My conversation with Cantwell has been a refreshing one. It reminded me why American beer culture is so unique. It is open to everything — even the absurd — and is therefore growing in directions that traditional beer enthusiasts seldom consider. While drinkers and brewers around the world find pale ales, pilsners, and even Belgian Tripels to be acceptable varieties of beer, many wouldn’t feel the same about the beverages that appear at Elysian’s Pumpkin Ale Festival.

According to Cantwell’s tally, their festival has featured sour pumpkin ales, barrel aged pumpkin ales, Belgian styles, lager styles, pumpkin aged pumpkin ales (yes, that’s beer aged inside of a pumpkin), spontaneously fermented pumpkin ales, and even a smoked pumpkin ale. When Cantwell told German brewers about the beers he has experimented with, he was met with laughter.

Upon contacting Dick, I too was skeptical about the legitimacy of the more extreme craft brews. One of my first evenings back in the United States this October, a friend bought me Screamin’ Pumpkin Spiced Ale from the Michigan Brewing Company.

“This is a great fall beer,” he said.

I didn’t agree, but I was curious. The first sip was like a mouthful of pumpkin pie. It was thick with heavy vanilla notes and a nutmeg-cinnamon spice. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was drinking over-sweetened, under-spiked liqueur. It certainly wasn’t ale, but what the hell was it? Before I went any further, I decided to do a tasting.

I sat down with three other people and ran through the five different pumpkin ales. Along with the Screamin’ Pumpkin, we tried Ichabod by New Holland Brewing, Punkin by Dogfish Head, Jaw Jacker by Arcadia Brewing Company, and Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale by Southern Trer Brewing Company. We had two questions in mind: 1) Do you like it? 2) Does it taste like beer?

Though none of our selections was as exotic as a smoked pumpkin beer, the flavor palette was diverse. At one end Dogfish Head’s Punkin presented a solid, malt-based ale with a mild pumpkin finish to compliment the malt. On the other side, Southern Trier’s Pumking Imperial was like drinking a vanilla-pumpkin milkshake. The results were scattered when it came to quality. Most people found the more traditional tasting Dogfish Head more appealing than the sweeter varieties, but we all also prefer traditional IPAs and Lagers for normal drinking. When we discussed whether each beer met our qualifications for being beer, the results were unanimous. Pumking Imperial and Screamin’ Pumpkin simply weren’t real beer. They were too sweet and too spiced. Liqueur, yes. Beer, no.

When I asked Cantwell if he had ever tried a pumpkin ale too radical to consider beer, he said, “I don’t think I have really encountered one that has crossed that line.”

But one of the beers we tested was like a milkshake! How could that possibly be beer? I was incredulous, which is sad, considering I get the same doubtful reaction when I bring American beers to Germany. I have my German friends taste my favorite java stout or IPA from the U.S., and they either gag or scoff. Sometimes they do both. Now I was doing the same thing. As Cantwell pointed out, our American standards for beer often tend to stem from our European forefathers rather from our colonial roots.

“I think it is a valid standard to keep in mind, that is, wanting it to still be beer. But beer has been made out of so many different things besides just barley malt… Pumpkins were used in colonial brewing, as were other adjuncts, simply because of the availability of imported malt or reluctance to import from Britain.”

Not only is pumpkin ale beer; this is American beer at its finest. At our inception, we refused let Europe control us, and beer brewing was no exception. Although these traditions may have died for a couple hundred years, the craft brewing movement has rekindled our passion for unconventional varieties of beer.

“Ten years ago pumpkin ales were almost universally spiced like pumpkin pie, and I think people have gotten beyond that… When we first started doing the pumpkin festival for example, it wasn’t that the beer was not good, but it was sort of like ‘Whoa, look at this, everyone brewed a pumpkin ale.’ I think you can see that in the quality of American brewers now. It used to be enough of a novelty to just do it, but now it’s gotta be top notch.”

The craft brewing movement is maturing quickly, and festivals like Cantwell’s are an important part of that maturation process.

“What we’ll do out here is contact people a few months in advance and say, ‘hey, do you want to brew something for this?’”

Together the brewers show off what they can do and also pressure each other to do it right.

“Sometimes people will say, ‘Well, can’t I just spice a regular beer and call it a pumpkin ale?’ and I say, ‘No.’ To be in this festival it has to have pumpkin in the brewing process.

“I’ve had a few breweries who have had to call me up and say, ‘Oh, we, we tried just putting some pumpkin into a firkin or a keg of finished beer and it turned to mud,’ and I was like, ‘well, I’m not surprised.’”

As my conversation with Cantwell showed time and again, even the most off-the-wall beers have to be brewed seriously.

This is a challenge for brewers, but it is also a challenge for drinkers. The maturation of American beer culture has to involve the consumer. They are the ones that have to buy the beer. This makes these beer festivals all the more important. They bring people together to talk, laugh,and try some 31 different beers (at least that was the count at Cantwell’s Pumpkin Festival this year). With such a wide variety, they should offer everyone something to fit his/her palette. If not, they should at least promote a better awareness that these beers exist.

“I want to do that other places too, I want to go to Portland next year and call some of my brewing friends down there and have them come up with things.”

The more these things go on, the more the brewers and the drinkers will define a brewing tradition just for them.

With this in mind, it was quite startling to sit down at the table for my first game of D&D as a freshman in high school with my friend, his mom and dad, and aunt and uncle. They are all normal people. But instead of the after-dinner movie or game of Scattergories, we sat down to imagine ourselves as wizards and elves.

Briefly, Dungeons and Dragons is played with a pen, paper, and dice with about five or six people. One person takes the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), who describes all of the settings and places and people. The rest of the people are players, who role-play heroes in a world that the DM has imagined for them. Much of the interaction is question and answer (what do I see?), guided by few rules. Some interaction, combat specifically, is amazingly complex, requiring several books to properly direct the action. There is no real goal in D&D, unless the DM gives the players one, or unless the player decides their character exists for a particular purpose.

