English Retirees Newsletter

22nd Edition, September 2012

Chair’s Message

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As I sit down to write what is my first “Chair’s Message,” I am surrounded by smoke and embers. I am happy to report, however, that the Department of English is not burning (rather just Washington is—the smoke of wildfires has pervaded the Palouse over the past week).

In the wake of the past several years, this must assuredly count as good and perhaps even surprising news. The past few years have been challenging ones, not only for the department and the university but also for the students and citizens we serve. While I’m not yet ready to announce the phoenix-like resurrection of the humanities at WSU, however appropriate the comparison might be to our current meteorological environs, there are indeed signs of light and life here in Avery Hall, drawn both from the energy of our newest colleagues and a renewed commitment by all of us to remember to the core of our work—great research and great teaching—and to ensure that others, both inside and outside of our university, recognize these strengths as well.

In this latter regard, I suspect, what I am saying will be familiar news. Indeed, the more I reflect upon my particular position as chair, the more I recognize the extent to our community continues to rely upon the work and contributions of those that have gone before us. In my case, as well as the department’s, I owe a particular debt in this regard to George Kennedy, who served as chair for the past nine years and led our department through some of the most challenging times it has recently experienced. His two terms as chair were marked by a passion for equity and attentiveness to the common good, and we are certainly better for that. And he’s not done yet—George has taken on a review of our technical writing curriculum, which annually serves over 1000 students from across the university but has not in some time had the sustained attention an offering this large surely deserves. For that work, and for much more, I’m personally very thankful.

As a department we enter into uncharted terrain this year, especially as we begin our first full year as a department in the university’s new College of Arts and Sciences, formed from the merger of the College of Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts over the past year. Now headed by the prior dean of the College of Sciences, Daryll DeWald, who himself only joined WSU a year ago, the new college is still a work in progress. By nearly any accounting, however, the new CAS represents the instructional core of the university, with over 57% of all undergraduate credit hours being taught by CAS faculty, a figure that rises to 80% when counting only first-year students, who for the second year in a row number over 4000. Even so, the CAS has insisted that its position as the undergraduate core of the university goes hand in hand with its prominence as a center of research excellence. Its nearly 600 faculty members currently teach over 740 graduate students and generate $30 million annually in research expenditures.

Amidst this new environment, members of our department from Pullman, Tri-Cities, and Vancouver met at the start of our year for our annual retreat, and though it may be hard to believe that a day-long departmental meeting could be marked by energy and enthusiasm I must assure you this was indeed the case. Recognizing that the on-going transition of our college has created a space in which we can shape and in some cases even reset the external narratives that mark our work, we reaffirmed our long-standing commitments to student learning and pedagogy while at the same time we also set ourselves the goal of increasing the impact and productivity of our research and creative activity. While these and other goals will be integrated into our department’s forthcoming five-year plan, they will be advanced more by the actual excellence we continue to achieve.

In a faculty as accomplished as ours—the 2010 National Research Council’s survey of graduate programs ranked us as more productive than Chapel Hill, Austin, and yes, UW—it’s always dangerous to highlight individual accomplishments. Even so, I wanted to select two items of note, if only because they’re web-accessible and thus give you the chance to see what our faculty have been doing. Debbie Lee, for example, is in her third year of a three-year, NEH-supported interdisciplinary project designed to chart the human environment and history of the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness. The fruits of her research, which include archival work and oral history interviews, are beginning to appear on the project’s website. Investigating an environment much farther from Pullman, Peter Chilson spent time in Mali reporting on the unfolding Turareg rebellion in the north and coup in the capital—a sample of his work, which was supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, has been published by the Foreign Policy.

Along with these projects we continue to work on a range of projects and in a variety of media that is quite frankly astonishing. At the same time we haven’t forgotten the students we serve. Indeed, just this summer we began participating in a new “Summerbridge” project designed primarily (though not exclusively) to ensure incoming that student athletes, who would take English 101 prior to the beginning of the academic year, begin their studies with the research and writing skills that are crucial for any student’s success. We’ve also increased by over 30% the number of English 105 (Composition for ESL) sections to keep pace with the growing number of international students attending WSU.

Helping us to advance our work on all these fronts are our four (yes, four!) new hires, two new tenure-track assistant professors and two new clinical assistant professors (multi-year non-tenure-track appointments). In nineteenth-century literature and digital humanities we welcomed to the tenure track Roger Whitson, a University of Florida PhD who had previously been an Andrew Mellon Fellow at Emory University’s Digital Scholarship Commons. In the rhetoric of science and technology we welcomed to the tenure track Michael Edwards, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst PhD who had previously been an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), a post which also included a term in Afghanistan helping the national government there develop technology- and pedagogy-related policies for its higher-education system. In our clinical ranks we welcomed Leeann Hunter, a University of Florida PhD in nineteenth-century literature who had been teaching as a Brittain Fellow at Georgia Tech, and Bimbisar Irom, a twentieth-century and contemporary literature specialist from Michigan State University who earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Along with these new colleagues we also welcomed to our department an entering class of 16 new MA and PhD students, all of whom are fully funded. I’ve already met with several of them, and they have exciting stories to tell—one is a native of Centralia, WA who received a BA from WSU Online, while another is from Sri Lanka and here on a Fulbright Fellowship. These students will be entering a program that has recently achieved a remarkable rate of success in placing its graduates in tenure-track posts. Roughly 75% or more of our graduates have found such success, a rate well above the average 42% from the most recent MLA studies. We have found it increasingly challenging to recruit the best students to Pullman, in part owing to a stagnation in graduate student support and recruiting budgets. I expect to make establishing summer dissertation writing fellowships one of our key fund- raising objectives this coming year, recognizing that in a job market as competitive as this one our students must distinguish themselves not only in teaching but also increasingly in publishing the sort of work that demands their undivided attention to produce.

