Inlander 02/16/2023

Artificial intelligence helped make this cover, but couldn’t write the stories inside

EDITOR’S NOTE

Fear of artificial intelligence goes way back. Perhaps the earliest sign of this comes from the golem narratives of Judaism, where a being is created from mud and goes on to either terrorize or be abused by humans. The most famous of these tales takes place in 16th century Prague, where a rabbi brings a golem to life to defend the city’s ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. It works, but the golem turns against those he’s meant to protect and begins massa cring people. The rabbi who made him eventually immobilizes him, and he falls to dust. This story spawned many others. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano. Even the distant future of Dune, where all artificial intelligence has been outlawed after the “thinking machines” and humans went to war.

At the heart of all these stories is the fear that we will create something that we can’t control, that will turn on us. As Chey Scott reports for her story in this week’s cover section — WILL AI REPLACE US? — many of the Inland Northwest’s artists aren’t too concerned about being overthrown by this technology. And as I found working with Daniel Walters, who contributed his own take on AI for the cover, humans remain more headstrong than any machine. I asked him to write a simple article where he and AI compete to write a simple news story. Instead, he pitted his whole writing life against it.

— NICHOLAS DESHAIS, editor

GREENE’S PIECE PAGE 14

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

MARCH

COMMENT

STAFF DIRECTORY

PHONE: 509-325-0634

Ted S. McGregor Jr. (tedm@inlander.com)

PUBLISHER

Jer McGregor (x224)

GENERAL MANAGER

EDITORIAL

Nicholas Deshais (x239) EDITOR

Chey Scott (x225)

ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

Derek Harrison (x248)

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Seth Sommerfeld (x250)

MUSIC & SCREEN EDITOR

Samantha Wohlfeil (x234)

BREAKING NEWS EDITOR

Daniel Walters (x263)

SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER

Madison Pearson (x218)

LISTINGS EDITOR

Nate Sanford (x282), Summer Sandstrom (x232)

STAFF WRITERS

Chris Frisella

COPY CHIEF

Young Kwak, Erick Doxey

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Ellie Rothstrom INTERN

Lawrence B.A. Hatter, Chase Hutchinson, E.J. Iannelli, Will Maupin, Nic Renshaw, Lauren Roddis, Carrie Scozzaro

CONTRIBUTORS

ADVERTISING

Kristi Gotzian (x215)

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Carolyn Padgham (x214), Autumn Potts (x251)

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Tracy Menasco (x260), Claire Price (x217), Stephanie Grinols (x216)

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Tamara McGregor (x233)

COMMUNICATION & EVENTS DIRECTOR

Kristina Smith (x223)

EVENT & SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER

Colleen Bell-Craig (x212), Raja Bejjani (x242)

ADVERTISING ASSISTANTS

PRODUCTION

Tom Stover (x265)

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Ali Blackwood (x228)

CREATIVE LEAD & MARKETING MANAGER

Derrick King (x238)

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Todd Goodner (x231)

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

OPERATIONS

Dee Ann Cook (x211)

BUSINESS MANAGER

Kristin Wagner (x210)

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

CIRCULATION

Frank DeCaro (x226)

CIRCULATION MANAGER

Travis Beck (x237)

CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR

ARE YOU WORRIED THAT AI WILL REPLACE YOUR JOB?

KYLE BOOEY

No, because I’m interested in wildlife ecology and I’d be doing predator-prey management, so I’ll be dead before they can get a robot out in the woods.

Have you ever used AI programs before?

I’ve used ChatGPT and stuff like that. I think they’re interesting.

ISABELLA CAMP

I guess there is some concern, because I am a graphic designer. I also think that traditional art and fine arts have to be prominent. I don’t think we’re going to lose those completely.

What do you think about AI in general?

I personally haven’t used it, so I don’t know, but it’s really cool and it seems to be a fast way to get images and graphics in general.

PATRICK DEVINE

No, I’m not worried that it’s going to replace my job, but I have worked in other jobs where I feel like AI is going to make strides to replacing, or maybe supplementing them.

What are your opinions on AI in general? I’m for it. I think it’s the future, I think. Whether I like it or not, it’s where we’re headed.

JOE KUTTER

No, but also yeah. I work in the design field, so looking at AI and art, it’s interesting but I don’t think it’ll pass as a human.

Why do you think it won’t pass as a human? I think there’s a lot of emotional elements that go into it that I don’t think a computer could quite pick up, at least right now.

ANDREW HUAU

I’m sure there will be some impact, but I still think that people like dealing with people.

What are your opinions on AI in general?

I think it’s an inevitable reality. It doesn’t necessarily worry me, at least in this stage in the game, until they become self-aware and we see judgment day like in Terminator.

THEMAPPING PREDJUDICE PROJECT

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22ND 7:00PM

Kindred Spirits

Ukraine in 2022 and the newly formed United States of 1776 both had pivotal roles to play in the fight for freedom around the world

BY LAWRENCE B.A. HATTER

Ayear ago this week, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Few international observers imagined that Ukraine stood a chance. Russia, we were told, had the second most powerful military in the world. It was just a matter of time before Ukraine was beaten and Putin installed a puppet regime in Kyiv.

It didn’t turn out that way.

Ukraine was not defeated. President Volodymyr Zelensky did not flee the capital to establish a government in exile. Instead, the Internet was filled with videos of Ukrainian farmers towing the carcasses of destroyed Russian tanks behind their tractors. A year later, Ukraine has succeeded in pushing back the invaders, but Russia is still far from defeated.

Ukraine is fighting a war of independence against Russian neocolonialism. Putin never came to terms with the chaotic end of the Soviet Union; he denies the existence of Ukraine as

a nation. As a student of perverted history, he sees it as his divine mission to re-establish control over Russia’s former imperial possessions as a 21st century Peter the Great.

Though separated by more than 250 years, Ukraine’s fight for independence from Russia embodies the same spirit as America’s own War of Independence. Zelensky has come to personify the Ukrainian cause in a similar way that George Washington and his Continental Army emerged as a powerful symbol of patriot unity during the Revolutionary War. Putin plays the role of King George III. The British monarch insisted on taking a hard line against the rebellious colonies, and he was largely responsible for ensuring that his country fought a losing war for far too long.

More than 250 years apart, George Washington and Volodymyr Zelensky became defenders of democracy. PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE PHOTO

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are required and available at the Gonzaga Performing Arts

The historical analogy of the Ukraine war and the American War of Independence is not just celebratory; it also offers an important lesson about the crucial role that foreign military aid will play in Ukrainian victory. The United States could not have won the Revolutionary War alone. The survival of the Continental Army depended on financing and supplies from abroad.

There is a persistent myth in the popular imagination that America won its independence from a global superpower through the grit and determination of a homespun army. It is easy to imagine a band of ragtag soldiers, grabbing their muskets from above the fireplace before heading out to ambush guileless British regulars. While guerrilla fighting took place, General Washington recognized the importance of fielding a professional, Europeanstyle army.

This wasn’t cheap. And it wasn’t easy. Eighteenth-century warfare was expensive. And Congress did not have the power of taxation. The fledgling United States lacked a military manufacturing base. The states could not supply the arms, ammunition and supplies necessary to fight a protracted war. The United States needed more than a little help from its friends to win its independence. The majority of the gunpowder used by the Continental Army during the war came from Caribbean colonies, including places like Jamaica, which remained loyal to the British Empire. Loans from countries like France and the Netherlands allowed Congress to buy arms to fight. Without this support, there is no way that the United States would have won the war.

The Revolutionary War also offers a cautionary tale of the danger of escalation. While NATO and other countries providing military aid to Ukraine have underlined their opposition to a general war with Russia, America’s allies during the War of Independence joined with the expressed intention of widening the conflict. France was an absolutist monarchy. King Louis XVI in no way shared the patriot’s democratic ideals. But he was eager to restore France’s military prestige, damaged by its defeat during the Seven Years’ War, by humiliating its traditional British foe. The FrancoAmerican alliance of 1778 transformed the War of Independence into a global conflict as France and Britain attempted to capture one another’s colonies in the Caribbean and beyond.

The danger of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is incomparable to the showdown between Britain and France in the 1770s and 1780s. A nuclear escalation would risk the annihilation of humankind. But NATO lacks the territorial motivation that animated France during the Revolutionary War. Despite the false rhetoric emanating from the Kremlin, NATO is not an imperial enterprise. If NATO’s “territory” has expanded, it is because states have asked to join to defend themselves against Russia’s neocolonial ambitions in central and eastern Europe. NATO’s shared commitment to democracy and a rules-based international system helps to provide a barrier to direct military intervention by the Western powers today.

The recent decision by the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and others to provide Ukraine with battle tanks is an important step in arming Ukraine with the tools it needs to defeat Russia and defend democracy. Though General Washington could never have imagined anything like an M1 Abrams at Yorktown, he would understand better than anyone the importance of foreign military aid to the cause of freedom.

If we want to see an end to Putin’s monstrous war of aggression before another anniversary of his illegal invasion rolls around, the United States and its allies must stay the course in providing military aid to Ukraine. n

Lawrence B.A. Hatter is an award-winning author and associate professor of early American history at Washington State University. These views are his own and do not reflect those of WSU.

The work to address local homelessness hits its first speed bump: writing a joint statement

The Spokane region’s homeless response might be on the brink of a radical transformation.

A new effort, led by a volunteer group of former city staffers, would see every local service provider and government entity currently working on homeless issues gathered together under one umbrella. Ideally, it would take politics out of the region’s response to the ever-worsening homeless crisis.

The volunteer group consists of veterans from the city of Spokane: Gavin Cooley, a former chief financial officer who worked under five mayors; Rick Romero, a city utilities director credited with thinking up a financial strategy to stop sewage from entering the river without breaking the bank; and Theresa Sanders, the city administrator under Mayor David Condon. They’ve been leading the charge and pitching the idea of a regional authority to local leaders for months now. (Cooley and Romero have also been writing guest Inlander opinion columns, independent of our editorial team.)

Next week, the volunteers plan to officially launch a 90-day “due diligence” period to gather feedback from community members and figure out what structure would work best for the regional entity.

Local politicians on both sides of the aisle appear to be approaching the proposal with genuine interest. But there’s also trepidation. The whole idea is dependent on

BY NATE SANFORD

competing jurisdictions’ ability to give up some of their authority, put aside their differences and work together.

Last week, that collaborative spirit saw its first big test. The challenge: getting elected leaders from the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley, as well as the county, to agree on the wording of a joint statement.

THE COUNTY

The Spokane County commissioners have concerns right away.

“It’s making it sound like we’ve already committed to whatever they decide at the end,” says Commissioner Mary Kuney.

Commissioner Josh Kerns agrees. “It almost implies this 90-day due diligence period is just for show.”

It’s Tuesday, Feb. 7, and the county commissioners are looking over a draft statement announcing the start of the due diligence period that Cooley sent to them the night before.

The volunteers’ original plan, Cooley says, was to kick things off with a massive launch event — a “kumbaya” moment bringing service providers, local businesses, elected leaders and people experiencing homelessness together in person. But the logistics were a mess, so Cooley pivoted to a joint statement instead. The current idea is for the county commission, Spokane City Council, Spokane mayor’s

office and Spokane Valley City Council to sign off on the statement and release it together that Friday, Feb. 10.

At Tuesday’s commissioner meeting, it becomes clear: Friday isn’t going to happen.

The commissioners worry the statement is too presumptuous. They want to make it clear that they’ve only agreed to explore the idea of a regional authority — nothing more.

The commissioners put together a list of edits for Cooley’s statement that includes replacing every use of the phrase “regional authority” with “regional effort.” They change the wording of sentences like “a collaborative authority will address these needs” to “a collaborative effort could address these needs.” Instead of “eliminating jurisdictional and political boundaries,” the commissioners suggest “moving beyond” those things.

The commissioners make plans to review the statement at a later meeting and send the edited copy to Spokane Valley and Spokane city officials.

THE CITY

Cooley stresses that the point of the 90-day period isn’t to figure out how to solve homelessness in Spokane — it’s to determine what type of structure should be in charge of working out how to solve the problem.

There are a few examples of what that might look like. The regional model that’s drawn the most interest from local leaders is in Houston. Houston’s regional authority is structured as an independent nonprofit, led by people who aren’t in politics. Cooley’s volunteer group recently used money from private donors to hire Mandy Chapman Semple — who was heavily involved in the Houston model — to advise the group during the due diligence process.

In King County, the regional homeless authority is set up as an interlocal agency, with a mix of elected officials from different jurisdictions and people with lived experience on the governing board.

There are a number of other structures that could work for Spokane, Cooley says. He points to existing examples of regional coordination across Spokane jurisdictions, like the Spokane Transit Authority and the Spokane Regional Health District.

Along with local elected leaders, Cooley and the volunteers have been meeting with local businesses and homeless service providers like Zeke Smith, president of the Empire Health Foundation.

Smith really supports the idea and says a regional approach could help some of the challenges facing providers, like time spent applying for grants, and data collection and sharing. Whatever structure the entity takes, Smith hopes there will be a proper mix of stakeholders at the table.

In a rare moment of unity, both the Spokane City Council and Mayor Nadine Woodward seem to support the idea as well. Woodward traveled to Houston to learn about the city’s model last fall and said in a recent video that establishing a regional authority is at the top of her list for 2023.

“Much of the groundwork has already been done, and there is great interest as we embark on what will be a generational change,” Woodward said in the video.

Council President Breean Beggs says the city didn’t have any major changes to the joint statement, noting that little is at stake with a nonbinding statement that doesn’t carry any legal weight.

Of all the regional jurisdictions, Beggs says the city of Spokane has long shouldered the majority of the financial and other impacts that come with the region’s homeless crisis. Other jurisdictions might be worried about giving up authority, but the city is happy to share some of the load, Beggs says. The city would eagerly sign off on the creation of the regional homeless authority if it came to a vote today, he says.

“The mayor and the City Council are super in favor of this idea,” Beggs says. “We’re not going to be the obstacle, if there is one. I’m not saying there will be. Could be a little bit out in the Valley, maybe.”

THE VALLEY

“We did not select them, they were presented to us,” Padden says.

The fact that the three volunteers are former, highlevel administrators from the city was a “red flag” for Padden. She suggests the council propose adding a representative from the Valley to the volunteer team.

At the end of the meeting, the Valley council still isn’t done. Members make plans to review the statement again at a later meeting.

LETTERS

Send comments to editor@inlander.com.

Pam Haley, the council-appointed Valley mayor, says she and the council members want more clarity on the purpose of the due diligence period. Some form of regional effort may be ultimately helpful, she says, but it’s far too soon to commit to anything.

“It’s important to at least have a conversation,” Haley says. “But I’m hesitant to give up everything to a group that may or may not have the same plans. And I also want to know how it’s going to be funded.”

Just hours after county commissioners finished with the draft statement, the Spokane Valley City Council is looking over their edits. They have a few suggestions of their own.

At the end of a sentence that reads “elected leaders will determine how to move forward,” council member Laura Padden suggests adding “and may or may not agree to move forward.”

Padden also takes issue with a line that reads “To guide this effort, we’ve selected three retired City of Spokane employees.”

Before Supper SWEETS

The proposed regional authority happens to coincide with the development of Spokane Valley’s “Homeless Action Plan.” Haley says the Valley plans to continue working on its own plan, regardless of whether or not they eventually sign on to the regional effort.

WORKING TOGETHER

Despite the delayed start and critical edits, Cooley says he’s more optimistic than he’s ever been and thinks the feedback so far has been constructive.

On Monday, the county commissioners took another look at the joint statement. They had a few more minor edits, but overall they seemed pleased with the new lan-

“REGIONAL HOMELESS AUTHORITY,” CONTINUED...

guage and sent the revised copy to the city again. Beggs says he expects the Spokane City Council to pass a resolution endorsing the statement Thursday.

The Valley council members are in Olympia this week, so they won’t get a chance to take action on the joint statement until their Feb. 24 meeting at the earliest. Haley says she’ll probably agree to sign the statement, assuming the language properly reflects her concerns about a lack of clarity.

Beggs hopes the Valley gets on board.

“It’ll work way better with them at the table for the due diligence, but as long as the city and the county are on, I’m confident we can move forward,” Beggs says.

Cooley says the joint statement was limited to the region’s three biggest jurisdictions to avoid “mission creep.” Cooley is still meeting with smaller municipalities like Cheney, Airway Heights and other West Plains towns, and he hopes they’ll sign the statement and join the effort once the big three are on board.

After the 90-day period is over, the volunteer group will report its findings to the local leaders and make a recommendation for which structure the regional entity should take. That’s when the real thorny questions will have to be ironed out: How much influence will each jurisdiction have? How much will it cost, and who will pay? If the regional entity wants to build shelters, where will they go?

“That will probably be a dicey day,” Beggs says.

But that’s if the politicians even agree to form the regional entity in the first place. The local jurisdictions might just back out and keep doing their own thing.

Cooley doesn’t think that will happen. He’s optimistic that at least some of the local jurisdictions will be on board. And the ones that aren’t? They’re welcome to sit it out. Once they see how it’s going, Cooley says they’re welcome to change their minds and get in on the action. n

nates@inlander.com

Free Lunch

Riccelli proposes free school meals for all students. Plus, Lisa Brown is mum

on a mayor run; and the county considers a ballpark upgrade.

Overdrawn school lunch accounts could be a thing of the past if the Washington Legislature likes a Spokane lawmaker’s idea. State Rep. Marcus Riccelli’s House Bill 1238 would provide free lunch and breakfast to all students who request the meals starting in the 2023-24 school year. Already, about 700,000 of the state’s 1.1 million K-12 students receive free school meals, but the bill would make the policy universal. Not everyone is a fan: Chewelah School District Superintendent Jason Perrins testified to the House Education Committee in January that he doesn’t think schools are responsible for feeding kids. “To have a generation grow up believing that the state will feed them and take care of them undermines everything we are trying to do,” Perrins told lawmakers. “Is a life free of troubles the new standard?” Meanwhile, Riccelli told his peers “food is health” and that “consistent access to nutritious food is part of how we protect kids from getting sick while ensuring they have the fuel they need to learn, grow and play.”

(SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL)

HOW NOW, LISA BROWN?

After four years leading the Washington state Department of Commerce, Lisa Brown is stepping down. In a phone call, Brown wouldn’t say if she’s running for mayor of Spokane. “I’m going to talk about what’s next in early March,” she says. Brown did say she’s not planning to move to Northern California, despite her husband’s working remotely in Spokane for a law firm located there. Former City Council President Ben Stuckart, who had been interested in running (again) for mayor if Brown didn’t, is uncharacteristically circumspect. “I’m not in a place where I’m allowed to say anything, or could say anything, or should say anything,” he says. If Brown does run for mayor, she and Mayor Nadine Woodward will both face questions about their leadership — especially on Camp Hope, the large East Central homeless encampment on state-owned property. Despite efforts by the commerce department to find alternative housing or shelter for residents, the camp still stands. “The city administration ... thought the state involvement meant they could just make the camp go away,” Brown says. “The concept of ‘we’ll just sweep it’ … wasn’t, in my opinion, humane, practical or legal.” (DANIEL WALTERS)

STADIUM SHARING

Avista Stadium is turning 65 this year, and the county-owned ballpark needs upgrades in order to comply with Major League Baseball requirements. On Monday, Spokane County commissioners moved one step closer to an agreement with the Spokane Indians baseball team that would help pay for the $22 million project. The county has committed up to $8 million, on the condition that the team match the funds. As part of the deal, the county wants to raise the team’s rent, charge them for maintenance and get a cut of revenue. On Monday, the commissioners discussed an offer from the Indians that would see them give the county $1 for every ticket sold after the first 250,000 of the season. Spokane Valley is putting $2 million toward the project, which includes upgrades to the stadium’s lights, locker rooms and field surface. The Indians have pledged $2 million so far and are seeking money from other sources, including the state Legislature, so they can match the rest of the commissioners’ funds. (NATE SANFORD)

Get the latest on Inlander.com

What affects my energy bill in winter?

During the winter, your energy bill can differ from one month to the next for a lot of reasons.

A sudden cold snap may occur which requires your heating system to run more frequently. Fewer daylight hours mean your lights are on for longer periods. Having kids at home for school vacations and guests stay over the holidays can affect the amount of energy you use each month, as well.

