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PEOPLE compiled by

Susan Drinkard

watching

“If you could see one artist at the Festival at Sandpoint, who would it be? ” “Lindsey Stirling.

She’s an electric violinist.”

David Wingett Cashier Sagle

READER 111 Cedar Street, Suite 9 Sandpoint, ID 83864 (208)265-9724

www.sandpointreader.com Publisher: Ben Olson ben@sandpointreader.com Editorial: Zach Hagadone (Editor) zach@sandpointreader.com Lyndsie Kiebert (News Editor) lyndsie@sandpointreader.com Cameron Rasmusson (emeritus) John Reuter (emeritus) Advertising: Jodi Berge Jodi@sandpointreader.com

“Jack Johnson. I have been listening to his music since middle school. I really like his music.”

Dustin Hannawalt Student pharmacist Hayden

Contributing Artists: Ben Olson, Susan Drinkard, Bill Borders.

Contributing Writers: Zach Hagadone, Ben Olson, Lyndsie Kiebert, Lorraine H. Marie, Emily Erickson, Brenden Bobby, Mike Wagoner, Jim Mitsui, Zen Fiskin, Margaret Ann Maricle, Jeanette Schandelmeier, Beth Weber, Kathy Hubbard, Sandy Compton.

Submit stories to: stories@sandpointreader.com Printed weekly at: Tribune Publishing Co. Lewiston, ID

“Twenty One Pilots.”

Mandalynn Tryall Homemaker Sagle

“Angels and Airwaves. They are kind of alternative pop/ rock. One of the members of Blink-182 is the founder of Angels and Airwaves. If I didn’t put their name out there while I have the opportunity, my brother would kill me.”

Greg Leverich Hardware Sandpoint

“Alanis Morissette. I like some of her songs and just ordered Jagged Little Pill.”

Jim Orbaugh Owner of The Corner Book Store Sagle

Subscription Price: $115 per year Web Content: Keokee The Sandpoint Reader is a weekly publication owned and operated by Ben Olson and Keokee. It is devoted to the arts, entertainment, politics and lifestyle in and around Sandpoint, Idaho.

We hope to provide a quality alternative by offering honest, in-depth reporting that reflects the intelligence and interests of our diverse and growing community.

The Reader is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Leftover copies are collected and recycled weekly, or burned in massive bonfires to appease the gods of journalism. Free to all, limit two copies per person.

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Requirements: –No more than 300 words –Letters may not contain excessive profanity or libelous material. Please elevate the discussion.

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Email letters to: letters@sandpointreader.com Check us out on the web at: www.sandpointreader.com Like us on Facebook.

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NEWS

E. Bonner libraries shift back to curbside service Decision comes in the wake of a contentious anti-mask protest

By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff The East Bonner County Library District closed its doors and transitioned back to a curbside pick-up system on Aug. 1 due to the rising number of novel coronavirus cases in Bonner County.

“Our patrons’ health and safety are of the utmost concern,” Library Director Ann Nichols told the Sandpoint Reader shortly after the decision. “In order to protect the public, the East Bonner Library District is resuming curbside service in response to the spike in COVID-19 cases in our area.”

This comes after a handful of anti-mask protesters gathered outside the library July 28 demanding to be let in without required face coverings. Library staff called Sandpoint police, and officers informed protesters that the East Bonner County Library

Board of Trustees has the right to create rules for its facilities.

Nichols told the Reader that when asked if they were card-carrying patrons, a number of protesters said they were from elsewhere, one man telling Nichols he was from Seattle.

“Apparently, a small minority of local residents organized by a group outside of our community chooses to ignore best practices in favor of perceived First Amendment violations,” Amy Flint, chair of the library board, told the Reader.

Flint said Nichols and several board members received “a barrage of emails” opposing the mask mandate following the protest. Nichols also received phone calls threatening lawsuits, and some said they would be back to the library — or outside of board members’ homes — to protest further.

The board had scheduled a Zoom meeting for the morning of

July 31, which Flint said was intended to refine the face covering policy after a protester attempted to enter the library with a mask made from a mesh material full of holes. Word of the meeting began to circulate on social media, and many people voiced a desire to attend and make their anti-mask views heard.

Flint said the person who posted about the meeting on Facebook “indicated that ‘we are going for the jugular,’” meaning mask opponents planned to come in force to the Zoom meeting.

“After careful consideration — and in the interest of protecting staff, patrons and trustees as well as avoiding a ‘Zoom Zoo’ — we cancelled Friday morning’s meeting and decided to return to curbside only pick-up effective Saturday, so the library will not be physically open to the public,” Flint said.

Flint emphasized that the move back to curbside services

is only temporary, and that the Sandpoint and Clark Fork branches “will reopen as soon as possible with a revised and improved mask requirement.”

Library officials also stated that “our decision to close is based on public safety in response to the spike in cases.”

In the meantime, library patrons can access physical materials by placing a hold at ebon-

A message written in chalk outside the front door of the Sandpoint Branch of the East Bonner County Library District during an anti-mask protest July 28.

Photo by Ben Olson. nerlibrary.org and scheduling a curbside pick-up time via email.

The library website also offers many digital resources that can be accessed from home, including free music, movie streaming and ebooks.

SCOTUS places stay on Idaho education funding initiative Reclaim Idaho announces Invest in Idaho initiative will not see the November ballot

By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff Reclaim Idaho’s education funding ballot initiative effectively met its end July 30, when the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay on the group’s lawsuit against state officials, who they allege failed to accommodate signature gathering efforts amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.

“I have very bad news to share,” Reclaim Idaho co-founder Luke Mayville wrote in a newsletter July 30. “The United States Supreme Court has decided to block our signature drive, and their decision is harsher and more damaging to our campaign than anyone anticipated.”

This is the latest in a legal battle that began in June, when Reclaim Idaho filed a lawsuit 4 /

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claiming that Gov. Brad Little and Secretary of State Lawerence Denney violated the group’s First Amendment rights by failing to offer an alternative to in-person signature gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in favor of the grassroots organization, and gave the state a seven-day window in which to decide whether the signature drive could continue online or if the initiative would automatically qualify.

State officials chose neither option, instead requesting a stay of proceedings. Winmill denied the stay, and instead took it on himself to make the state’s choice: Reclaim Idaho could collect signatures electronically.

The group did just that, while the state went first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

and then the Supreme Court to request another stay. The highest court in the land granted that request July 30, putting a stop to Reclaim Idaho’s efforts. The 9th Circuit decision is slated for Aug. 13, according to Idaho Education News, so the SCOTUS ruling stands in the meantime.

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s sovereignty over its election and initiative processes,” Little told Idaho Ed News. “It is important that initiatives follow the laws set by the Idaho Legislature so we can ensure those initiatives that get on the ballot are legitimate and have significant support throughout Idaho.”

The Invest in Idaho initiative would have allocated about $170 million in taxes on Idaho’s wealthiest citizens to fund K-12 education annually. The move-

ment gained steam in recent months, after Little announced $99 million in education funding cuts across the state.

“We are shocked that the Court has made this extraordinary intervention rather than let the normal appeals process run its course,” Mayville wrote. “It is deeply disheartening that the highest court in our nation has decided to clamp down on a grassroots campaign in Idaho — a campaign made up of thousands of ordinary citizens who are simply trying to make Idaho a better place for their children and grandchildren.”

Mayville said that though the path forward is “uncertain,” the court’s decision combined with the state’s repeated attempts to halt the initiative make getting Invest in Idaho on the November ballot appear impossible. Due

to these factors, Mayville said, “we see no other option than to suspend our signature drive.”

The decision doesn’t spell the end of Reclaim Idaho, however, which has built its platform around “strong public schools, protected public lands and health care for working families.”

“Reclaim Idaho began when 50 people showed up on a winter morning in North Idaho to knock on doors for a local school levy. Since then, we’ve experienced many victories and a few defeats,” Mayville said — one of those victories being the successful Medicaid expansion initiative of 2018.

“As long as there are Idahoans willing to show up for this work, we’re not going anywhere,” he added.

NEWS

Summer of our discontent

From mask mandates to school reopening plans, COVID-19 continues to roil North Idaho

By Lyndsie Kiebert and Zach Hagadone Reader Staff Both the state and Panhandle Health District continue their upward trend in new cases of the novel coronavirus, as the latter — which covers Idaho’s five northernmost counties — surpassed 2,000 confirmed cases Aug. 5, adding 76 more for a total of 2,034 districtwide, 722 of which are active.

State reporting of confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases reached 22,707 and 217 deaths on Aug. 5, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

At the same time, Panhandle Health District reported 17 new cases in Bonner County, bringing the county’s total to 171 cases since virus tracking began in midMarch, 58 of which are active.

Rising numbers in the Idaho Panhandle have been to blame for a myriad of event cancellations since May. The latest came Aug. 4, when Schweitzer Mountain Resort announced that Fall Fest, slated for Sept. 4-7, had been canceled “[d]ue to the current environment surrounding large events and the risks associated with COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, Bonner County Fair Director Darcey Smith confirmed to the Reader that the fair, scheduled for Aug. 19-22, is still happening. She said organizers will put in place stations for washing and sanitizing hands, gloves and masks will be provided to volunteers, officials are “encouraging visitors to wear masks” and events such as the market animal sale will have modified seating to limit crowding.

“We are glad to have a fair,” Smith said. “It will be modified for safety concerns, but we are still going to have our annual fair.”

Un-masked opposition Event cancellations and mask mandates are popping up more and more across the state. The city

of Moscow recently extended its requirement for face coverings through early October and, closer to home, the PHD board voted July 23 to approve a mask mandate for Kootenai County.

The Kootenai County mask order has drawn widespread opposition, prompting a “Citizens Against Mask Mandate Rally” on Aug. 4 in downtown Coeur d’Alene. Featured speakers included Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, and Rep. Tim Remington, R-Coeur d’Alene, alongside other vocal mask opponents.

In an interview with Spokane-based KHQ, one attendee wearing a Heather Scott hat said: “[I’m] more pro-freedom than I am anti-mask. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. We’ll get along just fine, we will.”

Among the speakers at the event were Bonner County PHD board members Glen Bailey and Allen Banks — who voted against the mask mandate — as well as Bonner County resident Paul Herndon, who filed a petition July 31 in Idaho District Court claiming that the health board’s July 17 and July 23 meetings violated open meeting laws. Herndon and fellow plaintiffs Angelo Brunson and Daniel Schattner argue that due to those alleged violations, the mask order should be considered “null and void.”

According to court documents, Herndon lives in Sagle, while Brunson and Schattner are both residents and restaurant owners in Kootenai County. The petitioners pointed to technical problems with video conferencing and telephonic communications that they allege limited both board members’ and the public’s ability to adequately hear the proceedings.

In particular, the plaintiffs took issue with board member Walt Kirby calling in via a cell phone that “was not connected to any of the authorized District telecommunications devices,” nor routed to the video conferencing platform Zoom, nor to individual members of the board, according to the

complaint.

The board entered a recess at one point to reconnect Kirby to the meeting, and the Boundary County commissioner shared repeatedly that he was having a hard time hearing what was being said by other participants.

Plaintiffs also argue that PHD violated open meeting laws by limiting in-person attendance to both of the July meetings in order to meet social distancing protocols and by not providing an alternative to the video conferencing platform to accommodate more members of the public. Beyond that, the complaint claims the meeting did not include an adequate number and size of monitors to deliver audio to attendees who were unable to be in the meeting room and called into question whether a cell phone used to communicate with Kirby was “an effective or lawful telecommunications device” in the context of the meeting.

PHD spokesperson Katherine Hoyer told the Reader, “It’s our position that the meetings were proper and the actions taken were legal. Our legal counsel will be filing an answer to the petition.”

