Communication

Kevin Cannon ’02 was still a student when his cartoons first delighted Grinnellians on the pages of The Grinnell Magazine. His wry, colorful graphics have had a long run.

The end of Cannon’s cartoon “run” with the magazine this summer coincides with another — the conclusion of Russell K. Osgood’s 12-year tenure as President of the College.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2010.

Trustee Nordahl Brue ’67 had an idea and termed it “selah,” a Hebrew word for a time to pause and reflect. Brue’s idea was to celebrate the talent and achievement within the College community, to commemorate the fourth rebuilding of Grinnell’s facilities, and to honor retiring President Russell K. Osgood.

Brue hopes to make Selah an annual day of celebration focused on Grinnell’s achievements.Suggestions for future celebrations may be sent to Meg Jones Bair, director of donor relations.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2010.

There’s something magical about an old newspaper office; it’s seen so much history, heard so many stories. The old Scarlet & Black press room at the Grinnell Herald Register is such a place.

The old makeup room is filled with the tools that editors of old used to ready the publication for print. Though replaced by computers, when you visit you can almost hear the ghosts of the past stirring among the dusty shelves.

Photos by Jim Heemstra

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2010.

Tips? We've got more tips than a truck-stop waitress. Here are some more ideas on how to survive the recession.

From Rachel Bly ’93

Director of conference operations and events in the Department of College and Alumni Relations

1. Take turns with other families and host “game nights.” Each child can pick out a board game that he or she wants to play. It's even more fun if the adults get involved.
2. Check out your local library. They often have great — and free — activities for children.
3. Go on explorations in town. Bly said a local artist in Grinnell put on a class to show children how to make stained glass.
4. Form a swimming collective with other families and rent the pool out for an hour or two at a time.
5. Form babysitting co-ops to reduce childcare expenses when the adults want a night on the town.
6. Kids love to bake. Make a batch of sugar cookies and let the children decorate them.
7. Take advantage of local events. In Grinnell, for example, the College hosts numerous events and concerts that children can enjoy.

From Erin Howell-Gritsch

Costume designer in Grinnell's theatre and dance department

1. People make the mistake of thinking clothes in second-hand and resale shops are good values, when in fact they are often overpriced. “I'd actually start at Goodwill, where you can find some pretty good things,” she says.
2. Also consider Old Navy. “You can find 97-cent bargains, which is even cheaper than Goodwill.”
3. Instead of paying as much as $20 for a jersey knit scarf, buy a yard of cotton knit at a fabric store and make three or four of your own. (They make great gifts.)

From Jen Jacobsen ’95

Wellness coordinator

1. You don't need to spend a lot on barbells. A gallon of milk or container of laundry detergent can work just as well. If that seems a little too low-tech, Play it Again Sports have cheaper barbells. “I store mine under the couch,” she says.
2. Fitness and workout DVDs are often available for free at the local library. Netflix subscribers can also get them.
3. Form child care trade-offs with friends so you can spend an hour at the gym without having to pay the cost of a babysitter.
4. There are countless ways to work out with children (for you, it's a workout; for them, it's play). Go sledding; walking up the hill is great exercise. Go on hikes. Ride bicycles together. Or let them ride a bicycle while you run along next to them.

From Ralph Eyberg

The College's horticulturist

1. Don't mow too often, especially in the hottest part of summer.
2. If you have a shaded area in your yard, create a shade garden. Place plants there that thrive in the shade.
3. Stick to a budget when it comes to landscaping. “It's easy to go into a garden center, see something you want and compulsively buy it,” he says.
4. Plant smaller trees and plants. They grow faster.
5. Use mulch for weed control and water management — but you don't want it to be deeper than four inches.
6. Use plants that are hardy for your area.
7. When planting annuals, put a little bit of Soil Moist in the bottom of the hole before planting. “It absorbs water and keeps the plant from drying out quite as much.”
8. Time-release fertilizer will take care of most plants through the summer.

From Kristin Lovig

Director of human resources

1. Follow up on your job application, but don't overdo it. If you are told that your application has been received, there's no need for a follow-up call. But it's perfectly fine to check back if it feels like the process is dragging on.
2. Be willing to accept a temporary job. It's a great way to get your foot in the door and to demonstrate your work ethic. It can often lead to a full-time job.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Fall 2010.

By Richard Cleaver ’75 The son of a Grinnell faculty member himself, Richard Cleaver grew up just around the corner from Professor of Philosophy Neal Klausner, overhearing many an animated philosophical conversation among Grinnell’s “faculty legends.”

