We have welcomed several visitors this year, including the Minnesota poet Athena Kildegaard and novelist Jane Hamilton for January term writing classes. As you can see from all the updates below, it's been a busy year with our various reading and writing gigs as we try to keep the view from 5th and 6th floor Main as far-reaching as ever.

     Two colleagues--Mark Muggli and Peter Scholl--are closing up shop and saying farewell this May. They have been terrific teachers and mentors to hundreds--thousands--of students in their 35-year careers at Luther. We will miss dearly hearing Peter's wry asides and quirky footnotes to just about any topic under the sun, and thank him for his dedication in cultivating our Sigma Tau Delta chapter (not to mention hosting all those Halloween parties!). As for Mark, a Renaissance man if ever there was one (scholar, playwright, director, dancer), we are grateful for the always-surprising Shakespeare Performed productions, and promise to keep "Our Shakespeare" in our midst.

     We always love to hear from you, whether the news is small or large, so feel free to drop a note to keep us current in what you are doing. To be an English major at Luther College is a blessing--all those great books, life-changing words, and your own creative work to wake up to each day. Know that your former teachers are still here--running late to class, helping students revise a paper or poem, loving their work, and remembering you.

John Bale Greetings again from Vennehjem ("Home of Friends") with promises of gentle April showers and blooming flowers. I've always thought of balance as a key to a good life--though at this stage maintaining it is more of a challenge as I wander about with a cane and lean on the shoulders of others. But I'm still getting around. Breakfast at Ruby's every Thursday brings out a full table of "regulars," and monthly meetings of our Grand Whist Club continue. Mary Lou Mohr and I are still introducing Shakespeare plays (As You Like It performance at Luther and Twelfth Night at the Guthrie) and leading "critical" discussions after each play. My travel, though somewhat limited, with my daughter Ruth's great help brought me to New York and Washington this past summer and fall. Ruth and I have plans to celebrate my 88th birthday later this month in Boston where we will see Shakespeare's Pericles and feast on seafood! So despite challenges and imbalances, I am enjoying life in Decorah with friends and colleagues (including alumni). Soli Deo Gloria!

Judy Boese (boesejud@luther.edu) As I sit at my desk this morning I am reminded of how nice it will be to bike the completed Trout Run Trail again this year. I am reminded because in my office I now have a lovely painting by David Faldet depicting the valley from the overlook on the trail. Since I have a windowless office, this painting gives me the feeling of being outdoors. Our travels this year have taken my husband and I to Boyne Falls, Michigan--(where he was able to do a zip line--notice I just said "he"), and to St. Joseph, Missouri, Dodge City, and Hays in Kansas where we went to museums--more to my liking. We look forward to spending time in Minneapolis with family and to a trip to the Ozarks with friends this summer.

David Faldet (faldetda@luther.edu) This year I am on sabbatical, working on a range of projects. The largest of these is to revise a novel I began in January 2009. Assisted last summer by Luther junior Cate Anderson, I also began new historical research on the Winnebago who lived in this corner of Iowa in the 1840s. This spring I've taken that research further using state historical archives in Iowa City and St. Paul and federal records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In between the novel and American Indian history, I started writing poetry again, and enjoy the time to read contemporary poems during my study breaks at Preus Library. I was surprised in March to get an e-mail telling me I would be honored in May for completing 25 years of service at Luther. I can't believe how old that makes some of you who were my first students here!

Rachel Faldet (faldetra@luther.edu) Once again, fall semester found me in Olin 105--my favorite classroom with movable desks--working with first year international students. After two sections of Intro to College Writing, I welcomed sophomores, juniors, and seniors into a creative nonfiction course. As David is on sabbatical, I took spring semester off to travel with (read: help) him on research adventures. On day two of five days in the National Archives, I learned that if you wear a sweater into the Central Research Room, you cannot take it off even if you are hot. And don't even think about taking notes on your own notebook paper; you must use the government's. My best find for David was an 1857 handwritten 3-page letter that started "Your Excellency, James Buchanan, President of the United States" sent via the Winneshiek County Clerk of Court. The letter, a fragile map, and two other documents from said Decorah clerk were fastened with a blue ribbon. If that wasn't enough, David insisted I canoe with him down a river where alligators basked on the shoreline during an unusual cold snap. Good thing I brought along my Norwegian mittens.  

