Category Archives: Center for the New Northwest

Innovation and ideas on life, policy, and the arts.

Acuity

As we bid goodbye to the year 2020 and welcome 2021, it is for most of us a welcome change from a year unlike any other in our lifetime. Maybe that is true for one and all, but not everyone had such a bad year in 2020. Some people profited tremendously. Elon Musk, he of Read More

How Wide the Divide?

Turn a few sacred cows on their heads. Think about the aphorisms that support our concept of American society. The place where meritocracy determines your fate. Anybody can get ahead, right? The great gift of our free enterprise system. Competition brings out the best in us and the cream rises to the top. If you start Read More

Performance

  Dramatists, directors, actors all will tell you the same thing about it: theatre is when strangers come together to share a common experience. What is so unique is the connection between artists and audience. The same could be said of all the performing arts in pre-pandemic times. What about streaming theatre?  The various ways the Read More

Basic Income

As the pandemic of 2020 rages, a new Administration forms, and Congress lobs partisan volleys back and forth across that ever widening aisle on the Hill, we are at an inflection point of unprecedented gravity. Possibly not since the Civil War has the United States seemed so divided and likely to come apart. If ever Read More

No Kill Meat

Big agriculture feeds the world. The energy industry keeps it lighted, warmed, cooled and mobile. Together they supply our most basic needs. In the process, both of them do tremendous damage to the natural world. The energy required to produce meat, beef, pork, lamb, and poultry, is no small matter. Neither is the havoc wrecked Read More

Supply and Demand Upended

When supply becomes an ecological value and demand becomes a value of human need, the new dynamics of society as a living system begins. James Quilligan Thinking about where and why we invest capital, and what it costs us, is one of the critical considerations in examining late stage capitalism. The sanctity of our concept of Read More

Energy Source Comparison

Energy Source Comparison Energy Source Pros Cons Solar Energy Non-polluting Most abundant energy source available Systems last 15-30 years High initial investment Dependent on sunny weather Supplemental energy may be needed in low sunlight areas Requires large physical space for PV cell panels Limited availability of polysilicon for panels Wind Energy No emissions Affordable Little Read More

Play4Keeps

When we began this website, the focus was Center for the New Northwest, a non-profit center for ideas about change. One of the things we wanted to change was Ashland New Plays Festival. A proud promoter of new works for the stage and the playwrights who write them, ANPF for nearly three decades had been Read More

Center for the New Northwest: playbook

We are about change. Big change, small change, spare change. Whatever. Everything we post here is meant to point out our realities and suggest ways we might make them better if we’re willing to change. We believe that solutions we want should determine the systems we use, rather than the other way around. Today, many Read More