Edmonds Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Peter Wayne Moe was maybe 8 or 9 when his parents took him to a traveling exhibit in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Spokane. The main attraction: whales.

Inside, the lights were dimmed. Green plastic dangled from the ceiling to represent seaweed. A whale's song blared from speakers.

Also hanging from the ceiling were life-size plastic replicas of 100-foot plastic whales, some of them of the killer whale type.

"It was supposed to be educational," said Moe, now 38 and an associate English professor at Seattle Pacific University, where he oversees the writing program. "I remember...