Graham, of Spokane. After Estes ran away from home, it didn’t take long before she fell under the control of a pimp, Graham said.
The last time Graham saw her sister, Estes and her best friend Becky Marrero — another Ridgway victim — had stopped by the family’s Federal Way home to pick up some of Estes’ things.
Soon after, Estes was raped and pistol-whipped by a serial rapist. She was set to testify against him when she disappeared on Sept. 20, 1982.
Estes’ body was found almost six years later, on May 30, 1988, in Federal Way. She had just turned 15.
Marrero was 20 when she disappeared from a SeaTac motel on Dec. 3, 1982. Her body was discovered in an Auburn ravine December 2010, years after Ridgway had admitted he killed her.
“When these particular girls were being killed, it was like no one cared,” said Graham, a married mother of three. “You couldn’t go anywhere without people talking about it, at the grocery store or wherever. I heard some of the cruelest things being said, like: ‘It’s her fault for being out there.’
“But what people didn’t realize was my sister didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t go home,” Graham said.
Graham and Reichert are working together to contact other victims’ families and hope to meet with them to discuss the memorial.
“It’s for healing, it’s positive and it will happen, I have little doubt,” she said.
To learn more
For more information on The Organization for Prostitution Survivors and to donate to the Green River Victims Memorial, visit www.seattleops.com. The website includes a video about the effort.
Community engagement
The next OPS community engagement will be held the second week of April, and the first art exhibit is planned for early May. Dates and venues haven’t been confirmed yet, but information will be available on the OPS website.
Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s are among those who won’t sell the engineered salmon despite an FDA finding that it would be as safe to eat as conventional salmon.
By Andrew Pollack, The New York Times
Several supermarket chains have pledged not to sell what could become the first genetically modified animal to reach the nation’s dinner plates — a salmon engineered to grow about twice as fast as normal.
The supermarkets — including Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and Aldi — stated their policies in response to a campaign by consumer and environmental groups opposed to the fish. The groups are expected to announce the chains’ policies Wednesday. The supermarket chains have 2,000 stores in all, with 1,200 of them belonging to Aldi, which has outlets stretching from Kansas and Texas to the East Coast.
“Our current definition of sustainable seafood specifies the exclusion of genetically modified organisms,” a spokeswoman for Aldi said in a statement that also said the policy might evolve over time.
She said the company would not comment further.
The salmon is now awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which in December concluded that the fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment and would be as safe to eat as conventional salmon. The agency is accepting public comments on its findings until April 26.
Under existing FDA policies, the salmon, if approved, would probably not be labeled as genetically engineered. The agency has said that use of genetic engineering per se does not change a food materially.
The campaign by the environmental and consumer groups suggests that the salmon could have trouble winning acceptance in the market, assuming consumers could identify it.
“Consumers do not want to eat genetically engineered fish, and stores are starting to pick up on it,” said Eric Hoffman, food and technology policy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, one of the 30 organizations that sent letters to retailers asking them to promise not to carry the salmon.
Other organizations involved include the Center for Food Safety and Consumers Union.
Still, the 2,000 stores covered by the pledges so far represent only a small fraction of the estimated 36,500 U.S. supermarkets, and some already had policies against genetically engineered seafood. Whole Foods, which recently announced that all genetically engineered food sold in its stores would have to be labeled by 2018, caters to consumers more likely than most to pay higher prices to avoid genetically modified ingredients.
Hoffman said he was confident that other grocers, including some more mainstream ones, would sign on.
“We haven’t heard any solid noes from anyone,” he said.
Ronald L. Stotish, chief executive of AquaBounty Technologies, which developed the salmon, said of the pledges: “I would be disappointed, but it’s their right. No one will ever be forced to purchase our products.”
But he added, “We think we have a safe and healthy product that we hope will be given a chance to be fairly judged by consumers.”
The fish, the AquAdvantage salmon, is a farmed Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from the chinook salmon and a genetic switch from the ocean pout that keeps the transplanted gene continuously active. The salmon can grow to market weight in as little as half the time required by other farmed Atlantic salmon, AquaBounty says.
Critics say that the fish has not been tested adequately for safety and that it might outcompete wild salmon for food or mates should it ever escape. AquaBounty says its fish are sterilized and would be grown in inland tanks, with little chance of escape.
