WSU BASEBALL PLAYERS ON PORTLAND PICKLES ROSTER
WSU Cougar Baseball players #28 Sam Lauderdale
and #6 Brody Barnum, both from Vancouver, Wash., are members of the Portland
Pickles summer collegiate wood-bat team in the West Coast League. 'News for
CougGroup' took photos 7/28/2018 at the Pickles' home, Walker Stadium in
Portland's Lents Park. See photos/slideshow here:
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Vince Grippi of the Spokesman-Review
says reporter Theo Lawson, who covers WSU Coug athletics for the S-R had “some
stories to tell from his trip to Hollywood and the Pac-12 football media day.
He told them to Larry Weir, who used them for his most recent Press Box”
podcast. Link to the podcast:
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Vince Grippi of the Spokane S-R
also says:
“Washington State, if it could,
would have signed Luke Falk to a long-term contract. But four years is the
maximum and he’s now in Tennessee, trying to make the Titans.
“So when practice opens in
Pullman on Monday, Mike Leach will be looking for a new leader of the offense.
It my be a one-year rental, senior transfer Gardner Minshew, or one of two
juniors, Trey Tinsley or Anthony Gordon. Whoever it is, they will have more
control of what happens on the field than most of their peers around the
nation. That’s just the nature of Leach’s system.
“But there are also holes to
fill up front, with three starting spots – and the line coach – new this
season. And there are other questions as well on both sides of the ball and on
special teams. Such things happen to everyone.
“As the players bake under the
sun in Pullman and Lewiston (and in Moscow and Cheney), decisions will be made.
“And, hopefully, everyone will
be sharing celebratory baby pictures come the first week of September.”
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A Grain Escape to the Palouse
The swoon-worthy landscapes and
small-town charms of this Northwest region
Wall Street Journal, July 27,
2018 2:32 p.m. ET,
https://www.wsj.com/…/a-grain-escape-to-the-palouse-1532716…
TRAVEL
A Getaway to the ‘Tuscany of
America’
The Palouse—a scenic farm
region on the Washington-Idaho border—is often compared to Tuscany, but with
pie shops and ice-cream socials
The view on the drive up
Steptoe Butte along the Palouse Scenic Byway.
Sunrise from Steptoe Butte,
Wash.
The Latah Trail, a 13-mile path
between Moscow and Troy, one of the area’s many rails-to-trails paths.
Along the Latah Trail. The
Palouse encompasses some 4,000-square miles of farm country.
Strawberry rhubarb pie from the
Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen in Deary, Idaho.
Artisan cheese at Brush Creek
Creamery, which shares a space with the Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen.
Tanner Collier at Lodgepole
restaurant in Moscow, Idaho.
Lodgepole serves sophisticated
takes on regional staples such as guajillo chili-dusted fried garbanzo beans.
Rebecca Ashbach at the
Lodgepole restaurant.
The Hunga Dunga Brewing Co. in
Moscow, Idaho.
Hunga Dunga Brewing Co. in
Moscow, Idaho.
Sunrise from Steptoe Butte,
Wash.BROOKE FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Matthew Kronsberg, Wall
Street Journal,
July 27, 2018 2:33 p.m. ET
MY WIFE AND SON laughed at me
when, for the third time in less than a mile, I stopped our rental car, stepped
onto the gravel road and took yet another wholly inadequate cellphone picture
of the rolling fields that surrounded us.
Soon they clambered out too and
fell quiet. We were in the Palouse, a roughly 4,000-square-mile agricultural
region that straddles the Idaho-Washington border. Intensely fertile, the
region is defined by its dunelike hills, formed eons ago by windblown silt.
The hills, gold and green with
grains and legumes, undulate without pattern or rhythm; every bend in the road
reconfigures the landscape in unpredictable ways, leaving you feeling just a
bit off kilter, in a perpetual low-level swoon.
This is farm country; not
anyone’s idea of a tourism hot spot. The unusual topography draws photographers
and cyclists, but even if your relationship to those pastimes is casual at
best, it is an easy place to fall in love with. At the heart of the Palouse are
two cheek-by-jowl college towns, Pullman, Wash., and Moscow, Idaho, with
populations of roughly 33,000 and 25,000, respectively. They’re about a
10-minute drive apart.
When I asked Nancy Ruth
Peterson, a lifelong Muscovite and president of the Latah County Historical Society,
to characterize the difference between the burgs, she said “Moscow is a town
that has a university. Pullman is a university that has a town. I’m probably
going to get into trouble for saying that.”
Rebecca Ashbach at Lodgepole,
an urbane New American restaurant in Moscow, Idaho.
Rebecca Ashbach at Lodgepole,
an urbane New American restaurant in Moscow, Idaho. PHOTO: BROOKE FITTS FOR THE
WALL STREET JOURNAL
And indeed, even during a
mid-July visit, when most of Moscow’s 12,000 students were gone, the town felt
alive.
We based ourselves at the
modishly refitted Monarch Motel, just a block off Main Street. On an evening
stroll, I stopped to watch the Palouse Peace Coalition string up tie-dyed
banners saying “peace” in a dozen or so languages, as they’ve done nearly every
Friday night since 2001.
I asked coalition member Bill
Beck when the peacenik contingent had taken root in the region; he told me that
many of its cohort had been there for decades, noting a “huge number of
back-to-the-landers” who came to the area in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
“Most people come here because
of the universities. It’s this incredibly quiet, beautiful town,” he said,
gesturing down the block toward BookPeople of Moscow, the largest of three
independent bookshops, “with some intelligentsia.”
For dinner that night, we went
to Lodgepole, a smartly decorated New American restaurant. Delivering a dish of
very snackable guajillo chili-dusted fried garbanzo beans, the waiter told us
that legumes and pulses are a big deal in these parts.
