Mossback is biased on the subject of beards: They're always in style. But chin whiskers are still subject to debate outside the Great Nearby where fashion sometimes flirts with the beard, but razors usually win out in the end.Maybe the Santa-season h...

To be a Seattle native today is to be conflicted. I suffer from bouts of nostalgia for the old city, but also feel excitement about aspects of the new. The latter sentiment may come as a surprise, because as a columnist I frequently complain about mo...

Maybe it's just me, but it seemed like 2008 was filled with Nazi and Hitler stories and references. I wrote about it on a number of occasions, including pointing out brouhahas over local conservatives comparing environmentalists to Nazis, critics acc...

While conservatives wail about federal financial bailouts being a return to socialism, the budget problems at the states signal new momentum for the opposite: privatization.States have been looking for ways to raise cash for some time, and leasing or...

In a step toward making driving in your own vehicle akin to taking a taxi cab that charges by distance traveled, Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski plans to recommend his state transition away from the gas tax in 2009, eventually replacing it with a mile...

The story is sobering to those who hope for success in efforts to clean-up Puget Sound, the beautiful, once bountiful defining waters of our region. The Washington Post has an analysis of the historic $6-billion Chesapeake Bay clean-up effort, launch...

The dean of writing about the West, Wallace Stegner, once wrote that the West gave America two innovations: the motel and the ghost town. The ethic of the region has long been about movement and growth: to stay in one place is to stagnate and die. Th...

The late Walt Crowley, co-founder of the local history website HistoryLink, used call his project an example of venture socialism. As a non-profit, HistoryLink has been partly supported by funds from local government as well as foundations and priv...

Mona Lisa Saloy, the African-American poet and professor from New Orleans who stirred controversy at Seattle's Lakeside prep school with her reading of a poem called (and using) The 'N' Word, has now responded via email to the Lakeside community.Sp...

Seattle's first world's fair, the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition of 1909, will be remembered in many ways during its upcoming centennial year, but giving people a live-action sense of the expo has proved elusive. A fairly extensive photographic reco...