Given that most of my current friends are nerds themselves (including Editors Kevin and Nick), it astounded me that none of them had ever tried their hand at Dungeons and Dragons. So I planned a dinner and D&D evening, enticing them with quiche and squash soup but ultimately hoping they’d enjoy role playing the most. The following is a transcription of everyone introducing their characters, to their very first fight in a bar.

The Cast
Jordan as… the Dungeon Master
Nick as… Handley Toshane, a male Halfling Rogue
Kevin as… Twitter McFacebook, a transgendered Human Wizard
Clay as… Emma Fierce, a female (lesbian) Dragon-born Paladin
Aaron as… Bigby O’Toole, a male Half-Elf Cleric
Sean as… Chen Stubsters, a male Dwarf Fighter

This is their story.

Kevin: So I know we get to pick a name, but what about gender? Like, if I’m a women, do I get drunk faster or something?

Jordan: There’s no difference. Why don’t we go around the room. Say your name and talk about who you are.

Kevin: My name is Twitter McFacebook. I’m a Human Wizard. I put my gender as Prince. I’ll just say I’m transgendered.

Sean: Uh, my name is Chen Stubsters. A Dwarf Fighter who is a male. I am strong, hardy, and dependable.

Clay: He’s Asian?

Sean: Well he looks Asian on the picture

Clay: No you imagine your own character. Like, not just that picture.

Sean: Okay, well imagine he’s Asian.

Clay: My name is Emma Fierce. A female lesbian Dragon-born Paladin.

Kevin: What does dragon-born mean?

Nick: You’re born a dragon.

Aaron: Dragon-born.

Jordan: I think it means an ancestor got preggo from a dragon once or something.

Clay: So how do we play this? Do we all have to talk in our character?

Nick: Yeah role play, come on. Forsooth.

Jordan: If you want. That might be a little too nerdy to begin with. We’ll work up to that, and eventually we’ll end with LARPing in our parent’s backyard.

Kevin: What’s everyone’s height?

Aaron: I’m 5’11”, my actual height oh my god. I really identify with my character already.

Nick: You’re also a half-elf, so that helps too.

Jordan: Alright. Now that we’re done introducing our characters, let’s figure out where you are in this world.

The DM drops a map on the table. It shows a tavern with various tables and chairs, with a bar near the west side of the room. A rabble of patrons are scattered around.

Jordan: So you find yourselves in a local tavern.

Nick: Can we throw chairs in this tavern?

Aaron: Oh my god. Let’s kill everyone on this tavern. Oh you guys are fucked, I’ve got +5 religion.

Nick: What does that mean? I have zero religion. I’m definitely going to steal from someone.

Kevin: I have more religion.

Aaron: But I’m a cleric, that’s a religious character! I should be more religious than you.

Kevin: Do our characters have a patience level?

Jordan: Everyone pick places where you are in this tavern.

People drop their character on the map to indicate where they are.

Aaron: Oh, it’s like Coyote Ugly, we’re all on top of the bar doing a dance.

Everyone moves their character on top of the bar, a la Coyote Ugly.

Nick: Yeah, I’m totally dropping dollars in your G-string. Or your plated mail, rather.

Clay: Well, I’m a lesbian so I’m alone. I’m not having fun.

Nick: So how am I associated with these people? Do we have a history?

Jordan: Well you’re associated somehow. It’s better for you to make up a history to give your character some flavor, but for easy of play, we’ll say you all know each other already.

Kevin: So we’re all Facebook friends already?

Aaron: Some of us are probably friends. I’m not friends with Clay though.

Jordan: Anyway, as a band of adventurers, you basically go out and do jobs for money or treasure. So you’re all hanging out at this bar, which is basically the center of social life in this small town.

Clay: Is this the Wild Rose? (a lesbian bar in Seattle)

Jordan: Sure, we’ll call it the Wild Rose, but it probably isn’t the kind of crowd you’re thinking of. So you guys are all just hanging out at the bar… or I guess on top of the bar. Your evening is interrupted when all of a sudden the front door of the bar splinters open with a loud yell and four big, scary-looking humanoid forms burst through. These four bust down the door, and one of them takes a big axe and chops down this man sitting in a chair closest the entrance.

The DM places four markers indicating these new creatures on the map.

Sean: That guy was my friend!

Jordan: Roll a Sadness Check.

Sean: What?

Jordan: I’m kidding. Your character is sad now. Anyway, in this game I give you the setup to everything — what stuff looks like, who is where, what people are saying — and then you need to tell me what you’d like to do. So, chaos is erupting in the bar as these four scary creatures bust down the door. What do you do?

Kevin: LET’S KILL THEM. EVERYONE.

Nick: Wait, wait. Maybe…, maybe we can see what they want?

Clay: No.

Nick: Could I use some sort of skill to see what they’re pissed about. Like, just say “Hey man, what’s goin’ on here?”

Jordan: You can do whatever the hell you want. You could make an Insight Check, which is your character attempting to divine a person’s motives, feelings, etc.

Nick: My character is trained in that. I’ll do that.

Nick rolls a 20 sided die.

Nick: I got an 18.

Jordan: You have a hard time sensing what they want, beyond some general desire to kill and destroy things. You do, however, see a big Red Hand tattooed on all their foreheads, and you recall overhearing a tavern patron talking about some Red Hand folks earlier in the night.

Kevin: Is that like a new band?

Nick: Can I ask them to play, uh, “Shaking Hand”?

Kevin: Okay, let’s fuck these dudes up.

A lengthy battle ensues, which is guided by very specific rules. Some terribly violent things occur, including the bar and bartender exploding in a giant ball of fire, magical spells whizzing around, Nick stealing everything off the bartender’s charred corpse while no one looks, and Clay hiding in the corner until everyone yells at him to do something. In the end, the party emerges victorious, though a little shaken at this seemingly random act of terrible violence.

The party decides to investigate by questioning some townsfolk, eventually discovering that the attack is part of an ongoing problem of raids by a local hobgoblin and his band of ruffians. And with that, the group embarks on their epic venture, much to the consternation of their real life friends and family.