Carol Gilbertson (gilbertc@luther.edu) Almost two years of retirement for me now (May 2011), and I can't complain. I miss the richness of literary class prep and the ferment of good classroom discussion, but I enjoy the leisured life of long reading over my breakfast tea, yoga and elliptical at my schedule, and time to travel. Our family has been busy: our daughter Ellen was married in July 2011, and our daughter Clara in July 2012. We're delighted to now have two great young men in our family. In January 2012, Mark and I taught our Dramatic Greece class--reading aloud great plays in the ancient sites at Athens, Delphi, and Nafplion, so I got a little chance to relive teaching but also to visit one of our favorite places. In Decorah, I've taken a few art classes, read some books, and written some poems (my chapbook of poems, From a Distance, Dancing, is still available here on Amazon). This semester I've joined Mark in London for his ACM study abroad course, and that means I'm very busy taking the tube, visiting museums, seeing plays with the group, and entertaining students. We began the semester with a week in Florence, and we had a lovely week in Paris during spring break, so our lives are filled with visual art: Renaissance Madonnas and Impressionist lilies on blue, blue water. We have water here too: we live in a lovely modern flat overlooking the Regent's Canal just blocks from King's Cross tube station, so our location is both central and quiet--the most frequent noise we hear is the geese calling on the canal. Warm greetings to all.

Andy Hageman (hagean03@luther.edu) Greetings! This update resembles a time travel narrative because it is simultaneously my first and second update from the Luther College English department. Last year I wrote in during the last months of an ACM-Mellon postdoctoral fellowship here at Luther and now I'm writing from the spring of my first year as a tenure-track faculty member. At present, I'm teaching three courses: Paideia, Literature and Ecology, and Writing for Media. Amongst the rewards of teaching the same group of first-year students in Paideia for the full academic year are the sense of community that grows over that extended time and the accomplishment in reading, writing and thinking that they get to feel and I get to observe. Tomorrow, my Literature and Ecology students are taking me outdoors to unveil the creative projects they've been making. In addition to exams and essays, I have students in this course get their hands dirty building artifacts or artworks that do literary things. Writing for Media is a great chance for students to learn the essentials of journalistic writing as well as public relations strategies and skills, all the while doing A LOT of writing. Not only are these students producing a lot of stories, press releases, and other documents, but they're producing video news stories and features. Some of them are already producing very professional writing and videos. I'll also mention that I'm just back from presenting research at the Science Fiction Research Association/EATON Conference. This year I published in the journal Science Fiction Studies on science fiction and ecology in Paolo Bacigalupi's novel, The Windup Girl. Finally, the other 2/3 of my household just returned from a two-month family visit to Sichuan Province, China. My 2-year old, Sofia, returned with a plethora of Chinese vocabulary. We look forward to spring and summer so we can take longer walks near the river and around the parks of Decorah.

Lise Kildegaard (kildegli@luther.edu) That time of year thou may'st in your English department behold when all our desks are buried in drifts of papers to grade and year-end assessment plans to implement and committee reports to write. But we are still making time for fun--this week, about 50 students celebrated National Poetry Month by joining in a poetry flash mob in the Dahl Union, reciting Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" to a packed crowd of lunch eaters in the Oneota Cafe. Other highlights of my year included a trip to the American Modernist Association conference, where I gave a paper on the Minnesota writer Wanda G�g, and a visit to the Houghton Library at Harvard, where I thrilled at the sight of John Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne and Emily Dickinson's hand written poems. But best of all was the month of January, when Jane Hamilton and Athena Kildegaard came to teach classes in creative writing--it seemed as though all of Main was abuzz with creative energy. I hope your year is buzzing, too!

Martin Klammer (klammerm@luther.edu) Dear Alumni and other Friends, I've enjoyed stepping in this year as Chips Advisor while David Faldet is on sabbatical and getting to know the students, most of them English majors, who do good work every week. Fourteen Chips staffers and I went to the national college press convention in Chicago last October, though they had to work hard to convince me that we needed to leave by 4:00 a.m. to make all the sessions! I'm also Writing Director again this year and had some hand (not much of one) in bringing about the innovation this term of skype-tutoring our nursing students in Rochester, which as far as I know may be unique among college writing centers nation-wide. Paideia continues to be invigorated with new faculty from various disciplines and as I look around the room at staff meetings I wonder where all the older people went until I realize I am the older people (well, one of them). I need to add that I don't feel old and can still easily bike up to one-fourth as far as my colleague Novian. I hope this note finds you happy and well and reading good writing and maybe even writing good writing.

