Bruce Barcott

A Tale of Two Drug Wars: Denver, Day One

It's a thrilling thing, watching the world change in front of your eyes. I've been writing about marijuana legalization for most of the past year--my Rolling Stone feature in the Jan 3 issue just went up this morning--so I couldn't miss the official start. I flew in to Denver on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, checked in to my hotel, took a nap, and then walked into the city to see the War on Drugs come to an end. At Casselman's, a party space in Denver's NoDo district, marijuana advocates and business owners rang in midnight with champagne-and-reefer toasts. I hung out until around 1:30, talking history and hope with folks who were there back in the day. After dodging the running of the drunks (all screaming at taxis or their girlfriends,  sometimes both) I caught a van back to the Quality Inn, slept four hours, then hustled across town to catch Iraq War veteran Sean Azzariti make the first purchase at 3-D Cannabis Center. An hour later at Medicine Man, Denver's largest dispensary (now retail shop), the industry's most charming brother duo, Andy and Pete Williams, gave me a tour of their massive warehouse grow--which is about to double in size. While Pete took me behind the curtain to get a look at their operation, Andy worked the three-hour line outside with Clintonian ease. As the masses queued up peacefully, MM staff busily transplanted, harvested, and trimmed to meet the demand. After checking in on six other retail shops--all mobbed, all day--I stopped back at Medicine Man at 6:30pm and joined the line. The City of Denver requires pot shops to close at 7pm, and MM was taking no chances on day one. They'd set their computers to refuse all sales after 7:00. A beat-the-clock atmosphere set in, as customers thrust their dollars at budtenders, those of us in line cheering every sale. (That's me in line in the photo at left, in front of MM's Wall Of Weed.) I got in on one of the last transactions of the day, and went out shaking the hand of a very happy Andy Williams. I'll have more on this later. Right now I'm exhausted and hoping to catch a plane home. Without my purchase. 

What's Your Income? How to Answer for Obamacare

My column in the Nov. 18 issue of the New York Observer has generated a ton of mail and a lot of questions about the issue many of us are facing: How to estimate income on the Exchange application. From the column: 

The state exchange number put me on hold. I hung up and called Premera. “You can sign up with us directly,” a very helpful rep told me, “but if there’s a chance your income could qualify you for a subsidy, it’s best to go through the state exchange.” 
    So: Back to the exchange website. Enter birth dates, zip code, tobacco use, yadda yadda, monthly income. Stop. Ponder. 
    Which month, brother? For that matter, which year? Do you want gross, net, before SE (self-employment tax, a k a Social Security payments) or after? AGI (adjusted gross income) from last year’s 1040? 

All my fellow freelancers and contract workers wanted to know: What's the number? 

I got ahold of the Washington State Insurance Commissioner's office this morning. They said it's a question they get asked a lot. Their answer came straight from the IRS definition:

For purposes of the premium tax credit, your household income is your modified adjusted gross income plus that of every other individual in your family for whom you can properly claim a personal exemption deduction and who is required to file a federal income tax return.

In other words, it's AGI.* Which is good news for most of us. AGI is the figure that's on the front page of your 1040, it's the number that's arrived at after all SE tax and deductions have been subtracted from your gross income. The trick is to estimate what your AGI is going to be for the year in which you're covered. In other words the AGI figure isn't a lookback; it runs concurrent with your insurance premium. So you're not estimating what your final AGI will be for 2013. You're estimating what it's going to be in 2014. 

Got that? 

Here's an IRS FAQ on the topic. If I hear more or differently, I'll report back. Good luck. 

* Actually, "modified" AGI, which apparently makes a difference to those who receive Social Security or retirement income from tax free bonds. See Jeff Thomas' helpful comment below. And remember: I am not a tax professional. 

Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU Dinner, One Year Later

One year ago next week, supporters of the ACLU of Washington gathered at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront to celebrate one of the most historic double victories in the history of social justice. Just a few days prior to the organization's annual fundraising dinner, Washington voters approved initiatives legalizing both gay marriage and the adult use of marijuana. Some folks in the ACLU spent most of their lives fighting for those issues. Finally: Victory. Drinks all around! 

The speaker that night, unfortunately, was Glenn Greenwald. 

Now known worldwide as the greatest muckracker of his generation, Greenwald then was just making a name for himself. With the Guardian as his microphone, Greenwald was fearlessly taking on the Obama administration and its out-of-control spying machine. In a ballroom crowded with happy civil libertarians--a rare sight, believe me--Greenwald took the podium and laid a turd in the punchbowl. 

Obama’s big data grab, Greenwald said, was more awful than anyone in the room could imagine. The domestic spying and retaliation were bad and getting worse. Bummer, bummer, bummer. 

By the end of the speech, ACLU of Washington executive director Kathleen Taylor had to clean-and-jerk the mood of the room back to positive. 

One year later, I can’t get Greenwald’s speech out of my mind. In the past twelve months Greenwald’s stories, using ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s data, have shaken the world. He was right. The spying was worse than anyone imagined. And the retaliation has fallen on Greenwald. 

Roger Cohen’s column in today’s New York Times revealed that Greenwald now lives a strange existence. He’s courted as the centerpiece of eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s new media startup, while living in the hills of Rio de Janeiro with a pack of rescue dogs, unable to visit the United States (rest easy, Kathleen Taylor!) for fear of being arrested. “I feel like if I went back to the United States there is a more than trivial chance I would be arrested,” he told Cohen. “Not one of 20 lawyers I have spoken to has said, ‘Oh, you are being paranoid; of course they would never think of arresting you.’ ”

Meanwhile his latest story, revealing that the NSA has tapped the phone of every Euro leader but Adrian Hasler, has Angela Merkel giving Obama a wood shampoo with a rolling pin. Month after month, Greenwald’s  stories for the Guardian continue the embarrassing situation in which a British newspaper breaks the most important stories about the United States government, while the New York Times frets about the damage to national security and ignores the stories that Greenwald continues to break. 

By the way: How much does the New York Times hate Glenn Greenwald? This much. Last month when news of Greenwald’s partnership with Omidyar broke, the NYT headlined the business story “Snowden Journalist’s New Venture to Be Bankrolled by eBay Founder.” 

‘Snowden Journalist?’

Two things here. The NYT’s own columnist today acknowledged Greenwald as the most famous journalist of his generation. Calling him ‘Snowden Journalist’ is like calling Bob Woodward “Political Burglary Reporter.” At any newspaper, copy editors always look for the shortest, pithiest headline--which means they passed over “Greenwald’s New Venture” for the longer “Snowden Journalist’s New Venture,” and...why exactly? Envy? Spite? Hard to say. I’m waiting for the next headline about Jeff Bezos: “Online Store Founder’s New Venture...” 

The ACLU of Washington’s annual Bill of Rights dinner takes place next week, on November 9, at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront. I wish Kathleen Taylor could invite Glenn Greenwald back so we in the audience could give him the standing ovation--and the legal protection--he deserves. 

Want a tourist attraction? Attract some birds.

I was saddened to open today’s New York Times and read that the Great Platte River Road Archway has fallen on hard times. You’d never know from its jumble of a name, but the Archway is a fantastic museum about America’s westward pioneers. Really. It’s one of the best history museums I’ve ever seen. The Archway is in Kearney, Nebraska, surrounded by corn fields and feedlots and Interstate 80. It can be confusing to find because it’s not exactly off Interstate 80, it’s suspended across Interstate 80. 

John Eligon’s piece in the Times recalled the high hopes that attended the Archway’s opening in the early 2000s: 

            ...promoters hailed it as a singular monument to westward expansion that would
            draw at least a million visitors a year. 

It hasn’t worked out as they’d hoped. After drawing nearly 250,000 visitors its first twelve months, attendance tapered to about 50,000 a year. Which isn’t bad. But it’s not exactly Six Flags Over Kearney. And the Archway may soon go bankrupt. 

