You could chart your position on The Falls AARP pop-culture spectrum by four events of the past week – the Spokane shows of James Taylor, Henry Rollins and Modest Mouse, and the death of Robert Goulet.

If your tastes run to Goulet and “Camelot” -- and Modest Mouse sounds like a cartoon character -- your subscription to the AARP magazine is about to expire. Again.

If you're a Taylor fan, your subscription is just about to start.

If you remember Rollins when he was the lead singer of Black Flag, you've got about a decade before the AARP gets you. (Guilty).

And if you're a Modest Mouse fan, you've probably got a few years left before signing up. But you don't need to be so smug about it.

Goulet, for his part, hadn't been to Spokane for about a decade. That was right about the time he was beginning to develop a kitschy, ironic image in ESPN basketball commercials, though before Will Ferrell took it to a whole new level with his loopy impression.

He performed here in 1997 as the lead in “Man of La Mancha,” a musical full of perfect Goulet fodder like “The Impossible Dream.”

In an interview before that show, the S-R's Jim Kershner asked Goulet how much of his loungey performance in the ESPN ads was a put-on and how much was the real him.

“A little bit of both,” he said, chuckling. “You have to camp it up a little bit. But it's pretty much me, I must say.”

Question: Where do you place yourself on the Goulet-Taylor-Rollins-Mouse scale?

The Falls: We're firmly in Rollins land. But we're going to the Modest Mouse show.

A morning sun burns through fog over Seattle today as viewed from the top of the Space Needle. The city will host the "Mayors Climate Summit, " Thursday and Friday, a meeting of more than 100 mayors from across the country to discuss steps U.S. cities can make to address the effects of climate change. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

New from the AP:

Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died at the age of 42 at Central Washington University.

Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on CWU's Ellensburg campus since 1980.

She died of natural causes Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of The Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus.

Washoe was born in Africa about 1965. Her memorial will be Nov. 12.

She was taken to the veterinary hospital at Washington State University on Wednesday for a necropsy.

"Washoe was a treasured member of our family," the Fouts said in a statement.

Here's a silent-movie-style video of "Ben Franklin" playing a practical joke on "Abe Lincoln."

Richard Curtis, the state legislator who found himself caught up in a sex scandal in Spokane, resigned today.

Here's a piece of Rich Roesler's story:

"While I believe we've done some good and helped a lot of people during the time I served in the Legislature, events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people," Curtis said in a short statement e-mailed to reporters this afternoon. "I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused."

He said he today submitted his resignation to Gov. Gregoire, effective immediately.

“This has been damaging to my family, and I don't want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office," Curtis said.

He really had no choice. The details in his case were so specific and so damning, that even if he'd wanted to pull a Larry Craig and drag it on and on, it would have been too punishing for him personally. Craig's case has become an object lesson into how to make yourself the butt of a national joke for weeks longer than necessary, to no real purpose.

Question: Will there be any larger lasting impact from this case? Or is it a limited event affecting just Curtis, his family and his constituents?

Bleckblog points out that tomorrow is the start of National Novel Writing Month. We have no idea how legit a declaration this is, but we're in full support.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm going to try to crank out 50,000 words of a novel in the course of the month. If I do this, I'll be a "winner" in the National Novel Writing Month competition. I'm considering this something of a 30 day, 50,000 word free/forced writing session, the same sort of thing I have my students do at the beginning of class each day, based on the advice of Peter Elbow. I've been thinking about what sort of story I'll be working on, how I'll frame it, what point-of-view I'll take a shot at, all the sorts of things a novelist needs to consider. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes.

Full post.

Question: What is your unwritten novel about? And can you get it done in the next 30 days?

If you like to cook at all, you probably have a love for cast iron.

There's just something awesome about it. We've never quite gone all the way into a Dutch oven (well, we have one of those fancy glazed ones, not the blackened kind that sit in campfires) but we're several years into the development of a skillet.

The Fresh Sheet has some good advice for maintaining – and reviving – good old cast iron.

Question: What's your favorite single piece of cookwear?

Utah polygamist “prophet” Warren Jeffs has some interesting things to say in recently released court documents, the AP reports.

In telephone calls Jan. 24, Jeffs told family that he "had been immoral with a sister and a daughter" when he was 20, according to the documents. He goes on to renounce his role as the church prophet and says the Lord had "revealed to him that he was a wicked man."

It is not clear who Jeffs is speaking about, and Jeffs does not elaborate on the conduct. Some listeners responded by telling Jeffs he is the prophet and was being tested, according to the documents.

We have two thoughts. 1) It seems that Jeffs might have listened harder for that revelation from the Lord, which was doubtlessly there all along. 2) Some people will believe any ridiculous thing, even when they're being told not to by someone with good standing.

Question: Would it take a divine revelation for someone to realize that “being immoral with a daughter” makes you a wicked man?

metro(spokane) has the following:

You've all heard of Manito, Corbin, Comstock, Lincoln, Liberty, etc. The names represent some of Spokane's most sizable park lands. At the other end of the spectrum is Spokane's oft overlooked .28 acres (12k sqf) Skeet-so-mish Park. If you've ever visited (not sure why you would) Skeet-so-mish park it's easy to understand why nobody pays any attention to it. It amounts to two city parcels 1/2 block east of Maple St. on Maxwell Avenue and other than the 10' of basalt that fronts Maxwell, the park has little apparent significance.

Read the entire post here.

Question: What other little-known corners of Spokane contain a park that no one notices?

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

Here's a video story done by Nick Eaton about the return of Reno the dog.

Question: What was the best pet you've ever had?

The Tri-City Herald here reports on the death of Robert Shields, a Dayton man whose detailed, exhaustive personal diaries became the subject of news coverage around the world in the mid-90s.

The 89-year-old retired teacher, who died Oct. 15, received global attention more than a decade ago when he claimed to have written the world's longest diary -- believed to contain more than 36 million words.

His diary contained reflections of everything that happened in his life. That devotion to detail and random thinking caught the notice of media organizations around the world in the mid-1990s.

...In an interview with the Herald in 1995, Shields talked about the details of his diary and why he felt the need to write down everything from creating foam while urinating to logging grocery receipts.

He admitted that penning his diary so zealously could be construed as odd. "If an eccentric is a kook, I guess I'm a kook," he joked to the Herald.

Read the rest of this entry »

The pillars of Fred Russell's defense keep crumbling.

His defense team tried to have his blood tests thrown out, due to sloppy performance at the state lab. But the judge said no. The team challenged the arrest warrant, the performance of the arresting officer, and other procedural issues related to the original investigation.

Tuesday they tried to admit evidence of death threats against Russell -- which they say are the real reason he fled to Ireland. But Judge David Frazier wouldn't admit the information about the threats, because they came through Russell's father and were second-hand.

Rich Roesler reports on the bind that leaves Russell's defense in.

Question: If Russell received death threats and was fleeing in fear of his life, would that change your opinion of the possibility that he may be innocent?

With the passing of Robert Goulet, we wanted to track just one path of his influence through the world of pop culture. Here's a video -- it's longish, feel free to skim -- that pulls together several of Goulet's performances.

Which leads us to Will Ferrell's brilliant Robert Goulet character. In this clip, he "raps," complete with all the words a white guy just simply shouldn't say.

Finally, completing a postmodern circuit, here's some shmoo imitating Ferrell imitating Goulet. It's really not very good, but it's interesting for a few seconds.

We wouldn't call that a tribute exactly. But it is one measure of Goulet's trajectory through the world.

In a comment here yesterday on the matter of Richard Curtis -- the state rep caught up in a sex scandal -- David Brookbank had this to say:

Do you think we will every hear one of these guys saying something like this:

"I am embarrassed. I wish it hadn't happen in these circumstances. I am a sexual creature like everyone else. I am and have been for a long time a hypocrite. I can't exactly put a label on my sexuality. I am at least bi-sexual. My wife knows I have struggled with it. I have hurt her and others and I apologize. I need help not because of who I am but for my inability to accept and come to terms with who I am. I hope anyone else in the same situation I am in would do the following: Begin to find your way out of your hypocrisy so as not to hurt anyone else and perpetuate more hate and hypocrisy. Try to find honesty with yourself and peace with the rest of humanity and their uniqueness. Start doing it now."

Too much to ask, right?

Here's today's story on the case, which includes details of the encounter police say occurred between Curtis and a young Spokane man. Unlike, say, the Larry Craig case, the details are more damning and specific.

Question: What would happen if Curtis just came out and said what David suggests? Would such direct talk make it any more possible for him to salvage his family life and public position?

It’s Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. You know what day it is. Boo.

Back at home: Reno the missing boxer is home. The dog, who'd seen Michael Buletti and his fiance, Leslie Andersen, through separate bouts with cancer, needs medicine for a heart condition and so his week gone missing was extra stressful for his owners. When Buletti went to a searcher's home to retrieve the dog Monday, he said, “He came running over to me, I threw him to the ground, cried like a little baby.” Beautiful. Here's the full story.

Today in Your Sexy Government: Spokane County got a windfall Tuesday – or maybe it's a landfall. Developer Jim Frank is handing over 120 acres overlooking Liberty Lake for a park. The county can take it for free, or spend $400,000 to have water lines extended to the park. Full story.

Lancelot leaves the castle: “Just watch my vocal cords.”
---Robert Goulet speaking to doctors as they inserted a breathing tube down his throat. Goulet died Tuesday. Full story.

Weather: It's going to be a chilly Halloween, with highs around 48 and lows dipping below 30. Here's the five-day forecast.

Today in History: Four hundred and ninety years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in one of the most famous acts of rebellion in history. Luther blasted the Catholic Church for, among other things, charging payments -- “indulgences” -- for the forgiveness of sins. From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Eileen Gumaer, 83. “She grew up on the family farm in Worley, Idaho. She graduated from Holy Names College. After graduation, she taught at Worley High School. She was devoted to her family. Her grandchildren often benefited from her mentoring and her great-grandchildren were the light of her life. Eileen was an avid gardener with a great passion for roses which provided beauty for her family and friends.”
For more.

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

This week's On the Job profiles Craig Eastburg, who's been blowing out sprinkler systems this fall.

We were wondering just how much justice Paul Sandifur's settlement will buy for the victims of Met Mortgage's collapse.

Works out to about $4.74 per investor.

Sandifur settled his case with the feds – which alleged he oversaw fraudulent deals that backfired on investors – for a total of $151,000. About half of that may go to investors.

Around 16,000 investors lost about $470 million in the company's collapse, so Sandifur's getting an excellent deal. Round it off and call it .03 percent of a penny on the dollar.

Maybe he's a better businessman than it appears. Not to mention the fact that he faces no criminal liability – unlike his right-hand man.

Here are a few things Sandifur's $4.74 per investor will not buy.

--A Quarter-Pounder meal with fries and a drink.

--A five-pound chicken at a local grocery store.

--A quart of oil for your car's leaky old engine.

--Any time at all with a bankruptcy attorney.

--A life savings.

Question: What are some other things you can't buy for $4.74?

New from The AP:

Secretary of State Sam Reed is forecasting a 51 percent turnout for the November general election.

Reed, the state's chief elections official, says most voters are casting ballots by mail, boosting the turnout higher than it might have been. Ballots must be postmarked by midnight Tuesday.

Nearly all counties, 36 of the 39, have vote-by-mail and King, Pierce and Kittitas are expected to make the switch by next year. A record 95 percent of the August primary vote was mailed in.

Reed says 51 percent is the average of the last seven odd-year elections. He says six statewide ballot measures are generating a modest amount of interest, especially a referendum dealing with insurance, and voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties face a big roads-and-transit proposal.

Question: Isn't this level of turnout embarassingly low? Or should a higher turnout even be a goal at all -- presuming that people who don't vote aren't well-informed on the issues?

When Richard Curtis says he “helped someone out” the other night at the Davenport, maybe he was being euphemistic.

Curtis is the latest entrant in the gay-family-values-guys sweepstakes. Here's how you know: He's a Republican lawmaker who opposes gay marriage and domestic partnerships. He says he's not gay. He gets caught allegedly having sex with a man (i.e., helping a guy out). He denies it.

He told the Vancouver Columbian yesterday that it was a misunderstanding. “I was trying to help someone out,” he said. In the hours after midnight. At the Erotic Boutique. And later at the Davenport.

The first police records in the case are now out, and they detail allegations that Curtis engaged in “mutual sexual activities” and then got caught up in a dispute – or blackmail – over paying the guy he helped out. Here's a link to the story by Bill Morlin, and you can look at the search warrant affidavit there.

Presumably, Curtis will now follow the playbook and assert that he was the victim of an overzealous police officer, a gross misunderstanding, or a media conspiracy.

Question: What's your reaction to the information in the search warrant?

Yesterday we asked: What do you see as the chief issues arising from the graying of the population?

Here are some of the comments we received. These are edited – in a couple of cases they're a fraction of the full answer – but you can read the full thread here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The windows of the Bridgeview Medical and Professional Center in East Bremerton, Wash., reflect an abstract mosaic of fall colors Monday.(AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Larry Steagall)

Fresh off The AP wire:

Talk about being in a pickle: A judge gave a 35-year-old man probation in a case that police said involved an assault with pickles.

According to police reports, the pickle problems began when Bobby Lee Bolen of Buchanan was hanging out at his then-friend Jody Lee's home in Buchanan on Aug. 20.

Bolen went to the refrigerator and helped himself to some pickles. According to the report, Lee told Bolen he couldn't afford to feed everyone and not to eat his pickles. Bolen then began yelling and swearing and stormed out, according to the report.

Later, Bolen barged back into the house and got into an argument with Lee. Lee told police Bolen slammed him down on the couch and threw two large pickles at him and said, "Here's your damn pickles."

Bolen also shoved former friend J.W. Romanski III and beat Lee with a telephone when he tried to call 911, according to the report. Two counts involving Bolen's assaults were dismissed as was a charge of cutting or interfering with phone lines.

"If this is not the silliest case I've ever seen in this courtroom, it certainly is in the Top 10," Berrien Trial Court Judge Scott Schofield said. "The fact that it's silly doesn't mean that it's not serious."

Write your own headline for this story.

Rich Roesler has some new poll numbers over at Eye on Olympia:

Referendum 67 – a battle between insurers and lawyers which over a new law allowing triple damages when insurers wrongly deny a claim – is apparently being won by the lawyers. A new poll sponsored by a University of Washington research center, 48 percent of voters support it, and 31 percent don't. (Undecided: 21 percent)

And voters are apparently leaning toward modifying the state constitution to make it easier for school districts to pass property tax levies. The poll showed 59 percent support, 31 percent against constitutional amendment 4204, better known as the simple majority amendment, since it would replace an existing requirement for 60 percent "supermajority" approval from voters with a 50-percent-plus-1 simple majority.

Full post.

Question: What's your position on these two measures?

Lou Guzzo writes, at WhackyNation:

A friend said to me the other day: “Why can’t we get rid of these godawful ads on TV and radio and all the bra and panty ads in the newspapers, as well as many others?” He was not alone. Others have made similar remarks to me, knowing full well that my life has been devoted to the print and broadcast media.

I’ve always had a ready answer for my friend and others, and I am constrained to make it now for the umpteenth time. Like it or not, advertising is an essential part of our capitalist, free-enterprise system — and, thus, a most important adjunct to our freedom and liberty.

... Advertising supports the free press, television, and radio. It also supports all magazines, department stores, drug stores, and commerce of every kind. Without advertising — whether it turns you off or not — these enterprises, which are the life blood of American commerce and industry, would vanish overnight because of the immediate falloff in paying customers.

We have a love/hate thing with advertising. We want newspapers to survive as journalistic enterprises at least somewhat similar to what they are now. And advertising is the only way we can see to make that happen, even if it's all for underpants.

But we're also annoyed when ads creep into spaces where they didn't used to – popping up before online stories, running before the movies, showing up as product placements inside of shows.

Question: What's your view of ad creep? Vital free speech or intrusive commercialization?

Doug Clark offers some ideas for Halloween costumes off the news this morning.

One suggestion is to go in search of candy (or whatever) as the Night of the Living Fred Russell.

Anyway, you'll need three essential items for a Night of the Living Fred costume:

1. A red wig. 2. An arrogant scowl. 3. A wide yellow stripe running up your back.

Full column.

Question: What Halloween costume is suggested by recent events or people in the news?

Curtis Wilkes creates jack o'lanterns that are probably a little more complex than yours.

But he's happy to show you how to do it yourself. Here's Heather Lalley's story on Wilkes from today's Home section, which includes a slideshow of the process used to make one of his creations.

Question: What was the most ambitious thing you ever carved into a pumpkin?

Out of everything we might remember about the former surgeon general, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the one thing we do is the dustup that was caused over her support for including information about – gasp! -- masturbation as part of school sex ed.

Elders appeared in Pasco on Monday, and she hasn't changed her mind, the Tri-City Herald reports.

Elders, 74, is a firecracker of a woman with a distinct Arkansas accent. She's best known for her brief, outspoken tenure as surgeon general under the Clinton administration that ended with her forced resignation after 15 months when she suggested that information about masturbation be included in comprehensive sex education programs in schools.


"Everybody went crazy," she told the crowd. "Always remember, masturbation never caused anybody to go crazy, never caused anybody to go blind, never caused hair to grow on your hands, and at least you know you're having sex with somebody you love."

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's a report from the young people at eMerge, a group of Spokane teens who do video news reports. This was posted recently at YouTube.

Dear Annie: My 20-year-old daughter goes to college full time and holds down a full-time job. The problem is, "Nia" has terrible hygiene habits. Her room is always trashed with dirty clothes and papers. She has old food and half-full drinks all over the place, and wrappers and trash everywhere. She showers every day but rarely brushes her teeth. She has friends but doesn't socialize with them. She is on the Internet for hours at a time.

Nia is bright but just doesn't care about her appearance. She does lack self-esteem but tries really hard to hide it. I really see her as socially awkward.

I have tried therapy and talking with her, but nothing helps. A doctor gave her medication for depression and put her in group therapy, which she did not like, and she did not get any better. She has had three boyfriends, but that was in name only. I don't know what to do. Nia has a solid, intact family, and we can't figure out why she doesn't understand that taking care of yourself matters. – Need Help

The Falls: As long as she's spending a lot of time every day on the Internet, she should be fine.

Real answer here.

Paul Sandifur will pay $151,000 to settle accusations arising over the collapse of Met Mortgage, which left investors holding the bag for $470 million.

We think $151,000 is a lot of money. But we think it might be less so for Sandifur. And it's hardly anything at all compared to $470 million.

Here's what one attorney for investors had to say, in John Stucke's story this morning about the deal:

“Unless $150,000 includes every last dime Paul Sandifur has, it is an injustice to the many fine people who have lost their life savings to his gross mismanagement,” said the attorney, P.J. Grabicki.

And oh, by the way, only about half of that will go to investors. The rest goes to the SEC. And no criminal charges have been filed.

Loaded question: Is this even close to fair? Is it in fair's zip code? Hemisphere? If somebody walked around with a mask and a bag – trick or treat! -- and relieved people of $470 million one by one, what would their punishment be? What would be a fair settlement for Sandifur?

It’s Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007. Calm down. MRSA's probably not going to kill you. But it might make an interesting Halloween costume.

Today in Your Sexy Government: Among the very sexiest things your government does is create and pass budgets. Its super-sexy. The City Council is considering a $604 million budget, prepared by the mayor, right now. The proposal includes 12 new police officers, 6 new firefighters, adding a few other staffers and a small cut in utility fees. Here's more.

Speaking of the “superbug”: “We deal with this every day in the hospital. Today is no different than any other day.”
--Marty Fallon, director of infection control, Kootenai Medical Center.

Weather: Highs around 52, lows down to 29. It's time to take off the flip-flops, kids. Here's the five-day forecast.

Today in History: In 1938, a punk kid named Orson Welles terrified people across the country with his radio performance of “War of the Worlds.” From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: John Paul Geisler, 79. “During a lifetime of gathering friends, John worked at a variety of occupations. He began as a meat cutter in Beeville, Texas. He continued this trade in Portland, OR. He then owned The County Market in Beaverton. A customer there persuaded John to attend auctioneering school and together they started Auction Specialties Inc. In Tigard. This enterprise employed the entire family. Eight years later, John sold food portioning equipment throughout the western half of Oregon. In 1976, John and Dorothy bought and managed Lakeview Terrace Mobile Park. They continued to live in the Grand Coulee area after they sold the park in 1996. “
For more.

Here's a GU broadcast student report on one business's reaction to the temporary Halloween stores.

Trick-or-treating, as many of us remember it, is really a bygone tradition. Pretty far bygone, really.

That probably makes sense, given the some of the dangerous possibilities of the world we live in. Here's the top of a story on the decline in the tradition by Jody Lawrence-Turner:

A U.S. Census Bureau report says fewer children are trick-or-treating because the demographic for it is declining, while many Inland Northwest parents say it has more to do with twisted people who might hand out unsafe candy.

“When I was a kid, we were let loose to scour the town like an enemy Army,” said Moses Lake resident Hank Buchman, 59. “Halloween terror takes on a new meaning now.”

Like Hank, we were let loose on the town when we were growing up as well. It was a small town and a different time, but there was also talk then of the more sinister fears of the holiday – poisoned candy, Halloween kidnappings.

We wonder if it's gotten more dangerous or if parents have just become more aware. After all, a lot of our dads put us in their laps when they were driving back then, too.

Question: What was your trick-or-treating experience like when you were a child (assuming you're not one now), compared to what you see today? Is anything lost in the fact that kids aren't out alone, scouring the whole town?

We've had two images of old age in our minds recently.

The first is that of Elsie Gettman, the 91-year-old woman who died in deplorable conditions last week.

The second is that of Dennis Hopper, who's all over the TV these days in commercials reassuring Baby Boomers that their old age will be one big adventure. Something tells us the boomer elderly are going to be unbearable for the rest of us – a parade of people failing to act their age.

The images are two sides of a demographic coin. In terms of health, wealth and longevity, the boomers are probably going to live a revolutionary style of old age – at least those who have plenty of money. Things won't be quite so rosy for some of the others. And the strain on social services to take care of people like Gettman is only going to increase as the number of older people swells.

