Stefanie Pettit

There is an old wooden chapel that sits quietly in the woods just a short walk west of the Commons building on the campus of Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute. Dwarfed by the large ponderosas surrounding it, this little chapel began its existence many miles away on the Peone Prairie as part of the St. Michael Mission, the outreach to the Spokane Tribe begun in the 1860s by the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church. The chapel was relocated in 1968 to its present site in an effort to preserve it.

We baby boomers know all too well that aging can do unkind things to our bodies. Some of it is just normal stuff – maybe a slight hearing loss, slower gait, sluggish GI tract. Or maybe a little more impactful – high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease. Or some of the big guns – stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s. And maybe worst of all is the feeling of vulnerability, sometimes depression, that comes along sneakily as we see our strong selves being diminished.

“Trees are your best antiques.” – Alexander Smith,

The first time I can remember ever eating homemade preserves of any sort was when I was in ninth grade and my friend’s Czechoslovakian grandmother served us some sort of relish that she had made. I recall thinking how old-fashioned and old-worldly it was that someone would go to the trouble to do such a thing, even though it was darned good. Ah youth.

When Lisa and Jim Van Nostrand drove up to Spokane from their home in Kennewick last year for their 25th wedding anniversary celebration, they posed for a formal portrait outside the old South Hill home where they had their first apartment. Building owner Rebecca Mack let them set up camera and lights for the picture at 1210 S. Adams St., the vintage home that had been subdivided into apartments not too many years after it was built in 1906.

I was 5 years old and living in New York City when I had my tonsils removed. As a reward for being a brave girl, my mother took me to Broadway to see Mary Martin in “Peter Pan.” I was hooked (no insider joke intended) and I’ve been going to the theater ever since. Broadway and London and Ashland, semi-professional theater, community theater, college and high school productions, and children’s theater.

When they returned home to their farms and families after fighting in World War I – the Great War, the war that began 100 years ago this summer – one of the things the young men from Rockford did was establish an American Legion Post. They named it for Edward Leehan, who died on a battlefield in France, the first soldier from Rockford to die in the war. After meeting for a year with Grand Army of the Republic veterans of the Civil War at a church in town, the Edward Leehan American Legion Post 165 decided it needed a home of its own, so the members cut trees from the Mica Peak area and dragged the logs on horse-drawn bobsleds to a spot on Emma Street, by the west side of Rockford Creek, where they built what became known as the Log Cabin Post in 1921.

It was summertime several decades ago when as a newlywed I moved to Spokane and I first heard that familiar phrase: “We’re going to the lake.” I didn’t know much about the area, being new here and all, but I was pretty sure there was more than just one lake out there that a person could cool off in. “Which lake?” I’d ask, and then I’d be told – Lake Coeur d’Alene, let’s say. But the next time I’d hear the same sentence from the same person, I’d assume the speaker was heading to Coeur d’Alene again only to discover that this time it was to Williams Lake.

The bell atop a pillar just outside the administration building at the Hutton Settlement isn’t just a decoration, and it isn’t any old bell. The bell comes from Northern Pacific Railway Company’s Engine 109 and was brought to the Hutton Settlement at the request of founder Levi W. Hutton.

As this newspaper’s resident self-appointed curmudgeonly old person, it is incumbent upon me to be sure the rest of you are behaving properly. When the offenses pile up, it’s time to speak. What has piqued my concern of late is your perfectly awful behavior behind the wheel, and I would like you to stop – immediately – doing several things.

When Expo ’74 opened, several pieces of public art were already on site, commissioned for the fair and to remain afterward as permanent installations in what would become Riverfront Park – Sister Paula Turnbull’s garbage-eating goat and Glen Michaels’ Moon Crater being among the more recognizable ones. But there was another piece of art being installed as the international exposition opened – Ken Spiering’s Mountain Sheep, not part of the officially commissioned Expo art works but now very much a part of the public art collection in the park. As it was then, it remains today – lovely, but a little hard to find.

Today I feel compelled to give some advice: Get out of town. No really, do it. It doesn’t have to be for long and it doesn’t have to be far or expensive. Just go.

This is a story about a couple who married this winter and the little sign from the universe they received just before saying “I do.” They didn’t need a sign, as they had been together more than nine years and knew what they wanted, but a sign is a sign, so they didn’t question it.

