English Retirees Newsletter

25th Edition, September 2015

Chair’s Message

Dear Friends,

Each year, Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin releases its “Mindset List,” a compilation of facts and oddities —”they have never licked a postage stamp!”—about the lives and experiences of the year’s crop of 18-year- old, first-year college students. In that spirit, I would like to offer a single fact from what could be a similar list for our department’s new class of graduate students: They will never experience a Bundy Reading Room with yellow-patterned carpet and heavy, wood-block furniture.

Indeed, this year in Avery Hall started off with a departmental retreat that doubled as an informal opening of our newly renovated Bundy, finally complete after at least a year of planning and construction generously supported by former President Elson Floyd. As you will see from the photos I have included for the newsletter, the room and its functionality have undergone a significant change—new, easily moveable furniture allows the room to double as an exceptionally functional seminar and meeting space, and a new video conferencing system means that the days of clunky, television-based AMS connections to Vancouver and Tri-Cities are a thing of the past.

However this is still the same Bundy, and we are still your English department. Both, I think, have “good bones”—we continue to produce scholarship at a strong rate, and we continue to teach and reach a vast majority of the students who enter WSU. We have also significantly strengthened and clarified our standards for tenure and promotion, detailing specifics regarding both quantity and quality of scholarship while also recognizing the multiplicity of ways our research is pursued and published. At the same time, we have recommitted ourselves to a more extensive mentoring process for pre-tenure faculty that is already garnering strong reviews within and outside our department.

Those pre-tenure faculty now include Julie Staggers, our new advanced assistant professor of Technical and Professional Writing, who will be joined next year (presuming our search is successful) by another such new colleague in Vancouver. Our program in Digital Technology and Culture is also growing, driven in part by the new Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation led by Kim Withey and supported by both the Libraries and the College of Arts and Sciences. You can learn more about this group and their commitment to finding new ways to do scholarly work and preserve the past on their website.

This effort is part of a larger commitment we have made to increasing the public visibility and campus presence of the remarkable people and programs of our department. The first fruits of that work are cropping up in some unexpected places—a spot on Seattle television highlighting our growing commitment to science writing and an article in Washington’s major Spanish-language newspaper on our Critical Literacies and Success Program for minority and first-generation students, just for starters.

At the same time, we are not neglecting our long-standing commitments to the academy, most recently for example securing the appointment of Dr. Karen Kilcup, currently the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of English, Environmental and Sustainability Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC-Greensboro, to serve as editor of ESQ for the next two years. A full review of her bio could take up a letter of its own, so suffice it to say that as the author or editor of at least 11 books (and many more articles, reviews, invited lectures, and the like) and a former editor herself, Dr. Kilcup is well-positioned to lead the journal forward.

There are challenges, of course, whether budgetary or driven by national perceptions of the humanities that at times can seem cavalierly jaundiced. (There are times when I look with a certain bit of jealousy upon the departure to your ranks of George Kennedy, my predecessor in this office who did much to keep us on an even keel during tough times.) We’re meeting those continuing challenges, however, with a sense of confidence and optimism about what we can accomplish as a community, and I think it’s fair to say that spirit—and those accomplishments—are increasingly being recognized at all levels of WSU.

As even this brief summary should indicate, there is a lot going on here, and much of it is worth celebrating. In that spirit, we hope in October to have a more formal party to mark the Bundy’s opening, and if you’re anywhere close we would love to welcome you back to Avery Hall. You can check out the new space, take a look at the new display of retired faculty pictures that will grace the entryway to this room, and receive my—and our—thank you for the foundation of success you helped construct for our department.

Once the particulars for that event are finalized I will ask Paul to distribute them via this list. Please come if you are able, and even if you are not, know that you are welcome among us any time.

Best,

Todd

Editor’s Note

Thank you all for keeping this newsletter alive in its 25th year, whether by contributing or using it to keep up with the rest of us.

Nick Kiessling forwarded this obituary for Art Coffin, who was an important mentor for me early on.

Obituaries

Arthur B. Coffin (1929-2013)

Arthur B. Coffin gave up the ghost on Monday, November 18, 2013. Nearly always hopeful, yet sometimes disappointed, he resolved early not to take life too seriously.

