Rebecca Nappi

Alice Walker

You be the boss. You've got this guy in your office who's smart, hard-working, liked by just about everybody. Trouble is: He sometimes drinks too much and then likes to corner women and stick his tongue down their throats. He's a leg-stroker, a crotch-grabber, an elevator-masher.

It's open season on welfare moms. They attend public forums and the audience boos them. Strangers see them cash their public assistance checks and sneer, "Happy Mother's Day." A sweetsounding woman in her 80s calls the newspaper with her solution to the welfare crisis: "Sterilize those lazy women." Every six months or so, our society selects a group to trash without any worry of political correctness. It was blondes a few years back, then white males, then Christian Conservatives and now welfare moms are in the trash spotlight. So maybe it's a good thing welfare reform is most likely dead this legislative season in Washington state. Talks between Senate and House negotiators collapsed last week. Legislators couldn't agree on how long welfare recipients should collect benefits. The Republicandominated House wanted full benefits to end after two years with an extension, at a reduced rate, of 18 months if no jobs are available. The Senate's proposal would allow families to collect benefits for 3 1/2 and reduced benefits for an additional 18 months.

Ah, Lilac Parade time comes next weekend. The floats. The princesses. The marching bands. Be sure to look for the 60 or so women in white (and some in period costumes) who will be marching to celebrate the 75th anniversary of women getting the vote. Cheer them on! Give a salute! The women will be members, friends and family representing several women groups, and representatives of the two sponsoring organizations, the League of Women Voters and the Spokane Women's Club.

Janet Reno, attorney general, is in trouble for being, as some call her, "chief of the federal thugs." Marion Hammer, the future National Rifle Association president, is in trouble with people who favor the assault weapons ban. Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth is in trouble for not distancing herself far enough from the militant militia. Former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders got in so much trouble she lost her job. Women in trouble. What a wonderful thing. Everyone who believes women deserve to be treated as equals in our society should celebrate each time a high-profile woman gets in trouble for the right reasons. For sticking to her guns. For refusing to apologize if she's right. For admitting a mistake. For telling the truth, even if the truth is painful.

You walk into your basement and see clutter everywhere. Boxes of old clothes. Magazines from the 1970s you vow one day to read. Broken appliances you plan to fix soon. You paw through the clutter and find a dusty painting. You clean it off and discover that the painting is a Rembrandt! Would you leave it in the basement? Not a chance. Remember the Rembrandt in the basement tomorrow as you run Bloomsday. As you make your way up Doomsday Hill, look over your right shoulder. You'll see a clutter of bushes, trees and overgrown grass at the edge of the Spokane River. A masterpiece hides there, a Rembrandt of nature. In three places, the Spokane-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer bubbles to the surface in the form of mountain streams. The source of drinking water for much of the Inland Northwest, the 135-square mile aquifer is a slow-moving underground river, clogged with rocks. Because the aquifer is out of our sight, we take it for granted. But were it ever to be polluted, we'd pay plenty to unpollute our drinking water.

Bea McElroy

Today marks the third-annual Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Young girls might be hanging around your workplace, watching. You might catch some boys peering at you, too, because there's a protest movement on against this girls-only stuff. Most workplace behavior will be stellar today. Bosses will be complimentary. Parents will work enthusiastically to impress their children. Keep in mind, however, that the lasting messages our children receive about work come at home, from you, after hours. So it's important to convey valuable lessons about work to your children every day.

The widowed among us are fluent in the language of grief. They know that saying such things as: "It was God's will" or "You're young, you can always marry again" are much more hurtful than helpful. They know that grief is an exhausting and tricky beast with a timetable of its own. They know that individuals grieve at different paces. And in different ways. They know the only way around grief is through it.

Louis Rukavina was channel surfing. Click. A news account of a huge banquet honoring local sports stars. Click. A national news report on science and math scores of school-age children. Out of 15 industrial nations, the United States ranked near the bottom. Click off the TV. Click on the idea in Rukavina's head. Why not honor students who are scholars, the way we honor student athletes? Make it an elegant affair. Give away BIG scholarship money. One man. One thought. The Spokane attorney worked the phones. He called fellow attorney Bill Etter. He called Dr. Eric Johnson. The three men coached football together at Cataldo School. "You get the docs; we'll get the lawyers," he told Johnson. They were like Mickey Rooney and his gang in those old movies: "We'll put on our own show!"

