Chris Peck

On this second weekend of November, two questions seem to occupy the minds of many Inland Northwesterners. 1) Should we wait for the last leaves to fall before raking the lawn? 2) Has anyone checked the anti-freeze?

The cab driver from the airport had much to say. Wheeling down I-70 on an early fall evening, he offered a common-man critique on this region where he has piloted cabs for 22 years.

For 28 years, Linda Deutsch has simply done what most people in this country do each morning - get up and go to work. In the last year, however, much of the world suddenly began to pay attention to Deutsch's daily chores. Deutsch, an Associated Press news reporter, covers the courts in Los Angeles. So Deutsch was there to hear every witness, every argument in the O.J. Simpson trial. Deutsch has been the solid, anonymous reporter recording California courtroom dramas for the more than 1,500 daily newspapers in America that rarely can afford to send someone to cover the bizarre California trials of Charles Manson, the Menendez brothers, Angela Davis or Patty Hearst. Her coverage of these trials entered into the American memory even if her face and name did not. In the past year and half, though, she has covered what others hyped as The Trial of the Century. To her surprise, Deutsch became something of a star. Her lifetime of coolly observing the drama in Southern California courtrooms suddenly became a hot asset. Throughout the O.J. Trial, she regularly appeared on TV, probably the most grounded and nononsense commentator on the circus in Judge Ito's courtroom. So in these raw days after the verdict, as the nation struggles to understand the trial, the judicial system, and the profoundly different ways black and white America perceived the result, we might all consider a bit of salve being applied by Linda Deutsch.

The Big Unit walked slowly from the pitching mound. He had just given up a home run that put his team down 4-0. He threw hard. He worked every pitch. It wasn't enough.

Basically, our society has demonized tobacco companies and the people who use their products. We have our reasons. We know regular use of tobacco will kill perhaps 400,000 Americans this year and cause serious illnesses for thousands more. We know our living rooms smell when people who smoke light up. So, we've pushed those who smoke or chew out of our offices and homes, and bad-mouth the tobacco people and the tobacco companies with vigor.

While pumping gas at my neighborhood station on Friday, the Spokane science center came up. "I know a good place for the science center," the store's owner said as I forked over a $20. Say what?

From what I can tell, voters in Spokane won't be casting a ballot Tuesday on who created the universe. A recent letter to the newspaper, however, suggested otherwise. In explaining why they would be voting against locating a science center in Riverfront Park, Steve and Debbie Dunham wrote: "Our children will leave the center full of ideas that the theory of evolution is fact and that they did indeed evolve from a slime pool millions of years ago." "They will learn there is no God who created them, and our moral code that is based on the Ten Commandments is no longer relevant to them." I checked the Ten Commandments again, but alas, they still don't include, "Thou Shall Not Be Paranoid."

Many people think Ben and Jerry started it. In 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded an ice cream company in an abandoned Vermont gas station and pledged a portion of their profits to charity and social projects. But, America's favorite dessert has been flavored with a social conscience long before Rain Forest Crunch.

Not long ago a letter arrived at the the newspaper accusing us of a variety of infractions. The front page, the writer complained, isn't the whole truth. Editorials, the writer pointed out, aren't the gospel.

On Tuesday, most young children of the Inland Northwest will safely be seated in school. Rachel Carver will not be there. The dark-haired girl who would have been entering fourth grade at Spokane's Ridgeview Elementary was assaulted and killed June 15 - the last day of school.

Driving back from Yellowstone or Glacier national parks, many Pacific Northwest travelers pass through North Idaho's Silver Valley. As the highway goes through Kellogg, back-seat voices inevitably ask, "What are those big towers?" The towers, or stacks, are part of the Inland Northwest's mining history and heritage.

Unpublished correction: The name of Allison Cowles was misspelled in the published text.

Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in a California drug treatment center Wednesday, and there was genuine mourning in the land. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a God or a flawless man. He drank too much, ate too much, ingested illegal drugs and had bad exercise habits. But the passing of this legendary guitarist for the Grateful Dead nonetheless should be noted for what it says about America.

For school administrators, government officials and public agency budget directors, the summer of 1995 is sweating-bullets season. No sitting back on the deck this season. Those who are given the task of charting public-spending priorities are just trying to avoid a train wreck. On one end of the track is the engine of cutting government spending.

"I'm a teenager, Dad," my daughter said with a lilting voice and melt-a-heart smile on the morning of her 13th birthday. I was grateful for the merry words and show of teeth. Becoming a teenager compels many perfectly normal girls and boys to experiment with a variety of other verbal tones and facial expressions.

The IMAX theater's cool, dark auditorium was empty except for a few men who, 21 years ago, had a hand in building the big screen. They didn't step as lightly as they had in that summer of 1974 when the finishing touches were being applied to the IMAX and other attractions at the site of Spokane's world's fair. "We all used to go down once or twice a day and be sidewalk superintendents," recalled Ed McWilliams, president of the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce in 1974.

Here's the difference between a real neighborhood and an on-line computer neighborhood: In a living, breathing, real-life neighborhood the grass really grows, dogs really bark, and the neighbors can actually see, hear and smell what is happening next door. In a computer-based neighborhood, it's just dots on a screen. Much hype and misplaced hope is being pushed along the information superhighway. A future of world communities! The promise of unfettered communication! Kindred spirits linked up night and day! Pull the plug on all this garbage. The world of cyberspace and virtual communities is a poor, sterile substitute for what really is going on next door.

What's the biggest problem threatening Spokane's future? Fractured, feuding, flawed local government. That's the answer given again and again to a consultant hired by the Spokane Area Economic Development Council.

Silicone breast implants, it turns out, don't appear to cause serious diseases in women. That's the conclusion of researchers at the Harvard Medical School.

Jeff Burningham's brain has been bashed regularly with the music of Pearl Jam. Classmate Brandon Enevold's mind has been routinely invaded by Arnold Schwarzenegger's violent movies. Jeff and Brandon are 18. They live in the Spokane Valley.

My most cherished bric-a-brac at the lake appears to be nothing more than a few weathered strips of moulding, shortened lengths of 2x4, and fragments of pine board. These treasures lie, like untrained country kittens, beneath the almost-level deck my friend Ted Wert and I built 11 years ago on a cabin overlooking Lake Pend Oreille.

FOR THE RECORD: (June 4, 1995): The U.S. Geological Survey's maps are available in room 135 of the downtown Spokane Post Office, 904 W. Riverside. The location was listed incorrectly in Chris Peck's column last Sunday.

At the Crescent Court in downtown Spokane a few days ago 550 business people prayed earnestly for local government. This 33rd Annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast was the biggest ever for the city. Ron Kinley, an insurance and financial planning businessman who has helped organize the prayer breakfast for 20 years, isn't one of those voices heard so often bashing government. "Our goal at the breakfast is just to honor our elected officials because Christ commands us to do so," he said, citing a passage from Romans 13.

My friend Jim Taft bought an electric car a couple of years ago. This was his way of doing what he could for the cause of clean air. He wanted his public life to resonate with his private concerns about the fate of the earth.