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Fall 2004

Around Old Main

Ruminator/Hungry Mind Bookstore, 1970–2004

Beloved bookstore closes after several years of financial trouble

Ruminator Books, which opened in 1970 as the Hungry Mind Bookstore and became a beloved community institution for generations of Macalester students, faculty and alumni, went out of business at the end of July.

One of the most admired independent bookstores in the country, Ruminator had been in financial trouble for several years and owed more than $650,000 to Macalester, its landlord. After months of negotiations, the college and Ruminator failed to reach agreement and the bookstore shut down.

Owner David Unowsky opened the bookstore in 1970 on Grand Avenue as the Hungry Mind. The store moved across the street in 1972 and became the textbook dealer for Macalester. At its height, the bookstore employed 55 people—half of them full-time—at its main store, textbook outlet, Minneapolis branch, book review and press. Dozens of Macalester students and alumni worked at Ruminator over the years.

The bookstore was celebrated for its readings, drawing a host of notable authors, and sponsorship of other literary and cultural events.

Hungry Mind became Ruminator Books in 2000 when Unowsky sold the name to an online university. As its financial woes deepened, Ruminator sought to reduce its debts by becoming a community-owned bookstore and selling stock to the public. But not enough shares were sold and contributions were returned. St. Paul City Council members earmarked a $50,000 grant in March to help the store continue to attract national writers for readings. Councilman Jay Benanav planned to funnel another $25,000 of city money allocated to his ward to help. But none of that money was spent, city officials said.

A Macalester alumnus—who wished to remain anonymous—stepped forward as a financial backer and negotiated directly with Macalester in recent months, but those talks did not reach a successful conclusion.

In interviews with several Twin Cities publications, Unowsky acknowledged making business mistakes. "We never ran the store in a way to make money and so we didn't build up any equity or cash reserve against the time when all the bad things happened all at once," he told Macalester Today. "We opened the Minneapolis store and lost a lot of money; we sold the name Hungry Mind to finance that and to cover previous losses.

"As the store got bigger, instead of making more money we lost more money, because our managerial skills weren't set for that kind of store. We bought a new computer that cost a lot of money. And we had moved the textbook store down the street and that didn't work either. So all those things combined cost us a lot of money. It was a gradual decline in the value or goodness of our inventory. So the store went downhill."

After all of the ideas and options to save the store had played out, Unowsky expressed disappointment that the extended negotiations with Macalester did not lead to an agreement that would allow the store to continue operations.

David Wheaton, the college's vice president for administration and treasurer, said: "Ruminator was a great and important place for decades of Macalester students. We worked diligently first with the store's management and then with an investor to try to find a way to continue its operations. Ultimately, we were not able to reach an agreement, despite many months of effort.

"In the end, Mac did more than any other entity in the community to try to keep the store open, but we recognized that our ability to do so was not limitless," Wheaton added.

Benanav spoke for many when he told the Star Tribune: "It's more than just a bookstore. It's part of the community. And there are fewer and fewer places in the community to get together. It's pretty hard to gather at Wal-Mart."

Life, death and books: A few words with David Unowsky

David Unowsky, who created the Hungry Mind-Ruminator Bookstore at the age of 28 and ran it for all of its 34 years, is a St. Paulite through and through. He grew up a block from Macalester, went to school in St. Paul, lives in the city's Merriam Park neighborhood and has played softball at St. Paul's Highland Park for close to 50 years.

In late July, the day after Ruminator celebrated its life and mourned its death with a "wake" that attracted more than a thousand people, Unowsky talked about his creation with Macalester Today.

What prompted you to start the Hungry Mind in the first place?

It was pretty much politically motivated. I was involved in the antiwar movement. It was 1970 and there were a lot of radical magazines and newspapers that people didn't have access to in St. Paul. Savran's [bookstore] was selling them in Minneapolis, and I wanted to be like Savran's in some ways. I wanted to be by Macalester College, where I grew up. I started on a shoestring.

I wound up having to take another job to support the store. There was one other guy who worked with me and he slept in the store half the time because he didn't have any money either. It was touch and go 'til we moved across the street in 1972 and made a deal with Macalester to be their textbook seller. Even then it took several years to get the hang of what we were doing.

What made the bookstore such a success?

One reason was the staff. We always hired people who not only cared about books but maybe even more importantly cared about service and helping people find what they want. And then early on we realized what a bookstore could be in relation to the community. We started doing what you can call cross marketing or cause-related marketing, tying ourselves to social service organizations, writers' organizations, political and environment-related organizations. We sold books at their events and they in turn became our customers.

What are some of the highlights for you of the past 34 years?

