SNOWLANDER YES, IT’S BEEN A STRANGE SEASON PAGE 18
VACCINATING TEACHERS SHOULD EDUCATORS CUT THE LINE? PAGE 8
VALENTINE’S DAY SWEETS WHERE TO FIND THEM LOCALLY PAGE 33
FEBRUARY 11-17, 2021 | STAY WARM!
ut b , g n i w o r it’s g main e r s e l d r big hu ha By Samant
wohlfeil page 14
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INSIDE
Here for Knees When adventure takes its toll.
VOL. 28, NO. 18 | COVER DESIGN: DEREK HARRISON
COMMENT NEWS COVER STORY SNOWLANDER
5 8 14 18
CULTURE FOOD FILM EVENTS
29 33 35 39
I SAW YOU GREEN ZONE ADVICE GODDESS BULLETIN BOARD
41 42 46 47
EDITOR’S NOTE
We’re focused on providing excellent orthopedic care. We’re here for you.
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n a country increasingly divided by tribalism, between us and them, the Inlander still strives to be a place of COMMON GROUND where, ideally, everyone can find a little something just for them inside. Take this week’s issue, for example. As our cover story, staff reporter Samantha Wohlfeil gives us an in-depth look at how the Inland Northwest is (or isn’t) successfully incubating startup businesses (page 14). In Culture, we explore a local writer’s latest tome of “sexy paranormal romance and action-packed urban fantasy” (page 29). In Food, we highlight local hotspots for Valentine’s Day sweet treats and spill the beans on a special food event called the Great Dine Out (page 34). In Film, we have a review of a new movie (yes, they exist) as well as a retrospective on an old one (The Silence of the Lambs, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, page 36). In Comment, contributor Michael Allen explains why he’s betting on Spokane to boom after the pandemic (page 6). And in News, we examine the hot debate around whether teachers should cut the vaccine line (page 8). If you, dear reader, don’t find something you love, we’ll be back again next week with even more. — JACOB H. FRIES, editor
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ZOOM PAGE 32
THE GREAT DINE OUT PAGE 34
BREACH OF TRUST PAGE 35
HAPPENING THIS WEEK PAGE 39
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A weekly email for food lovers Subscribe at Inlander.com/newsletter FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 3
Private Donations the Primary Path Forward for Fire Devastated Malden and Pine City What can you give this week?
Denied federal disaster funds for individuals, residents of fire damaged Whitman County will need to rely on community support to rebuild by Erin Sellers, Fellow at Innovia Foundation
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES Daily Food Sorters Needed - SECOND HARVEST You can help hungry people in our community by volunteering for one of the daily sorting events hosted at Second Harvest. The two-hour shifts are designed to protect volunteer safety -while serving our neighbors. For a daily schedule or to learn more, visit the Second Harvest website.
I
n September 2020, devastating wildfires swept through Whitman County, destroying 97 homes in Malden and Pine City. Nearly two-thirds of these families did not have homeowner’s insurance making these losses even more tragic. Residents of Malden and Pine City not only lost their homes, but also gathering places and crucial utility services. According to Paul Kimmell, Regional Business Manager at Avista Corporation, starting the rebuilding effort was essentially starting from scratch. “These are incredibly resilient people,” Kimmell said. “In spite of losing everything, their commitment to rebuild community is just amazing.”
Volunteers Wanted - WOMEN & CHILDREN’S FREE RESTAURANT
Innovia Foundation has been inspired by the resiliency of the Malden and Pine City community members, as well as the generosity of individuals and organizations who have graciously stepped in to help these small rural towns rise from the ashes of tragedy. Innovia has joined faith-based organizations, utility companies, state and local government agencies and other philanthropic organizations to help our neighbors with both short- and long-term recovery efforts.
In response to COVID-19, the Women & Children’s Free Restaurant is providing contact-less, curbside meal and food distribution twice a week. Volunteers are needed to safely load food, assist individuals with the walk-up service option and guide individuals on the restaurant’s processes for safe distancing. To volunteer, fill out a volunteer application online or contact the volunteer services manager at volunteer@wcfrspokane.org or by calling 509-324-1995 Ext. 300.
Inspired by the dedication and pure grit of Malden and Pine City residents, Innovia created ‘A Pine Creek Christmas,’ a successful short-term project that united more than 200 generous donors with families in these communities to make their holiday season a little brighter. Many of these generous and caring donors asked, “What more can we do?” As a direct result of this outpouring of kindness and concern, Innovia and its trusted partners are raising funds to help rebuild as many homes as possible.
Inland.volunteerhub.com
wcfrspokane.org/volunteer-form/
Mentors Needed - BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS Being a Big Brother or Big Sister can be one of the most enjoyable things you’ll ever do. Not to mention, one of the most fulfilling. You have the opportunity to help shape a child’s future for the better by empowering them to achieve. And the best part is, it can actually be a lot of fun. You and your Little can share the kinds of activities you already like to do. To be a mentor you need to be out of high school and willing to make a minimum of an 18 month commitment to a child. Bigs meet with their Littles 2-4 times a month. For more information, contact kshelton@nwbigs.org or call 328-8312 ext. 214.
WISH LISTS Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington Can you help Catholic Charities with February’s donation drive featuring home maintenance items like cleaning supplies, large plastic yard bags, gardening gloves and gardening tools? Donating is easy. Gather your items, then call 509-358-4250 for drop off instructions.
Inlander.com/giveGUIDE2020
Recovery does not end with addressing immediate needs of a community. “Long-term recovery is not a sprint, it is a marathon,” Kimmell said.
To make a donation to the Pine Creek Fund at Innovia Foundation, please visit Innovia.org While the communities of Malden and Pine City received word that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared the Babb Road Fire a disaster and will provide public assistance for things such as public buildings, FEMA denied funding assistance to individuals and households. The news was just received on Feb. 5, and the residents are still processing what this means. But ultimately it makes rebuilding even a bigger challenge for the community, and private donations more important. Innovia has established the Pine Creek Fund (which serves both Pine City and Malden) to help support long-term recovery efforts. Donations have already been secured to erect a community center in Malden and for start-up efforts toward reconstruction. Scott Hokonson, Executive Director of the Pine Creek Community Restoration (PCCR), acknowledges that the road ahead is long and not without challenges along the way. In the meantime residents are currently engaged in boots-on-the-ground hard work, cleaning up fire debris, preparing their lots and helping their neighbors. Now that FEMA has denied the individual assistance, Hokonson is back wondering how they will provide safe, temporary housing which is imperative for displaced families. “With limited federal funding, the funds raised by Innovia Foundation and by the community are more critical now to help meet some of the communities’ needs and can fill the gaps between any federal or state dollars received,” said Hokonson. “From the very beginning, the people I have met along the way, and the organizations that have stepped forward have been incredibly helpful,” Hokonson said. “We are all doing the best we can with the resources we have.” Restoring this region will take time, but Malden and Pine City residents can rest assured they will have Innovia and many caring partners and donors sharing in the journey to rebuild their beloved communities.
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For more information about how you can support the rebuilding efforts in Malden and Pine City, please visit: pinecreekcommunityrestoration.org
COMMENT STAFF DIRECTORY PHONE: 509-325-0634
IF YOU COULD START A NEW COMPANY IN THE REGION, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Ted S. McGregor Jr. (tedm@inlander.com)
JULIA WENTZ: I would start a local Spokane grocery store that doesn’t sell single-use plastic packaged products. It would have reusable containers for all of the typical household items: cleaning products, shampoo and foodstuffs like flour, sugar, milk, etc.
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Ringling Brothers circus arrives, first time in town Elegant high society wedding of KK Cutter’s daughter, Laura Merchant Frank Bruno murdered by local Black Hand mafia Earliest car arrives in Spokane Falls, scares horses
EDITOR’S NOTE
Normally, we ask our question of the week of people we randomly encounter on the street. But with the coronavirus pandemic, we instead asked our followers on social media to share their thoughts.
go to
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JAMES C KAMURA: Self-supporting homeless shelter. It would not only benefit the homeless but the community of Spokane. It would be supported by donations and the people living there. Each individual would have to contribute, work, be sober and be a productive member of society, until placed in permanent housing. JENNIFER MCCORMICK: I would love a dim sum restaurant with the lazy susan in the middle of the table and carts going table to table. MATT BEHRINGER: Half public market, half food hall. Preferably in the Jensen Byrd Building with apartments above. MERRIE ADAMS: I would start a solar panel company because it would produce many, many jobs; also it is sustainable energy without abuse of use! AMBER WHEELOCK: A zoo. This generation never got to see Walk in the Wild. LYN STANLEY: A fresh juice shop/ drive-thru! With juices, smoothies and salads. Spokane lacks healthy drive-thru options! CHARLIE DURANONA: A dessert restaurant where only high-end desserts, ports, dessert cocktails, etc. are served. DAVID LEETH: The Inland Northwest QAnon Deprogramming Center.
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TRICIA SYKES: My husband and I were just talking about a small event venue that would be similar to the ones from the ’40s with horseshoe seating. Where you can come with a small group or as a couple and have dinner while you watch a live show: comedy, quartet, dueling pianos, something. Maybe have familyfriendly movies during the daytime on weekends. n
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FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 5
COMMENT | COMMUNITY
Where Do We Go from Here? With its penchant for self-improvement and renewal, Spokane can exit the pandemic bound for better days BY MICHAEL ALLEN
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re you exhausted? Exhausted of this pandemic and its isolation? Exhausted of having a hundred-year national financial crisis or environmental crisis every 10 years? Exhausted of national politics that seek division and not collaboration? Exhausted of the national media who give opinion disguised as news? Exhausted of social media bitterness and anger? Well, me too. What do we do about it? With all that is around us to cause despair, I am reminded when I look out my window of how grateful I am for the place we all call home. There is something hopeful about Spokane — how it is constantly reinventing itself. When we emerge from this pandemic, in Spokane it will be with momentum. A few of the key components are in place for Spokane to take the next step. The reinvestment into Riverfront Park has turned out amazing. Spokane International Airport has seen incredible improvements to facilities and direct flight routes this past decade. Our efforts to clean up the river with our CSO tank project is almost complete. Even our streets have appropriate funding sources now, and the Complete Streets
concept is improving bike and pedestrian access at the same time. But there is still work to be done. It starts with our community’s front room: downtown Spokane. Our employment, retail, tourism and gathering center is amazing, but parking is not. Parking studies will tell you we have enough, but most of our experiences trying to find it tell you otherwise. And if we cannot access it conveniently, we stop going. The city should build two municipal parking structures — one on each end of downtown. This should assist in the development of additional downtown housing and culinary experiences and promote retail. We are great at events: Bloomsday, Hoopfest, Pig Out and Terrain. Let’s make more of them. Some natural concepts that seem to be lacking are a European-style Christmas market, a summer music festival and a more national event like South by Southwest that brings together leaders
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Key components are in place for Spokane to take the next step. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO in entertainment, technology, arts and more. Another idea: Close down Post Street from River Park Square to the Davenport on weekends for food, art and live entertainment; create our own Beale Street like Memphis. A place that you know you can always go to find something to do and that attracts people to visit Spokane for the same reason. Decentralize some the homeless services from downtown. Whether by planning or accident, most of the homeless services for our region landed on Second and Third Street. They are needed, but let’s fairly disburse these important services across the area. Spokane housing is feeling the effect of COVID-19: a pandemic-heightened housing shortage. The ability for people to live where they want and still have the job that they want accelerated during the outbreak. As a result, the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area has a record number of folks moving into the area. This is driving up housing prices and creating a shortage in inventory. We must expand the Growth Management Boundary and change zoning to promote density around our city centers. Affordable housing is a benchmark of a healthy community. Everyone seems to have a strong take on public transit and on the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) in particular. I’m a fan. I moved here with no car and used STA to travel from school at EWU to work in the Spokane Industrial Park in the Valley. To get to the next step, STA needs greater frequency on more routes. Public transit must be convenient to be truly successful. I would also make it free. Fee collection makes up about 20 percent of overall revenue; by the time you factor out costs associated with collection and money handling, it might be worth eliminating fees to increase ridership. The communities who took this past year to plan for what comes next after this pandemic, to thrive rather than just survive, will become apparent later this year. I hope we have. In the meantime, go out and support your local businesses and restaurants. Enjoy Spokane’s front room instead of the one in your home — it is inspiring. Spokane gives us all hope. n Michael Allen, a business and entrepreneurship professor at Spokane Community College, is a former associate athletic director at Eastern Washington University. A longtime Republican, he previously served six years on the Spokane City Council.
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Sheridan Elementary fourth-grade teacher Christina Grieshaber teaches math to her class.
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
EDUCATION
VACCINE ETHICS 101 Washington teachers want their vaccines. Should Inslee let them cut the line? BY WILSON CRISCIONE
V
accinate teachers. It’s become a rallying cry uniting parents and celebrities, Democrats and Republicans. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and many schools are nearing the one-year mark of closing to in-person instruction, there’s seemingly universal support for vaccinating educators as soon as possible so schools can be open safely. So why hasn’t Washington — and Gov. Jay Inslee — prioritized COVID-19 vaccines for teachers yet? Inslee says it comes down to a lack of supply. “We would all like to be vaccinated today,” Inslee said in a press conference last week. “We are going to be vaccinating teachers. We’re already vaccinating teachers over 65 and those over 50 in multigenerational housing. There isn’t enough to go around for everybody not of age right now.” But Inslee and the state Department of Health have been bombarded with opposition to this stance from seemingly all sides. Teachers unions, the state superintendent of public instruction and lawmakers from everywhere on the political spectrum have voiced their displeasure with Inslee’s not prioritizing teachers for
8 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
vaccines first. After all, both Idaho and Oregon, despite their contrasting state politics, have prioritized teachers and made them eligible before older, more vulnerable populations. In Washington, some older teachers may be eligible for a vaccine, but most are left wondering when it will be their turn. Larry Delaney, president of the Washington Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, says Inslee should at least make educators currently working in-person eligible for the vaccine. “I talked to an educator in Clarkston who said, ‘I can cross the river into Lewiston, and if I were working there I’d be vaccinated. Or if I worked a little farther south in Oregon, I’d be vaccinated,’” Delaney tells the Inlander. “‘But here [in Washington], I can’t.’” But here’s the thing: With a limited supply of vaccine doses, as Inslee has repeatedly pointed out, prioritizing one group of people may mean another group has to wait longer. As an example, while Idaho and Oregon vaccinated teachers, they have been slower to inoculate older citizens who are 65 and older, a population that accounts for 80 percent of all COVID-19 related deaths. Idaho
has been one of the slowest states to vaccinate its citizens overall. While the call to vaccinate teachers sounds like a nobrainer on its face, it raises a number of ethical questions that the loudest advocates for teachers have a hard time answering.
IS SCHOOL SAFE ALREADY?