In real terms, the cumulative age of the community is rising. The median age in Spokane in 2005 was 35.4. Twenty-five years ago it was under 30.

And it's going up even more before it comes back down.

What do you see as the chief issues resulting from the graying of the population?

A while back, when all the sexual assaults in Pullman were in the news, we wondered here why it is that boorish behavior -- from catcalls to the more-then-boorish violence against women -- was such a persistent part of the male spectrum.

At the time, a couple of young people who've moved to here relatively recently passed along the observation that Spokane is a haven of catcallers. Young women walking downtown, we were told, have an excellent chance of being hooted or whistled at.

Which we found surprising. Not that we think we're all that cosmopolitan here. But we didn't think our men were all construction-worker stereotypes with bulging eyeballs.

So here's a delayed question: Is Spokane particularly catcall-ish in your experience? Are women subjected to more of that here than in other, more enlightened places?

Today's flickr.com image comes from austinspace. To see more of his photos, go here.

metro(spokane) is hot on the trail of some of the most interesting graffiti to show up around Spokane in a while: an image of author, designer and all-around visionary Buckminster Fuller. The photo illustration is from the blog, as is the excerpt below:

The Buckminster Fuller saga continues. Not content with a mere 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, the wheatpaster has gone big this time on the Bernard St. Wall. A full 5'x8' layout of an elder Bucky casting a spell on the evening commuters as they wind their way up the South Hill. The meaning? We're not sure. Perhaps Spokane is part of a global movement to spread Bucky's philosophies on architecture, or simply a cry out for better design.

If you'd like to know more about Fuller, check out this web site. Here's a quotation of his from 1980: “For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”

That was 27 years ago. Scientists had concluded that if there was the political will, the resources and technology existed to end the worst hunger and malnutrition within a generation.

Obviously, that hasn't happened. Why not?

Two men fish on the foggy Ohio River, Monday, Oct. 29, 2007, near a marina in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

Write your own cutline...

Not all that long ago, the narrow electric car designed by Spokane's Rick Woodbury – it's one person wide – seemed like a pipe dream.

These days, you wouldn't be surprised to see lots of the skinny cars on the streets of some European city, where fuel efficiency and small cars tend to catch on first. And with $3 gas, the appearance of hybrid cars and a growing public awareness of global warming, these tiny cars – the kind of things we'd make fun of back in our Idaho hometown – look more and more plausible to American consumers, we'd guess.

Here's an excerpt from Parker Howell's Sunday story:

"I don't think that the electric car is even slightly dead," Woodbury said. "It just hasn't begun yet."

The road to offering the Tango as a viable mass-produced car, however, has taken a few twists for Woodbury, 58, and his seven-year-old company. The business has run on fumes while he proves his version of a high-performance commuter car that's powered by electrons, not fossil fuels. And the company faces increasing competition from relative newcomers, such as California-based Tesla Motors Inc., which is backed by more than $100 million in start-up money.

With support from a Google Inc. founder and 10 orders for models expected to cost $108,000 to $148,000 each, depending on the battery system, Woodbury's company could be on its way to carving out its niche.

The company boasts its existing prototype two-seater Tango is 5 inches narrower than a Honda Goldwing motorcycle and has a range of about 50 highway miles per charge. The latest models are designed to travel farther per charge, accelerate to at least 60 mph in 4 seconds and reach top speeds of about 130 mph, according to the company.

Still pretty expensive, these Tangos. But the landscape is changing dramatically, auto-wise. Who knows what things will look like in a decade?

Are you ready for an electric car? If you've got a hybrid, how are you liking it? And if you don't, what will it take for you to consider one?

The Falls: We're driving a paid-for pickup. And we're going to drive it until it croaks. But at that point, while we don't know for sure what we'll be getting, we're probably giving up on our SUV dreams.

This comes just in time for Halloween. Researchers are trying to figure out just how many bats are living in a concrete structure near the Columbia River at Hanford. The Tri-City Herald reports on the effort:

Hanford researchers twice have tried to count the bats that have made a home in an underground concrete structure near the Columbia River.

They set up a video camera with an infrared light outside the hatch to the structure, called a clearwell, and let it roll.

"It's like popcorn coming out," said Ken Gano, a natural resource specialist for Washington Closure Hanford. "They come and go all night long."

Both times they've counted about 2,000 bats, which they say probably is a low estimate. But that number makes the colony the largest identified in the state, rivaled only by a colony that roosts under an Olympia pier.

This time next year, Washington Closure and the Department of Energy expect to know much more. As part of the Hanford cleanup effort, the clearwell is scheduled to be demolished in fiscal year 2009, which begins next October.

"That (gives) us some time to figure out how to deal with it," Gano said. "We can look at the impact to demolishing it and what we can do to provide an alternate roost site."

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Due to a mixup here at The Falls, the following item ran in the paper Saturday instead of today, as it was scheduled to do. Anyway, here's our post about college costs, and a thoughtful response from CCS board member Carol Landa-McVicker....

There was a lot of predictable news last week.

Dino Rossi announced he's running for governor. The homeless tent city disbanded – only to reband. And public college tuition increased at about double the rate of inflation – 6.6 percent.

Every time tuition goes steeply rising, someone points out that a college education remains a good deal over a lifetime. A college grad earns more than a high school grad. Someone with a master's degree earns more than someone with a BA. And so on.

But that's only a relative comparison. The simple economic fact is, the more college graduates there are, the less they're worth in the marketplace. And the more expensive college becomes, relative to everything else, the less return there is on the investment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's a portion of the Spokane Children's Theatre performance of "High School Musicial," recently posted at YouTube.

Question: Were you ever in a high school musical? What role did you play? What embarassing or exciting thing occured that made you self-conscious for months.

The Falls answers its own question: We were Nathan Detroit in our senior year production of "Guys and Dolls," Gooding High School, circa 1984. We got to kiss a girl who otherwise would not have given us the time of day.

How should the country treat the children of illegal immigrants? Especially those who are trying to attend college and better their lives?

Those are some of the questions raised by Kevin Graman's story in Sunday's S-R about a stalled proposal in Congress to allow the kids of illegal immigrants to have legal residency while they attend college.

Here's an excerpt:

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted whether to end debate on a bill that would grant her — and as many as 65,000 students a year like her, the U.S.-raised offspring of illegal immigrants — legal residency while she pursues her degree. Its bipartisan sponsors fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to bring the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act to a vote.

It is the DREAM Act to those supporters in Congress who say children should not be punished for the actions of their parents. It is the Bad Dream Act to opponents who say it rewards illegal behavior with amnesty.

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It’s Monday, Oct. 29, 2007. That nip in the air means your tomatoes are done for.

Today in Your Sexy Government: Election Day – such as it is anymore, since mail voting – is a week from tomorrow. The political team at the S-R has put together a valuable database with information aobut candidates, their positions and past coverage. Check it out, then fill in your ballot.

One way to look at it: "When people go around the room and introduce themselves I usually introduce myself as a building owner. I can't deny that I'm a developer, but I think of myself as someone who owns buildings."
-- Mick McDowell, in this morning's profile by Pia Hansen. Full story.

Weather: Nights are dipping below freezing, and that's expected to continue this week. Today's high forecast at 54. Here's the five-day forecast.

Today in History: Black Tuesday struck on this day in 1929, with investors dumping millions of shares of stock and losing billions of dollars in an event that kicked off the Great Depression. From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Timm Chester, 80. “He graduated from Harrington High School in 1944 as Valedictorian of his class. He then attended Washington State College before coming back home to farm. He married his high school sweetheart, Glenna Defabaugh, in 1947. Chester was very involved in his community. He was a 57-year member of the Harrington Lions Club. He was on the Board of Directors for the Harrington School District, the United Grain Growers and the Harrington Golf and Country Club and served as a Harrington City Councilman.” For more.

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Here's the final installment for the week.

What's the worst thing you ever received while trick or treating?

The dominant political cliché of our time is the division between red states and blue states.

You've only got to live in the red part of a blue state – are you listening, Spokane? -- to know the limits of the comparison.

But a new report shows an even stranger breakdown: The red-blue divide really only exists among the rich. (Thanks to Ryan for the tip).

The web site Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, run by some Columbia University professors, produced the report, which shows, in essence, that the true divide is really the rich-poor divide. A lot of red states are really kind of blue down in the underclass.

The researchers put together maps showing the red-blue results of the last presidential election. This one is what would have happened if only poor voters counted:

And this one only counts rich votes:

Interesting stuff, if not all that shocking. There are a lot of reasons the poor might support the Democrats and the rich Republicans. What do you think are the main ones?

Dave Postman, at Postman on Politics, notes that Dino Rossi has lumped the “biggest businesses” together with unions and trial lawyers as enemies of the people (or at least the people for Rossi).

“It's a hint at a sort of economic populism that Washington hasn't seen from Republican gubernatorial candidates. Instead, the GOP has sold itself as the party that would be best for businesses of all sizes and stripes; the party that would have made Boeing headquarters safe in Washington, let Microsoft thrive and give all big business the sort of stability it craves in government.”

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The current issue of Washington CEO magazine features Stacey and Betsy Cowles on the cover under the headline: DYNASTY.

You probably already have the magazine at home, so bear with us. The story, authored by Spokane's Bill Stimson, opens like this:

THERE'S NO OTHER company in Washington quite like the Cowles Co. of Spokane. Its exact wealth is a secret. As a privately held company, it doesn't have to report its finances and it doesn't. The company's director of marketing, Shaun O'L. Higgins, will only say that if Cowles did report its financial condition, it would make the state's top 50 businesses lists "easily." But more important than the total wealth is the fact that for more than a century, nearly all of the company's hundreds of millions of dollars in assets are concentrated in Spokane County and neighboring Kootenai County, Idaho, giving the family extraordinary influence in the eastern portion of the state.

Good to know they're doing OK.

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Here's another round of Stupid Questions, and we'll have one more up later today.

Call it Free-attle. At least one homeless guy does.

The P-I has an reports this morning on a downtown hygiene center, one example of the city's friendliness toward the down and out:

John Studley worked 36 years as a hot-press operator at a plywood mill before losing his job and some of his dignity.

"I've never been homeless all my life until last year," said Studley, 62, formerly of Klamath Falls in rural southern Oregon.

Through word of mouth, he heard that Seattle was a "homeless-friendly city," a place that helped the down and out so much that "they jokingly call it 'Free-attle.' "

That's evident at the Urban Rest Stop, a downtown hygiene center offering showers, laundry facilities and restrooms at no charge to homeless and low-income people. The center recently expanded its laundry facilities, added a women's restroom and created office space.

In September, use of the free center rose 15 percent compared with the same month a year earlier, including a 55 percent increase in laundry users. Shower use is up 18 percent.

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The folks from PETA were back with a PR stunt covered here by KXLY.

After seeing this, we've decided to get rid of our fur coats.

Dear Miss Manners: When I eat steak, I like to cut my steak into smaller pieces. Then, after doing so, I stab the cut portion of steak with my knife and place it in my mouth. I was recently chastised by my new girlfriend for doing so.

I have eaten my steak like this since I was a young boy. I felt my girlfriend was wrong, since I've never been corrected for eating my steak this way.

Will you please help me explain to my girlfriend that there is no wrong way to eat a Texas steak?

The Falls: It's time to dump this girlfriend now, boyfriend. What does she expect you do to – eat with your hands? Was she born in a barn?

Real answer here.

Ooooo, James Taylor's seen fire and he's seen rain. Which is something the people who see him perform Monday at the Spokane Arena will probably hear about. (For Jim Kershner's story on Taylor, go here.)

Taylor's visit got us wondering: What have you seen? If you had to write a song pairing the two things that best describe the nature and range of your experience, what would it be?

Chips and beer?

Wolves and bears?

Diapers and pacifiers?

It didn't seem that the mayor's assertion that Mary Verner was interested in a tribal casion downtown could get any less credible.

And then it did.

Jim Camden reports this morning that Dennis Hession suggested that developer Ron Wells could verify his claims. But Wells said he met with Verner over possible tribal interest in the Rookery building, but “nobody ever said casino.” Here's Camden's story, and another one comparing Hession's claims about Verner's attendance at the City Council with the public record.

We wrote more about the mayor's casual approach to the truth of his public statements here yesterday. And Frank's had a few things to say on this question, as well, over at Hard 7.

The post includes a clip of him asserting three times that he had made a public comment on a certain matter – before qualifying that by saying “But even if I didn't ... ”

Not a huge deal, in that one instance. But we think it displays a strange habit of asserting things without thinking about their basis in fact, or at least their basis in supporting evidence.

If you can't back it up, you shouldn't say it.

Devil's advocate: What would be so bad about a tribal casino downtown anyway? (Not that Mary Verner and I have ever discussed it.) Not that long ago we had a non-tribal one that, as I recall, didn't last too long...

It’s Friday, Oct. 26, 2007. For all intents and purposes, Halloween starts today and runs through Wednesday.

Today in Your Sexy Government: Sometimes Your Sexy Government just doesn't understand. That was the case this week when the Spokane Regional Health District approved budget cuts without making the proposals public beforehand. The district's administrator, Torney Smith, seems to think that his wing of Your Sexy Government doesn't operate by the same rules and principles as everyone else's. He seems to feel that public debate has no place in decision-making over public funding. If you disagree and would like Smith to know it for the next round of multimillion-dollar decisions, call the district at 324-1500, ask for Smith and tell him so yourself. Sometimes, Your Sexy Government just needs to know you care.

Buckle down, children: “Kids who try more rigorous classes are better off in the long run. We are really encouraging kids to challenge themselves.”
-- Nancy Stowell, superintendent of Spokane Public Schools, referring to a hike in the number of students taking advanced placement courses and other efforts to prepare students for college. Read the full story .

And then for breakfast, sausage and kraut: It's Oktoberfest at Saint John Vianney in the Valley. Start things off with an adults-only sausage-and-kraut dinner tonight at 5, a family carnival Saturday, and then more sausage and kraut Saturday night. For more, go here.

Weather: OK, the first freezes of the year are arriving. You may have seen it dip below 32 degrees last night, and it's supposed to drop to 27 tonight. Today's high is expected to be 48. Here's the five-day forecast.

Today in History: The Shootout at the OK Corral occurred on this date in 1881. Wyatt Earp. Doc Holliday. Tombstone, Arizona. It's easy to forget it was a real event. From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Floyd Henry Weil, 80. “Floyd served our country during World War II as a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He was awarded a medal for his excellent marksmanship. Floyd was a Foreman at Kruger Sheet Metal for 23 years until his retirement in 1980. He was a member of the Sons of Norway. Floyd loved creating stained glass windows and making guitars and violins. He also enjoyed playing the guitars he made. Floyd had a family band he loved to play in.” For more.

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OK, here's part 2 of the Halloween edition.

What's your favorite scary movie?

We all need a basis for civic pride.

Here in Washington, we can always fall back on the stiffness of our fines for not wearing a seat belt. At $86, it's tops in the country, well ahead of Oregon ($75) and Rhode Island ($50).

This comes from some new figures at StateMaster.com, a web site that compares states on a range of figures. Another seat-belt-related figure puts Washington at No. 2 for the highest percentage of fatal accidents in which restraints were used, at 55 percent. Which doesn't mean, we don't think, that seat belts are causing the accidents.

Here are some other ways in which we're leading the nation:

We're No. 1 for the most cremations (63.3 percent of deaths); exports to Russia (260 million); and exports-per-capita to New Zealand ($53.28 for each of us.)

We're No. 3 in the total number of Starbucks franchises, having been overtaken by California and Texas. And we're fourth in terms of exercise – when surveyed, 82.7 percent of us said that in the previous month, we'd exercised at least once.

Question: What exercise did you get in the last month? Be honest.

It's time for Dennis Hession to learn the art of corroboration.

The S-R published a letter today from representatives of local tribes, stating unequivocally that they never sought or considered trying to establish gambling in the Rookery building. The letter reads, in part:

Fact: The Spokane Tribe, Coeur d'Alene Tribe and Colville Confederated Tribes have never sought to conduct gaming within the Rookery Building or anywhere else within Spokane city limits. Any claim to the contrary is patently false. Tribal gaming is strictly regulated upon Indian trust lands by the federal government.

Here's the full letter.

This is the latest strike against Dennis Hession's completely unsupported allegation that Mary Verner raised the possibility of such gambling with him in a conversation. She denies it. The tribes deny it. And he hasn't presented a stitch of evidence that's held up.

It's not like it's the only time the mayor has said something that turned out to be not quite true. He did it to Al French in a debate over the summer, claiming French planned to fire all department heads. He did it in his discussions over the Jack Lynch matter, denying that he'd pressured Lynch to resign, only to acknowledge later that he had.

There was a moment in last week's KSPS debate that's illustrative. It came shortly after Hession criticized Verner for voting to pay Medicare premiums for some retired firefighters. Here's a clip from the debate, which is posted in full at ksps.org.

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“But even if I didn't....”

Kind of says it all.

Has the mayor's claim over the supposed idea for a downtown casino affected your view of his credibility, or changed your position on the mayoral race?

The homeless camp is back together, this time near Mission and Napa.

“If you are going to put people in boxes, you have to have enough boxes to put them in,” said Dave Bilsland, an advocate for the homeless.

Bilsland said about a dozen people will camp on two private lots near east Mission and north Napa. On Tuesday, homeless activists agreed to disband a protest camp on Riverside Avenue near Monroe Street after reaching a tentative agreement with the city.

Read the full Full story.

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This week's Stupid Questions have a Halloween theme. We talked to people at Northgate Center.

What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

New from The AP:

Buy these stamps, you will.

The U.S. Postal Service sought to harness the force Thursday, releasing a new postage stamp featuring Star Wars' enigmatic Yoda, known for his odd syntax as well as his wisdom.

The Jedi master's stamp was originally part of a multi-stamp Star Wars set and is now available as an individual stamp following a public vote on which of that set should receive special attention.

Question: Who would you like to see on a stamp?

The Falls: Henry James, Martin Scorcese, Frank Church.

Dino's in. Here's a passage from Rich Roesler's story:

In a pre-announcement interview with the Associated Press, Rossi said his campaign will focus on Gregoire's "trail of broken promises," including tax hikes and not doing more to cut through the state's bureaucracy. He said he'd turn that around to a more customer-oriented approach. He blasted state government as "more expensive and less effective" at solving people's problems.

Question: Now's your chance to predict the future. Who'll win the governor's office, and by what margin?

Here's a shot from austinspace at flickr.com, from Marycliff House. It's hard to see at this size, but if you go here , and look at the larger image -- you can see the photographer reflected. You can see more of austinspace's work here.

The police officer accused of rape – so far unnamed by the cops – was named in a story today by Bill Morlin.

Jason S. Uberuaga, a decorated, nine-year veteran of the Spokane Police Department, has been on paid leave since a woman alleged last week she was sexually assaulted in a car parked outside a Spokane Valley bar, sources say.

Uberuaga was also involved in the Otto Zehm case, the story says.

We're glad to see his identity made public, though the police department didn't want it to be. Officers accused of criminal misconduct should face a higher standard of scrutiny. If he's not charged or found innocent, people can understand that and put it into context.

But if he is, who wants another case where it seems that a misbehaving officer was given more consideration than the public he serves?

Question: Should police officers suspected of a crime, and placed on leave, be publicly identified by investigators? Or should they be treated like regular citizens, who wouldn't be identified typically until charges are filed?

Another bone-headed racial remark. Another deeply apologetic apology. And now another quiet disappearance.

James Watson, among the most important scientists of our time and a Nobel Prize winner, resigned today after making incendiary comments last week, the NY Times reports.

Dr. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, and later headed the American government’s part in the international Human Genome Project, was quoted in The Times of London last week as suggesting that, overall, people of African descent are not as intelligent as people of European descent. In the ensuing uproar, he issued a statement apologizing “unreservedly” for the comments, adding “there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

We somehow find it extra disappointing when this kind of comment comes from someone like Watson, who bears the imprimatur of science and reason. We live in a time when the term “sound science” is abused daily by people attempting to advance an economic agenda. Casual ignorance goes about dressed as studious skepticism. Watson's fall can't help things any.

Now here's something you don't want your food to do: glow.

The Post-Intelligencer reports today that some East Side residents found some surprises in their shrimp:

It sounds like a Halloween joke. A pile of brightly glowing cooked shrimp sitting on the counter in a darkened kitchen.

But Randall Peters doesn't see the humor in it. He bought the shrimp last week from the West Seattle Thriftway. He ate some that evening and returned to the kitchen a few minutes later.

"It was like a bright eerie light was shining on it," said Peters, who works for a natural food store. "I thought that maybe it had been overirradiated, you know, too much radiation. Now, whenever I buy seafood, I take it home and turn out the lights."

No formal investigation is being launched. A possible explanation is the existence of luminescent bacteria, which has created similar situations in the past.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's a report from eMerge News, a group of Spokane teenagers who are doing video reports on issues important to them. This one's about teen jobs in the city.

Question: What was the best job you had as a teenager?

Earlier this week, we asked how it was that no one had noticed the horrendous conditions in Elsie Gettman's home before it was too late.

Gettman, who died Wednesday, was found Tuesday laying on a mattress inches deep with filth, a bed spring burrowed into her back.

It turns out someone did notice. A few someones, actually. It's just that no one heeded the warning – every agency involved in hearing reports about Gettman passed the buck or ran into bureaucratic obstacles to helping her. In some instances, she apparently refused help.

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1) Are you excited about the new Cabela's? Are you planning to visit the store sometime soon?

OR:

2) Are you planning to visit your trusty old sporting goods store as a sign of support?

3) Didn't you shower after athletic events in high school? We did. And we thought the kids that didn't were kind of skeezy.

4) Is Larry Craig credible when he says he didn't consult his defense attorney on the Minneapolis bathroom dance?

It’s Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007. There are two kinds of people. Those who can't wait for the opening of Cabela's on Friday, and the other kind. Here's today's story about the store opening, and here's one about how other sporting goods stores in the region are bracing for the competition.