One was the Hillary Clinton event where we had to close the whole store and the Secret Service was here with bomb-sniffing dogs. It was 1995 and [she was promoting] her book It Takes a Village. 1995 was the 25th anniversary of the store; it was a huge year for us and the publishers sent us every possible author you could imagine—Barbara Kingsolver, John Updike, Studs Terkel, Norman Mailer.

Early in his career—about '78—we had a Garrison Keillor reading on a day when there was 21 inches of snow and people kept calling all day to see if he was coming. He did. People came on cross country skis and snowshoes. There was the Michael Moore event that we had at the Central Presbyterian Church downtown. We charged five bucks; 1,200 people came in and 600 stood outside and waited; he did a free second show that started at midnight.

Those are a few of the highlights. I also think of the interpersonal relationships built over the years with customers—to me, that's really what it's all about.

Where do you go from here? You've poured your heart and soul into the store.

I also poured my money. I filed for personal bankruptcy last week. So I'm broke. I'm not going to be starting any business on my own. However, I've had several interesting calls about going into business working for somebody else. But I haven't quite decided yet.

At the closing "wake," it was obvious how much the bookstore has meant to many people.

It's incredibly heartwarming. I cried a lot yesterday. [There were] a lot of stories from people about how this store helped them get through tough times. One woman said all her kids grew up better because they could come here and people helped them find books. [That kind of tribute] makes me feel great; it also makes me realize just how great the loss is. It was a bittersweet day

Macalester statement on Ruminator

Macalester has long recognized the value of having a strong, independent bookstore like the Ruminator (formerly Hungry Mind) in proximity to its campus. Over the past 34 years, the store has provided textbook service, readings by prominent authors, and other cultural events and opportunities for our students, faculty and staff and for the local community, which includes many Macalester alumni.

Just as the college has long benefited from its relationship with the Ruminator, the store has benefited from its relationship with Macalester: through textbook sales, business from the Macalester community and the very generous terms the college has provided during Ruminator's extended period of financial difficulty. These terms have included carrying an accumulated debt of several hundred thousand dollars, funds that could otherwise be used to advance our core mission of educating students.

For several months Macalester, the Ruminator and a financial backer have been engaged in discussions with the goal of preserving the existence of the store. These discussions did not reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. Differences remained on key terms, and the debt continued to accumulate.

The closing of the Ruminator is a sad moment for the college, the neighborhood and the literary community. At the same time, we should celebrate the contributions the store made during the past decades and look ahead to new opportunities to strengthen the attractiveness of our community.

Alumni awards

Catharine Lealtad '15 Service to Society Award

Gloria Perez Jordan '88 is executive director of The Jeremiah Program in Minneapolis, which provides affordable housing and services to help low-income, single-parent women achieve economic self-sufficiency. One of its first staff members, she helped design the program, which so far has helped 76 women to create more stable lives for themselves and their children. In her six years at Jeremiah, it has grown from 18 residential units to 39, and its budget, once $650,000, is now $1.6 million. She previously served as executive director of Casa de Esperanza, an organization devoted to ending domestic violence in Latino families.

Young Alumni Award

Jeremy Hanson '95 is public policy director of the Minnesota Smoke-Free Coalition, where he oversees legislative and political advocacy related to tobacco prevention and second-hand smoke. He and his staff have supported successful clean air initiatives in Duluth and Rochester, and he is now working with the city of Minneapolis to bring 100 percent clean indoor air to its public places. Also active in electoral politics, he was field director for the successful House and Senate campaigns of Minnesota State Sen. Scott Dibble, the first openly gay man to serve in the House.

Distinguished Citizens

Phyllis Bambusch Jones '44 was the first woman full-time prosecutor in Minnesota. She helped lobby for legislation creating the Minnesota County Attorneys Council, then served as its executive director. The Council provides educational services to the attorneys including interdisciplinary seminars with public defenders, judges and law enforcement. Turning then to private practice, she handled a variety of cases before becoming a District Court judge in Anoka in the Tenth District where she served for nine years, followed by retiree service on the Court of Appeals.

Howard Huelster '49 began teaching English at Macalester in 1949, specializing in American literature, 20th century literature and composition. He served as assistant dean from 1964 to 1967 and retired with 40 years of service to the college in 1990. An innovator, he inspired students of all disciplines in his popular class, "The Essay in Word and Picture," The father of a son with Down syndrome, he also had a 17-year civic career advocating for people with developmental disabilities.

Don Amren '54 combined teaching at the University of Minnesota and at Hennepin County Medical Center with a 28-year pediatrics practice at Park Nicollet Clinic and research in infectious diseases. His research resulted in many advances in the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases in children, including the switch to a more effective rubella vaccine. He was the first medical director at Methodist Hospital and served for eight years as president of the Park Nicollet Foundation.

