Jamie Tobias Neely

(From Opinion page, April 1, 1998): Francine Boxer is, of course, the new county administrator for Spokane County government. Her title was listed incorrectly in yesterday's editorial.

After living in Syracuse, N.Y., for the past five years, Spokane Symphony music director Fabio Mechetti has decided to move to Spokane. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

1. Frederica von Stade has performed with the world's top opera companies and symphonies. 2. The Bravo Broadway! trio, left, will perform a SuperPops concert with the Spokane Symphony this season. 3. Inset photos, clockwise from upper left, are other guests of the symphony: singer Shirley Jones, flutist Michael Faust, pianist Angela Cheng and violinist Leila Josefowicz.

1. Gordon Brannon, center, leads a senior water exercise class at Sta-Fit. The class includes a group of blind students. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review 2. Above: Miklyn Ward helps Charlie Greer to the pool ladder at the end of class. 3. Right: Seniors at the Sta-Fit water exercise class hold hands as they wade across the pool.

Two generations of American parents will remember Dr. Benjamin Spock as the wise pediatrician who was permanently on call. At 3 a.m., when parents hate to wake their physician, they turned instead to Spock. His writer's voice soothed their worries, whether the problem was as scary as croup or as mundane as diaper rash. His remarkable new child care manual, now called "Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care," was first published in 1946. His respectful approach reassured anxious parents. "Trust yourself ... you know more than you think you do," he wrote.

For more than two decades, a split has divided feminists of elite Western groups from those of developing countries. The split can only be resolved, said Dr. Angela Gilliam, an anthropologist and member of the Evergreen State College faculty, when more privileged feminists learn to respect the issues of women living in other cultures. Those issues have included the Asian sex trade for Thai women, apartheid for African women and labor issues for Bolivian women.

Child care is like home maintenance. If it's not done well, everybody suffers. It isn't until the roof begins to leak, the sewer backs up or the appliances start to self-combust that everyone suddenly notices what's not getting done.

A classic American scene replayed a week ago when more than a thousand Russian and Ukrainian immigrants streamed into the old First Baptist Church in downtown Spokane. For most Americans, it's an image out of a distant past: grateful immigrants filling churches with strong accents, fervent faith and hope. So dated that many Americans might dismiss it as sentimental, this image pulses with trust and optimism, two qualities that jar with these ironic times.

Virginia White, a local artist and writer, teaches senior writing workshops nine months out of the year. Photo by Jason Clark/The Spokesman-Review

Thirty years ago many people mindlessly tolerated child abuse, and viewed troubled kids as puzzling aberrations. But long before mainstream thinking caught up with him, a young Spokane psychologist, Clay Jorgensen, recognized that those socalled "bad kids" often suffered horrific home lives. He observed that child abuse leaves an open, gaping wound. In damaged children, the pain of being denigrated, assaulted and abandoned never seems to end.

Breast-feeding working moms may be young and sleep-deprived. They may lack the energy, the drive or the clout to ask for simple workplace changes. Their co-workers and managers, more attuned to the requirements of a traditionally male work force, may be oblivious to their needs.

Lawrence Weathers stands at the door of one of the high-tech, fiberglass pods he engineered for treating a wide variety of psychological disorders. Photo by Liz Kishimoto/The Spokesman-Review

1. Diane Cummings relaxes with 10 acupuncture needles in her body. Cummings is being treated for persistent headaches at Paul Lu's acupuncture clinic. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review 2. Jeanette Nelson, a certified acupuncturist in private practice in Spokane, displays the tools of her trade. Photo by Jason Clark/The Spokesman-Review 3. Acupuncturist Paul Lu estimates that 80 percent of his patients show improvement with acupuncture treatment. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Was Sonny Bono's lightweight reputation deserved or did his political career prove the critics wrong? This is no time to start calling for the canonization of Sonny Bono. With all due respect, Bono's biggest achievement was the perfection of a memorable persona, that of the affable doofus. It managed to carry him, a singer without a voice, to the top of the pop charts and all the way to Congress.

1. Clarence Freeman grew up in poverty in Spokane, but now lives a retired life in comfort. Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand/The Spokesman-Review 2. Top: Freeman excelled as an officer in the Army during World War II. 3. Freeman's home is filled with reminders of his late wife Frances, who died in 1996. Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand/The Spokesman-Review 4. Clarence and Frances Freeman walk in front of the Woolworth's store in downtown Spokane just after they were married. Clarence says Woolworth's was one of the stores in town that would serve him and other blacks at its lunch counter. Photo courtesy of Clarence Freeman

