Macalester Today SUMMER 2016 Choosing a Bigger Life Pinpointing that moment when everything changed PAGE 24 Macalester Today SUMMER 2016 Features 12 The Next Sound You Hear 10 Duluth musician Gaelynn Lea Tressler ’06 wins NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest—and the start of a national reputation. Pioneering Preschool 12 Macalester once had nursery school kids playing and learning at the Miss Stella Wood Center. Macalester After Dark 16 One Friday night last February, our photographer set out to see what was happening on campus. 16 Creating Screen Magic 20 Hollywood insider Ken LaZebnik ’76 leads a screenwriting program designed to bring more women into the field. Choosing a Bigger Life 24 Pinpointing that moment when everything changed Get Set for Generation Z 28 As Millennials move on, Macalester gets ready to welcome the largest and most diverse cohort of students in its history. 24 Market-Savvy Foreign Aid 32 Mihir Desai ’90 leads a thriving international development consultancy. 32 ON THE COVER: Illustration by Wesley Bedrosian (TOP TO BOTTOM): MACALESTER ARCHIVES, DAVID J. TURNER, WESLEY BEDROSIAN, COURTESY OF MIHIR DESAI Staff EDITOR Lynette Lamb [email protected] ART DIRECTOR Brian Donahue CLASS NOTES EDITOR Robert Kerr ’92 PHOTOGRAPHER David J. Turner CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rebecca DeJarlais Ortiz ’06 Jan Shaw-Flamm ’76 ASSISTANT VP FOR COMM/PR David Warch MACALESTER COLLEGE CHAIR, BOARD OF TRUSTEES Jerry Crawford ’71 PRESIDENT Brian Rosenberg MACALESTER TODAY (Volume 104, Number 3) is published by Macalester College. It is PHOTO: DAVID J. TURNER DAVID PHOTO: 4 mailed free of charge to alumni and friends of the college four times a year. Circulation is 32,000. FOR CHANGE OF ADDRESS, please write: Alumni Relations Office, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-1899. Or Departments call (651) 696-6295. Toll-free: 1-888-242-9351. Email: [email protected] Letters 2 TO SUBMIT COMMENTS OR IDEAS, Household Words 3 Phone: 651-696-6452. Fax: 651-696-6192. Email: [email protected] Summit to St. Clair 4 Web: macalester.edu/alumni Game of Thrones, baby dinosaurs, and a bee-friendly campus Class Notes 34 Mac Weddings 38 Macalester Today is printed Alumni Award Winners 40 on Rolland Enviro 100, a 100 percent recycled paper. Our In Memoriam 45 printer, Bolger Printing of ® Grandstand 48 38 Minneapolis, is FSC certified. Letters longtime losing team after less than two years It is not surprising that the “Prosperity The Way We Were on the job.” This is simply not true and ignores Gospel” she has studied— either expounded The photo of the 1961 Mac yearbook cover the many achievements of former coach Ellen in church or implicit in lifestyle—is so per- (Letters, Spring 2016) motivated me to write. Thompson, who took over a program in sham- vasive in privileged communities across The Class of 1961 was full of nice students, bles and led our team to conference playoffs. America. It is the natural outgrowth of a many of whom were Merit Scholars from During its 2004–05 season, the Macales- society built on a continent of immense small towns. We were taught by one of Mac’s ter women’s basketball team opened with six natural wealth, where we believed the open brightest collection of faculty losses, by an average margin of road and its frontier were endless—where members, a faculty that called 40 points.The rest of the season it was finally possible, we thought, to make us to strive for excellence. We was canceled due to lack of play- a clean break with the Old World. But the attended chapel and were re- ers. In 2005–06, Thompson’s fundamental rules of the universe apply here quired to attend a general col- first year as coach, she built a too, on the other side of the Atlantic—a fact lege assembly, where we lis- team from scratch: slotting in we could ignore for a time but which is now tened to some world-famous to run scrimmages male play- being thrown in our faces by the new world speakers. We learned about ers and women with no plans order, and driven home by the first hints of dedicating our efforts to wor- to play collegiate athletics. In mortality for a generation which honed pur- thy causes, such as sending 2006–07, Coach Thompson more suit of self-determination to a fine edge. help to Vietnam. I met and than doubled the previous year’s It is the old biblical bugaboo, hubris, come married my wife, who played wins, earning her MIAC Coach to rear its ugly head in the United States of in the Mac pipe band, and our of the Year honors. America, the land of the alleged free and home first child was born in Macville. Some of us In 2009–10, Coach Thompson led us to a of the conveniently brave: the delusion that were veterans who had fought in the Korean record of 16–6, placing fourth in the confer- we have control of our destiny, when in fact War. We studied hard and moved on to gradu- ence and qualifying for playoffs. Had our arch- we are only hapless beneficiaries of luck— ate school. One classmate, Kofi Annan, would nemesis down Summit Avenue not spoiled blessings, if you’ll pardon the expression. become the Secretary of the United Nations. our run, we are certain to have earned the first Bowler’s diagnosis of advanced cancer at We became professionals in various fields and championship in school history (or so we tell a relatively young age placed her squarely be- noted scholars. We had no time for nonsense ourselves after a few pints at Billy’s). In 2010– fore a reckoning which many of us hope to or political correctness; we just felt obligated 11 we finished as sixth seed, with a 10–12 defer. Her conversation with the inevitable to make the world a better place. Now at 81, record in the regular season, earning another bears the marks of one who has lived much I look upon Macalester with gratitude and a playoff berth. That year Thompson again re- longer and, as such, ought be closely consid- little sadness. ceived MIAC Coach of the Year honors. ered by the rest of us. After all, our time is Thomas L. Dynneson ’61 Coach Roysland in no way inherited a coming, too: sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, Minneapolis “longtime losing team” and to say as much sans everything. overlooks the extraordinary career of Coach William Werner, Jr. ’77 Thompson and her unprecedented—and as Minneapolis Garrison’s Goodbye yet unduplicated—achievements. I read in Macalester Today (“Goodbye to Garri- The 2009-10 Macalester women’s basketball son,” Spring 2016) that Garrison Keillor made team and assistant coaching staff Correction his first radio broadcast from our campus on Amanda Summer Slavin ’78, who wrote the July 6, 1974. My question is about his final EDITOR’S NOTE: We apologize for the mistak- book 100 Places in Greece Every Woman Should broadcast: When will it be aired and will it also en use of the adjective longtime. Clearly it was Go, uses the name Amanda Summer profes- be held on our campus? only the few seasons immediately before Coach sionally and on her books. Also, the correct Tom Hilton ’57 Roysland took over as coach that could be charac- spelling of the Greek town referred to in the Atlantic Beach, Fla. terized as losing ones, and those years were pre- book excerpt is Kioni. ceded by some very fine seasons indeed. We regret EDITOR’S NOTE: Garrison Keillor’s final show overlooking the excellent record of Coach Ellen as host of A Prairie Home Companion took place Thompson and especially her winning 2009-11 LETTERS POLICY on July 1, 2016, at the Hollywood Bowl. PHC last women’s basketball teams. broadcast from Macalester in July 2015. We invite letters of 300 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for clarity, style, On the Prosperity Gospel and space and will be published based Softball winners Kate Bowler’s essay “Death, the Prosperity on their relevance to issues discussed In the most recent issue of Macalester Today Gospel and Me” (Grandstand, Spring 2016) in Macalester Today. You can send let- (“A for Women Coaches,” Spring 2016), wom- is a profound statement in a column of a ters to [email protected] or to en’s basketball coach Kelly Roysland’s appear- magazine that frankly could sometimes use a Macalester Today, Macalester College, ance in MinnPost was highlighted with the dose of the unpredictable. Bowler’s analysis is 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105. claim that “…Roysland… is turning around a razor-sharp and spot-on. 2 MACALESTER TODAY Household Words Not Advice BY BRIAN ROSENBERG ehind the desk in my office is a wall lined with books. I am some- what particular about the way those books are organized, so they Bbegin on the left with British literature, ar- ranged chronologically and alphabetically and by genre according to a system only I would know, then move to American literature, then to literature written in languages other than English. The first book on the top shelf on the left-hand side is, of course, Beowulf. The last at the other end of the long wall is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Between are not just John Donne and Toni Morrison and Bertolt Brecht. Between, in many re- spects, are the ideas and words and moments of beauty and insight that have shaped my life. I note this because we are living in a mo- ment when many people—maybe most peo- ple—want to judge the value of what you have President Rosenberg congratulating a Class of 2016 graduate.