Article

Power lines over a field on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation

Summer 2012

Coyote

—Pronunciation: kī–ō’–tē, chiefly Western kī’–ōt

After years away,
I met you again on the tongue
of an old friend from home. Kī’–ōt.

Trotting through sagebrush. Wild
by any name. I’d moved to a green isle city
that pronounced you kī–ō’–tē

and abandoned you by the side of the road.
I’d forgotten your silver, slope-shouldered form
and gaze.

You’re not a citizen of language or memory,
but I am. Changing your name
was a betrayal of home

born of living among outsiders,
born of looking back through outsiders’ eyes
at interchangeable houses landscaped

with … » More …

Summer 2012

That’s right, there are now 10,000 more members in the WSUAA since 2004, when we started the push to build membership, alumni engagement, and fiscal stability. That’s enough to pack the stands in Beasley Coliseum.

We’re celebrating an astonishing increase of over 70 percent to a total of 23,500 dues-paying members. It might be worth noting that the number of Life Members in the Alumni Association has doubled during this same time frame.

By increasing our membership, the WSUAA can provide even more support to WSU and to make available scholarship support, alumni outreach, awards and recognition, Gold and Diamond Graduate reunions, and about … » More …

Summer 2012

Donald Wayne Bushaw 1926–2012—A great teacher and a great learner

“Learning should be an unending process,” said Don Bushaw in an interview some years back. Anyone who knew him at all will know this was no idle observation. Bushaw, who first arrived at Washington State College in 1943 as a 17-year-old freshman and returned, a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton in hand, to teach and lead for a distinguished 43 years, passed away in Portland, Oregon, on January 15, 2012, surrounded by his wife and children.

Don Bushaw was born in Anacortes, Washington, on May 5, 1926, to Elmond and Ruth Bushaw. The family moved to Bremerton in 1930 when Elmond took a job at … » More …

Summer 2012

Dan Newhouse ’77—Farm to director’s office

In 2009, Dan Newhouse ’77 was walking through the wings of the state House of Representatives when the governor’s chief of staff approached him with a surprising offer.

Newhouse was a four-term Republican representative from Sunnyside and floor leader for his caucus, so he didn’t expect to be asked to be director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture by a Democratic governor. “At the time, everyone knew there was a vacancy, but being from a different political party I didn’t think I would be considered for that position,” he says.

Soon after, Newhouse visited with Gov. Chris Gregoire about agriculture once. Then he … » More …

Summer 2012

John E. Olerud ’65—Science is a lot like baseball

Whether he’s studying how wounds heal or he’s tagging a runner out at home plate, John E. Olerud ’65 knows two techniques to succeed: work hard and stick with it.

Olerud credits those lessons to the man who recruited him to Washington State University’s baseball team, Chuck “Bobo” Brayton. “He was one of those guys who taught you a lot of lessons about life, not just baseball,” he says.

The lessons learned have led to achievements on the diamond—as catcher and captain of the 1965 Cougar baseball team that played in the College World Series, and as a professional player for seven years—and in academia, … » More …

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 …

Paul Kies and parts of his autograph collection at WSU

Summer 2012

Historically yours

Paul Philemon Kies, a popular professor of English, was one of the keenest collectors at Washington State College. When he wasn’t teaching, advising, or shooting photographs on campus, he was filling his office and home with rare books, autographs, letters, and photographs.

Robert B. O’Connor, a student, profiled Kies in 1970. It’s a portrait of “a unique personality” whose “office was so crowded with a lifetime of accumulation of everything imaginable that there was never any available chair space.”

As a young scholar from the rural Midwest, Kies learned his culture in Chicago from the Ringling family (as in the Ringling Brothers Circus) in … » More …

Summer 2012

The collectors

A tale of tenacity, obsession, and ancient texts

The papers were yellowed, fragile, and disorganized, but in December of 1941, on a search for rare books and documents in Mexico, Spanish professor J. Horace Nunemaker found his treasure.

A long-time collector who spent many hours searching for old Spanish texts and papers through booksellers and dealers in Spain and the United States, Nunemaker had just turned his efforts to Mexico City. There he made the find of his life, a collection that dated almost as far back as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and contained the business dealings of one central elite family … » More …

Summer 2012

Managing Nemo

The island of Hawaii, lest it be confused with the state of Hawaii, is often referred to as the Big Island. In fact, it is the biggest of the Hawaiian Islands. But in many ways, it is like a small town, as Brian Tissot has once again realized upon returning earlier this year.

On short notice, he has scheduled a talk in the Kealakehe High School Library in Kailua-Kona, the largest town on the island’s west coast, also known as West Hawaii. And in the days leading up to the talk, most everyone he meets has heard he will be speaking. Even an old acquaintance … » More …

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 …