The Slice: Just another name-dropping crow

Is it just me or does everyone around here eventually start to believe that he or she can understand what crows are saying?

The other day, I was sure I heard one claim that a distant relative of his used to fly along with the young Bing Crosby while he delivered The Spokesman-Review in the morning.

Multiple choice: In the altogether unlikely event that Parade magazine did a cover story on Spokane, which would be the headline?

A) “The City that Learned to Love Again.” B) “One City’s Cry: We’re Mad as Hell about Something.” C) “Camper Cleavage from the Heart.” D) “The Comeback City on the Brink of Coming Back Again.” E) “America’s Marmotland.” F) “Welcome to Old Car Purgatory.” G) “Geographically Isolated — And Loving It!” H) Other.

Just wondering: Betty Presnail asks if everyone else is already familiar with referring to Idaho’s Panhandle as “The Chimney.” She recently encountered that for the first time.

Spokane exit interview No. 2: Today’s respondent is a woman named Meagan who grew up here and moved to the West Side when her husband’s job was relocated.

The thing she liked best about Spokane? Her family and friends, she said. “It was a safe place to grow up.”

The things she doesn’t miss are conservative voting patterns and shoveling snow.

She said the thing Spokane could learn from her current home is how to be more open-minded.

The thing people where she lives could learn from Spokane is “How to drive in the snow.”

And “How to keep rockin’ those 1980s styles.”

She said she doesn’t hesitate to defend Spokane in nonpolitical conversations, roots for Spokane in the second-biggest population competition with Tacoma and misses “actual seasons.”

Things she doesn’t miss hearing about include Gonzaga University basketball coaches and Ham on Regal.

Would she ever consider moving back here?

“Only if the western side of the state fell into the ocean and Oregon stopped accepting new residents.”

Today’s Slice question: Can you say that you are a true Spokanite if you have never been to a party where someone got shot, stabbed or neck-tattooed?