Learn what else impacts your winter bill and better manage your costs using our helpful online tools. Go to myavista.com/winterbill

Lisa Brown YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

State Rep. Marcus Riccelli

Marjorie Comes to Town

$50 photo ops, a Chinese spy balloon and low-testosterone husbands: A darling of the right headlines a local GOP fundraiser

BY NATE SANFORD

It’s golden hour in North Idaho, and everyone is yelling at each other.

The protesters number almost 100. They chant — “Love lives here!” — as the sun melts over Lake Coeur d’Alene. A clean-cut, grinning man named Alex Stein darts in and out of the crowd, wearing a baseball cap with an American flag on it and getting inches from the face of a protester carrying a drum.

“You’re exploiting your children,” Stein yells. “You’re the pedophile!”

The protesters are gathered outside the Coeur d’Alene Resort to oppose a visit from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican known for her culture-warring and embrace of conspiracy theories. Greene’s speech, hosted by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee for their annual Lincoln Day Dinner, took place Saturday. Tickets were $175 and had been sold out for weeks.

NEWS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Facing a Cliff

As federal funding dwindles, Washington groups that work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault urge state lawmakers to step up

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

Despite seeing increased need, agencies in Washington that work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault face layoffs and reduced services as their budgets take a significant hit in federal funding.

In Spokane, that could mean losing $300,000 for the YWCA’s domestic violence emergency housing program, reduced hours for Lutheran Community Services Northwest’s 24-hour sexual assault hotline (which got nearly 2,000 calls in the last year), and the loss of multiple sexual assault and vulnerable adult advocates.

To prevent the looming funding cliff, a coalition of providers is pushing state lawmakers to include $132 million in the two-year budget this year to stabilize their ability to help crime victims.

Stein, it turns out, is Greene’s opening speaker.

His speech doesn’t start for a few hours, so the selfdescribed comedian is outside starting arguments with protesters and shooting content with a cameraman to share online because the 37-year-old is also an internet personality.

Inside the resort, a group of women talk about how funny it was when Greene tried bringing a balloon to Biden’s State of the Union address last week to troll the president over the Chinese spy balloon that recently traversed the country.

On Twitter, Greene refers to the protesters outside as “nasty women who watch the view [referring to the TV show] and their ‘low-T’ husbands,” referring to low testosterone, a questionable phenomenon that Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson is currently obsessed with. She

Affected groups include providers of legal assistance, domestic violence shelters, sexual assault and children’s advocacy services, help for vulnerable adults and more. Much of their funding comes from either the state Office of Crime Victims Advocacy or Department of Social and Health Services, which provide both state money and federal dollars from the Victims of Crime Act.

Since 2017, the federal Crime Victims Fund has plummeted from $13 billion to about $1.8 billion. Statewide, Washington expects to see a 35 percent reduction in its annual allocation from that fund for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts in July.

The Crime Victims Fund relies on federal fines, fees and forfeitures. Much of that money comes from federal white collar crime cases, and it’s possible the sharp decrease is due to fewer of those crimes being prosecuted in recent years, says Roshelle Cleland, the advocacy and education program director for Lutheran Community Services.

Meanwhile, Washington’s funding for domestic violence emergency shelters (about $6.1 million per year statewide) and sexual assault services (about $6.8 million per year statewide) has remained stagnant for more than a decade.

posts a picture of herself posing with a man in a shirt that reads: “LIBERALS SUCK.” (A photo with the congresswoman is $50.)

The protesters outside hold signs depicting Greene as a clown and calling her a “Karen.” Other signs make fun of Biden’s predecessor.

Former Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Widmyer stops by the protest to see what’s going on. He’s accosted by a local man who films him and spouts conspiracies about the United Nations.

Many protesters express concern about North Idaho’s continued rightward lurch.

On the other side of the street, Darlene Nelson stands with a group of about five counterprotesters who came out in support of the congresswoman. Nelson likes Greene because she “speaks her mind and tells the truth.”

“We haven’t seen a cent of an increase in state ongoing funding since then,” says Emily Stone, the public policy director for the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who notes that 39 programs split the domestic violence funding that’s remained the same since 2009. “Programs are really, really struggling.”

Service providers say they’ve seen double-digit increases in demand for sexual assault programs and children’s advocacy centers in recent years. Domestic violence

Groups that work with crime victims face significant layoffs. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Alex Stein (right, white hat) argues with protestors outside the Coeur d’Alene Resort before giving his opening speech. NATE SANFORD PHOTO

She praises the congresswoman for calling Biden a liar during his State of the Union speech. She wonders if some of the protesters across the street were hired by Democrats.

While we’re talking, someone in a car drives by and tells Nelson and the other Greene supporters to “eat a dick.”

Passing drivers are heckling protesters on the other side of the street, too. Some are on their way to Greene’s speech. Inside the resort, attendees mill around in tuxedos and formal dresses. There’s chatter about vaccines, sex education in schools and big tech censorship. A few families passing through the lobby are dressed for vacation and seem confused about the yelling outside.

Security is tight. A spokesperson for the local GOP tells me they aren’t offering press access to Greene’s speech because of space issues. Close to 700 people attend, including prominent Idaho Republicans like state Rep. Heather Scott and state Sen. Scott Herndon.

A recording of the speech posted online shows Greene taking the stage in the big, white fur dress she wore to the State of the Union. “North Idaho is truly God’s country,” Greene says, adding that it’s her first time in the state before drumming on the usual culture war beats: vaccine mandates, election fraud, undocumented immigrants and the arrest of the Jan. 6 rioters among them.

Outside the resort, Stein isn’t taking any of this seriously. When protesters engage with him, he calls them “losers” and “baby killers,” and makes fun of the way they look.

As the sun sets, Stein takes a break from trolling to shoot a promo for an upcoming event in Canyon County, Idaho.

“Buckle up buttercup ’cause we’re about to go wild,” Stein says to the camera.

“Dude, that was fire,” the cameraman says.

Stein’s voice drops to a normal volume. He sounds almost bored as he tells the cameraman to make sure there weren’t any issues with the audio. Then he runs back to the resort to edit the video together before the speech. He got the content, it’s time to post. n

nates@inlander.com

groups also regularly see far more requests than they can handle.

“We want the state to step up and increase sustainable, ongoing funding, so it’s not this guessing game from the federal level of what is going to be distributed,” Cleland says.

Otherwise, Lutheran Community Services, which is the official sexual assault advocacy and crime victims center for Spokane County, has been informed that its funding could drop by 17 to 36 percent at the end of June.

The organization helps children and vulnerable adults who’ve faced everything from violence to financial fraud, and provides 24-hour sexual assault advocates who can help adults with hospital visits, court navigation, safety planning and access to counseling.

If the reduction happens, Lutheran Community Services would lose two to six full-time advocates from a staff of about 15, Cleland says.

“We’re working with thousands of individuals, thousands of families every year,” Cleland says.

The center could also lose the ability to provide the 24-hour response for sexual assault victims they’re required to offer, which is concerning because they already struggle to help everyone who requests their services, Cleland says.

The YWCA expects the gap in domestic violence emergency housing money will be covered with funding from the Spokane city and county governments, so it doesn’t anticipate losing staff, for now, according to a statement.

“Programs have shared multiple times that it’s hard for them to even do a two-year budget because they don’t know what the federal budget is going to look like,” Stone says. “[This ask] is really about stable funding and, quite frankly, keeping the doors open.” n samanthaw@inlander.com

Live Lounge Entertainment

Live Music is back at Coeur d’Alene Casino!

Every weekend, you’ll find live music at the Nighthawk Lounge with local bands playing past midnight. For a more relaxed vibe earlier in the evening, choose the option of live acoustic music in the Chinook Lounge.

Just Plain Darin

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 TH & SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 TH 6 PM - 9:30 PM

CHINOOK LOUNGE

Enjoy a night with Just Plain Darin an accomplished musician and powerful vocalist with a full list of eclectic, original material.

Royale

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17

& SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18 TH 8:30 PM - 12:30 AM

NIGHTHAWK LOUNGE

Check out the Nighthawk Lounge to hear Royale playing hits ranging from “Come Together” by the Beatles to “Santeria” by Sublime.

ARTificial

AI image generators are transforming the art world,

With just a few phrases and clicks, artificial intelligence can bring any idea to life.

A happy dolphin jumping over a rainbow in outer space, in the style of Lisa Frank.

A bouquet of pastel colored flowers in a vase, realistic still life painting.

Three kittens grocery shopping in the style of Beatrix Potter. The results materialize onscreen in seconds. Humans, meanwhile, need hours, even days, to create similar output.

It’s why, lately, artists of all types are reacting with both concern and curiosity to the rapid emergence of these powerful new tools. AI text-to-image generators seemingly exploded into existence in late 2022. Two of the biggest, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2, offer practically anyone with web access the chance to try their hand at prompting machine-trained systems, called models, to create depictions ranging from eerie echoes of reality to wildly goofy misinterpretations. While the models have limitations, their output is at times indistinguishable from human-made art.

In response, artists are collectively calling for new legal boundaries to protect their livelihoods, especially as

evidence has emerged showing massive quantities of copyrighted work were used to train Stable Diffusion’s model.

While much of the broader public conversation has been critical of AI-created imagery, several artists in the Spokane area are less concerned about it infringing on their professions.

“I personally don’t feel like I’ll be replaced, mainly because of the work I do,” says Ashley Vaughn, a multidisciplinary artist whose focuses include painting, printmaking and photography. “I guess I would have to be confronted with an [AI-generated] image that looks just like mine.

“The kind of person who would want to buy artificially generated art for the sake of it being cheaper isn’t the kind of person who would want to buy handmade artwork anyway,” Vaughn continues. “I think that people who buy handmade artwork really value it.”

With computer-generated imagery, that human connection and story behind a piece of art is just not there, she adds.

Local printmaker Chris Bovey, known for his retroinspired homages to regional landmarks through his venture Vintage Print + Neon, echoes that belief. While

Bovey uses digital tools to help design his screen prints and murals, none of his art can, of course, be made entirely on a computer.

“I don’t anticipate there being a time where it’s going to replace something handcrafted and handmade,” Bovey says. “There might be digital artists out there that [AI] could affect the livelihoods of pretty significantly — I can see the validity of that — but I think there is something tactile that people like about my work. And I don’t know if you can really replace that with a machine.”

The team at downtown Spokane design and marketing firm Maker & Made sees the introduction of generative AI tools as yet another technology to both adapt to and leverage.

“Overall, everyone on our team seems more welcoming to AI playing a part [in] our everyday life than worried about it,” Maker & Made co-founder Brittany Stodgell says in an email. “Our current mantra is ‘adapt or die.’”

Her team also recognizes how image generators could help people who otherwise can’t afford to hire a professional graphic designer.

“We hope AI will be integrated thoughtfully into our

BY CHEY SCOTT

Inception

but many of the Inland Northwest’s artists aren’t that worried

field as an aid to the tools we already know and use, and that it will not replace the majority of what we bring to the table,” she says.

Spokane artist Tiffany Patterson, well-known in the community for her whimsical, pastel-hued color palettes and characters with large, expressive eyes, also doesn’t think AI art is “inherently bad.”

“It’s just a question of how it’s being used and who’s profiting from it,” Patterson says.

“One of the most disappointing aspects of this trending on social media is that you have giant corporations stealing these amazingly talented artists’ work, using AI to study and reproduce it without their permission, and without paying them — leading to ‘the masses’ now celebrating homogenized appropriated art,” she continues. “I guess to sum it up, I’m intrigued, disappointed, and thrilled to be alive at this moment to witness the evolution of art.”

LAWS FOR ROBOTICS

Setting legal and ethical boundaries for AI-created works is a complicated and murky process.

Already, lawsuits are rolling in. One of the most

prominent is a class-action suit launched by three U.S. artists alleging that Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion and another image generator, Midjourney, infringed on millions of artist’s rights by using their work without permission or compensation to train its model.

Stock photo company Getty Images is also suing Stability AI for the same reason. In an ironic twist, numerous examples of Stable Diffusion’s output featured fragments of Getty’s recognizable gray bar watermark.

It’ll take a long time for copyright law to catch up to a technology that’s literally changing every day, says Gonzaga University School of Law professor Jeffrey Omari, whose research focuses on law, technology and social science. And while it’s hard to make predictions about how legal battles over AI art could play out, the music industry offers a few examples.

“From my perspective, we were dealing with a very similar issue in the early 2000s, with remix and mashup culture,” Omari says. “And everyone in the industry was like, ‘What does this mean for the future of the industry and copyright?’”

While remixes aren’t universally protected under fair use, works deemed to be transformative — or different

enough from the original source — can be. This precedent could be used in defense of generative AI output.

As to whether artists can protect their work from being used to train the models making those images, those involved with the class-action suit are demanding AI developers give artists a choice to opt out or to be paid if their work is used as such.

As a potential solution, Omari again draws a parallel from the music industry and its subscription-based streaming services, which can take some credit for helping reduce prolific music piracy of the early 2000s.

“Maybe there could just be a very large online database where artists could contribute their art and they would receive compensation for contributing,” he says. “I don’t know how practical that is, or if it’ll ever happen, but something similar happened with music 15 years ago, so maybe it’s possible in this realm.”

For artists who want to find out if their work was used to train Stable Diffusion’s model, a free website — HaveIBeenTrained.com — lets users search by keyword or image. (Stability AI has made its image dataset public, unlike DALL-E’s OpenAI.)

...continued on next page

“A bouquet of pastel colored flowers in a vase, realistic still life painting.” IMAGES GENERATED BY DALL-E 2/OPENAI

“I keep using the word complex, but these are very challenging issues,” Omari says. “We’re at the point in history with this generative AI, and this doesn’t just apply to copyright… It’s affecting free speech norms because of misinformation, and there are plagiarism issues, so it’s unsettling norms not just in copyright. These are societal issues that I imagine we’ll be dealing with ethically and legally for years to come.”

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Artificial intelligence-generated images probably won’t put the region’s artists out of work, especially those who work with physical media, but some are thinking one step further.

What if AI could be used to create art in ways never before possible?

That’s how Travis Masingale, a design professor at Eastern Washington University, sees it. Masingale is on sabbatical for the 2022-23 school year and is using that time to study how AI systems can become yet another tool in the artistic arsenal.

Some artists have already been doing just that, Masingale says. Last year, a gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, hosted “The Imitation Game: Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” a showcase contextualizing the long history of AI, how it’s been creatively used before, and its current role in artistic and cultural expression. One of the show’s featured artists, for example, trained an AI model using their massive corpus of work. Scott Eaton fed thousands of images of the human figure into an AI model to create new art such as videos melding elements of those photos with the motion of liquids.

“It’s just in the infancy phase,” Masingale says. “The generators that are making images and stuff, that’s awesome, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily AI art, right? Like, they’re not writing the code for it, they’ve learned how to manipulate the algorithm really well and have learned how to generate really beautiful images that we possibly couldn’t have made before.”

As an example, he’s seen people use generative AI to visually depict dreams they’ve had.

Masingale compares the emergence of generative AI to what photography did to painting. Though artists at the time feared cameras would replace them, that didn’t happen.

“When photography came, painting was really allowed to become about the actual painting and not about rendering an image,” he says. “So you see this explosion of painting [and a focus on] painting and brushstrokes, and that wasn’t there before because they were trying to capture reality.”

And even in the early days of the internet, Masingale recalls the art community’s caution about putting work online because people could “steal it.”

“When I was first learning art, that was a big no-no. But now, we flip through Instagram all day long, right?” he says. “We developed a way of trust and being accountable, and so we’ll have to do that again” with AI.

Until that happens, though, there will be growing pains.

“There is going to be some fallout for a while, and it’s going to suck — there’s no other way to say it — until we

develop systems of accountability.”

Even so, Masingale remains optimistic.

“I’ve been reading about this for a year now, so I’m not as scared. I’m more like ‘Oh, what can we do with it, and how can we use this new tool?’” he says.

“But there is a lot of fear. A lot of traditional drawers and painters are scared that their images are going to be taken and used by a machine. But there will always be a need for human-made stuff, and it could possibly make human-made stuff more valuable because we recognize the time and interest that goes into it.” n

“A happy dolphin jumping over a rainbow in outer space in the style of Lisa Frank.” IMAGES GENERATED BY DALL-E 2/OPENAI

Ea t local . Che w slowly. E ar n big.

STCU is excited to sponsor Inlander Restaurant Week, February 23 – March 4. We’re getting hungry just thinking about it.

To celebrate, you can earn up to 5x points when you use your STCU rewards credit card at restaurants and bars through March 31, including at participating Inlander Restaurant Week spots. Redeem your points for cash back, gift cards, and more!*

Details at stcu.org/bonus.

*Bonus points promotion runs January 1 – March 31, 2023, and applies to purchases made with your consumer rewards credit card at your favorite casual or fine dining restaurants and bars. Fast food restaurants and food delivery purchases not eligible. Limited to $2,500 in qualifying purchases, or up to 7,500 bonus points. No limit to number of standard earned points allowed. Bonus points vary depending on which STCU rewards card you use. Standard Rewards cards earn up to 4x points; Premier Rewards card earn up to 5x points. To earn 5x points, get 3x bonus points using your STCU Premier Rewards and another 2x points by selecting “Restaurants” in advance as one of your two spending categories. Points are typically awarded within three business days after your qualifying transaction posts. Earned points on purchases never expire, with at least one purchase every 24 months. Bonus points expire one year from date awarded. All loans subject to approval.

Daniel vs. MechaDaniel

Will AI save me — or replace me?

BY DANIEL WALTERS

Writing is hard.

Or rather, let me rephrase that — writing is hard for me, a human man of flesh and folly.

But writing is very, very easy for ChatGPT.

ChatGPT, the chatbot that artificial intelligence company OpenAI released to awe and terror last November, has no anxiety, no ADHD, no procrastination, no over-ambition. It doesn’t feel pity, remorse or fear — it just writes. All you have to do is make a wish.

“Write a snarky gift guide in the style of Spokane reporter Daniel Walters about gifts for fans of Elon Musk,” I ask, just as my editor had asked me to do in December.

And then I watch the little blinking cursor, moving faster than I could ever type, churn out a range of potential gifts for Musk fans. A Space X hoodie. A biography of Musk. It even had the requisite not-a-real-suggestion-suggestion: A flamethrower, a reference to a Musk promotional stunt.

“Just be careful not to accidentally set your house on fire while using it,” the very mildly funny chat program almost joked.

I protest that my version of the Elon Musk fan gift guide was better — more useful, more sardonic — but ChatGPT’s version appeared utterly, terrifyingly fine.

I’ve been a professional writer for nearly 15 years, dammit, and it can sometimes take me days to complete a gift guide assignment. And ChatGPT just spat one out like it was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

It offers utopia and dystopia as a two-for-one bundle: Maybe AI could soon make the pain and anguish of writing a thing of the past. And if that were true maybe AI could make writers a thing of the past.

When Buzzfeed announced they were firing staff and using AI to help write quizzes, their stock soared

We journalists have already seen our colleagues replaced by Craigslist, Facebook and Google, by Fandango and Legacy.com, by social media interns and squads of corporate public relations teams. And now here come the robots, with the audacity to write a gift guide in the style of me, reporter/meatsack Daniel Walters.

My entire identity — from grade school on — has been focused on being a writer. If a computer program could threaten that? Then the crisis ChatGPT poses isn’t just professional. It’s existential.

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY

Shortly after winter break, the staff at Lewis and Clark High School held a meeting focused on one message: “Here it comes.”

Like the calculator and smartphone before it, ChatGPT was poised to upend education.

“I brought it to my students and said, ‘This is going to change everything,’” says longtime teacher Eric Woodard.

So far, it wasn’t like ChatGPT was delivering A+ high school senior-level work.

“A closeup of robotic hands typing on a typewriter, digital art.” IMAGE GENERATED BY DALL-E 2/OPENAI

“It feels like it delivers a serviceable, but not really interesting essay,” Woodard says. Still, if it was “an eighth grader writing it, you’d go, ‘Nice job.’”

And for a ninth grader with dyslexia, it was something like a miracle. Charlie McLean, a local freshman at Columbia Virtual Academy, has always struggled with writing.

“I have all these ideas, and I want to put them on paper. And I can’t,” McLean says. “It’s like I’m sitting there in mud and trying to slog through it.”

