Chris Peck

Talk radio routinely reminds me of what a jerk I really am. For a few months now, my bad thinking, bad upbringing and bad internal compass have been popular topics on Spokane's most vociferous radio shows. This personal jerkiness comes from working at a newspaper, one of the truly sinister threats to society according to boys like Richard Clear and Todd Herman. Day after day these most ornery, opinionated and obnoxious talk radio hosts read the paper and find material they describe as left-leaning lies that have trapped the masses in a mushroom-like existence where they are fed bull and kept in the dark.

Farmers on the Palouse of Eastern Washington and across the border in Idaho rise early these days, and not just because of planting season. The men and women who still work the land for a living feel an ill wind. For 60 years, farm life here has been built on a series of interconnected assumptions that city people and the region's politicians agreed were important. Everyone agreed farming is an essential industry. Even as children moved off the farm, we still agreed on the value of locally controlled farms.

In any given week I come across a whole cell block of people I think need to be locked up. For example, my daughter rode her bike to Spokane's Riverfront Park with a friend a few days ago. While at the park a greasy guy who security officers later said was a convicted sex offender started to harass the two girls.

Washington Gov. Mike Lowry rose to his feet in the capital mansion a few weeks ago and asked for advice from his assembled guests. "I need your help in improving my public image," he said with a small laugh. The room full of Washington's newspaper editors and publishers giggled nervously with him.

Chase Middle School didn't expect all of this. When teachers, students and administrators moved one mile east and 37 blocks south from the old Libby Junior High last fall, few anticipated the new school would become so divided over issues of race, culture and basic civility. Wasn't this the school named for the late Jim Chase, Spokane's beloved black mayor?

Let's get personal about the proposed cuts in public radio and public TV funding. Think of your own household finances. Imagine they aren't looking so good. Over the years, you've run up the credit cards. Then the adjustable rate mortgage began to rise.

Around noon Monday hundreds of hungry kids will rush the school lunch rooms in Spokane's suburban Central Valley School District. They will be famished. "We see lots of kids on Monday come to school just starving," said Gary Pannell, food service supervisor for Central Valley. "We think it has something to do with not having met the daily nutritional requirements over the weekend."

Cathy McMorris, a newly-elected legislator from Colville, used to play the piano for Woodlands community theater productions in Kettle Falls. Yankee Doodle was one of her better shows.

After a long day in real life I sat with my wife and ate a piece of Valentine's Day candy at midnight. This sweet celebration at home marked 25 years of Valentine's Days spent together. The quiet while kids were sleeping was the best gift we had. In the living room, we took the opportunity to simply talk and reflect on the years and the tears and the triumphs.

Proponents of Valley incorporation are getting way ahead of themselves and they need to chill out. A few nights ago, a crowd of overheated incorporation supporters tried to muscle the state Boundary Review Board into a rushed judgment on whether to include the industrial area known as Yardley within the boundaries of the proposed new city. What's the rush?

Does this sound familiar? Forty years ago a national teachers survey found the most pressing problems in schools were: talking, running in the halls and chewing gum. Then, very recently, teachers were surveyed again about the biggest problems in the classroom. This time they cited guns, drugs and assaults on staff.

Mississippi just plain has it backward. Crime won't stop with a good spanking. Instead, a growing body of evidence suggests spanking actually may increase the chance of violent behavior and, by extension, violent crime.

Joe McKinnon, father of the idea Spokane's suburbs should be incorporated into a separate city, often speaks two words to explain his reason why: local control. "This is what it's all about," McKinnon said a few days ago when asked for an update on the rationale for establishing a city in the suburbs.

Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman ripped the buttons off a newspaper photographer's shirt a few days ago. I understand the instinct. Every day I work around photographers.

Readers of The New York Times discovered North Idaho a few days ago. Sitting in their comfortable townhouses on the Upper East Side with a bagel and espresso, they turned to the Sunday New York Times Magazine and saw, probably for the first time, many of the people who constitute our local color. Bo Gritz, the survivalist ex-Green Beret, was there on his Clearwater River estate known as Almost Heaven.

Muffin is just a dog. At least that was the way someone looked at the pup one dark winter's night as a car crept across a bridge above the Spokane River.

Spokane may never have an NFL football franchise, but it can be in the big leagues in another category. On the second floor of the Cheney Cowles Museum sits a small plexiglass case with the big-league future of the Inland Northwest's cultural infrastructure inside.