Well, Whatever -- Mark your calendars for Spokane's May 28-29 "Poverty Summit." Strike that. Mark your calendars for the "Prosperity Summit." Strike that. Mark your calendars for "One Spokane." One Spokane? Yeah -- it's a summit. About poverty. We think.
Teacher to Teacher? -- In its wisdom, the Washington State Legislature this year passed a law requiring that, by August 2003, all school districts create policies to forbid bullying. There's no word if the state law equips administrators with backbones to deal with this problem.
Spokane Public Schools already have an anti-bullying rule, Policy 3200, and a similar one called Policy 5170, which is the school board's pledge that the schools will not tolerate "harassment or discrimination" that is "adult to student, student to adult, student to student, adult to adult, male to female, female to male, male to male, or female to female."
No word about harassment that is student to classroom pet, pet to student, pet to adult, adult to pet, or pet to pet.
Getting its 15 Minutes -- Smelterville, Idaho, made national news earlier this week -- well, if you count Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as national news. Correspondent Stacey Grenrock-Woods visited the North Idaho town to look into the Superfund cleanup there, and she managed to make fun of everybody just about equally.
Dr. John Osborn, a supporter of the EPA cleanup there, couldn't locate his MD card when Grenrock-Woods zinged him with, "You're not really a doctor, are you?" And after asking for a punchy tourism slogan for the town from one of the anti-EPA "Good Townspeople" she interviewed, she had to cut off his rambling answer with, "That's kind of long."
As some PR specialists will tell you -- any publicity is good publicity.
Tacky Patriotism -- Seen on a 1970s Monte Carlo (we think) around town recently was a woman driving with an American flag laid out as a dashboard cover. Since good taste seems to be a faulty guide, let us humbly suggest there are at least two places the Stars and Strips do not belong: In clothing and on one's dashboard.
Use Caution, Dammit -- Spring is high-water season, and time for folks looking for recreation to be especially aware of water hazards. Still, one wonders if Avista's well-meaning PR department isn't spitting into the wind with this recent warning on one of their press releases: "Always obey warning signs near dams, such as 'Danger/Extreme Current/Stay Out, Stay Alive.' "
If a person is the type to ignore a warning sign posted on a riverbank in the first place, will such gentle reminders make any difference?
Send Q & amp;N ideas to dan@inlander.com