When he first stumbled across ChatGPT on YouTube, the possibilities were instantly clear.

“What popped in my head is that it could make writing so much easier for me,” McLean says.

He pours out a jumbled stream-of-conscious recitation of events and commands to ChatGPT: “Spell check, expand on ideas. And rewrite for clarity.”

Think of Mickey watching the magic brooms clean the sorcerer’s workshop in Fantasia. Before his eyes, he sees AI turn chaos into order. Other times McLean starts with the AI-written answer and then turns down the quality knob.

“I’ll tell it to write it at an eighth-grade level,” McLean says. “Rephrase it. Shorten it. I ask it to misspell a few things.”

Look, I get it. Despite all my experience, all my practice, despite the methylphenidate or dextroamphetamine or Starbucks Frappuccino coursing through my veins, I know that sometimes simply lining up verbs and nouns feels like breaking and resetting your own bones. The words just don’t want to bend that way.

I’ve had to warn every girlfriend I’ve ever had about “Cover Story Daniel.” About the bleary-eyed look I get when I’m working on a blockbuster article. The days or weeks of absence, the angst, the dishevelment, the ever-filthier apartment. The general odor.

But now, here comes technology, promising salvation.

ChatGPT can pen serviceable lines for a recent story another reporter and I did about former Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich: “He has been criticized for his handling of high-profile cases, such as the 2014 shooting of Wayne Scott Creach, and for his stance on immigration issues.”

But also an apology text to my girlfriend: “I am so sorry for neglecting you and not being emotionally available while I was working on the Inlander cover story.” ChatGPT promises her it’ll do better. Then, with my simple prompt, it writes her a poem comparing her to a daffodil.

To be clear: The writing isn’t good. It’s hackery. The kind of indistinguishable meat slurry that gets squirted out of a tube and vacuum sealed for school cafeterias. Yet there are times — like right now, as I stress-spiral over trying to finish this piece that was supposed to be a fun one — that I long to be a hack.

That’s not new for me. In fifth grade, utterly overwhelmed by the prospect of doing a report on the state of Texas worthy of a plastic binder, I melted down. My family still does impressions of my wide-eyed panicked scream over “the state repoooorrrttt!”

And I still do impressions of my dad’s inevitable advice to “just get it done.” He didn’t get it. It wasn’t like I was just some robotic computer program that could just spit out a —

“Hello, my name is ChatGPT, and I am here to give you a report on the state of Texas,” ChatGPT begins, before shifting into talking about, oh boy, this amazing state with big cities and oil and cowboys.

So that’s the way ChatGPT wants to play it? Let’s do this. Man vs. Machine, John Henry-style.

I take ChatGPT through my entire writing history, all the way back to the third grade hippopotamus report I submitted to Highlights for Children magazine (which got rejected).

“They can weigh up to 4,500 pounds and grow up to 16 feet long!” ChatGPT exclaims, appropriately enthusiastic.

It easily takes on not only my college history essay on whether Stalin was a true Marxist (Stalin’s mass murder was “a stark departure from the idea of a classless society”), but also the letter Whitworth University made me write when HBO caught me illegally downloading Rome over Limewire (“a disrespectful and dishonest way to consume your content”).

...continued on next page

I’m more than a student or a premium TV pirate, I insist. I was creative.

I pit my fiction stories about anthropomorphic fungi and office supplies against ChatGPT’s versions.

When I ask for its version of the humorous essay I wrote in seventh grade about throwing up on the side of the Oregon highway because of my sister’s Cheetoscovered fingers, it flexes its ability to understand irony.

“Here I was, in one of the most beautiful states in the country,” ChatGPT says. “Yet all I could think about was the disgust of Cheetos dust.”

How about Salk Wars, the 123-page Phantom Menace parody I’d set in my middle school, where janitors fought with push brooms instead of Jedis and lightsabers?

“Armed with only their trusty push brooms, the janitors must face off against Darth Cleaner and his army of cleaning robots in epic battles throughout the school,” offers ChatGPT. Like mine, the AI’s version would surely fail to impress Donna McIntyre from science class. Call it a draw.

I test the AI on writing a social studies rap song about Kenya’s yam exports or a rock song about restless leg syndrome. Considering my restless leg anthem made my science teacher tell me to “never sing again,” ChatGPT wins by default.

Maybe I could stump it. Give it something impossible. In my past, I spent years on a Jedi Knight computer game fan forum’s interactive storyboards. Taking turns with strangers, including one named “Krig the Viking,” I wrote hundreds of pages on a go-anywhere thread called “The Never-ending Story.”

ChatGPT, I say, write me a never-ending story.

Once upon a time, ChatGPT writes, a kingdom was

cursed with an endless book that keeps being written and is never completed: “And so it goes, to this day, the neverending story is still being told. No one knows when it will finally come to an end.”

Two lines later, it turns out, when ChatGPT concludes, “The end.”

I’M SORRY, DAVE

Maybe it’s less about ChatGPT being intelligent, than about me being artificial. How much of my beliefs, my personality, my being is simply amalgamation — Simpsons quotes, podcast takes, Reddit memes, tire store jingles?

Over the last year and a half, I wrote 2020: The Year: The Musical, a terrifyingly long blog post that, at its core, is little more than COVID and Trump fed through a LinManuel Miranda generator.

Antifa and Proud Boys get mashed up with West Side Story. Mike Pence turns into Jean Valjean. The QAnon shaman becomes a Femme Fatale doing a Bob Fosse tango.

For my musical number, “Not All Of Portland is Completely On Fire,” where Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler grapples with his city’s chaos all while trying to promote the city to tourists, I stole lines from Portlandia and Yeats: “We’re no longer the place young people go to retire / We’re where anarchy’s tide turns the widening gyre … Yet not all of Portland is completely on fire.”

But when ChatGPT begins its own version of the song — “Tear gas and flash bangs, a show of force / But Ted’s got a plan, he’s on the right course” — it seems strangely nervous.

It offers a disclaimer: “Note: I remind you this is a fictional song, and the events described may not be entirely accurate.”

ChatGPT was displaying the most modern human emotion of all: fear of being canceled.

I’d written a scene where Antifa and the Proud Boys try to recruit two young Portlanders to their fold. (“Bring me your lonely, your anonymous lost / who see the world like the hells of Heironymous Bosch.”) But ChatGPT doesn’t want to “glorify hate or extremist groups.”

It also won’t write a version of “Laptop from Hell” about Hunter Biden’s demonic laptop, opining it’s inappropriate to write songs about “someone’s personal life or situation.”

Not satisfied with pretending to be a better writer than I, ChatGPT claims to be a better person. It refuses to write a letter to my ex-girlfriend expressing my anger that she took back the scarf she’d given me. Instead, the AI amonishes me to “focus on positive and healthy ways to express emotions.”

Even my contributions to the age-old Whitworth vs. Gonzaga rivalry were too blasphemous.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not appropriate for me to write 95 theses comparing one university to another and declaring one as being ‘better’ than the other,” ChatGPT insists.

ChatGPT’s programmers wanted to stop their AI from being used for evil. The problem is that it’s already evil: It’s a machine that lies constantly, effortlessly and sociopathically.

I ask ChatGPT to sprinkle in some quotes from moral philosophers into its simulation of a high school debate and — voila — it adds quotes from Immanuel Kant and others. But the quotes aren’t real — exactly the kinds of lies Kant says are categorically wrong.

McLean, the local high schooler, says he asked Chat-

“DANIEL VS. MECHADANIEL,” CONTINUED...

GPT to write an Inlander article about his dad, musician Marshall McLean, but it “spouted out a lot of things that were untrue.”

The errors are endless. No, Sheriff Knezovich wasn’t born in Colfax. No, I didn’t take my girlfriend on a mountaintop picnic under the stars. Ask it to cite its sources, and it just makes up the sources.

McClean predicts what happens next: “Someone’s going to start making a bunch of fabricated bogus stories.”

The amount of sheer falsehood coming our way is going to be truly epic. And, in a rehash of the classic sci-fi trope about robots intended to replace humans turning evil, it will be up to the few real human journalists left to combat it.

After all, ChatGPT can’t do a pretty fundamental part of journalism: the journalism part. It can’t call up sources. It can’t press politicians on hard questions. It can’t find new truths.

At least, it can’t yet. Picture a not-too-distant future, where an AI hacks into my data, pours through literally thousands of hours of my recorded interviews, absorb-

ing my patter, my stutter, my techniques. And then it DeepFakes my voice, spoofs my phone number and calls up a source.

“So you mentioned that Sarah Conner moved out in July,” it might say. “Did she leave a forwarding address?”

Would that make me irrelevant as a journalist?

ChatGPT already has an answer: I already am irrelevant.

“I’m sorry,” ChatGPT says when I ask it to write my biography. “I am not familiar with a reporter named Daniel Walters from Spokane who works for Inlander.”

THE STORY’S END

“Verify you are human,” ChatGPT insists, hypocritically, when I try to log on.

How about this: It’s the struggle. All the anguish, all the all-nighters, those dark times where you know you’re a fraud — all the agony just makes the ecstasy of hitting “publish” all the sweeter.

Since McLean started using ChatGPT, he’s actually become better able to write without using it. That

accomplishment creates a truer, deeper kind of triumph, because he knows how hard writing is.

The daffodil’s bloom means so much precisely because of the long winter. The daffodil poem means more because the author spent so much time writing it. We don’t just pour our blood, sweat and tears into our work — it’s a little tiny piece of your soul, too.

Two decades after I last wrote on the “Never-ending Story” thread, I reach out to “Krig” — Jared “Krig the Viking” Zarn — a talented writer and artist. Today, he works at a grocery store in a tiny town in Manitoba. That’s fine with him. It gives him enough money to focus on his passions. When he creates fictional worlds — down to the plate tectonics and climate systems — he doesn’t do it because of a paycheck or a big audience. He does it because there’s not just suffering in creation, there’s genuine joy, too.

Together, we conclude that even if AI eventually fulfills all our needs for the consumption of art, it can’t replace our need to create it. That’s how we find meaning in life’s never-ending story.

“There’s something inside us and it has to get it out, like the alien in Alien,” Krig says. “Whether anybody cares is secondary.”

When I sing my version of “Laptop from Hell” to myself in the shower, I know it’s not a good song. I’m not a good singer. My musical is deeply embarrassing; I’m incredibly proud of it. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done; it’s my masterpiece.

I’m the only one who can hear the music inside my head. And that means there’s a song that no one else — man or machine — has the power to sing.

The end. n

OF SANDPOINT Residing Artists Shows at 4p

WESTERN PLEASURE GUEST RANCH Sleigh Ride, dinner and concert.

Cost: $130 for adults, $75 for children ages 6-12. A no-host bar to purchase beer and wine. Reservations are required please call (208) 263-9066.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19

SCHWEITZER Let it Glow Parade and Fireworks

Tubing, Village Campfire, hosted snowshoe hike, nastar racing, twilight skiing

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20

JALAPENOS Winter Carnival 50th Anniversary GOLD margarita Monday

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21

JALAPENOS It’s Taco Tuesday! Great deals on food and drinks!

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY Apres’ Ski at the Winery: Wine specials with a ski pass

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY Peter Lucht on the Piano (5-7pm)

Happy Hour at the winery: 15% Pizza and Bottle of wine

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23

SCHWEITZER Tubing Hill open

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24

PIERCE AUTO CHILI COOK-OFF 30 Gun Club Rd, Sagle. Questions 208 263-4212. Start Time: 3pm sign up entries. Time 4pm judging

SCHWEITZER Tubing, Village Campfire, hosted snowshoe hike, nastar racing, twilight skiing,

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY Live Jazz with the Ron Kieper Trio (5-8)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25

SCHWEITZER Sam Adams Air & Apres (Big air show)

SCHWEITZER tubing, campfire, hosted snowshoe hike, nastar racing, twilight skiing

LIVE AT THE 219 Jake Rozier Band

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY Mike Johnson Trio (5-8pm)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26

EICHARDT’S K9 KEG PULL, Downtown Sandpoint

After all, ChatGPT can’t do a pretty fundamental part of journalism: the journalism part. It can’t call up sources. It can’t press politicians on hard questions. It can’t find new truths.

AMPLIFYING BLACK VOICES

A new book illuminates stories and accomplishments of Spokane’s Black leaders

BY SUMMER SANDSTROM

When we think of history, it may conjure images of ancient civilizations, colonial settlements and even wars of centuries ago, but something that happened yesterday or last week is also part of the same irreversible past.

Telling the stories of what’s currently happening in our world allows us to ask questions and gain an understanding of issues that we may otherwise be oblivious to, and that’s what makes books like Stephaine Courtney’s Our Community: Black Leaders in Spokane important.

It’s one of few books on local Black history, a gap that both erases a crucial part of the city’s story and undermines the impact the Black community has had and continues to have in Spokane.

“There’s just no content around these spaces for

voices to be elevated and for us to learn about our current history,” Courtney says. “I realized that there was nothing and I had to create it.”

The book was born from working with educators around Spokane through her business the Learning Project Network, founded in 2015, which focuses on creating solutions to health equity and social justice issues through the lenses of art, conversation, policy and strategy.

During a training last year with local early childhood educators, Courtney’s team tasked the teachers with informing students about what Black leaders in the community are currently working on.

“An educator had shared that they had not met really any Black people in the community and they weren’t really sure of how to share that information with their

BLACK HISTORY AT U OF IDAHO

Another local book celebrating the region’s Black leaders was recently published. The Seminal History and Prospective Future of Blacks at the University of Idaho is the second volume of the Black History Research Lab and the University of Idaho Library’s Black History at the University of Idaho project and is now available to read online.

The book covers the Black community’s contributions to the university starting in the late 1890s with the University of Idaho’s first Black graduate. It also highlights recent milestones, such as reestablishing the university’s Black/ African American Cultural Center, Africana studies program and more. There’s also advice and guidance for future Black students and faculty at the university to help them flourish. Much of the book’s content isn’t common knowledge at the University of Idaho or in the region in general, and thus illuminates a vital part of the school’s history. Its authors are Brody Gasper, a 2021 UI history graduate, and Sydney Freeman Jr., director of the Black History Research Lab. Find out more at uidaho.edu/blackhistory.

Celebrate Black History Month with Stephaine Courtney’s book and many local events. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO

MORE BLACK HISTORY MONTH EVENTS

TOUR THE CARL MAXEY CENTER

The Kootenai County NAACP chapter hosts a guided tour of the Black-led and Black-centered nonprofit in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood. Sat, Feb. 18 at 12 pm. Free. Carl Maxey Center, 3114 E. Fifth Ave. kootenaicountynaacp.org

THE MAPPING PREJUDICE PROJECT

Dr. Kirsten Delegard, a historian at the University of Minnesota, presents this year’s William L. Davis, S.J. Lecture, followed by a panel discussion on racist housing covenants. Panelists include Larry Cebula of EWU, Logan Camporeale from Spokane’s City Preservation Office and other community leaders. Wed, Feb. 22 at 7 pm. Free. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/mwpac

ART & ACTIVISM

An exploration of artistic expressions from local Black artists followed by a discussion with the artists. Thu, Feb. 23 at 6 pm. Free. Gonzaga University Hemmingson Center, 702 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu

ALETHEA DUMAS FT. SESSIONZ

Local musician Alethea Dumas and Spokane-based jazz band Sessionz take the stage for a night of live music celebrating Black History Month. All ticket sales and funds raised during the show benefit the Carl Maxey Center. Sat, Feb. 25 at 7 pm. $15. Lucky You Lounge, 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. luckyyoulounge.com

BEYOND THE WESTERN CANON

Featuring music faculty from area universities including Darnelle Preston, Amy Porter, Jadrian Tarver and Nicole Sonbert, this concert explores music of the African diaspora. Sun, Feb. 26 at 2 pm. Free.

Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/mwpac

CLUSTERLUCK

This short documentary highlights the experiences of a group of Black faculty within a department at a historically White institution. Producer Candace N. Hall joins for a Q&A after the screening. Tue, Feb. 28 at 7 pm. Free. The Kenworthy Theatre, 508 S. Main St., Moscow. kenworthy.org

— COMPILED BY MADISON PEARSON

students in the classroom,” she says. “I reached out to my network and many other people around Spokane that were doing amazing things, and I asked them to be a part of a children’s book where not only children can learn about different people, but also educators could read about these different individuals and how they’re making a difference in Spokane.”

Our Community: Black Leaders in Spokane highlights a variety of local artists, business owners, educators and public officials, such as the late Sandy Williams, former Spokane NAACP president Kiantha Duncan, and politician Natasha Hill. The book also includes a resource guide so readers can connect with those highlighted within.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Stephaine Courtney will be at Spokane’s Black Business Expo on Saturday, Feb. 18 from 10 am to 3 pm, a free community event at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, 500 S. Stone St. More at carlmaxeycenter.org.

Although Our Community: Black Leaders in Spokane was originally released in digital-only format in fall 2021, Courtney decided to also print physical copies late last year due to an outpouring of positive feedback.

The most rewarding part of the process for Courtney was seeing the physical manifestation of her work and reading it for the first time.

“I know so many beautiful, amazing people that are doing things, and to be able to read it and go through it, it just filled my heart,” she says. “The other part that was really overwhelming as well is when I heard the stories of people reading the story to their children and their children being like, ‘Mom, you’re in the book, this is you!’ and just them realizing what their family’s contributions are to this community.”

Our Community: Black Leaders in Spokane is available through the Spokane Public Library and Spokane County Library District, and for purchase at Wishing Tree Books in the South Perry District. Courtney hopes to get copies in all city schools, too.

“People are just really glad there is a book that is representing other people’s lived experiences,” she says. “They’re glad that there’s a book that’s representing people that look like their families and people who just want to see our community in a very diverse light, and I think that’s what this book does. It brings this hidden piece straight to the front.”

The book is narrated by a young Black girl through affirmations such as “I am brave like…” and “I am smart like…” with short biographies about each featured Black leader to remind readers of all ages that they, too, possess similar qualities to those they’re reading about, and that they can accomplish similar things if they want to.

“Having someone that looks like them and represents their community is not only powerful, but it really is a testimony to the other people who are reading it, like, ‘We can do this,’” Courtney says.

The book ends with the line “I am me,” and the narrator’s realization that she’s capable of accomplishing anything she dreams.

“I hope that this book inspires our families and our children and community to learn to dream big and to know that they can be whoever they want.” n

THE BUZZ BIN

THE SPOKANE BRIDGE AWARDS

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of the city’s vehicle and pedestrian crossings

BY NIC RENSHAW

As a very avid pedestrian and recent transplant from a region with no big rivers, I’ve spent much of my time thus far in Spokane falling in love with its plentiful and varied bridges. Savoring the view of a glistening channel winding into the distance from above the very center of said channel? Nothing like it, folks. However, not all bridges are created equal, so with the utmost deference to the many great Spokane bridges we lack the time and space to include, here are five of the bridges I most enjoyed looking at, walking on and accidentally dropping things off.

“BRIDG-IEST” BRIDGE MISSION AVENUE BRIDGE

It feels somewhat obligatory to include the bridge I’m personally now most familiar with, but the Mission Avenue Bridge is one that could very well be displayed on the Wikipedia article for “bridge,” an agreeable middle ground between your rustic country footbridges and your feats of sheer architectural prowess. Nothing fancy going on here, but that’s key to its appeal, letting the unfussy iron-and-concrete guardrails and gentle convexity speak to its simple effectiveness. For a bridge that gets me to work darn near every day, that pragmatism is as reliable as it is endearing.

MOST STENTORIAN MONROE STREET BRIDGE

BEST OVERALL VIBE IRON BRIDGE

This vintage Union Pacific Railroad trestle was converted in 2012 to become part of the Spokane River Centennial Trail, and a decade later became one of my favorite walking spots in town. Everything about this modest little foot-and-bike bridge oozes charm: It’s located just far enough from local traffic to take on a zen-like tranquility at its center, and the lattice of iron trusses frames the straight-ahead view beautifully. And, Iron Bridge’s “triple-intersection Warren truss” pattern is extremely rare, appearing on only one other bridge in the state, according to historicbridges.org.

