Stories for the road:

Over the past couple of weeks I've taken advantage of my ample free time to do a lot of reading.  One of the most rewarding aspects of finally being done (for now) with my formal education is the great freedom it affords me to read and learn as I wish.  With that in mind, I have been both adding to and chipping away at a long list of books I have been meaning to read for some time now.  I've checked a couple of big ones off the list, but as many others have discovered, the more one reads, the more there is to be read.

Anyhow, both because I still have several large piles of library books and because I'll probably have significant chunks of unscheduled time while on the road, I'm bringing a bunch with me.  And although they are mostly a collection of randomly accumulated books from my bedside table, together they comprise a quintessential road reader -- perfectly curated for a few weeks kicking around the American continent:

You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe

More or less self-explanatory.

A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor

About the author's months-long trek through Europe -- on foot.  Although my journey is both shorter and less compelling than his, perhaps I will be inspired to parlay my travels into a much longer adventure.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Although I'll be staying off the high seas, I suppose I am searching for something.  At the very least, it is one of the great American novels.

The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey

Should I feel compelled to engage in any vandalism / beautification of the American Southwest.

Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville

To discover, as many have, that so many of de Tocqueville's insights still hold true.


These should make for some good reading on the road.  We'll see how many I'm actually able to get through, as I always seem to imagine I'll have far more free time than I actually do.  Regardless, I'll get through a few of them, and perhaps if we're lucky these works of great stature will seep through my fingertips out onto the digital pages of this blog, for all to read.  A hopeful sentiment at best.

More fun things:

Perhaps I'm getting a little overzealous in posting again so soon, but for a quick taste (unfortunately not literally) of what I did this summer, check this stuff out:

I spent the beginning of this summer working as an intern for WhistlePig Whiskey, a new whiskey company based in Shoreham, Vermont.  My main duties were to handle Twitter, blogging, etc. (which explains the sparse postings on the WhistlePig blog, given the sorry state of this electronic travelogue...), but I also was able to have a hand in some of the more business-minded aspects of launching the company, from arranging shipments down to bottling the whiskey.  An additional perk was, of course, the opportunity to sample the product early and often.  It's delicious, perhaps-even-nutritious, and it retails for around $70 a bottle, so it was a great privilege to have such unlimited access.

One of the coolest projects I ended up working on for WhistlePig was a mood video we created (I use "we" very loosely here, as I had little to do with the creative process behind the film) to tell the story of the brand.  The brainchild of my friends Evan and Ian, and shot by Nick Stefani, it came out great.  Check it out below.

Whistle Pig Promo from Nick Stefani on Vimeo.

More recently, Ian also compiled a bunch of his random footage from the summer into an awesome 60-second montage.  Check it out -- I've probably watched it twenty times by now.

Rock And Roll Summer from ian durkin on Vimeo.

I can never really tell whether I think these things are so great because I know the vast majority of the people and places in them, or because they just are.  Hopefully it's the latter.

And yet:

Ahh, and then to look at what one has written nearly nine months previous, only to see that little has changed.  In retrospect (well, I probably thought it at the time, too) it was folly to think that I could keep up a regular writing schedule while closing out my college career, so I'll make no apologies about my lack of posts.  I'm sure none of my nonexistent regular readers noticed anything -- in fact, at this point I think the only hits on this blog are the occasional people who get routed here through some errant Google search, only to discover that they stumbled upon one of the least-compelling corners of the internet.  To these, I apologize.  To anyone reading this intentionally, you have no one but yourself to blame.  I accept no responsibility.  But alas:

Now I do actually have something to write about, as starting tomorrow, I'll be embarking on a one-month journey around these United States, visiting friends, touring new cities, and putting off the job search for a couple more carefree weeks.

About two weeks ago I was lucky enough to purchase JetBlue's All You Can Jet Pass, which entitles the holder to unlimited travel on any and all JetBlue routes between the dates of September 7th and October 6th.  At $499 for the five-day version (I can't fly on Fridays or Sundays) it was a stunningly good deal, and with the open social calendar that only perpetual unemployment can provide, it seemed the perfect chance to explore the good old US of A and make up for some of the travel I had planned but put off this summer.