Born April 24, 1929, in Berlin, N.H., to Dora B. and “Pat” Coffin, he was educated in the public schools there and later at the University of New Hampshire (BA, 1951), Boston College (MA, 1958), and the University of Wisconsin (PhD, 1965). Dodging the draft upon being graduated from UNH, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After serving in the Supply Division on the USS Tripoli (CVE 64), he went to Officer Candidate School at Newport, RI, and subsequently served as Damage Control Officer and, later, as Engineer Officer on the USS Glen non (DD 840). This naval duty took him to many places from Helsinki to Istanbul, as well as to the Caribbean.

In 1956, Arthur married Gertrude Dupuis, also a native of Berlin, who brought encouragement and support for his plans to attend graduate school and to develop professionally. They had two daughters, Mary and Cathy. While he attended Boston College, Arthur taught in the Boston Public Schools system, and Gertrude worked for New England Tel and Tel. He next taught a year at the Stoneham, MA, high school, moving then to St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA, before returning to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 1965, Arthur, Gertrude, and Cathy moved to Pullman, Wash., where Arthur taught in the Department of English at Washington State University until 1972, when he accepted the headship of the Department of English at Montana State University at Bozeman. In Pullman, Gertrude worked in a bank, and she continued in that kind of employment in Bozeman until 1980.

Paul Brians (WSU 1968–2008)

When I was assembling the newsletter last year we were preparing to set off for a trip to Europe. We had a brief stay in London where we were able to get the last two tickets in the Globe Theatre for a very funny performance of A Comedy of Errors.

We had not been in Paris for a long time. We explored all our favorite spots using our discount museum pass to the max and catching the Louvre on its free day. New for us was the fabulous Musée des arts décoratifs next door where we were amused to find St. Catherine (martyred on a wheel of fire) placed thoughtfully next to an extinguisher.

Other delights: a free organ concert in Notre Dame, the Jewish Museum in the Marais, the view from of the Isle de la cité from the roof of the Musée du monde arabe. We also enjoyed a day trip to Fontainebleau with the son of a cousin of Paula’s and his girlfriend. But the high point of the visit was a thrilling concert of motets by Rameau and Mondonville conducted by William Christie leading a brilliant group of young instrumentalists and singers in the royal chapel at Versailles. Again, we got the two remaining seats at the last minute.

We stayed in an apartment in the Marais procured through Paris Flat Rent, a nice business that you would not find reviewed in Trip Advisor, etc. because they decline to pay the fee that would allow them to be listed. They are worth checking out.

On the way home we explored New England, staying mostly with friends and relatives, and viewed autumn foliage in every state except Maine.

Megan spent a pleasant week with us at Christmas time, this year mostly sunny. I made a winter-long project of posting pictures of the landscape to Facebook every day the sun shone. June is usually derisively referred to as “Junuary” around here, but this year it was clear, warm, and gorgeous.

Before we moved here, our WSU friends warned us about the dreary winters on Puget Sound; but it has been a remarkably dry and clear year, and the summer was almost alarmingly hot. It sure feels like global warming has reached us, bringing mixed feelings of pleasure and dread.

In December the Alaska Airlines in-flight magazine purchased the rights to my picture of the Fairy Dell to illustrate an article about Snow Falling on Cedars by Bainbridge author David Guterson—my first serious commercial sale.

I continued to do a lot of photography for the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, including work parties in which making handsome pictures of people pulling weeds was a real challenge. In March I had a long-planned exhibit of 55 of my photos of wildflowers that grow on the Island at the library. I sold a couple and had a nice reception with many visitors examining each shot in detail. I also gave a slide lecture on the subject.

In June the Land Trust helped sponsor a “Bio-Blitz” of the Island: more than a hundred volunteers led by expert specialists doing a one- day census of 454 plant and animal species in several locations. My job was to run around chasing various groups to photograph them at work. I made the mistake of hauling my heavy wheeled camera case along the steep, dusty trails. I will not make that mistake again.

In February Paula was terrific in a local production of Stephen Sondheim’s Side by Side, in which she paid a flamboyant older woman, soloing in “I Never Do Anything Twice” and “I’m Still Here.” She continues to enjoy singing with a couple of local choruses.

Also in February the folks at the Community Center in nearby Hansville invited me back to give my illustrated lecture on the history of the American comic strip.

