Maria E. Walinksi-Peterson '92
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- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: My name is Maria Elizabeth Walinski-Peterson. Walinkski-Peterson's hyphenated so when I was at Grinnell my last name was just Walinski. Graduated in the year 1992, and I currently live and will probably die in the city of Omaha, Nebraska.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: OK, so why did you come to Grinnell College? What is your first memory of the campus?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I have discovered, through speaking to other alum, that my story is not unique. There seems to be a homing beacon that is inborn in certain people, globally, and they don’t know it until something turns that homing beacon on and it says, “Go to Grinnell,” and they don’t really know why. Almost every person I’ve spoken to who has an affinity for this place, not all Grinnell graduates do, they’ve had a similar experience where something just said, “I need to be there,” and in some cases physically set foot on something on this campus. In my case, the parking lot down by Mears Cottage, and got out of the car, put my foot down and said, “I’m home,” and I don’t know why. This is the place. So, maybe Grinnell chooses us in some cosmic sense.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: OK, I like that. So during your time at Grinnell was there a professor, student or staff member who had a particularly strong influence on your life?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Absolutely. The three professors, all three are still here I’m pleased to say: Kent McClelland and Chris Hunter in the Sociology department were surrogate daddies to me, especially through some very rough times in my personal life. Chris Hunter was just a, a solid human being, not just an intellectual powerhouse but a good man. The third is John Rommereim, who – director of the Grinnell Singers – gave this freshman girl a chance to sing again, that I didn’t know that I was really qualified to do. So spending time with Grinnell Singers and the other vocal experiences here, that’s, that’s my heart. I’m grateful to them.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: How long were you in Grinnell Singers?Maria: Actually three years because I took a year off when I was in London for a semester, and didn’t, really couldn’t get back into it second semester but my freshman, sophomore and senior years.Chelsie: Awesome, awesome. We did a tour with Grinnell Singers, YGB.Maria: Oh yeah, OK. I’m glad to hear the YGB still exists.Chelsie: Oh, yes, I love YGB. What are the best memories of your time at Grinnell College? You don’t have to name one. You can name-
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Yeah, um, best memories. My husband knows that somewhere on the Harris Center campus is a half-consumed, maybe now evaporated bottle of peach schnapps that, in our drunken-ness, we thought it was a good idea to bury it and come back for it later. Driving my 1977 LTD across North Campus, which was entirely illegal, in the middle of the night.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Under the influence. Driving around campus?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: No, we were not drunk. We just were, we were seniors and we had been living in the fishbowl for four years and we decided to disobey a rule, disobey a rule. Like, “We’re gonna drive across this field,” partly because camping- or, campus and parking don’t go well together and that 1977 LTD is huge. So, couldn’t find a place to park, couldn’t manipulate this thing around this campus, so I took a route that was really not available to me.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Gonna, this is the one that’s gonna make the cut: my best friend and I were making a snowman on Central Campus on a very snowy, must’ve been a February morning, and in the politically correct atmosphere that is Grinnell somebody said, “Oh, you’re making a snow person.” And the same senioritis kicked in again, similar to the driving around the car, and we said, "We’re gonna make sure that they know it’s a snowman," and it turned out to be an anatomically correct, male, masturbating snowman, which was really quite a feat to get snow to go vertically. That was really good. Managed- took some spray bottles, and he was on campus for a little while. He didn’t melt right away, which I’m kind of glad about.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: One other extraordinary memory is also a cold one when, and this was under the influence. The loggias get covered in ice, and South Campus loggias, as you know, have an angle to them. One should not climb out of a second floor loggia window drunk, in the middle of winter when it’s covered in ice and snow. Not a good idea. The fact that nobody fell off and nobody was killed, maybe there are guardian angels, even in Grinnell.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Wow, OK. So next question is about your dorm. I don’t know which one you wanna talk about? I don't- which one comes fi-
