Dearly departed
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff The honor roll of departed community icons is getting uncomfortably long. With the passing March 13 of Erik Daarstad, at age 87, Sandpoint has lost yet another irreplaceable personality...
Tagged: back of the book
On dogs
By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff This month marks my dog’s fifth birthday. I’ve come to learn in the past five years that, when it comes to knowing and loving an animal, people either get...
The pesky public
By Ben Olson Reader Staff In an ideal democracy, a government serves at the behest of its people, not in spite of them. We are oceans away from anything resembling an ideal democracy in...
The Idaho Legislature: Where democracy goes to die
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff You can give no greater gift to an arch-conservative than mentioning the word “democracy” — it gives them the opportunity to puff up with pedantic glee and launch into...
A Few Thoughts … on achieving perma-grin
By Sandy Compton Reader Columnist Long ago, my girlfriend and her sister took me skiing at Schweitzer Basin. Sort of. They got me in a pair of leather boots that connected — temporarily —...
On buzzer beaters
By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff It was like the climax of a sports movie, only less probable. I was volunteering to help coach a girls’ junior high basketball game when a divine combination of...
The bitter pill of nostalgia
By Ben Olson Reader Staff I love watching movies from the 1990s. There’s something nostalgic and warm about that decade right before we all became consumed by the internet, smartphones and social media. It...
An old dog tries (and fails) to learn a new trick
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff Here is a list of “North Idaho activities” at which I suck, am mediocre or lack experience in, and have tried but frankly don’t like doing (in some kind...
The soft underbelly of a humbug
By Ben Olson Reader Staff Maybe it’s because I was born the day after Christmas that I became a humbug. Throughout my childhood, Christmas always loomed before my birthday; the annual eclipse that left...
No: The Nazis were not liberals. Stop trying to say they were
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff There’s been a curious trend in the letters to the editor I’ve been receiving lately: people trying to claim that the Nazis were “actually” liberals and that the Democratic...
