Inlander 08/13/2020

DEMOCRACY Why voting is a human right too often denied PAGE 6

MUSIC

Taylor Swift and Beyoncé reach greater heights PAGE 30

AUGUST 13-19, 2020 | FREE

The impossible choice facing local schools PAGE

12

HARD

KNOCKS

BY WILSON CRISCIONE

#AwesomeTogether

One of the many things that make the Inland Northwest great is our sense of community and support for each other. Times might be challenging right now, but we know we’ll get through this together.

Visit watrust.com/CaresAct for updates and helpful tips on how to stay safe and keep your money moving forward.

2 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

INSIDE VOL. 27, NO. 44 | COVER DESIGN: DEREK HARRISON

COMMENT 5 NEWS 8 COVER STORY 12

CULTURE 24 FILM 28 MUSIC 30

EVENTS 32 I SAW YOU 33 GREEN ZONE 34

EDITOR’S NOTE

WE ARE OPEN

P

eople certainly have their opinions on whether or not to teach kids IN-PERSON AT SCHOOL, but the fact is it’s not a simple yes-or-no question. Yes, in an ideal world — one without COVID — we know that schools have been most effective when kids physically attend class.

At the same time, schools have had to innovate in ways, especially with technology, that actually could outlast the pandemic.

“I think we’ll look at this moment decades from now and we’ll see this as a turning point in public education,” Adam Swinyard, the superintendent of Spokane Public Schools, tells us. His district is starting the fall with distance learning; other local districts, including Mead and Coeur d’Alene, have different ideas. Read all about it in staff writer Wilson Criscione’s in-depth report on page 12.

Also this week: We examine a #MeToo reckoning that has rattled downtown Spokane’s nightlife and music scene (page 8).

— JACOB H. FRIES, Editor

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CHEESEHEADS, REJOICE PAGE 26

STILL GOING BOLDLY PAGE 27

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FRESH THIS WEEK PAGE 20

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COMMENT STAFF DIRECTORY PHONE: 509-325-0634 Ted S. McGregor Jr. (tedm@inlander.com)

SHOULD OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS REOPEN DURING THE PANDEMIC?

PUBLISHER

J. Jeremy McGregor (x224) GENERAL MANAGER

EDITORIAL Jacob H. Fries (x261) EDITOR

Dan Nailen (x239)

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Wilson Criscione (x282), Daniel Walters (x263), Samantha Wohlfeil (x234) STAFF WRITERS

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Normally, we ask our question of the week of people we randomly encounter on the street. But with the coronavirus pandemic, we instead asked our followers on social media to share their thoughts.

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TORI BAILEY: No. Kids do catch it and while they usually have mild symptoms, studies are showing that they are actually better at spreading the virus to others. Those who have worked in schools already knew they were little germ machines! So they may not get that sick but what about the school employees, family members, community members?

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SHANE MABREY: Yes. If the guidelines are followed from the state.

Schools going against them should be willing to pay hazard pay and have a plan for emergency medical leave.

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JENNIFER PAVLIC: If we don’t do inperson instruction, then we need to seriously start thinking about taking care of children’s mental health...

I know that mine are suffering...

Zoom and internet meetings are not a replacement for seeing your friends... Friend interaction is just as important to the health of children.

ppgwni.org 1-866-904-7721

GENE BRAKE: Absolutely not. When the CDC says we should expect to see up to 30,000 deaths in the next three weeks, it’s not logical to consider in-person school. Opening schools to in-person instruction will cause our cases to soar and thousands of lives are in jeopardy as a result.

ANN FRANKOS: I say parents get paid to teach at home… Also, we shouldn’t have to fork over taxes for schools and teachers who wish not to open... for too many years schools have turned into liberal dumpsters and I’m sick and tired of paying for it!

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NICOLE BISHOP: Obviously it’s not ideal to have students learning from home, but the cost of that doesn’t compare to the mass toll of human lives that will be lost by confining students into a large-scale version of a petri dish.

DAVID SEESHOLTZ: Tough choice but I say remote with as many kids as possible and in-person for those that can’t. I think we all need to work together. If you have the ability to have your kids home, do it. That way we have as little amount of students in school as possible. n

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Democracy is a Human Right

CALEB WALSH ILLUSTRATION

Why I am a one-issue voter

BY JOHN T. REUTER

A

merica is an unusual nation — occasionally an exceptional one, but always unusual — in that it is defined not by a common ethnicity, history or language, but by an idea.

America’s original claim to independence is based on a singular moral truth: The right of all people to self-govern. It’s an argument boldly stated in the Declaration of Independence that tragically was poorly realized in the first draft of our Constitution.

But that simple moral truth has propelled those who fight to fulfill America’s founding pledge. Generations of suffragettes and freedom fighters have struggled for over two centuries to make the reality of America match its broken promise.

As suggested by President Barack Obama in his eulogy of congressman and legendary voting

rights advocate John Lewis, these Americans ought to be remembered as the founders of “a fuller, fairer, better America.” Indeed, America’s founding will not be complete until universal suffrage is achieved.

That voting is a basic right — one that should not be denied based on gender or race — is an understanding Americans now overwhelmingly hold in principle, but frequently our politicians fail to implement in practice.

Few politicians, of course, would dare to directly acknowledge that they want to block people from voting. They devise new and clever ways to disenfranchise folks: creating hours-

long lines at polling places, placing barriers to voter registration, removing folks from the voting rolls, and permanently blocking felons from voting, even long after they’ve served their sentences and made restitution.

Even the debate over the immigration and citizenship statuses of Dreamers is primarily really about whether they should be allowed to vote. Few suggest they should be sent to countries they may not even remember, but many more will suggest they should live permanently in the United States without a voice in our democratic processes.

Politicians arguing for these policies have lots of explanations, but their true motivation is transparent: They don’t want people to vote who might vote against them. Sure, over the decades and centuries, they’ve advanced racism and sexism to limit who votes — but those are merely evil tactics in the pursuit of a larger goal.

We spend a lot of time today debating whether particular public figures — including a certain president — are prejudiced. We ponder: “Do they hold acute animosity against particular racial groups?” I think this misses the more important point: That many are fighting for racist policies.

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Politicians have lots of explanations, but their true motivation is transparent: They don’t want people to vote who might vote against them.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the battle over voting rights. The arguments to create blockades to voting are almost always flimsy and occasionally politicians have revealed their intent by saying the “quiet part” out loud, acknowledging that they want to pass a law, conduct the census in a certain way, or redistrict specifically to increase their political power.

This was what happened in a recent Supreme Court case, where it was discovered that a Republican operative had devised a question specifically to undercount immigrants and to strengthen Republicans in redistricting. The court, appropriately, ordered the question removed.

Sadly, the Supreme Court has throughout our history failed as often as all our nation’s other institutions to consistently protect the right to vote. Slavery may be America’s original sin, but the instrument of its preservation and its continued impacts have long been linked to ensuring especially the disenfranchisement of Black Americans.

It was done by ensuring neither enslaved nor freed Black Americans could vote, by implementing poll taxes and so-called “literacy” test, by armed intimidation and political hangings. And make no mistake, the voter intimidation and suppression tactics used today are direct descendants of those same oppressions with the same intentions behind them.

The impact is elected representation that is hardly representative. It is a subversion of democracy that undermines the very legitimacy of our democratic republic. It leads to racist laws and policies out of touch with a true majority of America’s people.

I might be willing to assume, beyond reason, good intent behind the flawed policies that prolong racist impacts if the politicians advancing them didn’t so fervently advocate simultaneously to suppress the vote of those objecting. But really, their intention doesn’t matter. The impact does.

This is why this November I have become a one-issue voter. I will vote for the America that’s long been imagined but has yet to be achieved. I will vote for voting. I will vote for democracy.

There is nothing more important or more fundamentally American. It is at the very core of our collective potential for greatness. Democracy is a human right and it is time for us to finally not just honor it, but implement it. n John T. Reuter, a former Sandpoint City Councilman, has been active in protecting the environment, expanding LGBT rights and Idaho’s Republican Party politics.

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

THE LAST STRAW

After a deluge of Spokane women call out alleged rapists and sexual abusers on social media, what comes next?

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL AND NATHAN WEINBENDER

8 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

FROM LEFT: Maddison Fernandez, Alexis Taylor and Catherine McCully are speaking out about the prevalence of rape and violence in the community. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

publicly share their own stories of being raped, but a deluge of other women would speak out, too. Several more public posts appeared on Instagram and Facebook, shining a light on the dark behaviors of sometimes trusted and popular people in the downtown Spokane nightlife scene. They included accounts of rape, of coercion, of being drugged and assaulted. Some posted photos of bruises. In one screenshot, a man explicitly admitted to a friend that “I raped” someone, naming the woman he’d hurt.

Suddenly, it appeared Spokane was having its own massive #MeToo reckoning. A Facebook thread that listed all the allegations in one place grew longer and longer. People sometimes tagged the men’s employers, and in at least two instances, local businesses responded swiftly, offering public statements and firing those who were accused.

But there are limitations to a reckoning that largely exists on social media. The Facebook list compiling all the allegations was deleted while some other posts were hidden by women apparently afraid of being targeted or sued. None of the men have been charged in connection with the accusations. Indeed, until the Inlander asked Spokane Police, a department spokesman said he hadn’t heard anything about it.

That particular limitation is not new. Many women don’t feel comfortable going to the police or through the criminal justice system. Even when they do, the reality is that victims rarely see a conviction: Only 230 of 1,000 rapes are ever reported to police, and of those, only five cases will typically end in felony convictions, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) and statistics from the FBI. As a result, many women decide not to recount their trauma repeatedly in a legal process that can take years and instead try to warn other women by posting on social media. Collectively, these messages call for action: Look out for these people who’ve hurt us. Believe us.

In her post, Taylor asked for her friends to recognize that they maybe even saw her being emotionally abused afterward and did nothing, choosing to associate with the person who hurt her.

“I need you to show that you stand with those who have experienced sexual assault,” Taylor writes. “Maybe sit with that discomfort for a bit and think about why you haven’t worked on unlearning your ingrained misogyny.”

had sent to his friend Tyann Smith.

“I just wanted to say that even though you decided to stay my friend after I raped Alyse, I would never want or expect you to defend me or what I did,” Cate wrote, going on to say he’s sad to think Smith “could be associated with me and my wrong actions.”

Cate, 29, tells the Inlander that he wrote the message to Smith after seeing allegations against someone they both know. At first, he claims he wanted to acknowledge the burden he’d put on her by previously sharing that he’d hurt a woman, especially now that it appeared multiple men she knew had been harmful. But he also admits it was a “self-serving” and “manipulative” message looking for reassurance she’d remain his friend.

He also thought he might be named soon.

“After I saw this other person being outed, I thought to myself, ‘This could absolutely happen to me, too.

Maybe these women will do the same,’” Cate tells the Inlander. “A couple days later, they did.”

Smith, 28, says she hadn’t actually initiated conversations with Cate since he’d told her about harming a woman two years ago.

Knowing who that was now, Smith sent a screenshot of Cate’s message to Alyse Pugh. With that message in hand, Pugh says she finally felt comfortable sharing her story.

“It’s this big wake-up call about drinking culture, about nightlife, about predatory behavior and misogyny. It’s been incredibly disturbing.”

I A

lexis Taylor finally had enough. The lengthy Instagram post the 23-year-old made that Thursday in late June was something she’d written out many times: the story of how a former friend raped her after asking for a ride home when he was drunk in downtown Spokane. Afterward, he’d promised to change his behavior, but after learning he’d hurt someone else, Taylor was ready to make her story public.

“Here I am, after giving my abuser two chances that they didn’t deserve, outing them publicly,” her post reads in part. “I regret every single time I have tried to help you after this. You don’t deserve my kindness. Go to therapy, and f--- off.”

Taylor’s post would not only inspire close friends to

n one of the first public responses from a business in late June, Lucky You Lounge publicly called out sound technician Jackson Cate. Karli Ingersoll, co-owner of the Browne’s Addition music venue and restaurant, knew she had to be specific in her statement, especially since Cate was a longtime employee and her former bandmate.

“One in five women will be victims of sexual assault.

It follows that when a woman takes the massive risk to publicly acknowledge an assault, we must believe her,” the Lucky You post reads. “It also follows that the perpetrators of these horrible actions are likely people we know.”

Lucky You management was made aware, the post states, that Cate was one of those alleged perpetrators.

They fired him and pledged to make their venue safer.

“It’s this big wake-up call about drinking culture, about nightlife, about predatory behavior and misogyny,” Ingersoll tells the Inlander. “It’s been incredibly disturbing, to be honest.”

