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Summer 2024

Tim Steury

Spring 2007

Phyllis Campbell: Being about forever

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 last thing she’s interested in.

“You can print that,” she says. “I’ll never run for political office.

“I value people who do,” she adds, “but that’s not my calling.”

Politics, after all, is so short-term.

Campbell shows me, with obvious pleasure, the medal that represents the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award with which she was recently honored. Campbell’s relationship to Washington State University, which … » More …

Spring 2007

Viticultural art

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 alumni winemaking.

The wine club approached the digital design class taught in Fine Arts and asked students to design a wine label for a special spring release from Woodward Canyon, owned and operated by Rick Small ’69. Design students were instructed to reflect viticulture and the land-grant ideal on their labels. The label chosen is by Annette Ticknor ’07, a communication major and fine art student. (Full disclosure: … » More …

Spring 2007

Just like it was yesterday

“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 liberal sensibility and Native great-grandmother, I confess there have been times upon hearing Native Americans speak of the injustices of manifest destiny and conquest, I’ve wondered when they will finally accept, no matter the past injustice, that this is simply the way things are. Having attended the conference in October, however, I find I am still capable of learning.

The focus of this year’s conference was … » More …

Summer 2007

It’s rhubarb pie time!

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, over ice cream. Although Swanson does no research on the tart vegetable, he is an avid enthusiast and considers it an acidic parallel to his work with cranberries. And obviously, given his rhubarb enthusiasm, Swanson is from the Midwest, where every old farmstead has a rhubarb patch. “Mom always made rhubarb pie in the spring,” he says.

Rhubarb is also known by Midwesterners as … » More …

Summer 2007

A lavender landscape

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 here. But where Cathy ’68 and Leeon ’68 Angel planted their lavender seven years ago, dairy cows once grazed. And not too long before that, you might have seen a band of Clallam people heading across the meadow toward the Dungeness River to fish. Or north toward Sequim or Dungeness bays to dig shellfish.

Lavender is a recent development around Sequim. By the … » More …

Summer 2007

She's home

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 weaving.”

And with that, Susan Pavel (’99 Ph.D.) joined the revival of Coast Salish weaving.

Susan and Michael, a Washington State University faculty member in education, were living with his uncle, Bruce Miller, a master weaver.

“He started me at the beginning, carding the wool, spinning the wool, dyeing the wool, working up the loom. Actual weaving was maybe a third of the process.”

Susan … » More …

Summer 2007

The presidents

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 presidencies, including those of Wallis Beasley and William Pearl, were more subdued, yet productive and vital to the progress of WSU.

Regardless of how you count our presidents, though, the story of WSU and its presidents is rich, wonderful, and filled with drama, pathos, and even a little scandal here and there. Obviously, much has changed over the past 115 years. When George Lilley was named the first president … » More …

Spring 2003

The More You Learn: Distance Degree Program celebrates its tenth

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 time she’d ever set foot on campus. Or met, face to face, the staff of the Distance Degree Program who helped her achieve a bachelor’s degree in social science (with a 4.0, it should be mentioned), working from the private classroom she shares with a husband and four children a few miles outside of Kingston.

“If you look at … » More …