Day Off from Work - Diversity Day

I've got the day off from work today. No, this isn't part of my blogging about our Inland Northwest weekend trip; I'm taking a short pause on the writing backlog from last weekend to write about today.

What's today? On my company calendar it's "Be Diverse" Day. Don't feel bad if your first reaction is Whuh? Mine was, too. With a bit of web searching, though, I found it's the United Nations' World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

If you're still like, Whuh?, I understand. This is a holiday that almost nobody's heard of. My company's new Diversity & Inclusion program picked it... though they did a poor job communicating what & why. They said nothing about how it's aligned with a UN program, leaving us to figure it out for ourselves. Try a web search on "Diversity Day" and you'll likely find most of the top hits[*] are about an episode of the TV show The Office that satirizes corporate Diversity & Inclusion programs. Hmm, there could be an ironic lesson there.... Broaden your search to something like "May 21 holiday" and you'll find top matches for today include National Memo Day, National Pizza Party Day, and National Strawberries and Cream Day.

So, what am I doing with my day off from work and three-day weekend? Well, nothing, frankly. Hawk doesn't have the day off, so it's just me here at home. Most of my colleagues are in a similar situation. Could we have done our weekend trip to Spokane this weekend instead of last? Yes, and I did seriously consider it. But next weekend is Memorial Day, a major holiday, and I didn't want to travel two weekends in a row. Going to Spokane last weekend spaces things out a bit better. Plus, we needed the break last week. Now maybe I can use my quiet, at-home day today to catch up on last weekend's trip!


[*] Footnote: Yes, I am aware that search engines prioritize results based on a user's search history. I don't watch The Office and I have never searched for it. Hits on The Office are what a neutral search matched. Subsequent to researching UN World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, Google now returns matches on that when I use the same search terms. What does a search for "Diversity Day" match for you?

Downtown Spokane - Riverfront Park

Inland Empire Travelog #14
Spokane, Washington - Sun, 16 May 2021. 1:30pm.

"Let's go sightseeing in downtown Spokane, Washington," probably does not sound like a fascinating idea to most people. That's largely because a lot of people probably don't know enough geography even to know where/what Spokane is (it's a city of 225,000 in a metro area of almost 600,000 in eastern Washington state), and very few are aware that there's a lovely park right at the center of town on the falls of the Spokane River. It was the site of the 1974 World's Fair.



We began our trek from the castle-like Holiday Inn Express downtown, where we stayed last night. We left our car with its wobbly 50/50 spare tire in the parking lot to walk to the park. It was only a few blocks away. That was one of the reasons we chose this hotel. Another was that we liked the exterior design, including its perch atop a natural rock outcropping a block above the Spokane River. (A third was that the night was free using a voucher from an IHG credit card Hawk owns.) 

After descending one block to the river we walked 2-3 blocks along the riverfront then crossed over a foot bridge to an island in the middle of the Spokane River. Actually there are two islands here, and they make up most of the park.



The park was quiet in the morning hours on Sunday. There were handfuls of tourists out enjoying the immaculate weather and lots of geese and ducks. We crossed the island to the center of town. The picture above shows the clock tower on the island.



As the Spokane River splits around these islands it crashes down a series of falls. A small tram (seen in the picture above) takes passengers on a short ride from the upper level, down near the falls, and back. We thought about riding the tram, but it wasn't open until later in the morning. Instead we walked down past the falls, using the stairs and railings also visible in the picture above, then climbed back up to the top and crossed over the gorge on the Monroe Street Bridge (far left).

Crossing the big bridge took us back to the north side of the river, blocks from where we started, but we crossed a footbridge back onto the islands again. We made sure we saw everything... everything that wasn't closed to construction, anyway. And it lengthened our walk. By the time we trudged back up the hotel hill, hot and tired, we'd walked almost 5 miles. Time for lunch!