Blogroll

Aug. 19: The Lands Council of Spokane is ranking high in a national online contest for a grant from Tom’s of Maine to help reforest areas of Spokane – to provide much-needed shade, reduce traffic noise and beautify our city.

But the group needs more supporters to go online daily through Sept. 13 and click to give the effort a vote.

… Go to www.tomsofmaine.com/ community-involvement/ living-well/finalists-overview/ poll to vote for the Lands Council.

Aug. 20: In yesterday’s Spokesman-Review, my favorite obituary was that of Yekaterina Sergeyevna Makhanova, an 85-year-old immigrant from the former Soviet Union. She was born in the Ukraine and moved, in 1996, to Deer Park, and then Newman Lake, to “be with her children here in America.”

She had 14 children, 84 grandchildren and 55 great-grandchildren and “her family tree consists of 213 people of which 210 are living.”

We rarely see obituaries in our classified obits from residents of the former Soviet Union, even though the Inland Northwest area is home to immigrants from there, more than 20,000.

But, like my Italian immigrant relatives who came to Spokane in the early 20th century, that population doesn’t surface often in the mainstream press. So we don’t have many of the details of their lives, such as all the living Mrs. Makhanova did in her 85 years, 15 of them in the Inland Northwest.

Aug. 16: Spokane Valley hired an interim deputy city manager this week who may sound a little familiar to the folks in the city just to the west.

Roger Crum.

Crum worked for the city of Spokane for 22 years, was deputy city manager for 11 and city manager for five, ending in mid-1996 when he took the city manager job in Evanston, Ill.

In Spokane, he was part of a management team that ran City Hall from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, when the city switched from the council-manager form of government to the strong-mayor system.

Apparently his connection to the city of Spokane was not a disqualifier for the Valley job.

Aug. 19: I enjoy riding my bike along this one stretch of the lower South Hill where trolley tracks remain embedded in the street. It’s fun to imagine what all I missed by coming along decades too late to catch a ride. Here’s my partial list.

1. No stylishly leaning out of the trolley, waving and shouting “I’m home, darling!”

2. No talking with fellow passengers about what food item could be referred to as “the Spokane treat.”

3. No smiling as some angry old guy standing on his lawn shakes his fist at the passing trolley because of all that infernal clang-clang-clanging.