Support for letting teachers cut the vaccine line stems largely from two beliefs: that students need to return to school, and also that school buildings would be unsafe for teachers if they were allowed to do so without a vaccine. Inslee has argued that schools should be safe enough for students to return with or without a vaccine. But Delaney isn’t so sure. In a letter to Inslee last month, he wrote that “students and educators who are in school buildings now are at risk,” citing a lack of testing and contract-tracing resources. “It is puzzling and frustrating that you are pushing to expand in-person education without having solid science to back your decision,” Delaney wrote. ...continued on page 10
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 9
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NEWS | EDUCATION “VACCINE ETHICS 101,� CONTINUED...
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Delaney hasn’t said that every teacher needs to be vaccinated in order to return to school. Schools can reopen safely, he says, but many need more resources to do so. What he wishes is that Inslee would advocate for teachers getting vaccinated as vociferously as he does bringing them back to school. “We’re advocating for doing everything we can to minimize the risks,� Delaney says. “Adding the vaccine is just another layer of protection that can certainly give educators peace of mind but also work to protect the students and the families that those students go home to.� Chris Reykdal, the state superintendent of public instruction, wrote his own letter last month, asking Inslee to reconsider his vaccination plan in order to “expedite school reopening across the state.� Though Reykdal says widespread vaccination is not required to reopen schools, he says the current vaccine schedule will create “the unintended consequence� of vaccinating parents and guardians who still could not return to work because, without schools open, their kids would need support at home. Yet study after study indicates that opening school buildings isn’t as dangerous as public health experts feared it would be last summer, when many school districts decided to start the year with remote learning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that, based on the “preponderance of available evidence,� the benefits of opening schools outweigh the risks of further remote instruction. It came with a caveat: There needed to be adequate masking, distancing and ventilation measures taken.
Sheridan Elementary fourth-grade teacher Melissa Beeler works with 10-year-old student Elijah. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
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Another study published in the journal Pediatrics, examining 11 North Carolina school districts over two months, came to the same conclusion, finding no recorded instances of child-to-adult transmission. Research from the Institute for Disease Modeling in Seattle found similar results from data collected in Washington schools. And a recent study published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that looked at 17 Wisconsin schools found that when mask-wearing among students was high, COVID-19 incidence can be lower in schools than in the community overall. All of this seems to fit generally with the data from schools that have opened for in-person instruction in the Inland Northwest. The Spokane Regional Health District has repeatedly reported low transmission of COVID-19 in schools. Students and staff may bring disease into the school, but it doesn’t seem to spread inside the school building frequently. Coeur d’Alene Public Schools — where community spread has been high — reports that 10 percent of its cases have come from in-school transmission, though the district isn’t clear on where some other cases originated. Inslee cited much of this research in his letter responding to Delaney on Feb. 2. It should be noted, however, that this research doesn’t take into account new, potentially more contagious variants. “I am most hopeful that this data and research can give your
members additional confidence to be able to return to on-site learning,” Inslee wrote to Delaney. The Spokane Education Association, meanwhile, is already on board with teachers going back to school, regardless of the vaccine schedule. By March 1, middle and high school students will be on a hybrid model, attending school in-person part of the time and attending remotely the rest. Jeremy Shay, SEA president, says the union is OK with it as long as health officials say it’s safe. “We’ve always said we would follow the recommendations of the Spokane Regional Health District,” Shay says. “We’re currently on that path and trust the health district is considering all those factors and sending us back to buildings that are safe, and that all the protocols are being followed.” So for many schools, getting a vaccine isn’t tied to returning to in-person instruction. And there’s another problem: Even if all teachers were vaccinated, it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee that they’d want to return to school. In Oregon, one teachers union head told Willamette Week that getting a vaccine puts teachers in a “very difficult position,” since they are expected to return to school before they feel it’s safe to do so. By prioritizing teachers, older and more vulnerable seniors who live with students may remain at risk.
WHO WOULD THEY BUMP OUT OF LINE?
Beyond whether vaccines would allow all students to get back in school, there’s still the matter of the lack of supply. Inslee argues that if you give a 25-year-old teacher a vaccine now, with supply limited, then that teacher’s 80-year-old grandmother doesn’t get it. But Delaney doesn’t exactly see it that way. “Are we advocating for that 25-year-old teacher to bump the 80-year-old person out of the line? No. But we believe they should be in the same line together,” he says. Delaney says other essential workers, like grocery store workers, should also be in that line. He doesn’t have an answer for how that would work, however, without bumping seniors out of it. Yet for people 65 and older, each day matters. People are dying from COVID-19 every day, and people 65 and older make up 80 percent of those deaths. Politicians advocating for teachers to jump the line don’t explain how they’d prevent seniors from being bumped out either. Four members of the state Legislature — Democratic Sen. Lisa Wellman and Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, along with Republicans Sen. Brad Hawkins and Rep. Alex Ybarra — signed a letter asking Inslee to have educators “equally prioritized with older Washingtonians.” The letter didn’t expand on how to prioritize with a low vaccine supply. Republican Rep. Skyler Rude, R-Walla Walla, was a cosponsor of a bipartisan bill — supported by the Washington Education Association — to move teachers up the vaccine line. When asked how he would avoid a young teacher cutting in front of an elderly citizen, Rude says it’s a great question, and that maybe there should be some flexibility so local jurisdictions can make those decisions. Mike Faulk, a spokesman for Inslee, tells the Inlander it wouldn’t be practical to open up eligibility to all essential workers and those 65 and older. “We don’t have enough supply to even match the number of people in Washington currently eligible to receive a dose of vaccine,” Faulk says. “Meanwhile there have been documented issues of older individuals in Oregon trying to get vaccinated in Washington because they are not prioritized the same in their own state.” That’s the dilemma state governors face, with the lack of vaccine supply. If they prioritize teachers, older citizens feel left out. If they prioritize the most vulnerable citizens, then teachers feel left out. Delaney knows which side he’s on. “Gov. Inslee has made a decision. Gov. Brown in Oregon has made a decision. We wish that Inslee’s priorities would more align with Brown’s priorities around vaccinations, but that’s not where we’re at.” n wilsonc@inlander.com
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The mass vaccination center at the Spokane Arena on Feb. 1.
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
WHERE ARE THE VACCINES? Here’s what we know: Last week, Spokane County got 4,600 additional vaccine doses. We know that 4,000 went to CHAS Health’s mass vaccination center at the Spokane Arena. But we don’t know WHERE THE OTHER 600 WENT, because the state of Washington won’t tell us — or even tell the Spokane Regional Health District. “Washington State Department of Health does not share allocations to individual providers,” Danielle Koenig, the department’s health promotion supervisor, wrote in an email. Yet the question of who gets vaccine doses — and how many — is a vital one. If the public knew which clinics were getting the most vaccines, they could know where to focus their efforts to get vaccinated. How many vaccines are being sent to Costco? To Providence? To MultiCare? Right now, it’s not something the state is publishing — though last week, Gov. Jay Inslee suggested the state might be changing that in the future. (DANIEL WALTERS) OUTBREAK STRIKES MEN’S SHELTER Back in March, UNION GOSPEL MISSION shrank the capacity of its men’s shelter, fearing that COVID-19 would make it in and spread to its guests. Through most of 2020, that never happened. For months, the men’s shelter had no COVID cases, let alone any serious outbreaks. That’s changed. In the last six weeks, UGM’s men’s shelter has had 70 people test positive for COVID-19, including guests and staff. Five shelter staffers, including the shelter manager, are unable to work because they have COVID-19, says Dave Wall, director of community engagement for UGM. Thirty cases remain active. Now, the shelter has halted new intakes for a couple weeks at a time when shelters across the region have often been full. UGM hopes to reopen the shelter on Feb. 14, depending on whether the outbreak is under control then. Wall says the people who have tested positive have gone to a separate facility to quarantine. (WILSON CRISCIONE) DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION Last week, Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of HEROIN, COCAINE and OTHER DRUGS. Also last week, state lawmakers and advocacy groups in Washington state announced a plan to do the same thing on this side of the Columbia River. A bill introduced in the state Legislature would make Washington the second state in the nation to legalize the personal use of all drugs, ranging from psychedelic mushrooms to opiates. The measure would also pour state money into treatment and community-based intervention programs, where drug users and people with mental health problems would be referred instead of jail. Still, decriminalization is likely to receive pushback from law enforcement groups and others who worry its passage would lead to more lawlessness and street crime, not less. In Oregon, county sheriffs opposed Measure 110, the decriminalization measure that went before voters last fall. It passed by a wide margin anyway. (CROSSCUT)
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FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 13
14 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
Grow Elsewhere? Start Here,
Spokane’s startup scene is growing, but some major challenges remain
BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
A
n interesting thing happened in 2020: While many businesses took massive hits that will in some cases prove to be the death knell for companies, applications for new businesses skyrocketed across the country in the second half of the year. Applications for new employer identification numbers — required for companies to hire employees — hovered around 860,000 per quarter in 2018 and 2019, according to Census data, then surged to 1.6 million applications in the third quarter of 2020 and another 1.1 million in the year’s last quarter. What’s more, despite the pandemic, venture capital firms invested a record $130 billion in U.S. companies, according to CB Insights, which analyzes startup and economic data. Meanwhile, the Inland Northwest’s startup scene has been undeniably growing over the last several years, with local incubators and investors helping small, local startups raise more than $16.8 million in 2020 alone. Success stories include many health and medicalrelated companies that can easily draw on Spokane’s wealth of health experts. But there’s also been growth in companies pitching everything from spice blends to products that will keep utility workers and first responders safer while they work. Still, even as entrepreneurs and tech startups are starting to find more support in the Inland Northwest, some challenges remain as Spokane tries to pitch itself as a place where people should start and grow their companies. Indeed, one issue was acknowledged right in the #HackingWashington campaign started in 2019 — a pitch to Seattle-area businesses to move east: There’s not a lot of tech work here. “Attract talent without having to compete with the tech giant next door,” the campaign quipped. “Raise your profits by lowering the cost of everything.”
In those two ideas, the campaign both acknowledged one of the Inland Northwest’s greatest perks — affordability — and one of its biggest pitfalls: a lack of software developers and highly skilled computer science workers ready to apply for jobs. Tom Simpson is perhaps the best-known figure among local entrepreneurs, since he’s both CEO of the incubator Ignite Northwest and president of the Spokane Angel Alliance, which invests in fledgling companies. He agrees that the lack of developers in the area is one major limitation. But when it comes to selling businesses on the perks of Spokane and the Inland Northwest, he’s far more likely to end with the note about the cost of doing business here than to start with it. “When we talk about the virtues of the region, we often lead with affordability. ‘Come to Spokane! It’s affordable. it’s cheap,’” Simpson says. “I don’t like leading with that because you attract companies that aren’t, frankly, profitable.” Simpson is passionate that this region is not only a good place to start but also to grow, whether you’re telling a major tech company that their employees can better enjoy their lives here — where the commutes are short, the mountains are close and the lakes are closer — or you’re telling a startup that $1 million will last them 10 months longer here than in Seattle. Indeed, several companies have either moved to or opened offices here in recent years, including CloudEngage, which provides artificial intelligence customer service for websites in addition to other services, the global money transfer service Remitly, and GoToTags, which helps take cellphone users directly to information about products or experiences they’re having. Still, there are limitations to this “small big city,” including a small pool of investors and a lack of diversity that’s felt more keenly by some than others. In fact, for one Spokane company with apps geared
to help those who are transgender, some of the region’s drawbacks encouraged them to relocate to Austin, where they see the opportunity for greener pastures.
TURNING AWAY FROM SPOKANE
In a way, moving to Austin could be considered a sort of homecoming for Euphoria, a company founded in Spokane by development team Robbi Katherine Anthony and Patrick McHugh. It was during an LGBT hackathon there in 2019 that the two launched the idea for their flagship app, Solace, which helps people who are transgender set and reach goals and keep up with legislation and news that might affect them. While they started out with the goal of housing that app under a nonprofit, the team has since founded parent company Euphoria. Under that umbrella they created another app, Clarity, to help people better identify who they’re attracted to and how they identify, and they’re working on another called Bliss that will seek to help trans people invest their money (with help from financial experts) as they save for costly surgery and other goals they might set in Solace. “It’s great to have your 15 goals in Solace, but you also need to know how to afford them,” Anthony says. “There’s a better way to save for this. Let’s abandon the stashing of cash in a mattress, and invest [via] an app.” The team received early support from the Spokane area, including a short-term incubation period under the nonprofit Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund. “There’s been an immeasurable amount of good in Spokane,” Anthony says of the support they received after winning the hackathon. But with the need to pivot to fundraising and a forprofit model as they grow, Anthony says they quickly ran into walls here. It seemed like you had to already have money to get anyone interested, she says. ...continued on next page
Quarterly Business Applications in the U.S.
1.6M
1.6 million applications in the third quarter of 2020
1.2M 800k 400k 2011
2012
SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU / BUSINESS FORMATION STATISTICS
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 15
BUSINESS
“START HERE, GROW ELSEWHERE?,” CONTINUED... In entrepreneurial circles it’s often said that you’ll hear 100 “nos” before you get to one “yes.” Anthony says she understands that and was happy to keep working to meet the metrics that might make investment look more intriguing. But the pool of potential investors in Spokane is small, making it hard to get to that “yes” if you’re essentially pitching to the same people. “Spokane is a little big city. Everyone doesn’t know everyone, but everyone knows someone who knows everyone,” Anthony says. “It’s hard because so many good ideas in this town die without ever getting a fair shot.” Anthony says that as a trans woman, she’s also dealt with stereotyping and bias. At one point, she and McHugh designed a dating app, and potential investors assumed it was geared for LGBT people (it wasn’t), asking repeatedly how they could potentially pitch the product to a straight market, she says. In another instance, Anthony says someone told her after a presentation that they’d assumed she was going to bomb the pitch until they actually heard what she had to say. “My thought is, ‘You knew nothing about me, just what I looked like,’” she says. But while working with peers at the hackathon in Austin, the team got to see what it was like when the quality of their work was judged before they were, Anthony says. “It was a very sobering moment. It was like, ‘Oh my god, this is how life should be,’” Anthony says. “I want to be known as an entrepreneur, not that trans woman who once ran for county commissioner.” So in mid-January, Anthony and McHugh Tom Simpson, CEO of the incubator traveled to Austin to Ignite Northwest and president finalize their search for apartments and coworkof the Spokane Angel Alliance. ing space. They’ve since relocated to the Lone Star state and continue to work on their next fundraising goal after raising more than a quarter of a million dollars for Euphoria so far. They hope to encounter a larger test market and become part of the growing tech scene. “Being in a bigger market, we’ve got more latitude to experiment,” Anthony says. “One hundred investors down here in Austin will tell us, ‘Absolutely not’ and never write us a check, but they’ll tell us why, and that’s fair.” Still, those involved in helping grow Spokane’s startup scene are quick to note that the grass can always look greener on the other side, and the Inland Northwest has started improving on some of its challenges.
