We received this note from Ellen Anderson Penno ’84. She was a classmate of Ian Kraabel and has recently written a memoir on their time at Carleton, including the aftermath of the 1986 avalanche that claimed Ian’s life.
“Ian was inspired by history and endlessly curious about the world. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to me while a student:
I’ll tell you about the problem of hindsight. It’s a problem which plagues all historians who seek origins of a particular event, be it the French Revolution or why the Royals won the World Series… The problem with hindsight is that once you choose the explanation of a certain event as the goal of your historical research…. because you’re looking for a cause, that’s how you must describe the earlier period, as a cause of event x, thereby ignoring the countless other potentialities inherent in the situation. Historians in search of historical origins run the risk of a similar fate.
I am so pleased that Carleton is inspiring students to consider the current world with history in mind, and would like to offer recipients of the Ian Kraabel Memorial Prize who may be interested in Ian’s history a copy of my memoir, Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found, that celebrates his life. “
Ellen
