Best of the Northwest
It doesn't bother me much to encounter cigarette smoke in a public area, such as a park or Coeur d'Alene's City Beach. I figure the wind blows it away before it does damage (if casual driveby smoke in such setting does damage at all). However, I support the lifeguards' call for a smoking ban on the beach because, frankly, many smokers are slobs. They put their cigarettes out in the sand and leave them there. The beach has become a giant ash tray. Time to ban smokers from another area. You can find the story here.
1. Eric Devericks looks at that monkey of J. Flipflop Kerry's back here.
2. Idahoans Jarred Rome and Ian Waltz (pictured during his days at WSU) are representing America tomorrow when the discus competition kicks off at the Summer Olympics. Both now live in Boy-C. But Waltz graduated from nearby Post Falls High. You can find The Idaho Statesman story here.
3. Meanwhile, Idaho triathlete Barb Lindquist believes she'll be safe from sharks in the Mediterranean during the swim portion of her competition here.
4. Omak native Chad Kellogg, 32, broke his own record by climbing Mount Rainier and back -- a hike that usually takes two days -- in under five hours. The P-I tells you about the exploits of this mountaineer/guide here.
5. A hot real estate market, like Whitefish, Mont., puts pressure on seniors living on fixed incomes here.
6. G. George Ostrom, who once almost sold me his Kalispell News weekly, tells Whitefish Pilot readers about rescuing a damsel in distress on a climb with his Over The Hill Gang up Mount Oberlin in Glacier National Park here.
7. Greyhound bus service made residents of tiny Drummond, Mont., feel connected to the outer world. Now, they're not. The Missoulian was on the scene Tuesday when the last bus to Drummond pulled out here.
8. State wildlife officials suspect poaching after a rotting black bear carcass was found in a remote part of the WSU campus here.
*Joel Connelly of the Seattle P-I examines why media "Bigfeet" are wrong so much of the time here.
*Susan Byrnes of The Seattle Times looks at the misguided trend of delaying kindergarten here.
*Ron Judd of The Seattle Times opines on that Carly Patterson gold medal that finally lit a fire under the Summer Olympics crowd here.
*Yeah, yeah, I know Marty Fortier of the Coeur d'Alene Press was trying to be sarcastic with his column today opining on the need to rid the Olympics of most female sports. But he misfired. Don't believe me? Read Fortier's column for yourself here.