Neal Klausner has a gift for friendship. Many people in Grinnell have his intellectual curiosity, read as widely as he does, and more than a few share his intentional refusal to rest content with any answer.

But Klausner is different. During conversations, the professor emeritus of philosophy repeatedly rises from his comfortable chair (which is no trivial exercise for someone 101 years old) to pull a book from the shelf to pass to his visitor. As one talks with him, images of companionship, of living together with ideas, of intellectual friendship, continually recur. His long-running philosophical duel with his dear friend Howard Burkle (professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies) on faith and atheism is legendary on the Grinnell campus, even now that both are rarely seen there. But Klausner is quick to point out that it was kept going “because we spent so much time on the golf course together.”

Time and again as he recounts his route to Grinnell from Neenah, Wis., he mentions friends. Of his time as a divinity student at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, where he went after graduating from Lawrence in 1931, he says, “The friends I made there were a gift better than the degree.” (“I stayed in school so long because it was the Depression, and jobs were hard to find!”) From Colgate he went to Yale, where he pursued a Ph.D. While still working on it, in 1936, he was asked to teach both philosophy and psychology at the University of Redlands. “I went straight from my wedding to a summer course in psychology at the University of Chicago, and then we drove out to California. The air was redolent of orange groves back then.”

When Klausner came to Grinnell from Redlands in 1944, he says, “Both the College and the town were a little bit shabby.” In fact, he and Mary Klausner were not sure they wanted to stay, especially once winter came. “But the warmth of the student body made it home. I’ve never regretted coming, though I have regretted the weather.”

One of the major changes he has seen in the 64 ensuing years has been the beautification of both. One thing he insists has not changed is the intellectual stature of the faculty: when he first arrived, his colleagues included Edward Steiner, Henry Conard, Grant Gale, Charlie Foster, Harold Clapp, and his predecessor John Stoops, among others.

He recalls the impromptu celebration at the announce-ment of the end of World War II. He and Mary and several friends were having dinner at the Monroe Hotel (across Third Avenue from the train station, now the Depot Restaurant), the best place to eat in town in those days. On hearing the news, Klausner, then-Dean Earl Strong, and then-Treasurer Lou Phelps got up and rushed to Magoun Hall on campus, and took turns ringing the bell that hung in the tower for about half an hour before returning to finish their meal.

One thing he misses from his earliest days is the strong sense of community, due in large part to the small size of the campus. He estimates that during the war there were about 300 women students and perhaps 21 men, and the faculty was correspondingly small. “There was a custom then that the senior faculty would come calling on the new ones on Sunday afternoons. If you weren’t home, they would stick their calling cards in the screen door. Sometimes we’d come home and all these cards would come fluttering down.”

Reminiscing is not the main point of a conversation with Neal Klausner, however. He shares with a visitor his current reading — in this case, Martha Nussbaum’s newest book The Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality — and points out that one of the great benefits of retirement is that “I’m free — I can read anything I want.” When he retired in 1975, he started reading all of Dickens. Now one of his main social outlets is a book club with a group of other men living at the Mayflower Homes. (He was well into his 90s before he gave up tennis and golf.) The number of College colleagues at Mayflower makes it a congenial place, “but I’m still surprised that students of mine are now living here!”

He also keeps teaching, opening a discussion of different definitions of philosophy. “Philosophy is our most vigorous mental effort to know the Is, the whole Is, and nothing but the Is. To which I would add that it is also our most vigorous mental effort to know the Non-Is, the whole Non-Is, and nothing but the Non-Is. Or there is Socrates’ definition: ‘To do philosophy is to practice dying.’ Because in dying we strip away the senses, and only pure knowledge can grasp pure knowledge.” (His visitor is pleased to be able to name the dialogue of Plato in which Socrates’ definition appears, the Phaedo, and receive, in exchange a simple, “Yes, you’re right.” It’s like getting an A on an exam.) Bertrand Russell comes in next: “Philosophy is the substitution of articulate hesitation for inarticulate certainty.” Wittgenstein enters the room, asserting that there are no philosophical problems, only linguistic ones, and that a philosopher’s business is to clear the language. “Philosophy doesn’t solve problems, it dissolves them.” But Klausner then welcomes his favorite definition, from William James: “Our most stubborn effort is to think clearly.” Summing up, Klausner remarks, with a smile, “These have been my companions for a long time.”