WHEN CLOSE-KNIT WORKS
Simpson, who notes that he did fund an early project of Anthony’s, says that no matter how good a region is, you’ll still find some companies that want to move away. “I wouldn’t necessarily look at one company or one team or one entrepreneur choosing to leave as being indicative of a broader trend,” Simpson says. “I can think of probably six or more similar companies that chose to open up here over the last few years.” He acknowledges that the region isn’t very diverse, noting at least one startup recently opted not to move here last year due to a lack of diversity. There are many things drawing companies to the region though, and importantly, Simpson and others are
16 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
Euphoria chief creative officer Patrick McHugh, left, and CEO Robbi Katherine Anthony pack up for their move to Austin. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO working to support homegrown talent. Through Ignite Northwest, Simpson helps mentor entrepreneurs and brings in speakers who’ve got experience building companies to provide insight through free lectures (currently presented online due to COVID-19). Also through Ignite, startups may get the chance to pitch to the Spokane Angel Alliance or the Mind to Market fund from Greater Spokane Incorporated (GSI), which helps people create their minimum viable product. It was through an Ignite incubator course (that’s no longer offered) that Margie Bensching, founder and CEO of Golden Sherpa, got her start. Golden Sherpa provides a database of assisted living facilities that is geared both to help people find a safe, reliable place to move their parents and to help assisted living homes find new clients faster. “Senior living communities commit thousands of dollars to find leads and fill empty beds,” Bensching says. “Our product is an online space that bypasses traditional costs,” which can run into the thousands for a single contract when those facilities go through traditional means of finding new clients. Bensching says Ignite’s incubator course, which lasted about 14 weeks, helped her not only hone her idea, but helped her get involved in entrepreneurial groups around the state. While she acknowledges the investment pool in Spokane feels small, she says she’s also noticed the same people over and over again at investment competitions in the Seattle area, too. It’s not just a Spokane thing, she says. “You can work and grow your company here, and it’s a great place to live,” Bensching says, noting that her team includes tech workers who live across the country and can work together remotely. “We’re staying in Spokane; we don’t need to leave.” Simpson notes that while the pool of tech engineers and developers is somewhat lacking here at the moment, there’s a large pool of educated workers who are consistently coming out of regional universities. “We have a diversity of training programs in our community that is a huge opportunity for these startup companies,” says GSI CEO Alisha Benson. “As much as we want to market the region externally, we have to market it internally and create that stickiness for graduating talent in our area. There’s a perception that to find those tech jobs they have to go to a larger market.” But the pandemic proved just how many jobs can be
done anywhere with an internet connection. And, Benson notes, the community has done a lot of legwork in the last few years to make connections between entrepreneurs and people with experience getting companies off the ground. “We’ve been able to build this knowledge network for entrepreneurs,” Benson says. “The growth we’ve seen in the last five years is significant, but there’s still gaps in that ecosystem. Part of it is, how do we build that critical mass for entrepreneurs to be successful and access that talent they’re looking for?” Something worth noting for companies, Simpson says, is that Inland Northwest workers tend to be loyal, unlike in the Bay Area, where it’s more typical to sign on for bonuses, work a few years and move onto another option. That sentiment is echoed by Spiceology CEO Chip Overstreet, who commuted from Spokane to the Bay Area for the better part of a decade before joining the spice blend company two years ago. Even during the pandemic, the company has been able to retain employees and pivot its sales to reach a wider audience. “One of the biggest problems in the Bay Area and Seattle and Boston: The average tenure is two years in tech. You’re fighting for talent all the time,” Overstreet says. “There’s greater employee stability in places like Spokane. You find people want to stay.” The success of companies that have started here is also breeding success for others. Steve Rector, CFO of Cowles Company who leads their investments in early-stage startups under Cowles Ventures, agrees that the pool of local investors is small and so is the ability “to write ‘big’ checks.” But Rector also notes that more investment has been coming into the area from Seattle and other venture capital firms, too. Plus, he says, those investing here tend to work together. “Spokane is a small place, and the investment community here is even smaller,” Rector says by email. “But, having said that, the active investor base here — we’re all aligned with the same goals, and we’re always willing to collaborate. … Those of us who are active investors in this region don’t see us as competing against each other for deals. Rather we actively share deals and see how we can all collectively make it a successful effort.” n samanthaw@inlander.com
“There’s greater employee stability in places like Spokane.”
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FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 17
MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
TIME FLIES Gerry FitzGerald is a legend in the Inland Northwest ski-racing community BY BOB LEGASA
“I
was in the Navy and we were on a destroyer, we were out at sea, so I was talking to these guys. This one guy — I’ll never forget his hometown: He was from Fitzgerald, Georgia. I gave them a ski lesson on the fantail of a destroyer,” Gerry “Fitz” FitzGerald says, laughing while we sit drinking coffee one cold morning at Lookout Pass. He demonstrated the lesson: “OK, hold your feet here. And now walk forward. OK. Keep your hands out here. It was hysterical, but they were into it.” A longtime Spokane resident, Fitz has been coaching ski racing for over 50 years and during that time he’s coached well over 500 kids. He’s greatly respected and admired throughout the Pacific Northwest ski racing community. Fitz was born and raised in the rough and tumble mining town of Wallace, Idaho, where his father was one of the town’s physicians. “My dad started practicing in Wallace in 1933. The mines were going strong. Lead and zinc and silver was the name of the game. Lots of things going on in Wallace — some things you wouldn’t want to talk about in mixed company.” Fitz’s father was instrumental in getting the Lookout Pass ski area open. “My dad had a group of guys that thought a local ski area would be nice to have,” he says. “That was probably in the mid-1930s that they put this together. There was one rope tow. “They thought a free ski school was necessary because there were so many kids in the valley that couldn’t afford to ski,” he continues. “So not only was it a free ski school, but these guys would supply the equipment for a lot of kids, and they even had a free
bus ride for the kids to get up the mountain. Over the years, it expanded as you can see from all the pictures on the wall of those kids lined up halfway up the hill.”
F
itz’s first days on skis date to 1946 at Lookout Pass. “I don’t think I liked it initially because it was cold,” he says. “My dad drug me up to the ski hill, kicking and screaming, and he would put me out on the hill and tell me to go ski. In those days it was a lot different. Of course, we were riding rope tows. You’d wrap your arms around the rope, and it literally dragged you up the hill. You let go, you fall off. So, I don’t think we really enjoyed skiing for the first couple of years until we ran into some friends that were also doing it, then you had fun when you’d come up with your buddies, and we learned skiing’s not so bad.” Fitz ski raced while he was in high school, and he says he was just OK. After high school, he went on to Gonzaga University and then Yakima Valley College, where he played basketball. He didn’t ski as much as he’d have liked in college, but by chance he met the Yakima Valley College ski coach. “I ended up skiing with the coach a few different times, and we got along real well. I thought to myself, ‘Ski coaching is something I’d really like to do,’” Fitz says. After college he went into the Navy and was on active duty for two years. He got out in the spring of 1964, and one of the first things he did when he returned to Spokane was go skiing at Mt. Spokane.
“When I got out of the Navy, skiing was still in the forefront of my mind,” Fitz says. “I ran into a fella that wanted me to help him with his ski racing program, that was in the fall of 64. Don Gasaway had a ski team on Mount Spokane called Snowflake. He had a ski school, and he had some racers. He asked me if I would handle the racers.” Fitz ran the Snowflakes Ski Racing program for two years. Then in 1966, “the Spokane Ski Racing Association (SSRA) came to me and asked if I would consolidate with them,” he says. “I thought it was an awesome idea because I had virtually no race equipment, and we had no real place to train. Because there were two teams on the mountain, we were relegated to a little spot off to the side. So, I put it up for a vote with my racers. I said, ‘What would you like to do?’ The greater percentage voted to join SSRA. I was tickled to death.” ...continued on page 20
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MOUNTAIN PEOPLE “TIME FLIES,” CONTINUED... SSRA was serious about their racing program. They had hired a new head coach, LouLou Kneubuhler, who came from France. “Lou and I were the coaches; LouLou was the head coach. That was my beginning with Spokane Ski Racing Association. ’66 would be my first season coaching on Mount Spokane, and my last season would be 2016. So over 52 years of coaching, and the main reason I did that, was because of the pension that was attached to it,” he says with a sarcastic smile.
“To coach kids you have to act like a kid. And Gerry is just a big kid at heart.”
F Gerry and coach LouLou Kneubuhler.
20 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
itz has coached well over 500 hundred kids and is greatly respected by his mentors and athletes. Brandon “Moondog” Moon from Schweitzer Alpine Racing School says, “When I first started coaching ski racing, I learned a lot of my coaching skills by observing others. The best takeaway I ever got was from Gerry FitzGerald: To coach kids you have to act like a kid. And Gerry is just a big kid at heart.” Fitz’s oldest daughter, Jennifer, says, “Dad has been a coach to many racers. He was my first coach; he’s so talented. He always makes it fun for them. He still carries a bag of Tootsie Rolls to hand out to the kids. He asks them if they’ve been good. If they say yes, he says, ‘Wrong answer!’ The naughty stories the kids come up with to get the Tootsie Rolls are hilarious!” ...continued on page 22
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MOUNTAIN PEOPLE “TIME FLIES,” CONTINUED... His enthusiasm and his ability to make people laugh kept his young ski racers excited to train. His sense of humor even turned into a tradition among his kids. Back in his early coaching days, one of his young racers thought it would be funny if they named their ski team Fitz’s Alpine Racing Team. “So this kid had a windbreaker, and he put F.A.R.T. in white adhesive tape on the front of it. That’s all it was,” he says. “I remember his mother told me she went for a walk one morning and threw his coat on; she ran into some of her friends also out walking. They had some questions about this ‘FART’ on the front of the coat. She had no idea what it was all about, so it became kind of a joke. I had some shirts made up, and I’d give it to kids that did well. They had to earn it one way or the other,” Fitz says. Over the 52 years of coaching kids, Fitz has coached some of his kids’ kids. “It’s really a scary thought, when you think about it, because some of those first kids I coached are obviously in their mid-60s now,” he says. For over five decades Fitz has stood alongside a racecourse for hours on end with cold feet, in negative temps, and through blizzards and rain. He wouldn’t take any of it back. I asked him what he takes away from all those years of coaching. “Sometimes someone will say, ‘Oh, so and so made the U.S. Ski Team.’ You know, that’s nice, but for me the long-term thing is the kids you’ve met — who you still talk to. You look back at the letters they’ve sent you and the relationships you’ve built with the families. It becomes very personal, and they become part of your ski family. You get Christmas cards, text messages from them, and they ask how you’re doing. I think that’s the biggest thing I take away from coaching. I miss those text messages.” His biggest accomplishment as a ski coach? “I think in a nutshell it would be the skiing itself — all these kids hopefully you’ve helped them learn to ski a little bit better,
Gerry and his daughter Jennifer at Lookout Pass.
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in all conditions of snow. If you’re in a racing program, you learn to ski. You can ski in the crud, you can ski in the powder, you can ski on the ice, you can ski anywhere, anytime, and you can take care of your own equipment. What did I get out of this, when I stop and really think about it? The kid probably knows how to handle himself, and I hope I was part of that.” Jeff Pickering, who went on to coach the Women’s U.S. Ski Team, had this to say about his days being coached by FitzGerald: “The meaning of life through a young SSRA athletes’ eyes was receiving a F.A.R.T. ‘Fitz’s Alpine Race Team’ shirt. Finally got mine. Gerry, what you need to know is the impact you made on me as a person and as a coach. Individual sports thrive from a team environment. I learned that from you.” Christi Gregorak chuckles when she describes the days when FitzGerald coached her and her friends. “We tortured Fitz with our teenage angst, but those days are among the most formative and favorite days of my life. It’s where I learned that all it takes is all you’ve got. What I’ve got now, I learned from skiing on FitzGerald’s Alpine Racing Team.” Fitz’s skiing days have gone full circle now as he spends about 30 days a season skiing back where it all began, Lookout Pass. He can be found most every weekend skiing with his daughter Jennifer, and they can be seen cruising down Huckleberry Ridge or what was originally named Fitzgerald Ridge. Jennifer had put her skis away a few years back but now has a renewed love affair with the sport. “My daughter Jennifer, who hadn’t skied for 20 years, now has a season pass to Lookout. Oh my God. It’s a blast. It’s so much fun. I have a little trouble keeping up with her,” he says with a happy face. It’s refreshing to see this strong family bond and to see the fire that has been reignited through skiing. “Skiing with my dad this winter has been such a gift,” Jennifer explains happily. “We both feel like teenagers.” n
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 23
ESSAY
BETTER TOGETHER
Powder days are best when shared.
Is skiing really a solitary sport? Answer: No!
E
very skier or snowboarder on any mountain in the land has heard it said way too many times: “No friends on a powder day.” On the surface, the statement seems basic enough and its meaning fairly straightforward. Quite simply it means you can get more fresh turns of a higher quality if you don’t bother waiting around for any fellow riders who might slow you down. It’s true enough that taking the solitary route can often lead to more face shots, more time spent in the white room and probably even less time spent waiting in the dreaded powder day lift line. However, there’s a deeper question hiding just under a fresh dusting of crystalline snowflakes. Is skiing really a solitary sport? Let’s start with chairlifts. Currently, there exist only two single-person chairlifts in the United States: Chair 1 at Mad River Glen in Vermont and the Single Chair at Mount Eyak in Alaska. Personally, I have never ridden on a single chairlift, but it sure sounds like a lonely ride to me. I’ve always been a fan of having at least one person on the chair with me to swap stories of past powder days, compare ski graphics with and share a laugh while heckling anyone engaging in a complete yard sale below the lift. Obviously,
24 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
JOHN GROLLMUS PHOTOS
BY JOHN GROLLMUS
chairlifts have gotten bigger and bigger through the years, growing from holding two riders to four, then six and now even eight in an effort to increase uphill capacity. However, no matter how much focus ski resorts may place on uphill capacity, the chairlift ride has always been and will always remain a social experience. After all, the more the merrier. Well, what about the on-slope portion of the perfect powder day then? Is it really better by oneself? Every dedicated mountain rider knows about the concept of powder eights, and it’s a self-evident truth that a powder eight cannot be created by one skier alone. In fact, the powder eights competition is the driving force behind one of the greatest and cheesiest ski movies of all time, Aspen Extreme. Beyond the fact that it takes two people to create a perfect powder eight, there are other reasons not to be alone on a powder day, and perhaps none is more important than safety. The fact that we’re talking about powder days means a healthy amount of fresh fluffy snow is involved, and that creates two life-threatening hazards: avalanches and terrain traps such as tree wells. Both of those dangers can be at least partially reduced by skiing with a partner. After all, one
LODGING • CROSS COUNTRY SKIING • SNOWMOBILING of the most effective pieces of ski safety equipment, a transceiver, only works if at least two users are involved. Finally, let’s look at the celebratory aspect of a powder day. I can still vividly remember a particular run from one of the best powder days of my life. As I floated up and down between turns, my head would only surface from within the white room of powder long enough to take a breath and grab a quick look downhill to be sure no trees were in my immediate path. With every glorious moment, my heart pounded harder and faster almost as though it would burst through my chest at any moment. My excitement was so intense as to be almost overpowering, and when I finally reached the bottom of what had surely been one of the best runs of my life, I subconsciously yelled out with joy and looked around desperately for someone to share a high-five with— but alas I was alone.