As I only have to book my tickets three days in advance, most of my itinerary is still developing, but I do have a decent idea of where I'm headed.  For starters:

Tomorrow I will be taking a BoltBus down to New York City, where I'll spend two nights with friends before flying out Tuesday morning, the official first day of the pass.  From there I'll fly in to DC for about two days, staying with another friend (I luckily have couches to crash on in the vast majority of my destinations) before flying out on Thursday afternoon to Phoenix, AZ.

"Phoenix?" you say?

Yes, I understand, there is no real reason to go there.  But as the primary JetBlue destination in the American Southwest, it's really my only choice.  To make matters worse, the few moments (literally) that I will spend in Phoenix look to be the most hectic of the trip.  I land at 10:35 PM, have to get to the Greyhound station just outside the airport in time for an 11:30 PM departure, and will then take a bus to Flagstaff, AZ, getting in at 2:15 AM.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Flagstaff?"

Yes, and I have even less reason to go there.  In fact, my sole reason for passing through this (probably perfectly pleasant) desert city is to hop an Amtrak train at 5:21 AM.  It's going to make for a fun night on the road.

Anyway, assuming it all comes together properly, I'll be riding the Southwest Chief into Albuquerque, New Mexico, finally reaching my destination just after noon.  To put any idle speculation to rest, I do actually have a friend in Albuquerque, with whom I'll be staying until early Monday morning.

That's enough of my itinerary for now; I do actually know a few steps beyond that, but the writer in me is telling me that there will be way more suspense if I leave it unsaid -- for now.

To be continued...

Random thoughts:

In re-opening the blogging adventure, all of a sudden I assess every situation by whether or not it is worthy to write about. This makes general everyday life somewhat more interesting, although I do find myself attaching unnecessary profundity to everything, which certainly isn't an accurate reflection of my daily ins and outs. Further, it's almost exhausting, thinking so much on such minutiae -- who cares what the guy's face was like last night when I was ordering pizza? I need to work on my filter. I think if I were actually a writer, I'd probably go crazy trying to think about everything, and I'd probably miss out on a lot of the things that require actually doing.

Anyway, in thinking about my writing, I was again ruminating on the fact that I've never kept a successful journal, although I've tried plenty of times. I carried a pristine Moleskine around with me in my backpack for a solid two years, but I actually wrote on only twenty or so pages. I think the problem is, I already know what I'm thinking, so why would I need to document it? My journal entries often end up as weird conversations with myself or just quick, concise notes about whatever I'm doing. Without an audience, there's no motivation for me to write, and certainly no motivation for me to write well. So that's the great thing about the blog: even though my "audience" in this case is still essentially just me, at least the prospect of these words being read by someone else is enough to make me use proper grammar and avoid referring to myself in the third person.

It snowed a lot today, as I'm sure everyone heard. Around here we only got maybe ten inches, so nothing like the mid-Atlantic, but it was enough to be notable. I was in Boston at a party last night, and it was neat to wake up this morning and walk down the middle of the roads with everyone else, since there were no cars around. I've always loved snowstorms for the same reasons that many people do, but I think they also appeal to me on some level because of my anarchist tendencies. When there's a ton of snow lying around, nothing works, and yet everything seems to work that much better. In Boston there were plenty of people out in the street -- shoveling, talking, going on walks -- and the city seemed so much more humane without the incessant drone of cars and all of their associated ills. On my walk home (after parking the car down the street to avoid getting plowed in), some neighbors were outside shoveling, and their little kid said hi, even though I've never met him before. When it snows, people stay home, and they actually do things together, and when they do go out, it actually matters -- everything is an expedition, and it is treated with such respect. It seems that after a big storm is one of the only times that people consider just going for a walk to be a worthwhile pursuit. It's always worthwhile.

