English Retirees Newsletter

28th Edition, November 2018

Chair’s Note

Dear Colleagues,

Perhaps appropriately enough, I am sitting down to write this note as we head into Thanksgiving Break. There are still a few more days in the office for me, but there is no reason to delay any further giving thanks—and there are some to give—for this past year in our department.

The first of those thanks should be devoted to your newest member, Lynn Gordon, who retired this past spring semester. Lynn made an inestimable contribution to our students and departments both through her work in linguistics and, just importantly, through the Avery Microcomputer Lab, sustaining it through the repeated loss of air conditioning, state funding, and all sorts of other challenges. I hope you are enjoying your time away, and please know that enrollments in linguistics continue to grow, and that we may have found a way yet to pry out the degree from the shadow of General Studies!

Other departures have been sadder, including the loss of Barbara Sitko in May 2018 and, most recently, the death of Boyd Benson (one of the first editors of LandEscapes) just this month. Reflecting on their passages reminds me again that I, and all of us here, continue to rest upon the accomplishments of those who have gone before us.

In the department our work continues apace, and there do seem to be more glimmers of hope as we look to the future and, eventually, WSU’s emergence from the financial difficulties of the past year. The balance sheet in the College of Arts and Sciences looks better, bolstered by the arrival in September of more than 4500 first-year students to our Pullman campus alone. Those students were joined by our new dean—and English professor!—Matthew Jockers, a specialist in digital humanities and Irish literature who comes to us from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Changes are afoot in our department as well. We are currently searching for both a new associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition to serve as our Director of Composition and a clinical-rank professor in web design to support the Digital Technology and Culture program. Courses in DTC are bursting at the seams, and enrollments in English are strong as well.

Individual faculty continue to outpublish our peers—12 books or edited collections came out from our colleagues in 201718, and another 10 are forthcoming. In the same period they also published more than 40 essay-length works, and another 22 are soon to be published. We’re also racking up national awards, including an award for excellence in literary criticism to Aaron Oforlea and Kim Christen’s securing of WSU’s first-ever institutional Mellon grant. Worries over the demise of the humanities may be understandable, but they remain premature.

I want to close this letter, however, on a more personal note. After more than six years as chair of our department, this past October I was named CAS’ Associate Dean for Faculty. I have been doing that job part-time while continuing to serve as chair and guiding us through this transition, which should result in the announcement sometime next month of a new chair.

My move down the hill to Thompson Hall will be complete at the end of December, which makes this the last letter I will write to you in this capacity. Thus the thanks with which I began this letter are deeply felt, and they are certainly extended to you. Many of you knew me first as a new assistant professor, and I have genuinely valued the support you have extended to me and our department over the past years. I hope you will not be a stranger to Avery, as I promise myself not to be.

Best wishes,

Todd Butler

Editor’s Note

Despite the late notice and various other difficulties, many of your managed to pass on your news and pictures for this issue, for which I am very grateful.

Recent retirees include George Kennedy and Lynn Gordon. I heard of Lynn’s retirement after this issue was assembled, but hope she will join our list of contributors next year.

There are underlined links in this issue which will take you to Web pages or email addresses if you click on them. I have polished my Apple Pages skills a bit more, so I think they will work properly this time.

Obituary

Barbara Sitko

Sister Barbara Sitko, HM, formerly Sr. M. Dolorosa, died Sunday, May 27, at McGee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was 79. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she entered the Sisters of the Humility of Mary Congregation in 1956.

A graduate of Lourdes Academy, she entered the Sisters of the Humility of Mary Congregation in 1956 from St. Charles Borromeo Parish, Parma. Sr. Barbara completed her BA in English and French graduating magna cum laude from Notre Dame College of Cleveland in 1962. Her MA in literature in 1976 was from Bucknell University, Lewiston, PA. She was awarded her PhD in rhetoric in 1990 from Carnegie- Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Her first teaching assignment was at Magnificat High School, Rocky River.

Barbara taught at Villa Maria High School, Villa Maria, PA and later was an instructor at Carnegie-Mellon University.

She taught at Washington State University in Pullman from 1989-2005 as an associate professor of English.

While serving at Washington State University, Pullman, WA she served as a council member on the Leadership Team of the HM Sisters traveling the long distance as needed. She was the first president/CEO of Villa Maria Education and Spirituality Center from 2005-08.

