Pick a column, any column

Kirk Ericson | Mar 30, 20230

Dear readers,

I have ideas for columns that haven’t become columns yet, and maybe never will. Those ideas, some of them now nearly 6 years old, nag at me like a pile of gunk in the closet.

So, I’ve decided to clean out that closet. The story ideas that follow are getting tossed. It’s spring cleaning for the head.

Here’s how you can help. Check out the following stories and pick one that you’d like to see written into a column. Tell me. My email address is at the bottom of the column and I’ll write up the idea that gets the most requests. Promise.

Only one request per customer.

Here are your choices:

■ Is it true Bill Gates Jr. is or was a terrible tipper? A woman who used to work at Alderbrook Resort & Spa in Union told me he was. She didn’t witness it; she heard it from several waitresses who worked there in the early 1990s. Gates’ family has owned a vacation house next to Alderbrook for generations.

■ Call the Chamber of Commerce in Battle Ground, Washington, 360-687-1510. Ask whether it’s irritating to see the city’s name misspelled. Mention that 3rd Congressional District candidate Joe Kent — in announcing his second campaign for the federal seat — OK’d a news release in January that spelled the city, in the dateline, as “Battleground.” Also, the release had the wrong year: Jan. 11, 2022. Campaign contact person: Erin Van Natta/360-869-5714/[email protected].

■ National Skipping Day. Call the organization responsible for establishing national days, like Doughnut Day or Smile Day, and see what it would take to create a National Skipping Day (Webster’s definition: to move along lightly, stepping from one foot to the other with a hop or bounce.”)

■ A relative apparently has a friend who roomed at the University of Washington with the dude who is the basis for the main character in “The Big Lebowski.” 2023 is the film’s 25th anniversary — an anniversary divisible by five is a good news peg.

■ Can you call Google to cancel your Gmail account? Would you get transferred? Does Google even have a phone number? How many dead Gmail accounts are there?

■ Amy Lee is a blueberry picker who frequents Gile Blueberry Farm in Thurston County. Her picking record, according to owner Ken, is 200 pounds (confirm this) of blueberries, by hand, in a single day. Around $500. Best I’ve done in a day is 20 pounds. How does she do it?

■ Take one full day to walk around and help every person who expresses a need for help. Be prepared to say “yes” to everyone and every experience.

■ Imagine a conversation between ex-President Donald Trump and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The subject of the conversation would be, “Elements of the Moral Man” Should Douglass use the vernacular of his day?

■ Story on identifying mountains in the Olympic range. Many people in Mason and Thurston counties don’t know the name of the mountain they’re looking at. Give people memory devices for being able to recall and identify each mountain. Contact Elizabeth Person at [email protected].

■ During a summer weekend, approach people in Hoodsport driving cars with license plates from Florida or Texas. Tell them many people in Western Washington are prejudiced against Floridians and Texans. Ask whether they’ve noticed that. Also: “What can you tell Washingtonians that would make them less prejudiced about Floridians or Texans?”

■ Interview the man rescued in snow near Mount Ellinor in February 2021. He was found severely hypothermic with scant clothes. It might be a case of paradoxical undressing. Talk to rescuer, too. http://www.tinyurl.com/35rfc3hj.

■ The peril of naming buildings after humans, especially white men. Use the trail at camp (check whether it’s still a Boy Scout camp) on Summit Lake to illustrate the point. The trail was (is?) named after Jim West, a former state senator. After his term in the Capitol, West, a Republican, was elected mayor of Spokane. Then scandal, resignation, disgrace.

■ Where does an email go when it goes? How does it get from here to Arizona faster than it can get from my phone to my desktop computer 3 feet away?

■ Do a story on the popularity of picking salal in Mason and Jefferson counties. What is salal used for?

■ Record what people yell when they rant in public. Ask yellers questions about what they’re yelling.

■ Collect instances when people use the phrase, “It’s the worst ever.” For example: “It’s the worst case of FBI overreach in U.S. history.” Call them up, send emails, whatever, with one question: “What previous instance did that ‘worst-ever’ incident replace?” In other words, what’s now in second place in that worst-ever category of FBI overreach?

■ Some power utilities employ “avian bird experts.” Could be interesting.

■ Every year, the state gives awards to the best sewage treatment systems in Washington. What would a reception for those winners look like? Do they even have a reception?

■ Why don’t people in Washington have an accent? Or do we? And if we do, what is it, and why can’t we detect it? People in Boston and Mississippi know they have an accent, don’t they? Contact a linguistic professor at a university.

Email me with the column idea you’d most like written up.