The Slice: No longer smells like a drought

One great thing about the recent rain is it probably dissolved a few tons of the dog droppings weighing down Spokane’s parks. Maybe, for a while, playing catch will be slightly less squishy. OK, let’s move on.

•Slice answers (middle name stories): “I was a progressive young mother in the 1970s and I named my son Beau-Daniel,” wrote Roberta Garner. “As you know, Beau means beautiful in French and Daniel was for my brother. The dash was just a fun, eccentric addition and I figured there was no need for a middle name at all.”

Years later, while filling out an application for a Social Security card for her son, Garner wrote “none” in the space for the boy’s middle name.

You guessed it. The card arrived with the name “Beau-Daniel None Garner.”

“While he was a student at Whitworth College, some of his classmates heard the story and started calling him ‘None Garner,’ ” his mom wrote.

At graduation, a playful professor read the name as “Beau-Daniel None Garner.”

His mom is certain some in the audience that day had to be wondering who would give a son a middle name like “Nun.”

Tonda Habets was named for a character played by Hedy Lamarr in the 1942 film “White Cargo.”

“She played an island girl named Tondalayo,” wrote Habets. “Mom loved that name.”

But her father feared it would be tough to spell. “So they cut it in half,” said Habets. “My name is Tonda Layo.”

Kristy L’Rae Bennett’s middle name was the first name of an older sister’s friend. “I always thought my name was beautiful and unique…until I got older and found out my sister’s friend was named after her dad,” wrote Bennett. “L’Rae is Earl spelled backward.”

•Internet exercise: Go to your favorite search engine and type in “Coverage you can count on” or “Your local news leader.” Then tally up the number of media outlets across the country using those slogans.

•Buried in her back yard: “Each year when I till the soil in my rose bed and garden I dig up three to five pieces of glass,” wrote Sherri Sly, a South Hill resident.

The green and blue shards are thick and look like they might have come from art deco fixtures. (“Old batteries” is her uncle’s theory.)

“Should I run screaming into the night?”

•Slice answers: What would men learn from reading romance novels?

“That women read porn,” said one male caller.

“That women are as unhappy with reality as men are,” said another.

But Marilyn Othmer suggested it could be educational. “What they would learn would not be suitable to print in a family newspaper,” she wrote.

•Today’s Slice question: What’s your family’s No. 1 “lost in the woods” story?