As posts were widely shared across social media, many saw a screenshot of an Instagram message Cate

Now living in California, Pugh, 25, says Cate was an acquaintance when they were drinking at Garageland in 2018 and she got incredibly drunk. Multiple friends noted that the 97-pound woman was highly intoxicated, Pugh recalls, and they told Cate to make sure she got home to her apartment a block away. Instead, Pugh says she woke up in the middle of the night at Cate’s house to him raping her.

“I came to and Jackson was having sex with me, and I was like, ‘What is happening, why is this occurring?’”

Pugh says. “I had come to for probably, like, three seconds, and I blacked back out.”

Another woman, Maddison Fernandez, 24, shares a similar story, noting that she felt pressured into sex with Cate when she was highly intoxicated a few years ago and he drove her to his house instead of giving her a ride home. Another time, when she says they were both sober, Fernandez says he pushed her onto his bed, kissed her, and held his belt against her neck until she started sobbing.

“I didn’t want to be kissing him and certainly didn’t want his belt against my throat,” Fernandez recalls. “I cried for a long time, and he cried and was like, ‘I just need physical affection. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to get it.’”

After Pugh and Fernandez’ stories were posted publicly, Smith says she realized how similar they were to her own experience on a drunken night five years ago.

As a friend, she’d gone to Cate’s apartment after a party to listen to records, and recalls that he was going to take her home since he was sober enough. She woke up naked in his apartment, confused, and says that during therapy, she had a flashback of waking up to Cate having sex with her. After receiving his message this June, Smith told Cate he raped her, and he didn’t respond.

Fernandez says several other women with similar experiences with Cate came forward to her via Instagram ...continued on next page

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 9

NEWS | SOCIAL JUSTICE “THE LAST STRAW,” CONTINUED... after her post.

Cate acknowledges to the Inlander that his actions with multiple women have been wrong, emphasizing the lack of affirmative consent when someone is drunk.

“What I remember happening [is] very different than the stories that were posted on Instagram,” Cate says.

“It’s been important for me to understand that sex often involved alcohol, often involved being drunk, and that was normal to me, and that was wrong that that was normal to me.”

He now says he felt the women had initiated or wanted to have sex with him and he doesn’t think he raped them, disputing that anyone was ever asleep or passed out. But he also says he wasn’t considering their ability to make decisions while impaired.

“I absolutely believe that I was in the wrong,” Cate says.

He says he’s been to therapy, and has been reading about rape culture and trying to hold himself accountable since what happened with Pugh two years ago. That includes referring to what happened in Pugh’s words.

“There’s a part of me that absolutely believes [Pugh], and holds her experience as valid,” Cate says. “And there’s also part of me, naturally, that believes me and what I remember experiencing. And that’s complicated.”

For Pugh, who says she’d been violently assaulted before by another man, it was initially hard to recognize what had happened with Cate as “rape.” Even though she was uneasy about what happened, when Cate gave her a ride home the next morning, she texted to thank him for being a gentleman. That’s partly why Cate says he was confused, too.

But as Pugh realized just how broken her memories were from the night, she soon confronted Cate. He told her she kissed him, Pugh recalls, and that maybe he chose to see what he wanted to see, because he “hadn’t felt wanted in such a long time.”

“I was like, ‘He definitely had nonconsensual sex with me,’” she says. “But I wasn’t wanting to call it what it was, because that word is such a heavy, powerful word, and I felt like I was taking away from my previous experience by calling that ‘rape.’”

Traumatic experiences can actually alter the brain: It’s not uncommon for victims to struggle with recall or framing what took place for a while, victim advocates say.

For Pugh, talking through what happened hardened her resolve, and in the end she told Cate it was rape.

After moving to California, she also underwent eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which is often used for people with severe posttraumatic stress disorder. Pugh says the therapy helped her reduce her panic attacks from her previous assault

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10 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

and stop feeling like she was walking through life outside of her own body.

F

or victims or survivors of sex crimes, one of the most important things can be gaining back a sense of power and control over their own decisions and bodies, explains Kristina Poffenroth, a Washington certified sexual assault and crime victim advocate who works with Lutheran Community Services Northwest.

Lutheran provides free and confidential services to victims, including a sexual assault hotline (624-7273), which is answered by volunteers and victim advocates who can help people struggling after an assault, whether that happened 30 years ago or an hour Alyse Pugh, 25, has struggled to come ago, Poffenroth to grips with what happened to her. says. She’s also helped develop a bystander intervention course that local bars can request for their staff.

Advocates can connect victims with counseling, go with someone to the hospital to have a rape kit taken, and/or be there the entire way through the legal system if that’s the route someone chooses. In the case of choosing to post a story publicly, Poffenroth says she might ask the victims what response they hope to get, and what their plan is if that response is negative.

“I think the thing that drives people to maybe share publicly rather than talking to law enforcement — what many survivors say that they want is they want the perpetrator to be held accountable, they want for people to believe them, they want to feel validated, and they don’t want it to happen again,” Poffenroth says.

“And sometimes when you do report to law enforcement, none of those things happen.”

Before posting publicly, Taylor spent hours talking with her friend Catherine McCully about trauma.

McCully, 24, was also raped by someone she was close with, and the two women had talked about the pros and cons of publicly naming their abusers for a year or more.

What might that accomplish? What could they expect from those who’d hurt them? From their social circles?

Taylor got a semblance of an apology from her rapist last fall, and she suggested several steps for him to take to redeem himself: Go to therapy, stop drinking, read about gender and rape. Do better.

He promised he would change. But just days before she decided to go public this summer, Taylor heard from another person who claims he had since raped them, too.

Then, she learned there are others who’ve been hurt.

“It was the final straw. He was telling me he was working on getting better, reading books I recommended, he said he’d get therapy and stop drinking,” Taylor says.

“But he didn’t do any of that.”

Taylor posts snippets of conversations with the man and asks everyone reading the post to stop associating with or protecting known abusers.

Soon after Taylor’s post goes up, McCully posts about her own experience.

“I’ve been angry for a long time and I’ve been angry about a lot of people who’ve quietly known about the rape culture in Spokane but have never been supportive,” McCully tells the Inlander. “So I decided that I’m no longer gonna stay silent. I’m gonna come forward.”

Her post similarly calls for community action.

“I don’t want sympathy, apologies, or your pity. I want your anger,” McCully’s post reads. “You SHOULD be angry there are people in our community who’ve assaulted and coerced multiple acquaintances of yours.”

Even as the women who came forward say they were mostly pleased with the public and professional response, they also note that going this route wasn’t just about socalled “cancel culture.”

“What many survivors say that they want is they want the perpetrator to be held accountable, they want for people to believe them, they want to feel validated.”

“For Spokane, I want more,” McCully says. “I hope to make a space for more victims to feel comfortable expressing their experiences, and know there’s a community of other victims to support them.”

McCully says people have asked why she and others didn’t go to the police, but at least in her own case, she feels the justice system would not offer a path to redemption.

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“It’s also not a victim’s job to go through the grueling process of reliving their trauma over and over again just to get a semblance of justice,” McCully says. “I can’t speak for everyone who’s come forward and say that nobody was trying to cancel somebody or completely isolate them from support, but for me, the goal is to hold them accountable, offer redemption and the ability to grow as a person.”

F

or the handful of women who shared their stories with the Inlander, the overwhelmingly positive community feedback was a welcome surprise, and getting a real response from businesses was meaningful.

Lucky You Lounge, Red Room Lounge, Garageland and the defunct all-ages venue the Bartlett all publicly posted on their social media accounts about firing or no longer serving people whose names appeared on the list.

They emphasized the importance of believing people who share their stories of abuse, and of creating a safe space in their establishments.

They specified the next actions that would be taken, and as of publication, more than a month after the posts went up, they were still public on the businesses’ social media pages.

After seeing the screenshot from Cate, Lucky You owner Ingersoll says she felt she had to say something publicly.

“He implicated himself in a way that made me feel like it was important for me to protect my entire staff from just posting something vague, and to just acknowledge what was going on and to stand for the people who were coming forward,” Ingersoll says.

Garageland owner Shawn Heale posted his thoughts on his personal Facebook page, noting he fired two employees over the allegations and would no longer allow others on the list into his bar.

“We as businesses need to start being responsible about this and making sure it doesn’t happen,” Heale tells the Inlander. “There’s a certain culpability that comes to owning a business, that you are responsible for the bad things that happen to your patrons because of your business. If you don’t stand up against that and try to change everything so that that doesn’t happen anymore, then you’re just perpetuating the problem.”

Both Ingersoll and Heale say the responses to their respective posts were overwhelmingly supportive, and both received messages from more people who wanted to tell their own stories of abuse and harassment within the local nightlife scene. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was also some backlash, both from commenters who didn’t think their statements were straightforward enough, and from people skeptical that either business could have been so unaware of the alleged misconduct of their employees and regulars.

Lucky You Lounge owners Karli and Caleb Ingersoll. They previously operated the now-defunct Bartlett venue. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO “People were saying, ‘Well, you had to have known,’” Ingersoll says. “There have been things that have come to light that my other employees knew that I did not know.

And they thought I knew. … It just makes me realize how much we accept as fine in drinking culture. I mean, some of the stories that I’ve been told, I’m like, ‘God, if I would have known.’”

Heale also says a lot of the allegations came as a shock, as he thought Garageland had been keeping tabs on so-called creepy behavior and doing a satisfactory job making sure its patrons were safe.

“And then when I started hearing all of this,” he says, “I realized that we very much were not, and there was a lot of work to be done in that regard.”

Garageland is currently closed after one of its employees tested positive for COVID-19, so Heale says he’s still planning out the next course of action. But it likely will include extra security inside the bar on busy nights, and as an over-service precaution, Heale says he may discontinue the bar’s signature cocktails served in hefty, 32-ounce Mason jars.

“I think taking accountability is the biggest first step,” Heale says. “We can do everything that we can to keep people safe. But these people need to not have the status that they have to keep getting away with doing awful things to other people.”

Lucky You Lounge is open for food service, but its performance stages have been vacant since March. Ingersoll admits there might be a silver lining to this sort of reckoning occurring mid-pandemic, because precautions can be put firmly in place long before live music revs up again.

They have already built a partition separating Lucky You’s stage area from the restaurant, which allows staff to better monitor both spaces individually. Employees are currently undergoing sexual violence training with Lutheran Community Services, and anonymous communication channels will be set up so that folks can report serious concerns about any misconduct that might be occurring at the venue. Ingersoll says they’re also installing security cameras and purchasing test strips that can determine if a drink has been drugged.

Lucky You will also likely push last call for drinks earlier, hopefully discouraging people from showing up at the end of the night after drinking elsewhere, when it may be hard to know how much they’ve already had.

“Those hours of the night typically are not great times for people,” Ingersoll says. “We’re just trying to stack up those things that prevent this from being a place where you can get super f---ed up. We just don’t want that. That culture is just really problematic, and I think it’s actually really dangerous.” n

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12 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

TRICK

QUESTION

The impossible choice facing local schools deciding whether to open their doors

T

BY WILSON CRISCIONE he question has no right answer. The test is rigged. If Julie Ancona-Shepard

sends her son to school this fall, she risks him carrying home a virus that’s already killed more than 150,000 Americans. If she keeps him home, he’ll fall further behind and may never catch up.

Ancona-Shepard takes COVID-19 seriously. She’s hardly left the house for five months, and she follows all the rules that public health officials hope can slow the pandemic. But her son is 7 years old, legally blind and on the autism spectrum. A face on a computer screen can’t teach him. Since his school, Woodridge Elementary, closed its building in the spring, Ancona-Shepard’s noticed regression in her son’s speech and social behavior — uncharacteristic outbursts of anger because he’s frustrated that he’s stuck at home and can’t go back to school.

While Spokane Public Schools announced last week that it would start school online, Ancona-Shepard’s son may be part of a small group of students with disabilities

able to go back.

Is it worth the risk?

“It’s not an easy decision for me,” Ancona-Shepard says. “But if I don’t do anything for him, he’s going to lose a year of education being in a virtual setting.”

Because of America’s failed efforts to contain SARSCoV-2 — the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 disease — parents, educators and state governments are left with an impossible choice. Opening school for in-person instruction could fuel outbreaks, sicken educators and ravage communities with preventable death.

Yet, the consequences of not opening school buildings remain grim, education and health experts say. Children may experience worsening behavioral health and will likely fall behind in school. Parents will have to stay home from work to help their kids, unable to find child care. And research suggests continued distance learning will accentuate the inequalities in education already hindering students who come from low-income families, who are Black, Hispanic or Native, or who have disabilities.

Without strong federal guidance, the difficult decision

is left to states and local school districts. In Washington, the largest school systems in Seattle and Spokane chose to start the school year online before Gov. Jay Inslee encouraged other schools to follow suit. Coeur d’Alene Public Schools, meanwhile, plans to open school buildings even as the area’s case counts per capita have leapfrogged Spokane’s just across the border. Idaho Gov. Brad Little, like President Trump, has pushed schools to open for in-person instruction.