I also had a good day today because I rode on public transportation, which always puts me in a good mood, even if I'm running late and it's taking a while. There's something very calming about sitting there in public in your own little world -- completely out in the open and yet alone with your thoughts -- with everyone else and their little worlds. Part of it is that you're not in control; the train will get there for you at the same time it does for everyone else, so you might as well just be patient and people watch for a while. The woman on the subway platform next to me had her car stolen this morning ("In this weather?! Are they an idiot?!"), and while I normally might have been annoyed, listening to her detail the problem to her companion and at least two separate phone conversations, the station was outside, the train was running late, and everything was quiet, so it was okay. Better, even, to get a window into her world. Apparently it's the second time it's happened, and she's continually surprised, because even though it's a "high-theft car," it also happens to be "a total shitbox." On another morning I probably would have hoped she'd quiet down, but today the world was muffled, the train was my only mode of transportation, and it was certainly her only option, too. A good morning.

Ahh, to be back:

This seems to be the way these things work: my writing and blogging often comes in waves. For several weeks my posts are consistent and prolific, the writing, energized and clear; for a brief while, inspiration comes easily, and I definitely have something to say. Then, either work, or distractions, or sheer boredom sets in, and I go, oh, almost...eleven...months without posting anything. Which brings me to today.

It's winter break, I'm home, and there is nothing to do. Which means that naturally I am inclined to be productive -- and what could be more productive than writing a blog post essentially about nothing that will be read by literally (more or less) no one? Not much that I can think of, obviously.

The past few months have been a blur. I won't attempt any sort of tell-all right now, but they've been action packed and fraught with distress. Drama, intrigue. Senior year is almost half done, which means that I'm that much closer to being unemployed. Which brings me back to the blog.

I've had a number of conversations over the past few months and past few days, most particularly, about my future plans (as is likely when one is a senior in college), and there has been some speculation about this "writing" thing. After having a discussion about the merits of writing a blog and trying to parlay it into a book deal or something better, I'm not sure I see it as a respectable path to literary notoriety, but as a college senior with no other prospects, I can't be picky, either. So while I would hardly attempt to pass this meandering bullshit off as publishable material, I have been thinking that it might be wise to write more regularly (I think if you reread the posts over the past few years, I come to this conclusion every three months or so). View this, then, as one more attempt for me to get in the habit of written expression outside of email, text messages, and GChats.

I have, however, been doing some legitimate writing recently -- although not here -- which is where I'll begin.

"Waters to Wine," my column in The Middlebury Campus on all things alcohol, has continued this semester, and it has continued to be a success. While I've had trouble meeting deadlines, the quality of the writing has [generally] remained something to be proud of, and I've received a lot of kind encouragement from friends, coaches, and faculty alike. Due to the various iterations of the new Campus website, most of this semester's installments have been lost to the Interweb, but you can access future ones here. Below is my most recent column, which appeared a couple of weeks ago as part of the newspaper's yearly Green Issue.

The dismal state of the environment these days has me down in the dumps. In fact, it has depressed me so that I’ve been forced to drink (I imagine no one saw that coming). With climate change (and governments’ inability to do anything about it – world leaders agreed this week to not decide on anything at this year’s summit in Copenhagen, instead deciding to wait just a little bit longer…an inspired move), our throw-away culture, and a myriad of other problems far too numerous to mention, it’s a wonder that we’re all not raging alcoholics, passed out in a gutter somewhere, drowning our worries in the drink. Perhaps we should be.

You see, I’m not drinking solely to block out my sorrows – I’m drinking for a good cause. One of the greatest things to come out of the broadly named “environmental movement” in the past few years has been the idea of slow food. By this I mean food that is sustainable – local, often organic, or both – that is prepared with care and intention at every step in the process, and that is expected to be consumed with that same care in mind. Here, we savor quality over quantity, specificity over ubiquity, and food with a story over food with a label. Which brings me back to alcohol.

Luckily for us, caught up in this movement for better and better tasting food has been a push for equally stimulating spirits. Microbreweries and local wineries have experienced an enormous flowering over the past decade, and we’re now blessed with a variety of drinks that might have been unheard of only a few years ago. And even more luckily for all of us Middlebury students, we happen to have a local microbrewery just down the road.

The Otter Creek and Wolaver’s brewing facility is well known to Middlebury students; its brewery tour seems a rite of passage for the newly-21, and its seasonal selections provide just enough variety to keep students interested. Moreover, as a brewery it is committed to lessening its environmental impact as much as possible. Wolaver’s Certified Organic Ales was one of the first organic breweries in the United States when it began in 1997, and now it produces a number of organic ales for nationwide consumption. Of course, it is important to mention that while Wolaver’s brews are organic, the organic hops they use have to be trucked in from thousands of miles away, lessening their environmental credentials. However, Wolaver’s has also begun its Farmers Series of ales, which incorporate ingredients from local farmers, helping contribute to the local economy and building the idea of a story I mentioned earlier.

To me, it is this story that is most important. While microbreweries and artisanal foods are not a cure-all for all of our environmental ills, they are important for what they do – they make us ask questions about our food. It’s too easy to just go to the supermarket and pick up some anonymous case of beer; it’s much more interesting to know where it comes from, who produces it, and how. So when we drink beer from a brewery down the road, that in and of itself isn’t solving anything, but it is the beginning of a valuable and essential process. The more we learn about food, seemingly the more we want to know. If I know where my beer comes from, I’ll want to know how it’s produced, or maybe I’ll want to know what it does with its waste and if its hops are sustainably grown. Drinking local beer forces us to ask questions, which is always one of the most valuable things one can do.

So please, go out and have a drink from one of Vermont’s many local breweries. The state has been blessed by a growing number of local producers, all making some great beers. It’s important to know that by drinking alone we won’t solve any of our problems, but we can start to help. So as the empty bottles multiply and the problems fade from our consciousness, we can know: that glow we’re feeling comes from more than the alcohol.

Additionally, I've been doing some blogging as a part of my job in the Admissions Office as a Senior Fellow. In between giving interviews, leading information sessions, and helping out around the office, each of us is supposed to take some time to share our lives as seniors with the outside world. It's been a good exercise, and it's one of my favorite parts of the job. The Senior Fellows blog is here, and the following are links to my first post, on attending a Board of Trustees Retreat earlier this fall, as well as my second, recapping Dan Deacon's epic concert at Middlebury.

So that's that. It's a start, as always. And we'll see whether I write here again soon or not. See you in eleven months.

Sketching:

This semester I am taking ENAM 0170 -- Writing: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, the introductory creative writing workshop, which affords me the opportunity to write creatively, something I haven't officially done (although perhaps some of the entries on this blog could qualify) since 9th grade. After two weeks, it is both a pleasure and a challenge, and I look forward to cranking out some good material in the coming months. Our first assignment was to write a brief character sketch. Being swamped with work only a week into the semester, I wrote mine in the hour and a half before class on the day it was due. While I wish that I had taken the chance to further develop things before handing it in, I was actually quite pleased with the final product:

A kid spotted him on the way to school. He was leaned up against the side of a tree, everything all around him, and he held up traffic all morning. I was late getting there because of an issue with my transportation – the chain had come off again, and I discovered one tire was flat once I got out on the road – so he was gone by the time I arrived. They’d left everything else for me to sort through, to identify, catalog, and interpret, and as I caught by breath, swearing at the traffic that still clogged the main road and that had almost killed me as I tried to cross the street, that is exactly what I did.

There was still tape around the scene, and after nodding to one of the other officers, I ducked under. It marked off a blast radius. Things were strewn everywhere. His pack, leaned up against the tree where he had been. His bike, off to one side, dropped in the grass like he had jumped off in motion. The remnants of a fire, and in the ashes, the remnants of a book.

I set to work tagging, bagging, and cataloging each item, which would take a while given the circumstances. I hoped that I could be finished before the afternoon, as recent tree work had obliterated what little shade there had been, and as soon as the sun got high enough, I’d be cooked. Why do they make us wear these stupid jackets?

First item: the bag, tattered, sun-bleached, and empty, like a poolside retiree, at the end of its line. The bike, better than mine, chain in good condition, bright blue, with some spots of rust, and two full tires but the back brake out of commission. I couldn’t bag the bike, but I had to report on it anyway. The contents of the bag had been emptied and strewn about the ground, arranged nearly, given the circumstances, like they had been on sale. Two t-shirts, one red, faded, and smelling of sweat, the other, a pale gray, reading, Charlie’s Chicken ‘n’ Things. I wondered where he got that, and then saw that the address was printed on the other side. Georgia. The shirt was worn, but you could tell that it was still pretty new. He had just worn it a lot. Three pairs of socks, one with holes, two without, one of which was surprisingly clean. A camp stove, plus matches – one book, one box, eight matches in all – and little bits of charred paper, on which one could make out a few words, in jagged handwriting. It was worse than mine. I always wondered how the lab even dealt with my reports.

Three books, one I’d read, one I hadn’t, and one I couldn’t remember. I’d have checked the plot on the last one, but he had been slowly cannibalizing the pages for the fire, and my search for a logical conclusion revealed nothing more than scraps of words and incomplete sentences. If I had gotten there sooner, I could have at least known how it ended.

Another shirt, thrown in the bushes, that I had missed before. Striped, with holes, like old wallpaper. An apple, half eaten, a sack of rice, three pieces of white bread, crumbs, a few crackers, and an empty jar of peanut butter. I was pretty hungry. In my rush to fix the chain, pump up the tire, and avoid getting hit by traffic, I’d completely forgotten to eat. Two plastic containers of pudding, a few carrots, and unpopped microwave popcorn. I bagged all the food individually, just to see what they said. Three slices of bread, three bags. The rice, split among at least seven, the crumbs in another, and the pudding, poured out into one bag that I knew would explode everywhere if I jumped on it. Evidence. I thought about making lunch, and passing the bags off as my own, but I knew that would never hold up. I hate peanut butter.

An Allen wrench, an extra tube, duct tape, and a Swiss army knife. I opened each of its parts. I counted them, thought about writing the number down in my book, and realized it wasn’t important. Who cared how many things it could do? It’s a Swiss army knife, after all – the rest of the things are insignificant. I wondered about how many people had actually found occasion to use the fish scaler or the compass, and then I dropped it in the bag. The knife, as well as two of the three screwdrivers, hit the side of the bag, tearing a hole, and the whole thing fell out on the ground in front of me.

I looked around, embarrassed, but the mid-morning traffic was clearing up, and no one had noticed. Even if they did, what would they care? One guy, two bikes, a couple bits of food, some dog eared books, and a Swiss army knife, scaler, screwdriver, compass, toothpick, wine opener, scissors, tweezers, and at least three other things I couldn’t begin to know what to do with. I put it in my pocket.

I puttered around a bit more, kicking a few more odd items off to the side. I climbed the tree, just high enough to reach the bare spot where they had cut out all the branches, and sat in the sun for a while. It was 11:00. From this spot, all of his possessions looked just as random, and my meticulous bagging of everything had only enhanced the perception of a yard sale. As the cars passed by on the main road, I thought about the people in all of them, and what things they might have, and if they’d be willing to let me bag, tag, and catalogue them. They probably wouldn’t.

At the intersection, one car ran a red light, and another had to swerve not to hit it. At least three people honked. I climbed out onto one of the branches, balancing precariously as it shifted under my weight, and jumped down, two feet onto the bag of pudding. It splattered everywhere.

Investigators later in the day would discover a pudding blast radius of nearly twenty feet. It stuck to the tree, bits of it landed in the grass, and the rest completely coated everything I had put in bags. It was a good marker of my presence. He had tried, well enough, leaving his things strewn about the ground and a headfull of blood on the lower branches of the tree, but they took care of that when they took him and the gun away. They took the gun, bagged, tagged, and catalogued it, and then did the same to him. Evidence.

The sun was high enough in the sky that the entire scene was bathed in light, and squinting in the bright sunshine, I checked my bearings on the Swiss army compass, we traded bikes, and peddled into traffic.

I'll keep updating as my work progresses. Perhaps I'll parlay this into a longer story at some point -- stay tuned.

Number Two:

My sources have informed me that this week's edition of Waters to Wine was not properly posted on the Middlebury Campus website, so I apologize for keeping all of my dedicated readers in limbo with my belated posting on The Restless Life. This week's installment is below.

