Patricia Susan Hart ’91 MA, ’97 PhD
Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest with University of Washington, 2010
At the end of the 19th century, adoption became part of a broader movement to reform the orphanage and poor farm system in the United States. In her most recent book, Patricia Susan Hart, who teaches journalism and American studies at the University of Idaho, looks at the issue of child placement in Washington. The book … » More …
George Nethercutt Jr. ’67 may not be in Congress anymore, but he still yearns to shorten the distance between Washington, D.C., and his home state of Washington.
The effort has kept the Spokane native busy since he left the House of Representatives in 2005, when he transformed a project from his office into the George Nethercutt Foundation, a nonprofit organization to promote civic literacy and foster leadership qualities.
“We as Americans just don’t know the story of our country. And it troubles me. As a citizen, it bothers me,” says Nethercutt as we meet one afternoon last fall in Seattle, where he’s visiting on … » More …
A few weeks ago, Brian Toste ’99 and his three-man crew set out from Westport, in southwest Washington, in Toste’s 45-foot vessel Huntress in search of Dungeness crab. They spent the first few days tying line and setting out some 500 crab traps, circles of metal and wire about the size and shape of large truck tires.
A few days later, when the traps were full, they returned to their buoys and pulled them out of the water. The crew quickly empties them by hand, says Toste. They toss the females and the male crabs smaller than 6-¼ inches across the back into the water, replenish … » More …
Worth D. Griffin stepped off the train in Pullman in the fall of 1924 to find Washington State College’s art department barely four years old and with just one other full-time faculty member. Prior to that, the only art instruction offered was painting lessons for students with the pocket money.
But Griffin had come to help teach design and creative composition and build a program. The Indiana native had studied commercial and fine art in Indianapolis and at the Art Institute in Chicago. In addition to working as a magazine illustrator, he trained among American realists, artists focused on rendering unidealized scenes of daily life. … » More …
Luz Maria Gordillo
University of Texas Press, 2010
There are communities of people who live their lives in two places at once. Residents of Detroit, Michigan, and the small town of San Ignacio, Mexico, for example. In her book, historian Luz Maria Gordillo sets out to explain the history of this phenomenon, which dates back to the 1940s when the Bracero Program started bringing temporary Mexican laborers into the Midwest.
She hones that focus to … » More …
Last summer Mary Kaufman-Cranney culled a batch of black dresses from her closet and replaced them with hiking boots and trail shoes. Having left her job with the Seattle Opera, where she was director of development, she has less use for the dresses. But now she requires the shoes for her new role at The Nature Conservancy leading fundraising for the nonprofit’s Washington State chapter.
Instead of organizing galas, she’s trekking across mudflats and into rainforests to learn the details of preserving our state’s natural resources.
“I’m really enjoying this work,” she says. “Northwesterners are so passionate about their natural … » More …
Joe Fugere opened Tutta Bella pizzeria in Columbia City in 2004. A veteran of several Northwest-based companies, including Starbucks and Taco Time, he decided it was time to go into business for himself and produce true traditional Naples-style pizza.
Today the south Seattle restaurant is filled with blond wood tables and bears sweet touches like parchment paper pendant lights and brick walls. Though it’s not yet 10 a.m., an applewood fire is burning in the oven and trays of sliced mushrooms are waiting to be roasted.
Fugere comes in and orders a cappuccino over the heads of two regulars at … » More …
One day in 1936 Betty Lee and her twin sister Peggy, about four years old, posed for their mother in the Washington State College shirts given to them by Carl Morrow, then Dean of Men at WSU.
Their parents, Don and Julia Lee, moved to Pullman in the 1930s and opened a restaurant, and later ran a small grocery on Maiden Lane. Morrow was a regular customer at their restaurant, which served “American” food, says Betty Lee. On occasion, he brought the family gifts, conferring on the girls the shirts, dolls, and balls.
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Two years ago, Lou Pepper watched the bank he once managed become the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Pepper, a former Washington State University regent, had retired from Washington Mutual in the early 1990s when the bank was sound. But then a pattern of rapid growth and risky lending led to the collapse.
The former CEO felt helpless as each day brought more negative news. “People had been building this bank for 115 years, damn good people,” says Pepper, leaning forward in his chair in the small first-floor office of his home on Skagit Bay. And many of them were losing their savings, their … » More …