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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Adrian Rogers

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News >  Health

New diagnosis for MS advocate

Deanna Kirkpatrick, an East Wenatchee, Wash., woman whose podcasts about living with multiple sclerosis have reached thousands of listeners around the world, no longer has MS. Or rather, she never did, according to a “dream team” of three Seattle neurologists she assembled in response to her nagging suspicions that she didn’t quite fit into the MS category. Kirkpatrick’s advocacy efforts were featured recently in an article in The Spokesman-Review.
News >  Features

Colville’s Selecky set to retire as state’s secretary of health

Mary Selecky’s twice-monthly round-trip drives across the state, Olympia to her home near Colville and back, took seven hours each way, which she took as an opportunity to appreciate the perks of a public health system: safe drinking water at rest stops, a connected EMS and trauma-center network in the event of a crash. Washington’s secretary of health said she’s made it a priority to stay in touch with community, or communities – and keep the far-flung ones in mind alongside urban areas as she and other state officials made decisions that would affect residents’ health throughout the state.
News >  Features

Spirited start

A rite of spring for art lovers, Coeur d’Alene’s ArtWalk begins today with an event featuring fresh work from 13 artists at The Art Spirit Gallery. An opening reception at the fine art gallery will help mark the season’s start and highlight pieces by some of the gallery’s core regional artists – including Harold Balazs, Mel McCuddin, Mary Farrell and Del Gish – along with pieces by artists new or newer to the space.
News >  Features

Taking on trauma

Yellow buses pull up and open their doors, and children push into the school in waves. Five teachers waiting in the foyer greet them as individuals. Each gets eye contact, a “good morning” or a side-hug or a question. The teachers aim to notice: Is anyone walking with their shoulders hunched? Crying? Paler than normal?
News >  Features

Get Gothic!

Joyce Carol Oates was doing vampires when Stephenie Meyer was in grade school. Characters in Oates’ latest novel, “The Accursed,” include demons and a zombie along with a vampire figure. Published in March, it’s the final book in her “Gothic quintet” – and will be a subject of her talk about the postmodernist Gothic novel at 7 p.m. next Friday at the Bing Crosby Theater as part of Get Lit!
News >  Features

Catch renowned artist’s work at GU’s Jundt Art Museum

An exhibit opening Friday at Gonzaga’s Jundt Art Museum pulls together much of the university’s  collection of work by glass artist Dale Chihuly. The Tacoma native’s pieces have been exhibited – often on grand scales – around the world, drawing both crowds and criticism.
News >  Features

Companions for life

As a general rule, Dennis Robertson is in. Bowling? Fishing? Karoake? Yes, yes, yes. A homebound elderly resident in need of a companion, or a caregiver who needs a few hours of relief? Yes to them, too.
News >  Features

Disabled vessels

Pain in your leg? The source could be deep within. A presentation tonight by a Spokane vascular surgeon aims to educate people about possible causes of leg pain related to veins and arteries. As interest grows in some treatments, it’s among presentations and free screenings to reach potential patients with vascular problems. Some presentations may be more enticing than others: One series of local promotional events offers Northwest wines and hors d’oeuvres along with information about the latest treatments for varicose veins.
News >  Health

Male call

As a boom operator at Fairchild Air Force Base, Staff Sgt. Thomas Wright flew 200 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, maneuvering refueling booms into waiting fighter planes high above the earth. Now he’s traded his flight suit for scrubs, preparing to graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, his education covered by the GI Bill.
News >  Features

String leader

As Leo Kottke told a group of college graduates in 2008, building up to what he acknowledged was starting to sound a lot like a commencement speech, the beauty is in the break. “If failure were not a reality, there would be no space to jump into … where anything can happen,” the acoustic guitar virtuoso said at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “We learn to love the flaw, we cherish our losses as much as we celebrate our accomplishments.”
News >  Health

Back in the swing

To put her daughter to sleep, Colleen Robinson used to dance the Charleston, the baby in her arms. Now 4, Clodagh joined the swing-dance class her mother taught last week for mothers (and one father) and their babies and young children. The dance classes offer a way for parents to use their bodies and brains learning steps while their children learn, too, Robinson said.
News >  Features