Both options threaten to punish the most vulnerable.

THE DANGER OF DISTANCE LEARNING

In June, when COVID-19 cases in Washington and Idaho seemed manageable for public health officials, states urged schools to plan on opening buildings in the fall with proper safety measures.

“I think today is a moment of hope,” said Chris Reykdal, Washington’s superintendent of public instruction, as he released a framework for schools to open in the fall. ...continued on next page

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 13

EDUCATION

“TRICK QUESTION,” CONTINUED...

Washington schools prepared plans for two scenarios: One in which opening in-person was possible, and one where it was not. As summer came, however, cases in both Idaho and Washington ballooned. The day Reykdal made his announcement, June 11, Spokane County had 791 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Then, Spokane County added quadruple that amount over the span of roughly six weeks. By Aug. 3, Spokane Public Schools announced it would begin the school year remotely, following guidance of health officials. Neighboring Central Valley School District announced similar plans the same day.

But even if distance learning is better than it was in the spring, can it replace in-person instruction?

Experts doubt it.

“It’s absolutely not comparable. Not at all. Especially for those children who don’t come from a place of privilege,” says Tara Haskins, education department chair at Eastern Washington University. “I wonder what the long-term effects from this will be.”

14 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

Her guess: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The gap between those who have resources and those who don’t widens. Racial disparities in student achievement worsen.

tion, and the menu of digital platforms led to an inconsistent delivery of online learning that confused families.

Many students didn’t engage in online learning at all, and it took valiant efforts from counselors to even find some students who became otherwise invisible outside of the school building.

The entire experience was defined by inconsistency. For each school district that could provide laptops to all students, another could not. For each teacher who diligently checked in on students, another did not. For each parent able to help kids with school work, another could not.

“We certainly saw some kids whose learning losses were minimal,” says Kate Orozco, assistant superintendent of elementary education and instruction for Coeur d’Alene Public Schools. “And then we saw many, many other children whose entire lives were disrupted by the pandemic.”

“We certainly saw some kids whose learning losses were minimal. And then we saw many, many other children whose entire lives were disrupted.”

Distance learning in the spring was largely a fiasco.

In March, teachers said goodbye to their students not knowing how long the school shutdown would last. They weren’t equipped to transition quickly into online educa-

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Julie Ancona-Shepard and her 7-year-old son Demetri wish in-person school was possible. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO Some research suggests that the learning lost in spring already might cause long-term damage. Following a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, one study found that children who missed three months of school were a year and a half behind in their learning, compared to where they should normally have been. Modelers with the Research on Improving Systems of Education Programme (RISE) predict similar losses from the spring COVID-19 shutdown.

School districts hope distance learning in the fall won’t be as chaotic as in the spring. In Spokane Public Schools, it will be a “real-time” school day, with a school start and dismissal time. Classes will all use one uniform digital platform, Microsoft Teams. Lanya McKittrick, a research analyst at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, says she’s encouraged when she sees school districts, not just in Spokane but in larger systems like Sacramento City Unified School District, release similar plans that spell out what the day will look like, how attendance will be taken, what the family’s role will be. ...continued on next page

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EDUCATION “TRICK QUESTION,” CONTINUED...

“That feels different than what was happening in the spring,” McKittrick says.

But even the most organized online programs can’t replace in-person instruction, research suggests. In 2015, Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes concluded that academic benefits from online schools are “currently the exception rather than the rule,” with one of the authors at the time saying that the gains online students saw in math were so minimal that it was “literally as though the student did not go to school for the entire year.” In both Idaho and Washington, online schools drag down graduation rates. Some of this can be explained by the fact that online schools tend to enroll students who were struggling in traditional settings in the first place, but there’s little evidence that online programs are more effective as remediation. In a 2015 study, students who failed an algebra course still did better in an in-person credit-recovery program than an online one.

How much of the daily schedule will rely on the help of parents who may not have the ability to do so? How do you manage a class of first graders virtually, and what happens when one simply walks away from the computer? What if students don’t have an internet connection strong enough for a video call?

Starting in a remote learning environment — which many Spokane teachers still support — means these questions may be unanswerable.

“There’s no great solution,” Shay says. “There isn’t this mystery solution sitting out there that we haven’t thought of.”

The consequences of continued online learning go far beyond academics, however. School is not just a place where students can come and learn reading, math and science. It’s where they learn social skills, and it may be one of the few places where they feel safe and can rely on a meal. It also serves as child care for working parents.

The public health risks of opening school may be more immediate, but not having school has its own public health consequences.

“We know, for example, if you do not graduate from high school, your economic achievement is significantly impacted,” says Spokane health officer Bob Lutz. “And we know that individuals who have lower educational attainment have poor health outcomes — physical, mental and behavioral health outcomes.”

It’s a loop that perpetuates poverty and racial inequality. Students in low-income families — disproportionately students of color — are less likely to achieve

“There’s no great solution. There isn’t this mystery solution sitting out there that we haven’t thought of.”

Teachers in physical classrooms didn’t sign up to be online instructors. There can be a steep learning curve as they attempt to transition to full distance learning in the fall.

Jeremy Shay, president of the Spokane Education Association that represents local educators, says there are plenty of logistical questions still being worked out.

educational goals, which in turn makes them more likely to be low-income. An article in June published by the consultant firm McKinsey & Company found that lowincome, Black and Hispanic students will experience the most learning loss due to the pandemic, falling behind in academics by up to a year and likely leading to higher drop-out rates. The health and economic devastation of the pandemic causes trauma and stress for kids as well, and that only compounds students’ struggles.

Spokane Public Schools superintendent Adam Swinyard has repeated that he and the Spokane community are “grieving” over starting the school year online.

“I think it will be some time before we fully understand the impact of this experience for our students. We know when students aren’t engaged, when they don’t have the opportunity to meet essential learning standards that are going to prepare them for secondary experiences, there’s a detrimental impact on their trajectory,” Swinyard tells the Inlander. “We know this experience is going to, in many ways, exacerbate that.”

Brianna Rollins, a single working mom with two young children in Spokane, says online school in the spring already took a toll on her kids. She has little capacity to help them with school work, and she knows her kids might fall further behind in the fall.

“I can’t be a mom and be a cook and be a maid and be a teacher and be a worker,” she says.

But the alternative? For Rollins, that’s an even worse option. Remote learning is temporary. The consequences of getting COVID-19 may not be.

“I’d rather my kids were safe and healthy, and didn’t expose other families if they catch coronavirus,” Rollins says.

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16 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

THE DANGER OF IN-PERSON LEARNING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a staff writer covering education since 2016, Wilson Criscione’s work has unveiled how online schools in Washington can profit from student failure, how local schools disproportionately discipline students of color and students in special education, and how childhood trauma can impact student development. Reach him at 509-325-0634 ext. 282 or wilsonc@inlander.com.

On the same day Spokane Public Schools decided to scrap its plan to open in-person because of rising infection rates, Coeur d’Alene Public Schools, roughly 35 miles away, went the opposite direction. It would open school buildings for in-person classes, even as cases per capita rose faster than in Spokane.

“We know our community has very strong feelings about starting in-person, to whatever extent we can, and we support that,” says Orozco, the assistant superintendent. “Except never for at the expense of the safety of kids or adults. Never then.”

The problem is, there’s no clear direction on what’s a safe way to open schools.

“It’s a natural experiment,” Lutz says.

Other countries have opened schools, though typically the community spread at the time has been lower than in the U.S. When Israel reopened its schools, thinking it too had the virus under control, it saw infection rates explode. Without clear federal guidance — not counting President Trump encouraging school reopenings while falsely claiming children are “almost immune” to COVID-19 — the decision is left to state and local health officials, or schools themselves.

“You look at the guidance, and the CDC guidance is meaningless,” Lutz tells the Inlander. “It said, ‘Open up schools but be cautious.’ Well, thanks. Thanks. Every state is coming up with its own metrics, its own way of doing things. We’ve got 50 states doing 50 different things.”

If opening schools is indeed an experiment, Coeur d’Alene Public Schools looks ready to let it play out. Thinking infection rates would be down by the fall, the school district surveyed students, parents and staff, asking which safety measures they would support when school opens up. The survey never asked how parents felt about starting school remotely. CDA Schools spokesman Scott Maben says that question wasn’t asked because “when we were conceiving this, it didn’t seem like that was going to be a reality for us.”

The plan has four different risk levels that would dictate safety measures, from minimal risk, where buildings open with “social distancing as is practical” and no mask requirement, to critical risk, where buildings are closed. With help from Panhandle Health District, Coeur d’Alene Public Schools determined it was in the “moderate” risk category, which meant buildings would be open and masks would be required.

Lutz questions what “moderate” risk means, noting Kootenai County’s incidence rates, or case counts per capita, were rising higher than Spokane’s. Indeed, the difference between risk categories in North Idaho appears open to interpretation. “Widespread” or “sustained” transmission would fall under the Panhandle Health’s moderate category, while “large-scale” transmission would fall under the highest risk category. But Panhandle Health wouldn’t share with the Inlander case counts, hospitalizations or any other metrics that would define what is “widespread” vs. “large-scale” transmission.

“It’s a very different dynamic when you cross 30 miles over the border,” Lutz says.

By contrast, Washington’s guidance has three different risk categories defined by case rates. Low-risk counties, for example, would have fewer than 25 new cases per 100,00 residents over two weeks.

Those counties — of which there are few currently — are encouraged to have a mix of in-person learning and distance learning. The state “strongly recommends” that high-risk counties, a category Spokane easily falls under, start with distance learning only.

Opening up with high infection rates, however, isn’t just an Idaho thing. Mead School District, just north of Spokane Public Schools, decided last week it would flout local and state health recommendations and open in-person instruction for grades K-5 and then have a rotating schedule for older students.

The science isn’t settled on how kids, especially young children, transmit COVID-19 compared to adults. Children account for a small proportion of cases across the country, and early indications ...continued on next page

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 17

EDUCATION “TRICK QUESTION,” CONTINUED... suggested they may not transmit the virus as easily.

More recent research, however, suggests the opposite. A study published weeks ago in JAMA Pediatrics found that children under the age of 5 carry just as much or more coronavirus in their noses and throats than older people, even if children don’t feel as sick. In an overnight camp in Georgia, hundreds of kids got infected, the CDC reported, suggesting that the virus can spread indiscriminately in congregated settings no matter the age of the group.

It’s unclear what would happen in a school setting with safety measures in place. But in recommending that schools start online, Lutz went back to what he knows: Social distancing works. It held back COVID-19 in the spring, allowing for hospitals to gather resources even if it didn’t eradicate the threat completely. Then when things opened up, the virus seized the chance to spread again.

Shay, the Spokane Education Association president, worries that schools in Mead and North Idaho will fuel the spread of the virus across the Inland Northwest. That would further delay any school building reopening plans.

“In making the decision to go to distance learning, what we’re really trying to do is prevent the spread — anything we can do to prevent the spread,” he says. “I think a lot of our work will be undone if other communities go in-person.”

Just as there are racial disparities in who will suffer without school, so too are their racial disparities in who’s most at risk in a COVID-19 outbreak. People of color account for a disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., and children are neither immune to the virus nor the disparate racial impacts. Research released by the CDC last week indicates that Hispanic children were hospitalized at a rate eight times higher than White children. Black children were hospitalized five times more often.

While children are typically spared the severe symptoms associated with COVID-19, there are teachers, administrators, custodial staff and other adults in school buildings who they might unintentionally infect. Plus, there’s the danger that kids bring the virus home.

Ancona-Shepard, the parent who wants her 7-year-old back in school, admits that’s a scenario that scares her.

As part of the district’s special education task force on reopening schools, Ancona-Shepard says she feels strongly that it’s too dangerous for schools to open for all students in-person right now.

“My kids get me sick all the time,” she says. “Schools are like petri dishes. There’s no way to have all kids there with nothing in place — that would just be nuts.”

By now, the consequences of a major outbreak are well established. We’ve already seen it: Preventable death, long-term health impacts for survivors, more school closures and economic collapse.

Lutz knows the decision to reopen schools isn’t solely about stopping the pandemic. If it was, he says it would be an “easy decision” to close schools. But it’s not. The decision must also consider the well-being of kids, families and the community, along with the lasting mental and physical health impacts. Lutz says it took a week of sleepless nights before he and the health district ultimately decided to recommend that school buildings stay closed.

“Public health weighs the weight of these decisions.

It’s not all about COVID-19. We definitely understand the big picture and the long view,” he says. “But we’re still in a pandemic. We have not exited the pandemic. And we have to ask for patience.”

