7 HOME CULTURE POLITICS
High-definition promotes face wars
10/3/2008 | Editor's note: Meghan Daum is on vacation this week; this column originally ran on Jan. 19. Say what you will about society's shallow preoccupation with physical appearance, no one can accuse us of not sweating the details.
Column was fun, but radio beckons
8/22/2008 | Growing up, my family listened to a radio program called the Midnight Special on WFMT in Chicago. It piped an eclectic mix of music, rich and rare, into our suburban home on Saturday nights. We listened to it religiously.
Hard 7: Duncan tests limits of open trial
8/15/2008 | The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst. Confessed killer Joseph Duncan certainly qualifies. He was cruising past Wolf Lodge Bay on I-90 on a warm spring day three years ago when he looked over and spied two little kids playing in a sprinkler.
Dagwood lives to see another day
8/8/2008 | The bleak state of the newspaper business has managed to penetrate the sweet spot the comics. Now, in addition to legions of journalists and pressmen, Dagwood is feeling the heat.
How to score free flights
8/1/2008 | There have been oodles of lurid tales about how hellish it is to travel this summer, especially by air. The price of plane tickets is exorbitant and climbing.
Hard 7: Tolerating thy neighbor isn't easy
7/25/2008 | Everybody's got a story about a neighbor, whether the extent of community living is an apartment building, two houses with a shared driveway, or rural properties hundreds of yards apart.
Hard 7: Water marketing reaches new low
7/18/2008 | Handy access to gobs of terrific consumer info on the internet hasn't really diminished the power of snappy product promotion. People are just as susceptible to the siren songs of advertising as they ever have been.
Hard7: Big issues in big-box plan
7/11/2008 | If Spokane's comprehensive plan is so vulnerable to pressure from big-box builders that it can be modified overnight, why do we even bother with one?
Hard 7: Kids at camp preserve dying art
7/4/2008 | Penmanship, letter writing talk about old school. Does anybody still practice these ancient art forms? Besides those folks in the county jail or the convalescent center, I have only been able to come up with one small sliver of society that persists in this archaic form of communication: kids at summer camp.
Hard 7: Laziness leads to usable waste
6/27/2008 | Been to the dump lately? It's absolutely amazing to see what people throw away. Golf clubs, lawn furniture, ice chests and bird cages.
Hard 7: Scouts deserve praise and thanks
6/20/2008 | The Boy Scouts of America has seen some pretty rough times since its heyday, which very well may have been in the '50s and '60s. At the very least, it's become decidedly unfashionable. At worst, It's been plagued with serious charges of discrimination and scandal. There have been many times that I have felt ambivalence about my family's deep involvement in scouting.
My ambivalence turned on a dime this past week. Like lots of people, including, apparently, the King of Sweden, I was deeply touched by the stories coming out of the Midwest about the heroics of the Boy Scouts whose camp was flattened by a ferocious twister.
WASL takes hold on Class of 2008
6/13/2008 | We sat in the crowded Spokane Arena last Sunday, straining to catch a glimpse of our graduate among hundreds of classmates dressed in billowing black gowns and sporting mortarboards.
Hard 7: Assessment variations baffling
6/6/2008 | This week, 170,000 property owners in Spokane County got nifty little postcards from the Assessor's office. The little card looks a lot like one of those inserts that get stuck between the pages of magazines, and falls out annoyingly when you bring in the mail.
River gets the attention it deserves
5/30/2008 | We tend to be a little blasι about the river that runs though the heart of our city. Even the falls, for which the city was originally named, get barely a glance most of the year.
Hard 7: Where to draw line with teen drinking
5/23/2008 | Turns out I made a mistake a few weeks ago when I reported in this column that parents could host an underage drinking party as long as they had the consent of the parents of all kids in attendance.
Hard 7: Another blow to credibility
5/16/2008 | I don't want to pick on the police department, but they keep painting bullseyes on their backsides. All we have to do is wait a few months, and here comes another glaring illustration of why the department's credibility is so badly mangled.
Applying the Pinocchio scale locally
5/9/2008 | There is a big, fat problem with lying in our culture. The Washington Post sees prevarication as so prevalent, it has devised a scale, or continuum to distinguish its varying degrees.
Hard 7: Condemn drinking, or control it?
5/2/2008 | Here in Washington, you can legally start working when you're 14, and get a driver's permit at 15. Somewhere between 16 and 18 you can consent to sex, depending on the age difference between you and your partner.
Hard 7: Will we get the shaft on oversight?
4/25/2008 | Once again, the citizens of Spokane are in danger of being bamboozled. A watered-down, gutted version of last year's original police oversight proposal is being forwarded as the panacea to the widely acknowledged rift between police and the policed in our community.
Hard 7: Track deal should be black-flagged
4/18/2008 | It's mind-boggling. County officials spend months wringing their hands over proposals to restore basic public safety services, yet they can't whip out the ol' checkbook fast enough to buy a dilapidated, contaminated racetrack.
Hard 7: Teen pot use is no relaxed matter
4/11/2008 | Like a lot of parents in my age group, I was pretty relaxed about marijuana. I went to college in the early '70s, when unprecedented numbers of people discovered and smoked pot.
Dog park's popularity not unnoticed
4/4/2008 | My husband says if he ever opens a tavern, he'll call it the Dog Park, and post the rules of Petiquette right above the bar.
In the hot seat at 'Antiques Roadshow'
3/28/2008 | When I schlepped my goodies to the Convention Center last August, I never imagined I'd end up getting the third degree from all those nice "Antiques Roadshow" people.
Hard 7: Still seeking explanation for tragedy
3/21/2008 | The criminal trial of Clifford Helm is over. A jury last Friday acquitted Helm of five counts of vehicular homicide and one count of vehicular assault.
Hard 7: Helm's silence takes a heavy toll
3/14/2008 | The way I see it, there's not much difference between Fred Russell and Clifford Helm. Each killed multiple people after getting behind the wheel of a vehicle a total of eight souls.