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While the joyous memory of that run will always be inside me, I can’t help feeling it would have been better to have someone to celebrate that moment with. We’ve all hollered out at the top of our lungs with joy midslope on a particularly delicious powder run at some point, and while it may be some simple animalistic tendency within us causing us to do it, one also has to wonder if there isn’t some communal purpose in it. Perhaps that joyous and primal scream will be heard by those on the chairlift, thus amping up their stoke for the run they will too soon be experiencing. At the end of the day, do we not all want to celebrate the day’s victories with someone? I mean if a powder day is a truly solitary experience, who are you going to share a beer with at the end of the day? Who are you going to laugh and maybe even cry with about the one run where for three, or was it four turns, you never saw anything but cold white smoke in your face? Who are you going to formulate the plan with for a road trip to follow the next big storm to the magical land of powder miracles? Didn’t we learn in kindergarten that sharing is simply the right thing to do? It might just be my opinion, but it shouldn’t be — we should all just agree to powder days with friends from this day forward. All right, now let’s all say it aloud together. Join me in this moment, this movement. Say it loud and proud, so that every other powder slayer near you will know you’re part of their tribe: “Friends on a powder day!” n
W H I T E F I S H , M O N TA N A SKIWHITEFISH.COM | 877- SKI- FISH Partially Located on National Forest Lands
Photos © GlacierWorld.com
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FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 25
WINTER EVENTS FEBRUARY
GALENTINE’S DAY SNOWSHOE HIKE Grab your gal pals and head to the Activity Center for a hosted snowshoe hike through majestic old-growth forests on the way to Picnic Point for a charcuterie snack and wine, followed by a moonlight hike back to the Village. Fri, Feb. 12 at 3 pm. $45 all inclusive. Schweitzer Mountain Resort, 10000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd., Sandpoint, Idaho. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555) DATE NIGHT ON THE SLOPES Love is in the air during Valentine’s weekend at Mt. Spokane, with special ticket packages available that include two night skiing lift tickets for $49; add two equipment rental packages for $49. Tickets must purchase in advance online. Thu, Feb. 11 from 3-9 pm. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr., Mead. mtspokane.com (238-2220) $28 MONDAYS & TUESDAYS All-day lift tickets are discounted to $28 on Mondays and Tuesdays throughout February with rentals for an additional $28. (Discount doesn’t apply over President’s Day, Feb. 15). Tickets also must be purchased in advance online. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr., Mead. mtspokane. com (238-2220) LADIES-ONLY CLINIC With three different days to choose from this season, women can enjoy a fun-filled day on the mountain led by Mt. Spokane’s best women instructors. Open to all skill levels, with groups divided by ability to allow all participants to learn and have fun at their pace. Lunch is provided, and the day ends with door prizes and drinks. Offered Fri, Feb. 12 and Fri, March 12 from 8:30 am-2 pm. $79-$140/session. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr., Mead. mtspokane.com (238-2220) PRESIDENT’S DAY WEEKEND AT SCHWEITZER Spend the long Presidents Day weekend at the mountain and enjoy a Sunday night (Feb. 14 at 6 pm) fireworks show in the village. The 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Beercat will also be cruising the slopes throughout the weekend. Feb. 12-15. (Event subject to change due to health and safety precautions.) Schweitzer Mountain Resort, 10000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd., Sandpoint, Idaho. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555) PRESIDENT’S WEEKEND AT SILVER Plan ahead to book your lift tickets, lessons and rentals in advance for
26 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
this busy three-day weekend on the mountain. Tubing sessions are also available. Sat, Feb. 13-Mon, Feb. 15. Silver Mountain Resort, 610 Bunker Ave., Kellogg, Idaho, silvermt.com (208-783-1111) 10 BARREL BEERCAT AT SILVER The mobile brewery on treads heads around the mountain this weekend. Make sure to reserve lift tickets in advance. Feb. 19-21. Silver Mountain Resort, 610 Bunker Ave., Kellogg, Idaho, silvermt.com (208-783-1111) SNOWSHOE TOUR OF 49 DEGREES NORTH Tour the trails of Chewelah Peak, and learn tips for better control and more fun on your snowshoes. Lunch is included after this trek, and your registration fee includes equipment rentals, trail pass and lunch. Pre-trip information to be emailed after registration. Transportation is participants’ responsibility for this event. Ages 15+. Offered Feb. 20, March 6 and March 20 from 10 am-4 pm. $43/session. Register at spokanerec.org, and see other winter recreation activities. (625-6200) CROSS-COUNTRY SKI LESSONS (49 DEGREES NORTH) Learn to cross-country ski and tour the trails of the 49 Degrees North Nordic Area with the mountain’s certified ski instructors. Ticket includes equipment, trail pass and instruction (students must provide their own transportation to the mountain this year). Additional information to be emailed after registration. Ages 13+. Offered Feb. 21 and March 7 from 10 am-2 pm. $53. Register at spokanerec.org, and see other winter recreation activities. (625-6200) SNOWSHOE INTERPRETIVE TOUR Learn about the mountain from Friends of Mt. Spokane member and local expert Chris Currie, who has published two books on the park and the history of skiing in the region. This guided interpretive tour is not a lesson, and is thus for experienced hikers. Tickets include equipment rental. Ages 13+. Sun, Feb. 21 from 10 am-3 pm. $35. Register at spokanerec.org, and see other winter recreation activities. (625-6200) FAT TUESDAY ON A SUNDAY A celebration full of party beads, gumbo, an outdoor barbecue and specialty drinks in the Loft Pub. Beads are being given out with the first few hundred lift tickets purchased at the start of the day. Masks and social distancing requested. Sun, Feb. 21. Lookout Pass, I-90 Exit 0 at Mullan, Idaho. skilookout.com (208-744-1301)
Catch the 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Beercat at Schweitzer (Feb. 14-16) and Silver Mountain (Feb. 22). TOYOTA SKI FREE FRIDAY Drive any Toyota (or Scion or Lexus) vehicle to 49 Degrees North and receive a free lift ticket, courtesy of Toyota. Lift tickets (driver only) will be passed out in the parking lot as you arrive. Fri, Feb. 26. 49 Degrees North Mountain Resort, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd., Chewelah. Ski49n.com (9356649) MOONLIGHT SNOWSHOE HIKE Quietly explore the meadows and woods around Mount Spokane. Guides, transportation (departs from Mead Yoke’s Fresh Market, 14202 N. Market St.), headlamps, walking poles and snowshoes are all provided. Additional information to be emailed after registration. Ages 16+. Offered Feb. 26 and March 26 from 6-9 pm. $29. Register at spokanerec.org, and
see other winter recreation activities. (625-6200) MT. SPOKANE SNOWSHOE TOURS Learn the basics of snowshoeing during a guided hike on the trails at Mt. Spokane. Pre-trip info emailed after registration; admission includes shoes, instruction, poles, trail fees and transportation from Yoke’s Fresh Market in Mead. $25-$29. Offered Feb. 14 and 28, March 13 from 9 am-1 pm. Register at spokanerec.org, and see other winter recreation activities.
MARCH
DOUG E FRESH BANKED SLALOM Race your snowboard through a banked slalom course in the terrain park. All proceeds go to the Doug E. Fresh Foundation, and a beer garden at the bottom of the course is once
SCHWEITZER MOUNTAIN RESORT PHOTO
again sponsored by Grand Teton Brewing. Sat, March 6. Silver Mountain Resort, 610 Bunker Ave., Kellogg, Idaho, silvermt.com (208-783-1111) MEGA DEMO DAY Join Schweitzer as it raises money for the Panhandle Alliance for Education (PAFE) while offering a chance to sample 2022’s newest skis and boards. More details to come. (Event subject to change due to current COVID-19 regulations). Sat, March 6. Schweitzer Mountain Resort, 10000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd., Sandpoint, Idaho. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555) 7TH ANNUAL BOYD HILL SNOWSKATE SORTANATURAL BANKED SLALOM This event takes place in the Rolling Thunder - Natural Terrain Park, and the course layout is a natural banked
NEWS slalom. Runs will be timed on a technical banked course, challenging riders to carry speed from top to bottom. Snowskates are binding-free skateboards for the snow. This annual event is co-hosted by Boyd Hill, which uses equipment made by local master ski builder TJ Sneva. March 6 at 8 am. $67. Lookout Pass, I-90 Exit 0 at Mullan, Idaho. skilookout.com (208-744-1301) TOYOTA SKI FREE FRIDAY Head to Silver in your Toyota vehicle for a free lift ticket (only driver eligible). Representatives from Parker Toyota will be in the parking lot passing out the free lift tickets, no reservations required. Fri, March 5. Silver Mountain Resort, 610 Bunker Ave., Kellogg, Idaho, silvermt.com (208-783-1111) FIFTH-GRADE FAMILY PASSPORT DAY Area fifth-graders and their families can receive half-off lift tickets for a day on the slopes. Sun, March 7. 49 Degrees North Mountain Resort, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd., Chewelah. Ski49n. com (935-6649) TOYOTA SKI FREE FRIDAY Drive any Toyota vehicle to Mt. Spokane and receive a free lift ticket, courtesy of Toyota. As you pull into the parking lot, you’ll be handed one free adult direct-to-lift ticket. All other passenger lift tickets ($29-$67) must be purchased online in advance. Fri, March 12 from 9 am-9 pm. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr., Mead. mtspokane.com (238-2220) SHEIMO CUP The annual all-ages race, sponsored by Hale’s Ales, benefits 49’s FAST racing program. Details TBA. Sat, March 13. 49 Degrees North Mountain Resort, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd., Chewelah. Ski49n.com (935-6649) ST. PATRICK’S DAY KIDS TREASURE HUNT Make sure to wear green when you head up to the mountain, and raise a pint in the pub. Kids (ages 12 and under), meanwhile, can enjoy a special treasure hunt on the mountain for a chance to win prizes. Wed, March 17. Lookout Pass, I-90 Exit 0 at Mullan, Idaho. skilookout.com (208-744-1301) 2,400 FEET OF SCHWEITZER Dubbed the longest giant slalom in the U.S., this event offers categories for alpine, snowboard and telemark, along with prizes for each, and a barbecue lunch. More details TBA. Sat, March 27 from 7 am-1 pm. Schweitzer Mountain Resort, 10000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd., Sandpoint, Idaho. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555) n
The 290 employees on the payroll are the most Mt. Spokane has ever had.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
BOB LEGASA PHOTO
Despite industrywide challenges, resorts note high skier enthusiasm and potential long-term opportunities in the pandemic BY ALEX SAKARIASSEN
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he ski season kicked off at maximum stoke for Mt. Spokane General Manager Jim van Löben Sels. Day One on the slopes arrived complete with sun, blaring music and all seven of the mountain’s lifts spinning. Even limited skier numbers and a late-hour declaration from Gov. Jay Inslee that shuttered the resort’s indoor dining spaces couldn’t detract from the vibe that winter was finally, officially here. “There was so much energy, and people were so excited that we were open,” Löben Sels says. “I think that will stick with me.” As idyllic as that opening was, it didn’t take long for the challenges to arise. Over the Christmas holiday, both of Mt. Spokane’s base lifts broke down on the same day, cutting off summit access for any riders not lucky enough to already be shredding the backside. Moisture fried the circuitry in a set of new outdoor lockers installed in direct response to the pandemic, rendering the lockers useless. And Löben Sels found himself having to address the complaints of several skiers who claimed they couldn’t comply with the mountain’s face mask protocol due to medical conditions. After all that, Löben Sels’ enthusiasm at the midpoint of the season is still downright contagious. Riders got the hang of the online reservation system quickly, he says,
and the 290 employees on the payroll are the most Mt. Spokane has ever had. The resort has set records for rental and lesson numbers, and would likely be having a banner year in terms of skier volume too if not for its limit on ticket sales. Most notably, Löben Sels estimates that 99 percent of the skiing public has happily complied with the resort’s COVID-19 rules. “We’ve survived half the season,” he says. “I don’t think COVID’s going to shut us down. We’ve been really fortunate; we haven’t had a COVID outbreak from our site, from our team members or anything.” The high demand for skiing and snowboarding opportunities in 2021 has certainly been on display, at least anecdotally, throughout the region. Parking lots at western Montana’s Discovery Ski Area and Lost Trail Powder Mountain — neither of which have capped ticket sales — were filled to the brim at times in late January. Traffic jams and illegal parking reportedly became a major headache in the Cascades last month as unprecedented crowds flocked to elevation for outdoor relief. But the challenges resorts continue to face in the pandemic are very real. Data cited by Ski Area Management magazine in December indicated a 34.9 percent drop in preseason bookings at more than a dozen
resorts in the western United States. A surge in COVID-19 cases has generated frustration among locals in Whistler about out-of-town visitors, and ski resorts in Ontario have been shuttered throughout the first half of the season due to a provincewide lockdown. British Columbia’s Big White scrambled to contain a coronavirus cluster in mid-December, terminating seven employees for breaching their social responsibility contracts. It’s easy to imagine that kind of news harshing the skiing public’s mellow. Yet at Lookout Pass, marketing and sales director Matt Sawyer notes that riders have been excited, even relieved, to be back on the slopes. Weekend business has run at a brisk pace, he says, with some days actually selling out, and midweek popularity has experienced a slight uptick, too. For the most part, visitors have complied with Lookout’s mask policy. Those who do put a foot down over it, Sawyer says, have been asked not to come. Regardless of how the health crisis plays out the next few months, Lookout does not plan to revisit any of its COVID-19 protocols. “There’s obviously a lot of talk about things changing, but we’re staying the course, and most of the ski areas that we’ve talked to in both Idaho and Montana have chosen to go that same direction,” Sawyer says. In fact, some of what the pandemic has brought about may stick around long term. Lookout’s installation of port-apotties is one new amenity Sawyer says the public seems to greatly appreciate. And he anticipates the rapid cultural shift toward parking lot tailgating has some serious staying power. As much as he dreads the impact on the mountain’s food-service revenue, Sawyer can’t deny that the portable fire pits, propane grills and pop-up tents have had a marked effect on skier morale. “In some ways … we don’t want to see that because it’s taking money out of our pocket,” he says. “But in other ways, the vibe and the stoke is high, and they’re having a great time.” At Mt. Spokane, Löben Sels says that smaller caps on group lessons have led to a better experience for riders and might be worth considering for future seasons. He’s also realized, after half a season managing a resort with no indoor-seating capacity, that there’s real public appeal in covered, heated outdoor spaces. That too, he says, is a lesson that will likely stick with Mt. Spokane. More than anything, though, the chairlift breakdowns that punctuated the holidays highlighted a priority for Löben Sels. He’s actively examining options for replacements in the near future, likening the two lifts to a car with 200,000 miles on it. “They still run, they still do a great job, but that reliability factor — you just don’t know when it’s going to break down,” Löben Sels says. “You can’t have that and have guests have a great experience. I don’t want them to have air time. I want them to have ski time.” n
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 27
LAST RUN
IN BETWEEN HERE AND THERE Slipping through the pines and into the past
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hen Mike texted this morning to say we’d be shredding 10 inches of fresh powder, I’d rolled my eyes. A few hours later I’m perched above a line that’s become as familiar to me as the pinched squeak of ski boots, dining on my own skepticism. There’s enough here in the trees along Lost Trail Powder Mountain’s boundary to banish the weeks of rock-dodging. More than enough. The wall of squat pines swallow Mike and our buddy Dale. With a whoop, I follow. My tips punch through a breaker of soft snow then ease to the left, turning to avoid a fallen tree I know from experience is lurking just below the surface. I weave between several low-hanging boughs, skis slicing through rich butter, and charge another roller that sends me a good five feet into the air. For a moment I forget what month it is, what year, what state of emergency or stage of vaccine distribution. Everything else falls away as I drift through this winter cathedral. I’m sure many of us have been in a bit of a funk, what with the pandemic approaching the one-year mark. Which is why it’s been more important than ever to get out and explore new places. On the few weekends I’ve managed to ski, parking lots and ticket lines have been jampacked.
