The Grinnell Magazine Spring 2013 G The Memory Books Student Musings Grinnell After Fire What working as a wildland firefighter taught me about college. It started to rain after midnight, cool drops on my In the quick-moving world of firefighting, I found scalp and my eyelids. I slid deeper into my sleeping myself thinking more and more about the books piled bag, watching through the slit at the top as dark shapes on my dresser at our guard station. I began a nightly moved around me, figures hauling ground pads and ritual of listening to storytelling podcasts as I lay beneath personal gear bags across the field to a long row of fire great stretches of sky. I started jotting down scraps in trucks. We were at a wildfire in southern Idaho, camped Spanish when I found the time; I wrote long letters out on a farmer’s land, the nearby hills glowing in the following my thoughts and poems about losing my face dark. The Ridge Top Fire. This was our seventh day. — that sensation that comes from living without mirrors. Car lights clicked on as people wrestled into On my free days, whenever those came, I made a habit backseats to escape the rain; others struggled with tent of driving the steep, curved road into Salt Lake City, bags. Few of us bothered with tents when the sky looked where I would camp out in a bookstore for hours. clear. On the clock from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., tents — the It took the total absence of Grinnell for me to daily operation of putting them up and then taking understand why it was important to me in the first place. them down — cut into sleep time. Where fire tests my physical limits, Grinnell pushes me The tempo of the rain increased and, mumbling to learn and engage with new and sometimes startling to myself, I sat up, stowed my boots in my gear bag, and ideas. Both things, doing and thinking, have definite By Clare gave the night sky one long look before rolling up, taco- payoffs; and as I learned this year, I shouldn’t take either Boerigter ’14, a style, in my ground tarp. It was hot like that, my days- for granted. Spanish major who without-a-shower smell suddenly intensified in the closed Back at Grinnell, I feel a much stronger ownership of recently volunteered space, but I was betting the storm would pass. I was also my education. I feel lucky to be able to spend such a large in Costa Rica for strongly opposed to tents. Or trying to drag my sleeping part of my life learning about myself and our intensely nine weeks with the setup across a field to do battle for our truck’s back seat. interesting world. In my environmental studies class this generous support I was tired, and wakeup would come soon enough. semester, I peer curiously at the charts my professor projects of the James C. Last year, I spent nearly five months working as a on the wall, his voice proclaiming them magnificent Randall Fellowship. federal wildland firefighter on the Kings Peak Module, a artworks, statistics like thousands of dancing cranes. In my Her fiction piece, 10-person crew based out of the Ashley National Forest fiction seminar, I watch writing unfold itself; in my Spanish “Gusanos,” won in northeastern Utah. It was a dry season, and we worked seminar, I pull at language, reordering my ideas into a new the ACM’s 2012 123 days from June to mid- structure. I write, I read, I let Nick Adams Short October on 15 fires, bringing my thoughts get mixed up Story Contest; her me to just under 1,000 with everybody else’s around nonfiction work, hours of overtime. During the classroom table. I let “Williams of the that time, I learned how to my mind lead me around as Dog Days,” will sharpen hand tools and fell though I’m a fish on a line, appear in Plain fire-weakened trees with a always curious to find out China: National chainsaw; I rolled hose lays where it is we’re going. Anthology of the and set up sprinklers around After these experiences, Best Undergraduate homes, bridges, barns, and I understand that there’s a Writing 2012. She lookout towers; I directed a balance to strike between is looking forward helicopter via radio about doing and thinking, a to her second season where to drop supplies, hiked balance that is different with Kings Peak and nine miles with a 70-pound for each of us. For me, the is excited to continue pack and, at the end of the contrast between these two exploring the West. season in Wyoming, camped things is beautiful; after fire, I for two weeks in 10-degree appreciate Grinnell as I never weather (yes, fires still burn in would have before. Now at the cold!). Grinnell, I think excitedly Fire taught me about about another fire season myself in a way that Grinnell with the Kings Peak Module. never could. But the opposite Leaving, after all, is not such is also true: Grinnell has a bad thing, not when I know taught me about myself in a just how good it will feel to way that fire never will. find myself back again. Webextras www.grinnell.edu/magazine Download this issue! The Grinnell Magazine is now available online in .pdf form Jacob Wood and William McNulty, cofounders of Team Rubicon. Departments Letters .................... 