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Spring 2018

WSU Track & Field favorites

I didn’t realize until I compiled this favorite-moments list just how much the dictum of “no cheering in the pressbox” has come to dominate how I watch/enjoy the sport. Unfortunately, I’ve done a good job—too good, in fact—of learning how to be dispassionate. It makes me a better journalist and broadcaster, but it saps some of the vitality out of being a fan. So as you’ll see, my list is very much front-loaded.

Chronologically, these self-centered moments stick with me (noting that I’ve restricted individuals to a single appearance apiece, or it would run the risk of being all Gerry Lindgren and Henry Rono):

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Spring 2018

Beets

Not everyone will love a beet, but it has long been a vegetable of love.

The deep red of a beet and its earthy sweetness speak to some people, who adore the vegetable in all kinds of dishes. Beets have a lot of healthy qualities, too, and even potential chemical uses in solar panels.

That’s not to say beets don’t have detractors. That same earthiness, produced by the substance geosmin, puts off some palates.

The beet—Beta vulgaris, also known as garden beet, blood turnip, beetroot, or red beet—was cultivated in ancient Greece and Rome, but there are stories of beets in the Hanging Gardens of … » More …

Spring 2018

Communities for the golden age

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made…

(From poem Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning)

It’s never easy to find a new home.

Just ask Barbara Nelson, a former account manager from Seattle. When her husband passed away, she moved from the century-old house where they had lived for 48 years. She has piercing eyes and a strong voice, but it trembles slightly as she explains: “It was so traumatic. After the estate sale, I took five things out of that house and walked away. I felt like I … » More …

Spring 2018

At Home with Ernie Pyle

Edited by Owen V. Johnson ’68

Indiana University Press: 2016

A glimpse into the life and times of American journalist and Indiana favorite son Ernie Pyle, as seen through an extensive collection of Pyle’s folksy newspaper columns stretching from his student days in 1921 until his death by sniper fire during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

The homespun Hoosier, as Pyle was known, grew up in small-town … » More …

Covers of Hip Hop Ain’t Dead: It’s Livin’ in the White House and Playing While White

Spring 2018

Hip Hop Ain’t Dead and Playing While White

Hip Hop Ain’t Dead: It’s Livin’ in the White House

Sanford Richmond ’11 PhD

Mill City Press: 2016

Playing While White: Privilege and Power On and Off the Field

David J. Leonard

University of Washington Press: 2017

During his undergraduate years at the University of Southern California, writes Sanford Richmond in Hip Hop Ain’t Dead, “I began to … » More …

Spring 2018

Fires burned, cauldrons bubble

In the embers of an ancient winter day, a Swedish scout scrambles up the hill of snow-covered boulders, hurrying over the slippery ground between them along a narrow path. His panting breath trails after him until he stumbles through the castle gate gasping, “Vandals on the riverbank! Bandits to the east!”

The heavy palisade slams shut behind him as men rush to position along a glinting rock wall. From 150 feet above the valley floor, they watch as silhouettes begin scaling the boulders below. With a signal, arrows and stones rain down upon them, yet the marauders advance, dragging their weapons or clenching them in … » More …

Spring 2018

Wheeling new heights

It’s a clear, warm Sunday morning in Portland. Sandy Boulevard is nearly deserted and Tom Haig is cruising on his bicycle. He tucks into the teardrop position, thinking, This is awesome.

Suddenly, an elderly couple blow through a stop sign. Haig reacts quickly—but he’s pissed and, looking back at them, yells something unprintable. A second later, he returns his attention to his direction of travel. Yellow light! And a truck coming at him. Bicyclist and driver lock eyes. Both brake and Haig thinks, I’ve got this. That truck has enough clearance for me to lay it down and slide right under.

Then the unthinkable happens—his … » More …

Spring 2018

The perfect gift for every Coug

When you choose a gift for a special person in your life, you want to pick just the right one. A gift that will delight when it’s opened and make an impact for years to come.

Recently, we received a postcard from a 1947 graduate whose father gave her a WSU Alumni Association Life Membership for graduation over 70 years ago. She told us that she thinks of her dad every time she receives something from the WSUAA. There aren’t many gifts that can prompt that kind of gratitude nearly three-quarters of a century later.

Many of our members choose this gift for the … » More …

Spring 2018

Class notes

1960s

Henry Wyborney (’62 Anthro.) and Art Sandison (’70, ’73 MS Phys. Ed.) were recently inducted into the Port Angeles High School Roughrider Hall of Fame. Henry set the state record for high jump at Port Angeles in 1957, and went on to break WSU’s high jump record three years later. Art held the second-fastest 800-meter time in the history of American track while at WSU, and still holds the state’s fastest 800-meter time for college or high school athletes, which he set for the Roughriders in 1965.

1970s

Former president and CEO of Boeing, and current WSU Regent Scott Carson (’72 Busi.) was presented … » More …

Winter 2017

Reconsidering health

Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates proposed that four basic personalities were driven by excess or lack of bodily fluids, the “humors.” Discredited by biochemistry, we may consider the idea humorous, but Hippocrates’ theories began a centuries-long consideration of temperaments and personality in psychology and philosophy.

Other ideas of human health were first spurned and then accepted. Germ theory, the thought that many diseases are caused by microorganisms, was treated with disdain when it was proposed in the sixteenth century. It didn’t receive its due until nineteenth-century experiments by cholera researcher John Snow and chemist Louis Pasteur, among others, proved germ theory’s validity.

Even today we continue … » More …