The groups against the fish say that Marsh Supermarkets, with about 90 stores in Ohio and Indiana, and PCC Natural Markets, with nine stores in Washington state, had also agreed not to carry the genetically modified salmon. Marsh did not return calls seeking verification.
AquaBounty, which is based in Maynard, Mass., has been close to running out of money. Friday, shareholders approved the sale of new shares worth $6 million, which the company has said would be enough to keep it afloat for at least another year.
Most of the new shares are being acquired by the Intrexon Corp., bringing its stake in AquaBounty to 53.8 percent. Intrexon specializes in synthetic biology, an advanced form of genetic engineering, and is controlled by Randal J. Kirk, a biotechnology entrepreneur.
Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press. Pope Francis gives the thumbs up to the crowd as he arrives in St. Peter’s Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican on Tuesday.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis laid out the priorities of his pontificate during his installation Mass on Tuesday, urging the princes, presidents, sheiks and thousands of ordinary people attending to protect the environment, the weakest and the poorest and to let tenderness “open up a horizon of hope.”
It was a message Francis has hinted at in his first week as pontiff, when his gestures of simplicity often spoke louder than his words. But on a day when he had the world’s economic, political and religious leadership sitting before him on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica for the official start of his papacy, Francis made his point clear.
“Please,” he told them. “Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”
The Argentine native is the first pope from Latin America and the first named for the 13th-century friar St. Francis of Assisi, whose life’s work was to care for nature, the poor and most disadvantaged.
The Vatican said between 150,000-200,000 people attended the Mass, held under bright blue skies after days of chilly rain and featuring flag-waving fans from around the world.
In Buenos Aires, thousands of people packed the central Plaza di Mayo square to watch the ceremony on giant TV screens, erupting in joy when Francis called them from Rome, his words broadcast over loudspeakers.
“I want to ask a favor,” Francis told them. “I want to ask you to walk together, and take care of one another. … And don’t forget that this bishop who is far away loves you very much. Pray for me.”
Back in Rome, Francis was interrupted by applause several times during his homily, including when he urged the faithful not to allow “omens of destruction,” hatred, envy and pride to “defile our lives.”
Francis said the role of the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics is to open his arms and protect all of humanity, but “especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”
“Today amid so much darkness we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others,” he said. “To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope, it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds.”
After the celebrations die down, Francis has his work cut out for him as he confronts a church in crisis: Retired Pope Benedict XVI spent eight years trying to reverse the decline of Christianity in Europe, without much success.
While growing in Africa and Asia, the Catholic Church has been stained in Europe, Australia and the Americas by sexual abuse scandals. Closer to home, Francis is facing serious management shortcomings in a Vatican bureaucracy in dire need of reform.
Francis hasn’t offered any hint of how he might tackle those greater problems, focusing instead on crowd-pleasing messages and gestures that signal a total shift in priority and personality from his German theologian predecessor.
On Wednesday, Francis may give a hint about his ecumenical intentions, as he holds an audience with Christian delegations who attended his installation. On Friday, he will put his foreign policy chops on display in an address to the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.
Saturday he calls on Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat south of Rome, and Sunday celebrates Palm Sunday Mass, another major celebration in St. Peter’s Square.
He then presides over all the rites of Holy Week, capped by Easter Sunday Mass on March 31, when Christians mark the resurrection of Christ, an evocative start to a pontificate.
Francis, 76, thrilled the crowd at the start of the Mass by taking a long round-about through the sun-drenched piazza, shouting “Ciao!” at well-wishers and kissing babies handed up to him.
At one point, as he neared a group of people in wheelchairs, he signaled for the jeep to stop, hopped off, and went to bless a disabled man held up to the barricade by an aide and kiss him on his forehead. It was a gesture from a man whose short papacy so far is becoming defined by such spontaneous forays into the crowd that seem to surprise and concern his security guards.
“I like him because he loves the poor,” said 7-year-old Pietro Loretti, who attended the Mass from Barletta in southern Italy. Another child in the crowd, 9-year-old Benedetta Vergetti from Cervetri near Rome, also skipped school to attend.
“I like him because he’s sweet like my Dad.”
The blue and white flags from Argentina fluttered above the crowd, which Italian media initially estimated could reach 1 million. Civil protection crews closed the main streets leading to the square to traffic and set up barricades for nearly a mile (two kilometers) along the route to try to control the masses and allow official delegations through.
