The Slice: We’ll get our fair share of snotty letters

Nobody expected last December’s weather.

As a result, a lot of us were not prepared for the snow onslaught.

But I’m not going to get caught off guard two seasons in a row.

So here’s my prediction for the Spokane area’s early spring: We are going to get smacked in the nose with big, fat fistfuls of pollen.

You think you have seen an allergy season? Well, the spring of 2009 is going to be one for the books.

Trees and bushes are going to explode, shooting pollen grains into the air like fireworks.

Records will be broken. Sinuses will be clogged. Claritin D will be hoarded. Tom Sherry will declare that we’re in the red zone. And letters to the editor will blame Mayor Verner.

“It’s just phlegm, people,” she’ll say.

And somehow we’ll manage to make it to summer.

•Speaking of the change of seasons: Some of my colleagues will soon be cobbling together the S-R’s annual Summer Camp Guide. And they want to include readers’ most unforgettable memories of camp.

Do you have a story to share?

Your anecdote can deal with a moment of blue-ribbon triumph or a minor disaster. It’s up to you. Maybe you forged an unlikely friendship in a leaky canoe. Maybe your letters home that summer dealt with skunks, bears and a counselor’s full-frontal poison ivy rash.

Or perhaps your favorite camp memory deals with learning how to create a Web site or make 79.3 percent of your free-throws.

This is open to both kids and adults.

Send your story to summercamps@spokesman.com; fax (509) 459-5098; or mail it to Summer Camp Guide, The Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside Ave., Spokane, WA 99201.

Submissions must be received by the end of business on March 31. Be sure to include your daytime phone number.

•See if you can spot the phony PBS pledge programming titles: A) “Eat Your Way to Enlightenment.” B) “Celtic Overkill.” C) “Roy Orbison Again.” D) “The 101 Secrets to Financial, Sexual and Zeitgeist Success.” E) “Jane Austen Smackdown.” F) “Yet Another Special on the Queen and Her Corgis.” G) “Bill Moyers Causes Conservatives to Stroke Out.” H) “Some More Tenors Phone It In.”

OK, none of those are real. Yet.

•Today’s Slice question: You might remember how they once called baseball slugger Reggie Jackson “Mr. October,” in recognition of his World Series exploits. You might even recall that singer Jackie Wilson was known as “Mr. Excitement.”

Well, if you were going to be labeled “Mr.” Something or “Ms.” Something, what would it be?