It's been a little while...

My last post, I was pretty hard on litterbugs. I would apologize to them, but it's pretty obvious they don't care anyway. I have to say that things are looking cleaner downtown. I don't know if that's because of all the rain we've been having or there was a major clean up after St Patrick's Day.  I will revisit this issue soon.

One thing on the radar is the next BrewRunRun.  It's scheduled for April 23rd. There will be a big shakeup in the lineup, as Iron Goat will be relocating. The old location will be shut down and I'm not sure if the new one will be open or not by the 23rd. So, that just leaves Benniditos and Budge Brothers to the east.  We have some new breweries to consider, as well. So...

In the meantime, if you don't follow Haiku Friday, you can at haikufriday.com. Which reminds me, I need to revamp this website and then get some content on brewrunrun.com. Here's last week's HaikuFriday if you are interested.

Dirty Old Town - Part Une

If this Native American gentleman (played by someone who may have been Italian)  were to paddle his canoe up under the railroad tracks toward the intersection of Pacific and Browne, downstream from the House of Charity, he would weep so hard he might have a stroke. Unfortunately buckets of tears would only dampen the mounds of trash there. Indeed, most of downtown has become amazingly littered.

I've been thinking a lot about all the litter downtown. I think we need to figure out a multi-pronged approach to fixing this problem.  When I was a kid, one of the worst things you could be called was a litterbug - basically an angry, dirty cockroach who only cared about himself. If you littered (even accidentally) you felt ashamed. So powerful was the effect of public service announcements at the time. I mean look at him, a boozing, smoker with an eyepatch. Actually, he seems kind of cool now.

Things softened with dorky Woodsy Owl (according to the song, he was a friend of Smoky the Bear - sure) appealing to our give-a-hootedness, and now it seems there's no whimsical character asking us to do anything in any PSA. Maybe there are no longer PSAs.

In the next few installments, I would like to address the embarrassment of our garbage-strewn Spokane, a city I take a lot of pride in.

In closing, I invite you to try a little experiment. Wherever you live, go for a little walk. How many paces can you count before you encounter garbage (not in garbage cans). For those of us who walk a lot downtown, let's do the same. If you want, you can leave your findings in the comment section. Tell us all where you walked and the minimum and maximum paces you strolled before encountering litter. Why not sing this song while you are walking, over and over and over and out loud:

The starts are starting

Today was the first day of thinning for my summer crop of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, onions, etc.

Here's the before:

Here's the after:



















What a mess. It always is. I used to feel kind of guilty about killing off so many beautiful little plants. Worse yet, the aftermath of thinning is such a sparse dismal sight.

To baby those seeds into sprouting, enjoy how the greenery filled the soil, take in the morning smells of a garden in the basement, get excited about the growth every day, only to rip out and destroy so much seems cruel and counterproductive - especially when the survivors look so shell shocked. Their future doesn't look very good. Except...

I've seen the same thing happen every year. Within a day or two, they are back, stems plumping in the dirt. The growlight is raised a little every day to accommodate their healthiness. All the purged plants are not even a memory as I transplant the lucky ones into bigger pots. Sometimes gardening is as heartless as it gets.

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