Author: Tim Steury
182 article(s) found by this author.
Review :: Coal Wars: Unions, Strikes, and Violence in Depression-Era Central Washington
Summer 2015
There was a time, it’s been recalled, when each home in Roslyn had
three pictures on its wall: of Jesus, FDR, and John L. Lewis, the
powerful head of the United Mine Workers of America, or UMW. But labor
conflicts in the coal-mining town duri...
Categories: Washington state history
Tags: Labor and unions, Coal mining, Roslyn
First Words
Spring 2014
On his retirement, founding editor Tim Steury reflects on the vision of the magazine, its past, and its future.
Categories: Washington State Magazine
Tags: Magazines, Editor
Mountains and Rivers and Prairies Without End
Spring 2014
“The whole concept has burgeoned ... to one where the landscape is part of why people select to live in certain locations, has political meaning, has religious meaning, has all of these other kinds of meaning.”
Categories: Anthropology, History, Washington state history
Tags: Landscape, Memory, Native Americans, Ecology
Sorting debitage from rubble
Spring 2014
Recent discoveries of stone tools have pushed back the estimated arrival of humans in the western hemisphere. WSU archaeologist Bill Andrefsky plays a big role in identifying whether the points were made by humans.
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Stone tools, Debitage, Clovis people
Beans
Winter 2013
“I was determined to know beans.”
—Thoreau, Walden
Having abandoned journalism and returned to her family’s farm on
Whidbey Island, Georgie Smith ’93 started gardening, and one thing led
to another. Smith had at least two things going...
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Beans, Dry beans
Web Extra :: And 1,083 Lines of Lupine
Winter 2013
This article first appeared in WSU’s Universe magazine in Spring 2000.
OF THE WORLD’S MOST important food crops, none is native to the United States. Even at the beginning of European colonization, many of the agricultural crops raised by the Na...
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Seeds, Germplasm, Plant introduction
Review :: The Barbless Hook: Inner Sanctum of Angling Revealed
Winter 2013
In the tradition of Patrick McManus ’56, ’59, Dennis Dauble ventures
into that conjoined alternate universe of outdoor sport and humor, the
difference between the two being that Dauble tends to catch more fish.
Perhaps that is because Daubl...
Categories: Humor
Tags: Fishing
Of mice, men, and wheat
Winter 2013
Mice may have played a major role in the evolution of wheat, as they fed on the stores of grain harvested by humans.
Categories: Agriculture, History
Tags: Mice, Wheat, Evolution
David Cox ’71—Generations Rx
Winter 2013
The Cox family of South Bend, Washington, have run their pharmacy for three generations.
Categories: Alumni, Pharmacy
Tags: Pharmacists
Gabriel Fielding
Winter 2013
As his books come back in print, a new portrait of author and longtime WSU English professor Gabriel Fielding adorns the wall of Avery Hall's Bundy Reading Room.
Categories: Literature, WSU faculty
Tags: Gabriel Fielding, Authors
The Pear
Winter 2013
The pear and the apple are quite different fruits, both in how they are eaten and in how they are grown. And where in Washington they are grown makes all the difference in how pear farmers think of their product.
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Pears, Horticulture, Tree fruit
The Community of the Oyster
Winter 2013
Keith Cox documented the oyster community of Willapa Bay in film, culminating in a showing at Raymond Theater that brought together generations of oystermen.
Categories: Agriculture, Visual arts
Tags: Documentary, Oysters
Water to the Promised Land
Fall 2013
As an aquifer declines, Columbia Basin farmers look to water promised them 80 years ago.
Categories: Agriculture, History
Tags: Water, Columbia Basin Project, Irrigation, Odessa aquifer
An even playing field
Fall 2013
The Access Center at WSU help mitigate circumstances for students with learning or physical disabilities and help them succeed at the school.
Categories: WSU students, Campus life
Tags: Accessibility, Disabilities
Apple-a-Day
Fall 2013
Danielle ’12 and Megan ’13 LaRiviere started a business delivering apples to businesses in Yakima and Bellevue as a healthy snack food option.
Categories: Alumni, Business
Tags: Apples
Review :: Love Reports to Spring Training
Fall 2013
Baseball lends itself as metaphor like no other sport. Boxing might come
close, but its inherent brutality and changing cultural tastes have
removed it from the public’s awareness.
But baseball endures and permeates our culture, and eve...
Categories: Poetry
Tags: Baseball, Romance
First Words for Fall 2013
Fall 2013
In the early 1950s, Washington State College and the Bureau of Reclamation published a Farmer’s Handbook for the Columbia Basin Project. Written for new farmers breaking ground in the newly irrigated Columbia Basin Project, the handbook offered advice to last of the pioneers in the West.
Categories: Agriculture, History
Tags: Columbia Basin Project, Farmers
Chicha in the landscape
Summer 2013
Terraced landscapes of the Incan Empire in the Andes were likely used for more than crops, says WSU archaeologist Melissa Goodman-Elgar. They were probably ceremonial and social places to drink maize beer chicha as well.
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Inca, Chicha, Andes, Peru
Juice Grapes
Summer 2013
Almost half of all juice grapes is grown in Washington's Yakima Valley. The Concord grape, the primary source for grape juice had a long journey from Massachusetts before getting established in the West.
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Grapes, Juice grapes
Eric Zakarison ’81 and Sheryl Hagen-Zakarison ’83, ’91—Thinking small
Summer 2013
Eric Zakarison ’81 and Sheryl Hagen-Zakarison ’83, ’91 decided to use their small family farm near Pullman to raise more than wheat, adding animals and other crops to the mix.
Categories: Agriculture, Alumni
Tags: Small farms, Sustainability, Ranching
Spaces between
Summer 2013
Taking the road less traveled can lead to serendipitous finds such as the whimsy of Emil Gehrke's windmill creations.
Categories: Washington state history, Visual arts
Tags: Small towns, Artists
Small Towns You Should Visit
Summer 2013
Visiting small towns across Washington state can give you insight into the people, places, and the food of the region.
Categories: Washington state history
Tags: Small towns, Grand Coulee, Central Washington
Tastes like Beethoven
Spring 2013
The 1909 National Apple Show in Spokane featured competitions, band concerts, vaudeville shows, and 1,525,831 apples. It heralded the rise of Washington as a top apple-producing state.
Categories: History
Tags: Spokane, Apples
The forgotten forest
Spring 2013
Early successional forests, the stage following a major disturbance such as fire, windstorm, or harvest, has a valuable ecological role for plants and wildlife, according to WSU forest ecologist Mark Swanson.
Categories: Forestry, Environmental studies
Tags: Forest ecology, Early successional forests, Forest management
How Washington tastes: The Apple meets Cougar Gold
Spring 2013
One need not be an expert taster to appreciate the chemistry between the apple and Cougar Gold.
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Taste, Cougar Gold cheese, Apples, Horticulture, Cheese
Web Extra :: The Cheddar cheese lexicon
Spring 2013
Mary Ann Drake ’96 PhD directs the North Carolina State University Sensory Service Center, which specializes in the sensory evaluation of dairy products. She and her colleagues produced this cheese flavor wheel, as well as a more specific cheddar c...
