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The Slice: You could always build a tall fence

I hadn’t ever thought of human rights violations in terms of real estate.
But then an e-mail arrived at Slice Headquarters from my friend Liz Cox.
“I was skimming though the ads in Craig’s List for Spokane and saw a house advertised as having ‘unspeakable views.’ Made me wonder if I should alert Amnesty International.”
Not to worry, Liz. It’s probably just a reference to living across the street from a strip mall or having neighbors with six cars in the yard.
Of course, not all the definitions of “unspeakable” are negative. So I’ll just pipe down.
•Re: that seemingly random reference to finding happiness in Spokane that appeared in The New York Times Sunday magazine: I heard back from the writer of the piece, Virginia Heffernan.
“I had to think about it, but I think I can trace my fixation on Spokane,” she wrote.
“I grew up in New Hampshire, and as a kid was drawn to Spokane (seeing it on the map) as very far away and glamorous and yet still miraculously in the same country as my town. In my head, I originally had Spoke-AIN but somehow pretty early on I discovered the real pronunciation, and prided myself on knowing it. Hm, at least I hope Spoke-ANN is right.
“In any case, since my NH town was tiny, I imagined almost every place as bigger, and I was sure Spokane was a giant metropolis, especially since it wasn’t in New England and thus there was no way it could be how I imagined parochial to be.
“Anyway, that’s it. I just say it to myself when I need to think of a far-off and foreign and yet American place.”
I wrote back and invited her to come visit and do a travel story.
•Far from perfect: Here’s a note Slice reader Tracey Hirt sent me Monday.
“Yesterday afternoon my parents were out for a ride on their motorcycle. At Third and Cedar, they spotted an elderly man with a walker tumble over in the middle of the intersection. It took about three minutes for them to navigate traffic in order to get to where he was. During that time they witnessed at least 15 cars swerve around him and continue onto the freeway on-ramp. No one except my parents stopped to help. These other drivers just let him lie in the middle of the street, unable to get to his walker or to right himself.
“ … My mother said to me in a sad tone of voice that this was the first time in her life she was ashamed to live in Spokane.”
•Today’s Slice question: Who around here would be the champion when it comes to identifying the musical themes to old TV shows in five seconds or less?