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Summer 2008

A gift toward animal health

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $25 million to Washington State University toward the construction of a research building that will become the centerpiece in the new School for Global Animal Health. The new facility will provide modern research space on the Pullman campus to support global animal health research. WSU is recognized internationally for research focused on preventing transmission of animal pathogens. “You cannot identify a healthy human population in which the animals are not also healthy,” says Warwick Bayly, dean of WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

“Humans are inextricably linked to their animals. Solving the challenge of global poverty is not … » More …

Summer 2008

What a dive

The Washington State University biologist, who retired in 2001 after decades of studying marine worms, was shorebound when the stubby little submarine called Alvin first carried humans to the bottom of the sea.

Schroeder remembers the excitement in his lab when scientists aboard Alvin discovered vents in the ocean floor, where three-foot-long tube worms and other weird-looking animals lived on the mineral exhalations of the earth’s interior.

“I had a graduate student working on worms then,” he recalls, “and it was in Time magazine, these guys with these giant worms, and [my student] came running into my office and said, ‘What the hell are these … » More …

Summer 2008

A home for hotel history

One day in the late 1920s, hoteliers Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar met by chance in a coffee shop in Yakima, Washington. Unbeknownst to one another, each had gone to Yakima to make separate hotel deals. But by the time they parted company that day, the two had decided to go into business together. In 1930 they joined with the Schmidt Brothers, who had hotels in Olympia, Seattle, and Bellingham, to form Western Hotels Inc., the foundation of what would become the Westin hotel chain.

That first year they had 17 properties, including the Roosevelt and Waldorf hotels in Seattle, the Marcus Whitman in … » More …

Summer 2008

Signing Day Central

During the early morning hours of Wednesday, February 6, Rich Rasmussen enters the Washington State University football office carrying two boxes, each containing a dozen donuts, and places them on the front counter.

Rasmussen opens the door to his office, where, taped on its outer side, is a piece of paper:

Core Values for WSU Football 2008:
Compete – Compete to win
Execution – Attention to detail
Effort – Relentless on every rep
Encouragement – Positive response to all situations

Rasmussen turns on his computer, checks his e-mail, and waits for the future of WSU football to commence.

… » More …

Spring 2009

White Jade and Other Stories

White Jade book

The seven stories in this collection are delightful. Sometimes funny and even perverse, they show an extravagant imagination, and a very sharp political perspective deepened by their concern for how wars and historical dislocations jam people into corners from which it sometimes takes generations to escape. The novella which follows them, White Jade, has a distinctly different tone and is a marvelous adventure in “autobiography.”It is more like a channeling or act of loving reconstitution of a deceased mother’s voice than anything like a memoir or confession or any of those other … » More …

Summer 2007

Panda Diaries

In Panda Diaries, Alex Kuo’s latest novel, a panda mailman chastises his improbable cohort, Ge, for buying into its pop image. “You’re supposed to be in intelligence. You’ve seen me smoke. If I relied only on that bamboo diet, we’d all be extinct by now. That’s just a story our lobbyists invent for the foreign journalists in Beijing when they have nothing else to write about.” And unlike the surly postal carriers of America, this zoological civil servant is, in many ways, more contemplative and human than Ge can claim to be. A colonel in the Chinese secret service, Ge has been exiled to Changchun, … » More …

Winter 2006

American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

What most baby boomers know about the legendary frontier figure David “Davy” Crockett has been gleaned from the Walt Disney movie and television series starring Fess Parker. In American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett, WSU English professor Buddy Levy presents a fuller profile of the man who made Tennessee famous in the early 1800s. It’s not just a master heroic outdoorsman who emerges; the consummate politician and ferocious fighter for underdog causes shines through as well. Born August 17, 1786, Davy Crockett found his independent spirit and developed his frontier skills on the open road at the age of 14, when he ran … » More …

Summer 2006

WSU Military Veterans: Heroes and Legends

With three engines lost on a B-29 bombing run over Tokyo December 3, 1944, pilot Robert Goldsworthy and his crew bailed out. For the next nine months, he would endure brutal beatings as a Japanese prisoner of war. Far worse, he said, was the cold and starvation. Goldsworthy and his older brother, Harry E. Goldsworthy Jr., both flew World War II combat missions. They retired as Air Force generals with five stars between them. Their contributions to the war are among the 120 case studies chronicled in C. James Quann’s new book, WSU Military Veterans: Heroes and Legends. The author relates military experiences of former … » More …

Winter 2001

The War Years: A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II

Most Washingtonians don’t realize that their state—with a wartime population of just over 1.7 million—did as much or more per capita than any other state to help win World War II, says James R. Warren.

The WSU alumnus (’49 Speech/Comm.) and Bellevue resident is author of a new book, The War Years: A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II.

The state’s 15 shipyards were busy building warships. Boeing turned out thousands of B-17 and B-29 bombers. Pacific Car and Foundry produced hundreds of Sherman tanks. And Hanford purified the plutonium for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by B-17s. When the war started … » More …