Claus-M. Naske ’70 PhD and Herman E. Slotnick
University of Oklahoma Press, 2011
In 1867 the Russia of Czar Alexander II was broke. As part of the solution, the country sold its North American lands to the United States for $7 million in a deal brokered by Secretary of State William Seward. The transaction angered many Russians, who felt they shouldn’t give up the colony. At the same time, it … » More …
Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal ’04 PhD
University of Washington Press, 2011
At a time when women’s rights and politics are dominating our national discourse, it would be good to consider our past. Emma Smith DeVoe’s story, for example, enhances our understanding of our nation’s Women’s Suffrage movement as well as the history of women in Washington. DeVoe led the 1910 campaign in our state—organizing, giving speeches, and raising money for the cause. … » More …
Seven decades later, we consider our plutonium legacy
Works considered in this article:
Plume
Kathleen Flenniken
University of Washington Press 2012
Made in Hanford: The Bomb that Changed the World
Hill Williams
Washington State University Press 2011
Making Plutonium, Re-Making Richland: Atomic Heritage and Community Identity, Richland, Washington, 1943-1963
Lee Ann Powell
Thesis, Department of History, Washington State University 2007
Reactor B From State Route 24 east of Vernita … » More …
Paul Philemon Kies, a popular professor of English, was one of the keenest collectors at Washington State College. When he wasn’t teaching, advising, or shooting photographs on campus, he was filling his office and home with rare books, autographs, letters, and photographs.
Robert B. O’Connor, a student, profiled Kies in 1970. It’s a portrait of “a unique personality” whose “office was so crowded with a lifetime of accumulation of everything imaginable that there was never any available chair space.”
As a young scholar from the rural Midwest, Kies learned his culture in Chicago from the Ringling family (as in the Ringling Brothers Circus) in … » More …
“We should observe first, and think afterwards.”
—The Lancet, Oct. 19, 1823
Part of the nature of a writer—but then again, perhaps I speak only for myself—is the constant reimagining of one’s self and context, the repeated immersion in myriad and esoteric subjects, all the while desperately hoping for infinite reincarnations in order to fulfill all the things one would like to understand, experience, and be. On the other hand, being a writer embraces the perfectly paradoxical satisfaction with one’s role as a learned observer.
Given the skeptical writer’s reluctance to rely on reincarnation, the only way to grasp these multitudinous desires and perspectives … » More …
George Hirahara and his family, including Frank ’48, had their lives in Yakima disrupted in 1942 when they were forced to relocate with about 10,000 other Japanese Americans to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
Frank’s daughter Patti Hirahara has shared a number of items with Washington State University from her family’s internment experience. They include about 2,000 photographs and negatives, many of them showing daily life at Heart Mountain.
The gallery below shows a few scenes from the Heart Mountain internment camp: celebrations, school days, sports events, and daily routines.
The complete collection is housed at WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, where students, scholars, and descendants … » More …
“When I drive past this place it gives me a good-hearted, happy feeling,” says Quanah Matheson ’04, cultural resources director of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. At what is now Old Mission State Park, just off Interstate 90 at Cataldo, Idaho, Matheson is taking a breather from the rush of last-minute details prior to opening a major historical exhibit.
A graceful, whitewashed chapel, the Mission of the Sacred Heart, completed in 1853 and the oldest building in Idaho, tops a grassy knoll at the state park, but down below, the tribe has just completed a modern museum that is now the permanent home of an exhibit … » More …
In 1992, Frank Hirahara ’48 sent his daughter Patti to Yakima to help his elderly parents pack up their home for their move to Southern California.
What had at first seemed a chore turned into a treasure hunt as Patti unearthed letters, photographs, and official records that chronicled her family’s experience as Japanese Americans who had spent World War II in an internment camp. “These things were hidden all around the house,” she says. She discovered notes in the buffet, letters in the kitchen cupboard, and photo negatives tucked into books.
Frank’s grandfather Motokichi Hirahara came to Washington from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan in 1907. … » More …
The wind said
You know I’m
the result of
forces beyond my control—A.R. Ammons, “The Wide Land”
When the subject of free will resurfaced on the media horizon recently, all I could think of was that last dorm room bull session on said topic many, many years ago. But up it pops again, not just in philosophy journals, but in the esteemed science, and generally nonphilosophical, journals Nature and Science. A subject that has been fervently teased, manipulated, and debated (by scholars decidedly more rigorous than a clutch of college students with a couple of semesters of introductory philosophy under … » More …
Kevin Carson ’81
Westholme Publishing, 2011
In his foreword to the latest account of the Nez Perce War of 1877, Kevin Carson ’81 writes, “In my memory, there was never a time when our family was not fascinated by the saga of the Nez Perce.” Carson’s great-great-great grandfather, Levi Watrous, served as a scout during the Civil War, then moved to Columbia County, Washington, in 1872, where he made his living as a stockman. … » More …