Washington Voices

The hot trend this year is definitely vegetable gardening. Vegetable starts and seeds are flying off the shelves at plant sales and garden stores. By August, Spokane is going to be swimming in luscious sweet tomatoes, peppers, corn and beans. Nationally, the popularity of vegetable gardening has risen. The reasons are pretty obvious. With the recent vegetable contamination scares, people want to know where their food is coming from. Younger gardeners want their landscapes to give something back, so they are planting vegetables instead of ornamentals. Lastly, with the economy in a tailspin, people just want to save money. Regardless of why you are planting a vegetable garden, my bet is you are going to have more than you can use come harvest time.

Among Washington cities, Spokane holds a unique distinction with the Daughters of the American Revolution. Since its inception in 1890, the DAR has had more than 872,000 members nationwide, including such notables as Susan B. Anthony, Mary Baker Eddy, Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter and Janet Reno.

If your image of the average video-game enthusiast is someone not yet ready to shave, car date or, for that matter, cross the street without asking permission, you’ll be surprised to see who’s picked up joysticks and selected avatars for themselves. Let’s put it this way: Video games aren’t just for the grandkids anymore.

Six years ago, Joan Hamilton retired from her job as an elementary physical education teacher and began a new career in show business. But that wasn’t exactly what she intended. Hamilton’s father had been a song-and-dance man who tapped his way through vaudeville routines. He’d ensured his daughter and her twin brother knew their shim sham from their shuffle step, and Hamilton developed an abiding passion for tap.

“Man heaven,” if there were such a thing, would probably be very similar to Davis Pro Shop on Spokane’s North Side. Or, if heaven is too strong a word, perhaps the shop could be described as a “man museum” or “man gallery” where pictures of automobiles and such are plastered onto the walls. What’s really amazing are the things parked in the shop that are worthy of an “awesome.”

The classroom at HOPE School looks like most other preschool classrooms: sweet potatoes are sprouting on the windowsill, the betta fish swims around in its aquarium and a couple of caterpillars are growing big and fat in a little plastic dish. Today’s topic is seeds and how different plants grow from different seeds. Gathered around teacher Amy Hardie and instructional assistant Jennie Wheaton are five preschoolers working on their daily “jobs” – learning the calendar, singing out the names of the months, figuring out what the weather is like outside and taking attendance.

Last Thursday’s committee meeting of the Youth Sustainability Council opened with a lively discussion of what to do in case of a widespread zombie attack. “I’d go to Costco with a small army and hold out there until the National Guard arrived,” said 17-year-old William Breckenridge, a junior at Lewis and Clark High School.

“Man heaven,” if there were such a thing, would probably be very similar to Davis Pro Shop on Spokane’s North Side. Or, if heaven is too strong a word, perhaps the shop could be described as a “man museum” or “man gallery” where pictures of automobiles and such are plastered onto the walls. What’s really amazing are the things parked in the shop that are worthy of an “awesome.”

Alejandra Rose Calzadillas roams the halls of West Valley High School fairly anonymously. She looks like any other teenage girl and only her close friends and school staff know she’s struggling with a disease that will likely kill her someday. “Most of them don’t know because I look normal,” said Calzadillas, who goes by Lexi. “People don’t look at me and see that I’m disabled.”