On this week's Inland Journal:
The world sees the war in Ukraine mostly through the lens of reporters who tell us what they see and hear. Spokane native Kristin Blyckert has lived and worked there as a human rights lawyer for nearly three years. This week she was back in her home town.
"I think that there is broad support [in the United States] for Ukraine, but I think compassion fatigue is a real thing. And, you know, even if people still have the stickers on their phone or whatever, I think it's easy to forget. You know, there's so much going on right now, and it's easy to forget, and it's easy to get distracted by other global and domestic atrocities."
Former Boise Mayor David Bieter came to Spokane this week to talk about how his city is addressing homelessness. A Spokane business group brought him here to share his experiences.
"We had a kind of crash course...literally, three weeks after I was first sworn in a homeless facility of about 150 people failed. It was owned by the city and run by a nonprofit and the nonprofit said if you don't cut us a big check, we’re gonna have to push 150 people out in the streets. So we thought it was a bad idea to keep funding a model that that was unsustainable, so we didn't cut the check and consequently had to take it over. We had no funding and really no expertise. The only upside was the council and the mayor, we were in the foxhole together. Nobody was jabbing at the other."
Food as Farmacy. Eliza Billingham talks with Coeur d'Alene naturopath Casey Carr about the links between our food supply, soil and human health.
"If we are what we eat and what we eat is coming from the soil, really our micronutrient health and the amount of trace minerals, just general minerals, vitamins, polyphenols and antioxidants were really only as strong as what's in the soil because that's all that the plants can pick up.”
And we talk with apple detective Dave Benscoter about a new tool, LostApples.wiki, people can use to test the varieties of apples they find in their yards and orchards.
"What we try to do there is first of all, let people know about lost apples, what they are, and then also provide a way to get a hold of one of our committee people and either come take a look at their orchard, or if it's outside of our driving distance, we'll send them instructions on how to send apples to us. And that's really the first step is to find these old homestead orchards and then try to identify the apples in the orchard."