Strange as it sounds, I found that schism. I slipped through into a time and place that was. At Lost Trail, in that gladed cathedral, the past year became for a moment nothing more than a dream. But as I hockey-stop above a long line of masked riders waiting for the lift, I know the trip is over, and honestly I’m relieved. Tough as the last year has been at times, it’s also had brighter spots than the years that came before.
BY ALEX SAKARIASSEN
Trailheads are bursting with hikers, sledders, snowshoers and alpine tourists. With movie theaters, music venues, restaurants and the like still shuttered or at reduced capacities, I’d say it’s a safe bet most of those folks are fairly new to the snowsports world. It’s hard to imagine a more memorable first winter to spend on the mountains and in the woods. We vets will likely look back on this season a bit differently. Nothing felt quite right from day one. Not the rides Tough as the year has been, it’s also had brighter spots than the years that came before. LOST TRAIL SKI AREA PHOTO to the hill, not the wait for a chair, not the après scene. We weren’t so much dropped into Oz as we were nudged I wish I could relocate that rift for others, the ones into a parallel reality, one so like the world we knew that who have truly suffered and lost. Unfortunately, charging we found ourselves in a dilemma. Do we accept this place down that same line again, I find only the usual stashes and adapt to it? Or do we hold out and hope that the rift of powder and the gentle rustle of needles against my will reopen so we can step back through? coat. n
Find your winter and spring adventures at SpokaneRec.org!
IN A PRIEST LAKE CABIN IN THE WOODS
book your spring getaway today! March and April 50% off* lodging!
*restaurant and lounge closed March/April
28 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
A few of Åsa Maria Bradley’s book covers.
ROMANCE
PLEASURE BITES Sexy werewolves and social media saviors: Spokane author Åsa Maria Bradley preps the release of her latest paranormal romance BY DAN NAILEN
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ake it from a professional romance writer: Sex scenes and action scenes are more similar than you might think. “If you’re writing a fighting scene, you have to keep track of ‘where are the different players at different points?’ You’re choreographing a lot of movement in the scene,” says Åsa Maria Bradley, Spokane author of best-selling tomes that her website calls “sexy paranormal romance and action-packed urban fantasy.” “Where are their arms and legs? How is it all going to work out? That’s not that different from choreographing a sex scene. What clothes are they wearing? Who’s
naked? Where are their arms and legs? They’re actually really closely related.” Of course, finding the perfect balance of thrilling action and steamy romance is not easily done, but the 49-year-old Bradley has turned her passion for writing into a best-selling career in the romance literature industry, one she and her friends affectionately call “Romancelandia.” Bradley’s new book arriving Feb. 16, A Wolf ’s Hunger, is her sixth published novel. The 2010 graduate of Eastern Washington University’s creative writing program has also published two novellas and a lot of short stories,
including one in the 1001 Dark Nights anthology in 2020 that serves as a prequel of sorts to A Wolf ’s Hunger, the first part of an intended trilogy. It will be her second series of connected books after her breakthrough Viking Warriors trilogy published between 2015 and 2019. Like her previous trilogy, Bradley’s new one (which she’s dubbed The Norse Billionaire Shifters) has nods to the Sweden native’s interest in Norse mythology like Odin and Freya in its story, but at heart it’s a wolf “shifter” tale (“shifters” being creatures that can switch, in this case, from human to wolves). ...continued on next page
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 29
CULTURE | ROMANCE “PLEASURE BITES,” CONTINUED... A Wolf ’s Hunger takes place in San Francisco, Bradley says, and there’s a sort of “alpha werewolf” there in charge of the western packs of shifters. There are rumors of a brewing war with the eastern packs, and this alpha wolf has a medallion that connects him to his pack’s magic. Enter the story’s heroine, a star archaeologist who can also bend quantum physics in order to communicate with herself in other dimensions. She’s duped into trying to track down the alpha wolf’s medallion after being told it’s a stolen artifact — and that our alpha wolf is the thief. “And that’s how they meet,” Bradley says. “Then there’s shenanigans and lovemaking and people turning into wolves. And, of course, the two of them falling in love.” No matter the genre, readers won’t stick with a book in the absence of compelling characters. And in romance books, Bradley says, “the challenge of writing is that you have two main characters. Or at least two main characters, because there’s many subgenres in romance.” “They both have to go through their own [story] arc. And their relationship has to go through the arc as well.”
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Now on Inlander.com: National and international stories from the New York Times to go with the fresh, local news we deliver every day 30 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
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radley has worked consistently through the pandemic, primarily staying at home and working both on her writing and in her day job teaching physics at Spokane Falls Community College. In her role as a professor, she’s had to get used to communicating with students online and filming videos of her labs or lectures. “I miss the contact that I have with students, because I think you form a better relationship with them that way,” Bradley says. “But on the other hand, this [online] relationship is also interesting because students, they’re sometimes a little more open since you’re communicating Åsa Maria Bradley via emails and things. They’re sharing more of their lives than they might if we were just having face-to-face communication.” The virtual realm has also proved surprisingly good for her life in Romancelandia, too. A big annual conference of romance writers typically held in New York City proved a hit when it moved to a virtual event instead, and Bradley has a Zoom lunch with some fellow writers every Wednesday. “The romance community of readers and writers has always been sort of spread out, not just across the United States, but also worldwide,” Bradley says. “So there’s always been social media as the way that I connect with writer
Bradley’s new book arrives Feb. 16. friends and readers. It is something that I lean on.” Visitors to her website, asamariabradley.com, will find all the usual things authors have on their pages, from lists of her books to connections to her active Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds (and her Pinterest, Goodreads and BookBub pages, among others). But you’ll also find videos of Bradley teaching visitors how to make a Swedish kladdkaka cake (basically sticky chocolate cake) and “the yummiest of all pumpkin breads.” It’s all part of staying connected to a vibrant romance community, especially during these times when they can’t meet in person. That means Bradley doesn’t have any current plans for in-person book launch events for A Wolf ’s Hunger, but there will surely be activity online surrounding the start of her new series. Bradley says that active community online has helped her stay focused on writing through the last year. “It’s hard to be creative, and it’s hard for your brain to be quiet enough to be creative, so being able to talk to other writers has been amazing,” Bradley says. “And then having the readers have such easy access to me through social media, their support has been invaluable. I might think that, you know, ‘The world is a really dark place, and my books are not going to have any impact.’ And who wants to tweet or Instagram about ‘buy my book here, I just wrote a new book’ when the world is falling down around us? “Getting messages from readers saying, ‘Hey, the reason I can cope with the world falling down around me is because books like yours exist out there, and I want more of them’ — that has been amazing.” n A Wolf ’s Hunger arrives in stores and online on Tuesday, Feb. 16. Visit asamariabradley. com for more information.
CULTURE | DIGEST
Notable Expression SO SUAVE As pure escapist entertainment, new Netflix series Lupin certainly fits the bill. The five-episode season follows professional thief Assane Diop as he seeks revenge on the rich family that framed his father in a robbery 25 years ago, using only his wits, disguises and inspiration from a fictional master thief he read about as a child named Arsene Lupin. While issues of race and class certainly are prominent, Lupin is primarily a breezy show full of humor, lovely shots of Paris, and a magnetic performance by Omar Sy in the lead role. If the James Bond franchise is looking for a Daniel Craig replacement, perhaps one with a French accent? (DAN NAILEN)
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BY DR. JODY GRAVES
s I watched the celebration festivities of the inauguration, once again I saw what we all see and experience in these moments. The tireless heroes in the medical community were honored. The hopes and dreams of young people were lifted up in every field through stories told by people in areas of sports, business, innovation and technology. The breakthrough of our first woman VP was celebrated. Throughout all of it, the entire event was punctuated by MUSIC, from the military band to Garth Brooks and everything in between. MUSIC accompanied the impressive fireworks at the end, and framed the moments of reflection as we collectively mourned the loss of over 400,000 Americans to this pandemic. MUSIC brings it all together and gives our hearts and minds a moment of respite, joy, memory, hope and possibility. MUSIC synthesizes the emotions of the moment, and unites our spirits. Couldn’t you feel it?
THE BUZZ BIN
THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST There’s noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online Feb. 12. To wit: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, New Fragility. Stroke my chin and say “the singles so far have been pretty good.” FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, Life Rolls On. I’m going to keep rolling mine as far away from this line as humanly possible. DJANGO DJANGO, Glowing in the Dark. A fourth album of dance-pop to help you fight off the winter blahs. (DAN NAILEN)
MUSIC, ART, STORY-TELLING, DANCING, THEATER, FILM AND LITERATURE... all the ways we communicate and find a path of expression when nothing else will suffice. We were moved by the stunning youth poet laureate that day, and inspired by the stories of “firsttime” elected servants to our government on all levels. Through all of this, MUSIC was integrated and laced throughout the tapestry of the day, as it is at weddings, funerals, graduations and myriad celebrations across the globe. MUSIC brings it all together, and brings us together, softening the edges of our perceived differences. It has since the beginning, when music and stories were first enjoyed around a campfire. For those who continue to mandate cutting MUSIC programs, or insist on taking it out of our schools, or refuse arts funding at local, state and national levels, I ask: “Who will play for you if you take this all away?” MUSIC is not a peripheral activity. It is a foundational component of every culture — and of every great educational system. It is worth our investment. The arts illustrate our humanness and give voice to what truly matters. From strumming a lullaby on a guitar for a small child who needs to be calmed, to the energy and visceral excitement of a full symphony orchestra playing in solidarity after the Berlin Wall came down. MUSIC heals and transforms us. It cannot be diminished, it cannot be silenced, it is not “extracurricular.” MUSIC is necessary for us to survive as people, and provides wonder, healing and imagination to a world that aches for beauty and peace. n Dr. Jody Graves is professor of piano studies and graduate program director for music at EWU.
BACK TO THE MOVIES Movie theaters in Washington are still closed, but now you can replicate the experience. The Magic Lantern Theatre is reopening for private screenings, allowing up to six people from a single household into their 33-seat theater. It’s $99 to rent the screen, and you bring your own BluRay or DVD. The Lantern, meanwhile, will supply the popcorn (don’t skip the real butter) and concessions, and you’re welcome to bring in food from the restaurants located in the Community Building. To set up your private screening, email magiclanternevents@ gmail.com. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)
A DOCTORATE IN COMIXOLOGY For decades, I’ve watched comic book movies and marathoned comic book TV shows and played comic book video games. But did you know that they make comic book books? Reading a comic book is never ideal on your laptop or smartphone, but they’re perfect for tablets, where the bright colors shine and it takes only a pinch to zoom in on dialogue and details. I got the ComiXology app in order to read the critically acclaimed Flintstones comics, but soon found I could try an “unlimited” subscription for 30 days for free, which has me catching up on all sorts of comic-book classics. Did you know there’s a character named “Batman” who fights crime while dressing like a bat? Wild stuff. (DANIEL WALTERS)
KUDOS Washington state’s Artist Trust announced its 2020 Fellowship Award recipients Monday, and while Eastern Washington was largely overlooked, big props to Spokane author Sharma Shields for winning one of the $10,000 prizes awarded “to artists of any discipline in recognition of artistic excellence and dedication to their practice.” Shields was one of nine winners chosen from 266 applicants. (DAN NAILEN)
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 31
CULTURE | COLLEGE THEATER
Cleaning up corpses can be fun, in the right hands.
Lights, Camera, Zoom
SFCC theater production finds unlikely success despite COVID challenges BY SPENCER BROWN
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here are countless moving parts that go into producing a musical, so much so that in normal circumstances it seems like a herculean task. Adding in a pandemic, strict health regulations and unreliable internet makes that task a hundred times harder. That still wasn’t enough to stop the theater department at Spokane Falls Community College from putting on their fall show Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. “It was a new experience, constantly surviving every turn, which was exciting,” says Ashley Demoville, director of the SFCC drama department. “Being in the field of theater for a few decades, it was the first time where everything was completely different. I’ve made movies and plays, but this was completely new. It had to land between theater and film because we couldn’t be in the same physical space.”