THE OPPORTUNITY

The pandemic didn’t create the inequalities that currently

18 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

Spokane Public Schools’ new superintendent Adam Swinyard: “I think it will be some time before we fully understand the impact of this experience for our students.” exist in education, where students living in poverty — more often Hispanic, Native and Black students — face greater barriers to achieving school success than more affluent, typically White counterparts. It didn’t create the disparities in internet and computer access, the lack of resources for students with disabilities. Nor is the pandemic-driven school shutdown in spring responsible for the uneven delivery of online education.

These problems existed long before COVID-19, each one a steady current feeding into a sea of larger social, economic and health inequities.

“This has always been going on,” says Vanessa Anthony-Stevens, a University of Idaho assistant professor who researches diversity and equity in education.

“We know our system already contributes to vast inequities.”

Then the pandemic came in like a storm, flooding those currents and making them impossible to ignore.

Rarely have those inequities been this visible. Teachers, for instance, may know that the success of their students relies on more than what happens in the classroom.

But classrooms, Anthony-Stevens says, can perpetuate an illusion that teachers are delivering an equal education to everyone as long as they’re in a controlled environment, as if the physical space is the equalizer.

“It’s forcing teachers to recognize that our infrastructure is not decontextualized from larger social inequities,” Anthony-Stevens says.

That can present an opportunity. It’s the one glimmer of hope education researchers like her and school leaders cling to: If the pandemic wiped out the school system as we know it, maybe it can be rebuilt more equitably.

“I think we’ll look at this moment decades from now and we’ll see this as a turning point in public education,” says Swinyard, who took over as Spokane Public Schools superintendent this summer.

Whether they’re offering in-person instruction this fall or not, school systems had to develop new ways to deliver instruction. Out of necessity, school districts have engaged students in their homes “in ways we never imagined were possible,” says Orozco, with Coeur d’Alene Public Schools. Schools will be more mindful in developing relationships with parents, and more open-minded and flexible with students.

“We are learning some profound lessons about how to take an educational system that has been historically resistant to change, showing a mirror to ourselves and saying, ‘There are much better ways to serve our kids,’” Orozco says. “And we’re doing it.”

Schools can rethink education and match the funding and material resources to meet those needs, Anthony-Stevens says. They can reevaluate which students need to be at school, and which would benefit away from it, leveraging technology. Teachers can become more attentive to student needs away from home, understanding the family situations shaping a student’s perceptions. In her view, it’s a chance to move away from a standardized world and toward a model that provides more meaningful learning that students can use in their own world. She argues school districts should have more autonomy to support each individual student, and that a greater emphasis on providing access to technology and resources should only strengthen that effort.

“Online learning and diversifying delivery of information are good things. They offer more possibilities for a diverse society, to do it in ways that build on student strengths,” she says.

Distance learning probably shouldn’t be the default, but Swinyard, too, sees a greater role for it moving forward. He says it’s a trajectory moving away from “one size fits all.” Because of the shutdown, teachers have invested time in understanding how it can work effectively and that can be a “powerful asset when deployed correctly,” Swinyard says.

Those changes, however, represent the most optimistic view of how schools may change, Anthony-Stevens says.

“I think we’ll look at this moment decades from now and we’ll see this as a turning point in public education.”

The more realistic picture? That’s uglier.

It would go the opposite way: As state budgets reel from the pandemic, politicians defund public schools, stripping school districts of the needed infrastructure to address inequities. The economy crumbles, forcing more families into poverty. As children need more support, schools become less equipped to give it to them.

“Schools are going to open, and it is poor people who are going to suffer,” she says. “We already see that in every way across our society.”

The most crucial question, then, isn’t when kids will see school buildings again. It’s whether the system will turn a blind eye to these students once they do.

“We can’t meet the needs of this generation,” says Anthony-Stevens, “without seeing them.” n

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“In restaurants, every table, every seat counts for dollars toward your operating expenses,” says Erin Everhart of Longhorn Barbecue. And though Longhorn has had more than six decades in business to introduce takeout, catering and delivery services, “that all just got amped up, and how we were doing it got amped up,” she says. “So instead of family-style catering, we’re now doing individually packaged meals, especially for the businesses around the area.”

Longhorn is also finding strength and support in the wider community. That goes beyond the loyal patrons who’ve been ordering takeout or dining in. It also comes from the sense of unity among the West Plains restaurants.

“We’re comrades among competitors as far as the restaurants go,” Everhart laughs. “Everybody’s been banding together to talk to each other and figure out what everybody’s doing to help their business withstand what the future holds.”

For Broemmeling, seeing that unity during such uncertain times is encouraging. But then again, he’s always felt that the

ZAC SMITH AND ERIN EVERHART LONGHORN BBQ

Comrades, Not Competitors As the executive director of the West Plains Chamber of Commerce, Toby Broemmeling is used to advocating for the area and its local economy. He’s quick to note, for example, that the West Plains includes three “viable, dynamic, growing” downtown cores: Cheney, Medical Lake and Airway Heights.

The fallout from COVID-19 has only intensified his efforts.

The chamber’s scope includes everything from family-run businesses and small nonprofits up to large educational institutions and tribal organizations, and Broemmeling knows that none of them have gone unaffected.

“Since mid-March, we’ve been really focusing on serving all of our businesses in the community and providing resources and information,” he says. “We come to them and say, ‘What do you need right now?’ As PPP loans are starting to phase out, they’re starting to say, OK, at this point, we need customers.’ They need to start getting some revenue.”

West Plains restaurants, with their remarkably diverse mix of classic American fare and international cuisine, are no exception. Broemmeling says they adapted quickly to the changing conditions and public health mandates by offering takeout or expanding their patio-style dining.

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20 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

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West Plains is a special place.

“We’ve got great trails and a walkable downtown, so you can get outdoors and get some recreation, then grab something to eat while keeping things safe,” he says. “And a majority of our businesses are family-owned. You’ll be supporting local families that have a passion for their craft and are committed to giving you a great experience.” ◆ The Longhorn Barbecue is located at 7611 W. Sunset Hwy. and open daily. Online ordering is simple via thelonghornbbq.com. Their Spokane Valley location is set to reopen this month.

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BARRELHOUSE PUB & PIZZA

OSPREY RESTAURANT & BAR

PIZZA • CHENEY Few foods lend themselves to takeout and delivery like pizza, and that makes Barrelhouse an ideal choice if you’re still a little cautious about eating out. Their specialty pizzas come in 12- and 16-inch varieties, so you can get something like the Maui (Canadian bacon, pineapple, more bacon) or the Garden Goddess (spinach, artichoke, peppers, onions, mushrooms) all for yourself or for family-sized sharing. Along with traditional build-your-own-pizza options, you can stuff their homemade calzones with up to five fillings of your choice.

Don’t forget to order a side of barrel bites, covered in parmesan and garlic butter, for pre- or post-meal snacking. 122 College Ave. 235-4338. barrelhousepubandpizza.com

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DOWNTOWN SPOKANE When COVID-19 first hit, Osprey responded by setting up multiple meat smokers and filling the streets of downtown Spokane with the irresistible scent of its smoked barbecue.

The restaurant has since reopened its patio space, implemented single-use menus and set up guest hand-washing stations. Osprey’s new temporary menu includes Buffalo-style pork shanks, street tacos and baby-back ribs from their recently purchased top-tier smokers. You can pick up curbside barbecue every day as well as to-go six-packs, growlers and cocktail kits. Be sure to check (and share) their social media posts for up-to-date info. 700 N. Division St. 326-5577. ospreyspokane.com

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BREAKFAST & LUNCH • CHENEY Taking its name from its many variations on eggs Benedict, Bene’s is a one-stop shop for satisfying your breakfast and brunch cravings. They’re using QR-code ordering at each table and freshly sanitizing the tableware after every use.

For those who aren’t yet comfortable with eating in, you can easily order from the full menu online and choose car-side pickup. Pair your Country Benedict (poached eggs, biscuits and gravy) or Fireman’s Benedict (topped with Sriracha hollandaise sauce) with a fresh-squeezed orange juice mimosa to go. Gift card purchases and a plug or two on social media are greatly appreciated. 24 W. First St. 951-5207. benesamfix.com

THE FISCHIN’ HOLE SALOON

AMERICAN • MEDICAL LAKE If you’re planning on visiting Medical, Silver or Clear lakes, the Fischin’ Hole has your edibles covered — not to mention your 21+ beverages in sealed containers for takeout. Call ahead or simply stop by on your way out and choose from their classic menu of burgers, sandwiches and finger food.

Or better yet, get it delivered. From Friday to Sunday, they’ll actually bring their family-style lunch packages to a pickup point at Medical Lake. Even at a time when everyone’s tightening their belts, they’re still offering a 10 percent military discount and a Saturday night prime rib dinner special for $21. 114 E. Lake St. 299-6114. fischinhole.com

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN • AIRWAY HEIGHTS Specializing in wild-game offerings that are as unique as they are delectable, the Rusty Moose has gone all-out with its sanitization efforts. The restaurant was given a gorgeous remodel to make its dine-in experience safer and more comfortable at the same time. Bison and elk burgers are available from their takeout menu, as are cider-glazed salmon and house-smoked ribs. For a little help on your way to becoming a barbeque pro, try one of their take-home steak kits. It features a top-quality ribeye steak that’s been aged for 45 days in-house, cheddar mash, asparagus, the Rusty Moose’s signature beef rub and finishing butter. 9105 W. Highway 2.

747-5579. rustymoosespokane.com

wear a mask. be safe for all of us.

GRAB YOUR PIECE OF HISTORY Eastern Washington University is wrapping up the replacement of the iconic red athletic turf on Roos Field. Eagles fans who’ve purchased a square of the retired red turf will be able to pick it up curbside during the celebratory Red Turf Day event on Wednesday, Aug. 19, at the stadium. It will be a great opportunity to admire the newly refurbished “Inferno” and then stop in and support one of the local restaurants in Cheney to show your Eagle pride.

SCRATCH RESTAURANT & RAIN LOUNGE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DOWNTOWN SPOKANE Both Scratch Restaurant and its sister bar, Rain Lounge, are strictly adhering to the mandates set forth by the state. To treat yourself or someone special to their locally sourced, often organic fare at a nice discount, gift certificates are available online at 15 percent off. Throughout August, which is Washington Wine Month, the restaurant is running a weekly special of a specialty wine and a charcuterie board served in a convenient picnic basket to take with you. If you want to dine in but forgot your mask, don’t worry. They’ve got free disposable ones handy. 1005 W. First Ave. 590-3167. scratchspokane.com

WISCONSINBURGER

#KindnessNotCOVID

RÜT VEGAN • SOUTH HILL You don’t have to be a committed vegan to savor everything on the menu at Rüt. While their fresh spins on popular gastropub and comfort food dishes do happen to be free of meat as well as most major food allergens, they’re delicious above all. The restaurant’s brand-new summer menu features a barbecue chickpea salad as well as a watermelon poké bowl — although the Lava Brownie Sundae is a treat at any time of the year. Guests can pay over the phone and take advantage of contactless curbside pickup. Delivery options are also available through local service Treehouse. 901 W. 14th Ave. 824-0883. rutspokane.com

ABOUT Back to business • These weekly pages are part of a local marketing effort in support of the hospitality

sector brought to you by leading institutions and businesses to help promote the Spokane County economy, supported in part by Cares Act funding. With the goal of balancing commerce and public safety, you can follow along here in the Inlander, and via the links below, as local restaurants, shops and more share their stories and invite your support.

BURGERS • SOUTH HILL Wisconsinburger is still grinding locally sourced, premium Angus beef in-house for some of the most consistently toprated burgers in town. Although it’s removed 50 percent of its indoor seating to comply with CDC guidelines, it has two outdoor patios that are arranged for distance. Prefer to-go?

Fill a growler (you can even bring your own) or a take-home pint to accompany the burgers like the indulgent Gorgonzaga (gorgonzola, marinated mushrooms) or the understated Wisconsin (cheddar, caramelized onions). And don’t forget that you can show your love with swag like gift cards, glassware, T-shirts and hats. 916 S. ​Hatch St. 241-3083. wisconsinburger.com

Questions? Contact us at backtobusiness@inlander.com

more to come • Through the end of the year, watch

the Inlander for special Back To Business guides, along with special sections, sharing more recovery stories and community business features.

Safe business practice resources KindnessNotCovid.org • Financial resources for businesses InlandBizStrong.org

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 21

The Fox won’t be full for the foreseeable future. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

THE ROAD BACK

L O O K I N G OUTSIDE THE BOX Performing arts venues have been forced to slash budgets and furlough staff, but they’re aiming to emerge stronger in the end

BY E.J. IANNELLI

J

eff vom Saal has turned his basement into an underground command center. Now outfitted with a massive whiteboard full of brainstorming ideas, a repurposed filing cabinet and a printer he sourced on the cheap from Facebook Marketplace, the space has become the unofficial strategic headquarters for the Spokane Symphony and the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox in the age of social distancing.

