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The Slice: Spring gets the cold shoulder

Something happened after The Slice announced the “Spring in Spokane” contest one month ago.

Winter decided to stick around.

So it seems fitting that two of this competition’s three winners reflect that seasonal ambiguity.

Barry M. Smith explained how his winning photo came about.

“I found this skim of ice on the dog dish, slipped it carefully off the top and hung it in the tree,” he wrote. “It expresses my feelings exactly about living in Spokane. It is a little inconvenient at times but it is always amazing and quite often surprisingly beautiful.”

And here’s how Diana Witherspoon described her winning entry.

“My granddaughter, C’Nedra, had a pretty good idea for ‘Spring in Spokane’ (actually Post Falls in our case),” she wrote. “This sums up this spring.”

The snow had melted enough to allow removing a toppled Santa figure from the garden. See it in the background at right? And a fresh dusting had provided 10-year-old C’Nedra with enough material to make one last mini-snowman.

Our third winner, 6-year-old Maddie Speare, offered a poem.

“We think it captures the sense of urgency we feel when spring finally arrives,” said her mom, Liza Mattana, who helped with a few spelling corrections.

Wake up

Wake up

Get up

Get up

Hurry

Hurry

Scurry

Scurry

It’s spring

Speaking of spring: Kathy Kurtz recently told her 3-year-old granddaughter, Kira, about various flowers that soon would appear. And apparently the little girl remembered at least part of what she heard.

On a subsequent walk with her mother, young Kira excitedly declared, “Look, mommy! The taco bells are in bloom!”

Things to do before Memorial Day: “Well, we go to the lake, so we need to get out to the lake before then to make sure pipes didn’t break and squirrels didn’t invade at the lake,” wrote Karen Brady.

TV news: Some readers said Q6/Fox’s Bill McGinty shouldn’t change a thing. Others suggested that there’s nothing wrong with his on-camera persona that mild sedatives couldn’t address.

And Molly Harley said those who share his hairstyle should be said to be coiffed with “The McGinty.”

In any event, it would seem that viewers have noticed him. That has to be a good thing in his line of work.

Today’s Slice question: What’s your most effective tactic for dealing with seasonal allergies?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. For previous Slice columns, see www.spokesman.com/columnists. Cyclists who take themselves too seriously to wave back to less elite-looking bike riders can go to blazes.

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