In all of these achievements—faculty and student alike—we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, those who established a tradition of excellence that has served our department for years and that continues to challenge me. Do know that we welcome your continued engagement with our community in whatever form, whether it’s a hello across the produce aisle in the Pullman Safeway or a note from somewhere far distant. If you’re ever in town do let me know—I’d love to meet with you and perhaps show you even more of what we’re doing. And if I can do anything for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

With my thanks and best wishes,

Todd Butler

Editor’s Note

You’ll note that the department has a new chair: Todd Butler. George Kennedy has stepped down, but hasn’t yet joined us in retirement. We owe him a great debt for having so well supported this project in past years.

Welcome and congratulations to Prof. Butler.

Thank you all for your submissions and your kind words about my work on this newsletter. But really, it’s not very hard.

Well . . . it was a bit harder this time because I had to switch layout software. This issue is brought to you via Apple’s Pages. It was somewhat more difficult to use than InDesign, but it has one great advantage: it does a better job of creating working Web links. You’ll find my personal contribution is full of them. Feel free to click on anything blue.

And next year, feel free to include whatever Web links you’d like to share with us. And keep those photos coming. Remember you can zoom in on these photos to get a better view.

Paul Brians (WSU 1968–2008)

Our big adventure last year was our trip to Ukraine and Russia.

I have been working since 1990 with Lyubov Sirota, a woman who witnessed the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor from the balcony of her apartment in Pripyat. She received a heavy dose of radiation, which has caused her many medical problems over the years.

She was moved to write several poems about the experience and the aftermath which I managed to have translated into English and published in various places. They have been retranslated into other European languages, set to music, and circulated around the globe. You can read about her and her writings on my Web site.

She has urged Paula and me for years to visit Kiev, and we decided that we would go in September, 2011. The experience was quite amazing. The Chernobyl refugees living in Kiev form a tight community, and they were extremely welcoming. Photos and the story of the visit are on the Web. Pictures from the rest of our Kiev tour are on Picasa.

We especially enjoyed spending a long day being guided around the huge Pirogovo outdoor folk architecture museum by Tamara Krasitskaya, president of the Chernobyl survivors’ organization. It gathers together many farmhouses, windmills, churches, and other examples of traditional Ukrainian architecture.

The people in Kiev were very friendly and kind, and the weather was warm and sunny, with people lightly dressed—particularly the many fashionable young women.

Petersburg, on the other hand, was cold and rainy, and everyone was bundled up. We both caught colds but still managed to have a wonderful time. We spent two days exploring the fabulous Hermitage museum. The streets and canals of old Petersburg were a delight to explore, especially after we figured out the subway system which conveyed us swiftly to our destinations. Note to Lonely Planet: the subway stations and maps are now also labeled in English. Petersburg photos.

Although we were treated well in both places, we felt that Ukraine gave off a more cheerful and optimistic vibe. They are very proud of their new nation, and of course Russia feels somewhat shrunken and depressed in comparison.

Then just a couple of weeks ago, Kathleen Flenniken, current Poet Laureate of Washington State, came to Eagle Harbor Books to read from her moving new volume of poems about living near and working at the Hanford nuclear plant: Plume. As an experienced nuclear engineer herself, she writes authoritatively about the damage the reactors have done to employees, nearby residents, and the environment generally. She inscribed a copy of her book for Lyuba, and I gave her a copy of Lyuba’s book.

On the way back from Russia, we stopped in New York to celebrate Paula’s birthday with daughter Megan, who works at a Manhattan spa coaching clients in Pilates, Gyrotonics, and Polarity Therapy. She gave us a wonderful tour of the Highline Park. The architects of this park are also planning the projected Seattle waterfront park, which will be constructed when a deep- bore traffic tunnel replaces the Alaskan Way viaduct.

Then we proceeded to Maine, where Paula spent her summers as a young person, especially enjoying the spectacular Acadia National Park. I headed home while Paula continued on to visit with various New England relatives.

Shortly after our return, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. Although the symptoms can be very unpleasant, they can be suppressed simply by avoiding all wheat and wheat by-products such as standard soy sauce and blue cheese. Only about 1% of the population is gluten- intolerant, but gluten-free diets have become something of fad. That’s all right with me because there are now lots of good products for baking and many restaurants are trying to be accommodating. I’m very glad I enjoy cooking, because the diet is much easier to follow if you prepare your own foods. Top two things I miss most: baklava and cream puffs.

Megan visited for three weeks during the holidays. It was our first Christmas together since we moved, and we had a great time. She came out for another visit at the end of the summer.

In February Karen Weathermon arranged for me to speak to WSU freshmen about nuclear issues in connection with the common reading book, and also secured engagements for me to give my talk on the history of comic strip art and a condensed version of my address on WSU in the late sixties, which was much better attended than the original (now available online as a YouTube video). The Hammonds generously hosted us and arranged a gathering of our friends where we had a wonderful time.