The image of wandering with, and among, friends, is a powerful one for Klausner, who declares that he has always wanted his students to do the same. He also wants their motivation to be pleasure, not utility. In a 1954 lecture in honor of former President John S. Nollen, later published in part in The American Scholar, Klausner makes plain that this companionship with our predecessors, like all friendships, is for its own sake. “I wish to defend the idea that the humanities are best thought of as ends in themselves, rather than means; man has the capacity for sheer personal enjoyment and satisfaction, and finds this deeply in the arts, literature, philosophy, history, and any other subject that expresses man by telling of his birth, struggle, achievements, decay, and death. Why should we think it necessary to defend man’s interest in himself?” Describing a situation that seems not to have changed much in a half century, and still to be relevant when the educational debate centers around “No Child Left Behind” and “teaching to the test,” Klausner deplores the “educationists in our day, who are responsible for sending into the schools of the nation teachers almost totally blind to what is human in the human situation.” Liberal arts education, he seems to be saying, is the antidote, especially if it helps us, as he puts it in another speech, to “endure the persistent small voice that often distracts [us] by saying, at the most critical times, ‘You could be wrong. Why not look at it this way?’”

Looking at things in new ways, helped by books and WOI-FM on the radio, are among Klausner’s chief companions these days, as his old friends and sparring partners move on. He still corresponds with old students, though — the ones who don’t live down the hall — and his dedication to teaching is strong, as the philosophy lesson just described makes clear. The conversation takes place on the day the financial rescue plan becomes law and the Dow Jones average plunges by 777 points, and the ensuing discussion demonstrates that Klausner has not retreated from the world.

But both he and his visitor have things to do, so he makes an elegant transition to parting. “I have an exit line,” he says. “Richard Rorty, an American philosopher, pragmatist, and atheist, said or wrote, ‘Love is the only law.’ I don’t put much philosophical weight on that wonderfully ambiguous and vague statement. But I go a long way with Rorty here.”

Then he walks the visitor to the door — companionable yet again, on the intellectual journey.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Winter 2008.

Babel Tower teachers (l to r): Nikeisha Sewell ’12, Juli Garcia-Vicente ’10, leader Claire Moisan, Camila Barrios-Camacho ’12, Mairéad O’Grady ’10, Hiba Elnour ’12, and Heidi Chun ’10.
Photographer: Grant Dissette '12

At the same time globalization makes communication across cultures more important than ever, shrinking budgets have forced schools around the country to cut foreign language programs. The local Grinnell district is no exception.

A new collaboration between Grinnell students and the Grinnell Area Arts Council may help fill the gap.

“The decline of foreign language instruction in schools seemed like a problem for which we may have an exceptional local solution,” says Claire Moisan, instructor in the Grinnell College Writing Lab and founder of Babel Tower Language Academy. Babel Tower is an after-school and weekend language program employing Grinnell students to teach six foreign languages.

Grinnell students are particularly well-prepared to teach languages. The study of foreign languages continues to thrive at Grinnell, Moisan says. Thirteen percent of Grinnell graduates are language majors; 86 percent of Grinnell graduates completed at least one language course, and 49 percent completed as least three. Nearly 60 percent of Grinnell students study abroad for at least one semester.

“My goal was to create a program that would be as much about learning to teach as it is about teaching to learn,” says Moisan, whose initial academic training was in French. “Teaching is one of the best ways of solidifying language skills.”

Students are excited about the opportunity. “As a future educator, I have this phenomenal opportunity to try out my lesson plans, to see what works and doesn’t,” says Chinese teacher Heidi Chun ’10.

“This last semester reminded me how much fun learning about language and culture can be,” she adds. “I had the opportunity to review a large amount of material often not discussed at the college level and to slow down and enjoy preparing lessons on cultural topics.”

Moisan also collaborated with visiting instructor Yasuko Akiyama, who trained the student teachers in a two-credit course on foreign language teaching methodologies. “This course gives the student both training in the theory of how languages are taught, and practice teaching in a low stakes, creative environment,” says Akiyama.

“I am so excited about the collaboration between the College and the arts council,” says Moisan.“ It’s a win-win situation that enriches the lives of all involved — the college students who have the opportunity to impart their skills and knowledge of topics they are studying at Grinnell, and the local community children who have the opportunity to broaden their cultural, creative, and linguistic horizons.”

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Spring 2010.

Katie Mears ’03 works for Episcopal Relief and Development as program manager for U.S. disaster preparedness and response. She was recently in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, handling logistics for transfer of relief supplies into Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake there. The organization’s network of Haitian staff is running 23 camps, serving more than 25,000 people.