3 Grinnell Prize winner Jacob Wood talks with students about Team Rubicon, a group Photo by Justin Hayworth Hail Harry Hopkins that helps veterans reintegrate into civilian life by engaging them in disaster relief. Campusnotes ................ 7 ESSAYS: FEATURES: The Ethical Anthropologists Inside front cover 14 From Page to Stage Student Musings: Observations: 18 “It’s All Up to You” Grinnell After Fire It Takes a College The Next Big Thing by Clare Boerigter ’14 by Dan Weeks ’80 Is Small At the Faulconer What working as a Why Robert Noyce ’49 was Yarn Bombing the Peace Grove wildland firefighter taught lucky to have been a Grinnellian. by Erin Peterson ’98 me about college. Fire and Ice 16 Mobile apps are small enough for smartphones but pack an Classnotes ................. 28 2 Conversations: increasingly big punch. Grinnell EditorNotes: Learning from Alumni app developers and experts Notable Alumni Boom, It’s Gone? by Kate Moening ’11 share how apps are reshaping Directing a Career by Dan Weeks ’80 Doug Caulkins’ alumni-enriched everything from politics to Wendy Knox ’79 Why the print version of course offers young Grinnellians photography — and what might The Grinnell Magazine is vision and reassurance. be next. Radical Giving here for the long haul. Carol Baker ’83 26 The Frankenstein Theory 12 Book Excerpt: 22 Andrew Weiner ’94 Choosing Grinnell’s Future: On the Book The Memory Books Access and Excellence by Sterling Lord ’42 Making Connections — by Raynard S. Kington A veteran literary agent shares by Kate Moening ’11 and a Difference Thanks to you, Grinnell College 60 years of experience in the Lester Alemán ’07 Burling Library’s archives offer is a national example. world of publishing. a glimpse into Grinnell life a Publications, Productions, Inside back cover century ago via the pages of and Exhibitions ............. 34 13 elaborate, student-compiled Choosing Grinnell’s Future: Alumni Musings: scrapbooks. In Memoriam ............... 35 Living Our Values Professor Fishman on Deck by Matthew Welch ’96 by Carroll R. McKibbin ’60 Alumni Council: 2013 Alumni I am more proud than McKibbin faced a momentus Award Recipients ............ 36 ever of Grinnell. question: baseball or biology? The Grinnell Magazine Spring 2013 1 The Grinnell Magazine Spring 2013 Volume 45 Number 3 Email: [email protected] Office of Communications Vice-president for Communications Jim Reische [email protected] Editor Dan Weeks ’80 [email protected] Art Director / Designer Editornotes Jim Powers [email protected] Classnotes Editor Boom, It’s Gone? Bonnie Primley [email protected] Editorial Assistant “Grinnell may have no plans to eliminate the print [magazine]. Kate Moening ’11 Contributing Photographer But I imagine discussions may happen and boom, it’s gone,” Justin Hayworth The Grinnell Magazine — Bruce Crane ’80 [“Keep mailing!” Page 5.] (ISSN 1539-0950) is published quarterly by Grinnell College, Office of Communications, 733 Broad St., Grinnell, IA 50112. Several times a year, I get letters such as Crane’s, pleading with us not to stop printing the Periodicals postage paid at Grinnell, IA, and additional mailing offices. magazine. © Copyright Grinnell College, 2013 We will not. In a survey last year, 88 percent of Grinnell alumni responding told us that The Grinnell Magazine was their preferred source of information about the College. We’d be nuts POSTMASTER Send address changes to: to stop printing something that is so central to your engagement with Grinnell, or to switch it to The Grinnell Magazine a format you didn’t prefer. 733 Broad Street Grinnell, IA 50112 So, rest assured that we will continue to print the very best magazine we possibly can for a FAX: 641-269-3408 long, long time. Email: [email protected] — Dan Weeks ’80, editor Mission Statement The Grinnell Magazine is published quarterly [email protected] for alumni, students, parents, faculty, and www.grinnell.edu/magazine friends of the College by the Office of Communications. The contents of this magazine are selected to stimulate thought P.S. For those of you who’d rather read The Grinnell Magazine online, email [email protected] and discussion, to demonstrate the range of opinions and activities on the campus and with “Arlo’s List” in the subject line and your street address in the body.