📢 Cascadia Voices 05/02/26

Welcome to our newest newsletter: If you’re a CDN subscriber, you’re automatically signed up to receive content-specific newsletters, including “Cascadia Voices,” a Saturday email highlighting our opinion content of the week.

Among the better gauges regarding the health of local journalism and the democratic process is the level of a community’s participation in a newspaper’s letters to the editor section. It’s an “indicator species” I’ve followed closely for about 15 years, most of that for The Daily (Everett) Herald, but now as Cascadia Daily News’ deputy editor, helping to compile CDN’s weekly offering of community voices.

Over more than four years of CDN’s growing coverage of Whatcom and Skagit counties and their communities, the publication’s Opinion section has also seen an increasing number of our readers adding their thoughts and experiences to the conversations around news events and controversies, often with compelling perspectives and even a little humor.

And, if you’ll allow a brief Semiquincentennial Moment, those letters continue a tradition older than the nation, the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment itself.

We can only add: Keep it coming. Such as:

However, it includes almost nothing about what the crisis is, why it is happening or what needs to be done about it. Tindall mentions loss of “critical food and processing infrastructure, plant closures and other losses across the agricultural supply chain,” but these sound, at least on the surface, like market forces at work. Are there specific, poorly conceived or implemented government policies that are undermining agriculture?

Tindall says, “decision-makers cannot claim to support agriculture while ignoring the worst profitability numbers in the nation.” But again, profitability, by itself, is not a government issue. Profitability alone doesn’t ensure the public has access to healthy, high-quality, sustainable food. Farming is an extremely challenging business, and one we all rely on. Given all the environmental, political and economic forces we read about daily, it is not surprising that at least some Washington farms, and perhaps all, are in crisis. But beyond a short-term bailout, what should Olympia’s farm priorities be?

Scott Miller
Bellingham

Read more letters to the editor here.

Submit a letter to the editor (250 words max) or guest commentary (500–800 words) online at cascadiadaily.com/submissions.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma delighted fans of music and humanity during his performance with the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, as Editor Ron Judd recounts in his column.

Guest Writers Seth Newsom and Lance Calloway make the point that the regulatory process, while necessary for environmental protection, at some point begins to impede progress, including improvements at the AltaGas/ALA Energy Ferndale Terminal at Cherry Point that protect the environment and jobs at the same time.

And Rachel Witter McGarrity, Correctional Health Services manager for the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office, asks readers to consider that as jails have become a default provider of mental health and substance use disorder services, there are opportunities to provide crucial interventions to reduce overdose deaths, ER visits and recidivism. (In print May 1, online Monday.)

Cities and counties are struggling to find revenue that can fund the infrastructure and needs that residents expect. For example, Whatcom County is discovering that a sales tax increase for criminal justice services isn’t bringing in as much revenue as hoped. While at the same time, the county is considering a new property tax to help support the Lummi Island ferry. Likewise, Lynden School District has again failed to convince enough voters to increase property taxes to remodel schools.

On The Media: which started 25 years ago and continues as a public radio show and twice-weekly podcast from WYNC Studios, reviews recent news through a contemplative media lens. Hosted by Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger, OTM’s interviews provide context and analysis of the past week’s events.

Among the better late-night “news” monologues: and now dwindling, with the pending departure of Stephen Colbert from his CBS late-night show and the FCC’s latest threats against ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel — are NBC’s “Late Night” host Seth Meyers and his “Closer Look” segments. Meyers’ “Closer Look” segments meld clips, commentary and snark into biting satire.

Speaking of ballrooms: The Atlantic’s Alexandra Petri has some thoughts on other tragedies in history that would have been prevented had there been a ballroom available in the White House’s East Wing, including the British torching of the White House during the War of 1812: “A ballroom,” notes Peti, “couldn’t have hurt.”