The funny thing--unmentioned in the story--is that another attraction has the motels and B&Bs of Kearney filled to near capacity every spring. 

The attraction? Birds.  

Every March and April more than 500,000 sandhill cranes rest and refuel along the Platte River near Kearney, and with them come upwards of 75,000 birders from all over the world. I went to see the birds in 2007. It was an amazing spectacle. While my family and I were in Kearney, we stopped in at the Archway. We were delighted by the lifelike (and sometimes terrifying) dioramas. We’d definitely go again. But the Archway is an add-on. We wouldn’t go to Kearney just to see the museum. The sandhill crane rendezvous, though--there’s only one place in the world that happens. It’s worth the trip. 

And it’s free. All the people of Kearney and central Nebraska have to do is continue making room on the river for them.  

IPCC 5: The Deep Ocean Heats Up

The IPCC releases its 5th annual report on climate change on Monday. The results are hardly shocking: climate change is happening, it will get worse, and humans are causing it. But for those blessed with scientific curiosity and literacy, the report offers some intriguing new issues. One that I've been looking into this past week: What happened during the hiatus? 
    "Hiatus" is the term are using to describe the stair-step pauses in global annual mean surface temperature readings that occur every few years. The century-long trend line continues its steady upward slope, but over smaller chunks of time there are periods of slower warmer and faster warming. It's better shown by this chart published by NASA's Goddard Institute. Essentially, the global annual mean surface temperature shot up dramatically from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, then slowed. That doesn't mean global warming is stopping, or that the planet is cooling. Far from it. It does, though, pose an interesting question for researchers who keep track of the global energy budget--how much energy enters the earth's climate system, and where it goes. For them, the question over the past few years has been: During hiatus periods, where does the excess energy go? 
    The most likely answer: Into the deep ocean. I've just put up a story on the mystery, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists in Boulder, Colorado, who are solving it, on On Earth's website. Those of you who want to burnish your climate change geek status can pursue the issue further at RealClimate.org, which has an excellent post on the subject.  

 

Save "The Emerald Mile": Adventure Writers Stage Guerrilla Reading in Seattle

The ongoing spat between Barnes & Noble and the publisher Simon & Schuster has resulted in the nation's only national bookstore shutting out S&S authors and their books. My friend and colleague Kevin Fedarko is one of those caught in the crossfire. His fantastic new book, The Emerald Mile, is one of the great summer reads of 2013. But you won't find it at B&N. And you won't see Kevin reading in their stores. To help remedy the situation, some friends and I are staging a guerrilla reading outside the downtown Seattle Barnes & Noble store at 7th and Pine on Friday, July 12, at noon. Come hear Christopher Solomon, Dylan Tomine, McKenzie Funk, and yours truly read until the cops kick us to the curb. UPDATE: Here's a short video of the reading. 

A High Risk Investment: Welcome to the Cannabis Space

Medical marijuana is a $1.5 billion business conducted in 18 states and Washington DC. It's about to become a lot bigger. Last week New Hampshire approved the use of doctor-approved pot, and Colorado and Washington will introduce adult use (over 21) regulations later this year. Investing in pot is tricky, though. The federal government still considers cannabis a Schedule I drug, as illegal as LSD and heroin. Over the past few months I've spent time with the three partners in Privateer Holdings, the nation's first private equity firm to invest in what they call "the cannabis space." Their first acquisition, the Yelp! style web site Leafly.com, is one of their early effots to create "a clean American brand." Michael Blue, Brendan Kennedy, (pictured in photo above) and Christian Groh aren't old-school pot activists. They come out of Silicon Valley and investment banking. Their adventures in the legal pot trade are chronicled in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. 

Your Bike Helmet Doesn't Do What You Think It Does.