Categories: Culinary Arts, Food
Tags: Cheddar cheese, Flavors, Taste, Cheese
Review :: Montana Before History: 11,000 Years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Rockies and Plains
Spring 2013
The oldest archaeological site in Montana, the Anzick Site near
Wilsall, has been carbon-dated to 11,040 years ago. It is, writes
Douglas MacDonald in this fine survey of Montana archaeology, the only
Clovis site excavated in Montana. App...
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Montana, Clovis people, Hunter-gatherers
Web Extra :: Gallery: Archaeology on Galiano Island
Winter 2012
For the past 15 years, Washington State University archaeologist Colin Grier has explored the past of Galiano Island, one of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. Take a tour of the dig and the methods of archae...
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Gulf Islands, Native Americans
Feasting on the Salish Sea
Winter 2012
About 650 years ago, inhabitants of a large plank house on Galiano Island abandoned it for unknown reasons. But not before they feasted on 10,000 sea urchins.
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Salish Sea, Native Americans, Gulf Islands
Onions
Winter 2012
Maybe it onions are so fundamental that we take them for
granted, chopping and ingesting them as casually as we breathe air or
drink water, but some Washington farmers pay a lot of attention to onions.
Categories: Food
Tags: Onions
Maps, memory, and imagination
Winter 2012
The aspirations, dreams, and metaphors invested in maps are displayed in two recent books by WSU alumni, as well as several articles in this issue.
Categories: Alumni, Literature, Geography
Tags: Maps, Books
Web Extra :: Choosing the right onion—and some onion lore
Winter 2012
Choosing the right onion:
First of all, let’s not get too picky. In general, different kinds of onions are interchangeable. Just because you don’t have any white onions doesn’t mean you can’t go ahead and fix a Mexican dish with yellow glo...
Categories: Food, Culinary Arts
Tags: Recipe, Onions
Review :: The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States
Fall 2012
Contemplate the founding of the United States, a budding democracy
carved out of a vast and unknown (to everyone other than its original
inhabitants) wilderness. At some point, one might find oneself unable to
extricate American history from Na...
Categories: History, Environmental studies
Tags: Ecology, Environmentalists, Conservation
Web Extra :: Elusive Butterfly
Fall 2012
Of the 158 species of butterflies found throughout southern British Columbia, Washington, northern Idaho, and northern Oregon, only one was not included the exhaustive research resulting in David James and David Nunnallee’s Life Histories of Cascad...
Categories: Entomology
Tags: Butterflies
Yet another existential mystery
Fall 2012
Luke Premo, an evolutionary anthropologist who studies Pliocene and Pleistocene hominin behavior and demography, explores why humans and our ancestor hominins have such low genetic diversity considering the large population.
Categories: Anthropology
Tags: Genetic diversity, Evolutionary anthropology
Unfiltered history
Fall 2012
A collection of oral histories from WSU emeritus faculty reveal an engrossing and unfiltered account of the last several decades at the University.
Categories: WSU faculty, WSU history, Campus life
Tags: Oral history
Life Histories: The Butterflies of Cascadia
Fall 2012
In documenting the life histories of Cascadia’s butterflies, every one
of the 158 species represented a separate research project. The result
has been a wealth of biological and ecological knowledge that simply did
not exist before David Nunnallee and WSU entomologist David James began
their monumental task.
Categories: Entomology, Biological sciences
Tags: Butterflies, Cascades
The spirit of the land grant institution
Fall 2012
Had the intent of the land grant spirit been simply to produce
homemakers or farmers or carpenters, Justin Morrill, the author of the
act that established the land-grants 150 years ago, might have best
looked for his model among the craft guild...
Categories: Education, WSU history
Tags: WSU presidents
The Atomic Landscape
Summer 2012
Seven decades after the first nuclear production facilities were sited at Hanford, we discover the cultural legacy. We sample from poetry, history, and art, as well as a WSU student’s master’s thesis.
Categories: Washington state history, History, Poetry
Tags: Hanford, Manhattan Project, Nuclear reactors, World War II, Atomic bomb
Raspberries
Summer 2012
The cultivation of raspberries is, compared to that of other fruits, a relatively recent endeavor. Rubus idaeus,
“the bramble bush of Ida,” purportedly grew on the slopes of Mount Ida
and was enjoyed by the residents of the city of Troy. Ida,...
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Breeding, Horticulture, Raspberries
The learned observer
Summer 2012
“We should observe first, and think afterwards.”—The Lancet 19 Oct. 1823Part of the nature of a writer—but then again, perhaps I speak only
for myself—is the constant reimagining of one’s self and context, the
repeated immersion in my...
Categories: Literature, Journalism
Tags: Observation, Writing
Doing good through blending
Summer 2012
About three years ago, Monte Regier returned to Seattle from a year working on the hospital ship Anastasis
off the coast of Liberia. Suffering from culture shock, remembering
friends who go to bed hungry every night, he sat with his friend Martin...
Categories: Alumni, Social work
Tags: Wine, Philanthropy, Charity, Food
Lessons from the Forest—The anthropology of childhood
Spring 2012
Anthropologist Barry Hewlett has spent the last 40 years gleaning lessons from the Aka, a people who personify hundreds of thousands of years of human history.
Categories: Anthropology
Tags: Child development, Africa, Aka, Children, Parenting
The end of free will?
Spring 2012
The wind said
You know I’m
...
Categories: Philosophy
Tags: Free will, Determinism, Neuroscience, Morality
Time’s Warehouse
Spring 2012
As anniversaries go, I suppose a mere decade is not so big a deal,
even for a magazine. Many magazines, after all, have lived much
longer. Atlantic Monthly’s 154 years aside, even here at Washington State University, Washington State Magazi...
Categories: WSU history
Tags: Magazines, WSU presidents
Review :: The Long Journey of the Nez Perce: A Battle History from Cottonwood to Bear Paw
Spring 2012
In his foreword to the latest account of the Nez Perce War of 1877, Kevin Carson ’81 writes, “In my memory, there was never a time when our family was not fascinated by the saga of the Nez Perce.” Carson’s great-great-great grandfather, Lev...
Categories: History, Military sciences
Tags: Native Americans, Native American leaders, Northwest history
Tolerance in an intolerant time
Winter 2011
In 1530, a group of Lutheran princes composed a statement of faith,
requesting legal recognition, and presented it to Charles V, the Holy
Roman Emperor. Although the Emperor rejected it, the Augsburg
Confession would become the statemen...
Categories: History
Tags: Religion, Confessionalism, Tolerance, Religious wars, Medieval times
An evolutionary myth is dismissed
Winter 2011
Even though a paper on guppy senescence by evolutionary biologist
Donna Holmes and her colleagues has circulated for several years, the
“grandmother hypothesis” still persists.And understandably so. One of those rare feel-good stories f...