BEST NON-RIVER BRIDGE FREYA STREET BRIDGE

In addition to the many bridges crisscrossing its eponymous river, Spokane is also home to many viaducts and overpasses, including this one overlooking the BNSF freight railway just south of Trent Avenue. That birds-eye view of trains passing to and fro is undoubtedly this bridge’s greatest asset, aided by chain-link fencing that allows for an unobstructed line of sight. Though many will understandably prefer the greenery and picturesque flowing water that comes with a river bridge, stand on Freya at just the right moment, as a diesel locomotive chugs off into the sunset, and grimy urbanity looks every bit as pretty.

NEW DIGS

With programming out the wazoo, Spokane Art School has been overdue for an expansion for quite a while now. The nonprofit is moving into a space almost three times the size of its current home in the Garland District, which it’s called home for the past 11 years. The new space opens just in time for March’s First Friday celebration. Their new facility is located on the corner of Second Avenue and Sherman Street, just two blocks from the Catalyst building on the south edge of the University District. With a dedicated parking lot and large gallery space, this move allows the art school to expand event offerings with room to grow. Celebrate the move with excited staff on Friday, March 3 with the space’s inaugural show, a Women’s History Month invitational (pictured). See spokaneartschool.net for more information. (MADISON PEARSON)

GIVING BACK

Not only does adopting pets during events at area PetSmart stores help provide furry friends with full and joyous lives, it helps give back to the local shelters that make this possible. In 2022, SpokAnimal completed over 2,500 adoptions at Spokane’s three PetSmart stores. As a result, the nonprofit was awarded $25,000 from PetSmart Charities’ adoption rewards program to help cover the expenses of caring for thousands of animals each year. SpokAnimal has been involved with PetSmart Charities since 2007 and has found homes for more than 12,000 animals since then through these collaborative efforts. For more information about SpokAnimal, which has been operating in Spokane since 1983, its adoption programs and animals looking for loving homes, visit spokanimal.org. (SUMMER SANDSTROM)

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST

Noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online on Feb. 17.

BEST NAMED BRIDGE SANDIFUR MEMORIAL BRIDGE

WEEKEND COUNTDOWN

Get the scoop on this weekend’s events with our newsletter. Sign up at Inlander.com/newsletter.

If scale and distinction are the names of the game, then the Monroe Street Bridge stands as Spokane’s crown jewel, a 136-foot-tall, 281-foot-long behemoth towering over Spokane Falls and framing the heart of downtown. The chain-link guardrail patterns and bison skull ornamentation make it one of Spokane’s most visually appealing and recognizable bridges, and the view is one of the best in the city. The footpaths on each side boast four stone pavilions with plaques on the bridge’s history. Any civic engineering enthusiast would be hard-pressed to deny Monroe Street’s bridge-y bonafides.

An honorable mention in a city of very practically named bridges; sometimes a good memorial bridge can’t be beat. This one, which connects High Bridge Park with the Centennial Trail on the southwest edge of Kendall Yards, is named after the late C. Paul Sandifur Sr. and his wife, J. Evelyn Sandifur. Paul was well-known for his frugality, despite being a self-made millionaire and successful real estate investor. He helped restore the historic Met Theater about a decade before it was renamed the Bing Crosby Theater. Not to be forgotten, his and Evelyn’s names are now inscribed at the ends of this long footbridge. It’s really quite nice, too, offering a gorgeous view of an island-dotted segment of river. n

MAITA, LONELINESS. The standout Portland indie singer-songwriter reimagines one of 2022’s best albums — I Just Want to Be Wild for You — with stirring, stripped-down solo versions of all the expertly written tunes.

SHONEN KNIFE, OUR BEST PLACE. Even after 40+ years, the forever queens of Japanese pop punk never fail to deliver sunny, frenetic and hyper-melodic bursts of simple punk bliss.

PINK, TRUSTFALL. The intensely positive pop star enlists guests like Chris Stapleton, First Aid Kit and the Lumineers for her ninth studio album. (SETH SOMMERFELD)

The Monroe Street Bridge is instantly recognizable. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

The Kathie and Mel Show

Two actors are reprising a production of Parallel Lives and finding the fresh in the familiar

For Kathie Doyle-Lipe and Melody Deatherage, there’s a whiff of déjà vu to their upcoming performance of Parallel Lives, opening this weekend on the Spokane Civic Theatre’s main stage for a limited run.

“We actually put this up six years ago for Lake City Playhouse as they were getting restarted. And then Civic approached us later about maybe reviving it for a special event,” Deatherage says.

“So it’s just kind of putting it back on its feet,” adds Doyle-Lipe.

But does their previous experience mean they were off-book faster than usual? The question elicits a hearty laugh from both women. This demanding sketch-based play, which originated in the mid-1980s as Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy’s Kathy and Mo Show, is propelled by just two actors who must rapidly channel one character after another — from capricious supernatural beings to college students to farmworkers. And that’s just in the first part of act one.

“There is that challenge of creating a distinct character [for each scene]. There’s a lot of different dialects, and we’re playing different genders,” Deatherage says. “When we did it six years ago, we put it up in less than three weeks. It was a very intensive experience and a real push.”

To ease some of that pressure this time around, they started meeting on a regular basis last autumn.

“The first time we got together, I said to Kathie, ‘I have no memory of ever saying these lines,’” she laughs.

BY E.J. IANNELLI

“It’s a lot to memorize all over again, that’s for sure.”

“But after we did it a couple of times, it began to feel familiar,” says Doyle-Lipe. “It was also interesting because we were finding things that we didn’t even realize about it the first time we did it.” During her previous encounter with the play, a gag about a 12-step program went over her head because of the speed at which she had to learn her lines.

Parallel Lives is a satirical comedy often described as feminist, a catch-all shorthand for its dealing with topics like menstruation, childbirth, single motherhood and systemic gender inequality. The title is presumably meant to echo Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a series of famous biographical profiles that juxtaposed classic Greek and Roman luminaries — all male, as you might expect — to illustrate their virtues or failings.

“In the play, the characters in these vignettes, they definitely are sometimes opposite ends of a spectrum,” says Deatherage. One sketch pits “a divorced, rich Beverly Hills lady” played by herself against Doyle-Lipe’s “middle-class housewife type in a laundromat.” Yet both are united by the fact that they’re undergoing a crisis of identity.

However, this production of Parallel Lives, directed by Troy Nickerson (whose Sweeney Todd, incidentally, is running contemporaneously across town at Stage Left), won’t feature every scene from the original script. Gaffney and

Najimy’s collection of skits, which was later filmed as an HBO special, anchored itself pretty firmly in the mores and pop culture of the time.

“When we first looked at the script six years ago, [cutting] was kind of a matter of expedience,” Deatherage says. “And then there were a couple of sketches that... just seemed like they wouldn’t have added all that much to the audience experience.”

“The humor was dated,” Doyle-Lipe adds, “and there were some things that I think people would find offensive now. Things have changed a lot. It would also be very long if you did them all.”

Additionally, this production is working to capture a particular vibe, one that’s a little less fraught than some of the full source material might allow. On the Civic’s large main stage, the show makes use of isolated lighting to frame the action and scale things down to a more intimate size. The set design is largely black box. Quickchange costumes help keep the pacing fluid.

“We wanted to keep it light for sure,” says Deatherage, “but there are definitely some very poignant and rather unsettling [scenes]. It’s not all frothy. It’s about the depth of the experience, the human experience, for the characters as well as the audience.” n

Parallel Lives • Feb. 17-26; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm; Sun at 2 pm • $25 • Spokane Civic Theatre • 1020 N. Howard St. • spokanecivictheatre.com

Melody Deatherage (left) Kathie Doyle-Lipe channel capricious supernatural beings, college students, farmworkers and more. CHRIS WOOLEY, HEADS AND TAILS PHOTO

Chef Chats: SCOTT SIFF

BY CARRIE SCOZZARO

Scott Siff has criss-crossed the country for his career, and although he’s worked in such urban hubs as Boston and New York City, he adamantly says the “West Coast is the best coast.”

Born and raised in Florida, Siff initially went to school for radio and television, but a random hospitality class piqued his interest in cooking. Meanwhile, a chef who happened to live in Siff’s neighborhood gave him his first restaurant job.

Siff moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he earned two degrees at Johnson & Wales University: an associate degree in culinary arts and a bachelor’s in restaurant management and culinary arts. In nearby Boston, Siff worked at the former FrenchAmerican restaurant, Clio, and the former West Bridge, both of which focused on innovation and exotic ingredients.

Siff eventually moved west, ending up in Seattle. There, he worked for Ethan Stowell Restaurants at both Cortina and Tavolàta at Capitol Hill. At the latter, he met his future wife, Tania, who was the restaurant’s bar and restaurant manager. In 2019 Siff relocated to Manhattan to help open Wolf Restaurant, an Italian-inspired collaboration between Ethan Stowell Restaurants and Nordstrom.

In February 2021, Siff and his wife relocated to Spokane, where they both helped launch Stowell’s Tavolàta Spokane later that spring in a former Olive Garden location facing Riverfront Park. We recently chatted with Siff about his culinary journey thus far, and more.

INLANDER: What are the highlights of how you got here?

SIFF: Growing up, I kind of had that fat-kid mentality, like, I just loved food. I grew up practicing Judaism, so a lot of our holidays are centered around food. I grew up with a brother and sister, so I started cooking our dinner sometimes. I would watch a lot of Emeril Lagasse on TV. And, like, I would be 14 years old and watching Emeril at 11 pm. And then I just started experimenting at home, like frying things, and probably setting things on fire and making a bunch of mistakes, but that also kind of shaped how I learned. I like to be creative, and you have to make mistakes sometimes to figure things out. And I think the biggest thing to do is learn from those.

Who helped you get where you are today?

Working in French fine dining definitely taught me a lot of discipline and hard work and kind of what it takes to make it in that kind of environment. But what I learned from Matthew

Tavolàta Spokane’s executive chef sees everything as a learning opportunity

[Gaudet, chef-owner at West Bridge] was more like it’s OK to have fun with food. I think the chef has a role to play in telling a story, whether that’s based on ideas that he or she has, or past experience, past things they’ve eaten.

What’s an essential technique you employ most often?

Emulsification. A lot of our aiolis and vinaigrettes usually have some sort of emulsification with yogurt and Dijon [mustard] and that sort of thing. But we also emulsify our pasta sauce, a lot of them with butter or Parmesan cheese. We never use cream in any of our pastas here, so it’s always just either butter, or butter and cheese-based.

What’s your favorite thing to eat from your own menu?

I would definitely say the focaccia is delicious. It’s a housemade focaccia that actually changes seasonally as well. Last summer we did a focaccia with a tomato jam and nectarine butter, but right now we have focaccia with pumpkin seed pesto, so parmesan, basil, a little olive oil.

What’s missing from the local culinary scene that you’d like to see more of? Mocktails.

Where would you travel just for the food and why?

Japan and Vietnam. I’ve been there. So I would say Japan, in general. I was able to hit centralized Japan. I went to Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, out on the west coast. But I definitely would like to hit all the regions. There’s a lot going on and a lot of different cuisines.

What’s the biggest myth about the restaurant industry we should know?

That we all go out and party all the time. Some do. Some don’t. I stopped drinking two years ago. It’s tough, but my wife also is sober. At this point, I can’t see myself being able to do what I do without being sober.

What might you be doing if you weren’t in the culinary industry?

Since I bought a house, I have been very much into home improvement. I put in new tiles on my kitchen backsplash and tiled my countertops, and so kind of taking it step by step, but I definitely am enjoying it. I never really worked too much around home improvement stuff, so now that I know I can mess things up on my dime, I’ll take the risk.

And then music as well. I just started picking up some drumming, but I’ve also played guitar for a long time.

Are there any lessons from your culinary life that you apply to your personal life?

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, because everyone is [afraid], but everyone does [make mistakes]. n

Chef Scott Siff has been at Tavolàta Spokane since it opened in 2021. ERICK DOXEY PHOTOS

From Panama to Spokane

Cantarito Mexican Restaurant opens in Indian Trail neighborhood; Plus, local restaurants recognized by James Beard Foundation

BY LAUREN RODDIS AND CARRIE SCOZZARO

Authentic Latin American restaurants can feel few and far between in the Inland Northwest. Cantarito Mexican Restaurant in Spokane’s Indian Trail neighborhood opened in November, and helps fill this gap by serving a unique blend of Mexican, Panamanian, and various other Central and South American cuisine.

Turquoise leather seats, colorful artwork, and sprawling plants provide a sense of cheerful, homelike comfort. Born in Panama, owner José Gonzalez opened Cantarito with his wife, Michele, and he thinks the restaurant’s family-friendly feel makes Cantarito special.

The food is filled with fresh-tasting flavors, including the housemade chips and medium spicy salsa served when you sit, and the exquisitely creamy flan ($6.50).

Served in a tortilla lightly fried to perfection with melt-in-your-mouth meat, the carnitas de puerco Cantarito street tacos ($4.11 each) are a must. Fajitas ($21.79) and burritos ($11.39 each or $16.59-$18.67 for specialty burritos), as well as carne, pollo, mariscos and vegetarian dishes, fill out the menu’s entree offerings. The original margarita ($13.46) and the cantarito ($11.39) — a drink served in a clay pot for which the restaurant is named — are the more popular drinks, but there are also wine, beer and tequila options.

The Panamanian and Peruvian fare at Cantarito adds a distinct touch to Spokane’s Latin American food scene, which is almost exclusively Mexican food. Gonzalez hopes

to add some Colombian and Salvadoran food to his menu in the future. Check out other menu options and more at cantaritospokane.com. (LAUREN

RODDIS)

LOCAL ACCOLADES

If you’ve ever watched an awards show — Golden Globes, the Oscars — you’ll inevitably hear someone say, “It’s an honor just to be nominated.”

But when the venerable James Beard Foundation lists your name or your business among its annual culinary industry leaders, it truly is an honor to be nominated. In January, the foundation recognized chef-owner Tony Brown of RUINS and HUNT as a semifinalist in the “best chef” category for the Pacific and Northwest region. Meanwhile, THE BLACK CYPRESS in Pullman was among 20 nationwide nominees for the outstanding hospitality award. Visit jamesbeard.org to learn more and see the complete list of nominees.

The Black Cypress was also among the

Northwest regional restaurants that Seattle Met’s food and travel writers recognized as the best in Washington state outside the Seattle area for 2023. Additional Eastern Washington spots that made the list include Spokane’s INLAND PACIFIC KITCHEN, COCHINITO TAQUERIA and GANDER & RYEGRASS

And since we’re talking accolades, POW’WAW FOOD TRUCK won the Golden Noodle Award at the 2023 downtown Coeur d’Alene Mac and Cheese festival. Owned by Shane Clark (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) and his wife, Megan (Coeur d’Alene), Pow’Waw wowed the judges with its smoked salmon mac and cheese topped with bison jerky, fry bread crumbles, fresh herbs and a honey maple berry sauce called wojapi

Big shout out to Maisa Abudayha of FEAST WORLD KITCHEN for being an honoree in this year’s YWCA Women of Achievement awards in the Arts and Culture category. The YWCA writes that Abudayha’s “leadership has been instrumental in helping over 75 chef families share their culinary gifts as they earn income, learn valuable career skills, and build community connections,” including more than 79 percent of whom are women, many of them single mothers who have experienced significant trauma. Awards are to be presented in person at the Davenport Grand Hotel during a luncheon on March 9. Visit ywcaspokane.org to see the complete list of honorees. (CARRIE SCOZZARO) n

To-Go Box is the Inlander’s regular dining news column, offering tasty tidbits and updates on the region’s food and drink scene. Send tips and updates to food@inlander.com.

Panamanian and Peruvian food shines at Cantarito.

TIRED ANT ICS

Jonathan

gravitas

BY CHASE HUTCHINSON

Though it centers on a scrappy character who can flexibly alter his anatomy to become either as tall as a skyscraper or as small as an ant based on his needs, director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is most defined by its rigidness. It wastes little time in launching us headfirst into a hidden universe only to reveal that any joy to be found there is hamstrung by a creaky story that never finds anything unique, jokes that offer increasingly diminishing returns, surprisingly flat visuals that only rarely convey a sense of scale and a villain who could be its saving grace were he not held back so thoroughly. Though there are moments that hint at the tantalizing potential of a more bold vision, the latest Marvel film buries them underneath a mechanical journey where the cast seems as lost as the characters.

Leading this is the titular Ant-Man, aka Scott Lang. Played once more by Paul Rudd, he is trying to get used to his new life after losing years during the events of Avengers: Endgame. He has even become a bit of a celebrity with a self-aggrandizing memoir that professes values he does not actually live by. This frustrates his daughter Cassie (recast as Kathryn Newton of Freaky), who thinks he should be doing more to help others. Unbeknownst to Scott, she has been doing some poking around into the quantum realm with returning characters Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and The Wasp, aka Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) by her side. They believe these experiments to be safe and try to convince a concerned Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), who was rescued from the realm in the prior Ant-Man film, but something goes awry. This pulls all of them into said quantum realm where they will have to reunite and escape before they get found by this universe’s ruler who has a plan he has been waiting years to see completed.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA

Rated PG-13

Majors, who has been magnificent in everything from The Last Black Man in San Francisco to the upcoming Magazine Dreams, he brings a menacing presence that manages to transcend the trappings of this story. The deliberate manner in which he speaks makes it even more unsettling when Kang will snap without warning. There is a more intimate theatrical sensibility to him that Majors molds into something disquietingly immense. This a challenge because the film does a lot of mucking about before Majors is free to command the screen. This is done under the guise of establishing how much the inhabitants of this universe fear Kang, but it never carries any urgency with it. Be it an extended cameo or the return of a familiar face from a previous film, none of it is ever as engaging as just seeing Majors give a monologue. For all the ways this franchise is built around thuddingly immense spectacle, the smaller character moments he gets are the most mesmerizing to behold. Had the film been more willing to turn itself over to him and strip away most everything else, it might have worked.

Directed by Peyton Reed

Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors

ALSO OPENING

MARLOWE

Liam Neeson stars as Raymond Chandler’s titular 1930s hardboiled detective in this neo-noir. When an heiress and daughter of a movie star hires the private eye to find her ex-lover, Marlowe uncovers a seedy conspiracy he must unravel. Rated R

OF AN AGE

When a dancer meets his dance partner’s brother, there’s instantly a spark between the two. The complicating factor in this Australian romance drama? They’re only going to be together for a single passionate day. Rated R

This character is the infamous Kang the Conqueror, and he’s the film’s greatest asset. Played by the outstanding actor Jonathan

Alas, there is a frustrating fidelity to building on the franchise that makes this individual film far too fleeting. Longtime fans may appreciate the tie-ins and set-ups that are dutifully doled out, though this increasingly resembles more of a checklist meant to establish yet another intergalactic conflict rather than an effort to actually make a film that’s good on its own. There are attempts to give characters an emotional journey, but it all feels like an afterthought with supposedly significant lines carrying next to no weight as a result. The only part of Quantumania that is memorable is Majors who, without spoiling, will likely have more of a role in future films to come. One just hopes they’re better than this one. n

OSCAR NOMINATED LIVE ACTION AND ANIMATED SHORT FILMS

The collection of this year’s narrative short Academy Awards contenders includes stop-motion talking ostriches, grieving brothers completing their mom’s bucket list, girls trying to steal cake against a backdrop of war, airport security drama, multiple animated arctic adventures and much more. Not Rated At the Magic Lantern

Majors’

bolsters Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but the rest of the film is a banal experience

While Ant-Man might be lost in the quantum realm, his movie is just plain lost.

The Never-ending Gory

Wrestling with the morals and emotions of war movie fatigue

BY SETH SOMMERFELD

“For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed”

— John Milton, “Sonnet XV”

Ithink we’ve reached the point that a straightforward war movie — no matter how well executed — is inherently bad art.

This thought couldn’t escape my mind while watching the latest cinematic adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. The German adaptation of the classic novel was one of the most acclaimed movies of 2022. Depicting the horrors of trench warfare during World War I from the perspective of a young German soldier, the movie has been nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture. It is an undeniably wellmade movie from a technical standpoint with vivid, textured details.

And I felt absolutely nothing while watching it.

But I don’t totally place that at the feet of All Quiet on the Western Front. Some of it is inherent to what the war movie genre has become.

Essentially there are two main strains of war movies: anti-war features that try to underscore how war is hell and almost propagandist celebrations of heroic war feats.

