Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Summer 2024

Tim Steury

Fall 2009

Foiling an invasive

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 bacteria as a perfectly natural way to fight cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, scientific name Bromus tectorum. Recently, she and her colleagues were awarded a large grant to test the effectiveness of Pseudomonas fluorescens D7 for controlling cheatgrass in rangeland.

Cheatgrass, which was introduced in the late 19th century as a forage crop, is an aggressive invader, a grass that has, according to WSU botanist » More …

Fall 2007

Jim Torina: Playing well with others

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 in Mexico.

Torina wasn’t about to give up his hard-earned surfing for just any tantalizing deal.

But this was different.

First, here was this clear need: According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people a year. The medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring at hospitals alone amount … » More …

Fall 2007

Trees return to Ireland

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 austere treelessness.

A hundred years ago, barely 1 percent of Ireland was forested. Now forest has reclaimed 10 percent of the landscape, and the Irish government would like to raise that coverage to 17 percent. Toward that goal, it has mounted a reforestation campaign, backed by a program of grants to landowners to plant trees. Trouble is, the Irish haven’t been used to seeing forest as part of their … » More …

Winter 2007

Kathleen Flenniken – You have to say what’s true

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 funny. While she was at Washington State University, she studied civil engineering.

A career in engineering that evolved toward poetry may not be typical, but it’s a fine match, says Flenniken. In engineering, “you can’t hide behind your language. You have to say what’s true, and if it’s not true, that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.” And with that, you are ready to … » More …

Winter 2007

Pears

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, is it not strange that the pear is not more popular? The question is hardly new. In fact, U.P. Hedrick, in the monumental and beautiful Pears of New York, spends three large pages exploring why, even in 1920, the pear was not more widely eaten.

Given that Washington grows more than 24,000 acres of pears, it would seem that many people do enjoy … » More …

Winter 2007

Field Camp 1957

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 had supervised during that summer 50 years ago.

“It’s sure good to see it again,” he says, but admits that he doesn’t recognize much. The native village that he and his students had excavated now lies under 30 or 40 feet of water. Many of those former Washington State College students now stand around with him in the early summer heat and reminisce, picking … » More …

Summer 2009

Interesting times

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 off with a joke.

But being a fifty-something journalist facing a post-newspaper era in a town awash in laid-off reporters, reality had started to sink in. Even so, referring to the demise of his employer and the economic times in general, at one point Tom gestured outside to First Avenue and said, “But this is no crisis. Somalia has a … » More …