As holiday travelers can attest, people who jam the overhead bins with everything from Santa Claus presents to oversized Cougar paraphernalia not only delay departure times, they drive their fellow passengers crazy. United Airlines and Northwest Airlines have decided to stop the madness. They're restricting economy passengers to fewer bags, a move that will finally keep everyone safer. According to Consumer's Digest, an estimated 1,200 U.S. passengers are injured every year by falling bags. A flight attendants' group reports 3,711 baggage-related injuries last year. Certainly, a number of injuries on Sunday's turbulent United flight from Tokyo were caused by high-flying carry-ons. How have we arrived at such a mess? It's simple. Airlines failed to enforce government regulations limiting carry-ons and passengers ran amok. The current loose limits may have worked in a time when planes were less jammed and the culture more respectful. Flight attendants have asked the Federal Aviation Administration to set stricter limits on carry-on baggage. It's flight attendants who must deal with all those pushy passengers and their mountains of luggage. They need all the FAA support they can get. The FAA, reluctant to regulate, failed to consider a critical issue: the jerk factor. These narcissistic passengers are so self-obsessed that they can't bear to wait. Ask them to stand for five minutes in the baggage claim area and you'd think you'd just suggested they obey the posted traffic speeds. They'd scream! The fact is that the vast majority of checked luggage makes it to its destination just fine. When there's a delay, airlines make prompt deliveries. As for tight connection times, those, too could be eased with sensible new requirements. Imagine a flight without the jerk factor. Nobody would be ramming massive sales cases, oversized garment bags or entire sets of golf clubs into those minuscule overhead bins. For those post-Rose Bowl flights, Cougar heads and Wolverine masks would be firmly checked in the baggage compartment below. With everyone tucked into place sooner, all passengers would be more likely to make those crucial connections. Faster than ever, the plane would be soaring ahead into safer and far friendlier skies.

Denise Otradovec may soon hang a "Home Sweet Home" sign at her new house on East DeSmet. This year Habitat for Humanity's Spokane chapter celebrates its 10th anniversary. It is building its 50th house, financed by the mortgage payments on previous Habitat houses, for Otradovec and her two children.

Whether your celebrations sparkle with cubic zirconia or diamonds, flow with Budweiser or Dom Perignon, one fact of holiday life crosses all lines of class and income. Drinking and driving do not make a festive combination.

In one of Maya Angelou's most memorable poems, she wrote: "... Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise." For the last three years at Gonzaga Law School, Uri Clinton's life read like a line out of that poem.

No more lining bird cages. Four columnists at The Spokesman-Review will celebrate the holidays clutching hard-bound collections of their best work. This month New Media Ventures will publish "The Human Comedy, Plus Other Species at No Extra Charge" by humor columnist Jim Kershner, "Welcome to Helmet Night" by sports writer John Blanchette, "A Good Life in the Inland Northwest" by editor Chris Peck, and "Loose Clark Journals" by columnist Doug Clark. "It occurred to us The Spokesman-Review had some of the most honored newspaper columnists in the country," says Shaun O'L. Higgins, president and chief operating officer of New Media Ventures, a subsidiary of Cowles Publishing Co., which publishes The Spokesman-Review.

Should Whitman College dethrone the pioneers for whom it's named or do they still deserve respect? Weep no tears for the loss of Walla Walla's historic pageant called "Wagons West." On the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Viola Forrest portrayed Narcissa in the town play. It was 1936 and nostalgia for these heroes of the Northwest flooded tear ducts. Memories of the Cayuse Indians, whose lives were forever changed by their encounter with the Whitmans, were considered irrelevant.

Who wants to stand with a sour, Grinchy frown at the bedsides of the McCaughey septuplets? No one here. This has been a week for celebration, as the world's only known surviving set of septuplets starts life in an Iowa hospital. These young parents deserve a toast: They have a long 18 years ahead of them. But this also has been a week to examine the medical ethics of the doctors and researchers who brought us to this point. Human babies were never designed to be born and raised in litters, yet suddenly, medical technology has outpaced our capacity to nurture our young. For the infertile, baby hunger is a lasting heartbreak. It stands to reason that desperate couples will undergo any procedure, spend any amount, to produce the babies they yearn for.

The first year of Alecia Gaffney's separation, her estranged husband picked up their daughters at 3 o'clock on Thanksgiving Day. Suddenly the remaining hours became very lonely. "I was devastated," Gaffney says. "I was left alone on a holiday and it was unbelievable." Gaffney spent an equally heart-breaking Christmas Eve that year. According to experts on grief and loss, Gaffney's experience was hardly unusual.

Terry Boyden teaches nearly a full load of classes in Spokane Community College's English department, yet she's paid as a part-timer. One day when Boyden described her $11,000 annual salary to her class, one of her students was earning exactly the same amount - on welfare. The salaries for part-time faculty members at the Community Colleges of Spokane have been appallingly low. Last spring, part-timers banded together to draw attention to their plight, describing paychecks so slim that these teachers were able to qualify for food stamps and free school lunches for their children.