Fall 2013
The Columbia Basin Project’s past and present
More about the Columbia Basin Project, its past, and its potential.
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Fall 2013
From Holland Library to hacking history
Of all the ways a college student can find trouble, at least Ralph Barclay started in the library.
It was 1960, and he was wandering through the engineering library, then on the third floor of Holland, when his eye was drawn to a freshly minted Bell Systems Technical Journal. Inside, amid some positively mind-numbing treatises, he found the article, “Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching.”
Years later, this one article would be referred to as “the keys to the kingdom,” a plain-spoken description of how the phone system evolved and, unbeknownst to the authors, the means by which an 18-year-old electrical engineering student from … » More …
Fall 2013
A fitting business
Growing up, Loralyn Young ’62 heard different versions of her Grandma Lucy, her grandmother’s mother. She was a Pennsylvania-born girl from a large family and for some time was apprenticed to a tailor. She married a homesteader more than 30 years her senior, and was widowed in Kansas with a young child at the age of 35. She later married Civil War veteran John Stevenson and started her second life. Then they moved to Washington where, at the age of 60, Lucy opened her own hat and dressmaking business in Issaquah. From some accounts, she was clever and hardworking. From others, precise and demanding.
“My … » More …
Fall 2013
First Words for Fall 2013
Uncle Sam took the challenge in the year of ’33
For the farmers and the workers and for all humanity
Now river, you can ramble where the sun sets in the sea
But while you’re rambling, river, you can do some work for me
—Woody Guthrie, “Roll, Columbia, Roll”
In the early 1950s, Washington State College and the Bureau of Reclamation published a Farmer’s Handbook for the Columbia Basin Project. Written for new farmers breaking ground in the newly irrigated Columbia Basin Project, the handbook offered advice on everything from what crops to grow to what kind … » More …
Fall 2013
Rugged Mercy: A Country Doctor in Idaho’s Sun Valley
Robert S. Wright
WSU Press, 2013
When 13-year-old Robert Henry Wright was caught spying on a kitchen table appendectomy, he was pulled in to assist. Inspired by that experience, the Hailey, Idaho, boy spent his early 20s in medical school, at first struggling to memorize the complex anatomy of the human body. After graduating, he married his childhood sweetheart, moved home to Idaho, and became a successful doctor, beloved in his community.
It … » More …
Fall 2013
Love Reports to Spring Training
Linda Kittell
Turning Point Books, 2013
Baseball lends itself as metaphor like no other sport. Boxing might come close, but its inherent brutality and changing cultural tastes have removed it from the public’s awareness.
But baseball endures and permeates our culture, and even a non-fan can appreciate the sport’s dramatic interplay of quietude and adrenaline. In Love Reports to Spring Training, Linda Kittell exploits this richness through a deeply satisfying … » More …
Fall 2013
Oceania and the Victorian Imagination: Where All Things Are Possible
Richard D. Fulton ’75 PhD and Peter H. Hoffenberg
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013
Devotees of Victorian-era writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad may well recognize the current of interest in Oceania, or the South Pacific, that runs through their stories.
During that period, from the 1830s to 1901, tales, photographs, travel books, and essays all fed and informed the … » More …
Summer 2013
Video: After Newtown: Guns in America
This PBS documentary examines the evolution of guns in America, their frequent link to violence, and the clash of cultures that reflect competing visions of our national identity.
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Summer 2013
New & noteworthy
Blazing a Wagon Trail to Oregon: A Weekly Chronicle of the Great Migration of 1843
by Lloyd W. Coffman ’87
Caxton Press-University of Nebraska, 2012
Diaries, letters, and reminiscences of pioneers tell the story of the earliest wagon trains to undertake the six-month trek from Missouri to Oregon in 1843, as they faced bad weather, threatening Indians, and scarce supplies.
Career Choices for Veterinarians: Private Practice and Beyond
by Carin A. Smith ’84
Smith Veterinary Consulting, 2011
The opinions and insights of experienced veterinarians offer examples of how veterinary students, current … » More …
Summer 2013
Gun Show Nation—a conversation with Joan Burbick
While researching her book Gun Show Nation, WSU English Professor Joan Burbick joined the National Rifle Association, visited gun shows around the country, and steeped herself in the history of American gun culture. Looking beyond the romance of the West, of Buffalo Bill and the magazine American Rifleman, she found issues of race, gender relations, moral crusades, and political and financial concerns.
As someone who writes nonfiction exploring the character and culture of America, Burbick has studied rodeo queens, examined Henry David Thoreau’s efforts to integrate natural history with human history, and looked into the American national culture of the 1900s. Now a professor emeritus, … » More …