I continue to post occasionally to my “Common Errors” blog. One of my most entertaining projects was researching the expression “gone to live on a farm upstate.” Because Common Errors in English Usage was featured in the PBS Signals catalogue at Christmastime surrounded by Downton Abbey merchandise, the book enjoyed a boost in sales that has substantially increased our income this year.

I retired from my stint as a volunteer tour guide at the Science Fiction Museum as they began requiring all guides to take turns doing fantasy and horror as well. I am just not interested in horror films. The revamped SF exhibit (inside the Experience Music Project) is very impressive, however.

We visited Susan Chan in Portland in March, and spent a day with Alice Spitzer and Mike Owen at their new apartment in the city. On Independence Day I participated in the annual Photo Club exhibit and marched with the Land Trust in the parade, while Paula stayed with Jana Argersinger in Moscow reunited with lots of Palouse friends at Alice and Mike’s place in Idaho. The other event that took her east for a week was a big reunion of members of the “Knitters” who gathered at Birgitta Ingemanson’s home from all over the country.

We had another nice visit with Susan in the summer when she came up from Portland to explore the area. We hiked through wildflowers and butterflies on Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park and visited Marymere Falls.

We hosted a play reading of Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro and tried to get the participants to return the next day to view a performance of Mozart’s opera—only one person took us up on the offer.

Unfortunately we were competing with a talk by David Guterson as part of a month-long celebration of Snow Falling on Cedars. We enjoyed the local production of the theatrical version of the novel much more than the weak 1999 movie version.

I enjoyed repeating my role as photographer for the annual garden tour, and was also asked to contribute photos for the Parks Foundation Web site.

With our new next-door neighbors we enjoyed sailing around the Island in the old steam-powered ferry, the Virginia V. My photos of the trip were turned into a slide show on the Inside Bainbridge website and are going to be featured in November in a slick regional magazine.

We kept planning to go off on a trip somewhere this summer, but fascinating things to do right here kept popping up. Last month, we went to a riveting theater performance in Bellingham involving Paula’s friend and drama teacher, explored the Mount Baker area, and enjoyed the local BI 10-minute play festival. I have contributed eight prints to a show of Island photographs at a downtown restaurant. They will be on display for an indefinite period.

In case you are wondering about the capitalization of “Island”—Islanders do this whenever it is an abbreviation of our island’s name.

I continue to post photographs almost daily on Facebook where I enjoy sharing them with a couple of hundred people, many of them old friends from WSU. You do not have to “friend” me to see my stuff.

Paul Brians

Leota and Dutch Day (WSU 1970–1988)

Hi, folks,

As usual, another year has passed and a few more wrinkles have appeared. A friend recently sent me a T-shirt saying, “Gray is the new blonde.” I was not sure whether to be annoyed or complimented.

We finally bit the bullet and bought a new laptop, so I am diligently learning the various changes to Microsoft programming. We were about ten years behind, so it is a challenge. It is not like we are troglodytes, since we at least have smart phones, an iPad and Kindles. However, I cannot find where to access the Spell Check since I am pretty sure I misspelled “troglodyte.”

I also want to turn off the “suggested word” when I am typing. Have you ever tried to type “Leota” and always end up with “Leotard”?

Well, enough complaining. All in all, Dutch and I are doing well and keeping busy. We have been on our usual travels: to Mexico for the dark winter days, to Sonoma/Napa valleys for wine in the spring. We stay in Seattle pretty much all summer in order to take advantage of the sunny days. In September, we are heading off to Chicago for a week where we will connect with friends we see every year in Mexico. We have never been to Chicago, so we are pretty excited.

Chad is working at Fred Meyer now and has been for about a year. It had been four years or more since he has had something permanent, so we are all pretty happy for him.

Kecia and family are doing well. We get an occasional opportunity to hang out with Isaac and Evelyn and just play. We recently took them to the Ballard Locks and stayed so long that our visit planned for the nearby beach was cut short. I thought the beach would be the bigger draw for 8 and 4 year olds. We also played a little baseball with Isaac who decided to pitch overhand to me. I had no idea I could still duck so well. Getting back up was another issue.

Our yard is dutifully brown as we have let the grass go dormant this year. Walking barefoot is not nearly so pleasant. Our vegetables are enjoying the heat, though—especially the peppers which are producing way more than ever before. Instead of hawking extra zucchini on the corner, we will be out there with jalapenos and serranos.