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Evolutionary biology, Menopause, Evolution
When Memory Fades
Winter 2011
With memory notebooks and smart apartments that use motion technology to track their residents' daily behaviors, WSU neuropsychologists are exploring ways to help patients and their families cope with age-related memory loss. Meanwhile, two scientists have discovered a means to restore neural connectivity.
Categories: Psychology, Biological sciences
Tags: Aging, Dementia, Memory, Alzheimer's Disease, Neuroscience
Outsmarting Dementia
Winter 2011
We used to believe, says neuropsychologist Maureen
Schmitter-Edgecombe, that if a person lived long enough, he or she
would develop dementia. Now we know better, she says. Whether caused by Alzheimer’s or other
disease, dementia ...
Categories: Biological sciences, Psychology, WSU faculty
Tags: Aging, Dementia, Memory, WSU staff
Westward Ho!
Fall 2011
There was a time, not so long ago, in our great Northwest when
boundaries were not a great concern. When the first non-Indian
settlers reached the Palouse and the Columbia Plateau, they could look
to the distant horizon and see nothing bu...
Categories: Agriculture, Earth sciences
Tags: Soil, Farmers
Web Extra :: When soil goes sour
Fall 2011
Ammonia based fertilizer, which provides nitrogen, can offer a great boost to even an otherwise not so healthy soil. But ammonia fertilizer, which depends on petroleum for its manufacture, is becoming very expensive. The consistent high yields of whe...
Categories: Agriculture, Earth sciences
Tags: Soil, Soil health, Nitrate fertilizer
Web Extra :: How you contribute to soil health
Fall 2011
If you contribute your daily bodily wastes to a municipal waste treatment plant, you are more than likely directly benefiting Washington soils.
According to Puyallup soil scientist Craig Cogger, each person in Washington produces about 60 pounds ...
Categories: Agriculture, Earth sciences, WSU Extension
Tags: Biosolids, Soil, Soil health
A Fine Thin Skin—wind, water, volcanoes, and ice
Fall 2011
Different as they seem, the soils of Eastern and Western Washington have
one thing in common. They come—either by water, wind, or ice—generally
from elsewhere. And what takes eons to form can be covered over or erode
away in a geologic heartbeat.
Categories: Agriculture, Earth sciences
Tags: Geology, Soil, Agronomy
Randall Johnson’s Cougar logo Turns 75—What this place needs
Fall 2011
When Randall Johnson was a student at Washington State College, he
would occasionally stop and visit Butch. This was the 1930s, when
Butch was a real cougar and lived in a cage near Martin Stadium.“He could care less,” wrote Johnson ’...
Categories: Alumni, WSU history
Tags: Butch Cougar, Cougar logo
The Storyteller—Patrick McManus ’56, ’59 MA
Summer 2011
Patrick McManus’s comic formula depends on his creation of a world of oddly
named characters with generous and adventurous souls. And a markedly different
perspective. “As far back as I can remember,” he writes, “I have seen funny. What
may horrify normal people may strike me as hilarious.”
Categories: Alumni, Literature
Tags: Humor, Authors, Outdoors, Fishing, Hunting
Henry Grosshans—1921-2010
Summer 2011
Henry Grosshans came to Washington State College in 1952, engaging
in an active academic and intellectual life for three decades, after
which he retired to Shoreline, Washington. Grosshans died last
October, at the age of 89.He was for ma...
Categories: WSU faculty
Tags: In memoriam, Rhodes Scholar, WSU Press, Honors College
Carrots
Summer 2011
Although a wine and carrot pairing is not immediately obvious, it is
intriguing that carrots and wine grapes appreciate the same
environmental conditions. In fact, Horse Heaven Hills, Washington’s
newest viticultural region, is also hom...
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Recipe, Carrots
Somewhere in France
Summer 2011
The latest posting on our Coordinates website is from Margrit von
Braun ’89 PhD, who writes from Nigeria. Margrit and her husband, Ian
von Lindern, founded TerraGraphics, an environmental engineering
company, in the 1980s. They have sin...
Categories: Alumni, Area studies, WSU history
Tags: Travel, Maps, WSU presidents
Buddy Levy: Historical investigator
Summer 2011
In a fabulously snide review of the first episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded on the History Channel, a reviewer for The New York Times
refers to investigator Buddy Levy, “who could be a bus driver but who
is in fact an English professor at W...
Categories: History
Tags: Authors, Television programs, Exploration, Conquistadors
Review :: Fishes of the Columbia Basin: A guide to their natural history and identification
Summer 2011
It’s really pretty remarkable how much Dennis Dauble has managed to squeeze into this book of a mere 210 pages. If you read Fishes of the Columbia Basin:
You will get a good briefing on fish in Columbia Basin Indian culture and history.
You w...
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Columbia Basin, Fishing, Fish
Back in the Earth—Putting ancestors to rest, or destroying the past?
Spring 2011
Over the last two decades, tribes have been invoking the Native American
Graves Protection and Recovery Act to reclaim remains of their
ancestors from museum and research collections across the country. But
what if those remains are 10,000 years old?
Categories: Anthropology, Cultural studies, Archaeology
Tags: Native Americans, Marmes Rockshelter
Nature Boy reads on
Spring 2011
We received a wonderful letter recently from Clarence Schuchman ’38 about tuition costs and music. Referring to published comments by President Floyd about rising
tuition costs, Mr. Schuchman recalls visiting Bursar Kruegel’s office
and ...
Categories: WSU history, Alumni
Tags: Music, Tuition
Kim Fay ’88—Communion: A Culinary Journey through Vietnam
Spring 2011
Any prospective reader of Kim Fay’s book about Vietnamese food should
be forewarned. Her descriptions are awfully good. In the city of Hue,
following her first exposure to com hen, or clam rice, which
was served to her Vietnamese-hot, well be...
Categories: Food, Alumni
Tags: Vietnam, Cooking, Travel
Nicole Braux Taflinger ’66, ’68—Season of Suffering
Spring 2011
Nicole Braux (now Taflinger) was 13 years old when Germany invaded
France in 1940. Years later, having survived the occupation with her
mother, married an American airman, and moved to Pullman, she has
written a lovely and moving memoir.First w...
Categories: Memoirs, Alumni
Tags: World War II, France
A Washington sabbatical for Afghan scholars
Winter 2010
We’re an Afghan/WSU
contingent marching up Western Avenue in Seattle. Four Afghan men, all
good friends, are dressed in suits and carrying big bouquets of flowers.
They are in a boisterous mood. Not only is it a glorious day, they have
WSU-...
Categories: Public affairs, Political science
Tags: Afghanistan, Public service, Government
Chickpeas
Winter 2010
Although Middle Eastern cooks who found themselves in the United
States undoubtedly found sources of such a vital ingredient, it wasn’t
until the last couple of decades that the chickpea made its way into the
American diet and moved up from t...
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Chickpeas, Garbanzo beans, Hummus
Common cause
Winter 2010
For reasons explained later in this issue, I was walking down Pike
Street on a beautiful day in July with Rafi Khalil Nasar, an Afghan
lawyer. We were just discussing the difference between civil and Shariah
law when we came upon a couple of yo...
