Shawn Vestal

Things are tough all over – even, it turns out, in the acoustic and architectural wonderland of the Fox Theater. A labor dispute has erupted between the Spokane Symphony’s musicians and administrators, and the tune is depressingly familiar: The economy is doing a number on an organization, and the resulting scramble to keep the ship afloat has resulted in cuts in staff, pay and morale.

At least one leader at Washington State University is kicking butt this year. President Elson Floyd has proposed holding the line on tuition increases. He has asked WSU’s Board of Regents to tie tuition increases to the Consumer Price Index, the government’s measure of inflation, rather than jacking up tuition by five or six or 10 times that amount, as has been the default position for years throughout higher ed.

As the campaign for Referendum 74 rolls along, you might fall under the impression that people of faith – all of them – are opposed to gay marriage. That this historic vote before us is a battle between the godless and the godly. Or at least the insufficiently godly with those who are properly so.

The Coeur d’Alene School Board has made it clear. The kids whose educations are under their charge do not reside in the world. They are not global citizens. They live in Idaho, and Idaho only.

When “everybody knows” something, everybody is often wrong. Jim McDevitt says that’s the case when it comes to the widespread assumption – which has had an airing in this column – that the fix was in on our new police chief, Frank Straub. The conventional wisdom held that Mayor David Condon handpicked Straub, ignored the advice of advisers, and that the process of gathering and evaluating input from lots of different people was a sham.

It happens every time a victim of child sexual abuse wins a lawsuit: the cries that these people are only in it for the money. Only in it for the money. Only in it for the money. It’s a club wielded by those whose moral compasses are just spinning wildly. But the lawsuit-only system of addressing these past crimes does beg a question: What about other avenues of justice? What if the clock never stopped ticking on the criminal prosecution of child rapists?

Tucked into a corner of Riverfront Park, near the big red wagon, are a pair of large, concrete planters, one uphill from the other. At least, that’s what most people would see. Jarrod Swanson sees opportunity. He scans the city landscape – garbage cans, railings, stairways, benches – and asks: “How can I play with it?”

We have a lot of gaps in this country. There’s the achievement gap in schools. The income gap. The opportunity gap.

Mayor David Condon once referred to himself as an “action guy.” Eight months into the strongest example so far of Spokane’s strong-mayor system, the term seems apt. Action Guy! Cutting through red tape! Slicing through the fog of negativity! Getting stuff done!

Hal Dixon once told me that we live in different worlds. Different political worlds, surely – Hal is a conservative, and I am not. But Hal, who is the most thoughtful guy who writes regularly to point out how wrong I am, was talking about something else entirely: how our work lives shape our political lives.

Nearly every Friday for a year or so, my son and I have made a little trip to the Spokane Public Market. We get a drink, buy some fruits and vegetables and maybe a piece of fish or a tiny cheesecake. Sometimes we’ve eaten pizza or tacos. The vendors are nice to the boy, and it reminds me of going around with my parents in the little Idaho town I grew up in when I was a kid, saying hi to everyone. No big deal. A small, good thing.

School has started, just in time to ride the wave of our collective political pretense: Education is our top priority. That’s certainly the phrase to which everyone pays lip service. It’s certainly ingrained, admirably, in Washington’s Constitution. It’s surely something everyone in politics says, especially now that the state Supreme Court has ordered the Legislature to live up to its constitutional responsibility to provide “ample” funds for schools.

The news release arrived, as they do arrive nearly every day, announcing the latest example of corporate justice. A huge company is accused of breaking laws and regulations. The allegations rouse the corporation’s legal and PR teams. A sum of money is paid, a sum that may seem huge to you and me, but which is something like coins in the couch for the corporation.

Thirty years ago, a small band of people were walking across America, from the west side of Washington to Washington, D.C. The following spring, they continued their pilgrimage, after a flight to Ireland, all the way to Bethlehem. They slept in church basements and in homes. They ate lentil soup and peanut butter sandwiches. They broke bread with people in the Midwest and Yugoslavia and points between. All told, they covered 6,500 miles in 20 months – on foot and in the spirit of one of the lesser-heeded teachings of Jesus Christ: “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.”