It's "Let's All Vote" Tuesday!

 

If we don't do anything else on this Tuesday, May 19, we eligible voters should exercise our civic responsibility, go to the polls and VOTE. 

Much can be said about the political situations in protests, in public and virtual forums, in letters to the editors, in general conversation or even yelling at the TV set (some at my house have that part perfected). 

All this said, the most profound, specific and lasting message we can send out there into the world is filling in several little boxes with black or blue ink. 

Once we've done that, we've earned the right to continue commentary via all of the above.

I believe that if we don't participate in the election process, we not only let down candidates we would have preferred, but we also let down ourselves.

So, let's try to win an undeclared contest:  let's see people from Bonner County win yet another State contest with the  highest voter turnout percentage. 

VOTE TODAY. 

We got wet!

Just when we were thinking the rain had left for a while, the biggest, wettest, most intense downpour came over late yesterday afternoon and created a whole new set of puddles and squishy ground. 

I even found my rain boots when it was time to go bring the horses in from pasture. 

Maybe today, the warmth and dry weather will come.  

Like many people in Sandpoint, I was stunned yesterday afternoon to hear of the death of Mark Fuhrman.  

Like most of the world, I had seen all the coverage over the past 30-plus years regarding his involvement as a Los Angeles detective in the epic OJ Simpson trial. 

Well, after that ongoing story ended, Mark Fuhrman moved to Sandpoint.  I can even remember where he lived---first on Euclid, eventually on a farm out here in the country along Colburn-Culver Road and then over in Dufort. 

The locals tend to keep track of the big names who move to the community, but for the most part, they also leave them alone to live their lives in relative peace and quiet. 

I'd like to think that's how Mark Fuhrman saw it because he stayed here. 

In the early years after he moved here, I was advising the Sandpoint High School Cedar Post and doing my darndest to keep up the long-standing fine reputation the student newspaper had earned over the decades, thanks to some amazing advisers who came before me. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Cedar Post students consistently and perennially came close to functioning as professional journalists by the time they graduated from high school. 

They were also generally competitive at the state and national level. 

In 1997,  members of my staff agreed to coordinate a panel discussion at the JEA National Convention.  

The discussion would touch on a term I liked to use called "hit-and-run journalism."  

Sandpoint had been a victim over the years where national media outlets would send reporters to our community to get the scoop, often with the bent of perpetuating the idea that North Idaho was filled with racists. 

Yes, we had them and still do, but hardly to the extent of the perception that a national audience would often assume after reading yet another story where the reporter had come to this beautiful area, talked to a few locals as well as some folks in the bars, write a story, file it and leave town. 

As one who grew up in this community and knew better, I thought this coverage was a bit unfair. 

So, that would be the discussion, and to prepare for the conference in Phoenix, we invited Mark Fuhrman to come to our Cedar Post class. He graciously accepted.  

He spent two hours with my students, and what was to be an interview turned into a lively discussion. 

I was one proud journalism adviser that day, and, as one of my students who took the lead in that activity wrote to me a while back, "THAT still gives me goosebumps."

From Cory Myers, who once served as the news director for the Sioux Falls, South Dakota's Argus Leader: 

I remember you arranging for us (or did you have us do it?

 

I can't remember the origin . . .  to interview Mark Fuhrman after he moved to Sandpoint and ahead of our trip/presentation in Phoenix on the effects of and inaccuracies in national/international reporting on a small community. 

THAT still gives me goosebumps!

I never forgot that generous gesture on Mark Fuhrman's part, and I'm sure that the experience became a lifetime memory for those students. 

In later years when Willie came back home to teach and coach at Sandpoint High, he had some conversations with Mark whose son was one of Willie's players. 

With his death, the world will hear the story told over and over about Mark Fuhrman's involvement with the "glove" and his testimony in the OJ trial, but based on the comments I've seen on Facebook, he lived a positive and good life here in Sandpoint.

Residents of this community saw Mark Fuhrman, the human, and that's exactly how we'll remember him. 

 

Life changing for me and my unique horse situation. 

Condensed bales of orchard grass, available at Wood's Hay and Grain. 

Since I board my horses now, I don't need nearly as much hay. 

Also, since many farmers with hay equipment have gone to round bales or those huge square bales, I was feeling a bit stressed out about where I was going to get my hay. 

When I learned about the compressed bales at Wood's yesterday I bought a couple. 

And, for me, they will be perfect.  No need for a hay crew because they are manageable at 57 pounds per bale.  I simply dumped each bale out of the pickup bed into a cart, rolled them into the barn and emptied onto the floor.  

A bit more expensive but without the expense and worry of finding a hay crew to put hay in the barn, it evens out. 

Knowing about this option has removed and everlasting cloud of stress. 

I am thrilled. 

Off to do my voting and then home to keep up the yard beautification activities. 

Happy Tuesday.