That latter is hardly even wasting breath over as it was definitely more of a pre-Vietnam rah-rah recruiting tool meant to prop up American spirits more than anything. Certainly, those films still exist in some form, but usually it’s fluffier popcorn entertainment without getting into anything that gritty. It’s the realm of films like Top Gun: Maverick or Devotion or Pearl Harbor, where you can tell the heroism package they’re selling by glancing at the movie poster for three seconds. It’s all well and good (I thought Maverick was a blast), but those flicks really don’t ask viewers to take anything that seriously.

My issue is with the anti-war strain, which All Quiet definitely falls under.

Of course, this subcategory took off with depictions of recent warfare in the Vietnam War era, where the militaristic patriotism took a hit and harrowing depictions of the senseless violence led to classic films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. And there can still be

MAGIC LANTERN THEATER

TICKETS:

2/17- 2/23

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS

COMING SOON: THE FABELMANS

FOR PRIVATE RESERVATIONS EMAIL: magiclanternevents@gmail.com

FOR SHOWTIMES: 509-209-2383 or MAGICLANTERNONMAIN.COM

MOVIE TIMES

standouts that exist under this anti-war umbrella, whether taking an arch approach (M*A*S*H), shedding light on new ages of battle (The Hurt Locker) or even simply reveling in moviemaking gimmickry (1917, and its one-shot approach).

But at this point most of the films of this ilk — especially ones told in a dour, straightforward manner while depicting wars that have been covered ad nauseam (heck even, Wonder Woman had a WWI trench warfare scene) mostly just ring hollow. It’s not that the depictions of the havoc — bodies caked in mud, limbs blown off, brutal close-range killings, rows of young men being mowed down — aren’t trying to make a clear point. But if you’ve seen your fair share of war films, they reveal absolutely nothing new about the history, psychology and cost of war.

Oh, war is bad and we probably shouldn’t do it? Thanks.

Trench warfare was an insane way to wage battle that literally killed millions? I had no idea

Some high-ranking officials don’t care about sending their men to get slaughtered? Wow, never considered that.

These movies want to show us war in the most brutal ways possible (while still not going past an R rating), and advances in moviemaking technology and processes allow each new incarnation to up the ante. The cinematography in All Quiet blows the prior big screen adaptations of the same text (in 1930 and 1979) out of the water.

But to what end? At a certain point, having seen warfare like this depicted on celluloid dozens and dozens of times creates the opposite of the intended effect. I wasn’t more horrified by the more graphic depictions of death and despair, I was far less impacted. I was numb to it.

When there’s nothing really new about the story being told, it becomes more a process of desensitizing viewers to the carnage of war. Instead of trying to evoke sympathy for these poor soldiers, it begins to feel exploitative. All Quiet and films of its ilk now feel less like war films and more torture porn movies set against the backdrop of a battlefield. n

The horrors of cinematic war shouldn’t be numbing.

The Middle of Somewhere

Live From Somewhere seeks to boost the local music scene with unique performance videos at atypical locales

If a band plays in an empty pool in the woods and a crowd isn’t around to see it, does it even make a sound?

It does when the cameras from Live From Somewhere are on hand to document the noise barrage.

The sky is an oversaturated hue of baby blue as the autumnal yellow leaves of the surrounding trees rustle in their remote tranquility. But things are about to get loud Amid all this secluded natural beauty rests a busted-ass abandoned cemetery drainage pool. On a small hill in the center, Spokane punk duo the Smokes start kicking out the jams with their usual no-frills fury. The dormant cracked concrete surrounding the group has been tagged to high hell with vibrant spray painted art (incredibly fitting considering the Smokes’ latest album — G.O.V.T. Graffiti). It’s a blast of sound and color in the middle of nowhere.

The Smokes’ trip to the Palisades Park locale serves

BY SETH SOMMERFELD

as the Season 3 premiere of Live From Somewhere, the Spokane video series that seeks to highlight local musical talent via performances in atypical settings. The Smokes’ entry, which clocks in at a bit over 30 minutes, features cinematic overhead drone shots, voyeur glimpses through tree branches, and up-close-and-personal footage as the duo rips through an energetic and raw set. The Season 3 premiere episode drops this Saturday, Feb. 18 at lfs-nw.com or youtube.com/livefromsomewherenw.

A pandemic era creation, Live From Somewhere’s creative process has varied and evolved since its coopedup origins.

The Live From Somewhere journey actually began years before a single second of footage was shot, when the series’ three co-founders — Jon Kuritz (director/editor), Ryan Stocks (executive producer/ assistant director) and Tyler Poole (audio engineer/

photographer) — first connected through the local music scene. Stocks was playing in the electronic rock band the Broken Thumbs and tapped Kuritz to direct the music video for the song “Laying Low” in 2015. The group reteamed with Kurtz for the 2016 music video for “Oxygen,” with Poole as the photographer shooting the video’s release event. The trio grew closer over the years but didn’t fully unite creatively until COVID shut down the musical world.

With artists having nowhere to play live because of pandemic restrictions, the guys felt the need to do something to ensure the local music scene maintained at least a faint pulse. Taking inspiration from things like Cercle (a French-based production that makes cinematic videos of EDM performances at stunning locations), Tiny Desk Concerts and KEXP sessions, the crew envisioned Live From Somewhere as an outlet to showcase notable local acts to both existing fans and folks far flung from Spokane.

“Nobody’s doing that kind of stuff in this area, so let’s just try it,” says Kuritz. “Our big thing coming in was let’s give them a stage, let’s give them a product, let’s bring them into the community and give them like just a high-quality video production that brings people into what our scene is, and how diverse our music scene is.”

That first year, Live From Somewhere hit their goals and turned out 16 episodes (four of which were acoustic sets) packed with local music goodness. Highlights from Season 1 are wideranging: Brotha Nature rapping under the lights of the Riverfront Pavilion, BaLonely playing among the vinyl stacks at Resurrection Records, Light in Mirrors and Uh Oh and the Oh Wells jamming out in nature, Gotu Gotu making a riot in a living room with wacky waving inflatable tube men, Stocks’ band Civiliance performing at the shuttered Fox Theater, and more.

But as the world started to creep back to something vaguely resembling normalcy, the three men had less time to devote to the project, leading to an abbreviated Season 2. It only featured three episodes: Jinx Universe, Ghost Heart and Kung Fu Vinyl. Live From Somewhere essentially was struggling to find the right format and get in a consistent groove.

Part of the issue boils down to simple logistics. For starters, Live From Somewhere is a labor of love — there’s no financial backer or consistent income flow from making the videos (some episodes have been sponsored). It’s essentially a very cool hobby the guys do in their free time. Then the process of finding locations, coordinating with bands, making sure everyone’s schedules line up and so on means episodes usually take six to eight weeks just to plan, and then another month after the shoot working on postproduction. Thankfully, it’s expanded beyond a three-man operation, with Nik Michaels (set design/audio), Michael Grimm (mixing/mastering engineer), and camera operators Jason Overdorff, Rory Babin and Nick Tatosky lending a hand.

The Live From Somewhere gang feel like they’ve found that for Season 3, which will consist of at least six episodes, with the tentative plan being to release one a month for the run. The goal this season is to boost the production scale.

“First and foremost is just stepping the overall

JINGLE CONTEST

WINNING IS JUST THE BEGINNING! $5,000 in Cash Prizes!

NW musicians, songwriters and those with a creative musical bent of any music style are invited to create a new jingle for the Coeur d’Alene Casino.

Jingle submissions must include and end with the familiar lyrics “Winning is just the beginning at the Coeur d’Alene Casino!”

production level game up,” Stocks says. “It’s been a learning process from the beginning. The audio quality consistency, we really want to elevate that. Visuals have always been our strongest suit. We really want to sink our teeth more into the roots of the community as well. We want to get more people involved or at least be networked with people who share a vision of just trying to elevate the music community.”

The biggest change for Season 3 is the addition of hosts for the series. Local rappers ExZac Change and Iyzlow Matisse — artists featured on the series’ very first episode — serve as the guides to help viewers get a handle on the artists performing. It’s more of a casual music nerd hang vibe than polished hosting, but it fits Live From Somewhere’s DIY vibes.

“They’re an access point to people, we believe, who aren’t necessarily into every band or artists that we feature musically. If it’s a metal band and somebody’s not into that, they at least know that [ExZac] and [Matisse] are there to kind of help ease them into it and engage with these artists,” says Stocks.

Going forward, the Live From Somewhere team wants to keep expanding. They’d love to travel a bit farther and shoot in places like national parks. There’s plenty of artists they’ve yet to work with but would love to have on — the guys mention everyone from locals (Allen Stone) to former locals (Carmen Jane) to West Side acts (Macklemore) as dream series artists.

But the goal of keeping the local scene thriving remains the core of Live From Somewhere.

“Ultimately, anyone who’s hungry enough to pursue it as hard as we’re willing to pursue it, we want to work with them,” says Stocks. “So the numbers that they have aren’t necessarily what we’re chasing or whatever, but we can mutually lift each other through the art platform.”

“If we can just catch the eyes and ears of more people somehow, and then just remind them that to maintain [a music scene] it requires some input,” he continues. “It can be hard, I get it, to make it out to things and show support for local bands you’ve never heard of or a style of music you don’t like, but just for the spirit of the local community we just need to keep people engaged.” n

To enter, submit your 30 to 120 seconds MPG3 or MPG4 file by MARCH 16TH, 2023 at cdacasino.com/jingle Winner(s) will be announced at the Coeur d’Alene Casino on MARCH 31ST, 2023 AT 5 PM See cdacasino.com/jingle for compete entry instructions and contest rules.

The Live From Somewhere crew shooting sessions for Ghost Heart (left) and Alive in Barcelona (above). TYLER POOLE PHOTOS

COVERS THE FAB FOUR | RED NOT CHILI PEPPERS

There’s more similarities shared by the Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers than Beatlemaniacs would probably like to admit. Both are quartets, obviously. Both have had plenty of hit singles and chart-topping albums. Both are heavily associated with their hometowns: Liverpool vs. LA. Both borrowed liberally from Black music: R&B vs funk. Both have been known to sport matching looks at times: suited mop top boys vs. naked except for socks on their c—s. Both have penned some of the most tender ballads in rock history: “Blackbird” vs. “Under the Bridge.” Both have plenty of songs with nonsense lyrics: “Come Together,” Magical Mystery Tour, etc. vs. most of RHCP’s catalog. So if you’re in the mood for catching a touring cover band this Friday, the choice between The Fab Four at the Bing and Red NOT Chili Peppers (pictured) at the Knit might not be as wild a contrast as it seems.

— SETH SOMMERFELD

The Fab Four • Fri, Feb. 17 at 8 pm •

$35-$90 • All ages • Bing Crosby Theater • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • bingcrosbytheater.com

Red NOT Chili Peppers, Snacks at Midnight, Quarter Monkey • Fri, Feb. 17 at 8 pm • $18-$20 • All ages • Knitting Factory • 919 W. Sprague Ave. • sp.knittingfactory.com

Thursday, 02/16

CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Thursday Night Jam

CHECKERBOARD TAPROOM, Weathered Shepherds

J DAVENPORT GRAND, Lyle Morse

HIGHBALL, Villa Blues

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT HOTEL, Jahari Stampley

JOHN’S ALLEY, The Olson Bros Band

RELIC SMOKEHOUSE, Pamela Benton

ZOLA, The Desperate Eights

Friday, 02/17

AK ASIAN RESTAURANT, Mel Dalton

BACKWOODS WHISKEY BAR, John Pitcher

BIGFOOT PUB & EATERY, Rock Candy

J BING CROSBY THEATER, The Fab Four

CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Steve Livingston & Triple Shot

COEUR D’ALENE CASINO, Elvis Tribute Artist Contest & Show

CURLEY’S, Dangerous Type

J DAVENPORT GRAND, Matty Ride

THE DRAFT ZONE, Jeremiah Banks, Mike Hensley, Kyle Cunningham

HIGHBALL, The Kevin Shay Band

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT HOTEL, Jahari Stampley Trio

IRON HORSE (CDA), The Happiness

J KNITTING FACTORY, Red NOT Chili Peppers

MOOSE LOUNGE, Heather King Band

NIGHTHAWK LOUNGE, Royale

CINEMATIC OUR PLANET LIVE

The Emmy-winning Netflix conservationminded nature documentary series Our Planet may initially captivate viewers with its stunning wildlife imagery and gravitas-rich narration by David Attenborough, but what really helps the episodes flourish and flow is the scoring by Oscar-winning composer Steven Price (Gravity). And while it’s great to stream the show from the comfort of your home in a pair of sweatpants, Our Planet Live in Concert offers patrons a chance to take in the majesty of the music in person while also gazing at the dazzling cinematography projected behind the 18-piece orchestra.

— SETH SOMMERFELD

Our Planet Live in Concert • Sat, Feb. 18 at 7 pm • $30-$75 • Ages 18+ • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org

OLD MILL BAR AND GRILL, Gil Rivas

OSPREY RESTAURANT, Sam Leyde

J PANIDA THEATER, Diane Schuur

J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Chris Lynch and Lauren Kerschner

Saturday, 02/18

BACKWOODS WHISKEY BAR, The Red Books

BIGFOOT PUB & EATERY, Rock Candy

BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Pastiche

CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Rusty Jackson Band

CURLEY’S, Dangerous Type

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT HOTEL, Jahari Stampley Trio

IRON HORSE (CDA), The Happiness

J LEBANON RESTAURANT, Safar

LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, The Imagine Collective

LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, The Dolly Party

MOOSE LOUNGE, Heather King Band

NIGHTHAWK LOUNGE, Royale

OSPREY RESTAURANT, Jacob Burrows

J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Kosh

J PONDEROSA BAR AND GRILL, Rhythmic Collective Duo

ZOLA, Blake Braley

Sunday, 02/19

CURLEY’S, Dangerous Type

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT HOTEL, Eareaka Traganza

J THE CENTENNIAL HOTEL SPOKANE, Imagine Jazz Quartet

Monday, 02/20

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT, Riley Grey

Tuesday, 02/21

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT, Riley Grey

LITZ’S PUB & EATERY, Shuffle Dawgs

LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Zonky Night

Wednesday, 02/22

J THE BIG DIPPER, Psyclon Nine

J DAVENPORT GRAND, Lyle Morse

J HISTORIC DAVENPORT HOTEL, Dr. Don Goodwin

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Peter Lucht

RED ROOM LOUNGE, The Roomates

SOUTH PERRY LANTERN, Kyle Swafford

ZOLA, Runaway Lemonade

J = THE INLANDER RECOMMENDS THIS SHOW

J = ALL AGES SHOW

MUSIC | VENUES

219 LOUNGE • 219 N. First Ave., Sandpoint • 208-263-5673

ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS • 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-927-9463

BABY BAR • 827 W. First Ave. • 509-847-1234

BARRISTER WINERY • 1213 W. Railroad Ave. • 509-465-3591

BEE’S KNEES WHISKY BAR • 1324 W. Lancaster Rd.., Hayden • 208-758-0558

BERSERK • 125 S. Stevens St. • 509-315-5101

THE BIG DIPPER • 171 S. Washington St. • 509-863-8098

BIGFOOT PUB • 9115 N. Division St. • 509-467-9638

BING CROSBY THEATER • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-227-7638

BLACK DIAMOND • 9614 E. Sprague Ave. • 509891-8357

BOLO’S BAR & GRILL • 116 S. Best Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-891-8995

BOOMERS CLASSIC ROCK BAR • 18219 E. Appleway Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-368-9847

BUCER’S COFFEEHOUSE PUB • 201 S. Main St., Moscow • 208-596-0887

THE BULL HEAD • 10211 S. Electric St., Four Lakes • 509-838-9717

CHAN’S RED DRAGON • 1406 W. Third Ave. • 509-838-6688

COEUR D’ALENE CASINO • 37914 S. Nukwalqw St., Worley • 800-523-2464

COEUR D’ALENE CELLARS • 3890 N. Schreiber Way, Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-2336

CRUISERS BAR & GRILL • 6105 W Seltice Way, Post Falls • 208-446-7154

CURLEY’S HAUSER JUNCTION • 26433 W. Hwy. 53, Post Falls • 208-773-5816

EICHARDT’S PUB • 212 Cedar St., Sandpoint • 208-263-4005

FIRST INTERSTATE CENTER FOR THE ARTS • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • 509-279-7000

FOX THEATER • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-624-1200

IRON HORSE • 407 E. Sherman, Coeur d’Alene • 208-667-7314

IRON HORSE BAR & GRILL • 11105 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-926-8411

JOHN’S ALLEY • 114 E. Sixth St., Moscow • 208-883-7662

KNITTING FACTORY • 911 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-244-3279

LEFTBANK WINE BAR • 108 N. Washington St. • 509-315-8623

LUCKY YOU LOUNGE • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • 509-474-0511

MARYHILL WINERY • 1303 W. Summit Pkwy. • 509-443-3832

THE MASON JAR • 101 F St., Cheney • 509-359-8052

MAX AT MIRABEAU • 1100 N. Sullivan Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-922-6252

MILLIE’S • 28441 Hwy 57, Priest Lake • 208-443-0510

MOOSE LOUNGE • 401 E. Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-7901

MOOTSY’S • 406 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-838-1570

NASHVILLE NORTH • 6361 W. Seltice Way, Post Falls • 208-457-9128

NORTHERN QUEST RESORT & CASINO • 100 N. Hayford Rd., Airway Heights • 877-871-6772

NYNE BAR & BISTRO • 232 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-474-1621

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY • 301 Cedar St., Sandpoint • 208-265-8545

THE

NOTICE

The U S Department of the Air Force invites you to review the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and attend Public Hearings for the Proposed Beddown of KC-46A Tanker Aircraft for Main Operating Base #6

PROPOSED ACTION AND ALTERNATIVES CONSIDERED Pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act, the U S Department of the Air Force (DAF), has prepared a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for public review that analyzes the potential environmental consequences associated with the proposal to beddown and replace 1950s-era aerial refueling tankers with the KC-46A Main Operating Base #6 (MOB 6) aircraft and mission at either MacDill Air Force Base (AFB), Florida or at Fairchild AFB, Washington, to include the proposal’s effect on historic properties The MOB 6 beddown requires an active duty installation in the continental United States with the aerial refueling tankers and mission to be replaced, as well as the capacity to support KC-46A infrastructure, facilities, airfield operations, training activities, and personne l.

The DAF’s Preferred Alternative is to beddown the MOB 6 mission with 24 KC-46A aircraft at MacDill AFB The EIS also evaluates Fairchild AFB as a reasonable alternative for the MOB 6 beddown, and the No Action Alternative Depending on the selected installation, the KC-46A would either fully or partially replace the current active duty tanker mission

OBTAIN AND REVIEW THE DRAFT EIS The DAF has initiated a 45-day comment period and invites the public to review and provide comments on the Draft EIS, which is available for download at www kc46amob6eis com and may also be viewed at the following local libraries:

MacDill AFB Area: Jan Kaminis Platt Regional Library (3910 S Manhattan Ave, Tampa, FL 33611), John F Germany Public Library (900 N Ashley Dr, Tampa, FL 33602), Port Tampa City Public Library (4902 W Commerce St, Tampa, FL 33616), and MacDill AFB Library (8102 Condor St, Bldg 252, Tampa, FL 33621)

Fairchild AFB Area: Airway Heights Library (1213 S Lundstrom St, Airway Heights, WA 99001), Medical Lake Library (321 E Herb St, Medical lake, WA 99022), Spokane Central Public Library (906 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201), and Fairchild AFB Library (2 W Castle St, Fairchild AFB, WA 99011)

VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEARINGS - PLEASE ATTEND

The DAF requests comments from interested local, state, and federal agencies; federally recognized tribes; and interested members of the public. The DAF is holding two virtual public hearings to provide the public with the opportunity to learn more about the proposal, it’s effect on historic properties, and to provide input in March 2023 (see table below for specific dates and times ). Information regarding the impact assessment is accessible via the project website ( www.kc46amob6eis com), and a pre-recorded public hearing presentation will be available to access and listen to on the day of the virtual public h earing A weblink and phone number to access the online virtual public hearings will be provided via flyers at the specified local libraries and on the project website allowing interested parties to participate in the public hearings either by phone or online Those without internet access are invited to participate by phone

One virtual public hearing will be held in the local time of each installation alternative Each virtual public hearing will begin at 5:30 local time with the DAF giving a brief presentation about the proposal. Formal public testimony will begin at approximately 6 p m The hearing venue will close at 8:00 p m , but may adjourn before 8:00 p m upon or after verification that all participants who desire to speak have been heard and there a re no more registered speakers All members of the public are invited and encouraged to attend Verbal comments will be accepted at the hearings, but you can also submit your comments in writing via email, postal mail, the project website (see details below) Verbal comments will be limited to 3 minutes or less; therefore, the DAF suggests submitting statements of considerable length in writing Your input is valuable and assists the DAF in making more informed decisions.