The Spokane County Domestic Violence Consortium is a group of men and women from law enforcement, the courts and social services who have banded together to fight domestic violence. On Tuesday, from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. at Sacred Heart Medical Center's Providence Auditorium, the consortium will provide training to members of the public on all aspects of the problem. Spokane Police Chief Terry Mangan is the keynote speaker. The Rev. Brenda Tudor of Moran United Methodist Church will address religious issues as they pertain to domestic violence and a panel will discuss services available in our community. Call 487-6783. Call now for camp: Ah, the carefree days of girlhood. Weeks spent at camp, in beautiful surroundings, learning new things and forming friendships that lasted, well, a few years. The Girl Scouts Inland Empire Council is offering Women's Camp 1995 from Aug. 11-14. For more information, call 747-8091 or (800) 827-9478. Brain debate: Thanks to Karol Maybury for an eloquently written letter responding to Michael Gurian's column about chemical and structural differences in the brains of men and women that might help explain some of the difference between the sexes. Maybury, a social psychology doctorate student, disagrees with the thesis. "Despite the attractiveness of ideas like 'Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars,' the sexes are quite similar in many ways, though our environments, how people perceive and judge us, are quite different. For whatever reason, perhaps the increasing conservative mood in our country, research findings in which no sex difference is found, or in which environmental explanations are put forth, are not considered newsworthy. We want global gender differences and we want biological explanations for them! Alas, that is not the scientific reality." Women Helping Women: Thirteen Spokane programs have been selected to receive funds raised during the Women Helping Women luncheon to be held May 2. Author Anna Quindlen is the speaker. The programs include: Women's and Children's Free Restaurant, the YWCA's Alternatives to Domestic Violence Safe Shelter, The Children's Ark, Lutheran Social Services' Acquaintance Rape Program, Breast Cancer Task Force at Sacred Heart, the Comprehensive Preschool at Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center. Programs at St. Joseph Family Center, Crosswalk, Miryam's House of Transition, STOPP Youth Help Association, Catholic Family Services, the Life Skills programs of the Community Colleges and Family Service Spokane will also receive money. For information on the luncheon, call 747-0802.

Robert S. McNamara is an old man now. But he is frozen in many minds the way he looked as he helped choreograph the Vietnam War: The wire-rim glasses, the stern expression, the demeanor that said: "I am in charge. Don't question me." At 78, though, McNamara is finally questioning himself. In a memoir to be published this week, McNamara admits that the United States should have withdrawn from Vietnam in 1963, when only 78 Americans had been killed. The former secretary of defense should have, he says now, forced a probing debate about whether the war could ever be won.

Question: "What does the typical Spokane resident consider great culture?" Answer: "An all-you-can-eat buffet."

George Eliot didn't publish until she was 40 years old.

Click on television's daytime soap operas and enter a parallel universe. Here, women wear dresses at home. Middleaged men have glorious hair. When women characters languish in the hospital, they wear makeup - mascara, blush, eyeliner! In the universe of soaps, husbands and wives cast each other aside as easily as old sweaters. The Daytime Emmy Awards nominees were announced this week, so it seems an appropriate time to explore how soaps help erode some of our culture's most important values. Fidelity. Commitment. The old wedding vow: for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

A New York City artist has set up an answering machine in his home. He calls himself "Mr. Confession" and he urges men and women to call. They do. They confess to lying, cheating, lusting. They feel better after telling someone their woes. Mr. Confession provides this service for art's sake, but he's a bit like the Spokane Human Rights Commission. The little-known, taxpayer-financed commission listens to citizen complaints about perceived injustices. Since it opened in May 1992, the commission has collected more than 160 complaints of human rights violations, ranging from the trite to the troublesome. Most of the alleged violations occurred in workplaces and in schools; half have been race-related.

