English Retirees Newsletter

29th Edition, September 2019

Chair’s Note

Hello, all,

Since I began my term as chair of the English Department on January 2, 2019, I have enjoyed working with a great group of faculty, staff, and students. Thanks to the support of our alumni, we were able to send student interns for our literary journal, Blood Orange Review (BOR), to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Portland, and BOR held its first literary contest. We had a range of visiting writers, including Crystal Wilkinson, Mita Mahato, Kaveh Akbar, and Rachel Morgan.

Our first Visiting Writers Series event for Fall 2019 will be at 5:00 PM on September 11, and will feature WSUV’s Pavithra Narayanan’s and Thabiti Lewis’s film, BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement (Fine Arts Building, Room 5062). A new issue of our undergraduate journal, LandEscapes, was released in April.

With the help of my intern, Miranda Sherrell, as well as Tomie Gowdy-Burke, Liz Siler, and Laura Powers, the department produced an alumni newsletter, which we hope to do annually. This year’s newsletter features the accomplishments of Donna Campbell, Ashley Boyd, Will Hamlin, Desiree Hellegers, Anna Plemons, and Aaron Oforlea; the emerita award for Diane Gillespie; as well as news of the passing of Professor Emerita, Virginia Hyde, and Boyd Benson, founder of our undergraduate journal, LandEscapes.

In Summer 2019, we held the first Pullman Experimental Theatre for high school students, directed by an English major, Avery Barnwell. The performance was at Regional Theatre of the Palouse, and we look forward to making Pullman Experimental Theatre an annual event.

We would love to hear about all of you —your accomplishments, your ventures in reading and writing, and your adventures following retirement. Please send any news to dl.potts@wsu.edu.

Best,

Donna

D.L. Potts
Professor and Chair
Department of English
Washington State University

Editor’s Note

Donna Potts, the new chair of the department, has warmly welcomed our newsletter and promptly supplied us with the above information and a request that we keep in touch.

The current issue of the departmental newsletter English Matters contains a nice piece about the Ruth Slonim Endowed Scholarship and another about Patty Ericsson.

She seems to be genuinely interested in keeping up with the doings of us retirees and will be seeing that printed copies of the newsletter continue to be deposited in the library archives.

I intend to stay on an early September schedule from now on if at all possible. If that is a serious problem, please let me know.

Paul Brians

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

Obituary

Virginia Hyde

Virginia Hyde (79) has passed from this life in Pullman, WA. She suffered a series of strokes starting in October 2018, and she passed away on January 2, 2019. She was preceded in death by her mother Mary Hazel Crosswhite, her father John Franklin Crosswhite, two brothers, Frank Samuel Crosswhite, Glenn Stephen Crosswhite, and a half-brother Leigh John Crosswhite. She is survived in her near family by her husband David Barnes, son Mike Milano, sister-in-law Carol Crosswhite, niece Katherine Beasley, two nephews, Mark and Jason, and a great nephew Joshua, the son of Katherine.

Virginia was born in Atchison Kansas on October 5, 1938. Her family farmed there until WWII when they moved to Tacoma, Washington for work in the defense industry. After the war the family moved back to Kansas where her mother Hazel got a degree in education. In 1948 the family moved to Coolidge, Arizona, where Hazel taught in the local schools. Virginia attended high school in Arizona and then married a classmate Jack Hyde from which the name Hyde came. The marriage lasted only a few years but the name Hyde continued.

For a time she worked as a newspaper editor and other jobs in Arizona. Then (in only three years) she got a BA degree in German from Arizona State University. From this springboard she went to the University of Wisconsin and (again in only three years) she finished a PhD degree in English and came to Washington State University as an assistant Professor in 1970.

Virginia was, for over 30 years, Professor of English Literature at Washington State University. Her teaching and research work usually dealt with the Victorian and later time periods. In that context she taught a very broad range of courses and published critical works dealing with numerous authors.

Some of her major publications deal with the poet and novelist D. H. Lawrence. Her book The Risen Adam which makes connections between Lawrence and the Bible, gained her international recognition. She was also invited by the Cambridge University Press to edit the definitive edition of the D. H. Lawrence work Mornings in Mexico which was well received.

In addition to her academic activities she was also interested in other things in the world. One of our favorite places and things to do was to go swimming in the Snake River near Wawawai. She called it the “wine dark sea.” Virginia’s body was cremated and when I go our ashes will be mixed and scattered into the waters of the Snake River at Wawawai.

She was also a poet of great skill, was deeply involved in collecting a lifetime of poems she had written, and was near to editing them into a book for publication. I will at some point try to finish that project.

David Barnes, Loving Husband to Virginia Hyde.

Paul Brians (WSU 1968–2008)

Since last year’s issue came out, Paula & I have taken only one trip: to Bend, Oregon where daughter Megan moved after spending most of her adult life in New York City. She was determined to escape to a more natural setting and is greatly enjoying her life there.

Bend is a flourishing upscale community high in the mountains. A river runs through it, bordered by trails and parks. Condos are perched on top of these cliffs.

We both enjoyed performing in a readers’ theatre production of Christopher Durang’s comic updating of Chekhov, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. I read the part of Vanya. Paula also performed in another production in nearby Kingston in the summer.

We also enjoyed the local “Ten-Minute Play Festival” with short dramatic works being presented by local authors. Out of over a hundred submissions ten were chosen for production, with many of them being quite impressive. We live in a very creative community.

I began hosting a series of opera showings on DVD at the senior center which were lightly but enthusiastically attended. I’m going to try again in November to see if people are in a more operatic mood.

Most of the year has been occupied with walks in the park and the woods and work in the garden.

But this has also been a big year for my photography. I have had three public exhibits (at the senior center, the town library, and a local realty agency) and am selling photographic greeting cards in three local stores.

On a trip to Seattle with a friend I caught this striking street musician in front of the downtown Target.

The book Natural Bainbridge was finally published by the local land trust and has received a warm welcome. I took 3/4 of the photos in the book, including the cover shot.

I continue to photograph volunteers for the land trust doing monthly stewardship work on protected land—a real challenge given that they are constantly moving, the lighting is often very challenging, and it is hard to avoid people presenting their butts to my lens. But my favorite outing was a session depicting the high school conservation team clearing invasive thistles from one of our most beautiful properties.

Leota Day (WSU 1970–1988)

Hi, folks,

Here I am, the day before the assignment is due, trying to scribble out (on a keyboard!), my life for the past year. I am grateful, though, that Paul gives us this assignment helping us to maintain some connection.

Last year, I was grumbling about our vegetable garden not producing as usual. This year, the problem is more apparent: we have rabbits! Wild rabbits at that, not just some pet that got dumped. Since I am not ready to My golf improved as a result of the above-mentioned golf camp. I have had a relatively enjoyable season. I have won, over the course of an 8-month season, almost a hundred bucks! A dollar here, two dollars there, and we are talking real money! Over the last couple of years, go all “Elmer Fudd” and “Kill the wabbits,” we are growing flowers instead. We had not had rabbits that I was aware of for 30 years! I guess we do not have many natural predators. Coyote sightings are up, though, and we live in a pretty urban neighborhood.

Dutch and I are doing well and still traveling. We spent our usual weeks in Ixtapa, Mexico, in January. It is lovely to get out of the dark, gloomy winter and into the sun! We also took a road trip to Sedona, Arizona, in the Spring to attend a Road Scholar Golf Camp. For the first time ever, we did not have a paper map with us and just used Google Maps. It was very disconcerting not to know quite where in the world we were or how long we would be traveling through eastern Nevada. We are heading to Italy soon and already have a paper map!

I have initiated an online signup system for my golf club. To paraphrase Elizabeth Warren, “I have an app for that!” Still, it was a complex and detailed project which gave my aging brain a much-needed workout.

The grandkids, Isaac and Evelyn, are entering the 7th and 3rd grades, respectively. Isaac, at 12, is almost as tall as I am (Possibly, I am shrinking a little, too). He is turning out for soccer and cross country running this fall. Evelyn, at 8, is doing soccer. I know this may be obvious, but it is much warmer attending soccer games here than it was in Pullman.

Kecia has begun self-employment as a Life Coach. She is still working with her previous boss, but that job morphed into coaching her boss, which ultimately led to training and certification as a coach. Chad continues to work at Fred Meyer. And, luckily for us, he continues to housesit for us when we travel.

So far, we have our health and we have our family. Life is good. Hope you all happy and healthy, too.

Leota and Dutch Day

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

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1975–2001)

We have not traveled as much this year. Still, although we hadn’t cross-country skied in several years, Dick and I went with a group of Pullmanites to the Methow Valley in February, stayed at the Mazama Country Inn, and tried out our old equipment. We could still ski, Dick with his biathlon background especially well, but we got stiff and sore.

We also made a fair number of trips to Spokane for doctor appointments, concerts, and plays plus a few trips to Baker City, Oregon, where Dick’s son Dan and wife Lynne have a lovely home on a golf course. Now we are looking forward to a Road Scholar trip in October to the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lakes, Ontario.

I am still active professionally. When Alex Hammond kindly nominated me for a WSU Emeritus Society Legacy of Excellence Award, I gave an illustrated lecture entitled “What’s Left to Say About Virginia Woolf?” Soon afterwards, my long article entitled “Maps of Her Own: Virginia Woolf In and Beyond the Archives” appeared in the Woolf Studies Annual. I had been working off and on for years on Virginia Woolf’s cartographical imagery in connection with individual maps, world atlases, travel guides, and histories, all parts of the Leonard and Virginia Woolf Library in Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections. Then, this past June, I flew to Cincinnati to present a paper at the Twenty-ninth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Appropriately for a professor emerita, my paper was “’The being grows rings’: Leonard and Virginia Woolf on Aging/Ageism.”

We continue to be active in the community. Dick has been working hard to help restructure the operations at the Gladish Community and Cultural Center and to secure grants to redo parts of the huge, flat roof. I have my exercise group and the Pleiades Investment Club.

Dick and I continue to support the Young Artists’ Competition for the Washington Idaho Symphony and to enjoy the concerts under a new director, Dan Pham. Since we are no longer Palouse Dance Club officers, we can just go and dance, something we’ll do until, as an elderly couple we knew memorably said, “We just go out there and hold each other up!”

“I am so important to myself,” Virginia Woolf mused in her diary in 1928, “yet . . . to other people: like the shadow passing over the downs.” Still we write our little summaries to salute other English department retirees over the years and across the miles. Salve! Sante!

Diane

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

Alex Hammond (WSU 1975–2009)

A highlight this year for Barbara and me was escaping the long winter on Pullman’s College Hill in late February for a 14-day Viking cruise across the Atlantic with old UCLA friends, followed by a week exploring Barcelona and another learning to deal with hills, trolleys, and cobblestones in Lisbon.

Unfortunately, I had to miss Diane Gillespie’s lecture for WSU’s Emeritus Society when it recognized her post-retirement scholarship with its Legacy of Excellence Award, a loss not compensated for either by Gaudi’s wonderfully excessive architecture or the discovery of Pasteis de Nata.

The rest of our travel was connected to family in California. Barbara spent a month in Merced helping her sister recuperate from an operation, and we had multiple visits to our son Alec and his wife in Los Angeles. As I have mentioned before, both are in the film industry, with Alec’s current gig as production designer involving a movie being filmed in Vancouver, B. C., and Japan, his wife Amy’s juggling multiple clients with her increasingly busy research company.

Various family members gathered in Silverlake and Santa Monica for our grandson Maxwell’s piano concerts, his high school graduation in late May (he is now in his first year at Yale), and his younger brother’s basketball games—Christopher has become a sophomore in high school this fall and is already being courted by college coaches.

Seeing our daughter Elizabeth and her partner Carlos Means was confined to Maxwell’s graduation gathering. She is still living in La Paz, Mexico, leading outdoor courses on the Baja peninsula and in Alaska for various environmental groups, and now teaching a sailing course at the local university, which owned no sail boats when she took the job. Sadly, both she and Carlos are dealing with the recent death of his father, founder of Baja Expeditions and a major force in conservation in Mexico.

As in years past, Barbara continued being active in a book club, Gourmet group, and various organization boards such as the Pullman’s Police Advisory Board, and the Leaseholders Association at Idaho’s Heyburn State Park.

This summer, in addition to replacing a 100-foot sewer pipe that succumbed to age and tree roots, we managed to spend a fair amount of time at our 1930s Idaho cabin, where maintenance also loomed large and I struggled with repairs to the aging auxiliary outboard and fragile sails of a 1978 Catalina 22. While Barbara’s private practice as a psychologist is down to one client, she continues to do consulting work and chairs the board of Palouse River Counseling. I am still active with the Whitman County Democrats and the College Hill Association and continue hanging about the WSU library with my Poe research, now focused on the last stage of a guide to the Poe source collection in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.

I am pleased to say that two of my Poe essays appeared in print this year, one a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe, the other an article on Poe and Melville’s Pierre in Poe Studies.

In both of the latter pieces, I again benefited from the wonderful editing skills of Jana Argersinger, who has retired after thirty years at WSU, twenty-nine of which involved editorial positions on Poe Studies (now being edited at Brigham Young University) and ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance under their various titles and shifting fortunes. Al von Frank and others who contribute letters to this newsletter helped mark her retirement at a gathering that Barbara and I hosted for her in mid-August. We cannot help but feel the personal and professional loss that Jana’s leaving the department creates.

With thanks again to Paul for doing this newsletter,

Alex (and Barbara)

1110 N.E. Indiana St.
Pullman, WA 99163

Rich Haswell (WSU 1967–1980)

Jan and I had a passing good year. Except for an inside-passage Alaskan cruise up to Glacier Bay, we confined our travels to the wilder parts of Colorado. Much of the time we were after elusive species of wildflowers—an endless hobby that had some unexpected successes. The photograph, which I took in the field, is of southern flax (Linum australe). The flower is so rare in Colorado that William Weber, the state’s preeminent wildflower expert, now in his nineties, never saw or collected it.

As the summer progressed, we sought higher and higher elevations. The other photograph is of Jan and dog Dobby in an alpine field of August flowers, above 11,000 feet. The view is west toward the Sneffels Range of the western San Juans, with three or four peaks just under 14,000 feet. Silverton is a few miles to the south.

As for scholarship, my Early History of Holistic Scoring, co-authored with Norbert Elliot, will be out in a few weeks from Utah State University Press. Five years in the planning, researching, and writing—it is a book I will be happy to have on the shelf rather than in my head and computer.

Rich

Nick Kiessling (WSU 1867–2000)

Dear Retirees,

Again, thank you, Paul, for your work on the English Retirees Newsletter.

Karen and I had a busy year. All of the work is voluntary, but when we commit, we should take it to the end. Karen has projects that keep her constantly in meetings in Pullman and Spokane. These range from local hospice, beautification, and fund-raising committees to travels to Spokane for Senior Citizen programs in Eastern Washington. I still have things to finish involving The Anatomy of Melancholy and as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused children. The last, after I have served for over six years, I wanted desperately to jettison, but I must stay on until a final superior court appearance in December.

We have been doing, as most retirees, a lot of traveling: three weeks in New York City in October, ten days in Seattle in December, two weeks in Florida in March, a month in Oxford in May, a few days in Pocatello in August, a week in Wisconsin this month. Only the Oxford trip was for business, and that involved my own personal research, mainly at the Christ Church library, and some difficult discussions with Oxford University Press personnel about their digital edition projects.

As far as recreation in Pullman goes, the traditional philosophical/theological discussions continue twice a week at Rico’s, where nothing is sacred and all conversation stays in Rico’s; our trips to Avery cabin at Priest Lake are becoming less frequent, but our sons use it more; and biking down the Lewiston Hill to Costco in Clarkston, to Moscow, and to One Shot Charley’s in Harrison, Idaho, are fairly regular.

I have given up tennis and racket-ball and now, mirabile dictu, I can walk without pain. I see former colleagues, Linden, von Frank, Nellie Zamora, and Hammond, here in Pullman, but my contact with those still in Avery Hall is more limited. I have occasional beers with Mike Hanly and Will Hamlin, and couple of contacts with our current and very competent department chair, Donna Potts, who attended Virginia Hyde’s funeral service, gave a fascinating lecture on Nancy Van Doren at a local historical society meeting, and joined Mike Hanly and me at a local pub for a late afternoon beer. The department is in good hands.

This coming year will see some changes. No more trips overseas, no more Priest Lake since the cabin will be sold, and our annual travel to New York each October will probably end. Now to attend to my garden.

May we all live to write another annual letter,

Nick

510 SE Crestview St.
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: kiesslin@yahoo.com

Howard McCord (WSU 1960–1970)

I will be 87 in a couple of months. I am working on a new book of poems following the restoration of good blood flow to my brain by carotid stents earlier this year. The Muse needs blood. The French translation of my Longjaunes His Periplus (Kayak, 1968) has just appeared. It is the third of my books to be translated into French, all in print!


My son, Colman, born in Pullman in 1960, died in May of brain cancer, and I and my other five children, and his wife, Lisa, and his two children took his ashes to New Mexico and placed them in the Rio Penasco, where three of his great-great grandfathers had their first ranches. Colman had wanted to retire in that area. It is in the Sacramento Mountains, close to the Mescalero Apache Nation. As with many cancers, we do not know its cause, but we suspect exposure to noxious gases in Desert Storm, and tumors on his legs shortly after may be responsible. He was a wonderful man and a beloved son, who will be in my and Jenny’s and his siblings’ memory always. He served four years in the Navy, and six in the Army. He did two tours on the DMZ, and then went to 101st Air Assault Division. He had very fond memories of growing up in Pullman, and our many excursions to the beaches along the Snake, long underwater now, and in the forests of the Bitterroots.
 


Robert is professor at McHenry College, Susannah is Associate Chief Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, Julia is an MSW, Eva is with Google, and Asher is a painter and writer.

And there are eight wonderful grandchildren, too!

Howard

Susan H. McLeod (WSU 1986–2001)

Dear Friends,

Thanks once again to Paul for putting us in touch with each other! We always enjoy hearing news from our WSU friends. Doug and I have just celebrated one year of living at Casa de Mañana, a wonderful retirement community. The marketing folks just put together a virtual tour of the place.

We have had a fairly uneventful year. I spent much of the fall recovering from my second hip replacement and getting used to being in an apartment that is roughly the size of our first apartment in graduate school—we seem to have come full circle, except now we have a spectacular view of the ocean. We don’t actually spend that much time in the apartment, since there is so much going on here, but we do try to get back for the sunsets, sometimes from the roof.

I have no idea how it happened, but I have wound up on several committees here; Doug has been wiser.

We are not traveling much these days, but I did spend a couple of weeks in Portland, OR, taking care of our granddaughter while her mom was on a business trip. I will not do it again; I discovered that I no longer have the patience to negotiate absolutely everything (eating, appropriate outfits, bedtime, hairstyle, tv time) with a seven-year-old.

I was able to go back a few months later to see her in a production of “Annie,” in which she played the orphan who frightens Miss Hannigan with a dead mouse.

She evidently forgave my earlier attempts as a parent substitute, so we had a good time. She and her mom just visited us here in La Jolla a few weeks ago (son Jon could not come), and that was great fun as well. Daughter Alison lives here in San Diego, and we enjoy seeing her often.

I am still the senior editor of Perspectives on Writing, a scholarly book series that exists both on-line and in print, and is entirely open access. This idea was radical when it first started, but now it seems that other presses are moving into an on-line mode (if not open access). What is interesting is that we actually sell about as many books as a related press that is not open access. It seems that people want an actual book, even though they could download a PDF of same without charge. Several books in the series have won awards, including one by WSU’s very own Asao Inoue, titled Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future.

Greetings to all and best wishes,

Sue (and Doug)

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

Nelly C. Zamora (WSU 1976–2003)

Cesar and I are still living in Pullman and our travels are a bit fewer this year.

We went to the Philippines last February 14, in spite of the harsh weather in Pullman. We were able to fly out of Pullman Airport to Seattle with a two hour gap before it snowed again.


Before we left for Japan (our layover to the Philippines), Delta announced there was a storm headed to the country. We experienced the tail end of the typhoon as we approached Japan.

While the flight to the Philippines was not confirmed, we anxiously waited. We gave a sigh of relief when we heard the announcement of boarding and were very thankful we did not get stranded in Japan, even if we were delayed two hours in getting to the Philippines.



I was able to have reunions with my former classmates in high school and friends from my hometown. (Every time anyone from the different classes come back to visit, there is a reunion or gathering to see each other.

My picture here, was taken at the house we were staying in the Philippines. There is a small garden with Hibiscus in bloom. (This particular Hibiscus only blooms for one day. The flowers open in the morning and, by 6:00 PM, fall to the ground.)

I have my share of health problems but still trying hard to cope. I turned 80 last month. I really make every effort to still be as active as I can.

Reading the Newsletter give me so much joy. Thank you, Paul, for taking the time to make this happen.

My best wishes and regards to all of you. Please keep in touch through this newsletter.

Nelly

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