The chickpeas in your
store-bought hummus may well come from the Palouse, and every August, the
National Lentil Festival takes place over in Pullman. Delivering the check, he
suggested we visit the town’s farmers market the next day.
We woke up early the following
morning to heed this advice. Parents deposited their kids at Main Street’s
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre for free Saturday morning cartoons before
loading up on wiffle-bat-sized stalks of rhubarb, braided garlic and lush greens.
Some browsed crafts like ivory-colored horsehair pottery, made with clay mined
nearby in Deary, Idaho.
Horsehair, singed on the
ceramics after firing, left jagged tangles of dark lines. The lighter lines
came from the hair of Appaloosa horses—notice the middle syllables
(ap-PA-LOOSE-uh)—believed to have originated in the region. The market’s
prepared-food stands reflected the area’s diversity: Shanghai dumplings,
Egyptian pastries and for me, tamales filled with local lentils.
The Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen,
in Deary, Idaho.
The Pie Safe Bakery &
Kitchen, in Deary, Idaho. PHOTO: BROOKE FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
At Paradise Creek Bicycles,
just behind the tamale stand, we rented bikes and decided to take advantage of
the area’s rails-to-trails paths. We rode the 7-mile Bill Chipman Palouse Trail
to Pullman, a wide and flat path with frequent turnouts featuring interpretive
and historical signs.
For all that Moscow and Pullman
have to offer, we took the greatest pleasure in exploring the region’s smaller
towns, and the byways between them. In Uniontown, Wash., we visited the soaring
art space Artisans at the Dahmen Barn, easily identifiable by its fence, made
from more than a thousand steel wheels. Inside, among the workspaces, we
grabbed a free “Photography Hot Spots on the Palouse” map, marked with the
area’s most photogenic barns, abandoned houses and lone trees. Its detailed
rendering of small, usually unpaved farm roads that vein the landscape proved
invaluable.
Over in Deary, at the Pie Safe
Bakery & Kitchen, which shares space with the Brush Creek Creamery, we had
a lunch of grilled-cheese sandwiches and pizza, followed by a heaping wedge of
berry-lemon chess pie—alone worth a trip the Palouse. And after a Sunday
morning hike among the towering red cypress trees in the Idler’s Rest Nature
Preserve, we went to the town of Palouse, Wash., for its annual Ice Cream
Social.
As the Auf Gehts German Band
played in the gazebo of the riverside Palouse City Park, we lined up for slices
of home-baked pie, topped with ice cream scooped by the Palouse Royalty—teenage
girls in black gowns, white gloves and tiaras.
Wheels of locally made cheese
at Brush Creek Creamery, which shares space with the bakery.
Wheels of locally made cheese
at Brush Creek Creamery, which shares space with the bakery. PHOTO: BROOKE
FITTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sitting on the grass beneath
the towering pines at the Social, we talked to brothers Don and Richard
Scheuerman of Palouse Heritage, who are working to revive the landrace grains
that were first farmed in the region a century and a half ago.
“All these towns have something
special,” said Richard, a former professor at Seattle Pacific University and
the author of several books on the region. Don cut in to say, “Our little town,
Endicott, is on the edge of viability with about 300 people, but it has been
that way forever. Our big thing is Fourth of July. Big fireworks. It’s really
quite spectacular for a rinky-dink little town.”
For year-round spectacle, it’s
hard to beat the view from Steptoe Butte, about 13 miles northwest of Palouse.
It is no Devil’s Tower—pictures of it are typically underwhelming but photos
from it make you see why travel writers have taken to calling the region
America’s Tuscany.
When the sun hangs low in the
sky, the colors and contours of the hills deepen, and photographers line the
roadway that corkscrews up a thousand feet above the surrounding landscape.
Diehards will come out for sunrise, about 5:30 a.m. during the summer. We were
not diehard, and found sunset to be sufficiently breathtaking.
It was another sunset drive,
over back roads from Pullman to Moscow, that convinced me that this might be
America’s most perfect agrarian landscape. The just-risen full moon bobbed and
weaved over the hilltops like a vesper sparrow chasing a dragonfly. It only
stopped when I pulled over to snap another picture.
THE LOWDOWN / On the Loose in
the Palouse
A Getaway to the ‘Tuscany of
America’
ILLUSTRATION: JASON LEE
Getting There From Seattle,
Pullman, Wash. is about a 4½-hour drive or an hour flight directly into the
Moscow-Pullman Regional Airport. Spokane International Airport is about a
90-minute drive from Moscow, Idaho.
Staying There The Monarch
Motel, a refitted motor lodge in Moscow, Idaho, offers simple, stylish rooms,
just a block off Moscow’s Main Street. From $79 a night,
moscowmonarch.com.
Eating There On Moscow’s Main
Street, Lodgepole serves sophisticated takes on regional staples 106 N. Main
St., lodgepolerestaurant.com. At the Pie Safe Bakery & Kitchen, in Deary,
Idaho, flaky-crusted pies are the stars, but dishes like pizza and salad that
take advantage of Brush Creek Creamery’s output are terrific too. 307 Main St.,
piesafebakery.com.
The Mediterranean-influenced
cuisine at the Black Cypress in Pullman reflects the Greek heritage of
chef-owner Nick Pitsilionis, a French Laundry alum. 215 E. Main St.,
theblackcypress.com. For a taste of the Palouse, wherever you are, flour from
landrace grains can be bought from Palouse
Heritage. palouseheritage.com
Exploring There Bikes can be
rented hourly, daily and weekly from Paradise Creek Bicycles in Moscow. 513 S
Main St,
paradisecreekbikes.com.
The Palouse Scenic Byway website offers a
thorough guide to Washington’s side of the region.
palousescenicbyway.org
