The Slice: Cuba helps keep Spokane on the map

Steve Becker’s 17-year-old son, Jensen, temporarily lives in Brazil as part of the Rotary Youth Exchange.

The other day, the Lewis and Clark High senior was talking to his dad via Skype. Right away, it was clear that he was excited.

“I really thought he was going to tell me he lost his camera or ATM card,” his dad said.

That wasn’t it.

Instead, Jensen told about watching TV with his host family when they happened onto a channel where the Paulsen Building was momentarily prominent on the screen. Then the Davenport Hotel appeared. Then Riverfront Park.

It was one of those forgettable Cuba Gooding Jr. films made here a few years ago.

“I started yelling to my host family that the movie was made in Spokane!” Jensen told his dad.

The elder Becker understood his son’s reaction to seeing scenes of his hometown while watching TV in South America. But he suspects others in the room took it in stride. “I am guessing having never been to Spokane, the excitement was lost on Jensen’s hosts.”

Closing the books on Halloween night: Dorothy Clark had dispensed virtually all her treats. So when a cluster of kids she guessed to be sixth-graders or thereabouts arrived at her door, she had to report that she didn’t have enough candy for them.

“This was met with a chorus of ‘That’s OK’ as they dashed off to greener pastures,” she wrote.

Then something remarkable happened.

“As they turned to go, one boy swung back and dropped a handful of treats from his own bag into my bowl, saying, ‘I’ll help you with the next bunch.’ ”

Several of that boy’s Halloween pals still near the porch then quickly did likewise.

“They were gone too quickly for me to even thank them. I just stood there stunned with my replenished treats and a very real admiration for today’s young people.”

Low-tech time travel: Trudi Brown’s 87-year-old dad has lived in Oregon for 25 years, but he still relies on an old Kellogg phone book to refresh his memory about people from his Gem State past.

Today’s Slice question: How do you plan to salute veterans and celebrate Washington’s statehood day on Sunday?