Mexico Tech Research Articles

Plutonium and the Rio Grande: Environmental Change and Contamination in the Nuclear Age

Journal of Environmental QualityVolume 25, Issue 3 p. 626-627 Book Review Plutonium and the Rio Grande: Environmental Change and Contamination in the Nuclear Age William L. Graf, Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. 1994. 329 p. $49.95. ISBN 0-19-508933-2 J. Bruce, J. Bruce Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM, 87801Search for more papers by this authorJ. Harrison, J. Harrison Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM, 87801Search for more papers by this author J. Bruce, J. Bruce Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM, 87801Search for more papers by this authorJ. Harrison, J. Harrison Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM, 87801Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 May 1996 https://doi.org/10.2134/jeq1996.00472425002500030032xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume25, Issue3May‐June 1996Pages 626-627 RelatedInformation

Line of Fall by Miles Wilson

Reviews 275 The dialogue continues in this superb collection of letters from his forma­ tive period, to the great benefit of students not only of Manfred’s work and of western literature, but of American culture in general. The letters span the period from his college years through his struggle with tuberculosis, his early loves and marriage, his development as a writer, to the appearance of his masterpiece, Lord Grizzly. In 1946, in a project initiated by Sinclair Lewis, Manfred began deposit­ ing his papers at the University of Minnesota, and in 1982, prompted by fears of nuclear destruction, he designated Augustana College, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as a repository for duplicate copies of many of his papers. The collec­ tion has grown to some three thousand letters, virtually all of which are open to research. For this collection, the editors, with Manfred’s invaluable assist­ ance, have selected 161 which seem best to document his personal and intel­ lectual development. Manfred’s correspondents run the gamut from family members and col­ lege friends to editors and prominent writers and critics like Mark Schorer, Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Van Wyck Brooks. Only Manfred’sletters, of course, are included;giving the other side of the dialogues would present intimidating logistical and legal difficulties. Still, one glimpses only with tantalizing incompleteness what people like Brooks and Warren thought of Manfred and his books. And one wishes the editors had included much more personal detail on people like Manfred’s college chum John Huizenga, to whom some of the most introspective letters in the entire collec­ tion are directed. Insights such as those remain alone for those fortunate scholars whose research takes them to the Manfred manuscript collections and to Manfred himself. GARY TOPPING Utah State Historical Society Line of Fall. By Miles Wilson. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989. 180 pages, $17.95.) Although westering most characteristically lends itself to epic accountings it also invites portrayal in shorter narratives. Whether in letter or diary, tale or short story the larger themes and myths of the West always color the action and characters and provide historical and geographical/geological backgrounding for both the author’s and the reader’s expectations. In Line of Fall Miles Wilson’ssundry short stories all fall decidedly in the direction of the modern West—whether that be the Southwest, the Mountain West, California, or the Pacific Northwest. And although the characters which 276 Western American Literature make the most common appearance are professors, writers, and U.S. Forest Service personnel, they are shadowed by older archetypal travelers headed west either to make a name or lose it, find or forget themselves:the drifter, the “prospector,” the worker, the runaway, the tourist, the explorer, the reporter, et al. In this respect what Wilson’snarratives prove is that the old West lives on in the new—and helps determine it. But it is not just this point—important as it may be—which makes Wilson’sstories socompelling;rather it ishis imagina­ tive and varied dramatizations of new and imagined Wests rising. “On Tour with Max” is a delightful variation of the familiar story of sidekicks on the trail of the good and the beautiful with luck and chance. Here the Quixote-like character, Max, is a has-been poet on the reading circuit and headed not for New York but for New Mexico Tech in Socorro. His Panza-like pal (and narrator) is an aspiring poet who needs the “networking.” Only Max’s ability to recite everyone’s poetry but his own saves them both from barroom brawlers. In “Wyoming” it is a benevolent hitchhiker, an Ariel-like lover, Abby from “Abora Wells,” whose mute encouragements (written on a frosty windshield) see Professor McGrath and his Volvo through a Wyoming blizzard and on to a possible job at Long Beach State. The middle-age crisis of Mr. Parker in “Going Away” is only temporarily halted in its downward spin by a series of “memos” he writes about his runaway life and his few months’ sexual interlude in Firs, Oregon with an equally curious lost soul named Adrian. Soon, however, Parker’s menopausal rekindling of the...

