Shawn Vestal

If you want to “fix schools,” apparently, there’s one group of people you should ignore. Teachers.

Cooking is often the last thing a firefighter wants to do with a fire. “ ‘I don’t want to cook,’ ” said Spokane Fire Lt. John Griffith, imitating the whine of the noncook. “ ‘If I have to cook, here’s what you get.’ ‘I burn water.’ ”

Summer has finally arrived in Spokane, just in time for the city to close the pools. Well – close the pools to people, that is.

Ten years ago, Jack and Evans Anne Snizik were volunteering as campground hosts in a beautiful spot a long, long way from New York City. There was no TV reception, and sparse radio reception – which ordinarily is part of the charm of the beautiful spot on the southern end of Lake Wenatchee in north-central Washington. But even there, the Sniziks felt what happened on that singular September morning almost immediately. Their daughter called from Spokane as she watched the events on TV. “I remember my youngest daughter saying, ‘Oh My God, Mom, the towers are falling,’ ” Evans Anne said.

If I suggested that no one could succeed in business in Spokane without polluting the river and trampling on workers’ rights, I’d be called an ignorant Bolshevik. So, of course, I’d never do such a thing. But that’s sort of what the business “community” did Monday night, as one organization after another lined up to tell the City Council that they were very concerned that the Community Bill of Rights would drive away business and cost Spokane dearly.

Kids sprawl on the couch, teasing and bantering. A young man cuts up a watermelon in the kitchen. Laptops pop open. The fridge door opens and shuts, opens and shuts. A rowdy group plays a game before a dry-erase board – a combination of charades and Pictionary. “OK!” a woman shouts. “I ordered pizza for dinner. It’ll be here at 5:30.”

It took just five years, 20 weeks and a day. But finally we’re hearing the truth about Otto Zehm from Jim Nicks.

I’m not sure when I turned over the title to my soul, technically. It might have been the moment I dragged out my “smart” phone to occupy 10 seconds while I waited, perched on a wooden giraffe, for the Carrousel to start at a 4-year-old’s birthday party. Or the first time I used that phone to check Facebook while waiting impatiently for my desktop computer to boot up.

When all the new jobs that the new spending cuts are bound to create finally get created, will someone please call Anjanette Lal? Lal is what the government calls an “exhaustee.” She’s been out of work for 27 months. Her search for a job lasted longer than her unemployment benefits. She’s cobbling together an existence from government programs, but what she wants is a job as a medical assistant – something she trained to do, graduating Nov. 30 with honors from a 10-month program.

It’s Saturday morning. Do you know where your market is? We’re at a high-water mark – at least for recent years – regarding the availability of fresh fruits, veggies, local foods and summer vibes here in the land of the buffet. There’s the regular downtown Spokane farmers market, 13 years old this summer, and the fledgling Spokane Public Market, a year-round indoor market with food and produce, as well as a variety of other vendors.

Duane “Swede” Nelson’s diary entry for April 1, 1945, was unusually long and detailed. You can understand why. He writes about the invasion of Okinawa and his surprise at the initial lack of resistance he and his fellow Marines encountered, compared to the fierce fighting he’d seen elsewhere. He describes the sight of a Japanese plane being shot down – and a bit about the countryside and agricultural fields. He mentions the “swell steak” he had for dinner the night before, and the pig they butchered for dinner on the island. He mentions his buddies Zito, Raven, Ski, Ronzino, and Stinnette – who shot a Japanese soldier with his Tommy gun.

The story of the Spokane economy is a good news-bad news scenario. But it’s no joke. The recovery has arrived with a vengeance for some people. Everyone else is still treading water in a still pool, and it takes no guesswork to figure out who’s who, because it’s a rule of thumb: We overvalue big shots and undervalue underlings.

They call them “Brady officers.” If you ever find yourself arrested, they’re the ones you want to catch you. A Brady officer is a cop with a record of untruthfulness. On a witness stand, they could be a defense attorney’s dream. If a prosecutor gets a criminal case filed by a Brady officer, that officer’s record is “discoverable” – meaning it should be turned over to the defense as exculpatory evidence.

In the early morning hours of April 5, Robin Braun woke up and tried to get out of bed. A diabetic, Braun was having an insulin reaction and needed to eat something to raise her blood sugar quickly. But the reaction also stole her coordination – she fell to the floor and found herself unable to move.

The story of Ora and Vachel first floated vaguely through Florence Kirk’s family lore. Her Aunt Ora, it was said, “had a man in her life,” though she never married. Later, it emerged that Aunt Ora had forged a close friendship in 1920s Spokane with the flamboyant poet Vachel Lindsay. He died in 1931, a suicide, and she died, broken-hearted, several weeks later.

Kelty Walker grew up in an isolated trailer house in the woods outside Blanchard, Idaho. “We took five dirt roads to get to the trailer,” she said. “It was out there.”

Now for the insult. The Ridpath Hotel has suffered several years of gradual injury. Now, just as the city is pressing property owners to address health and safety problems, five teenagers have been arrested for allegedly breaking into the empty hotel and going on a Fourth of July vandalism spree.

PULLMAN – The journalism students on campus here this week aren’t preparing for careers covering things like the Casey Anthony trial. The news that Halla Khoury, Sama Zeriea and their fellow visitors from the Middle East want to report is more along the lines of checkpoints and warfare and revolution.