New Magazine Specializes In Good News
The free tabloid at Super 1 Foods looks like a television guide, but a Lake City High School cheerleader smiles from one cover, a Coeur d’Alene engineer from the other.
A glance inside finds stories on parenting, local kids and hobbies, how to choose a day-care center, the foreign-exchange student experience. It also includes 75 activities for a rainy day and a comprehensive calendar of family-oriented events.
“I just look at this and say, ‘I had no idea all this existed,”’ says Kiki Miller, publisher of the new North Idaho Family Magazine.
The Kootenai Alliance for Children and Families started the magazine last summer to give people a solid dose of good family news.
The 40 agencies, schools, organizations and programs in the alliance began with a newsletter to communicate with one another. It evolved into a magazine for the public.
Kiki runs a small publishing company and volunteered for the job. She joined the alliance last spring after organizing child care for the Kiwanis’ huge playground project in Coeur d’Alene’s City Park.
“I don’t have kids,” she says. “So this is how I’m part of the ‘village.”’
Ads and sponsors cover the printing costs. If the magazine ever earns money, Kiki will pay her staff. But earnings aren’t the project’s goal.
“Of all the projects I have, this is not a moneymaker,” she says. “But it’s meeting a need.”
That need is twofold - her own need to contribute, as well as many families’ need to do better.
The fall edition tells parents how to prepare for conferences with their children’s teachers, where to take children during a crisis, which business people in Kootenai County do great things for kids, how teenagers pick and pay for cars - and more.
It’s a keeper.
North Idaho Family Magazine is free and available at Kootenai County chambers of commerce, all Super 1 Foods, at health district and school offices and from any alliance member.
One of our own
St. Maries Medal of Honor recipient Vernon Baker knows he’s reached the big time when he sees his face on books. “Lasting Valor” just hit bookstores in the region and Vernon’s is not the only local name on the cover. Spokesman-Review reporter Ken Olsen’s name is there, too.
Ken poured months of research, writing, sweat and stress into the project. Go meet Ken and Vernon at The Bookseller, 311 Sherman, in Coeur d’Alene from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Sunday or at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane at 7:30 p.m. Monday.
Dinner guests
If you have enough turkey to share this Thanksgiving, invite one of the 50 foreign students at North Idaho College for dinner. The students come from all over the world and live in NIC’s dorms or in apartments around town.
They don’t have host families who share every American custom with them. Most have no clue what Thanksgiving is about, but they’d probably love to tell you and your dinner guests about traditions in their own countries.
If you have room at the table, call NIC’s Gene LeRoy at 769-3381.
Better Spudnuts
Apparently the best Spudnuts are made with special flour sold through the Spudnuts Corp. That, according to Ben Zimmerman, whose parents ran Coeur d’Alene’s Spudnuts 50 years ago.
For those dying for the real thing, call 1-800-772-8828 and order your flour. Add water and yeast, cook in oil, and, voila - Spudnuts. Or head to the Spudnuts Shop at 228 Williams Blvd. in Richland.
What Panhandle treat drives you wild? Express yourself to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; or send a fax to 765-7149, call 765-7128 or send e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo