Bloglander

When the Olmsted brothers wrote a report to Spokane’s Board of Park Commissioners in 1908 outlining a system of parks, the plan emphasized the natural beauty of Spokane’s deep river gorge and the need to “prize and preserve” the unique landscape.

That perspective has guided the Kendall Yards development, and the next phase includes the construction of Olmsted Green, a park about the size of a football field along the Centennial Trail. After getting feedback from residents last fall, the park plans now include a winding path through the middle with a footbridge over a stormwater “rain garden.” A water feature for kids was added near the playground area and Centennial Trail.

Compare the latest image to the previous version from last year, below:

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Greenstone

The latest plans for Olmsted Green in Kendall Yards include a water feature for kids and "rain gardens" for stormwater.

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Greenstone

Previous plans from last year, when residents gave feedback.

Though it won’t be obvious, this park is also designed to be an innovative solution for keeping unfiltered stormwater out of the Spokane River. Runoff from streets and parking lots often contains oil, de-icer and other pollutants, and new developments are required to contain stormwater so it doesn’t run directly into the river.

This past summer, an underground tank was constructed just west of the Monroe Street Bridge at the same time the Centennial Trail was extended through Kendall Yards. That tank captures runoff from the bridge area, where the soil is too rocky to absorb it, and pumps it farther west into Kendall Yards, where it will be filtered at the Olmsted park through grassy basins called “rain gardens” in the northwest corner of the park. Another rain garden in the middle of the park is paired with a pedestrian bridge.

Greenstone Corp. CEO Jim Frank offered the land as public park, but the city Park Board declined to take on the maintenance costs. Instead, it will be owned by the Kendall Yards homeowners’ association.

Here is a detail from the specifications for the stormwater basins at the park entrance.

Here is the park location within the Kendall Yards development:

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A destroyed lunch — taco salad?

Once, back before my days at the Inlander, our staff created a video series called “Lunches & Punches.” It was described as: “in which we take local lunches as destroy them in interesting and arbitrary ways.”

It worked like this: We would post a photo of a destroyed lunch from a local restaurant. Readers would guess what lunch it was, and we would reveal the answer with a video showing how the lunch was destroyed. In the first, Chauncy “The Hillyard Hammer” Welliver destroyed a BLT from Brooklyn Deli.

I asked art director Chris Bovey, the only one in the videos who’s still on staff, to explain. He says:

“Looking back on it, I can't believe we got the green light to make Lunches & Punches, a pointless web series where we destroy local food in a creative way. Premise sounds simple but after you blow up a bowl of gumbo with a shotgun, destroying food becomes challenging.

It started when I mistakingly overheard a conversation about lunches and naturally I butted in as a joke about a web series called Lunches and Punches all about destroying food. I teamed up with former Inlander staffer Nick Deshais, and we pitched it to the editor, Jacob Fries.

He was not thrilled but I clearly remember him saying, "meh, why not?" Voila! Out of ambivalence, Lunches and Punches was born! With former Inlander staffer, Joel Smith, directing and Young Kwak filming, we did things that would make any fifth-grader jealous.

I would love to bring back the series one day, only because I think sometimes we take things too seriously and can't be goofy. So Spokane, you bring the burrito and we'll bring the dynamite!

After a few rounds of switching up our web systems, not all the photos made it through. But all the videos are still around. And we created a playlist of them all for your viewing pleasure.

I mean, they used to let us shoot pint glasses? Neato Burrito is totally OK with putting dynamite in with the black beans? Amazing. Maybe we should bring it back...

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Derrick King

This "Center of the Galaxy" screenprint is one of the venue's Indiegogo campaign perks.

Since new owners launched a $50,000 crowdfunding campaign a week and a half ago, plans to revitalize the Big Dipper have been catching the attention of both local and national media, including Rolling Stone.

The write-up posted this morning on the music magazine's website focused largely on Big Dipper owner Dan Hoerner's connection as a former member of the popular Seattle rock group Sunny Day Real Estate.

Sunny Day was one of the major influential bands of the "emo" music movement of the '90s, but the group broke up in 2001 when two of its members left to join the Foo Fighters. Coincidentally, Sunny Day has also announced it's releasing a new song — the group's first since 2000 — called Lipton Witch, as part of a split-release record with Circa Survive, on April 19th's Record Store Day.

Hoerner has said he hopes his ties to the music community can help influence donations to the Dipper's Indiegogo campaign. As of this posting, the campaign has raised $3,215.