At the start of the Mass, Francis received a gold-plated silver fisherman’s ring symbolizing the papacy and a woolen stole symbolizing his role as shepherd of his flock. The ring was something of a hand-me-down, first offered to Pope Paul VI, the pope who presided over the latter half of the Second Vatican Council, the meetings that brought the Church into the modern world.
Francis also received vows of obedience from a half-dozen cardinals — a potent symbol given Benedict XVI is still alive and was reportedly watching the proceedings on TV.
A cardinal intoned the rite of inauguration, saying: “The Good Shepherd charged Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep; today you succeed him as the bishop of this church.”
Some 132 official delegations attended, including more than a half-dozen heads of state from Latin America, a sign of the significance of the election for the region. Francis’s determination that his pontificate would be focused on the poor has resonance in a poverty-stricken region that counts 40 percent of the world’s Catholics.
In the VIP section was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Taiwanese President Ying-Jeou Ma, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Prince Albert of Monaco and Bahrain Prince Sheik Abdullah bin Haman bin Isa Alkhalifa, among others. All told, six sovereign rulers, 31 heads of state, three princes and 11 heads of government were attending, the Vatican said.
Francis directed his homily to them, saying: “We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!”
After the Mass, Francis stood in a receiving line for nearly two hours to greet each of the government delegations in St. Peter’s Basilica, chatting warmly and animatedly with each one, kissing the few youngsters who came along with their parents and occasionally blessing a rosary given to him. Unlike his predecessors, he did so in just his white cassock, not the red cape.
Among the religious VIPs attending was the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew I, who became the first patriarch from the Istanbul-based church to attend a papal investiture since the two branches of Christianity split nearly 1,000 years ago. Also attending for the first time was the chief rabbi of Rome. Their presence underscores the broad hopes for ecumenical and interfaith dialogue in this new papacy given Francis’ own work for improved relations.
In a gesture to Christians in the East, the pope prayed with Eastern rite Catholic patriarchs and archbishops before the tomb of St. Peter at the start of the Mass and the Gospel was chanted in Greek rather than the traditional Latin.
But it is Francis’ history of living with the poor and working for them while archbishop of Buenos Aires that seems to have resonated with ordinary Catholics who say they are hopeful that Francis can inspire a new generation of faithful who have fallen away from the church.
“As an Argentine, he was our cardinal. It’s a great joy for us,” said Edoardo Fernandez Mendia, from the Argentine Pampas who was in the crowd. “I would have never imagined that it was going to be him.”
Recalling another great moment in Argentine history, when soccer great Diego Maradona scored an improbable goal in the 1986 World Cup, he said: “And for the second time, the Hand of God came to Argentina.”
EVERETT — United Way of Snohomish County celebrated its 2012 Community Caring Campaign with a recent dinner honoring top fundraisers. The campaign’s total, due in July, is expected to be slightly higher than in the previous year.
The agency that provides grants to 102 programs through 39 nonprofit organizations reported total revenue of $9.95 million in 2011.
The 2012 campaign saw a slight increase in revenue, said Neil Parekh, the local United Way’s vice president of marketing and communications. Despite the slow economy, revenues have held steady in the past few years, he said.
“We so appreciate that Snohomish County always works together as a community. It’s a testament to our county’s caring and can-do spirit,” said Dennis Smith, president and CEO of United Way of Snohomish County, in a statement after the March 6 dinner at Comcast Arena’s Edward D. Hansen Conference Center.
The Community Caring Campaign is the agency’s primary source of revenue. It includes contributions to campaigns organized at area workplaces, the Combined Federal Campaign, and the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound. United Way also raises money for its endowment, seeks grants, and works with lawmakers to obtain state and federal money for efforts here.
The largest contributions to the 2012 campaign came from the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound, with a gift of $1.86 million, and the Boeing Co., which donated $800,000. Together, they were named co-winners of the Premier Partner Award.
There was a tie for the President’s Award, the top organizational prize presented. The two winners were the Fluke Corporation and UPS.
Parekh said Fluke conducts an annual campaign that benefits six United Way agencies around the country, including the one here. Fluke’s local campaign raised more than $246,000, a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Since 2008, employee and corporate giving from the Fluke Corporation has totaled $1,042,952. Parekh said Fluke’s effort is United Way’s second largest local corporate campaign.
Fluke also provides a big crew of volunteers for United Way’s annual Days of Caring. Many of them working at Camp Fire USA’s Camp Killoqua near Stanwood.
