I SAW YOU
ST. PATRICK'S DAY ANGEL: Not a leprechaun, but a St. Patrick's Day angel seen walking the bike path by the falls on Saturday the 15th. I have more compliments to give, oblige me. Inlander will facilitate.
CHEERS
WELL DONE, NC HIGH BANDS! Well done North Central Bands! Last night's Spring Concert was excellent! Tim Blaydon is doing a fantastic job of motivating the coolest Band Kids to excel at making wonderful and compelling music. Thank you for all your hard work. You're making the world a more beautiful place!HIGH DRIVE WATER BOTTLE: To whoever found my water bottle on 3/19 in the parking area on High Drive and put it up a guardrail post: Thank You! You are a good soul.
RE: JESSE E. A poet's heart does speak the part of lovely lines above the din.
SOUTHSIDE JOANN FABRIC & CRAFTS: Thanks so much for your decades of support for affordable creativity, gifting, and fun. Hours of choosing fabric from a large stock for sewing a variety of goods, chats with helpful staff about yarn colors, picking out seasonal knickknacks, appreciating advice offered by other friendly customers, sorting through paper options to make cards and tags, a handy place to pick up an INLANDER, and on and on. You'll be sorely missed, Joann's. Thanks again to you and your staff!
JEERS
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER: I am not my brother's keeper and here's why. As human beings we are not hardwired to give unconditional love. Case in point, your child gives you moments of joy in return for the love and care you give to them. Your dog or pet gives you love and happiness in return for food and shelter. In the case of our homeless and drug addicted we give them free food, medical care, shelter and other services. In return they give us nothing. The human condition reacts to this with either sympathy or anger. If you are sympathetic, you give and give with no return. That's okay but you are not helping them in the long run. If you are angry you reach out to your leaders who, at the present time, have no answers to the problem. I, personally, am angry because I cannot give unconditional love to those who do not return anything to society. Stop the insanity and give CONDITIONAL love to these folks. Expect more of them and help them to be responsible for themselves.
WHEN.... ...I burgle your home, steal your car, harm your family, or any one of those, I am wanted for those crimes, whether I am the known suspect or not. I know I committed the crimes and there are consequences. Someone knowingly harboring me, as a fugitive, is complicit. Stop the bleeding heart rantings regarding illegal immigrants who are wanted by the law. "Families are shattered..." because someone is unlawfully roaming amongst the citizenry. If you don't want your family "shattered" follow the law. People are necessarily incarcerated (not often enough) to protect innocent people. Stop interfering with law enforcement officials who are doing their jobs. You really wanna be caught up in that web? Spend your energy helping those who are doing the "things" of life, lawfully, and to no detriment of any. When you're the victim, you will feel differently. You. Will. Ask those who are. It's a common conundrum. Stay compassionate; help protect your law-abiding neighbors. Stop being dramatic. Don't contribute to the chaos. Here's to hoping YOU and yours are safe from criminals.
TO LARGE RESIDENTIAL UNITS DOWNTOWN! There's talk of towering residential units coming to our downtown....9,000 or so people I think is what they project could be? THINK ABOUT IT! With those people come their dogs urinating all over everything....stores, planters, poop on the sidewalk. Don't believe me? Go visit a city where they have a large population of people living downtown. UNLESS this is thought through beforehand and addressed it's gonna be gross!
RE: LICENSE FRAUD: Please quit with your bellyaching. Literally nobody is sitting around thinking it's someone else's responsibility to pay for tabs. You might go around town seeing expired ones (like mine), but there's a story, a struggle and something behind it. You don't know anyone's reason. Our car was stolen, ransacked, destroyed and then found after tabs expired and insurance won't pay a dime. I'm not going to update tabs before I update my car for our family. Tabs ain't cheap. Thx.