Our neighborhood is undergoing considerable change because a light rail station is being built just 6 blocks away. We have about five 4- to 6-story apartment buildings being constructed nearby, with more in the permitting stage. We also have several “apodments” going in, which might have 45 180-sq.ft., private units with no parking provided. Just today, a backhoe began tearing down three Craftsman bungalows (which were dilapidated), across the alley from us. It has been pretty amazing to watch. It takes only about 90 minutes for an entire house to become rubble.

The upside to all this disruption is that the new townhouses will draw tenants who can afford higher rents and, thus, engender a bit of renewal in the neighborhood, which has been the location of Seattle’s worst slumlord, who owns two or three blocks of blighted property. Seattle condemned his properties and they have been boarded up for a few years.

And once the light rail station is complete in 2024, we will be able to trundle our luggage up there and take rapid transit directly to the airport.

We hope you all remain healthy and happy.

Leota and Dutch

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

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1957-2001)

As the saying goes, bad things often come in threes. When I wrote this update last year I had just attended a memorial service in Superior, WI, for my younger sister, Carole. Although I would never equate the subsequent loss of our best-ever cat, Madame Butterball, that death also made our lives less rich. Then, shortly before Christmas, Dick ended up in the hospital in Spokane for quadruple bypass heart surgery. In spite of having to cancel a trip to New Hampshire to meet Dick’s brother and wife from Rotterdam, that health crisis had a happy ending. Dick has gone through rehab and is now doing well.

It has taken a while, however, for us to get back to traveling. I did fly to Bloomsburg, PA, last June for the 25th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf. After a three-hour shuttle ride from Newark airport, we western U.S. scholars discovered Bloomsburg University, an apparently flourishing institution in a smallish town with hills, a bit like Pullman. A great B & B, our panel (effective in spite of jet lag), and an excellent conference helped to make traveling there worthwhile. Bloomsburg’s citizens were enthusiastically supportive and attended several downtown and campus events. Todd Avery, a former graduate of our program, materialized at a theatre performance. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, as does Diana Archibald, whom some of you might also remember.

This summer we have been dealing with what we call “the farm.” Where a diseased tree used to be, Dick constructed two large raised garden beds. With sun, good soil, and compost, we have produced abundant spinach and lettuce, and yellow and green beans, crook-neck and acorns quash, and cucumbers. These and our usual tomatoes have required careful watering and regular harvesting during this record-breaking hot, dry, dusty, and smoky summer. Dick’s son who runs a large rental equipment operation in eastern Oregon is the only one we know who is benefiting, at least financially, from the many devastating wildfires.

This season, Dick and I are new co-presidents of the Palouse Dance Club, a job (live bands, venues, caterers) more complicated than we had expected. The investment club to which I and several other faculty women have belonged since 1997 is also in transition, since no one wants to be treasurer. As for Dick, as he is still active in several organizations, including the Board of the Gladish Community and Cultural Center. Together, we are doing our usual round of concerts and plays.

On September 20th, we will go with friends to France for a riverboat trip from Lyon to Marseilles. We then fly on to Barcelona for several days. It will be our first big trip since last fall. Maybe we can finally connect with Dick’s brother and family during the coming holiday season. None of us is getting any younger or healthier.

Greetings to all of you and many thanks to Paul for keeping us up-to-date.

Diane

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

Alex Hammond (WSU 1975–2009)

Dear Fellow Retirees,

Having missed doing this newsletter last year, I will again do a summary list of what seems a very busy two years. I continue to work at Poe scholarship, became an honorary member of the Poe Studies Association, gave a paper at its International Conference in NYC in March, read occasional submissions for Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation as consulting editor, and joined the board of the Edgar Allan Poe Review. Barbara continues her small private practice as a psychologist and has been doing supervision in the last year for the WSU Counseling Center, from which she retired as director in 2009.

Our son’s work on feature movies as production designer—recent films include Nonstop, Insurgent, and the latter’s forthcoming sequel—has increasingly taken him outside of Los Angeles, while our daughter-in-law’s small research company for the film industry, Heavy Water, has grown successful and time demanding. Their children, our 15- and 12-year-old grandsons, are heavily involved in music and basketball in Los Angeles and elsewhere, while our daughter is in her third year of heading up operations in Baja California for Ecological Projects International. Busy though they are, I am glad to say we managed to gather them together with other family for our 50^th wedding anniversary in San Juan Capistrano this June.

We continue to live on Pullman’s College Hill, I do Democratic politics in Whitman Country and serve as treasurer of the College Hill Association—which attempts to preserve the neighborhood’s historic district and hold off inappropriate development—while Barbara’s work on various boards includes Pullman’s Police Advisory Committee and the Palouse River Counseling Center.

And we’ve found time to travel: in 2013, Ireland and Baja California (petting whale calves in the St. Ignacio Lagoon); in 2014 and early 2015, Italy and France for the Christmas holidays; and this summer, a visit with Barbara’s cousin in Ottawa and a trip by rail and car through Quebec to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Until next year,

Alex (and Barbara)

1110 N.E. Indiana St.
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: hammonda@wsu.edu

Rich Haswell (WSU 1967–1980)

No foreign lands this year, but lots of hikes around Colorado high places: Independence Pass, Missionary Ridge, Engineer Mt., Cottonwood Pass, South Crestone Creek, etc. We had an encounter with a Rattlesnake at Penitente Canyon, north of Del Norte. In case you are wondering, I was on the other side of a ravine from the critter. Rattlesnakes around our region have an appealing green tint.

And this is the very top of Alberta Peak (elevation 11,904), on the Continental Divide south of Wolf Creek Pass. I elected not to clamber up these last few yards, thinking of my prosthetic hips, so I let Dobby summit for me. Actually, I think he was more interested in the picas than the record for 8-year-old

I nearly forgot. Jan and my Hospitality and Authoring: An Essay for the English Profession came out this spring (Utah State University Press, through University Press of Colorado). It is a sequel to Authoring: An Essay for the English Profession on Potentiality and Singularity (2010).

Rich

Virginia Hyde (WSU 1970–2004)

Dear Colleagues,

Of course, WSU is now in full session, and the students once again walk back and forth from Campus Heights to classes, many of them taking our street—Orchard Drive, which runs past the new Recreation Center and the Coliseum toward the central campus. For a short period, some of these scholar pedestrians were wearing masks, as at the time of the Mount St. Helens eruption (for those of you who recall the cloud of dust that descended upon us here in Pullman at that time). The cause this time was a great cloud of smoke covering much of the town from surrounding forest fires. A cooling rain has intervened, so there is no more need for masks!

I must tell again Dave’s Mount St. Helens anecdote. In the eruption year, he was teaching a class here for educational television, and he had to wear a white surgical mask in one session because of the volcanic dust. (Nobody yet knew if it was toxic or not.) For years, the math sessions were repeated on educational television, never with the slightest explanation of that mysterious mask!

This year I was selected as a lifetime member of the MLA, recognizing my 45+ years of service as speaker, session chair, contributor to the MLA “Teaching Authors” book series, and president of an allied organization. Here’s a surprising part of the selection: my dues payments were even returned to me!

I have also been invited to speak at the next national MLA convention at a joint session sponsored by the International Society for Textual Scholarship and the North American Society for Lawrence (and Circle). I will discuss my 10-year research/quest for unpublished material for the Cambridge Edition of Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, the critical reception, and the impact on recent studies. This volume brought together all the essays Lawrence wrote in America about Southwestern Pueblos, Mexican Zapotecs, and other indigenous peoples. I located some of the manuscript items in Nottingham, New Mexico, and Mexico (in private hands), and elsewhere. My title is “From the Pueblos to Cambridge.” Some of you may recall where Thomas Wolfe says that the road that led the English to the Dutch (in America) was “strange enough” and tinged with the magic of all such unlikely connections. Of course, the road that brought the Pueblos to Cambridge is touched with its own kind of strangeness and even magic. Naturally, the edition has been of particular interest to the Taos community and the native residents of Taos Pueblo, including some who are themselves artists and one or two contemporary authors still living inside the pueblo walls.


I have also served this year as a guest editor (with Michael Bell, UK, and Nak-chung Paik, Korea) of a literary journal, published by Seoul University Press, containing essays developed from selected presentations at the 13th International Lawrence Conference in Gargnano, Italy. It includes scholars from seven countries out of more than twenty represented at the conference. 