As executive director of the symphony and the venue it calls home, vom Saal, like executive directors everywhere, has been engaged in nonstop damage control since COVID-19 restrictions first went into effect in mid-March.

By now, it’s an all-too-common story among performing arts organizations. At first, there was the hope that the initial limits on social gatherings were all just temporary. A few postponements and a little belt-tightening would suffice. It wasn’t the venue going dark so much as briefly dimming the lights.

But circumstances kept evolving. And with every

22 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

change in infection counts and public health guidance, vom Saal and his staff have had to respond in kind. That ultimately led to the symphony’s decision to create the only certainty they could. In late July, the entire 2020-21 season — its 75th anniversary, no less — was moved to next year.

“There have been some fits and starts where we thought that the late fall could be a time for activity, and then that sort of got pushed into the early spring. It’s hard to capture just what’s around the next corner. All of us have had to not just readjust but really recalibrate and reimagine,” he says, and that applies to the symphony and the theater alike.

“The organizational impact has been substantial,” vom Saal says. “Up until coronavirus hit, I was always very proud to say that we’ve really grown both the range and the number of concerts, shows and events that we would present at the Fox every year.”

Vom Saal estimates that those events numbered over 100 annually. Now they’re all on hold, which likewise

means that box office attendants, stage crew and frontof-house managers — roughly 150 for any given payroll cycle — are all currently on “standby” along with the symphony’s musicians. All that’s left is a “barebones skeleton staff of a few people working a very few hours per week.”

The organization did secure a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for $720,000 that will help pay the remaining staff through December. To help ease the budgetary strain a little further, both vom Saal and music director James Lowe forgave their salaries for three months. In July, their pay resumed at a “significantly reduced” rate. Their forgiven salaries are partly being used to pay for 100 percent of the musicians’ health insurance as opposed to the usual half.

The audience has played its part, too. Requests for season ticket refunds have been “pretty close to zero.” The Symphony Association also set up a musicians’ relief fund that has taken in roughly $110,000 in community donations, with $15,000 of that awarded to musicians so far. ...continued on page 24

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AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 23

CULTURE | THE ROAD BACK “LOOKING OUTSIDE THE BOX,” CONTINUED...

F

or a municipal corporation like the Public Facilities District (PFD), which manages the Spokane Arena and the First Interstate Center for the Arts, charitable funds and PPP loans have simply not been an option. That’s limited the PFD’s ability to soften the economic effects of COVID-19.

“As an organization, we did everything we could to keep everybody on and pay full time as long as possible.

Even when we had zero events in our buildings, THE ROAD BACK we had part-time staff counting chairs, doing The Inlander is checking in inventories of all of our on local businesses and how equipment,” says Matt they’re evolving in a world with Meyer, director of entercoronavirus. Follow along at tainment for the PFD. Inlander.com/recovery.

More than half of the immediate 55-person staff have since been furloughed, with another 15 reduced to part-time.

Meyer estimates the losses for the canceled or rebooked Spokane Arena and FICA shows to be $4.5 million so far. Given current trends, more are likely to be postponed, and the industry is starting to use the second or even the third quarter of 2021 as its new resumption point.

Echoing vom Saal, Meyer says that the most challenging aspect has been the lack of a stable foundation on which to plan.

“Last week, I had everything ready to go and started getting artists aligned to do an outdoor concert series over in Riverfront Park in the Lilac Bowl. Everything was going to be in line with what the restrictions were at the time,” he says. Two days after Meyer thought the event

The First Interstate Center for the Arts is pretty quiet these days. was finalized, the statewide restrictions changed.

In the meantime, he’s been holding onto another venue reopening proposal until daily infection counts begin to fall.

If there’s a silver lining to be found, it’s that the pandemic has encouraged organizations like the PFD to look beyond traditional silos to find new partners. Many of those partners are local, but some include sports teams and stadiums on the other side of the state.

“In my part of the industry, a lot of us are coming together and trying to work through it. There are these relationships we’ve built during these struggles. In the long run, the relationships are going to be what matters,” Meyer says. That has resulted in some “completely out-

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

side the box” ideas for safe, revenue-generating entertainment, but he’s reluctant to get too specific.

Back in his basement HQ, vom Saal refers to some of his own interim possibilities listed on his whiteboard — things like online streaming performances or small-group concerts — as well as the “pent-up hunger and desire” for live entertainment that he and Meyer are already seeing from both audiences and performers.

“We need authentic optimism, not blind optimism — really looking for the things we can control and that we can imagine together for the future,” says vom Saal.

“And there will be a day when we look back on this in the rearview mirror. There will be a point when we are extremely busy again.” n

Our journalism makes a difference, and so can you.

Learn more at Inlander.com/Insider

24 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

CULTURE | THE ROAD BACK

Virtual Reality

Spokane’s streets won’t fill for Hoopfest or Bloomsday this year, but you can still compete online.

Race Director Jon Neill. “For us to deviate from that schedule was a big deal.”

The act of simply rescheduling these events wasn’t easy to begin with, and it was just the tip of the logisticalnightmare iceberg. Like practically every other business in the country, Hoopfest and Bloomsday then had to navigate an unsettled world of guidelines, mandates and requirements.

“We spent so much time trying to understand the ever-changing landscape,” Santangelo says. “How could we be compliant in Phase 3? What does Phase 4 look like?”

Bloomsday officials spent the summer working towards what seemed like a feasible situation in Phase

BY WILL MAUPIN 4, even if it required distancing and masks, Neill says.

“Once we found ourselves where we are now, locked in or decades now, Bloomsday and Hoopfest have and spinning here in Phase 2, we knew that there would survived as outdoor events despite battling through need to be a new, alternate plan for us to be able to put everything from near-freezing temperatures to on our race.” triple-digit heat. Mother nature has tried but never sucFor both, the alternative plan wound up being ceeded in stopping these events from drawing tens of virtual events. Bloomsday went with a program allowing thousands of people into the heart of Spokane. participants to run any 7.46 mile course of their choosing Until this year, when it has become unsafe to draw during the weekend of Sept. 18. Hoopfest even just 10 people — let alone tens of partnered with athletic training app Homethousands — into close proximity.

ONLINE “We plan for weather, we plan There’s still time to participate Court to create a series of challenges and contests for participants to complete on their for if something bad were to happen,” and support Bloomsday and own over the weekend of Aug. 20. says Hoopfest Executive Director Hoopfest virtually. Visit their In the coming months, when the iconic Matt Santangelo. “We did not plan websites for more details. player and finisher shirts start popping up for a pandemic. That’s not in the on people around town, it may seem like 2020 wasn’t crisis management plan that we work from.” all that different than years past. In that way, Spokane is They wound up learning how to plan for a pandemic getting Hoopfest and Bloomsday, albeit a unique version on the fly. Initially, both organizations decided to postof each. But neither Spokane nor the organizations are pone their events until late summer, hoping things would getting the usual benefits. get better.

These massive community events are deeply tied to “This is our 44th race year, so we have 43 years many elements of our community, Neill says. “The prounder our belt of putting on one of the world’s premier cess of moving Bloomsday from the spring to the fall and road races every first Sunday of May,” says Bloomsday

When it comes to huge community events like Bloomsday and Hoopfest, there’s only so much they can do to adapt to a COVID-19 world

F

ERICK DOXEY PHOTO

coordinating that with city leadership, and along with our sponsors and the hospitality community, the convention center — really with the entire city infrastructure — was a humongous undertaking.”

Hoopfest alone brings in nearly $50 million to the local economy annually over the course of, essentially, just two days. This year, though, there won’t be hotels packed with visitors or snow cone vendors on every other street corner. There won’t even be as many people playing basketball.

When Hoopfest announced it was going virtual, players already registered were given the option for a refund.

Unsurprisingly, Santangelo says, most have gone that route. Not only will these events be unable to bring in as much money to the local economy as normal, they’re bringing in less for the organizations as well.

“It’s a funky business model,” Santangelo says. “At the end of the day, we’re a small business. We’ve got payroll, we have rent and we have technology. In our case, we’re a nonprofit. We don’t have a huge war chest.”

Two long-running, vibrant community events that are, at their core, small businesses. And they’re feeling the pinch just like everybody else. Like restaurants that have switched to takeout, they’ve had to look for other sources of income to stay afloat. Hoopfest has seen an increase in retail sales, which Santangelo attributes to people wanting to support the organization however they can.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising. The Spokane community is a big part of what has made Bloomsday and Hoopfest into the premier events they are today.

Spokanites have been with them since the beginning, and they’re still there now.

“We’re competitors just like everyone else in the basketball world,” Santangelo says. “We’re going to find a way but we need good teammates just like in any team sport.” n

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 25

CULTURE | DIGEST

Doing It Wrong CHEESEHEADS, REJOICE! Baking has been Spokane chef Ricky Webster’s passion since childhood. The chef’s journey has taken him from running a hotel kitchen to consulting for Sysco Spokane, but he’s now ready to branch out on his own. Next up for Webster is Rind and Wheat, a specialty shop in Spokane (location to be announced), set to open this fall. Webster launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000, running through Friday, Sept. 4. Besides a curated selection of specialty cheese from around the world, freshbaked breads and pastries, Webster plans to sell locally made beer, wine and other artisan products showcasing the region’s bounty. (CHEY SCOTT)

BY LIZZIE OSWALT

W

e’re all experiencing COVID-19 inconveniences, but that’s no excuse to be rude. Working at a popular Spokane restaurant has given me an escape from my house and the ups and downs of life as a college student. While I’ve appreciated contact with the outside world, this contact hasn’t always been pleasant. I’ve compiled some of my “favorite” pandemic customers into four main groups, Friends-style: The one where the delivery driver cuts in line Delivery drivers are always on the move. They make more money the more orders they fulfill, so of course they are. But this can come as quite an inconvenience when some drivers cut through a line of customers and interrupt someone working the register. These drivers have sometimes even interrupted me while I’m taking a customer’s order to tell me which order they are picking up. Yikes.

THE BUZZ BIN The one where they wear their mask under their nose I’ll let you in on a little secret — and I do not want to alarm anyone — but you can actually breathe out of your mouth AND your nose. So that carbon dioxide from your lungs will indeed escape through your nostrils, too. Therefore, not covering both your mouth and nose with a mask is counterproductive. No one at the register wants to stand close to someone wearing their mask like that. Oh, and please do not use bathing suit bottoms or underwear as masks. Save it for the bedroom.

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST Some noteworthy new music hits online and in stores Aug. 14. To wit: KATHLEEN EDWARDS, Total Freedom.

This Canadian songwriter has been underappreciated for too long.

KING BUZZO, Gift of Sacrifice. The Melvins frontman goes solo on some surprisingly unsludge-y sounds.

TANYA DONELLY & THE PARKINGTON SISTERS, Self-titled. The Belly frontwoman tackles covers of the Go-Gos, Pretenders, Split Enz and more. (DAN NAILEN)

26 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

The one where they complain about the closed lobby The summer weather has been pretty hot, so wanting refreshing AC is normal. However, restaurants are trying to follow state safety guidelines. If you, as a customer, get upset and refuse to support businesses because you cannot sit inside, this only reflects on your character.

Truthfully, the loss of your sale will not be anywhere near as detrimental to a restaurant’s revenue as a coronavirus outbreak.

The one where they touch my screen Maintaining a clean space requires help from employees AND customers. There have always been a lot of fingers touching electronic screens in the restaurant I work at (especially when people prefer touching the tipping screen privately). Our new coronavirus rules require only the employees to touch these screens, while wearing gloves. When I tell a customer I need to touch the screen for them, but the customer promptly touches the screen anyway, it starts to feel increasingly harder to stay clean and efficient.

Please listen to service industry workers. We are taking these precautions for everyone, including you! n

THE FINAL ARGUMENT Logic’s (alleged) final album, No Pressure, marks the last entry in a decadelong career and a return to his mixtape roots with classic hip-hop-inspired beats. You might enjoy the Logic that’s smoothly sewing together syllables over serene hi-hats and deep bass hits, or you may prefer the Logic that’s emphatically attacking over more trappy styles. Either way, the album has something for you while wrapping up Logic’s legacy that’s made him one of the most popular rappers in the game. Have a listen to “Dad Bod,” my favorite track, and sit back and relax for a nice low-key experience. (JEREMEY RANDRUP)

A WINDING PATH Mindy Cameron’s been contributing book reviews to the Inlander for a little while, and now the retired journalist (Seattle Times, Lewiston Morning Tribune, among other places) has her own book.