In the summer we also had visits from Susan Chan (recently tenured at Portland State), Paula’s cousins and from Bill Morelock, the former Northwest Public Radio host who used to do the “Bob & Bill” program with Bob Christianson. He now works for Minnesota Public Radio. We also enjoyed having the Kiesslings on the island for a month. They’ve become regular visitors. See Nick’s contribution for a list of the other WSU folks they hosted at a party at their rental house.

Paula continues to sing with three choral groups and attend her monthly book club.

Both of us still enjoy our volunteer work with the Bainbridge Island Land Trust. I have done two oral history interviews so far with owners of properties secured by BILT and learned a lot about early days on the island. I go out on many photo assignments, including a fascinating shoreline restoration project.

I contribute regularly to the local online weekly, Inside Bainbridge, and am active on Facebook, where I keep up with a lot of old Pullman friends and post many of my photos. I still participate in the island photo club. My newest activity is serving as a volunteer guide to the “Icons of Science Fiction” exhibit in the Science Fiction Museum housed inside the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center.

Next door is the fabulous Dale Chihuly glass art museum, which we’ve enjoyed sharing with visitors. And then there’s the new “Great Wheel” on the waterfront. Just one more reason to be glad we’re just a ferry ride away from the city.

We held our third annual Labor Day barbecue on our breezeway with our neighbors. It’s nice that the kids are getting old enough to not need constant supervision and the adults can actually have conversations without constant interruptions—though two of the boys managed to collide with each other on their bikes.

Big subtraction from our property: three large Douglas firs that had succumbed to laminated root rot and had to be taken out before they fell on a neighboring house. Other neighbors are enjoying free firewood.

Big addition: installation of a heat pump system which has dramatically lowered our power bill and made the house much more comfortable.

We have continued to participate in group play readings preceded by potluck dinners. They’re great fun. I’ve never been able to memorize lines, but this gives me a chance to act without having to go “off book.”

We continue to enjoy life on Bainbridge. It just gets better and better.

Paul Brians

11734 Kirk Ave.
NE Bainbridge, WA 98110
Email: paulbrians@gmail.com

Leota and Dutch Day (WSU l970–1988)

Hi, folks,

It’s been an unusually normal year. We spent our usual time in Mexico with the usual group of people who go there every year. Our garden is once again slow to produce due to cool temperatures early on. Our tomatoes are finally beginning to ripen, which means Chad will benefit because we’ll be in Spain soon and he stays in our house while we’re away. We’ll try to convince him to freeze a few so we can at least cook with them.

Our Spain trip is a Rick Steves tour group with a couple of days before and after to accommodate cheap flights. We’ve not been to Spain before so I’m eager to see the ‘modernista’ architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona. I’ve cracked open my old Spanish vocabulary books in hopes that I can recapture some.

An update on our progeny: Chad is again unemployed. One of the pitfalls for getting clients whose house has burned down is the need for an insurance adjuster to be a fire truck chaser. His company chose to take the high road by sending a polite letter to an owner and waiting to see if anyone called. Oh, well.

Kecia is working as a leasing consultant at a large apartment complex in downtown Seattle. Grandson, Isaac, starts kindergarten this fall. Evelyn is in preschool full time. So Dutch and I are retired from daycare once again. The two grandchildren are opposites. Isaac is highly verbal and likes to please. Evelyn is very emphatic and, even though she often chooses not to use words, you are always pretty sure what she means. I would like to be able to see them more often, but all of our schedules are busy.

We’ve run into two different people this year who know Bill Hirschfeld. One golfing buddy of mine lives in the same retirement community. The other connection is one of those “six degrees of separation” things. The mother of a friend of a friend also lives in the same place. They both speak very highly of him.

Leota and Dutch Day

5653 11th Ave.
NE Seattle, WA 98105
Email: carvil@comcast.net

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1957-2001)

Since I have a fractured ankle it’s a good time to stay sedentary and contemplate the past year for the Retirees’ Newsletter. The doctor says the bone chip should be healed by the time Dick and I are scheduled to fly to Utah next month to hike several national parks with Road Scholar. We’re still in the do-it-while-we-still-can mode, although my current problem makes me wonder–about myself at least.

We did take the Hurtigruten ferry last September all the way from Bergen across the Arctic Circle to the NordKapp and Russian border, then all the way back down the coast again. The Vantage Tour guide gave us extensive and fascinating information about life in Norway from birth to death and about the country’s culture and history. I was especially interested in the

complex situation of Norway during WWII and the roles played by both quislings and saboteurs. In spite of variable weather, the scenery was magnificent, especially in the Geiranger Fjord and the narrow Trollfjord.

In October, we drove to Ashland, OR, visiting and hiking with friends on the way before reaching the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We joined a Road Scholar group, and thus got a lot of back-stage information from actors and stage managers about the three productions we saw: Measure for Measure set in 1970s urban America (which actually worked); The Imaginary Invalid, Moliere to the nth degree; and August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, about several generations of a dysfunctional family. These productions were excellent all around, although very different.

In March we went to Los Angeles for Road Scholar’s “Art Collectors and Their Collections.” We wanted to get to all major museums without driving in LA as well as learn some history of the LA County (LACMA), J. Paul Getty, Norton Simon, and Huntington Museums and Collections. We also had a chance to spend some time with Roberta and Mike Armstrong, former Pullmanites who now live in LA.