After 2008 Sr. Barbara never considered herself totally retired as she offered her time and attention at Villa Maria as a hospitality volunteer for VMESC, a library volunteer and periodically as organist for Mass and other services.

The daughter of the late Joseph V. and Julia (Mejak) Sitko is survived by her nephews, Norbert and Joseph and their families, and her sisters in the Humility of Mary Congregation with whom she shared her life for 61 years.

Paul Brians (WSU 1968–2008)

Work on the Natural Bainbridge photo book for the BI Land Trust ramped up this year. Three years into the project and we finally began selecting photos and laying them out. I did a lot of extra shooting and also worked on other people’s pictures. As I write this we are waiting for sample proofs from the printer to see whether they can render colors accurately. The new target date is July 2019.

Jana Argersinger came over for two of the protest marches in Seattle early in the year. All three of us joined the “March for Our Lives.”

Paula was cast for a part in the Island Theatre production of a play about Ezra Pound by Sean O’Leary, a local playwright. I joined her on stage at the senior center in a semi-staged reader’s theatre production of Almost, Maine, each of us playing several roles in a series of comic sketches. The last time I was “on stage” in a play was in first grade when I was head dwarf in Snow White. I really enjoyed it and had an even better time in the Kingston Readers’ Theatre production of Neill Simon’s The Odd Couple (female version) in which I had to practice a Spanish accent to read one of the two male roles. Another production of sketches by local writers was not so much fun (chaotic rehearsals, some lousy scripts), but we continue to enjoy the informal potluck play readings sponsored by Island Theatre.

I continued photographing work parties, meetings, and new properties for the Land Trust. My annual photographs of the Winslow Way July 4th and Halloween events have become very popular on Facebook.

Snow has become rare here, but we had one dusting on February 22.

In June, we greatly enjoyed visiting with old friends at Dick and Fran’s 50th wedding anniversary. The Kiesslings kindly hosted us.

I was involved in a lot of audio-visual work, including upgrading our home system to 4K HDR and helping the senior center select an ultrashort-throw projector for use by our photo club. The projector sits about six inches from the screen and produces amazing images.

I continue to do press interviews on language-usage issues, including a long one with a Wall Street Journal reporter speaking with me from Australia which came to nothing because I did not agree with the nitpicking point he was pursuing. But I did get a nice quotation and link in Caroline Bologna’s article “Why Do We Pronounce ‘Bologna’ As ‘Baloney’?” (October 31, 2018).

In mid-September Paula left for a singing workshop and visit with our Island friends who have moved to Italy, and then joined me for a wonderful ten days exploring places in Paris we had not experienced before, plus side trips to Écouen, Chantilly, and Reims. You can watch a short slide show of my favorite photos from the trip on YouTube.

We stayed in a rented apartment in Montparnasse.

On our way home we visited with Megan in New York for a few days, especially enjoying our walks in Central Park.

We had the pleasure of her company here on the island at summer’s end and are looking forward to her annual Christmas visit next month.

My friend and neighbor David Sigmond took me out on his new boat to shoot shoreline shots of Bainbridge. I posted one a day on Facebook to a lot of enthusiastic response. I try to use FB mainly for upbeat and entertaining materials.

Modestly cheered by the recent election, we are looking forward to more good news in the coming year while we continue to enjoy our lives here on Bainbridge. Feel free to check us out on Facebook to see what we are up to.

Paul

Leota Day (WSU 1970–1988)

Hi, Folks,

First off, Paul. I have wanted to tell you for a while, now, how much I appreciate the peacefulness of your photo collections on Facebook. They are a lovely change from the pervasive political stridency. And, thanks for continuing with ERN. 


I have been amazed at how fast time has passed. It has been 30 years since we left Pullman. We still have very fond memories of all of you and the 18 years we spent there.

Dutch and I spent our usual time in Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa when it is dark and wet up here in the Northwest. Over the years, we have met many friends from the northern U.S and southern Canada—all of us escaping to the sun.

This fall, we went “leaf peeping” in New England. We’d been told many times how much prettier the fall colors were in New England than anywhere else. Every year the color presents itself differently, of course, and we may have missed the prime dates, but I find I am parochial about fall colors. It’s my favorite season and our changing leaves here are beautiful! 



We also visited Boston and thoroughly enjoyed seeing historical sites and just wandering around the town. We walked across the river to Cambridge and tramped around the M.I.T. and Harvard campuses. The attached photo shows us trying to capture our skewed reflection in the Frank Gehry building at M.I.T. Our cellphones, of course, are front and center in the photo (insert appropriately ironic smiley face here). 


