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Spring 2024

Washington State Magazine

Spring 2021

WSM staff picks for the pandemic

WSM staff picks

Here’s what the staff of Washington State Magazine has been reading, watching, and listening to since the start of the COVID-19 crisis.

 

Larry Clark (’94 Comm.)
Editor

Books

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish (Gallery Books, 2017) – Haddish’s comedy shines through some rough times in this memoir. I was laughing out loud during several parts.

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner (Harper, 1972) – A classic of science fiction and environmental destruction

Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein (Tachyon Publications, 2019) – I enjoy a good novel about fiction becoming reality, and obsession. Goldstein’s words are gripping and, at … » More …

Cover of Spring 2020 issue of Washington State Magazine
Spring 2020

Ever a green state

There’s nothing new about being green.

Two millennia ago, Chinese Minister for Agriculture Tsai Lun in the first-century Han dynasty called for subjects of the emperor to boil old linen rags for papermaking. Professional recyclers in medieval England collected dust and ash left from fireplaces, then sold it to brick manufacturers as an inexpensive base material. More recently, World War II saw an uptick in recycling, with many common household items like clothes, scrap metal, and tires turned into new products for the war effort.

The same spirit of innovative recycling inspired Washington State University’s Taiji Miyasaka and David Drake to invent a construction block from … » More …

TalkBack
Spring 2020

Talkback for Spring 2020

 

Making much of good medicine

I write to compliment the superb feature “Good medicine” by Brian Charles Clark.

Thank you for choosing the topic, one that deserves attention, but receives little in my experience.What the staff is doing to truly include Native people and their culture in the work of the new medical school is admirable. And Brian’s writing was quite extraordinary.

Robbie Paul’s stories from her father will stay with me. “We need to learn to listen, and to listen to learn.” If future health-care practitioners from WSU can learn to listen quietly, they will have a much-needed positive impact in our … » More …