UPDATE 5/8: Due to the huge response to the story, Bicycling magazine has posted a clean pdf version of the story on its website here. The editors tell me you may be asked to enter your email to download it, but there's no cost and no obligation. 

UPDATE UPDATE 5/9: I'll be on KUOW, Seattle's NPR affiliate, this morning at 10am PDT talking about bike helmets and concussions. Listen to the archived show here. 

Concussions are Topic A in many sports right now. But not in bicycling. Most riders assume it's not their problem, what with that sleek helmet they're sporting. Here's the thing, though. Bike helmets protect the head against one thing: skull fracture. And skull fracture has nothing to do with concussion. They've done studies. I've read them. There's no correlation. So now you're wondering what your bike helmet does to protect you against concussion. The answer is jack squat. 

I've spent much of the past year investigating concussions and bike helmets. Bicycling Magazine just published my findings in its June issue. That article, "Senseless," isn't yet on the web, but I've linked to a scanned version of the piece here.

For more than thirty years, medical researchers have known that concussions occur because of brain spin, not blunt force. Helmet makers ignored the concussion problem because they assumed they couldn't solve it, and their customers didn't much care. Riders assumed they were safe because the government certified every helmet sold. What they don't know is that the government standard is the very thing that prevents helmets from getting better -- and addressing the concussion problem. 

And that problem is getting worse. The death rate for bicyclists has steadily declined over the past 15 years. The concussion rate for bicyclists is going the other direction. It's growing faster than the sport. 

The good news: There is a solution. It's available on the shelf today. You just have to know where to look. 

Here Are The MIPS Helmets

UPDATE: I've spoken with the folks at Scott USA about linking people to local bike shops carrying their MIPS-equipped helmets, and they directed me to this shop locator. I've tried it a couple times and it works really well. They say more shops are stocking the Taal and Lin as interest increases, but it's still not a top seller and you may have to special order one. 

I've already gotten a number of queries about which next-generation helmets actually mitigate the risk of concussion. There are only a few on the market at this point. Scott USA has just launched two, the Taal and the Lin, which both have the MIPS system. The Taal (pictured at left) looks to be the one with the best price point, around $75, and I found some here at Suburbanskiandbike.com. REI carries POC's Trabec Race helmet, which also has the MIPS system. It's a more rugged lid meant for mountain biking, and it carries a rugged price ($220). For snow sports, I love Burton's RED helmet with MIPS. I skied with it this past season, as did my wife and kids. REI has them on sale right now for $119. I've seen even better deals online at skis.com and altrec, but with REI you get the easy return policy if you need it. Amazon has Scott USA's Chase snow helmet, with MIPS, for around $106. 

FOR KIDS: Lazer Sport now manufactures two bike helmets for kids with the MIPS system: Lazer P'nutz and Lazer Nut'z. Amazon.com has the Lazer Nut'z for $72. 

FOR HOCKEY PLAYERS: In the helmet industry, hockey helmets are notoriously the absolute worst sports helmets. Seriously. It's like a joke. A couple months ago I ditched our old helmets and bought myself and my son a Messier M11 helmet, which is advanced as hockey head protection gets. They don't have the MIPS system, but operate on sort of a similar principle of giving the head room to move and slide. We've been wearing them for 2 months and frankly I love it. It's the lightest, most comfortable hockey helmet I've ever worn. Check it out at Cascadeicehockey.com. 

As I wrote in the article, if riders and skiers want better brain protection we have to vote with our wallets. Nobody's forcing helmet makers to care about concussions, and if these helmets don't sell, their manufacturers will get the message and drop the MIPS system as well as future concussion systems already in the pipeline. Go out and get your brain protected now! 

How to Store Nuclear Waste? Ask for Volunteers.