When I was in first grade, my elementary school held a fall festival that included a costume competition. My mom and grandmother spent what I imagine were countless hours behind the sewing machine, painstakingly recreating Disney’s vision of Aladdin of Agrabah. Complete with a plastic lamp and cardboard fez, the costume was nearly flawless.

But when it was time to go to the festival, I became self-conscious and decided to wear a gray turtleneck beneath Aladdin’s vest. It looked ridiculous. I wore sneakers instead of going barefoot and further destroyed the illusion. Walking in a circle with the other contestants to show off my costume for the judges’ panel, I knew my squeamishness was going to cost me an award. I was right: a fifth grader dressed as the Cat in the Hat won. That I might not have won even if I had gone bare-chested never crossed my mind.

My apathy for Halloween in particular and costumes in general can likely be traced back to that afternoon. Probably my deep-seated neuroses and self-loathing, too. And isn’t that what Halloween is really about ― scarring children? — Contributing Writer Tim Lehman

On Halloween my goal was always to be as scary and disgusting as possible. Without chest hair or the slightest inkling of peach-fuzz, this was a way for us to claim our masculinity. We rubbed dirt in our faces and blacked out teeth to be pirates. We bought puss-covered masks with an eyeball hanging out. These were all good, masculine costumes. They were sure to scare the pants off the girl we liked, which was tantamount to bedding her (before we knew what bedding was).

Patron saints did not fit this paradigm. That did not stop my mother from forcing my sisters and I all dress as our patron saints (I was Saint William of Vercelli) for Halloween when I was eight-years-old. She swooned and chuckled at the unabashed cuteness of our Halloween costumes. My friends, in turn, laughed out loud and chased me around with their swords.

My mother still maintains that I was adorable. So are princesses. — Writer Locke McKenzie

My mother has always been a hippie at heart. Not a “Smelly Pothead” hippie, but more of the “Do-It-Yourself and Frugality is My Religion” variety. As a result, I never had a store-bought costume for Halloween. Instead we always crafted a costume out of a large box full of dress-up clothes and my sister’s old dance recital outfits. Many years I was a witch or vampire because we had a bitchin’ cape, but I also went through a phase where I dressed up like something fairly commonplace and added a mask or googly eyes to become a monster. In this photo, I’m simply wearing the tutu and ballerina shoes I wore to dance class, but donned my brother’s scary mask (almost certainly a result of his influence) to become a three-year-old “Ballerina Monster.” — Writer Caitlin Boersma

Recalling any single noteworthy Halloween costume is impossible for me, because apparently my childhood was a schizophrenic whirlwind in which I freely swapped outfits and identities like so many Weird Al cassettes in an Aiwa boombox. Need proof? Take this email from my mother, summarizing my dress-up antics:

[You dressed up as a] tiger; some outfit where you had on a white skirt of B’s draped like a cape and a black scarf around your head (?!); just diapers and a shirt on your head; B’s dance tutu and headband; cowboy with gun and sword (fully armed!); giraffe spotted face; robin hood; plastic knight guy; plastic knight guy horned hat with summer solstice shirt and two rubber gloves – one orange and one yellow: menacing look; bird with big yellow plastic beak and huge silver and yellow wings with thigh-high socks; pink dance outfit of Becca’s with long pink fringe and arm warmers; head shot with mean plastic fangs; karate guy; vampire (not a great photo); Robinhood 2 with plastic sword; magician (?) or circus ringmaster with mustache; totally outfitted (kneepads, wristguards, helmet, rollerblader; Dodgers outfit with mitt; Lakers outfit with basketball; red powerranger guy with pumpkins; vampire 2 with fangs, bloody mouth and black cape – hair slicked back (about age 8?); ½ green face and ½ wounded face with wild hair (with pumpkin)……..remember how I had such a hard time buying that gross stuff for you?; peacenik (with pumpkin). That gets us up to about age 9.

It’s a wonder I paused for the camera at all. Yet many photos like the one below still exist. I present to you: “bird with big yellow plastic beak and huge silver and yellow wings with thigh-high socks.” — Contributing Writer Daniel Adler

To be honest, I was never all too creative when dressing up for Halloween. I was always in dance classes, and my parents had to buy lame costumes for my spring recitals. Frequently, I would just reuse those the next fall. Campy and flashy — they worked well. This lovely little number I wore in fourth grade during a tap routine to the Casper the Friendly Ghost theme song. It worked perfectly in my mind. But, then kids would ask what I was, and I wouldn’t have a clue. “I’m a Casper girl!” Then, I would add DUH to really seal the deal that my costume was legit. — Contributing Writer Alice Stanley

I always wanted a Nerf gun, but my mom never allowed them in the house. She believed they were dangerous, too dangerous for a nine-year-old such as myself.

“But Mom, they just shoot foam darts with rubber tips. Come ooonnnnnn.”

But she didn’t yield to my nagging.

So I came up with a plan: dress as Boba Fett from Star Wars and demand that a Nerf gun was an essential piece to the costume. Naturally, my father bought me the Nerf gun that resembled the weapon Fett had on his forearm in Return of the Jedi. I then coaxed my parents into buying what I’m sure was a very expensive replica helmet to complete my outfit. Success!

A week after Halloween, my mom confiscated the gun after I shot my brother in the eye. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

The old grey donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a corner of the forest, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” – and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to stop thinking for a little, in order to say “How do you do?” in a gloomy manner to him.

“And how are you?” said Winnie-the-Pooh.

Eeyore shook his head from side to side.

“Not very how,” he said. “I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time.”

“Dear, dear,” said Pooh, “I’m sorry about that. Let’s have a look at you.”

Introspective, cheerless, and vaguely addled, equal parts crank and cynic, a wet blanket in a world of cheerful optimism – this is the quintessential pessimist.