My student project leader experience

The author discusses her experiences as the student project leader in a manuals class charged with researching, writing, and producing a handbook for the New Mexico Tech technical communication program. She describes the management process of organizing the class into groups of writers, outlining the document into sections, assigning research and writing topics to the groups, and setting deadlines for the project calendar.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Physics, chemistry, and biology of organics in groundwater

The Groundwater Committee of AGU's Hydrology Section sponsored this special session at the 1986 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. The session was chaired by John L. Wilson of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech, Socorro). At earlier meetings a number of sessions had focused on the mathematical modeling of dissolved organic transport. More recently, AGU sponsored a Chapman Conference on “Microbial Processes in the Transport, Fate, and In Situ Treatment of Subsurface Contaminants.” The fall special session was the first to examine a much wider view of the scientific issues and brought together modelers and experimentalists; chemists, biologists, physicists, and engineers.

On Tour with Max

WE'RE HEADING WEST, somewhere near the Texas/New Mexico line, driving from Canyon to Socorro. Max is in the back seat drinking Shiner Beer and hiccuping. He has been complaining about his rough handling in the question-and-answer session after last night's reading. The girl didn't look like the sort who would mix it up in public, although you really can't tell anymore, but she knew Max's early poetry lot better than he did and was grimly partisan about its bald misogyny. When Max tried to jolly her out of scrap, she creamed him, and the local faculty host had to step in, flapping it all away and inviting everybody to the reception. Max drank and sulked his way through the party, but I got him back to the motel before any serious damage was done. We're on our way to New Mexico Tech because Max's last live-in was grant writer, and twenty-five years ago Maximilian Pfluger was big item in American poetry. John Ciardi called him a pivotal countermotion in American letters. Max's friend parlayed this history into National En dowment grant for reading tour. Why I'm here is that the grant has gimmick designed to give younger poet some exposure while the col leges take an old gray reputation to the bank. Happily for Max, most faculty members apparently don't read once they leave graduate school, so reputations on the circuit lag generation or so. Unofficially, I'm expected to keep Max mostly in line: colorful, but on time for the next reading. Before I signed on, an NEA staffer sized me up over lunch, pointing out that NEA didn't need any bad press in this political climate and that the organization would certainly want to review my own grant needs following successful tour. The staffer urged me to think of her as my personal grantsperson. As it turns out, keeping Max in line hasn't really been much of chore. He is generally no worse than cranky, and when he drinks too much he tends to get sullen or sleepy instead of outrageously memorable. Still, I've had to behave more responsibly than suits me. So instead of one-trick pony, we give the schools dog and pony show. Most nights, though, Max is the dog. Max fancies himself good reader, but he is mainly loud. His gestures are all choreographed and his inter-poem patter was scripted in about 1958 and hasn't changed since as

Engineering Programs and Research at New Mexico Tech

Engineering Programs and Research at New Mexico Tech

Announcement of new Mexico Tech

Announcement of new Mexico Tech

Geology Exchange Program

Because geology professors cannot bring ore deposits from around the globe into their classrooms, the next best thing is to take their students to the deposits, according to David Norman, an associate professor of geochemistry at New Mexico Tech and Angus Moore of the Royal School of Mines. They organized a new exchange program between the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, N.M., and the Royal School of Mines in London, England. In May, 14 students from England toured deposits in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado; in the photograph, Norman (on the right) describes a rock from a New Mexico ore deposit to some of the visitors from England. In early June a contingency from New Mexico Tech began studying deposits in England, Spain, and Portugal. Norman and Moore say that the exchange program may be expanded next year.

