If anybody appreciates the value of a penny – even better than Washington state’s fiscally strained  lawmakers – it’s the Spokane Guilds’ School.  Every year as part of its fundraising, the nonprofit organization appeals to the region’s schoolchildren to reach into their pockets literally for their pennies. And, as children do, they respond. Eagerly.

The sedan ahead of me was barreling along the byways outside of Kansas City, and I was glued to its bumper. The Washington state trooper at the wheel was hustling Gov. Dan Evans to his next speaking engagement and wasn’t worrying that traffic or red lights might throw me off his trail.

Whatever it was that was so shocking about South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst during President Barack Obama’s health care speech on Wednesday, it wasn’t the simple breach of decorum. Decorum, if you haven’t noticed, is extinct. We lost it long ago. I’ve become increasingly sensitive to its departure, not only because of what goes on daily in the news – or the cable TV screechfests that pass for news – but also because of the sour tone of political discourse that takes place in The Spokesman-Review’s own letters column.

It's spring, the season when, as poet Joan Walsh Anglund put it: "... new life presses out from every growing thing, fulfilling our trust, renewing our faith, that this has always been, that this will be again."