Column

Doug Clark asks, “How Freaking Fed Up with the Winter of 2017 Are You?”

For all you know, that doddering old guy ahead of you in the checkout line might have spent his days long ago flying over the Arctic Circle to reach a holding-pattern point just outside Soviet airspace. So before you decide to get impatient with him, just ask yourself: What’s on your résumé?

A plaque on a swinging bench overlooking viewtiful McEuen Park and Tubbs Hill on the Coeur d’Alene waterfront touches on the life story of an amazing Coeur d’Alene pediatrician who made the world a better place, although she left it too soon.

Why be early when you can be just in the nick of time?

Once in while someone comes along who makes us forget about our problems and maybe realize how lucky we are.

Idaho lawmakers have just finished a full week of hearings on health and human services budgets, and while major changes and initiatives are underway in some areas, there was little talk about how to close the state’s health coverage gap.

When watching the Super Bowl means you can make that 8:30 p.m. bedtime.

A long time ago in a Big Sky State not far away, Jim Newcomb, now of Spokane, was a troubleshooter for Northwest Telephone Systems. He was minding his own business, when the flack for his company went bonkers as a result of a photo in the town newspaper. As a result, Jim was assigned to escort the news editor around for the day. He still has the newspaper clipping the journalist wrote afterward.

Anne Marie is not in Australia, friend.

You can leave a message, but don’t expect the right reply.

Turning over welfare to the states has resulted in more people being mired in “deep poverty.”

Things aren’t equal in the press corps at the Idaho Legislature. “Reporterette” (not Huckleberries’ word) Kimberlee Kruesi of the Associated Press tweets that she spends $100 for a haircut and highlights, and considers the steep price to be a career investment. A C-note is 10 times as much as your Huckleberry columnist pays for a cut (with senior discount and before tip, of course). Yeah, yeah, Huckleberries knows: It shows.

Remember Bill Murray stuck in a time loop in the 1993 comedy movie classic, “Groundhog Day”? Murray, as the jaded and condescending TV weatherman Phil Connors, wakes to find himself living the day (Feb. 2) over and over and over … again.

It’s not how it looks.

I don’t know how to rescue a bird precisely, but I do know how to get one to places where they can be saved. I am happy to provide transport.

Coeur d'Alene residents and visitors will see this summer if there's room enough for two downtown concerts within blocks of each other on the same evening. Tyler Davis, the guiding light behind the popular Live After 5 concerts on the Parkside condo lawn, is moving his event to McEuen Park on Wednesdays. Meanwhile, Darrell Dlouhy of the Daft Badger pub has picked the same evening for his concert series in the old Live After 5 spot.

Maybe this is how it becomes great again. Citizens using their constitutional authority to gather and protest. Individuals standing up for fundamental American values when their elected officials don’t. Leaders from college presidents to governors to the heads of major employers speaking out to support first principles. Scientists and park rangers and government attorneys refusing to shut up. Truth-loving people speaking against lies, and journalists assailing systemic, intentional falsehoods.

This isn’t the way to read a book. Chapter 9 first. Then, Chapters 12 through 15. And back to Chapter 1. But “The Street Agent” by former FBI agent Wayne Manis isn’t like other books.

One of the swell things about marriage is that you have someone who’ll let you know when your mental faculties fly off the tracks like a jackknifed coal train. The following evaluation took place on a recent Sunday after I drove to a hardware store for a light fixture and returned home with a birdseed-encrusted wreath made out of suet.