Kerri Thoreson

My much younger husband, Bert, officially retired June 30 after nearly a quarter century with the Lakeland School District Transportation Department and over half a century as a wage earner altogether.

I love my birthday month of May, which I celebrate all month long with a hundred or so Main Street Birthday Club friends, starting with May Day, the Kentucky Derby, Cinco deMayo, Mother’s Day, then Memorial Day. I can stretch out a celebration like nobody’s business.

Earlier this year, a Main Street reader emailed asking if I’d be interested in speaking at a monthly meeting of the Coeur d’Alene Womans Club.

Garrison Keillor: “March is the month God created to show people who don’t drink what a hangover is like.”

In December Bert and I bought fitness watches. I know a lot of people who’ve been on the steps bandwagon for years. For us, we hope to be more intentional about our activity with the bonus of knowing heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns and such.

This past Friday, I attended a retirement party for former owner Tracy Christopherson at Scott Shawver’s Auto Body and RV. The business was sold to longtime employee Mark Ferguson and his wife, Jennifer, last fall and Tracy stayed on to work with Jennifer on the administration side. Friday was her last day of work.

On the eve of the 2024 general election I'm reminded of this lesson from my father's life. When I go to the polls every election I feel as if I'm honoring all who've sacrificed so much through the generations so that I can exercise that right. From the Suffrigists to the men and women in uniform, all of you walk into the voting booth with me.

OK, it wasn’t really date night, but we were under the stars on Wyoming Avenue in the dark of night. After seeing people post awesome photos of the Northern Lights in real time Thursday evening and recognizing that they were actually viewing in town in Post Falls, Rathdrum, Hayden and Coeur d’Alene and not from a mountaintop, I convinced Bert to join me in driving a few blocks so we could have an unobstructed view.

When I first moved to Post Falls in 1985, then with a population of about 5,000, Jim Hammond was serving his first term on the Post Falls City Council.

There’s magic in the annual gathering of vintage Vikings whose high school years were half-century or more ago. We see each other as we once knew each other, while the reality of some wrinkles, pounds and graying of hair is merely amusing and inevitable.

As we prepare to celebrate America’s 248th anniversary of independence we need also to remember over two centuries of selfless service to country by those who left it all on the battlefield.

No matter how the town has grown or changed the Fourth of July parade is a constant, a slice of Americana that for a couple of hours on Coeur d’Alene’s “Main Street” all of the things that our community and country once was and still is, is right there displayed in red, white and blue.

Happy first day of summer tomorrow, when we'll receive the gift of sunshine and temperatures in the 80s after a chilly wet first part of the month. Summer solstice marks the longest period of daylight of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Recently, I realized that changing landscape can be disorienting when landmarks implanted in our brain no longer exist. I’ve lived here since Post Falls was fewer than 5,000 people and the Rathdrum Prairie between Post Falls, Rathdrum and Coeur d’Alene was 100 square miles of blue grass and hay fields.

Ruthie Clark always wanted a little red convertible, which seemed impractical during marriage and motherhood and life in rural North Idaho.

I like to do my part to ensure that the elusive “small town feel” reminders are a priority.

It’s the last week of the fair ... AKA, the third week of August. Predictably, I find myself shaking my head, muttering, “Where did summer go?”

Roberta Graves Larsen was born on Aug. 8, 1936, at the home of Dr. Blackwell, which is now known as the Blackwell House on Sherman Avenue. She grew up in the home of her grandparents, Richard and Iverina Rasmussen, with her mother Joyce on Cougar Bay. The Rasmussen legend on the Heritage Wall at the Coeur d’Alene Library describes them as among the first settlers in Cougar Bay in the early 1920s.