“The folks at Fluke have a history, a legacy of community participation. It was important to John Fluke when he founded the company,” said Jim Lico, president of the Fluke Corporation. The Everett-based Fluke Corporation, which makes industrial testing equipment, is now a subsidiary of the Danaher Corporation.
Lico said United Way team leaders at Fluke have done a good job in recent years getting the word out to employees about campaign participation. “United Way is a great way to engage in charitable giving, an easy way,” Lico said.
The other President’s Award winner, UPS, is a longtime national partner with United Way and a past winner of United Way’s Spirit of America award, Parekh said. Locally, UPS corporate and employee giving has exceeded $400,000 since 2008, he said.
Parekh said UPS held a campaign kickoff event at Safeco Field and its employees increased their United Way participation by 44 percent, with their donations up 59 percent. There are UPS locations in Everett and Arlington.
Jessica Scrace, an area spokeswoman for UPS, said the business has been a United Way partner for 31 years. “Last year we were very proud to become the first company to have given over $1 billion to United Way nationally,” Scrace said.
Community Transit CEO Joyce Eleanor, chairwoman of United Way’s 2012 campaign, said that with all the donations the agency was able to help hundreds of thousands of people. Programs helped by United Way of Snohomish County serve about 330,000 people annually.
The dinner was also a welcome for Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring, chairman of the 2013 United Way Community Caring Campaign.
Below is the full list of award winners:
President’s Award: The Fluke Corporation and UPS.
Executive of the Year Awards: Phil McConnell, executive director Work Opportunities; Jerry Goodwin, CEO and president Senior Aerospace AMT, Absolute Manufactuing and Damar AeroSystems.
Premier Partner Award: The Boeing Co., and Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound.
Positive Change Award: Everett Public Schools; Jamco America, Inc.; and Premera Blue Cross.
Local Community Hero Award: Vine Dahlen PLLC; Target, Marysville; Tulalip Gaming Organization.
Labor Partnership Award: Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1576; International Associations of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 130.
The Kristofersons are in the running for the state tree farmer of the year award
By Gale Fiege, The Herald
Mark Mulligan / The Herald, 2011 file Julia Kristoferson smiles as she zips onto a platform manned by guide Jack Dawe while zip-lining Aug. 29, 2011, at the Kristoferson farm.
CAMANO ISLAND — The Kristoferson family is one of four in the state nominated for the Washington Tree Farmer of the Year award.
The century-old Kristoferson farm on Camano Island is now home to the family’s tourism-oriented zip-line business, Canopy Tours Northwest.
The two-year-old venture is a fun one, but it’s also a way for the family to preserve the 134-acre farm and stick to a commitment to managing their 100-acre forest for many generations to come, Kris Kristoferson said.
His sister, Mona Kristoferson Campbell agreed.
“We’re very honored to among those considered for the forest award,” Campbell said. “Learning about forest stewardship led us to entertain a business idea that is low impact and allows us to share the knowledge we gained about our forest.”
Swedish immigrants Alfred and Alberta Kristoferson bought land for a dairy farm on Camano Island in 1912. From lumber milled on site, the Kristofersons built hay and dairy barns, which today are listed on the state’s Heritage Barn Register.
When the Kristofersons moved to Camano, the old-growth trees on their land already had been clear cut. With its 100-year-old trees, the current forest is managed for a small harvest every 10 years under a stewardship plan developed with the help of Washington State University Extension. The Kristoferson family has had plenty of chances over the years to sell their property to developers, Campbell, said.
Other tree farms nominated for the tree farmer of the year award, sponsored by the Washington Farm Forestry Association and the Washington Forest Protection Association, include one on the Kitsap Peninsula, one near Chehalis and another outside of Olympia.
The award is based on the farmer’s stewardship, management plan, timber health, innovation and community involvement. The winner will be announced April 26.
Los Angeles Times This restaurant-grade salmon bisque can be made in less than an hour.
By Noelle Carter, Los Angeles Times
With the depth of flavor in this soup, you’d never guess it came together in under an hour.
Robin’s Restaurant in Cambria, Calif., was happy to share its recipe for rich and creamy salmon bisque, which we’ve adapted below.
Robin’s salmon bisque
¼ cup salted butter
1 cup sliced leeks
1 cup sliced white mushrooms
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2¾ cups (22 ounces) clam juice
2 cups crushed tomatoes
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill, plus fresh sprigs for garnish
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 cups cubed fresh salmon (bones removed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes), about 1½ pounds
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups heavy cream
Heat a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat until hot. Add the butter, and, when it is melted, stir in the leeks, mushrooms and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, until the leeks are translucent and soft.