It should be noted that even if the ambitious $50,000 goal (intended to fund the installation of fire sprinklers, which will increase the venue's maximum capacity) isn't reached in the next 50 days, the Dipper campaign will still get to keep most of the final pot. Under Indiegogo's flexible funding model, if a campaign goal is reached the site takes a 4 percent cut. If not, the fundraiser gets what they've raised minus a 9 percent cut to the site.

Donor perks for contributing to the Dipper's fund include free passes to future shows, T-shirts, limited-run screenprinted posters by local artists (one is by Inlander graphic designer Derrick King) and combinations of these items. For more generous backers, $750 gets a private movie-watching party at the venue, $5,000 is a lifetime pass to the venue and a whopping $25,000 donation means the venue's stage will be named after that donor.

U of I/Dabco

LEFT: Wallace Residence Center will be home to a fine arts themed community next fall. RIGHT: One of the apartment complexes built by Duane Brelsford in Pullman.

WSU

Meth study: WSU sleep scientist Jonathan Wisor has received a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for $395,577 to study the effects of chronic meth use on brain metabolism and sleep. (WSU News)

Helping transfers: The American Association of University Women awarded a $5,000 grant to WSU’s Women’s Resource Center to help women attending Community Colleges of Spokane transfer to four-year institutions. The team seeks to raise awareness and address issues that inhibit women from successfully making the transfer. (WSU News)

Free housing: A Pullman developer and philanthropist is teaming up with the WSU Foundation to provide free housing for a select group of high-achieving students. Duane Brelsford is giving the university access to four two-bedroom apartments for the next 20 years. (Daily Evergreen)

U of I

Fine arts community: Housing will be opening a fine arts themed community in Wallace Residence Center-Stevenson Wing for fall 2014. The fine arts themed community has previously been located in the Targhee building, which will be going offline as a student living option for fall 2014. (U of I News)

Gonzaga

Haven for Hoops: Spokane, because of Gonzaga, was named one of the “8 Havens for College Hoops” in the April issue of Where to Retire magazine. The cities were chosen for their appeal to retirees who enjoy college sports, as well as the other amenities that come with college towns. (Gonzaga News)

Debates in D.C.: The debate team at GU has been invited to participate in the Lafayette Debates in Washington, D.C. this April, hosted by the French Embassy in partnership with the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies of the George Washington University. (Gonzaga News)

Campus Sexual Violence Act: The Campus Sexual Violence (Campus SaVE) Act, which aims to prevent sexual assault on campuses, will take effect March 7. It will hold individual schools accountable for reporting and taking disciplinary action against sexual violence. (Gonzaga Bulletin)

Wildcard: Boston University

MOOCs: Registration for BU’s first four MOOCs (massive open online courses) opened last week, signaling the University’s entrance into a new form of higher education that rethinks the current classroom model and offers it—free of charge—to a global audience, including students here. (BU News)

IHOP

Since beginning its National Pancake Day celebration in 2006, the International House of Pancakes reports its restaurants have raised more than $10 million to support charities. Today, we here in Spokane will once again celebrate National Pancake Day at IHOP and enjoy three free Buttermilk pancakes.

In return, you will be asked to consider leaving a donation for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. All the donations will help local charities provide equipment, procedures and critical care for children. If you donate $5 while you’re there, you'll get a coupon for $5 off your next visit. Treat the family and help out a good cause. The goal for this year is to raise $3 million.

Children's Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds and awareness for 170 member hospitals that provide treatment to kids across the U.S. and Canada. Donations — including all those made on National Pancake Day — stay local to fund critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable care. Programs like the one IHOP offers support the nonprofit's mission to save and improve the lives of as many children as possible.

There are four IHOP restaurants in the Spokane area, including one in Spokane Valley and one in Coeur d'Alene. Hurry, or take your time. There's no rush: National Pancake Day ends at 10 pm. My own mom and siblings didn't waste any time, arriving at 7 am for free breakfast before school and work. Find the one closest to you.

HERE

A new proposed anti-discrimination policy over sexual orientation and gender identity causes tension in the Coeur d'Alene School District. (SR)

That money you help the city raise by getting caught on camera running red lights still can still only be used on traffic safety projects. (SR)

A woman stops an apparent child-luring attempt in north Spokane. (KXLY)

Spokane will get one of the state's first pot-growing licenses. (KXLY)

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost in the URM security breach. (SR)

THERE

The '80s called: They're taking 20 percent of Radio Shack's stores back. (NYT)

John Kerry arrives in Kiev, offering gifts of loan guarantees to a country on the brink of war. (NYT)

Here come the pot TV ads. (The Wire)

BETTE'S BUSINESS BUREAU

Bette in Spokane and Cathy McMorris Rodgers get a drubbing from Colbert. (And the Spokesman-Review gets some praise.)

This week, we published an in-depth investigation into Erick Hansen, the president of BlueStar Digital Technologies, a beleaguered Blu-ray plant in Spokane.

If you’ve watched BlueStar’s video newsletter to investors, uploaded a week after the FBI raid, you may notice a guy named Robert Leslie Hymers the III. He’s the corporate-looking guy in the thick glasses, the first to talk after Hansen.

“We’re starting to get a hold of everything that’s out there,” Hymers says. “It’s not a lot out there, but there are a few issues that are rather vocal and very visible. So we’re doing everything that we can to mitigate the damage, to protect your investment, to protect the company as a going concern, and to make sure that we can isolate the damage and be able to, you know, achieve a good outcome for everybody.”

The video calls him an employee of the accounting department of the law offices of Darin Shaw, the attorney aiming to take BlueStar public. Hymers has also been named as an associate producer and production accountant for BlueStar’s sci-fi movie Dominion.

You probably haven’t heard of him. Unless, of course, you’re a die-hard Mets or Phillies fan.

Lenny Dykstra played center fielder for the Mets in the ’80s and the Phillies in the ’90s. After his retirement, he experienced improbable success — picking stocks, publishing a financial magazine aimed at wealthy athletes.

Hymers was his accountant.

And when all that collapsed, when Dykstra fell into bankruptcy, when he was accused of bankruptcy fraud, obstruction of justice, filing a false financial statement, and grand theft auto, Hymers was tangled up with him.

Here’s an LA Times story on the indictment from 2011.

Los Angeles County prosecutors said Dykstra, 48, along with his accountant Robert Hymers, 27, and friend Christopher Gavanis, 30, tried to claim credit through a phony business and stolen identity. Beginning in January, the trio tried to lease high-end cars from several area dealerships.

"He has scammed everybody he knows," Deputy Dist. Atty. Alex Karkanen said. "They faked pay stubs. They faked income information for the company. They made it all up on a laser printer at home. And when the dealers asked for a co-signer, they said their financial officer would sign."

The so-called financial officer was actually an unsuspecting customer of the accountant, Karkanen said, adding, "He knew nothing about them using his identity.

At two dealerships, Dykstra and Hymers provided information for the "co-signer," but the leases were not approved. At one of the dealerships, Dykstra, Hymers and Gavanis provided fraudulent information and drove off with 2011 models of a Ford Mustang, Ford Flex and Lincoln MKS, Karkanen said.

Maria Ramirez, head deputy district attorney in charge of the auto fraud unit, said Dykstra's company, Home Free Systems, "doesn't even exist.… He's hardly a financial guru."

They "presented the company like it was making millions of dollars when it was not," Ramirez said.

And here's an in-depth 2012 Sports Illustrated story that dives even further into to the strange case, including the use of forged documents:

The case of [identity theft victim] Wilberto Hernandez didn't exactly fit the pattern of the earlier complaints against Dykstra. Unlike the others, Hernandez barely knew the ex-player. They had met once, in September 2010, introduced by Robert Hymers, a mutual friend and a mild-mannered, churchgoing, then 27-year-old accountant at Ernst & Young. On Valentine's Day 2011, when Hernandez followed up on his call to the police by coming in to speak with [LAPD detective Juan] Contreras, he brought Hymers with him.

Hymers told police that he had introduced Hernandez to Dykstra so that Hernandez could help Dykstra improve his credit. At the time, however, Hernandez did not realize that Hymers, who had been doing financial work for Dykstra outside of his employment with Ernst & Young, had been seduced by Dykstra's lifestyle—riding in fancy cars, meeting retired ballplayers and hanging out with celebrities, including Charlie Sheen. Hymers told Contreras that he loaned Dykstra money and credit cards and would later tell police that spending time with Dykstra was "like being in a movie."