Schools planning for the pandemic The Lake Pend Oreille School District unveiled a new website Aug. 4 featuring its draft reopening plan for the 2020-2021 academic year.

The plan, accessible at covid. lposd.org, lays out the basic protocols to be used by district schools when they open their doors to students and staff on Sept. 8 and is based on a four-tiered, color-coded rubric based on the prevalence of COVID-19 in the county.

Taking its cue from guidance released in July by the Idaho State Board of Education, the LPOSD plan calls for a traditional fiveday-per week, in-person schedule at the “green level,” which means there is no identified community spread of COVID-19.

At the “yellow” level — meaning “minimal to moderate com-

munity spread” — school operations would emphasize reducing mingling among students and staff first by shortening the school day to maximize face-to-face instructional time while limiting class sizes to allow for social distancing.

Elementary school students would only interact with other students from their class, or “cohort.”

Should a positive case be reported either by a student or teacher, only that cohort would be required to transition to distance learning.

Face coverings “are expected to be worn” during arrival and dismissal, as well as other “transition times” when students may come into contact with other cohorts.

Staff is expected to wear a face covering.

Secondary students, meanwhile, would be expected to wear face coverings throughout the day as their schedules require them to move between several classrooms.

Classes would begin at 8:20 a.m. for elementary and 8:30 a.m. for secondary students, with dismissal at 12:40 p.m. for Sandpoint Middle School; 12:45 p.m. for Sandpoint, Clark Fork and Lake Pend Oreille high schools; and 1 p.m. for district elementary schools.

To compensate for the shortened in-person instructional schedule, all students — other than half-day kindergarteners — would be required to undertake some period of distance learning each day. Times vary by grade level and school, from as little as 15 minutes per day to 30 minutes per class per day.

The “orange” level would transition to a “hybrid” schedule with two days of in-person instruction and three days of distance learning, and the “red” level would mean full online-only instruction.

Find the full breakdown on the covid.lposd.org website.

“For your planning purposes,

today we would start school in the yellow blended-learning model,” LPOSD Superintendent Tom Albertson wrote in an email Aug. 4 to district parents and guardians. “[P]lease be reminded that this plan is fluid and can be adapted as needed for unforeseen reasons.”

Regardless, LPOSD will institute increased sanitization and cleaning protocols at all facilities, and follow quarantine procedures for students and staff who have either tested positive, show symptoms of COVID-19 or have been in “close contact” — defined as being within six feet for 15 minutes or more — with an individual who has tested positive.

Parents or guardians who are uncomfortable with their students attending any level of in-person instruction can register for a fully online option, which would be provided for free to students K-12 through the Idaho Digital Learning Academy. To enroll students K-6 in the online-only option, contact IDLA Coordinator Meagan Hofmeister at meagan. hofmeister@lposd.org. For grades 7-12, registration will be through individual school counselors, who can be contacted through school offices.

Albertson alerted parents and guardians that they should expect an email from their students’ schools beginning the week of Monday, Aug. 10, requesting information about whether they plan to enroll for 2020-’21 and, if so, whether that will be according to the color-coded protocols or fully online.

“Much time and thought has gone into this plan with the hopes of keeping schools open,” Albertson wrote. “This can only happen with the full cooperation of all students, staff and parents working together to ensure the safety protocols are followed.”

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NEWS Heartbreak as emergency crews recover child who drowned in Sand Creek

By Reader Staff The community is mourning a 7-yearold boy who drowned during the afternoon of Aug. 4 in a stretch of Sand Creek between Sandpoint and Ponderay.

Emergency crews responded to the report of a missing child near the Popsicle Bridge at approximately 2 p.m. The boy had last been seen on the rocks at the edge of the creek. First responders from Selkirk Fire, Bonner County EMS, Sandpoint and Ponderay police, and the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office conducted the search, but were unable to locate him from the shoreline or bridge.

According to a news release from the city of Sandpoint, two members of the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team found the child under 12 to 15 feet of low-visibility water. Officials reported he was not wearing a flotation device and family members said that he did not know how to swim.

Following attempts at resuscitation by

Bonner County EMS, the boy was transported to Bonner General Hospital where he was pronounced deceased. There were no visible signs of trauma.

Names will not be released at this time pending family notification, according to the city.

Officials underscored the need for water safety — particularly regarding children — noting that drowning is the fifth-leading cause of unintentional death for minors aged 14 and younger.

“With the high temperatures in the past week, there has been an increase in water activities in and around Sandpoint,” the city stated.

“We want to remind everyone that a person can begin to drown in less than 20 seconds,” Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon stated in the release. “Swimming in natural bodies of water requires more knowledge and additional skills than using a swimming pool. Many of our bodies of water, including Sand Creek, have deep holes and debris that can’t be seen from the surface.”

Gov. Little to call special legislative session

By Reader Staff Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced Aug. 5 that he will call the Legislature to a special session the week of Aug. 24.

According to a news release from the governor’s office, Little will meet with legislative leadership and members of the House and Sen-

ate to further discuss what specific topics will be addressed during the special session, which “could include the November general election and liability reform during emergencies.”

Little is anticipated to issue a proclamation the week of Aug. 17, “detailing the exact issues to be considered during the special session.”

Idaho Ag. Department cautions against unsolicited seed packages from China

By Reader Staff Since late July, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been investigating reports of people around the country receiving suspicious packets apparently mailed from China and containing seeds. According to The New York Times, the unsolicited packets appear to contain a “mix of ornamental, fruit and vegetable, herb and weed species,” including cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage.

Quoting from an expert at Penn State University, The Times reported that the risks are low for “some nefarious outcome” from the seeds — apparently sent as a type of scam to drum up sales — yet, if they are planted it could result in the spread of invasive species or plant diseases.

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Idahoans who have received the unsolicited packages of seeds.

According to a July 27 news release, ISDA has received approximately 20 calls or emails reporting the packets being sent to Idahoans. Several states are reporting similar occurrences, according to the agency. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has been tracking such instances at the federal level.

Idahoans who have received unsolicited packages of seeds are asked to take these steps: • Do not plant the seeds; • Do not open the seed packages; • Contact the Idaho office of USDA APHIS at 208-373-1600; • Keep the label and seed package; • Wait for further instructions from USDA about disposal and follow-up.

For more info, visit the USDA APHIS website at bit.ly/31gn4A5.

Bits ’n’ Pieces From east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling: The city council of Asheville, N.C., voted 7-0 in favor of reparations for descendants of slaves, ABC News reported.

Reparations will include investing in Black communities, such as business opportunities, help with home ownership and addressing fairness within the criminal justice system.

Contrary to recent statements from the administration of President Donald Trump, “antifa” is not a dangerous threat to the nation. According to a database compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a centrist think tank, antifa has no links to murder in 25 years.

According to The Guardian, data for the report came from records of close to 900 attacks and plots deemed politically motivated. Over the same 25-year period, white supremacists and right-wing extremists engaged in attacks that left 329 people dead. The data included 21 deaths from socalled left-wing attacks, but CSIS indicated the term “left wing” is misleading, since it referred to black nationalists who may have more in common with right-wing ideologies: homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Justice Department task force released an anti-government extremists report that describes antifa as a “major threat,” but makes no reference to white supremacists.

Busted: The mayor of Richmond, Va., mayor reported to WTVR.com that recent Black Lives Matter protests in the city were instigated into riots by white supremacists who carried BLM signs while breaking windows. Genuine BLM protesters pointed them out to police and they were stopped. There were six arrests. Similar reports about white supremacists posing as BLM supporters have been made at protests across the U.S. According to reports in the Boston Globe, L.A. Times and govexec.com, Trump administration plans to slow mail deliveries via unprecedented operational changes to the U.S. Postal Service are founded on allegations that the agency, which has not relied on tax funds, is failing financially. That overlooks how the USPS was hampered by a 2006 Congressional requirement to pre-fund retirement by 75 years into the future. Sans the pre-funding, the USPS would have turned a profit and had funds for modernizing and upgrading facilities.

The U.S. House voted to eliminate the pre-funding requirement in February, but it has not seen action in the Senate.

After five deaths and 15 arrests, analysts

By Lorraine H. Marie Reader Columnist

are scrambling to define the emerging Boogaloo Boi movement. The Department of Homeland Security calls the group’s members, who anticipate and look forward to a second American civil war, “violent extremists” that are both left and right wing.

But, The Guardian reports, based on their actions and rhetoric, experts are identifying the Boogaloo Bois as “right wing” and “far right.” That’s based on their affinity for heavy weaponry and right-wing martyrs, such as Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing fame, and Boogaloo Bois appearing at protests to protect business and corporate property.

Not all Boogaloo followers are white supremacists, analysts reported, but there is a faction that wants a race war and others that want societal breakdown via rebellion against the government. This has led some experts in extremism to conclude that the Boogaloo movement is a “broad anti-government movement that is full of white power activists.”

Trump has been “soft on Russia” at least 37 times, according to a recent CNN report. The allegations are renewed with his multi-billion dollar plan to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. Republicans on the Armed Services Committee said the president’s move is encouraging “Russian aggression,” ABC News reported.

Pandemics are a hidden cost of economic development, according to Kate Jones, chair of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College, London. She and other researchers identified 335 diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004, with 60% from non-humans (while the human population ballooned from 2.5 billion to 6 billion after 1950). The university’s research is looking at how degraded habitats from extractive practices in remote areas results in exposure to more viruses. As well, population growth increasingly leads to sharing habitat with wild creatures, amplifying the risk of species-to-species migration of pathogens.

Modern ways of life result in diseases traveling farther and faster.

Foreign countries are trying to hack U.S. political campaigns and “compromise our election infrastructure,” William Evanina, director of National Counterintelligence and Security recently warned. Democrats are asking for a full briefing for Congress.

Blast from the past: According to Article II, Section I, of the United States Constitution, “The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

PERSPECTIVES

Emily Articulated

A column by and about Millennials

‘Since whens’ and sandcastles

By Emily Erickson Reader Columnist

The porch boards creaked beneath the curve of my rocking chair, chiming in with the tunes and chirps of birds greeting a new day. Long beams of soft sunlight seeped through the trees and played freely with the swirls of steam rising from my coffee mug. I took in a breath — the kind of breath that stretches the lungs to a full feeling of tingling, and held it. As the pressure in my chest tipped past unbearable, I began a long, slow, seeping exhale.

Then my phone buzzed. It was a photo memory notification.

“One year ago today,” it read, with images of concert stage lights, sweaty smiling faces and an uncomplicated gathering of people. The pictures on my phone showed bodies squashed together in a mash of friends and strangers, dancing to music and reveling in unbridled joy.

“When was the last time I felt such easy joy?” I wondered.

I searched for the feeling of being filled to the brim with carefree elation; a more intense, more dangerous feeling than contentment.

As the tendrils of my memory stretched further and further back into the past months, tears welled in my eyes. A single line of recent conversation with a doctor boomed in my ears, “I think of us as being in the middle of the beginning of this pandemic,” and my tears

Emily Erickson.

spilled over.

They flowed freely, pooling into the hollow of my collarbone, then soaking into my shirt, until they turned to bursts of cruel laughter.

“Since when had I become so fragile?”

I continued: “Since when did it start feeling like my world was built on a foundation of sand, with something as small as a notification on my phone having the power to tip my morning on its side?”

On and on, I thought: “Since when did six-feetapart start feeling more like a state of existence; an emotional gap between myself and others, instead of a mandate of physical distance meant to keep us safe and healthy?”

“Since when did finding community get so complicated, with masks being an acknowledgement of your team? And how could there possibly be teams anyway?”

“Since when did conversations become one-way streets painted in red and blue, in which subscribing to one idea is really a subscription to an

entire package of ideas?”