When asked what gives her hope in the face of such a disaster, Mears says, “That people, somehow, continue to get up everyday. In the face of all that death and destruction, in a country that literally smells like death … they are finding strength and courage in the face of a gruesome reality. That cheers me up.

“It’s important for Americans to remember that Haitians aren’t just victims here,” she adds. “They can be and need to be in control of their recovery.”

Mears sent these photos she took in the days immediately following the Haiti earthquake.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Spring 2010.

Mears writes, “[This photo is of] me (at left, purple shirt) and my colleague Kirsten Muth (at right) (both from Episcopal Relief and Development) meeting with the crisis commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti in Port-au-Prince a week after the quake. The one in the purple baseball cap is the Bishop of Haiti, Rt. Rev. Jean-Zache Duracin. Courtesy of the Diocese of Haiti

Destruction in Port-au-Prince. By Katie Mears ’03

The Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince was badly damaged. The center portion was formerly three stories tall. By Katie Mears ’03

Damage to the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. By Katie Mears ’03

Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet,
Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Galaxy of Images

by Erika Graham ’10

You call me to you, vast and powerful mind,
Minerva of France, immortal Emilie
I awake at your voice, I march to your insights,
In the footsteps of virtues and of the truth.

Emilie was a very unusual woman.

Her full name was Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, because when she was born in 1706, all French nobles had names longer than themselves! That’s why we’ll call her Emilie. But it wasn’t her name that made her unusual.

It was unusual for a woman born in 1706 to grow up to become a physicist.

But Emilie was unusual. Her father made sure that she got a good education before she got married, and she was able to learn advanced math from some of the best teachers around.

By 1734, she had a castle, Cirey, and she filled one huge room with instruments of all kinds, mathematical, physical, chemical, astronomical, mechanical, and so on. Scientific visitors thought they were dreaming to be in such a room. And Emilie welcomed many scientists to her home.

At Emilie’s castle in Cirey, her visitors worked with her on science, doing experiments and discussing all kinds of theories about the world.

After all, in France in 1734, science — especially physics — was one of the biggest issues of the day. Everyone loved to talk about it, but no one was quite sure how the universe worked:

Why do things fall?

How do things move?

And, while we’re at it,

What makes a thing a thing?

Or rather, everyone was sure how the universe worked. They just didn’t agree.

Mostly, people divided up into teams, with competing ideas about physics. In France, the star player was René Descartes (you say that day-CART). He lived from 1596 to 1650, and had a lot to say about the world.

What did he think? He thought about thinking. Humans are reasonable creatures, so everything could be explained if we just think about it enough. We call this rationalism.

To understand physics, Descartes asked people to think about an imaginary world along with him:

Allow your thought to wander beyond this world to view another, wholly new, world. Let us suppose so much matter all around us that, in whatever direction our imagination may extend, it no longer sees any place that is empty.

Then, thinking about this new world, you could figure out its physics. If all this matter, all the stuff in the new universe, was stirred up like a giant mixing bowl, what would happen? Everything would start moving around, some parts faster, others slower. After a while, things would settle down to look like — THIS.

Since the universe is filled up, nothing moves anywhere without pushing other things away, and those things have to push other bits from their places, and this pushing and shoving continues endlessly. And so, said Descartes, everything moves around in circles. There is no room to spare in the universe, so whenever one part of space wants to shift even a little bit, a whole chain of things has to get moving.

This was a fictional universe, but he said that things worked the same way in our world too. That’s why the solar system chases itself around in a circle. That’s how air fills back in behind an object moving through it.

And that’s the way he found ideas to explain the world; he took a thought that everyone could agree on, then explored what the results had to be. Human reason was pure, not bothered by all the sorts of inaccuracies caused by mistakes in our senses or our measurements. As he said, since we are taking the liberty of imagining this matter as we fancy, let us attribute to it, if we may, a nature in which there is absolutely nothing that everyone cannot know as perfectly as possible.

With the mind, everyone can understand physics. But not everyone agreed, including Isaac Newton.

He was the champion physicist of England, born in 1642 — so he was just 8 when Descartes died. But that didn’t stop him from arguing with Descartes once got old enough. He called Descartes’ physics absurd, fiction, and repugnant to reason. (Physicists could be quite badly behaved back then.) All the universe spinning in circles? Never!

He also didn’t like Descartes’ habit of imagining, either — that wasn’t how science should work! Rationalists were dreamers.

So what did he think? He thought about looking.

The world exists right here in front of our eyes, so why bother making up a fictional world, with the weird sort of physics Descartes threw in, when you could see and change and discover everything that was real? Certainly idle fancies ought not to be fabricated recklessly against the evidence of experiments. Newton liked watching the world. Newton liked experiments. And his experiments taught him that Descartes had it wrong.