To request a CD of the hearing presentation, or if you need to request accommodation to access the printed or audio portion of the presentation or need additional accommodation to make a telephone comment (per the Americans with Disabilities Act), please submit your request at the project website (www kc46amob6eis com) or contact the MacDill AFB 6 Aerial Refueling Wing (ARW) Public Affairs Office (PAO) by phone (813-828-2215) or email (6 arw pa@us af mil) or Fairchild AFB PAO by phone (509-247-5705) or email (92arw pa@us af mil) no later than one week prior to the virtual hearing date Dates for each

via email to MacDill AFB 6 ARW PA at 6 arw pa@us af.mil, SUBJECT: KC-46A MOB 6 EIS, or to Fairchild AFB PAO at 92arw pa@us af mil, SUBJECT: KC-46A MOB 6 EIS, or by postal mail vis USPS to AFCEC CZN, ATTN: KC-46A MOB 6 EIS, 2261 Hughes Ave, Suite 155, JBSA Lackland, Texas 78236-9853 or via FedEx or UPS to AFCEC CZN, ATTN: KC-46A MOB 6 EIS, Building 1 Bay 8 Room 6009, 3515 South General McMullen, San Antonio, TX 782261710

In order to fully address public concerns or comments, the DAF suggests attendees submit their intention to participate in the public hearing with an indication of which environmental impact(s) they wish to address prior to the hearing via email or phone, though it is not required

For additional information, or to request hard or CD copies of the Draft EIS, please contact MacDill AFB 6 ARW PAO via the phone, email, or postal mail contact information provided in this notice Please consider the environment when requesting print materials

We will accept comments at any time during the environmental process Written and oral comments will be given equal weight; however, to ensure the DAF has sufficient time to consider public input in preparation of the Final EIS, please submit comments by March 27, 2023

COMEDY THANKS, WE HATE IT

Look, we get it — y’all looooove the “Cheers/Jeers” and “I Saw You” submissions in the Inlander. Just don’t say to our face it’s the first thing you flip to when you meet an Inlander writer out in public. It hurts. Don’t you read our amazing reporting on local news, culture, food and music, too?! Anyway, I digress… We really do wholeheartedly support the Blue Door Theatre’s homage, for which it takes actual reader submissions and improvises said “I Saw You” contents on the spot for this hilarious, always-popular series, happening each Friday night in February. There are two shows left until the series goes back into hibernation, so grab the latest Inlander (It’s really good, I promise!) or head to Inlander.com and find some comedicworthy submissions to contribute.

— CHEY SCOTT

MUSIC GOING DOLLYWOOD

MUSIC THE POWER OF SONG

I Saw You!

• Fri, Feb. 17 and Fri, Feb. 24 at 7:30 pm

• $9 • Blue Door Theatre

• 815 W. Garland Ave. • bluedoortheatre.org • 509-747-7045

There is nothing Dolly Parton cannot do. Write some of the greatest songs of all-time? Check. Sing those souring tunes with graceful zeal? Check. Act in hit movies? Check. Become a fashion icon (aka Backwood Barbie)? Check. Open up a successful theme park? Check. Help fund the initial COVID vaccines? Sure, even that. That’s plenty enough reason to celebrate the Smoky Mountain Songbird. While Lucky You is hardly a honky-tonk, the space transforms into a country dance bash for The Dolly Party: The Dolly Parton-Inspired Country Western Diva Dance Party. Wrangle up your dancing boots as the DJ spins tracks from Dolly, Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves, Reba McEntire, The Chicks, Loretta Lynn and more.

— SETH SOMMERFELD

Songwriting is a powerful craft that can evoke emotions ranging from immense joy to gut-wrenching heartbreak, and it can tell intricate stories in ways that transport you directly to the scene. Not only will guests of this two-day music celebration get to learn how nationally recognized and regional musicians write their music, they’ll also have the opportunity to hear that art performed live and in person. The weekend is filled with performances and workshops from featured musicians who explain their songwriting process and tell the stories behind the creation of songs. Tickets are available online for day passes, all weekend or for individual workshops.

GET LISTED!

Submit events online at Inlander.com/getlisted or email relevant details to getlisted@inlander.com. We need the details one week prior to our publication date.

BENEFIT SPIN ME RIGHT ’ROUND

Nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to the rush of finding that hidden gem of a record after hours of flipping through bins at a record store. You come out the other side with sore fingers and a thinner wallet, but the gratification is enough to be reeling with delight for days to come. If that’s how you seek out your weekly dose of dopamine, you might want to check out this annual record sale benefiting Spokane Public Radio. Maybe you’re looking for a coveted CSN&Y release or you collect Titanic on VHS. Well, there’s hundreds of crates to sort through over the span of this two-day treasure hunt. Expect a long line outside the venue Saturday morning — you’re not the only avid vinyl collector in this town.

— MADISON PEARSON

Spokane Public Radio Record Sale • Sat, Feb. 18 from 9 am-5 pm and Sun, Feb. 19 from 11 am-5 pm

• Free

• CenterPlace Regional Event Center • 2425 N. Discovery Place Dr., Spokane Valley • spokanepublicradio.org

FILM HECK YES!

When you think about perfection, what comes to mind? Personally, the cult classic film Napoleon Dynamite is my first thought. Its absurdity and downright bizarre nature place it in a category of its own, topping my list of favorite movies. At this screening of Napoleon Dynamite, you can see the idiocy for yourself on the big screen while dancers from the MoFe Troupe of Festival Dance perform two special dances that coincide with the film, one being Napoleon’s iconic choreography to Jamiroquai’s song “Canned Heat.” They’ve been practicing their sick moves and attending their Rex Kwon Do classes diligently, so prepare for awesomeness. Tots available for purchase, and “Vote for Pedro” shirts encouraged.

—

MADISON PEARSON

I SAW YOU

CUTE CUSTOMER AT EDDIE BAUER To the tall guy who was a customer at Eddie Bauer on a random Wednesday morning. Thanks for laughing at my jokes and holding the door for me. If you’re interested in going on a hike let me know. Email me the name of the brewery or the town we were talking about, and I’ll know it’s you! Namethebrewery3@gmail.com

THE “IMPORTANT” THINGS IN LIFE You’re into: movies, music, March Madness, downhill skiing, weed, home improvement, gifts, holidays, biking, cross-country skiing, Zags, facial hair, old whyte dudes, cowboy politicians, landscaping, TV, sake, cupcakes. You’re not into: news. I love you anyway. Who’s hungry?! Restaurant Week is coming!

SAY IT WITH ME If your car doesn’t cost $100 to fill, then use smaller bills! The gas station doesn’t want your hundred-dollar bills! We are not a bank!

CHEERS

DAKOTA AT BROWN BEAR Dakota, you rock! Today at the Sunset Boulevard car wash where you do maintenance, we had a friendly conversation about what it takes to keep that place looking good. Thank you for helping anchor your business as a clean, safe place in a challenging neighborhood. Thank you for your dedication and care. You are an unsung hero for our town, and we admire you.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT ANNA A big thank-you to a lovely young lady that paused her training run on the High Drive Bluff upper trail to help me. I was doing some trail maintenance and was straining to move a very heavy boulder. Without your help I would still be there struggling, or in the cardiac ward. Happy trails to you, Anna.

JO KOY SHOW I want to thank everyone associated with the Jo Koy show at the First Interstate Center on Feb. 2. I have cancer and severe arthritis, and I have not been to a concert or event since before the pandemic. My son bought me tickets for a birthday gift. Everyone from the venue was beyond kind and helpful, from letting my son drop me off in front and then going to park, and everything else all the way to the end of the show. Getting in and finding our seats was easy, even the people who shared our row were kind when they found out I couldn’t keep standing to let them out easily (even though I was on the end). They gently stepped over me. Then at the end of the show, many offered help for me to get to the elevator while my son went and got the car. I am not sure, after a lifetime of going to concerts and events, that I am going to be able to do any more. But, this was a great way to end. Thank you everyone. Spokane...you rock!

FOUND A PAY-IT-FORWARD MOMENT!

To the tall dark gentleman who helped me at Rosauers on Feb. 3. I need you to know that a gentleman, taxi driver... from M.I.S.S.I.S.S.I.P.P.I... Mr. FRED... MELTS MY HEART AND DESERVED THAT AND AN EXISTENCE, AS DO YOU.

HIDDEN GEM From the outside, I would never have guessed. A little bar and grill tucked between two car lots on an industrial stretch of Sprague Avenue in the Valley. But by happenstance, a friend and I ventured inside the place, The Bearded Ginger, to discover a welcoming little hideout, with a nice-looking bar, but an even better looking menu of BBQ favorites. The staff was warm, the food was reasonably priced — and excellent. After one unplanned visit, I’m feeling protective of the place: Let’s keep this local gem in business.

MOTORIST STOPS TO HELP Thank you to the gentleman in the silver pickup that stopped to offer help. I had a flat tire on I-90 halfway up Sunset Hill by Exit 277. AAA was on their way, but standing by the freeway waiting was stressful, and your gesture of caring was greatly appreciated.

MOVIE THEATER CRIERS I saw “The Whale” at Regal in Coeur d’Alene. Some folks left immediately, but about six of us stayed and cried. We really shared a moment there! What a movie!

MURDERTAINMENT Shame on the local news outlets petitioning the gag order on the U of I case. Leave it alone. It’s not “freedom of speech” — it’s using tragedy for entertainment. So many cases have been ruined by the media. Not classy at all.

and pay parking. Why are there so few all-day meters? I see blocks and blocks of empty two-hour parking spots while I’m searching for an all-day, hoping it’s less than a mile from where I work. City of Spokane, please be a little kinder to those

RETRO DONUTS CUSTOMER SERVICE

Cheers to the young ladies at Retro Donuts, great customer service, which is hard to come by nowadays! You brightened up this guy’s gloomy day!!! And thanks to the owners for putting, great REAL bacon on the maples bars, and hiring people who clearly love their job!

JEERS

“CHRISTIAN” FINANCE GUY Jeers to the “Christian” finance guy who thinks he can fool everyone about his true character… and his affair with the secretary. You advertise “integrity” and “Biblical responsibility” while feeding calculated lies to those who trust you based on your “faith.” I have to hand it to you, your lying and manipulation skills are impressive. You may have many people fooled, but the God you are mocking won’t be deceived and you will be called to account.

DISAPPOINTING SPOKANE Spokane sure has a pretty river, and a lot of garbage around and close to it. The Centennial Trail is beautiful, but the junky tents along the river between Avista and the Greene Street Bridge ruin the view. Cheers to Spokane for building a walking, running, and biking trail along Illinois Avenue just above the river. When it was completed this autumn, it was beautiful. Now, there is a junky blanket that has been discarded as well as garbage littered all along the path in the vegetation just due south of the trail. Cheers to Spokane for having built and maintained so many beautiful bridges in Spokane, but jeers to the cowards that paint all over the underneath during the evenings when they’re not likely to get caught. To those doing the damage, may you fall into the river someday and let it sweep you away to another place you can destroy. Garbage for the Garbage!

WHY NO HARVEST DATE? Why does the LCB no longer require that I-502 flower producers put a harvest date on their product? Is it so vendors can continue to sell their terpless dust buds? And no, a package date is not the same. If we could buy it bulk style, where we could smell it, it would put a lot of the bottom feeders out of business. Get rid of the packaging. It just generates waste.

RE: COLD CASES While I fully agree with your message that resources should be allocated to our region’s cold cases, I’m disappointed that you relied on tropes to prove your dear friend and their cases worthiness as in: not a party girl, didn’t live in a group house, no weird boyfriend or substance abuse. Crime isn’t reserved for high-risk populations, clearly, but those populations are also worthy of justice and attention. Casual language such as this promotes stereotypes and bias. Let’s work together toward justice for all, then and now.

HMM… WHAT COULD HAPPEN? Apparently the great minds in the Washington legislature haven’t grasped the concept that streets are safer for pedestrians when they use crosswalks. What is the impetus for the “Jaywalk at Will” bill? More money for hospitals and funeral homes?

TALKING TURKEY’S TURKEY JEERS+ to the earthquake in Turkey/Syria that as of now has killed the equivalent of the entire population of Post Falls, Idaho. The entire population. Plus. And a special jeering shoutout to Erdogan, who can’t account for a missing billion-dollar earthquake relief fund, funded by over 10 years of taxes.

PITIFUL PARKING Like so many others, I work downtown, and as such, have to find

of us who have to pay to go to work. Bump some of those empty two-hour spots to all day spots. Since you’ve doubled the fine of a parking ticket, you should be able to afford this.

Once again, like every other day it seems, there’s “Bad news on the doorstep.” The NoNewspaper gets more disappointing than ever, every day (except Saturday). The semi-daily paper has slipped so far, it’s like people are running for the exits down at Riverside and Monroe. And that’s sad, because it used to be a pretty good paper. Not so anymore. Whoever is leading it is pushing it further downhill, and at this rate it won’t be long before it is gone. Very, very limited new, and most of it is days old. Local news, other than crime, Zags and Cougars, is virtually nonexistent. Most bylines are not local reporters. Washington Post. Seattle Times. New York Times. Long, really long, stories on subjects that very few people care about. Cute games and puzzles, but no news. Looks like it’s too late, but it would be nice if they woke up and put some effort into saving the paper. At least it doesn’t take a lot of time to read it and the coffee doesn’t get cold. n

BAD NEWS ON THE DOORSTEP

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.

“

The God you are mocking won’t be deceived...

CALENDAR BENEFIT

MARDI BRAS This month-long fundraiser aims to provide access to bras, underwear and personal hygiene items to people experiencing poverty and homelessness. Drop off items on March 3 from 2-4 pm at Hope House. bit.ly/3YsbK0O

SUNDAY FUNDRAISE Flatstick Pub hosts Spokane Helpers Network, a non-profit that serves low-income households. Spokane Helpers Network tells the community about ways to get help for basic needs, as well as how to volunteer or donate. Saturdays from 1-4 pm through Feb. 26. Free. Flatstick Pub, 618 W. Main Ave. flatstickpub.com/spokane (703-862-6195)

BINGO NIGHT This event raises money for Family Promise of North Idaho. All proceeds from bingo cards and 20% of draft sales go to the organization. Feb. 23, 6-8 pm. $5. Coeur d’Alene Cider Co., 1327 E. Sherman Ave. instagram.com/ cdacider (208-704-2160)

HOSPICE OF SPOKANE’S TASTE OF LIFE An evening of drinks, food, music and fundraising activities. During the event, guests have the opportunity to speak with area winemakers and brewers, sample unique food pairings and enjoy music by the Zonky Jazz Band. Proceeds help provide care and support to the terminally-ill patients and families we serve. Feb. 24, 5:30-8:30 pm. $100. Historic Davenport Hotel, 10 S. Post St. hospiceofspokane.org (509-456-0438)

FREE REIN THERAPEUTIC RIDING ANNUAL AUCTION This annual auction and dinner raises one third of Free Rein’s operating budget and allows them to continue offering horsemanship programs. The event includes an auction as well as dinner. Feb. 25, 5-10 pm. $50-$60. Shriners Event Center, 7217 W. Westbow Blvd. freereinspokane.com/2023auction

SPOKANE POTTERS’ GUILD CHILI FEED

This annual event includes bowls of chili, handmade bowls for sale, a raffle and more. Feb. 25, 11 am-3 pm. $8-$15. Corbin Senior Activity Center, 827 West Cleveland Avenue. spokanepottersguild.org

SOUP & PIE FUNDRAISER Enjoy fresh soups from local restaurants, along with pie hand-made by friends and neighbors. The event also includes a raffle and the opportunity to purchase full pies. All proceeds benefit the Humane Society of the Palouse. Feb. 27, 11 am-1 pm. $10. 1912 Center, 412 E. Third St. humanesocietyofthepalouse.org (208-883-1166)

BUILDING BRIGHTER FUTURES FUND -

RAISER This annual fundraiser for Northeast Youth Center includes dinner, drinks, a dessert dash, a silent auction and a live auction. All proceeds go directly to kids and families in need. Monetary donations can be arranged via phone or online. March 4, 5:30-9 pm. $75-$150. Northern Quest Resort & Casino, 100 N. Hayford Rd. spokaneneyc.com (509-482-0708)

COMEDY

BAD FRIENDS WITH ANDREW SANTINO & BOBBY LEE The comedy duo performs a live version of their podcast and put their love/hate relationship on display. Feb. 17, 8 pm. $35-$65. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org

I SAW YOU! Join the BDT Players as they pull the comedy from the weekly readersubmitted section of the Inlander. Guests are encouraged to bring their favorite (family friendly) posting to the show. Feb. 17 and Feb. 24, 7:30 pm. $9. Blue

Door Theatre, 815 W. Garland Ave. bluedoortheatre.org (509-747-7045)

SAFARI Blue Door’s version of “Whose Line,” a fast-paced improv show with a few twists and turns. Rated for mature audiences/ages 16+. Reservations recommended. Feb. 18 and Feb. 25, 7:30 pm. $9. Blue Door Theatre, 815 W. Garland Ave. bluedoortheatre.com

LIVE COMEDY NIGHT Comedians slated to perform: Sam Killer, Simon Kaufman and Rocki MartinFeb. 18, 8 pm. $15. The Draft Zone, 4436 W. Riverbend Ave. (208-457-7917)

NEW TALENT TUESDAYS Watch comedians of all skill levels work out jokes together. Tuesdays at 7 pm (doors at 6 pm). Free. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

OPEN MIC STAND-UP Wednesdays at 7:30 pm. See website for advance signup details. Free. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub. com (509-318-9998)

JOE “MR. D” DOMBROWSKI Joe went viral in 2017 with an April Fools Day spelling test prank that he pulled on his students, now he performs stand-up comedy across the country. Feb. 23-24, 7:30 pm and Feb. 25, 6 & 8:30 pm. $25-$35. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

THAT TIME OF THE MONTH An allfemme comedy show hosted by Rocki Martin featuring Tina Branvold, Jenni Black, Jordan Watson and other local performers. Feb. 25, 7:30 pm. $15. Atomic Threads Boutique, 1905 N. Monroe St. atomicthreadsinc.com (509-280-9120)

MIKE E. WINFIELD Mike has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Office and Brad Paisley’s Comedy Rodeo. March 2, 7:30 pm, March 3, 7:30 & 10:15 pm and March 4, 7 & 9:45 pm. $20-$32. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY THEATRE

SPORTS Gonzaga’s student comedy improv group showcases family-friendly humor. March 4, 9 pm. $1. Gonzaga University Magnuson Theatre, 502 E. Boone Ave. gonzaga.edu/theatreanddance

COMMUNITY

LILAC CITY LIVE! This late-night talk show-style gathering features Breaking Bread podcast host Kenji Linane-Booey, filmmaker Sean Finley, the Spokane Comedy Film Festival’s Josiah Carlson and musical guest Scott Ryan. Feb. 16, 8 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5336)

ROLE-PLAYING GAME DROP IN Improve your RPG skills by watching and participating in games. Fridays from 4-8 pm and Saturdays from 1-5 pm. Free. RPG Community Center, 101 N. Stone Street. rpgcenter.org (509-608-7630)

SANDPOINT WINTER CARNIVAL This annual 10-day carnival features myriad events for the entire family including parades, parties and activities up on Schweitzer Mountain. Other activities include pub crawls and the beloved K9 Keg Pull. Feb. 17-26. Prices vary. Sandpoint, Idaho. sandpointwintercarnival.com

BLACK BUSINESS EXPO Support local Black-owned businesses at this annual vendor fair/expo. The event features booths with goods available for purchase as well as resources for the community. Feb. 18, 10 am-3 pm. Free. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, 500 S. Stone St. carlmaxeycenter.org (509-867-3043)

DROP IN & RPG Stop by and explore the world of role playing games. Build a shared narrative using cooperative problem solving, exploration, imagination and rich social interaction. First and Third Sat. of every month, 1-3:45 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org (509-279-0299)