Stir in the clam juice, crushed tomatoes, chopped parsley and dill, and season with the salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, then stir in the salmon. Continue to simmer until the salmon is fully cooked, 3 to 5 minutes.
While the soup is cooking, whisk the flour into the heavy cream in a small bowl. Slowly add the cream to the soup when the salmon is cooked. Continue to simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.
Ladle the soup into bowls, and serve garnished with dill sprigs.
By Jessica Danforth, Indian Country Today Media Network
“The beginning of sexually transmitted infections laying siege upon Indigenous peoples’ self-determination occurred when Columbus’s syphilis infected crew sexually terrorized Indigenous women over 500 years ago. HIV has become the latest procession of this colonial legacy, linking violence to infection. Today, the responsibility of defending our self-determination against ongoing colonialism is an active right of Native peoples, but one that includes a call for accountability of non-Natives to claim. National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is therefore a time when the gravity of this story and the strength of our efforts toward healing & health is most appropriate when observed by Natives and non-Natives alike.” —INSPIRE HIV Prevention, Initiative of Native Sisters Preventing Infectious Risks through Empowerment
2011 National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day red balloon release on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. (National Native American HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Facebook)
Awareness days exist for many issues these days—for different types of cancers, to bullying, even bird-feeding and fair trade. While awareness and information sharing are important tenants of social change, what do these days really mean on the ground? How do we concretely effect change in one day alone?
Jessica Danforth, executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network
This was a recent conversation we had at the Native Youth Sexual Health Network prior to National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on March 20. In any given week our staff and youth leaders are working front-line in Indigenous communities throughout North America and it’s usually a time of the year we get more requests to speak to the realities of HIV and AIDS in our communities. And again, while this is critical and a great opportunity, we recently reflected on how far-reaching the issues of HIV/AIDS are to not just do prevention messaging but to specifically address historical traumas while not being solely relegated to deficit or disease control models of doing things. A common saying we have at NYSHN is that as Indigenous peoples or youth we aren’t “at risk” all alone, which is how we often have to read about ourselves. Colonization, racism, and not having access to culturally safe care are what actually put our lives at risk.
So what’s the importance of having a conversation like this on an awareness day to effect change? Krysta Williams, our advocacy and outreach coordinator, shared her perspective:
“The day is still important not only because of the issues of stigma and discrimination still faced by people living with HIV but because we are at a point where things will stay the same—annual events that talk about stats—or they will radically shift with the leadership of young Native people who are calling for more than just awareness. Every workshop we do we get more questions, they want to hear what else can be done, more than just knowing the facts but what are our options after diagnosis, how to improve quality of life and generally a big WHY about discrimination and stigma, even in the face of knowing the facts and having access to treatment.
“We are also seeing that it’s us as communities, nations and families that need to take charge—not the law, or mainstream public health or the AIDS industrial complex—but us. We aren’t waiting for a magical solution but actively making the real change of moving towards doing things our way, treating people with respect and love.”
I remember finding out when the first National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day happened and how appreciative I felt that there was finally a day where we could actually speak to what is specifically happening in our own Native communities—rather than being pressured to again join the line of “high risk statistic populations”. I spoke to Robert Foley, president and CEO of the National Native American HIV/AIDS Prevention Center, about the significance of the history of when the awareness day started:
“The first National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day was held on March 20, 2007, and was a collaborative effort between the National Native American HIV/AIDS Prevention Center, Colorado State University Commitment to Action for 7th-Generation Awareness & Education: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project (CA7AE: HAPP), and the Inter-tribal Council of Arizona with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It takes place on the first day of spring each year as it was believed that this day best exemplifies the ceremonies that occurred on the Spring Equinox for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples—celebrations of growth, rebirth, healing and rejuvenation. The day was created in order to draw attention to the impact that HIV is having on Native people, and create an opportunity to commit resources and energy to ending this epidemic—both from the community side and the government side.
At the time when National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day was created, there were other national awareness days that had been diffused, and they have been shown to be an effective method to highlight the epidemic in certain communities. The National Native American HIV/AIDS Prevention Center, Colorado State University and the Inter-tribal Council of Arizona wanted to ensure that Native communities received the benefit of these efforts and the government contribute resources to make it happen. They created the day, but the real efforts were to lobby the CDC to recognize it, support it and dedicate monies to support the creation and diffusion of Native Awareness Day materials.”