Or maybe it’s David Brooks of The New York Times. His impish grin and penchant for loud shirt-and-tie combinations masks, I’m convinced, reveals the psyche of a man stranded on a desert island with no hope of rescue — i.e., one on the very edge of shattering altogether. Sure, he delivers the standard political commentary and boilerplate eulogies for public figures like Ted Kennedy or Irving Kristol — no different from the stable of op-ed writers in most major newspapers. But the farther afield he goes, the wilder his aim gets; he criticizes celebrities for being insufficiently awed by contemporary events, and predicts one day that psychology will someday “replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’”. And is it simple coincidence or a terrifying grasp into his subconscious when, in one column, he describes his total disillusionment with Republicans (“Are they really my guys? Do I have guys anymore?…I feel politically closer to Barack Obama than to House Minority Leader John Boehner (and that’s even while being greatly exercised about the current health care bills).”, and then in another column five days later wonders what would happen if a gamma-ray burst sterilized half the planet?

No faith in party identity, in high or low culture, in any political or economic institution at all: Brooks is starting to sound like a journalist version of Mad Max, a lone wolf who has nothing to rely on but himself in a post-apocalyptic world. Instead of Eeyore’s understated melancholia, we get the intellectual equivalent of someone windmilling their arms; at any rate, both seem a bit unbalanced, and both certainly qualify as pessimists. And nobody is exactly clamoring for their respective company, either in the Hundred Acre Wood or on the halls of political power (Tom Friedman, not Brooks, got to play golf with President Obama last month).

I’m caricaturing slightly, but my point is simple: nobody likes a pessimist. Or at least, nobody likes a pessimist except in the abstract. People can admire long-dead ones like Orwell, Camus, Milgram, or Nietzsche from afar, but faced with a pessimist in the next cubicle, however, workplace behavior guides recommend a strategy of forbearance, along with a healthy dose of amateur psychotherapy. And according to a study done at the University of Pittsburgh, pessimism might kill you, “as bad as having high blood pressure…when it comes to cardiovascular health.”

In other words, be warned, pessimists: having a disposition that’s slightly less than sunshine-y is like painting a bull’s-eye on yourself that all but invites sociological experimentation, heart disease, and the self-righteousness of others. Forget smokers and fat people as the last frontier of socially sanctioned discrimination: pessimists bear the brunt of a lot more social abuse, much of it subconscious. But in the era of hope and change, what chance did we pessimists possibly have to begin with?

The main problem, I think, is that people conflate those who make negative comments with those who have a wide range of unpleasant or anti-social personality traits; it’s an instance of the fundamental attribution error writ large. I’d rather drink with optimists because they’d probably make for pleasanter company, but I’d rather take advice from fellow pessimists, who (for their sometime lack of social graces) at least tend to better recognize the limits of reason, ability, faith, and the world around them. Good intentions and chirpiness are, in my opinion, no substitute for a firm grounding in reality. It’s certainly mathematically possible that there are happy, well-informed, non-delusional optimists somewhere out there, but I can’t think of any (if you can, though, let me know about it).

At the end of the day, it’s easy to keep Eeyore and David Brooks, and by extension, pessimists in general, at arm’s length. Eeyore is a voice of gloom in a fairy-tale world, which means he’s unnecessary by definition; Brooks is too concerned with his political orphanage (which is boring and self-absorbed) or bizarre distillations of big ideas (which never quite work in a mere 22 column inches) to take seriously. It’s too easy to box the co-worker in the next cubicle as a hypochondriac — even as you patiently wait for his or her heart to give out — just as it was too easy for Spiro Agnew to tar his political opponents with the (William Safire-penned) phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

But that gives short shrift to the pessimists who do have something important and informed to say. The best example, of course, is Nouriel Roubini, “Dr. Doom,” the economist who defied conventional economic wisdom and correctly predicted the mechanics behind the “Great Recession” — the imminent bursting of a housing bubble, the collapse of investment banks and the credit market, bank losses numbering not in the billions but trillions of dollars. He was, of course, dismissed as a “permabear,” and economists and policymakers alike ignored what turned out to be uncomfortable truths for the simple reasons that, as far as I can tell, nobody likes to be told that they’re wrong, and nobody likes a pessimist.

It’s a story that dates back to Homer’s Iliad, in fact. Cassandra, the daughter of the Trojan king Priam, was given the gift of prophecy, and then cursed such that no one would believe her predictions. She warned Paris that kidnapping Helen would lead to the fall of Troy, and tried to convince fellow Trojans not to bring that big, mysterious wooden horse within the walls of the city. And obviously, no one believed her.

Replace the Trojan horse with mortgage-backed securities, and you have a cautionary tale for the twenty-first century. And, I hope, it gives you a compelling reason to listen to your local pessimist once in a while, even if you can’t bring yourself to sympathize with them. Not all of us are stuffed donkeys.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

I’ll begin by saying that I’m glad to see so many of you here today. I may not have been as kind or as loyal or as sexually exclusive as I could have been to all of you, and still you’ve come in my time of need. Many of you must have been quite shocked to learn that someone like me has cancer, someone who still looks as muscular and vital as on the day you last gave him birthday money or a loan or a bed to sleep in. Afterward you probably contemplated on how old you’ve become since then, how flabby and gray you look in the reflection of the 8×10″ glossy photo I enclosed with the letters.

It may shock you more still to learn that I don’t have cancer, which was a printing error, and I am perfectly healthy, almost certainly healthier than any of you. I apologize for not correcting it sooner, but I sprang for Papyrus Elite, a card stock too fine for any correcting fluid available on the consumer market. And perhaps it isn’t the right time now, with all of you reflecting on your own inevitable mortality, but as long as you are all here, I have some things I’d like to tell you.

To my family: I want you to know that I care for all of you deeply, and despite how the memoir was titled, I’ve never thought that [You] Should All Be Sent Into Space and Remotely Detonated. I chose that title at the insistence of my editor, who assured me it was a line from Yeats. This, I suppose, is what I get for wanting to sound literary. I’ve always thought you’d be more at home at the bottom of the sea than in the heavens anyway, and if I had a second chance, I’d have the title reflect that.