IT MUST BE ON PURPOSE: Jeers to Senate Democrats for wanting to "modify" the "arbitrary" 1% property tax increase. Now they can raise property taxes to whatever they want. I guess they have to find a way to balance the $13 billion Democrat state deficit. Maybe DOGE can look into this.
ANOTHER TANTRUM: At a meeting in 2023, a woman gushed Gavin Cooley understands the challenges of living outside: he spent a few years hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. Cooley lacked the good sense and decency to reject that absurd claim. A formerly unhoused woman argued unhoused community members should be at the policy table from Day One. What, Gavin asked the woman, could unhoused people contribute? Who was the woman? She is the Executive Director of a successful nonprofit serving unhoused people with addictions. He finally stated unhoused persons could be invited to offer "a heartfelt invocation" before he & his colleagues began work. Was I surprised to learn that Cooley's guided tours never include the kindness of a handwarmer or hot coffee poured from a thermos? Of course not. After all, nobody did a damn thing for poor Gavin when he was living rough in Goretex on the Pacific Coast Trail. He's having a tantrum. It started at a meeting when he relegated people he doesn't respect to "heartfelt invocations" and then getting out of his way. Now? He tantrums at 5 am, and at 6am he's served a donated meal.
WHEN ASKED... in her "Ghost Town to Boomtown" interview when asked about "negative activities," Downtown Spokane President Emilie Cameron replied, "I can't tell you off the top of my head if homeless counts increased or decreased, but I think it definitely became more noticeable." First, houselessness is a failure of social safety systems, not a "negative activity" in itself. Second, pay close attention to readily available community data, and put proactive solutions to help with this issue at the top of mind!
AMERICANS ARE BECOMING CRUEL: I'll start by saying that I voted for Trump. I, for one, am entirely fed up with his BS already. First of all, regardless of whether a person is here illegally, they likely weren't at some point and we, as Americans, invited them here, and then turned around and took everything that they owned and tossed them back into their countries in mass numbers. I think that we need to stand behind the president that we vote into office and stop invalidating the things they have done, regardless. THEY WERE INVITED AND WE SHOULD BE BETTER HOSTS TO SAY THE LEAST!
RE: SUPPORT OUR VETERANS: I don't know where you get your information but... OK. Let's consider the years following mid-war Afghanistan. At that time there were many vets returning and the VA was not ready to help. Over the years since they have increased their personnel to accommodate that and services were greatly provided to accommodate that. Here we are in 2025, the war is over and the needs for those personnel are diminished yet still required/wanted? The government needs to cater to what helps at the time... just like the need for aluminum sheeting for airplanes in WW2. When the amount of a resource is no longer required, you cut down to save money. It's common sense. Now for your stance on the VA not taking care of their veterans, you are completely wrong. If you are a disgruntled veteran you need to take that up with the VA or get your congressman involved. Don't get on here and bash something that does great things for veterans. Grrrr
WHY DO YOU STAY? Those who have never gone thru this are the ones who ask this question. When it's good, it's very good. When it's bad, it's very bad. You don't want to leave when it's good, too beat down to leave when it's bad. Why do you leave? When it's bad it's very bad. Why do you come back? When it's good it's very good. Why do you stay away at last? Walking down the street with one suitcase and two kids sounds really good. This is just a snippet of domestic violence. What's your snippet?
POTHOLES: They are back! OK so it's that time of year and the melt happened sooner, and what should appear//but hundreds of potholes our tires always fear.//They seem to grow bigger and wider and bold even though the road workers cram materials into the holes.//We play dodgems each day, figuring out where we can drive, looking like a drunkard to the drivers behind,//Our cars silently sigh from the crevices so deep and uneven, ruining their tires and struts for no apparent reason.//We can't fill in the roads until the weather is warmer, says the road department's constant unending answer.//Oh well all we can do is sit back and wait and wonder,//which roads will be filled that the City will ponder.//We may have more people moving to Spokane,//but the potholes will outnumber them ten thousand to one! ♦