“Since when did our news come from a networking app, with copy/pastes taking precedence over peer-reviewed science? And aren’t our beliefs just being manufactured by the algorithm anyway?”

“Since when did basic human rights and responsibilities get clumped together with how much you want to pay in taxes; with country leaders acting as mascots of reelection instead of defenders of democracy?”

“Since when was there a baseline of heaviness in every decision, in every interaction, in every day?”

The reality is that spiraling into such a succession of “since whens” only has one outcome: I sink deeper into my pit of sand. Instead, I’ll take my crumbled, earthen foundation and build a sandcastle out of “thank goodness for’s”: “Thank goodness for the amount of meticulous care, time and human-power dedicated to roasting the beans for my coffee, and all the things that had to go just perfectly for me to take my sweet morning sip.”

“Thank goodness for the community’s librarians, whose responsibilities stretch so far beyond facilitating our access to knowledge and resources.”

“Thank goodness for the people in full PPE, exposing themselves to the heat of the day, and the weight of COVID-19 test administration, all just to keep our community safe.”

“Thank goodness for the staff of this paper, filing free

page after free page with essential community news and journalistic integrity.”

“Thank goodness for the expanse of accessible public wilderness, making an escape into the forest, the mountains, the alpine lakes, all just a packed bag and tent set-up away.”

“Thank goodness for the creators, the artists, the musicians and all the people who ‘just picked up a paint brush

because they finally had the time to do so’ being a constant reminder that hard times really do breed beautiful things.”

“And thank goodness for the opportunity to share my voice, to share in this collective experience and to understand that sometimes all there really is to do is shed big, ugly tears into your perfect morning coffee.”

Retroactive

By BO

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To mask opponents: ‘What else will you shut down?’…

Bouquets: • Thanks Bonner County, for voting us “Best Informational Website” in the Bonner County Daily Bee’s annual “Best of Bonner County” awards. Our website was designed by Keokee and the upkeep is largely thanks to Reader News Editor Lyndsie Kiebert, who excels at darn near everything she does (except getting obscure ’90s movie references from the “old guys” on the Reader editorial staff). Our clicks and impressions have skyrocketed the past few months, with about double the amount of people viewing the Reader online as compared to the pre-COVID days. To be fair, we are just one of many informative websites in Bonner County, so I would feel remiss in not mentioning sandpointonline. com and bonnercountydailybee. com as well, which both are excellent online resources for local news and happenings. Thanks for thinking of us, Bonner County.

• Are you one of the few drivers out there who regularly uses their turn signal when driving on the roundabout? If so, I’d like to give you a Bouquet. While confusing to some drivers, roundabouts are actually quite efficient if everyone uses them properly. It helps everyone if you signal your intentions when going around the circle. If you’re taking the next turnoff and there’s a car waiting, it helps keep everything flowing smoother if you use a turn signal so fellow motorists can enter the roundabout without waiting to see what your next move is.

Barbs GUEST SUBMISSION: • Barbs to the group opposing masks who caused the library district to close both the Sandpoint and Clark Fork libraries and return to service at the door. I can’t help but wonder if any of them were card-holding library users?

Libraries are the only place I know of where you get your tax dollars worth just by using them!

-Submitted by Diane Newcomer.

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Dear editor, As a library patron of more than two decades, I am distressed that a selfish group of people has forced our library to close, depriving our whole community.

You don’t want to wear a mask.

You’re willing to wear shoes, pants, shirt — but won’t stay outside if you’re mask-free. It’s hard to understand. What else will you shut down?

I want to thank the director and staff of the library for their leadership in navigating one of our important institutions through this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

They’ve worked to deliver services while keepings patrons and staff safe. That’s not easy, and I know I’m only one of the many that appreciates the work they are doing.

For some reason, staying safe in the face of a virus that can lay people low and even kill them is controversial. Unnervingly, people who don’t realize they have the virus can spread it. Hence, any of us could be spreading this dangerous disease.

Science is demonstrating that face masks help keep us from being exposed to the novel coronavirus. When the virus is beaten back, we can all put masks away, with relief.

Caution is essential and I thank the library for it.

Molly O’Reilly Sandpoint

Canadians’ message to COVIDdenying Americans: ‘Stay away’...

Dear editor, A couple of times in my life, after losing faith in our voters, I vowed to move to Canada — once in 1972 when Nixon was re-elected president.

(In 1974 he was forced to resign.)

Then after the 2016 election, I began looking at property in Nelson, B.C. But now, after three-and-ahalf years under Donald Trump, I couldn’t move if I wanted to. The Canadians no longer want us, according to the Seattle Times: “You need to get the pandemic under control. You need a rational person to take the helm of your country. Until then, what we’re saying to Americans is: ‘Stay away,’” says a Canadian who has been monitoring boat traffic off British Columbia, looking for unwanted visitors.

Every American is looked at as a loaded transmitter of disease.

After a group of congressional representatives, including Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers,

of Spokane, sent a letter to the Canadian government mentioning the possible reopening of our shared border. A Canadian replied on Twitter: “There’s no reason to believe Americans will care about the health of Canadians, given that relatively few seem to care about the health of other Americans.”

“That border stays closed,” wrote another. “Canadians may be polite, but we’re not crazy.”

Jim Ramsey Sandpoint

Prayers for those affected by tragic drowning...

Dear editor, My heart is so sad for the 7-year-old boy who drowned on Tuesday, Aug. 4, at “Popsicle Bridge.” My prayers are with his family and friends. My children and I were there only one hour prior to his death and I shudder with empathy and terror.

On a day when Beirut endures explosions with mass casualties, I focus on (and cry over) a little boy who drowned in Sand Creek. It is impossible for me to unimagine this as my son, and I cannot help but wonder how I could carry on if he was.

Thanks to the Bonner County Sheriff’s Dive Team for recovering this boy in the deep, dark waters.

Your job on Tuesday was traumatic — my prayers and gratitude extend to you also.

Life is short — LOVE EVERYONE! Jodi Rawson Sandpoint

‘Some leadership never changes’...

Dear editor, I had a dream.

I was in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Engaging the enemy in battle. If you have seen the documentaries, you know the era.

The enemy surprised us. We couldn’t hear them, we couldn’t see them. All hell broke loose. Live fire all around, mortars coming closer with every explosion. We dove into the foxhole, sandbags deflecting shrapnel. First was Major Medic, followed closely by Captain Christian, then Lieutenant Large. The sergeants and privates followed their lead. We were so surprised

that we didn’t have time to load our weapons, put on our helmets, dress in protective gear.

The wounded started showing up, first four, then 59. I asked Lieutenant Large for orders.

His response was, “ Give me liberty or give me pizza, pass the pasta. Do what you want.”

Wounded kept coming in, 90, then 140.

I asked Captain Christian for orders.

His response was, “God will provide, radio upstairs.”

The wounded escalated, 150 or more.

I asked Major Medic what his orders were.

He responded, “They’re just wounded, wait for a lot of casualties, then we will figure it out.”

I woke in a sweat, thankful it was just a dream. Reality set in that day. Some leadership never changes.

They’re first in the foxhole, thinking of themselves, hoping for someone else to make the needed judgements, waiting for cataclysmic events before acting.

It was just a dream. Or was it?

William Krause Sandpoint

‘No shoes, no shirt, no service’…

Dear editor, No shoes, no shirt, no service.

We’ve been abiding by this notice at business entrances, especially restaurants, for decades. I suppose shirtless or barefoot customers were disallowed for health reasons.

Is it a law or just a practice that caught on? It doesn’t matter. Nobody seems to object. Why then, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, is there so much objection to wearing masks that very well may save our lives? Is it really that big of an infringement on your rights? Come on. People are dying. Regardless of who may have spread it, regardless of who didn’t do enough to stop it, we have to face it. We’re lucky in North Idaho that it hasn’t hit us harder. But, if we’re stupid, it will eventually hit us hard.

Wearing a mask in public reduces chances of giving or getting the deadly COVID-19 disease. Wearing a mask is simple, inexpensive and for everyone’s good. It has nothing to do with political points of view.

It has everything to do with health safety and eventually getting society back to normal.

You won’t look like a fool unless you’re the only one not wearing a

mask. You definitely will be a fool if you die from something that could have been prevented by wearing a piece of cloth over your face.

Based on their political points of view, governmental “leaders” may or may not implement rules requiring the wearing of masks.

However, private business owners do have the right to deny entry into their establishments. We already see signs that say: “We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone.” Businesses could take the lead — setting a sensible, temporary standard in unprecedented times.

Some have! More should! No shoes, no shirt, no service.

George Edward Priest River

In support of our library...

Dear editor, I would like to thank our library district’s community-elected board members and the staff in their support of keeping the most vulnerable members of our community safe with their decision to mandate the wearing of masks inside library premises.

Senior citizens, the most at-risk demographic for suffering complications from COVID-19, are also some of the library’s most prevalent beneficiaries.

As the fiscal impacts of the pandemic loom over the county’s budget for the year 2021, the library needs the community’s support now, more than ever. While many of us, myself included, may not be able to offer financial donations, virtually anyone is able to offer their time and expertise by volunteering for the library. Even simply using the library’s free services can help the library in securing federal grants that help fund pivotal services, from tutoring to the countless educational and community-building programs they offer all year.

A cornerstone of our community is under attack. I beg the Bonner County community: No matter your political beliefs, please stand up for your local library and its staff.

Brenden Bobby Bonner County

‘Elected saboteurs’...

Dear editor, Bonner County, with the endorsement of two commissioners, is suing Sandpoint because The

< see LTE, page 9 >

< LTE, con’t from page 8 > Festival, which rents Memorial Field from the city, doesn’t allow guns into concerts. Two private individuals wanting to carry guns into shows are also suing, so far costing $116,000 in legal fees. Bonner County taxpayers’ dollars funding the lawsuits are being flushed down the toilet. Guns at concerts will cause many people not to buy tickets, dinner, shop or use hotels. Most musicians won’t perform knowing the audience has guns. Worst-case scenario: How will the police know who is the bad guy if guns become visible at a performance during a disturbance? Guns at concerts will kill The Festival.

The recent invasion of Sandpoint by gun-carrying “vigilante type,” people recruited by Commissioner Dan McDonald supposedly to protect Sandpoint from “Antifa,” was actually about 45 kids and parents exercising their right to peacefully demonstrate that Black Lives Matter. Attention Sandpoint business owners: The lawsuits and BLM intimidation are damaging to your economy. Also, Sandpoint’s chief of police supports the “militia type” base of McDonald’s who showed up; looks like neither of them have confidence in Sandpoint’s police.

These incidents frighten people and intimidate us from attending The Festival or legally demonstrating in Sandpoint in the future.

McDonald refused to collaborate with towns in Bonner County to share information about topics like fires, disasters, emergency response, etc., labeling county-wide cooperation “socialism.” He called his “base,” and a bunch of untrained, unidentified people arrived with guns centered upon a fact-less rumor that he spread saying Antifa was infiltrating Sandpoint’s BLM demonstration. Mounting evidence shows this may have been illegal.

Elected officials are sworn to obey the law and should contribute to community economic/social health. Sandpoint you have several elected saboteurs who seem to be intent on bankrupting you.

Betty Gardner Priest River

Personal liberty doesn’t trump public health...

Dear editor, For those who argue that their personal freedoms are more important than the common good, and being asked to wear a mask violates

the Fourteenth Amendment right to liberty, I would refer them to a precedent established by a 1905 Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which the court ruled against a Massachusetts minister for refusing to comply with a mandatory smallpox vaccination.

In a 7-2 vote, the majority wrote, “In every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

So even if we in Bonner County are currently not required by the Panhandle Health District to wear a mask, be aware that your personal liberties are not without limitations when it comes to protecting the public’s health and safety.