You can lead a teenage boy to water...: Coaches at high schools in the area are trying to enforce new hygiene regimens to battle infections from drug-resistant infections, JoNel Aleccia reports. But it can be an uphill battle. “My son doesn't come home showered,” said Kathy Minnerly, whose son plays football at Ferris. “And I see his friends heading home and they're not showered, either.”

Quote “If he wasn’t a reporter, the capitol police probably would have had him for stalking.”
--Dan Whiting, spokesman for Idaho Hall of Famer Larry Craig, referring to Idaho Statesman reporter Dan Popkey. Popkey is the sole source and cause of all of Craig's troubles. Here's today's story by Betsy Russell, showing that Craig had spent a lot of money on a high-powered defense attorney right at the time he said he didn't consult an attorney over his troubles in an airport bathroom.

Weather:It's getting chillier. Highs expected in the mid-50s today. Here's the five-day forecast.

Today in History: Here's something unusual – a president who declared a war over long after the fighting had stopped. Harry Truman declared the war with Germany over on this day in 1951, though fighting had ceased in 1945. Treaty negotiations drug out the final, official announcement. From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Frieda (Hallstein) Booth. “In 1954, Frieda married Donald Pearson, with whom she became an active member of a Spokane dance club known as "The Crystal Chandeliers." In addition to her passion for ballroom dancing, Frieda enjoyed a wide range of other hobbies and interests that included travel, golf,Alpine skiing, flower gardening, gourmet cooking, and entertaining friends and relatives at their home in the Spokane Valley.” For more.

Game One of the World Series is drawing near.

Sports isn't one of our strong suits here at The Falls, but we like all the nostalgia and tradition that surrounds the series. That's why we like – in a lukewarm, distant way – the Red Sox. A team with some history.

Who do you like in the series?

Follow-up: Back when we lived in Montana, we had a friend who went hunting every year during the World Series and listened to the games on a radio. Do you have any World Series traditions?

There's something very “Apocolypse Now” about this photo – both the surfing in the face of disaster and the fiery setting. Meanwhile, here's the latest from the LA Times, which reports that: ”With wildfires in Los Angeles County largely under control, attention and resources shifted today to still-raging blazes elsewhere in Southern California, especially in Orange and San Diego counties, where numerous communities continued to be threatened.”

Do you know anyone who's being affected by the fires?

Idaho Hall of Famer Larry Craig sure had a good attorney on retainer, back when he wasn't consulting attorneys about his bathroom escapade.

Betsy Russell reports that Craig paid top criminal defense attorney Billy Martin and PR expert Judy Smith more than $37,000 out of campaign funds – during the time in which he said he hadn't talked to an attorney about his legal mess. It was one of his chief excuses when trying to have his guilty plea withdrawn.

His staff says that he had hired the attorneys to consider suing the Idaho Statesman – which gets the blame for everything from him -- but that he had not discussed the case with them.

Here's a piece of the story:

Since the news of the incident became public, Martin, who has also represented such famous clients as football player Michael Vick and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, has been Craig’s high-profile criminal attorney seeking to withdraw Craig’s guilty plea in Minnesota. Smith, meanwhile, has coordinated Craig’s public relations, including a recent hour-long interview with Matt Lauer of NBC News that aired on prime-time television and pre-empted regular programming.

....Craig has nearly half a million dollars in his re-election campaign fund, though he’s not seeking re-election. Under federal law, he’s free to use the money for his legal defense in matters related to his service as a senator. Craig was making his weekly commute from Idaho to the Senate when he was arrested during a Monday airport layover in Minneapolis.

Question: If this is a legal campaign expense, what else might qualify?

A seagull rests on a light post while the moon glows in the dusk sky at Lions Park in East Bremerton on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Larry Steagall)

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Elsie Gettman has died, which only completes the tragedy that was discovered in her filthy Euclid home earlier this week.

A video story about the case is above. And we're sure there'll be more to report on this story.

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Here's this week's installation of On the Job, in which we take a look at city parks worker Jim Rostberg scooping up the leaves at Shadle Park earlier this week.

Let us know if there's someone or some task you'd like to see featured in On the Job.

Here's a new photo that says something about the intensity and nature of the debate over the Iraq war. Cutline: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is confronted by CodePink member Desiree Sairooz, her hands painted red, as she arrives to testify on Capitol Hill today before the House Foreign Relations Committee hearing regarding US policy in the Middle East, where she spoke about Iraq, Iran, and the Israel Palestinian conflict. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

What does this say to you?

1)That someone has finally found the courage to force the consequences of the war into the field of vision of the administration.

2)That decorum and civility over the issue has fully broken down and turned into sideshow.

3)That opponents of the war are forcing the public to wake up.

4)That opponents of the war are hurting their own cause.

5)Other...

Carolyn Lamberson's Food page review of a new cookbook caught our eye:

My husband was not impressed.

“You know I hate beets, don't you?" he asked, looking at the beets piled on the counter. When I murmured something like, "Just try it," he grunted and wandered away.

Half an hour later, he was back for seconds. Thanks to Jamie Oliver.

This Raw Beetroot Salad with Feta and Pear is one of the 175 recipes featured in "Cook With Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook."

We noticed this because we've developed a strange and powerful love for beets recently. This is fundamentally inexplicable, bearing no relationship to any of our other food habits or preferences, which tend to run toward the Frito-Lay food group. But we recently had a beet and bleu cheese salad that was awesome,and the next thing you know, we were bringing home a bag of them from a farmers market.

Question: Do you like beets? What's the best (or worst, if you insist) way to prepare them?

Carolyn: A friend has an almost constant problem with being late and calling me on my cell minutes before we were supposed to meet to tell me she's going to be another 15 minutes. In the meantime there's not enough time for me to do anything but sit and wait. When I called her on it, her reply was that she can't control my feelings or reactions to the "situation," implying that I'm the one with a problem. She's got an all-purpose "get out of jail free" card somehow. – Maryland

The Falls: We'll need to get back to you in just a second....ha! Look, we can't control your feelings or reactions to the situation, by which we're implying that you're the one with the problem. When your friend no longer carries her “get out of the tardy jail free” card, then you'll have a leg to stand on.

Real answer here.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/features/story.asp?ID=216103

The News-Tribune of Tacoma reports reports on the latest theory involving D.B. Cooper:

Was Bonney Lake home to infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper?

It’s possible, according to an article in the Oct. 29 edition of New York Magazine that postulates that the man who jumped from a hijacked airplane 36 years ago over southwest Washington with $200,000 survived and lived out his life in this East Pierce County community.

Read the rest of this entry »

So it's Gregoire-Rossi, Round II.

The least unanticipated political announcement of the moment should come today, with Dino Rossi – the loser of a close, contentious election last time – announcing his candidacy. Here's a story.

And here's a question: What's your prediction for Round II? Will Gregoire's record as governor help her pull away this time, or will it be fuel for the Rossi campaign?

Here's a nifty time-lapse video created by WSU student Victor Vlist and posted at YouTube. Here's the description posted:

This is a time-lapse piece I created for my time-based media class at Washington State University. The piece makes use of John Lennon's "Imagine" lyrics to bring irony to the time-lapse imagery displayed.

Watch for the end, where time-lapse magic makes a banana ripen to blackness and unripen again.

The natural question around the California wildfires – at least for people who aren't bent on disbelieving the news about global warming – is whether warming has had an affect on the huge fires.

We've talked to forest service officials who believe that warming is at least part of the reason for record wildfires in the past four years running. But this story notes that it isn't seen as a particular cause of the ones burning now in California, given all the other factors.

(Also re: global warming, there's this AP story about further White House editing of the testimony of scientists and experts. And this one about a new study that links past global extinctions with warming conditions.)

The fires keep burning, meanwhile, with more than a half-million people evaucated and hundreds of homes burned. Here's the latest from the LA Times,
the AP, and the NY Times.

Question: What's your opinion about the relationship between recent hotter-than-usual summers and recent larger-than-usual wildfires nationwide? Cause-and-effect, or coincidence?

The Washington Hospital Association has reversed course and will no longer fight the release of information about medical errors made at specific hospitals.

The association had moved to block the release of hospital-specific information – arguing that only general information about mistakes was needed -- but changed its mind after hearing outcry from the public. Read more here.

Maybe those folks could call up the Spokane Regional Health District's administrator and explain their decision. The district's Torney Smith wouldn't publicly release the specifics of a proposed $350,000 in cuts to be voted on by the district's board. In other words, the public health agency – public funds, public service – will just let the public know once the decisions are final.

Here's Smith's rationale, from JoNel Aleccia's story:

“I don't want to put public information out that could put pressure on the board. The budget is not built on popularity contest.”

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It’s Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007. The Homeless Camp, Part II, is gone from the median in front of the Spokane Club. We're not sure how much influence it has, but we can't think of a better place to put homelessness on display.Full story.

Finding Reno: If you come across a boxer who answers to Reno, please let Michael Buletti and Leslie Andersen know. The dog, which needs medicine for a heart condition, helped the couple each work through battles with cancer, and they're worried sick about him. You can call Buletti at (509) 991-6896. Read the full story.

Gardens, not gangs? “We need to look at why there are gang kids. We have not done a good job of being available to our youth. We have simply failed.”
--Connie Copeland Malone, co-founder of Riverfront Farm, a project to provide work and community connection for young people in the West Central neighborhood. Read Pia Hansen's column.

Now's the time to think about it: A range of information and resources on breast cancer and prevention are available today at the Community Fair for Breast Health at the Intercollegiate College of Nursing, 2917 Fort George Wright Drive, from 10-2. It's free and it could be important.

Weather: Highs expected to be around 60 today. The forecast suggests that it may be the end of the unseasonably warm days.

Today in History: Et tu, Brute? In 42 B.C., Marcus Junius Brutus commits suicide after losing in battle. He was the chief conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar. From history.com

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Marian Delana Green, “Her parents were hard-working, thrifty and loving, but very strict. Her dad was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and her mother in Brit, Iowa. Her grandparents on her mother's side were William Kelly, born in Dublin, Ireland and Anna LeClair, born in Canada. They homesteaded in the French Gulch, north of Fernan Lake and were pioneers of the region.” For more.

You gotta love a little roller derby. From YouTube:

"Spokane's own Lilac City Rollergirls roll into the convention center as the Toothless Annie's take on The Pretty Deadly for a night of carnage."

The downtown homeless protesters have broken camp. Ben Shors reports on the dispersal of about 20 people from the median between the Spokane Club and the Catholic diocese.

“We’ve raised public awareness,” said Dave Bilsland, a 50-year-old activist for the homeless.

Asked whether the temporary agreement satisfied his concerns about the city’s low-income housing situation, Bilsland said: “This dog’s not done hunting.”

The House of Charity, a downtown shelter that has been operating near its capacity, agreed to let single men to sleep in a temporary, overflow area. Catholic Charities will pay for motel rooms for couples tonight and connect them with social workers.

“We want to get these people to a warm, safe place,” said Rob McCann, the executive director of Catholic Charities. “It’s not going to be a long-term solution in the hotels. We can’t do it for more than a night or two.”

Question: Did the protest affect your view of the situation facing the homeless in Spokane?

Back around the turn of the century, some 160 people worked in the newsroom at The Spokesman-Review, give or take. These days, we're down to around 137, and falling.

Also back around 2000, some 126,000 people subscribed to the paper. That's slipped below 95,000 today.

It's enough to make you wonder if there's a connection.

The latest news in what feels like the gradual death of the American newspaper was the announcement Monday that the S-R would be laying off or otherwise reducing its staff by 10-15 journalists, and 40 people companywide. The newsroom budget will have to be cut by about 11 percent.

Editor Steve Smith is carrying on a discussion of the issue at News is a Conversation.

This is just the latest step in the industry's three-step waltz down the cellar stairs: 1) Newspapers lose readers and advertisers. 2) Newspapers eliminate reporters, photographers and editors. 3) Newspapers lose more readers and advertisers.

There's more to it, of course. But all the while, the nation's newspaper publishers have treated the industry like a sinking ship – unloading as much treasure as possible while ignoring the leak.

We're not aiming this at our keepers here at the S-R. Things have been worse at other papers. But the layoffs throughout the industry have not been done to keep newspapers profitable. They've been done to ensure an acceptable level of profit – in an industry that has a gluttonous idea of what's acceptable, attempting to preserve profit margins of 15 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent.

And no one, meanwhile, seems to think that investing in improved journalism will pay off in any way.

We'll miss this business when it's gone. But we won't be all that surprised.

In an effort to refrain from cynicism about the human beings who work for Your Sexy Government, we're just going to assume that the news of a utility fee cut from the mayor's office is an enormous coincidence, and not political brown-nosing.

Jonathan Brunt reports reported this morning that Mayor Dennis Hession has proposed a 2 percent cut in utility fees -- as the city staff in those areas has asked for an increase of 3.5 percent.

"What people are telling me is that the utility rates are having a significant impact on their ability to make ends meet," Hession said.

That's great. We're all for helping those whose ends are meeting. In this case, since there's no political motivation behind the fee cut, we're sure the mayor won't mind us pointing out that this will really only help the people whose ends are just barely not meeting.

By, like, less than a nickel a day.

That's what the fee cut would amount do, based on the city's calculation of an annual savings of about $17 a year. An extra $1.42 or so each month for groceries.

Question: Isn't it good and amazing for the mayor's campaign that the fee cut comes so close to Election Day? I mean, lots of us still have our ballots at home, unmarked, just waiting for the final decision...

From Melodie Little's blog, Here's the Dirt, comes more bad news about the cost of living in Spokane:

Washington state's housing market is getting less affordable for first-time homebuyers, a recent study by the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University found.

The housing affordability index, which measures the ability of a typical family to make payments on a median-priced resale home, found that first-time homebuyers only just 66 percent of the income needed to buy a home in Spokane County. Spokane's affordability practically mirrors Walla Walla.

Medical marijuana patient Monte Levine of Bremerton, Wash. takes a puff from his medical marijuana vaporizer that he invented in this recent photo. Nearly a decade since Washington voters legalized marijuana as medicine, the issue remains clouded in confusion and controversy.(AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Larry Steagall)

Question: Should this guy be considered a criminal? And why can't we figure out a clear, simple set of rules governing medical marijuana?

The Falls: 1) No. 2) Because we have a 'reefer madness' hangover in this country that we can't get over. We think we'd be better off devoting resources in the war on pot toward other goals.

metro(spokane) has a good idea. Building off the impulse behind San Francisco's Lights Out event, they suggest a similar thing here in Spokane – a common night in which everyone turns off their lights for an hour, and then replaces high-usage light bulbs with compact flourescents:

Looking at the list of participating cities, we're saddened by the lack of mid-city involvement.  Sure there's Boulder, but is that much of a surprise?  This got us thinking that this would be a fantastic opportunity to really test our community's belief in the "Near Nature, Near Perfect" motto.  Anyone game for organizing the first ever Lights Out Spokane? 

Bleckblog writes about the informal christening of a bike lane on Southeast Boulevard:

This Sunday we, the Spokane Bicycle Advisory Board, held a semi-official opening for the bike lanes put in as part of the SE Boulevard renovation that occurred over the summer.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Tri-City Herald reports that a fish slide to help salmon work around spillways is headed to the region. Federal officials say the slides dramatically raise the survival rates of juvenile salmon and steelhead passing dams on their journey to and from the ocean:

A massive steel structure designed as a fish-friendly water slide to give juvenile salmon and steelhead a faster and safer way to negotiate spillways is en route to Lower Monumental Dam for installation next month.

The 2-million-pound spillway weir was being guided through the McNary Dam Lock on Monday after being pushed up the Columbia River from Portland by tugboat. Once in place at Lower Monumental Dam, it will be the third such fish slide to be installed on the Snake River. The first was installed in 2001 at Lower Granite Dam and the second in 2005 at Ice Harbor Dam.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's a link link to editor Steve Smith's blog posting yesterday about pending layoffs in the S-R newsroom.

This is going to be a big hit, and it's going to be bad for journalism in Spokane. And we're still corny enough here to believe that what's bad for journalism is bad for citizenship. There's just no way around that.

Here's a behind-the-scenes style look at a documentary team from Faith Bible Church that was in Zambia to produce a film on retiring nurse Evelyn Hattan, who's worked in the African country for 40 years.

Nothing's final yet, but the proposed sale of Empire Health Services is expected to have a big charitable windfall for Spokane.

JoNel Aleccia reports this morning that people around town are buzzing over the possibilities presented by the creation of a new foundation as part of the sale, which is not final.

But that hasn't stopped health care advocates and social service workers from expressing delicate interest in the new public resource estimated at $100 million, making it the largest charitable foundation in Spokane and one of the largest in Washington.

A foundation that size could mean, conservatively, around $5 million a year for health-care related programs.

"My first thought was 'Whoopie!' " said Marilee Roloff, chief executive of Volunteers of America of Spokane, a nonprofit agency. "I don't think people understood: This is a lot of money, folks."

Question: What specific goals would you like to see a new foundation target? What social or health programs should have the highest priority for Spokane?

What's a Rocky anyway?

The region's ski areas are banding together in a promotional campaign urging people to “Ski the Northwest Rockies.” Here's a couple excerpts from Becky Kramer's story:

"When you say 'Northwest Rockies' it has a lot more resonance with people in Boston or Michigan who are looking for a place to ski," said Tom Stebbins, administrator/marketing director for the Inland Northwest Ski Association, now doing business as Ski the Northwest Rockies.

Maybe it sounds better. But some people are dubious.

"I wouldn't call anything in the Mount Spokane area part of the Rockies," said Kirsten Peters, a geology instructor at Washington State University. "I wonder at their audacity … though I give them points for clever marketing. It makes it sound like we've got greater topographic relief – the steeper hills that skiers tend to want."

What do you think? Are we in the midst of the Rocky Mountains here? Or is this a little promotional fudging?

It’s Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. It's just one week until Halloween Eve.

Today in Your Sexy Government: One of the things Your Sexy Government does for you – or some of you – is take care of your trash. Now the county and city wings of YSG are discussing some big possible changes to the regional solid waste system, including the possibility of closing the incinerator.

Quote: “I was mad at first, but the more I thought about it, I know he is not alive because he would not do this to me.”
---Judy Sullivan, speaking in August about the government's withdrawal of her Social Security benefits because, they said, her husband who she believed to have died was alive. But she has learned that he is, in fact, alive.

Weather: A high of 52 is forecast, under cloudy skies. Five-day forecast.

Today in History: Five years ago, Chechen rebels stormed into a Moscow theater and took about 700 people hostage – a crisis that turned more tragic after Russian security forces pumped narcotic gas into the theater more than two days laters, killing scores of people. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Arthur F. Cortright, 87. "He was the youngest of eight children. During his teen years, Art moved around the Pacific Northwest working various jobs. At 16 he lied about his age to get a job working on Grand Coulee Dam. He also learned to fly in his teens, and continued to fly well into his 80s."

For more.

When we read about the fate of someone like 91-year-old Elsie Gettman, it makes us furious and vengeful. Lynch-mob fantasies suddenly seem appealing.

But however much blame is owed to Gettman's grandson and caregiver – and it seems like it's a whole lot – he didn't make her disappear all by himself. It takes a village to ignore someone this completely.

Gettman was found Monday living in the worst kind of filth, in her tiny home on Euclid. Here's the full story. She was lying on a filth-soaked mattress, with bedsprings literally buried in her back, police say. The smell was noticeable 40 feet away.

And yet no one seemed to notice, at least not for a long, long time. Family members – the first line of defense – went to authorities after Gettman's grandson, Michael R. Bourassa stopped letting them into the home, authorities said. But the house didn't get that filthy overnight, and we wonder how it is that no one – not a family member, not a neighbor, not a delivery person – noticed it before now.

Or maybe they did notice, and they minded their own business.

Minding your own business is, of course, a great Western tradition. Like lynch mobs.

But it's also the only thing that can make our neighbors vanish in the midst of us, out of the reach of any kind of help at all. And if Elsie Gettman became that invisible, we wonder who else is out there unseen, and what kind of lives they're living.

Question: How can communities do a better job protecting the most vulnerable residents -- the very young and the very old?

A debate arose on some blogs here Sunday and today about whether blog reporting should have different standards than material for the print newspaper.

It came up after the name of a young woman who commited suicide was posted at Huckleberries Online -- something that typically wouldn't be published in the paper. the name came up because Dave posted a police press release verbatim.

Steve Smith raised the question at his News is a Conversation blog : Should the blog be subject to the same policies that apply to print?

The Falls: We don't believe there should be different news standards for blogs. Lots of people want to argue that the world of blogs is somehow so transformative that regular standards for news don't always apply (i.e., the allowance of anonymous and psuedonymous comments on blogs). We can't really think of a good reason for it, however, and think that the journalistic standards of the paper should apply.

What do you think? Does the very nature of blogs, online interactivity change the foundation for the way news should be reported?

We've got a few things bogging us down today -- adjusting to a new computer setup and a few personal appointments will mean that there won't be a firestorm of activity here for most of the day. If people are interested in an open thread, though, consider this one.....

Prosecutor Steve Tucker responds to the criticisms made over at Hard 7 last week, and echoed here at The Falls.

Here's Frank's post And here's an excerpt in which Tucker disputes that his unfamiliarity with a civil case with similarities to the Trent Yohe matter was a failure of due diligence:

My job as a county prosecutor involves reviewing as many facts and circumstances as are available surrounding an incident, weighing those facts in light of existing state and local criminal laws, and making a decision as to whether a crime has been committed and can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Each case is reviewed on its own facts and a federal civil lawsuit, especially one decided after an incident, does not apply.

The Arlin Jordin case continues to grow.This just in, from Karen Dorn Steele:

Convicted rapist Arlin Jordin’s apartment was searched anew last week – a signal that the Spokane landlord may face new charges of attempted rape and second-degree assault based on a young woman’s report that he offered her alcohol and she became dizzy and disoriented during a day of apartment-hunting on Sept. 20.

Would you be surprised if there wasn't more to come about Jordin's extra-creepy behavior?

