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The Slice: Childhood is different in 2018
You know what I never see anymore?
Kids running around the neighborhood with toy guns, playing soldiers.
Here are three potential explanations. Which one would you choose?
1. Different sensibilities today. Parents now teach children that combat is not a game.
2. Kids channel their murderous impulses into violent video games.
3. If it’s not on the family activity schedule, it doesn’t happen.
Agree or disagree: I crossed paths with a gentleman I spent time with long ago, back when he was running for mayor. He suggested landlords are one subset of Spokane’s population that is not naive when it comes to progressive idealism vs. reality.
Reader challenge: Come up with a slogan for Spokane based on the implications of the Seattle housing market.
Reader challenge 2: Come up with a slogan for Spokane that reflects the reality of property crime here.
Slice answer: Jeana Allison knew just what I meant when I asked about maintaining affection for certain old songs even though you don’t regard them as towering achievements in the recording arts.
Barry Manilow’s 1975 version of “I Write the Songs” makes her think of her late mother and time they spent together. “When I hear this song it takes me back to a place of peace and love. And to her.”
The pie remains the same size: I understand it’s the nature of competition and free enterprise. And I’m all for raising the bar on quality and variety. But when you see local media going gaga over a new restaurant, do you sometimes wonder whose business the new establishment is going to chomp into?
One of us might be real: “You and Dorothy Dean are the only reason I have paper delivery,” wrote a valued SR subscriber who adorns her email signatures with a cat graphic, =^..^=.
Warm-up question: Has it been your experience that people in other parts of the country are somewhat baffled by the expression “North Idaho” (as opposed to “northern”)?
Today’s Slice question (for those who live outside the city of Spokane): When your travels take you far from the Northwest and you are asked to identify your home, do you tell people exactly where it is you live or do you simply say “Spokane, Washington”?
Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. What comes to mind when you smell cigar smoke?