Coming at UI from Everywhere By Ron McFarland Photos courtesy of Ron McFarland One summer morning in the mid-1970s, I got a call from my University of Idaho colleague, the late Teo Sipahigil. Teo hailed from Turkey, and
Don’t Leave Home without Them By Khaliela Wright My son Judah recently left Idaho in search of better wages and a higher standard of living. In Moscow, he was earning $18,720 a year as a software developer— the
As it happened, I was working as an assistant at the public library in Cocoa, Florida, the summer of 1961 when, on the morning of July 2, Ernest Hemingway took up his prized shotgun in Ketchum and, as a buddy informed me, “blew his head off.” Continue reading
Driving through Moscow the day after Christmas, I couldn’t help but notice discarded Christmas trees already at the curb outside some houses. It was a sad sight. How could these icons of joy and beauty be consigned so quickly to a heartless fate? Continue reading
When University of Idaho foreign exchange student Rafay Adeel arrived from Pakistan at the Moscow-Pullman Airport in August 2014, he had no idea that living, breathing Native Americans still walked the Earth. He thought European immigrants had killed them off years ago, during the Indian Wars, which in the Middle East have become as iconic of the American West as the cowboy. Continue reading
By Ron McFarland
She could not, would not fly. This poet, whose books boasted such titles as Cruelty and Killing Floor and most recently Sin was, it seemed, afraid to fly. At that moment twenty-odd years ago, she embodied the very definition of edginess and wrath and poetic violence. But she would not fly. Continue reading
Like other children, I once dreamed of the possibilities of magic and fantasy worlds, of faraway places to visit, and fantastical wonders to see.
I dreamed of the amazing careers I’d have as a spy, a jungle explorer, an astronaut. With age, I realized such dreams are not easily grasped and that I would have to travel across continents to places of mystery, unless I used an entertainment medium to take me to far-off places. I began to seek ways to live out my dreams without leaving home. Continue reading
As this school year drew to a close and my seventeen-year-old son prepared to embark on his senior year, we pondered what he was going to do after high school.
When I was his age, I knew I would be attending the University of Idaho. I never considered any other schools. His future, however, is less certain. While my son busied himself with thoughts of the future, I found myself ruminating over Idaho’s educational past.
America’s well-laid foundations for free public education were not lost on early Idahoans, as I discovered when I decided to research the early days of the University of Idaho. It was established during the fifteenth session of the Legislature of the Territory of Idaho by the Organic Act of 1889, which said, “No student who shall have been a resident of the state for one year next preceding his admission shall be required to pay any fees for his tuition.” I think it’s significant that even before statehood was granted, this concept of a tuition-free university was established. And once statehood was achieved, the Idaho Legislature incorporated the Organic Act into the state constitution. Continue reading
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over to the man-animals.
There were days when White Fang crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away.
—Jack London’s White Fang
Puerto Vallarta had entered the sultry pre-storm season a little early in the first week of June. I was visiting expat friends, and would fly back to Idaho the next day. A movement in the restaurant caught my attention.
My eyes met the gaze of a medium-sized dog who walked indoors three paces, turned, and disappeared. I burst into tears.
A couple of weeks earlier, I had been in Victoria, British Columbia, with my mother and sister. On the last day of that trip, I got a call from my daughter, Margot, who said our white dog, Sky, had hurt herself playing with a friend’s puppy in our back yard.
“She was running and then she yelped a couple times and had trouble coming up the steps into the house. Maybe it’s her back again. She seems to be in excruciating pain, and is lying under the table panting. Her eyes are rolled back.”
When I got home to Moscow from Canada, Sky was moving easier but she listed and occasionally stumbled. In five days, I was to leave for the Mexico trip. Her right eye looked glazed, which wasn’t hard to notice in a dog with eyes so light they were nearly white, rimmed in black; knockout eyes that everyone admired. Then the eye became bloodshot until it was alarmingly red. Our friend and veterinarian, Janet, checked her.
“Sometimes they can snap out of it,” she said. “I don’t think it was a stroke, because her eyes don’t waver as would be expected.”
The eye cleared, but then her right nostril began to bleed, and for a while that day her nose seemed to be saturated in red. If it didn’t stop, I’d have to make choices. It was all happening so suddenly. The nose bleeding subsided, but she wasn’t eating. Another dog lover, Dave, suggested it might hurt her to chew dry food so I gave her some canned food, which she seemed to relish for a day or so.
I discussed options with Janet, Margot, and Dave, the three people who would care for Sky while I was gone.
“If she has to go, do it. I don’t want her to suffer.” Continue reading