Alison Mandaville (mandal01@luther.edu) How flat is Iowa? Not so much after  all! To a visiting professor venturing for the first time into the flyover unknown, the Driftless corner of this soy and corn state has been a marvelous adventure. Coming from five years teaching at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state, I knew I would love being part of the ELCA community at Luther. And I have--the faculty and staff have been welcoming and generous and the students have forgiven me my wanton West Coast ways and delighted me with their hard and happy works. My Rhetoric class educated me about how things are done here and produced stunning speeches and visual essays. My American Novel and Effective Writing classes have jumped right in to the odd exercises I throw at them (Write about bananas! Make a villanelle out of lines from Chopin's The Awakening!). During J-Term, students produced their own graphic memoirs (comics) on powerful themes: leaving family in Chinese-occupied Tibet to trek over the Himalayas at seven years old for an education, the hidden domestic violence in our own rural United States childhood communities, nerdiness and losing your first friend. Paideia, with faculty from across the campus and first-year students as new to this place as I, has been predictably energizing. More unexpectedly, I have loved Decorah. Two weeks before I arrived, the Trout Run Trail opened. I spent the Fall circling the town through 12 miles of industry, sports fields, fishing holes, cow fields and ancient limestone bluffs. I spent winter cross-country skiing in Van Peenen and Palisades Parks. I'm soon off to the West Coast for a position at Fresno State University. But now I can say sauna properly.

June Melby (melbju01@luther.edu) As visiting faculty this semester, I am enjoying the chance to show creative writing students what is possible, what they can do, and then screaming loudly in excitement when they do it. Okay, not quite. But having spent some years performing at poetry slams and as a spoken word artist (and, okay, as a standup comedian), I admit that it's not a quiet classroom. And they have surprised me, deliciously. One student wrote a story in the form of a computer program. Another, in the form of Sonata. Also beautiful, heartbreaking poetry. I grew up here in Decorah, and after 25 years, find myself here again, now living in the woods (a dream I've always had), teaching at Luther (a privilege I greatly respect), and completing my first book, a memoir about my family's miniature golf course (My Family and Other Hazards, forthcoming from Henry Holt), a book I've always wanted to write. Has the winter been long? Who's even noticed?

Martin Mohr (mohrmart@oneota.net) Love note from an 84-year old klutz: My dull late winter days have been broken into by a fall down a flight of stairs. Everyone sliding and breaking clavicles etc. on ice outside, and I fall down my own inside stairs. Broke an ankle and really rattled my rib cage in the fall. You know what sneezing with bruised ribs feels like? Anyway, my ankle is getting pinned in surgery on Wednesday, and I am fast learning a new skill: how to put on a pair of pants with the magic little bootie they give you armored with velcro. Slides real smoothly. Am thinking of donning the Mohr tartan kilt for the duration. Otherwise I'm doing well, trying out another iteration of my family history, this time on a computer version to make all primary source stuff--pictures, documents, church records from Pomerania--available to them what foller after. Winter has been long, beastly, and haunted by right-wing madmen. Next winter, Phoenix? I think they've got a right to carry law.

Mary Hull Mohr (mohrmary@luther.edu) Happy Spring to you all. It hardly seems possible that I am writing another letter. Time passes so quickly. There are more lectures, musical events, and dramatic productions in Decorah than one can attend, and John Bale and I contributed by preparing a group of Lifelong Learners for The Acting Company presentation of "As You Like It" as part of the Center Stage Series. We also met with another group before going to the Guthrie to see an English all-male cast perform "Twelfth Night."  Good discussions with our older class members. We took our yearly trip to the beautiful Grand Tetons in July and did our usual hikes as well as attend the Teton Music Festival. I continue to sing in the church choir, and this year, as an AAUW member, organized both a state and local candidate forum prior to the November election. Not uncontroversial. Best wishes for the coming year!

