By traditional baseball standards, Scott Hatteberg’s big league days were numbered.
He had been a Cougar standout, team captain, Most Valuable Player, and catcher for future All-Star Aaron Sele, with whom he went to the Red Sox in 1991. But in his fifth year in the majors he ruptured a nerve in his elbow. An operation left him unable to hold a baseball. In the words of Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, he was “a second string, washed up catcher.”
“I couldn’t throw as hard,” Hatteberg x’91 recalls. “My accuracy had gone. As a catcher, you lose … » More …
Most of you really like us. Some of you don’t. A very few of you (2 percent) ignore us, but hardly anyone outright hates us. That’s the gist of the reader survey many of you recently participated in. Either way, we’re listening. And the most striking point of the survey was that you do indeed read us.
We haven’t done a reader survey in quite a while, not because we’re not interested, but because they’re expensive. There comes a time, however, when an editor needs something a little more systematic, even more than your informal comments and letters, in gauging his readership. Fortunately, that time … » More …
We used to believe, says neuropsychologist Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe, that if a person lived long enough, he or she would develop dementia.
Now we know better, she says. Whether caused by Alzheimer’s or other disease, dementia is not a normal aging process. Many people, such as G. Roger Spencer and colleagues pictured here, remain completely alert and engaged well into their 80s and 90s and older.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the chance of someone over 85 having the disease is nearly 50 percent. Other dementia-causing diseases raise that risk even higher. So what is it that enables someone to escape the dementia odds?
Standing above the Crowd by James “Dukes” Donaldson ’79 Aviva Publishing, New York, 2011
Donaldson mines his experiences as a former Cougar basketball and NBA star, entrepreneur, mentor, and community leader not just to tell his own story, but to motivate readers in achieving success and confidence in their own endeavors. A profile of Donaldson appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of this magazine, and a web-only story in 2006.
Eliminate the Chaos at Work by Laura Leist ’91 John Wiley and Sons , Hoboken, NJ, 2011
Noted organizational consultant Laura Leist offers proven techniques to tame … » More …
Tyler Armour ’10, Tim Meinig ’10, Ted Powers ’09, and Javier Suarez ’10
For fans of earthy, Northwest indie-folk in the vein of Seattle’s Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes, Pullman’s own Yarn Owl delivers a lush and satisfying debut. Montaña Y Caballo, the band’s first full-length album, was recorded in a barn just south of Moscow, Idaho, and every song evokes the varied scenery of the Pacific Northwest. The … » More …
Noriko Kawamura , Yoichiro Murakami, and Shin Chiba, editors
University of Washington Press, 2011
The idea of “peace” in our complex and conflicted world sometimes seems out of reach or even antiquated. The authors in this collection recognize these realities and make a concerted effort to build a new theory of peace studies.
Noriko Kawamura, a WSU assistant professor of history, co-edited the volume, which includes contributions from a number of Washington State faculty along … » More …
Ge and G, mathematicians in northern China and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, respectively, navigate parallel academic paths at the beginning of this unique and challenging novel by WSU English professor Alex Kuo. The two characters don’t know each other, but their lives reflect a common experience over the course of 30 years.
The Chinese woman Ge and Chinese-American man G share a disgust for the emptiness of their teaching and the revolutions … » More …
Ammonia based fertilizer, which provides nitrogen, can offer a great boost to even an otherwise not so healthy soil. But ammonia fertilizer, which depends on petroleum for its manufacture, is becoming very expensive. The consistent high yields of wheat on the Palouse depend on applying about 100 pounds of fertilizer per acre, with that fertilizer currently costing $50-80/ton. More significant, however, is not the cost, but the long-term effect of applying so much fertilizer.
Soils on the Palouse before farming were generally neutral, with a pH of 7, says Rich Koenig. Since then, the pH of the soil has dropped in some cases as much … » More …
If you live in a wildfire-prone area, preparation and forethought is key to your personal safety and preserving your home. You can follow these ten FireSafe steps to prepare your home and land.
(Courtesy of the Washington Department of Natural Resources)
1. Recognize the hazard
Fire is a natural part of our environment. In Spokane County, the grasses and pine forests have been subjected to fires every 3 to 30 years. This is a normal part of our Eco-system. There are more than 300,000 people living in Spokane County and many live in or adjacent to forestland. Understand the steps you … » More …
You can follow the mercurial weather of the Pacific Northwest with a number of resources from Washington State University and other weather websites.
AgWeatherNet :: Access to raw weather data from the Washington State University weather network, along with decision aids. AWN includes 136 weather stations located mostly in the irrigated regions of eastern Washington State but the network has undergone significant expansion in Western Washington and in dry land regions of the state. The AWN network is administered and managed by the AgWeatherNet team located at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, WA but is programmatically … » More …