Arbor Crest Wine Cellars’ Cliff House sits on a bluff overlooking the Spokane River surrounded by a sunken rose garden, arched gatekeeper’s house, herb garden, open-air pagoda and beautiful spaces to walk in and around, and to attend luncheons, concerts or weddings – and, of course, for wine tasting. And then there’s the square-wheeled tractor. There it sits, something of an anachronism, but one of the pride and joys of inventor Royal Riblet, who developed the hilltop site into his own spacious home and gardens at 4705 N. Fruithill Road in 1924.

When I wrote recently about taking a little time to learn about some of the things I see along Interstate 90 as I make my many trips back and forth to Seattle, I was surprised at how many people encouraged me to report back my findings. Apparently there are a lot of us who want to know more about the everyday things we normally take for granted as we pass by at 70 miles per hour. The first time I wrote about the very visible Sprague Lake and Mount Stewart, places hard to miss but about which I knew pretty much nothing. With my eyes open and my brain actually paying attention, I’ve discovered a lot. And so I share again.

When railroad construction allowed the Northern Pacific Railroad to connect Spokane with Chicago and other large cities to the east and west in 1883, Spokane’s city founders hired an official architect to help guide the design of new commercial buildings with the goal of perpetuating the image of Spokane as a progressive and prospering city. That architect was Herman Preusse, a German immigrant who had settled in Spokane just the year before. He set about designing the Glover Block at what is now Howard and Spokane Falls Boulevard, the Post Office Block, the Frankfort Block at Main and Howard and many others. Sadly, his prodigious work was largely destroyed in the great fire of 1889 which consumed most of downtown Spokane.

My friend Hugh Davis has a rather eclectic collection of antique things, many of which have to do with words and communication. He used to have 19 vintage typewriters, but his wife persuaded him that the space they occupied could perhaps be better used otherwise. But he does love books, and his daughter Dana recently gave him a wonderful old dictionary as a gift, one she found in an antique store here in Spokane. It is the 1904 Common Sense Dictionary with Every Day Helps. KnowingI , too, would appreciate all this book represents, he kindly loaned it to me, and I have been gently turning the pages ever since.

Kendra Canton is a young woman with boundless energy, a busy life and some grown-up responsibilities – all of which she handles with grace and a strong sense of faith, believing that God hasn’t given her anything she can’t face. “I believe I have a good relationship with God even though I am really busy,” said the 18-year-old Rogers High School senior, whose greatest pleasure is hanging out with family and friends, although still “very attached to my cellphone.”

Clemence Kitambala is a shy, introverted and soft-spoken young woman whose gentleness belies the difficulties she has already overcome in life. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she was a young child when warfare broke out, and she witnessed terrible things. Her family lost their home and everything they owned. With her mother and younger siblings she became a refugee in Uganda, where she lived until two years ago when they were relocated to Spokane by World Relief.

In the Rwandan culture women keep their names upon marrying and children born to them do not necessarily carry their mother’s or father’s surname. Names can be chosen by the family. This is how Douglas Kempthorne came to be named. His father, Theo Mbabaliye, was studying at the University of Idaho when genocide broke out in his homeland of Rwanda in the mid-1990s. Desperately wanting to bring his wife, Immaculee Mukakalisa, to America, he sought help from Idaho’s Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, who successfully helped him in obtaining a visa for her. And so when a child was born to the couple, they named him Douglas Kempthorne – now a 17-year-old senior at Gonzaga Prep School, about to graduate and with the goal of going on to medical school.

One million people take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test every year to determine if they are eligible for military service and what roles in the military they qualify for. When North Central High School’s Elijah Hiler, 18, took the exam, he placed in the top 6 percent in the nation, an exceptional accomplishment.

If anyone ever wondered where Gabriel Soileau’s heart lies – clearly, it’s in music. It has been all around the Lewis and Clark High School senior his entire life. He recalls his earliest memory at about age 4 listening to the Chinese, Cajun, Celtic and African songs his parents played in the car as the family drove from their home in Fairbanks to settle in the Lower 48. His parents Xiao Ping Li, an acupuncturist, and John Soileau, a naturopathic physician, met in Alaska but decided to raise their only child in Spokane, surrounded by the music they love. And young Soileau has thrived and excelled in all things musical.

When she was a little girl, Anne Walter remembers climbing the 16 steps leading to the huge front doors of the Heath Branch of the Spokane Public Library at 525 E. Mission Ave. “It was three blocks from the house where I grew up,” she said, “and I would walk to the library all the time. The sheer size of it, the stone steps. I felt so important going up them and come out with an armful of books. And the books were free! How wonderful that when I was done reading them I could come back for more.”