Dave and I have both had challenges health- wise. I had painful surgery for a hernia (caused by a bad fall of a year earlier), and Dave developed diabetic neuropathy with pain that was at times disabling. But we are both trying to flourish again! 


It is good to be in Pullman where some of our good friends and colleagues are also still located.


Thank you, Paul, for all your work with the newsletter; I always enjoy it thoroughly and look forward to it.


I love you all.
 


Best of everything,

Virginia Hyde

Nick Kiessling (WSU 1967–2000)

Dear Emeriti/Emeritae,

Thanks for the reminder, Paul. I let this letter slip and we are now in our usual place in NYC trying to catch up. We have had a pretty good year with, as is usual with retirees, too much travel. The big trip was last December to Phoenix, then to Austin to work in the Harry Ransom Library for a week. From Austin we flew in the new 787 to the UK, and on to a Leighlinbridge condo about 50 miles southwest of Dublin.

The condo is owned by Lynn Coleman, a WSU English MA from about 1980, and her husband, Craig Trygstad. The two now live in Lewiston but travel extensively in their jobs as education consultants. Their Ireland place is purely for pleasure and it is delightful, overlooking castle ruins on the river Barrow. We toured the west country of Ireland mainly to visit Kylemore Abbey which has a library I wanted to see. Over the past few years I located about thirty books that were stolen from this collection and the Mother Abbess was eager to have them back. The library now at the Abbey, transported by Irish nuns from Ypres in France in 1914, has been decimated by thieves and she showed me what was left—four printed items out of several hundred once there. Sad.

In February we flew to London where we stayed in a home-away place in Camden. We had been there before and very much enjoy being about a 15-minute walk from the British Library and St. Pancras Station. We made a trip to Aberdeen, Scotland, and to Stonyhurst College near Preston, again looking for evidence of stolen books, and in March, near the end of our stay in Camden, we flew to Rennes to visit the Beaudriers. Bob and Mimi spent the 1993-94 year in Pullman, taking over my courses, while Karen and I taught Bob’s courses at the university in Rennes. Both Bob and Mimi are thriving in retirement, and we visited St. Malo on an absolutely gorgeous day.

Upon our return to Pullman we took about a half a dozen trips to Priest Lake while the Avery cabin is still available. Some of the time after March I spent recovering from a nasty kidney infection which had, as the nephrologist told me, disappeared but left in its wake chaos in my kidney filtering system. It will be some time before things become normal, but my readings show improvement.

Our usual visit in New York City with Hongbo Tan, PhD in English in 1989, was put on hold because her boss, Hank Greenberg, insisted that she go to China for several months to check the books for the Starr Corporation.

We will leave New York City before Pope Francis comes to town on September 24. He is now in Washington D.C. where a friend of mine at Catholic University wrote that the two-hour visit on September 23 to his campus church, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, will cost the school $1,000,000. A mere pittance, I would say, about one third the salary of our football coach.

On our way back to Pullman we will visit friends in Wisconsin, including Jim Stokes, PhD in English in 1979, and Michael Williams, PhD in English in 1985, both at UW Stevens Point (Becky Stephens, PhD in English in 1996, is also there)

Hope you all have a good year until the next newsletter. Our lives will depend upon the spectacular blooming of 50,000 daffodils that volunteers planted along Bishop Boulevard on September 12. Karen, along with Ken Casavant, raised the money for the purchase of the bulbs and helped arrange for the planting. We shall see.

All the best,

Nick K.

Howard McChord (WSU 1960–1971)

Jennifer and I are just back from Paris and Namur, Belgium, where I was invited to be a part of L’intime Festival. My novel, L’homme Qui Marchait Sur La Lune, was featured by a reading by an actor, and questions and comments from two critics and me on stage for over an hour.

We spent three days in Namur, then took the Thalys train to Paris, where we had an apartment in the Marais for ten days. We had fine visits with my publisher, Oliver Gallmeister, translator Thierry Gillyboeuf and his wife Cecile, and Pierre and Eva Cendors, old friends.

We also met with the director of the movie based on my book. The script is just being finished.

Our son Asher, his wife Jessi, and new grandson Mateo, were in Bowling Green when we arrived, and our daughter Susannah, her husband William and daughters Sophia and Alexandria came from Shaker Heights for a wonderful reunion.

