May 2006

Mr. Potato Head's revenge

by Lindsay Thompson

WSBA President Brooke Taylor's initiative to bring back civics education isn't just a sensible idea, but one he seems to have floated at just the right time.

In a seemingly sex-obsessed session, the Legislature passed a civics-education bill this year. In addition, under Taylor's leadership, the WSBA and several of our sections have sponsored a monthly public-affairs TV show, The Docket, on TVW, Washington's answer to C-SPAN.

The Docket rolled out in January. It's a half-hour long, and is hosted by UW Law Dean Joe Knight. Knight is a good choice. He comes across as a cool guy, segueing between segments and conducting interesting interviews.

The program includes bits on important recent court cases, drawing on TVW's excellent Supreme Court coverage. There are practical segments on things like why one needs a will, and what to do about it. There's an interview with someone interesting in the legal field as well. Early interviewees have tended toward the Usual Suspects in bar and bench leadership. All have done admirably, mind you, but that sort of hierarchical booking suggests a level of cautiousness that shouldn't be necessary in such a well-produced program.

But the show is a good start on what one hopes will be a long run. It reaches out to the motivated viewers: Washingtonians who care about public affairs. These people lead the opinions of others, and speak up for themselves in legislative and civic matters.

Inventive approaches make topics like civics interesting in a way that the old-school model of "three branches of government, how a law is passed, and what the courts do" struggled with in the old days.

Take Toni Miller's ninth-grade class at Kirkland Junior High. Three years ago she thought, why not teach her students about how laws get made by getting them to submit one. The kids thought about it and decided to ask the Legislature to make the Walla Walla sweet onion the state vegetable.* It's unique to Washington, after all, they observed.

The project started three years ago and didn't make much headway till this year's short session. It passed in the House, 95-1, and moved to the other house, where Senator Bill Finkbeiner championed his young constituents' idea.

You wouldn't think this would be hard. We already have a state bird, the willow goldfinch. The steelhead trout is our state fish. Our state flower is the western rhododendron. Washington's official tree is the western hemlock. The apple, of course, is our state fruit. And, God help us, our state gem is — petrified wood.

Enter the Washington Potato Commission.

We're bigger, they argued, and the state ought not to favor one product over another. An attempt at compromise came up in the Senate: make the Walla Walla the state edible bulb, and the russet potato our official tuber. Some senators got positively po-faced about the bill, arguing they'd look silly passing it and then having to explain why other bills didn't make the cut in the 59-day session.

So the clock got run out on the vegetable bill.  Toni Miller, the teacher who came up with the idea, is retiring, so there's no telling if the idea will sprout again next year. The Potato Commission is feeling beat-up on. "It's funny how we just got portrayed as these big monsters, beating up on these ninth-graders, and that wasn't the case at all," its executive director told the press.

For whatever it's worth, my contribution to the civics debate is this: next time, try lentils. Washington produces over 40 percent of U.S. production.  We're the number-one producer in America.

It's the perfect unifier, too. Lentils are grown in a roughly 90-mile radius of Pullman, on the east side, and it's west-side Birkenstockers who chow them down with such enthusiasm.

There's lots of choices, too. There's Brewers, Crimsons, Pardinas, French Greens, Estons, Red Chiefs, Lairds, Emeralds, and Richleas among the 85,000 acres of lentillage in Washington. Kids, get on the phone to the Washington Dry Pea and Lentil Commission! The next legislative session will be here before you know it. 

For personal correspondence, Lindsay Thompson can be reached at tradelaw@hotmail.com. E-mail letters to the editor to letterstotheeditor@wsba.org or mail to WSBA, Attn: Letters to the Editor, 2101 Fourth Ave., Ste. 400, Seattle, WA 98121-2330.

*When I first heard about the fuss on the radio, half-awake one morning, I found myself daydreaming about a number of contenders for state vegetable, but in the shower — more clear-headed — it came to me they were all, technically, people. Oh well.