Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Author had start in North Idaho

D.F. Oliveria Staff writer

For those keeping score at home, Dave Boling, author of “Guernica” and one of a dozen 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers picks, cut his teeth in journalism as a CDA Press sports writer. Doug Clark, then the Press editor and now the S-R’s zany columnist, hired Boling 25 or so years ago because he was intrigued how an ex-college footballer could write so well without journalistic training. Boling walked into the Press office sick from drinking bad water while logging and desperate for a job, as my buddy Clark tells the story. He’d worked the steel mills in Chicago and then the forests in the Northwest after starting as center for the University of Louisville. Clark liked him right away – and he had an opening for Boling assisting then sports editor Dale Grummert. At the Press, Boling strutted his stuff as a writer and joined Clark in bedeviling former publisher Roy Wellman by, among other things, turning off the light when Wellman was in the men’s room and turning up the newsroom thermostat when he was on a energy conservation kick. Later, Boling joined Grummert on the Lewiston Tribune sports desk, before joining the S-R for a while and ultimately moving on to the Tacoma News-Tribune. “Guernica” is a top seller in Spain and on its way to becoming an international hit. In it, Boling fictionalizes about the infamous bombing of a Basque village that inspired one of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings. In it, you’ll also read the “gritty, in-your-face Chicago style” that Clark discovered after taking a chance on Boling.

An Idaho vandal?

Some of you may know that Hauser Resort manager Lacy Hynes has applied for the vacancy created on the Hauser City Council by the resignation of Bill Madigan. But did you know that the relatively recent graduate of Lewis-Clark State College has a short history of vandalism in her distant past? D.J. Nall of the Hauser Thoughts blog was remarking to hubby Dave about how nice it would be to have a young person on the council, when Dave brought her up short. “Isn’t she the one who wrote on my pump house?” Now, let’s fast-backward to the time Lacy was in the first grade. She and other first-graders lived at the Nalls’ mobile home park. One day, Dave noticed some letters on the building he’d just finished painting – giant letters spelling something harmless that could be seen by traffic passing by on Hauser Lake Road. The Nalls immediately suspected Lacy. How’d they know she was the culprit? D.J. explains on her blog: “Lacy was the only one who could print that well, and she left her initials on her work.” Surely, D.J. continues, she’s “outgrown the graffiti time of her life.” Mebbe. But it sounds like Lacy wants to leave her fingerprints on City Hall and the ordinances that govern Hauser’s residents.

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: From sea to sea across this nation/our pigeons have no education;/they know less math than you or I,/and yet how well they multiply – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Thoughts On Pigeons No. 7) … At Get Out! North Idaho, reviewer OrangeTV (aka Patrick Jacobs) offers “18 Oddly Named Local Eateries.” Huckleberries’ll give you his Top 5: Wily Widgeon Café (Hope), Nosworthy’s Hall of Fame (CDA), PauPau’s Kitchen (Hayden), Kynrede Café (Hayden), and Chic-and-Chop (Bonners Ferry). You’ll have to check out his blog site (http://getoutnorthidaho.blogspot.com) for the other 13 … Quotable Quote (re: notorious Hang-Obama sign in Bonner County): “How is Idaho ever going to move its reputation beyond “potato sanctuary” if it can’t even shake “bigot sanctuary”? “Napoleon Dynamite” might have distracted the U.S. momentarily, but our reputation is still on thin ice. C’mon, crazy people, just give it a rest already”/Kevin Otzenberger, UIdaho Argonaut. Bingo.

Parting shot

At Huckleberries Online, Berry Pickers were intrigued by those 40 refrigerated boxcars that have been parked on the abandoned BNSF tracks, between Hubbard and Riverstone. Berry Picker Oracle offered: “It’s the Palin family wardrobe. It has been sequestered by the FBI on its way back to DC.” Shannon: “Hagadone probably ordered some back up snow in case there isn’t any for the Resort’s lighting ceremony.” CoeurgenX: “Housing for the homeless this winter? Whiteboards for beginner taggers? It could be some kind of TROJAN HORSE?” Indy offered the best explanation: “The railroads always use their inactive sidings to store seasonal cars when they are not in use.”