The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has forced the United States to take a hard look at our own nuclear infrastructure, especially the half-assed way we store nuclear waste. About a year ago I started looking into America's waste plan--such as it is--for Pacific Standard, a terrific new magazine emerging from the coccoon of the old Miller-McCune publication. The bad news: Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which was supposed to solve the problem, failed. The good news: We've learned a few things over the past thirty years. Lesson #1: Don't force a nuclear waste site down the throat of a politically weak state. (Sorry, Nevada.) Lesson #2: There are places that actually want nuclear waste facilities. But you have to ask them in the right way. And you can't pay them. There are ways out of this mess. Read the article here at Pacific Standard. 

World Travelers in Print

For some reason I've been reading a lot of books about world travel lately. Maybe because it's January and raining without cease here at home. My most recent pleasant journey: Round About The Earth, by Joyce Chaplin, a history of circumnavigation. The best part of the book: Her description of Magellan's ill-fated trip 'round the globe. Here's a bit from my New York Times Book Review piece: 

Magellan departed Spain with a flotilla of five ships carrying about 280 men and a huge store of supplies. To say he was neither well-liked nor trusted would be an understatement verging on fraud. Before he even reached the tip of South America, the masters of three ships conspired, unsuccessfully, to kill him. A fourth ditched the party and sailed home.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Magellan’s life, it’s that bold doesn’t pair well with stupid. While stopping in the Philippines, Magellan responded to a chieftain’s insult with a rash show of force. He died in the ensuing battle, run through with bamboo spears.

Also worth checking out: Laurence Bergreen's Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, a fascinating biography of one of the world's greatest adventurers. I reviewed that one a few years back, so you can probably find a copy in paperback or used by now. It's worth seeking out. 

 

 

 

We Are Greater Than The Gun Lobby

How’d it feel to drop off your kids at school this morning? 

 I just dropped mine at middle school half an hour ago. And I’ll tell you what it felt like to me. It felt like a new form of terrorism. 

 Terrorism’s aim is the unsettling of daily norms, the infusion of fear, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness into the general population. That’s what I felt as I crept along the dropoff line in the Subaru. 

 I’ll wager I’m not the only parent who had to tamp down the urge to instruct his 8th grader on the finer points of mass shooter survival. Where is your jacket? Put that lunch in your backpack. Remember, if Boo Radley shows up with military-grade weapons, be sure to hide in the kiln closet and survive! 

 It’s becoming normalized, this insidious new safety calculus. Eight days ago my daughter and I attended the wedding of my cousin at Seattle City Hall. Gay marriage became legal in Washington State that day, and the mayor had thrown open the community’s most public space to host 140 weddings. The day was glorious. But the night before, I found myself taking serious stock of the risk. Gay marriage is still a passionate issue, one of those end-of-civilization buttons for some of those on the extreme right. It wasn’t unthinkable--in fact, it was quite thinkable--for some right-wing nut to show up with an assault rifle and start shooting up the place. 

 That sort of thinking leads, of course, to Terrorists-have-won Boulevard, and of course we attended the wedding. Love and joy all around. 

 Why are we accepting this? Why are we adapting to it? This is interior terrorism: We absorb the fear, assuming we’re powerless to stop it. We adapt to the fear, quivering in the face of a few (emphasis few) gun enthusiasts who demand their right to collect  military weaponry while externalizing the blowback onto us and our children. We do it to ourselves. 

 If a group with a foreign-sounding name had perpetrated the Aurora theater massacre, the Clackamas Town Center shootings, and the Newtown horror, we’d have take action yesterday. Instead we get Stephen Roberts on Morning Edition knitting his sticks about the power of the gun lobby. The gun lobby. What civilized country has a gun lobby? 

 We are greater than the gun lobby. We are the pissed-off parents lobby. We have the power to gather and sit in the offices of Congressmen and demand to know why they are voting for Bushmasters--I’m pissed off that I even know the name of that gun--over the safety of our children. 

 Act now. In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act in thirty days. Not thirty months. Not thirty weeks. Thirty days. 

 What can we do? Here are a few ideas off the top of my head. 

