One of the larger reasons I’m a Spokanite is because of our stunning inventory of trees. It’s hard to leave them behind for very long. I remember, as a kid, family car rides from Pasco, and how I felt when we reached the tree line near Sprague, and there began to absorb the enveloping greenness and the smell of pines. After the November storm that brought so many of them down, I’ve wanted to frame an homage to trees from photos I’ve taken the past few years. This is that. Treeshine.
David Condon came to office in Spokane because of how badly his predecessor botched the issue of police accountability. After sailing through the 2011 primary election, former Mayor Mary Verner energized Condon’s campaign by turning remarkably tone deaf to rising public anger about police conduct in the Otto Zehm tragedy.
Although Condon was something of a political blank page when he took office, it would have been hard to imagine that he could do any worse than Verner on what, then, was the central issue in city politics.
But he has. Continue reading The Mayor’s Ruthless Ruse
By Larry Shook
Ah Kah Tah is a Blackfeet Indian phrase that means “Going Home.” My friend Earl Barlow, a Blackfeet, told me that.
Ah Kah Tah is also the name Nate Ostrander and I have given to the five-year-old mustang gelding we brought home from the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse holding facility at Burns, Oregon. We’re going to experiment on both the horse and me.
Here’s our question: can you take a sixty-nine-year old veteran whose heart and psyche have been shattered by war and teach him to train a mustang—a creature arrested in the heaven of open range for the crime of freedom—in a way that gives both him and the horse a new life? Continue reading Of Mustangs and Warriors
Maybe you were watching the SportsCenter Outdoors live broadcast from Spokane’s Annual Hoopfest 3 on 3 tournament on Sunday morning, June 28th. And maybe you heard it was really hot in Spokane.
But did you know how hot it REALLY was?
How about 108 degrees on a paved city street, clinging to the one nearby tree from 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 in the evening?
After spending my first year as Hoopfest volunteer sequestered in a tent on the edge of Riverfront Park, I thought I would up the ante a little bit and become a court monitor. The Nike swag (a cool pair of Nike shoes, shorts, t-shirt and hat) was the deciding factor for me. Oh, what we’ll do for a little swag…. Continue reading Hoopfest Forever