New exhibit explores midcentury architecture in Spokane

In a December episode of “The Simpsons,” Marge and Homer got some cool new neighbors from Portland, their artisanal-doughnut trailer in tow, who’d discovered a decrepit rancher to restore to its midcentury modern architectural glory. “What a find!” declared the husband. “Underneath all the ugly renovations, this house has Neutra bones!” And, for a while at least, even Springfield was cool.
News >  Features

Interplayers’ latest play loosely tied to Jim West scandal

The fictional script of Interplayers’ production “Speech & Debate” starts with an epigraph drawn from Spokane’s recent real-life history: an excerpt from a 2004 online chat between a student who called himself “dannyboy” and a mayor who called himself “RightBi-Guy.” Jim West’s sexual conversations with teenage boys and young men – and a computer forensics expert hired by The Spokesman-Review posing as a high school senior – formed the basis of the recall behind his ouster in 2005.
News >  Features

Accepting hearts

A Spokane heart transplant surgeon is embarking on a clinical trial that will wipe out the immune systems of high-risk patients in hopes of ultimately saving their lives. Dr. Timothy Icenogle has been on Spokane’s leading edge of heart transplant surgery and research since soon after he arrived at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center to launch its transplant program. He performed some of the area’s first heart transplants in the early 1990s, around the same time starting to implant mechanical hearts in patients who couldn’t wait for organs.
News >  Health

The hearts of bears and men

How do you perform an echocardiogram on a grizzly bear? Very carefully. But, if you want reliable results, you don’t drug the bears – the researchers at Washington State University’s Bear Center learned that anesthesia affects how grizzlies’ hearts perform, muddling their findings. That’s why scientists there trained four grizzlies from early cubhood to participate in testing: They come when they’re called, amble into large crates, crouch into position – elbows up on a log – and let the researchers pass over their chests with an ultrasound device, creating detailed images of their beating hearts.
News >  Health

The sweetest salves

Monique Kovalenko hasn’t bought deodorant in four years. After living through cancer a decade ago, she’s interested in avoiding mysterious chemicals contained in store-bought products – but also in not being smelly. With deodorants labeled “natural” or “organic,” she failed at the latter.
News >  Features

Zbyszewski wins poetry competition

Tom Zbyszewski, a student at Liberty Bell High School in Methow Valley, placed first in Thursday’s Poetry Out Loud competition. Langston Ward, a student at Mead High School who won the state competition last year, placed second.
News >  Features

Pockets of prose

Twenty years before she died, Kathryn Rantala’s sister wrote 20 pages covering the history of her life. Excerpts:
News >  Washington Voices

Master fly tier donates flies for benefit auction

A dozen fishing flies created by master fly tier John Newbury will be auctioned Friday during a fundraiser for a Spokane man who suffered a brain injury in a December auto accident. The fundraiser will take place from 5 to 10 p.m. at Press, 909 S. Grand Blvd. The event will also include a raffle and other fundraising efforts.
News >  Features

Against the grain

Alicia Troye was exhausted, and her joints hurt. “Everything hurt, all the time,” she said. She was 37. Her doctor ruled out arthritis, thyroid problems and other potential causes of her fatigue and pain. Meanwhile, in an ongoing struggle to lose weight, the Coeur d’Alene woman zeroed in on gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.
News >  Features

Lopez’s ‘word-storm’ hits Auntie’s tonight

Robert Lopez – “a force of literary nature come unhinged,” one reviewer wrote – will give a reading tonight in Spokane as part of Eastern Washington University’s Visiting Writers Series. The author of two novels, “Kamby Bolongo Mean River” and “Part of the World,” Lopez most recently published a short-story collection, “Asunder,” in 2010.
News >  Features

Spokane native’s photos reveal burgeoning music scene in Mexico

Marshall Peterson knew he felt the most alive in foreign cultures, so a decade ago the Seattle schoolteacher caught a ride south and went to Mexico, not sure what he’d find. He took a little digital camera to document whatever it was. Recently, he found himself back in his hometown of Spokane at the opening of an exhibition of concert photographs he made in Guadalajara, where he stopped and stayed. He worked for rock bands to document performances, fans, the scenes behind the scenes – striving to show the whole picture, he said, of a time of change in Mexico’s “cuna del rock,” or cradle of rock.