I’d particularly like to apologize to my aunts, uncles, and cousins for referring to you as “ants,” “uggos” and “turds” in the book. This was, again, the fault of my editor, a man so unwise as to trust my manuscript, margin notes, and emails more than his own judgment. I’ve been informed that a revision is not possible for the paperback or translated editions, but I’m told that “turd” sounds quite beautiful in Urdu. If any of my immediate family was here, I’d have some words for them too, but lacking that I will instead give you this gesture — to reproduce, at your leisure, should you see them.

To my friends: I’d like to thank you for all the support you’ve given me over the years, some of you more than others. I’m talking to you, Clark; you and your family, especially your sister, have done so much for me, especially your sister. Not just in my public life, but in my home, and at your home, and at your family’s lake house, and even at school and behind the school. And I’m talking to you Steve, who was always there for me, even when people found your adoration of me “fawning” or “pathetic” and finally began to question your sexual orientation. I never questioned, Steve; I always knew exactly what you were.

And to my exes in the audience: I have loved all of you and could still love any of you, preferably simultaneously. You are the ones who always believed in me and not in each other, even when the evidence was conclusive. I have never called myself a clever man, leaving that task to many admirers, but I never needed to be one around any of you. I only lament the distance that has grown between us, though I can see many of you are doing your best to bridge it, inch by waist inch.

In closing, I’d like to thank you all again for coming, though I see many of you have already left, no doubt having to attend to the important business of beating your children or finding new applications for ranch dressing. You have all been as kind to me as I have to you, which reminds of a song I learned as a child about a magic penny. I can’t quite remember how the song goes but let me assure you now: the magic penny is mine and none of you can have it. None of you.

Bereft of context, colleagues meet in hallways and remark, “This balloon story is quite unlike any other I’ve heard. It certainly bears no resemblance to the Hindenburg disaster of 1934.” This chat is inevitably uninformed, especially considering the Hindenburg crashed in 1937.

But this ignorance need not continue. Through the last several centuries, balloons, blimps, and zeppelins have established a rich narrative of exploits in America and abroad, often conveying notable figures and participating in notable events. The following is a selection of historical balloons and balloon passengers that may be of interest to a respectable audience.

Josef Stalin’s Steel Dirigible

As madness descended upon the dictator’s paranoid mind, Stalin convinced himself that superior Soviet technology could shock nations into submission after the Second World War. To that end, he conceived of a giant flying fortress made of steel, his namesake alloy. He would terrorize the nations of the West by floating this monstrosity over major cities for weeks on end, like a malevolent metal moon waiting to rain death upon the Earth.

His vision never came to fruition. When at first it wouldn’t lift off, Stalin ordered that it be fitted with a high-propulsion rocket engine. Ironically, the leader had already executed any scientist capable of telling him that he had just created a giant, hollow missile with no aerostatic properties. The vessel’s first and only test flight crashed and seriously injured its single passenger, actor Aleksei Dikij, Stalin’s propaganda stand-in. He had been put on board to fool the Soviet people into believing that Stalin himself was testing the aircraft, such was his faith in its success. Ever the cunning propagandist, Stalin turned the well publicized failure to his advantage, appearing unscathed in public a week later and proclaiming himself to be “invulnerable to all physical injury.”

Mary Poppins’s Orbital Drop Parasol

Many have wondered why the British did not take a more active role in the post-war space race between the United States and the USSR. In reality, the UK did fund several secret expeditions to near-space in the late ’50s and early ’60s, with cooperation from the US Air Force’s Excelsior project (featured in this famous Boards of Canada video). But while America’s project sought to discover the limits of human technology and physiology, and to probe the reaches of our planet’s gravity, the British were more concerned with delivering compassionate at-home care to aristocratic children.

Director Robert Stevenson attempted to publicize this undocumented, multi-billion pound operation (as well several Scotland Yard experiments on the coercive properties of hallucinogenic drugs) in his 1964 documentary, but the film was fictionalized and musicalized by the Walt Disney Company before its release. The files associated with these programs remain classified.

Isaac Newton’s Airborne Gravity Demonstrator

Widely acknowledged as one of history’s great geniuses, Newton was also a relentless self-promoter. His bitter feud with Gottfried Leibniz over the invention of calculus is well known, but Newton went to similar extents to publicize each of his other major discoveries.

After publishing his Law of Universal Gravitation in 1687, Newton devised a novel way to demonstrate his concept to the public. The mathematician took to the skies in a basket suspended beneath a large canvas canopy, lifted by the heat of an open fire. From his perch in the sky, Newton bombarded the cities of Europe with ripe apples, hoping to replicate his sub-arboreal epiphany en masse. When approached by the police about this seemingly destructive stunt, Newton replied, “I am feeding their minds as well as their stomachs.”

His attempt at education backfired, however, because of his flying vehicle, which seemed to contradict his teachings on gravity. Several cities labeled Newton “a deceitful wizard,” and fined him for littering their streets with rotting fruit. Any mention of Newton’s floating contraption was purged from the records, and it would take another hundred years for the hot air balloon to be rediscovered.

David Sedaris has an essay about how he spent most of his time in Paris watching movies. I know using Sedaris to justify any habit is akin to repeating an argument from Larry David, but it’s hard not to empathize with his reasoning: the French are bored.

“Fortunately, going to the movies [in Paris] seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought,” he writes. “It’s not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it’s just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we’ve agreed to lower the bar.”

But when Sedaris says he’s just being lazy, I think he’s being self-effacing, even facetious. Sure, I was bored when I paid to see Brad Pitt scalp Nazis, but that’s not why I enjoyed it more alone. What Sedaris is really highlighting is the difference in between how Americans and the French think of movies, or at least the movie theater.