1. Ban assault weapons now and forever. Period. 
2. “Gun shows” end today. We don’t allow people to swap Demerol at “prescription pharmaceutical” shows. 
3. Background checks, 30-day waiting period, and three co-signers for a gun permit. 
4. Gun permits. Required for all guns. Pass a test to get one. You drive a car, you need a license. 
5. Require shooting ranges to check gun licenses. It’s not that hard. Grocery store clerks check ID’s on liquor sales ten times an hour. 

 That’s a list from ten minutes of thought. I’m sure Congress and the Obama Administration can do a little better. 

 We need to make sure they do. 

 

Death at Yosemite: Hantavirus in the Cabin Walls

Last summer's hantavirus outbreak at Yosemite threw a strange
kind of scare into one of America's most beloved national parks. Hanta's carried by deer mice, so it's no stranger to the backcountry. But the virus is extremely rare--about 30 cases a year in the United States--and it usually infects just one victim, not several at a time. The Yosemite outbreak, which infected ten park visitors and killed three, was the biggest outbreak in nearly twenty years. And the most mysterious. It took weeks for state health officials and park rangers to figure out what was going on. Now, six months later, the tent cabins at the outbreak's epicenter are being torn down, and the full tale can be told. Outside Magazine sent me to Yosemite in early September, and published my full article in this online special earlier this week. Remember, if you see signs of mice in your cabin, shed, or laundry room: Wear a mask, wet the place with a disinfectant like a diluted bleach solution, and clean it thoroughly. Do not sweep. And don't let the mice back in. 

Earth's Last Unexplored Wilderness: Your Bathroom

Discover magazine sent me on a great assignment last year: Delve into the emerging science of indoor microbiology. Exploring the great indoors was a little like going on that old Disneyland ride, Journey Through Inner Space ("I am passing beyond the magnification limits of even the most powerful microscopes. These are snowflakes – and yet they seem to grow larger and larger. Or can I be shrinking – shrinking beyond the smallness of a tiny snowflake crystal? Indeed, I am becoming smaller and smaller!").* A handful of scientists are on the cutting edge of this field, and they're doing fascinating work: Norman Pace at the University of Colorado, Jonathan Eisen at UC-Santa Cruz, and Jessica Green at the University of Oregon. Pace's work on shower curtains and showerheads led me to unscrew the showerheads in my own house and give them a thorough cleaning. Green's work, at the U of O's Biology and the Built Environment lab (BioBE), looks at the microbial ecosystem of hospitals, and asks whether it's better to encourage a high diversity of microbial species in hospitals, rather than continue the current kill-'em-all strategy which seems to be doing nothing but opening ecological niches for staph infections to flourish. Discover recently posted the full article online here, and you can also follow the day-to-day goings on in this field through Eisen's "Tree of Life" blog, one of the great undiscovered science blogs out there today. 

*Will anyone besides my sister Allison get this reference? I don't care. I loved that ride. Especially that giant eyeball looking at you through the other end of the microscope. 

Sailing with the Deep Sea Challenger Expedition

Ye Olde Website has been stale for a couple months, but I've got a good excuse. I’ve been sailing the South Pacific with James Cameron’s National Geographic expedition to reach the deepest spot in the world: Challenger Deep, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. So far we’ve called on ports in Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Guam. Jim’s hit depths of 1,000 meters, 4,000 meters, 7,200 meters, and 8,000 meters--the deepest any manned submersible has gone since the historic dive of the Trieste back in 1960. 

Cameron and Nat Geo have kept the whole operation under wraps for months and finally revealed all earlier this month. 

I'm reporting on the expedition for National Geographic Magazine, along with photographer Mark Thiessen. Our work should hit the stands later this year.

I can't say much more about it at this point, but we've got a great web site going at http://deepseachallenge.com. Dr. Joe MacInnes is blogging every few days about the goings on. As I told my kids: Whatever Dr. Joe's writing about, that's what I'm doing. Check out the site and stay tuned. Jim should be going for the big dive--to nearly 11,000 meters, nearly 7 miles deep--any day now. 

