Emerald Heights Elementary School sixth-grader Rachel Adamson,12, plays with a dragonfly at Island Lake County Park on Tuesday in Silverdale, Wash. Rachel was there with the sixth-grade class for an end-of-the-school year picnic/Larry Steagall, AP Photo/Kitsap Sun.

Stapilus: No such thing as a Republican for Larry Grant here?

1. David Horsey/Seattle PI has hit on a good idea re: how to fix our national parks here.

2. Two Drummond, Mont., athletes lost sports privileges after tasting wine at a Washington state winery during a senior class trip whose chaperones included the chairman of the school board and his wife here.

3. People who can walk to shops and services in their neighborhoods are more fit and less likely to die in car crashes. That's the finding of a new report released today by the Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) on sprawl and health in the Pacific Northwest here.

4. Pastor Randy Mitchell advised a Meridian congregation not to hate the man responsible for purposely slamming into an oncoming car, causing the deaths of Samantha Murphy and her 4-year-old daughter, Jaelynne Grimes here.

5. The family of a Medical Lake High School student is fired up over a graduation policy that prevented their daughter from wearing a cultural sash she earned for getting good grades here.

6. IMHO-NW: D.F. Oliveria/Spokesman-Review (Walls and bridges), Rebecca Nappi/Spokesman-Review (Studying abroad provides key lessons), Dan Popkey/Idaho Statesman (Idaho GOP cautiously optimistic), The Kalispell Daily Inter Lake (Preserving park peace), Brian Murphy/Idaho Statesman (American soccer's unnecessary roughness),

Online Poll: Only 19.8% of 1018 respondents to an Idaho Statesman poll say they know "quite a bit" about soccer.

*Montanan sues psychic over bad "bad karma" fix here.

*Washington AG Rob McKenna: State government workers can opt out of union membership because of religious beliefsm here.

*A Billings woman with leukemia gets a life-saving bone marrow transplant from a brother she didn't know she had here.

Orbusmax Special: Pre-eminent American Indian psychologists fudges tribal ties, degrees here; and: Top Microsoft exec leaves unexpectedly here.

---

---