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Summer 2024

WSM Winter 2011

Dunlap tugboat
Winter 2011

Jim Dunlap ’70—Tugs, tides, and time

Jim Dunlap ’70 says he learned the family business “from the mud up.”

Today one of several Dunlaps in the water transportation business runs a tugboat and freight company with ports in Everett and LaConner. But his first job working for his Uncle Gene’s towing business came in the 1960s when Jim was just a teen.

His task was to “dog” deadhead logs mired in the mud flats around Fidalgo Island. At low tide, young Jim would wade out and chain empty barrels to the logs. When the tide came in, the barrels would float to the surface and pull the logs loose. Then at … » More …

Illustration David Wheeler
Winter 2011

Collegiate Athletics in the 21st Century

“Just Win, Baby!” was the motto made famous by legendary Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis. His philosophy was that simple. Along the way the Raiders gained a reputation as one of the dirtiest, most penalized, but successful teams in professional football. Collegiate athletics seems to have adopted Davis’s philosophy as compliance and education are threatened by the very big business of college sports.

In Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America, I contend that the system of college athletics no longer works for the realities of the 21st century. There is simply too much media exposure and money at stake. For example, … » More …

Winter 2011

A power shortage

Don Kopczynski ’91 first noticed the power industry’s newest problem around the year 2000. The vice president for Avista Corp. counted 100 engineers on his team. Looking ahead, he realized that half of them would be retiring simultaneously. It made sense, since they all came out of school and entered the workforce at the same time. “We’ve been together our whole careers,’’ he says.

The looming shortage of engineers, though, is not limited to Avista. It’s a national issue, according to a recent survey by the Center for Energy Workforce Development. Fifty-one percent of engineers working in the power industry, including electric, natural gas, and … » More …

Architect Jim Olson’s work featured at the WSU Museum of Art
Winter 2011

Homes for art

Few of us will ever see inside the homes of some of the Pacific Northwest’s major art collectors. But this fall we get a glimpse when the Museum of Art at Washington State University hosts an exhibit of internationally-known architect Jim Olson’s houses built for art.

Olson’s clients collect works by Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, and Henri Matisse, and they seek out modern sculpture, pre-Columbian artifacts, and antique Southeast Asian artworks. Some of them are sharing images of their homes, as well as art from their own collections, with WSU.

With large photographs dominating the gallery space, it will be almost as if you … » More …

Winter 2011

An evolutionary myth is dismissed

Even though a paper on guppy senescence by evolutionary biologist Donna Holmes and her colleagues has circulated for several years, the “grandmother hypothesis” still persists.

And understandably so. One of those rare feel-good stories from evolutionary theory, the grandmother hypothesis attempts to explain menopause in humans as an evolutionary adaptation. Menopause is adaptive, the argument goes, in the sense that women’s reproductive capacity is cut short barely two-thirds of the way through their lives so that the grandmother can help raise the grandchildren, thereby improving the survival of her lineage.

In spite of its appeal, however, “I’ve always thought that was a dumb theory,” … » More …

Winter 2011

The lost and found flourmill

Steve Fulton grew up in the 1960s with his uncle Leonard’s flour milled with a process called Unifine. Fulton ate whole wheat bread baked by his mother Lee x’38 from the flour. His father Joseph x’39 promoted and delivered the flour all over the Northwest. But the Spokane area mill closed in 1986.

So in 2008 when Fulton started researching the family mill—built at Washington State University—he was surprised to learn that Oregon company Azure Standard was using the Unifine name for its flour.

He emailed Azure Standard’s president, David Stelzer. “David called my cell phone and said, ‘I know where your uncle’s mill is,’” … » More …

bread loaves
Winter 2011

Wheat: A 10,000-year relationship

A while back, George DePasquale visited the ancient Italian city of Pompeii, not far from his ancestral home of Sorrento. Looking at a 2,000-year-old oven, DePasquale could easily imagine how its baker prepared and baked bread much as he does today at Seattle’s Essential Baking Company. He could feel he was part of a long, human continuum, “a river of history,” with “bazillions of people behind me, bazillions of people to come.”

But even the oldest rivers change, forming new channels, and sometimes doubling back on themselves.

bread loaves

… » More …

John Olerud of the Seattle Mariners
Winter 2011

John Olerud x’88: Faith, Hope, and Horses

John Olerud was not enamored with New York City during his playing days with the Toronto Blue Jays. “Every time we went there and played I was so intimidated by the city,” he recalls. “I just thought, man, it was just a matter of time before I get mugged on the streets.”

So imagine Olerud’s thoughts when he learned he was traded to the New York Mets in 1997.

“Sure enough I get traded to them and my wife (Kelly) says, ‘Let’s just try living in the city and see what it’s like.’

“We did that and just had a great time.”

“I think [God] … » More …