Geronimo Ruiz foams the roof at the home of producer Jeffrey Katzenberg where a wildfire driven by powerful Santa Ana winds threatened a university and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes Sunday in Malibu, Calif. Flames destroyed a church and several homes, one of them a landmark castle. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

The last four years have been the biggest fire years on record nationwide. What do you think is the reason -- global warming, federal fire policy, or other?

And....write your own cutline, if you want.

Dear Annie: I was asked by a dear friend to spend a week with her at a condo owned by one of her relatives. We could stay for free and split all expenses. After the 15-hour drive, we opened the door to the condo and the place reeked of mildew and years of cigarette smoke.

The next morning, my friend's 7-year-old daughter began to show signs of her satanic heritage, ruining every outing by screaming and whining when she didn't get her way.

I came home exhausted after being with someone I considered an intelligent, thoughtful person. When she e-mailed to ask if I'd had a good time, my husband said I should tell her the truth, so I responded, as thoughtfully as I could, and said it was horrible. She said she was sorry and to chalk it up to lessons learned.

Do you think I was too harsh when she asked my opinion?

The Falls: No, not at all. We believe you should complain about anything and everything that bothers you in your life, particularly things that reflect upon friends who try to do you favors, and extra-particularly when it involves complaining about the behavior of their children. Honesty is the best policy in human affairs -- i.e., the thoughtful expression of all that you find horrible -- and we think this will guarantee you a long, happy life full of love and companionship.

Real answer here.

The Seattle Times reports that there’s a push in the Tri-Cities to give Hanford’s B Reactor a new life.

Built in secrecy during World War II but dormant since 1968, B Reactor ushered in the atomic age as the world's first nuclear reactor, producing the plutonium for the first full-scale nuclear test explosion in New Mexico and the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki.

For generations, Hanford has been the bread of life for the Tri-Cities, from when nine reactors produced plutonium to now, when billions of dollars are paying for the world's largest environmental cleanup.
Proud of their nuclear heritage, Tri-Citians want the U.S. Department of Energy to give new life to B Reactor by turning it into a museum.

Some newly posted footage from the Spokane Train Show.

Question: What hobby has taken over your life?

A few highlights from the Sunday paper:

--Wildlife officials had to put down a grizzly bear that was being fed by people in the Priest Lake area. It’s sad how such behavior persists over time, particularly in the case of a wildlife photographer who apparently baited grizzlies onto his property to photograph them. Now the bear is dead, and the people who were putting out food are directly to blame.

--A clear-eyed, helpful look at some of the key issues facing the candidates for Spokane mayor, by Jonathan Brunt and Jim Camden.

--The staff of The Vox, the S-R’s teen paper, pitched in to report a day-in-the-life story about the life of high schoolers in our region.

Question: What would be an appropriate legal punishment for someone who baited an endangered species?

Like us, you probably lay awake nights wondering how Washington stacks up to the rest of the country in terms of toothlessness. Or obesity. Or lynchings per capita since the late 1800s.

StateMaster is a web site that can help answer your questions. It compiles statistics and presents them comparatively among states.

Here’s how Washington compares in a few categories:

Richest: We’re 14th. District of Columbia is first.
Most educated: We’re 30th. Vermont is first.
Most taxed: We’re 13th. Hawaii is first.

Most murderous: We’re 35th. District of Columbia is first.
Most firearms deaths: We’re 35th. District of Columbia is first.

Most unmarried men: We’re 16th. District of Columbia is first.
Most unmarried women: We’re 21st. District of Columbia is first

Toothlessness: We’re 46th. West Virginia is first.
Most smokeless tobacco users: We’re 15th. West Virginia is first.

Highest gas prices: We’re 7th. Hawaii is first.
Most car poolers: We’re 21st. Hawaii is first.

Most obese people: We’re 40th. Mississippi is first.
Most lynchings per capita, 1882-1968: We’re 30th. Mississippi is first.
Percentage of houses that are mobile homes: We’re 25th. South Carolina is first.

It’s Monday, Oct. 22, 2007. Spell urceolate. The Inlander’s Michael Bowen did and won the Spokane is Spelling championship on Sunday.

Speaking of spelling: In a move that recalls the philosophy of the new math, Spokane Public Schools is ditching the memorize-and-repeat method of learning to spell in favor of something more conceptual and writinb-based. One teacher said, in Sara Leaming’s story on the matter this morning: "The comments I heard (from parents) were, 'My God, what's next? The feeling is that we are moving away from what has worked for hundreds of years with millions of kids to something that nobody is quite sure of."

Quote: "The elk was going to die down there one way or another. I couldn't just go down there, but my Jeep has a winch, and I thought I could get it into that area."
--Richard Parrish, who found an elk trapped in a mine shaft on his first hunt recently

Weather: It’s supposed to warm up slightly, with highs near 60. Five-day forecast here.

Today in History: JFK announces that U.S. intelligence discovered the Soviets had nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that American forces were implementing a blockade around the island. Thus kicked off a tense few days that history has taught us were only prevented from escalating into warfare by some key moments of restraint by the country’s leadership. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Lynda J. Mantello, 81. “Lynda was a resident of Spokane since 1947 and a member of St. Patrick Catholic Church. She enjoyed flowers, plants, writing poems, bingo and crocheting. Lynda belonged to her neighborhood Coffee Club. Her grandchildren and family were her greatest joy. They lived apart but she watched their pictures rotate on her laptop computer, on which she used to write poems.”

For more.

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What is your favorite thing about winter?

Here's some of the day's breaking news:

This is the opening of Amy Cannata's report about a dramatic rescue of two city water workers: "Two Spokane city water department employees were rescued this morning from a flooded basement when a valve they were working on at a South Hill water station burst, at one point forcing them to breathe and communicate through a crack in the ceiling."

Here's the lead of Rich Roesler's report from the opening arguments in the Fred Russell trial: "The prosecution in Fred Russell's vehicular homicide trial described to a jury a horrifying accident scene of a roadway littered with flaming vehicles, dead college students and live victims trapped in the wreckage."

Earlier today, a judge denied bail for alleged super-creep Kenneth John Freeman. Here's Bill Morlin's story.

Also: "A Spokane Police officer has been placed on administrative leave while the Washington State Patrol investigates a rape allegation made last week."

A model walks the runway wearing Voom by designer Joy Han's Spring 2008 fashion show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif., Wednesday.(AP Photo)

Write your own cutline...

It's another big weekend if you love movies, as Dan Webster reports over at Movies and More.

We have our choices of "Things We Lost in the Fire," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Rendition," "Feel the Noise" and even the vampire flick "30 Days of Night."

That doesn't include "Gone Baby Gone."

What new movie are you eager to see?

The Falls: The Darjeeling Limited.

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This just in -- there's a high winds advisory for the Spokane-CdA area. But it apparently has nothing to do with this little misstep -- spotted by Gina Boysun -- from last night's Q6 broadcast.

Today’s weather looks a whole lot like fall turning into winter. And once the weather gets cold, people without much money have a whole new set of challenges to deal with.

We interviewed Ralph DeCristoforo, the project coordinator of Health for All, about the health-care challenges facing the poor and uninsured at this time of year. His program works to identify and help those without insurance before a crisis sets in.

For more information, go here, or call 444-3066 or 866-444-3066 outside Spokane County.

Here’s a slightly edited transcript from the e-mail exchange:

The Falls: Winter’s starting to show up here in Spokane. What kinds of extra problems does this time of year bring for people who are struggling to get by, from the homeless to working people without insurance?

Ralph DeCristoforo: At this time of year, the problems of food, clothing and shelter are magnified because of the weather. Health-care access takes a back seat to the need of the increased demands in these basic survival categories because of what little household money available.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Tri-City Herald reports that the team from the excellent Discovery show “Mythbusters” is at Hanford this week testing the belief that cockroaches would survive a nuclear holocaust.

"It's been on the original list of myths since day one," said Kari Byron, one of the Mythbuster stars, who came to town with Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci.

The show not only had to find a place to do the testing, but it also had to convince the Discovery Channel that it could be done safely.

"People are just scared when they hear radiation," Byron said. "Too many zombie movies."

The crew is using an irradiator in the basement of Hanford's 318 Building just north of Richland. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory usually uses it to calibrate dosimeters and test for radiation damage on equipment such as video cameras and fiber optic cables.

But Thursday afternoon, Byron and Imahara were moving uncooperative cockroaches into a specially built roach condo to be exposed in the irradiator.

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It's back.

What's the worst job you've ever had?

We’re feeling a little chagrined here this morning. After doing a good bit of whining on the blog and in the paper about the nasty and useless tone the mayor’s race has sometimes taken, we realized something: Complaining about politics as usual is just another component of politics as usual.

So we’re going to provide some links here to more substantive information about Dennis Hession and Mary Verner. And to try to be just a little less cynical about the elections wing of Your Sexy Government.

First off, here’s a link to a thoughtful and interesting piece in this week’s Inlander by Kevin Taylor. He looks at the electoral map of support for the candidates and finds it’s more complex than the old North-South divide (aka Spokane’s Mason-Dixon line):

A map of how Spokane voted for Dennis Hession and Mary Verner in the August primary reveals the river is not the divider between haves and have-nots, despite the oft-repeated myth. The precinct map clearly shows a Spokane divided by economic contour lines — the comfortable neighborhoods of Indian Trail in the far northwest and High Drive in the far south bracketing the blue-collar expanse in between.

And both candidates have been campaigning heavily on the north side, where businessman and city councilman Al French, the third major candidate in the five-way primary, left nearly 7,500 votes up for grabs.

French's votes are not a solid block. He mounted a pro-business, anti-Hession campaign and his votes may go to either candidate. Some business-interest donors to French have shown up as contributing to Hession, while neighborhood activist French donors have gone to Verner.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Miss Manners: Suppose one was a gentleman invited to a formal dinner party. One arrives at the appointed time, checks the seating chart in the hallway, picks up his tiny envelope and finds the name of his dinner partner on a card inside, and dutifully ignores her all through drinks. Then, the butler (or gong) calls for dinner.

Does a gentleman then seek out his dinner partner and escort her into the dining room, or should he escort his own escort into the dining room, leaving her to attend to his dinner partner's chair?

The Falls: One would escort both one’s own escort and one’s dinner partner at the same time, one on each of one’s arms, and seat them in the alphabetical order based on the first letter of their last name. And afterward, once the "dinner's over" gong has rung, one would escort one’s dinner partner to one's dinner partner's carriage and horseman before climbing into one’s own carriage with one's own escort and trundling off to the manse, impatient to get out of that damned man-corset.

Real answer, if you can believe it, here.

Question: Isn't it hard to find a good butler these days?

This speaks for itself.

What are you planning to do this weekend?

They call it due diligence. At least they do when it really gets done.

In his Hard 7 column today, Frank Sennett adds up the ways in which prosecutor Steve Tucker simply doesn't do the homework.

In the context of his recent admission that he hadn't read -- or didn't recall reading -- a case relevant to the Trent Yohe case, Sennett reminds us of another bit of laziness from Tucker in the Otto Zehm case:

It wasn't until late July last year that Tucker announced he was nearing a decision on whether to charge any officers involved in the call. That's when The Spokesman-Review's Tom Clouse delivered a bombshell: The prosecutor admitted he hadn't fully reviewed videotapes of the incident more than four months after Zehm's death.

Question: What do you think Steve Tucker does all day?

Medical care is complicated stuff. No doubt about it.

But most of us know what a pressure sore is, and we know that a surgeon isn’t supposed to leave the forceps inside you after your operation. And most of us know that we don’t want to be spending lots and lots and lots of our money – and putting our health on the line -- at a hospital that lets these things happen too much.

Hospitals don’t see it this way, of course. JoNel Aleccia reports this morning that the state hospital association has successfully lobbied to keep information about individual hospital mistakes away from the public.

Between June 2006 and August 2007, 223 adverse events were reported by the state’s hospitals, the data showed.

The hospital association supports reporting of overall errors to help improve patient safety, but not mistakes logged at individual sites, (Kristin) Peterson said.

“Publicizing reported events at specific facilities has a very punitive effect,” Peterson wrote in a memo to state health officials. “It penalizes reporting without any quality improvement value.”

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Friday, Oct. 19, 2007. Everybody’s working for the weekend. Everybody wants a little romance. Everybody’s going off the deep end. Everybody wants a second chance. Oh.

Today in Your Sexy Government: Schools, we may sometimes forget, are a vital part of Your Sexy Government. What with the mayoral race getting all hot and stupid, the school board candidates sometimes get overlooked. We apologize for this. So here’s a link to today’s profile of Position 3 candidates Christie Querna and Norbert Luete Jr.. And here’s the Position 2 profile.

Celebrities of a sort: Today’s benefit for Hope House includes what have to pass for celebrities here in Spokane – models from local police agencies and the media. But it’s for a good cause. It starts at 11 at the Doubletree and if you want to go you better call for tickets quick: 624-2378.

Quote: "He's not Superman, he's as normal as you and I. And you can see it in his face from time to time – not very often – that he has some remorse."
--Hank Clements, referring to Fred Russell. Clements’ son, Brandon, died in the crash Russell is accused of causing. Today's story on the Russell trial, and the selection -- finally -- of a jury.

Weather: Rainy with a high of 55. More of the same is expected Saturday, and it’s supposed to start to clear up Sunday.

Today in History: The great Jimmy Stewart movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" debuted in 1939. Would Mr. Smith even bother today? From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Jack Nathan Ross, 78. “He graduated in 1947 from Davenport High School, then Eastern Washington University in 1951. He was a school teacher and P.E. coach for 32 years and retired from Ridgeview Elementary in 1983. In retirement, Jack enjoyed traveling, genealogy and their cabin at Sacheen Lake.”
For more.

From a breaking story by Bill Morlin:

A man described as “one of the most-infamous bad guys” by the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in Spokane on federal charges of production and transportation of child pornography.

Kenneth John Freeman was arrested in May in Hong Kong after a worldwide manhunt that tracked him to China, where he reportedly had been working as a computer consultant for a U.S.-based company.

It sounds like he's earned his distinction as infamous:

Freeman is a former Benton County, Wash., reserve sheriff’s deputy and once worked as a security officer at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

He is accused of producing the child pornography at his home in Richland, Wash. Court documents say the abuse began on Mother’s Day weekend in 2000 and continued until approximately July 2001.

The young girl being sexually assaulted on the videotape Freeman is accused of producing is his daughter, who has willingly and openly talked about the case, authorities say.

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We're starting Stupid Questions on Thursday this week, with an additional two installments tomorrow.

This one was shot at Spokane Falls Community College. Music is from Seattle's flopsy.

Question: What would you do with the money if you won the $200,000 Powerball lottery?

Wedding season wanes, Halloween season approaches, and the clever web site indexed finds a connection.

The folks at metro(spokane) do another excellent job of breaking down statistical information today. This time, they take new figures for the Gross Domestic Product for regional cities and compare them.

A few things you should take note of: 1) Over the 5 year period our compound annual growth rate was a decent 4.5% which put us 4th overall ahead of Seattle and Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, but behind the national rate of 5.3%. 2) Check out our friends to the east: Coeur d' Alene putting up some significant numbers - 6.9% growth? Niiiiice.

*Spokanarama writes about biking in Spokane: Riders come to appreciate their town, and by riding in auto traffic, they show others that they aren't tied to the car. You can get fresh air, exercise, adventure and a healthy dose of beauty - simply by going to work or the store in a more fun fashion.

*Toadman checks in from the LA airport: Here, people are coming and going. Some are coming home, some are leaving home, some are going home. For some, their home isn't so centralized. For some, home is wherever they happen to be tonight. Their home is the world, the planet. Tonight, my home is in Spokane, but I'm waiting in Los Angeles for my flight. Tonight, I'll board a small craft bound for Spokane. Someday, I'll take my home and fly it around the globe.

*McCranium announces that Jim McCabe, who runs the blog, is running for Richland City Council: Yep… you read that right. Complete with PDC filings (coming soon). I am officially running for Richland City Council. Butterflies in my stomach and all. Needless to say I didn’t sleep well last night.

*At The Pajamahadin, “Proof that the Mainstream Media Willfully Misinforms.”

The mayoral campaign is beginning to eat its tail – what we’re hearing from candidates increasingly sounds like the politics of politics, rather than ideas, philosophy or specific proposals.

Best of all, there’s an invigorating debate over which candidate is really the mudslinger. Always helpful.

Here are a few things we’ve “learned” about the candidates:

Mary Verner might make a fine mayor, if she weren’t skipping votes on asphalt purchases all the time.

Dennis Hession might make a fine mayor, if he weren’t a liar and a racist.

Mary Verner might make a fine mayor, if she didn’t want to bring tribal casinos into downtown Spokane

Dennis Hession might make a fine mayor, if his wife weren’t busy throttling his opponents.

Mary Verner might make a fine mayor, if she weren’t such a mudslinger.

Dennis Hession might make a fine mayor, if he weren’t such a mudslinger.

OK. That should just about do it. Now go vote, Spokane.

Devil’s Advocate: Or am I just being a scold about all this? Doesn’t every campaign taste about this bad, and shouldn’t we all just get used to it?

The big storm expected on the West Side didn't show up, the AP reports.

National Weather Service warnings for winds gusting to 60 mph along the coast, through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and across western Skagit and Whatcom counties, were lowered to 40 mph, and mst of the rest of the state west of the Cascade Range was unlikely to get winds exceeding 43 mph through Thursday night, according to forecasts.

Over at A Matter of Opinion, they're reporting that Washington again leads the country in a new report ranking states on their public disclosure laws for election financing.

We've used the Public Disclosure Commission web site a lot over the years, and have always found it highly useful. But we didn't realize the state was such a leader in this arena.

Question: Are you surprised that the state gets such a strong ranking on public disclosure of campaign funding? Are there parts of the electoral process that should be made more transparent?

News from our neighbors to the west, via The Associated Press:

This image provided by the King County Sheriff's Department shows Deputy C. Neely as she peers into the bowl of the giant toilet that she recovered Wednesday. The giant “toilette” was on the side of the roadway covered with a tarp. When the deputy realized what she found she blurted out, “Holy crap, it’s a giant toilet!” Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said the toilet facsimile was built by five friends in Colorado Springs, Colo., and was brought to Seattle late last month for a race. It was stolen out of the back of a truck, which was also stolen. Urquhart says the truck has not been found.

I hesitate to ask you to write your own cutline, but...

The state's consumer advocate says Avista's request for a rate hike should be rejected, John Stucke reports.

Here's the lead from this morning's story:
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business/story.asp?ID=215221

Avista's request to raise electricity and natural gas rates in Eastern Washington is excessive and should be rejected, the Washington attorney general's consumer advocacy division said in testimony filed Wednesday with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.

"Avista customers have seen frequent, substantial increases in their electric and gas bills over the last six years," said Simon ffitch, chief of the attorney general's Public Counsel Section.

Devil's advocate: Aren't the company's arguments that it needs to pay for dam upkeep and to improve its profitability persuasive reasons to allow the increase?

It's a scary time to be a woman attending WSU.

There's been a sickening series of events in Pullman this school year, from an attempted rape to the freakish rape and burglary blamed on a porn actor passing through town.

Now there's this -- four big jerks catcalling, harassing and assaulting a woman on Greek row. Four of these mouth-breathers weigh in at more than 200 pounds, according to police descriptions.

If you know these guys, call the cops now:(509) 334-0802.

And in the meantime, we're asking a difficult question: What is it -- in the culture or in us -- that leads to the persistence of sexual violence toward women? Is it our increasingly porn-y culture? Our general celebration of aggression and assertion? Something undeveloped in the monkey brain of some men? Or what?

The Seattle Times reports that the Gates Foundation is launching an effort to wipe out malaria – a disease that kills a million people a year, mostly children in Africa:

The last time a drive was launched to eradicate malaria, the year was 1955 and the call came from the governments of the world through the United Nations.

Now, two people from Seattle are challenging the world to take up the cause again.

Because their names are Bill and Melinda Gates, the world is paying attention.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is better than anything we ever did for a class project. Here's the description from YouTube:

Here it is, this video is a legend at Mead High in Spokane. The Story of Oedipus is a tragic tale of greek mythology. (This guy marries his mom on accident.)Yea i'd call that tragic. Created by Jerrin Neal and Spencer Isitt. This video is a legend at Mead. BEST HISTORY PROJECT EVER!

Neil Young’s playing Spokane on Saturday night.
The show's sold out.

Our favorite memory of Young comes from years ago when he played at the Opera House. He brought out a big old pipe organ and performed “After the Gold Rush.” It was a strange and beautiful thing. We also remember that he was wearing Uggs, for some reason.

Anyway, what’s your favorite memory from a Neil Young show in Spokane? Or anywhere? And what's your favorite song of his?

We were surprised to learn that more than 400 students in the Spokane Public Schools system take online courses, a figure that’s growing.

The information was part of Sara Leaming’s story this morning about a district decision to stop charging students extra to take more online classes than the normal limit.

According to the North American Council for Online Learning, more than a million students – including those in private schools and home-schooled students – are enrolled at “virtual schools” across the country.

Spokane’s program is unique in that teachers write and teach the curriculum, while most school districts buy the curriculum from for-profit groups.

… Many students say the courses help them with electives – especially those needed for college admission – they are unable to take because their schedules are already full of required courses.

We’ve taken a few college courses online in recent years, and while they’ve been fine, we always suspected they were more about bringing in revenue or getting more done with fewer professors than they were about providing high-quality education.

We’re not saying that’s the case here, but we’re curious about how well kids learn online versus in a real classroom.

What do you think of online classes for high school students? Do you know anyone who’s taken or taught one? How effective was it?

It’s Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007. Start thinking about what kind of Halloween candy you’ll be handing out this year. Because you’ll probably be eating most of it yourself.

The politics of politics: It seems that in every close political campaign, there comes a time when the candidates enter a world that is almost entirely focused on the mechanics of politics and campaigning – a tit-for-tat series of exchanges that gradually have less and less to do with anything but responding and accusing. The snake begins to eat its tail. Dennis Hession and Mary Verner have been headed that way for a while now. Now Hession is running TV ads criticizing Verner for some votes and for missing some votes – including one on buying asphalt. Verner calls it negative campaigning, which it is. Meanwhile, the voters who were still bothering to pay attention begin drifting back to “Dancing With The Stars.”