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: My freshman year was Smith Annex, which, is it still a thing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was a cautious- Maria, boy, I'm not really sure where I’m going. I think that might be safer. OK, yeah, eeee, bad idea. (Cat noise) Cat nails, bad, not good. So, it was, I had a good experience but co-ed living is really, that’s the nature of the world, why would we segregate ourselves? So then my other three years were split between James and Haines.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: So you were a South Campuser.Maria: I’m a South Campus girl. Although we just stayed in East Campus and that was quite lovely, but South Campus is home.Chelsie: What kind of clothes did you wear every day as a Grinnell student, or on special occasions?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Do you know, I still have most of them. It had to be black, or olive green. Oh, had my black leather biker’s jacket, anything that made me feel that I was cool. I wasn’t cool. I wasn’t, but it was. The basis of any wardrobe was black, and preferably something that people would look at and say, “Oh yeah, you’re a Grinnellian,” whatever I perceived that to be, but I don’t have, I just remember a lot of black and green.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: OK. How about on those special occasions, those Friday, Saturday nights?Maria: Waltz! No, let’s just go right for Waltz.Chelsie: Okay, let's go straight to Waltz.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Because spring- fall waltz or winter waltz, ball, depending on what it was, and spring waltz, all of a sudden women had razors and nail polish and the high maintenance phenomenon that didn’t really exist otherwise. What a joy. It was just like little kids playing dress-up with feather boas and shoes that were too big and uncomfortable and fan- We really enjoyed the opportunity to go full high-maintenance.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Waltz was the biggest event of the year?Maria: I don’t know if it was the biggest event, but it was-Chelsie: Fanciest?Maria: Just that juxtapositioning of here’s all the hippies and the tie-dye and lots of hair, and then this two times a year, we played adult. How much, of course, you got drunk, but still.Chelsie: Yes, always. Always to Waltz.Maria: Slam Waltzing, Slam Waltzing.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: OK. So did you guys have Waltz in the Quad, or was it..?Maria: I remember Waltz being in Darby.Chelsie: Okay, yeah. We had it in Darby this last semester.Maria: The real Darby, thank you very much.Chelsie: Oh, okay.Maria: The Darby that now only exists underneath the art gallery, and the various bricks, I guess, in JRC. And then, by my senior year Waltz was in Harris, so then we had Waltz with the disco ball.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Okay. Awesome, awesome. Next question: what book influenced you most in college?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I didn’t read a single one. I have no recollection of ever reading any book in college, and that’s God’s own truth. I must have, and I still, I think that it was a couple of reference books that I carry around with me that still have the Grinnell College bookstore sticker on the back, but it wasn’t until grad school that I actually can recall a book really changing my world paradigm. So, and many people have said, “How did you get through Grinnell? How did you get through grad school. How can you even have any kind of IQ at all if you don’t read?” I have no idea. I have excellent receptive language skills. I can hear things and I will absorb, but I’m not a reader.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: What was your major?Maria: I was Sociology. Sociology major, yup, mhm-hmm.Chelsie: What memories or images do you have of the town of Grinnell?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: State Street, The Bar. McNally’s, Cunningham’s. But I didn’t, well, I didn’t spend a lot of time in town. I never lived off-campus. I always lived in the dorms. So, there was no animosity there but the town was the way that you got to Grinnell and it was a little bit of a buffer zone between us and the cornfields. So, just sort of, it’s there but I was never engaged in it. I’ve been more engaged in it as an adult now, realizing, seeing, looking, again, outside of the fishbowl.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: How has Grinnell changed since you were a student?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Obviously there’s physical changes on the campus, but I think the culture of this place is almost exactly the same with the one exception, and that is the invasion of communication technology. The idea that we- the Internet really did not exist in usable form. We went and checked our dreams mail, which is a precursor to email. That was a big deal, that you’d sit in class, and I teach high school so I’m very sensitive to, what we recently heard as a noise factor that’s invaded life. That you will never know life other than that.That's not a judgment on you but you will never know life without that noise level unless you make a conscious effort to disconnect yourself, to pull yourself off the grid.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: So, Grinnell I think has always been, even though we’re this fishbowl analogy that I’m using, we’re still a fishbowl inside of a much larger culture that always has reflected the culture. The 50s were still the 50s at Grinnell. The 60s were still the 60s at Grinnell. The 1860s were still the 1860s at Grinnell. So, the 2000 and followings are still the 2000, and that, the outside world, that constant electric, as I’m listening to the fluorescent lights hum, is symbolic of that. It makes me a little sad just to see that that’s happened to our culture as a whole, and that this place is not immune to it. But that’s just the way. That’s the reality. As an adult you realize, yeah, we’re really not that isolated from the outside world.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Describe something that is no longer available on campus, but that was meaningful to you, for example buildings, programs, activities.Maria: I don’t know, but I can, I mean, that affinity for Darby just because of its nature, of the historical nature, sort of the monolithic, seemably… immovable nature of this thing that’s gone.Chelsie: That was the first gym, right? I didn’t even get to see it.Maria: Yeah, no, you wouldn’t know.