The Elements of San Joaquin by Gary Soto

Reviews 73 The Elements of San Joaquin. By Gary Soto. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. $2.95.) The biggest failure of many ethnic and minority-group writers is that their political viewpoints often turn them into moralizing zealots or right­ eous cultural revolutionaries. These authors tend to depict the plight of their particular groups with a fervor whose focus is essentially one-dimen­ sional. Metaphor gives way to harangue, nimbleness of thought succumbs to the straightjacket of political and racial argot. Chicano poet Gary Soto, a former fieldhand in the San Joaquin Valley, manages to avoid such short­ comings in The Elements of San Joaquin and thereby establishes that he is considerably more than just a good ethnic writer; he is a good poet. The book has already been awarded the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum, and six of the poems were reprinted in New York Times Book Review, some indications that Soto’s audience extends sig­ nificantly beyond members of his race. And while it’s true that his thirtyeight poems concern the hardships and difficulties of migrant workers, he also records their satisfactions and joys, albeit small ones. Indeed life in migrant camps does not include many of the typical middle-class amenities, but it does contain many touching moments of familial devotion. And Soto takes care to note that economic and social deprivation do not necessarily spawn moral degeneration. As he points out there are murderers, rapists, and thieves to be sure among the Chicano poor, but more importantly there are those who are able to turn their labors ino causes for celebra­ tion. Hoeing cotton or picking grapes can be a respectful act, one capable of canceling the effacing nihilism of social violence. Acts of personal gen­ erosity and kindness are as historically important to these workers as the decades of cultural and governmental neglect. An attitude of abidance, Soto knows, helps salve years of political and economic anonymity. Soto’s topics extend beyond the fields and farms into all aspects of migrant life in the valley — the charity hospitals, the barbershops, the streets and alleys — and he depicts them all in a lean, simple style. And although Soto is capable of mimicking the mannerisms of uneducated Chicanos in a straightforward, uncomplicated style, his verses are not unintellectual. His simplicity is merely a stylistic device, one appropriately suited to his seem­ ingly primitive and occasionally bucolic subjects. Consequently his meta­ phors are drawn from poverty, work, and failure, but they are nonetheless evocative, enlightening, and haunting. In describing the depression that occurs with unemployment from the autumn rains, Soto closes “Rain” with the apt observation: The skin of my belly will tighten like a belt And there will be no reason for pockets. 74 Western American Literature Consider the assailant he details in “The Underground Parking” : A man who holds fear Like the lung a spot of cancer, Waits for your wife. These images are at once likely and terrifying. But Soto’s characters, much like his metaphors, are transcendent. Imaginatively they rise above the meanness of their appearance, not as unscarred ideologues or saints or rhetoricians, but as human — frail and impoverished — whose heritage is simply and redemptively the earth. JERRY BRADLEY, New Mexico Tech American Indian Fiction. By Charles R. Larson. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978. 208 pages, $9.50.) Larson’s study discusses sixteen novels by fourteen authors. It does not deal with the short story (I believe no collection of stories by a single Indian author has yet been published), and limits itself rigorously to those novels written by Indian authors; thus, such novels as Laughing Boy, The Man Who Killed the Deer, and Little Big Man lie outside its scope, despite a long chapter — the second — about changing views of Pocahontas which would seem to have been better saved for another book (none of these six­ teen novels mentions Pocahontas). Within these limitations, Larson’s book is an excellent introduction to American Indian fiction. Larson sees four stages in the history of Indian fiction. The first, which he calls assimilationist, includes Chief Simon Pokagon’s Queen of the Woods (1899), John M. Oskison’s Wild...

Course and program descriptions

At the current time, there is intense interest in Computer Science Education within the academic community. Symposia have been and are being held (4), recommendations for degree programs have been made (1, 3), a special interest group within ACM (SIGCSE) is growing and discussion at national meetings is lively. Little information is available, however, on what specific curriculum are being offered. This report presents the curriculum leading to a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science which is currently offered at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The curriculum reflects our prejudices and local constraints. Because Computer Science involves such a wide spectrum of subject matter and because New Mexico Tech is a small college (total enrollment is about 800 students), the report specifically addresses the problem of building a viable curriculum within constraints imposed by the small college environment. The author invites any questions, comments or criticism from readers concerned about Computer Science Education.