Our children and grandchildren are all healthy and happy. We are lucky they all live so close. After Thanksgiving, the grandchildren will spend a day with us decorating the tree and hanging outdoor lights.

They are old enough to climb the ladders, now, so Dutch and I do not. We just hold the ladder and give directions.

This past year, I advocated for an online tee time sign up system for my golf club. Then, with the help of another member, we created and implemented this change from in-person, on-paper signups to an online process. The club members and the golf course Pro Shop readily adapted to the new process with only a couple of small hitches. It was very time consuming, but really good for me to work through such a mentally challenging task.
 


We hope all of you are well and have had a good year. Inevitably, Dutch and I are aging, as you can see from the years since we first lived in Pullman. But so far, so good!
 


Leota and Dutch Day

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

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1975-2001)

Greetings! Another year is passing by too quickly. Plus Thanksgiving Day marks three-quarters-of-a-century since I was born on a cold day in northern Minnesota. Dick and I will have Thanksgiving dinner with friends at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane.

In January we finally visited the Hawaiian Islands, something everyone we know seems to have done already. We flew to Honolulu then travelled among the four main islands with a Road Scholar group on a mid-sized Norwegian Line cruise ship.

Remember the false missile alert? We were in Honolulu, listening to an excellent illustrated lecture on the volcanic formation of the islands. Suddenly people’s cell phones started to chime warnings (tsunami, we thought). Then a voice on the hotel intercom said “incoming missile,” stay inside, stay away from windows. That is exactly where we were, there was nothing we could do, so the lecturer continued.

The false alarm announcement came about twenty to thirty minutes later.

We were in Volcanoes National Park well before the most current eruption, but we did walk close to the shore where the lava from a previous one had curled, swirled, and was still not rock hard.

Hawaii may be vulnerable and volatile, but it is also fascinating. The museums and architectural sites we visited emphasized the history and culture of the Hawaiian people, especially in connection with the U.S. both before and after statehood.

Back in Honolulu, we spent an enjoyable day with Gary and Becky Thorgaard. We may not be cruise- oriented people and couldn’t learn the hula, but we are glad we made the trip.

Our only other long journey so far in 2018 was in late June/early July when we booked with UnTours an apartment on a canal in Leiden The Netherlands for two weeks.

I flew first to the UK to present a paper at the 28th Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference, this year at the University of Kent in Canterbury. The paper was a small part of a much longer essay forthcoming in the Woolf Studies Annual. Then I joined Dick in Leiden where we enjoyed several excellent museums there and elsewhere. Dick’s older brother Bob lives in Rotterdam, so we also were able to spend valuable time with him and wife Hendrien.

If any of you remember our former graduate student, Wayne Chapman, he is now living in Portland, having retired from Clemson University after a distinguished career as CUP editor and a continuing one as scholar. He and his family visited Pullman in August and were able to have lunch with Virginia Hyde and Dave Barnes (before Virginia’s recent health problems) as well as dinner with Dick and me.

Otherwise, our year has been a continuation of stable health, previous varied activities, as well as enjoyment and support of the arts. As for the constant barrage of national and international crises, we can only hope that abuses of power, hate, greed, and divisiveness cannot get any worse. Oh, wait! They just did!

Diane

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

Rich Haswell (WSU 1967–1980)

Hello from snowy Colorado. Our house has enjoyed almost ten inches of snow so far this fall, more than we got all last winter.

Nothing new to report. Just hiking, writing, car trips, grandchildren, and teasing the dog. My and Norbert Elliot’s Early History of Holistic Essay Scoring is in press. We are waiting for proofs. Jan finished a long essay on the relevance of Aquinas to contemporary literary criticism, and has started another on Aquinas and James Lee Burke.

Am I the oldest living member of this retiree’s newsletter?

My outstanding contribution to world civilization this year was a post to a Colorado native flower listserv. It shows a community of two flowers, red swampfire (Salicornia rubra) and horned seablite (Suaeda calceoliformis), in an alkali flat on the east side of the San Luis Valley. Not exactly Wordsworth’s “host, of dancing daffodils,” but the post got 203 likes, 7 comments, and 63 shares. Not bad for a listserv of around 2,000 members.

From the west side of the San Luis Valley, hang in there, better times are around the corner!

