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The Slice: Goodwill gains traction
Sometimes people do the right thing.
A couple of weekends ago, Elizabeth Reedman was up from Sacramento, Calif., to take part in her sixth consecutive Bloomsday.
Born and raised in Spokane, the 60-year-old LC/EWU grad still has relatives here, including her mother. Bloomsday has become an annual occasion for a family gathering.
But something happened on race day Sunday. Reedman lost her driver’s license and $31 somewhere in downtown Spokane.
The money was no big deal. Losing the driver’s license, however, had the potential to seriously complicate her air travel home. And isn’t that already enough of an ordeal?
But the bad news nudged Reedman into a series of encounters with people sincerely interested in helping her. It started with a Spokane police officer. Then there was a helpful Bloomsday lost-and-found volunteer. Then an airport security official who accepted her California state employee picture ID.
Reedman went home thinking, not for the first time, that her old hometown was populated with some pretty fine folks.
After being back in Sacramento a few days, Reedman got an email from the Bloomsday office. Her lost items had been turned in and would be mailed to her.
Apparently the license and $31 were turned in anonymously.
Said Reedman, “It sort of restores your faith in people, doesn’t it?”
Generation gap: Responding to a post on The Slice Blog, Jeri Hershberger argued that getting “grounded” was a stiffer sentence for kids years ago than it is today.
Where readers would like to have the Bloomsday course vulture appear: “I would enjoy having the vulture rendezvous with me at Avista when I pay my January heat bill,” wrote Rich Kapelke. “What better way to convey gloom and doom?”
Marilyn Ray and several others mentioned having the big bird at their funerals. For her part, Ray said she is feeling fine right now. So the exact date of the vulture’s appearance would have to be penciled in later.
Today’s Slice question: Does the perception that the Spokane area’s activities calendar is already booked up with annual events tend to stifle the next big idea?