Mark Wilson is in search of an Inland Northwest family willing to place the area’s first elder cottage in the family’s backyard. The family won’t get a monetary break for being the first, but they will pioneer a trend in senior housing that is predicted to flourish in the next decade or so.
A few years ago, I had lunch with Dr. Elizabeth Welty, then in her mid-90s. “What’s your secret?” I asked the retired physician, who was in good shape, physically and mentally.
In fall 1984, a features writer at The Spokesman-Review fell in love with a Montana grizzly bear scientist she had interviewed for a story. The day she told then-editor Chris Peck that she was leaving to get married, my application arrived on Peck’s desk. After eight years away from Spokane, working at bigger newspapers in bigger cities, including USA Today in Washington, D.C., I was preparing to return home to Spokane to get married.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul – named for a 17th century French priest – was founded in 1833 by Antoine Frederic Ozanam, a French student challenged by another student to prove his Catholic church still cared for the needy. The society has a strong presence in Spokane and North Idaho through its thrift stores, emergency shelters and helping people with utility bills, rent, clothing and food, as well as providing emotional and spiritual support.
This week, I traded in my dumb cellphone for a smartphone, and I feel dumb as a stone as I try to figure it out. Mental frustration is good for building new connections in the brain, but feelings of panic, irritation and sadness over the convenience of my old phone are triumphing right now over any long-term benefits.
On May 7, Stevi Allen was busy working on a quilting project and wrapping gifts for a church ladies’ luncheon. As she made her way to the lower level of her Spokane home, glass jars of gift candy in both hands, Allen, now 71, was in a hurry, as usual. She somehow missed the small, carpeted final step and crash-landed at the bottom of the stairs.
My boomer friends and I talk sometimes about our teeth. It’s come to this – conversations about teeth. But you start to talk about your teeth, and it’s amazing where the conversation leads.
The other day, three of us old-timers at the newspaper reminisced about what it took to research stories before Google. We did a lot more reporting in person and on the phone, conversations that sometimes stretched for hours. And then if the article required in-depth research, we’d pop over to the downtown Spokane library in search of books on the topic, and we’d search (sometimes for hours) for magazine and journal articles summarized in large, heavy index books.
From 1949 to 1953, Maryrose Groce – an Anaconda, Mont., girl – ended up a young wife and mother living in Newark, Ohio. Her husband, Tom, worked for Kaiser Aluminum in its Ohio plant. People didn’t travel as much back then, and one of the other Kaiser wives, when Groce told her she was from Montana, said: “Oh I’ve never been that far South.”