In America, the cineplex is a social space. We go to the movies with friends because that’s just what you do. Dinner and a movie remains the staple first-date activity, even though it’s neither romantic nor inspired. Eating at a nice restaurant makes sense, but watching a film offers nothing but a distracted viewing while both you and your date contemplate how well the whole night is going. You might lean over and make a comment every once and a while, but there’s only a 30% chance they’ll even hear it and an even slimmer chance that it’s worth hearing. Conversely, we’re afraid of watching movies alone. Maybe it’s embarrassing because it looks like you’ve been stood up: I’ll admit that, in high school, I saw Love Actually twice in theaters by myself for that very reason — the trauma of which has kept me from going to the movies by myself since then.

The French see things differently; while I’m sure they also do dinner and a movie, there’s a good chance they spend more time eating than watching the film. Sedaris confesses, “I’ve never considered myself an across-the-board apologist for the French, but there’s a lot to be said for an entire population that never, under any circumstances, talks during the picture.” And I think this cultural difference is huge. The French are at the theater to watch the movie, not to hang out.

In high school, my friend Craig worked at an AMC Theatre in Framingham, Massachusetts. What was special about this cinema was that it had one Premium theater with a full restaurant and bar, and the idea was that you could have dinner and a movie in the same place. I’ve been there a few times, mostly because Craig got me in for free. The food is mediocre but familiar, there’s unlimited popcorn and soda, and the seats are a little comfier than the ones in the regular theater. If seeing a movie at a normal theater is like driving Camry, then the Premium theater is like driving whatever the Lexus equivalent is called.

In the end, the amenities may be different but it’s basically the same vehicle, and the concept never really took off because people don’t really care for a luxury version of the movies. The Premium theater does just fine, but it’s never that busy and only sells out when the regular shows are too. AMC had plans to introduce Premium across the country, but it’s never grown past the one in Framingham and one other in Yorktown, Illinois. The Premium theater misses the point of going to the movies altogether.

Watching a film at the theater is not better merely because of the screen size, the surround sound system, or the Milk Duds. When I’m watching a DVD at home, I certainly don’t wish it was bigger or louder. Instead, I believe in the relationship we have to the movie theater. It doesn’t matter so much as how many seats are in the room, but the fact that you’re there. Films are made to be shown in movie theaters, not on a laptop or an airplane television or, as David Lynch would say, “a fucking telephone.”

I realize I’ve spent most of this essay explaining why movie theaters don’t work well as a social place, but haven’t really gone into why it’s better alone. The truth is that I’m not really sure. As humans, I think we like solitary experiences. We don’t like being by ourselves and bored — that’s loneliness — but we do like doing things alone.

Jonathan Lethem, in discussing his childhood obsession with Star Wars (he saw it 21 times in the theater), professes a spiritual quality to the experience. He says, “I still go to the movies alone, all the time. It’s as near as I come in my life to any reverent or worshipful or meditational practice.”

Sure, there are certain films that are best enjoyed with others, like anything ironically bad, movies with Bill Murray, or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (if being assaulted by “shit happening” for two and half hours counts as a movie). But for most films, if you can separate the idea of going out to the movie theater as a means of socializing or entertainment, you’ll find yourself enjoying the theater a lot more. There’s something satisfying about leaving the house to be by yourself.

If you avoid Love Actually.

I know what you’re thinking, polite reader with your leather-bound, gold-leafed copy of Great Expectations on the mantle. You are wondering what sort of silly illiterate claims that there is no “good” book to call your favorite.  And I agree wholeheartedly.  There are many books worthy of the title, but that fact does not make me any more eager to name a favorite. 

Unfortunately, I can’t lay my reluctance at the door of sentimentality and claim that my adoration of novels is so impartial as to exclude favoritism.  I have buckets full of favorite books. My bookcase is organized to include two shelves devoted entirely to favorite books, on which the books are further organized by depth of affection and attractiveness of cover. 

No, my reluctance comes from a quaking social squeamishness.   Great works of fiction often evoke equally great assumptions about their enthusiasts.  Therefore, unless you are lucky in the obscurity of your tastes, this very personal piece of information allows the questioning party to label you as an established “type” based on the rumored characteristics attached to that particular novel’s followers.  Through a process that I like to refer to as literary stereotyping, your favorite novel becomes a social calling card, a veritable status symbol.  

Certainly the more earnest readers of this diatribe (the aforementioned Mr. Great Expectations among them) are throwing up their hands in protest of such scheming and self-consciousness.  Scoff if you will, literary stereotyping is a real discriminatory practice. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is what Nike sneakers were in the mid-nineties: instant cool. 

No work of literature is too exalted to fall prey to literary stereotypes. Even a fondness for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be interpreted as a fondness for pre-Protestant culture, a partiality for recreational corset use, and a weakness for necklaces featuring fairies perched on bottles full of glitter.  

In the face of these stereotypes, I consider lying about your favorite novel an entirely justified falsehood. I see no reason to subject so personal a choice to the rigors of public scrutiny. I’ve developed a system for selecting an appropriate decoy novel for situations when the question cannot be politely avoided.  

An ideal decoy novel is generally innocuous: vaguely suggestive of your intelligence, widely recognized, not too sexy (read: Nabakov’s Lolita or anything by Joyce Carol Oates), and preferably being sold at Urban Outfitters with a trendy new cover.  Of these criteria, being widely recognized is the most important.  No novel, no matter how beloved and perfectly crafted, can stand up to an awkward verbal synopsis given to an acquaintance. Take it from someone who always wants to talk about E.M. Forster after a few beers: the subject is better avoided.

To dodge the awkward discussion of plot summaries, my stock answers read shamefully like the photocopied syllabus of a lower-division undergrad English lecture.  Yet even these texts are not without considerable associations.  

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, for example, implies a certain morose disposition and the ownership of several pairs of black tights.  Similarly, Hawthorne’s House of The Seven Gables suggests serious sexual frustration, while a love for Hemingway belies a weakness for the sauce. The choice of Frank Herbert’s Dune or Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy insinuates that you were too ashamed to admit your first choice, Ender’s Game, because it involves non-satirical spacecraft and is not yet vindicated by being “retro” or “classic.” As for Milton’s Paradise Lost — well, no one was going to believe that was your favorite anyway.

