A number of the specimens in WSU’s mycological herbarium were collected and identified at the Pullman campus.Here’s sampling of some of the more prominent local collectors and their contributions. (Courtesy WSU Mycological Herbarium and Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections)
The state’s greatest rivalry hit a landmark November 2007, when the 100th game in 108 years was played between Washington State University and the University of Washington. For a glimpse of our history, we dipped into WSU’s archives and found photos, film, and colorful programs for this historic contest. See a touchdown from 1910 and film footage of a game in 1923. Check out the chilled cheerleaders of 1950 and the mustachioed players of 1970. And hear the Cougar fight song as you’ve never heard it before.
Kathleen Flenniken (née Dillon) ’83 writes about her children and vacuuming, about sex and death, about fame and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s husband (“Oh the beauty of his wretchedness.”). Her poems are tight and clear and smart and often very funny. While she was at Washington State University, she studied civil engineering.
A career in engineering that evolved toward poetry may not be typical, but it’s a fine match, says Flenniken. In engineering, “you can’t hide behind your language. You have to say what’s true, and if it’s not true, that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.” And with that, you are ready to … » More …
Two years ago Mary Alyce Burleigh bought herself a bright yellow scooter. The former Kirkland mayor and current city council member uses it to zip around town to meetings and local fundraisers. She finds she is as busy in her retirement as she was during her 29 years as a teacher for Redmond High School. Recently she parked her scooter and perched on a city park bench in downtown Kirkland to talk with Hannelore Sudermann about life, civic involvement, and getting 80 miles to the gallon.
My goal was always to be a high school history teacher. I really took a broad range of courses … » More …
There are few things finer than a perfectly ripened pear. We Washingtonians are thus among the luckiest people on earth, because after wide geographical and temporal wandering, the pear seems to have found its true home in our state.
That being so, is it not strange that the pear is not more popular? The question is hardly new. In fact, U.P. Hedrick, in the monumental and beautiful Pears of New York, spends three large pages exploring why, even in 1920, the pear was not more widely eaten.
Given that Washington grows more than 24,000 acres of pears, it would seem that many people do enjoy … » More …
The first contest between cross-state rivals Washington State and the University of Washington took place on a muddy field in Seattle in November 1900. The Washington Agricultural College “Farmers,” as we were known then, made the 290-mile trek from Pullman to Seattle to play the UW “Sun Dodgers” in the pouring rain. The match ended in a five-to-five tie.
Because the two teams will play their 100th game together this year, we thought we’d take a look back at the history of that long relationship.
Meeting up with the UW just after the turn of the century was a spotty endeavor. After the first five … » More …
Back in the late 1960s, when Jo Washburn was athletic director for women’s intramural sports at Washington State University, she had to stretch $1,200 to cover all the expenses of the volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, field hockey, skiing, and tennis teams.
Women’s athletics was a second-class affair. The athletes had to carpool to away games and sleep four to a hotel room to save money. They had to buy their own uniforms. They helped set up spectator seating for their meets. And they trained only when the facilities weren’t being used by the men’s teams. Few, if any, received athletic scholarships.
Meanwhile, their male counterparts traveled … » More …
Cynthia Haseltine wants everyone to know that the microbes she works with are not bacteria.
They look like bacteria; each Sulfolobus is a single cell that has one circular chromosome and lacks a nucleus. But in their genes and the way they read and repair their DNA, these organisms bear a closer resemblance to us than to bacteria—and those similarities make Sulfolobus an excellent model system for learning about how our cells handle DNA, and how the process sometimes goes wrong.
Haseltine’s microbes belong to the group of organisms known as Archaea (ar-KAY-uh). Most Archaea are extremophiles, living in hot, saline, acidic, or other extreme … » More …
Richard Daugherty—”Doc”—can’t remember where exactly the site was in relation to the present reservoir created by Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River. He’d been holding out a little hope that maybe there would be some sign of the work he had supervised during that summer 50 years ago.
“It’s sure good to see it again,” he says, but admits that he doesn’t recognize much. The native village that he and his students had excavated now lies under 30 or 40 feet of water. Many of those former Washington State College students now stand around with him in the early summer heat and reminisce, picking … » More …