32 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
Even with all of the changes that Demoville and the crew had to adapt to, they were still able to put on a show that was recently recognized by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, where it will be in competition next week. Demoville chose this particular show by playwright Taylor Mac because she thought it was the perfect, lightly political show that related to life right now and could be done remotely. Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus is set right after the final scene of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, one of the Bard’s bloodiest tragedies. Gary is a clown promoted to be a maid to clean up the carnage. While being trained to dispose of the bodies, Gary gets distracted and sets his new goal to impress the surviving court with his fooling. Given that the project was a hybrid of theater and film, there was a lot of improvisation using more un-
orthodox techniques that depended on what the situation and the technology allowed. “We filmed the whole thing over Zoom,” Demoville says. “The whole cast was in the same Zoom call, and we’d use the Zoom record feature and hide people who weren’t supposed to be in the shot.” While recording the video and dialogue was relatively simple over Zoom, it was more difficult when they added musical elements to the show. “Zoom doesn’t allow layered audio,” Demoville says. “Even with dialogue there would be an overlapping of lines but that wouldn’t work for music.” Three cast members used their phones to record their own audio since they were as powerful as a regular mic would be, not to mention convenient. However, SFCC had to pull together a lot of other equipment to make the show complete. “We needed lighting, a green screen and cameras,” says Meg Jones, who played Gary. “Keeping the lighting the same for everyone in the show to make it look like we are in the same place was very difficult. Plus, recording on Zoom over the internet is not easy to deal with.” According to Jones, the production rehearsed four times a week for three weeks. Each time they had to film, they had to set everything up and readjust to make it look seamless. And while the tech side of things were difficult, the process of acting also changed dramatically in this vacuum. “The biggest thing was not having the audience and not being able to feed off their energy,” Jones says. “You don’t know how they engage with things. Everything was basically thrown out the window.” The prerecorded nature of the production was also strange to Jaz Vega, one of Jones’ two castmates, but it actually came with strange benefits as well. “It was very fun, very different from anything I’ve done before. Really challenging because you couldn’t connect to your castmates,” says Vega, who played Janice, the maid who trains Gary to clean up the corpses. “There’s that unspoken chemistry that was way harder to get over camera, but we still got it, which was surprising but amazing. Working in shows you also never really get to see it, unless you record it. It was really cool to be able to go back and watch it with my family. Weird but cool.” After streaming the recorded version of the performance from Nov. 27- Dec. 5, SFCC was invited to show their recorded performance at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival running Feb. 17-20. This isn’t the first time the department has been invited to attend the regional festival, but it’s the first time they’ve been nominated for an award. “This year we will be viewed by national representatives from Kennedy for awards,” Demoville says. “One of the key elements of Kennedy Center is the responses. Professional theater representatives from across the nation will see the performance and give responses to cast and crew.” The SFCC drama department is already planning its future productions. Its spring musical will be Madagascar: A Musical Adventure, complete with highly protective singing masks. They are also plan a show for preschoolers titled The Problem of Goblins in mid-March. “We did not miss a beat with the pandemic,” Demoville says. “We continued to do work and used time to explore different means of entertainment and create experiences for people. Students showed a lot of gratitude that we can still meet, and they are still growing their craft in a different way than they are used to.” n Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus plays at the Region 7 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Feb. 17-20. The event is only open for students and schools. For more information visit kcactf7.org/home/festival/
VALENTINE’S DAY
Heart-y Helpings Sweet treats and eats for Valentine’s Day around the Inland Northwest BY CHEY SCOTT
V
alentine’s Day is upon us, and as the pandemic continues to force restrictions on dining out, local restaurants, bakeries and other food purveyors are ramping up take-home options. The holiday of love falls on a Sunday this year, but don’t wait until the last minute to make a reservation for what is available to enjoy in person, or to preorder baked goods and treats, since availability for both is limited. This year’s Valentine’s Day options offer something to fit any desire or lifestyle — solo, partnered, celebrating with kids or close friends. Here are some highlights around the region that caught our eye.
THE BLISSFUL WHISK
1612 N. Barker Rd., Spokane Valley, blissfulwhisk.com, 242-3189 The Spokane Valley bakery is going all out with its V-Day specialties: Heart-shaped cookie cakes ($14), strawberry bundt cakes ($12.50), chocolate-dipped strawberries (4/$10), themed cupcakes and sugar cookies ($3.50/each; $35/dozen) and much more. “Cakesicles,” or popsicle-shaped cake pops ($3.50 each), in traditional and heart shapes, are also new this year for Valentine’s Day. A full menu of festive coffee and espresso drinks — German chocolate truffle latte, anyone? — along with some non-coffee drinks for the little ones, are also available all month. Preorder online to ensure you can fulfill you and your loved ones’ desires; orders are available for pickup on Feb. 12 and 13 from 7 am-1 pm.
SWEET FROSTINGS
An assortment of sugary treats at Sweet Frostings Blissful Bakeshop. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
15 S. Washington St. and 10406 N. Division St., sweetfrostingsbakeshop.com Both main locations (there also are kiosks in the Spokane Valley and NorthTown malls) of the bakery known for its cupcakes topped with tiny fondant hearts have been busy crafting new treats while adapting existing menu favorites for V-Day 2021. One of this winter’s biggest cozy food trends, hot cocoa “bombs” ($8/each), make a thematic reappearance, now decked out in pink, ...continued on next page
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 33
FOOD | EVENT
FOOD | VALENTINE’S DAY “HEART-Y HELPINGS,” CONTINUED... red and white sprinkles. Among the many Valentine’s specials offered for preorder on Sweet Frostings’ website are assorted cupcakes ($4.25 each), mini chocolate drip cakes ($36.50), lots of iced, heart-shaped cookies ($4.25 each) and an adorable “love bug” cake ($19). For a onestop shop, the Whitworth Sweet Frostings has a limited quantity of Valentine’s bundles ($70), complete with a bottle of champagne, a floral arrangement and box of four assorted cupcakes. Order online to pick up in store, or for local delivery.
GARLAND SANDWICH SHOPPE
Smoked Halibut Cakes from Steam Plant Grill offered during last year’s Restaurant Week.
Inlander Restaurant Week Pivots
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
In its place this March, The Great Dine Out offers flexibility for diners, restaurants BY CHEY SCOTT
I
n a normal year, Inlander Restaurant Week takes place from late February to early March, but even a year after the pandemic’s onset, 2021 is still not a “normal” year. Announcements of permanent restaurant closures across the region continue to trickle in, paired with ever-changing statewide restrictions on dining out. So for 2021, the traditional Inlander Restaurant Week — a 10-day celebration of the region’s culinary excellence in which participating venues showcase their best via three-course, fixed price menus — is moving to what’s hoped to be a more stable time, Aug. 19-28. Then next year, the event will return to late winter, Feb. 24-March 5, 2022. In place of what would usually be Restaurant Week, coordinators at the Inlander, with the help of community partners, opted for something a little different. The Great Dine Out will be a two-week event, March 11-27, featuring about 120 participating restaurants in Spokane and Kootenai counties. Those restaurants each will highlight three signature dishes, anything from a popular entree to family-style takeout meals, cocktails to go, desserts, etc. There won’t be any set pricing, rather the goal
34 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
of the event is to encourage diners to support the area’s local, independently owned restaurants after a yearlong struggle that continues to hamper the hospitality industry. The Great Dine Out coincides with the one-year anniversary of the initial pandemic shutdown in March 2020. Since public health regulations affecting restaurants during the event window are unknown, the hope is that diners can support their neighborhood eateries or try something new to them, in whichever way they feel most comfortable, via takeout, outdoor or open-air seating, or indoor dining if it’s again allowed by that time. There is no cost for restaurants to participate; however, spots are limited. The Great Dine Out is made possible by collaborative financial support from 12 regional institutions: STCU, Washington Trust Bank, Idaho Central Credit Union, BECU, P1FCU, Progressions Credit Union, First Interstate Bank, Banner Bank, Canopy Credit Union, Umpqua Bank, Wheatland Bank and Horizon Credit Union. An event guide highlighting restaurants’ event menus will be released in the March 11 edition of the Inlander and online at inlander.com/greatdineout. n
3903 N. Madison St., garlandsandwich.com, 326-2405 Skip the sweets, skip the flowers, get pickles instead. Yes, the Garland Sandwich Shoppe is offering an alternative to all things stereotypically (and literally) sweet with its newly introduced pickle “bouquets.” The edible arrangements are available for delivery ($32 to anywhere in Spokane) and pickup ($25) this Valentine’s Day. Deliveries, provided by locally owned Treehouse Deliveries, are scheduled for Feb. 14 between 10 am and noon, while pickups at the shop are between 9 and 11 am. Orders must be placed by phone, owner Kristen Speller says. She initially plans to offer 100 pickle bouquets for sale, but if demand proves to be high enough, she’ll order more supplies. Each “bouquet” comes with two bacon “roses” on cheese and olive skewers, along with three skewered pickles displayed in a vase with some nonedible greenery to tie the arrangement together. Speller says she plans to offer the pickle arrangements, along with a forthcoming charcuterie option and a bloody mary “bouquet,” as yearround items.
BIRDIE’S PIE SHOP
1003 N. Spokane St., Post Falls, birdiespies.com, 208-457-7004 If your sweetie can’t say no to pie, then consider the mouthwatering variety of Valentine’s specials at Birdie’s Pie Shop. Among them is the “You Fill My Heart” pie ($28), available in a 9.5-inch heart-shaped or round tin with several filling choices: chocolate cream (with an Oreo crust), turtle (salted caramelized pecan with butter biscoff crust), apple, raspberry cream, key lime, red velvet and cherry. Preorder for pickup on Feb. 12 or 13 (the shop is closed on the 14th). Can’t settle on just one flavor? The Valentine’s Day pie quad ($19.50) offers four mini pies in select filling flavors. In addition to these holiday pie specials, Birdie’s has teamed up with two local companies to offer his-and-her gift sets ($32/each). One option includes two mini dessert pies and a folding knife from Buck Knives. The other also has two sweet minis, plus soap, body butter and a bath bomb from Mountain Madness Soap Co. A combo that includes both, but switches out the pies for two savory and two sweet, is $65.
WANDERLUST DELICATO
421 W. Main Ave., wanderlustdelicato.com, 822-7087 Let a seasoned pro do all the work for you, and pick up a charcuterie, cheese and wine package from wine expert and cheesemonger Amber Park, owner of downtown’s Wanderlust Delicato. While you can certainly order a custom platter with your sweetie’s favorite cured meats and specialty cheeses, which Park imports from around the world, there’s also a special Valentine’s package deal for two ($80) currently available for preorder. You’ll get a selection of cured meat, cheese, accompanying snacks like bread, crackers, nuts and, of course, chocolate. Park has also picked out two bottles of wine, one red and one sparkling, to pair perfectly with the food she’s curated. Order online for pickup by Feb. 13 as the shop is closed Sundays. n
BREACH OF TRUST
Judas and the Black Messiah is an electric, beautifully acted re-creation of recent American history BY NATHAN WEINBENDER
H
istory so rarely gets translated into compelling but believable narrative films that it’s tempting to label Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah as a surprise. This is an assured, confident film about a particularly chaotic episode in recent American history, and the characters, all of them fictional interpretations of people who really existed, reflect that chaos. Compare this movie to Aaron Sorkin’s recent The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was set in the same time period and deals with similar political material, and yet whose characters felt like conduits for regurgitating the writer-director’s Big Ideas about the era. Here, the characters actually resemble human beings. They’re not always virtuous. They’re mired in contradiction. In Sorkin’s film, the characters tended to behave as if their places in history have already been secured. In King’s film, the characters seem to realize that their legacies are still in the process of being written. The movie begins in 1968 Chicago, where Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) is an enterprising 20-year-old activist who has risen within the ranks of the still-nascent Black Panther Party and is chairman of the organization’s Illinois chapter. Hampton’s concerns are primarily philanthropic — he’s most proud of a free breakfast program he’s established in his neighborhood — but the FBI sees the Panthers as a terrorist organization and Hampton as a dangerous insurgent, and their goal is to sow as much discord as possible between its various chapters. Enter William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), a petty crook who’s arrested for a scheme in which he poses as a fed, raids a bar and runs off with someone’s car. (His justification: “A badge is scarier than a gun.”) An FBI agent (Jesse Plemons) strikes a bargain with him:
O’Neal can sidestep federal charges if he’ll infiltrate the O’Neal, under suspicion after the Panthers become aware Black Panthers as part of the bureau’s COINTELPRO of a mole, is pressured into hotwiring a car at gunpoint. campaign, buddying up to Hampton and bringing back In only a handful of films, Daniel Kaluuya has as much insider information as possible. already developed into one of the most exciting actors O’Neal realizes he’s in a lose-lose situation: Either he around, and this might be his best role yet. As Hampton, sells out his own people, or he becomes just another stahe gets the predictable show-stopping moments, where tistic in the prison system. Ironically, he lands a position he’s delivering stirring speeches in front of rapt crowds, within the Chicago Panthers’ security detail, and though but he also gets some nice intimate ones: One of the he isn’t Hampton’s closest ally within the organization, most humanizing scenes has Hampton alone in his office he’s enough of a confidante that his capacity as informant after hours, reciting along to recordings of old Malcolm becomes more and more lucrative. X speeches like they’re Shakespearean soliloquies. Hampton preaches the need for racial Stanfield’s role is arguably the trickier one, revolution by any means necessary, and however: He has to keep us invested in JUDAS AND part of that mission involves uniting Black O’Neal’s inner turmoil, without simply THE BLACK MESSIAH militant groups with seemingly contradicplaying the character as a rat with only his Rated R tory philosophies (this outreach led to interests at heart. Directed by Shaka King Hampton’s racial unity movement, the O’Neal is the Judas of the title, though Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Rainbow Coalition). He has also accepted Lakeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, his betrayal of Hampton isn’t driven by the reality, both publicly and in private, that Dominique Fishback ideological concerns so much as pure he may have to die for his peaceable cause, self-preservation. It would be easy to pin Streaming on HBO Max Feb. 12 and he has no illusions about the likelihood Hampton’s 1969 death during a police that he could die at the hands of the police. Hampton’s raid solely on O’Neal’s duplicity, but King’s film realizes pregnant girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique things are much more complex than that: Because HampFishback), meanwhile, is struggling with Hampton’s idea ton’s murder was no doubt an inevitability in the minds of sacrifice: How can he be so resigned to his fate when of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, O’Neal was merely a tool in there’s so much work left to be done, and when he has a expediting a cruel process. baby on the way? That’s what makes Judas and the Black Messiah such a Of course, we know Hampton’s fate (and the fate brilliant drama: It isn’t storybook history with the edges of most of his colleagues) going into Judas and the Black sanded down. Like Ava DuVernay’s Selma, another recent Messiah, but the film nonetheless has the seductive pull of biopic about the 1960s civil rights movement, it’s enlighta thriller. King and his co-writer Will Berson have filled ening both factually and emotionally, reminding us that this sensitive story with moments of genuine suspense noble social causes still have complicated personalities at and unexpected violence, including a moment in which their centers. n
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 35
FILM | ANNIVERSARY
Hello Again, Clarice
Jodie Foster won an Oscar for portraying an FBI agent with an unusual relationship with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter.
