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Summer 2024

WSM Fall 2006

Fall 2006

In watermelon heaven

If sublimity is a perfectly ripe watermelon, then where do 101 varieties take you?

I used to think watermelon was pretty much watermelon. Aside from some variability in ripeness and sweetness, you taste one, you taste them all. I am pleased to report that, as with a select few other things, I was wrong.

Last August [2005] I was fortunate to be in Vancouver on the day that Carol Miles hosted her watermelon tasting. That summer, as well as the previous, Miles had conducted variety trials of small “icebox” watermelons, in order to determine their suitability for organic production by small farmers in western Washington.

… » More …

Fall 2006

The memories of a queen

Before there was Wisteria Lane, there was the French royal court at the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It was a place of forced marriages, lovers and infidelities, imprisonments and poisonings, sword fights and murders. And all that was just within the castle walls.

A little bit of that past is hidden in Washington State University’s archives, in a delicate book with a yellow leather cover. It is a firsthand account of life there with details of some of the greatest scandals and intrigues of French history.

The 378-year-old vellum-paged book holds the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, also known as Queen Margot. She was … » More …

Fall 2006

Building a better treadle pump—one step at a time

The first thing Jeff Evans, a recent graduate in entrepreneurship, did when he started his senior project was to locate Malawi on a map.

He and engineering students Travis Meyer, Kyle Kraemer, and Dan Good have since learned a lot about this African country, third poorest in the world, and developed a treadle pump they hope will make a positive difference for people there. They traveled to Malawi in March to test their product. Working with Peter Wyeth, associate scientist in International Programs, Trent Bunderson, associate director of International Programs, and faculty advisors Denny Davis and Jerman Rose, the team was part of a unique … » More …

Fall 2006

Students design schools for Sri Lanka

A group of six students in civil and environmental engineering worked with Washington State University’s new student group of Engineers Without Borders and Asiana Education Development (AED), a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that runs schools for orphans in Sri Lanka, to design two schools that will be rebuilt in the region destroyed by the December 2004 tsunami. The organization is working to rebuild nine of its schools that were destroyed.

When completed, the schools, which will cost a total of about $100,000, will hold about 720 students altogether and contain about two dozen classrooms.

Student Alex McDonald started the WSU chapter of Engineers Without Borders about … » More …

Fall 2006

Blogger's world

Amelia Veneziano, a junior at Washington State University, has a weakness when it comes time to do her homework. When she settles in to her Pullman apartment and turns on her computer, instead of researching a paper or e-mailing a professor, she keys into her personal reflections and posts them on her blog.

Veneziano, “a virgo and a journalism student at wonderful wazzu” according to her internet Web-log page, spends at least five minutes writing about her latest crush, her deeds for the day, the results of the “What are you looking for in a relationship?” quiz she got from a friend, and, of course, … » More …

Fall 2006

All that glitters: The shimmering nano-alchemy of Lai-Sheng Wang

Lai-Sheng Wang places a tinker-toyish thing onto a visitor’s palm. Many such toys line the Washington State University physics professor’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory office in Richland. The object at hand—12 steel balls hinged to red plastic tubes twisted this way and that—form a perfectly symmetrical, 20-sided icosahedron.

Wang also displays a daughter-fashioned Father’s Day card that testifies to his paternal greatness. He spends time with the family, washes dishes, cooks, and is always kind. Mixed in there is a gilded item that truly separates Wang from all other pops on earth: he fathered the gold buckyball.

The word “buckyball” derives from “Buckminsterfullerene,” a hollow … » More …

Fall 2006

A home for music

You don’t always need an address to find the Friel House. Just follow the music.

A short walk from campus, a group of music-minded students have found a home on C Street. The house looks small from the curb, but its three stories shelter seven students, and still have room for a formal dining room, a large kitchen with a breakfast nook, a living room, and a library.

The house is named for the Friel family, and for 54 years was home to Washington State University basketball coach Jack Friel and his wife, Catherine.

Catherine Friel died in 2003. Last year, her family agreed to … » More …

Fall 2006

The coming of age of teen films

As a teen, Sarah Hentges had Wonder Woman and Princess Leia as her pop culture role models. One flew an invisible plane, and the other lived in another galaxy. Neither offered much of an idea of how a young American woman should be.

As a Washington State University graduate student, Hentges is on the trail of other American teen icons like Natalie Wood’s Deanie, who suffers sexual repression in the 1961 Splendor in the Grass, and Lindsay Lohan’s 2004 Lola, who is  striving to be the center of attention in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. She has dedicated much of her post-graduate education to … » More …