Denise Zembryki Sagle

Helping each other, we can set an example…

Dear editor, Yesterday while I was shopping in a grocery store that requires masks, I looked up to see a man I didn’t recognize without one. He looked as hot as me, and as lost.

At first I put my head down and pushed the cart a little faster. Then, since I happened to have an extra mask with me, I pulled back.

“Would you wear a mask for me if I gave you one?” I asked, tentatively, afraid to look him full in the eye. What the hell, why not ask?

His face lit up as he answered immediately, “Yes,” he said. I was glad to see him smile.

I gave him a mask and he put it right on as I walked away.

So simple. This is how Team Sandpoint can flatten our virus curve. We can help each other and set an example for the whole rest of the country. No mandates, no confrontations, no anger. Just ask each other for help.

What shall we call ourselves? the Mask-eraiders?

Nancy Gerth Sagle

Send letters to the editor to letters@sandpointreader.com.

Please keep under 300 words and avoid excessive profanity and libelous statements.

PERSPECTIVES

Fighting words

Don’t fall for name-calling and distortions; Democrats are fighting for Idaho’s future

By Idaho House and Senate Democrats Special to the Reader Republican politicians have had supermajority control of the Legislature and every statewide office for decades. Under their governance, Idaho has sunk to 51st place in education investment (and, remarkably, now they want to cut another $99 million from our education budget).

For seven years they refused to even allow a vote on Medicaid expansion, leaving many thousands of Idahoans to suffer and sometimes die without health care. They have eroded public lands access and allowed air and water quality to dramatically decline.

They have stonewalled measures to reduce homeowner property taxes and left our infrastructure to dangerously deteriorate.

Faced with this record, it’s not surprising that they prefer name-calling and misdirection to a real conversation about issues.

Tom Luna, the new Idaho GOP chairman, recently previewed his plan for attacking Democratic candidates this election year: Step One: Harp nonstop on a report generated for the city of Boise by a nonpartisan team of volunteers, and falsely attribute it to Idaho Democrats, who in fact never wrote, endorsed or implemented it. The report compiled some citizens’ suggestions, and is not and never has been Democratic policy or platform.

Step Two: Call Democratic legislators “socialists,” ignoring the fact that we are not only capitalists who embrace the importance of businesses large and small, but many of us are business owners ourselves.

Step Three: Hope that voters will settle for name-calling and distortion, and won’t probe into actual positions or records.

This brazen misdirection by the GOP chairman belies a fear that if Idaho voters really understand Democrats’ positions and the GOP’s dismal single-party governance record, the Republican supermajority would be in jeopardy.

Voters deserve to know where Democrats actually stand. Here is

our legislative agenda, plain and simple:

A Strong Economy Idaho has lost business opportunities due to inadequate infrastructure, an insufficiently skilled workforce and a lack of affordable housing. We want to correct these deficiencies. Let’s be honest — there’s a lot of crony capitalism in this state masquerading as real capitalism. We’ll do a lot better without a one-party government whose focus is on well-connected insiders rather than making sure everyone has economic opportunity.

Education The success of our communities starts with our schools. Teacher pay must be sufficient to recruit and retain quality educators. Lack of funding shouldn’t force schools into four-day weeks and sub-par education programs. Education should be adequately funded by the state as mandated by the Idaho Constitution — property taxpayers shouldn’t have to pass levies to keep schools operational. We should be generating a skilled workforce that draws high-wage employers to Idaho, not underfunding higher education and forcing tuition hikes that make a degree unaffordable.

Fair taxes We oppose the GOP’s giant tax cuts and exemptions to those at the top that leave the rest of us with overblown property taxes and underfunded schools and infrastructure. The 2018 Republican income tax cut cost the state more than $200 million annually in revenue, gave more than $5,000 a year in cuts to the wealthiest, but only $12 a year to earners in the bottom 20%, while leaving schools underfunded and giving nothing to those needing it most.

The indexed homeowner exemption should be restored and we must increase property tax assistance for seniors and veterans. Millions of dollars a year in internet sales taxes are currently held hostage by the majority party’s infighting. These funds should be used to fund education, repair infrastructure and reduce

property taxes. And the Legislature should examine the $2.5 billion a year in lost revenue from sales tax exemptions.

Public lands Democrats always fight to protect public lands and your right to access and use them, as well as your right to enjoy clean air and clean water.

Strong families Idahoans should not have to work three jobs to support a family. We support gradual increases to the minimum wage and affordable, safe child care.

Public safety We support our first responders. We back adequate funding for training and equipment, including ensuring proper standards for use of force.

Infrastructure Idaho has 187 structurally deficient bridges and 898 bridges that are past their expected structural life. You deserve roads and bridges that are strong enough for the needs of business and your family’s safety.

Health care We support affordable, quality health care, so we and 61% of Idahoans who agreed with us made Medicaid expansion a reality.

Idaho Democrats are fighting for a more balanced Legislature that addresses constituents’ needs.

After thousands of conversations with voters, we have found broad public support for our platform as described above, and the GOP is rightly concerned that a debate on real issues will not play out to their advantage.

In 90 days, you’ll have the chance to correct the harmful imbalance in our Legislature. We hope that you’ll join us in paving a better road for Idaho’s future.

This opinion piece was drafted and submitted by the Idaho Democratic Caucus, representing the combined 21 Democrats serving in the Idaho House and Senate.

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FEATURE

Punching the keys Why I collect antique typewriters

take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning — Charles Bukowski

By Ben Olson Reader Staff My dad kept a small office upstairs in an alcove outside my childhood room in Westmond. From his ornate roll-top desk, dad would type correspondence on his typewriter, filling our log home with the pleasant sound of clacking keys on onion skin paper.

This sound, along with my mom’s sewing machine, was often what lulled me to sleep in those days of yore.

Occasionally — when dad wasn’t home, of course — my sisters and I would play on the typewriter, reveling at the tactile gratification each time a typebar thumped down and stamped a letter on the page.

As I grew older and the computer began taking over life as we know it, typewriters went out of fashion. They once filled every office building with a cacophony of blissful noise — that visceral sound of work — but now were graduated to thrift store counters and yard sales, often priced at a buck just so their owners could be rid of the 40 pounds of metal.

After I fled college to become a fledgling writer in my early 20s, I filled Moleskine notebooks with scenes and descriptions of my varied adventures, later transferring the good stuff to a laptop. I found there was a meditative quality to writing longhand. A fast typer can type almost as fast as they can think on a laptop, but longhand requires a slower, more methodical pace.

The problem with longhand was that my handwriting was atrocious. It didn’t help that I was usually writing while hitchhiking in the back of a pickup or slumped against some brick wall in the wee hours of the morning, waxing poetic about how the street lamps shone off the wet pavement.

I also couldn’t write for long periods of time without getting a hand cramp. I had an old typewriter laying around — a Smith-Corona from the ’80s that I picked up at a thrift store — so I closed the laptop and started using that to transcribe my

notebooks. I fell into the rhythm that every typewriter sings. Thwack, thwack, thwack sang the keys. Cu-chunk went the shift key.

Ding and shzzzzzzt-THUNK as I pushed the carriage back home for the next line.

It was as if a rare flower had opened before me. Finally I had found a way not just to type on a keyboard, but punch the keys onto the page and listen as they were embedded into the physical world. Writing was no longer a pondering activity, but physical exertion. It was almost as if the small task of hunting each key and returning the carriage allowed my mind to achieve a finer focus.

Somewhere along the way, I began collecting old typewriters — not because I needed them or wanted to use them, but because I felt like they were misfit toys that had been banished to the attic. I’d see a blue Royal beneath a stack of baseball mitts at the thrift store bearing a price tag of $4. Done.

I’d clean out someone’s garage and find a dusty old Underwood. Sure, I’ll take it home.

They began to pile up, these veterans of work. I found an Underwood No. 5 for sale for $10 at a yard sale and it typed like fine jazz. Another time, I found a twin to my original Smith-Corona, so I bought it just in case I needed the parts. Some of my friends knew that I had an affinity for these machines, so they often gifted me their typewriters, probably happy to free themselves some shelf space. I took them all as they came.

The only time I actually spent any real money on a typewriter was when I found a 1924 Underwood portable at an antique store in Coeur d’Alene. It was $90 and I agonized over the decision while my partner shopped, finally splurging and buying the thing. It now sits on my desk at the office, holding my mail and occasionally tapping out a thank you note to our wonderful readers who send us mail. Best $90 I ever spent.

There is a pace to a typewriter that I understand. Words are not just portions of a sentence, but a victory as each letter is punched ceremoniously onto the page. When

you really get going on a typewriter, it’s a noisy affair, full of metallic chunks and dings and grunts as you wrestle the prose into submission line by line, page by page.

One of my best typewriter memories involved a crazed 13-hour writing session that culminated in a play that I produced on the Panida main stage a decade ago. The play, Death of a Small Town in the West, was a dark satire that began as a failed novel. It was one of the many files I lugged around with me inside the laptop that never really went anywhere.

One night, fueled by cheap beer and hubris, I lugged out my Smith-Corona and fed a sheet into the carriage. I began typing the failed novel into a play. I’d never written a play before. I had never really seen that many plays before, but that didn’t stop me.

I typed through the night, sweating and drinking beer as the moths flapped at the window panes. I stopped only to use the bathroom and get more beer from the fridge.

Somewhere after sunrise, I came to, realizing that I was writing the last scene. I was finishing something. I wrote those elusive words, “THE END” and sat back in my chair with utter exhaustion. I felt as if I’d just gone 10 rounds with someone far out of my weight class and beat the snot out of them.

There on the desk before me sat the fruits of my labor, a stack of ratty typewritten pages that had taken 13 hours to produce. It was one of the best feelings in my life as a writer — not only did I finish a play, but I had done it almost automatically, as if the typewriter was drawing each finger to the keys. I was just along for the ride.

I love the feel of the keys in my fingers, the gangly thin metal arms that lead to the letter punches. I love the attention to detail each machine was given, and how they can go 100 years without moving an inch and fire right up with a little elbow grease.

No power needed, no sterile blue glow of a computer screen. Just a writer and his machine taking the punches, turning them into a song.

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Mad about Science:

Brought to you by:

the yellow fever epidemic of 1793

By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist Philadelphia — home of the Phillies, the Liberty Bell and the Fresh Prince. In 1793, it was also the epicenter of one of the worst epidemics America has ever faced. A mere decade after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, a young Philadelphia faced a brutally hot and humid summer; and, with it, prime conditions for the spread of a fast-acting and deadly disease: yellow fever.

As we now know, yellow fever is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes. Most cases are mild, manifesting symptoms like headaches, fever, nausea and vomiting. Sometimes these discomforts get considerably worse, leading to vomit blackened by blood and liver failure, which causes jaundice, a yellowing of the skin, from which the disease earned its name.

Nowadays, yellow fever is rare in the United States, especially around here where our long and harsh winters send those little flying bloodsuckers straight to the great dark beyond. However, if you plan on traveling to South America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends you get a yellow fever vaccine before your departure.

Our understanding of microbiology and how diseases spread in 2020 is considerably more advanced than the medical knowledge of 1793, which was another major contributor to why the epidemic of the time was so lethal.

In addition to our contemporary understanding, our sanitization practices and infrastructure have also vastly improved. Indoor plumbing and filtered running water help reduce the spread of diseases that could add unneces12 /

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sary complications to a yellow fever infection — a luxury most of the population back then critically lacked.

Regardless, despite these innovations, humans are still human, and the societal ways in which we deal with disease — especially widespread epidemics, or pandemics, in the case of COVID-19, remain largely unchanged from the early days of the republic.