Categories: Public affairs, Political science
Tags: Civility, Public service
Review :: Legacy of Angels
Fall 2010
The issue of whether to review self-published books resurfaces here at WSM periodically, as it does in many other review venues. The argument against reviewing such books assumes that publication by a commercial publisher promises some standa...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Self-published books
Web Extra :: Video: Grilling Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Fall 2010
RecipeIngredientsWalla Walla Sweet onionsOlive oilA grill Peel and slice the onions very thick, about an inch. Heat the grill. Put the Walla Walla Sweets on the grill when it's ready. Brush with olive oil as necessary. When the onions are soften...
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Video, Walla Walla Sweets, Onions, Recipe
Edward Claplanhoo ’56—Bah-duk-too-ah: August 8, 1928–March 14, 2010
Fall 2010
Ed Claplanhoo ’56 was
chairman of the Makah Tribe in Neah Bay when a winter storm in 1970
eroded the bank above the beach at Cape Alava on the Olympic Peninsula
coast, revealing the village of Ozette. The village, ancestral home to
many Mak...
Categories: Alumni, Cultural studies
Tags: In memoriam, Native American leaders, Makah, Ozette
Cows deposit piles of diversity
Fall 2010
Holly Ferguson knows her
cow pies about as well as anyone. In the first study of flies in managed
pastures in the Pacific Northwest, the entomologist has spent an
unusual amount of time traveling the state and assessing its cow pies.No matter ...
Categories: Biological sciences, Agriculture
Tags: Cattle, Entomology, Manure, Dung
The kinder, gentler orchard
Fall 2010
The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 initiated the gradual phasing out of organophosphate pesticides. By 2012, the major chemical defense against wormy apples will no longer be available. But not to worry, thanks to a continuous refinement of Integrated Pest Management and collaboration amongst growers, industry fieldmen, and WSU researchers.
Categories: WSU Extension, Agriculture
Tags: Tree fruit, Integrated Pest Management, Fruit, Pesticides, Pest management, Horticulture
Tree Top: Creating a fruit revolution
Fall 2010
Book reviewIn the September 10, 1951, issue of Life
magazine is a picture of a bulldozer mounding apples in the Yakima
dump. Seven acres of apples worth
$6 million dollars rotted as pigs rooted through them, the result of
failing foreign mark...
Categories: Business, Agriculture
Tags: Tree Top, Apples, Northwest history, Books
The Cultivated Landscape
Fall 2010
One place you must
add to your “must-visit-before-I-die” list is the Wenatchee Valley
during full bloom of the pear and apple orchards in late April. Perhaps
you’ve seen Van Gogh’s lovely, but not often reproduced, painting “The
Pin...
Categories: Washington state history, Agriculture
Tags: Landscape, Pastoral
Walla Walla Sweets
Fall 2010
When retired French soldier Pete Pieri settled in Walla Walla around
the turn of the 20th century, he planted onion seed he had brought from
Corsica. His new neighbors, Italian gardeners who had settled there
earlier, admired the ability of the...
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Walla Walla Sweets, Onions
Web Extra :: Reply to letter from Herman Goetjen
Summer 2010
Letter:I really enjoyed the article on Bob Mierendorf's work in the North Cascades National Park.However, a couple of the photos raise some questions for me if you can pass them on to Bob for me. On page 29, the top two photos show a large culturally...
Categories: Archaeology, Environmental studies
Tags: Climate change, Cascades
The Academic Library in the Age of Google
Summer 2010
Information naivete suggests a broader blind faith in the offerings of Google–mirroring a general faith in technology that in some ways defines our culture and propels our economy.
Categories: Computer sciences, Library and museum studies
Tags: Library, Archives, Technology, Digital world
Interview with Michael Pollan
Summer 2010
Michael Pollan has been a leading voice in the re-evaluation of how
we eat and farm. The author of Omnivore’s Dilemma,
the book selected for this year’s Common
Reading, Pollan visited campus in January to talk with the students who
had be...
Categories: Agriculture, Environmental studies
Tags: Organic foods, Food
Shall I Eat a Peach?
Summer 2010
At the risk of sounding either shopworn (which I hope I’m not) or
like a Luddite (my identification with said philosophy depending on the
day of the week), the thing I’m most looking forward to in “retirement,”
besides being able to foc...
Categories: Communication, Literature
Tags: Internet, Technology, Digital world
Of Time and Wildness in the North Cascades
Spring 2010
Bob Mierendorf has spent the last couple of decades trying to convince the archaeological establishment that pre-contact Northwest Indians did not confine themselves to the lowlands, but frequented the high country. Now he has an ancient camping site to make his point.
Categories: Archaeology, Earth sciences
Tags: Tephrochronology, Cascades, Native Americans, National parks
The Summer issue
Spring 2010
Some of you will not see the Summer issue of Washington State
Magazine.
Or so you say. I hope I can change your minds. I’m referring, of course, to our experimental online-only issue made
possible by recent budget cuts. When I first announced...
Categories: Websites, Alumni
Tags: WSU staff
Finally, a Washington apple
Spring 2010
A Washington apple? you say. You might respond, correctly, that
Washington and apples are almost synonymous. After all, we produce more
than half of the nation’s eating apples. Visit a market in Mexico,
Thailand, Houston, or Saudi Arabia, and...
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Horticulture, Apples
North Cascades Highway: Near Washington Pass
Spring 2010
Although the native people
crossed the North Cascades on foot for thousands of years, white
settlers dreamed of a more readily traveled northern route. The
Washington legislature committed its first funding for such a route in
1893, based on ...
Categories: Washington state history
Tags: Highways, North Cascades Highway, Cascades
Cultivated thought
Winter 2009
Cultivated thought : : Near the end of an otherwise
lackluster speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in
September 1859, Abraham Lincoln suddenly shifted gears heading into his
peroration.Having compared two conflicting theories of lab...
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Nutrition
Grover Krantz (1931-2002) and Clyde
Winter 2009
“I’ve been a teacher all
my life, and I think I might as well be a teacher after I’m dead,”
Grover Krantz told the Smithsonian’s anthropology collections manager
David Hunt as they negotiated Krantz’s proposed donation of his
skeleton...
Categories: Anthropology, WSU faculty
Tags: Taxidermy, Forensic anthropology, Dogs
How we eat is what we are
Winter 2009
In the 1960s, 24.3 percent of Americans were overweight. Now, over 60 percent of us are. Even though other countries are hot on our heels, we are still the plumpest folk in the world. Does it matter?
Categories: Food, Economics, Health sciences, Biological sciences
Tags: Obesity, Nutrition, Food, Exercise, Diabetes
Is organic more nutritious?
Winter 2009
This summer saw the publication of a study of the nutritional value
of organic versus conventional foods by scientists with the London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Based on a review of 55
articles they judged of satisfactory quality, t...
Categories: Agriculture, Food
Tags: Organic foods, Nutrition
Foiling an invasive
Fall 2009
Sometimes, figuring something out only deepens the overall mystery.Take Pseudomonas fluorescens D7, for
example.Ann Kennedy, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service soil
microbiologist at Washington State University, has isolated these
native bacter...