He definitely disagreed with Descartes’ hypothesis of vortices, the system where everything in the universe formed into giant whirlpools of matter, including our solar system. Why did he disagree? Because he could see that the planets weren’t moving the way they should.

If the planets went around the sun in one large whirl, and also moved in the center of their own circle of motion because of the matter they pushed aside, they would have to move at a certain speed and go around the sun in a certain amount of time.

Unfortunately for Descartes, they didn’t.

Comets also helped convince Newton that Descartes was wrong. A swirl moving around the sun as evenly as Descartes thought was no place to go finding objects which cut out a strange path. But comets come and go quickly, at odd angles, and certainly aren’t moving in the same kind of orbits as the rest of the planets.

Descartes, for all his logic, had to be wrong.

But not everyone thought so. In fact, most people in France didn’t agree with Newton. They thought he didn’t understand.

Where was his logic?

Where were his causes?

Newton had taken away Descartes’ circles and hadn’t said why. He told people what he saw around him, and talked of forces and motion, but he gave no reason why his system had to be any better than Descartes’.

And, after all, Newton was only an Englishman.

What? Why does that matter?

You may well ask. After all, England and France aren’t all that far apart — doesn’t physics work the same way in both places? If you throw a stone in France, it will hit the ground as well as in England. Ask anyone.

Unfortunately, France and England hadn’t gotten along for a very long time; after the French thought they’d won the physics prize with Descartes, it was hard to let some newcomer take it away.

So, for a while, physics did work differently in France and England — and most of the rest of Europe, for that matter.

Newton died in 1727. Descartes was already long gone. But everywhere, people continued to argue over who was right. Now everyone called physics repugnant to reason and other nasty names — well, the physics they didn’t believe in, anyhow.

Things were getting out of control.

Steve Johnston ’92, general counsel for the Oakland A’s, says heading to Phoenix, Ariz., to watch spring training is one of his favorite job duties. He sent this photo slideshow of a day at the ballpark with the A’s, along with some family snapshots. Photos used courtesy of Johnston.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2010.

Johnston soaks up some sunshine while the team takes the field.

Johnston (second from right) watches the team run drills at spring training with (l to r) Oakland A’s owner Lew Wolff, Field Manager Bob Geren, and General Manager Billy Beane.

Johnston watches the team at work. The Oakland A’s are part of the Cactus League for spring training.

Steve and two of his three sons (Brady and Ty) take in a game.

Steve’s sons Brady, Will, and Ty with former Oakland A’s/Yankees All-Star Jason Giambi.

Steve’s wife Angela with their son Ty — she and Steve coach their son’s Little League team.

Steve, Angela, and the boys enjoy a day at the beach.

Johnston's son Will at an A’s game impatiently waiting for his hotdog.

Johnston's sons at the Oakland A's batting cage at the stadium.

Brady and Johnston at a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game.

Brady helping the photographer at the San Jose Earthquakes game.

On Aug. 1, 2010, Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., will become the 13th president of Grinnell College. When Kington was introduced to a packed Herrick Chapel on Feb. 17, the response was remarkable in its passion and its volume. Photos by Jim Heemstra.

This article appeared as a web extra for The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2010.

Herrick Chapel, which has served as a setting for Grinnell’s defining moments for more than a century, overflowed with joy (and Grinnellians) for the presidential announcement.

David White ’90, chair of the Grinnell College Board of Trustees, introduced Kington to the standing-room-only audience.

Kington received three standing ovations from the happy crowd in Herrick.

As most parents would agree, keeping a small child quiet in church can be challenging. Kington’s partner, Dr. Peter Daniolos, entertains the couple’s older son Emerson during the announcement ceremony.

Emerson's attention wandered, but he would soon be on the move.

“C’mon up!”

Emerson and his father face the audience together.

Emerson appears to be thinking, "Hmmmm … what happens if I drop this over the side?"

A sunny day greeted Kington for the presidential announcement, complemented by a warm reception from Grinnellians in Herrick.

Jeff Phelps ’71 (right) greets the new president and his partner, while Seth Allen (second from left), dean of admission and financial aid, waits to speak with the new president.

Daniolos and Emerson wore big smiles as they walked to lunch at the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center.

Trustee Hal Fuson ’67 walks with Kington on their way to the Rosenfield Center.

Kington got a round of applause from students eating lunch when he and his family walked into the dining hall.

Raynard S. Kington, M.D. — Grinnell’s 13th president.