English Retirees Newsletter

33rd Edition, November 2023

Chair’s Note

Fall has arrived on the Palouse, and we are excited to share our recent faculty publications and presentations. We have two new faculty members: Bibhushana Poudyal, in Rhetoric and Composition; and M.A. Miller, in W.G.S.S. We had ten faculty members apply for promotion, and we were just notified that their cases have been forwarded to the provost, so we are hopeful for their success.

We’ve had a Visiting Writers Series event featuring Bojan Louis, a Diné (Navajo Nation) writer and professor at the University of Arizona; some terrific Open Mics at Brused Books on Main; our first official meeting of the revived chapter of Sigma Tau Delta; and a panel of authors from English, History, and the Center for Arts and Humanities, reading from the forthcoming edited collection, Women of the Palouse, hosted by Neill Public Library.

Thanks especially to Heloise Abtahi and Debbie Lee, we have a new website that just launched.

All my best,
Donna L. Potts

Professor and Chair
Department of English
Washington State University

Paul Brians (WSU 1968–2008)

I have not got a strong response to calls for contributions to this newsletter lately, so I think this will be the final one unless someone else wants to take it over. Let me know if you’d like the mailing list.

It has been a rough year for us here. Paula’s medical problems (none terminal) have kept us pretty much close to home. Then recently our septic system backed up and damaged the flooring on most of the ground floor, so right now we are camping in other rooms while workers rip everything out and replace a lot. It will take several weeks, or even a couple of months.

Fortunately our home insurance will pay for just about everything. Our medical insurance is also excellent, so we’re not in financial problems. Neighbors have been helpful and supportive.

Paula continues to enjoy participating in her Italian language groups, and has several friends who have helping us out and keeping her company.

Megan has visited a few times in the past year and is doing well in Bend.

I continue to be involved with the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, but less so than formerly. Lots of new staff and volunteers, including a photographer who does things I used to do.

BILT has managed to place over 10% of the acreage on the island under permanent conservation easements and the city has passed stringent regulations on tree-clearing on private properties. We continued to live in a mostly forested environment.

We no longer have any propane appliances. We are enjoying our new electric fireplace (with digitally projected flames) and induction electric stove.

The garden and woods around us continue to be a delight. We now have a sizable area protected from deer grazing by high fencing.

Paula and I continue our nightly tradition of reading aloud from Disney comics in Italian. Topolino (Mickey Mouse) and Paperino (Donald Duck) are far more popular in Europe than in the US, and they are often featured in tales from history and literature, including Homer’s Odyssey, Treasure Island, and even On the Road.

The first of these parodic works was a version of the Inferno, with Mickey as Dante and Goofy as Virgil! Paula translates as much as she can and I can guess other words or look them up in Google Translate.

A group of graduate students at Oxford reached out to me to contribute to their discussion of the imagery of nuclear war in popular culture. I continue to get feedback from people enjoying my Common Errors in English Usage, the paper edition of which continues to sell steadily.

After several years of shooting exclusively with my iPhone, I got a Nikon Z50 compact mirrorless camera which is great for higher-resolution images and more distant subjects. I will end by including two photos taken in our yard with it.

If you want to stay in touch:

Email: paulbrians@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/paul.brians.3
Website: https://brians.wsu.edu/

Paul

11734 Kirk Ave.
NE, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Leota Day (WSU 1970–1988)

Hi, everyone,

Dutch and I are just back from three weeks in France, so this will most likely be short.

We had a great time with a week in Paris and then a Rick Steves tour of the Loire Valley. We have an amazing storm on our last day in Nice. The city closed the 5-mile promenade with police patrolling all day to make sure we tourists didn’t get washed out to sea trying to get selfies.

We had a good year all in all. The only drawback is that my knees are wearing out, but that seems to be the norm for at least a dozen of our friends.

Our grandson, Isaac, turned 16 this summer and got his first paid job—he was a TA and the University of Washington for a Creative Writing Summer Camp for 12-year-olds. He was hoping for the Science Camp, but I am pretty tickled with the opportunity he got.

Our granddaughter has become fascinated with costumes and spent several weeks, or months, researching a costume for Comic-Con, and then the Renaissance Fair. Here she is with her Renaissance wings, which she spent hours and hours making and which open and close by pulling strings. I’m so impressed.

Be well, all of you. And thanks again to Paul for coordinating this newsletter.

Leota Day

Email: carvil@comcast.net

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1975-2001)

Although COVID dangers are lessened (although not gone), we still are not traveling much. If some force could beam us up and set us down without hours in airports and on planes or hours in the car, we would be out and about more. We remember with envy the efficient train systems in Europe. Although we still make short car trips regionally and down to visit Dick’s son Dan and wife Lynne in Baker City, OR, that five-hour drive is about our limit.

Plus, after having travelled a lot for research and pleasure in our younger years, we now sit on our deck, enjoy the flower and vegetable gardens, go for long walks, and wonder why we should travel to look for anything better.

Speaking of traveling for research, I now can do most of mine on line and locally in WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections. Two short pieces and one article recently were published and two book chapters are forthcoming. Yearly International Virginia Woolf Conferences resumed in-person in 2023.

After a couple of years of Covid-avoiding conferences on Zoom, however, many scholars got used to attending without expensive and difficult long-distance travel. After an in-person, June conference in Fort Myers, Florida, therefore, the organizers added an October symposium on Zoom. It extended the conference theme, Woolf and Ecologies, and I presented a paper called “Tea in the Library: Lenoard and Virginia Woolf and the Ecologies of Tea.”

During COVID years, academic Woolf Salons and social drop-ins became popular and still continue on Zoom. My Pleiades Investment Club (founded in 1997) is now meeting again in members’ homes after the Zoom years. We are all retired and smaller in number, but we enjoy each other’s company over a glass of wine while we cope with current market volatility. Dick continues to play golf and create unusual artistic items out of wood, fabric, and tile in his garage workshop.

Together we fund, through the Innovia Foundation, the Washington Idaho Symphony’s yearly Young Artists’ Competition. We are also involved in the Gladish Performing Arts Center project, especially the planned remodel of the auditorium as a home for the Washington Idaho Symphony and for other groups in need of a dedicated performance venue.

Thank you, Paul, for again organizing this newsletter. It is good to hear how other Department retirees are living and faring in a world so overwhelmed with tragic events and constant “breaking news.”

Diane

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

Nick Kiessling (WSU 1967–2000)

Dear Paul, Emeriti, and others formerly associated with our Department of English, Thanks, again, Paul, for editing the Newsletter.

Yes, the requirements apparently issued by the Governor, and interpreted in a rather bizarre way, have become a WSU bureaucrats’ reason for existence. Lucky them, unlucky us. It took me over two solid days to get my Workday verification. I now regret having done it, but I am not going to waste any more time protesting an insane requirement. For the context, see Paul Brians’ email of September 18, 2021.

Outside of that lost two days, the year has been fine for us. I have had to give up pickle ball – too much stress on the knees. Now it is walking, which does not hurt. Karen is now an adept on Zoom, a requirement which was made necessary by the cancellation of her physical presence at Spokane and Seattle meetings of the Council of Aging, and I was able to re-engage on projects which began in the nineties, then were put aside until 2019, and are now almost finished with only final proofing left to do.

A highpoint for me was the Legacy of Excellence Award for 2021 presented to me by the Emeritus Society at WSU. Because of COVID, my hour-long talk was reduced to a recorded eighteen minutes, given in March over Zoom.

Travel outside the country has ended long ago, but we managed trips to relatives in Montana, Pocatello, Boise, Wisconsin, Cannon Beach, Oregon, and Michigan. Our last visits to Priest Lake were in August. The property was sold by Emmett Avery’s grandson to a relative and we are happy that the cabin is staying in the family. A brief trip to McCall with a bunch of Rico’s reprobates (me included) tested our bike riding stamina and toleration for hot springs, single malt, and beer. When COVID was seemingly under control, in mid-May, we had our ‘annual’ two-week visit to New York City and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. In the Big Apple we, as usual, had a lunch at a French restaurant with Hongbo Tan, a PhD in 1989. She wrote her dissertation under the direction of Al von Frank. She is now a very successful employee of Maurice ‘Hank’ Greenberg at Starr Insurance, whose billion dollar suit against the US government is still pending.

We have been in touch with very few other PhDs from our Department. We had wanted to visit Bethany Blankenship, PhD 2005, in Dillon, Montana, in early July, but she was still suffering from a long-term case of COVID which she contacted just before vaccines became available.

When in Wisconsin in August, we passed within seventy-five miles of Stevens Point, where we have three PhDs, Jim Stokes (1979), Michael Williams (1985), and Becky Stephens (1996), but we did not have time to see them. When on the way to Cannon Beach we spent a night with Lynn Gussenhoven Coleman (MA about 1981) and Craig Trygstad in Vancouver, Washington.

Hope this Newsletter continues, with the addition, perhaps, of more recent retirees. I would like to hear from Victor, Alex Kuo, Joan Burbick, et al.

Take care,

Nick Kiessling

Susan H. McLeod (WSU 1986–2001)

Not much to report, except that we continue to enjoy life in our La Jolla retirement community, Casa de Mañana. We will be celebrating the centennial of the place next year (well, not the community as such but the hotel that is the original building, which opened in 1924); I have been having fun researching the history of the old hotel, which hosted a lot of silent film stars you have never heard of in the 1920s. We have also enjoyed visits here from friends and relatives, now that we are past the COVID days of no visitors. Attached is a picture that daughter Alison took of us recently in front of the La Jolla Historical Society, just up the hill from us.

Best wishes to all,

Sue

Nelly C. Zamora (WSU 1976–2003)

In March-April of this year, we visited with family and friends in the Philippines. During that trip, we spent a few days at a beach hotel resort in late March and the Holy Week in our hometown (a suburb of Manila) in early April. We are currently visiting the Philippines again (October-November) and taking a side trip to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, Japan in early November. We will head back to the US during the week of Thanksgiving and spend the holiday in the Seattle area with our daughter, Jen. Our return to Pullman is on November 24.

The COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed many of our travel plans. Although most restrictions have lifted, we remain selective about when and where we travel.

We continue to enjoy living in Pullman where we landed more than 50 years ago! It is fun to brag to our relatives and friends in the Philippines that we can reach any store, hospital, church, or other place in town within 10 minutes. In the Philippines, it takes us 15-30 minutes to cover the same distance.

We hope all of you are staying happy and healthy. Best wishes in the new year!

Nelly