Navigating Complex Times
Thank you for what is the best Voice I have seen since graduating in 1967 (Spring 2024). From the letters regarding Angie Pius and Bob Will to the art of Donna Dennis and Ben Shahn at the end, a thoroughly good and informative read. Each article was worthy and reflective of an increasingly diverse student body, able to navigate complex times. Your focus on mediating democracy, deciphering deception, and political poster art is spot on.
Erica Lord’s “skoden” poster is a poignant reminder of my good friend, David Paul ’66, a political scientist who researched how movies, theater, music, and especially popular culture have become instrumental in challenging repressive, destructive, authoritarian regimes. May [alumni poster artists] Christina Seely, Mildred Beltré, Ethan Murrow, and Erica Lord’s work be spread wide. Perhaps a team of students, faculty, and alums from various disciplines could collaborate on getting packets distributed and displayed in Northfield, Rice County, the Twin Cities, and beyond.
—Craig Rennebohm ’67
Peace within Politics
Thanks for the Get-Out-the-Vote posters in the Spring 2024 issue. I feel better now. I’m not alone. The issues and candidates are still the same, but somehow I’m more at peace. The whole magazine was awesomely timely.
—Mark Rueber ’75
Life-Changing Service
On behalf of all the Returned and Serving Peace Corps Volunteers from Carleton, thanks for the nod to the Peace Corps in the latest issue (“Carls in the Corps,” Spring 2024). I served in Afghanistan from 1972 to 1974, and I know it changed me and my life forever.
—Jane M. Willard ’71
Sayles-Hill Memories
“The Many Lives of Sayles-Hill” (Spring 2024) omits that this historic space was a popular and convenient multi-use space until the remodel in 1979. As a student from 1976 to 1980, I enjoyed dances, the indoor elevated running track, and other events, especially during the cold winter months, and I didn’t have to spend the extra time to go to and from the Men’s Gymnasium.
—Martha Bond ’80
Shout Out to ’65
Wow: Six men of the Class of ’65 pictured in the Spring 2024 edition of the Voice (“Class Notes”)—and looking so fit and well—and three more mentioned . . . plus a two-page spread on Donna Dennis, Class of ’64 (“Contact Sheet”)! And just to say, I’m alive, too, living and still working in England—since 1988.
Some of the highlights of my Carleton experience: graduating, co-producing She Loves Me with Gary Carr, and learning from English literature professors who instilled in me a lifelong love of critical reading and kick-started my careers as a copywriter and editor in New York (Newsweek and Sports Illustrated) and the U.K. (Outward Bound, Popperfoto/Getty Images, and Arts Society publications). And I’ve very much appreciated and enjoyed visits from Carleton alumni representatives to my stone-and-thatch village just up the hill from Althorp, home of the Spencers, here in the wilds of the East Midlands.
—Gary Shaeffer ’65