I think it’s this history in lobbying and advocacy it took to create National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in the first place that we can rally around this coming March 20 and build our collective strength from the ground up. More than just another awareness day, it’s a time of the year to make the realities of HIV/AIDS real for everyone, not just because of heightened statistics or risks but because our youth are asking us to remember the possibilities for change this day can have if we do make it real. As Shea Norris, member of the National Native HIV/AIDS Youth Council (NNYC-HIV) told me:
“I think part of the day represents being seen—within our communities, tribes, nations and internationally—as Native peoples. It’s a day to remember community members that have been lost and look forward to educating our peoples. It’s also to open discussions and reduce stigmas, taboos, and stereotypes. What I hope this day brings is awareness for not just anybody but for the youth, to give them as much knowledge as possible so that they can take the next step and educate their peers so that their peers can educate the next generation.”
Jessica Danforth is the founder and executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.
By Cole R. Delaune, Indian Country Today Media Network
Last week, the Internet news cycle erupted in a predictable maelstrom of gasps and pearl-clutching over the spring/summer issue of AnOther Magazine, an esoteric style rag based in London that caters to a relatively rarefied demographic of the sartorially literate and eclectically minded. Like a number of similar periodicals, the publication achieves its ad dollars not by accruing a large readership, but by courting the tastes of the creatively attuned — most likely, design students and other aspiring insiders. The fury reserved for its cover girl, a three-time Oscar nominee and the star of the recently released Oz the Great and Powerful, was the latest episode in a vogue of hand-wringing about pop caricatures of Natives and the perils of a specifically visual brand of cultural appropriation.
While some of the incidents in said wave have quite rightly garnered backlash and sparked timely and necessary dialogue about the historically invisible Indian America, the disgruntlement with Michelle Williams is perhaps most reminiscent of the uproar that occurred when Karlie Kloss trotted down a Victoria’s Secret runway last autumn clad in nominally indigenous regalia, replete with headdress and other cartoonish accoutrements. The ire precipitated by both controversies illuminates an ironic ignorance — since that, of course, is the primary element in each occurrence identified as offensive —about the nature of creative expression and hierarchical power structures in the fashion industry, as well as interesting implications about the trendiness of political correctness and waxing butthurt over consumerist minutiae and other contemporary inanities.
When Kloss stomped down a New York City catwalk back in November during the lingerie monolith’s annual over-the-top marketing free-for-all, online commentators wasted little time in taking the model to task for her faux pas. Feverish speculation that the beauty had donned the fake tribal garb as an intentional diss to ex-boyfriend Sam Bradford quickly seized the imagination of especially misguided voices. Although the Rams quarterback is a registered member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, such fantastic romantic-revenge conjecture missed a salient point: major corporations are not in the practice of leaving any details of a multimillion dollar and nationally televised production to the whims of 19-year-olds. Companies helming a presentation of their clothing wares employ men and women whose sole professional responsibility is to apparel the posers in a pre-selected line of ensembles and determine the appropriate manner in which to accessorize those garments; these specialists are known as stylists. An organization investing money in such a large operation would inevitably require final approval over the outfits and accompanying entertainment from teams in a variety of departments. At no point does a mannequin, even one as highly paid as an Angel, customarily pipe in with an opinion on the costumes she has been assigned. Her job, effectively, is to function as a living doll or animated clothes hanger: show up and display the goods in as flattering a way as possible, in manner consistent with the thematic tone of the collection, the event, and the label at large. One assumes Ms. Kloss could have launched a dressing-room protest against ugly Halloween kitsch, but plenty of working women put up with managers who deploy disagreeable tactics, and most of them don’t face the possibility of breaching a lucrative contract while facing the costs of a West Village mortgage and future medical school tuition.
