Paradise Lost
Coeur d’Alene residents have become so accustomed to out-of-staters gushing about the beauty of the town and lake that some of my blog’s readers were stunned when I posted a column in which columnist Mark Morford/S.F. Chronicle described it as another ruined place. Quoth Mark: Coeur d’Alene has a distinct central portion of town, well off the toxic highway. It is calm and tree lined and emptily pretty, and it is packed with, well, restaurants and art galleries. And real estate offices. For yuppies. Because, of course, there are no local shops left. No mom-and-pops, few unique small businesses of any kind. No charm. No real community per se. Just well-manicured food and mediocre art no true local can actually afford and business parks where the heart used to be.” Harsh, but … You can find a link to Mark’s entire screed in Huckleberries Online today: www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/nhb.

Be Careful Out There
How do you explain to your car insurance company that the dint in your Geo was caused by a foosball table that’d been part of your yard sale in Post Falls until that big storm hit the other day? The wind blasted hubby’s foosball table against colleague Taryn Brodwater’s front bumper. At least, that’s her story and she’s sticking to it … Tongue firmly cheeked, volunteers at the Festival at Sandpoint have a fond nickname for Trish Gannon, the festival’s PRmeister and publisher of The River Journal: Miss Information … If you’d read the daily version of Huckleberries online, you’d already know that Todd Hudson of renown Hudson’s Hamburgers in downtown CDA aced hole No. 5 at the Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course recently, which proves, sez Hayden Councilman Chris Beck, that Todd’s “golf skills are almost as good as his burger skills.”

Poet’s Corner
"We stand outside our camp,/the stars are so bright./I pick out constellations I’ve known only from books./The Milky Way splashes the length of the night./Heaven can be many places – in the tent,/a cup of fresh coffee on a tree stump,/at the end of a spincast trout lure,/but right now, it is where it is meant to be” – Bob Salsbury/Unbearable Bobness of Being ("All The Heavens" … “Oh, you bring a knife/and I’ll bring a fork/and we’ll all fill up/on government pork” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Song for a D.C. Picnic”) … “Dating in your forties is a lot like buying a high mileage used car – We may seem ok during the test drive but serious problems usually come up after some time on the road,” Bob Salsbury/Random Shallow Thoughts.

Huckleberries
Seems I was onto something a coupla weeks ago when I reported that someone’d pasted an oval around the midsections of those black stickmen on the yellow courthouse crosswalk signs. Made ‘em look like hula-hoop crossings. In the City Hall briefing sheet, Street Super Jon Ingalls said his crew found several other signs vandalized in a similar manner during the “hula-hoop insurgency” … A co-worker was excited last week when she saw a CDA moto-cop nail a motorist for speeding on Seltice Way during the CARE emphasis patrol. A sadist? No, she noticed the speeder’s license plates – from California. Feelings run deep here … Bumpersnicker (on a red Ford on Mission in Spokane by Jon Livingston): "If I wanted to listen to the crap coming out of your stereo, I’d be sitting in your car" … Quotable Quote: “They were just in awe of the place. They thought they were coming to a big potato field” – Ron Gardner/Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor, re: the reaction of the 350 touristas meeting at the CdA resort to the city of Coeur d’Alene. Obviously, they have a higher tolerance for tinsel than Bay Area commentator Morford.

Parting Shot
Cis Gors/From A Simple Mind blogged a list of “Things We Shouldn’t Do, But We Used To,” including these don’ts: Swing out over the water on a rope; steal watermelons or ears of corn; give chocolate or pork chop bones to dogs, let your buddy ride on the bike with you, or let your kids sell lemonade. The complete list of 17 “used to’s” are linked on my blog site today. Meanwhile, Cis, I wonder how we survived?

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