Shawn Vestal

DAVENPORT, Wash. - They call her The Colonel, and for good reason. Bernice Leavitt Jackson has presided over a lot of troops. Jackson, a fast-talking Roman candle of memories who's "going on 80," has never served directly in the military. But her passion for honoring those who do comes from a deep well of personal contribution.

The Liberty Lake Satanists – which would be a great name for a Hoopfest team or a best-ball foursome – are still waiting for their chance to pray. Same with the Wiccans and Jains. Not to mention Hindus and Muslims. And all the other scary folks who might hope to share their non-Christian prayers in the land of golf and prosperity. The Liberty Lake City Council there has drawn a line in the sand trap: Only Christian prayers before council meetings.

If you were on the fence about the proposal to knock down the old YMCA building in Riverfront Park, go take a look now that it’s gone. My guess is you won’t yearn for a stack of condos.

With every new turn in the city’s red-light camera experience, the discovery is made all over again. Aha! It really is all about the money!

Two months after the city of Spokane cracked down on the owners of the decrepit Ridpath Hotel, cleanup efforts are slowly moving forward. But even as plans for bringing the iconic downtown hotel back to life are being publicly aired, the obstacles remain daunting, from a wildly complicated ownership picture to a variety of legal entanglements and a weak economy. Last week, city officials took the next step in their demand for a cleanup.

The afternoon of Sept. 12, 2006, stands vividly in Steve Arce’s memory. He and an employee were driving up the winding road to 49 Degrees North outside Chewelah, on their way to unload some drywall. A quarter-mile or so ahead on an uphill curve, Arce saw a big work truck and trailer and two workers on the roadside, busy on a road sign project.

How loud do you like your amplified blues harmonica? That’s the real question underlying the proposal to change Spokane Municipal Code 10.08.020.

Terry Miller returned to Shadle Park High School on Tuesday night to see for himself: It’s gotten better. Miller, whose memories of bullying at Shadle in the 1980s helped inspire the inspiring “It Gets Better” project, returned to his alma mater for the first time in more than two decades. This time, the welcome was a lot warmer – a big crowd turned out to hear Miller and his longtime partner, the writer Dan Savage, give a hilarious and moving presentation about gay kids, acceptance and life after bullying.

If using coupons is an extreme sport, Tammilee Tillison just made the all-star team. Tillison – a Medical Lake woman who became a coupon demon after losing her job – was featured this week on the latest reality show, “Extreme Couponing.”

When Benjameen “JaJa” Quarless rode into Greensboro, N.C., on a bus Monday, he was traveling in the shadow of 1961. Quarless, a junior at Whitworth University, is part of a project marking the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders – students who challenged segregation at Southern lunch counters and on buses, and were met along with way with violence, arrest and general thuggery.

It’s the wildest doomed building you’ve ever seen. Blue, painted tree branches sprout from the hallway walls, which are a riot of color and forms. A forest of whittled limbs crowds the room behind the sliding glass of an abandoned reception desk. The basin of a drinking fountain, thick with paint, is filled with charcoal briquettes. Bark, moss, broken glass, a car hood – the flora and detritus of the Spokane River are being transformed into art, along with paint, charcoal and the more ordinary materials of creation.

Tony Antonucci knows it sounds corny. But he’d like us all to take a moment and do something nice for someone. Something simple. Soup for a neighbor. Help in the yard. A listening ear. Something random and kind.

Call it the great hot dog caper. Or maybe the greatly overblown hot dog caper would be more accurate. One day last December, Eastern Washington University student John Richardson got himself a German sausage at the self-serve counter at Mitchell’s IGA in Cheney. He ate it as he shopped for peanut butter (crunchy), jelly, bread and other items. When he left, he forgot to pay for the 99-cent dog – though he did pay for more than $28 in groceries.

We used to call it the Spokane vortex – the way this town sprouts connections to major worldwide stories. Now the Spokane vortex has entered the viral age: The song and video “Friday” – the object of the most unwarranted avalanche of attention in the history of the world – has roots, or at least one tiny, rooty fiber, here.

Think you’ve had a crazy year? Try Holly Pickett’s nerve-rattling 2011: A bombing in Alexandria, Egypt. Revolution in Tunisia. Revolution in Egypt. A detour to Oman. More revolution in Cairo and Morocco. Then a couple of stretches in Libya, running for her life with the overmatched rebels. “I’m here at a really incredible time in history,” said Pickett, a former Spokesman-Review photojournalist whose arresting images have appeared all over the world. “I never thought I would see what I’ve seen in the past few months. From that standpoint, I’m really thankful and glad to be doing the job I’m doing – so yeah, I love it.”

The hammer still rests there, right where Bill Sanders left it – atop a work glove, on the back of an unfinished, life-size scrap-metal sculpture of an Afghan hound, next to an unfinished, life-size scrap-metal sculpture of a llama. It’s the perfect symbol of a Spokane original. The emblem of a man who lived for art, right to the end.

You’ve got to hand it to the Citizens for Responsible Taxation. When they go irresponsible, they go big. They’ll overstate the amount of school-funding measures by about 100 percent. They mischaracterize continuing taxes as “NEW” taxes or “TAX INCREASES” or, best of all, “NEW TAX INCREASES.” Lately, they reached a new low by exaggerating a proposed tax in the Orchard Prairie district by 10 times.