Big smiles for back-to-school photos

Here’s a collective Good Sport Award to the hundreds of kids, from kindergartners to seniors in high school, who let their parents take first day of school photos Tuesday to document history and to post on Facebook. I thoroughly enjoy seeing so many smiling faces, especially those of the parents!

Now we all need to pay close attention to those buses and heed flashing stop lights when they’re picking up and dropping off the children. 

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Although my husband’s first official day of retirement from the Lakeland Transportation shop was July 1 this year, it’s felt more like he was on summer vacation. Yesterday, the first day of school, when he didn’t have to go in early for one last check, making sure all of the buses were ready to safely run over 300 square miles of routes, was when he truly felt the retirement glow.

Kudos to Lakeland's Rod Heitstuman and Matt Wesala for doing the heavy lifting mechanically on those big yellow buses!

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The Tuesday following Labor Day Weekend is probably one of my least favorite days of the year. Even though the calendar says that the last day of summer isn’t for three weeks, it’s all over but the shouting for all intents and purposes.

Tradition, or at least generations of people who summer in the Hamptons, tells us that it’s a fashion faux pas to wear white after Labor Day. Pshaw. If I owned a pair of white shoes that weren’t athletic shoes, I’d sashay about town showing them off. But I will be wearing white pants when I join fellow vintage Vikings for the Coeur d’Alene High School 50+ All Class Reunion this Saturday. Take that, Hamptons snobs.

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In the category of Old Dogs, New Tricks, Labor Day was the first time ever (in decades) that my deadline to file this column changed from Tuesdays to Mondays. While the publication day of Wednesdays is unchanged, my internal deadline calendar will require adjustment.

Since 1990, I’ve prided myself on never having missed a newspaper deadline for anything. At this point in time, I’m grateful to still have a newspaper deadline, which means people are still reading the newspaper.

We got this!

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Happy birthday today to Willi Buerge, Lesli Linde, Emily Davis, Kris McIlvenna, Jim Hamby, Robin Merrifield, Patty Jacobs, Jeremy Moser, David Armstrong, Jeff Tyler and Taylor Valente. Tomorrow, George House (90!), Paulette Fabian, Maggie DeTar, Steve Yost and Rich Dickman will celebrate. On Sept. 5, Jay Broderick, Ken Bookamer and Dave Pulis will cheer another year. Celebrating on Saturday are Carl Riegert, Jack Evans, Amy Carlson, Evelyn Wegner, Dave Chamberlain and Della St.Clair. On Sunday, Keri Alexander and her mother, Sherry Krulitz, Vicki Fulton, Laura Umthun, James Arras, Lori Millsap, Kathleen Cavender, Nikki Luttmann and Jim Brannon mark another year on the calendar. Anne Mitchell, Lea Williams, Vicki Currie, Lisa Gould, Sheena Dunn, Angie Demmig, Lorna Price, Gayle Simpson, Imogene Sverdsten, Irina Ponomarenko, Brad Marshall, Sonya Fernandes, Rosemary Dickson and Bob Coles start the week with Monday birthdays. Sept. 9 birthdays for Dani Zibell-Wolfe, Mary Larson, Kibbee Walton, Seth Anderson, Dominick Pokosa, Daniel Connelly, Krysta Azzollini, Marty Meyer, Donna Boise and Chase Price.

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email [email protected].