…

In late 2010, Hymers, according to a taped interview that police conducted with him on Feb. 14, 2011, began helping Dykstra package assets—specifically his MLB pension and a stake in the online celebrity poker site Hollywood Poker—to be sold or used as collateral to obtain loans. Dykstra promised Hymers equity in his new business Home Free Systems, ostensibly set up to help people refinance predatory home mortgages. Dykstra had also introduced Hymers to Sheen, with whom Hymers hoped to partner on an energy drink with the slogan, "Sheen power, Sheen blood, Sheen energy."

….

Hymers was dazzled by the possibility of earning money with Sheen; in a second police interview, on March 22, 2011, he referred to Dykstra as "Sheen rich and cash poor." Hymers also portrayed himself to Contreras as a friend who tried to help Dykstra, of whom Hymers told police, "Some nights he'll be in Beverly Hills staying in a hotel, and other nights he'll be in his car." He recounted trying to take Dykstra to his church: Hymers said Dykstra immediately claimed to smell mold in the church and had an insurance adjuster come to the building after hours to inspect it, claiming that the adjuster was a friend who would give him a kickback if there was money to be made from a claim. "I've never been good with profiling people," Hymers told Contreras. "Lenny took advantage of that."

Dykstra was sentenced to three years in prison. Hymers copped to a no-contest plea of one count of identity theft as part of a plea bargain, with the agreement that he would only be actually sentenced to a misdemeanor. He was forced to do 30 days of community service and pay about $12,000 in restitution.

Darin Shaw, also featured in the BlueStar video, helped Hymers get his misdemeanor record expunged this January: Legally, it’s almost like his no-contest plea never existed.

Hymers, reached by phone Monday, doesn’t believe he did anything morally wrong in the Dykstra case. He says he was a victim of Dykstra and a series of misunderstandings, and says the main victim in the case remains his best friend. Hymers' version: He was originally acting as an informant, voluntarily giving the police information before he was swept up with the indictments of Dykstra.

“I got fired from my job, everything. My whole life changed,” Hymers says. “It’s the worst thing that could happen with a [Certified Public Accountant]. The next three years, I’ve been working feverishly to rebuild.”

That struggle, he says, made him attractive to Hansen. “He could come to a young professional who could give him a huge discount, because he knows [my] reputation is a little tarnished,” Hymers says. “I took on Erick Hansen at a time I couldn’t turn away any clients, unless he was a blatant criminal. I gave him a discount because of my past.”

He says he was told Hansen wanted his help cleaning up the mess left by previous accountants and getting the books in better shape. But Hymers rapidly found himself doing more than that: He says Hansen heaped other tasks on him — like reviewing the script of Hansen’s alien invasion movie — and made clear they were bigger priorities.

“The guy can’t even draft an email,” Hymers says. “He needs to lean on people who are just competent in writing things. He can’t sit behind a computer and do things that a CEO is supposed to do.”

When Hymers was interviewed for the video, he says, there was a lot he wasn't told about, like the ongoing FBI investigation. He had over 60 other clients to deal with, he says, and was fooled like so many others.

“Maybe they thought I was a good front guy. Here’s this clean-shaven, right-wing accountant from Ernst and Young,” Hymers says. “The video was made prior to the FBI raid. I think that Erick knew something was going to go down, and that’s why he was expediting the video.”

Records show that Hansen did know the FBI was investigating his company, long before the actual raid. A little after the FBI conducted their search warrant, Hymers says he severed all ties with BlueStar.

Early this year, one of BlueStar’s largest investors contacted Hymers with general concerns. On Feb. 5, 2014, Hymers’ attorney sent this brutal reply:

I represent Mr. Robert L. Hymers.

I am informed and thereon believe that the Principals of BlueStar are about to be indicted by the state and federal authorities for an array of crimes relating to the scheme they concocted to raise capital on behalf of BlueStar.

Mr. Erick Hansen is the primary target of this pending indictment – and unless Mr. Hansen and his attorneys work out a pre indictment deal with the prosecuting agencies, I am informed and thereon believe that Mr. Hansen WILL be indicted.

As you are well aware, any methodology implemented by BlueStar to raise capital has nothing to do with the conduct and activities of Mr. Hymers, who has not, and does not, and will not, be affiliated either directly or indirectly with a criminal enterprise or any of its activities.

Mr. Hymers has been used and abused and manipulated and deceived by Mr. Hansen, who as you know is not only uneducated and practically illiterate, but also has no legitimate education and experience and qualifications that would prepare him to administrate and operate BlueStar.

If you would like to discuss the foregoing or work with Mr. Hymers to do the right thing and protect the otherwise legitimate aspects and assets of BlueStar please let us know.