- Glenn PetersonGlenn: The graduation pranks you mentioned.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: OK, that’s a good point. You don’t know about that, probably. They don’t do this anymore. Historically, you did not pay for your diploma, or you didn’t pay for college until you got your diploma. You sort of racked up this bill and at the end, at commencement, you gave them the money and they gave you a diploma. That has metamorphosized over the years that there became a time, and I couldn't tell you the time frame, that it was symbolic. That graduates would come across, and there was a jar or some kind of container, people would drop in a penny as sort of homage to that tradition.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: And then Grinnell tweaked it a little bit again and there was this tradition that I knew about, in the mid-to-late eighties and in the early nineties, when you did something that was your five seconds of fame, coming across that stage, something silly or fun. The ultimate Frisbee guys and gals would always throw a Frisbee out at the audience. Several graduations there was a Spiderman and I still don’t know who he was. Some Grinnellian that would climb up across the Bookstore.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I mean that was part of, people, lots of ‘em had a fake arm. You had like a mannequin’s arm underneath your robe and then the president would go to shake your hand and the president would wind up holding this fake arm. Somebody drove their motorcycle. I took my Elmo, my little Elmo doll that I was kinda famous for. Had a little mortarboard and a little gown on. Y’know, waved to my mommy and daddy, and had a little matching corsage, and evidently, we were talking to President Drake last night, but that’s gone. So-
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: We can bring that back.Maria: You make sure you do that. Spread the word.Chelsie: OK. So what is this Elmo significance?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I collect Elmo, and he became a character on Sesame Street the year that I graduated from high school and so it is a Grinnell connection because my first real care package that came from my mommy was my first stuffed Elmo, so that would’ve been the fall of 1988. Thus began a collection of, I mean he represents all that’s good about humanity. Curiosity and love and affection, I mean how can you not? So he’s my little friend I carry, well, at 41 maybe the novelty wore off a little bit.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Okay. So, describe your favorite academic experience or class at Grinnell.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: There was a woman here, Thorson-Smith, hyphenated Thorson-Smith, and she was the wife of a minister, so she really wasn’t here for herself, she was here with her husband and I don’t remember what his parish was in town. But, she was a Sociology prof and her particularly interests were human sexuality. So, she taught all of the really cool special topics classes . Human Sexuality, Gender Issues, with a gentility quite antithetical of Kesho Scott. Kesho Scott will push you and push you and push you until cry, and Thorson-Smith was quite the opposite.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: She sort of pulled, and let you speak for yourself, but really really changed my thoughts about human sexuality overall, and really, as Hunter and McClelland and Rommereim were patriarchal role models she was very much a matriarchal role model in that she had this gentle way about her with issues that are pretty poignant, pretty powerful. So, several special topics that I took with her about human sexuality.. This, I’m getting college credit for this? This is fantastic. Here’s a chance to really explore who you are and who we are as human beings, and I’m gonna get a degree outta this? I love it. How else could you analyze George Michael? And in the eighties that was a deal. And write a paper about that? Only at Grinnell.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Only at Grinnell, always. Always lie.Maria: Yeah.Chelsie: Describe your favorite place on campus.Maria: Herrick Chapel.Chelsie: Why Herrick Chapel?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Because it, as Darby, had that sense of history and weight and inertia and "I’m here and I’m the last of the ages and you cannot move me." That has still a Christian heritage to it, which is important to me. It was a safe spot on campus that represented, in all of the change, in all of these explorations, "who am I? Who is the world?" Push the envelope. Ask the questions. Herrick Chapel is a rock and that they’ve restored the organ is fantastic. They may have kept the heart of the heart, that’s, I’m very moved to be in there. It’s very emotional for me.