In June I made my usual trip to the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, this 22nd one in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The theme was “Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf” so I did a paper on Woolf, a Hogarth Press publication by Julia Strachey called Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, and ritual theory. It will appear in the new selected papers volume, and I’m working on a longer version for publication elsewhere. My last year’s paper is now out in Contradictory Woolf: Selected Papers from the Twenty-First Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

We’re still very active locally, I mainly as President of the Washington Idaho Symphony Association and Dick mainly as a Gladish Community and Cultural Center board and facilities planning committee member. He directed Bus Stop for Moscow Community Theatre this past February, and this July we took the set we did for last year’s Rumpelstiltskin (Pullman Community Theatre) and repurposed it for a “Floriade” room (straw spun into flowers rather than gold) at the Left Bank Gallery in Palouse.

Thanks again to Paul for editing the Newsletter. Re-tire-ment means that we, like the rest of you, retread and keep going! As for the sorry state of nation and right now I find myself beyond speech.

Diane Gillespie

945 SE Glen Echo Rd.
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: gillespie@pullman.com

Rich Haswell (WSU 1967–1980)

Last May I retired for good when Jan retired. She emptied her office at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi and hung up her laurels, which were considerable given she had been teaching full time for only eighteen years. Four scholarly monographs, over thirty scholarly articles, editor of the two-volume authoritative edition of Paul Scott’s letters, director of the Honors Program. She won every teaching and scholarship award available, topping it off with best teacher of the year for the entire Texas A&M system. The plaques now fill a large cardboard box in the basement.

The basement is in Del Norte, Colorado, where we moved permanently this summer. The house sits on three city lots, has four bedrooms and one bathroom, dates from the nineteenth century. The town—even Coloradans ask, where’s Del Norte?—sits at 8,0000 feet elevation on the upper reaches of the Rio Grande in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. It’s a working person’s town, largely Mexican-American, small, poor, and untouristy. One grocery story, one hospital, one Catholic church, one city park on the river with the biggest cottonwoods I have ever seen. Three weeks ago a neighbor chased a bear out of her garbage cans with a barbecue fork.

We recommend the area. Three hours drive to Sante Fe, two hours to Durango, 45 minutes east to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, 45 minutes west to the National Divide, 20 minutes south to the trailhead up Frisco Creek, 15 minutes north to Penitente Canyon, three minutes (by bike) to the grocery story, two minutes (on foot) to the trail up Lookout Mountain in back of the house.

The photos were taken this May at Shaw Creek Meadows, about 15 miles southwest of Del Norte. If you have better eyes than mine, you can make out Jan and Dobby (the dog), walking in the direction of Del Norte Peak still with a bit of snow at the top (12,285’ elevation). And that’s me, glasses askew, grizzled, unkempt, and less adventurous, a little closer to the camera.

Sorry we don’t have snaps of us in Nairobi, Karachi, Minsk, or other far-flung scholarly places. Maybe next year, after we have insulated the bedrooms upstairs.

Rich Haswell

Virginia Hyde (WSU 1970–2004)

Dear Colleagues,

This year Dave and I have both been busy with writing and editing. He is working on a theory of conical shapes with many graphic models. I have been writing about Trollope’s oversees novels, especially Nina Balatka, with its marvelous old-Prague background, and Linda Tressel, set in Nuremburg. You probably know that these were among Trollope’s anonymous works and both seem more in the tragic mode than most of his better-known novels–and more about the women in themselves than in society. In the past I have written about Kafka and his settings, and it is especially interesting to see in Nina Balatka some of the same topography, and sometimes surprisingly similar symbology of place, in so different a writer.

I also have three editing projects. First, I am guest editor this fall for a literary journal’s special issue (based on an international conference in Sydney on Lawrence and related writers, especially a number of Australian women writers), and I have just completed the Introduction (in press this month 2012). I have continued some duties with the Lawrence Society of North America, and Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (Lawrence Cambridge Edition) received an honor this year.

In addition to the journal, I am helping to edit two manuscripts. One is my brother’s study of linguistic- based and myth-based links between certain Southwestern and Mexican Indian cultures, as studied in ethnology and archeology. He has died, leaving it unfinished; his wife, the co-author, has asked me to help ready it for publication. He was the founding editor of the journal Desert Plants, published by the University of Arizona, which is devoted to scholarly articles on Southwestern native plants, ecology, and culture, including archeological subjects. The other manuscript is by a historic pioneer woman of Idaho, who wrote a memoir/historical novel about her trip from Philadelphia to Bonners Ferry and life in that region during the nineteenth century. The author happened to be in our close family (Dave’s), and she certainly produced quite a remarkable first-hand account of early Idaho in 48 chapters.

My PAH syndrome, which is progressive, has greatly slowed my activities, but I am told by the Spokane doctors that I am doing the best possible of those with this diagnosis. It usually leads to oxygen-dependence and such, but I am still keeping ahead of that. I have had, in addition, a “slipped disk,” so I can only marvel at the days when I used to walk all around quite rapidly in high heels (which I still like but seldom wear)! I have a particular recollection of running to class on slippery, icy sidewalks in my spike-heeled boots! How did I do that?!

Dave’s adopted son Mike and family live nearby, and we are helping to celebrate the grandson’s 16th birthday with a big surprise (I can’t divulge it, lest he read this note, by some strange chance)! I can say it will be big and will have a giant ribbon on it. For some reason, almost our entire group have birthdays in the same two weeks, so this period is always a big family occasion.