Bye-bye: The Spokane Symphony’s Classics series will put on its final performance at the INB Performing Arts Center tonight, with Verdi’s Requiem.

Quote: “In Eastern Washington, he was a moderate. But when he got to Olympia, that made him a conservative.”
--state Sen. Mark Schoesler, referring to former Whitman County legislator Eugene A. Prince, who died Saturday. Full story.

Weather: Colder and colder. Today’s high is forecast to be 50 and rainy.

Today in History: Two hundred and forty years ago, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon settled a matter of bitter colonial warfare by establishing a stone-lined border between Pennsylvania and Delaware. Not long after, the Mason-Dixon line would separate the slave-holding states of the South from the free states of the North. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Catherine M. Jewell, 87. “After she married Robert E. Jewell, they moved to Spokane where she was active in St. Monica's Guild at St. Xavier Parish, while raising her five sons. She volunteered in the library, while the boys attended school there. She was employed by Gonzaga Prep cafeteria for nearly 20 years, where she utilized her incredible sense of hospitality and her food service skills.”

For more.

Shonto Pete was found not guilty this afternoon of stealing the car of off-duty police officer Jay Olsen.

Now the question is, what will that mean for Olsen's trial on charges of assault and reckless endangerment for shooting Pete in the early morning of Feb. 26.

Here's an excerpt from Karen Dorn Steele's story:

Following Wednesday’s verdict, a smiling Pete hugged his lawyer David Partovi and described his reaction as “complete happiness.” He said prosecutors had offered him a plea deal for third-degree theft, but he wouldn’t take it because he was innocent.

“My lawyer told me that just proves that they didn’t have a case. He told me, ‘Don’t worry. Just tell the truth.’ ”

Jurors said they had questions about Olsen's version of events the night of the shooting, and a lot of his reported behavior that night sounds suspicious. And Pete's exoneration again raises the question of whether Olsen isn't facing trumped-down charges here.

As others, including Frank Sennett over at Hard 7, have asked: Doesn't shooting at someone more than once warrant a charge of attempted murder?

In any case, it'll be interesting to see how jurors in that case -- if it makes it that far -- react to Pete, who will be a witness at that time and not the defendant.

How badly does the verdict damage Olsen's credibility?

Here’s a nice panoramic shot of the Finch Arboretum by Jibby! at flickr.com. See more of his photos here.

sulustu got this picture of the new Saranac building, on a day that seemed to be providing some solar power for the building’s many panels.

“I'm so glad the folks at the Saranac are taking such a leadership role creating environmentally friendly structures.”

Elsewhere:

*metro(spokane) is seeking out the best vacant dirt lots in the central city. Cast your vote here.

This year though we look at that rarest of vacant lots in the CBD - the vacant dirt lot. What? Dirt lots in the CBD? You had better believe it, and they are beauties. Here is the criteria we used in our flawless analysis:

The lot(s) must have been vacant for at least 5 years
The lot(s) must exist in Spokane's CBD
Can't have been nominated previously
The lot(s) must be less than 1 acre
The lot(s) must be dirt

*Unbearable Bobness gives us his take on the food review – of a Tacoma 7-11. An excerpt:

The service is abysmal. I'm standing for what seems forever at the Go Go Taquitos and 10,000 kinds of hot dogs and sausage counter. The clerk acts like I'm invisible. I want to walk behind the counter and serve myself that is how bad I want a Tamale Pie Go Go Taquito this morning. The perfect compliment to my apple fritter and 24 oz. cup of steaming hot black coffee. Don't do this to me lady. It's killing me.

Jury selection is moving along slowly in the Fred Russell trial. But the importance of doing it carefully is brought home when you consider some of the people in the audience at the Kelso courtroom where Russell is being tried.

This is from Rich Roesler's story this afternoon:

Among the handful of observers in the courtroom Wednesday were parents from both sides. Every day, Russell's mother and aunt have sat in the courtroom, politely declining one interview request after another.

Three rows in front of them sat two fathers of WSU students killed in the crash.

Rich Morrow, a West Seattle freight manager who launched a reward fund to find Russell when he fled, is the father of 21-year-old Stacy Morrow. Beside him sat Hank Clements of White Swan, whose only son Brandon Clements was driving the 1978 Cadillac smashed by Russell's Chevy Blazer. He said he and other family members will be attending the entire trial.

"I'm hoping that it's here that justice is done," he said.

Being deliberate about jury selection is a step in that direction. It's expected that a jury will be seated later today.

Question: If you've served on a jury, what was your experience like? If you've been excused during jury selection, what was the reason?

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This is the first installment of a video feature we're going to be doing here called On the Job. We'll be going out into the community and doing brief profiles of people at work.

Today's subject is Theresa Sanderson, a flagger on the Monroe Street construction project who's been noticed by lots of drivers for the smile and wave she has for every passing motorist.

If you've got someone you'd like to suggest for this feature, please let me know.

S-R file photo by Dan Pelle

A leaky pipe is delaying the opening of the Riverfront Park ice rink.

So we thought we'd take this opportunity to give you something to do in the interim, by reading an entry at howstuffworks.com. It's an online encylopedia, and this entry discusses how ice rinks are put together.

Forming a good skating surface isn't as simple as making a tray of ice cubes. Freezing a rink correctly takes no less than a dozen stages, with some stages laying ice that may be as thin as 1/32 of an inch (0.8 millimeters). Some layers require paint to create an attractive background and, in the case of hockey, provide clear markings. And ice that's best for one sport may be completely unacceptable for another.

Caveat: This site is general, and not specific to any local rink.

Question: What's your strongest move on the ice?

The Falls: The Triple Slight Concussion.

OK, back to pork.

Among the responses to yesterday’s question about who has the best pork were these offerings (above and beyond that offered at DeLeon’s): the bacon and avocado sandwich at Marron’s; schnitzel at Chic-A-Ria; Portland’s Voodoo Doughnut.

Ryan sent along a link to this bacon chocolate bar, which even we think tests the boundaries of where pork can go.

And here are instructions for how to pop corn in bacon fat.

Question: Is it an offense against porkdom to cook bacon in the microwave?

From austinspace at flickr.com, a scene outside of Rosalia. We love these simple compositions with lots of sky from farm country.

For more of his photos, go here.

Over at A Matter of Opinion, Rebecca Nappi is wondering...

Feeling in a nostalgic mood this morning? Share your memories of growing up in Spokane when we were as far from cool as possible. Or maybe you think we're still a two-dot town. And that's OK? Or not?

Kathleen Merriman’s column today in the Tacoma News-Tribune opens with these paragraphs:

Monday evening I sat at Ruby Thomas’ dining room table, amazed at how much, and cringing at how little, we have done for her granddaughter in the next room. Mercedes Thomas is 12, and can’t speak, eat, or get around on her own. She is one of about 121 people on the planet diagnosed with Proteus syndrome, the genetic defect that afflicted Joseph Merrick, the subject of the film “The Elephant Man.”

Read the rest of the story here.

And here are a few other headlines from around the state:

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News has a feature on lifelong stamp collector Paul Schroeder.

“Nearly 10,000 different postage stamps are issued worldwide each year, so it's easy to see how a collector can end up with rooms packed full of stamps depicting anything and everything.

Paul Schroeder devotes the majority of the first floor of his Pullman home to the hobby - a practice that doesn't always sit well with his wife, Alice.

"My wife would just as soon the whole thing disappears," the 69-year-old said.

For more.

Seattle Times: “Prepare to chase down knocked-over garbage cans and deal with flickering lights Thursday evening — forecasters say a wind storm could be headed for Western Washington.”
Story here.

Olympian: “Some female students at The Evergreen State College say they never used to think twice about walking alone on campus but are rethinking their safety after a woman reported that she was raped at gunpoint early Monday.” Story here.

Tri-City Herald: Filmmaker Travis Senger has enlisted the help of a prominent producer in the hopes of having his movie, “The Sidewalk Never Ends,” made. Story here.

Wenatchee World: “A 33-year old Quincy man was arrested Tuesday after leading police on a 80-mile car chase that started at Quincy and ended in the early morning hours near Grand Coulee Dam.” Story here.

Centralia Chronicle: The Adna School District is looking to replace its 70-year-old bleachers and football stadium. Story here.

We’re dipping into EWU’s Community Indicators Initiative of Spokane web site today to see what kind of picture of Spokane we can paint.

A few figures from the site, which gathers statistics from several government and other sources:

*In 2006, an estimated 53 percent of Spokane residents attended a musical, drama or dance performance. (And “Cats” wasn’t even playing.) That’s better than the statewide figure of 51.4 percent. (Photo shows a scene from "Long Day's Journey Into Night" at the Actors' Repertory Theatre earlier this year.)

*In the same year, 54 percent of residents here attended a sporting event.

*The city had 8.7 arts-related businesses per 1,000 establishments, slightly below state average, according to Census figures.

*Spokane scored a 1.24 in 2004 on the “creative vitality index,” which we’re certain is the kind of fixed, hard number that reflects an undisputable truth. The measurement comes from the Washington Arts Council, and shows that Spokane is more creatively vital than the national average, but slightly less creatively vital than the state average.

*Spending per capita on parks in Spokane County was $92 in 2004, below the state average of $133.

There’s plenty more where that came from at the website. And we’ll be bringing you more information from there in the future.

Question: What “musical, drama or dance” performance have you attended lately, and how’d you like it?

Follow-up: How’s your personal creative vitality index measuring up?

Anybody ready to go skiing?

It’s always nice to see when some other city’s political dysfunction outstrips your own.

In Rention, the city council is divided over allegations of collusion, lawsuits and a mysterious, vulgar insult to the mayor written in lipstick on her bathroom mirror, the P-I reports. But the city’s economy is thriving, as one business owner told the paper.

"You don't hear anybody making fun of Renton anymore -- Renton is a force to deal with.”

Don’t people make fun of Renton anymore?

Steak lovers swear it’s the way to go.

But dry-aging beef can sound a little off-putting, at least at first. In his Food story today, Tom Bowers describes it as “controlled rotting.”

High-end steakhouses tout their aged beef as more tender and tasty than regular steaks, and you pay a premium for it.

Here’s the word on avoiding that premium and aging the beef yourself:

While it is easier to let the professionals do it, chances are one or two enterprising foodies out there can't wait to try this at home. Among a few ways to do it:

Cook's Illustrated suggests buying a roast, patting it dry and placing it on a wire rack over a tray lined with paper towels, and letting it age for up to four days.

On his show, "Good Eats," Alton Brown recommends placing a rib roast (with a nice layer of fat to save on waste) in a perforated plastic container at 36-38 degrees with 50 percent humidity for up to four days.

Jonathan Holden, executive chef at Spencer's For Steaks and Chops, advises against amateur aging because the environment must be strictly controlled.

Have you had dry-aged beef and how’d you like it? Have you tried to do it yourself, and what kind of luck have you had?

What’s going to happen to the Otis 9?

Out of 36 residents of the downtown hotel who remain there past the deadline to leave, nine are unaccounted for. The hotel, long a home for some of the city’s poor, troubled people, is set to be redeveloped by its new owner, RenCorp.

Most of those there past the deadline have other arrangements looming, Kevin Graman reports.

But the nine who are unaccounted for present a problem, even for the best-intentioned people involve. They haven’t been seen in a long time and haven’t responded to efforts to find and help them.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007. Now that it’s getting colder, think about making a donation to Coats 4 Kids.

Somebody to shove: We weren’t there, but we’re skeptical about the report made to police that the mayor’s wife pushed a protester – or at least we’re skeptical that it was a push worthy of police investigation. It’s possible that the city’s peace officers have bigger fish to fry. It’s possible that some political advantage was seen in making the report. And it’s possible that sometimes people just need to take care of their own petty conflicts on their own.

A mother’s trials: Diana Cote, pictured above, has probably had her fill of courtrooms. She’s been in Spokane at the trial of her son, Shonto Pete, who stands accused of stealing a pickup truck before being shot in the head by an off-duty police officer. Now she’s off to the trial of the man who’s accused of killing her daughter in Montana. “I don’t know why people are trying to kill my kids,” she said. Here’s Karen Dorn Steele’s story.

Quote: “I do believe the police officer was very aggressive, I do believe he profiled. I’m always very frustrated about profiling. I’ve got a bit of a streak of civil libertarianism right down my middle.”
--Idaho Hall of Famer Larry Craig, speaking to TV’s Matt Lauer in an interview aired Tuesday. Story here.

Weather: Today’s high is forecast at 59, with more rain expected. The next several days should get chillier.

Today in History: In 1989, 63 people died in an earthquake in San Francisco. In 1931, Al Capone was sentenced to prison for tax evasion. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Elwood G. Amsbury. “During WWII Elwood was placed in the Rainbow Division of the Infantry. He served in Europe until the end of the war. In April, 1989 Elwood married his square dance partner, Wanda (Bleasner) Sharp. They traveled in their RV from Canada to Arizona participating in many dances and festivals.”

For more.

Every time an athlete gets into trouble, there’s a kind of shocked outcry that seems, to us, a little naïve.

An athlete? In trouble? Say it ain’t so.

In any case, a lot of people believe that sports teach positive ethical values. But UI researcher Sharon Stoll has spent years studying sports and ethics, and she’s come to the opposite conclusion: sports don’t teach ethical behavior at all, and they may encourage unethical behavior.
We contacted Stoll last month and conducted an interview via e-mail. Here’s a transcript, with minor editing.

The Falls: There's a lot of faith out there in the off-the-field values that kids supposedly learn by participating in sports. Your research suggests that sports actually contribute to worse personal ethics. How did you arrive at that conclusion, and why do you think that is?

Stoll: This is a great question, but rather complicated. The values that people think the kids are getting may be about morality – honesty, justice, fair play – when in actuality what is being learned are what we call social values – hard work, dedication, intensity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Police may have found the truck that hit and killed 77-year-old Donald C. Seever on Sept. 30. They're headed to Yakima to check it out. Story here.

Eastern Washington political donors have given $725,376 to presidential candidates.

Which is almost nothing, really. Less than a quarter of 1 percent of all the millions and millions of dollars pouring into campaigns.

And if you’re wondering who’s getting our money, one fact says it all: Ron Paul out-earned every Democrat on the ballot. And Hillary Clinton – the top money-raiser of anyone nationally – is in fourth place among donors in our region.

The New York Times has a nifty new interactive map that shows the geographic source of donations to presidential candidates. That's the source of the information here.

It shows that among Eastern Washington’s deep pockets, Rudy Giuliani comes first, attracting $371,575 in donations. Next is Mitt Romney, at $102,570, John McCain ($49,908), and Ron Paul ($46,056).

Tops among Democrats were Barack Obama ($40,486), John Edwards ($20,316), Bill Richardson ($16,870) and Hillary Clinton ($14,246).

Here’s how the rest of the candidates have fared here: Fred Thompson ($35,900); Joe Biden ($7,375); Sam Brownback ($4,670); James Gilmore ($4,600); Tom Tancredo ($4,125); Dennis Kucinich ($2,550); Chris Dodd ($2,300); Duncan Hunter ($1,404); Mike Gravel ($425); and Mike Huckabee ($0).

Question: Do the donations surprise you in any way? Who would you expect to do well here and why?

A lot of people wonder what life is like at an exciting, fast-paced newspaper like the S-R. This photo gives you a good idea: there's lot of pipe-smoking and pneumatic tubes.

Actually, this is from 1928, and today's special section about the newspaper's 125th anniversary. Check it out.

Tom Tippett, left, of Flushing, Mich., and James Burgess, of Seattle, fish among quiet and color of fall while drifting the Yakima River on Sunday. (Kitsap Sun, Steve Zugschwerdt)

Here's a new posting from YouTube that shows "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk signing a plastic leg last Saturday in Spokane.

Question: What's the strangest thing you've ever had a celebrity sign?

We had a little discussion here yesterday about the wide array of pork products included in a new kitchen-sink burrito from a fast-food chain, and the consensus seems to be that a lot of us like pork.

Like to eat it. Like to talk about it.

One thing I don’t like about it is its marketing campaign. The other white meat? I don’t think that pork – the source of bacon, hamsteaks, pork tenderloin, cracklins and sausage – needs to be sold as the new chicken.

Anyway, here’s a link sure to make a pork-lovers heart strain just a beat or two more. It posts a bacon recipe every day. Today’s recipe is Bacon, Courgette and Blue Cheese Soup.

And here’s a comment from yesterday’s post. Ryan Pitts wrote:

With all due respect to the osso bucco at Downriver and the roasted pork right now at Luna (with grits!), I have to say that the carnitas at De Leon are the cream of the pork crop in Spokane right now. I feel like I'm sinning just thinking about them.

Which leads us to a question: What’s the best pork dish in Spokane, restaurant or otherwise?

Science presses onward.

Researchers at the UW have implanted a gene from a rabbit into a poplar tree – and it made the trees much more efficient at pulling toxins from the air and water. The news was reported in this morning’s Seattle P-I, and it raises the usual batch of questions about ethics in genetic engineering.

Many people are worried about transgenic organisms, in which a gene from one species is inserted into another, whether it's corn that produces a pig vaccine or a soybean that makes its own pesticide. There are concerns that mutant plants could spread, entering the food supply and threatening human health. Or they could interbreed with normal plants, transferring herbicide resistance to weeds, for example. No one can predict all of the potential side effects of a new gene on the host plant or other plants and animals.

On the other hand:

It's a beautiful thing that a rabbit gene is perfectly readable by a plant. Look at how connected life is," said Sharon Doty, a professor with the UW's College of Forest Resources. She's the lead author of the poplar research published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It's a beautiful thing," she said. "I don't think it's something to fear."

Question: What’s your thought here? Gee whiz or oh no?

The candidates for mayor kept after each other at Monday night’s debate, including some useful back-and-forth over which one was really mudslinging and which one was sticking to the facts.

They disagreed over this, naturally.

The debate, at the Bing, allowed candidates Dennis Hession and Mary Verner to question each other.

Here’s Verner’s turn:

Verner asked Hession why he fined ambulance company American Medical Response “such a paltry sum” after it was discovered that they had overbilled residents $320,000 from 2003 and 2006.
Under terms of the city’s contract with AMR, Hession could have imposed a much higher fine than the $80,000 figure he decided to levy against the company last year. Hession defended the move.

“This was an error that was made in judgment,” he said of the overbilling. “It was not a deliberate attempt on their part to deceive anybody.”

And here’s Hession’s:

Hession asked Verner why she voted “to make gambling easier” in Spokane by reducing the gambling tax.

After county leaders drastically reduced gambling taxes outside city limits, the City Council in 2005 reduced the city’s tax from 20 to 10 percent over two years.

“For me it only made sense to keep businesses in the city of Spokane,” Verner said. “You painted me as an anti-business candidate, but I’ll tell you that’s a good exhibition of how I am willing to keep businesses in Spokane.”

Here’s Jonathan Brunt’s full story from this morning’s S-R.

Question: Did you watch the debate? What was your take-away impression of the candidates’ performance?

As ever-larger dams are built around the world, the Grand Coulee dam has been demoted from its former spot as the world’s largest one.

It’s now fourth. Today’s paper included an fascinating graphic with information about the top four. Grand Coulee’s still the biggest on in our country.

Question: What’s your opinion about dam-building in the developing world? Is it something needed to help poor populations and economies grow? Or is it bound to create more problems than it’s worth?

It’s always depressing to hear more news about the positive effects of exercise, given how lazy we are.

But it’s there again in a new story this morning about scientists who are studying ways to combat the normal wear-and-tear on the brain as it ages:

High on the list: Simple physical exercise. It seems to do the brain as much good as the body.

Other options aren't as well-studied, but range from brain-training games to medications that may keep brain networks better connected. In fact, an old blood-pressure pill named guanfacine improves memory in old rats and monkeys by doing just that _ but it hasn't yet been tested in older people with memory problems.

This is a huge issue as the population ages, of course. Life expectancies are stretching – people now in their 50s could well live another 40 years routinely. One brain specialist says that this is the “front-and-center public health issue” of our time.

Question: What are you doing to stay sharp as you age?

The Falls: We’re getting right on that….

They say we’re getting a visit from La Nina this year, and that could mean a cold and snowy winter.

Some people, of course, will whine and complain about this. Some TV weather-smilers are already well into tsking and frowning over the passage of summer. We here at The Falls have never understood this, because we think winter is cool, at least at the front end.

1) It’s pretty.

2) You can play in it.

3) It affords the opportunity to trot out a satisfying variety of winter gear like boots.

4) It puts a premium on competence and common sense.

5) It includes Christmas.

Winter can be hard on people with few resources, as Kevin Graman reports in his story here, and there ought to be help available for them. (Athol firewood dealer Shane Smith is shown above, in a photo by Jesse Tinsley.)

But if you just don’t like it, and year after year you find yourself complaining that it’s winter again, you might consider that it’s pretty much an annual event around here.

Question: What’s your favorite thing about winter? Even if you don’t like winter, wish you lived in Florida, cry while putting away your tank tops and mesh clothing – what’s your favorite thing about winter?

It’s Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007. Who says we can’t just let the leaves stay on the ground to be covered up in snow?

Today in Your Sexy Government: One of the sexiest things about your government is checks and balances. A judge ruled Monday that it was unconstitutional for the Spokane County Jail to take booking fees from inmates later found innocent.

Yes, it is: We love the title of the citywide event, Spokane Is Reading. So declarative and confident. Anyway, if you’re reading this year’s selection, Jess Walter’s “Citizen Vince,” you can catch him at two free public events Thursday. He’s at the North Spokane Library at 1, and the Masonic Temple at 7. For more info, call 444-5307. For more on Jess, a National Book Award nominee, check out www.jesswalter.com.

Quote: “We believe in truth and we believe in fairness. … We also believe in justice. We don’t look kindly on deaths by idiocy.”
--Longtime Kelso City Councilman Alan Slater, referring to the townspeople who will serve as jurors in the Fred Russell trial. The trial started Monday, and is expected to last up to a month.

Weather: It’s chilly and raining, with a high of 59 expected. The rest of the week is supposed to be more of the same.

