Pia Hallenberg

It’s the Wednesday before the long Thanksgiving weekend and most of the students at Hillyard’s Shaw Middle School are looking forward to a few days off with family and a couple of great meals. Others know that they will be hungry long before they can return for free breakfast on Monday morning. Study after study shows that hungry children have a hard time focusing on school work. Schools have free breakfast and lunch programs to make up for some of the hunger issues – for some kids, school has become the only place they can count on a meal. Once they get home, they are on their own.

On a gray Tuesday afternoon, about 20 students were staying after class at Holmes Elementary School. They weren’t in trouble. They had been nominated by their peers to be part of the school’s Peacemakers Program, a leadership class supported by Camp Fire USA’s Inland Northwest Council. As the kids settled down after a group exercise about sharing and working together, Camp Fire’s Erica Nolte asked them about the experience.

The vintage and jewelry boutique Veda Lux, 1106 S. Perry St., was burglarized for the first time on the night of Sept. 28. Crooks made off with vintage wares, jewelry supplies and the cash register. Summer Hightower, owner of Veda Lux, later got a call saying the register was at the gazebo in Grant Park. The register was retrieved and Hightower’s father was called in to repair and reinforce the busted back door.

Into how many pieces a pan of pumpkin dessert can be divided may not be a concern at an ordinary family Thanksgiving Dinner, but the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant is expecting to feed 1,200 people on Saturday – and volunteers want to make absolutely sure there’s dessert for everyone. “I always talk to the servers about presentation,” Karen Orlando, volunteer coordinator at the restaurant, while taste testing and cutting dessert on Monday. “We want to make sure everyone gets a nice-size serving and that it looks good on the plate.”

Casey Ager is pretty sure his former classmates at Ferris High School would call him a nerd, but that’s all right with him. He’s now an undergraduate at the University of Washington and as part of a team of 20 undergraduates and six graduate students, he helped take home the top award in the International Genetically Engineered Machine World Championship Competition – iGEM – last weekend. “We still can’t believe it,” said Ager on the phone from UW. “Usually it’s a school from Europe or Asia who wins the top prize.”

Saturday's highlights

Pages of Harmony barbershop chorus, a Spokane-based group, is celebrating its 60th anniversary by celebrating someone else: a group of Spokane’s Pearl Harbor survivors. Pages of Harmony’s 35-man choir will perform a special program of patriotic music Friday at the Lincoln Center, including “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “God Bless the USA” and “Mansions of the Lord” from the Mel Gibson movie “We Were Soldiers.”

Say “Girl Scouts” and people are likely to answer with “cookies, camp and crafts.” Everyone wants their Samoas or Thin Mints when cookie time comes around, and most organizations would be proud to have created a fundraiser that’s become an American institution. Yet cookie profits are not quite enough to pay for all the Girl Scout programs, so the Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho are now launching a $1.3 million fundraising campaign to reach the final goal of $2 million.

The Spokane Garry Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is raffling off an oil painting by Ralph Carson to raise money for a new flagpole at a monument to Spokane Garry the group established in 1964. The monument is on the south side of Drumheller Springs Historical Park, on West Euclid Avenue, where Spokane Garry built a school in 1830.

The Spokane Garry Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is raffling off an oil painting by Ralph Carson to raise money for a new flagpole at a monument to Spokane Garry the group established in 1964. The monument is on the south side of Drumheller Springs Historical Park, on West Euclid Avenue, where Spokane Garry built a school in 1830.

The year was 1996, the day after ice storm hit. Libby McGrory Hodges had a lot on her mind while she finished up clients at the hair salon where she worked. At 31, she had just become the mother of an adopted son who was 2 months old at the time. And before going home, she had a doctor’s appointment to check out a lump in her breast. “I remember driving up to Sacred Heart, seeing the ice on the trees and the branches breaking off. It was surreal,” said Libby. “I thought it was just a cyst in my breast. It never occurred to me that it could be malignant.”

Don Winant said he’s not an animal rights activist, but when a personable little tuxedo cat showed up at his door about a month ago he did exactly what “they” say he shouldn’t have done: He fed it. “I started to feed him tuna. We were sharing. He’d get half a can and I’d get half a can,” said Winant, who’s a physiologist and lives just north of the Gonzaga University campus. “I know; if you feed them you own them.” Soon Winant had set up a cardboard box with a cozy blanket in it on his front porch, and the cat began hanging out there.

Trek and Treat in Hillyard

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