Idaho Voices

Q:   Five people in Post Falls were asked: “Do you think gas prices will continue to fall?”

For the first few weeks leading into the holiday shopping season, it was a notch below business as usual for shop owner Sharon Shults. Then the storms hit, the icy berms piled up and the foot traffic ground to a halt. Even as national headlines described a dramatic drop in almost every avenue of spending by recession-reeling consumers, Shults, proprietor of JJ’s Shoes and Boutique in downtown Coeur d’Alene, said sales were only slightly down at her store in early December compared to the previous year.

Ski-Mor is a chapter of Spokane Valley history almost forgotten. One of the area’s first ski resorts, it operated for nine seasons where 44th Avenue meets the east slope of Browne Mountain in the Ponderosa neighborhood.

With the New Year nearly upon us, many people have replaced thoughts of sugar cookies and gift giving with real pounds and post-holiday stress. Brandy Kramer would like to help you shed those unwanted leftovers at her aptly named well-being business, Orchids and Iron. Whether bound by a resolution or simply looking to relieve pent-up tension, January has long represented a potential turning point for positive change. Orchids and Iron in downtown Coeur d’Alene, is the perfect place to start. There, the massage therapist and fitness trainer-turned-entrepreneur has combined fitness, nutrition and massage therapy into one wellness center to help anyone live a healthier life.

Roger Riggs’ home in southwest Spokane is akin to a museum. His appreciation of art is evident from the free-standing pieces to the ones that adorn the walls done by well-known artists, professors of art, his students and his own nonobjective paintings. “My style is mostly abstract, impressionistic, nonobjective, just design,” he said, “Modern art challenges one’s imagination.”

Val Vissia has always been plagued by poor vision. ”I need to put my glasses on to find my contacts,” she joked. But after she turned 40 her vision problems worsened. Eventually she was diagnosed with optic neuritis, an inflammation of the optic nerve.

As round after round of winter storms slammed the Inland Northwest, one uncomplicated instrument in particular quickly jumped to the top of many must-have lists: a shovel. Whether on the front of a plow or in the hands of area residents, shovels have become an essential component in the winter that wouldn’t let up. “I’ve been here 20 years and I’ve never seen snow fall this much. And it just doesn’t seem to stop,” said city of Post Falls street supervisor Jim Porter, adding that he’s heard the area has received more than 70 inches of snow and counting as of Monday morning.

The door to the little house on West Broadway Avenue opens just a crack, to reveal pitch darkness in stark contrast to the blinding white snow outside. A young woman in stocking feet smiles shyly at John Jones as he hands her a box of groceries. It’s Christmas Eve and Jones is delivering food on behalf of Off-Broadway Family Outreach and Lighthouse of Hope to neighbors who are snowbound in West Central. The nonprofit usually hands out food donations every Monday on the corner of Nettleton and West Broadway. Finding the usual recipients snowbound, Jones and Marcel Smith, the house mother at Lighthouse of Hope, decided to take the food directly to the needy.

Q: Five people chosen at random in Post Falls were asked: “Have you started  making any New Year’s Resolutions?”

It was the year the economy turned from a fluffy Aebleskiver into a flat crepe, the year of the bouffant hockey mom and her lizards of Satan, and the year of the agonizingly televised celebrity rehab stint. The year was so tense, so full of money stress and political mayhem and foolishness, how ever did we make it through? Well, we said “pish posh” to it all and went out to dine, drink and dance our woes away.