The 20th anniversary of the Martin Marty Center at the Divinity School and Martin E. Marty's 90th birthday were celebrated on February 3. A group of Marty's former students, Rob Wilson-Black (1991), now the CEO of Sojourners, Paul Pribbenow (former resident), the President of Augsburg College, and fellow Divinity School alumnus William Sachs, organized a series of panels entitled, "Interpreting Faith, Nation and Academy." An interview of Mr. Marty and a conversation among of former Marty Center Directors W. Clark Gilpin (1970; trustee), William Schweiker, and Wendy Doniger were conducted by Gretchen Helfrich. A dinner and other festivities followed, with remarks by Divinity School Dean Laurie Zoloth and current Marty Center Director Willemien Otten, special music, and a keynote by author and Virginia Tech Professor Sylvester Johnson.

Beau Underwood (2006) will speak at Eureka College's annual Founders Day Convocation on February 2. His address is entitled, "The Virtue of Vocation."

House Scholar Jack Veatch was selected as a sponsored attendee of the National Festival of Young Preachers by the Fund for Theological Education. He will preach at the festival in Atlanta in January. He has selected Associate Dean Yvonne Gilmore (2001) to attend as his mentor.

Keri Anderson (2013) is an outpatient therapist at The Carson Center, a community mental health agency, in Westfield, Massachusetts. She passed her social work licensing examination in September 2017.

Garry Sparks (2001) has co-published, “A Sixteenth-Century Priest’s Fieldnotes among Highland Maya: Proto-Theologia as Vade mecum,” with Frauke Sachse (Univ. of Bonn, Germany). It is a study of a colonial Dominican missionary handbook held at the U.S. Library of Congress.It appears in Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017), 102-123.

On November 26, First Christian Church of Colorado Springs honored Chuck Blaisdell (1976), on his retirement as Senior Minister. He is starting a congregational consulting business, www.growagain.net.

Congratulations to Darryl (former resident) and Thandiwe Dale-Ferguson (2009) on the birth of their daughter, Cora Lois, on November 17. All are doing well, and grandparents Tod and Ana Gobledale (1975) are delighted by her arrival.

In November, Harvard University Press published Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity among Men by Ritch C. Savin-Williams (1971). The book "explores the personal stories of forty young men to help us understand the biological and psychological factors that led them to become mostly straight and the cultural forces that are loosening the sexual bind that many boys and young men experience.... Mostly Straight shows us how these young men are forging a new personal identity that confounds both traditional ideas and conventional scientific opinion." Savin-Williams is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University.

Tabitha Isner (2005) has launched a campaign to become the Democratic nominee for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District. The election will be November 6, 2018.

Congratulations to Ben Varnum (former resident) and Meghan Griffiths, who were married November 11 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.