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Spring 2024

Tim Steury

Winter 2008

A reburial eases a clash of culture and science

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 spent decades in a laboratory storeroom. On one box is printed in neat letters, “woman and child.”

A warm breeze rustles the sage and wild rye, as people approach the grave in small groups, people of the Yakama, Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Wannapum. Although the identities of the remains are uncertain, they are certainly ancestors of many of those gathered … » More …

Winter 2008

Rethinking the Fundamentals

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. » More ...
Summer 2006

The worm turns: A Palouse native is found

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-de Leon noticed a glimpse of white. Quick with her shovel, she captured the six-inch specimen of Driloreirus americanus, also known as the giant Palouse earthworm. Historically, specimens have been recorded as long as three feet. Although an observer reported it as “abundant” in the Palouse in 1897, tillage and competition from European earthworms seem to have taken their toll.

Smoot Hill contains the largest remnant of native Palouse prairie. … » More …

Spring 2006

Farming in the rain

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 families across the South Puget Sound region to visit Hunter Farms and cart home their pumpkins.

One of the Hunter family cousins has a letter written by Isaac Woods soon after he arrived in the valley from Iowa in the 1880s. Apologizing that he couldn’t repay the $8.00 he’d borrowed from the recipient of the letter to move west, he complained about … » More …

Summer 2008

A sense of who we are

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 back roads between Pullman and our home, I never quite know when I’ve crossed from Idaho into Washington. There are no signs, no point where my brain says okay, I’m in a different state. Examined from Twin Falls to Aberdeen, however, Idaho and Washington obviously have very different identities. Idaho has no Ho Rain Forest, no Pacific shoreline, no … » More …

Summer 2008

On the road

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 with a major Roy Lichtenstein exhibition a couple of years ago. After arranging with collector Jordan Schnitzer to assemble the exhibition, he sent it around the West to seven other museums, from the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle to the Austin Art Museum in Texas, making it possible for over 117,000 people to see work … » More …

Winter 2007

O Palouse!

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 settlement and a fairly well documented Native history. Throw in a few major conflicts between settlers and natives for drama. Then there’s the two-universities-in-the-middle-of-nowhere angle. Then we’ll get a lot of sponsors and work them into the story just a little, and bingo! O Palouse! Oh! Oh! Oh!

And for the most part, it works. O Palouse! is a fine general introduction, a perfect stocking stuffer, a … » More …

Summer 2008

A Dialogue with the Past

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. » More ...