The Slice

By Paul Turner

Feb. 23 – Mentioned to a colleague heading out to cover the Newt Gingrich appearance that he might make national news if he tackled the candidate during his speech.

“National brief,” is how I put it.

Might be a career-ender though, I hastened to add.

But then I got to wondering. As far as I know, the reporter in question is in good standing with his bosses. So maybe they would just suspend him for a couple of months and then bring him back on board after he had a chance to contemplate the error of his ways and repent.

“With back pay,” he suggested.

Boy, sometimes you can really tell when someone has been covering the city of Spokane for a while.

Down

to Earth

By Paul Dillon

Feb. 23 – Gary Snyder once said “more and more of us in the industrialized world are feeling a spiritual void, and coming to believe that moving away from consumerism and towards community may be an important step in recovering that nameless thing we’ve lost.” But if money can’t make you happy, perhaps a new kind of economy can? That’s what a documentary, “The Economics Of Happiness” asks.  The film discusses the connection between a bad economy, the environment and that spiritual void. How people in the United States have become less happy since the 1950s; that consumerism has broken down community and the connection to nature.

End Notes

By Rebecca Nappi

Feb. 22 – A bonus for growing older in the Inland Northwest? We don’t have a real obvious facelift culture. You spot them here and there on women and men, but there’s no real pressure to go under the knife for vanity’s sake. People age in place and face.

A story broke today about a small study that indicates face work shaves about seven years off your age. The more surgery, the more years. That kind of media buzz will likely generate even more business for plastic surgeons. Good for the economy and good for the women and men who choose it. But living here makes it easy to pass on the plastic. Agree?