I am looking forward to my 83rd birthday. Jennifer and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary this summer, and life has been very kind to us all.

My best to all.

Howard McCord

Susan H. McLeod (WSU 1986-2001)

Dear WSU Friends,

Once again, thanks to Paul for collecting the news. It is always good to hear how and what others are doing.

We have had an interesting year. In early December I had hip replacement surgery, which is every bit as miraculous as everyone tells you (although I was three weeks out from the surgery before I finally decided it had been a good idea). Besides restoring my level of activity, the surgery was also a wake-up call about our house—which although comfortable, is not a good place for folks with aging joints. Daughter Alison came up with a brilliant idea—we should take over her San Diego condo, which is in an area near downtown, and she would move into the old homestead. So we are downsizing, packing and getting ready to swap this month. The new address is above.

In other house news, son Jon and his wife bought a house in Portland, OR, this past Spring, and one of the most pleasant features of the place is a downstairs bedroom known as Grandpa’s Nap Room. We have been to Portland multiple times to stay with them and help out with granddaughter Paityn, now 3 1/2. She is adorable, amazing, and exhausting. We are besotted as only grandparents can be.

Despite the trips back and forth to Portland we have managed to continue our singing in various choirs and our volunteer work. I recently acquired a much-needed co-editor for the Perspectives on Writing Series to help out with the workload. One of the high points for me this year was shepherding to publication a terrific book by someone many of you knew when he was a graduate student, Asao Inoue. Asao is now Director of University Writing at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

The personal highlight of our year was that Jon’s birth family found him and we arranged to meet his birth mom and sister. It was an emotional reunion, but Jon handled it well, and we were delighted to get to know them. (Doug was even more delighted to learn that Jon’s newly discovered sister is married to a scout for the Green Bay Packers.) I do think that open adoptions are so much better than the old method of closing the records; both our kids have now met their birth families, and each has had a very positive experience. As for us, we are fascinated by the similarities we see between the kids and their birth siblings, even to the point of various mannerisms. DNA is a wondrous thing.

Doug and I are celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this year, so that explains the picture below (giant card courtesy of Alison). The other picture is of granddaughter Paityn, dressed for the July 4th parade in her new Portland neighborhood.

Best wishes to all!

Sue

3560 1st. Ave, #11
San Diego, CA 92103
Email: mcleod@writing.ucsb.edu

Barbara Sitko (WSU 1989–2005)

Greetings from western PA, where tomatoes, beans, and flowers grow apace in mercifully cool weather. Jeannette and I traveled a little this spring, joining what is turning out to be an annual Pittsburgh Post-Gazette theatre critic bus tour to the Shakespeare and Shaw Festivals in Canada.

Marcellus Shale and fracking issues continue in our area, although we have had no problems with the well on the southern border of our community center property. We take water samples daily and continue to join neighbors in protesting Hillcorp’s efforts to bypass noise and lighting restrictions near their properties.

I still play keyboard for our congregational liturgies and hope to do so for as long as arthritic fingers allow. And we continue a subscription to the Pittsburgh Symphony, enjoy the Met in HD in Youngstown, and catch community theatre often.

Warm regards to all,

Barbara

Albert von Frank (WSU 1984–2006)

Jane and I are probably overdosing on travel these days, which we did so relatively little of before retirement. A year ago we were on a wonderful cruise up the New England coast, on as far as Corner Brook, Newfoundland. We got into the Saint Lawrence on the way back and spent two days in Quebec, then three days afterwards in Manhattan with friends. It is a good thing that lobster can be prepared in so many different ways! Our December cruise took us to the Caribbean, to South America (Cartagena, Colombia), and Central America (Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize)—all of which places were new to us and delightfully strange. In January we went to MLA in Vancouver, where I gave a paper on Margaret Fuller’s appropriation by the Spiritualists, and had the pleasure of organizing and hosting a retirement dinner for a colleague from Pennsylvania. (This seems now a main form of interaction with old friends.)

In early March we joined a group from the University of Rochester for a week of theatre in London and had the great good fortune of seeing Ralph Fiennes in Man and Superman, Juliette Binoche in Antigone, Mark Strong in A View from the Bridge, a terrific performance of Beckett’s Happy Days, and three other plays not quite as memorable. Being on the other side of the world already, we took advantage by tacking on a cruise from Rome to Greece and Turkey, touching at Olympia, Athens, Ephesus, and Istanbul, then at Naples and Pompeii on the way back. Jane had seen most of these places during her junior year in college, but I had never managed to make it to any of them.