30 years after its release, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is as scary and brilliantly crafted as ever BY NATHAN WEINBENDER
I
t must have been some kind of sick joke to release The Silence of the Lambs on Valentine’s Day 1991. February is normally the month when studios dump their least desirable products, but this bloody thriller had quite a pedigree: It was directed by the critically adored Jonathan Demme, based on a bestseller by Thomas Harris, and starred recent Oscar winner Jodie Foster as an FBI trainee who uses one serial killer to catch another. The film was an instant hit, topping the box office for five straight weeks and remaining in the top 10 well into the spring. The Silence of the Lambs became only the third movie to sweep the so-called “top five” Academy Awards categories — best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay (It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are the others). Demme’s attachment to such gruesome material is bizarre in retrospect. He was best known for mostly
36 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
upbeat, off-kilter films: the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, quirky buddy comedy Melvin & Howard, the studio-compromised WWII romance Swing Shift. Although he got his start making down-and-dirty exploitation films for Roger Corman, and although some of his movies — particularly 1986’s Something Wild and 1988’s Married to the Mob — had a glimmer of menace about them, nothing Demme had made suggested he’d be a match for something so grisly. But the late director’s trademark sense of character is all over Silence of the Lambs, and what separates this film from its copycats is its predilection for humanity over horror — in fact, the authenticity of its central characters is why the horror is so potent. Consider the famous meetings between Agent Clarice Starling (Foster) and the imprisoned Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), who appears to
have insight into a string of brutal murders credited to one Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Starling and Lecter only share four short scenes in the movie, and yet those scenes have embedded themselves so deeply into our cultural consciousness that we tend to forget how little time they occupy. Hopkins himself is only in the film for about 25 minutes, and yet his performance, one of the scariest ever captured on film, looms over the movie like a bird of prey, always circling. He seems almost sprightly, maybe even a bit debonair, until he turns on his heel and bites your nose off. Hopkins’ interpretation of Lecter is rightfully iconic, and yet it’s as good as it is because he has Foster to work against. Hopkins’ performance has inspired the most critical analysis, but Foster’s role is the richer and more difficult. She has to play convincingly tough and convincingly vulnerable, a brilliant investigative mind nonetheless second-guessed by her superiors at every turn. The moment when Clarice breaks down crying after her first meeting with Lecter doesn’t read as a moment of weakness, but rather as a moment of understandable human catharsis. She’s the emotional and dramatic anchor of the film, and without Clarice’s humanity, Lecter’s single-minded bloodlust isn’t half as threatening.
T
he Silence of the Lambs wasn’t the first Hannibal Lecter novel to make it to the screen. Five years prior, Michael Mann adapted Harris’ 1981
potboiler Red Dragon as Manhunter, in which retired homicide detective Will Graham (William Petersen), damaged from a long-ago run-in with Lecter (Brian Cox), reluctantly takes the case of a mass murderer known as the Tooth Fairy (Tom Noonan). Placing Manhunter side-by-side with Lambs is an interesting case study in seemingly contradictory styles being applied to similar material. Both films follow more or less the same trajectory — killer strikes, cop investigates, Lecter mediates, killer and cop face off — and yet they couldn’t look more different. Mann’s approach is as moody and neon-lit as his then-popular TV series Miami Vice, and the sets are sparsely furnished, ultramodern and almost clinical in their cleanliness. Demme’s, on the other hand, is gothic and baroque, and his milieu is practically subterranean: The antiseptic white tile of Lecter’s jail cell in Manhunter is replaced here by a dungeon-like chamber, and Clarice’s first visit to the cavernous bowels of the prison foreshadows her climactic descent to Buffalo Bill’s lair, where the kidnapped Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith) is trapped in an empty well embedded even deeper into the earth. Those warring visual styles also reflect the motives of their respective villains. Manhunter is about a killer who spies and lurks before pouncing, and Dante Spinotti’s camera follows suit, often hanging back and shooting its characters through long lenses. Lambs’ killers, meanwhile, grab and bite and peel back flesh, and the movie likewise invades our personal space with its leering camerawork. I don’t think either approach is designed to let the audience identify with murderers, but rather to get us in the same headspace as their central detectives, who are themselves occupying the damaged psyches of the killers they hunt. Much has been written about cinematographer Tak Fujimoto’s use of close-ups ...continued on next page
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Now on Inlander.com: National and international stories from the New York Times to go with the fresh, local news we deliver every day FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 37
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“HELLO AGAIN, CLARICE,” CONTINUED... in The Silence of the Lambs, and what struck me upon this rewatch is just how close they are — suffocating, leering, invasive — and how they’re almost always employed whenever Starling is in conversations with men, whose demeanors range from formal to condescending to menacing. Demme has them stare directly down the barrel of the camera, practically breaking the fourth wall; in her close-ups, Starling’s eyes are usually pointed right past the lens, as if she’s trying to escape such unwanted scrutiny. And yet she’s trapped by their gaze, like a moth pinned to a board.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day Sunday, February 14th
FILM | ANNIVERSARY
I
n 1991, the acclaim for Silence was deafening, but it wasn’t without its critics. The character of Buffalo Bill, in particular, was singled out by contemporary LGBTQ+ advocates as yet another Hollywood film dangerously conflating gender fluidity with murderous psychosis. The activist group Queer Nation even protested outside the ’92 Oscars ceremony. The criticisms ring even truer three decades later, and other writers have delved into them more eloquently than I ever could: For starters, I’d recommend Annaliese Griffin’s 2019 essay about Buffalo Bill for Quartz, as well as Jo Moses’ recent contextual analysis for the student-run publication the Campanil; both pieces recognize the artistic merit of the film while rightfully singling out its most troubling undercurrents.
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Probably shouldn’t stand that close to a guy nicknamed “The Cannibal.” It was a successful, award-winning, incendiary film, which meant one thing: There had to be sequels. Hannibal, directed by Ridley Scott and released a decade after its predecessor, took the Lecter-Starling relationship in dunderheaded directions and leaned into Grand Guignol camp — remember Anthony Hopkins feeding Ray Liotta sauteed chunks of his own brain? 2002’s Red Dragon, another adaptation of the first Lecter novel, is more operatic than Manhunter and yet less absorbing. And the Lecter origin story Hannibal Rising, released in 2007, is essentially forgotten. Improbably enough, it was the character’s transition to network television that finally brought him back to the heights of Silence of the Lambs. NBC’s Hannibal, a prequel series starring Mads Mikkelsen as Lecter and Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, got mostly middling ratings but glowing critical reviews, and it’s a gorgeous, twisty, surprisingly nasty bit of serialized drama. The reason it works is that Bryan Fuller, who developed Hannibal for TV, understands Lecter’s allure better than any filmmaker since Demme, which is that he’s only compelling when he’s up against someone as equally and lethally intelligent. It’s also why Clarice Starling is still the best sparring partner Hannibal Lecter ever had. (Another TV spinoff, titled Clarice, follows Starling in the aftermath of her time with Lecter and debuts on CBS on Feb. 11.) In those underground interrogations, she attempts to grill Lecter at an emotional remove, before realizing that she has to succumb to his mind games in order to recover the information she needs. Lecter, to give a psychopath credit, is also aware of Starling’s motives, and rewards her for humoring him. It isn’t the case of a fly being coaxed into a spider’s web. In so many ways, they’re playing each other. n
MUSIC TURN UP THE HEAT
Baby Bar’s ongoing virtual concert series continues to bring a diverse array of styles to its virtual stage, and this weekend brings a performance by the local folk-rock collective Heat Speak. A project fronted by singer-songwriter Dario Ré, Heat Speak employs violin and cello to invoke a string-fueled warmth, blending genres and languages, with Ré’s lyrics shifting between English and French. The band debuted new music via livestream at the beginning of the year, and last week saw the debut of a music video for the song “Chippy Lean Grass.” Baby Bar’s February schedule includes a Feb. 19 benefit for Planned Parenthood, which will feature romantic song covers from various local artists, and a Feb. 25 showcase for singersongwriter Gabriella Rose. — NATHAN WEINBENDER Heat Speak • Sat, Feb. 13 at 8 pm • $5 • Streaming at babybarneatoburrito.veeps.com
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WORDS POETIC JUSTICE
Up next for its Hagan Center Speaker Series, Spokane Community College is hosting a YouTube event featuring Kevin Young. Young is the poetry podcast host and poetry editor for The New Yorker and the director of New York Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture located in Harlem. Also an author, Young has written 13 books of poetry and prose, and he edited the recent anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. His 2017 nonfiction book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News made him a finalist for a PEN award. Young’s presentation is open to the public at 5 pm via Zoom, and livestreamed on YouTube. — NATALIE RIETH Hagan Center Speaker Series: Kevin Young • Wed, Feb. 17 at 5 pm • Free • Online; details at scc.spokane.edu/News-Events/ Live-Events
WORDS BECOMING FREE
As part of Gonzaga’s Black History Month festivities, the school is welcoming USC law and history professor Ariela Gross for an online version of Gonzaga’s William L. Davis, S.J. History Lecture. Gross is the author of Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. It’s an examination of how both enslaved and free people of color in those three communities used their knowledge of the law to claim American citizenship for themselves and their families. An expert on how race and slavery shaped our country’s laws, culture and politics, Gross should make for a fascinating speaker on your Wednesday lunch hour. — DAN NAILEN Ariela Gross: Becoming Free, Becoming Black • Wed, Feb 17 at noon • Free • Online; preregister at bit.ly/zaglawbecomingfree
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 39
Sweetheart S pecials
Author Events!
EVENTS
Celebrate Valentine’s Day Sunday, February 14th
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February 16, 7p
VISUAL ARTS RETURNING HOME
The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, in accordance with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, is displaying 16 artifacts from its collection one last time before returning the items to their rightful owners, the indigenous Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest, whose name means “People of the Tides.” In 2018, a tribally appointed Tlingit delegation was sent to Spokane to review the museum’s American Indian collection of artifacts. This delegation determined that the MAC possessed 16 artifacts that qualified as culturally significant under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Once the exhibition ends on May 2, the artifacts will be returned to the Tlingit people. — SPENCER BROWN
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VISUAL ARTS POETIC PORTRAITS
Dean Davis (above) has been a leader in the region’s arts scene for several decades. Next up for the local photographer is an exhibition of his ongoing effort to capture portraits of local poets, along with recordings of each reading their work. Davis was moved to create Pictures of Poets after hearing some of these spoken-word talents perform at the 2017 Spokane Arts Awards, and has continued adding to the collection. While the Boswell Hall Corner Gallery at North Idaho College is open with social distancing and safety protocols in place, there’s also an online component, where viewers can see the images as well as listen to recorded poetry. Among the poets captured by Davis’ lens, viewers may recognize Mark Anderson, M.L. Smoker, Robert Pinsky and Claudia Castro Luna. — CHEY SCOTT Pictures of Poets • Through March 26; Mon-Thu 10 am-4 pm; Fri 10 am-2:30 pm • Free • North Idaho College, Boswell Hall Corner Gallery • 880 W. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene • Online at picturesofpoets.com
BLACK TRUCK, DARK HAIR, MEGA CAR WASH Hi, I saw you at Mega Car Wash vacuuming your truck, I was the short dark hair wearing blue flannel, blue Chevy small SUV. You had a blue maybe flannel or jacket on as well, Sunday Super bowl day around 3:30. If you’re interested, email me at onnaray08@gmail.com. PS just so I no it’s the right person you thought my name was _ _ _ _... I gave you my name; you thought you might have seen me before. Signed, Me... :)
I know that it’s probably going to be awhile before we see each other again; I miss you already. I love you, lady. You’ll always be with me In my heart. Until the day we meet again.
“
YOU SAW ME THE UNIVERSE HASN’T BEEN SUBTLE SINCE You saw me at my job; you asked me about my new car; you saw my Curtis Mayfield cassettes in the backseat. After you left, you called my job to ask me out. Intrigued, I canceled a date with someone else that night to get to know you. The universe hasn’t been subtle since. I’m so in love with you, Maria. Thank you for seeing me.
I SAW YOU RED STRING I could write a poem, or a sad song. I will refrain from both and try aimlessly to move on. The pain had subsided, I had accepted our fate. Then you held held me in your arms and I saw the look on your face. Oh what a story did it tell. It pulled me from my ignorance, how blissfull it was. Pretending you do not care, and felt nothing for me. Yet, I dare not say a peep. (At least not to you.) What else is a girl to do. BTW, in case you have not noticed. I STILL F---ING LOVE YOU! Holy hell, I must move on from you. I beg the question how, if time and distance did not do the trick. I feel I may always be stuck with this empty aimless wish. Remembering that gentle kiss from years ago. Oh how I wish my heart would let you go.
CHEERS FIREMAN HONK Firefighters have always been on my list of Consistently Good People. Including the time when my precious VW Beetle was shot at in San Diego (I was blocks away at the time), and several firemen helped me. We all know they will run into a burning building. And go to great lengths to rescue kitties from trees. Always heroic. And thoughtful. (Not to mention good-lookin’.) But, until today, I didn’t know they could make me laugh so hard I cried. After narrowly missing a jaywalker who jumped out in front of me on a downtown street, and honking at the dude, I heard a REALLY LOUD honk, and realized that a fire truck had also just honked at the guy! Thanks for the reinforcement, Firemen, and the smiles and thumbs-up. That made my day, my week, my month!
PANDEMIC PROBLEMS I saw you in Albertsons on 57th. You were in the holiday aisle, picking up some heartshaped Dove chocolates. (Milk chocolate is my favorite too!) Even from six feet away you looked amazing. I thought about you later and wished I had said ‘Hi’ or something. This social distancing is really starting to curb my appeal. Maybe we could share a bag of Kisses sometime? Your lovely pose caused me to write some prose: I saw you at the store last week / Your mask hid some of your beauty / Your smile, your lips, your dimples, your cheeks / I imagine you quite a cutie
I MISS YOU ALREADY I don’t know how we got here, or why, but I want to say thank you for the past year and a half. Although it has been a constant fight, and despite the fact that I am currently alone, again, I just want you to understand that I love you with all of my heart.
have in common? Yep! Spiraling interest rates and Penalties! According to this weekly there is a Representative Mr. Mike Volz that has taken notice that the City has a lot in common with the
thing, the ponytail should be a clear sign that this individual tends to lean the other way... if you know what I mean. Keep your gender opinions in your dreams. The real world has no place for
I literally hate the Pinch more than anything else on the planet.
