Column

Most of us prefer wearing our layers of mental or metaphorical masks. It may be even more tempting to do so as we wear literal masks to protect ourselves from the coronavirus. But unmasking leads to real spiritual growth. 

With a pandemic and racial and social injustice around us, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. But there is hope out there. 

While the city has a long list of transportation visions, ideas and plans it hopes to pursue, the Six Year Comprehensive Street Program is where projects go when the city intends to see them through and has at least some of the funding in hand to make that happen.

The virus threatening the health of the population is also threatening the health care system. In Spokane – where a large part of our population relies on government health insurance and a large part of our workforce is employed in health care – that means a lot of added pressure on hospitals that have already been losing money.

When the Legislature is in session, Olympia is often the state’s primary location for people to peaceably assemble – mostly – for redress of grievances. Even with the honorable lawmakers at home, the nationwide demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers brings out the local protesters.

Most of us understand that the coronavirus presents a health crisis, an economic crisis and a social crisis. But for those at the bottom of the economic scale, it could also turn into a legal crisis.

When the touchiest issue in American politics burst into literal flames after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Kitara Johnson could not stand by either. She is the mother of five, a U.S. Army veteran – and the catalyst for a Declare Yourself night on Tuesday, giving young people a microphone and an opportunity for their voices to be heard.

Crews will head out to the East Trent Bridge this morning and start undoing the work crews before them completed 110 years ago.

Whatever the politicians say, the Bible tells us that growing as Christians requires us to be in community with each other.

Mail voting improves voter turnout. It does it among both parties, too.

While there are many things we are all giving up because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the “stay home when possible” order has added one thing for the public in general, and reporters in particular: the ability to “attend” court hearings from a distance.

It’s hard to justify why restaurants can safely open at 50% capacity and a church cannot. Hand sanitizer at the entry, tape on the floor and blocked off seating for social distancing are equally possible in both locations. And a spirit of self-discipline is essential to staying healthy, virus or no virus.

Elephant Bikes are built by one man in a Colbert garage, where Glen Copus turns out bikes known for their idiosyncratic designs and expert craftsmanship. But Copus is disarmingly unpretentious about his product and adamant about keeping the design utilitarian and no-frills.

Even for those of us who endure the coronavirus pandemic with a minimum of disruption, I sense we all live in some degree of “stuck.” Arguably, everyone alive right now is feeling “stuck” to a lesser or greater degree.

For years, when an infectious disease reared up in Spokane, there was a simple but important reaction: Call Dorothy MacEachern.

Everywhere you look right now, with the announcement that Spokane County can move cautiously down the road toward reopening the economy, you see people racing across the coronavirus finish line, arms raised, cheering. Which risks putting us back at the coronavirus starting line.

Gov. Jay Inslee, the presidential candidate, talked of nothing but climate change. Inslee, the candidate for a third term as Washington’s governor, has of necessity been talking nothing but COVID-19 for the past two months. He tied the two together while a panelist at a virtual town hall live-streamed at berniesanders.com on May 13. The event was titled “Saving Our Planet from the Existential Threat of Climate Change,” and fellow panelist Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, had just discussed the Green New Deal. Inslee was up next.

With video conferencing, courts are trying to fit an in-person process into a no-contact world and trying to balance justice with safety in unprecedented ways.

Fish Lake Trail is, at least for now, a misnomer. But a pair of efforts are underway to make the trail reach the lake on one end and to connect the current trailhead to the Centennial Trail on the other.