Francesca Lyman

The hospital where I worked would become the scene of the first known death from coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States, along with dozens more deaths, in coming days, here, and at other feeder hospitals from rehab centers holding sick and largely elderly patients around the region. What had seemed like a faraway threat across the Pacific Ocean mushroomed quickly across the United States.

Francesca Lyman is a Seattle-based investigative journalist and author who writes for magazines and newspapers.

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Sales of secondhand goods are booming, growing about 3 percent each year, faster than conventional retail. And market researchers project this multibillion-dollar industry will grow exponentially.
This surge in secondhand shopping has opened new opportunities for the public to be misled about how much money for-profit retailers are making off the charities they brag about benefiting, according to grantee Francesca Lyman’s new report for InvestigateWest, co-published by Salon.

Within the last decade, state regulators across the country have accused many for-profit secondhand stores of masquerading as charities, using deceptive tactics through advertising, telemarketers, pickup services, donation bins, and dubious charity alliances. In some cases, even minimum-wage salespeople have been caught misleading the consumer in person, perhaps unintentionally.
An upsurge in public complaints about potential consumer deception by for-profit thrift stores led the Minnesota At...

Riding a green Raleigh bicycle, Emily Aune is streaking along the banks of Oregon's Willamette River on a path lined with black cottonwoods and bigleaf maples. She's taking a scenic trail through the city of Eugene's Alton Baker Park, a cyclists' and runners' paradise. But this time, she's not commuting or out cruising for pleasure.

In her maintenance detail for the city's Parks and Open Space Department (POS), she's ditched the usual pickup truck. She's part of its pedaling a posse -- she's riding a bike.

A commentary on the promise and perils of genetically engineered products.

The journals of the scientists, artists, and filmmakers on expedition to a remote rain forest in Central Africa, home to Baka pygmies, gorillas, elephants and 200 foot trees.

Book on global warming--Penguin Books

Charity-watchers say Savers and stores like it are quietly reaping a bonanza on donated goods, giving back minimally to charities while spouting slogans like “Donating to Value Village is a great way to Donate to Charity.”

The economic downturn and the weak credit market has forced some developers of super-efficient homes to find new ways to keep their projects on track.

Life at the Top in Costa Rica - The New York Times

Francesca Lyman is a journalist and author of such books as The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming, with World Resources Institute; and a children's book, Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest, with the American Museum of Natural History. She wrote the award-winning "Your Environment" column for MSNBC.COM for 7 years, but her environmental reporting goes back to sounding an early alarm on climate change in the 1980s (with a cover illustration...

Self-Published (paperback), $16.95
Reviewed by Francesca Lyman
A longtime environmental activist finds lessons for the present in this stirring-yet-entertaining memoir by Byron Kennard, author of the 1982 book, “Nothing Can be Done, Everything is Possible,” which explored the limits and possibilities of community organizing to protect the environment.
In this latest book, Kennard changes his tune somewhat, pointing to the power of media and the arts as having a creative hand in promoting the ...