Categories: Agriculture, Biological sciences
Tags: Cheatgrass, Invasive weeds
Washington potatoes
Fall 2009
Judging by his occasional ribald references to the potato,
Shakespeare considered the exotic tuber primarily as an aphrodisiac.
Although the time of the potato’s introduction to Europe from the New
World is not clear, recent scholarship has dete...
Categories: Food
Tags: Potatoes
Interesting times, Part II
Fall 2009
Having not been spared from Washington State University’s recent
budget woes, we can think of no other way to absorb our share of the
cuts than to drop one issue of the printed Washington State Magazine.Now, before I go on, let me make a few quic...
Categories: WSU history, Websites
Tags: Budget
Finding Chief Kamiakin
Fall 2009
A new biography of Kamiakin from Washington State University Press finally pulls together the history, legend, and cultural memory of a great chief, a powerful leader of both tolerance and will.
Categories: History, Cultural studies
Tags: Chief Kamiakin, Native American leaders, Native Americans
Mixing it up
Summer 2009
Not since white settlers surged west, overwhelming the native population, has Washington been at all diverse in its population, at least if one defines “diverse” by ethnicity rather than European country of origin. By 1890, whites represented ...
Categories: Sociology, Geography
Tags: Diversity, Demographics
Conexión rises to a burgeoning market
Summer 2009
Where demographers see change, Lauri (Smith) Jordana ‘88 sees opportunity.
Jordana is the founder of Conexión Marketing in Seattle, which is dedicated to marketing companies to the rapidly growing Hispanic/Latino market.
When Jordana grad...
Categories: Business
Tags: Diversity, Marketing
Interesting times
Summer 2009
We were having a long midweek dinner at Le Pichet in Seattle, a sort of anticipatory wake for the Seattle P-I, where my friend Tom had worked as a reporter for 20-some years. Tom’s pretty crusty and tends to brush even the most irksome things of...
Categories: Business, WSU history
Tags: Economy
Review :: Plowed Under: Agriculture and Environment in the Palouse
Summer 2009
This is an important and disturbing book, both for the environmental degradation it documents and the message of what little progress our agricultural practices on the Palouse have made.
In a sense, the precursor of Plowed Under was a series ...
Categories: Agriculture, Environmental studies
Tags: Soil, Erosion
Cougar Memory
Spring 2009
An essential part of being a Cougar (as well as being human) seems to be the need to tell one’s story of one’s youth and experiences here at Washington State University.
To make it easier to do so and to share it with your fellow Cougs, we have...
Categories: WSU history, Alumni
Tags: WSU staff, Autobiography
What is Art For?
Spring 2009
Art, says independent scholar Ellen Dissanayake '57, is "making special." It is an act that gives us a sense of belonging and meaning. It is passed from mother to child. Its origins lie deep in our evolutionary past. It makes us human.
Categories: Anthropology, Fine Arts
Tags: Evolution, Art history, Dance
Great promise in a nitrogen conundrum
Spring 2009
Mike Kahn and Svetlana Yurgel, molecular biologists in Washington State University’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, have a challenge on their hands that involves one of the most abundant, but also difficult to obtain, substances on earth.
Nea...
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Nitrogen, Molecular biology
A long-term biofuels strategy for Washington
Spring 2009
In 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation “relating to providing for the means to encourage the use of cleaner energy.” The final of four chapters of the renewable energy act directed Washington State University to explore the ...
Categories: Public affairs, Engineering
Tags: Biofuels
Lentils
Spring 2009
Local. Delicious.
Neglected.
Our first night in the Yucatan this past December, my wife ordered lentil soup. Flavored with bacon and garnished with plantain and lime, it was delicious. Odds are that it was made with Pardina lentils grown here ...
Categories: Food
Tags: Lentils
Web Extra :: Yucatecan lentil soup recipe (Tim’s interpretation)
Spring 2009
lard
medium yellow onion, chopped fine
large clove garlic, minced
(I actually use much more than this, but don’t want to scare people off)
2-3 slices of good thick bacon, chopped
a little Mexican oregano
1 chipotle pepper (canned in adob...
Categories: Food
Tags: Lentils
Rethinking the Fundamentals
Winter 2008
Feeding the world may require us to use old knowledge in new ways. Although the prices of fuel and commodities have dropped since early summer, the volatility of their relationship will surely dog us for the foreseeable future. While stock prices may temporarily overshadow food prices in the public consciousness, some farmers and researchers are looking at different ways of doing business, perhaps moving the land-grant university back to its founding purpose.
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Biofuels, Food costs
A reburial eases a clash of culture and science
Winter 2008
On a bluff above the Snake River, a few miles upstream from the
Tri-Cities, people are gathering on a July morning to bury their
dead. Or rebury, actually. The bones that fill the ordinary
cardboard boxes sitting next to a deep open grave have spe...
Categories: Anthropology, Cultural studies
Tags: Native Americans
An Afghanistan success story
Winter 2008
The people of Laghman province in eastern Afghanistan suffered
through a severe drought from 1997 through 2001. On top of years of
conflict, the drought took an enormous toll on its people. Farmers
sold off their cattle as the drought worsened, un...
Categories: Agriculture, Social work
Tags: International development, Afghanistan
Meaningful glimpses
Winter 2008
Little of what goes on
at a university is the stuff of breaking news. The general formula for what
gets reported about a university is pretty much the same as for politics and
world affairs: money gained and lost, a result here, a conclusion there...
Categories: Websites, WSU history
Tags: No Tags
Reconsidering the oyster
Fall 2008
FOR AN OYSTER LOVER, speeding down the Willapa
River in an open boat toward Willapa Bay and its oyster beds must
be like approaching the Celestial City. Even if it is cold for May,
and gray, and spitting rain, everyone in the boat is smiling
beat...
Categories: Food
Tags: Oysters
On the road
Summer 2008
Museum of Art director Chris Bruce has not been content of late
to just set up a traveling show and then send it back. He'd just as
soon put the show together and make sure it gets seen as much as
possible by putting it on the road. Bruce started ...
Categories: Visual arts
Tags: Art museums
Web Extra :: Ozette Art and the Makah Canoe
Summer 2008
Many questions remain concerning the contents of the longhouses excavated at Ozette. One of the most intriguing is the nature of its art, which was pervasive. More than 400 artifacts stored at the Makah Cultural Center might be considered ar...
Categories: Fine Arts, Cultural studies, Anthropology
Tags: Native Americans, Makah
A sense of who we are
Summer 2008
Although I think freely of Washington as home,
I must confess to a technicality. I actually live in Idaho, on a farm we moved onto the same year I started working at Washington State University, 19 years ago.
When I drive to work by the various ...
Categories: WSU history
Tags: Identity
A Dialogue with the Past
Summer 2008
A fierce Pacific storm in February 1970 revealed early remains of Ozette, on the Olympic Coast between Cape Flattery and La Push. Worried about the site's vulnerability to looters and further storms, Makah tribal leader Ed Claplanhoo '56 called archaeologist Richard Daugherty at Washington State University, commencing an 11-year excavation of the site. The excavation yielded thousands of well-preserved artifacts and a wealth of clues to the history and culture of Makahs and other coastal tribes.
Categories: Archaeology, Anthropology
Tags: Makah, Ozette, Northwest history, Native Americans
The Home of My Family: Ozette, the Makahs, and Doc Daugherty
Spring 2008
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ozette is the cultural continuity. Makahs had lived in Ozette for 2,000 years and probably much longer. The village had been abandoned for only 60 years, and many Makahs still went there to fish and hunt. One elder called the exposure of the longhouses by the storm "a gift from the past."
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Makah, Ozette, Native Americans
Field Camp 1957
Winter 2007
Richard Daugherty—"Doc"—can't remember where exactly the site
was in relation to the present reservoir created by Lower
Monumental Dam on the Snake River. He'd been holding out a little
hope that maybe there would be some sign of the work he h...
Categories: Archaeology
Tags: Snake River
Pears
Winter 2007
There are few things finer than a perfectly ripened pear. We
Washingtonians are thus among the luckiest people on earth, because
after wide geographical and temporal wandering, the pear seems to
have found its true home in our state.That being so,...
Categories: Food
Tags: Pears
Kathleen Flenniken - You have to say what's true
Winter 2007
Kathleen Flenniken (née Dillon) '83 writes about her children
and vacuuming, about sex and death, about fame and Edna St. Vincent
Millay's husband ("Oh the beauty of his wretchedness."). Her poems
are tight and clear and smart and often very funn...
Categories: Poetry, Alumni
Tags: Ecology
Review :: O Palouse!
Winter 2007
O Palouse!, a DVD about the area, obviously started as one of those absolutely great ideas. Take an area that's extraordinarily photogenic. Good geologic bones, good seasonal color. Unique personality. Add a rich history of relatively recent European...
Categories: Geography, Photography
Tags: Northwest history, Natural Resources
It Happened at the World's Fair
Fall 2007
Shortly after Jay Rockey '50 arrived in Seattle to handle the public relations for the 1962 World's Fair, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
ran an editorial claiming it could not see how the fair could possibly
make it. "Do you really know what you're doing?" Rockey's wife asked
him. Turns out he did.
Categories: Communication, Alumni
Tags: World's fair, Public relations, Seattle
The Rockey Style
Fall 2007
In spite of nearly universal name recognition and a client list that
runs through the Pacific Northwest alphabet, Rockey himself rarely
shows up in the press. In this age of Google, it's unnerving to go
looking for someone who you know permeates a civic and business
culture, and he just isn't there.
Categories: Communication, Alumni
Tags: World's fair, Public relations, Seattle
Trees return to Ireland
Fall 2007
Once upon a time, Ireland was mostly forest. In prehistoric and
early historic times, trees covered an estimated 90-95 percent of
the landscape. But English invasions, rebellions, and industrial
demands moved the landscape toward its modern auster...
Categories: Forestry
Tags: Trees, Ireland
Jim Torina: Playing well with others
Fall 2007
Nothing short of the opportunity to make the world a better
place while making a lot of money could have lured Jim Torina '84
out of his retirement. He'd already made a fortune building
high-end homes around the Puget Sound and was happily surfing...
Categories: Health sciences, Alumni
Tags: Patient safety
The presidents
Summer 2007
Depending on how you count, Elson S. Floyd becomes Washington State University's tenth, eighth, maybe twelfth, president. Whereas the tenures of the first two, Lilley and Heston, were tumultuous, brief, and of corresponding effect, other interim pres...
Categories: WSU history, WSU faculty
Tags: WSU presidents
A lavender landscape
Summer 2007
The landscape west of Sequim has, no doubt, always been
beautiful. There's an obvious advantage to having the foothills of
the Olympics on the near horizon. But add fields of lavender, and
you have jaw-drop stunning.Beauty is obviously a constant ...
Categories: Agriculture, Alumni, Business
Tags: Agritourism, Lavender
It's rhubarb pie time!
Summer 2007
Barry Swanson, professor of food science, and I see eye to eye
on at least one significant issue. We like our rhubarb pie to be
made exclusively with rhubarb. NOT strawberries. Just rhubarb.However, Swanson actually prefers his rhubarb as sauce, ov...
Categories: Food
Tags: Rhubarb
She's home
Summer 2007
When her husband-to-be Michael Pavel took her home to the
Skokomish reservation in the summer of 1996, it was revealed that
Susan Pavel (photo, center) couldn't cook."The attitude," she says, "was, well, let's teach you some
useful trade. Like wea...
Categories: Alumni, Cultural studies
Tags: Native Americans, Coast Salish, Weaving
Viticultural art
Spring 2007
Wine-By-Cougars, the precocious young wine club sponsored by the
Washington State University Alumni Association, is adding art to
its viticultural appeal. The wine club will offer a special "Artist
Expression 2007," a union of student art and alum...
Categories: Visual arts
Tags: Painting, Wine
Phyllis Campbell: Being about forever
Spring 2007
Someone recently told Phyllis Campbell '73 that she had the
perfect resume to run for governor.In her office high above 5th Avenue in Seattle, Campbell tells
me this with a mixture of amusement and certitude. Running
for political office is the la...
Categories: Business, Alumni
Tags: Social justice, Philanthropy
Web Extra :: A Conversation about Art and Biology with Ellen Dissanayake '57
Spring 2007
Ellen Franzen Dissanayake came to Washington State College from
Walla Walla in 1953 as a music major. At the time, undergraduates
were required to take four science classes. After taking the
legendary BioSci 101 from Winfield Hatch and Human Physi...
Categories: Performing arts, Visual arts, Anthropology
Tags: Evolution, Art history
Just like it was yesterday
Spring 2007
"We were living a good life," said Albert Redstarr Andrews in a
meditation concluding the second Plateau Conference, "and we were
disturbed." What might be taken as gracious understatement also
resonated with profound loss.In spite of a generally ...
Categories: Cultural studies, History
Tags: Native Americans, Eastern Washington
Whither organic?
Winter 2006
With a new organic major and a strong history of research, WSU is a leader in organic agriculture. But is that enough to keep up with the demands of a burgeoning organic industry?
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Sustainability, Organic foods
In watermelon heaven
Fall 2006
If sublimity is a perfectly ripe watermelon, then where do 101 varieties take you?I used to think watermelon was pretty much watermelon. Aside from some variability in ripeness and sweetness, you taste one, you taste them all. I am pleased to repo...
Categories: Food
Tags: Watermelon
Art and Enterprise: Jordan Swain '00
Fall 2006
So I'm riding around Bellevue with this very high-energy
27-year-old painter, and I'm starting to think, "Well, maybe I
should take up painting." That's how infectious my companion is.
She makes it sound like so much fun.Jordan Swain '00 offers me...