Today in History: It’s been a bloody day, over the years. In 1793, Marie Antoinette was beheaded. In 1946, 10 top Nazis were hung for war crimes. In 1859, 10 men died in abolitionist John Brown’s raid on an armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. And in 1976, “Disco Duck” topped the charts. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Marion Devenere, 89. “There is no way to express how much we already miss her warm, nurturing personality and quaint New England accent: ‘We're gonna have a potty…’ And no one cooked Italian dishes any better than Marion! She loved the Lord and prayed for us all every night. She passed away peacefully in her chair still holding her rosary. She would always say ‘It's a great life if you don't weaken’ and ‘Keep the faith!’”

For more.

Spokane’s an affordable place to live, right?

It’s one of the things we tell ourselves when we’re adding up the benefits of living here, along with: It’s a great place to raise kids.

The truth is, it’s barely more affordable than average, at least according to the latest statistics from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association. And its affordability is offset by lower-than-average pay.

The statistics are included in the latest Real Estate Report for the region.

The cost of living index – in which the national average equals 100 – gives Spokane a 97.9.

Housing and utilities are much more affordable than average, at 88 and 85, respectively. But transportation (113) and health care (108) are higher.

Meanwhile, per-capita income is 84.9 percent of average and sinking. It was 91.3 in 1970.

Among the cities with a lower cost-of-living index overall: Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Boise (barely), Charlotte, N.C., and the Tri-Cities.

Still, we’re staying here.

Question: Why are our health-care costs higher than average? With all the hospitals here, shouldn’t competition drive costs down?

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Speaking of Dry Fly Distilling, the S-R did its own video story...

remi1000 checks in at the Rookery block, with commentary and photos (example above):

And you wanted a building at the Rookery Block?! No no no, it’s a lot more practical to have surface parking there, so we can walk to, y’know, other surface parking lots. Look, they even put up a nice fence to keep the riff-raff out! A lot better than an actual building.

metro(spokane) reports on the new Dryfly Distillery in the U-District, with a cool slideshow:

Since prohibition ended in 1933 there has not been a micro distillery in the State of Washington -- Dryfly is at the front of what we hope is the birth of a new distilling culture here in Spokane.

The Pajamahadin asks why Gen. Petreaus didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize:

Ronald Reagan did more for peace than anyone in my lifetime. Before him, it was Winston Churchill. Both made the world a safer and freer place, but neither was ever recongnized for their contributions. George Bush and General Petreaus will also have to wait decades for the judgement of history.

Unbearable Bobness takes a different tack:

The right wing nuttosphere is becoming more and more unglued* over Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It's funny to watch these brainstemmers flail. John McCain, in an act of embarrassingly sad envy and smallness, said some Buddhist monks should have got it instead of Gore.

The cool thing about passing over Buddhist monks for peace prizes or anything else is they really aren't going to take it very personally.

We love insanely fatty foods as much as the next person. Possibly even more.

But as triple bacon burgers and fried-chicken bowls proliferate at fast-food restaurants, we wonder where it may possibly end: bacon-fat injections with a caffeine-soda drip?

The latest entry in the arteriosclerosis sweepstakes is Hardee's new Country Breakfast Burrito. It's got eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, cheese and gravy.

It sounds awful.

And we'll probably be getting one any day now.

Question: How many pork products is enough for one burrito?

This comes via Hard 7, where Frank asks, “Why has Avista poured so much money into Dennis Hession’s campaign?”

The question arises from a piece by Bob Herold in the current Inlander that examines Avista’s $14,200 in donations to Hession. The piece concludes:

Could it be that Avista just doesn't want to deal with a mayor who has a long (and knowledgeable) interest in environmental matters, who supports neighborhood councils and who believes that the council-approved comprehensive plan should not be left to gather dust? Could it be that company officials fear that a Mayor Verner might not always agree with them when they assert that what's good for Avista is always good for Spokane?

Question: Is what’s good for Avista good for Spokane?

Jim Camden has the rundown for tonight’s mayoral debate at Spin Control:

Watch it in person: The debate takes place at the Bing Crosby Theater at Lincon and Sprague. Admission is free, but tickets are required and there are only a few left. Although the debate starts at 7 p.m., show up between 6 and 6:30 p.m., to find a seat, get settled and have a chance to submit a question.

Watch it on television: Starts at 7 p.m. on Channel 4.

Listen to it on the radio: On KXLY-AM, which is at 920.

Catch it on the Web: The station will be streaming it live from its web site, and the newspaper will be providing a link from its site.

Question: Are you planning to watch the debate? Why or why not?

The Falls: We want to, honestly, but we have an unavoidable conflict.

Josh Heytvelt, above, and Theo Davis have been reinstated to the GU basketball team, after their high-profile arrest on drug charges last year.

We have a hypothesis about people’s reactions to the case: If you engaged in any youthful bad behavior like pot smoking when you were in college, you tend to see their problems as a minor infraction for which they’ve more than paid the price.

And if you toed the line, never broke the law, and always wondered about that funny smell at the parties you attended – and left early – during your own days as a young adult, you’re more inclined to see their offense as serious and their punishment as insufficient.

The Falls pleads the Fifth on this particular question, but feels these two have paid sufficiently for their offense.

Question: Is it time to forgive and forget? Or should their mistake have cost them more?

About six years after his original trial was to begin, Fred Russell's about ready to be back before a jury on vehicular homicide charges. Preview here.

The seemingly daily debates between Mary Verner and Dennis Hession have sometimes sounded like they were descending into the kind of sniping that leaves a lot of us fed up with the elections wing of Your Sexy Government.

If you’ve been through enough elections, you begin to despair that they can ever rise above the stranglehold of the petty – a failure that is shared by candidates, journalists and a public that mostly doesn’t pay any attention until things get hot and stupid.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Times has put together an excellent piece of public-service journalism on congressional earmarks, the “little” favors that lawmakers slip into bills largely unnoticed.

In the kind of exhaustive reporting that appears too rarely in the press these days, the Times tracked down every earmark in the 2007 defense bill. And then it compared those to campaign contributions and put together a highly usable database with every member of Congress.

The stories, database and other elements are here.

Here’s a summary of what the paper found, in a series titled “The Favor Factory”:

--People who benefit from earmarks generally give money to those who deliver them: Of the nearly 500 companies identified as getting 2007 defense earmarks, 78 percent had employees or political action committees who made campaign contributions to Congress in the past six years.

--Though individual contributions are limited by law, people at companies that received defense earmarks gave lawmakers more than $47 million.

--The 2,700 earmarks Congress put in the 2007 military spending bill cost $11.8 billion. The Pentagon didn't ask for the money in its budget and, because its budget is capped by law, cuts had to be made to find room for the favors.

--Nearly all members of Congress dole out earmarks. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, an earmark critic, calls the practice "circular fundraising" because of the perception that tax dollars given out as favors come back as campaign donations. "I think that most taxpayers would say that it doesn't pass the smell test," he said.

Question: Is there any good reason to allow such earmarks? Should they be banned or limited in some way?

If it’s autumn, it must be time to renew the debate over studded snow tires. Amy Cannata reports this morning, in her Getting There column, that Costco won’t sell studded tires any longer.

Costco's corporate tire buyer Pat McClintock said the decision was made to be "environmentally responsible. Many manufacturers are moving away from studded tires because of the road damage they cause."

Questions: Where do you come down on the question of studded tires? Are they really any better than siping or good snow tires? What limitations, if any, should we place on their use?

One of the commonly posted events at YouTube is hockey game fights. Here's one from a Spokane Chiefs game. My favorite part is the way the official glides along placidly behind the players as they throw punches...

Telling even a sliver of the truth is so rare in politics these days that it seems naïve even to complain about it.

But we’ve been struck again lately by extreme care taken in the naming of political fund-raising groups.

If a group is called Citizens for Quality Health Care, you can be sure that the donors are doctors and hospitals.

If a group’s called People for Quality Education, you can be certain the biggest donors are teachers unions.

Citizens for Public Safety? Firefighters and police unions and officials.

We may form a committee and name it Citizens for Better Salaries for Newspaper Employees.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Monday, Oct. 15, 2007. Cancer researchers say death rates from the disease took a sharp dive between 2002 and 2004. Good to hear.

Encouraging news for people who like pumpkins: The crop around here has escaped the devastation that’s been the result for pumpkin farmers elsewhere in the country. It might surprise you to learn that pumpkin growing is a $100 million-a-year business.

Quote: "I didn't want to embarrass my wife, my kids, Idaho and my friends. And I wrestled with it a long while. … I should have told my wife. I should have told my kids. And most importantly, I should have told counsel."
---Idaho Hall of Famer Larry Craig, in a televised interview with Matt Lauer. Story here.

Weather: Today’s high is forecast for 64, and temperatures are headed downward over the next five days.

Today in History: In 1964, Craig Breedlove laid down the longest skid marks in history – six miles of rubber at the Bonneville Salt Flats. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize.
From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Mildred Jane Sewell, 91. “Mildred had an avid interest in gardening, art, music, and spending time with family and friends. She was active in the United Church of Christ in Newport, Chapter O of PEO, and numerous other organizations in the community.”
For more.

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The final installment of today's Stupid Questions. I hope people have enjoyed it, and we'll do another round or two next week.

Question: If you were elected to Congress, what would be the first law you'd try to have passed?

If a new poll is to be believed, Washington is even less enamored of the president – on Iraq, on the economy, and overall – than the rest of the country.

A poll of 800 Washingtonians showed that 1 in 5 residents approve of his job performance; just 19 percent approved of his handling of the war in Iraq; and 22 percent approve of his handling of the economy.

Congress’ approval rating was even lower, at 16 percent.

Bush’s national approval rating is 27 percent, about where Richard Nixon’s was before he resigned. Politico has the latest national figures.

The Washington poll was conducted by Atlanta-based Strategic Vision, LLC.

The group has been polling on a potential Gregoire-Rossi gubernatorial race for a while now – though Rossi claims to be undecided about running, he’s making a lot of moves in that direction. The poll says it would be another tight race – with 47 percent favoring Gregoire to 45 percent for Rossi.

A few other survey results:

-- 64 percent of respondents said they thought Washington was headed in the wrong direction.

-- 54 percent said they approved of Sen. Patty Murray.

-- 68 percent favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

-- 48 percent of Washington Democrats said they favor Hillary Clinton in the next election, with Barack Obama at 22 percent.

-- 37 percent of Washington Republicans said
they favor Rudy Giuliani, with Fred Thompson at 20 percent.

Question: Who do you like for president?

Here's a handy little tool for matching the issues that matter most to you with the presidential candidates.

You "vote" on issues, and the system tells you how you align with the various candidates.

Unless you've already made up your mind...

Another beautiful autumn photo. This one's from jimg at flickr.com. For more of his images, go here.

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OK, here's today's Round 2. By the way, these questions were asked at and around the STA Plaza this week. In future installments, we'll begin straying a little farther afield...

Question: What's the best way to get a baby to stop crying?

--Here's a beautiful fall image from sulustu.

--Toadman at Synaptic Disunion writes about those of us who grew up in the Reagan years:

Where are they now anyway? My fellow genX'ers? Where have they gone? Are we melting into the background like so many other generations to come before us? Are we taking to much from the planet, like so many other generations before us as well? What are we doing?

--The Pajamahadin provides a link to this video, which should have won this young woman a pageant title of some sort for life.

Spokane Valley Insider notes that Saturday is Spokane Valley Shred Day.

--And The Unbearable Bobness of Being weighs on the Al Gore, the Nobel, and the presidential election:

I wish Al would run, Hillary gives me the chillaries and Obama will be roadkill under the Clinton election limo. Al has the gravitas to give Billary a run for their money.

It's kind of a love-hate thing you've got going with Your Sexy Government.

In 2001, the state passed I-747, limiting tax increases to 1 percent. But taxes keep going up at a much greater rate than that, because voters are approving new taxes. (This is from a post yesterday at Rich Roesler's Eye on Olympia)

Statewide property tax collections on existing properties rose 5.7 percent ($414 million) last year, as voters agreed to tax themselves more than the 1 percent limit.

... All told, according to the revenue department, state and local property tax collections rose 7.1 percent in 2007, to $7.73 billion a year.

This made us wonder people's feelings about taxation by Their Sexy Government are like their feelings about Congress -- they tend to hate it overall, but hate their own congressperson somewhat less.

Question: Is this evidence that Your Sexy Government is simply a tax glutton? Or that tax-limiting initiatives work by putting more tax decisions into the hands of voters?

At the risk of biting the hand that might someday feed me, I'll point to an interesting article at Tom Sowa's TXT blog about cyberslacking at work. It was written by Laura DL Bracken.

An excerpt:

With major league baseball playoffs in full swing, companies nationwide are reviewing worker time-use practices. With growing interest in online social networks, holiday shopping and fantasy sports leagues, “cyber-slacking” has raised serious workplace concerns.

The other side of the argument, as stated in an August 2007 TechDirt blog, is that allowing workers time for cyber-slacking actually boosts production.

That position, supported by some human resource managers, argues that personal use of computers, just like company phones, helps workers stay in their offices longer, saving them the need to dash off during breaks or after work to manage tasks.

Question: How much non-work-related web surfing do you do at work? And how much of it does -- or should -- your employer allow?

The Falls: We can't really say .... maybe if you grant us anonymous-source status.

You think Tim Eyman ever gets burned out, playing just a single note in every election?

This year, he’s back with Initiative 960, another tax-cutting effort.

The S-R’s Rich Roesler provides the full rundown. Here’s his summary:

The complex measure would:
•Reaffirm an existing – but often bypassed – state law that says it takes a two-thirds majority of state lawmakers to pass a tax increase.
•Require extensive public notices any time state lawmakers launch a tax bill, hold hearings on it, or vote on it.
•Require state budget officials to calculate the 10-year cost of any new taxes.
•Send most state-agency fee increases, large or small, to state lawmakers for a vote.

Question: Do you want to see more limitations placed on the government’s ability to tax?

From The Associated Press: One of many scary costumed people roams through the Nightmare on Fairgrounds Road maze at the Bureau County Fairgrounds in Princeton, Ill., Thursday. The Halloween feature opens Friday and will be open three straight weekends with an elaborate web of tunnels in Bureau County Fair buildings but also a hayrack ride, bonfire, refreshments and childrens activities, is in its fourth year

Write your own cutline...

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OK -- here's another installment of Stupid Questions. We'll have a couple more of these throughout the day.

Meanwhile, you can answer the question these folks did: What would you have for your last meal on earth?

Yesterday, we poached a question from The Slice: "What movie nobody's ever heard of do you recommend as a rental?"

Some of the answers, not all of which are really that obscure:
Duel (video clip above)
The House with the Laughing Windows
Chinatown
Brazil
Mulholland Drive
The Passenger
One, Two, Three...(by the great Billy Wilder)
The Changeling
Near Dark
Grave of the Fireflies
Local Hero
Battle of Algiers

As widely speculated, Al Gore won the Nobel Prize this morning for his work on global warming.

The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, asserted that the prize was not aimed at the Bush administration, which rejected Kyoto and was widely criticized outside the U.S. for not taking global warming seriously enough.

“We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming,” Mjoes said. “The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this.”

Question: Did Gore get your (hypothetical) vote for the Nobel?

Follow-up: Does this change your view of whether he ought to jump into the presidential race?

When the feds announced Oct. 1 that they’d rounded up 77 hard-core gang members, the hyperbole could not have been thicker.

These were people involved in murders, shootings and other violent crimes, police said. The ATF agent in charge of the arrests said this in a news release: “We concentrated on the worst of the worst, chronic offenders with ties to illegal firearms and violent crime.”

Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich lent their own stage quotes to the release, as well. It got reported everywhere, breathlessly. And as the truth of the statement fell apart, no one with any police agency felt the need to correct the record.

*Nowhere near 77 people were arrested. Fewer than half that many were booked into jail.

* And all but 10 of those have been released from jail.

* Some of those arrested had no gang affiliation whatsoever.

*A lot of the alleged crimes were things like drug possession, probation violations, misdemeanor assault and robbery.

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It’s Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. Only one day left until the Pacific Northwest Marching Band Championships at Joe Albi Stadium.

Innocent until proven guilty: We felt that the protestations of innocence made by Timothy Jacobs after his arrest in the Whitley Fuel fire sounded hollow. But police let the deadline for charging him expire and he walked free Thursday. Police apparently didn't bother to discuss the matter with either Jacobs himself or Fire Chief Bobby Williams, who was surprised to learn of the release. If prosecutors eventually come up with charges against him, we’ll try to retain a little more reasonable doubt.

Quote: “I love working with the kids that are kind of the forgotten ones. We make lots of excuses but I believe every child can succeed.”
--Rogers High School teacher Erin Rogers, who was awarded a Milken Foundation grant of $25,000 on Thursday. She was the first Spokane teacher to win the prestigious honor in 10 years. Story here.
Video story above.

Weather: The high is expected to be 62 and partly sunny with similar temps over the weekend. At night, the forecast calls for a low in the 40s. Here’s the five-day forecast.

Today in History: On this date in 1492, Columbus reached the “New World”, landing at the Bahamas though he thought he had struck East Asia. Four-hundred and sixty-eight years later, Nikita Khruschchev took off his shoe and pounded a table at the United Nations. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

Get your culture on: Maybe now wouldn’t be such a bad time to attend a classic Greek tragedy about war, family and the conflicts between personal morality and the edicts of the state. “Antigone” opens tonight at Whitworth University, with performances this weekend and next. For more, go here.

In passing: Beulah May Hindman, 95. “Beulah taught school for many years, both before she was married and after her sons were in college. She started teaching on a two-year certificate, continuing her college education part time and finally receiving her bachelor's degree at 51 years of age.”
For more.

Suspended Spokane Police Officer James Olsen pleaded the Fifth in response to a variety of questions from prosecutors today.

Olsen's accused of shooting Shonto Pete in the head in an early-morning incident in the Peaceful Valley. Here's the story, and here are the questions Olsen wouldn't answer:

Spokane County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Douglas R. Hughes asked Olsen a number of questions which he refused to answer: whether he shot Pete in the head; whether he continued to fire while Pete was knocking on the door of a house seeking help for his head wound; whether he tried to hide evidence when on-duty police responded to a 911 call reporting gunshots; and whether he gave false statements to any law officers.

The Falls: The Fifth Amendment is an important protection against government abuse. But whatever it does for someone under criminal suspicion in legal terms, it basically cements an impression of guilt to the public.

Question: What's your reaction when you see that someone has pleaded the Fifth?

Here’s a cute flicker.com shot from Phill at Liberty Lake. (More of Phill’s photos.)
His caption is: “Come any closer and I’ll drop this on you.”

You can write your own…

So what’s a living wage worth?

Whenever the newspaper reports on wage information – especially on tough times for people at the lower end of the spectrum – there’s a predictably uncharitable response. Lots of people just don’t believe that it’s all that hard out there for the poor or the not-quite-poor.

According to the new report from the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, a single person in Washington needs to earn $11.41 an hour to cover basic expenses. That’s an annual salary of about $23,700. A family of four needs combined hourly earnings of $31.68, or more than $65,800 a year.

At first blush, those figures didn’t seem so horrible to us here at The Falls, either. After all, we didn’t make $23,700 when we were first loosed on the world as a young adult, and we got along OK. And our salary expectations – established sometime back in the days of the Reagan presidency – make 60-plus grand sound like a manageable sum for a family of four.

But those are pre-inflation expectations, and maybe a little bit beside the point. This is supposed to be a living wage, not the poverty level – a wage that is sufficient to cover fundamental expenses. And the key finding from the survey, as reported Wednesday in the S-R, is that wages in this region constantly grow at a much slower rate than the cost of consumer goods.

Read the rest of this entry »

From today's Dear Annie column:

Dear Annie: I am a 62-year-old male who has lately noticed something, and I'm wondering if it's the start of a disease of some kind.

I've become aware that I often walk down the street holding conversations with imaginary people or those from my past. On a few occasions, I've been caught red-handed by others. It's really embarrassing. What really scares me is it seems to start involuntarily. When I notice other people doing this, my first reaction is, "Who's that wacko?" I don't want to be that person.

Is this the beginning of dementia? – Worried in Connecticut

Dear Worried: We certainly hope not, because we’re not anywhere near 62 and we enjoy conversations – some would say profanity-laced arguments – with people from our past every day – The Falls.

But seriously…here's the real answer.

Question: What was the most embarassing time you got caught talking to yourself?

The S-R's Parker Howell unearthed a funny-but-false story about a fictional Sandpoint man who so loves the iPhone that he created a rolling museum in its honor.

The Onion-style parody blog iPhone Savior is taking its cue from breathless media coverage of the new device -- which makes the whole thing seem not so far-fetched.

See Parker's post here.

At Awful Lot of Nothing, some nostalgia for big candy bars on Halloween:

Yesterday I bought a bunch of full-size candy bars. My aim is to be the Lady Who Gives Out Full Size Candy Bars. I still remember the one we had in our neighborhood growing up. I'm hoping times haven't changed too much and that a full size candy bar is still impressive enough to establish a reputation and get the kids coming to the door.

At WhackyNation, an argument for keeping pennies and dollars:

What would happen to the 79-cent sale or the dollar ninety-nine bargain at the places you shopped so often in keen anticipation of finding a bargain? Well, maybe the stuff isn’t in the “bargain” category, but at least it’s the stuff that keeps our morale up — as well as the fairy-tale notion that maybe you can still buy something for that little money.

At HorsesAss.org, a link to this Larry Craig parody video (because the world is crying out for more Larry Craig parody videos) set to the tune of “YMCA.”

Sagebrush says:

Here it is. You knew it was coming. Team Hill's friends in the liberal media are taking a brief respite from trashing Rudy to pitch Phase 2: Nice Hillary. Phase 1 (smart Hillary) was a resounding success.”

At I’m Sick of Your Insane Demands:

Checking out Target's collection of Halloween costumes for boys and girls, I couldn't help but notice a little, um, disparity between the "When I Grow Up" costumes for each gender. Here's the breakdown.
Total number of boys' career-oriented costumes: 39
Total number of girls' career-oriented costumes: 12

Questions: What's the best/worst Halloween candy you ever got? What's the best/worst Halloween candy you ever gave?