Jón Hákon Magnússon '64 is a native son of Iceland who exemplifies Macalester internationalism in his life experiences and global perspective. He started Iceland's first public relations firm, KOM, and managed the International Press Center for the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik. Through his journalism, his public relations agency and his worldwide business contacts, he has been instrumental in building the current reputation of Iceland as a cosmopolitan nation with a global outlook. He has also been extremely active in politics, business and civic organizations in Iceland.

Manuel J. Cervantes '74 has been giving back to the community throughout a multifaceted legal career. He has served as a paralegal for indigent clients, as a labor-management attorney for the American Federation of Government Employees in Minneapolis, an assistant city attorney of St. Paul, a judge on the Minnesota State Workers' Compensation Court of Appeals and as a Ramsey County District Court referee, acting as a judge in civil cases and disputes that come before juvenile and family courts. Since 2001, he has been St. Paul city attorney.

Alumni Service Award

Anne Harbour '64 has performed almost every volunteer role at Macalester with grace and enthusiasm. She was the longtime leader of the alumni chapter in Boston. She also served on the Alumni Board, chairing its Development Committee. A leader on each of her class reunion committees, she served as chair of the Annual Fund in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, the period of its biggest growth, and has been an Annual Fund calling volunteer for many years. She was active in the Campaign for the 80's and in the Touch the Future campaign. She is a member of the Grand Society and played an important role in the Grand Society campaign.

Alumni are invited to nominate candidates for an honorary degree, Distinguished Citizen Citation or Young Alumni Award. Click here to nominate a candidate.

Race matters

A Macalester professor and an alumnus helped bring about the historic Supreme Court decision permitting the University of Michigan law school to consider an applicant's race among admission criteria.

Today's pop quiz: A multiracial/multiethnic college classroom:

a. has a positive effect on a student's cognitive and personal development

b. challenges students' stereotypes

c. broadens students' perspectives

d. sharpens students' critical thinking skills

e. all of the above

If you guessed "e," you're right, according to research conducted by Macalester Professor Roxane Harvey Gudeman and '72 Mac grad Geoffrey Maruyama, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota and an assistant vice president in its office of multicultural and academic affairs. Their conclusions, as well as those of colleagues at other colleges, helped bring about last year's historic U.S. Supreme Court decision (Grutter v. Bollinger) permitting the University of Michigan law school to consider an applicant's race among admission criteria.

How? By showing the benefits that schools attain when they include a "critical mass" of minority students. What critical mass offers majority group students that token minority representation does not, is exposure to a broader range of minority as well as majority views. Critical mass also aids minority students, according to the 70 percent of Mac faculty who reported that it increased those students' classroom participation.

Gudeman's assessment of the effects of classroom heterogeneity at Macalester and Maruyama's assessment of effects at large public and private research universities were referenced in several of the legal briefs filed in support of Michigan's law school admission policy. The policy sought to establish a critical mass of under-represented minority students without resorting to quotas or other methods that would make race a decisive factor.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor echoed Gudeman and Maruyama's conclusions in her tie-breaking vote, noting that classroom diversity "better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals."

Gudeman, an adjunct psychology professor who has taught at Macalester since 1985, has been "interested in pluralism and culture for a long time." In the early 1990s she and the Psychology Department received a Knight Foundation grant to develop programs exploring pluralism. She invited Maruyama to present several seminars designed to enhance faculty teaching and advising across social difference.

Maruyama continued collaborating with the Psychology Department periodically, contributing his expertise in methodology and data interpretation and in issues related to education and urban schools. "If you're interested in equity and opportunity, you want to make sure others have access to those ideals' benefits too," he says.

Maruyama understands what it means to be an under-represented minority, having grown up Asian American in Iowa. "My classes and peers were predominantly white, so the basic perspective I got was a mainstream white one....Because I was the only person like me in my classes, it was impossible for me to disentangle the extent to which people interacted with me in particular ways because of how they viewed me as an individual vs. how they viewed me as an Asian American."

The Grutter case was a landmark because it was the first time a majority of the justices agreed that creating diversity in educational settings is of sufficiently compelling governmental interest that race can be explicitly considered as a factor in admissions. In addition, the case demonstrates the changing way in which social science research affects affirmative action decisions.

In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing school segregation represented the first time that social science research influenced the court. That research emphasized segregation's negative effects. These days, social science research like that done by Gudeman and Maruyama focuses on integration's positive outcomes.

Although Gudeman was "ecstatic" about the Grutter decision, her elation is tempered. "I also feel sad, in a way, that all this policy is being made on the basis of reverse discrimination cases....The alleviation of the pernicious effects of general societal discrimination no longer seems to play a role in Supreme Court decisions, in contrast to the Brown v. Board of Education decision."

As for Macalester, Maruyama says that "in general, the population is more racially sensitive now than when I attended Mac." Adds Gudeman, "Two students' honors thesis research was used in an internal audit the college did in its ongoing effort to monitor multiculturalism." Although she points out that Macalester has lacked a critical mass of students of color, she has found that people in higher education view Mac as a relatively successful multicultural learning environment.

A recently renewed Bush Foundation grant co-directed by Gudeman and Professor Jan Serie of Mac's Center for Scholarship and Teaching will develop a two-week Urban Faculty Seminar that aims to increase participants' multicultural competence by helping them better understand the urban communities from which their students hail.

"How do you find the social conditions that best support maximizing the benefits of diversity?" Gudeman muses. Whatever the answer, "we know that it is imperative to continue to devote mindful attention to our multicultural health."

—Janet Cass '83

Do the math

If you want to understand immigration in the U.S.—or a host of other subjects with public policy implications—you better understand how to figure

Over spicy tortas and pupusas at the Mercado Central in Minneapolis, a half-dozen high school and middle school teachers discuss immigration in Minnesota. The Mercado, a member-owned cooperative of 47 Latino businesses, is an ideal setting for such a discussion, since it sits at the heart of three Minneapolis neighborhoods that have seen an explosion in the Latino population.

As part of a Macalester-hosted workshop, "Immigration in America: Understanding the Numbers," these history and social studies teachers are learning how to integrate quantitative methods—statistics, probabilities, rates and graphs—in their classrooms. The workshop is an outreach component to a larger Macalester initiative, Quantitative Methods for Public Policy (QM4PP).

In an earlier classroom session at Macalester, the teachers have addressed suggestions that the five-year-old Mercado is the reason for the growth in Latino population. But speaker Rachel Dolan '93, business adviser and loan officer at the Neighborhood Development Center, explains that this trend was well under way by the time the Mercado opened. "Our job is to figure out what's already happening in a community and how to make it happen in ways that are better, stronger and more community-minded," she says. "The [population] trends were happening in the area already."

Participants in the program use U.S. Census figures to learn more, and the numbers seem to confirm her claim. In 1990, 4 percent of residents in the surrounding area were Latino. By 2000, just a few months after the Mercado opened, that number had jumped to 22 percent.

The example serves as a way to discuss the difference between correlation and causation: just because two things seem to be linked doesn't mean one is necessarily caused by the other. In this case, the reverse of the hypothesis is true; a growing number of Latinos in the area spurred the creation of the Mercado.

For the past two years, Macalester students have been learning about similar statistical and mathematical concepts in their courses, thanks to the QM4PP program. Each year, a single topic with public policy implications is chosen. School vouchers and immigration were chosen as the first two topics, and immigration will be used again in 200405. Selected courses, ranging from economics and American studies to anthropology, examine the subject in class. An additional weekly session gives students a chance to study the quantitative methods that can help give them a greater understanding of the issue.

QM4PP is interdisciplinary by design, and Professor David Bressoud, who directs the program, says that the focus on public policy issues is meant to attract students who wouldn't otherwise be interested in quantitative methods. The program is funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation.

Macalester isn't alone in promoting the importance of quantitative literacy, but its public policy focus is distinctive. "We wanted to capitalize on Macalester's strengths in political science and social issues by building the program around policy analysis," says Bressoud. Whether or not students pursue careers in public policy, an understanding of how numbers are used—and misused—in newspaper articles, by politicians and in polls, will make students better thinkers and better citizens, Bressoud argues.

Though he acknowledges that the impetus for the program came from the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, he is quick to distinguish quantitative literacy from college-level mathematics. "This is simple mathematics done in sophisticated settings, like working with U.S. Census data," he says. While he points out that there are many ways numbers can be manipulated to support different viewpoints, he adds that people too often dismiss statistics as irrelevant. "The message we want to get across is not that we should be ignoring the numbers, but that we need to be critical of the numbers people put forward," he says. "You can get a lot of very useful information from them."

The teachers who gathered at the Mercado say they're eager to implement the methods they've learned at the Macalester workshop in their classroom, and hope that quantitative ways of thinking will give their students a deeper understanding of immigration.

Jim Rannow, who has taught geography and other subjects in Eden Prairie schools, doesn't expect his students to remember all the numbers, but he hopes they take away the larger themes. "I want to get across the fact that even though the classes that students take are separate, the concepts they learn will have to be put together in life," he says. "You have to use all of these tools together to succeed."

—Erin Peterson