Tim Steury

Fall 2004

An Exquisite Scar

The beauty of the channeled scablands comes from unimaginable catastrophe. » More ...

Fall 2004

A Little Bronze—Strategically Placed

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. » More ...

Summer 2004

An environmental mystery is solved, but answer points to larger concerns

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 Zoroastrian sects. So the sudden and precipitous decline in vulture population caused great consternation throughout the subcontinent.

Over the past decade, the population of the Oriental white-backed vulture has declined by more than 95 percent. Other vulture species have experienced similar catastrophic declines. When Washington State University veterinary diagnostician Lindsay Oaks arrived in Pakistan in 2000 to investigate the mysterious deaths, he selected for study three colonies of perhaps 1,000 … » More …

Summer 2004

Full Circle

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. » More ...

Spring 2004

The Last Roses of Summer

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 Manito Park in Spokane, is showing us his charges, which in late September are still in full bloom, and we spend much of our time sniffing.

A visit to Smith’s All-American Rose Selection (AARS) display garden gives a portrait of things to come. Each year, Manito and the other 130 such gardens across the country display the new … » More …

Winter 2005

Adorning the world

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: Art of the Marquesas Islands, (May 10, 2005 – January 15, 2006) Carol Ivory, who was the advisor and consultant for the show, lectured on Marquesan art, her research specialty, at the Barr Graduate Center. Attending the lecture were 15 Marquesans, a remarkable fact in that the Marquesas Islands are marvelously remote. To reach the Marquesas, one must first reach the already remote Tahiti, and … » More …

Winter 2005

When buoy meets barge

“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 not mixed well off the Pacific coast. Dungeness crab fishermen typically set 400 to 500 pots in the waters off Washington’s coast. Multiply that by 228 fishermen, and you get a thicket of buoys attached by monofilament to the pots 50 to 250 feet below.

That same ocean, near shore, is a towboat highway over which huge boats towing barges laden with various … » More …

Fall 2005