Cameron’s memoir Leaving the Boys charts her path through a career and family life at a time when women weren’t encouraged to have both, and her story will resonate with anyone juggling their work/life balance. (DAN NAILEN)

AMERICAN MOO-VIE In films like Meek’s Cutoff and Certain Women, director Kelly Reichardt explored the vastness and majesty of the American West and the people dwarfed by those harsh but beautiful landscapes. Her latest, First Cow, is set in Oregon territory in the 1820s, where a poor chef and a Chinese immigrant team up to steal milk from a wealthy landowner’s bovine, which they’ll use to make biscuits and earn enough money to be self-sufficient. But fate has different plans in this down-to-earth story told with the simplicity of a fable. Following a limited run in theaters prelockdown, First Cow is now available to rent on most streaming platforms. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)

CULTURE | ESSAY

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Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, Star Trek’s badass communications officer.

Going Boldly I Finally Watched… the original Star Trek, and it showed me a better world to live in

BY QUINN WELSCH

I

n late Spring, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests and the earlier stages of the COVID shutdowns, I did what a lot of people did.

I looked for an escape.

Science fiction, in particular stories about space exploration, has been especially attractive to me since civilization started its downward spiral in 2020. Looking to the stars inspires some hope — or at least it inspires some context for our place in this vast universe.

I think this was true for audiences in late1960s America, who maybe also found some peace in watching the adventures of the crew aboard the Enterprise in the original Star Trek (now referred to as The Original Series, or TOS).

While its later iterations like The Next Generation seem to be more aspirational, highlighting the potential of scientific discovery, TOS delves headfirst into the issues its audiences were facing at the time (1966-69), especially in regard to racism, sexism and war.

I’ll admit that watching a television show all the way through isn’t exactly a personal triumph.

But looking back on TOS, I’ve realized how groundbreaking the show was at a time when the United States was simultaneously advancing into space and experiencing massive social and racial unrest.

TOS is proof to me that science fiction has a practical impact on people, not just for escapism but as a way to grapple with complex issues and to imagine a future version of ourselves that is hopefully better (although there are lessons to be

learned from futuristic dystopias, too).

In every part of the world, from the beginning of time, humans have tried to make sense of the stars in the night sky. Star Trek provided an example of a human civilization, three centuries into the future, where Earth’s people were united with that single common interest: Learning more about who we are, where we came from and what else is out there. The mission of the Starship Enterprise was never about conquest, or war, or resources. It was about understanding. It was about eliminating ignorance.

Before you can watch it, you have to forgive the hilarious costumes, psychedelic set designs and the emphatic Shatner monologues. (Come on, it was the ’60s!)

Star Trek also plays a little differently than your sixth or seventh rewatch of Parks and Recreation.

You can’t just fold laundry or scroll through your Instagram feed while it plays in the background.

The shows aren’t meant to be digested one after another, either. There’s a message in almost every show, and if you aren’t paying attention, you won’t get it. Sometimes it’s simple (“Charlie X”). Sometimes it’s cerebral (“Amok Time”).

Sometimes it’s silly (“The Trouble with Tribbles”).

But more than anything else, TOS, and maybe the franchise overall, offers a larger message: Keep going. Boldly.

I’m reminded of this as the world around me seems to be continuously collapsing with each day. Science fiction isn’t the answer to our problems, but it might give us the inspiration we need to carry on. n

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AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 27

ROCK DOCS

It Might

Get Loud

Fleetwood Mac: Always ready for their closeup.

Inspired by a new film about the Go-Go’s, we pitch some of our dream rock documentaries

BY DAN NAILEN AND NATHAN WEINBENDER

W

e’ve all seen documentaries and TV specials exploring the influence of a band or solo artist, full of sordid stories told via contemporary interviews, archival footage and photo montages, all designed to explain their legacy.

The new documentary The Go-Go’s, now airing on Showtime, follows that blueprint with a nuts-and-bolts history lesson on the titular California pop band, still the only all-female group to top the album charts with songs they wrote and played themselves. It’s a tried-and-true formula, one that has also been applied in recent years to Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby, Leonard Cohen, the Band, Nina Simone and more.

We racked our brains and came up with some artists we’d most like to see get the bio-doc treatment, from unheralded geniuses to cultural juggernauts with killer backstories.

FLEETWOOD MAC

The central contradiction of Fleetwood Mac is that their drug-fueled, contentious behind-the-scenes drama inspired some of the smoothest soft-rock of the ’70s.

Perhaps enough has been written about the band’s most famous iteration, fronted by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, but imagine a multipart documentary spanning the many iterations of Mac — its early days with blues guitarist Peter Green at the helm; the tumultuous, stadium-filling era of Rumours and Tusk; the 1990s comeback all the way up to the last few years, which found its members still squabbling publicly. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)

28 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

MAYHEM

Making the bickering of Fleetwood Mac look like mere schoolyard taunts, this Norwegian black metal band has a dark history. Their live shows were notoriously chaotic.

One of their frontmen shot himself and his bandmates wore jewelry made from pieces of his skull. The bassist murdered the guitarist, and one of the band’s former members admitted he had planned the same crime but was simply beaten to the punch. These events were dramatized in the 2018 film Lords of Chaos, but surviving Mayhem members have taken issue with its accuracy. Maybe it’s time to let them tell their own bizarre, brutal story. (NW)

HÜSKER DÜ

It wasn’t exactly a secret, but it wasn’t exactly common knowledge, either, that the two songwriters of one of the loudest, fastest punk bands of the ’80s were both gay men. Guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart both evolved as songwriters over the course of Hüsker Dü’s career, exploring pop, psychedelic and prog elements alongside bass player Greg Norton, and the band was a clear influence on the likes of Nirvana and the Pixies, among others. Their story’s been documented to a degree in a film about Hart (Every Everything) and Mould’s autobiography (See a Little Light), but a film exploring the sexual politics of the early American punk scene with Hüsker Dü as a jumping-off point would be fascinating.

(DAN NAILEN)

LOS LOBOS

Before there was any “Latin pop” explosion there was

Los Lobos, who self-deprecatingly call themselves “just another band from East L.A.” Best known among most White Americans for their No. 1 cover of “La Bamba” for the 1987 movie of the same name, Los Lobos goes back to 1973, when they formed as high school friends.

They’ve found fans among hipsters, hippies and classicrockers, not to mention listeners of all races, while remaining rooted in their Mexican-American culture. I’d love a film exploring the brotherhood of “the wolves” and their expansive sound. (DN)

THE MONKEES

Even at their peak, the Monkees were written off as a manufactured gimmick, a fake band thrown together for a TV show, a Beatles cash-in. And they were those things.

But they recorded some genuinely great songs, even if they were performed by anonymous studio musicians.

The Monkees are also more idiosyncratic than they get credit for: Check out their 1967 LPs Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., which show them leveraging fame for studio experimentation. Or, even better, watch their 1968 film Head, a stream-of-consciousness satire that the band co-wrote with Jack Nicholson while they were all on acid. (NW)

THE BANGLES

Arriving in Los Angeles a few years after the Go-Go’s as part of the “Paisley Underground” scene, the Bangles could make for great documentary fodder thanks to a career arc that includes massive success after starting out as an indie band, recording a Prince song (“Manic Mon-

day”), having a hit with a jokey song (“Walk Like an Egyptian”) and the typical strife that comes when the lead singer is singled out as the star among a band of equals. As ass-kicking women rocking through the male-dominated industry of the ’80s long after the Go-Go’s split up, and still going strong all these years later, the Bangles story would be great to watch. (DN)

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MATERIAL ISSUE

This Chicago trio broke out in the early ’90s with a smart powerpop sound landing somewhere between Cheap Trick and the Replacements, and lyrics full of both love and heartbreak from lead singer Jim Ellison. Their major-label debut International Pop Overthrow cost only $5,000 to record and sold more than 300,000 copies, and two more strong albums followed before the band came to a tragic end with Ellison’s 1996 suicide. He left a note and its contents have never been revealed. There are reports of a documentary on the band in progress, and a film that uncovers Ellison’s last words and introduces a new generation to an excellent band could be pretty great. (DN)

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She is, without question, the predominant voice of the disco era, but Donna Summer’s pre-fame career could inspire a documentary unto itself. Before she became a dance floor diva, Summer worked as a model, fronted a German psych-rock band, starred in a production of Hair and collaborated with legendary producer Giorgio Moroder on sexually suggestive jams that were so long they took up an entire side of a vinyl record. Basically, the world needs to know about the wonderful weirdness of Summer’s early contributions to pop music, and she deserves to be the subject of a documentary as glossy and stylish as she was. (NW)

SYLVESTER

Here’s another disco pioneer, but one who isn’t as well known.

You’ve still probably heard the late Sylvester’s most indelible hit, 1978’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” which merged R&B, gospel and the technological innovations of electronic pop in ways that had an incalculable influence on future dance music. Sylvester was also one of the few artists of his era to brazenly subvert gender norms and openly identify as queer, which would no doubt inspire terrific insight from contemporary academics and performers. A documentary about Sylvester’s legacy was apparently in production a decade ago, but it has yet to materialize. (NW)

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JANE’S ADDICTION

Jane’s Addiction seemed to appear out of nowhere with their major-label debut Nothing’s Shocking in 1988, bringing a bombastic metal-meets-alternative sound and a distinct visual approach unheard of in the mainstream at the time. One more album (Ritual de lo Habitual) and they were essentially done (save for later desperate and forgettable reunions), but their legacy remains intact largely on the strength of those two albums and leader Perry Farrell’s invention of the Lollapalooza festival. With Farrell and his original bandmates Stephen Perkins, Eric Avery and Dave Navarro all alive and kicking, and no doubt plenty of great old video footage, a doc capturing their early years could recapture the magic in ways new music can’t. (DN) n

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AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 29

RELEASES

POP STANDARDS Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s new releases find two of music’s biggest stars at the heights of their power

BY NATHAN WEINBENDER BEYONCE, BLACK IS KING

Beyonce is not your typical pop star, and so it stands to reason that Black Is King is not your typical pop star vanity project. In fact, her new visual album is, like last year’s extraordinary concert film Homecoming, a genuinely collaborative piece, a platform for dozens of directors, cinematographers, dancers, choreographers, costume designers and actors who are mostly unknown to us. But Queen Bey is at the center of it all, the proud creator of this vibrant, unabashed celebration of Blackness.

The film’s origins might lead you to think this is some sort of commercial sellout. It’s a companion piece to last year’s mixtape The Lion King: The Gift, itself an extension of the hugely successful remake of The Lion King for which Beyonce provided her voice. And it’s streaming on Disney+, the first of several planned projects between Bey and the world’s foremost entertainment conglomerate, with snippets of dialogue from the new Lion King incorporated into the music (which, frankly, should have been cut out entirely).

It does tell a story — in broad, impressionistic strokes — that recalls King Simba’s rise to power, with biblical

30 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

parallels thrown in (the boy king, like baby Moses, is placed in a basket and rushed down a river). Beyonce even positions herself as the Mother Mary of the piece: Not only are her own children front and center, but she strikes plenty of beatific poses throughout.

But for all its associations to a mediocre Disney cashin, Black Is King turns out to be one of the most gorgeous music videos ever made, a regal 85-minute procession of one stunning, arresting image after another. From a filmmaking perspective, Black Is King tips its hat to the breathy mysticism of Terrence Malick, and the way it refracts sacred imagery through a slightly surrealist lens has a hint of Alejandro Jodorowsky to it. I’m also reminded of Charles Burnett and Barry Jenkins and Julie Dash, filmmakers who so lovingly photograph Black faces in settings both otherworldly and mundane, and films like Black Orpheus and Mother of George, which revel in the vibrant colors of Africa.

Musically, Black Is King isn’t as bracing as Beyonce’s 2013 self-titled LP, or as nakedly honest and stylistically unexpected as 2016’s Lemonade. But it’s another compelling entry in Beyonce’s campaign to be the ultimate

auteur of contemporary pop music: She’s in complete control of every element here, confidently so, and the texture and warmth she brings to this project suggests it should stay that way.

TAYLOR SWIFT, FOLKLORE

Of all the criticisms leveled at Taylor Swift, never let it be said that she’s an underachiever. It should come as no surprise that she’s one of the few people who have been productive in the midst of this pandemic. Folklore, Swift’s eighth studio record, dropped unexpectedly a couple weeks ago, and it turns out to have a fitting title, because it’s the first album wherein she’s playing the role of storyteller rather than memoirist.

Swift’s lyrics have always draped a Top 40 veneer over details from her personal life, and fans have annotated her songs with the fervency of armchair detectives tracking a killer. Folklore is a veritable Easter egg hunt, but instead of dropping hints about her own loves and losses, Swift seems to be doing so with characters she’s created.

