Summer 2008
Age of Identity
Debbie Lee journeyed across an ocean and traveled back two centuries to find some of history's most infamous imposters. She came home with a new understanding of culture and identity. » More ...
WSM Summer 2008
Summer 2008
Wiggle Like a Fish
Tory Christensen ’01
CD Baby, 2007
Sometime in the 1970s or ’80s, when National Public Radio was airing a program called Folk Festival USA, I recorded a concert from one of those broadcasts by a singer named Sam Hinton. Among the songs Hinton performed was one called “Barney McCabe.” It was about “a wise child” who went off in search of an evil witch and ultimately destroyed her with the help of three canny dogs—Barney McCabe, Doodleydoo, and Soo Boy. He also sang a song in Yiddish … » More …
Summer 2008
Recess at 20 Below
Perhaps more than most books for children, Cindy Lou Aillaud’s Recess at 20 Below has its feet firmly planted in the real world. The reason for that, of course, is that it’s illustrated with the author’s own photographs of children at the school in Delta Junction, Alaska, where Aillaud teaches physical education. And it’s probably for that reason too that the book makes the most of what some might consider an unlikely subject—the way kids cope with sub-zero temperatures in the far north. Through a combination of first-person narrative—presumably spoken by one of the schoolchildren—and engaging images, Aillaud walks her readers (5 to 10 years … » More …
Summer 2008
Masters of Disguise
WSU researchers close in on an elusive pair of pathogens. Their hunt may help small-scale farmers around the world. » More ...
Summer 2008
A Dialogue with the Past
A fierce Pacific storm in February 1970 revealed early remains of Ozette, on the Olympic Coast between Cape Flattery and La Push. Worried about the site's vulnerability to looters and further storms, Makah tribal leader Ed Claplanhoo '56 called archaeologist Richard Daugherty at Washington State University, commencing an 11-year excavation of the site. The excavation yielded thousands of well-preserved artifacts and a wealth of clues to the history and culture of Makahs and other coastal tribes. » More ...
Summer 2008
Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees
Stephen F. Arno ’65 and Ramona P. Hammerly
The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 2007
Trees recall memories. Both thicken through the years, become storm-roughened, and may persist despite broken branches. We look at trees the way we look to memories as familiar waymarks in our personal landscapes. The new edition of Stephen Arno (’65 Forestry) and Ramona Hammerly’s Northwest Trees offers to enlarge one’s landscape of trees. The beauty of this book, with its insights and plucky facts, welcomes familiarity with trees. Reading Northwest Trees turns trees into sharper memories.
This new volume—characterized as an “anniversary … » More …
Summer 2008
Just Don’t Get Sick: Access to Health Care in the Aftermath of Welfare
Karen Seccombe and Kim Hoffman
Rutgers University Press, 2007
Victor Sidel, the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, observes, “statistics are people with the tears washed away.” Just Don’t Get Sick, a new book by Karen Seccombe (’85 Ph.D. Soc.) and Kim Hoffman, offers a litany of statistics about the plight of Oregon families who formerly received welfare benefits, but the tears glisten on these pages, thanks to skillful threading of the individual stories and observations of the study subjects. It’s a compelling and often gut-wrenching analysis of the frayed social safety net in 21st-century … » More …
Summer 2008
Dizzy
Stacy A. Nyikos and Kary Lee ’86
Stonehorse Publishing, Tulsa, OK, 2007
Meet Dizzy, a Pacific white-sided dolphin who romps through the pages of this book at a—well, at a dizzying pace. Aimed at a readership of 3- to 8-year-olds, the story, such as it is, follows Dizzy through days spent flying among the clouds, high-diving, and “porpoising” frenetically about his watery world. But then he catches sight of a sea lion, a “fish shepherd” who herds sardines and hake, and realizes: “Am I missing fresh fish? . . . But that’s just not right!” … » More …
Summer 2008
Color + Modulation
Rob Tyler ’96
2006
Rob Tyler’s animated films combine hand-painted film cells, computer manipulation and atmospheric electronic music to produce a hypnotic come-hither based on changing, pulsing colors that riff off a primary abstract shape to the music of Unrecognizable Now, Moksha Kusa, Carpet Music, In Support of Living, and Solar Marquardt. Although there is no indication that these films are meant for anything more than a DVD-scale viewing, Tyler’s films may recall (for those who can recall) psychedelic light shows of the 1960s, and would certainly work wonders as rave backgrounds. Their luminosity evokes … » More …
Summer 2008
Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America
Charles B. Kastner ’81
University of New Mexico Press, 2007
For generations, the 1920s have provided fodder for authors. The super-hyped sensationalism of those ballyhooed years seems a bottomless pool of entertaining topics. The decade of Lindbergh, Valentino, Capone, and Ruth, of flappers, Mah Jong, crossword puzzles, and marathon dances, also produced the Bunion Derby, a marathon footrace across America. It is to his credit that Seattle author Charles Kastner (’81 M.A. History) not only uncovered this nearly forgotten story, but also that he treats it with respect, for it would have been easy to … » More …