Alison Boggs

Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Ron Edinger said Wednesday he’s the victim of a smear campaign because he believes the proposed makeover of McEuen Field should be put to a public vote. In a statement released to the media, Edinger said he never used his position to help three of his grandsons get jobs with the city. Two of them have worked part-time for the city for years, he said; a third worked seasonally for the streets department.

Peg Kingery knows the feeling that comes over her when she steps out into a river and casts her line, hoping a cutthroat trout will rise to the fly. “It’s a tremendously healing, peaceful, fulfilling activity,” the Moscow fly fisherman said earlier this week while fishing on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. “If fly-fishing can be even a tiny bit to them what it is to me, that would be awesome.”

A golden eagle found grounded as a baby flew free for the first time Thursday morning after more than a year of rehabilitation with a Coeur d’Alene raptor biologist. Jane Fink, executive director of Birds of Prey Northwest, released the eagle during the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s annual Elders Dinner gathering, attended by hundreds of people from tribes throughout the Northwest.

On the eve of their districtwide cross-country race, Seltice Elementary School students in Post Falls received race tips from two marathoners who work as personal trainers at a nearby athletic club. Heath Wiltse, a 25-time marathoner, led the students Tuesday in stretching exercises before they took to the field for laps. He swung his legs back and forth, jogged in place, then walked the gym’s perimeter, squatting into deep knee bends with each step.

A Smithsonian Institution conservator gently unwrapped a 110-year-old doll Thursday, preparing it for installation in a new exhibit at Old Mission State Park in Cataldo, Idaho. “It’s something coming back to us,” Coeur d’Alene tribal elder Felix Aripa said of the doll crafted by a tribe member. “I say welcome home,” he said as he watched Greta Hansen of the National Museum of Natural History lay three dolls – a Native American man, woman and child – on a table.

Anticipating both a November 2012 ballot initiative and state legislation to legalize medicinal marijuana, social services agencies in Coeur d’Alene are organizing to educate the public about what they call the dangers of drug legalization. “Our whole goal is we want our people educated so we can put pressure on the legislators not to pass it. We don’t want it. I know there’s a lot of people that do want it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t,” said Anita Kronvall, director of the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council, which is supporting the Kootenai Alliance for Children and Families in hosting two mid-October events.

A nonprofit ice arena in Coeur d’Alene that has been rebuilding since a 2008 roof collapse received a major boost Thursday when Frontier Communications announced a seven-year, $175,000 contribution. As a result, the Kootenai Youth Recreation Organization ice arena on West Seltice Way will be renamed Frontier Ice Arena. The Fortune 500 company provides communication services in rural America and acquired much of Verizon’s landline operations in 2010. The agreement calls for the company to donate $25,000 per year for seven years, Daniel McCarthy, Frontier’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, announced at a Thursday news conference.

In dozens of camps along Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River, Coeur d’Alene Indians used stone tools to pound and grind meat, berries and roots. The handmade tools would be left in the water, where they would continue to be shaped by its flow. Dozens of the tools were used by Indian families on the tribe’s aboriginal lands dating to ancient times, said Cliff SiJohn, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s cultural awareness director. Since the tribe stopped using the lands, numerous artifacts have been picked up by visitors and kept as souvenirs, he said.

When one lifelong resident of Priest River, Idaho, learned a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution would spend more than a month in her hometown, this was her response: “I never thought I would see the day the Smithsonian came to Priest River.”

Three generations of Michelle Parkin’s family have taken the bus to Coeur d’Alene schools from the same Wolf Lodge area bus stop, until this year. Cutbacks forced the district to look for savings in its transportation budget and three rural bus routes were trimmed – in Wolf Lodge, the north side of Hayden Lake and Cougar Gulch – with service consolidated in those areas.

A teenage brother and sister from Coeur d’Alene recovered former NFL quarterback Drew Bledsoe’s stolen mountain bike.

A teenaged brother and sister from Coeur d'Alene recovered former NFL quarterback Drew Bledsoe's stolen mountain bike.