Huckleberries Best of the INorthwest — 6/21/06

Emerald Heights Elementary School sixth-grader Rachel Adamson,12, plays with a dragonfly at Island Lake County Park on Tuesday in Silverdale, Wash. Rachel was there with the sixth-grade class for an end-of-the-school year picnic/Larry Steagall, AP Photo/Kitsap Sun.

Stapilus: No such thing as a Republican for Larry Grant here ?

1. David Horsey /Seattle PI has hit on a good idea re: how to fix our national parks here .

2. Two Drummond, Mont., athletes lost sports privileges after tasting wine at a Washington state winery during a senior class trip whose chaperones included the chairman of the school board and his wife here .

3. People who can walk to shops and services in their neighborhoods are more fit and less likely to die in car crashes. That’s the finding of a new report released today by the Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) on sprawl and health in the Pacific Northwest here .

4. Pastor Randy Mitchell advised a Meridian congregation not to hate the man responsible for purposely slamming into an oncoming car, causing the deaths of Samantha Murphy and her 4-year-old daughter, Jaelynne Grimes here .

5. The family of a Medical Lake High School student is fired up over a graduation policy that prevented their daughter from wearing a cultural sash she earned for getting good grades here .

6. IMHO-NW: D.F. Oliveria /Spokesman-Review ( Walls and bridges ), Rebecca Nappi/Spokesman-Review ( Studying abroad provides key lessons ), Dan Popkey /Idaho Statesman ( Idaho GOP cautiously optimistic ), The Kalispell Daily Inter Lake ( Preserving park peace ), Brian Murphy /Idaho Statesman ( American soccer’s unnecessary roughness ),

Online Poll: Only 19.8% of 1018 respondents to an Idaho Statesman poll say they know “quite a bit” about soccer.

*Montanan sues psychic over bad “bad karma” fix here .

*Washington AG Rob McKenna : State government workers can opt out of union membership because of religious beliefsm here .

*A Billings woman with leukemia gets a life-saving bone marrow transplant from a brother she didn’t know she had here .

Orbusmax Special: Pre-eminent American Indian psychologists fudges tribal ties, degrees here ; and: Top Microsoft exec leaves unexpectedly here .