Anthems or anathema, Christmas music is part of our identity
By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
It was the day before Halloween when I heard the first Christmas song of 2023.
I was thumbing through some costume ideas at a local …
By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
It was the day before Halloween when I heard the first Christmas song of 2023.
I was thumbing through some costume ideas at a local …
By Dick Sonnichsen
Reader Contributor
And God said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), thus, initiating mating rituals that remain today — men and women …
‘Home’ is a moveable feast
By Zach Hagadone
Images of Thanksgiving — at least the idealized ones — are of tables loaded with food in cozy, home-feeling places that are …
By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
After college, I spent about five years living and working in Los Angeles. The plan was to break into writing and directing movies, but the …
By Mike Wagoner
Reader Contributor
Archaeologists keep finding cool things out about us… our early history as a species… Homo Sapiens, baby… that’s who we are.
Evidently an early prototype …
By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff
It’s come to my attention that my life story — such as it is — could be considered less than normal, due to the presence …
By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Contributor
A couple of days into this year’s rifle hunting season, my husband Alex sent me a photo. The text notification made my heart race. He’d …
By Dick Sonnichsen
Reader Contributor
I love that title phrase. If only it were true.
Sadly, it isn’t. Not even close. It’s an oxymoron, a myth, a preposterous impossibility, a …
By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
I grew up 10 miles south of Sandpoint, in a log cabin beside Highway 95 near Westmond. To this day, if I hear the faraway …
By Jen Jackson Quintano
Reader Columnist
It was, perhaps, not my finest moment.
I might have treated one Sandpoint land baron as a proxy for them all.
I might have …
The Sandpoint Reader is our town's local, independent weekly newspaper. "Independent" means that the Reader is locally owned, in a partnership between Publisher Ben Olson and Keokee Co. Publishing, the media company owned by Chris Bessler that also publishes Sandpoint Magazine and Sandpoint Online. Sandpoint Reader LLC is a completely independent business unit; no big newspaper group or corporate conglomerate or billionaire owner dictates our editorial policy. And we want the news, opinion and lifestyle stories we report to be freely available to all interested readers - so unlike many other newspapers and media websites, we have NO PAYWALL on our website. The Reader relies wholly on the support of our valued advertisers, as well as readers who voluntarily contribute. Want to ensure that local, independent journalism survives in our town? You can help support the Reader for as little as $1.