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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Readers likely to be safe and sane

Paul Turner The Spokesman-Review

Here’s a question.

Do you think people who are apt to blow themselves up with fireworks read the newspaper?

I’m thinking they probably don’t. Just a guess.

Oh, it’s not like I assume all S-R readers are incapable of idiocy. I mean, have you ever glanced at the letters to the editor?

No, I just don’t picture newspaper readers – an admittedly diverse lot – being all that into fireworks.

So is there any point to printing warnings and cautionary tales about the handling of same? Isn’t that just preaching to the choir? Maybe.

Still, newspaper readers sometimes associate with nonreaders. Perhaps they can nag those folks about playing with explosives.

So consider this your reminder to point out the dangers. After all, someone’s got to say it.

“You’ll put your eye out.”

•Back in the saddle: OK, where were we. Oh, yeah – Thursday’s Marmot Lodge membership application.

It was hard to miss. And if you read the correction Friday, you already know that we managed to illustrate that form with a large photo of a prairie dog. Mistakes were made, as they say in the other Washington.

But that gave me an idea. I think I’m going to make my lodge nickname P-Dog.

Or maybe that nickname should go to the page designer in question, unless he wants to simply go by Pee Dee.

In any event, thanks to all those who submitted applications. I haven’t had a chance to sort through them yet.

But a report is forthcoming.

•Slice feedback: “If Spokane tried to sell itself as ‘The Birthplace of Hip,’ the rest of the country would laugh at us,” wrote Bill Stimson.

He has his own Bing-related proposal: “The White Christmas City.”

“Bing’s ‘White Christmas’ is the most famous song of the last century,” he wrote. “Its power is such that, as a history of Christmas celebration said, places like Yuma, Arizona depict Christmas as snowy. And what scenes were running through his head when Bing sang he was ‘dreaming of a white Christmas’?”

Visions of Spokane, U.S.A., no doubt.

•Slice answer: Several Slice readers asserted that they are the Inland Northwest residents least interested in celebrities. But the self-nomination from Patricia Skomars caught my eye.

“I am just a little below the vomit point,” she wrote.

•Today’s Slice question: If everyone around here stopped watering their lawns today, how long would it take for Spokane to look like a slice of toast?