The Play “Art” and Bonnie & Clyde on stage, Evil Dead: The Musical returns

Jim Lynch is no stranger to the Northwest. He grew up in the Puget Sound and while his career as a professional journalist took him around the country, he returned seven years ago to the Northwest where his two recent and critically acclaimed novels are set. The books are lyrical meditations on the geography of Northwest and the people who inhabit a landscape that is pinched between the mountains and the sea on the edge of the continent. In his most recent novel, Border Songs, Lynch focuses on the imaginary line that separates America from its hockey and health care loving neighbor to the north. It's an imaginary line that seems to be growing more hard and volatile in our age of immigrant insecurity and post 9/11 boogeymen.

You can’t really know the poppy by its photo – how the blossom holds the last of sunset, how the pollen is silky on your finger. You have walked along the shining river. You are tired and a little lonely. When you discover the poppy glowing against its dark leaves, you stop. A man walks by with his dog. “Gorgeous time to walk,” he says. The smoke from his cigarette drifts back.
I had breathed deep and imagined writing about life after Facebook, about all of it: the loneliness, the poppy, the sweetness in the stranger’s voice, the harsh scent of his smoke. I took myself off Facebook because my daughter had been exploring the privacy violations she and so many others found outrageous. But there was more. I can’t think of a time in history when it has not been dangerous for one institution to hold huge amounts of information about so many. Consolidation of data is consolidation of power.