Huckleberries: Facebook SOS rouses Lake City

Coeur d’Alene Councilman Mike Kennedy appreciates Mark Zuckerberg’s online brainchild more than ever. On Wednesday, Mike issued this Facebook SOS: “Anybody have a lightly used pair of crutches for use by, say, an 11-year-old ballerina and soccer player with a newly torn ligament in her foot? I don’t think I’ll make the ‘crutch store’ before they close.” Seems Mike’s daughter, Maggie, landed a jump wrong during ballet practice. Responded Carrie Cook, a Coeur d’Alene resident who attended a Texas university like Mike: “I have some used recently by a 10-year old. … I can set them on my front porch for you to swing by and grab them.” By the time the thread had played out with 24 comments, many of us Facebook friends of Mike had warm fuzzies for the good-neighborliness found online in Lake City. But the story doesn’t end there. Scott Peterson, the Aflac rep for Mike’s company, read the cyber SOS and dropped off a claim form at the councilman’s office before Mike reported for work the next morning.

Social networking

If you follow my Huckleberries Online blog/Twitter/Facebook (spokesman.com/blogs/hbo), you know the Coeur d’Alene Police Department now is on Twitter and Facebook. You can get news releases straight from Sgt. Christie Wood’s keyboard to your eyes, without journalists in the middle. Which doesn’t really explain why some journalists on the spokeswoman’s mailing list snarled when she announced via email that she would no longer send out email releases. One groused that he didn’t want to monitor Facebook and Twitter to see what was happening at the police department. Christie backed off and will continue to email news releases to the media dinosaur brigade. As well as tweet. And update her Facebook status. Even if she doesn’t know what all that means … BTW, Liz Arakelian said of the CPD’s Facebook page: “Would it be terrible to post some virtual doughnuts on it?” … Coeur d’Alene Realtor Tom Torgerson said of the department’s social networking: “Hopefully we can talk them into tweeting speed trap locations?! Now THAT would be a community service!”

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: Snow in the night/rain in the day;/tired of April/ready for May – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Next, Please”) … Jim Faucher will be the first to admit that he didn’t expect to win his March Madness bracket and its $460 jackpot. After all, there were 133 people competing, including his wife and son. But it still hurts that a 10-year-old picked Connecticut to go all and way and easily lapped the adult field … Huckleberries is still trying to decipher the meaning of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile parked in the Bonzai Bistro lot in downtown Coeur d’Alene on Wednesday evening.

Parting shot

In listening to the police scanner last week, Huckleberries was surprised by a dated, improper expression. A patrol officer and a dispatcher were discussing two African-American salesmen who were going door-to-door. At least one caller worried that the pair was begging for money. In pinpointing their whereabouts, the officer referred to the salesmen three times as “Negroes.” Huckleberries isn’t going to rat out the department or the officer. But some sensitivity training seems to be in order.