Shawn Vestal

Like a lot of homeowners trying to sell, Jennifer Crouch has had a quiet six months – no offers for the blue four-bedroom home she first listed last winter. So she and her real estate agent cooked up an idea: Crouch, a painting contractor, will paint the home the color of the buyer’s choosing.

Bon Bon is trying to be bona fide. But the state is taking an awfully long time deciding whether it is. In the meantime, Katherine Fritchie is in a small-business owner’s nightmare: owing on a big loan, with a hip new bar ready to go and a would-be employee waiting to start. Until the state rules on Fritchie’s application for a liquor license, Bon Bon’s doors – and its future – remain closed.

Sital “Sia” Gill rises each morning at 5, showers, prays and goes to work at her North Side minimart. Each and every day, not counting some rare time off.

Teenagers looking for summer jobs are running into a wall. Teen hiring in May – typically the kick-off for seasonal jobs kids get to save for college or pay for fun – was worse than it’s been in more than 40 years. Grant Gillies and Caleb Peck decided to hire themselves.

LAMONT, Wash. – The past few years have seen a revolution of sorts in “the lowly and largely misunderstood town of Lamont,” as the mayor jokingly calls it. The once- horrible water system has been replaced. Half the tiny town has been paved. A new flagpole has been put up. A dog ordinance was adopted, to no small controversy. And soon, the town will be boast two crucial amenities: a library and, inside that library, the town’s first public restroom.

It is a measure of how passionately silly the debate over Jefferson Elementary has grown that the school’s principal called in security for Thursday’s annual spring fundraiser, the Tech Trek. Fortunately, the only things clouding the Tech Trek were the clouds.

If you want a handy metaphor for the economic ups and downs of the past five years, you could do worse than the house on Baldy Mountain Road outside Sandpoint. The extravagant, customized home – one neighbor calls it “the castle” – was built in November 2005 by the stunt charity show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” relying on a massive volunteer effort to help a bachelor who had stepped in to raise his sister’s kids after she passed away. The bachelor proceeded to refinance the place twice, lose his job, try to start a business, default, leave town. The bank foreclosed on the castle in October. It sits on the market, price plummeting.

Thirty-six years ago, Evel Knievel turned Twin Falls, Idaho, upside-down. Now his son says he wants to do the same thing – taking on his dad’s unfinished business with a jump over the Snake River Canyon.

The graduates at Sunday’s commencement ceremony for Gonzaga University were eagerly looking toward the future. Jessica Clark’s ready to serve in the Army. Tye Perdido is going to try to forge a career in pro soccer. Kathleen Carter’s got a job lined up in the Seattle area. And oh, yeah; that tall guy with the beard and dreads, a head above the others in blue caps and gowns? He's got a job, too. He'll be returning to the NBA.

In August 1959, Edmond Gray punched, kicked and beat his wife with a belt so badly she had to seek medical care. On April 22, Gray made a brief appearance in this newspaper’s daily historical column, which noted that he had been handed three life sentences for three murders 50 years ago.

What if the stupidest things you did at age 14 came up now during a job interview? If the application form included a box asking if you’d ever driven drunk in your parents’ car? Plagiarized an essay on Huck Finn? Set fire to bags of dung and left them on doorsteps?

MOSCOW, Idaho – Colleges will open a lot of gifts from donors this year. Most of them will be checks, but some of them will be artifacts, authors’ papers, historical documents. It’s safe to say that not many will come in 55-gallon drums.