Via E-Mail
I loved “Faculty Legends” [fall 2016], but was disappointed by your failure to include the ever-amazing Owen Jenkins. When I visited my brother Peter Szabad ’67 on campus in 1963, Professor Jenkins’s class forever changed my perception of what an English class could and should be. At the urging of Jane Hamilton ’79 (whom he impressively inspired), I e-mailed him to tell him that his class shaped my desire to teach English. A long e-mail exchange ensued (he even remembered my brother!), which resulted in my husband, Don Ljung ’65, and I dining with him at a Carleton reunion. Although Don never had the privilege of being one of Professor Jenkins’s students, his classmates speak about him with reverence. He was a master at teaching critical thinking and an exemplar in the liberal arts.
–Ellen Jo Ljung
Thank you for the informative and beautifully designed fall 2016 sesquicentennial issue of the Voice. The poems were good [“This Poem Is Occasional” and “Sesquicentennial Poem”], the history of the tunnels was one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while [“The Carleton Tunnels: A Fictional History”], and the opinions from our presidents on down were entertaining and sage.
I wonder, though, why alumnus Thorstein Veblen, Class of 1880, did not feature prominently in the issue (or even warrant mention). Carleton’s economics department website rightly calls him the “bright but rebellious student.” Veblen is Carleton’s most and perhaps only famous alumnus. In today’s political climate, a fresh examination of Veblen’s influential theory of conspicuous consumption and the leisure class seems warranted.
–Thomas Herron ’90
Via Instagram
A post shared by Carleton College (@carletoncollege) on