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PAC-12 LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITY
FOOTBALL RADIO PLAY-BY-PLAY 'VOICES' in October 2011: Washington State's
Bob Robertson and Oregon State's Mike Parker.
Alma maters:
Bob = Western Washington University.
Mike = University of Oregon.
(News for
CougGroup photo.)
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Regional air quality worsens with no end in sight
Meteorologists say while smoke prediction is difficult, haze
is unlikely to dissipate as fires rage on
By
Scott Jackson, Moscow Pullman Daily News Aug 21, 2018
Clarkston had the worst air quality in the country Monday,
according to reports from the National Weather Service.
With smoke from surrounding wildfires filtering into the
region, Clarkston reached the "hazardous" category with a 309 on the
air quality index, meaning the entire population is likely to experience health
effects. Nearby, Moscow did not fare much better with a "very
unhealthy" AQI of around 250 in the early afternoon, and Pullman peaked
around 190. All measurements propelled the region into a minimum AQI deemed to
be "unhealthy" - though levels improved to healthier readings by the
evening.
"Climatologically, this is the time of year we should
be seeing (smoke), and I would say for the next few weeks it would be like
that," NWS Meteorologist Jon Fox said. "Once the fires start to die
down a little bit, obviously the smoke gets quite a bit better - or the air
quality gets quite a bit better."
Director of Gritman Medical Center's Cardio-Pulmonary
Department Kevin Uptmor said there is not much people can do to mitigate air
quality conditions beyond limiting time spent outside. While those with
respiratory conditions should stay indoors altogether, Uptmor said smoky skies
are not quite so worrisome for healthy people.
"If you just minimize your exposure, it's not too
bad," Uptmor said. "At this level - even at hazardous - if you're a
healthy person, it's not really much different than smoking two
cigarettes."
Uptmor said most healthy lungs will purge smoky particulates
in less than a week once clearer skies return.
Pullman and Moscow school districts have both taken steps to
limit smoke exposure in student athletes, including rescheduling games, moving
many scheduled practices indoors and canceling those it can't. If conditions do
not improve by the time students resume classes next week, Superintendent of
Moscow Schools Greg Bailey said recess will likely be held indoors as well.
"The rule of thumb is if you can't see Moscow Mountain,
you've gotta figure you're up there in the higher range," Bailey said.
While current air quality is worse in the Northwest than
anywhere else in the country, Fox said this is by no means unprecedented for
the region. He said it takes windier conditions to help move the smoke onward,
but with fires raging in Washington, Oregon, Montana and Canada, it is
difficult to know if wind from any direction can bring relief.
"The problem is there's fires just about everywhere
around the area, but they're most numerous in the Cascades and southern British
Columbia," Fox said. "What you need is some strong winds to mix the
smoke out of there and then the source region of the air should be relatively
smoke free."
Fox said there is a small chance of increased precipitation
later in the week, but it is difficult to know if air quality conditions will
improve much by then. While forecasts on the NWS website show no prediction of
smoke by Thursday, Fox said there's little hope that it will abate completely
by the end of the week.
"I don't see anything in the weather that's going to
bring dramatic relief anytime soon," Fox said. "It's hard to forecast
smoke, so I would expect that as long as there's fires around - and there's a
lot of fires around - then it's going to be relatively smoky."
:::::::::::::::::;
August 20, 2018 – Spokane Spokesman-Review WSU Athletics beat
writer Theo Lawson talks Cougar football with Larry Weir/from The Press Box…
Spokane S-R
Audio file:
::::::::::::::::::::::
Where in
the world is Mike Leach? Inside the WSU coach’s multi-country summer vacation
By Scott
Hanson Seattle Times
Originally
published August 20, 2018 at 3:24 pm Updated August 20, 2018 at 6:13 pm
The coach
describes his preference for "expedition travel, where you learn as much
as you can as fast as you can." He's recently done that in Cambodia and
Croatia, among other places.
Washington
State football coach Mike Leach isn’t sure how many countries he has visited.
He added
Cambodia, Taiwan, Croatia and Portugal after spring football this year, but
he’s never actually made a list.
“No, I
need to do that some time,” he said.
One thing
is certain, traveling is something he loves to do. It suits his curiosity, his
passion for history and a desire to learn new things.
“For me,
there are two types of travel,” he said. “There is expedition travel, where you
learn as much as you can as fast as you can, and cover as much ground as you
possibly can. It’s both a sensory overload and an expedition. Then there is
travel that’s more designed to decompress, and mine tend to be expeditions.”
The
two-week trip to Croatia, in which several couples rented a boat and sailed
through the small islands off the Croatian coast, was several years in the
making. The eight-day trip to Cambodia and four-day trip to Taiwan was an
opportunity that came up, and he joined three state legislators on that
excursion.