TOUR THE CARL MAXEY CENTER Take a tour of the Carl Maxey Center, a Blackled and Black-centered nonprofit in the East Central neighborhood of Spokane, hosted by the Spokane NAACP. RSVP by email to attend. Feb. 18, noon. Free. Carl Maxey Center, 3116 E. Fifth Ave. naacpspokane.com (509-795-1964)

SPOKANE PUBLIC RADIO RECORD

SALE Sort through hundreds of crates of music, movies and gear with a variety of records, CDs, DVDs and tapes. Feb. 18, 9 am-5 pm and Feb. 19, 11 am-5 pm. Free. CenterPlace Regional Event Center, 2426 N. Discovery Place Dr. spokanepublicradio.org (509-688-0300)

GENEALOGY & YOUR DNA Lynda Keenan, president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society, shares information on what to expect when using DNA tests to research your family tree, how the DNA tests work and what information they can and cannot give you. Registration is required. Feb. 22, 6-7:30 pm. Free. North Spokane Library, 44 E. Hawthorne Rd. scld.org/events (893-8350)

OPEN STUDIO AT THE HIVE Stop by to check out the Artist-In-Residence studios, tour The Hive and ask questions. Wed from 4-7 pm through Feb. 22. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5300)

FAMILY CONSTRUCTION ZONE Stretch your imagination to create epic builds with blocks. Drop in any time during the session for creative play. Feb. 23, 3-5 pm. Free. Otis Orchards Library, 22324 E. Wellesley Ave. scld.org (893-8390)

SPOKANE HOME & YARD SHOW This show features hundreds of displays and demos offering the latest in home and yard-related products, services and improvements. Feb. 23-26; Thu-Fri from 12-8 pm, Sat from 10 am-7 pm and Sun from 10 am-5 pm. $8. Spokane County Fair & Expo Center, 404 N. Havana St. custershows.com (509-924-0588)

ACCEPTANCE SPOKANE A peer-supported safe space for LGBTQIA+ youth (ages 16-19) in the Spokane area to meet and discuss issues and topics, and promote mental health awareness and acceptance of oneself. The last Saturday of every month from 3-4 pm. Free. Atomic Threads Boutique, 1905 N. Monroe St. fb.me/e/3cxf4vKyL (509-280-9120)

A QUEERCENTRIC CELEBRATION Jonathan Shuffield and his team entertain at this late-night talk show-style gathering. Celebrate movies with film critic Nathan Box, laugh with comedian Chris Jessop and meet other local queer guests. Feb. 25, 7-9 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. thequeercentric.com

SPOKANE FOLKLORE SOCIETY CON -

TRA DANCE Each dance features a local folk music band as well as a caller who teaches easy-to-learn folk-style dances called contras. Sessions begin with a newcomer hour followed by a two-hour general dance. Proof of COVID-19 vaccinations is required. First and third Wed of each month from 7:15-9:30 pm. First Wed. of every month, 7:15-9:30 pm. $7$10. Woman’s Club of Spokane, 1428 W. Ninth. spokanefolklore.org

1912 CENTER WINTER MARKET The market includes dozens of vendors sell-

ing wares, food and drinks. March 4, 9 am-1 pm. Free to shop. 1912 Center, 412 E. Third St., Moscow. 1912center.org

THE BREAKDOWN: PHOTOGRAPHY Learn basic photo composition, how to set up lighting and how to confidently capture photos on your DSLR camera. Limited cameras available for use, bring your own camera if possible. March 4, 3-4 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org (509-279-0299)

FAMILY CONSTRUCTION ZONE Play with blocks and stretch your imagination to create epic builds. This event also takes place at other SCLD branches, see website for details. March 4, 3-5 pm. Free. Medical Lake Library, 3212 Herb St. scld.org/events (509-893-8330)

PIRATES, PILLAGIN’ & PARTYIN’ MYSTERY & 4 YEAR CELEBRATION Captain Jack Blacksparrow has sent word to the most notorious pirate crews of the Caribbean that he’s seeking to recruit pirates for a journey to seek legendary treasures on Parrot Island. Tickets to this event include participation in the mystery game, dinner, a non-alcoholic beverage and dessert. March 4, 6-9 pm. $49-$59. Crime Scene Entertainment, 2775 N. Howard St. crimesceneentertainment.com

FILM

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE Watch Napoleon Dynamite on the Kenworthy screen with two special dance performances by the MoFe Performance Troupe of Festival Dance that coincide with the film. Feb. 16, 7 pm. $3-$7. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)

OSCAR SHORTS Watch all short films nominated for for an Oscar in 2023. Feb.17-19; Fri at 7 pm, Sat at 4 pm and 7 pm, Sun at 4 pm. $7. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET Attenborough reflects upon both the defining moments of his life as a naturalist and the devastating changes he has seen. A discussion follows the screening of the film. This is a free event; however, a donation of $5 is appreciated. Feb. 18, 7-9 pm. Free. Magic Lantern Theatre, 25 W. Main Ave. magiclanternonmain.com (509-209-2383)

GLOBAL CINEMA CAFÉ: THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD Using state-of-theart technology and materials from the BBC and Imperial War Museum, filmmaker Peter Jackson allows the story of World War I to be told by the men who were there. Life on the front is explored through the voices of the soldiers, who discuss their feelings about the conflict, the food they ate, the friends they made and their dreams of the future. Feb. 19, 2:30 & 6:30 pm. $7-$10. Panida Theater, 300 N. First Ave. panida.org

MONDAY NIGHT MOVIES Showings of cult classics and B-movies. Check social media (@goldenhandlebrewco) for details on what the movies will be every week. Every other Mon at 5:30 pm. Free. Golden Handle Brewing Co., 154 S. Madison St. golden-handle-project-spc. square.site (509-863-9167)

PALOUSE CULT FILM REVIVAL: MARS

ATTACKS! A fleet of martian spacecraft surrounds the world’s major cities and all of humanity waits to see if the visitors have actually “come in peace.” Beer and wine available for purchase. Each film in the series includes an interactive element. Feb. 22, 7:30-9:30 pm. $5-$50. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. palousecultfilms.org (208-310-1200)

BLACK

HISTORY MONTH: BUFFALO

SOLDIERS This film discusses the six all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments created in 1866 known as the Buffalo Soldiers. The screening is followed by a Q&A with the film’s director. Feb. 23, 10 am-1 pm. Free. Spokane Community College, 1810 N. Greene St. scc.spokane.edu

MALCOLM X A biographical epic of the controversial and influential leader, from his early life and career, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam. Feb. 23, 7-10:30 pm. $7. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)

SPOKANE COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL The festival opens with a live set from local rock band Yeti Detector and is followed by a variety of short films directed by and starring local comedians and filmmakers. See website for full schedule. Feb. 24, 7-10 pm. $10. Garland Theater, 924 W. Garland Ave. spokanecomedyfilmfestival.com (509-990-8787)

NASRIN A portrait of human rights activist and political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh. The event is also taking place online, reach out via email for more information on how to join virtually. Feb. 24, 6:308:30 am. Free. Unitarian Universalist Church, 4340 W. Whistalks Way. meaningfulmovies.org/events/nasrin

PALOUSE CULT FILM REVIVAL: THE ROOM The last installment of the 2023 Palouse Cult Film Revival. All audience members receive a prop bag and a callout script at this event for an interactive experience. Feb. 24, 7:30-10:30 pm. $10-$50. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. palousecultfilms.org (208-310-1200)

BLACK HISTORY MONTH SCREENING: CLUSTERLUCK This short documentary highlights the experiences of a group of Black faculty within a department at a historically white institution. Producer Candace N. Hall joins for a Q&A after the screening. Feb. 28, 7 pm. Free. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org

VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY SET CREATION WITH CARDBOARD Design and build a backdrop with cardboard and other supplies that can be used for filming videos and taking photos. Some premade cardboard sets are available for video and photography practice. All supplies provided. Registration required. This event also takes place at other SCLD branches, see website for details. March 4, 3:30-5:30 pm. Free. Spokane Valley Library, 12004 E. Main. scld.org/events

FOOD & DRINK

BRING YOUR OWN VINYL NIGHT Bring your own vinyl to spin while sipping on craft cocktails and listening to music. Every Thursdat from 3-10 pm. The Boneyard - Side Hustle Syrups, 17905 E. Appleway Ave, Ste A. sidehustlesyrups.com

FIRESIDE DINNER & MUSIC SERIES Enjoy selections from Arbor Crest’s seasonal menu along with wine and beer from Square Wheel Brewing. Music lineup varies, see website for more. Thu-Sat from 6-8 pm. Arbor Crest Wine Cellars, 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd. arborcrest.com

FRENCH VALENTINE’S COOKING

CLASS A French-inspired cooking class featuring roasted duck breast, a red wine pan sauce, risotto and a flourless chocolate tart for dessert. Each meal is paired with a glass of wine. Feb. 17, 5:30 pm. $95. Wanderlust Delicato, 421 W. Main Ave., Suite 103. wanderlustdelicato.com (509-822-7087)

EVENTS | CALENDAR

NORTH IDAHO WINE SOCIETY: INTERNATIONAL WINES Learn more about France, Spain and Italy with special guest Marshall Jorgensen of The Sorting Table importer who has 20 years in the wine industry representing international wines. Feb. 17, 7-10 pm. $25-$30. Lake City Center, 1916 N. Lakewood Dr. northidahowinesociety.org (208-667-4628)

WINE TASTING Taste a selection of wines from Reininger and Helix. Includes cheese and crackers. Reservations not required. Feb. 17, 3-5:30 pm. $15. Vino! A Wine Shop, 222 S. Washington St. vinowine.com (509-838-1229)

COOKING WITH FRESH HERBS & VEGGIES Taste a vegetarian meal that can be made with herbs and veggies harvested from your own garden. Attendees get two drinks and a small meal. Feb. 18, 2-4 pm. $30. Ritters Garden & Gift, 10120 N. Division St. 4ritter.com (509-467-5258)

WALLA WALLA BREWFEST This second annual event features 25 craft breweries and cider houses from Washington, Oregon and Idaho, hosted in multiple downtown venues. Feb. 18, 12-4 pm. $40-$50. Walla Walla. downtownww. com/brewfest (509-529-8755)

WINE TASTING A blind wine tasting in the theme of Old World v. New World. Includes cheese and crackers. Reservations not required. Feb. 18, 2-4:30 pm. $10. Vino! A Wine Shop, 222 S. Washington St. vinowine.com (509-838-1229)

DRAG BRUNCH The cast of Runway performs while enjoying a full breakfast menu and mimosas. Hosted by Savannah SoReal. Sundays from 10 am-2 pm. Globe Bar & Kitchen, 204 N. Division. globespokane.com (509-443-4014)

NOVA KAINE’S DON’T TELL MAMA

CABARET & DRAG BRUNCH Various Inland Northwest drag performers take the stage and perform pieces choreographed by Troy Nickerson. First and third Sun of every month, 11 am. Highball A Modern Speakeasy, 100 N. Hayford Rd. northernquest.com (877-871-6772)

WINTER MARKET Enjoy a craft beer while supporting a collection of local makers, bakers and farmers at this indoor farmers market. Third Sun. of every month from 2-4 pm through March 19. Free. Lumberbeard Brewing, 25 E. Third Ave. lumberbeardbrewing.com

WINE WEDNESDAY All seven dinners in the series feature food from culinary regions south of the equator. Each meal includes three wines paired by owner Josh Wade. See the menus at link. Wednesdays from 6-8 pm through Feb. 22. $27.50. Fête - A Nectar Co, 120 N. Stevens St. nectarcateringandevents.com

WINE TASTING Taste a selection of wines from Italy. Includes cheese and crackers. Reservations not required. Feb. 24, 3-5:30 pm. $15. Vino! A Wine Shop, 222 S. Washington St. vinowine.com

SPOKANE CHIEFS WINTER BREWBASH

Taste beers from local breweries including Iron Horse, Garland Brew Werks, No-Li and more. All guests receive a commemorative stein and five 2-oz. pour tokens. You don’t need tickets to the Chiefs game to attend. Feb. 25, 4-6 pm. $13-$25. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com (279-7000)

TRAILER PARK TRAGEDY This barbecue-themed murder mystery dinner brings out the ill-mannered, illiterate and intoxicated residents. Feb. 25, 7-10 pm. $59-$69. Cruisers, 6105 W. Seltice Way. crimesceneentertainment.com

MUSIC

SPOKANE SYMPHONY CHAMBER

SOIREÉ 2 Musician-curated chamber music is accompanied by refreshments, wine, coffee and dessert from Beacon Hill Catering. Feb. 16, 7:30 pm. $99. Barrister Winery, 1213 W. Railroad Ave. spokanesymphony.org (509-465-3591)

OUR PLANET: LIVE IN CONCERT The Emmy Award-winning Netflix Original documentary series has been fused with new orchestrations by Steven Price, with narration by Sir David Attenborough. Feb. 18, 7 pm. $30-$75. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org

SANDPOINT SONGFEST This weekendlong event features area songwriters and musicians performing original music and leading workshops. See website for full schedule. Feb. 18, 3-7 pm and Feb. 19, 1-4 pm. $20-$40. Music Conservatory of Sandpoint, 110 Main St. sandpointconservatory.org (208-265-4444)

LIFT EVERY VOICE & SING This concert features Dr. Jadrian Tarver presenting on the different types of Black spirituals and their significance in the African American community. The concert highlights solo and choir performances. Feb. 19, 3-4 pm. Free. Manito United Methodist Church, 3220 S. Grand Blvd. manitoumc.org

SPIRIT OF SPOKANE CHORUS REHEARSAL Sit in on the rehearsals of the Spirit of Spokane chorus. Tue from 6:309 pm. Free. Opportunity Presbyterian Church, 202 N. Pines Rd. spiritofspokanechorus.org/ (509-866-6354)

NORTHWEST COMPOSERS: NEW COMPOSITION RECITAL This concert features Gonzaga University faculty and other local musicians performing new works by composers residing in the Northwest, including Robert Spittal, William Berry and Ryan Hare. Feb. 24, 7:30-8:45 pm. Free. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/music

NORTH IDAHO PHILHARMONIA: EUROPEAN POSTCARDS Classical selections performed by the North Idaho Philharmonia. Works inlclude J. S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue (Contrapunctus I - IV.), Handel’s Harp Concerto and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. Feb. 24, 7:30 pm and Feb. 25, 2 pm. $15-$30. Panida Theater, 300 N. First Ave. sandpointconservatory. org (208-263-9191)

SOLSTICE WIND QUINTET WITH FABIO MENCHETTI The Solstice Wind Quintet performs Francis Poulenc’s Sextour for wind quintet and piano with WSU School of Music piano faculty, Fabio Menchetti. Feb. 24, 7:30-9 pm. Free. Kimbrough Music Building (WSU), WSU Pullman. music. wsu.edu (509-332-9600)

NORTHWEST BACHFEST: OLIVER MESSIAEN, QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME Chip Phillips, Kurt Nikkanen, Zuill Bailey and Maria Asteriadou perform “Quartet for the End of Time” by Oliver Messiaen, a French composer who wrote this piece while a prisoner of war in 1941 under German captivity. Feb. 25, 7 pm. $15-$49. Barrister Winery, 1213 W. Railroad Ave. nwbachfest.com (509-465-3591)

BEYOND THE WESTERN CANON: EXPLORING THE MUSIC OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA A concert featuring Darnelle Preston, Dr. Jadrian Tarver, Dr. Amy Porter and Dr. Nicole Sonbert. Feb. 26, 2 pm. Free. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/ mwpac (509-313-4776)

NORTHWEST BACHFEST: SELECTIONS

BY JOHANNES BRAHMS Chip Phillips, Kurt Nikkanen, Zuill Bailey and Maria Asteriadou perform various selections composed by Johannes Brahms including “Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in A minor.” Feb. 26, 3 pm. $15-$49. Barrister Winery, 1213 W. Railroad Ave. nwbachfest.com (509-465-3591)

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

MT. SPOKANE NIGHT SKI Ski in the dark on Mt. Spokane’s 16-lighted runs. Wed-Sat from 3-9 pm through March 11. $36. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com (509-238-2220)

SPOKANE NORDIC SKI-A-THON All February long, skiers self-report their kilometers skied and rack up donations. Earn prizes for reaching milestones. Through Feb. 28. spokanenordic.org

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Ski during sunset and into the night with live music and food and drink specials. Fri from 3-9 pmthrough Feb. 24. $36. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com

GONE TO THE DOGS & SKIJOR DAYS

Bring your dogs to the mountain and let them run around on the lower trail system. All dogs must be accompanied by their human who has a pass or lift ticket. Feb. 17 and March 25, 9 am-3:30 pm. $5$82. 49 Degrees North, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd. ski49n.com (509-935-6649)

SNOWSHOE & BREWS MOUNT SPO -

KANE TOUR A 2-3 mile snowshoe tour through the woods of Mount Spokane State Park. Afterward, head to Big Barn Brewery on Green Bluff to learn about their locally crafted beer and enjoy beverages to end the day. Fee includes: snowshoes, poles, trail fees, instruction, guides and transportation. (Beverages not included.) Feb. 18 and March 5 from 9 am-2:30 pm. $47. Big Barn Brewing Co., 16004 N. Applewood Ln. spokanerec.org

CHEWELAH PEAK CHALLENGE FAT

TIRE BIKE RACE A seven-kilometer race on the lower trail systems with single-track downhill sections, conditions permitting. Registration starts at 9:30 am, race starts at 11 am. Feb. 19. $20. 49 Degrees North, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd. ski49n.com (509-935-6649)

SNOWSHOE TRIP & MEAD TASTING

Take a tour of Mount Spokane while snowshoeing 2-3 miles through forested trails. After, head to Hierophant Meadery on Green Bluff for an educational tasting. Fee includes: snowshoes, poles, trail fees, instruction, guides and transportation. Meet at Yoke’s in Mead. Feb. 19 and March 19 from 9 am-2:30 pm. $47. Mt. Spokane State Park, 26107 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. spokanerec.org (509-755-2489)

SNOWSHOE MOUNT SPOKANE WITH TRANSPORTATION Learn the basics of snowshoeing during a guided hike. Travel on snowshoe trails through the snowcovered trees and hills around Mount Spokane. Fee includes: snowshoes, poles, trail fees, instruction, guides and transportation. Meet at Yoke’s Fresh Market, 14202 N. Market St. Feb. 20 and March 18, 9 am-1 pm. $39. spokanerec.org

SNOWSHOE HEADLAMP HIKE Hike through the forested trails of Mount Spokane with a headlamp to light your way. Fee includes: snowshoes, poles, headlamps, instruction, guides and transportation. Meet at Yoke’s in Mead. Feb. 24, 12-9:30 pm. $31. spokanerec.org

SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. PORTLAND WINTERHAWKS Promos include the Shriners Hospitals for Kids Spokane Jersey Pillow Giveaway and School Night. Feb. 24, 7:05 pm. $12-$30. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com

VANDALS ALUM SKI WEEKEND Ski or snowboard surrounded by University of Idaho alumni. Wear Vandals logos, colors or your favorite Vandals jersey. Feb. 24-25, 9 am-4 pm. $55-$73. Lookout Pass Ski & Recreation Area, I-90 Exit 0. skilookout.com (208-744-1301)

FAMILY NORDIC WEEKENDS On select weekends, kids under 18 years of age get free trail passes and equipment rentals when accompanied by a parent or guardian. Feb. 25-26 and March 18-19. Free for kids under 18. 49 Degrees North, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd. ski49.com

PACIFIC NW NATIONAL WIFE CARRYING COMPETITION Carry your spouse across snowy terrain and win their weight in cash. Must have a lift ticket or season pass to participate. Feb. 25, 2 pm. Lookout Pass Ski & Recreation Area, I-90 Exit 0. skilookout.com (208-744-1301)

SAMUEL ADAMS AIR & APRÈS The slopes become an immersive 3D storytelling visual experience projected directly onto the mountain while pro skiers and riders throw down. After the main event, enjoy music, fireworks and an after party to close out the day. Feb. 25, 9 am-3:30 pm. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com

