WSM Spring 2010

Spring 2010

Leave it to beavers

As we crunch through the snow in the hills above Winthrop, Steve Bondi ’02 and Ryan Anderson ’08 are eager to see evidence that their project to improve riparian habitat and provide late season water to the Methow Valley is working.

They’re building dams, but with the help of nature’s own unparalleled engineer—the beaver. The effort for a time seemed just a joke in the state capital—that of beavers building dams along rivers and streams in the Columbia River watershed to improve the hydrology of the region. “At the time, we couldn’t tell if they were laughing at us or with us,” says Anderson, watershed … » More …

Spring 2010

Language, Money, and Loss

Sometimes loss can be an occasion for newly discovered vitality. Where better than the university to challenge ourselves to avoid linguistic lemminghood? » More ...

Spring 2010

Vancouver Lake: A Search for Solutions Great and Small

This is the second time WSU scientists have worked on a plan to clean up Vancouver Lake. The first, in the 1960s, was monumental. This time it's microscopic. » More ...

Spring 2010

Desperately Seeking Sherman

Although his work is increasingly ubiquitous, the writer Sherman Alexie ’94 is a little harder to pin down. Our correspondent is undaunted. » More ...

Spring 2010

Of Time and Wildness in the North Cascades

Bob Mierendorf has spent the last couple of decades trying to convince the archaeological establishment that pre-contact Northwest Indians did not confine themselves to the lowlands, but frequented the high country. Now he has an ancient camping site to make his point. » More ...

Spring 2010

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America

semple

Matthew Avery Sutton

Harvard University Press, 2007

No figure in early twentieth-century Christianity gained as much fame, notoriety, and acclaim as Aimee Semple McPherson. “Sister” McPherson oversaw the rise of an expansive empire—church services, radio, stagecraft, community service, politics, and print media—devoted to spreading her brand of fundamentalism and Pentecostal Protestantism. McPherson herself inspired a massive following, due in part to her charisma and ability to use modern techniques to further her cause of “old-time … » More …

Spring 2010

Women’s Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington

womens_votes

Shanna Stevenson

WSU Press, 2009

This year marks the 100-year anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington state. As the fifth state in the Union to allow women to vote, Washington’s landmark was more than a half-century in the making. In fact, in 1883, when Washington was a territory, woman did win the right to vote. Then, just five years later, the right was revoked and they had to campaign all over again.

In her latest … » More …

Spring 2010

Libera

libera

Marco Bittelli ’98 MS, ’01 PhD

Pacific Coast Jazz, 2009

Some things you expect to find on the Palouse: tractors, football fans, a smattering of laboratories probing the molecular basis of life and the reaches of space. The rural alchemy of agriculture and academia would seem less likely to nurture the great urban art form of jazz, but somehow it does. Several nights a week, you can wander into a club like Rico’s and find … » More …