The Washington legislature has crossed the halfway point of its 105-day session. We talk with three eastern Washington freshmen about their experiences.
"Speaker Jinkins came out and said, I got five minutes. So we went down onto the floor, and she had all the kids take turns holding the gavel. She had me stand at my desk, and she whispered in their ears, and they'd hit the gavel and tell me to do funny things. And, you know, it was kind of a special moment."
The official language of the U.S. is now English. SPR/Spokesman-Review rural affairs reporter and Murrow Fellow Monica Carrillo-Casas brings us reaction from Spokane residents for whom English is not their first language.
We talk with historian Amanda VanLanen from Lewis-Clark State College about the growth of the apple industry in Washington.
"It wasn't clear in the beginning that Wenatchee and Yakima were going to be the kind of major players. Apples were actually grown all over Washington State in the early territorial years a lot of those were being grown in the Vancouver area and in the Puget Sound area. Walla Walla with the mining booms in Idaho in the 1860s became a very early supplier. Spokane also had a fairly large apple district that it was promoting apples in the Palouse and really a lot of places."
Hear a longer version of this interview here.
