Adrian Rogers

A thin, L-shaped metal rod in each hand, 7-year-old Jacob Fausti was dowsing for dinosaurs. His instructions were to hold the rods gently, letting them hover in parallel over a line of Styrofoam cups. If they crossed, according to the rules of dowsing, he’d hit the jackpot: There would be a toy dinosaur underneath.

It wasn’t so long ago that Andy Lewis appeared in the Super Bowl halftime show, wearing a gleaming-white toga, silver-spangled boots and his brown Afro, balancing and bouncing on a 2-inch-wide line of webbing suspended 4 feet above the stage as a gladiator-costumed Madonna sang and squatted alongside him. But his sport has come far since that 2012 performance, Lewis said last week at Riverfront Park, where the World Cup of slacklining was taking place as part of Hoopfest.

An acrobat climbs another’s thighs and back to balance, inverted, on his partner’s shoulders – one set of feet planted and one pointed skyward. Aerialists scale suspended lengths of silk to dance in all the directions, up and down included. Jugglers lie on their backs on stage, feet up, to juggle not only objects but each other. The performers in Wanderlust Circus offer an experience that might seem a little unreal – but really, its ringmaster said, it might be the realest thing its audience sees all week.

An acrobat climbs another’s thighs and back to balance, inverted, on his partner’s shoulders – one set of feet planted and one pointed skyward. Aerialists scale suspended lengths of silk to dance in all the directions, up and down included. Jugglers lie on their backs on stage, feet up, to juggle not only objects but each other. The performers in Wanderlust Circus offer an experience that might seem a little unreal – but really, its ringmaster said, it might be the realest thing its audience sees all week.

There’s no sipping at a coffee cupping. When it comes to detecting in detail the aromas and tastes of a specialty brew – distinguishing the piquant from the nippy, the cucumber from the garden peas – it’s all about the slurp.

Chuck Gamache’s wisdom tooth was impacted, growing sideways in his jaw. It had to come out. This was terrifying, considering Gamache’s dental history: the pain of a childhood in-line skating accident that broke his front teeth, a young adulthood marked by soda pop and neglect that made him self-conscious. “When I got to the dentist, regardless of the situation, it would get to where I was almost hyperventilating, going into shock,” said Gamache, 31, of Spokane Valley. “I mean, I was freaking myself out.”

Sure, there’s national poetry month. It’s April, in case you’ve been under a rock. And some people celebrate children’s poetry week. Kenn Nesbitt, the Spokane author named children’s poet laureate this week by the Poetry Foundation, has a smaller-scale ambition:

If you’ve ever tried to get a 2-year-old to brush her teeth or a 4-year-old to climb into a dentist’s chair, here’s a story for you. Or your problem child. Dr. Blake McKinley Jr., a Spokane Valley endodontist, wrote “Happy Tooth & Sad Tooth” more than a decade ago before visiting his son’s preschool class to give a talk about his job.

Using a freestyle stroke to cut through the water, Kim Sutton draws praise from her poolside coach, Jaime Hopoi. Sutton, 18, crosses the pool in a straight line, rather than veering off – her awareness of her body’s place in space has improved, Hopoi says. But the coach sends the swimmer back across the pool again, this time by way of the backstroke, because it’s good for her.

They didn’t know about zombies yet in the 1870s, so imagine their confusion. Early in the zombie- Western comic book series “Rotten,” one poor guy, a would-be miner who hopes he’s on the trail to the town of Shimmer, spots a gray- skinned, sore-covered figure staggering in the distance.

To Susana Soth, the scar tissue from her mastectomy six weeks ago feels like a rubber band wrapped tight around her chest. But the band is loosening, she said, thanks to help from her physical therapist. And she’s hopeful that by loosening up that tissue, she’ll be able to maintain as much mobility in her arm as she can even after she undergoes radiation as part of her breast cancer treatment.

Mark Garrett is alive, which, among his group of friends from 25 years ago, puts him in the tiny minority. That Garrett is 58 and living with HIV puts him in a growing demographic: People with HIV are aging, as a group.

It’s not that Julia Sweeney didn’t love her family. It’s just that she wanted them to go away. She’d gone to some trouble to pull them together, traveling from L.A. to China to adopt 17-month-old Mulan as a single mother; falling in love with a man, Michael Blum, after some strangers insisted he’d be a good match; marrying that man; and packing up their new minivan to trade Los Angeles for the “certain kind of peace” she’d craved – the family life, with its attendant carpools and cat vomit – in suburban Chicago.

His studio is half a garage behind his house, with the door wide open to sun, lawn, quiet and dandelions in Peaceful Valley. He keeps painting after the sun goes down, with lights aimed at the canvas or paper on his easel. He paints every day, but if he makes a plan for a day’s work, it’s vague. Maybe he’ll paint a skull today, or maybe an Indian guy.

His studio is half a garage behind his house, with the door wide open to sun, lawn, quiet and dandelions in Peaceful Valley. He keeps painting after the sun goes down, with lights aimed at the canvas or paper on his easel. He paints every day, but if he makes a plan for a day’s work, it’s vague. Maybe he’ll paint a skull today, or maybe an Indian guy.

An eating-disorder treatment center opening in June on the South Hill aims to fill what its operators call a gap in services in the Spokane area, offering care for patients who need more than an hour or two a week of therapy and dietary counseling but less than 24-hour treatment in a residential program or hospital. The Emily Program, set to open June 3, will assess patients for eating disorders, providing individual and group therapy and nutritional counseling along with psychiatric and medical services.

Langston Ward, a senior at Mead High School, is the national Poetry Out Loud champion, rising to the top from hundreds of thousands of students who recited poetry on stages across the U.S. Ward, 18, secured the win with a performance of “The Bad Old Days,” by Kenneth Rexroth. It was the third and final poem he performed in the competition that ended Tuesday night in Washington, D.C.

Langston Ward, a senior at Mead High School, is the national Poetry Out Loud champion, rising to the top from hundreds of thousands of students who recited poetry on stages across the U.S.

Competing in the unofficial wheelchair division – in the back with the strollers – Donna Husick and Gail Ableman probably will not win Bloomsday on Sunday. But when they finish, it’ll represent a couple of victories.

The man around 60 whose hat was gray, whose tattoo was unreadable, was found along the railroad tracks east of downtown. An infant girl, three months or more premature, was left at the city sewage treatment plant. Another man, maybe 40, rested in the river near Nine Mile, wearing a yellow-metal cross pendant on a necklace held together with a paper clip. Each still unnamed, they’re entries in the unidentified-bodies list maintained by Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office.

At 26, Cara Hernandez has her untimely death about as well-planned as it can be. It’s all in her advance directive, instructions for family and doctors to follow if an accident or some other catastrophe leaves her in dire condition and unable to make her wishes known.

A Philadelphia-based modern dance company founded by an Israeli-born choreographer who first danced in the Yemeni folk tradition will perform Saturday in North Idaho. The Jacklin Arts & Cultural Center in Post Falls got a $10,000 Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help pay for the Koresh Dance Company’s visit. The grants are meant to help organizations produce arts events that wouldn’t typically be seen in their regions.