JEERS
KEEP IT DOWN! To the owner of certain apartments in Browne’s Addition, this jeers goes out to you, cowpoke. If the only fleeting satisfaction I’ll get is having this jeers posted and you actually read it, then dagnabbit, this is gonna be worth it to me! I just wanna tell you... You suck... you suck so much. For most of 2020 and going into 2021, you gave your apartment building a face-lift. A really loud face-lift. There were countless mornings, starting at 7 am, when it wasn’t the chirping of birds that welcomed the new day; it was your burly maintenance crew ready to demo sh*t to oblivion. They’d yell, they jack hammered the sh*t out of the ground, they’d use all the Screeching tools. You even had an Avista crew of 10+, screaming and yelling at each other at 7:30 am this morning. (I love you Avista but damn... y’all need to use walkie talkies or something.) These earth-quaking disturbances last all day, for days in a row, all year long. Yeah, I don’t know the first thing about owning a building and all the maintenance and upkeep it requires, especially when you have people living in it. But folks have the right to live in peace and quiet, and you subjecting families and animals to loud construction noises right outside their homes for a year now is just heartless. Get the job done, and let people live in peace! PREDATORY INTEREST RATES — LIKE A LOAN SHARK! So what do the City of Spokane and some sleazy loan shark
SOUND OFF
1. Visit Inlander.com/isawyou by 3 pm Monday. 2. Pick a category (I Saw You, You Saw Me, Cheers or Jeers). 3. Provide basic info: your name and email (so we know you’re real). 4. To connect via I Saw You, provide a non-identifying email to be included with your submission — like “petals327@yahoo.com,” not “j.smith@comcast.net.”
common Loan Shark. Interest and penalties on property taxes. One of the big concerns is IF you help someone that is STRUGGLING during this time period (WOW? Anyone struggling other than the City of Spokane — think recent tax increase) with cutting out the predatory interest and penalties that instead of helping the MANY that are having a hard time you may Also be supporting those scummy people that just don’t want to pay the rent (property tax a form of rent) on the property they live on. See, if you call it property tax instead of rent you can screw the people that owe it! IF however you refer to it as rent, then you can’t even HINT the person owes it! Got it? The whole idea of the small guy taking back HIS country (OR city) should be much more obvious with the recent moves on Wall Street — Game Stop stock purchase. Where a group of little people that don’t matter suddenly become Giant Killers! Until the public gets backed into a wall and starts to stand up for themselves. I applaud that Fine Representative Mike Volz. Please, Mike, Help those who don’t seem to want to help themselves! LEFT THE BUILDING Jeers to all you political nutz jeering at ANYONE who flies a flag or a sticker THEY don’t like... This is America, you crybaby so get over yourself. 75+ million Americans are NOT leaving the building. Go then to steal and peel; your work is cut out for you. TO THE PERSON WHO POSTED “YOU VISIT ME IN MY DREAMS” You say you saw an “average” sized “man”? Did you seriously just assume gender? If any-
”
your stupid logic.
PINCHED OFF Dear Spokesman-Review: Please stop leaving the Pinch in my yard. It is ruining my life. I literally hate the Pinch more than anything else on the planet. Please... I’m begging you... JUST STOP! It’s not that difficult. You just have to stop throwing it into my driveway. That is actually LESS work for someone. Why has it been so difficult to try and get this small request accomplished? I’ve left so many desperate voicemails. I now go to a weekly support group for Pinch victims just to try and make sense of it all. We talk of the dread we feel as we open our front doors to see yet another piece of garbage, mindlessly pinched onto the sidewalk, waiting, like an obsessive stalker. It’s one thing to endorse Donald Trump for president. But sending half the city 50 Arby’s coupons twice a week? That is unforgivable! Again, please stop sending me the Pinch so that I can move forward and try to rebuild the wreckage that your “news” outlet has made out of my life. Sincerely, Guy Who Hates the Pinch. n
THIS WEEK'S ANSWERS T G I F B E T O A N D Y T P I P E L I E A L E X D A L A S N O A N I D L A T E A S E V D U R A S I S L
R A D I U N A N A Y N I R E N E
E N C A G E N D E D E A F R O N R T Y
I N K
N A H S U E L A A U R E D O R S H D O A N C A U A T T P A I U S E
A M E N D U F O O R A
M E A R A
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T H E S I M S
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NOTE: I Saw You/Cheers & Jeers is for adults 18 or older. The Inlander reserves the right to edit or reject any posting at any time at its sole discretion and assumes no responsibility for the content.
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Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Seeking Marijuana or Cannabis Users for a Research Study in Washington State
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) is compensating adults in the Spokane, Washington area to participate in transportation related research. VTTI is seeking volunteers to dually enroll in both the Pioneer study and the ADAS Washington study, which focuses on naturalistic driving behaviors of those using vehicles equipped with new technology. VTTI has conducted numerous similar studies all over the country for over fifteen years.
Please see below for the eligibility requirements for each study. ADAS WASHINGTON STUDY The ADAS Washington study examines how people drive and make use of advanced vehicle features. To be eligible, volunteers must: • Drive their own vehicle as they normally would • Drive a vehicle that was manufactured in 2018 or later with the following features: • Lane Keeping Assistance - automatically keeps the vehicle in the lane • Adaptive Cruise Control - maintains set speed, but also automatically slows with traffic PIONEER STUDY • Have used marijuana (cannabis) multiple times in the last 30 days • Have a smart phone and be willing to install and use a free app named HighNotes • Be willing to routinely use your smart phone to complete brief app-based surveys and submit breathalyzer and oral fluid samples yourself with easy-to-use equipment provided by VTTI All data for these studies are strictly confidential and participant privacy is protected by a Certificate of Confidentiality issued by the National Institute of Health. Estimated participation time is up to 24 months. VTTI will compensate Spokane, Washington area study drivers, who are dually enrolled in both ADAS Washington and Pioneer, a maximum of $100 per month, with a total maximum possible compensation of $2,550 for full participation in both projects. INTERESTED? Please contact us at 540-231-1583 or PioneerStudy@vtti.vt.edu and reference the “Pioneer” study in your message. All inquiries welcome! TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EITHER STUDY: https://www.vtti.vt.edu/adas/pioneer <IRB #19-785>, <IRB #20-205>
www.vtti.vt.edu
42 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
BY WILL MAUPIN
V
alentine’s Day is here, but why settle for flowers, or flower, when you can infuse your romantic holiday with some great cannabis-infused gifts? Here are three to consider when shopping for your significant other this February.
MAKE SOME INFUSED MOCKTAILS
Local producer Dogtown Pioneers’ line of Ray’s Lemonade infused beverages are on the top shelf of the cannabis drink market. With a range of flavors from traditional lemonade to blood orange and raspberry, they’ve got you covered no matter what kind of cannabis mixed drink you’re craving. Ray’s Lemonade is available at most dispensaries in our region. Head to your favorite with your special someone, grab a flavor that sounds good and make a trip to the grocery store to pick up some mixers. Muddled lime and tonic water for the blood orange? Why not? A coconut cup for your bottle of tropical kush? Sure! The possibilities for your Valentine’s drink menu, infused with weed and romance, are endless.
BATH BOMBS FOR THE DIRTY
A hot bath, in a room lit by candlelight, with rose petals floating in the water. Now, that’s romantic. But, come on, roses aren’t the only flowers you
should be throwing in your bath these days. No, don’t go dropping a couple grams of flower in there. Get the weed that’s been made for water. Bath bombs are an ever-growing niche in the cannabis-infused topical market. Absorbing THC through the skin doesn’t produce the usual intoxicating effects, but rather just a sublime body high from head to toe. If you’ve got a partner who could use a nice, relaxing cleaning, for whatever reason, this is the gift for you.
SMELL GOOD, NOT STONED
This one might be a bit self-serving, but what are you to do if you’re not much of a cannabis enthusiast but your partner certainly is? What do you get the significant other who smells good when they don’t smell stoned? Consider something that allows them to get stoned without smelling like they have. Weed pens are the perfect middle ground when it comes to smoking but not smelling. You’re not technically smoking, but vaping feels close enough. And since you’re not combusting fresh cannabis flower, you won’t breathe out a cloud of smoke that will stick to you and everything in your house. Dispensaries offer many versions of pens and batteries, but my go-to is from Bodhi High with three power levels that allow you to dial in the perfect, precise hit. n
FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 43
GREEN ZONE
e n ' s i t Day n e l a V BE AWARE: Marijuana is legal for adults 21 and older under Washington State law (e.g., RCW 69.50, RCW 69.51A, HB0001 Initiative 502 and Senate Bill 5052). State law does not preempt federal law; possessing, using, distributing and selling marijuana remains illegal under federal law. In Washington state, consuming marijuana in public, driving while under the influence of marijuana and transporting marijuana across state lines are all illegal. Marijuana has intoxicating effects; there may be health risks associated with its consumption, and it may be habit-forming. It can also impair concentration, coordination and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. Keep out of reach of children. For more information, consult the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board at www.liq.wa.gov.
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44 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
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FEBRUARY 11, 2021 INLANDER 45
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Advice Goddess BLARENAKED LADIES
Whenever I feel like I click with someone, I want to be upfront and tell them I like them right away. My friends all say this is dating suicide (and that’s how it’s been working out for me). But if I’m looking for emotional honesty in a partner, shouldn’t I lead with it? —Confused
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AMY ALKON
If we’re arrested, we have a right to remain silent. Ideally, we don’t just confess: “That was me, robbing the 7-Eleven. See — there on the video —
that’s my hair.” Best practices for criminals are also helpful for dating. In short, leaving some mystery as to whether you’re all in will make you seem more desirable. Consider that we value things that are hard to get, which is why people spend thousands of dollars on rings with sparkly rocks chipped out of African mines when there are very pretty sparkly pebbles that can be picked up all over suburbia. Psychologist Robert Cialdini explains that the less available something seems, the more desirable we perceive it to be. This doesn’t mean it is more valuable, but fear of losing access to it kicks off a motivational state in us: a drive to get it that we don’t feel when we hear, “More where that came from! Our supply’s basically on the level of ‘plague of locusts.’” The thing is, you can tell somebody you’re into them through how you look at them and touch them. Consider where your longing to be immediately “honest” in spoken-word form might be coming from. Holding back information causes psychological tension, as does the suspense when we’re left wondering how another person feels. This tension is uncomfortable, so we long to relieve the pressure, like by exploding our feelz all over the person who inspired them. Tension released! Uh, along with the message that we’re probably deeply needy and “not all that.” Try an experiment: With the next three guys you date, make a pact with yourself to tough out the discomfort instead of flapping your lips to make it go away. In practical terms: Don’t confess. Just be. You’ll ultimately have a better chance of finding the “emotional honesty” you’re looking for than if you try to rush the process — like by calling the guy up and blurting out, “Hi...I really love you!” A strangely familiar male voice responds: “I’m sorry, Ma’am. This is the gas company.”
DAD MAN WALKING
I’m a 33-year-old woman with a male partner in his late 30s. We eventually want children, and I’ve been considering having my eggs frozen. My doctor suggested my boyfriend should consider freezing his sperm. He is a “manly man” type, and his masculinity is a strong part of his identity. How can I keep him from being insulted and angry if I suggest he look into sperm freezing? —Aspiring Mom Unfortunately, the men with the healthiest sperm are the 20-somethings who have trouble sustaining adult relationships — but no problem, because they’ll just have their mom call to tell you it’s over. We tend to have a weirdly one-sided view of fertility issues, as if a man’s only role in babymaking is the fun part, and never mind whether Daddy’s 27 or 70 at the time of conception. Meanwhile, women in their late 30s and their 40s get treated like they have dinosaur eggs. Having a bun in the oven at age 35 or older is referred to as a “geriatric pregnancy” or, less mortifyingly, being of “advanced maternal age.” It’s associated with increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects, as well as diabetes and high blood pressure in a woman during her pregnancy. There’s little understanding that aging sperm can be a problem, too. Researchers are still squabbling about when men hit “advanced paternal age,” but there’s general agreement that after age 40, sperm exhibit damage that can make it more difficult for a man to get a woman pregnant and are associated with greater miscarriage rates. There’s also an increased risk of having children who develop schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. OB-GYN researcher Dr. Nancy A. Phillips and her colleagues suggest that men “bank sperm before their 35th or, at least, their 45th birthday” to limit the risks to the mother, fetus, and child from aging sperm. In presenting this to your boyfriend, consider that how you frame a story changes the story that gets told. Make this a story not of elderly sperm but of the very manly act of protecting the woman he loves from harm (along with any baby who might enter the picture). Chances are he’ll see looking into spermfreezing as a positive thing: a way he can preserve his he-man-liest sperm — instead of waiting till his varsity swimmers are more like old dudes floating on water wings in the condo pool. n ©2021, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. • Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)
46 INLANDER FEBRUARY 11, 2021
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ACROSS 1. “The freakin’ weekend is here!” 5. Big seller of camping gear 8. Jet popular in the 1960s and ‘70s 14. Texas politico O’Rourke 15. Texas politico Richards 16. Don who won an Oscar for “Cocoon” 17. His performances on TV’s ‘NewsRadio’ and Comedy Central roasts are atrocious!! 19. Fastball, in baseball 20. Fish sometimes served tartare 21. Stirring time? 22. Backup singer for Gladys Knight 25. Her political activism is terrible!! 27. Peace Nobelist Wiesel 29. ____ de cologne 30. “Am ____ brother’s keeper?” 31. His novel “The Three Musketeers” should be banned from libraries!!
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69. “____ the Force, Luke” 70. Baby ____ DOWN 1. Not yet on the sched. 2. Lead-in to X, Y or Z 3. “____ be my pleasure!” 4. Winner of four Indianapolis 500s 5. Wilson of “The Office” 6. Behind bars 7. Squid squirt 8. Pre-Columbian Mexican 9. Modify, as the Constitution 10. Stiller’s longtime wife and comedy partner 11. Brand of probiotic yogurt 12. Best-selling PC game released in 2000 13. Joan of Arc’s crime
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THIS W ANSWE EEK’S I SAW RS ON YOUS
36. Bryn ____ College 39. Noted Chinese-American fashion designer 42 43 44 45 46 40. Hangs around 41. Bring in 49 42. Nutritional fig. 43. Many Beethoven pieces 56 54 55 44. Bond creator Fleming 45. “Don’t just give up!” 58 59 46. Slice of pizza? 61 62 63 64 47. They may be dressed for dinner 66 67 51. Former Massachusetts governor ____ Patrick 69 70 52. “Goodnight” girl of song 53. Number with all its letters “ATTACK AD” in alphabetical order 54. ____ patootie 28. Chris Christie or Kamala Harris, 55. British pop star Rita for short 59. Sore 32. Novelist Rand 61. “The Simpsons” shopkeeper 33. Homer’s TV neighbor 62. “Rock and Roll, Hoochie ____” (1974 hit) 34. Homer’s outburst 63. & 35. Area 51 sighting 64. Narc’s grp. 38
47 50
30 34
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37. Easter egg coloring 38. Friend ____ friend 39. He was absolutely O.J. Simpson’s worst lawyer!! 47. ____-Cat (winter vehicle) 48. Bother 49. Like a steak that’s “still mooing” 50. Her folk rock music cannot be more painful to listen to!! 56. Bill, the Science Guy 57. Down the road 58. Je ne sais quoi 60. “Yours truly” alternative 61. Smear campaign commercial ... or this puzzle’s theme 65. 10-time NBA All-Star Kevin 66. ____ gow (gambling game played with dominoes) 67. Sharpen 68. French impressionism pioneer Alfred
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18. ____ Lipa (2018 Best New Artist) 21. Swivel around 22. Wasabi-coated snack 23. Sick 24. Chart type 26. Hear here!
FEBRUARY 11, 2020 INLANDER 47
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