Our sidewalk is again busy with students walking back and forth to class. This always seems like a happy time of beginnings: book bags are new, late summer wardrobes are sporty (we are, after all, just across the street from the Recreation Center), and everybody seems full of a renewed energy. I am thinking of you all and of the good times in Avery Hall and College Hall! Thanks to Paul Brians for producing this welcome newsletter!

Virginia Hyde

Nick Kiessling (WSU 1967–2000)

Dear Fellow Retirees,

Alas, the deadline was yesterday. My excuse is that on Friday, yesterday, there was a women’s soccer game, a day of women’s tennis matches, and the men’s football game with Las Vegas. Two I saw on PAC 12 TV and one, the tennis match, in person.

We’ve had a good year. No one fell on the ice, crashed while biking, or sawed off an inappropriate limb while trimming in the garden. May the next year be as good to us. To get away from the ice and snow we went to Atlanta in January. The excuse was to work in the Pitts Theology Library which holds a trove of recusant books. We had a good time during our stay, even though Atlanta is not our favorite city. The day and overnight trips to Savannah, FDR’s Warm Springs, Callaway Gardens, the cities to the east of Atlanta which Sherman left standing, and Stone Mountain were all fascinating. Atlanta itself has the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, the High Museum of Art, a great history museum, and excellent restaurants and small theaters. Fortunately we had a lovely 15th floor apartment which overlooked the northern ‘down town’. Bill (PhD 1980) and Nancy Gruber had us out to their place for a splendid dinner. Bill will retire from Emory at the end of this semester, and they will move to a house they already own in Moscow.

In March, April and May we were in London for seven weeks so that I could give a paper at the Benedictine History Symposium at Colwich Abbey in Staffordshire. Of course, London is fun no matter where you stay, but our new apartment near Camden Town was ideally situated – three blocks from the most interesting center of Camden, twenty minutes to the BL, twenty minutes from the Eurostar station at St. Pancras, and about ten minutes from Regents Park. The summer was equally fun, for we housesat for seven weeks on Bainbridge Island at a mansion – that of Fritz Levy and Nancy Taylor. The staircase to the second story matched that in Gone with the Wind. We were able to see a lot of former WSU/Pullman people, including Paul Brians and Paula Elliot, Jerry and Bev Young, Bill and Emma Iulo, Jeff and Amanda Cain, Tom and Helen Bartuska, Sally Orsborn, Shirley and Bud Price, and Pete Butkus and Carol Helm. We did not get to spend much of the summer in Pullman because we were at Priest Lake for a couple of weeks.

Next week we will leave for Chicago and New York and return to Pullman on October 1. We should have a good time, but we’re getting to the point where we’d like to spend more time at home. We will do so after a six week stay in Seville, in January and February.

On more serious matters; Karen is still heavily involved in the League of Women Voters, though she went to her last state board meeting in June. I still attend twice-a-week seminars at Rico’s where we bring everyone down to size (a relatively easy task).

All the best to every one of you,

Nick K

Stanton Linden (WSU 1967-2002)

Greetings Friends and Colleagues,

Lucy and I are in reasonably good health and keeping to a very busy schedule. In fact, we’re leaving this Sunday for a holiday in Provence and are currently frantically preparing for departure. (PBS would have to choose this week to air the Met’s new (17-hour!) production of Wagner’s Ring cycle on public television.) In any case, this missive will be shorter than usual.

Along with the everyday activities that I’ve been recounting for years, foreign travel has once again been a major source of interest and pleasure during the past twelve months. At this time last September (and joined by old friends from grad school) we made our first trip to Norway and Sweden. Our week in Norway concentrated on attractions both urban and rural: among them, Oslo’s splendid National Gallery, its fascinating Norwegian Resistance Museum (which greatly illuminates Steinbeck’s novella The Moon is Down, which I read when very young), the Viking Ship Museum, and the Norwegian Folk Museum. The Hanseatic and waterfront district of beautiful, rainy Bergen, along with its art galleries, parks, and handsome public buildings are no less impressive.

But the highpoint of the Norway visit was perhaps the journey between Oslo and Bergen, which was in part by rail, including a breathtaking descent from the high country north and far to the west of Oslo down to the waters of the Sognefjord (the country’s longest and deepest) aboard the Flåmsbana private rail line. From thence we went by boat to the beautiful village of Balestrand for two days of hiking, visits to remote hamlets, stave churches, and (rapidly melting) glaciers up the arm of the neighboring Fjærlandsfjord. After Balestrand, we continued by boat to Bergen.

Our visit to Sweden included only Stockholm, which wasn’t our original intention but upon arrival we quickly decided that the capital city and its environs provided more than enough to occupy us for a week’s time. Our attractive and conveniently located flat in the Östermalm district—along with the city’s excellent subway system—helped confirm the rightness of our decision. Thus began an interesting and enjoyable self-guided tour of this world class city: the fascinating Vasa Museum, the Royal Palace and its treasures, the old town, the Skansen open-air folk museum (a kind of vast Williamsburg-like series of displays presenting the Swedish peoples—including the Sami—and their history and culture), Drottningholm Palace with its famous, still-in-use Baroque theater, and much more, including a day cruise on the Stockholm archipelago.

Despite the horrendous acts of Anders Breivik shortly before we arrived in Oslo, it is clear to us that the Norwegians, and no less the Swedes, are a highly progressive, prosperous, well-educated people who are generally happy, healthy, stable, and proud of their country, its government and economic system. Americans could learn from them.

