1990s retrospective

So, um, what's better: Meow Mix or Cat Chow?

from the archives

• “Courage in the Canyon,” The Columbian, April 9, 1995: “Follow along as a brave (and blind) diabetic with prosthetic legs traverses one of the most challenging trails in the Grand Canyon.” text only
  
  
• “Rimshot Radio,” The Columbian, July 11, 1999: “How corporate interests have taken over public intent for radio airwaves.” text only
  
  
• “Rooted in Vancouver,” The Columbian, April 6, 1997: “Sprawl meets lettuce farm, where a Japanese owner who lived through internment during World War II encounters a new obstacle in his pursuit of the American Dream.” text only
  
  
• “A Fowl for a Friend,” The Columbian, April 11, 1996: “A gentle story of a man and a goose ... and the love between them.” text only
  
  
• “The Outer Limits of Washington,” March 17, 1996: “This project,
  which eventually became my first book, shows the quirky people and places of the state.”
  
  
• “A Descent to Suicide,” The Columbian, Jan. 15, 1996: “County sets new record for number of suicides in a year. This piece personalizes the milestone.” text only
  
  
• “Big Foot,” The Columbian, Nov. 13, 1996: “An examination of the Bigfoot phenomenon through the perspective of one of the great hunters of the huge hairy ape. Mixes humor and skepticism with an underlying hope that these creatures could exist.” text only
  
  
• “Judge Heavy Investigated,” The Columbian, May 16, 1995: “Received an anonymous credit card receipt in the mail, which ended up bringing down this superior court judge. He resigned the day after these stories ran.” text only
  
  
• “Grave Concerns,” The Columbian, April 19, 1995: “Cemetery needs to get rid of gravestones. The easiest solution: Toss them over a nearby cliff into the woods. People walking by on the trail below aren't happy to find these. Another quirk to the story, it ran the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was grossly underplayed.” text only
  
  
• “Fort Nowhere,” The Columbian, April 16-18, 1995: “The Fort Vancouver National Historic Site was the end of the Oregon trail for many. It's a gorgeous site, near the banks of the Columbia River. But as an attraction, at least in the mid-1990s, it was foundering. Colleague Sherri Nee and I investigated.” text only
  

  

• “Crazy, Quirky and Queer,” The Columbian, Jan. 15-19, 1995: “I spent several days early in my career just perusing the paper's library, as a way to get to better know the community. I found several funny and
  interesting historical anecdotes that became this five-day series.”
  
  
• “A Road to Despair,” The Columbian, Dec. 29, 1994: “An elderly couple dealing with dementia demonstrates the helplessness families can feel and the tragic consequences of gray areas between responsibilities.” text only
  
  
• “The Legacy of Kurt Cobain,” The Olympian, April 20, 1994: “The biggest rock star of a generation (who lived in Olympia for a couple of years) commits suicide. No one at this paper knows what to do about it. So I volunteer. One of my first big opportunities.” text only
  
  
• “Officials Ring Up Calls, WSU Pays,” The Daily Evergreen, April 27, 1993: “Ever wonder who pays the long-distance phone bills of college bureaucrats in a Pac-10 athlethic department? You do.” text only
  
  
• “Baseball Hazing Ritual Revealed,” The Daily Evergreen, April 16, 1992: “Washington State University's baseball program had a tradition of hazing its players as long and as rich as any fraternity on campus, until this story ran.” text only