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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Adrian Rogers

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News >  Health

The 411 on 85210

It’s no secret that eating healthy food and working up a regular sweat prevent obesity – or that preventing obesity can help prevent chronic illnesses including diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Health advice comes from all directions – doctors, media, friends, school, work. Sometimes, said Emily Fleury, a director at Inland Northwest Health Services, we get so much advice about staying healthy – and sometimes seemingly conflicting advice – that many people file it in their minds as junk mail. They ignore it all.
News >  Features

Bartell is the force behind this week’s international accordion fest

Patricia Bartell is a native Bolivian, adopted when she was nearly 5 by parents who took her home to Charlo, Mont., seven miles northeast of the National Bison Range. Her first musical influence, when it came to the accordion, was one of her 17 siblings – a big brother who got to play one. She was 8 when her parents gave in and let her take lessons, too.
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Tutu shares gift

Naomi Tutu has loved talking all her life. “I think that preaching is somewhere in my blood,” joked the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. “I don’t know where it comes from.”
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Squeeze play

At 7, Naomi Harris picked up the guitar. She put it down after three weeks. “I didn’t practice at all,” she said. “I quickly ended that.”
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‘Little Bee’ characters face moral decisions in immoral world

With the possible exception of U2, as noted by the title character in Chris Cleave’s novel “Little Bee,” there’s not much in arts and culture that everybody likes. That includes literature, which makes choosing a book for the Spokane is Reading program tricky. This year’s program will culminate Friday with two events featuring Cleave.
News >  Features

More from Chris Cleave

With the possible exception of U2, as noted by the title character in Chris Cleave’s novel “Little Bee,” there’s not much in arts and culture that everybody likes.
News >  Features

Puncture perfect

Construction equipment rumbles outside, and Amy Shook lies on her back, her head and knees slightly elevated and tiny needles poking out of her ears and forehead, the backs of her hands, the tops of her feet and the crown of her head. She could not be more calm. Really, she couldn’t be. She’s mother to a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and her husband, a train engineer, often works out of town.
News >  Features

Visual Arts Tour will feature wide range of elements

Some stops on the Fall Visual Arts Tour will have interactive elements, too. The 38-stop tour – starting with opening receptions Friday night and continuing with exhibitions and events Saturday – offers the chance to view work as varied as landscape photography, jewelry made of metals gathered from trash bins and demolition sites, and collages inspired by “Twin Peaks.”
News >  Features

Exercise in disguise

Who can blame us for ditching our running shoes for the remote control? It’s getting dark out there. Soon it’ll be cold. “Modern Family” is back on. Americans gain about a pound a year between late September or early October and late February or early March. They also tend not to drop it – it accumulates, in some cases leading to significant weight gain, according to a study published in 2000 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
News >  Features

The power of forgiveness

The end of love isn’t the end of a story by Shann Ray Ferch. In the new story he’ll read tonight in Spokane, love comes first. Then comes hatred, then comes violence, then comes forgiveness.
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River Artist Studio Tour helps fill void left by Inland Crafts

In the unsteady business of fine arts and crafts, the Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour strives for balance. Saturday’s self-guided tour will span the studios of five artists who live and work near the river. Each will display their own work and host several guest artists.
News >  Features

Schools start to wash hands of sanitizers

Alcohol-based hand sanitizer, once considered an easy eradicator in a germ-filled world, has lost some of its luster, including in some schools. Recent studies have shown that sanitizers don’t kill all germs and may do more harm than good by creating a false sense of cleanliness – when people use hand sanitizer, they cut down on the soap-and-water washing, which works better to prevent the spread of illness.
News >  Features

Training children to build immunity, fight germs

Maybe your kindergartner, so eager and bright-eyed in the first week of school, got pink eye in the second. Maybe your preschooler’s persistent sniffling has become her built-in beacon. Follow the trail of sodden tissues.
News >  Health

One treatment left standing for gonorrhea

As health advocates have warned for years: This is not your father’s gonorrhea. In the old days, all it took to wipe out most cases of “the clap,” a sexually transmitted bacterial infection, was a course of penicillin.
News >  Health

City of Spokane ready to get the lead out

The city of Spokane has more than $3 million in federal money to pay to reduce lead hazards in low-income homes, and it’s ready to start spending. Its Lead Safe Spokane program provides low-interest loans that mostly turn into grants – about 75 percent of each loan is forgiven.
News >  Features

Living with lead

To test, or not to test, kids for lead poisoning. In Spokane, the question is put to parents. Unlike some states, Washington requires no blood-lead testing of children before they start school; parents and doctors are encouraged to assess each child’s level of risk and test accordingly.
News >  Health

blues

Oh, their aching necks, shoulders, rib cages and lower backs. As students haul themselves and their start-of-school supplies into classrooms this week, some may be risking injury. Packed too heavy or worn improperly, backpacks can cause pain that endures into adulthood. More than 2,000 backpack-related injuries were treated at doctor’s offices, clinics and emergency rooms in 2007, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
News >  Health

Technology overload can spell eye discomfort

Good news, kids. Despite what your parents might promise, you probably won’t wreck your eyes by playing video games or poking at your cellphone for ridiculously long stretches of time. There are plenty of other reasons not to do those things, said Alan Johnson, an optometrist at the Spokane Eye Clinic. But “you can’t really have any permanent damage to eyes from using a computer, whether you’re a child or an adult.”
News >  Health

Vision quests

Luke Nease was an unusually squirmy kid, but his mother never suspected vision problems. Luke regularly saw his pediatrician, who also never suspected the boy couldn’t see out of his left eye. It took a school vision screening to raise a flag; a subsequent eye exam found he has refractive amblyopia, aka “lazy eye.”
News >  Features

In November, Idaho to offer suicide prevention hotline

It’s been six years since Idaho – where the suicide rate ranks among the highest in the nation – has had its own suicide prevention hotline, a free and anonymous source of support for people in crisis. That will change in November, when organizers say the Idaho Suicide Prevention Hotline will open five days a week, with the goal of eventually operating 24 hours 7 days a week. Idaho is now the only state without its own nationally accredited hotline.