The rest of our year’s trips were Stateside: Boston in May for ALA, where I avoided listening to papers, Glacier National Park in June for a week of golf with a friend, then an exploratory foray to Key West in late June. (I know, no one goes to Key West in the summer, but still Jane and I enjoyed ourselves a great deal, especially after finding that it was slightly cooler than Pullman at the same time.

Hedonism and self-indulgence, I have decided, are among the better uses of retirement, but the work that a career has trained me in offers its deep pleasures, too, so that I find it hard to lay aside the research and writing. Recently (early in September) my annotated edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry was published by Harvard Press.

Conscious that twenty-first century audiences are not exactly clamoring for immersion in nineteenth- century American verse, I thought only a carefully annotated edition stood any chance of making Emerson’s merits known, in or out of the classroom. So The Major Poetry is, in some part, an experiment in salesmanship. The book has already been commented upon in the New Yorker (somewhat to my surprise); but the author of the notice, Dan Chiasson, stolidly affirmed the conventional 40-year-old modernist (if not post- modernist) view of the matter that I had meant to challenge. Probably it is not to be expected that an established contemporary poet would rise to such bait.

Al von Frank

Email: ajvonfrank@roadrunner.com

Nelly C. Zamora (WSU 1976-2003)

We still live in Pullman and are blessed with relatively good health. We continue to travel whenever we can.

In early October of last year, we attended a family friend’s 60th wedding anniversary celebration in Honolulu, HI. During this trip, we also had the chance to fly to Hilo to tour the big island of Hawaii, including Volcanoes National Park. On both the big island and Oahu, we visited with some of Cesar’s former students at Washington State University. It is gratifying to learn that all of them are doing very well in their practice of the veterinary profession.

We visited families and friends in the Philippines in October-November and, during this trip, went to Cesar’s old school at the University of the Philippines, now located in Los Baños, Laguna province. We flew home to Pullman after Thanksgiving and celebrated Christmas in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We were back in the Philippines in March-April, 2015, to attend our niece’s wedding and for Holy Week. We were in Seville, Spain during Holy Week a few years ago and observed elaborate religious processions along neighborhood the streets. Their celebration of Holy Week reminded us of the way it is also celebrated in the Philippines.

In May, we flew to Los Angeles and joined Cesar’s brother and sister-in-law on a drive to Sedona, Arizona, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, Zion National Park in Utah, and a stop in Las Vegas.

The summer was just as busy as friends from near and far came to visit us in Pullman. We also traveled to the San Francisco Bay Areas to visit our daughter, Pauline, and son-in-law, Andreas. In July, we went to the Seattle area to meet with Cesar’s veterinary colleagues and visit our daughter, Jennifer.

I have attached a photo of our cherry harvest last June. We planted a 3-in-1 cherry tree (Bing cherry stock with grafts of Rainier and Lapin cherry varieties) in 2012. We were able to pick about 8 lbs of cherries from the small tree.

The summer has been very hot in Pullman. We normally pick plums in late September/early October, but, this year, the first week of September.

We visited Los Angeles, again, in early September to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit at the California Science Center and join the celebration of Cesar’s brother’s 75th birthday. In less than a week of this writing, we will be flying to Barcelona and join Cesar’s brother and sister-in-law in a Norwegian Cruise Line’s 12-day Mediterranean Cruise. The cruise will stop at ports in Toulon, France; Livorno, Civitavecchia, and Naples in Italy; Mykonos and Piraeus in Greece; Istanbul, and Ephesus in Turkey; and, finally, Venice, Italy. (Thanks, Paul, for your personal insights to some of the places we will be visiting.)

In late October, we will, again, be on our way to visit families and friends in the Philippines.

I have been retired 12 years and really enjoy each day. Even when health problems occur, I am thankful I am able to do what my health allows. I hope all of you are also happy and in good health, and look forward to reading your contributions to this newsletter. Thank you, Paul, for getting this newsletter going.

Best wishes to all of you.

Nelly Zamora

1710 NW Deane Street
Pullman, WA 99163-3508
Email: nellyczamora@hotmail.com