Father’s Day is coming up this week, and so is my dad’s 85th birthday. I sure wish he were going to be here to celebrate both occasions, but he’s been gone for 20 years.
Digging through a bunch of old photos of him the other day, I came across one from Fathers Day 1964. I was startled. It was a photo of our entire family — me, my four brothers and mom dutifully facing the camera, posing the way conventional people do. Except for dad. He is facing backwards. Why was he facing backwards? Simply because it looked funny, I guess. Or maybe he was showing off a new haircut. There was no other reason.

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Growing up, I didn’t get to see my dad as much as most kids.

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Summer is approaching and fresh fruit is arriving in the stores.

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Ever met one of those people who seemingly can do everything? I know a guy like that.
He speaks approximately 47 different languages fluently, including Esperanto.
He can play 14 musical instruments — simultaneously.

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With his party’s nomination in hand, would Barack Obama be better off with Hillary Clinton as his running mate?
Obviously she thinks so. If she’s not on the ticket and Obama wins, she’ll be sidelined for at least four and perhaps eight years, at which point she’ll be 68.

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Every family experiences painful losses. Beloved pets and family members die. So do hopes and marriages. Tragedies and accidents happen, unfortunately.
As parents, we may not be able to protect our children from crisis or loss, but we can react in a way that prevents it from tearing the family apart. What matters isn’t whether you have a crisis, but how you handle it.

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Q: My two year old PC, running Windows XP Professional freezes up several times a day and I have to restart it using the power button.

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On May 21, inclement weather didn’t stop a band of King County cyclists from the task at hand: riding an 11-mile route to acknowledge the untimely deaths of their comrades.

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When we had to start thinking about our senior project in early February, I knew I wanted to volunteer for a newspaper and get a feel for professional journalism.

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The Washington State Republican convention last weekend in Spokane should have been dull and uneventful.
All they had to do was approve a slate of national convention delegates to support the obvious nominee, John McCain, vote for a short, concise party platform and leave town.
Instead the tenacious Ron Paul people, who made up more than a third of the delegates, contested the McCain forces on virtually every front.

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The state organization that governs high school sports has stumbled in a recent decision involving girls track.
Because of it, common sense has been shoved aside in favor of a questionable rule.
The issue involves the girls 3,200-meter run at the recent Class 4A track and field meet in Pasco. One of the runners — Nicole Cochran of Bellarmine Prep — was disqualified when a judge ruled she stepped over the inside lane line during the race. Cochran dominated the race and won by three seconds, but was denied her medal.
Here’s the problem. A video of the race shows that it wasn’t Cochran who stepped over the line, but another runner.

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My twin sons are now about six weeks old — so naturally, it’s time to begin applying to private preschools.
I considered starting this process two weeks ago — but I believe that kids need a chance to be kids.

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Thousands of mortar boards will be tossed into the air across Washington this June; a time-honored sign that our high school seniors have finally graduated.

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Looking for an easy, low fat and elegant meal for entertaining?

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Wanna buy a car that’s gentle on the environment?
Then don’t buy a new hybrid. Are you buying organic food because it’s good for the environment? If so, you’re making a mistake.
Those are just two of the 10 claims made by the writers at WIRED magazine in its lead story: “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What it Means to be Green.”

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The election season is approaching and the state’s two major political parties are in a twitter.
The reason? We have a new primary system this year and there’s no longer a guarantee that both a Democrat and a Republican will make it to the November General Election ballot.

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News media mimic domestic beasts of burden: Sometimes lazy, often trainable, but always hungry.

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It’s expected that transportation will be the biggest local issue in the 2008 elections.

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I helped a friend and his wife load their stuff into a big U-Haul some days ago. They were moving to southern California.

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Microsoft will continue to support Windows XP Professional until the year 2014, which means we’ll continue to support your desire to use it.

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