In 1793, what passed for a prevailing theory of disease transmission was the medieval idea of miasma — that bad air and stinky smells were how diseases spread. This caused some unusual behaviors during the epidemic, such as richer citizens covering their faces with pieces of cloth dampened by mixtures of vinegar and tobacco, which did absolutely nothing to stem a disease spread by mosquito bites. Interestingly, the principle of voluntary social distancing came into play during the outbreak, as citizens kept apart from one another and avoided physical greetings like shaking hands.

(Bonus fact: The first historical documentation of the high-five as we know it was in 1977, though its origins date to African-American jazz culture during the 1920s, evolving from the low-five, which was a sort of alternative handshake and show of solidarity between Black Americans at the time.)

Returning to the epidemic, Philadelphia’s population was considerably smaller than it is today. Yet, at least 5,000 people were recorded to have died from the disease, accounting for about 10% of the city’s population in 1793. This must have appeared apocalyptic at the time, as more than 20,000 people fled the city in a panic. That reduction in pop-

ulation caused the overall death toll to rise from 10% to as high as 30% of the city’s residents as the epidemic wore on.

The wealthiest citizens in the nation’s first capital city were the first to leave, including multiple signatories of the Declaration of Independence such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton — the latter actually contracted the disease but survived only to die in a duel 11 years later. (The guy also had a hugely successful musical made about his life and death in 2015, as well as having his likeness appear on the $10 bill, so surviving a deadly epidemic was just one small feather in his cap.)

As is common throughout history, the poorer residents were unable to flee and were left to endure not only the disease, but the economic repercussions of living in a city that no one wanted to be in. Among them were thousands of free Black men and women.

Scientific belief at the time, which we know to be severely misguided, rested on two key falsehoods: that yellow fever had infected the city via a trade ship from Haiti, and that Blacks had some genetic trait that provided immunity to the disease.

This stemmed from the fact that many Blacks in tropical places, such as Haiti, were not affected by the disease. This is likely because people living in tropical climates had already been infected by the disease at one point or another and had developed an immunity — something the Black residents of Philadelphia did not have, as exposure to the disease that far north was rare.

Despite being stuck in the city and tasked with what can only be described as an extreme-

Volunteers collecting the dead and dying from yellow fever. Courtesy Wikipedia.

ly unfair duty, the free men and women rose to the occasion and adopted the mantle of health care workers throughout the epidemic, saving untold lives and receiving very little thanks for it. Many white doctors at the time received the most attention for their work, despite presenting myriad “cures” and treatments that had little to no scientific merit and blatantly didn’t work.

The epidemic concluded as winter fell on Philadelphia and

the mosquito population was either ushered southward or froze to death, but its mark was left on our fledgling nation amid the turmoil of not one, but six conflicts.

Yeah, 1776 gets all of the glory, but our country fought three other wars and three rebellions before 1800 — a combined half of them occurring at the same time as the yellow fever epidemic.

No one said starting a country was easy. Stay healthy and curious, 7B.

Random Corner t rome?

Don’t know much about ancien

• The Ancient Roman civilization began on the Italian Peninsula as early as the eighth century BCE. • At its peak in the second century CE, the Roman Empire contained at least 65 million people, comprising approximately 21% of the world’s population at the time.

• The Roman Empire was not the largest empire in history. It was only the 28th largest. At its height in the first two decades of the 20th, the British Empire claimed 23% of the total world population (more than 400 million people at the time), making it the largest in history.

• The wars between the Romans and Persians lasted about 721 years, the longest conflict in human history.

• Ancient Romans celebrated “Saturnalia,” a festival during which slaves and their masters would switch places.

• During the seventh century BCE, ancient Roman “vestal virgins” were required to keep their hymens intact as proof of virginity until age 30 or they would be buried alive.

• Ancient Rome was eight times more densely populated than mod-

We can help!

ern New York.

• Urine was used in ancient Rome to wash clothes. Romans also used it to whiten their teeth.

• Paris was originally a Roman city called “Lutetia.”

• The Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula made his horse a senator.

• Women in ancient Rome daubed themselves with the sweat of gladiators to improve their beauty and complexion.

• Roman gladiators rarely fought to the death or against animals and were considered celebrities of their time.

• Two Roman dams in Spain are still in use after 1,900 years.

• French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi drew his inspiration for the design of the Statue of Liberty from the pagan Roman goddess Libertas, whose image featured on the coins struck by the political faction that assassinated Julius Caesar.

• After the fall of the Roman Empire, the technology to make concrete was lost for 1,000 years.

COMMUNITY

Keeping their goals in sight

Pend Oreille Vision Care celebrates 10 years in Sandpoint and national recognition

By Ben Olson Reader Staff Before Dr. Nate Harrell opened Pend Oreille Vision Care in Sandpoint a decade ago, he was fresh out of optometry school, dreaming of a place to call home.

“He knew he wanted to move somewhere that was not Omaha [where Harrell is originally from],” said Jen Heller, the business manager and “office mom” for the optometry practice. “A doctor told him about this place [on Oak Street]. It had been an eye clinic for about four years and was closing down, so he got a loan and made it happen.”

Heller said Harrell scrimped and saved to make this dream a reality, living in the Sandpoint office on an air mattress and eating off of a hot plate for the first few years while he established the business. With a sharp focus on customer care and attention, Pend Oreille Vision Care took off, adding a Bonners Ferry location in 2014 and a Priest River office in 2018. Now, 10 years later, Pend Oreille Vision Care employs three doctors and seven staff members throughout its three locations.

According to Heller, it was that focus on customer care — as well as hiring good people — that solidified the success of the business.

“We couldn’t do what we do without everyone on our team,” Heller told the Reader. “We hire carefully and pay people well for what they do. We also make sure to get out and play and take time off, because that’s important, too.”

Heller said when they opened Bonners Ferry Eye Care, it was originally intended to be a satellite business to save rural community members a long drive to access services. They quickly realized the demand was enough to warrant a full-time office.

“We were pushing the angle, ‘We send

doctors to where the patients are,’ which was fairly unusual in the industry,” Heller said. “Both in Bonners Ferry and again when we opened the Priest River office, we would get an influx of people who hadn’t had their eyes checked in over 30 years.”

It was this innovative customer care that helped Pend Oreille Vision Care to be named one of the 2020 America’s Finest Optical Retailers by INVISION, a national magazine for eyecare professionals.

“Every year we feel privileged to bring our readers the best of the best of independent optical retail in our industry,” said Deirdre Carroll, INVISION’s editor-in-chief.

Heller said the criteria for receiving an honorable mention is stiff, since optical retailers compete on a national scale for the award. Stores are judged on exterior and interior appearance and design, store biography, marketing, web presence and overall individuality.

“It’s pretty well rounded,” Heller said.

“They want to know you’re doing something different than just being a product mill or a patient mill.”

Heller believes one reason INVISION selected Pend Oreille Vision Care for an honorable mention this year was because they listen to their customers.

“I think everyone who works here is really good at listening,” Heller said. “We make sure to build time to listen to people and educate accordingly. Instead of just selling an object, we sell an education.”

While the focus is usually on higher quality products with strong warranties, Heller said other innovations like offering a basic eyewear package at an affordable price helps them service a wider range of customers.

“Recently, we put together some basic packages for people that might be really hard up, who can walk out of here with eyewear

for $50,” she said. “We don’t push them hard — they aren’t as high quality and they aren’t the same warranties — but when COVID hit all of a sudden, we were ready for it. … We wanted to make sure different levels of need were met instead of just one.”

To celebrate a decade of business in Sandpoint, Pend Oreille Vision Care is offering 50% off any warrantied anti-scratch or anti-reflective lens coating with a coupon (look for their ad in this week’s edition of the

Pend Oreille Vision Care doctors from all three locations (left to right): Danielle Tholl, Nate Harrell, Amber Prins.

Courtesy photo.

Reader). The offer is good until Sept. 15.

Check out Pend Oreille Vision Care at 514 Oak St. in Sandpoint, Bonners Ferry Eye Care at 6348 Main Street in Bonner Ferry and Priest River Eye Care at 6132 Highway 2 in Priest River. Or find them out on the web at pendoreillevisioncare.com.

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FOOD

Comfort food for all

By Mike Wagoner Reader Contributor

Moxie’s brings veg-friendly eats to the Oak Street Food Court

So where does it come from?

Check this out. Let’s say you took a big bucket and filled it with dry dirt and, after weighing that dirt, then planted a little tiny tree seedling in it. Then set it out on your deck, watered it now and then and let it grow, let’s say, for five years.

Now, after that five years you pull the tree out and weigh it. You find it weighs, let’s say, 16 pounds. Now you take all the dirt out and weigh it again when it’s dry. You discover it weighs almost exactly what it weighed five years ago.

So, where did all the “stuff ” in that tree come from?

Most of what built the tree was carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.The carbon it obtained from taking in CO2 from the air, the hydrogen came from the water it was given: H2O. Both molecules

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contain some oxygen. It also needed some “micronutrients” like nitrogen, phosphorus and a bit of potassium, but these are used sparingly compared to the big three C, O and H. This process can be represented by the equation CO2 + H2O [with the addition of sunlight] yields C6 H12 O6 + O2.

To put it back into words: ”Plants take in CO2 and water then, with the energy provided by the sun, convert these atoms into glucose — or the food plants make for themselves. When they have had enough to eat they use the rest to build themselves. They end up with some extra oxygen they don’t need so they kick it back out their “exhaust pipes” into the air which comes in real handy for the rest of us.

By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff New Sandpoint food truck Moxie’s was born from a love for comfort food, frustration with restaurants and pandemic-induced job loss.

Vegetarians and partners Angela Woods and Taylor Ward grew tired of the same old veggie burgers, fries and other unapproachable meat-free options on dine-out menus.

“Just because I’m a vegetarian doesn’t mean that I don’t want affordable junk food, you know?” Woods said.

When Woods and Ward both lost their jobs at the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic this spring, a growing dream became a reality: the couple bought a vintage Shasta trailer off the side of the road in Newport, Wash., and created Moxie’s — a veg-friendly grub destination for the Idaho Panhandle. “[I]t’s extremely liberating and fulfilling to be in control of the direction that you want to take your business and we absolutely love what we do,” Woods said, adding that support from the community has been top notch from the start, and that it’s been a treat to serve vegetarian-friendly food to people who have found themselves underrepresented around town. “Receiving such awesome feedback from the people that we serve, and knowing that we’re taking care of a population that can sometimes be forgotten, is what keeps us doing what we do.”

Moxie’s has a

Top: Angela Woods and Taylor Ward in front of their new food truck Moxie’s.

Bottom: The Brownie Crinkle Sando.

Courtesy photos. rotating menu with an emphasis on local, in-season ingredients and comfort food — especially breakfast. The most popular dish, Woods said, has been the “fried chk’n” (tofu) on a buttermilk waffle with spicy honey cinnamon syrup.

“Even the carnivorous customers are surprised by how good this dish is,” Woods said.

She said popular Moxie’s bakery items include the spicy peanut butter fudge brownie, lemon white chocolate tart and their rotating flavors of cookie sandwiches — this week’s being lemon with blueberry buttercream, using blueberries Woods and Ward picked themselves at Riley Creek Blueberry Farm in Laclede.

Woods said that as a queer couple owning a business in North Idaho, she and Ward want people to know Moxie’s is for absolutely everyone. “[I]t’s really important for us that we are known as a business that celebrates diversity and welcomes all,” Woods said.

Check out Moxies’ offerings Wednesday-Sunday at the Oak Street Food Court.

Hours vary, so find Moxie’s on Facebook for updates. View the menu and order online at moxiessoulgrub.com.

