The Slice: Comparing apples to … apples

Here’s a report on the Evergreen State of mind.

To solicit materials for geography projects, elementary school kids sometimes send letters to faraway newspapers. The hope is that the papers will print the students’ addresses and then readers will mail postcards and pamphlets about their areas.

That is how fifth-grader Cole Jennings happened to write to The Spokesman-Review last week. He wanted help with his part of a “Parade of States” project.

“I have chosen your state, Washington, for my presentation,” he wrote.

Great. Excellent pick.

The thing is, young Cole happens to live in Washington — a little place called Buckley near the Pierce County/King County line, to be precise.

So “your state” is also his state.

I’m sure he simply copied most of that wording from a form provided by his teacher. And it looks like an adult addressed the envelope.

Still, we all know West Siders are capable of forgetting that we exist over here.

Oh, well. Contact me if you want Cole’s address. Sounds like he could use a hand.

“Speaking of this state’s identity crisis: I loved Friday’s “Today in history” entry from 1980. “The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded.”

I’m glad we made clear that it wasn’t one of those exploding volcanoes in Washington, D.C.

“Just wondering: Are you comfortable addressing someone by his or her nickname if you do not know the story of how that person came be called that?

“Slice answers: “I am the person nobody likes to sit next to at concerts,” wrote Diane Rowland, a single mom who lives in Post Falls and works in Spokane. “Not only am I loud, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket and I usually know all the words to the songs.”

And Ken Stout, a truck driver who owns a vintage Mustang, said convertibles are definitely worth the trouble.

“Feedback: Ed Schaefer said the item about getting ready to go to the airport could have been based on his oldest daughter, Catherine.

“It got to the point that while she was in college we would set all the clocks in the house ahead by an hour so there would be a fighting chance of getting her to the airport on time,” he wrote.

And in the matter of being surrounded by younger people, William Hiatt was talking to a landscape designer about replacing a retaining wall. Hiatt mentioned that he had moved into his house in 1982, which prompted the guy to note that he was in eighth grade that year.

“Today’s Slice question: Compared to the way cars from 1957 are remembered today, how will model year 2007 vehicles be viewed 50 years from now?