Sundance Diary: Chasing the Hot Docs

Flew into Salt Lake City last night for a weeklong stint reporting on the Sundance Film Festival and doing some other field work for future stories. I'll be filing "Sundance Diary" posts for On Earth's website this week, seeking early info on some of 2012's most compelling documentaries. I've covered Mark Kitchell's "A Fierce Green Fire" extensively, but it's not the only interesting movie screening around town. Just filed a piece on "Chasing Ice," about an amazing five-year quest by National Geographic photographer James Balog to document climate change with time-lapse cameras stationed on some of the world's most remote glaciers. Also hoping to get a few items in about the strange rituals of Sundance. Which this year include an army of volunteers wearing bright orange Kenneth Cole down jackets. Gotta get one of those for my daughter. Tuesday morning update: Caught three films yesterday. Will post on two of them soon, but I had to get an immediate piece up on "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom," which was nominated for an Oscar this morning. More soon. 

The Greatest US Women's Marathon Ever? Tune In Saturday.

One of the greatest footraces in American history could take place Saturday morning and too few people are aware of it. The US Olympic Marathon Trials go off this Saturday morning, January 14, in Houston. (Men start at 7am EST, women at 7:15.) The men’s race features two well known runners, Ryan Hall and Meb Keflezighi, and their duel will be fun to watch. But the real action is on the women’s side. 

One veteran marathon coach put it to me this way: “This is the best women’s marathon field, ever. Period.” 

Two-time Olympian Deena Kastor will try for one more Olympic bid, but it’s the race among the top three qualifiers that’s the real attraction. This is the first time Kara Goucher, Desiree Davila, and Shalane Flanagan have gone head-to-head against each other in any race. Over the past two years I’ve had the great fortune to profile Goucher, Davila, and Flanagan in three separate features for Runner’s World. They’re each amazing athletes and interesting characters, and I can’t wait to watch them compete. Runner’s World resident guru Amby Burfoot will be blogging the race live on the RW website, and NBC will broadcast it in tape-delay later Saturday afternoon, 3pm Eastern, 12 noon Pacific. Also: Check out our handicapping guide: Amby's 11 Men To Watch and my 10 Women To Watch. I invite you to join me and become a running geek for the day. 

UPDATE: The results are in. After 26.2 miles, Shalane, Desi, and Kara finished with less than 30 seconds separating them. All three will represent the United States in London.  
1) Shalane Flanagan 2:25:38
2) Desiree Davila  2:25:55
3) Kara Goucher   2:26:06  

Story Update: US Army Announces ADS/Hyperstealth Bid One of Five Finalists for Next General-Issue Camouflage

Just got a note from Guy Cramer, the brilliant camouflage designer I profiled in a 2011 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. His design has just been named one of five finalists in the competition to create the next generation of general-issue US Army fatigues.Next: The top five will undergo extensive lab and field tests. A winner will be announced in 9 to 12 months. 

Cramer teamed up with the military supplier ADS in the bid. Two of his toughest competitors, Crye Precision of Brooklyn, and the US Army's own Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center, are also on the short list. One interesting entry, too: Kryptek Inc, a small camo developer based up in Fairbanks, Alaska, made the finals. Looks like Kryptek's a couple of Afghan/Iraq war vets who've teamed up to create great gear and interesting patterns for both soldiers and outdoorsmen. Great story there for anyone with the budget to get up to Fairbanks. 

The Ranger Who Saved Paradise: Thanks to Margaret Anderson

Amid all the tumult of the past week's shooting and manhunt on Mount Rainier, one fact tended to get lost in the coverage: Margaret Anderson (right), the murdered park ranger, most likely saved a number of lives by diverting the man who killed her.   She protected not only those people but also the life of the mountain in our minds. I wrote up a short essay about Anderson and the mountain early last week, and the Seattle Times published it on their Sunday op-ed page. Anderson's memorial service will be held this coming Tuesday, January 10, at 1pm at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. 

