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Spring 2024

Tim Steury

Summer 2012

The atomic landscape

 

Seven decades later, we consider our plutonium legacy 

Works considered in this article:

Plume
Kathleen Flenniken
University of Washington Press 2012

Made in Hanford: The Bomb that Changed the World
Hill Williams
Washington State University Press 2011

Making Plutonium, Re-Making Richland: Atomic Heritage and Community Identity, Richland, Washington, 1943-1963
Lee Ann Powell
Thesis, Department of History, Washington State University 2007

 

Reactor B From State Route 24 east of Vernita … » More …

Raspberries. by Cathleen Abers-Kimball
Summer 2012

Raspberries

The cultivation of raspberries is, compared to that of other fruits, a relatively recent endeavor. Rubus idaeus, “the bramble bush of Ida,” purportedly grew on the slopes of Mount Ida and was enjoyed by the residents of the city of Troy. Ida, the nursemaid to the infant Zeus, pricked her finger while picking the originally snow-white berries, staining them red from that time forth. But it was not until the last four or five hundred years, writes D.L. Jennings in his Raspberries and Blackberries, that raspberries have been domesticated.

Today, nearly 60 percent of U.S. red raspberries are produced in Washington. Almost all of the … » More …

Sozo Friends blended wines
Summer 2012

Doing good through blending

About three years ago, Monte Regier returned to Seattle from a year working on the hospital ship Anastasis off the coast of Liberia. Suffering from culture shock, remembering friends who go to bed hungry every night, he sat with his friend Martin Barrett over a glass of wine and mused on what a dollar would buy.

And then came the Idea.

“You know, Monte,” said Barrett, “I think this glass of wine could feed a kid for a day.”

One can imagine Regier’s skeptical smile.

“Give me 90 days,” said Barrett.

So Barrett started researching this idea of selling wine to feed kids and convinced … » More …

First Words
Summer 2012

The learned observer

“We should observe first, and think afterwards.” 
—The Lancet, Oct. 19, 1823

Part of the nature of a writer—but then again, perhaps I speak only for myself—is the constant reimagining of one’s self and context, the repeated immersion in myriad and esoteric subjects, all the while desperately hoping for infinite reincarnations in order to fulfill all the things one would like to understand, experience, and be. On the other hand, being a writer embraces the perfectly paradoxical satisfaction with one’s role as a learned observer.

Given the skeptical writer’s reluctance to rely on reincarnation, the only way to grasp these multitudinous desires and perspectives … » More …

Spring 2012

Lessons from the Forest—The anthropology of childhood

Fresh out of college in 1971, with a little money saved up, Barry Hewlett bought a one-way ticket to Europe. He trekked around Europe for a while, but eventually started to get bored. He noticed many of his fellow youthful travelers were heading for India. So he headed south, for Africa.

He found a cargo boat that was going to Alexandria, Egypt, and booked passage. And kept going, up the Nile to Khartoum in Sudan. Along the way, he says, other travelers told him, you’ve got to see the pygmy people. So he made his way to Uganda to visit pygmies.

He didn’t stay long, … » More …

Joe Keim Campbell
Spring 2012

The end of free will?

 

The wind said
You know I’m
the result of
forces beyond my control

—A.R. Ammons, “The Wide Land”

When the subject of free will resurfaced on the media horizon recently, all I could think of was that last dorm room bull session on said topic many, many years ago. But up it pops again, not just in philosophy journals, but in the esteemed science, and generally nonphilosophical, journals Nature and Science. A subject that has been fervently teased, manipulated, and debated (by scholars decidedly more rigorous than a clutch of college students with a couple of semesters of introductory philosophy under … » More …

First Words
Spring 2012

Time’s Warehouse

As anniversaries go, I suppose a mere decade is not so big a deal, even for a magazine. Many magazines, after all, have lived much longer. Atlantic Monthly’s 154 years aside, even here at Washington State University, Washington State Magazine is a relative youngster. Pow Wow, Washington State College’s first magazine for alumni, debuted in 1910 and ran until 1969, when it was replaced by HillTopics.

Along the way, Pow Wow, to which I last referred a few issues ago, reflected the life of a nascent college. Drawing on the dramatic events of the young twentieth century, dispatches from Washington State College’s few alumni and … » More …

Spring 2012

The Long Journey of the Nez Perce: A Battle History from Cottonwood to Bear Paw

2012spring_nezperce_cover

Kevin Carson ’81
Westholme Publishing, 2011

In his foreword to the latest account of the Nez Perce War of 1877, Kevin Carson ’81 writes, “In my memory, there was never a time when our family was not fascinated by the saga of the Nez Perce.” Carson’s great-great-great grandfather, Levi Watrous, served as a scout during the Civil War, then moved to Columbia County, Washington, in 1872, where he made his living as a stockman. … » More …

Winter 2011

An evolutionary myth is dismissed

Even though a paper on guppy senescence by evolutionary biologist Donna Holmes and her colleagues has circulated for several years, the “grandmother hypothesis” still persists.

And understandably so. One of those rare feel-good stories from evolutionary theory, the grandmother hypothesis attempts to explain menopause in humans as an evolutionary adaptation. Menopause is adaptive, the argument goes, in the sense that women’s reproductive capacity is cut short barely two-thirds of the way through their lives so that the grandmother can help raise the grandchildren, thereby improving the survival of her lineage.

In spite of its appeal, however, “I’ve always thought that was a dumb theory,” … » More …