2020 One year ago
The holiday season looks lonely for many this year — especially for elderly communities who are forced to isolate because they are at higher risk for developing COVID-19 complications. One Moscow resident, Kath Strickler, was inspired to find a way to reach out to local seniors after hearing a story about a family friend who’s struggled lately after a long nine months spent stuck in lockdown at an assisted living center. “That story broke my heart,” Strickler said. After hearing this story, Strickler emailed five of her close friends — Jodi McClory, Jocelyn Aycrigg, Jana Horne, Susan Spalinger and Kelly Jennings — to get them on board with a plan to create gift baskets for the residents of two assisted living centers in town. ... An annual Palouse Pathways event that seeks to connect college-bound high schoolers with college students from the region is being held virtually this year, but organizers said the online format has not been a hindrance. Palouse Pathways Director Peggy Jenkins said the event, which normally takes place over a single afternoon, has been split into three separate teleconferences hosted through Zoom. While there is no free coffee or pizza available this year, Jenkins said she’s been encouraged by attendance to these and other functions hosted by Palouse Pathways in a year overshadowed by a pandemic.
2016 Five years ago
Christmas weekend — one of the busiest weekends for fire departments across the nation — was mostly emergency-free for the Pullman Fire Department, but it didn’t mean it was uneventful. Firefighters rushed to the Pullman Fire Department for a traditional turkey dinner — it wasn’t ablaze, either. They came together just for fire family feasts and were able to thanks to a slow weekend. According to the National Fire Protection Association, Christmas and Christmas Eve see the second and third most kitchen fires in the United States — right behind Thanksgiving. But as of 4 p.m. in the afternoon the Pullman Fire Department responded to zero kitchen or Christmas tree fires. ... Veterans like Mike Lucey spent Christmas Eve on South Jackson Street in Moscow with a fishing net asking those passing by for donations to homeless veterans. Lucey, a Vietnam era veteran, spent eight years on the streets looking for a way out. Now he’s a volunteer for the Guardians Foundation of Post Falls, Idaho, and he’s working to find a way out for other homeless veterans. Lucey had a pinched sciatic nerve and was unable to walk for much of the time he spent without a home. One day when Lucey came out of a Wal-Mart in east Spokane he saw a table for the Guardians Foundation — a nonprofit that provides more homes for veterans than any in the Inland Northwest. By noon the next day Lucey was in a home in Coeur d’Alene.
2011 Ten years ago
Christmas is a time for tradition, and congregation members at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church began their own Sunday with a community dinner following the Holy Eucharist. The church hosts an annual Thanksgiving dinner, said the Rev. Robin Biffle, but this year congregation members Nate Wiltsie and his partner, Paul Collins, wanted to give a Christmas gift to the community in the form of a holiday dinner. “It is so much an expression of who this congregation is,” said Biffle. “It was a delight, but in that sense, not a surprise.” A sudden illness sidelined Wiltsie on Sunday, but Collins, his mother-in-law Bea O’Neill and several other volunteers were downstairs in the church early that morning cooking up turkeys, hams and a number of side dishes. ... Books are still arriving for the new 10,000-book library on the island of Rota, just north of Guam and more than a thousand miles east of the Philippines. These last few books come, as did the 10,000, not directly from New York publishers or Amazon.com, but from the readers of MaryJanesFarm magazine, published by Moscow resident MaryJane Butters, its founder. Until the library’s reopening last summer, the people of Rota had been without a community library since December 1997 when Super Typhoon Paka hit the Pacific island, devastating the island’s newly completed library, and damaging its books so badly they had to be burned. Last year Aimee Steiner, a literacy advocate working on Rota, was inspired to reach out for help to Moscow, 6,000 miles away.