COMMUNITY City of Sandpoint adopts ADA proclamation

By Reader Staff

Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad signed a city-wide proclamation about the Americans With Disabilities Act on July 26, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ADA and underscoring the city’s commitment to providing integrated, non-restrictive environments for people with disabilities and their families.

The Northwest ADA Center-Idaho has worked to change the landscape for individuals with disabilities, their families and other advocates. Since 1993, local center for independent living Disability Action Center NW has provided outreach, training and technical assistance to promote voluntary compliance with the ADA. People with disabilities now have better access to businesses, buildings, state and local programs and services, as well as increased opportunities for employment, “but our work is not done” said Mark Leeper, Executive Director of DAC NW. “Despite progress over the past 30 years, people with disabilities still have higher poverty rates and lower employment and educational outcomes than those without disabilities,” he said.

DAC will be working to raise more awareness with a T-shirt campaign.

The proclamation is part of a statewide virtual celebration of the 30th anniversary of the ADA. Events started July 17 and will run through Oct. 31, October being National Disability Awareness Month.

For more information about events check the Facebook page @ADA30Idaho.

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August is a busy month in Sandpoint. Whether you’re out swimming in the lake to cool off or creating public art out of repurposed instruments, there’s always something interesting to photograph. Here are a few shots that made the cut this week.

Right: One of two public pianos outside of the Music Conservatory of Sandpoint, featuring new artwork by MCS students.

The Instrument Art Factory is an art collaboration between MCS and Kelly Price and Peter Goetzinger.

Middle: A “pirate ship” captained by Bonner County resident Dan Mimmack on Sand Creek.

Bottom right: A new vinyl wrap installed

by Busy Beaver Graphics at Boyer Avenue and Highway 200 featuring artwork by Sandpoint artist Maggie Dawson.

Bottom middle: A perfect ray of light hitting the War Memorial Field sign.

Bottom left: A handful of kids air off the Statue of Liberty pier at Sandpoint City Beach on a hot day in August.

All photos by Ben Olson.

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LITERATURE

This open Window

Vol. 4 No.6 poetry and prose by local writers edited by Jim mitsui

i wear my mask for you I wear my mask for you.

I wear my mask for your family.

I can’t stand the mask, it’s true, yet I wear my mask for you.

This isn’t about red or blue.

Our health and safety know no hue.

I’m reaching out o’er the political divide To show we’re truly on the same side.

One thing this virus has pointed out, We’re in this world together, there is little doubt.

As our country’s cases spike out of control, Halting the spread must be our shared goal.

We miss our lives and we miss our friends, And we wonder when this daymare will end.

I stay home, keep my distance, and wear a mask, Yet there’s still one question I have to ask.

I wear my mask for you.

Will you wear a mask for me?

— Zen Fiskin Zen (Suzen) Fiskin is a speaker, author and mentor who is intent on leaving the world a better place. She believes that laughter is one of the primary food groups to be enjoyed daily.

new school normal 8 o’clock Check in I can’t see you Now I can. You’re all here Ooops Someone is still in bed. Stop wiggling your computer and get dressed. Take the blanket off your head I need to see all your faces Take off your hoodie I can’t see your face Tell your brother in the background who just came out of the shower not to drop his towel. Ooops.

TMI I’m shutting down now I’m back You’re all on mute now unless I say otherwise Put your phones away Stop texting each other That picture is not appropriate Spilling Starbucks on your dress is no reason to scream Is anyone there?

I can see you now.

What are you cooking It’s too early for lunch A quesadilla for your little brother?

Who’s that crawling around in the background? Your baby sister?

Where is your mother?

Asleep?

You’re all back on unmute now It would be nice if you all would remind one parent to be in the room so we don’t

Margaret Ann taught English at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, Calif. She’s lived in Sandpoint for six years. This poem captures the unique, once-in-a-lifetime world that we’re now experiencing. Sometimes we all have to “get it out.”

for a fanciful few moments I watch two white butterflies dance over the swath of blooming St. Johnswort along my chicken yard fence as they meet to kiss on every third pass. In reality they’re more likely cabbage moths soaking up some of the gold flower

essence before they return to the garden to lay more eggs on my broccoli.

— Jeanette Schandelmeier Jeanette lives on Talache Road. She grew up on a homestead in Alaska before settling in North Idaho. A retired educator, she loves her cats and chickens, and her garden and bees keep her busy.

prickly pear cactus Hat rack of Mickey Mouse ears and an occasional thorn-rimmed heart

couple The two spent their lifetimes

the night sea waltzes with her black salt dress ruffling out

in stripes of white taffeta swishing

tough love I just love poetry but one thing

Send poems to: jim3wells@aol.com

have anyone else drawing on the screen Click on your answer instead Use the red check for Yes… blue check for No… green check for I Don’t Know No, there is not an option for I don’t care Any questions about the reading assignment?

What reading assignment? I thought you were going to read it to us What project? Isn’t this a virtual school? It counts???

What is my grade?

Look at the chart. You can figure it out.

A = 85-100 B = 70-85 C = 55-70 NC = incomplete That’s not fair You think not? This is the new Everyone’s a Winner System That’s not fair Will we have to do this again next time?

What year?

– Margaret Ann Maricle

about it has always bugged me.

Keats and Yeats don’t rhyme.

undoing distances between them.

Then her stroke happened and the refastening.

dad said It doesn’t take much intelligence to show how stupid you can be.

— Short poems by Beth Weber Beth Weber teaches music and plays violin for the Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra, kayaks, can name any bird in North Idaho, scuba dives and it turns out she’s also a skydiver.

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events August 6 - 13, 2020

THURSDAY, August 6

Live Music w/ Kevin Dorin 6-8pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall

COMMUNITY

POAC plans for a ‘successful and safe’ Arts and Crafts Fair

FriDAY, August 7 Live Music w/ Devon Wade 6:30-9:30pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall Early Bird Paddle Plus 6:30-8am @ Outdoor Experience Free class, rentals available, meet out back on Sand Creek behind OE

Live Music w/ Bright Moments Jazz 6-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority Live Music w/ Kevin Garner of Spare Parts 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery Live Music w/ Chris Lynch 6-9pm @ Arlo’s Ristorante Live Music w/ Kevin Dorin 8-10pm @ Arlo’s Ristorante

SATURDAY, August 8 Sandpoint Farmers’ Market 9am-1pm @ Farmin Park The Market is back at Farmin Park!

Saturday Movie Night Dusk @ The Longshot Wedding Crashers Live Music w/ Chris Lynch 8-10pm @ The Back Door

Live Music w/ Okay Honey 6:30-9:30pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall POAC Arts & Crafts Fair 9am-5pm @ Downtown Sandpoint POAC’s annual event with vendors from all over selling arts and crafts from metal art to pottery to jewelry and yard art.

Something for every budget!

A scene from POAC’s Arts and Crafts Fair in 2019. Photo by Ben Olson.

SunDAY, August 9

Piano Sunday w/ Tom Pletscher 3-5pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery

POAC Arts & Crafts Fair 9am-4pm @ Downtown Sandpoint

monDAY, August 10

Monday Night Blues Jam w/ Truck Mills Lifetree Cafe 7pm @ Eichardt’s Pub 2pm @ Jalapeño’s Restaurant “Reincarnation: Have You Been Here Monday Night Run Posse (free) Before?” features filmed interviews with 6pm @ Outdoor Experience people describing past livfe experiences.

tuesDAY, August 11 wednesDAY, August 12 Sandpoint Farmers’ Market 3-5:30pm @ Farmin Park The Market is back at Farmin Park!

Brews for Benefits for Jay Schranck 4-8pm @ Laughing Dog Brewery A portion of all drink sales will go to support Jay Schranck, the instrucyor in a helicopter crash in Rathdrum on June 23.

ThursDAY, August 13 Live Music w/ Pamela Jean 6-8pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall

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By Kathy Hubbard Reader Contributor Some things will change and some things will stay the same as the 48th annual Arts and Crafts Fair fills the streets of downtown Sandpoint on Saturday, Aug. 8 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 9 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Hosted by the Pend Oreille Arts Council, 100 vendors will set up their tents from Main Street east of Farmin Park to First Avenue and across Second Avenue from Cedar to Church streets.

As in years past, artists and crafters from all over the country will sell their handmade merchandise in this juried event that’s always a family favorite.

Whether you’re looking for clever gifts or hunting for treasures for yourself, the Arts and Crafts Fair is tailor-made for shoppers’ discerning taste. From metal art to pottery to jewelry to fine art to yard art, this show has something for every budget, too.

Speaking of taste, food vendors will be on hand to deliver culinary treats while students and instructors from the Music Conservatory at Sandpoint provide music.

“I’m excited that this fair is bigger and better than last year,” said POAC Board President Carol Deaner. “We gave a lot of thought to whether we should have the Arts and Crafts Fair this year with COVID-19 hanging around, but we

finally came to the decision to have it because the livelihood of many of these artisans depends on the sales at events such as this.”

Health safety protocols at this year’s fair include spacing booths farther apart to allow for social distancing and attendees will be asked not to enter a crowded booth but to wait outside until they can peruse with more space between fellow shoppers.

All attendees will also be asked to wear masks. POAC volunteers will have masks and hand sanitizer for anyone in need. Because of the need for distancing and disinfecting, there won’t be the Kaleidoscope Kids Booth this year.

“The POAC board of directors, staff and city officials believe that the plan we have in place will make for a very successful and safe weekend,” Deaner said, adding that POAC would understand if anyone feeling uncomfortable coming downtown, wearing a mask and practicing social distancing decided to stay away.

“Our top priority is for the safety of our community,” she said.

Downtown streets where the fair will take place will be closed to vehicle traffic beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 7, continuing until 8 p.m. on Sunday. Access to the City Parking Lot will be on Church Street only. For more information go to artinsandpoint.org or call the POAC office at 208-263-6139.

STAGE & SCREEN

Funding The Festival

With 2020 season canceled, Festival board launches critical fundraising campaign

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff For the past 38 years, music lovers from around the region have marked early August on their entertainment calendars in anticipation of The Festival at Sandpoint.

This year, owing to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, the iconic two-week concert series at War Memorial Field has been canceled, but it still needs community support — now more than ever.

Coinciding with what would have been opening night on Thursday, Aug. 6, the nonprofit board announced the launch of Save our Festival: The Festival at Sandpoint Critical Relief Fundraising Campaign, intended as a lifeline to keep the organization going through these historic tough times and help ensure both its return for a 2021 concert season and sustain the many music education programs it supports throughout the year.

“Regrettably we have reached a point where, in order for The Festival at Sandpoint to continue bringing a concert series and programs to the community of Sandpoint we need support from our community,” the board wrote in a news release.

The virtual fundraising campaign invites

donors to create teams and fundraise on behalf of The Festival.

To participate in the fundraising effort, go to festivalatsandpoint.com and click the “Save Our Festival — Critical Relief Fund” button. There, you can sign up as an individual fundraiser, join a team or create a team.

Fundraising teams — “whether you’re a group of one or 100,” according to the website — can select specific categories with unique missions and goals. One category supports expanding The Festival’s operations and programs through digital platforms, while another is aimed at sustaining and adapting regional scholarships, camps and other programs. Yet another specifically targets raising funds needed to book performers, while another supports the organization as a whole. Goals range from $1,000 to $25,000.

Participants can sign on to support a specific fundraiser or team, with contributions logged on the site and teams’ progress tracked in real-time.

Direct donations in any amount are accepted on the site, and other support options include philanthropic gifts and donating 2020 season passes and tickets. As of press-

time, 26 season passes and 208 tickets had already been donated. To contribute passes, email your name and season pass number to info@festivalatsandpoint.com.