Craig T. Nelson

Like horror stories? Forget Stephen King. Pick up the March 6 edition of The New Yorker and read Susan Cheever's article on nannies. You'll meet monstrous men and women who work 16-hour days, pay their nannies dirt and treat them like dirt, too. You'll meet rich children living in emotional poverty. One nanny says: "You shouldn't have kids if you're not ready to make adjustments." Amen. We witnessed another battle in the country's child-care war recently when O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark battled with her ex-husband over custody of their two small boys. The Marcia supporters say she has a right to a brilliant career and her children, too. The ex-hubby camp says since Mom's so busy, Dad should get them.

The woman's essay begins: "I was blessed (yes, blessed) with a form that can only be described as buxom." In the March-April Utne Reader magazine, the writer describes encounters with a coworker named Jerry. He said things such as "I like my women meaty." One day, he said: "You look like Lauren Bacall today." How did she handle it? Read on: "Regardless of his intentions, I still felt the atmosphere was all wrong. I said the first thing that popped into my head: 'You look like Don Knotts today.' And with that one seemingly simple phrase I triumphed over eons of eyeballing, decades of depravity, and centuries of sexual harassment. And it was all achieved without pissing, without moaning, and certainly without licentious litigation."

The interview with the doctor was not going well. Some doctors, if the truth be told, think journalists are kind of stupid. Then the doctor made a reference to the 18th century novel "Tristram Shandy." I told him I'd read the book. I said: "Remember how that character drops a chestnut in his lap early in the book and then it isn't mentioned again for about 100 pages?" We laughed together about Laurence Sterne's digressions. The doctor warmed up and the interview went smoothly.

Gheorghe and Elena Turcin fled Romania for the United States in 1982. They ended up in Spokane, sponsored by a church. They knew no English, received public assistance and lived in a poor section of town. Despite their circumstances, they attended college and worked full time. Now, more than a decade later, Elena is a nurse and Gheorghe works for Washington state as a community corrections officer. They have built a home in a nice section of Spokane. Gheorghe helped with the labor.

Ann Lesperance, a scientist, was in Latin America on business and during a meeting, one of the men made repeated derogatory comments about her. She finally stood up and said: "Never say anything like that to me again." Not only did he stop, but all the men in the meeting treated her with more respect. Lesperance told this story at the Northwest International Women's Conference held recently in Seattle. The conference message was hopeful: Men and women can work together to bring about much-needed changes that will make the workplace more humane and productive. But the transformation will be marked by growing pains. We've seen some in past weeks. Gov. Mike Lowry is under investigation for possible sexual harassment. Sam Angove, a 26-year veteran of the Spokane County Parks Department, announced he will resign in May. Complaints had surfaced that Angove's brusque style created a hostile work environment. Kootenai County recently paid $7,500 to a former legal secretary who said she was fired for complaining about sexual harassment.

It was early morning at the conference center in downtown Seattle. More than 1,500 women filled the enormous meeting hall. The place needed some warming up so Ysaye Barnwell, composer, singer and Ph.D., led the crowd in a sort of Bible hymn. Women swayed, clapped their hands and sang: "We've got to keep hope alive in this world today. So every day, we've got to pray on, pray on." It was clear the Northwest International Women's Conference: A Forum for Global Leadership was not going to be any ordinary conference. There was a sense it would find its way into history, a touchstone event that mapped out a new way to lead in the world, a way that combines the unique strengths of women and men. Around the country, 10 similar conferences were taking place the first weekend in February.

It is not politically correct to blame the victims of battering for their fate. To ask: "Why don't they just leave?" But our society must stop coddling victims by blaming everyone around them. This blame game takes power from women and forces them to wait. Wait, while cops get more training. While the courts get tougher. While men attend anger-management classes to unclench their fists. Instead, women - those battered and those not - need to get active in the fight against this epidemic. Women-power is awesome. Women give birth, juggle multiple roles, run countries. What would happen if women channeled their energy to stop the battering? We believe much of it would end.