She’Ll Be Missed, But Not Forgotten

If citizenship is making a difference to the place where you belong, Karen Streeter was a lifelong good citizen. She was certainly too young at age 56 to lose her life to cancer.

Through the sadness, her memorial service at North Idaho College captured the essence of the person she was and the legacy she leaves behind.

Streeter’s public service record was as extraordinary as the number of people whose lives she touched. As many of those friends and colleagues shared stories and memories, the life of this ordinary woman became a fitting eulogy. She certainly lived life well and set an example of citizenship and compassion and teamwork.

When Nils Rosdahl led those assembled in a poignant rendition of “Puff the Magic Dragon” at the conclusion of the memorial, we all knew that Streeter was loving the whimsy and joy in that moment. She will be missed but not forgotten.

A business story last week about Leo Notar buying a vacant downtown lot made me realize that to kids everything seems somehow bigger and shinier than it is in the reality of adulthood. Case in point for me would be the Wilma Theater that stood on the corner of Second and Sherman Avenue in Coeur d’Alene during my youth.

What a grand theater it was, with the big velvet curtains and the secluded balcony where you certainly didn’t want to sit on a first date. I can remember what a big deal it was to watch the Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night” back in the ‘60s on our own silver screen.

Now looking at that 5,000-square-foot grass-covered lot, it certainly seems too small to have held the magical place where we all dreamed so big.

Don Hoffman was just 21 years old when he started running the family business in Post Falls. For nearly 13 years his most important staff member was Toby, a black lab who was in charge of public relations at Hoffman’s Shoe Box.

Although Toby’s size was imposing, he became good friends with customers young and old. Toby lived the good life until illness and old age took it’s toll a couple years ago.

I drove by the store the other day and got a chuckle out of seeing Don and his new trainee. Jack is a “local boy,” a product of Byer’s Kennel and the Lab pup is as wide as he is tall. He certainly knows who’s boss, and I suspect it isn’t Don.

Don joked that Jack is gaining his own fan club, consisting so far of the people who clean carpets and sell large bags of dog food.

I love it when I can find justification for one of my guilty pleasures. A new Tufts University study found that a half cup of blueberries daily can reverse memory loss and restore motor coordination. So I’m figuring that I can substitute the blueberries for huckleberries in season and have one of Paul Bunyan’s famous huckleberry shakes every day this summer.

Kevin Spellman of UltraFit had a great suggestion for those folks at the Census Bureau which would have saved all of us a few million dollars. He said that instead of the nearly $72 million they’re spending to advertise the census, they could have held several million-dollar random drawings from those who had returned their completed census forms.

In view of the hoards of people who stood in line for a shot at the million-plus dollar Powerball prize recently, I think Spellman’s on to something. Of course, as the brains behind this suggestion, it would be fitting to pay him a million-dollar fee for creative services.

When my husband’s brother, wife and son were house guests over the weekend on their way to Seattle, we had some pretty gray and gloomy weather here in the River City. During a Sunday walk in Falls Park, my sister-in-law remarked that it was really cold here and commented that they were enjoying one of the warmest winters on record back home.

Now that’s not necessarily a comical comparison unless you know that Tim and Sue Thoreson live in Williston, N.D.!