Summer 2014
Mullan Road monuments
An exclusive chapter about monuments along the Mullan Road by historian Keith Petersen.
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Summer 2014
Excerpt from The Many Lives of the Crystal Ballroom
Two chapters from the history of Portland’s Crystal Ballroom by Tim Hills.
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Summer 2014
Tim Hills ’93—Hotels and history
The bodyguards standing sentry outside James Brown’s dressing room were as tall as the ceiling—an impossible 20 feet or so, remembers Tim Hills ’93 MA. But maybe it was his nerves.
After a long wait, the door opened and the historian was granted entry. Reclining on a sofa in Portland’s Crystal Ballroom, decked out in a blue leather suit, surrounded by his large entourage, the Godfather of Soul was prepared to entertain Hills’ questions for the next hour.
How did an unassuming public historian who once worked for the Congressional Information Service before earning a graduate degree in history from WSU end up interviewing one … » More …
Summer 2014
Lost highway
John Mullan closed the last link of the Northwest Passage and vanished from history—until now
On a May morning in 1858, along a small creek on the northern edge of the Palouse, hundreds of warriors from several Inland Northwest Indian tribes closed in on 160 Army soldiers led by Col. Edward Steptoe. An Army retreat turned into a 10-hour running battle. Two company commanders were mortally wounded, panicking the men. At last, the troops took up defensive positions on a hillside in what is today Rosalia. As night fell, they were surrounded, outgunned, and down to two rounds of ammunition apiece.
More than a … » More …
Summer 2014
The time in between
England came late to the Renaissance. But by the time it arrived, its greatest contribution would be literary. John Donne, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson served a literate aristocracy eager to be informed and entertained.
Into the late sixteenth century comes the observant figure of Michel de Montaigne, a French statesman and prolific essayist who wrote about nearly everything his mind encountered, “from cannibals to codpieces, suicide to faith,” as Will Hamlin, WSU’s English literature and Renaissance scholar, puts it. For most English readers of the time, Montaigne’s French Essais were made accessible by a translation undertaken by his contemporary John Florio, a language teacher … » More …
Summer 2014
A Washington childhood
As spring surrenders to summer, so must we yield our state to its youngest residents, approximately 1.15 million children and teens who will soon take over our communities, yards, pools, beaches, and parks.
One of my early memories is of exploring a campsite on Mount Rainier. I remember roaming around the spot on a cool June morning, exploring a paved road dusted with pine needles and peering into the wet shadows of the woods. Laced into my first hiking boots, I followed my parents along the Sunrise Nature trail, an easy 1.5 mile loop … » More …
Summer 2014
Hunger Immortal: The First Thirty Years of the West Seattle Food Bank, 1983–2013
Ronald F. Marshall ’71
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
What is today the West Seattle Food Bank started as a shoestring operation in an abandoned public school building. A pair of retired grocers from South Dakota had taken on responsibility for distributing government commodities like cheese and peanut butter to needy community members.
Thirty years later, the food bank owns its own building, serves an average of 750 families a week, and … » More …
Summer 2014
The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan
W. Puck Brecher
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013
Eccentricity and odd artistic behavior in the Edo period of Japan (1600–1868) proliferated as an aesthetic subculture that both resisted the rigidity of the Tokugawa realm and served as a source of moral and cultural values.
This study by Brecher, an assistant professor of Japanese language at Washington State University, delves into the complex role of oddballs and eccentrics as sources of artistic … » More …
Spring 2014
Washington state road trips
Winthrop to Marblemount–North Cascades Highway—87.4 miles
I was running late, headed for Marblemount over Washington Pass. As it grew darker, I drove through thick, swirling clouds. The clouds would part, revealing a jagged peak, then close quickly, then reveal another. It was dizzying and magical, the road before me disappearing and reappearing. It was only in 1972 that State Route 20 made the 87-mile drive from Winthrop to Marblemount possible. The highway passes through extraordinary landscape and ecological transitions, from the sagebrush of the Methow Valley … » More …
Spring 2014
Mountains and rivers and prairies without end
“The whole concept has burgeoned ... to one where the landscape is part of why people select to live in certain locations, has political meaning, has religious meaning, has all of these other kinds of meaning.”
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