This is no more apparent than in a trio of songs that each take on the side of a teenage love triangle, although (ever

the canny marketer) Swift has been loath to discuss which songs make up said trilogy. You have to figure it out.

This approach is at its best on “The Last Great American Dynasty,” a storysong inspired by heiress Rebekah Harkness, whose Rhode Island estate Swift now owns, and details how “a middle-class divorcee” married into a wealthy family and became a social pariah in her upper-crust town. “She had a marvelous time ruining everything,” Swift sings with relish.

But there are personal songs that put new ink in her trademark poison pen, particularly “Mad Woman,” which extends Harkness’s story into a rebuke of Scooter Braun, who Swift has publicly battled for the rights to the masters of her old recordings. “Epiphany,” meanwhile, is the only song that time-stamps Folklore as a mid-pandemic creation, with lyrics that shout out frontline medical workers and liken their sacrifices to Swift’s grandfather’s on the frontline of Guadalcanal.

(It’s a tortured metaphor at best.)

Swift’s primary collaborator here is the National’s Aaron Dessner, with pop svengali Jack Antonoff and Bon Iver also making contributions. Musically, it’s more measured than previous releases, less beholden to the conventions of anthemic arena fillers.

It’s hardly the sonic departure some critics have made it out to be. What it does feature, though, are some of her most evocative and specific lyrical images, from the fleeting glimpse of an ex at a bus stop (“The 1”) to lovers meeting in secret behind the mall (“August”), to the venomous kiss-off in “This Is Me Trying”: “They told me all of my cages were mental / So I got wasted like all my potential.” And on “Peace,” the album’s penultimate track, she not only ties up the themes of the record but crafts an overarching distillation of her entire oeuvre: “All these people think love’s for show,” she says, before admitting, “I’d die for you in secret.” n

Begin with the end in mind...

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AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 31

FOOD BALLPARK EATS

The bases may be empty this summer, but thanks to a special outdoor pop-up restaurant on the field of Avista Stadium, favorite ballpark snacks are still being served up hot and fresh.

What started as a few takeout-friendly meals offered as part of a partnership between the Spokane Indians baseball team and Second Harvest food bank later evolved into the more regularly operating Infield Cafe, which continues to offer affordable concession eats for takeout and dine-in service three days a week. Among the menu choices are hot dogs, burgers, chicken strips, popcorn, fries, frozen treats, fountain drinks and beer. Order online or call in a pickup order, and watch for family-style meal specials offered once a week.

— CHEY SCOTT Spokane Indians’ Infield Cafe • Through Aug. 27; Tue-Thu from 11 am-1 pm • Avista Stadium • 602 N. Havana St. • spokaneindians.com

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WORDS HOT TALK

As part of ongoing virtual programming, the Spokane Public Library is next hosting ethicist Brian Henning for a lecture on global warming and the implications of how it alludes to our connection with the world. Henning is a philosophy and environmental studies professor at Gonzaga University and has written and lectured on related topics like the need for clean energy, divestment from fossil fuels, and climate change awareness. In this presentation, Henning goes over human morals in relation to nature and how those ideas hint at beliefs we hold about ourselves. Henning explores the progression of climate change and how society has gotten to this point. The virtual event is free to all who register.

— JEREMEY RANDRUP Heating Up: The Ethics of Climate Change • Tue, Aug. 18 from 6-7:30 pm • Free • Online; details at spokanelibrary.org

OUTDOORS BY BIKE OR BOAT

The Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort is hosting an upcoming bike ride and boat tour along the beautiful Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes as part of its cultural tourism programs. The ride takes guests along a historic trail route once used by Coeur d’Alene Natives for generations, later turned into a railroad. The 73-mile paved recreational trail is replete with breathtaking Idaho scenery. After a lunch break, with food provided, guests take a boat back to the resort. On the following day, the casino is also offering a kayak and canoe tour through Plummer Marsh, offering a chance to spot local wildlife and bird watch while learning about tribal history in the area. For more information, visit the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel’s Facebook page or website.

— LIZZIE OSWALT Bike & Boat Tour • Sun, Aug. 16 from 10 am-4:30 pm • $100 • Kayak & Canoe Tour • Mon, Aug. 17 from 9 am-3 pm • $40 • cdacasino.com/events

CHEERS INLANDER Thanks for keeping the platform open minded, for the most part. It used to be OK to have different opinions and conversations like adults. Nowadays the HATE being pushed in our faces is unending and causing division like nothing our elders have even seen before! We are being pitted against each other, intentionally, and everyone is too distracted to see the truth. Remember the other smokescreens in our history? There was always something bigger going on behind it, and the truth came out later...

I SAW YOU SKY’S THE LIMIT Sky. I know you always trip on me about s*** that’s happened in the past but I just want you to know that I love you and I’m trying to change that thought in your head so that we could be happy maybe you never know might just end up loving me please just see the changes that I’ve made okay I promise I’ll be there for you through thick and thin I love you love B ANTI MASKERS If you’re not wearing a mask in public you give up your right to hospital care and a vent if you get covid.

CUTE GAS STATION GUY! I would see you at the Tesoro gas station on Thor/ Freya a lot in the early mornings!! I haven’t been going there, so its been like 6 months. You worked there! Didn’t catch your name. I think it started with a B?! But, you are super cute and I wondered if you still work there!? You were always so friendly to me... hope I see you again!! Glitterygirl79@aol.com

CHEERS SPOKANE HERO Cheers to Dr Lutz!, for making the courageous stand by stating the truthfulness, facts and consequences if the Spokane Public Schools were to open its doors to a devil’s virus, that would’ve unleashed unimaginable despair to the most precious part of our community. Sure, we’ll have to seriously adjust our lives, but by doing so we all may live well. Remember, LIFE, LIBERTY & the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

JACK’S GOOD WILL FOUND ON DIVISION So, after working a 10 hour day, I am starving but only $3.76 in my pocket to eat with Sunday night. I go to Jack in the Box on N. Division at Foothills and order two tacos via drive thru, the cashier asks if that will be all and I tell him yes, that’s all cause I’m broke and starving and appreciate being able to at least get SOMETHING hot to eat tonight... the cashier says “$1.67 at the window.” I pull up around the building to see a young man on a bicycle attempting to order food, asking if his order for a hamburger was actually going to happen — it must not have been because the next minute I see the young man toss his bicycle across the bushes out of the way... I pull up to the window to pay and ask the cashier if the young man is upset because he can’t get service for lack of vehicle in the drive thru and my suspicion is confirmed, so I tell the cashier I will order the young man a hamburger and I tell the young man not to trip because I ordered him a burger, but need a few dollars to pay for it and as we are discussing the young man’s payment the manager of Jack in the Box comes to the window and informs me that she has bought both me and the young man a burger and it is on its way... her name is Monica. Monica, I just have to say that I love you and hope you rub off on every person you encounter because we need more Monicas in this world! Thank you so very much for your consideration, your generosity and your humble kindness. I hope you receive the same 10 fold in the next year.

JEERS FAREWELL INLANDER I remember how excited I was when I came across Volume 1, Number 1 of the Inlander. Here finally was a local paper that provided alternative, free, and independent journalism. I don’t believe I have missed an issue since then. But more and more, I have become concerned with the ever increasing liberal bent, hyperbolic

references, and the co-dependence of your paper. The final straw for me was seeing your editor simply parroting word for word the phrases of ultra liberal media when speaking of Portland and the ‘unidentified, camowearing federal agents snatching protestors off city sidewalks and whisking them away in unmarked vans without explanation.’ These “unidentified” federal agents are members

“

TO GO SHOPPING LIST Truck keys, cell phone, credit/debit card, cash, checkbook, camo underwear, white socks, combat boots, camo

position. Salary negotiations? — equipment?

— police/firefighter numbers? Do you honestly think the general public would EVER actually hear a Real Number as to what it costs this city for this “Service”? Even a ballpark number — not likely. OK Before you think I’m calling for defunding these departments that is NOT what I’m saying. But accountability?

Which brings us back to who runs this show?

Monica, I just have to say that I love you and hope you rub off on every person you encounter because we need more Monicas in this world!

of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency and are there specifically to protect the federal building and courthouse from the so called “largely peaceful” protestors who have broken door and windows, defaced the exterior, and attempted to set the building on fire because the state and local leadership refuses to enforce existing laws. Protests are and will remain a part of our democracy and I myself have participated in them, starting with the Vietnam War. But there is a difference between peacefully protesting versus those who “protest” by wanton destruction of property and attempts and successes in injuring law enforcement personnel. If the people of Portland, Seattle, and others prefer anarchy in the streets, they can certainly get that by peacefully voting in November by supporting those politicians who want to handcuff and/or abolish law enforcement. We also have a clear choice in November for our President, between a narcissistic reactionary blowhard or a doddering incompetent old fool. “Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly”. As for the Inlander, Volume 27, Number 41 will be my last issue. I wish you the best and hope you can find your way back home to what you used to be.

RE: CORONA PANIC I shall correct you, facts are two-sided, you need to compare the facts equally, not one sided. You said “52,000 people have died from the flu and only 4,000 from covid-19, since October.” First of all a hell of a lot more folks have passed one, well beyond 4,000. More importantly, how many more would have died from the flu if we didn’t have a vaccine? Once a vaccine is

SOUND OFF

1. Visit Inlander.com/isawyou by 3 pm Monday. 2. Pick a category (I Saw You, You Saw Me, Cheers or Jeers). 3.

Provide basic info: your name and email (so we know you’re real). 4. To connect via I Saw You, provide a non-identifying email to be included with your submission — like “petals327@yahoo.com,” not “j.smith@comcast.net.”

Health

available, the corona casualties will decrease tremendously. Till then stay protected and safe. Reason for toilet paper hoarding? Cause when someone sneezes, everyone within 12-ft crap their pants!

Family

pants, NRA tee shirt, MAGA hat, flak jacket, shoulder holster, Glock 40, extra clip, another extra clip, ankle holster, another Glock 40, more clips, bandoliers, tactical bayonet and flashlight, and night vision goggles - in case the sun goes down while I’m putting all this stuff on. Uh, now what was it I was going to buy?

AXIS OF EVIL Never read the Spokesman Review when you are eating! I almost blew my sandwich out my nose when I read the Lady Mayor and the City Council were going to start looking into Police reform (08/07/2020. I realize she is new to big time Spokane politics (and the City Council is just delusional) but ANYONE that has watched carefully knows NONE of these people Control Spokane. When I say “Control” I mean REALLY has the City by the “You Know Whats”--(BTW it rhymes with “Whats.” The people that actually Control this city are home on Monday nights enjoying a beverage of their choice while the puppets are down dealing with the “Great Unwashed” (You and I). Some of you may already know the three people I’m speaking of? The three people that actually give everyone in City Hall their marching orders? That would be: The Police UNION boss — The Firefighter UNION boss and of course Let’m Off Larry (Who controls behavior). Now before you scoff at this stop and think about the history and how things work in this City. The “People” speak to say they want more “Oversight” of the police department. Has that happened? If you say “Yes” you fail the class. And reforms — EVER? NO! NOTHING of note. City Hall and the General Public capitulate on EVERY point and

”

It certainly isn’t you and I. And it sure as hell isn’t City Hall. So please Ms. Mayor don’t blow smoke about how you all are going to step in!

You’d have to have union reform BEFORE you could ever get police reform? And when is that going to happen? When pigs fly.

MOVING TO SPOKANE? If you are leaving your over-crowded and over-taxed state or city to come here... PLEASE don’t vote for the same kind of idiotic things and fools that ruined your area!!! It’s insane to think repeating the same foolery will have a different outcome. WISE UP. Practice social distancing on the roads too, and Back Off! And BE KIND! PAY 2 PLAY Riverside park trail users illegally parking at seven mile. Get a pass! You have a nice enough car to afford it, you’re visiting regularly so you obviously enjoy yourself.

Show some respect for the rest of the paying trail users. $30 for access to the two biggest parks in the state and you can feel good about using the amenities. n

THIS WEEK'S ANSWERS D A I S

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O Z N O R O C O M M O S A C I G A A A R K N A R N O E R S C A S U L D E N A S F M I T A M N S D

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NOTE: I Saw You/Cheers & Jeers is for adults 18 or older. The Inlander reserves the right to edit or reject any posting at any time at its sole discretion and assumes no responsibility for the content.

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Heart to Heart American Heart Association says smoking cannabis could be harmful to cardiovascular health

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34 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

ing cannabis is known to produce cardiovascular effects like increased heart rate, atrial fibrillation and arrhythmias. It also referenced a study that compared smoked cannabis with smoked tobacco that showed a five-fold increase in blood concentration of carbon monoxide and a threefold increase in tar.

These are just short-term effects, though. What about the long-term ones?