Sincerely,

Joyce H. Vega

Hymers says he doesn’t need or want more publicity, but that he's willing to cooperate to get the full story out. He too believes he’s been defrauded by Hansen. The sheer quantity of problems with BlueStar, he says, means the issue “passes over from being a forgivable mistake to a pervasive moral issue.”

“My feeling is somewhat shell-shocked. I’m apprehensive. I’m getting flashbacks of Dykstra,” Hymers says today. “I don’t want to be the fall guy again.”

Hymers is far from the only one at BlueStar with trouble in his past: Here are just a few of the other people involved with Blue Ray/BlueStar, besides Erick Hansen, who’ve weathered accusations of financial misdeeds:

The former Chief Financial Officer of the company, Yelena Simonyan, was fired from Blue Ray Technologies after the company learned, thanks to an investor who ran a background check, that she had a felony fraud conviction. Later Simonyan tried, unsuccessfully, to sue the company to disclose their financial records.

Sean Michael (full name: Sean Michael Borzage Boyd), who’s served as BlueStar’s executive vice president of global business development, has been the subject of multiple state anti-fraud actions, and not just in Washington. In 2003, working for a company called ESS Environmental, he was sent a Cease and Desist letter from the Texas State Securities Board for selling unregistered securities. And in 2008, another company he worked for, SmartWear Technologies, was dinged by the California Department of Corporations for selling unregistered securities, omitting important information, and making false claims (say, claiming SmartWear had a contract with the Port of Los Angeles and Disney — they didn't). In 2012, a judgment came down from a three-year civil case on the matter, and Michael and several of his SmartWear colleagues were forced to pay a total of at least $25 million.

I sent Michael an email to ask for his response last week, and will update this post if I receive one.

Brian Main, who was con artist Greg Jeffreys’ partner in many of his Ridpath transactions, was tapped as BlueStar’s Executive Vice President of European Markets in August 2009. Only a few months later, Main was named with Jeffreys in a separate fraud suit from California investors. (It’s worth noting that, in a 2013 Spokesman-Review article, Main claims he was just another victim of Jeffreys.)

Allen Pabst, an engineer and the company’s recently appointed Vice President of Operations, has had to deal with numerous websites accusing him of stealing identities and running a fake airline ticket scam. Pabst hasn’t been charged with anything and says he’s innocent. He claims he himself is a victim of identity theft by the scammer, and he’s spent a lot of time and money to clear his name and make the accusations less visible online. In the comments of one of these posts, he says he’s proven his innocence.

And that's just a sample.

The takeaway: BlueStar has long been fighting fraud accusations, and yet the company has repeatedly partnered with people who’ve either been scammers, victims of fraud, or both.

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This year, for only the second time, Idaho is having a closed Republican primary — which means you can only vote in it if you are a registered Republican.

Gov. Butch Otter recently expressed concern about the potential impact of a closed primary and the number of people it could disenfranchise: “I didn’t think it was a good idea to do that. But that’s what the party wanted to do and that’s what the Central Committee of the Republican Party voted for, so that’s what we do.” I agree that the closed primary is a bad idea, but the reality is that it’s only happened now because party officials ignored the grassroots.

As a delegate at the 2008 Idaho Republican Convention, I led the charge with State Sen. Jeff Siddoway to keep Idaho’s primary open. We successfully won a vote on the floor to keep it open and end a lawsuit aimed at closing it.

The response from the newly elected party chairman? He ignored our vote and proceeded with the lawsuit anyway. (At the next convention, a vote was secured to support closing the primary. I and many other supporters of open elections didn’t show up. Why bother when your vote doesn’t count?)

I believe most Idaho Republicans agree with their Republican governor and that first convention vote: Keep the primary open. Because of a lawsuit that mandates allowing party leaders to close the primary if they wish (even over objections from the majority of their own party), it’s impossible for the Idaho Legislature to return to the open Republican primaries of our past.

But they could take a more radical step, like the state of Washington, and end party primaries altogether. Washington state’s truly open primary allows each voter to vote for whomever they like regardless of party. The two candidates with the most votes advance to the General Election. Sometimes that means the General Election is between two people of the same party, and that’s OK. The point is to ensure that voters, not party bureaucrats, decide whom our elected officials will be.

