Climate Anxiety 24 Michelle Rivero ’94 Shapes How Facing Fears About a Warming the City Supports Immigrants Planet, Macalester Students and Refugees
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MACALESTER WINTER 2020 Today CL I M AT E ANXIETY How the looming threat of global catastrophe is galvanizing today’s students to take action and seek solutions. SEE PAGE 24 MACALESTER Today WINTER 2020 12 14 20 FEATURES Welcome to Minneapolis 12 Climate Anxiety 24 Michelle Rivero ’94 shapes how Facing fears about a warming the city supports immigrants planet, Macalester students and refugees. are responding with education, organizing, and growing activism. Second Act 14 How alumni are finding meaningful How Macalester work and service in the second half Made Me the Republican TURNER; J. DAVID LEFT: FROM of their lives. I am Today 30 RJ Laukitis ’02 parlayed debates Curtain Call 20 on campus into bipartisan Before he retires, Dan Keyser collaboration on Capitol Hill. ON THE COVER: walks us through more than a MARIA SIRIANO; Generation Z grew up century of Mac theater. Lecture Notes 32 worrying about what will We asked Michael Griffin how happen to our warming news has changed in the twenty- ARCHIVES COLLEGE MACALESTER planet. Now channeling their climate anxiety into first century. action, these activists seek solutions to halt climate change. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLES JISCHKE STAFF EDITOR Rebecca DeJarlais Ortiz ’06 [email protected] ART DIRECTION The ESC Plan / theESCplan.com CLASS NOTES EDITOR Robert Kerr ’92 PHOTOGRAPHER David J. Turner CONTRIBUTING WRITER Julie Hessler ’85 ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Julie Hurbanis 24 30 CHAIR, BOARD OF TRUSTEES Jerry Crawford ’71 PRESIDENT DEPARTMENTS Brian Rosenberg VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT Household Words 2 D. Andrew Brown Correspondence 3 ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENGAGEMENT 1600 Grand 4 Katie Ladas A new magazine, a hoops milestone, MACALESTER TODAY (Volume 108, Number 1) and the microbiology of beer is published by Macalester College. It is mailed free of charge to alumni and friends of the college four times a year. Class Notes 34 Circulation is 32,000. You Said 35 TO UPDATE YOUR ADDRESS: Email: [email protected] Books 37 Call: 651-696-6295 or 1-888-242-9351 Write: Alumni Engagement Office, Macalester Weddings 39 College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-1899 In Memoriam 45 TO SHARE COMMENTS OR IDEAS: Email: [email protected] Last Look 48 Phone: 651-696-6123 Macalester Today is printed Royle to on Rolland Enviro 100, a place 100 percent recycled paper. FSC logo 40 Our printer, Royle Printing ® FROM LEFT: ADAM GEISS; STACY ZARIN GOLDBERG GEISS; STACY ADAM LEFT: FROM of Madison, Wis., is FSC certified. (FSC® C22017) WINTER 2020 / 1 HOUSEHOLD WORDS ALMOST GONE A column with lots of annotations BY BRIAN ROSENBERG By the time my presi- dency at Macalester concludes, I will have The passage through my seventeenth and last year as president attended nearly 300 at Macalester has been undeniably strange. This is not to say faculty meetings during that it has been better or worse than the 16 other not-my-last- my career as a profes- years, but it has been odd and different, colored by the aware- sor, dean, and president. Sometimes it’s okay for ness virtually every day that I am doing something for the fi- things to end. nal time. Move-in Day. Opening Convocation. Family Fest. The November faculty meeting. Among the most peculiar aspects of my runway to “retirement” has been its sheer length. Between the announcement of my I actually don’t plan on “retir- impending departure and the thing itself will be a period of 14 ing,” as in, “I’m not going to work months. This is done to allow for a presidential search process any more and might move into one of those senior communities that is deliberate, inclusive, and more or less interminable, but it where people ride around in golf Brian Rosenberg (in costume for is, to be honest, really weird. My personal preference would have carts.” That’s why I put the word in his role in the college’s Rocky been to behave like people in most professions, give a couple of quotes. Plus there’s no good word Horror Show production last fall) months’ notice, and gracefully depart. Maybe some balloons. for “I’m going to stop doing this is president of Macalester College. thing and do some other thing.” Since my announcement last April, more than a few people have given me that “is he still here?” look, and a few have even openly “Plastics….There’s a great future in expressed surprise that I am, in fact, still here. I don’t blame them; plastics.” Those of you who’ve seen occasionally I am myself surprised that I’m still here. The Graduate will get it. Those of Most of the questions I get asked these days are ones to which you who’ve not seen The Graduate should see The Graduate. I have no easy answer. What do I plan on doing next? (I have no idea, though I do have more empathy with our graduating se- niors.) Where do I plan to live? (Ditto, though the absence of snow To be fair, one of the defini- would be a strong selling point.) What do I consider my most tions of “dead man walking” significant accomplishment as president? (Persisting.) How do I is “any person in a doomed or explain the fact that the Red Sox have won four World Series and untenable situation, espe- cially one about to lose his or the Yankees one during my presidential term? (And how many, her job.” So, why not? exactly, have the Twins won, hotshot?) Recently a fellow president whom I like a good deal saw me enter a meeting room and said, wryly, “dead man walking.” Harsh, I was born in the Bronx. Sorry. O’BRIEN TIMMY NICKELODEON; ISTOCK.COM/MENTALART; MAXWELL COLLYARD; TOP: FROM CLOCKWISE What is the best Tim O’Brien book? perhaps, but I didn’t argue with her. a) Going After Cacciato One of the highlights of my year has been reading the new b) The Things They Carried book by Tim O’Brien ’68, his first since 2002. Do read it: it’s When I began at Macalester c) In the Lake of the Woods entitled Dad’s Maybe Book and is chiefly about a father’s love in the fall of 2003, most of for his two sons but also about Minnesota, writing, Hemingway, our current first-year stu- (Hint: The correct answer is c.) dents were watching Blue’s war, aging, memory, and magic—the Harry Houdini kind, not Clues—which, by the way, the Harry Potter kind. There is a photo in the book of the author has been rebooted by Nick- of The Things They Carried in a top hat and tails, which is not elodeon. Nothing can replace the original. something I ever expected to see. Tim is older than I am—I am quick these days to note when anyone is older than I am—but his reflections on aging capture much of what I am feeling in this winter of the year 2020. Some- how without my really noticing it I went from being a youngish college president to being the one to whom everyone turns when they are looking for a remark from an elder statesman. Tim writes about “the pitiless voice of my own mortality, This is Tim O’Brien in a base- bubbling up from somewhere in my belly, jabbering away as I ball cap. Now imagine a top hat instead of the baseball wash dishes and polish the kitchen counter.” I hear that voice, cap and you have it. too. (Along with another voice that says, mockingly, “on your best day you could never write a sentence that good.” That voice also 2 / MACALESTER TODAY CORRESPONDENCE Faculty Wisdom and serving as the Macalester Wanted to send my kudos re- Community Council’s recording garding the Fall 2019 Macal- secretary for all four years. After ester Today, specifically “The graduation, she worked as a polit- Classroom Wisdom I Carry With ical analyst for the Central Intelli- Me” piece on page 38. The tidbits gence Agency in Washington, D.C. jabbers at me a lot when I read you’ve included are 100 percent Back in Minnesota, she served on Marlon James.) spot on. I almost want to suggest many local and state boards (such I try to take comfort in the repackaging this kind of stuff as Red Wing Public Schools) and fact that I will carry from Macal- in some “cutesy and optimized received numerous awards for ester nearly two decades’ worth of for social media but can also be her volunteerism. In 2010 she memories, but Tim messes with PDF’d and printed for my cu- was Reunion Chair for our Class that bit of reassurance as well. bicle” way. Thank you. For each of 1960 and received Macalester’s I swear I have sham- “What we call memory,” he ob- pooed my hair twice and every page. Distinguished Citizen Award. serves, “is failed memory. What at least 20 times, just John Jensen ’96 When I saw her photo in her we call memory is forgetful- to make sure, which Hillsboro, Ore. obituary online, my first thought is particularly silly ness....Memory speaks, yes. But given how little hair I was that she was the spittin’ im- it stutters. It speaks in ellipses.” actually have. age of her mother, whom I met If I sometimes can’t remember Curious City the fall of 1956 as a freshman. whether I just shampooed my It used to be when Macalester Almost 64 years later, I clearly hair or what I had for breakfast Today arrived, I would turn to remember her parents and Judy, last Tuesday, how can I possibly Class Notes and look for friends who was an excellent example of recall with any reliability things I knew.