PEOPLE   Bassem Bejjani was always good in school. And when you’re raised in Lebanon and good in school, the paths forward are pretty clear. “You either become an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer,” Bejjani says.

Bejjani was interested in science as a kid, but better at biology than “the hardcore sciences,” so he became a physician and geneticist, founding a groundbreaking genomics company in Spokane in 2003. Read More>>

COOKING  "Let’s see: Seeds. Seeds. Seeds and nuts. Nuts. Nuts. Seeds.” Allison Collins paces the cold case at the front of her new Spokane cafe, Boots, pointing out the items that contain a pistachio or a pumpkin seed, a flax seed egg replacement or some cashew butter. She points to almost every item in the case.

“When people tell me they have a nut allergy,” Collins says, her face stretching into a wry smile, “I say, ‘You may not eat here!’”

Above the register is a chalkboard with a quote that changes daily. Some days the board carries a piece of timeless wisdom. Today it reads, “Blah blah bla bla blah,” which the board attributes to “Yadda Yadda.” Read More>>

COOKING  Say you’re dying for some tacos. Delicious, savory tacos. You get out the skillet to brown the “meat,” which is frozen and comes in a little green package and is pre-crumbled. It begins to sizzle the way hamburger does and, after a few minutes, in a strange way, it almost starts to smell like hamburger. The steam rising off it has the hint of salt, if not the hint of savor (a flavor profile food scientists call “umami”). Read More>>

PEOPLE  Wendy Osterling played lacrosse in high school. She ran and skied cross-country as well — going on to ski for Dartmouth College — but lacrosse, for her, was a unique and particular sort of challenge. Osterling is deaf, and team sports tend to rely on sharp hearing. There are whistles and called plays between teammates. There are 20 players and referees to keep track of.

But her team developed a series of hand signals for play-calling, her brain developed excellent peripheral vision, and she learned to infer stoppages of play from the way other players behaved. “I’d stop when they stopped,” she says.

This didn’t always work, though, so she’d ask the ref to tell the other team to just wave at her if play had stopped and she hadn’t. Read More>>

LIVING FEATURE  Nearly 2,000 years ago, people noticed a cluster of symptoms that included periodic bouts with cramps, chronic diarrhea, a particular skin rash and an inability to absorb nutrients. Science didn’t peg the problem to gluten until the 1960s.

It took another 40 years for broad public awareness of celiac disease, or gluten-intolerance, to arrive. The people we have to thank, oddly, are celebrities and their personal chefs — Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and the baker who made Chelsea Clinton’s wedding cake. Read More>>

PEOPLE  When Gabriel Castellanos grabs onto your arm, he doesn’t hold it tightly. He doesn’t even really grip. He takes you around the tricep, gently, with just the thumb and two fingers.

As you walk together, he seems to use the movement of your body, perceived through his fingertips, as a kind of input, to evaluate his own movements. He doesn’t hang on for support, the way you might expect — the way people do in the movies — because, to him, you are not a crutch to be leaned on.

For as long as he holds your arm, you’re an extension of his senses, a data set to be examined.

Gabriel Castellanos is blind.

He is by no means dependent. Read More>>

PEOPLE  Melinda Denton and Terry Judge sit on a white rattan settee in Judge’s Spokane living room, telling of their adventures in distant places like Malta and Glasgow.

Malta, Montana, to be clear.

“I didn’t realize how remote the Northwest still is,” Denton says, until she started flying into its sparsely populated hinterlands.

We often think of these United States as interconnected webs of highways. Pilots think of them as the nodes of airports, commercial and private. Spokane International. Felts Field. Read More>>

EXERCISE  I had planned this final installment of my “Year of Perfect Health” series to begin the way my first installment did, one whole year ago: with me running, running, running on the treadmill of metabolic evaluation. But that treadmill is a harsh mistress, and running on her was just too painful an experience. Rather than relive it in gory detail, I’d like to get it over quickly, so I can begin suppressing it like so much childhood trauma. Read More>>

EXERCISE  I’m not an idiot. Can we just agree on that? I’m not stupid. I originally set out to play around with various home exercise trends — the Perfect Pull-up, TRX — all those things you learn about in 30-minute intervals when you’re up far too late at night. Read More>>

EXERCISE  “I think people underrate walking if you’re out of shape.” That’s Jon Knight — men’s cross-country coach at North Central High School, winners of four consecutive state championships and, in 2008, the national crown. Among the nuggets of wisdom I expected from Knight, “walking is good” wasn’t one of them. It was a comforting affirmation given my continuing back problems (much better than they were, thank you, but still not allowing me to run), but … strange. Read More>>

EXERCISE  As I sit writing this, there’s a dull pain in my butt and a tightness in my lower back. I’ll probably have to stop writing half way through and lie down with my legs elevated. Then I’ll do some stretches. Hopefully after that, I’ll be good to sit again for a half hour. Then I’ll have to lie down again. Read More>>

HEALTH LINK  I spent the holiday season doing a really terrible job of holding myself accountable for working out. The plan was to work in exercise around all the various and sundry engagements and responsibilities. The idea was to try out a bunch of home gym solutions whenever I had a free second. Read More>>

NEWS  It’s 10:50 on the first morning of my year of perfect health and my lungs are burning. I can feel the first pump of sweat forcing its way out of the pores at the edge of my scalp and underneath my arms. I’m running, and my legs feel weak. They aren’t Jello-y exactly, but they definitely don’t have the power I’d like them to have. I come to the base of the Lincoln Street hill and slow to a walk, breathing hard. Read More>>