Shawn Vestal

Boots Reynolds got cowboys right. That’s how he made them laugh. Over decades as a cartoonist and painter, he became famous among horse people for his comic spirit and colorful images. But his artwork thrived on a deep, lived sense of Western authenticity – from the droopy brim of a cowboy hat, to the drag and drape of chaps, to the sometimes cantankerous bond between horse and rider, to the effects of time and gravity on a face or a body. Boots got it right.

On Sunday, police arrested Christopher Cannata on suspicion of car theft. It was the first time Cannata had been arrested since May. Which was the first time he’d been arrested since March. Which was the first time he’d been arrested since February.

My son got whooping cough last year. He didn’t whoop much. He didn’t miss much school. It wasn’t a big deal.

The mayor and police chief have made a point lately of talking up their downtown efforts – efforts to stymie crime and nuisance, to show a stronger police presence, to spiff up the gateways into the city. The new downtown police center, in the STA block, has merited not one but two news conferences in 21 days. And that doesn’t count Chief Frank Straub’s appearance before the cameras this week to tout a decrease in downtown crime – a response to the complaints of a business owner who blamed unresponsive police, in part, for his bar’s closure.

The Ridpath’s future keeps bumping into its past. This time, a bit of chicanery from five years ago has gotten tangled up in the competing efforts of two high-profile Spokane developers to bring the Ridpath back to life. Ron Wells wants to create an apartment tower at the Ridpath; Art Coffey wants to bring it back as a hotel. But neither owns all the pieces of the hotel. Now they’re on opposite sides of a lawsuit that aims to resolve exactly who owns what and what can be done there.

Hold on a second: Is Washington good for business? I don’t mean not bad, but actually good? Not unfriendly? Not hostile?

One obituary is a portrait of an individual. Several are a portrait of a place. A recent Sunday’s worth of passings told a tale of the Inland Northwest that included bankers and beer salesmen, soldiers and sailors, huckleberry pickers and lifelong baseball fans – all the variety and history that produce a community.

Fifty years ago, Jane Johnson’s mother heard the news that there would be a new kind of school starting in Spokane. The community college would take over vocational-technical training from the local school district and add academic programs that would allow students to transfer to four-year schools. As common and essential as this approach seems now, it was brand-new – and not universally welcome – at the time.

Our brief green season is upon us. If you’re eager to celebrate at one of the farmers markets, don’t forget the one that supports the growth of more than vegetables. The West Central Marketplace officially opened for the season Tuesday, in its new spot on the welcoming grass of A.M. Cannon Park. It’s part of Project Hope, the nonprofit that uses soil and seeds to teach job skills, money management, gardening and other life lessons to kids from difficult backgrounds in the West Central and Emerson Garfield neighborhoods, where poverty and its attendant problems are prevalent.

Listening to those who get all beet-faced over immigration, one might get the idea that there are two, and only two, kinds of immigrants: “legal” and “illegal.” But, as with all vapid oversimplifications, those categories simply don’t accurately reflect the human beings and their families who come to this country from other places. Thirty-one-year-old Jorge Guerrero and his family illustrate this perfectly: Guerrero was born in Mexico, came to America with his family in the 1990s as residents under President Ronald Reagan’s reforms, graduated from high school, joined the Navy and served overseas for eight years – during which he served in the Iraq War and became a naturalized citizen.

Once again, the mask of “educational reform” has slipped to reveal its real face: anger toward teachers. Anger toward teachers – always prefaced, conditioned, softened and front-loaded with B.S. – is perhaps the single biggest factor motivating those who don’t want to pay for schools. Every now and then, this might slip our minds as we listen to the rhetoric of “reformers” – who talk about bringing technology into the classrooms, empowering principals, disempowering unions, grading and punishing schools, raising standards, setting priorities, etc.

We need more cops. This is old, old news. We needed more cops last year, when the mayor decided that what we needed was a tax freeze. We needed more cops several years ago when the police department announced a free pass for property crimes because of a staffing shortfall. And we needed more cops when the department walked that back furiously, all while blaming – who else? – the media. We needed more cops when the mayor and police chief announced their nifty new reorg, which we need less than we need more cops.

When Sabrina Sorger and her husband, Roian Doctor, first rolled out their food truck last year, they got a lot of visits from Spokane city officials. First, they were told their Jamaican Jerk Pan truck was parked in a residential area. Then another employee revised that – it was commercial, and they were OK. Then there were concerns over the truck’s electrical cord crossing a sidewalk.

The problem with games of chicken is that the dumber driver wins. Whoever is most willing to crash the car wins. Whichever drunken teenager mistakes foolishness for principle carries the day.

One of the most important, and least considered, factors influencing what happens in classrooms is what happens in lunchrooms. That’s because lunchrooms are where a school’s relationship to the socioeconomic realities of its community are most glaringly apparent. As much as we argue over myriad issues surrounding education – from testing to charter schools to teachers unions – there is an insurmountable truth in the lunchroom: Impoverished children bring massive challenges into schools. Many of the problems that have been identified as school failures stem as much from poverty as anything.

Private booze just had its first birthday. How’s this baby doing? As might have been expected: Predictions of falling prices have not come true, on average. Predictions of dire public safety problems have not come true, either. We’re buying more booze, we’re buying it from a much larger variety of sellers, and the state is a little richer with booze taxes than it used to be. Restaurants and bars, meanwhile, have cut back on liquor purchases from distributors, and the big-box stores are killing the little guys.

Are you on the list? Talk about a question that cues its own ominous music.