Unlike the carnivalesque VS spectacle, titles of AnOther’s ilk reside far from the intersection of explicit commerce and obvious sexualization; they trade in fantasy. Open up the pages of any glossy devoted to fashion editorial, and you are likely to find sequences of photographs that act both as subtextual advertisement and as optical poems. Such sittings are analogous to storybooks without attendant words or the still images of a film strip: there is a narrative at work, and this is the major reason why circulars like Vogue are celebrated as enduring escapist fare. Thus, when Michelle Williams poses for multiple cover variations, all of the portraits involved are most reasonably interpreted as depictions of fictional characters. The nuances of context distinguish an appearance in such circumstances from pointedly profit-driven transgressions of taste in more definitively market-oriented spheres like mass-underwear retail and the T-shirt arena of Steve Madden. And although detractors have raised valid questions about the disconcerting underrepresentation of Natives in entertainment and the sensitive conundrum of when it is acceptable for a person outside of a particular race or culture to portray a character of the aforementioned background on camera, such gray areas do not automatically damn Ms. Williams for her participation in an artistic exercise over which she enjoyed no autonomy and in which she was likely legally obligated to engage as part of the media promotional clause of her employment agreement with Disney. Michelle Yeoh, for instance, has appeared in theaters as a Japanese geisha, a Burmese freedom fighter, and a Chinese warrioress even though she is Malaysian, and has garnered nary a raised eyebrow. For that matter, Tantoo Cardinal and Irene Bedard have played roles in movies about indigenous tribes very disparate from which they hail in real life. Why not a Caucasian performer, and why not in a static picture? It’s called “acting” for a reason, after all. If disappointment and unease with these characterizations is to be channeled effectively, critiques should be directed to the parties with ultimate discretion over the projects: Victoria’s Secret Fashion Collection Creative Director Sophie Neophitou-Apostolou and Dazed Group Editor Jefferson Hack.
Of course, tempered consideration has no place in a debate like this, and the gallery of talking heads triggered to cry “off with her head” (or “racist!”) and avoid all but superficial analysis steadfastly charged ahead by ascribing culpability to Montana’s favorite starlet not only for the photo shoot, but also for statements she never made. Most confoundingly, Aurora Bogado of The Nation was apparently determined to take as much umbrage with the situation as possible, facts be damned; she penned an open letter to the thespian entitled “Native Americans Are Not Munchkins,” in which she chides the suggestion that “Natives are cute creatures that require safekeeping.” The missive would have been incisive and worthy of some self-righteous applause had Williams ever issued statements in that vein . . . except she didn’t, but rather accurately noted that one productive interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz mythology is as a sociological allegory: “Quadlings, Tinkers and Munchkins didn’t mean much to me; it wasn’t my language. But when I thought of them as Native Americans trying to inhabit their land or about women getting the right to vote, it made a lot more sense. Even if it’s not always overt, if you’re looking for [politics] in the movie, it will feel very topical.” Relating the threads of an especially outlandish and arcane fantasia to the historical realities of the era in which it was created neither necessitates endorsement for troubling thematic undertones or authorial intent; as millions of audiences know, it’s easy enough to dissect the Twilight saga, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Harry Potter series, without earnestly believing in Mormonism, Christianity or the racial purity doctrine of the Third Reich. But who cares about literary deconstruction when there’s some moralistic sanctimony to plumb?
Educated at Darmouth College and Columbia University, Cole DeLaune is a native of Oklahoma and Tennessee. He currently resides in Atlanta, and has contributed editorial content to Vogue and Elle, among other publications. He is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma.Skin-walking, his first book of poetry, will be published in October.
This is the seventh year Blue Sky customers have funded these awards, which since 2006 has put more than $4 million to work at more than 50 facilities that produce power and increase awareness of the viability of renewable energy.
“The Umatilla project is another example of our customers’ deep commitment to building a renewable energy future,” said Pat Reiten, president and CEO of Pacific Power. “Not only will the Tamástslikt project supply renewable energy, but it will help teach a new generation about renewable energy. We’re proud to be part of this important effort along with our Blue Sky customers.”
The Tamástslikt Cultural Institute is the museum and cultural center of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and brings the tribe’s story alive to thousands of visitors each year. The 50-kilowatt wind turbine planned at the center will be visible from a variety of locations and will also serve as an educational tool for both local and tribal students. A kiosk and monitoring display showing real-time energy usage will be installed inside the cultural center and this information will be available on the institute’s website.
“The Blue Sky Block program, which funds these projects, has one of the highest participation rates you’ll find nationwide,” said Pat Egan, vice president of customer and community affairs, Pacific Power. “One of the reasons the Blue Sky Block option is so popular is that customers can see what they are getting. In addition to supporting the renewable energy industry, they are helping fund on-the-ground, working renewable projects in their own communities.”