And check out The Daily Doublespeak: Exposing Everyday Propaganda, a new blog run by the Rhetoricians for Peace. Contribute!

Nick Kiessling (WSU 1967–2000)

Dear Fellow Retirees,

We have had some reversals in 2018. Three of our friends have had strokes which has meant slow recoveries. Ron Ziegler, Mike Owen, and Virginia Hyde are all on the mend, and they are working hard every inch of the way to becoming their former selves. It is not clear whether Ron and Mike, former biking companions, will be able to make the Pullman to Moscow run in the future. My own and Karen’s health have been ok, but there are, as one would expect, minor inconveniences. After a routine exam in January, my doctor ordered a CAT scan which revealed, to our surprise, an iliac aneurysm the size of a tangerine.

The way out might have been quick and painless but a vascular surgeon, Adnan Rizvi, encased it in metal thread which is supposed to render the aneurysm harmless. My mummy will be of great interest to archeologists in 3018.

Our lives are following a familiar pattern: Three weeks in an upper east side condo in New York City in the fall, short stays in Seattle during the academic year, three weeks on Anna Maria Island in Florida, and numerous short stays in the Avery cabin on Priest Lake in the summer. I very much missed my Sunfish sail boat and repurchased it for use this last summer.

My days of scholarly research are now pretty well over. I have some things I would like to do, but when I read what people in my field are doing, I marvel at the time and energy they must have spent on their research and writing. The younger people are truly amazing, and the thought of competing frightens me. So I limit myself to reading their work in scholarly magazines which I can access on my home computer. One of my pleasures is reading issues of TLS passed on to me from my neighbor, Stan Linden. In former times I knew most of the contributors, but with each passing year new and unfamiliar names appear more frequently.

One of my lesser “pleasures” is serving as a Whitman County CASA person, a court appointed special advocate or guardian ad litem. I have been doing that for over five years and it takes a lot of preparation for, in my case, uneven results. I am hoping to end that service with a final superior court appearance in January of 2019.

Karen remains busy with her boards and committees. She is on the Grand Avenue Greenway committee, the Friends of Hospice Serenity House committee, the board of Aging and Long-Term Care of Eastern Washington, the citizens advisory board of the Rural Transportation Planning Organization and the Poverty Awareness Task Force. She is active in her beloved literary study group, the Fortnightly Club of Pullman, which just celebrated 125 years in existence here. In August she published an article in the Bunchgrass Historian on the founder of that club, Hattie Bryan, the wife of WSU president, Enoch Bryan.

Our two sons continue in their work. Mark is a RN in a Tacoma hospital and has a delightful partner who works as an RN in a Puyallup hospital. Dan is primarily an artist who has zero interest in selling or distributing his work, but he manages to get by on odd jobs, and most importantly, takes good care of business around the house.

I am writing this in New York, looking out of my window at the sunset, and not at all regretting that I did not run in the NY Marathon yesterday. Let the 50,000 have their fun without me.

Nick

Howard McCord (WSU 1960–1970)

We have ten grandchildren now, two born this year. All are talented and beautiful. We have a percussionist, a cellist, a guitarist, and several are science-oriented. I turned 86 today, and am recovering well from effects of infection which impacted brain in early June. Finally reading at old speed. Leaves are turning and falling on swamp back of house. English translation of French film script completed this summer, and now waiting for backers in France, or wherever. It is a interesting take on my novel, and I hope to see it someday!

I have fond memories of Pullman and WSU in the sixties. Many wonderful friends.

Howard

Nelly C. Zamora (WSU 1976–2003)

Dear Fellow Retirees,
 


Greetings from the Philippines! Cesar and I arrived in Marikina, the town we both grew up, last October 30th.

We are able to celebrate two important dates: November 1st (All Saints Day) and 2nd (All Souls Day) with our families here. These are big holidays in the entire country.



As of this writing, we have two more weeks before we return to the US. We have the chance to visit relatives and friends, and enjoy the local fruits in season.


We return to Pullman on December 2nd, and few days later we leave for California, to help our daughter Pauline, in taking care of her husband, who has many health problems in connection with Steven
Johnson’s Syndrome.