Categories: Fine Arts, Alumni
Tags: Painting
Eating well to save the Sound
Summer 2006
The Puget Sound region's 3.8 million population is expected to increase to 5.2 million within the next 15 years. If Puget Sound is to survive that growth, we must change our lives. That, and eat more shellfish.
Categories: Biological sciences, Earth sciences, Food, Health sciences
Tags: Animal behavior, Food, Oysters, Water
The worm turns: A Palouse native is found
Summer 2006
A Palouse native, not seen in nearly two decades and feared
extinct, has been rediscovered. While digging soil samples at the
Washington State University botany department's Smoot Hill
preserve, University of Idaho graduate student Yaniria Sanchez...
Categories: Entomology, Biological sciences
Tags: Palouse
Farming in the rain
Spring 2006
Farming in the Skokomish River Valley can be a challenge, what
with 60 to 80 inches of rain a year. One year, Hunter Farms's
pumpkin fields flooded, the pumpkins bobbing like buoys on a
temporary sea. Fortunately, the river receded in time for fam...
Categories: Alumni, Agriculture
Tags: Farmers
Eat more garlic
Spring 2006
If there's just one thing you plant in your garden, make it
garlic.For one thing, it's extraordinarily easy to grow. Plant it
around Columbus Day. Cover it with mulch. Or don't. Water it now
and then when it starts growing again in the spring. And...
Categories: Health sciences, Food, Agriculture
Tags: Gardening, Garlic, 4-H
When Pullman was a ski town
Spring 2006
"Everybody still
skis tremendously," says Richter. "They're all in really good
shape."
In 1952 the Washington State College ski team placed first in the
Northern Division, the Pacific Coast Conference, and the North
American International Interc...
Categories: Athletics, WSU history
Tags: Snow Sports
Not Your Normal Truffle
Winter 2005
Head Cowgirl Marilyn Lysohir followed her muse West in search of Art and Chocolate.
Categories: Culinary Arts, Food
Tags: Chocolate
Living with Art
Winter 2005
What happens when enjoyment becomes passion.
Categories: Fine Arts
Tags: Decor, Painting, Sculpture
Adorning the world
Winter 2005
The opening of the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition was the first time the visiting Marquesans had seen these representations of their culture.In conjunction with the opening at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City of Adorning the World: ...
Categories: Fine Arts
Tags: Marquesan art
When buoy meets barge
Winter 2005
"You look out on the ocean, and it looks huge. It looks like
there's space for anybody or anything out there."But," says Steve Harbell, "really there's a lot going on."Take, for example, crabbers and ocean-going towboats.
Historically, the two have...
Categories: Geography
Tags: Transportation, Crab, Ocean
Noam Chomsky
Fall 2005
The surprising thing about Noam Chomsky in person was what he
was not. Even though I was not intimately familiar with either his
linguistics or his political writing, I had imagined him as stern
and austere, too absorbed in thought to bother with ...
Categories: Languages and linguistics, Philosophy
Tags: Books
An International Romance
Fall 2005
Maxime Guinel wanted to do something different. So he left his
home in Brittany, went to college in Manchester, England, then came
to Washington State University in 2002 to pursue his doctorate. A
week after he arrived in Pullman, he met Sophia Su...
Categories: WSU students
Tags: Romance
The spice of life: Apples come in more than one variety
Fall 2005
Apples come in more than one variety—a lot more.
Categories: Food, Agriculture
Tags: Apples, Horticulture
Gig Harbor: Laureen Lund markets the town she loves
Summer 2005
Laureen Lund ('82 Comm.) recently celebrated her fifth
anniversary as the person who sells Gig Harbor to the world. She
seems to do her job well. At least, that's why I'm sitting in her
office in Gig Harbor's city building in mid-August."The best ...
Categories: Alumni, Geography
Tags: Tourism, Marketing
A Building Full of Answers
Summer 2005
Maybe it's their nondescript building, one of a row of identical
structures just off of Plum Street on the way into Olympia. Or
maybe it's their curious history, once a government entity, then
oddly tossed to the budget dogs by an otherwise enviro...
Categories: Engineering, Architecture and design
Tags: Energy
A Private Matter
Summer 2005
A unique academic unit combats domestic violenceChris Blodgett relates a story told him by a colleague. She was
shopping one day, when she observed a father growing progressively
frustrated with his nine- or 10-year-old daughter. Finally, he
snapp...
Categories: Psychology
Tags: Human behavior, Domestic violence, Children
A Nuclear Icon
Spring 2005
If you've ever driven State Road 24 from Othello to Yakima, you
may have glanced across the Columbia as you neared the Vernita
Bridge and noticed the B Reactor. There it sits across the river,
stark, intriguing, and mysterious against the shrub-st...
Categories: Physics, Engineering
Tags: Nuclear reactors
The Tie That Binds
Spring 2005
No matter what you want to blame--predatory pricing, vertical
integration, foreign competition, globalization, urban sprawl--the fact
of the matter is, rural America is packing it in. At least the rural
America of our memory or imagination.
Categories: Agriculture, Economics
Tags: Farmers, Food
Our Kind of Town
Winter 2004
Spokane is undeniably a beautiful place to live and raise a family. Its
downtown is once again vibrant. But it takes more than attitude and
livability to drive an economy. That's where higher education comes in.
Categories: WSU Spokane
Tags: Education, Urban planning, Growth
Helpless: Aesthetic Science
Winter 2004
Electron microscopy might be a just a prosaic tool to some--but for
this student researcher it was also a window to a world of beauty.
Categories: Botany, Photography
Tags: Microscopy
How Cougar Gold Made the World a Better Place
Winter 2004
Washington may not yet have reached cheese heaven. But we're now well
past the purgatory of cheese sameness. And we have the WSU Creamery,
and Cougar Gold as a delicious standard, to thank for much of this
progress.
Categories: Culinary Arts, Food
Tags: Ferdinand's, Cheese, WSU Creamery
The Cougars take Seattle
Winter 2004
It's one of those quintessential late-summer days in Seattle.
Clear in the morning, warm, gathering clouds by late afternoon, the
air heavy and muggy. The tourists are tired, making their way back
to the hotel for an early dinner. It is Friday, ru...
Categories: Alumni, WSU students
Tags: Seattle, Marching band, Cougar pride
What now, mad cow?
Fall 2004
Is it really as bad as it seems?
Categories: Veterinary medicine, Health sciences
Tags: Cattle, Diseases
Imagine: Class combines word and image to understand William and Blake
Fall 2004
The students in this class not only study Blake as both poet and visual artist--they also make images as he made them.
Categories: English, Fine Arts
Tags: Printing, Poetry
An Exquisite Scar
Fall 2004
The beauty of the channeled scablands comes from unimaginable catastrophe.
Categories: Geography, Earth sciences
Tags: Geology, Palouse, Channeled Scablands
A Little Bronze—Strategically Placed
Fall 2004
Although it might be better known for wine and wheat, Walla Walla is
also home to one of the most prominent fine-art foundries. For a short
time this fall, 32 sculptures cast at the Walla Walla Foundry will
reside at 13 locations across the Pullman campus.