This past March we spent a week in London en route to Greece, our final destination. Because our goal was to visit, after more than thirty years, several of the major Minoan sites we flew directly from London to Heraklion, Crete, so as to have easy access to Knossos. We were not surprised to find that the archaeologists had made considerable progress in our absence. The outstanding Heraklion Museum is now closed for extensive construction and reorganization; however, its staff has put together a large display of major Minoan pieces in temporary quarters. While on Crete we also visited for the first time several other Minoan sites along the south coast: Phaistos, Ayia Triada (the so-called “summer palace”), and the Greco-Roman Gortyn. Our brief stopover in Athens was for the sole purpose of visiting the new, spectacular Acropolis Museum. If and when the Elgin Marbles are ever returned to Greece by the British government, they will be installed in the new sites that await them. Until then, there is always London and the British Museum.

Our summer activities have been quite local but enjoyable nonetheless: a trip to Ashland for several plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, including a dazzling “Iraq war” Troilus and Cressida, and recently to Seattle for a season-opening Turandot, a production that is about as close as Seattle Opera comes to “grand opera.” It’s also been a fine summer for sailing on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Finally, early this year a longish festschrift article on Chaucer and the alchemist George Ripley was published in A Confluence of Words: Studies in Honor of Robert Lima (Newark, DE), and a second essay in a similar collection is currently in press. Meanwhile, I’m trying to find time to work on a new project: the most interesting personal library of a 17th-century English doctor about whom virtually no one appears to have heard. For more on this, keep tuned to these pages, and don’t forget to vote for Obama!

Best wishes and good health,

Stan

500 SE Crestview St.
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: linden@wsu.edu

Howard McCord (WSU 1960–1971)

We have a new addition to the McCord ranks—Callum Howard Gideon Snee, son of my daughter Eva and her husband Chris Snee of Seattle. He is my seventh grandchild. I visited him and his parents in Seattle in early June with great delight. My youngest son, Wyatt Asher also lives there, and my grandson Jacob Lindsay was visiting for the summer there. I also met Jessi Taveres, Wyatt’s lovely girl friend. Wyatt and I rode the ferry up to Victoria to visit Guy Birchard, a wonderful poet (Further Than the Blood, Boston: Pressed Wafer Press, 2010), who is also my bibliographer, and his wife Anne Heeney, a fine painter and animator. We had a wonderful weekend there and walked most of the trails along the shore.

Earlier in the year I was invited to read at University of Texas at El Paso by their Bi-Lingual Creative Writing Department. Sasha Pimental Chacon (Insides She Swallowed, West End Press, 2010) and her husband Daniel Chacon (Chicano Chicanery, Arte Publico Press, 2000) were my hosts, and I stayed four days at my favorite old hotel, the Del Norte, built in 1912. The SRO audience of about 125 was wonderful, as was the fine buffet held afterwards. I sold every book I had brought. I also read at EPCC where my friend Lawrence Welch (Begging For Vultures, UNM Press, 2010) teaches. El Paso and Ciudad Juarez have grown tremendously since I lived there, over fifty years ago. The cities have a combined population of three million now. Juarez is no longer the most violent city in the world, and some businesses and restaurants are starting to re-open. But it is still a sad, desperate city, with few tourists. El Paso remains the home of my heart, and the people there I hold especially dear.

French critics remain interested in my novel, and in January an interview with me by Pierre Cendors was published in Magazine des livres, #33, a big, slick publication unlike anything we have in this country. It is totally devoted to books and their authors, as is widely sold on the kiosks. I was a bit dazzled by it.

In October of 2011 I was invited to read at The Duende Poetry Series in Placitas, a little town north of Albuquerque which has been a hangout for writers since the sixties, when Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn lived there—and many others. The reading was held at the Anasazi Field Winery, which makes excellent dry wines from local fruits. I dedicated the reading to the memory of some old friends there, not long dead: Keith Wilson, Robert Burlingame, Gus Blaisdell, Gene Frumkin, and Roberto Sanchez, late at WSU. Many old-timers were in the audience and I felt much at home.

In August, our daughter Susannah was hired by the Cleveland Clinic as a researcher in health policy and as Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at Case-Western Medical School. She had received her PhD from Harvard in May. Since she and her family moved to Shaker Heights we have had many nice visits, and it is wonderful to be only 130 miles apart instead of 800! Susie is publishing widely in professional journals (JNEMS, JAMA, etc.) and lecturing frequently at colleges and conferences. Susie and William have two daughters, Sophia 8, and Alexandria, nearly 2.

Last weekend Robert, his wife Poly, and their daughter Skye came over from Crystal Lake, IL, where he teaches at McHenry College, and met Jenny and me, Colman and his family, Susie and hers, and our daughter Julia for a day at the Toledo Zoo with all the kids. Only Wyatt and Jake, Eva, Chris and Callum in Seattle were missing. But they all promise to be here in November for my 80th birthday!

Jenny starts back to school next week, with one and a half years to go before retirement. And all seems very well with our little world.

Howard McCord

Susan McLeod (WSU 1986–2001)

Dear Friends,

This will be short, because we are packing to leave on another Road Scholar trip, this one a cruise that focuses on the Byzantine Empire (I do think of it as sailing to Byzantium, but in a good way). I will enthuse about it in next year’s newsletter.

