We’Ll Let You Write Your Own Headline

Tue., April 11, 2000

By Paul Turner srpaulturner@gmail.com

A friend at WSU passed along some startling statistics.

In the United States, dogs produce 3.6 billion pounds of waste annually. That’s supposedly equal to 800 football fields piled with dog doo one foot high.

And just think. Virtually all of it is deposited in the front yards of individuals who do not own dogs.

People are so wonderful.

* Slice answers: Lance Hagler said a Bargain Hunters Hall of Fame would seem right at home in Spokane.

And Ken Martin said the Lilac City ought to be the site of a Buffet Hall of Fame.

* Seven key questions:

1. Does a backyard grill really need a global positioning system?

2. Is there ever any chance that a waitress or sales clerk is being sincere when complimenting your choices?

3. Who is the Spokane area’s most morally superior bicyclist?

4. What will it take to get people to take seriously the link between too much sun and skin cancer?

5. Have you ever discovered a restroom at a park or ballfield/tennis court that was actually unlocked?

6. Is there anything sadder than those “Mutts” comic strips in the Sunday paper when the focus is that tied-up dog left all alone?

7. How many people around here call their bank by its old name?

* Defending “North Idaho”:

“Do you suppose the folks who worry about calling it North Idaho would be comfortable if we renamed that mall on northern Division Street? Or would NorthernTown sound weird even to them?” — Ed Reynolds

“North Idaho is a State of Mind, in which you either live or not. Calling it northern Idaho separates the residents from the nonresidents.” — Marita McDonough

“The carpetbaggers can say what they will. Those of us who grew up here know better.” — Rose Dempsey

* Pets/Homework Department: When Tara Leininger taught high school history and geography, her cat Sherlock Holmes liked to snatch papers and bite them. “My students always enjoyed having their work `corrected’ by the cat,” she recalled.

* Family Phrases Department: Something said back in her college choir days (a tenor addressing an alto) has inspired Sierra Lawrence to refer, on more than one occasion, to “sectional harassment.”

And young Bradley Benjamin started something when he responded to beckoning by saying he’d be there in “a couple whiles.”

* Today’s Slice question: How many different kinds of flags can be found flying outside Inland Northwest homes?

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