Trego's Mountain Ear

I regularly get two alumni magazines. Montana State and South Dakota State. I didn’t pay much attention to MSU’s Collegian until 2005 – Barbra Hunter Mullen had been the contact who kept in contact with most of the folks I knew as an undergraduate, and that year an aneurism moved her into the majority – the first to go from ‘natural causes.’ I guess Barb kept me from looking it over to stay informed about the promotions and new jobs people were getting. She kept people connected, and in a much more complete manner than the magazines did.

SDSU’s alumni magazine wasn’t particularly informative until I retired and left campus – hell, I was there, and didn’t need the alumni office to tell me what my friends and colleagues were doing. After I retired and left Brookings, the magazine did show me occasionally what former students and colleagues were doing.

There are still occasions when I see what former students are doing – and college athletics never was a great interest. I half-heartedly root for the Bobcats and Jackrabbits, and I suppose there’s some vestigial support for any team that’s playing the Grizzlies, but in general, college sports just aren’t that interesting. It’s pretty much inevitable that when two groups of ogres move a ball in different directions, one group will move it further than the other.

But I still read the alumni magazines – but my colleagues and friends are showing up more and more frequently for their last mention on the pages in the back of the magazine marked ‘in memory of’. I never expected to read alumni magazines primarily for the obituaries.