Access to National Public Radio’s Washington, D.C., headquarters is limited these days; tours of the building, located a mile due north of the U.S. Capitol, remain suspended as they have been since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It’s not off limits to employees, of course, but as at so many other workplaces over the past two and a half years, the option to work from home has proven too attractive for many to pass up. So it is that when Rachel Martin ’96, Hon. ’14 offers to show around a guest, the high-tech studios at North Capitol Street NE are not on the itinerary.

Steam poured out from the grille of the “Loggermobile,” the University of Puget Sound’s team bus.

It was not an elegant vehicle. Built sometime in the ’60s, it wasn’t really even a bus at all—it was a 15-passenger stretch Chevy Suburban, the type of ungainly behemoth typically reserved for use as an airport shuttle or an ambulance. Now, on the way back from playing a match at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, the Loggermobile had given up the ghost.

SOME SISTERLY HELP

Joe Biden, presidential candidate, December 2019

TACOMA, Wash. – University of Puget Sound graduate Avalena Everard ’20 is among the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency’s unprecedented global evacuation in March 2020. The Peace Corps suspended global operations and evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nirvana’s debut album Bleach was released in June 1989. Three months later, during my first week of college, Soundgarden released their second album, Louder Than Love. And that November, Mudhoney’s self-titled debut arrived. “Grunge,” I quickly learned, was a real thing, and bands from Seattle were playing powerful, heavy, sweaty music at exceptionally high volumes and rebelliously slow speeds.

In 2006, 13 years after I graduated from University of Puget Sound, I was invited to speak to the university’s Business Leadership Program. The moment I received Professor Jeffrey J. Matthews’ invitation, I considered what my presentation might look like. At the time, I co-owned Sonic Boom Records, a chain of stores in Seattle; I ran my own record label, The Control Group; I toured the world playing drums in my band, The Long Winters; and I worked as an A&R scout for Epic Records.