Over the course of our collegiate years, we all (hopefully) grow more mature, more sophisticated, and more discerning in our tastes. We shun Top 40 radio for indie-music blogs, we trade department store garments for vintage store discoveries, and we deny our previous populist tastes as awkward reminders of a shameful past. For many, drinking tastes undergo similar changes – we move from thirty racks to home brews, from box wine to good years – and we treat our embarrassing alcoholic pasts with the same scorn we heap on boy bands or Beanie Babies. Some people delight in broadcasting their alcoholic maturity and look with self-aggrandizing pity on those whose liquor store purchase still includes canned beer or boxed wine. With this I take issue.

Some people question our maturity in light of our drinking habits or juxtapose the expense of our education with the price of our liquor – “I can’t believe you drink that stuff,” or “anything out of a can isn’t worth drinking,” are popular refrains – but these people are missing the point. No one buys Busch Light because they love the taste. No one drinks it with relish, pouring it dramatically into a red Solo cup to release its full bouquet. It isn’t spilled onto dirty basement floors in order to let it breathe. We don’t leave it in hot cars during the summer to let it age, and we don’t pair it with food for true gastronomical ecstasy (besides, everyone knows that a cold Busch Light is best paired with pizza, 2AM Grille food, and one to several more Busch Lights). Busch Light, and all other light beers like it, is bought with such enthusiasm and in such large quantities because it is cheap, it is available, and it gets you drunk.

Some will probably say that this is the problem, that we drink it exclusively to get drunk, which is fine. But arguments over taste or sophistication seem mostly irrelevant. One can appreciate good beers or fine wine and still enjoy being force-fed light beer by a room full of yelling twenty-somethings. I think that given the choice, the vast majority of us would sooner reach for a Vermont microbrew than a Bud Light, as we should. But come late Friday night, nothing beats beer that can be bought in boxes of thirty. There is a time and place for light beer, and we should stop disparaging those who drink it.

As we all get older and more mature, of course we’re going to look for new and better ways of enjoying alcohol, but that doesn’t mean that we need to cast off our storied history of collegiate drinking, and we certainly don’t need to belittle it. A great beer tastes better after a couple nights of lesser fare, so by continuing both facets of our college drinking careers – the sophisticated on the one hand, the less so on the other – we can actually heighten our enjoyment of both. It’s nice to grow up and progress, but we shouldn’t so willingly cast off our pasts, as they are still relevant and even gain importance as time goes on. Although in the case of boy bands, it’s another issue entirely.

Besides these first two introductory weeks, my column will be bi-weekly from here on out, so look for the next one (hopefully correctly posted to the Campus website) on Thursday, March 5th.

Waters to Wine:

As chronicled in the older entries of this blog, I've been in pursuit of a column in the school newspaper, The Middlebury Campus, for some time now. After being turned down (once), kept in the lurch (both times), and generally perplexed (more or less continuously), my persistence has paid off: I am now officially the newest columnist for Middlebury's best (read: only) weekly campus newspaper.

My column is about all things booze, which probably comes as no surprise. The idea came to me during my semester abroad, and while I would like to be able to tell people that I write some erudite column on literary theory or physics as applied to sporting events, this will be more fun. The first installment came out in today's paper, and after appearing again next week, it will run bi-weekly through the rest of the semester. I'll post each one on my blog after the paper is released, but you can also read them online on the Middlebury Campus website. See my first attempt below:

At a beer tasting class during my semester abroad in Denmark, the host introduced himself as “a part-time alcoholic,” which makes sense. In Denmark, with its government-funded education and universal healthcare, one can afford a part-time schedule. Me, I’m an American. I work full-time.

My name’s Mike, and while I’m kidding about being an alcoholic, I do have a problem: lately this publication has played host to not one, but two sex columns, which seems a gross misrepresentation of the lives of your average Middlebury College student. If you, like me, have ever, say, walked around this campus after dark on a weekend, you might have noticed that it seems far more Middlebury students are drunk on a regular basis than copulating actively. In fact, this ratio is probably considerable. I’d be willing to wager that on an average weekend night, perhaps 75% of Middlebury students will consume an alcoholic beverage (perhaps Jyoti Daniere will prove me completely out of touch on this statistic), while a significantly smaller number will practice what they’ve learned from the most recent installment of a Campus sex column. Furthermore, while our administration would be loath to admit it, probably a sizeable majority of those engaging in sex consumed alcohol beforehand. It seems to me that the alcohol-drinking masses are criminally underserved, which is where I come in.