Political implications are also important to keep in mind.  A declaration for Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is a firm indicator of socialist leanings. Similarly, a fondness for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway shows a soft spot for feminist theory. The prize tomatoes of any modernism lecture, Joyce’s Ulysses and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, are also rife with political associations; however, these are generally overlooked in favor of the equally damning hipster implications.  

It goes without saying that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is shorthand for a certain social demeanor (that is to say, being a jackass), so if you value your reputation as a sympathetic person this decoy is best reserved for the company of other Rand enthusiasts. On the off chance that you mistake the fondness of your friends for Atlas Shrugged, instant recovery is possible by evoking Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a text that implies a kind heart and acts as an effective repellent for Rand junkies. (A handy primer for deciphering how your friends feel about Ayn Rand: Are your friends cruelly indifferent to you? Is anyone smoking a cigarette with a dollar sign on it?)

Like any good premeditated judging device, literary stereotypes do create an opportunity for the bolder sort to harness these associations to project a favorable image.  While this trick can be employed very successfully (especially among young women professing a love for Salinger’s Franny and Zooey), it is not for everyone.   For example, when done correctly, telling some young fellow at a party that you adore George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss can imply that you are (attractively) jaded and worldly. Incorrect application of the same novel, however, could result in that very young man mistaking your charming declaration for a hint that your taste in men is inclined toward ill-fated hunchbacks/painters and (provided that he is neither hunchback nor painter) is his consequently being less likely to ask for your phone number.  

In the face of this difficulty I offer the decoy novel that I have found (through entirely unscientific research) to be the best choice when one desires to answer this question respectably while concealing the true inclinations of one’s literary desires.   Though an acknowledged classic, this novel has inspired a feature film, thus allowing you to preserve your pretense of intellectualism while carefully transitioning the conversation to the less dangerous but equally impressive topic of “Why Adaptations are Bad.” 

With suspense sufficiently built (and all of those Pride and Prejudice freaks on the edge of their imitation-Edwardian seats) the ideal decoy novel can be revealed. Obviously, and undoubtedly, the answer is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

I have found that The Great Gatsby is frequently name-dropped by two demographics.  One of these, the firmly qualified literary types, can call The Great Gatsby their favorite novel and be considered learned, even modishly intellectual.  A reply of the same from a member of the second group (youths with clunky plastic eyeglasses and purposefully weathered messenger bags) is generally accepted as earnest, but chalked up to a mandatory summer reading list and a placating personality.  

Regardless of these distinctions, the irreproachable quality of the novel neutralizes any implications and therefore evokes no literary stereotypes.  The Great Gatsby has all of the earmarks of a marvelous novel — arresting prose, patriotic suggestions, contraband liquor, and class commentary — yet remains the equivalent of professing a love for The Beatles amongst music enthusiasts.  In short: a partiality for The Great Gatsby is a confession obvious to the point of being a virtual non-statement.  

Though I have discovered the ultimate deterrent of literary stereotypes in The Great Gatsby, I occasionally question my purely defensive tactics.  Perhaps my time would be better used proactively, encouraging people to embrace those stereotypes and denouncing other stereotypes as utterly unfounded.  Someone must take a stand against such untruths; after all, Chuck Palahniuk novels do not always make a pervert .   

Whether on the defensive or the offensive, in the battle against literary stereotypes no resources will be committed to convincing those of you who consider this theory totally bunk.  In this instance, I think, skepticism is its own punishment.  Just keep admitting that your favorite novel is Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and the rest of us will keep assuming that no one asked you to the junior prom.  

At this point, you may be wondering what one of my campers this past summer asked so eloquently: “But why don’t you write about something—interesting?”

This honest boy was just vocalizing a commonly shared sentiment in our society. We live in a culture that does not value old fogies. Since there is no longer room for them in our mostly nuclear family households, once ol’ gram and gramps are incapable of taking care of themselves, they are to be packed up and sent off to assisted living places with names like, Sunrise Knolls, Splendid Autumn, or some other euphemism that masks the harsh reality of walkers, meds, and general getting old-ness with pleasant seasonal imagery and metaphors. We visit every now and again, collect checks on birthdays and holidays, and maybe let our grandmothers grab our cheeks or wipe a little schmutz from our faces from time to time.

But rarely does it ever occur to us that grandma Mabel might have some crazy stories up her sleeve. What if I told you that your grandmother had offered asylum to a deserter who was evading the occupying Russian army, or that your grandfather and great uncle spent time dressing as women and diving into haystacks to accomplish the same feat? Have you ever asked how exactly those knobby, familiar hands became so perfectly gnarled or wondered how many quilts were stitched, spools of thread spun, loafs of bread kneaded or clay pots were thrown? How often do we really consider the source of the physical and psychological wear-and-tear on our grandparents (the older generations)?

In 2007, during a brief stay in my late grandfather’s village of Brehy, I learned that what I had long considered my unique Slovak heritage is actually shared by many Americans. The exodus of people from Slovakia to the United States began around the 1880s and helped fuel Iron Belt industrial towns like Pittsburg and Detroit for decades. Iron and steel mills, as well as automobile plants (like the ones my grandfather and great-grandfather worked in), employed many of these immigrants. The work was physically taxing, oftentimes mentally numbing, and it chewed up and spit out many of the laborers like the scrap metal they were producing. The culturally stripping process of American assimilation also robbed many Slovaks and their offspring of cultural identity and pride.

The fact that people were willing to travel across an ocean for such a bleak and arduous existence shows how destitute the region was, and how desperate its inhabitants were to make a better life—and, who can blame them? Modernization lagged behind the surrounding territories (what is today the Czech Republic or Hungary), living conditions remained peasant-like even in industrial areas, and most productive workers went elsewhere to try and make a better living. Many villages were left populated mainly by women, children, and the elderly. Society was floundering. There used to be as saying about the picturesque Slovak mountains, the High Tatras—they’re beautiful, but you can’t eat ‘em.

