Jonathan Brunt

Milton Johnson, the chairman of Whitworth College’s music department for 27 years, first conducted Handel’s “Messiah” on Dec. 7, 1941. As the orchestra in Alexandria, Minn., was practicing that afternoon, the bass soloist, an Army reservist, who was supposed to sing the aria “Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage?” was called to active duty.

There’s still a market for art during a recession, but it’s harder to make a living, say many of the artists working this weekend at the Art on the Green festival in Coeur d’Alene. Emmett, Idaho, painter Paul Sloan – and many others at the event – said more customers are requesting unframed art or smaller prints. “The volume of sales is the same, but the sales price is lower,” Sloan said.

There’s still a market for art during a recession, but it’s harder to make a living, say many of the artists working this weekend at the popular Art on the Green festival in Coeur d’Alene.

Truella Stone often witnessed car crashes during slick conditions in front of her store along Freya Street Cars driving over a railroad bridge struggled to stop at the light at Broadway Avenue. Trucks heading north from the Broadway intersection had difficulty gathering speed to make it up the incline.

It’s not easy to goad Nancy McLaughlin into a fight. Even during the most passionate Spokane City Council debates, she’s among the least likely of the seven members to shout, go on the attack or personally criticize her colleagues or audience members.

Mike Allen was the surprise choice of a divided City Council when he was picked to fill an empty seat 18 months ago. At the time, Allen said he didn’t plan to run for the District 2 seat after the term expired. But earlier this year, Allen gave up his job as Eastern Washington University’s corporate and foundation relations director to run for a full term.

A lane of travel in a block of a downtown street will be eliminated this summer to make way for a bigger parking lot. The Spokane Public Facilities District next week plans to start construction on a new lot across from the INB Performing Arts Center to replace a hodgepodge of lots currently on the site.

As a kid, James Browning was disappointed he couldn’t use the broken slide at Spokane’s Witter Pool. More than a decade later, as a lifeguard, he heard constant gripes about the still-unfixed slide. But Monday, when he helps open the first two of six new city pools as Shadle Pool’s assistant manager, broken slides will be replaced by two-story-high tubes with intense curves, water playgrounds, gradual entries, fountains and tanks for lap swimmers.

Two decades after the ground was broken on Spokane’s most popular bike and pedestrian pathway, several stretches of the 37-mile Centennial Trail remain incomplete. The largest gap, between Riverfront Park and Riverside State Park, forces users onto city streets, and safety concerns also exist where it crosses Mission Avenue near Perry Street and at Argonne Road. Kaye Turner, executive director of the Friends of the Centennial Trail, shares her thoughts on the trail’s future. Q:Are you surprised that 20 years later, it’s not complete?

A 4-year-old playing with a lighter probably started a fire Friday morning that seriously injured his mother and destroyed their east Spokane home, a fire official said. The woman, Tawnia Embree, woke up in a bedroom and saw smoke and felt intense heat, said Assistant Chief Brian Schaeffer, of the Spokane Fire Department.

A 4-year-old playing with a lighter likely started a fire Friday morning that seriously injured his mother and destroyed their east Spokane home, a fire official said.

As a kid, James Browning was disappointed he couldn’t use the broken slide at Spokane’s Witter Pool. More than a decade later, when he was a lifeguard, he heard constant gripes about the still-unfixed slide.