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Summer 2024

WSM Winter 2010

Winter 2010

Living for a cure

At his home on the banks of the Columbia River just north of Wenatchee is one of Mike Utley’s achievements.

A Ford F-350 pickup.

Black with blue flames jutting from front to back, the truck gives off as imposing a presence as the 6-foot-6 Utley must have given opponents during his playing days as an offensive lineman with Washington State University and the Detroit Lions.

“Success comes not in time but in goals achieved,” he says. “I earned this truck.”

On November 17, 1991, Mike Utley was carried off a football field on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to a hospital.

In the ensuing … » More …

Winter 2010

A New Land

John Bishop was late getting to Mount St. Helens.

He was only 16 years old when it blew in 1980, and it would be another decade before he began crawling around the mountain as part of his doctoral studies.

“I was worried I missed all the action—‘Ten years, it’s all been studied,’” he recalls.

It turns out the dust, pumice, and other ejecta were only beginning to settle, and the mountain would continue to rumble, spit, and recover. In 1994, he found himself running from a mudflow, then watched as it moved fridge-sized boulders and shook the earth beneath his feet. Arriving at WSU Vancouver … » More …

Winter 2010

Letters for Winter 2010

 

Walla Walla Sweets

I really enjoyed your article on Walla Walla Sweet Onions in the Fall 2010 Washington State Magazine. It brought back a lot of memories of working at the Walla Walla Produce Company, a wholesale fruit and produce company that my Dad ran, as I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s. I spent a lot of summers loading 50-pound bags of Walla Walla Sweet Onions delivered by the growers to our warehouse into rail cars that were being sent to the midwest and east coast. But your article stated that the onions were “not called Walla Walla Sweets until 1960.” … » More …

Winter 2010

Common cause

I was walking down Pike Street on a beautiful day in July with an Afghan lawyer. We were just discussing the difference between civil and Shariah law when we came upon a couple of young protesters. They were both holding large posters of President Obama with a Hitler mustache. The male of the pair came up to me and insisted, “Wouldn’t you like to get rid of this jerk?”

Perhaps my reaction was exacerbated by having just listened to a group of idealistic scholars from Afghanistan discuss their efforts to build a society out of ideological and economic chaos; regardless, something inside me snapped, and … » More …

Winter 2010

An arboretum for WSU

Over the coming years, 170 acres east of Airport Road in Pullman will be transformed into an arboretum, which will include a new bear center, a biodiversity center, a gathering circle, and a series of walking trails and gardens.

The land fits neatly amidst the WSU Organic Farm, USDA research plots, and College of Veterinary Medicine facilities. While the project is still in its infancy, many pieces are falling into place to make it happen.

By mid-July, the first trails were visible, tiny paths of hot pink flags climbing up and around the hills. A grand opening is loosely planned for fall 2011, but … » More …

Winter 2010

Nature twice: Poetry and natural history

I lean on a glass case that displays stuffed egrets, herons, and sparrows. Across the room, Larry Hufford—director of the Conner Museum of Natural History and professor in the School of Biological Sciences—taps data into his computer. Larry is tall with thick graying hair and sharp blue eyes. I’m a full foot shorter, and this, coupled with the fact that I’m a professor in the English Department, makes for an unusual collaboration.

I used to feel alien in Larry’s scientific domain, even though my office is just a five-minute walk across campus. But over the last six … » More …

Winter 2010

A sinking economy sparks scholarships

Two years ago, Lou Pepper watched the bank he once managed become the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Pepper, a former Washington State University regent, had retired from Washington Mutual in the early 1990s when the bank was sound. But then a pattern of rapid growth and risky lending led to the collapse.

The former CEO felt helpless as each day brought more negative news. “People had been building this bank for 115 years, damn good people,” says Pepper, leaning forward in his chair in the small first-floor office of his home on Skagit Bay. And many of them were losing their savings, their … » More …

Winter 2010

The deadly cough

Few creatures in the course of human history have ever been as influential as the one that crawls and jumps and drinks blood in the lab of Viveka Vadyvaloo.

It hit the world stage in the sixth century, starting in Lower Egypt, traveling by ship to Constantinople, then into western Europe. It took about half a century to kill 100 million people, half the earth’s population.

Seven centuries later, it fanned out from the Crimean seaport of Caffa to revisit Constantinople and Sicily, from which it swept through Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. One-third of Europe, about 25 million people, was … » More …