Our big news is the arrival of a grandchild (our first), Paityn Lee McLeod, daughter of Jon and Shannah. I will include pictures, although it’s hard to choose from the several thousand that we have on our phones. Our son insisted that we get iPhones so that he could send videos and we could use the Facetime function (a little like Skype); I resisted, thinking my old phone was fine, but finally caved in. Now I can’t imagine how I got along without this new toy.

Doug and I continue singing in two choirs, are taking a Tai Chi class, and both continue with very satisfying volunteer work in various venues. I am also continuing as the series editor for two book series, which gives me a chance to work with up-and-coming scholars in the field. All this is enjoyable, but does not compare to how besotted we are with the new addition to the family. We are already impossible grandparents.

I look forward to hearing news from all of you.

Best,

Sue

Ron Meldrum (WSU 1965–1996)

2011 was a bit difficult, physically, culminating in an emergency procedure the end of December—a total blockage of duct to pancreas by a very large gallstone plus others backed up. It’s amazing what surgeons can do nowadays without invasive surgery—down through the throat and up to the stones, which were then removed. Then when we were in Phoenix in January I had gall bladder removal surgery, which was done with two tiny incisions. Amazing. And I’ve felt much better since then. I now realize that several hospital stays going back to August 2010 were actually undiagnosed gallstone problems. It took a huge stone to gain diagnosis!

Why were we in Phoenix in January? Our Daughter Deirdre, divorced, was getting married and it was a joyous occasion. Barb and I officiated at the garden wedding (thanks to online ordination for Reverend Meldrum!), and found a use for our doctoral gowns for that service.

We like Deedee’s new husband very much: Alan Nelson, who has a successful academic as well as business career (try Googling him if interested). He is a positive thinking, wide-ranging intellectual, a great communicator and considerate person—and quite a wine connoisseur. We enjoyed housesitting and caring for Deedee’s two children during their honeymoon trip to the Seychelles. My surgeon in Phoenix was a personal friend of Alan’s from high school days and a topnotch surgeon in the region.

Throughout the year we’ve made several trips to British Columbia, usually to Victoria and Vancouver, to visit relatives and to enjoy the sights. We especially enjoyed driving over the Cascade Pass to Anacortes and then taking the ferry to Sidney. In June we extended that trip to Oregon where Barb attended her 60th high school reunion in Albany, then we spent a week at a timeshare near Mt. Hood–most beautiful and relaxing. That fortified us for visitors at the lake over the summer and numerous project-jobs to do there. Fortunately we found a very good handyman to help us, but it was still a lot of work.

In April Barb made her “trip of her lifetime” to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, with daughter Cindy as trip planner and guide (her fluent German was a help), her daughter Vienna, and sister Deirdre. They had a great time and especially enjoyed numerous concerts. Barb managed all the walking and innumerable steps, but I didn’t feel up to such an exhausting two weeks so went to Vancouver instead.

Best wishes to all of you,

Ron Meldrum

Shirley Price (WSU 1963–1989)

Thanks, Paul, for dedicating time to the retirement newsletter, something we all enjoy reading. The readers are not only retired but also energetic!

We’re roaring along in our eighties; and we’ve both experienced medical adventures that are now history, with thanks to the medical profession, Medicare and health insurance. Although our helicopter daughter lives a a mere fifteen minutes from her parents, we’re mostly independent. However, I will not allow Bud on the roof. Our wonderful son-in-law does a good job of moss and fir needle cleaning. By the way, the family is fine!

Cannon Beach is calling us, and we’ll be on our way very shortly. I’m looking forward to some good beach strolls, golf, and generally wasting our substance is frivolous living. (With thanks to John Elwood for his words)

Although I’m not a fervent Obama supporter, I prefer him to Romney and Paul Ryan!

With best regards, wishing you a mild and gentle winter.

Shirley and Bud Price

11003 37th Ave.
NW, Gig Harbor, WA 99163
Email: bns2price@centurytel.net

Barbara Sitko (WSU 1989–2005)

Greetings. Another quiet year in western PA included a spring move across town to the Methodist Parsonage (the new pastor owns her own home and the church is glad for quiet renters in a quiet neighborhood!). Tree roots prevent a lawn garden, so this spring I experimented with the various patio varieties of tomato, greens, and herbs. I’m hoping for a very late frost, as yields are generous.

My work with our committee on responsible investing included considerable research on “fracking” in the Marcellus Shale, community meetings with neighbors, local speakers who have experienced water problems, and much study of legal issues. Digging has begun in the Youngstown area but not so far in farmland where most water comes from local wells. We have acreage that is fairly remote, but our entire community center water system is well-based. Although neighboring landowners would like to merge properties, agreements are unlikely. The shale companies tell us we are “surrounded.” We’ll see.

I still play keyboard for our congregational liturgies and hope to do so for as long as arthritic fingers allow. In addition to local theatre, the Met in HD is our main entertainment. I didn’t know I’d like Wagner, but now I’m hooked. Travels were slim this year—one weekend trip to Long Island and Manhattan for a family wedding. And this year brought yet another broken bone—Jeannette’s elbow met some unyielding concrete after a step over a lintel, but is nearly completely healed. In short, we’re still unpacking, slimming the book collections, and awaiting a colorful fall.

Warm regards,

Barbara

238 Meadowbrook Dr.
New Wilmington, PA 16142
Email: sitko@wsu.edu

John Stoler (WSU 1969-1974)

I haven’t responded to Paul’s invitation to contribute to the newsletter for the last two years but in reviewing the last three letters, I saw that there were several contributors whom I had known well and whose contributions to the letters were really interesting. Some of these former colleagues and a few former WSU grad students still exchange messages with me and so I thought I would resume my comments here.