The density of housing developments has been a big issue around the West in recent years.

In essence, the debate comes down to the difference between packing homes more closely together to preserve open space and create efficiencies of infrastructure, versus building wide-open subdivisions with houses on big lots.

metro(spokane) has an excellent post on this issue today, including a couple of graphics that show housing densities around the county.

The topic of development density is a hot one in our region right now and will continue to be well into the foreseeable future. Just look east towards the Spokane Valley where the gloves are off and where the topic looks to be a deciding factor in the November elections. There's no doubt that higher densities can provide a whole slew of benefits to urban centers like our own (diffusing infrastructure costs, improved returns on transit, etc.). However providing a mix of densities can serve to provide residents a balance in housing options, while at the same time meeting affordability needs. In our opinion it makes for a more interesting city as well.

Question: Compared to other places you've been, how dense is Spokane (in terms of development) and how dense should its new housing developments be?

More bad news on the real estate front:

Foreclosure filings across the U.S. nearly doubled last month compared with September 2006, as financially strapped homeowners already behind on mortgage payments defaulted on their loans or came closer to losing their homes to foreclosure, a real estate information company said Thursday.

A total of 223,538 foreclosure filings were reported in September, up from 112,210 in the same month a year ago, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc.

Full story.

Question: How do you see large national trends, like this one and like the subprime market, affecting Spokane? Is our market somewhat out of the mainstream, i.e., subject to fewer highs and fewer lows in recent years?

Charles Rowe is retiring as the anchor of KREM-2 News, the station has announced. His final broadcast will be Nov. 30.

The station’s report is here.

A fixture in local broadcasting, Rowe joined KREM in September 1987 as an anchor on the evening newscasts, including KREM 2 NEWS at 5:00, for 20 years the region’s highest-rated newscast. He also anchors KREM 2 NEWS at 10:00 on CW affiliate KSKN 22, sister station to KREM. Rowe praised the veteran anchor team at KREM 2 NEWS. “Nadine Woodward, Randy Shaw, Tom Sherry and Tom Hudson are a joy to work with,” Rowe said. “I believe that appreciation for one another and our constant vigilance to be fair and balanced in our reporting are appreciated by viewers.”

Earlier in his career, Rowe did a different kind of TV work:

While in Los Angeles, he also became famous for playing journalists in 17 movies and TV shows, including a recurring role on the “Rockford Files,” small parts in “Dynasty,” “Knots Landing” and “Quincy,” and the cult classic movie “Blood Beach.”

Here's a brief clip from "Blood Beach." Rowe is not in it, alas.

Question: What are your fondest memories of Rowe? How about your fondest memories of "Rockford Files," "Quincy," or "Dynasty"?

Here’s a little slice of The Slice:

Today's Slice question: What movie that nobody's ever heard of do you recommend as a rental?

The Falls: We often suggest Primer, a very-hard-to-follow movie about physics and time travel. The trailer is above.

It’s always nice when a political campaign descends into a battle of stereotypes.

And so now, the fight over Referendum 67 brings us evil lawyers versus evil insurers.

Which one do you support?

Rich Roesler explores the issue in a story here:

This fall, insurers and lawyers are locked in a multimillion-dollar clash over, yes, "frivolous lawsuits," "jackpot awards" and greedy insurers. One key ad features a real grieving daughter; another a fictitious law firm called "Sooem, Settle and Kashin."

Two years ago the issue was medical malpractice; this year it's insurers who allegedly stonewall legitimate claims to plump up their profits. And just as in 2005, voters are caught in a tug of war between two politically powerful, well-funded groups, both claiming to have voters' best interests at heart.

In a nutshell, R-67 would allow a new law to take effect which would require insurance companies to pay triple damages when they unfairly deny a claim. Insurance companies are deeply concerned that this would be bad for consumers, and have lent their ample support to a group named Consumers Against Higher Insurance Rates. Attorneys make up most of the opposition.

Question: Don’t we want a big incentive for insurance companies to pay claims as they should? Or is this law just a boondoogle for lawyers?

Follow-up: Shouldn't political groups be required to call themselves what they are, i.e., Insurance Companies for Larger Profits?

It’s Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007. Only 20 more shopping days until Halloween.

New at Your Sexy Government: Sometimes it’s hard to get Your Sexy Government on the line. You call and call, but Your Sexy Government, it seems, doesn’t have time for you. A new web page – www.beautifyspokane.org – should make it easier to make contact with your complaints about junker cars, yards full of garbage and other code violations. There’s also the new Ask Spokane feature for city services in general. It’s a start.

Quote: “Programmatically they can eliminate programs that might have provided for the poor. It doesn’t officially look like a shift on the surface, but it means that they no longer take a category of patients.”
--Ryland “Skip” Davis, a chief executive of the company that owns Sacred Heart hospital, speaking about the sale of Empire Health Services to the country’s largest for-profit hospital chain. Community Health Systems says it will expand charity care and improve the Empire hospitals in other ways. Story here.

Weather: The weather is on autopilot – days in the 60s and nights in the 40s. If we had to choose a single kind of weather for life in heaven, this would be it.

Today in History: Forty-five years ago today, Pope John XXIII opened Vatican II. And in 1809 on this date, Meriwether Lewis was found dead along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

In passing: Donald Brian McBride. “A man of keen intellect, he took the moral instruction he had learned from his mother, from his Jesuit education, and from his own personal reflection seriously; he did what he believed to be right, no matter the personal cost. He worked hard and well, and taught his children to do the same. He was tall and thin, and there was something lovely about his air. One knew instantly that he could be trusted. How we will all miss him.”

For more on McBride and other obituaries, go here.

If you're a fan of "The Sopranos," this is awesome -- a trip through Spokane that mirrors the show's opening credits. Instead of the pork store, there's the Piggy Mart.

Here's one to make us old fogeys cringe -- a video of kids skateboarding and taking some hard falls around Spokane. Sounds like Bowie on the soundtrack...

Reader Robert McGinty writes to take issue with our view of the supermajority. We argued yesterday that supermajority requirements for school levies are an affront to the one person, one vote principle.

McGinty writes that another principle is served by the supermajority provision, though -- the protection of minority rights.

Here's his case:

In corporate law, minority stock holders are protected from the excessive spending of majority stock holders, since that spending comes out of the pockets of everyone.

The same is true of bond levies, it seems to me. ... Let the majority vote to have their taxes increased, leaving the taxes of others in a "steady state" that is unchanged.

I know, I know, you argue that some folks simply vote against tax increases all the while in favor of increased expenditures for this or that public project. Such an argument merely leads us away from the real issue. Perhaps, schools should receive funding elsewhere from other tax sources or private monies.

Not sure where else the money would come from, but McGinty's point about minority rights doesn't fall on deaf ears here. Still, though, we think simple majorities are all that should be required for school levies.

The Rural School and Community Trust argues persuasively, in a June 2007 essay, that supermajorities create “premium” voters and “discount” voters.

Say for example, that 60% approval is required to override a lid. (As is the case in Washington) That means six votes are needed to achieve the same effect that five would have in a simple majority election. The votes of those who support the override are effectively discounted by one-sixth, or about 17%.

On the other hand, the votes of those who oppose the override are inflated by one-fourth-four votes have the same power as five would have in a simple majority election, a 25% premium.

Question: Here's another shot at the supermajority issue. Should Washington revert to simple majorities for school levies?

Prosecutor Steve Tucker said Trent Yohe's death was "excusable homicide," according to a story just posted by Bill Morlin.

Yohe died in May after a struggle with three sheriff's deputies in the Spokane Valley. some of his friends and family members said Yohe, who had a troubled history of drugs and crime, was a victim of excessive force.

Tucker said today that wasn't the case.

“The deputies were justified and not excessive in the level of force they used while trying to restrain Mr. Yohe,’’ Tucker said in his statement.

“While the manner of death is classified as homicide by the Medical Examiner’s Office, legally it is an excusable homicide (because) it was a death caused without any intent or criminal negligence on the part of the deputies involved,’’ the prosecutor’s statement said.

The Falls: It's hard to think of a more troubling phrase than "excusable homicide." But it's also hard to argue that that will be the result sometimes when police come into contact with those determined to resist or escape.

Question: What do you think about Tucker's decision?

OK, here are a few more quotes from my quick interview with Sherman Alexie. I don't mean to be such a one-note Johnny today, but i think his nomination is cool -- and it takes a little time to do interviews and pull stories together.

About the response to his new book: “People are just nakedly emotional about it. I’m seeing a lot of people crying (at readings).”

About his Spokane crowds: “At some points, I think I know about half the crowds there.”

About his identity as an artist: “I like to think of myself as an old-fashioned storyteller in a very new-fashioned world. I knew long ago that in order to compete I would have to be at least as interesting as a TV show.”

About the changes in Spokane: “I always have sort of a, ‘What? That Burlington Coat Factory turned into those crazy condos. I am happy for that kind of development. … Spokane used to feel smaller than its actual size, and now it feels like a city.”

About overnight success: “It took me 19 books but I finally made the New York Times list.”

About the hoped-for influence of his success: “I hope it helps rez kids understand how valuable their lives can be.”

Coming up: He’s working on another young-adult novel (“Radioactive Love Song”), a book of poems (“Thrash”), a family memoir (“War Dance”) and a murder mystery.

I just got off the phone with Sherman Alexie, who's still over the moon about his nomination for a National Book Award.

He said he's been floored by the response to the book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Written for young people, it's been a best-seller and it's drawing the most emotional reactions from readers that he's ever seen, he said.

"I've had a long and wonderful career," he said by phone from the airport in Miami. "But this is huge."

He noted that it's been a good couple of years for Spokane writers and the award nominations. He said Jess Walter -- whose novel "The Zero" was nominated last year -- was one of the first people he spoke to after hearing of the award. Spokane native Timothy Egan won last year's nonfiction award for "The Worst Hard Time."

"Three Spokane guys in two years," said Alexie. "For Jess and I it's a kid from Springdale and a kid from Wellpinit (respectively).

"I certainly hope the small-town kids in Eastern Washington see this and understand how huge this is. We are them."

Kyle Caldwell,4, right, of Bremerton, Wash., gets a frontal shower of leaves from his brother Ryan 7, at the park next to the East Bremerton YMCA Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007. The leaves are falling all over Kitsap County. (Kitsap Sun, Larry Steagall)

From Rich Roesler's Eye on Olympia comes this report on a new state audit, "Managing and Reducing Traffic Congestion in Puget Sound."

Roesler identified the frightening excerpt:

"As of 2007, the phenomenon of an all-day rush hour is beginning to happen across the Puget Sound region."

Question: What's your commute like?

The Falls: Ours is a beautifully short five minutes.

Washington's literary star continues rising, with the news today that Sherman Alexie was nominated for a National Book Award.

Alexie's nomination came in the category of youth literature for his new “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian."

Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle. When he returns to Spokane, his readings are packed and audiences treat him like a rock star.

Spokane's Jess Walter was nominated for the award last year in the general literature category for his novel, "The Zero." And Spokane native Timothy Egan won the nonfiction award for his Dust Bowl chronicle, "The Worst Hard Time."

Alexie will be appearing at Auntie's on Oct. 16. We here at The Falls are great admirers of his, and are trying to arrange an interview before his appearance.

Hyperbolic Question: Is Spokane becoming the Paris of the first decade of the new millennium?

Every time you think you've heard the lowest thing people are capable of, someone comes along to expand your horizons.

We're going to be on Dick Haugen's show this morning on KGA-AM. If you're curious about hearing possibly the worst radio-show guest in history, tune in to 1510 AM at 11:30...

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

OK -- here's the first installment of something I'm calling Stupid Questions, in which I take my little point-and-shoot out onto the streets and ask people questions.

I've got virtually no skills in this arena, but the idea is to do something fun and focused on the people of Spokane -- not to do a technically proficient video production. (That probably goes without saying.)

I'm curious to see how it goes, and what you think. So let me know...

And here's the question from today's video: What's your personal theme song?

A little Spokane from the movies...a scene from "Benny & Joon," filmed in Riverfront Park.

There’s a strong sense of déjà vu attached to the top headline in this morning’s paper: Costs of basic necessities outpace wages.

That’s been the story of the wage-earner’s life in Spokane for a long time. Here’s an excerpt from Ben Shors’ story:

With health-care costs rapidly rising, low-wage workers continue to lose ground even though wages grew 7 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to a new report from the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, a nonprofit based in Seattle.

“The findings are pretty grim,” said Gerald Smith, one of the report’s authors. “The cost of living is increasing more than twice as fast as actual wages.”

As few as one in five jobs in the Northwest now pay a living wage for a working family, and there are as many as 10 people for every such job, the report found.

This trend goes back a ways. Census data shows that between 1969 and 2005, the people living under the federal poverty line in Spokane rose from 13.5 percent to 17.3 percent.

Median incomes, figured for inflation, have made barely any gains – which is another way of saying that the money you earn is worth less and less every year as costs go up.

Question: What can Spokane – either government, business or the citizenry – do to help raise the basic standard of living? Businesses are no doubt hit hard by rising costs as well, but isn’t it a deep structural problem when there’s no systematic expectation that paychecks should bear any connection at all to the cost of living?

The Falls: More on this subject to come...

The mess in the state toxicology lab is still coming home to roost in Washington’s criminal courts.

Sloppy work, corner-cutting and an apparently indifferent approach to proper procedure at the lab became an issue in the Fred Russell case. Though his defense attorneys were unable to use that to get the charges against him thrown out, they did manage to paint a picture of the lab that ought to be of concern to Washington residents. (Former lab manager Ann Marie Gordon is pictured above, testifying in the Russell case last month.)

Now, it appears that about 30 DUI cases in Whitman County will be pleaded down to lesser offenses, due to problems with breath-tests at the lab. It’s different than the blood tests in the Russell case – the lab simply lost Russell’s blood – but speaks to the same level of competence and professionalism. In short, lab officials were allegedly attesting that they’d done testing for DUI breath analysis that they had not, in fact, done.

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reports that Whitman County prosecutor Denis Tracy is willing to negotiate about 30 of 80 pending DUI cases down to negligent driving. Otherwise, he said, trying the cases could take forever.

Tracy said if DUI cases continued as normal, he expects trials would take three days because defense attorneys would raise breath-test credibility issues and call toxicologists to testify. In order to keep the process speedy and avoid a backlog of cases for his staff, he is willing to compromise.

"I've decided this is not a fight that warrants the resources that would be needed to fight it," he said. "DUIs are a priority in the office, but they're not the only priority."

Question: What should prosecutors do when faced with such easily challengable evidence? Is Tracy making the right call? Or should his office try to make DUI convictions stick, even with the added time and expense and cost to other cases?

Among the barrage of reality shows lately is one that’s made minor celebrities of some
Washington crabbers, “Deadliest Catch.”

Today’s P-I runs a reality check on the show:

The reality apart from reality television? The catch has never been safer. In the 1990s, seven crabbers a year died in the Bering Sea. Between 2000 and 2005, nearly four a year did. But since 2005 -- the year "Deadliest Catch" first aired -- there have been no deaths.

We here at The Falls are somewhat abashedly addicted to a variety of reality shows, and have tuned in for portions of this one. (In fact, tuning in for portions is part of what makes the shows accessible.) But we also think that the game of shocked reaction to the shows’ false nature has become a cliché in its own right.

Reality shows aren’t real? Say it ain’t so.

Question: Do you watch reality shows? What are your favorites? And what is your favorite justification, to yourself or others?

The Falls answers its own question: We like the cooking and fashion shows such as “Top Chef.” And we have enjoyed, briefly, the ridiculous-celebrity genre, like “Being Bobby Brown.” And we justify it to ourselves – while a perfectly good novel sits unread on the coffee table – by noting how much bad TV there was back in the days when everything was scripted (at least more overtly scripted).

It’s Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007. Arlin Jordin’s back in jail. Seems right.

This morning’s argument for raising the legal driving age to 30: Three teenagers led police on a chase the wrong way on I-90 Tuesday, driving as fast as 100 mph and leaving crashes, mayhem and not a little terror in their wake. Ever notice that, when there’s a ridiculously irresponsible use of an automobile involved, it’s never a 35-year-old woman behind the wheel? No – this is the realm of the teenage boy.

Legos on steroids: Liberty Lake company Altek Inc. is getting ready to unveil a new construction toy that looks like a combination of Legos and an Erector set. (Pictured above: Kriston Broxson, holding a battle tank, Levi Wilson, left, and Tim Lines are product development engineers working on MINDS-i, a customizable construction toy developed in Liberty Lake. By Dan Pelle/S-R)

Quote: “Those pay increases are not keeping up with the increase in cost of living. This has really been going on for a long time — some people argue back to the ’70s and ’80s — but it is becoming very dramatic.”

Peter Kardas, director of Labor Education and Research Center at Evergreen State College in Olympia, referring to a new report that shows wage growth in the Northwest fell far behind the cost of living in the past five years.

Weather: Forecast calls for a high of 64, and mostly cloudy. Nights are supposed to be staying around 40.

Today in History: In 1881, Charles Darwin published the work that he thought at the time would be his life’s most important: “The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through The Action of Worms.” No word on whether the giant Palouse earthworm made it into the book. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

Get your place now: If you want to go to Oktoberbest at the Sons of Norway Tordenskjord Lodge on Friday, you need to get a reservation: 326-9211. It costs $12.50. Schnitzel will be served.

In passing: Herman F. “Bud” Brooks, 72. From his obituary: “After High School, he served 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, including a two-year tour in Vietnam. In 1976, Bud retired from the Military and moved to Spokane. He worked for the US Postal Service for 15 years, retiring in 1992. He was a member of El Katif Shrine, South Spokane Shrine Club, Manito Masonic Lodge and Scottish Rite.”

For more on Brooks and other obituaries, go here.

Here's a promo clip for KREM-2 from 1983, posted at YouTube.

I hope I don't seem like a shill for the station if I say that it's beautiful -- if you consider the hairstyles, music, TV shows, and graphic design of 1983 beautiful.

Question: What's your favorite part?

Here's another clash regarding medical privacy and greater good.

The New York Times reports that the VA hospitals have stopped providing information on cancer patients to a national tracking system, saying it's protecting veterans rights. Other hospitals are required by law to report such information.

Without information from vets, the nation's cancer database -- from which we and future we's all benefit -- will be incomplete. In California, for example, VA patients make up about 4 percent of cancer patients overall, the story says.

Among other things, (the new VA procedure) says that anyone who wants to use personal data involving Veterans Affairs patients must either get permission from the V.A.’s under secretary of health or find an agency researcher to collaborate with and get permission from the hospital’s ethics board. The directive also says that patient information must be encoded so that unauthorized people cannot read it.

Cancer researchers say they have no idea how they will meet the conditions, said Tina Clarke, an epidemiologist at the Northern California Cancer Center.

For example, Dr. Clarke said, it is not so easy to find a V.A. researcher to collaborate with.

“It means the V.A. collaborator has to have time and has to want to work with you on your research question,” she said.

The story does not note what Washington or Idaho is doing with regards to the records.

We appreciate the desire for privacy, and believe the VA is acting with the best intentions, if overzealously.

But, like just about everyone, we've had plenty of cancer among our family and friends. The importance of gathering reliable, complete information about the disease is paramount for good research.

Question: Should the VA relent and provide the information to the cancer database? Or is the privacy of veterans the prevailing concern here?

Arlin Jordin is back in jail, and a lot of people think he never should have been out in the first place.

Jordin was convicted of one count of second-degree rape in 2006, after dozens of women alleged he had drugged and raped them. He was free on bond while appealing the conviction, when another woman came forward to say she believed he'd drugged her.

Now, at least, he's going to prison.

But given the scope of the allegations against Jordin, as well as his conviction, it seems like he should have been there already.

Question: Was $100,000 bond enough to have set Jordin free in this case, or should he have been held pending his appeal?

We'll be on the air at KGA-AM, 1510, with Dick Haugen on Wednesday at 11:30.

We'll be discussing The Falls and what we're trying to do here, so if you're interested, tune in tomorrow at 11:30...

metro(spokane) sifts through the new Millikin Institute report on the “Best Performing Cities,” and finds a little glimmer of light – not a ton – in Spokane.

Based on a range of economic categories, we fared poorly compared to other cities in the region, but better overall than we’ve done in the past, their analysis says.

The bad news, using the above categories Spokane is ranked lowest in the Northwest, but the good news is we've moved up 12 spots on the list to #81. Not too shabby considering that's out of 361 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

The Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that the giant Palouse earthworm -- a lily-scented monster that grows up to 3 feet long -- will not be declared endangered.

Here's an excerpt from the breaking story.
The worm has reportedly been sighted just four times in the last generation.

The most recent sighting was in 2005 when a University of Idaho graduate student accidentally chopped one in half while using a shovel to conduct research.

Several searches since then have turned up nothing, something that couldn’t have been imagined by early settlers, who described the giant earthworms as being “very abundant.” It was first described in 1897 after its discovery near Pullman.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said it needed more hard data before it could declare the species endangered or threatened.

Question: What kinds of limits on activities in farm country might have to be enacted to protect a giant worm? And, if this particular push ever comes to shove, would you support protecting it?

Nobody mixes it up like Som. Over at Sound Wave, Isamu Jordan's Monday Mixtape is a brilliant and disturbing combo of '80s pop and R&B.

Included are songs from Bobby Brown, Bel Biv Devoe, Boyz II Men and Milli Vanilli.

I'd say it's the kind of list you either love or hate. But a lot of those songs are the kind you might love and hate at the same time.

The S-R edit board endorsed candidates in the Spokane city races this morning. For the full dose, go here, but here's the quick roundup.

Mayor: Dennis Hession

Council president: Joe Shogan

District 1: Donna McKereghan

District 2: Richard Rush

District 3: Lewis Griffin

Political endorsements are one of the things that new-media enthusiasts sometimes identify as a relic of the old -- a one-way, Father-knows-best dispensing of information.