Categories: Fine Arts, Campus life
Tags: Sculpture
An environmental mystery is solved, but answer points to larger concerns
Summer 2004
Vultures in India and Pakistan play a vital environmental role
by quickly removing dead livestock, inactivating pathogens, and
probably controlling the spread of livestock disease. Vultures are
also essential to the "sky burials" practiced by Zoro...
Categories: Environmental studies
Tags: Physiology, Vultures
Full Circle
Summer 2004
Steve Jones and Tim Murray want to make the immense area of eastern
Washington, or at least a good chunk of it, less prone to blow, less
often bare, even more unchanging. The way they'll do this is to
convince a plant that is content to die after it sets seed in late
summer that it actually wants to live.
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Wheat, Palouse, Genetics
Mount St. Helens: The perfect laboratory
Spring 2004
It is impossible to accept the immensity of Mount St. Helens and the
effect of its catastrophic 1980 eruption unless you are able to stand
beneath the enormous crater on the pumice plain and listen to John
Bishop talk about lupines.
Categories: Environmental studies, Biological sciences
Tags: Mount St. Helens, Volcanoes
The Last Roses of Summer
Spring 2004
Steve Smith has good news for those of us who like to satisfy
more than one sense at a time. The domestic rose, bred too long for
form and color only, to the detriment of scent, is regaining its
fragrance. Smith '76, the head rose gardener at Mani...
Categories: Botany
Tags: Roses, Gardening
Walter Clore: a wine visionary
Fall 2003
The prose is deliberate, straightforward, and academically
understated: "If hardier varieties free of diseases are used and
the best cultural practices known to obtain full vine maturity are
followed, it is feasible to grow European grapes in favo...
Categories: Alumni
Tags: Wine
Tasting Washington
Fall 2003
The setting is elegant, the food divine, the wine fine and
endless and magnificently diverse. On a Sunday evening in June, the
Grand Pennington Ballroom at Spokane's Davenport Hotel is filled
with representatives of more than 60 Washington winerie...
Categories: Culinary Arts, Food
Tags: Wine, Food
A place at the table
Fall 2003
American farmers claim less than 10 percent of what we spend on food. A growing number are going after their fair share--and we consumers stand to benefit.
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Food
How do bonds break?
Summer 2003
The underlying question that motivates my current work is,What are the forces on atoms and ions associated with
surfaces that result in these particles leaving or reattaching to
the surface when stimulated with an outside agent?These surfaces may b...
Categories: Physics, Chemistry
Tags: Atoms
A New language
Summer 2003
Claudine Elian uses language in her art because, as she puts it,
unlike representational art, words exist in their complete state
only when they are both written and read. However, she also finds
the Latin alphabet static and conforming. So she in...
Categories: Languages and linguistics, Fine Arts
Tags: Writing
Continuous History
Summer 2003
History for Jaqueline Peterson is about buildings and their
occupants, about street life, about gypsies and sailors and
immigrant workers-and little girls eager to show off their toy
airplanes. History is about place and about everyday life.Peters...
Categories: History
Tags: Photography, Immigration
Building the Perfect Bone
Summer 2003
With a new baby as inspiration, and an interdisciplinary team to help,
husband and wife Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose have set out to
solve the puzzle of how to imitate nature's growth of the human bone.
Categories: Biological sciences, Engineering
Tags: Bones, Materials engineering
The More You Learn: Distance Degree Program celebrates its tenth
Spring 2003
What it came down to was that Michele Candela needed a college
education-but it was going to have to come to her rather than her
going to campus. When she made the trip from Bainbridge Island to
Pullman for commencement last May, it was the first ...
Categories: WSU students, Global Campus
Tags: Distance education
How do we perceive sound?
Spring 2003
Christine Portfors, a neurologist, tends a lair of 23 tropical
moustache bats at WSU Vancouver in order to tease apart the
question of how they distinguish between sounds-for example,
between those they use for echolocation and those they use to
...
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Bats, Sound, Neuroscience
Mounting a defense against biological invaders
Spring 2003
Whatever its impact on trade, the World Trade Organization has
opened the doors to biological invasion, says Dick Mack. A
professor of botany at Washington State University, Mack is a
leading authority on invasive species and lead author of
Predi...
Categories: Botany, Biological sciences
Tags: Ecology, Invasive weeds
Taking the University to the people
Winter 2002
Cooperative Extension still offers advice on how to can your tomatoes or care for your chickens. But it also does much more, probing needs and providing solutions in every corner of the state.
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Cooperative extension, Public service
Dancing for the Gods
Fall 2002
On a recent spring evening, the audience at Daggy Hall was
mesmerized by a rare glimpse of a complex and ancient culture. For
more than two hours, Raji Soundararajan, who by day is a research
associate with the Center for Materials Research, dance...
Categories: Performing arts
Tags: India, Dance
Genetically modified foods—What's in it for you?
Fall 2002
If you think scientists all agree on genetically modified foods, think again.
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Genetically modified foods, Food
Ukraine: Mining Every Opportunity for Hope
Summer 2002
There are many toasts, to friendship and Ukraine and its women, who maintain what is left of its social fabric.
Categories: Political science, Geography
Tags: Ukraine
A salon of their own
Spring 2002
Good conversation
should bring about a transcendental melding of minds and
dissolve class and ideological differences.The funniest things Washington State University historian Steve
Kale ran across in researching his latest book were the a...
Categories: History, Literature
Tags: Salons, Women
Why do we sleep?
Spring 2002
James Krueger wants to know why the average person will spend 219,000 hours asleep.
Categories: Health sciences, Biological sciences
Tags: Sleep, Brain
Memories Are Made of This
Spring 2002
Neuroscientists Jay Wright and Joe Harding can approximate Alzheimer's symptoms in a rat by injecting a certain protein into its hippocampus. What's more, they can reverse those symptoms.
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Memory, Neuroscience, Brain
A Campus Full of Wonders
Spring 2002
All over campus, curiosities emerged from closets to form one of the most popular and unusual shows ever to fill the art museum.
Categories: Library and museum studies, Visual arts
Tags: Ephemera, Museums
Washington apples—best of the best
Winter 2001
ALTHOUGH DEBATE will continue over the benefits of organic versus conventional
farming, Washington State University scientists have established
that organic production of apples is more sustainable than conventional apple
production. Soil sc...
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Apples
The Laguna’s Secrets
Winter 2001
Some of the best clues to climatic history lie at the bottoms of lakes.WE ARE GATHERED on an eight-by-12-foot raft with a hole cut in
the center of its floor, in the middle of a lagoon in the mountains 30
kilometers out of Copan, Honduras, driv...
Categories: Social sciences, Archaeology
Tags: Maya civilization, Fossils, Paleoecology
Cataclysm, Light & Passion
Winter 2001
Even though the Washington wine industry is in its relative infancy, it is playing with the big boys. How did it get so good so quickly?
Categories: Agriculture
Tags: Wine
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Winter 2001
...
Categories: Biological sciences
Tags: Evolution, Dr. Universe