Green Fire and Quakenamis: Updates and Final Words on My Favorite 2011 Stories

Thought I'd end the year with updates on some of my favorite assignments from 2011.

When I spent time with Mark Kitchell, the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Berkeley in the Sixties," in San Francisco back in early June, he was a man down on his luck. As I wrote in "Lights, Camera, Activism!" for On Earth, he'd almost completed his next picture, an epic history of the environmental movement titled "A Fierce Green Fire," but his money was running out. Distribution deals were falling through. And he couldn't find an ending for the film. Seven months later, things have taken a dramatic turn for the better. His film has been accepted into Sundance. He's raising money again. He's found both an executive producer and a distribution partner. And he's secured a narrator for the film. A fellow by the name of Robert Redford. So...not a bad end of 2011 for Mr. Kitchell. "A Fierce Green Fire" will have its world premiere on January 23 in Park City, and I'll be there to blog the festival for OnEarth. Look for my updates Jan 23-30 at www.onearth.org. 

 

Guy Cramer, the camouflage genius I had the great fortune to find and profile for The Atlantic Monthly last summer, continues to crank out new patterns and inventions in his Hyperstealth studio in the backwoods of British Columbia. The Army Camouflage Improvement Effort, the competition to design the next generation of US Army camo, is expected to announce the winning design in mid-January 2012. Meanwhile, Cramer has come up with some far out new patterns, including this one being considered by the Canadian armed forces.
He's also working with the US Bureau of Land Management to conceal new oil-and-gas structures on public land. High Country News had a nice piece on that effort a few months ago; it's worth a read. 

 

The Elwha Dams, which I wrote about in the Oct issue of Seattle Met, are not just coming down--they are gone, daddy, gone. If you recall what the two old dams look like, you owe it to yourself to check out the National Park Service's live webcam photos of the two dam sites today. It's astonishing. The Lower Elwha Dam is simply gone. The Glines Canyon Dam (at right) has been notched to let the reservoir drain through. 

 

Perhaps my favorite story of the year was a massive feature the editors at Bicycling let me run with: "The Italian Job," a profile of Campagnolo, the great Italian bicycle component manufacturer. This was a rangy one, covering everything from Asian outsourcing to Boeing's 787 Dreamliner to a false advertising lawsuit in Seattle. I had the chance to spend a day at the famously secretive Campagnolo factory in Vicenza, Italy, and meet with Valentino Campagnolo, CEO and son of the company's founder. Part of the fun of the piece came in talking to Sr. Valentino about whether the company would ever, after nearly two decades of research, release an electronic shifting group. And, in a bit of beautiful timing, the company introduced the new Super Record 11 EPS (Electric Power Shift) and Record 11 EPS one week after "The Italian Job" hit the stands. The new gruppos should be available in early 2012 for, ahem, around $4,000 to $5,000. 

Hold on--nope, I was wrong. "The Italian Job" was my second favorite assignment of the past year. The winner: "Totally Psyched for the Full-Rip Nine," a big ol' rip-roarer of an Outside Magazine piece in which I was given the freedom to imagine (with the backing of months of painstaking research) a subduction zone megaquake, like the one that hit Japan in March 2011, erupting off the West Coast of the United States. The resulting infrastructure collapse and tsunami destruction gave me a new perspective on the Northwest. The research for this piece took me back to my days working on "The Measure of a Mountain," when I had the chance to talk to some of the geologists who unearthed the mystery behind the Osceola Flow. Thanks to the work of scientists at Oregon State, UW, and other institutions, we now know that a killer quake and tsunami last hit the coast of Washington and Oregon in 1700, and we're due for another any year now. Update: The megaquake did not hit the Cascadia Subduction Zone in 2011. But the year's passing did put more tension on the CSZ. When you feel the rumble, head for the hills, people.  

Coming in 2012: Brazilian Gauchos, grassland birds, marathon runners, microbes, Detroit, nuclear waste, and more stories about buildings and food.