Column

Tim Lorentz, who motors his boat car around Spokane, has now fashioned a desk out of a 1969 Lincoln Continental.

Did you get that notice from the Tooth Fairy about rates going up?

Th Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce is working behind the scenes to drop one of the two Ironman Coeur d’Alene races that it helps sponsor during the summer. The chamber, according to sources, is unhappy with the declining triathlete attendance in the full Ironman and a possible lack of commitment by the Ironman organization.

In the Google Maps image, you see him clearly: Sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk at the intersection of Division and Sharp, huddled behind a cardboard sign asking for help. Steven J. Hackett was a fixture at that corner, so it’s only fitting he’s a part of the map. But he won’t be at his regular post any longer; police found him dead in an alley behind a nearby liquor store Monday. It was the kind of heartbreaking end his father had feared for Steven, after years of addiction and living on the streets.

County health officials agree: We have our share of cancer here – and more than our share of breast, lung and skin cancer – but there’s reason to be wary of any single statistic that puts us at the top of a national list.

At least one of Newton’s laws of motion applies here. Dennis Foster remembers when his wife, Sue, was near the end of her two pregnancies and wanted to get up from bed to go to the bathroom. The 4-foot-11 Sue would have to start rocking side to side.

If you want a few laughs along with your small-town police report, you should “like” the Kellogg Police Department Facebook page. Peppered among the one-line and routine items in the page’s weekly Roll Call are items like a recent traffic hazard that featured a badly damaged collection of Christmas nutcrackers. Only one survived. Huckleberries tells you all about it today.

Trustee Christa Hazel of the Coeur d’Alene School Board had a close encounter with a “Caveman” the other day. She was at the checkout counter of a local store when the cashier began singing the praises of the women’s basketball team of Gonzaga University. He was singing to the choir, as far as Christa was concerned. But the Caveman behind her groused that women don’t belong on a basketball court.

It has been three years since Melissa DeMotte answered the siren call to open a bookstore in Coeur d’Alene. A bookworm with a head for finances, DeMotte tells Huckleberries that operating the independent bookstore in Riverstone is the hardest thing that she’s done. At 54, she says the business is her “last gig” and hopes it will be around long after she isn’t.

Sneaking out in your skivvies this time of year comes with a certain level of risk.

Idaho’s largest state agency will get a new director in July – Gov. Butch Otter has named Russ Barron, currently deputy director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, to be the next director when longtime head Dick Armstrong retires June 30.

Yet another Sunday and Paul is making his editor teary-eyed. Damn.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Most importantly, we want to be able to yell “Freebird!” often.

Does the arrival of warm weather and the appearance of fetching females in summery apparel challenge your right to think of yourself as a gentleman?

The election is 18 months away, but Ben Stuckart is finding fodder for optimism in early polling on his effort to unseat Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

This tale is as much about the modern cyber age we live in. Because of that, public school can be tailor-made for even online cowgirls like Evelyn Picking.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were sunny all summer long?

Once upon a time in America, there was a sheep shearing operation carried out on a massive scale at the start of every summer.