However, first I want to thank Paul for editing the newsletters, but most of all, I owe a thank-you for his insightful notes and comments on Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel which is the cornerstone of my science fiction course. I am teaching the class this coming fall semester and I owe a lot to Paul’s work on the novel.

I am still on the “modified service” program at UT— San Antonio, a program designed for retirees who can be hired back after their retirement for one-fourth of their last nine-month salary to teach one class a long semester (no summer teaching). We are short-handed, as is everyone these days, so I am assigned upper-division and graduate courses. Although other than the one class a semester there are no required responsibilities for modified service, I volunteer for MA and PhD exams, master theses, and dissertations. I may be getting a little long in the tooth (77) but I continue to love teaching.

The wonderful foreign travels reported by the retirees make me jealous. We do manage a yearly visit to Kauai but the rest of our travels are confined the other states, mostly California to visit my stepson, New York and New Jersey to see Mandy’s family and take in a couple of shows, and to various other places—mostly Houston, Dallas, Austin, Orlando, and Los Vegas—for our thirteen-year-old granddaughter’s softball tournaments and our eight-year-old twin granddaughter’s gymnastic meets. The latter has been terrific on the circuit this year and was up for a national ranking until she broke her ankle and could not complete the testing for the honor. Her twin brother is active in basketball, soccer, and coach-pitch baseball, so we keep busy around here too.

As I wrote before, I had a double bypass in 2007, followed two days later by a stroke. I was doing fine I thought until a year ago last Mother’s Day, I had a second, but fortunately, minor stroke. I briefly lost movement in my left arm but did not lose my speech (kind of important for my profession). I am doing well but am on a lot of meds including that universal heart medication, coumadin. Mandy has had two back surgeries and often has a lot of pain. Although she can’t run the six miles a day she was used to doing, she does work out every day on the elliptical machines at our health club.

I was greatly amused by Doug Hughes’ picture and comment on our governor. However, it is not very amusing to live under the right-wing rule of a three- term governor (preparing to run again) who makes his predecessor, old G.W., look good. No Democrat in Texas has been elected to a state-wide office since 1994. We are hoping that the rapidly expanding Hispanic population will change that.

Good health and good fortune to all.

John Stoler

2406 Rogers Loop
San Antonio, TX 78258
Email: utsaretireej@yahoo.com

Nelly C. Zamora (WSU 1976–2003)

I did not realize it is now nine and a half years that I have been retired. Cesar and I continue to live in Pullman and travel to the Philippines about twice a year to visit families and friends that we did not get to see often when we were both working.

In October 2011, we joined a tour of Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1835 making notes and collected specimens that provided important evidence for his theory of evolution. The highlight of the trip was seeing the unique wildlife in their natural habitat. The trip was also made memorable by an unexpected event. Toward the end of the 2nd day of our 5-day cruise of the Galapagos Islands, there was a fire in the engine room of the ship. Although the crew was able to stop the fire, the ship lost power and was disabled. At about 4:45 AM the following day, we got a phone call from the cruise director asking all passengers to leave the ship (“abandon ship”) and decide, in the next 15 minutes, what we want to do. We were given two options: 1) Cancel the rest of the cruise, transfer to the mainland with the help of the crew, and get a full refund, or 2) Continue the cruise, but transfer to another cruise ship (limited to 31 of 75 passengers). We chose to continue the cruise and at 6:00 AM, were taken, along with 29 others, by rubber dinghies from our ship to a smaller one.

We went to the Philippines in November of 2011. Our daughter, Jen, who is doing quite well following a hip replacement surgery in November of 2010, joined us so she could visit her cousins who she had not seen in about 20 years. She thoroughly enjoyed her visit and it was amazing to see her pick up the local language rather quickly. A few weeks after our return, we made the usual trip to the San Francisco Bay Area in December to spend Christmas with family and friends.

In April of 2012, we visited Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park in Utah. A highlight of this trip was the 1.5-mile hike (one way) to Delicate Arch.

The hike, which we thought would take us only 30 minutes or less, took us 50 minutes as we had to make frequent stops/rests on uphill climbs. But our effort was rewarded when we got to view Delicate Arch.

We went back to the Philippines last May. During our stay, we made three trips to different places in Luzon island: a town known for the elaborate decorations (with palms, rice stalks, farm produce, and other plant materials) of houses located along the route of the procession during the feast day of the town’s patron saint (San Isidro Labrador), the Hundred Islands National Park, and a UNESCO world heritage village and church in northern Philippines.

In August, we took a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks with my brother-in-law and his wife. We had promised them that we would take them to these parks if they would come to visit us in Pullman. And so, on very short notice, we scrambled to make room reservations (all hotels/cabins inside the park were booked). Fortunately, we were able to get rooms (very expensive) in Gardiner, MT, which is just outside the north entrance of the park.

We are returning to the Philippines at the end of October. We’ll be staying for three weeks and return to Pullman in time for Thanksgiving. Like the years before, we are celebrating Christmas in Sausalito, California, with our daughters Jen and Pauline and her husband, Andreas. We hope it will not be a harsh winter as we plan to drive.

Best wishes to all of you.

Nelly Zamora

1710 NW Deane Street
Pullman, WA 99613-3508
Email: nellyczamora@hotmail.com