I’m no expert on alcohol, but I’ve had my share. I enjoy a good drink, as well as the occasional bad one, and I think there can be a place for both. In this column, I hope to explore this world of alcohol as it relates to the college experience, and specifically, the Middlebury experience. I’m not here to over-glorify it or rehash embarrassing Friday nights, but I’m also not here to turn up my nose to light beer or the most foolish of foolish drinking games. I just believe that alcohol – in all its forms – plays a sizeable enough role in our college lives that it is worth looking at. I don’t believe that you have to drink to have fun, but I do know that some of the best times I’ve had with my friends have involved drinking alcohol, both to excess and in moderation. And I believe that with a more open conversation about both situations, we can avoid some of the troubles that alcohol can most certainly cause.

Over the course of the next few weeks and months, the subject of this column may vary widely. I’ve got in mind reviews of different alcohols (with a nod to my own limited qualifications), profiles of different microbreweries, investigations into the broader alcohol industry, and where our specific place is in all of this. I don’t have a detailed plan, but if alcohol figures as widely into our lives as I think that it does, I doubt that I’ll be starved for material. I suppose that this column, like any good night out with friends, begins without a certain idea of where it will end up. But I think that with equal parts seriousness and silliness, we can make it till morning. Although that might just be the alcohol talking.

The Campus comes out every Thursday, so stay tuned for more columns.

And we're back:

I had intended to write something soon after my return from Denmark -- nearly a month and a half ago -- but home, J-Term, and my burgeoning alcoholism got the better of me. So here I am, a few solid weeks into my return to the mother country, and back home in Massachusetts on break from school. I've been off since 9:35 AM Thursday when my last class ended, and I'm a free man until Monday the 9th, when it's back to business as usual. In the intervening days, I'm hoping to pay a visit to some voices from the past, catch up on my reading and writing, and begin working off the accumulated weight from the past month.

The past month -- January for the unenlightened, but J-Term for Middlebury students -- was Middlebury's one month Winter Term, where students take one class, affording them the opportunity to "really get involved in one subject," which reads more accurately as, "do as little work as possible and spend most of their time skiing and drinking." Yes, J-Term is the time of the year when Middlebury students are finally afforded the opportunity to take advantage of all that their school and their region has to offer. And while the fact that the temperature did not rise above 28 degrees the entire month might have deterred some from enjoying the month to its fullest capacity, my friends and I took advantage of every free moment (and there were a lot of free moments) to destroy our bodies and college property as best we could.

What follows are some sweet pictures my friend Foster took of one of our more destructive J-Term endeavors, where we amassed an arsenal of Molotov cocktails and deployed them with gusto onto an icy-field-cum-bombing-range in the middle of bucolic Vermont.

Incidentally, we discovered that we'd make awful insurgents, as the vast majority of our explosives failed to shatter and create the fireball we hoped for. The pictures above represent our only truly successful attempt, which was still certifiably awesome. While we surely would have been crushed by the Israeli army in the event of a real insurgency, we can take solace in the fact that we got some good pictures, available both on Foster's blog -- www.arestlesstransplant.com -- and on his Picasa page, here.

Thankfully, not everything we did during J-Term was destructive to property, body, and mind, as a couple of my friends and I also decided on a whim to make the trip down to D.C. to watch Obama's inauguration. Our schedule was a little absurd: leave 5:00 PM Monday, arrive at my friend Mike's house in Maryland at 1:30 AM, sleep from 2:00 to 3:30, hit the Mall by 5:00 AM, watch the inauguration, and leave by 2:00 PM for the nine hour drive back to Middlebury. Regardless of the lack of sleep, it was a fun time, and I'm glad that I can say that I was there, albeit sleep deprived. Plus, the trip was not devoid of real highlights, like discovering that the friendly people behind Harold and Kumar pulled a fast one on us, and that White Castle is actually the worst food known to man. While we had to learn our lesson the hard way, the sidetrip to a White Castle in one of Newark's seediest neighborhoods was still totally worth it, just for the experience. Here are a couple of photos my friend Dan took of the inauguration, also available here.