Mark Z. Muggli (mugglimz@luther.edu) How much difference a year can make. In last year's letter I was commenting as the department head on staffing,  assessment, and your financial and personal support of our on-going work. In the fall--lighter the department headship--I collaborated with the theatre department on Much Ado About Nothing, the dance department on A Tragedy Like Macbeth, over-saw my own class's production of Twelfth Night, and contributed ever-so-slightly to the Center Stage Series As You Like It: my research suggests that this was the Shakespeareianest year in Luther College's history. You can see my website www.luther.edu/english/ourshakespeare for more details about those productions, my Chips articles, faculty workshops, and film showings that were all part of my Dennis M. Jones Teaching Professorship projects--all of which added up to one of the best 1 � years of my Luther career. This spring I'm in the midst of directing the Associated Colleges of the Midwest London study abroad program, most of which involves teaching a course on English theatre ("Oh, darn, I've got to see another play tonight!"). My wife Carol Gilbertson has given a nice run-down on some of our other activities. And in May, I retire, after thirty-five very satisfying Luther years. It looks as though I'm going to be able to video-conference the retirement dinner, where I will get to say again, with complete sincerity, what I say now: thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

Kate Narveson (narveska@luther.edu) I've just come away from teaching Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale," which raises a fascinating question: can a blatant religious hypocrite in fact be blind to how self-serving his parade of religion is? A student after class noted how the tale hit close to home, since a friend is caught up in a megachurch whose leaders are, in my student's view, exploiting her in just the way Chaucer's friar tries to exploit people. That's one of the best parts of teaching, when a student finds a piece of medieval literature vividly painting out something that she has on her mind. Beyond the joys of teaching, the past year has been a kind of happy pause at the top of a hill: Bible Readers and Lay Writers in early modern England, the book I've worked on for several years, appeared last fall and has been well-reviewed, I was promoted to full professor (yikes), and I turned 50. So I find myself standing on top of this hill, surveying more distant vistas and wondering which way to turn next. Anyone want to give me an assignment?

Harland Nelson (nelsonhs@luther.edu) (semi) PROFESSIONAL Corinne and I took Mary Lou and John's half-day courses on As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and then saw the plays (AYLI by a traveling company at Luther, TN at the Guthrie by a British all-male company: interesting). I was a Lifelong Learner in March: David Kamm's "Art (still) Matters." Other than that, zilch (letters to the editor on political topics don't really count). ALUMS Homecoming coffee, of course: always fun, and I'm getting better at evading calling people by name. As I write, Bruce Omundson and Lois Baumer joined us for coffee and dessert April 11. TRAVEL: To the family haunts: mine in Minnesota, Corinne's in South Dakota this summer. Otherwise, to LaCrosse or Rochester occasionally. COMMUNITY: Vesterheim outdoor division tour guiding; Good Shepherd evangelism committee; fund-raising phone calling for Habitat for Humanity (no hammering last year, maybe some this year). Plus �a change, plus c'est la m�me chose. Until next year, deo volente.

Kris Peterson (petekr05@luther.edu) Such fun to receive greetings from friends and classmates from the '75 era who'd picked up and read last year's English  Department newsletter! Continuing as Visiting Faculty in the English and Education departments, I find it truly a gift to encourage and support first-year developing writers in English 110. The 2J2 Advanced Methods and Practicum sequence of Education 352, 366, and 367 provide challenge and joy in "passing the baton" to these skilled, enthusiastic, and visionary English teacher candidates. This winter I returned to middle school classrooms as I supervised student teachers. Dave and I love life on the acreage, this year learning the science and timing of staging a prairie burn, continuing landscaping, and preserving long moments on the cabin's deck to savor the views. Frequent road trips are plotted in a familiar triangular pattern: Twin Cities, Madison/Milwaukee, & Decorah, as we visit family, our precious five granddaughters, and friends. We did break the routine for a San Francisco Spring Break get-away--honoring our special birthdays this year. I had my Nook along (goal: less weight in the luggage). I couldn't bring myself to totally trust technology. Hence, a number of hidden books were stowed in my carry-on!

Nick Preus (preusn@luther.edu) One of my projects this year has been writing the entry on Matthew Arnold for the Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy, coming out soon from SAGE publications.  It was interesting to work on Arnold and education, since I hadn't spent a lot of time with this area of his thought and since the project integrated two of my preoccupations, 19th-century British literature and education theory.  Arnold is a famous advocate for high culture, a position in some disfavor these days, but he was also a proponent of extending state-supported education to the rising classes of England.  I enjoyed digging into his arguments, knowing that in our schools we still hotly debate what should be taught and who gets to learn. 

Diane Scholl (schollde@luther.edu) Hope the year has been happy and prosperous for all of you! We've enjoyed visiting our children and grandchildren, Gabriel and Greta, in St. Paul and in Oak Park--our favorite destinations. Last June we traveled to Nova Scotia for about 10 days, part of the time in the company of Bill and Anne Craft, with whom we stayed at a B&B on Cape Breton Island. We learned a lot about the Mik-Mak, the Acadians, the Scots and the Irish! This spring too has been rich in travel, as well as in work. I'm enjoying Twentieth Century British Lit right now, and think Mrs. Dalloway was the favorite read of the class. I'm actually looking forward to reading the research papers that result from our class discussions!  In between I've had some time to publish more poems, and add to the paper I've been working on.  Every project grows and changes shape in response to what we teach! I love the last few weeks of the semester, and look forward to the return of true spring.

