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Huckleberries: Unexpected budget request reminder of heartbreak
Many of you have heard of the silly mountain biker who started a Boise Foothills fire by lighting soiled toilet paper to dispose of it. Well, that started a discussion among my Huckleberries Online ( www.spokesman.com/blogs/hbo) crew. One said he has a “city colon that only works indoors.” He has never pooped in the woods (even during a camping trip from South Dakota to Southern California when he ate chili daily). However, outdoorswoman Taryn Thompson admits she has, from an early age and when there was no other option. Says she: “A potty emergency in the family a while back gave birth to the joke: Save your receipts.” John Austin also admits to going No. 2 in the forest. Says he: “Including once when I happened upon a bull moose on Eagle Peak. It was not voluntary.” Seems bears aren’t the only ones who poop in the woods.
Unexpected reminder
An unbudgeted request during the Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting last week was a poignant reminder of the heartbreak that occurred in early May. Police Chief Lee White asked the council for $56,144 to buy and equip a new patrol car, to replace the one driven by fallen Sgt. Greg Moore on the night he was slain while on patrol. Seems the city insurance company will pay for collision and other damages involving patrol cars. But it won’t pay for loss of a vehicle when it’s in the possession of another agency. The prosecutor’s office now has custody of Moore’s car, as part of the evidence it plans to use against suspected killer Jonathan Daniel Renfro, of Rathdrum. The car may be tied up for decades as Renfro’s murder trial and appeals process runs its course. The council, to its credit, didn’t hesitate to grant Chief White’s request.
Dolezal redux
Rachel Dolezal, who worked at Coeur d’Alene’s Human Rights Education Institute before moving to Spokane to become a national gag line, should get on with her life. Fast. In a Vanity Fair interview, Dolezal told reporter Allison Samuels: “I’ve got to figure it out before August 1, because my last paycheck was like $1,800 in June. (I lost) friends and the jobs and the work and – oh, my God – so much at the same time.” Reporter Samuels, who actually is an African-American female, writes that Dolezal’s “claim on black womanhood seems non-negotiable.” At this point, does it matter?
Huckleberries
Poet’s Corner: “Take Uncle Joe,/for sure we love him,/but we don’t need/a dozen of him” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“The Drawbacks of Human Cloning”) … And: “The paradise/for which I yearn:/they signal first/and then they turn” – Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Nirvana Behind the Wheel”) … A neurosurgeon friend refers to motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets as “Future heart donors” … Poll: 69 percent of my blog readers say military recruiters should be armed (to protect themselves from the next wacko who wants to harm them) … Bumpersnicker (on the back of a logging truck at Interstate 90 and Highway 95): “Welcome to Idaho. Please take a wolf and go home” … And (on an older blue-and-gray F-150 pickup parked near Coeur d’Alene’s Memorial Field on Wednesday: “Don’t Grow Up – It’s a trap.”
Parting shot
Six years after his death, old Harry Magnuson is back in the news, with four of his five kids fighting over the ha-huge estate he and his wife, Colleen, left behind. In his later years, Harry, who made his fortune in the Silver Valley mines, called Huckleberries from his Lake Coeur d’Alene summer home in the Casco Bay area to complain about the noise a Brooks seaplane made taking off from City Beach. It sounds like it’s coming right at me, Harry would say. Do you suppose the legal racket being made by his kids now is disturbing Harry’s eternal rest?