Not that anyone needed any more proof that there were a lot of people there, but there were. Seeing that many people, the Washington Monument lit up at 5:00 in the morning, and the sun rise over the Capitol were just some of the moments that made all the driving worth it. Also, Aretha Franklin's hat.

History repeats itself:

Yesterday was the last official day of the semester for DIS. To mark the occasion, there was a closing convocation at Kobenhavn Universitet where speeches were made, awards were handed out, and awkward photo montages were displayed. More importantly, the prize for best student blog was awarded, and -- no surprise here -- I didn't win.

Given my penchant for foul language, controversial subject matter, and occasional anti-Danish sentiment, I figured I was completely out of the running. I was fine with the little niche I had carved out for myself -- I've focused more on writing for laughs and entertainment than in the hope of winning some prize, so in some ways I had considered myself out of the running already. As it turns out, a few of the program interns came up to me later and said that they had really enjoyed my blog, and would have loved to have chosen it had it not been "too focused on drinking and partying for the DIS website." A completely fair assessment, I would say, although I do find it somewhat ironic that many of my longer entries were completed on quiet Friday nights during my self-imposed exile from socializing -- a time when, by all accounts, I should have been out getting plastered.

The winning blog was "A Broad" by Franni from Wesleyan, which I thought was a good choice. It is a little-mentioned but poorly-kept secret that all of the student bloggers ravenously read each other's posts, both in an attempt at entertainment and to keep up with the proverbial Joneses, and of the other student blogs, I enjoyed Franni's the most. While I set out to write the anti-blog for the DIS website (and succeeded), Franni managed to write with great sincerity without sacrificing the legitimate insight, occasional critique, and sheer entertainment value that was so conspicuously absent in many of the other blogs. Franni, as I'm sure you'll read this at one time or another, kudos. Although I still don't forgive you for losing that game of Taboo in our Health Care in Scandinavia class (I kiiiiid, I kiiiiiiiiid).

Once we were all suitably convocated, the deed was done, that was that, and we all made like a tree and got the fuck out of there. I spent another couple hours failing at Christmas shopping, and then I headed back to my home base to get ready for a last night out on the town. Despite the convocation's great pomp and circumstance, everyone knew that the real last hurrah for DIS students was the end of semester party, held last night at La Hacienda.

I had never been to La Hacienda, and most of my friends hadn't either, but it stood out in my mind for several reasons. First, it's close to DIS, so I pass it every day. Second, it's kind of trashy on the outside, which is only amplified when a drunk crowd gathers in front at say, 10:00 on a Sunday morning (I've seen it). And third, I've heard it's got a serious weather problem -- lots of snow, if you know what I mean.

As I discovered, the place wasn't actually that bad, as long as it's 9:30 on a Tuesday night and the place is packed with Americans. The beer was relatively cheap, which was nice, the dance floor was acceptably sketchy, which was entertaining, and I didn't see anyone doing any blow off of urinals in the men's room, which was a little disappointing. All in all, the makings of a good night, and a good night it was.

By 3 AM, a bunch of us were long gone from La Hacienda, having gotten a couple of casual beers elsewhere, and were presently stuffing our faces with shawarma, which may be what I will miss most about Copenhagen. By 4:00, we were waiting in the cold for our night bus, which at 4:00 in the morning comes once an hour or not at all. I checked all the time tables, figured out how long I had to wait, and that's what I did.

I found myself leaving this country much in the same way that I came into it -- standing alone in the idle 4 AM moonlight, drinks in my stomach, conversations in my head, and with plenty behind me, but much more to come. As I waited for my bus, I stopped at one last sausage stand, and when the time came, I hopped the bus and headed Home.

...except, meticulous timetable inspection be damned, I realized I was going in the wrong direction. So I got off the bus, hit an ATM, and hailed a taxi. At 5:11 on a Wednesday morning, I piled out of the cab, thankful to be back, one last time. It cost me thirty dollars.

Copenhagen, it's been enlightening.