Peter Scholl (schollpe@luther.edu) I will be retiring at the end of the 2012-13 academic years--Diane and I moved to Decorah to start at Luther in the fall 1977, so it's been 35 good years in a fifth floor office in Main Tower (with time off for sabbaticals in New Mexico, China, plus a year on the Nottingham Program). I plan to continue editing the college journal, Agora, for another year--that will keep me on the horizon. We don't plan to move out of Decorah--we like it here and it's a nice place for the family to gather--and a good place for grandkids Gabriel (3) and Greta (7 months) to visit. I haven't dreamed up any big projects yet, but if I do I expect I will report it in the next newsletter, this time with an emeritus after my academic rank. So to all you former students, as Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians say--"Hello ... goodbye ... goodbye ... hello!"

Clara Van Zanten (vanzcl01@luther.edu) I've had a busy and exciting year as a visiting professor in English and Paideia. In the fall, I taught Paideia 111 and English 130, "Literary Ventures" (on landscape and literature), and this spring, I am teaching Paideia 112, English 130 (on ghost stories), and English 230, "The Writer's Voice," in which I get to teach my first love, poetry. I particularly enjoyed teaching English 185, "Poetry and Science," during J-term. In that course, we explored widely, though by no means exhaustively, the border between these two seemingly incompatible worlds. My students included both poets and scientists, and they shared their knowledge of rhyme and meter, the conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics. Highlights of the course were a visit to the home of local naturalist Bert Porter (now a museum), student-led discussions of "method" in poetry and science, and a class, co-taught with my colleague Andy Hageman, on Ian Bogost's video game poem A Slow Year. The course readings varied widely, from Lucretius's De Rerum Natura to Christian B�k's Crystallography (one of several works of experimental poetry that we read, "experiment" being one point of contact between poetry and science). It's been a wonderful year. I couldn't ask for a more thoughtful, engaged, and enthusiastic community of students and colleagues. I look forward to returning to Luther in the fall.

Amy Weldon (weldam01@luther.edu) Greetings, everybody, from the Cheapskate Intellectual--I'm still on at the blog, although a little less frequently than before in this busy year. I spent the fall of 2012 on sabbatical, taking a pottery class and working on my usual garden of projects, including nonfictional considerations of three Southern women named Elizabeth; art, attention, and technology; and John Keats. In January 2013, I led my first-ever study-abroad course, "In Frankenstein's Footsteps," tracing the paths of the Keats-Shelley circle through London, Geneva, Venice, Florence, and Rome. Big spring-break thrill this year: a week of wandering in NYC, seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Fiona Shaw in "The Testament of Mary," and tons of museums and galleries (and buying lots of books). My essay "Traveling to Mary" appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2012 (Solas Press) and my essay on Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty (1877), will soon appear cross-posted at the literary websites Bloom and The Millions.

Novian Whitsitt (whitsino@luther.edu) This year has been full of challenging teaching. In the Fall, I taught the senior seminar, "The North American Slave Narrative," and I thoroughly enjoyed the contributions of all of the students. This Spring, I have had the pleasure to teach a Paideia 450 with Guy Nave (from Religion), a course entitled "The Color of Change: Black Intellectual Thought and Social Engagement." Participating on the Presidential Search Committee has also been a large part of this year's activities. While we weren't able to find the desired candidate for Luther's next president, the experience was invaluable as I had the privilege to work with Regent members, and Luther faculty and staff. My sense of Luther College, its values and traditions, and the future challenges awaiting it has been strengthened from the search committee's dedication. Next year, I look forward to a year's sabbatical, one that will allow me time to work on a couple of projects and spend the Spring semester at the University of Southern Indiana, teaching a seminar on black intellectual thought. As always, life with the family only continues to be busy and enjoyable. I'm pretty sure that Kat and I learn more from parenting than our kids learn from us. And my once critical perception of my own parents' parenting style humbly turns into one of awe as I wonder how they managed to successfully negotiate all of the childhood drama with which I currently struggle! But we're loving every second with Nia, Addae, and Yazmeen.