While the novel coronavirus pandemic has upended lives and economies around the world, it has also shuttered many other longtime community events while putting musicians, nonprofits and concert producers in a tailspin.

Yet, despite this “unprecedented crisis,” Festival board members reported that the organization “has already begun working towards booking for the 2021 season and thanks to operational cost cutting, volunteers donating their time, grant applications, penny pinching measures and donations from this fundraising campaign, we are confident we will have the money to weather this storm and continue to provide an iconic concert series in Sandpoint.”

The board stated: “Though many think of us as just a music festival, we are so much more. We are a nonprofit with a passion for cultivating a dynamic and vibrant community for everyone to enjoy.”

For more info on the various ways to contribute to The Festival at Sandpoint, visit festivalatsandpoint.com.

Summer streaming: What’s new for August on Netflix and Amazon Prime

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff Heading into our fifth month since the drama of lockdown and COVID-19 quarantine — followed by the stutter-step reopening process — it’s a pretty fair assumption that anyone with a decent internet connection and subscriptions to the myriad streaming services has watched pretty much every movie and TV series ever created.

Throughout this bizarre experience of social distancing and sheltering in place, it has become clear that among the chief beneficiaries of our collective (relatively) home-bound existence has been video-on-demand giant Netflix, which Forbes reported at the end of July boasted a full 40% of the top 20 TV shows and series. That is, rather than a traditional studio or production company, more than three-quarters of the most-watched video in the U.S. was a Netflix original.

In the second quarter of 2020, Netflix captured 31.5% of the market, according to Forbes, followed by Amazon, whose Prime service accounted for 24.7%. Hulu came in at 18.6%, trailed by Disney+ with an esti-

mated 6.1% and HBO and HBO Max with a combined 5.2%.

What all that adds up to is people are watching a lot of digital entertainment at home. As such, the big two — Netflix and Amazon — are shoveling as much content as possible into their platforms, with a raft of new additions coming in August.

Netflix by far has the most robust slate of offerings for the month, which it kicked off Aug. 1 with highlights including The Addams Family (1991), Being John Malkovich, Death at a Funeral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hardcore Henry, Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Mad Max (1979), The NeverEnding Story, The NeverEnding Story 2: The Next Chapter, Ocean’s Thirteen, Ocean’s Twelve, Seabiscuit and Transformers Rescue Bots Academy: Season 2.

Beginning Friday, Aug. 7, Netflix will add The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Kids In Space; Monday, Aug. 10 brings the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Nightcrawler, about a creepy nocturnal videographer who captures the late-night horrors of L.A. and sells his footage to the local TV station; and Monday, Aug. 31 will see the addition of Bond movies Casino

Royale and Quantum of Solace.

Amazon’s August offerings are less compelling, with critics zeroing in on the Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys Aftershow, which is essentially a show about the making of the dark-comedy Prime superhero series The Boys. Watching shows about shows is rarely — if ever — worth anyone’s time, so we’re more interested in Capone, which hits the streaming service on Monday, Aug. 10 with Tom Hardy as the eponymous gangland icon.

Amazon will also reacquaint viewers with British comedy Four Weddings And A Funeral as well as classic Rain Man. As of Aug. 1 Amazon subscribers have had access to Western shoot-’em-up 3:10 To Yuma, ’80s flyboy jock nostalgia trip Top Gun, late-stage Boomer rom-com Something’s Gotta Give, Julia Roberts dramedy Steel Magnolias and Spider-Man 3.

The weather has been gloriously hot and the lake temperature is nearing “bath water,” so getting outside is to be preferred; but, if you’re holed up inside on one of these hot August nights, there seems to be something for just about everyone on the old boob tube.

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MUSIC

Dream Festival

Zach’s picks

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff I’m a pragmatic man, so when the Reader editorial staff came up with the idea of conjuring a “Dream Festival” lineup, my mind first flew to impossibilities before I reigned it back into the realm of what might, in a perfect world, be realistic.

Of course, I’d love to resurrect at least a dozen bands and artists and pull in a few that are currently performing but in no way, ever, would come down from their Olympian mega-arenas to perform in little ’ol Sandpoint.

That said, my wishlist does include a few big names but, based on my considered experience listening to their work over the years, I feel like their personalities might lend them to considering our relatively small yet, pound-for-pound, priceless venue.

Week 1 Thursday I would happily queue up to see Australian-born rockabilly bluesman C.W. Stoneking for the first night of The Festival. Typically dressed in an all-white quasi-tropical ensemble, Stoneking’s off-kilter, sometimes haunting, other times jumpy, delivery evokes hot equatorial nights where anything — even the alluringly dangerous — can happen.

Friday Eilen Jewell would be a natural for The Festival at Sandpoint. She lives in Boise and even cut an album once titled Boundary County. Her folky sound is anything but typical, landing closer on the genre spectrum to certain Leonard Cohen tunes, as well as the oeuvre of Jolie Holland, than what we might consider the “plaid-and-banjo” style of the Northwest. Her vocals can be at turns delicate and wistful, world-weary and hard-edged. Not to mention her lyric writing, which ranks up there with the best sonic storytellers.

Saturday Country artist Granger Smith is successful in his own right, but his alter ego — Earl Dibbles Jr. — draws as big or bigger crowds. When Smith cocks his trucker hat to a jaunty angle and pulls on his overalls, he transforms into Earl, the country boy of country boys, who dips dip, cracks cold ones and rollicks across a landscape of hollers and fields toting his trusty shotgun and singing fun-loving songs about that easygoing rural life. Once you hear him shout his trademark, “yee yee!,” you’ll find yourself adopting it as your own exclamation of hillbilly joie de vivre.

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Sunday This is a little out-of-the-box, but Denver-based four-piece DeVotchKa makes my “Dream Festival” lineup for its multi-instrumental, Gypsy-punk inflected sound. In a genre niche inhabited by bands like Gogol Bordello and Diego’s Umbrella, DeVotchKa pulls audiences from their seats with a raucous amalgam of dancy accordion, fiddle and assorted horns — a perfect band to complement the “instrument petting zoo” traditionally put on for the kids earlier in the afternoon on the first Sunday.

Week 2 Thursday Based in New Orleans, Hurray for the Riff Raff trafficks in what can be loosely regarded as Americana, but that term comes off as too broad for any band that steps out of the mould of Top 40 pop, rock or hiphop. Those elements are present in Hurray for the Riff Raff’s sound, but it’s shot through with a much deeper vein of Cajun influences, making for an irresistible blend of traditions enlivened by the stellar vocal performance of band leader Alynda Segarra.

Friday This would be a helluva get — and among the most unrealistic of my picks — but I get the sense that the ever-unpredictable Tom Waits might at least consider a headliner spot on The Festival stage. A legend for decades, his lyrics are American modernist poetry and his inimitable vocals and genre-bending compositional sensibility catapult his work into its own rarefied atmosphere where jazz, blues, rock, folk and subversive experimentation blend into what can only be described as “Waitsian.”

Saturday This is another true fantasy act, but former Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard feels like she would be a fabulous fit for The Festival. Her powerhouse vocals and guitar work propelled the driving energy of her blues-rock band and, now that she’s gone solo, blazes on its own with a rowdy Southern soul influence spiked with R&B and hip-hop.

Sunday I’m loath to even conceive of anything other than the Spokane Symphony for closing night. Our favorite regional orchestra is as much a part of The Festival as its iconic tent. But in the spirit of “what-if,” it might be interesting to imagine a group like The Bad Plus stepping in with its profoundly unique avant garde jazz stylings, which somehow feel cutting edge while also being classically minded.

MUSIC

Dream Festival

By Ben Olson Reader Staff Week 1

Thursday I can think of no band to kick off my dream Festival than Beirut. This dynamic band of musical geniuses blends indie and world music in perfect proportions. Beirut features a litany of unique instruments that set this band apart from every other. Their brass section plays in perfect harmony, their percussion is funky and driving, and Zach Condon’s voice is one of those that you appreciate more and more over time. I saw Beirut play live in Portland, Ore., a couple years ago and it stands as one of the finest live performances I’ve ever seen.

Friday Though I wanted to choose Weezer, I think a more timely suggestion would be The National. This dark chamber rock band has it all: phenomenal songwriting; a dynamic, unique mixture of rock, indie and folk; and a deep, sonorous voice from frontman Matt Berninger.

Their live shows are equal parts soft and loud, driving and quiet — with every song on the set list painting a night of perfection under the stars at War Memorial Field.

Saturday For the Saturday country night, I can think of no other living country

artist that would give me as much of a thrill as seeing Willie Nelson playing live on The Festival stage. At 87 years old, Nelson is still playing shows and recently released his 70th solo album, First Rose of Spring.

Whether it’s his smooth, crooning voice or his simple, down-home lyrics that speak of a better time, Nelson will always be one of those artists that immediately sets my mind at ease from his first note to the last dying ember of his voice.

Sunday If I were in charge, I’d make a slight change to the first Sunday. In the past, this date was a collection of fun orchestral concerts aimed at getting families together and showcasing our local student musicians. I think this should be moved up a little to create a new “local’s night” that doubles as a fundraiser for the Charlie Packard Memorial Scholarship fund. If you attended the special concert held for Charlie a couple years back, it was one of my favorite Festival memories in recent years, where almost everyone in attendance was local.

The event would feature local bands that might not normally have a chance to play on the biggest stage in Sandpoint. Ticket prices would be reduced and anyone with a 7B driver’s license gets placement in an early admission line. Proceeds would benefit the scholarship, and locals would have

Little girls who grew up listening to country music in the late 1990s became deeply familiar with the three-part harmony and soaring fiddle sounds of The Dixie Chicks.

Instant classic “Goodbye Earl” told the upbeat story of two best friends who kill an abusive husband. What 6-year-old North Idaho girl wasn’t belting “‘cause Earl had to die” at the top of her lungs from the backseat of the car?

Since their early days of cheeky, banjo-heavy anthems and chart-topping albums, The Dixie Chicks have traveled a long and winding road — notably, undergoing a recent name change to “The Chicks.”

By dropping “Dixie” from their name, The Chicks hope to further distance themselves from the inherent racism that comes with attaching

Confederate imagery to art. This change might have come during the great 2020 push to do better, but band members Martie Maguire, Emily Strayer and Natalie Maines told NPR that they’d felt weird about the name for quite some time, but were inspired by the current Black Lives Matter movement to take the leap and update their moniker.

The change makes sense for a band that’s known for bucking the conservative country music system.

The Chicks’ new album, Gaslighter, comes after a 14-year hiatus spurred by the band’s cancellation back in 2003, when Maines criticized then-president George W. Bush.

Leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Maines said onstage in London that she was “ashamed” the president was from her home state of Texas.

Blowback came in all forms, from death threats to mass CD burnings to no longer playing The

READ

Ben’s picks

one night every year for them.

Week 2 Thursday For the first night of Week 2, I’d suggest booking the Australian brother/sister duo Angus & Julia Stone as the opening act. The main performer would be none other than Bon Iver, an indie-rock powerhouse group whose haunting harmonies and melodies would drift out into the crowd like a warm wind. Their quiet songs are enough to send chills down your spine, but when they hit a crescendo — especially on songs like, “The Wolves, Act. I and II” — there is nothing better than to be listening live while the magic is created.

Friday When I was in my early 20s working in Los Angeles, I was given tickets in the eighth row of the Hollywood Bowl for a Radiohead concert. My boss at the time was a colossal jerk, and knew I had been given the tickets, so he demanded that I work late doing meaningless paperwork until the concert had begun. Then he sent me home. I will despise this man for the rest of my life, because I’ve never had another chance to see Radiohead live. To see Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway perform live on The Festival stage would be a dream come true for me. This single band

Less Dixie, more vocal

By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff

This week’s RLW by Zach Hagadone

has shown me more beauty and melancholy than any other.