Nelly

Email: nellyczamora@hotmail.com

Alex Hammond (WSU 1975–2009)

Barbara and I spent another year on Pullman’s College Hill, which is again lively as WSU’s expensive football team does well on the field if not making much progress on its debt. As in years past, Barbara continued representing College Hill on Pullman’s Police Advisory Board as well as serving on the boards of Palouse River Counseling (Whitman County’s public provider of mental health services) and the Leaseholders Association at Idaho’s Heyburn State Park. In addition to organizing for a local Gourmet group, she has been particularly active in Fortnightly, a century-old book club also graced by Karen Kiessling and Fran Law.

My work for the Whitman County Democrats and, with Dick Law, for the Eastern Washington Committee for Progress once again recalled the labors of Sisyphus: our various efforts to aid Lisa Brown’s challenge to McMorris Rodgers for the 5th Congressional District seat failed early and decisively on election night, as did the campaigns of many other progressives in this part of the state even if nation-wide Democrats took control of the House of Representatives.

I continue on as Treasurer for the College Hill Association, serving on its board with George Kennedy as the CHA works to hold off deterioration and irresponsible development on College Hill. The Holiday gathering for CHA supporters in Bruce and Loretta Anawalt’s restored brick house (now an AirBnB) exposed lots of folks to Bruce’s elegant transformation of its original structure, and the group secured a grant that helped put the restored Greystone Church on the local Historic Register. But it’s clearly very slow work.

Our travels this year were focused on family. They began with a visit to our son as he did production design for a TV pilot in Vancouver, B.C., then a gathering in Los Angeles for a prize piano concert by grandson Maxwell, who is applying to colleges this fall, and for basketball games by 15-year old grandson Christopher, who has managed to reach 6’ 3” with no clear reason for the elevation.

Our main trip was to a family reunion in Albuquerque, where we combined the Balloon Fiesta with days of talk and sharing food with cousins from Mexico and California. My efforts to keep track of the names and lives of Paez-Urquidi brothers and sisters and their children (my mother’s family) were less than successful.

We extended that trip for first-ever visits to Austin and San Antonio, where my mother’s childhood home still stands and where the Alamo presentations avoid mentioning that protecting slavery from Mexico’s constitutional ban of it was the cause its defenders died for.

As in prior years, Barbara continues her small private practice as a psychologist and offers training seminars for pre-doctoral interns at the WSU Counseling Center, while I go on working on Edgar Allan Poe. I am pleased to say that I am publishing an article on Poe’s early fiction and a book chapter in the Oxford Handbook on Poe this fall, but I note with regret that the editing of Poe Studies will move from the Department of English to Brigham Young when Jana Argersinger retires at the end of this academic year.

With thanks again to Paul for doing this newsletter, Alex (and Barbara)

1110 N.E. Indiana St. Pullman, WA 99163 (509) 332-4104

Susan H. McLeod (WSU 1986–2001)

Dear Friends, Again, thanks to Paul for putting us in touch with one another. I hope this finds everyone doing well.

We have a new address! Doug and I had been thinking about moving to a retirement community for some time, but a couple of events in the Spring, viz. some issues with condo living (including blackwater flooding–ugh), and the realization that I needed a left hip replacement to match the one on the right, made us decide to move sooner rather than later. Once we made up our minds, things went quickly: we sold our condo in one minute, moved a month later, and I had my hip replaced three weeks after the move. We were a little breathless for a while, but we survived, and I am walking well again.

We had settled on the Front Porch Communities in general when we first started thinking about moving, since they are non-profit, affordable, and have an excellent reputation. When good friends moved to Casa de Mañana we decided on it in particular, partly because of the location (right on the ocean) but mostly because of the community itself. There are a number of retired professionals here; I recently had breakfast with a retired pianist from the Eastman School of Music and a woman who is an expert on Chinese Buddhism who taught at Columbia. The residents make decisions about activities, so we have lectures, concerts, and various courses offered; I’m enjoying one of the latter on world religions, but I could also be attending one on astronomy. La Jolla itself has a lot to offer; just up the hill from us is The Athenaeum, a music and arts library that offers concerts and lectures. There are also regular chamber music concerts in a nearby church that has great acoustics. You can tell we are enthusiastic about our new home.

I am still senior editor for the Perspectives on Writing series with the WAC Clearinghouse/ University Press of Colorado and enjoying reading the scholarship of the up-and-coming generation. Doug and I are also mentoring a couple of international scholars (his in Mexico, mine here in the States), which is rewarding. Our kids are now middle-aged—how did that happen?—and doing well. We enjoy spending time with them.

Sue

849 Coast Blvd., LC 201
La Jolla, CA 92037
Email: mcleod@ucsb.edu