But we here at The Falls -- despite our current onlininess -- retain a soft spot for the traditional style and practice of newspapers, and we don't have any fear at all that a newspaper endorsement will nefariously lead anyone to mark a ballot one way or the other.

We're not saying we agree with these endorsements. But we always find it interesting to see which way they go, in part because of our own history with the vagaries of the editorial-board process.

Which leads us to a question: Do you find editorial board endorsements useful? Do you find them persuasive or informative in ways that traditional news coverage is not? Or are they just mule-drawn plows in the age of the tractor?

Hard 7 takes an expanded look at the helium crisis here. Frank mentions a little context for this morning's story in the S-R, and then provides some additional links and info.

Then he begins the fun part.

An excerpt:

In addition, I've done some reporting of my own on the shortage and can reveal to you here exclusively that the federal government is set to announce the following plan for easing the crisis:

* All blimps will now be filled with hydrogen gas. Precautions will be taken: Radio reporters will be asked to practice crying "Oh, the humanity!" in case of a catastrophic, Hindenburg-stlye fire at next year's Super Bowl.

Question: Has the helium crisis affected your life in any way?

The Falls: We've had to cut back on singing "Smoke on the Water" in a hilarious ninny voice.

Poultry farmer Yekaterina Stepanova takes care of one of the turkeys at a farm in Shakhty near Rostov-on-Don, about 600 miles south of Moscow, Monday. (AP Photo/Sergei Venyavsky)

Or write your own...

How’s your Spokane?

Mayor Hession gave his annual state of the city speech Monday – known officially as the Annual Statement of Conditions and Affairs. That lumbering title is the perfect reflection of the fact that what the Mayor was really talking about was not so much your city as Your Sexy Government, which sometimes has a hard time speaking in plain English.

Here’s an excerpt from Jim Camden’s story on the speech:

On the plus side, sales tax revenue collections and building permits are up, some new businesses like BlueRay are locating here, and some existing businesses like HollisterStier are growing, he said. The city has better customer service, faster ways to get questions answered and strategic plans that citizens can read on the Internet. It's exploring a street car system for downtown, development at the old Playfair site, which it owns, and transportation impact fees. It plans to hire more police officers and firefighters.

Fair enough – this kind of speech is always going to contain mostly the bright side. (Listen to the whole thing here.) But it’s also always going to focus on government and public services, whereas in truth, each of us occupies a slightly different version of Spokane that is built of much more than that.

Yours might be made up primarily of an elementary school and a church community. Or maybe your Spokane is held together by comic-book shops and skate parks. We here at The Falls used to rely a bit more heavily on nightlife, concerts and restaurants than we do now; these days we tend to be more impressed by things like the free car-seat safety check at the Shriners Hospital and first birthday parties.

Question: What makes up Your Spokane? And what are the conditions and affairs of your city?

Follow-up: Was Hession’s speech too rosy? Isn’t it more important to understand the problems we all face as citizens than for public officials to pat themselves on the back for a job well done?

Here's a video for "Stuck in Spokane," a song by Mike Wagoner's Band. It's a country-rock style song about being trapped in Division Street traffic: "Traffic on Division, playing with my head/Like a too-long song by the Grateful Dead."

Thanks for the head's-up to As The Lake Churns.

It looks like all 10 passengers died in the West Side crash of a plane full of skydivers. Few details are known now, but like all such sudden deaths, it’s sure to be heart-rending for friends and family.

Here’s one passage from the AP story:

One man at a Red Cross center at White Pass said his 30-year-old son was aboard the plane. He displayed a family photo of the young man skydiving with a brother and sister.

"He worked hard and he played hard _ we just want to find him," said the father, who did not give his name.

News triangulation: Here’s the story from the Seattle Times, and here’s coverage from the P-I.

Other headlines from this morning’s S-R:

Helium shortage has suppliers deflated/Parker Howell
Photo above by Holly Pickett

Nasal test may help detect ‘superbug’/JoNel Aleccia

Trial under way for man shot by officer/Karen Dorn Steele.

Stove-fueled fire damages North Side home/Nick Eaton

One of the great things about The Slice, in my opinion, has been the way it has resisted the great undertow of narcissism that afflicts so many columns (and, now, blogs).

Paul Turner very rarely lets the focus stray from the people of Spokane. Today, though, he wrote about the death of his father with a simple, powerful poignancy. And he did it with a story that cast its view outside the circle of his own family.

It’s here if you missed it in this morning’s paper.

Richard Cohen of The Washington Post has a new take on the Larry Craig matter this morning: “Craig wasn't exposed as gay. He was exposed as ineducable.”

Cohen writes that if, as Craig asserts, he was indeed pressured into a false plea of guilty, it ought to make him reconsider his tough-on-crime votes to restrict death-penalty appeals.

He concludes:

Craig and others who voted for restricting death penalty appeals and for mandatory sentences and for one penalty for crack and another for cocaine ought to ponder what happened to Craig -- what he said happened and what actually might have happened. Either way, it was an abuse of police power and, possibly, the coercion of a false confession. We await Larry Craig's ringing speech on the matter. I shall write it for him. It's the one in which he says that if a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, then a liberal is a conservative who has been busted in a men's room.

Question: Was the Craig arrest an abuse of police power? Does it shed any light on the politics of the death penalty?

The Falls answers its own question: Maybe not an abuse, per se. But we have wondered since the arrest whether the police in Minneapolis have such a stranglehold on murder, rape and robbery that they can go trolling for pathetic, desperate men in bathrooms.

Yesterday we brought you the YouTube video of the West Valley marching band. Today here's the Mead marching band, from this weekend's Cavalcade of Bands. It's a tight unit.

Question: Did you ever play in a marching band? How difficult is it to march and play the tuba/trombone/drums at the same time?

Today in Your Sexy Government: Why should a minority of voters in a school district be able to defeat school funding measures?

A ballot measure in November asks Washington voters to undo the requirement for a supermajority of 60 percent to pass school funding measures. Opponents say it’s a scheme to raise taxes. We wonder why 51 percent is good enough to elect a governor or president, but not to provide money for schools.

From Sara Leaming’s story this morning, a supersexy pro and a con:

Jim Williams, West Valley school board: “It strikes me as unfair that schools have to reach a super majority to pass an issue, when we can build a new arena, coliseum or sports arena with a simple majority. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Sen. Jenea Holmquist, R-Moses Lake: “The bottom line is this is a property tax increase. I don’t see any reason why we should be making it easier to raise property taxes when taxes are already rising rapidly.”

Question: Should a simple majority be enough to pass school levies?

Every year, we here at The Falls develop more unease about personal fireworks. It feels like a betrayal of our Idaho roots – where, in the dim light of memory, it seems that as children we were given fireworks to shoot off while riding around in the back of pickup trucks eating lead-based paint chips – but the trend is unmistakable.

We keep wondering if they’re worth it.

Monday’s arrest in the Whitley Fuel arson reinforced our creeping fuddy-duddyism. Police say Timothy L. Jacobs was seen shooting fireworks toward the fuel plant more than once before the July 23 fire that caused upwards of $20 million in damage.

Jacobs told the S-R that he’s innocent.

"I know everyone says they're innocent, but I really am," a freshly fingerprinted Jacobs said during a jail house interview Monday afternoon. "I didn't start it. I don't know who did."

The full story is here.

Banning or policing fireworks may be a futile task – especially trying to keep them out of the hands of people who might enjoy, say, sending them flying toward fuel tanks. And the use of fireworks is already governed by laws in most places.

But maybe we should consider giving up the relatively easy access to backyard fireworks in exchange for making it harder for miscreants to get their hands on them.

Question: Or is this naïve? Is it more accurate to say, fireworks don’t blow up fuel tank yards, people blow up fuel tank yards?

Good morning,

We're on Day Two here at The Falls. Here's our mission statement from yesterday. And here's another shot at telling me what you'd like to see me do here.

It’s Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007. Have your rakes and pumpkin bags on standby.

More crucial political discourse: The mayor’s race grows ever testier. On Monday, Mary Verner and Dennis Hession couldn’t agree about the truth of a meeting the two of them did or didn’t have regarding the idea of gambling in downtown Spokane. You can sort through it here. But it ain’t edifying.

Weather: It’s supposed to stay in the 60s all week long. The autumn leaves are spectacular. It’s a great time of year, if you like this sort of thing.

Today in History: Seventy-one years ago, the Hoover Dam began sending power to L.A. Thirty-three years ago, Oskar Schindler, who saved hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust, died. And 15 years ago, a football-sized meteorite struck a Chevy Malibu in Peerskill, N.Y. From history.com.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

Quote: "The ones who are going to suffer the most are like novelty helium use, which is mainly balloons. We're trying to take care of everyone, but it's not possible to have as much helium as you had last year."
Shan Bush, president of A-L Compressed Gases Inc. in Spokane, talking about a helium shortage. Story here.

Late-night good cause: For a can of soup, you can check out “Evil Dead 2” and “Bubba Ho-Tep” tonight at Prago Argentine Café, 201 W. Riverside. The soup goes to the Spokane Food Bank. Starts at 10.

In passing: Peggy Anne Dolan. From her obituary: “She was a social butterfly and enjoyed all types of music and loved to dance. She liked cooking, reading, and movies. She had three children, and took part in all their activities. She made all of the holidays very special, and was so thrilled when three grandchildren came along to make the holidays evern more special.”

More on this and other obituaries.

It’s probably not surprising that Washington uses and produces the most hydroelectric power in the country.

But it might surprise you to see some of the other categories in which the state leads the nation, according to StateMaster.com, a statistical web site.

Washington spends more on libraries per $1,000 of its Gross Domestic Product than any other state, at 94 cents. (Pictured above, from the S-R files, is the Spokane Valley library). We here at the Falls love to hear that.

The state also had the largest increase in the nation of enrollment in the federal SCHIP health program for kids between 2003 and 2004, at 47 percent.

And it was tops in the country in the number of votes cast in 1932 for Liberty Party candidate William Harvey. Obviously.

Meanwhile, we’re 50th in the number of hospital beds per 1,000 residents, at 1.83.

Question: Based on your experience, in what categories does Washington lead the nation? And in what ones does is lag far behind?

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Here's a new video about country singer, yodeler and rancher Wylie Gustafson. Here's a story from Sunday's paper.

Here's the first news about an arrest in the Whitley Fuel arson:

A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with the July 23 Whitley Fuel fire.

Timothy Lee Jacobs is charged with first-degree arson, said Spokane Fire Chief Bobby Williams.

Investigators say fireworks Jacobs was shooting off at the facility ignited the blaze.

UPDATE: More here.

From The Fresh Sheet:

A reader recently sent a note requesting Rockwood Bakery's granola recipe after losing it in a house fire. According to the e-mail, it has become a favorite for gifts to co-workers and friends during the holiday season.

Here's the recipe.

Question: What special gift do you give for the holidays that has a personal touch?

Welcome to The Falls.

My name is Shawn Vestal, and I’ll be your waiter. We’ll be trying to serve up a diverse and interesting menu of Spokane news and features here every day – and we’re hoping that you weigh in early and often with your opinions.

It’s a little hard to describe what this place will look like, in part because readers will help determine what direction things take. But here are a few guiding principles:

If we were a hamburger, we’d be a Whammy: There’ll be a heavy dose of news, features and commentary about Spokane and Washington. We’ll bring in some general interest news from the nation and world, but the idea is to have a local focus. A lot of this will be links to other places, but we’ll be doing plenty of original features that you’ll only see here, too.

We want to know what you think: I’ll be shedding an opinion or two here myself, but the overall goal is to hear from readers. We want to know your opinions and reactions, and we’re interested in exploring different ways of interacting, like video posts.

A little work, a little play: We want a spirit of fun and irreverence here, but that doesn’t mean we won’t take certain things seriously. We’ll try to direct citizens to useful and important information about their government, for example. But we’ll also include several features with no real purpose higher than fun.

Technology, done poorly: We’ll be investigating some of the possibilities of personal technology – taking our little point-and-shoot out onto the streets of Spokane to ask questions and tell stories.

So that's a start. I'm eager to see how this evolves.

Question: What would you like to see in a Spokane-centric blog/column/online forum?

Here's a nice image of a sunrise from sulustu.

There’s a new post at WhackyNation that delves into the issue of campaign finance, based on a new AP report about the link between votes and contributions:

“I believe a constitutional amendment is needed to ban donations of any size to persons who run for public office. Then, you ask, how are candidates supposed to reach the voters with their proposed programs? My answer is, and has always been, to utilize the existing means in our federal and state constitutions. For example, the First Amendment of the federal Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, among other freedoms. Since the print and broadcast press is guaranteed its freedom in the most important law of the land, why shouldn’t it also make its columns and its broadcast time available equally to all candidates?

Here’s some of the other activity on regional blogs:

Bleckblog weighs in on Larry Craig: “It's official. Larry Craig, the senior senator from Idaho, is a snake, with apologies to the real snakes of this world as they slither along and do what they do.”

remi1000 raises an excellent question about the S-R website: “I mean, I don’t get it. Seriously! They have a weather ticker on top of the page, do they need to make the top story “A cool day with a chance of rain”?!”

The Amateur Malcontent takes a highly personal tour of Greenbluff (with kind of a focus on items shaped like genitalia, just so you know): “But first, there was a little matter of making sure I got more of those delicious pumpkin cinnamon-sugar donuts that I had last year. As soon as Karla parked the car, we made a beeline for them. Or at least I did! They were fresh off the fryer and so delicious!”

Sagebrush, linking to a Michael Barone piece about the “pervasive culture of intolerance” at colleges, writes: “I think universities will become increasingly irrelevant if this trend continues. After all, you don't need a degree to make it, do you Bill Gates?”

Barrage of questions: Should we throw out the current system of funding political campaigns? If so, what should we replace it with? If not, why not? Is the weather news? Have you found that the produce at Greenbluff reminds you of other things? Is Larry Craig a snake? Or more like a least-weasel?

Here's a list of the 24 songs that a Minnesota woman was found guilty of illegally sharing in the latest lawsuit brought by the record industry.

The list comes from The Vox Box.

Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain"
Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last"
Janet Jackson "Let's Wait Awhile"
Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"
Journey "Faithfully"; "Don't Stop Believing" Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery"
Aerosmith "Cryin'"
Linkin Park "One Step Closer"
Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart"
Bryan Adams "Somebody"
No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People"
Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run"
Richard Marx "Now and Forever"
Destiny's Child "Bills, Bills, Bills"
Green Day "Basket Case"

Question: What are the best and worst of the list?

Contrarian follow-up: Isn't the recording industry acting like a big, spoiled bully?

The Falls: 1) "Welcome to the Jungle" is best; anything by Richard Marx is worst. 2) Yes.

Dennis Hession, right, and Mary Verner at a primary debate this summer. Al French is at left. (S-R file photo)

Here at the Falls, we want to encourage citizens to pay attention to government, and so we have adopted a slick new marketing title for any and all coverage here of civic issues: Your Sexy Government.

This doesn’t mean we’ll be tracking the Internet release of nude photos of members of the City Council.

This does mean we’ll be tracking pertinent information, news coverage, opportunities for engagement, examples of excellence and mediocrity among our civic leaders. And asking for your participation in creating a new kind of forum about our government and how we – all of us -- can be smarter about telling it what to do.

Today in Your Sexy Government, we ask how you’d like to see the candidates for Spokane mayor distinguish themselves.

For a while, it seemed like drawing substantive distinctions between Dennis Hession and Mary Verner would be tough. Like a lot of races for political office, it seemed, they would not present stark differences in policy or approach that voters might latch onto.

Now that they’ve started to get a little more feisty, you’d think that would change. But so far it seems that the candidates have adopted rather typical and disappointing ways of trying to make themselves distinct – arguing over who deserves the credit for decisions they both like.

Here’s a passage from Jim Camden’s weekend story on the race:

They fought over who was first on global warming. Hession noted he was "the first mayor in Eastern Washington" to sign on to a resolution calling for global protection and was named to a panel by the governor. Verner shot back that the City Council beat him to the punch, passing a quality-of-life resolution even earlier, adding "I'm really pleased that Mr. Hession has decided to get involved." To which Hession replied: "The quality-of-life resolution was drafted by my office and handed to her."

They fought over the firefighter pension fund. Hession all but accused Verner of selling her vote on a change in the policy for covering retired firefighters' medical costs for a contribution from the union. Verner shot back that the city had been delaying a decision on the policy, hoping to save costs as old firefighters died, adding "I find that unconscionable."

Etc.

Minor, bitchy interactions between candidates are understandable, but they do voters no real good. What we need – those of use who ostensibly hold the reins of Your Sexy Government – are ways to discern the difference in philosophy, ability and performance between the two candidates.

There's plenty of opportunity left for the candidates to do this, and for the people to ask for it.

Questions: What do you want to know about the candidates for the purposes of comparison? Do you feel you understand them well enough to cast a smart vote?

From YouTube, here's a look at West Valley High School Marching Band's performance in the finals of the 2007 Cavalcade of Bands at Kennewick on Saturday. It's kind of a nautical theme.

Some people wear sweatshirts or display bumper stickers to show their school spirit.
Robert Russell collects cheese.

Russell, a 1972 WSU grad, is believed to own the oldest unopened cans of Cougar Gold around – two tins from 1976. The cheese is the pride of WSU’s creamery, and since enrolling at WSU in 1972 Russell has gathered as many as 27 cans of the stuff – carting it around as he moved around the West Coast and eventually retired to Costa Rica. You can read more in WSU’s news release here.

Russell participated in an instant-message interview with The Falls over the past several weeks – between interruptions caused by power outages in Costa Rica. Here’s the interview.

Maybe you could start by explaining the depth of your Cougar Gold habit?

The depth of my CG habit was about two feet, from my mouth to my stomach.

Touche. Could you expand on that -- how long have you been collecting and how many cans do you have now?

I don't know, I guess when I bought my first can I found a can of American Cheddar that was two years old (in 1972). After that I thought I'd buy a few cans a year and just see where it went. I maxed out at about 27. I only kept the oldest. I think the last time I actually bought some was about 1978. I've been living off the "interest" ever since and only touch the principal occasionally.

I'm down to 9 cans at the moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

From The Associated Press: Ricky Franks, from Hollywood, Calif., competes in the steer wrestling competition Sunday afternoon during the 13th annual San Dimas Western Days Rodeo in San Dimas, Calif.

Or write your own cutline...

In completely unrelated bovine news: Man dies after hitting bull

It's been a bad month for sexual assault in Pullman.

First there was the creepy string of burglaries and a rape allegedly conducted by a porn star and a WSU student. Now police are looking for a man who raped a woman early Sunday over homecoming weekend.

Here's hoping they catch and punish the guy.

Here’s a question from today’s Dear Annie column:

Dear Annie: Four years ago, I married a widower. His former wife was not only very popular, but a saint as well. When we run into people, we are always subjected to conversation about what a wonderful person "Mary" was and how everyone just loved her. … I don't doubt all these wonderful things about Mary. I once watched the video of the funeral, and even I cried, wishing I had known her. But Mary is gone, and I think it is rude for me to be bombarded with her accolades. I can never measure up.

My husband usually just stands there and listens. I think he likes to hear these things. I've explained to my husband how this makes me feel, but he is very unsympathetic. Is there something I can say to these people without being rude? – In Mary's Shadow

The Falls: No. Thank you for the easy question.

Here’s the real answer. And another real question:

What delicate matter have you wrestled with regarding the reputation or history of a friend or family member who’s died? (Sainthood does not count).

If you’re ever in big, public trouble and are trying to think of what you should say about it, remember this: be deeply sorry.

Being “deeply sorry” is the lingua franca of the American not-quite-apology. Larry Craig was deeply sorry that Idahoans had been put through the nasty scandal surrounding his bathroom antics – his sorrow wasn’t about his own actions, of course, but about the press mob that drove him to it.

Last week, Marion Jones told reporters she was deeply sorry about lying to investigators over steroid abuse. Her deep sorrow is fairly typical – coming once she’d been caught.

After Michael Richards’ racist rant at a comedy club, he became “deeply, deeply sorry.”

Can’t anybody come up with any other ways of measuring the extent of their sorrow? Profoundly sorry? Radically sorry? Desperately, embarrassingly sorry?

Read the rest of this entry »

The folks at metro(spokane) identified another old Spokane building that appears headed for destruction.

This weekend we spotted another building getting 'Wendell-ed' at the corner of 2nd and Adams. The usual indicators were there - fenced-off sidewalk, windows out, and the sky visible through the top floor. The area was never a prime area for apartment-seekers. The same could be said for West Main 5 years ago. With the Borning Building renovation and West First Ave. exploding a scant two blocks away, the remaining multi-story structures could have a new lease on life if they can hang on. Until then, swing by and get your last looks.

Question: How good a job is Spokane doing of preserving its character-rich, historic buildings? What should it do better?

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It’s Monday, Oct. 8, 2007. The candidates for Spokane mayor are kicking the campaign into high gear this week, with debates today and tomorrow, and more coming. Here’s Jim Camden’s story on the race and a schedule, so far, of upcoming debates.

Weather: More classic autumn weather on tap this week, with daytime temperatures in the 60s. It’s the time of year when summer-loving TV weatherpeople complain about the chill. But if you own a rich and satisfying array of jackets, it’s the best of times.

Today in History: Nine short years ago, presidential malfeasance had a much different look about it. The House of Representatives voted to proceed toward the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over his testimony over the Monica Lewinsky matter. Clinton insisted his answers were “legally accurate” but misleading. We here at The Falls believe the country’s leadership should have had bigger fish to fry, and the incident only looks more and more embarrassing as the years pass.

The morning drive: Check the traffic and the most recent gas prices.

Quote: "This is a classic example of the bad that can happen when people artificially feed wildlife. People were placed at risk and at least one – and perhaps two – grizzly bears will end up removed from an already small population."
--Idaho Fish and Game biologist Wayne Wakkinnen, commenting about a grizzly bear in the Priest Lake area that had to be put down. Story here.

A slice of The Slice: Here’s the best story we’ve heard this morning, so far, involving a flatulence simulator.

In passing: Hemmo I.S. Latvala, a longtime salesman for Procter and Gamble and former Spokane real estate salesman. Full obituary here.