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Did you guys get to hear the organist?Maria: Yes, we did!Chelsie: How was it?Maria: It’s beautiful, and we got to climb around behind the pipes and just, (gasp). Three thousand pipes in that thing! It’s just awesome.Chelsie: Yeah. Okay, if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently during your time at Grinnell College?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I might’ve read a book! I’m sure that I did. I’m sure that I did. I think I would have probably developed my social circle a little bit more, gone out and sought out a few more people. But that’s not my- that would’ve been- that’s really against my nature to do so. I’m much more comfortable with a smaller group of people. Quantity, not so much quality, yes?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Maybe. I think that if I could’ve forced myself to develop a habit, at 20-something, maybe at 40-something I wouldn’t have the trajectory of remaining more... reserved to myself, but I don’t really have a whole lot of regrets. I’m very proud and happy to be able to say that that’s generally true. Might be little things, but nothing...
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Do you think you think you were so caught up like, in the academia life that you didn’t have time to socialize, or just-?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: No, I did socialize, absolutely! I’m not - make no mistake - Harris and State Street- but it was just with a pretty defined group of people. I just wasn’t a floater, I guess. One of the new terms for adolescent cultures, floaters: people who can move from clique to clique to clique.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: That was important though, to have a study group.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Yeah. Now that being said, I don’t really have that group of friends anymore. I don’t any- I have connections with, maybe two graduates and- that I've maintained. And that’s OK, I’m- the institution to me is maybe more important to me than some of the individual people.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Glenn PetersonChelsie: So you met your spouse elsewhere?Maria: Oh, absolutely.Chelsie: You wanna talk about it a little bit?Maria: My husband Glenn has absolutely nothing to do with Grinnell. God bless him. You are, as you say, a Grinnellian by marriage.Chelsie: Honorary.Maria: Honorary Grinnellian. I hereby dub thee.-Chelsie: I declare you!Glenn: Now I'm an alumni of the Alumni College.Maria: There you go. That’s- How God blessed with me with this man is a miracle and a half, so, despite the Grinnellian in me.
- Chelsie SalvateraChelsie: Okay. How would you compare the students of today with your classmates?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Of course, because of that communication technology, you folks have access to things, quantity and quality and speed, in ways that are amazing to me. But, I do wonder, and some of this is a projection of my own teaching as I see children who are younger than you in high school and very talented but much younger, your ability to discern what is good from what is not so good or what is life-affirming from what is not life-affirming, because you have so many choices and so much opt – so many options and that’s a constant indignation, I fear for you that, how can you possibly find some ground in that?
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: I mean, it was hard for us. Here we were exploring the world and our world was considerably smaller, and we thought we had it all. Your world is- your world has no boundaries. Time and space mean very little to you. I mean you just don’t think about them in the same way. And I- How do you navigate through that? Where’s your compass? And that’s not an accusation, I just, I’m bewildered. How do you get through it? How do you get through it, and what’s gonna be the generation- how will your children, how will they? ‘Cause it’s only gonna expand, and yeah. The Romans maybe taught us a little lesson about getting too big for yourself and it’s gonna collapse on- Is that- that’s a possibility! I’m sorry, that’s kind of a downer! Keep the faith!
