Susan Drumheller

The last major winter snowfall blanketed the Inland Northwest on Dec. 2, yet more than a week later the drifts remain intact – preserved by the same cold temperatures that are driving low-income and elderly residents to seek aid with their high heating costs. Public assistance organizations are working to keep the heat on and keep citizens warm even if the temperatures continue to hover below freezing and the cost to heat rises.

Another big game hunting season has drawn to a close, and among the harvest was one unintended death – that of a hunter mistaken for a deer. When Mary Seppala heard about the Nov. 27 death of Casey Lawson, a 30-year-old man from the Spokane Valley, she said it broke her heart.

If Cathy Kowalski's six-year quest is successful, the state of Idaho's child care landscape will look an awful lot like Coeur d'Alene's. "Coeur d'Alene's regulations have been a model for the state," said Kowalski, a children's advocate and former day care owner.

A few days ago, workers stuck a 13,000-pound slab of granite in the ground in front of the old Battery building next to Coeur d'Alene City Park. On Saturday, that slab and a vision for a regional – and maybe one day international – human rights center will be unveiled on International Human Rights Day.

Keeping the pharmaceutical cocktails straight and dealing with their side effects are bad enough for people with HIV and AIDS. But it's the loneliness that's hardest.

The historic hobo camps along the Spokane River's railroad tracks are mostly gone. But on occasion, transients still manage to establish a makeshift camp in the trees near downtown Coeur d'Alene. Mostly they go unnoticed, except for when they clean up in public bathrooms at the nearby Harbor Center offices.