Reducing the power of political parties would also be a good step towards restoring the political system envisioned by our Founding Fathers (or at least our first president). In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington noted:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

John T. Reuter, a former Sandpoint City Councilman, is the executive director of Conservation Voters for Idaho. He has been active in protecting Idaho's environment, expanding LGBT rights and the Idaho Republican Party.

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First things first. If you don’t know the name Charlie LeDuff, watch this. Now this. OK. That guy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and he’s got a mix of serious chops and flair you won’t find anywhere else. LeDuff’s Work and Other Sins, which I recently finished, is a collection of New York City vignettes, stories of bar patrons and factory workers and 9/11 firefighters. The stories are dense with sensory detail, pulling you into the city and the lives of its characters. Now I’m on to Detroit: An American Autopsy, in which LeDuff returns to his broke and broken hometown. With writing that can at times, like LeDuff’s on-screen presence, feel too sensational, the book explores the big news behind the city’s fall: the politics, the corruption, the pension plans. But it also paints a vivid portrait of the city, its people and the lessons Detroit’s story holds for the rest of us. As LeDuff puts it, “You better look at Detroit because that’s what happens when you run out of money.”

— HEIDI GROOVER

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One of my favorite blogs these days is Go Book Yourself because it’s a human curated feed of books to read based on ones I’ve already read and love. It’s not like those generic Amazon recommendations that sometimes totally miss the mark. I’ve gone back to Go Book Yourself time and time again, and I’ve not once been disappointed. Right now, I’m working on Ned Beauman’s The Teleportation Accident, recommended because of my love for The Da Vinci Code and anything Jorge Luis Borges ever wrote. Being myself a little obsessed with the idea of teleportation (if I had a superpower, that would definitely be it), the title jumped out at me and I have not at all been disappointed. I’d never read any of Beauman’s work before, but his writing is sharp and funny and he gives us the beginnings Nazi Germany but from the perspective of a totally clueless, apolitical, unlucky-in-love theater set designer determined to solve a few mysteries of his own. There’s history, there’s romance, there’s noir and it all works together beautifully, the end result being this amazing page-turner that keeps me up at night.

— CLARKE HUMPHREY

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First, a confession. I used to be an avid reader, devouring books by the week. But lately whenever I sit down to read in the evenings or before bed, all I do is fall asleep within mere minutes. That said, it takes me ages to get through a novel, so instead I’ve been bookmarking and saving tons of long form pieces to my Instapaper account. The most interesting piece I’ve finished recently is Buzzfeed’s longform piece on the Russian political activist band Pussy Riot. “What Does Pussy Riot Mean Now” gives both a history of how the all-female group’s members came together, and how two of those women ended up being imprisoned by Vladimir Putin for two years after the group’s famous protest performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral. The piece also examines the feelings of Pussy Riot’s members who weren’t jailed, and their fear the group’s overall message has been lost now that two of their bandmates are internationally famous.

— CHEY SCOTT

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The military-civilian divide is a topic that interests me enough I’ll click just about every link I see about it — so I know when I encounter a particularly good story or essay, and I recently read an exemplary one: “After War, a Failure of Imagination,” an essay in the New York Times by Iraq veteran and author Phil Klay. In it, he challenges the notion that war is a uniquely terrible experience understandable only to those who were there.

It’s a difficult spot to be in, for both. The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment. But the result is the same: the veteran in a corner by himself, able to proclaim about war but not discuss it, and the civilian shut out from a conversation about one of the most morally fraught activities our nation engages in — war.

Another of my topics: Women’s participation on the Internet, of which there have also been some great pieces recently. Start with this long piece by Amanda Hess about attempting to document anonymous threats; then this shorter, detailed piece by Amy Wallace about the personal attacks on women who write about controversial topics; then this personal story by Laurie Penny about why short hair brings out the Internet hate.

— LISA WAANANEN

HERE

Deep concerns and questions remain for the fate of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. (AP)

Wondering why Washington state dropped its requirement to create a database to reveal more health care pricing to consumers? Premera Blue Cross. (SR)

Snow. (KXLY)

The shooting of a Christian Nicholas Buquet by Coeur d'Alene police offices has been declared justified by Kootenai County Prosecutor Barry McHugh. (CDAP)

THERE

Russia invades the Crimean peninsula, and Ukraine mobilizes its troops. (CNN)

Marches in Venezuela continue. (SR)

The Oscars happened last night. Gravity took most of the awards, and 12 Years a Slave took home the big award. The show was mostly bland, unsurprising, but vaguely comforting. Like a generic slice of pizza. (Time)