Voices

On a hot and humid late summer evening, the Rockin’ B Ranch just south of Interstate 90 on the Washington-Idaho border was living up to its raucous name. There was some yodeling, some pickin’, lots of fiddling, a cowboy shoot-out and a good old-fashioned meat and potatoes supper.

It was 1953 in tiny Nichols, Iowa, and there wasn’t a lot to do. So Jim Porter and a buddy drove to the big – well, bigger – city of Muscatine to attend a dance.

If you had seen my friend Mary Ellen Myrene in the last few years of her life, she’d have seemed pretty unremarkable – a tall and slender white-haired woman who blended into the landscape of other older women living on the periphery of the mainstream world.

Changes to the Ben Burr Trail, including a wider and paved pathway, have earned mixed reviews from bicyclists and walkers.

Scenic mountain vistas, mighty locomotives, a dash of dogs and a sprinkling of enlightenment – our recent road trip had it all.

One of the biggest questions I get is how to tell when a cantaloupe or a watermelon is ripe. It’s not easy to tell.

Just about every week someone sets up a tripod along East Belmont Road east of the town of Mica to take photos of the historic Heathdale barn, a tall gambrel-style barn built in 1908. “We’ve had professional photographers and people who love barns stop by to take pictures, and we’ve even had high school students come to take their senior pictures here,” said Diane Latta, who owns the barn with her husband, Lance.

Former teacher in Spokane Valley stays active at age 96.