“Unfortunately, most of the available data are short-term, observational and retrospective studies, which identify trends but do not prove cause and effect,” Page says.

Page also notes that public opinion on cannabis, as well as trends in cannabis consumption, are advancing at a faster rate than our understanding of the effects of its use. “Health care professionals need a greater understanding of the health implications of cannabis, which has the potential to interfere with prescribed medications

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BY WILL MAUPIN cience and medicine have made immense strides in studying the therapeutic benefits of cannabis, which has helped fuel the plant’s surge from the fringe of alternative medicine into the mainstream.

Not everything being learned is good news, though.

Last week the American Heart Association issued a statement in its journal, Circulation, finding that cannabis consumption provides no cardiovascular benefits and could potentially be harmful to the heart and blood vessels of users.

“Many consumers and health care professionals don’t realize that cannabis smoke contains components similar to tobacco smoke,” says Robert L. Page II, lead author of the statement. Though Page did concede that “the oral and topical forms, for which doses can be measured, may reduce some of the potential harms.”

The statement points out that smok-

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and/or trigger cardiovascular conditions or events, such as heart attacks and strokes,” Page says.

For that to happen, cannabis policy would need to change. The statement offered a very specific suggestion in that regard: “In the United States, this should start with removal of cannabis from Schedule 1 of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act.” Schedule 1 drugs are defined as having a high potential for abuse as well as no currently accepted medical use. Plain and simple, that definition does not apply to cannabis. The American Heart Association statement lists five conditions for which cannabis has known, conclusive medical benefits: pain, cachexia, nausea, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

As is the case with most therapeutics, the value provided may come with side effects. For cannabis, some of those are cardiovascular in nature. n

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BE AWARE: Marijuana is legal for adults 21 and older under Washington State law (e.g., RCW 69.50, RCW 69.51A, HB0001 Initiative 502 and Senate Bill 5052). State law does not preempt federal law; possessing, using, distributing and selling marijuana remains illegal under federal law. In Washington state, consuming marijuana in public, driving while under the influence of marijuana and transporting marijuana across state lines are all illegal. Marijuana has intoxicating effects; there may be health risks associated with its consumption, and it may be habit-forming. It can also impair concentration, coordination and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. Keep out of reach of children. For more information, consult the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board at www.liq.wa.gov.

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36 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

RELATIONSHIPS

Advice Goddess THE DEVIL EATS PURINA

AMY ALKON

My girlfriend got a dog six weeks ago — a Chihuahua.

I don’t hate the dog, but I’m not wild about him. I’ve almost stepped on him twice in the kitchen, and my snuggle time on the couch with my girlfriend has now become me watching him sit in her lap while they cootchie-coo it out. She hasn’t had the dog sleep in bed with us, but I know that’s next. Is this the end of our relationship? —Annoyed

It’s pretty depressing when doing risky stuff in bed means sleeping without a flea collar.

Though the interspecies bed-sharing you fear has yet to become a reality, chances are it’s next, especially if you stick with your current strategy: resenting that the dog’s getting all the attention but saying nothing to try to change that.

As humiliating as it is to have your top-dog status usurped by an actual dog, coming to understand the evolved function of jealousy could help you shift your focus — to see whether you can get your needs met or whether you need to blow this particular doghouse.

Jealousy often gets confused with envy, but evolutionary psychologist David Buss explains that they are “distinct emotions” that motivate “distinctly different” behaviors in line with the differing problems they were “designed” by evolution to solve. Buss’ research finds jealousy is activated “when there is a threat to a valued social relationship.” Envy, on the other hand, is triggered “when someone else has something that you desire or covet but currently lack.”

So, while envy mainly sparks longing (for the things, partner, or relationship someone else has), jealousy mainly arouses fear (of losing one’s own partner or friend to someone else). Accordingly, a woman envious of the promotion her coworker got basically “plays offense”: perhaps working harder and sucking up more to the boss in hopes of getting a promotion of her own. A woman experiencing jealousy over her hubby’s coziness with his hot female co-worker “plays defense”: possibly dressing sexier to compete with her rival in hopes of protecting her relationship against infidelity or “mate-poaching” (the other woman stealing her man).

Though jealousy is seen as maladaptive and toxic, it actually protects our interests, both by flagging threats to a “valued social relationship” — romantic or platonic — and by motivating us to fend them off. Research by evolutionary social psychologist Jaimie Arona Krems and her colleagues suggests jealousy is an “overlooked tool” for “friendship maintenance.” The loss of a friendship if, say, our friend moves away makes us feel sad, but if we seem to be losing the friendship because our best friend is hanging out with some new person, we feel jealous. The threat of being replaced, not the mere loss of the friendship, triggers jealousy in us, motivating us to put effort into shoring up our friendship.

Researchers have yet to explore the dog-as-mate-poacher angle, but it likely triggers jealousy for the same reasons human mate-poaching does: to alert you to a threat to a valued relationship so you can take steps to get the affection and commitment nozzle turned back in your direction.

For your best chance at getting your girlfriend to scratch behind your ears (or whatever!) at the rate she used to, evoke her empathy while giving her the sense your unhappiness could send you out the door. For example, say, “It’s great how happy Cujo’s making you, but when we’re on the couch, I feel embarrassingly left out.” You two might then brainstorm how you each can get enough of what you want. (A possible solution might be to get a little furry “cup” bed so he can curl up by her shoulder on the corner of the couch.)

By making your feelings known, you’ll likely give her the sense the dog-in-bed thing is something to ask you about, not just surprise you with when a paw goes up your nose at 3 a.m. By the way, I have a possible solution with something for both of you: Have the dog next to the bed, in his own little bed, when you stay over.

Dogs have an extremely powerful sense of smell, and I discovered while potty training mine that she would cry if she had to sleep in her little area in the living room but was calm and content when I put her bed next to mine in a giant Tupperware container. (She is a tiny Chinese crested, not a Great Dane.)

Whatever you two decide, it’ll come out of your using your jealousy productively: to see whether it’s possible to redirect enough of her attention and affection your way and to set some dog boundaries going forward. If something furry comes between you and your woman, you’d like it to be a mink bikini and not a small, growling four-legged thing that hates you and chews up your $200 sneakers. n ©2020, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. • Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)

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2. Philosopher Descartes 3. “Free Willy” creature 4. Workplace for some veterinarians 5. Declaration on a Chinese menu 6. Egglike 7. It’s lit eight nights in a row 8. Singer DiFranco 9. Mil. decoration since 1918 10. Enduring aspect of a person’s life 11. Orbicularis ____ (eyelid-closing muscle) 12. Swedish automaker 13. Titular host of NBC’s “Game of Games” 18. Miss Piggy’s coy question 22. Containing state-of-the-art

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THIS W ANSWE EEK’S I SAW RS ON YOUS

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37. “All will be well” 39. Wharton, e.g., informally 41. Oz. and kg.

42. “Modern Family” actor Stonestreet 44. *1885 operetta set in Japan 45. Words before “the blues” or “the Mondays” 47. Charged particles 48. *Setting for “Mork & Mindy” 53. Actresses Kendrick and Paquin 54. Coat of frost 55. Fly catcher 58. California’s ____ Valley 59. What each of the starred clues are “without” 62. Fake IRS call, e.g.

63. Blue eyes or hairy legs, e.g.

64. Where approximately 60% of people live 65. Urges 66. Tooth: Prefix

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gadgetry 23. Caleb who wrote “The Alienist” 24. Many a Meccan 25. “To begin with …”

26. [Avoid watching this in front of

GET YOUR INLANDER INSIDE

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ACROSS 1. Physician with a daily talk show 5. Itinerant sort 10. Nada for Nadal 14. Prefix with nautical 15. Bakery fixtures 16. Environmentalist’s subj.

17. *Unspeakable siutation?

19. Dock figure 20. Blue expanse 21. Third-northernmost national capital 22. Reduce by 50% 23. *Magazine that put Linda Evangelista on its cover holding a Cohiba panatella 26. Final Four org.

29. It’s unlikely 30. *2013 disaster film that spawned many sequels 33. Rabbit relative 34. POTUS when Sputnik was launched

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LOOK FOR THE

comes 34. “____ arigato, Mr. Roboto” 35. “Whatcha ____?”

39 40 38 36. Fraternal order with an animal emblem 43 44 38. Level 46 47 40. One who’s succeeding 43. Johnnie who said “If it 51 52 doesn’t fit, you must acquit” 54 55 56 57 45. Alleges 46. Go by walking 60 61 48. Deep, musically 49. Waiting in the wings 64 50. Emasculate 67 51. “Chicago Hope” Emmywinner Christine “ADO” 52. Underground find 55. “Now, where ____?” the boss] 56. Polish for publication 27. Jazzman Baker 57. Dinghy or dory 28. Some batteries 59. 1-800-Flowers competitor 31. Works, as dough 60. Suffix with script or text 32. Language from which “reindeer” 61. Zodiac animal 33

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AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 37

A DV E N TU R E AWAITS ...

Lakeside

ADVENTURE PACKAGE Come discover all the Lakeside Adventures awaiting your next visit!

COEUR D ’ ALENE

Make the end of summer the best of summer for the kids nce August rolls around, times seems to accelerate with the awareness of summer’s eventual end.

Make the most of the time with the kids now, with these ideas for making a North Idaho end of summer the best of summer for all.

38 INLANDER AUGUST 13, 2020

things to do & places to stay.

Coeur d’Alene Dreamin’ O

844.255.127 3 cdaresort.com

cda4.fun for more events,

Park it. Coeur d’Alene is delightfully rich in public park experiences for all interests and age levels. Head to CITY PARK and set up camp for the day. Stay in the cool of the trees and play on the massive Fort Sherman wooden playground, venture out onto the beach and swim, or wander over to the vintage Coeur d’Alene Carousel and ride for just a couple of bucks. Make sure to stop by Coeur d’Alene’s totally rad Skatepark to watch,

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

learn and even join in.

Fill up on fun. Dessert before dinner is every kid’s dream. Make that a reality with any number of North Idaho sweet treats. At MRS. HONEYPEEP’S SWEET SHOP inside the Resort Shops for just about any kind of classic candy you can think of, or a heaping cone of ice cream. Ice cream is the main feature of a GOOEY, an over-the-top sundae that’s so big and so yummy, it has its own menu at the Coeur d’Alene Resort’s DOCKSIDE RESTAURANT. You and the kiddos can mix-and-match from amongst seven Gooey styles, from fruity huckleberry cobbler to decadent Butterfinger candy hot fudge.

Make a play date. What is it about being

silly together that seems to strengthen our bonds with others? Find out at SILVERWOOD THEME PARK, where you and the kids can spend the day laughing your heads off as you spin, swirl, swoop and swim through all the attractions, including Boulder Beach water park. TRIPLE PLAY lets you and the kids experience indoor and outdoor fun, from bumper cars to bowling, and go-karts to games in the arcade. Don’t forget about Raptor Reef water park and, hey, make it a staycation overnighter for a double-dose of fun with their stay-and-play package. And for portable play action, visit FIGPICKEL’S TOY EMPORIUM to find a board game or specialty toy for fun on the go.

Book it. Before the kids have to hit the books at school — wherever that may be in the fall — book a day of North Idaho adventure. Hit the trails together on the back of the majestic yet gentle horses at BRIDLE PATH QUARTER HORSES. Add a little more horsepower with a JET SKI rental from Coeur d’Alene Resort for one or two passenger machines. Instead of zipping across the water, zip through the trees with TIMBERLINE ADVENTURES including their specialty tours like the tasty S’Mores Treehouse Adventure.

Go even higher with COEUR D’ALENE PARASAIL, for a bird’seye view of the lake for ages 4-and-up and a ride they’ll remember well past the end of summer.

C O E U R

D ’A L E N E

Upcoming Events Coeur d’Alene Marathon AUGUST 21-23

The Coeur d’Alene Marathon is on! America’s largest race since March will take place and feature four different distances (marathon, half marathon, 10K and 5K) over three days. Race organizers have been working with public health officials to develop COVID-19 mitigation strategies.

Bands on Boats AUGUST 21

Get ready for Hells Belles, an all-female AC/DC Tribute Band to rock you all night long as you cruise along scenic Lake Coeur d’Alene. $27.50; Ages 21+; Boarding begins at 6:30 pm at Independence Point.

Triple Play at Circling Raven AUGUST 22-25

Play three rounds of golf in three days at the renowned Circling Raven Golf Course. The first round is $89, the second round $59 and the third round $49.

For more events, things to do & places to stay, go to cda4.fun

Just North of Coeur d’Alene in Beautiful North Idaho

R E S E R V E YO U R T I C K E T S O N L I N E

COEUR D’ALENE

AUGUST 13, 2020 INLANDER 39