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Last question.Maria: Absolutely.Chelsie: If you were writing a history of Grinnell College, what would you include from your years here?Maria: You gotta have the, the disco balls. Not the thing- is it still over in the Harris Center? Is the disco ball still hanging? But the guys that wore their 1970s attire. Are we good? Okay.Chelsie: No, no, no, keep going.
- Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Chelsie SalvateraMaria: And, then they put on their polyester suits and... in homage to the generation prior to ours. That was, that non-political correctness was such a joy. Just, you don’t have to tiptoe.Chelsie: Did you guys have crazy Harris themes, like...Maria: Yeah.Chelsie: Fetish, and...?Maria: The thing, the one that we did our senior year was the Dr. Seuss Ball. We had lots of Dr. Seuss-esque characters and we wrote our own little poem. Oh, may I share with you the poem?Chelsie: Yes!Maria: I think I can do it from memory.Chelsie: Please, please do.
- Maria Walinkski-PetersonMaria: Diane Elizabeth May Roberts and Maria Walinski-Peterson. Sometime around February 1992. There’s a place not so far that you likely may know, where they disc in the sun and they brisk in the snow. Now and again if you look there and here, some very strange creatures begin to appear. Dingleboofs guzzle and wiggle their rumpies, not like those snookie old geekus-snarf grumpies. Geekus-snarfs grumble and I can’t remember the rest of that line, but it gives you a sense of what we had done to try to capture the sense of this, the dichotomies that exist in our own little 'Camp Grinnell'. Dr. Seuss world.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Glenn PetersonChelsie: Wow, amazing. OK- Oh, one quick question for both of you guys. So I noticed your shoes yesterday, those Converse shoes. I think you had the high tops and you had the-?Maria: We both had, just he hid his- had his pants on.Chelsie: Oh, he had pants on. What did it say in the back?Maria: Had our names on ‘em.Glenn: Maria and Glenn.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Glenn Peterson & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: Where did you guys get those from?Glenn: You can order ‘em straight from Converse.Maria: Converse online.Glenn: Costs the same thing as original Converse.Chelsie: Online.Maria: Yeah, and they'll- you can customize all the colors.
- Chelsie Salvatera & Glenn Peterson & Maria Walinkski-PetersonChelsie: What do they cost?Glenn: It costs the same- sixty bucks.Maria: Like sixty-two dollars.Chelsie: Oh, wow! Those are really adorable.
- Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Chelsie Salvatera & Glenn PetersonMaria: And we had, those were our- we got married in November, so our colors were red and purple so we had several people who wore-Chelsie: Oh, my God, I love you guys.Glenn: Then, we wore them together.Chelsie: I love you guys already. I'd seen those and I we-Maria: But, is that not-Chelsie: "That couple is so adorable!"
- Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Chelsie SalvateraMaria: Is that not a common denominator of Grinnellians, that they have some kind of creativity?Chelsie: It is, it is.Maria: It goes in different directions.Chelsie: It is. I mean, you were a Grinnellian who I distinguish-Maria: Oh, thanks. I take that as a great high compliment, coming from a current student, but thank you.
- Glenn Peterson & Maria Walinkski-PetersonGlenn: You missed our "Free Snooki" t-shirts then. Chelsie: I did.Maria: Yeah, you know who Snooki is? Chelsie: Yeah, you guys liked Snooki?Maria: Not really, but fascinated- the sociologist in me is fascinated by it, so we have matching "Free Snooki" t-shirts.
- Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Chelsie SalvateraMaria: I try not to watch much Jersey Shore.Maria: It’s OK.Chelsie: Only because your IQ goes down.Maria: It’s just temporary.Chelsie: OK, any other things to say?Maria: I’m just grateful that you even took the time to do this.Chelsie: It was amazing.
- Maria Walinkski-Peterson & Chelsie SalvateraMaria: I think that this oral history project is a little bit of that, "Let’s find some continuity. Let’s get something written down and rock solid." so that, it’s OK for things to change but don’t forget where you come from.Chelsie: (Whipsered: Thank you so much. )
Alumni oral history interview with Maria Walinski-Peterson '92, and Glenn Peterson. Recorded June 3, 2011.