“Boom, I
have the opportunity to go; I can’t pass this up,” he said.
Leach said
the journey to Portugal was short, with quick visits to the Algarve, a popular
beach destination on the southern coast, and to the capital, Lisbon.
The trips
to Cambodia and Taiwan were certainly in Leach’s “expedition” category, but he
said in Cambodia, “you can do both there, because they have off-the-chart
beaches, with the big old rocks popping through the ocean, some kind of
vegetation — palm trees — barely hanging on, and just clear, clear water.”
Leach got
a taste of a decompression vacation when he stayed in a treehouse on an island
off the coastal town of Sihanoukville, but two of his biggest highlights from
Cambodia were the Angkor temples and the floating villages in Tonle Sap, the
largest lake in Southeast Asia.
“They have
everything out there,” Leach said of the floating villages. “They have pool
tables out there, they’ve got bars, they’ve got hair-cutting places. Now, it
doesn’t look nice, and the water is utterly filthy. They’ll have pets and
animals up to their chest in water, just getting ready to get eaten, and there
are taxis that take you in between.”
Leach said
the legislators were trying to generate business for the state of Washington,
and being with them gave Leach a chance to meet the Cambodian prime minister.
“That was
impressive, and, of course, I talked about education in the state of Washington
and the opportunities there, and some of the success our exchange students have
had,” Leach said.
In Taiwan,
Leach met with many Washington State graduates (“so that was pretty awesome,
and we want even more to come”), and discovered a country much different from
the third-world Cambodia.
“The one
thing that I found surprising about Taiwan – because I haven’t been to Asia
much – is that I thought it would be a lot like Cambodia, but we are talking
about sophisticated, first-world
cities,” said Leach, who said Taipei reminded him of Toronto. “Really organized
stuff and you look at a lot of things and you think, wouldn’t it be great if we
did that in the U.S.”
Leach
toured the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which has a collection of nearly
700,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks. Leach said he was
amazed by the ivory carvings that were “hundreds of years old, even thousands,
and some of the other artwork that is so delicate and intricate.”
Perhaps
two of the most popular artifacts at the museum are the Meat-shaped Stone,
which looks like a piece of pork, and the Jadeite cabbage, which is a carving
of bok choy. Leach was fascinated that those items were so popular compared
with the other artwork he was seeing.
“We’re
talking lines for both of them, and they’re both in a special room, like where
you would put Michelangelo’s Pieta,” he said. “I am not saying there is not
something to it because clearly a bunch of people are captivated, but there is
a point to where it’s just polished rock. To me, all those ivory carvings are
breathtaking, jaw-dropping, but for every one of them, there is a hundred
others. So there is definitely a uniqueness to the rocks.”
The trip
he and his wife, Sharon, took with several other couples on the Adriatic Sea
was a bit more relaxing, and Leach said the scenery was “amazing, and the water
is very, very clear.”
“It’s kind
of funny because every couple knew somebody else, but nobody knew everybody,”
he said. “We rented a boat, and we sailed through all those islands off
Croatia. We went to Split, Dubrovnik and a bunch of those little islands (there
are more than 1,200 Croatian islands.).
“I think
the highlight might have been (walled city) of Dubrovnik,” said Leach, who
marveled at the Venetian influence on the Croatian islands.
Leach
wished he had longer in Portugal.
“We didn’t
have a lot of time and didn’t get to check out the whole country, and what we
did check out was at a pretty quick rate,” he said.
Leach said
one great thing about the Cambodia and Taiwan trip was the local people who
helped out the Washington delegation.
“Not only
do they help you with where to go – ‘Hey, check this out’ — but you also get to
see the country in the eyes of the people, people who live there, and that’s
the best,” he said.
Leach
coached for a season in Finland in 1989. In recent years, he has made trips to
Italy, France and England for clinics and camps. The living conditions when he
travels aren’t opulent, but that isn’t important to Leach.
“You can
stay in the Marriott in Paris, and it’s very similar to the Marriott in Seattle
or I can go over there and potentially sleep on a mattress on the floor, but
I’ve got people who live there taking me all over, showing me this, showing me
that,” he said. “You really get a sense of what it’s like from the people that
live there, and who were born there, and you just can’t get that by booking a
trip.”
Leach
traveled a bit more this year “because I’ve had kids every year in the house
until this year – this is the empty-nest dress rehearsal.” Even so, he can
never quite get away from football, not with his phone with him.
He loves
coaching football, but the one thing that might eventually get him thinking
about retirement is travel.
“If you
retire, you can stay at these places longer, and go more leisurely and slower
as opposed to having some schedule and having to hurry to the next attraction
in order to cover the ground you need to. Maybe we would just sit in the same
spot for a month.”
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