SNOWSHOE CANFIELD GULCH This moderate ramble leads snowshoers around the shoulder of Antoine Peak past slopes of coniferous forests and a historic fire pond. Fee includes snowshoes, poles, instruction, guides and transportation. Schedule subject to change due to snow conditions. Meet at Safeway at 8851 E. Trent. Feb. 25, 10 am-3 pm. $35. spokanerec.org (509-755-2489)

SNOWSHOE TOUR 49 DEGREES NORTH Tour the trails of 49 Degrees North with a guide who gives tips leading to better control and more fun on your snowshoes. Fee includes: snowshoes, poles, trail pass, instruction, guides and lunch! Meet at 49 Degrees North Nordic Area Yurt 3311 Flowery Trail Rd. Feb. 25 and March 11, 10 am-2 pm. $45. spokanerec. org (509-755-2489)

SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. TRI-CITY AMERI -

CANS Promos include Chiefs Fight Cancer Night presented by Inland Imaging. Feb. 25, 7:05 pm. $12-$30. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon. spokanechiefs.com

SPOKANE GOLF SHOW Find deals on golf rounds, equipment and golf travel. The show also features a long-drive and long-putt competition and free instructional and kid areas. Feb. 25-26. Spokane Convention Center, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. spokanegolfshow.com

SPOKANE GREAT OUTDOORS & BIKE

EXPO This event features an exhibitor hall of new and used bikes, outdoor recreation gear, travel deals and more. All tickets come with a free adventure deal. Feb. 25, 9 am-5 pm and Feb. 26, 10 am-4 pm. $11. Spokane Convention Center, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. spokaneoudoorexpo.com (279-7000)

WEST VALLEY OUTDOOR LEARNING

CENTER FEBRUARY OPEN HOUSE Participate in crafts, activities and meet lots of classroom critters. $5 suggested donation. Feb. 25, 10 am-1 pm. Free. West Valley Outdoor Learning Center, 8706 E. Upriver Drive. olc.wvsd.org (509-340-1028)

THEATER

ALL SHOOK UP Based in 1955, this musical is inspired by and features the songs of Elvis Presley. Into a little square town rides a guitar-playing young man who changes everything and everyone he meets. Wed-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 pm through Feb. 19. $15-$28. Kroc Center, 1765 W. Golf Course Rd. aspirecda.com

NOBODY This original one-man musical written by and staring Doug Dawson follows the story of a man struggling to find the right way to say goodbye. Feb. 16, 7:30 pm. Free. Washington Cracker Co. Building, 304 W. Pacific. spokaneplaywrightslaboratory.com

PUFFS A comedic play loosely based on the events in the Harry Potter universe. Feb. 10-19; Thu-Sat at 7 pm, Sat at 3 pm, Sun at 2 pm. $13-$15. TAC at the Lake, 22910 E. Appleway Ave. tacatthelake. com (509-432-1890)

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET The unsettling tale of a Victorian-era barber who returns home to London after 15 years of exile to take revenge on the corrupt judge who ruined his life. Thu-Sat at 7 pm, Sun at 2 pm through Feb. 26. $25-$30. Stage Left Theater, 108 W. Third Ave. stagelefttheater.org

LORD OF THE FLIES A production of Lord of the Flies performed by an all-femme cast directed by Dominique Betts. Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 5 pm through Feb. 19. $20. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. brightcomettheatre.com

LOVE, LIES & THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA Widow Joan is in love with her former gardener, but to hide the affair she tells her visiting sister-in-law that he’s her psychiatrist. Soon, chaos ensues. Feb. 17-19; Fri-Sat at 7 pm, Sun at 2 pm. $15. Chewelah Center for the Arts, 405 N. Third. chewelahcenterforthearts.com

PARALLEL LIVES The audience is whisked through the outrageous universe of Kathy and Mo, where two actresses play men and women struggling through the common rituals of modern life. Feb. 17-29, Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. $10-$25. Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre. com (325-2507)

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN’S CINDERELLA A musical is based on the fairy tale with music by Richard Rodgers and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. Feb. 24-March 5; Fri-Sat at 7 pm, Sat-Sun at 3 pm. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. cytspokane.org (509-487-6540)

VISUAL ARTS

INTERTWINED A group show featuring the artworks of Stefani Rossi, Michael Dinning, Megan Varecha, Kimber Follevaag and Meagan Mack. Mon-Fri from 8 am-5 pm through Feb. 24. Free. Chase Gallery, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. spokanearts.org (509-321-6440)

DREAMS, MEMORIES & REFLECTIONS

The gallery features new work of the New Moon members, artist consignors and the Spokane Jeweler’s Guild. Wed-Sat from 11 am-5 pm through Feb. 25. Free. New Moon Art Gallery, 1326 E. Sprague Ave. newmoonartgallery.com

FIGURATIVE The Art Spirit’s February show features five artists that specialize in figures: Mary Farrell, Kim Lewis, David Varneau, Heather Martindale and

Peter Cox. Wed-Sun from 11 am-6 pm through Feb. 28. Free. The Art Spirit Gallery, 415 Sherman Ave. theartspiritgallery.com (208-765-6006)

ILLUMINATING A MEDIEVAL BOOKMARK Learn about manuscript illumination and create your own illuminated bookmark with Spokane artist Hannah Charlton. Feb. 16, 5:45 pm. $25-$30. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First. northwestmuseum.org

IN WHAT WE SEE: A PRINTMAKER’S RESPONSE Through the news, social media, conversations, and travel, artists are engulfed with sights and sounds to inform their work and challenge their audience. This exhibition seeks to highlight the sights and sounds of each artists’ experience while showing the dynamism of print media through the eyes of African and African-American printmakers. Feb. 16-March 16; Mon-Thu from 9 am-4 pm, Fri from 9 am-1:30 pm. Free. SFCC Fine Arts Gallery, 3410 W. Whistalks Way. sfcc.spokane.edu

NEEDLEWORK LANDSCAPES Judy Patterson’s “stitched paintings” are all handmade with needle, thread and fabric. Tue-Sat from 10 am-6 pm through Feb. 28. Free. William Grant Gallery & Framing, 1188 W. Summit Pkwy. williamgrantgf.com (509-484-3535)

LILA SHAW GIRVIN: GIFT OF A MOMENT Living and working in Spokane since 1958, Girvin has used vibrant color, form, and unassuming techniques with oil paint to explore new dimensions of feeling through ethereal, abstract paintings. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through March 12. $7-$12. The MAC, 2316 W. First. northwestmuseum.org

FLUID A watercolor show curated by Jen Erickson featuring music by August to August. Featured artists include Kate Lund, Katie Creyts, Tobe Harvey and more. Tue-Sat from 9 am-6 pm through March 3. Free. Emerge, 119 N. Second St. emergecda.com (208-930-1876)

PICTURES OF POETS Viewers are connected to their favorite local poets via large black and white portraits and recordings. Bring headphones for the best experience. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through April 2. $7-$12. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org

PLATEAU PICTORIAL BEADWORK:

FRED L. MITCHELL COLLECTION During a lifetime collecting Plateau floral, geometric, and pictorial beadwork, Walla Walla resident Fred L. Mitchell has amassed the premier collection of this material. The collection includes beaded bags, cuffs, gauntlets, vests, cradleboards and horse regalia. TueSun from 10 am-5 pm through May 14. $7-$12. The MAC, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931)

RAFAEL SOLDI: MOTHER TONGUE

This exhibition showcases photographs examining how queerness and masculinity intersect with immigration, memory and loss. Mon-Fri from 9 am-6 pm through March 3. Free. EWU Gallery of Art, 140 Art Building. rafaelsoldi.com

IVA HASS: SAND & SPACE This exhibition features recent work from sculptural ceramic artist Iva Hass in which she explores childhood memories. Mon-Fri from 10 am-4:30 pm, Sat from 10 am-2 pm through March 24. Free. Bryan Oliver Gallery, Whitworth, 300 W. Hawthorne Ave. whitworth.edu

SARAH THOMPSON MOORE: VESTIGES A selection of sculptural works by local artist Sarah Thompson Moore. Mon-Thu from 10 am-4 pm, Fri from 10 am-2:30 pm through March 24. Free. Boswell Corner Gallery at NIC, 1000 W.

Garden Ave., Building 22. nic.edu/cornergallery (208-769-3276)

SAVAGES & PRINCESSES: THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIVE AMERICAN STEREOTYPES This exhibition brings together 12 contemporary Native American visual artists who reclaim their identities by replacing stereotypical images that fill the pop culture landscape. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through March 19. $10-$15. The MAC, 2316 W. First. northwestmuseum.org

CHAD YENNEY: CURSE OF THE NOSTALGIC AMNESIAC Through surrealistic compositions made from vintage American advertisements, Yenney uses collage to explore social and environmental issues. Thu-Sat from 4-7 pm through Feb. 25. Free. Terrain Gallery, 628 N. Monroe St. terrainspokane.com

UBUHLE WOMEN: BEADWORK AND THE ART OF INDEPENDENCE: This exhibition showcases a new form of bead art, the ndwango, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The six artists featured in the exhibition call their paintings in beads ndwangos, which translates as “cloth” or “rag.” Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through April 30. $10-$15. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org

REGIONAL ART FACULTY EXHIBITION

This exhibition features artworks of department faculty from Gonzaga, Eastern, Whitworth, Spokane Falls Community College and North Idaho College. Fri from 4-7 pm, Sat from 10 am-3 pm through March 3. Free. Gonzaga University Urban Arts Center, 125 S. Stevens St. gonzaga.edu/gonzaga-universityurban-arts-center (509-313-6686)

ART JOURNALING Work with Dina Natale to create a fun and unique journal using different mediums. Feb. 18, 11 am2:30 pm. $80. Spokane Art School, 503 E. Second Ave. spokaneartschool.net

HUCKLEBERRY LOVE PAINTING

WORKSHOP Coeur d’Alene tribal member Annette Peone teaches the art of painting with acrylics along with educating on the traditional values of the Huckleberry plant. Feb. 18, 2-4 pm. $75. Coeur d’Alene Casino, 37914 S. Nukwalqw. cdacasino.com (208-769-2464)

RIVER RIDGE ASSOCIATION OF FINE

ARTS Bring new art to share and discuss upcoming get-togethers and website changes. Guests welcome. Feb. 22, 10 am-noon. Free. Spokane Art Supply, 1303 N. Monroe St. rrafaofspokane.com

ART & ACTIVISM: CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY BY SUPPORTING BLACK FUTURES An exploration of artistic expressions from local Black artists followed by a discussion with the artists themselves. Feb. 23, 6 pm. Free. Gonzaga University Hemmingson Center, 702 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu

WORDS

ARCHITECT G.A. PEHRSON: A PERSONAL VIEW Spokane Preservation Advocates’ second winter lecture is on the work of architect Gustav Albin Pehrson. Pehrson designed many iconic buildings in the Northwest, including the Paulsen, the Chronicle and the remodel of the Chancery. Feb. 16, 5:45-7 pm. Free. Liberty Park Library, 402 S. Pittsburgh St. spokanepreservation.org

SURVIVAL & RESILIENT COMMUNITIES IN ANCIENT SICILY This presentation discusses the people of Entella being expelled from their city and restarting their lives by cultivating connections with other groups in order to

create a new, more expansive community. Feb. 16, 6:30-8 pm. Free. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org

OPEN MIC NITE All singers, songwriters, musicians, spoken word artists and poets are welcome. No sign-up required. Hosted by Bailey Allan Baker. Feb. 16, 7 pm. Free. Emerge, 119 N. Second St. emergecda.com

GRACE M. CHO: TASTES LIKE WAR A discussion with award-winning author Grace M. Cho, who talks about her new food memoir. Register to attend. Feb. 16, 10-11 am. Free./online. scld.org

UMOJA: SUSTAINING AFRICAN CULTURAL ARTS In this talk, infused with cultural artifacts, music, and dance, Afua Kouyaté brings people together through the sharing and celebration of cultural arts and traditions. Feb. 16, 7 pm. Free. Online: humanities.org

IDAHO PUBLIC TELEVISION STORYTIME A “Work It Out Wombats” story time. Meet in the Community Room to watch the debut of this new animated series for from PBS Kids, then follow up with activities and goodies. Feb. 17, 10-11 am. Free. Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. cdalibrary.org

AUTHOR TALK: KUMIKO LOVE Spokane author Kumiko Love discusses her book, My Money My Way: Taking Back Control of Your Financial Life. Following the event, Love conducts a Q&A and signs books. Feb. 18, 4 pm. Free. Barnes & Noble, 4750 N. Division St. barnesandnoble.com (509-482-4235)

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: NICK COURMON Nick Courmon performs a selection of his spoken word and poetry. Feb. 22, 11:30 am-1:30 pm. Free. Spokane Falls Community College, 3410 W. Whistalks Way. sfcc.spokane.edu

BROKEN MIC Spokane Poetry Slam’s longest-running, weekly open mic reading series. Wednesdays at 6:30 pm; sign-ups at 6 pm. Free. Neato Burrito, 827 W. First Ave. bit.ly/2ZAbugD POETRY AFTER DARK EWU MFA students lead discussions about craft elements, style and form in poetry. Second and Fourth Wed. of every month, 7-8 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org

RECKONING WITH HISTORY: THE MAPPING PREJUDICE PROJECT A lecture by Dr. Kirsten Delegard, historian at the University of Minnesota, is followed by a panel discussion on racially restrictive housing covenants. Panelists include Dr. Larry Cebula of EWU, Logan Camporeale from Spokane’s City Preservation Office and other community leaders. Feb. 22, 7 pm. Free. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/mwpac

THIRD GRADE POETRY SLAM Third graders from Stevens Elementary school participate in a “Be Brave” themed poetry slam with the help of SCC students. Feb. 22, 9 am-12:30 pm. Free. Spokane Community College, 1810 N. Greene St. scc.spokane.edu

JOHN PATRICK GREEN: AGENTS OF S.U.I.T. Join author John Patrick Green in celebrating the newest addition to the InvestiGators book series. Feb. 23, 6 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. spokanelibrary.org

PIVOT OPEN MIC STORYTELLING Put your name in a hat for a chance to tell a story in the theme of “9 to 5”. Stories should be less than 8 minutes and told without notes. Suggested donation of $10. Feb. 23, 6:30 pm. Central Library, 906 W. Main. pivotspokane.com n

ON SALE NOW

Saturday, June 17, 2023 | 8pm

“A perfect synthesis of crunchy guitars, sensitive lyrics, and loud/soft arrangements displaying the growth of this band from its 2017 debut – American Songwriter

“The S teel Woods are a potent – and teeth-rattling loud – force ” – Rolling Stone

Space Age High

NASA technology delivers efficiency, consistency for Spokane’s Redbird

BY WILL MAUPIN

The atmosphere of one of Spokane’s original cannabis grow operations, Redbird, feels much more like a scientific laboratory than a traditional cannabis farm. Giant containers line the hallways, connected with seemingly endless lengths of tube and pipe. Multicolored LEDs illuminate the grow rooms, projecting powerful light that is tough on the eyes but great for the plants. There’s also no soil, but unlike a hydroponic grow there’s not much water to be found either.

That’s because Redbird uses aeroponics. It’s a technology pioneered, studied and used by NASA for growing food in outer space, where time and resources are at a premium.

“That’s the great thing about aeroponics, you only spray a tiny bit of water. Other grows generally recirculate water, and you have to constantly monitor the water quality,” says Josh Ruhlman, Redbird’s chief operating

officer. “We can drain the waste, and we’re still using like 90 percent less water.”

Redbird’s aeroponic growing technique suspends the roots of cannabis plants in an air-filled container instead of in soil, water or another substrate. Piping systems inside the container deliver quick, controlled blasts of mist and nutrients every 200 to 300 seconds, directly to the roots. The growers are able to customize everything from the length and frequency of those blasts all the way down to the size of the water droplets that comprise them.

The result is a hyper-efficient and fast grow, which can produce a consistent product over and over again.

“It’s hard to explain to people that even small deviations result in the end product changing. For a consumer, it’s important that they have an expectation, when they’re

considering our stuff, that it’s the same every single time,” says Redbird CEO Chris Lane.

The difference between conventionally and aeroponically grown cannabis isn’t visible to the naked eye. But it’s made clear over time. Redbird’s automated systems limit the potential for human error. Every batch of Redbird’s Jungle Fruit, for example, is grown precisely the same way — one plant is never given more water or nutrients than another.

That level of consistency is important with any consumer product, but especially a mind-altering one like cannabis. Cannabis consumers want to know what they’re getting. That’s what Redbird aims to deliver right here in Spokane, even if they are using technology from outer space to do it. n

Redbird, one of Spokane’s original cannabis grow operations, has been working to dial in consistency with its products from day one.

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.

NOTE TO READERS

Be aware of the differences in the law between Idaho and Washington. It is illegal to possess, sell or transport cannabis in the State of Idaho. Possessing up to an ounce is a misdemeanor and can get you a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine; more than three ounces is a felony that can carry a fiveyear sentence and fine of up to $10,000. Transporting marijuana across state lines, like from Washington into Idaho, is a felony under federal law.

1. Teeming throng

6. Fargo’s state: Abbr.

10. Result of branching out?

14. Unfamiliar

15. East Indies tourist destination

16. “I feel pretty, ____ pretty” (“West Side Story” lyric)

17. Zed?

sirens

Trophy org.

PHONE:(509)444-7355

E-MAIL:BulletinBoard@Inlander.com

INPERSON: 1227WestSummitParkway Spokane,WA 99201

41. It might get under your skin

42. “____ the Spider” (classic African folk tale)

43. Watering holes in deserts

45. They’re heard in herds

46. Stop patronizing

50. “Let’s ... never do that”

53. Gabrielle of “Being Mary Jane”

54. “Hamilton” won one in 2015

55. 401(k) kin

58. Treats with a cold pack

59. Nelson?

62. ____ classic

63. Hammock support

64. 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner

65. Converse alternative

66. “Race Matters” writer Cornel

67. 1865 and 1945, e.g.

DOWN

1. Kathryn of “WandaVision”

2. Singing snowman in Disney’s “Frozen”

3. Small stream

4. 100%, in slang

5. Britannica, for one: Abbr.

6. Award won twice by Giannis Antetokounmpo

7. Häagen-____

8. Pub pick

9. Josh

10. Spa handout

11. Fisherman’s spot

12. Three-word question from Judas

13. Mideast’s ____ Heights

18. Tell (on)

22. When repeated, name in 1968

news

23. Wispy clouds

24. Picard’s counselor

25. Health insurance giant

26. Website help sections

27. Sleepyhead’s response

28. Young horse

30. Emmy winner Woodard

32. When some do lunch

33. Unleash upon

35. Hertz competitor

36. What a GOP member might call their pro-immigrant, pro-choice colleague, for short

37. “This

Play where the big winners play.

Earn a Hoodie!

IN FEBRUARY | WHILE SUPPLIES LAST

It’s our 30TH Anniversary year! Starting on February 1ST, earn 4,500 points with your Coeur Rewards card and receive a 30TH Anniversary Edition hoodie. Redeem the offer at any kiosk, then visit the Coeur Rewards booth during booth hours to get your hoodie!

Limit one redemption per Coeur Rewards member. Offer is available in February 2023, while supplies last.

Elvis Tribute Artist Contest & Show

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 TH | 7 PM | $30 & UP

This Elvis inspired event will showcase several of the leading Elvis tribute artists in the nation as they compete for prizes and top honors at Coeur d’Alene Casino’s first “I Heart Elvis” tribute artist contest! Event judges will include those that knew the real Elvis. Topping off the night will be a special performance by the award-winning Elvis tribute artist Rob Ely.

Must be age 18 or older to attend concerts. Purchase tickets at cdacasino.com, the Casino Box Office, or through the CDA Casino App. Call 1 800-523-2464 for more details.

Frank’s Omelet Bar

SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS

8 AM – 12 PM | $16.99 PER PERSON

Enjoy Frank’s made-to-order eggs or omelets with sides of bacon, sausage, potato patties, eggs Benedict, biscuits & gravy, fruit and assorted pastries. Includes your choice of coffee, juice, milk or a soft drink.

TIM ‘E’ HENDRY JIMMY HOLMES MOSES SNOW MATT STONE BROOKE WRIGHT MICHAEL CHAMBLISS

TIM ‘E’ HENDRY JIMMY HOLMES MOSES SNOW MATT STONE BROOKE WRIGHT MICHAEL CHAMBLISS