Magazines

From the archives

Here are some older pieces that I think have held up well. These articles are viewed as PDFs. To download Adobe Reader click here.

Years ago, before wind power became the Big Thing it is today, I wrote about wind's potential for The Atlantic Monthly. I actually sold several pieces to The Atlantic, but only this one saw the light of day.
I do a fair amount of mountaineering, so altitude-related issues interest me. Some years back I wrote in Discover about research into how the famed Sherpas managed so well at high altitudes. (Note: First few pages have a weird sideways layout)
I also spent several years as Sports Illustrated's unofficial climbing correspondent. Here I write about the controversy over climbing techniques in the national parks. Here I profile Ed Viesturs, the first American to climb the world's 14 8,000-meter peaks without the aid of supplemental oxygen. And in this article I write about climbing Mount McKinley.
One of the magazines that made a go of it during the dot-com boom years was Travelocity, launched by the travel site company. The magazine no longer exists, but I did write this piece for it, about traveling on Quebec's Gaspé peninsula.

I got into magazine writing the old-fashioned way - by getting myself fired from a job as a newspaper reporter. Not long after that my first magazine-length piece - "The Scale of Two Cities," about architecture and urban design in Seattle and Portland - appeared in Northwest, the Sunday magazine of The Oregonian newspaper. Before long I was contributing as well to Oregon Magazine, and Pacific Northwest Magazine. Curiously, none of these publications exists today. Hmmm.

Today I continue to write on art and architecture, as well as on environmental issues, politics, technology, aviation, health care, science, and more. Scroll down to see some of the publications where my work appears.

For some years I've worked as the Seattle correspondent for The Economist, covering Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Idaho. Some recent examples below:

Read about the ethical and legal travails of the Alaska congressional delegation.
All-terrain vehicles are wildly popular - and dangerous.
Real estate remains hot in some parts of the country, such as in Bend, Oregon
The Coast Guard's flawed overhaul program is examined here.
An ever-fruitful topic, transportation planning in Seattle.

Care to live in a basement? Some people are turning basements into incredibly special places.

Difficult to live in Boeing Country and not be interested in aviation. So I've written fairly often for Air & Space Smithsonian. Most recently, about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Last year, I contributed an article on some ex-Boeing guys in Everett who were making flyable copies of the famed Me-262, the first workable jet airplane. I've also written about firefighting aircraft, the Wright Brothers, and the engineering behind the 787.

Speaking of fires, in addition to my work on a book about fires, I've written several lengthy magazine pieces on the subject. The first was for: