Monthly Archive

I had very little time but quite a bit of fun writing this mini-feature on people at WSU who were born on Feb. 29. President Floyd was really surprised we knew about him technically being a leap day baby, and quite honestly I don’t remember when it came up or how we knew. It made me smug anyway.

This brings up another point, which is that I never proof-read my stories on days as busy as this one.  I usually don’t read them until a few days after they’re published because I have a weird anxiety about it. I did just read this one over, and it reminded me that I don’t do it because then I see a dozen little things with wording or arrangement that I wish I could change.

I should have anticipated this, but it was still a first for me: a wrong-number text message.

THEM (7:48 p.m.): Lost in room 458, tell bob and whoever else

ME (7:51 p.m.): ?

THEM (7:52 p.m.): Did you still want to get together to watch lost?

ME (7:54 p.m.): I think this is the wrong number, I’m sorry!

THEM (7:54 p.m.): Lol sorry!
It was a 509 number, so I suspect it’s someone I know peripherally. They wouldn’t get my number out of nowhere.

Photo by Tyler Tjomsland/Daily Evergreen

Here’s the story. I purposely overwrote it because the whole thing was so silly, and it needed a different tone to compete with an ever-popular fraternity-in-trouble story.

This is just an annotated roundup of ridiculous things I helped bring into existence. I will accept limited credit/blame:

With Dan eating all orange food this week and Victor eating green, red and white, I suggested there were lots of food items they could effectively share.

Victor was telling me a funny story one day that led to a conversation about the internet’s effect on English, and I told him he should turn it into a column. (And that’s me quoted in the top left house ad on this page.)

Nick came up with the first and second venue videos on his own (though encouraged by my amusement). But then last Thursday he was talking about going to Beasley two hours before the game and I suggested he make a third installment.

I’ve also been a fan of Jacob’s absurdly dull videos ever since the storm in Ireland. When in Aberdeen we drove near the courthouse where he spends many hours and I facetiously told him he should make a video about it. My theory that Jacob is trying to outdo himself in mundaneness surely motivated this most recent video.

Last night Nick was like, “I can’t think of what else to put on my blog.” I was like, “Just put up more random stuff like the rest of us.” Later he was telling me how one of his fellow sportwriters used to work at the Evergreen, and it was a nice little anecdote so I said he should post it.

I coined the term “rogue quotes” last semester when our InDesign template somehow started putting in the wrong type of quotation marks. So I was pleased when I realized tonight that people in the newsroom now use that as a standard designing term.

There are more, but that is plenty for now. I just needed a break from the rest of everything.

Today I’m writing a story about how Pullman Police are going around giving warnings to houses on College Hill with “accumulated party trash.” For being a fairly dull premise, it’s turning out to be an interesting story. We met one fellow who answered the door in his girlfriend’s pink bathrobe last Sunday. He re-enacted the scene for me and photographer Tyler Tjomsland.

Later I asked Sgt. Sam Sorem about it.

“I guess I didn’t think it was a blazing pink,” Sorem said. “I would consider it more of a shade of red.”

I just finished taking a rather unconventional exam for J475 that required me to do minor audio editing, make an online press release, put together a little poll for a bonus, and post it all online. I put it up on my old blog to avoid muddling this one, and just look at me writing about it anyway.

Just to follow up from yesterday, this over-the-top Doug Clark column (is that redundant?) in the Spokesman-Review today didn’t remind me of yesterday’s rage. I would have laughed aloud at this point if it weren’t such a tired and gratuitous joke:

“This mind-numbing isolation of Pullman drives some students to act out in socially inappropriate ways such as drinking, fighting and signing up for throwaway courses like journalism.”

The title basically says it all. I didn’t really think about it, but I had a few pieces of broccoli while I was packing up this morning. On the walk to campus, which is my typical time for most productive thinking, I thought about how few people worldwide ate broccoli and nothing else for breakfast. I also thought about how, even with all the varied eating habits I’ve had, eating broccoli for breakfast is something I’d never done before.

This is a conflict-of-interest confession. I feel really dumb for never seriously thinking about this before. I am the Daily Evergreen cops reporter. Nick Eaton is the Spokesman-Review Cougar sports reporter. When WSU athletes get in trouble with the law, our beats have unfortunate overlap.

Normally this could be avoided with a little bit of thinking ahead. Unfortunately this is not always a luxury provided in the news industry, so after asking Pullman Police Cmdr. Chris Tennant about the arrest of a WSU football player as part of the weekend mayhem I ended up writing the brief when our Sports editor decided late in the day that we did in fact want something on it. In between, I’d mentioned the arrest to Nick and he’d made the calls and written a brief for the Spokesman.

The whole thing made me very squeamish. We made our own calls, wrote our own briefs, worked with separate editors – and still it’s uncomfortable.

Making it into a colorful circle chart scribbled into my budget notebook assuaged my unease. I didn’t even know I had tiny colored pencils in my bag. I made this circle chart first, then realized Nick and I do actually have lives outside our beats. That’s the whole problem.

I was, yes, looking at my own blog this morning when I noticed the little pop-up link window for Christina’s Special K diet gave an interesting perspective. That’s on the left, with the website that actually shows up from the link on the right. Sometimes the internet is smarter than I like to think.

As for me, Day 2 gave me license to be a bit snippy at the other editors, since I am quite hungry. My heart rate is higher than usual, but that may have more to do with this Spokesman-Review article that inexplicably got full-front treatment. I’ve been following those same issues and numbers, and there will be a large story in the Evergreen next week addressing similar questions of whether violence is rising on College Hill.

Which makes my life that much more complicated this week. I’m also writing stories for Thursday and Friday, taking two exams, and trying to finish a number of smaller tasks. There’s also the looming citadel that is my thesis.

No, we’re not returning to the days of 14-hour Sports Weekend ordeals. It’s an even more concrete proof that every editor at the Evergreen enjoys suffering to a certain extent: We’re all doing “fad diets” for a week.

Since we’re all doing different ones, this will probably just make us hungry and crabby at each other. I am already coveting Christina’s Special K that she’s complaining about. Or Victor, who’s eating only foods that are red, green or white (but not Italian, Mexican or Hungarian).

I’m eating raw. Today is Day 1. This is a maintainable, if somewhat obscure, way of eating. So I don’t expect too many problems, except that the first week or two acts as a detox period. There are a few reasons I expect this to be relatively easy:

• I already eat vegetarian, and I like a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
• I don’t cook anyway, mostly because I don’t have time or I’m too impatient.
• I won’t feel deprived of dressings, sauces, dips or other condiments because I don’t like those anyway.
• I’m in the mood for bananas. This is actually quite unusual. It’s not that I dislike bananas, I’m just never really hungry for them except on rare occasions. Like now.
• Everything I’ve read about this is people complaining it’s too sweet. To me, too sweet is eating nothing but conversation hearts all day long. Or remember when I went on a Splenda kick freshman year? This kind of sweet should suit me fine.

And don’t worry, Mama, I’m taking my vitamins.

In a remarkably quick response from the university, I got the go-ahead for my thesis interviews. This isn’t the main part of my research, just a hope that I might get interesting insight. Here are the PDF versions of the cover letter and questions, which are meant to be discussion guidelines more than a rigid interrogation.

I’m seeking any media professionals who have been involved with crisis photography as a journalist, editor or other relevant role. I’m sending the information out with a description of my project more casual than the required cover letter, and hopefully I’ll get some responses. If you know of anyone who might be good for this, let me know or just pass on the information.

Today nationally acclaimed author Jess Walter visited campus and gave a talk for journalism students and Evergreen people about the path he’s taken as a writer. He was insightful and engaging, a great storyteller. As someone who at least aspires to writing longer journalism, and maybe fiction, his experiences were very interesting. Some highlights:

• Newspapers frustrated him because the world doesn’t fit into 12 inches of simple black-and-white. It took him years to earn the trust to write the long narratives and expansive stories that go beyond the simple events.

“I am really interested in those things that don’t fit in the parameters of a newspaper.”

• The biggest barrier for journalists who want to write books is that it requires “glacial patience.”

• What good reporting and good writing both require is not aggressiveness, but curiosity.

“I was kind of a magpie. I was constantly looking for interesting details.”

• On a similar theme, Walter fielded a number of questions about the invasive role of journalists.

“You have to find a way to not be a vulture. You have to find a way to live with yourself.”

“I think I made more ethical mistakes out of fear than aggression.”

“When people said they didn’t want to talk to me I said ‘OK.’ But I was stunned with how many people wanted to talk to me.”

He set the tone for this at the beginning, saying he never liked that intrusiveness of working as a reporter. This reminded me of a Didion-like shyness (which is not really a shyness in the traditional sense at all). It did not surprise me, then, when I asked him afterward which writers have influenced him most and he mentioned Didion. We talked about that for a bit.

Open to a scene of me trying to edit stories before budget and getting distracted by a conversation being conducted behind my head.

Christina (stamping her foot): It was not a poem! If I had wanted to try, I would have tried and it would have been a real poem.

Victor: I hate poetry, except in some cases.

…

Christina: Do you feel short on days when I feel tall?

Victor: No, I’m just slumping.

…

Christina: I can’t believe you didn’t read the poem. It wasn’t even a poem.

Christina and Victor notice they are being transcribed and exit to Victor’s office, where a debate about hand sanitizer ensues.

Let’s make this clear: I’m not the kind of person who likes antique stuff just because it’s old. Old things that still function do interest me, like old typewriters or cameras.

Anyway, this photo immediately made me think of old photos from the late 1800s/early 1900s when the West was still wild and men were proud of controlling nature for the sake of industry. This is my attempt at showing the rest of you what I saw in it.

A side note: The tallest lighthouse in Washington is in Westport along that beach. We wondered why we never saw it, and that’s because it’s not along the beach anymore. It was only 40 feet from high tide when it was built, but the ocean dynamics of the area changed when they built that jetty pictured above. Now the lighthouse is a few thousand feet from high tide, no longer really on the beach.

As promised, I got tired of the trouble Blogger was giving me. I started that blog for class and ended up using it for other projects pretty regularly, so I decided it was time to cut my losses and move on to something new.

Importing my old posts seemed to go pretty well, though I’ll be going through the formatting in the next few days to make sure it all loaded and looks right.

Today the New York Times presents a whole slew of related letters in which distinguished readers want to point out they know their Orwell better than columnist William Kristol, who used an essay by Orwell about Rudyard Kipling to explain why Democrats don’t know how to get anything done. It actually is that unnecessarily complicated; read it yourself.

Gag. Having read “1984″ is not really worthy of snobbish pride. It should just be embarrassing if you haven’t read it. Shame on the NYT for perpetuating the self-perceived cleverness of these people.

I started my References That Are No Longer Clever list a while ago with this one. I try to keep from one-upping them in pretentiousness by keeping the rest of my list fairly short:

• any reference to Bob Dylan singing “the times they are a-changin’”
• quoting Murrow’s fear comment (”We will not walk in
  fear … “)
• referencing Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, especially when commenting on internet memes or phenomenons

To make it clear, I think these are all fine references and certainly relevant in discussions of today’s world. But relevant is not the same as clever, and they’ve been trotted out a few too many times to be used in a self-congratulatory way.

Personally I think Kristol’s argument is a weak one - I’m not so far removed from high school that I can’t recognize desperate stretches for literary synthesis - but I do respect his attempt to invoke Orwell for something beyond the most obvious.

Here it is. Coming soon

I was going to make a shorter version to actually comply with the two-minute limit, but then I decided it just wasn’t worth fighting with Audacity any longer than necessary.

“Welcome to the Evergreen podcast for the second week of February, 1927.An unusually small number of WSC students failed during the past semester, registrar Frank T. Barnard announced. He said two weeks will be allowed for making up incompletes. Although final registration reports are not in, it is estimated that enrollment this semester will be approximately the same as last semester.

The Husky five will come across the Cascades to meet the Cougar hoop aggregation Saturday night in the second cross-state match-up of this basketball season.
The dope favors the Washington squad after they won the first tilt 39 to 16. There is hope, however, that the crimson and gray will emerge from its slump for an upset like the one against Idaho before the disastrous Coast tour.
Remember to wear your rooters cap to support our valiant boys of the hardwood …”

Thanks to Victor Graf, Christina Watts, Nick Eaton, Mike Feigen, Dan Herman and Brian Everstine for their vocal talents. An additional thanks to Victor and Nick for their technical support.

Audacity decided my podcast file no longer existed when I was about three minutes from being finished. I cursed a bit and snapped rather more than usual at the rest of the newsroom that “reoccuring” is not a word while editing tonight’s final story.

Then I started over.

Jacob, Christina and I went to the beach Saturday. The weather was favoring us and the tide was low. We spent a few hours finding sand dollars, climbing on rocks and, as Jacob said, “playing chicken with the widest ocean in the world.”

We also took a lot of photos, and maybe I’ll post more of them later finally up and switch my blog to WordPress since I’m sick of this not uploading and displaying any of my photos properly.

The fundamental question – Is journalism ethical? – has rattled around in my conscience ever since the first summer I thought to call myself a journalist. It’s the only thing in my life to keep me up at night and then it comes to me in nightmares, and it’s what got me into this thesis in the first place. These are the three pieces I think of most:

“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”

Janet Malcolm
“The Journalist and the Murderer”

“My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: Writers are always selling somebody out.”

Joan Didion
“Slouching Towards Bethlehem”

“An old woman was walking down the road when she saw a gang of thugs beating a poisonous snake. She rescued the snake and carried it back to her home, where she nursed it back to health. They became friends and lived together for many months. One day they were going into town, and the old woman picked him up and the snake bit her. Repeatedly. “O God,” she screamed, “I am dying! Why? I was your friend. I saved your life! I trusted you! Why did you bite me?”
The snake looked up at her and said, “Lady, you knew I was a snake when you first picked me up.”

Hunter S. Thompson
“Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie”

I accidentally took someone else’s drink at Starbucks in Ellensburg.

It was her fault for ordering almost the same thing right after me, and Starbucks’ fault for putting hers out on the counter first, my fault for not immediately recognizing the difference between “tall” and “grande” due to my relatively limited experience ordering coffee-type drinks, and Christina’s fault for saying “yes” when I whispered “Is this one mine?”

So I did the right thing by apologizing and clearing up the confusion. I also got a bigger drink than I paid for.

And that was probably the worst thing that happened during the whole weekend trip to the Grays Harbor area, so Christina and I returned to the newsroom quite pleased with ourselves. Anyway, more on this later before I return to the typical thesis and history stuff.

First of all, Allison left us all lovely presents (pictured here), which I found when I came to print my paper at the last minute before ethics class. It was also a good day because someone had already used the printer so it didn’t take six minutes to warm up.

When I was walking to ethics, there was a guy on crutches and a girl walking in front of me. I’m not sure if they were a couple, but it makes the story better to think they were. They were parting outside the CUE and before she left, the girl stooped down to pick up an Evergreen for him from the box since the crutches made it hard for him.

This is what Christina said when I told her this: “Wait, that’s your Valentine’s Day story? I kept waiting for him to give her a present like out of his pocket or something.”

Nope. To anyone reading this, and especially to those who know why I’m wearing green today, have a lovely Valentine’s Day!

The Evergreen had a female editor-in-chief for a few months in 1899, but 1904-05 marked the first time a woman led the newsroom the whole year. Her name was Zella Bisbee, and she was a Spokane native who majored in mathematics and physics. She seems kind of humorless, but that’s okay. Here’s what the 1905 Chinook had to say:

“It has been said that a lady was not fitted for the editorship of a college paper, and not without some reason. Nevertheless, the fact that we have had a lady editor during this entire year and a college paper that has been up to the standard of any in the Northwest in every particular, has proven conclusively that there are exceptions to this rule. The other members of the staff, it is true, were loyal in their support, but the burden of work and responsibility were borne by the Editor.”

And this is the face Christina made last weekend when we thought the only thing wrong with her car was a little snow covering. We have since discovered the front door was left slightly ajar through two feet of snowfall, the battery died and could not be easily jumpstarted, and there is mold growing on the back seat. Gross.

This is the vehicle Christina and I will be theoretically using to get over to the other side of the state this weekend. The plan includes emus, ocean, Irish cream and an exchange of hostage books.

It also means I won’t be getting much work done on my thesis in the next few days. This is probably bad, but I’m not much of a worrier.

Many people mistakenly believe I’m a very organized person. I am fairly organized, but in a very organic way. I let my things create their own places, rather than forcing some sort of structure. Anyway, here is my desk in the newsroom, where I do pretty much all my editing, writing and classwork.

1. stack of Chinook yearbooks from the following years: 1905, 1904, 1902, 1910, 1911, 1909, 1899
2. paper organizer with notes, documents and press releases for stories I’ve written or plan to write
3. fortune (from a cookie): “Be prepared to modify your plans.”
4. lightsaber, green
5. Stack consisting of:
- weekly copy chief comment sheet
- 2008 AP Styleguide (the only one in the newsroom)
- Phil 201 course packet
- WSU Police logs
- Com 440 course packet
- Moscow Co-op publication
6. basket containing:
- blue Tupperware full of ibuprofin for Brian
- colored thumb tacks
- tin of safety pins
- paring knife
- mending kit
- Splenda packets
- teal white board marker
- red pen without cap
- green plastic fake grass
7. Pullman Transit brochure
8. more WSU Police logs
9. sheet where I tallied different majors represented in the paper last week
10. computer monitor displaying Jetset
11. label with police contact numbers
12. Post-it checklist of things to do this week
13. Crayola markers
14. letter from the Public Records office and other miscellaneous papers
15. last week’s papers
16. turquoise chair, not rolly
17. old keyboard that I want to trade with Brian for the new style
18. Post-it note with old appointments
19. (obscured) screwdriver, best weapon in the newsroom
20. Tiny bucket for business cards
21. red iPod, CougarCard and (obscured) tiny bottle of magnolia blossom lotion
22. violet water cup saved from the Super Bowl party
23. Nalgene, probably empty
24. Old computer tower, same one I used as a copy editor in Fall 2006 before we got iMacs last semester
25. existential Post-it from Victor: “today. tomorrow.”
26. bowl with spork and can of minestrone soup
27. stack consisting of:
- pica pole
- books for my thesis (“Better Than Sex” by Hunter S. Thompson, “Image Ethics” by Gros/Katz/Ruby. “Visions of War” by David D. Perlmutter, “Vietnam: Reflexes and Reflections” by Sinaiko)
- January issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education
- books for reading (“The Literary Journalists” edited by Norman Sims, “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey, “Chrome Yellow” by Aldous Huxley)
28. stack consisting of:
- issues of the Evergreen (Feb. 8, Feb. 6, Jan. 17
- sports section from The Spokesman-Review (Jan. 25)
- The New York Times (Jan. 29, Jan. 22)
- “Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine” by Thom Jones

The actual audio isn’t finished since we got an extension, but here’s the graphic I’m putting together for it. Blending interests, I’m doing my required 475 podcast as if it’s an Evergreen podcast from 1927.

Fun was more important than historical accuracy – it’s more like how we like to imagine 1927. However, all the stories and much of the text* is authentically from February 1927 issues of the Evergreen.

Why 1927? Because it was the oldest book in the archives room that I could reach without difficulty.

The actual 1927 Evergreen staff looks like kind of a dour bunch, though the women had awesome names: Theda Lomax, Lyla Appel, Georgia Grimes, Lucille Weatherstone.

*UPDATE: I want to specifically mention that the Lucky Strike advertisement is entirely authentic, and not meant to glorify smoking. Those who know me, especially from the Evergreen, know how I feel about that. The logo does look cool in the graphic, though, and some weeks it seems like Lucky Strike cigarettes were entirely responsible for the financial health of this newspaper. Cigarettes and men’s suits dominated printed Evergreen ads back then, and there were always a bunch for typewriters at the beginning of a semester.

Me: Victor, what are you doing?

Victor: I am wearing a postmodern hat.

I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed to be working on my thesis this Friday evening, which is an indication that I haven’t been working on it as diligently as I should. Also I know no one reads this. Also I’m not by myself, so it’s not that bad.

Anyway, here’s a bit from a book aptly called “Press Photography: Reporting with a Camera” that sums up what I’m looking at with this whole project:

“But the favorable court decisions [for press freedom] have not entirely relieved the minds of photographers and editors, for there still remains the moral question involved. One newsman put the question this way: ‘What business has a photographer to make a living by treating human tragedy as a natural resource?’”

Here’s another quote, from a different book, from Dorothea Lange regarding her famous Great Depression photograph “Migrant Mother”:

“There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”

That last bit from the 1904 Chinook caught my attention. If the Evergreen held a place of distinction in “the college journalism of the West,” what did college journalism actually look like at that point?

Here’s a rundown of when the Pac-10 student newspapers joined the tradition:

1871 The Daily Californian (at Cal)
Remarkably, it’s had pretty much the same name ever since it began as one of the earliest college newspapers in the country and one of the first newspapers at all in the West.

1892 The Stanford Daily
Originally it was called The Daily Palo Alto.

1895 The Evergreen

1899 The Arizona Wildcat
It started with the stupid name Silver & Sage, later evolving to the Arizona Weekly Life and the University Life before getting a name that sounds marginally more like a real paper.

1900 The Oregon Emerald
It was the Oregon Weekly until 1909.

1906 The Daily Barometer (at Oregon State)
Its predecessor started in 1896 as a monthly literary magazine, then finally turned into a real weekly newspaper.

1906 The State Press (at Arizona State)
It started out as the Tempe Normal Student and then the Tempe Collegian. In 1890 they started a 1-page supplement to a professional local paper. It was called the Normal Echo.

1909 The Daily (at University of Washington)
UW technically had a paper called The Pacific Wave in 1891, but I’m not counting that because then they would be earlier than us.

1912 The Daily Trojan (at USC)

1919 The Daily Bruin
It didn’t get its name until 1926, after putting in a few years as the Cub Californian and the California Grizzly. They also had a paper of sorts called the Normal Outlook from 1910 to 1918.

Here’s a rosy view of the journalistic mission from the 1904 Chinook. It’s a bit dense.

“The most distinctive characteristic of present day college life is the college paper. Our fathers knew no college paper, and the only way that they knew of their fellows in other colleges was by word of mouth, and that word was usually steeped in the deepest venom before it reached its destination. We should feel glad, therefore, that the white light of truth and fairness shines down upon our educational world through the medium of the printed page.
The first attempt to found a college paper in the Washington Agricultural College was in the ‘Crib’ days of our college, when the ‘Record,’ a paper which would do credit to an old established college, was launched by Mr. Hull. The journalistic light shone fitfully, flickered and went out leaving our college without a medium of communication with the outside world. Our big brothers were not men who hid their light under a bushel and in 1894 the frail bark yclept ‘Evergreen’ was launched upon the sea of trouble with W.D. Todd at the helm. Although the angry sea has often threatened to crack the ribs of the frail craft, it has sailed steadily onward, never missing a number in the nine years of its existence, and it now occupies a distinct place, not only in our community, but in the college journalism of the West.”

From the 1903 Chinook, one of my favorite passages ever:

“Of the ’success and futility’ of the Evergreen it is useless to speak – every one connected with the college knows all about that, especially the futility. Neither would it be worth while to trace the history of this remarkable enterprise from its earliest beginnings in the dawn of the Washington Agricultural College down to the present time. It is likely that no one but students of economic science and history (possibly biologists also) would be interested in such an account, and it would be better for such students to so ’source work’ than to depend upon any statements we might make. We will simply leave it recorded here that the Evergreen is in the eighth year (tenth, if we include its predecessor, the College Record) of its promising career, and that the present staff go about their work as if it were really important.

This is like the opposite of history – Here’s a photo from today of Evergreen editor-in-chief Brian Everstine looking professional (minus the Doritos) while no one comes to visit his weekly Lunch With the Editor at The Bookie. It’s every Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m., in theory. He is dressed so classy because he attended the Student Advisory Board meeting at the President’s Residence in the afternoon. He forgot how to tie a half-windsor knot for about half an hour this morning, but fortunately remembered in time to get his tie on.

Apparently paging through old Evergreen tomes is contagious. It warmed my heart to see my fellow editors enthralled with achives books I left around the newsroom a while after the final thrilling moments of Super Bowl XLII. They were amused by alcohol advertisements and articles about the booming popularity of videocassette technology.

What I was looking for were the last times the WSU campus was closed. This was a big question last week, and there was a surprising lack of anyone at WSU who could say for sure. This is what I found:

Feb. 9, 1996: Flooding forced road closures and made the administration question how many faculty members would make it to campus. Faculty and staff were still expected to be at work if possible, and canceled classes were not rescheduled.

Nov. 22, 1985: Snow and cold temperatures around the state prompted WSU officials to cancel classes the Friday before Thanksgiving break. Classes from that day were made up on Dec. 7, a Saturday.

Jan. 4 and 5, 1982: The first two days of spring semester classes were canceled after snowy weather statewide kept students from returning to Pullman. Classes had to be made up on the following two Saturdays.

May 19 to 22, 1980: After ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption blanketed Pullman, hindering travel and raising health questions about air quality, classes were canceled for four days. President Glenn Terrell considered closing WSU for the rest of the semester, but decided to reopen. More than 1,000 students applied for emergency leave due to medical or psychological concerns.

Not a lot of regular work got done today after campus was shut down at 10 a.m., but there was still plenty of work to do. Really, a snow day is pretty much the happiest crisis to report about, but it still meant a few dozen hurried phone calls, a few frightening near-slips with camera gear, and a few hours of numb fingers and even colder feet.

In the course of all this, one question kept coming up: When was the WSU campus last closed due to snow?

As far as we could tell, no one really knew for certain. People remembered Mount St. Helens for sure in 1980, and there was something about closure in 1996 due to weather, but it wasn’t snow. I’ll be trying to track down the answer more definitively by Monday, but I was able to find out that the last confirmed snow days were Jan. 4 and 5, 1982. It was the beginning of spring semester and students weren’t able to travel back to Pullman. Those two days had to be made up the following two Saturdays, a plan that obviously didn’t earn many fans among the student body.

So that’s the history bit. But today was more about now, a little bit of community Zen as everyone dropped regular schedules and did whatever seemed fun. For us, fun meant documenting what everyone else was doing.
Fortunately, the university handed us a second chance. With Friday classes cancelled as well, the Evergreen staff will take a break from reporting (maybe) and enjoy the day more like normal people.