Saturday Of all the inspirational musicians out there, few have achieved the same level of admiration as Neil Young, whom I list as one of my influences for starting to play music.

Young has left us with a compendium of songs and attitudes that will stay with the music world forever. He has the ability to slow us down and hear the heartbreaking cadence of the quiet songs, only to pick us back up and blow us away with raw, driving rock. To this day, Young’s guitar solo on “Like a Hurricane” gives me goosebumps. That song has been described online as, “That one song where Neil Young plays the second greatest guitar solo in history, sings a little and then plays the greatest guitar solo in history.” Keep on rockin’ in the free world, Neil.

Sunday I wouldn’t change a thing about the Grande Finale night. The Spokane Symphony has always been the perfect way to wind up The Festival at Sandpoint, punctuated by fireworks at the end. If I were to request a particular performance from the orchestra, I’d love to hear Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, as I’ve always been partial to that one.

The Chicks drop half their name and a new album

Dixie Chicks on country music radio. Now, with a new album and renewed image, The Chicks aren’t backing down from what Maines started with her comments in 2003.

The band’s new single “March March” addresses school shootings, reproductive rights and more with lyrics that reveal the band’s seasoned approach to controversy: “Watchin’ our youth have to solve our problems / I’ll follow them so who’s comin’ with me / Half of you love me / Half already hate me.”

Though lyrics paint those who love and hate The Chicks to be half and half, record sales and mounting praise show otherwise. With Gaslighter, the band has amassed the most No. 1 albums of any female country music duo or group, and their latest is sitting at No. 3 among all genres.

It’s a legacy influencing today’s biggest female artists. One of the lit-

tle girls belting “Goodbye Earl” two decades ago was Taylor Swift, now a world-renowned pop icon. Swift held off on sharing her political beliefs until about 2018, partially because of the vitriol The Chicks faced in 2003.

“They showed me that women in country music could play their own instruments, make their own creative choices and dictate their own artistic departures,” Swift told The Guardian, “that they could be stoic, angry, daydreamy, romantic, ferocious, prideful and sorrowful. And that complexity was nothing to apologise for.”

Now they’re showing women across musical genres what it means to rise from the ashes. The Chicks may have been cancelled, but it turns out that they were just a decade or so before their time.

Listen to Gaslighter at thechicks. com or wherever you buy or stream music.

Writer James Baldwin has experienced something of a renaissance since the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which chronicled the brilliant thinker’s life and letters.

Sometimes overshadowed by his works on race, sexuality and politics is his fiction writing, for which he deserves a first-rank place among modernists. Giovanni’s Room, published in the mid1950s, put him on the literary map and merits a wide, contemporary readership.

LISTEN

As one internet wag recently put it, among the few good things to come out of 2020 is the mainstreaming of “bardcore” — a genre of music that translates contemporary pop and rock songs into medieval-sounding tunes performed on period instruments like lutes, fifes and sackbuts. Search “bardcore” on YouTube and pay particular attention to the Dolly Parton song “Jolene,” as reimagined by Hildegard von Blingin’.

WATCH

There’s a noxious strain of revisionist history that seeks to hijack Norse history in general and the Viking era in particular to front a bogus narrative of “pure Aryan” hard-assery. The real history of the Vikings is of course much more complicated. Treating the tropes of tough-guy Scandinavia with the derision they deserve is the Netflix original series Norsemen, which puts a raunchy, humorous spin on the beards-andswords mythology.

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BACK OF THE BOOK

on liberty and justice for all From Northern Idaho News, August 6, 1915

RAPID PROGRESS IS MADE IN PAVING WORK BEING CARRIED ON WITH ALL POSSIBLE SPEED — FINISH ABOUT SEPT. 15 The paving of First Avenue is progressing rapidly. The grading of this street is practically complete from the court house to Cedar street, and the curb and gutter are laid nearly the entire distance. Tomorrow night will probably see this phase of the work complete.

Grading of Cedar street is now progressing and the earth taken out is being used to fill under the Cedar street bridge.

It is expected that the loading and unloading apparatus will be installed shortly both here and at Algoma so that the handling of gravel for the sub-base can be done cheaply and expeditiously, after which there will be work for a large number of Sandpoint teams, according to the contractors.

Following the work of laying of the sub-base will come that of laying the concrete for the base. This will take the large amount of time, while after this has once been laid and set the work of putting on the asphaltum conrete topping will go with great rapidity.

It is expected the job will be completed in six weeks barring unexpected bad luck and delays.

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By Sandy Compton Reader Columnist Bill Hodge, Rob Mason and I are rolling slowly down Bloody Dick Creek Road in the Beaverhead National Forest toward a tour of Big Sheep Creek National Backcountry Byway. The way is bumpy, so typing on my laptop in the back seat is slow and oft redone.

But, being on a journey, I feel like journaling.

“Journal” and “journey” share a Latin root, diurnum, which translates roughly as “daily.” “Journey” is descended from diurnum via the French journée, which means “day,” “a day’s work” or “a day’s travel.”

Bloody Dick, in case you were wondering, was a British expat named Richard who was famous 160 years ago in southwestern Montana for his frequent use of the term “bloody.”

Bill’s crew cab diesel pickup has charging ports — 12 and 120 volts — navigation, cup holders galore, comfy seats, lots of legroom (even in back) and air conditioning; not a bad place to write, even on washboard.

We hit pavement at Highway 324 and conversation becomes impossible. We ride with windows down to mitigate the possibility of COVID-19, and the winds at 70 mph whip words right out the windows.

Isolated in the back seat, I’m parsing out ideas discussed at campfires over the past two evenings. First, we have agreed that social justice and environmental justice are twins that depend on each other for survival.

Second, we suppose that there’s a chance to learn and act on this, but we have to engage our better selves. We must quit yelling at each other about private matters — gender, sexuality, race, religion, even gun ownership — and focus on matters of the common good: clean air; clean water; universal education, health care and economic wellbeing; bridling corporate and personal greed;

STR8TS Solution

expanding renewable energy; and achieving liberty and justice for all.

Those last six words popped into my mind uninvited, but they are welcome, just the same. In fact, they pretty much cover it all.

If you grew or are growing up in these still-United States, you’ll recognize that phrase. It has been part of the many daily journeys we take to public school. Our Pledge of Allegiance ends with those words, and has since its origin in 1892. There have been several iterations since, but each has ended in the same way: “with liberty and justice for all.”

There are no further words after “all.”

The Pledge doesn’t end with “all white folks,” “all black folks,” “all rich folks,” “all Republicans,” “all gun owners,” “all Democrats” or “all” of any subgroup. It doesn’t even say “all Americans.” It’s pretty simple.

It says, “with liberty and justice for all.”

We might find a renewed sense of unity and understanding of patriotism if we take those words to heart. If we mean exactly what we say in the Pledge of Allegiance, the largesse of the U.S. is extended to the whole world. “All” is a pretty damned inclusive word. What part of it don’t we understand?

Can we afford liberty and justice for all?

We can — if we stop taking more than our share from planetary resources. We can — if we can curb the appetite of those who wish to “have it all,” including their neighbors’ share. We can certainly do better than we are now. As little as 10% of the wealth of the world’s most well-off will feed the planetary population. Of course, getting us to share, and then convincing us to give up our quest for more — and more — is the challenge. Maybe we can be convinced if we see that our wealth will not get us more when there is no more to get. When it is “all” gone, money — or the illusion thereof — will mean nothing.

Note that I use the terms “us” and “we.”

Otherwise, writing about these things with a $1,200 laptop while riding around burning fossil fuel in a $45,000 pickup would be hypocritical. I recognize that the three of us in the truck are part of the world’s most welloff. With other middle-class citizens, we give more than 10% of our wealth to the U.S. every year. And then a bit more to the states in which we live. In fact, most folks in my tax bracket give about 25% of their income to various entities to provide for the “common good.”

I’m not sure we here in the middle need to give more or give up much to provide “liberty and justice for all.” What we need to do is insist that the people we elect become better stewards of our money and that the ultra-wealthy do their share as well, and that both understand, accept and act on the inclusivity of the last six words of our Pledge of Allegiance. If we don’t make this part of our personal journeys, we stand to lose it all.

Sandy Compton is publisher and owner of Blue Creek Press. Read more from him and others at bluecreekpress.com/write-on.

Crossword Solution

Sudoku Solution I bet when neanderthal kids would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, “Don’t forget the thick, heavy brows.” Then they would get all embarrassed because they remembered they had the big husky brows too, and they’d get mad and eat the snowman.

Solution on page 22

whinge

Woorf tdhe Week

CROSSWORD

By Bill Borders

/hwinj/ [verb (used without object)] 1. to complain; whine.

(British and Australian Informal.)

“The group gathered to whinge in front of the cameras.”

Corrections: In our July 23 story “Northern Exposure: How Sandpoint’s sister city, Nelson, B.C., is weathering the COVID-19 pandemic,” we misspelled Val Yowek’s last name a handful of times. In the July 30 paper, we mistakenly attributed a reference in Tony Cerato’s letter, “Double standard…,” to a “Late Night Buddhist” column, when he was in fact addressing the column “A Grain of Salt.” We apologize for the error. -ZH

Copyright www.mirroreyes.com

Laughing Matter

Solution on page 22

ACROSS 1. Farm building 5. French for “Morning” 10. Expunge 14. Decorative case 15. Mount 16. X X X X 17. Baby’s soft spot 19. Resorts 20. Half of a pair 21. Minim 22. Any animal with no feet 23. Motion of hands 25. Man-made fiber 27. Tiny 28. Matrimonial cheating 31. Vagabonds 34. Each and all 35. Prefix meaning “Modern” 36. Burden 37. Intelligent 38. Sun 39. And so forth 40. Caps 41. Fine thread 42. Social 44. Small rounded bread 45. Anxiety 46. Luggage 50. Chimes 52. Fancy 54. Tall hill 55. Away from the wind 56. Gem of the month 58. Desserts 59. Odd-numbered page

Solution on page 22 11. Advocates 12. Its symbol is Pb 13. Being 18. Chills and fever 22. Partner 24. 2 2 2 2 DOWN 26. Mongol hut 1. Confuse 28. Utilize 2. Redress 29. Genuine 3. Graphic symbols 30. Bygone era 4. Louse-to-be 31. Garden tools 5. Farm fecal matter 32. Savvy about 6. Mountain crest 33. Pirate 7. Lean 34. Sympathies 8. A New York NHL team 37. Collections 9. Born as 38. Make melodious 10. Dictator sounds 60. As just mentioned 61. Classify 62. Donkeys 63. Bristle

40. Small casks 41. Toboggans 43. Swallow 44. Anticlimax 46. Hill 47. Quarters 48. Agile Old World viverrine 49. Colonic 50. Openings 51. Hodgepodge 53. Circle fragments 56. Brassiere 57. “___ the season to be jolly”

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MOVING WHAT

MATTERS From the food on your table, to the car in your driveway, and the television on your wall - just about everything you use once rode on our rails.

And as America's largest mover of intermodal freight, BNSF Railway connects our region's farmers, manufacturers, and businesses across the country and around the globe.

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AGRICULTURAL 405,150

INDUSTRIAL --427,244

ENERGY 29,655 -­

1,554,934

lntermodal Units & Carloads Shipped to and from Idaho and Washington in 2018

CONSUMER 692,885

Every year, BNSF carries enough grain to supply 900 MILLION PEOPLE with a year's supply of bread.

vehicles sold in the US are carried by BNSF.

BNSF transports enough lumber to build more than 500,000 HOMES each year.

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Connecting the Pacific Northwest since 1873