The Slice: Maybe we live in a vacuum

Someone had written “Spokane sucks” on a dirty parked car and I had wondered in last Sunday’s column what response should have been written next to that.

Here is a sampling of the ideas Slice readers shared.

“NOT!” suggested Tracie Hogeboom.

“…to the unenlightened,” said Sheila Barnes.

“Spokane sucks up the beauty God created for us,” said Maren Kuest.

“If you don’t explore it,” said Ruby Carney.

“Yes! Dyson capital of the world!” said Mike Pursel.

Kelly Schulz offered this. “On top of the ‘s’ and the ‘u’ in the word ‘sucks’ write an ‘r’ and ‘o’, forming the phrase ‘Spokane rocks’. Make sure the original ‘s’ and ‘u’ are still kind of visible so subsequent readers can see what they want to see … a two word Rorschach ink blot test of sorts.”

Of course, Boris Slayman’s attitude is pretty clear. “I would have written: ‘I CONCUR!’ I moved to Cheney and I won’t look back.”

Suggestions for Slice questions: “Have you ever done one of your questions on the quality of hospital food around here?” wrote Don Harding, who is not favorably impressed.

And baby boomer Bruce Werner shared this. “I learned to type in high school because I thought when I got drafted that I wouldn’t get my ass in the grass. Never used a keyboard from 1972 until the early 1990s and home computers. I wonder how many others had the same idea. Did it work for them?”

Warm-up questions: Has anyone closing up a lake place for the season ever had the eerie sensation that raccoons were watching the activity from a distance, just waiting for the cabin owner to get in his car and drive away? What’s the No. 1 drawback to a commitment to listen to all points of view? What’s the best advice (that the person heeded) you ever gave someone?

Today’s Slice question: What’s something many Inland Northwest kids learn growing up that might not be a given in many parts of the country?