Politically speaking regime changes in Slovakia seemed to shift more than the seasons—in the last two-hundred years alone Slovaks have experienced repression under the Austro-Hungarian Empire (a big reason people left in the first place), seen the creation and dismantling of Czechoslovakia (including Slovakia’s brief stint as an independent state from 1939-1945), not to mention the coming and going of Communist rule — this November 17 Marks the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. While a history book might summarize those transitions in a few consecutive paragraphs or chapters, people spent entire lifetimes witnessing the unfurling of these drastic socio-political fluxes and their repercussions. But no matter what institution wielded political power, life continued. People were born, they died, weddings were celebrated and gardens were harvested. Everyday life turned out to be the greatest preserver of traditions, customs, and culture, which is why I am so determined to collect accounts of it first-hand.

I never asked my Slovak immigrant grandparents about their lives in the Old Country while they were alive; we lived so far apart, and I was young. Maybe it is the fact that I am getting older myself, or perhaps it’s the inherently American need to be able to identify with something, and trace roots back more than a few hundred years to a more primal origin. It definitely comes from a small dose of “Slovak guilt,” which constantly forces me to question how I got such a lucky break in life when only two generations ago (and really only one…), my family was toiling away in factories and on assembly lines to advance their quality of life (another family saying engrained in me since youth is, “Medveds don’t quit”). Whatever the reason, I feel an incredible sense of urgency to collect as many stories as I can in hopes of preserving these threads of history. I need to do it now, because every year that passes takes with it more of these incredible lives and stories, simply erasing them.

Growing up, I thought Czechoslovakia was just an impossibly long word to spell and reserved for use only in “Where my Family is From” school projects, that it was a secret club that only a few people were in on. Despite my ignorance, I still took pride in my heritage, and always felt like it was a little bit special. Now, I understand that it is incredibly special, and I feel indebted to the older generations of Slovaks.

There is no way for me to go back and lighten their load, or retrospectively try to shoulder some of the burden. But I can remember and acknowledge the strenuous lives of these people and be grateful. I can share their stories with you so that, together, we can celebrate them as survivors, fighters, and keepers of precious traditions. I can assign more meaning to my heritage than, “Medved means ‘bear’ in Slovak.” We can all better understand a culture that, just twenty years ago, was still trudging along a path towards that nebulous goal of “freedom,” and a kind of life many of us take for granted.

I do have a good reason for all of this. The leader of our tour group mentioned that Kevin Costner et al. filmed part of Prince of Thieves — the scene when Robin and Azeem first arrive back in England and encounter Guy of Gisborne — at a section of Hadrian’s Wall called Sycamore Gap. And, after a five-kilometer hike, we’re standing at the very spot where Hollywood royalty, or at least Hollywood royalty of the early ’90s, once stood, too.

But I’m a little worried about my temporary fixation. I’d be willing to bet that nobody thinks about Prince of Thieves if they can help it, no matter how punch-drunk from sightseeing they may be. The fact that I’m visiting Roman ruins — which have inspired everyone from Renaissance architects to twentieth-century typographers — makes it even more inexcusable. A young Edward Gibbon decided to write The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire after viewing the ruins of the Forum from the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Me? I’m just trying to remember a movie consigned to the dustbin of history. So much for an epiphany of my own.

Actually, I’ve been getting the sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one who finds it hard to wrap my mind around Hadrian’s Wall — or at least, to do so in appropriately dignified ways. On the second day of the trip, my tour group, which consists almost entirely of undergraduates majoring in archaeology, visited a temple of Mithras (a kind of sun god) in Carrawburgh. We got there a little before dusk, in time for the last of the sun’s rays to illuminate the altar and the figure of Mithras carved into it, just as they would have nearly two millenia ago. As the light died, I heard one of my tour-mates mention that this was a scene right out of the videogame The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I assume that he meant it as a compliment.

It went on like that for the rest of the trip: for every mention of Prince of Thieves and Oblivion, there must have been two references to World of Warcraft, King Arthur (which was at least partially set at Hadrian’s Wall), and, of course, Lord of the Rings. A hundred years ago, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt likened history to poetry. Now we compare it to movies and computer RPGs. And I’m as guilty as the other nerds on this trip, even though I’m supposed to have a more mature perspective on all of this — my job as a historian-in-training is to care, and make others care, about the past and its legacy.

So, what am I to take away from all of this? It might be easy to beat the drums of cultural alarmism – to insist that we’ve lost all sense of the dignity of past human achievement, or that we’re so isolated from the world of rolling hillsides and ancient stone fortifications that we can only compare something as unique as Hadrian’s Wall to what we’ve seen in a “medievalizing” piece of pop culture. All I see, however, is that the points of reference have shifted, that we express amazement a little differently than people have in the past. I suspect that — whatever our predecessors might say — the sight of Roman ruins has never really driven anyone into immediate literary ecstasies. As lowbrow as my and my tour group’s reactions may have been, I’d like to think that a twenty-seven-year-old Gibbon would have understood them. Or, at least, he would have taken a pop culture reference over the alternatives: “This is boring.” “When do we go home?”

Here, by the way, is a picture of Sycamore Gap. That lone sycamore tree is now known as “The Robin Hood Tree,” and Kevin Costner walked, leaped, and under-acted all over that part of the wall. You’ll notice, of course, that I’m not in the picture. I made one of my friends take my picture there, with both my camera and hers. But when we got back, we found that my camera had stopped working by that point, and hers had its color balance off so much that the picture looked like someone had spilled green watercolors all over it. In a way, it’s a minor instance of cosmic justice: I have no photograph of the one moment that most defines this trip in my own memory, and makes my stories about that trip accessible (and hopefully, entertaining) to people without much knowledge of Roman history. Instead, my photographs only communicate that sense of awe that comes from looking at something so massive, and so old. It’s a deficiency that I don’t really mind — and one that I hope other people in my tour group struggle with, too.