Mad Men Power Rankings: Season 4, Episodes 1-6

In honor of Mad Men winning the Best Drama Emmy that Breaking Bad deserved, I figured it was about time that I wrote something about the show and the excellent fourth season it’s enjoying.  Like Lost before it, Mad Men’s ensemble cast features plenty of characters with a ton of storylines to dissect, and the best way to do this is with some power rankings.  So here we go:

15) Betty Draper Francis

Don’s ex-wife is probably one of the most annoying and disheartening characters that can be found on television.  Her appearances on screen are on the verge of sinking to Nikki & Paulo or Johnny Harper depths of annoyance and I am starting to wish that Weiner and company would either bury her alive or have her fall off a cliff.  Betty has never been a particularly engaging character, but with so many interesting things going on at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, her storylines are at the expense of others.  With her childlike tendencies and bitchiness no longer justifiable (as she has now left Don), I wonder if her time on the show is limited or at least going somewhere.

14) Harry Crane

I guess I was under the impression that with Harry joining the new firm, and with a new level of respect from his television resources, that he would become a more prominent member of the ensemble.  This season, however, has given Crane less to do than ever before.  Scarcely appearing in episodes, Harry only seems to appear when the writers want to reference some 1960s television shows or throw out a one-liner about California.  It’s not that this is a bad thing, but I guess I was expecting more.

13) Henry Francis

Probably the most confusing character of the Mad Men ensemble (I still can’t figure out why he would want to marry somebody as shrill and annoying as Betty), Henry’s perspective hasn’t been quite clear.  Sometimes he seems to be agreeing with Don (that they should move out of the house, and that Betty and Sally need therapy), while other times he seems to be just as negative towards Don as Betty is.  Not that I want more explanation of him, but a little more consistency might be nice.

12) Bert Cooper

Moving up to the main cast certainly didn’t mean more screentime for this agency patriarch.  While I find it hilarious that he’s had entire episodes go by where he’s nothing more than an out-of-focus background character (if present at all), I kind of miss the elusive and terrifying boss-man that he was in Season 1 when he was hardly seen at all, and his presence was awesomely built up. 

11) Freddy Rumson

Of all the minor players from past seasons that I expected could come back, Rumson was not one of them.  While Paul Kinsey and Sal Romano are still nowhere to be seen, Rumson had an awesome couple episodes this season where he brought an account straight out of an AA meeting.  I’m not sure if he’ll be coming back at all, but his scenes with Peggy did offer a great comparison between the two and helped us show how far Peggy has come.

10) Glen Bishop

Speaking of people I didn’t expect to see again, the creepy little kid that walked in on Betty in the bathroom a few seasons ago was back with a vengeance as he terrified the Draper Francis household and seemingly began flirting with little Sally.  Anybody that terrorizes Betty is good in my book, and Glen has brought some intrigue to all of his appearances in the show thus far.

9) Allison

Don’s former secretary has definitely helped to highlight his downfall as his less-than-thought through hook-up with her was one of his lowest points in the season thus far.  I loved that she threw a pot at him and was able to actually tell him how pathetic he has become, even if it meant that she’ll probably never appear in the show again. 

8) Ken Cosgrove

Seeing as the actor’s name has been in the opening credits all season, it should come as no surprise that Cosgrove is joining the team again and bringing his accounts with him.  While I thought, for a moment, that this might create a good amount of drama for him and Pete leading into the second half of the season, Pete definitely put Cosgrove in his place at the end of the last episode and I can’t see the status quo changing any time soon.  Although I’d also be surprised if Kenny becomes a compelling character as he moves into the new firm.

7) Joan Holloway Harris

This has definitely been Joan’s breakout season in my mind as she’s not only been given more prominence in the office but in the show overall.  I think it’s great that she now has some sort of authority position at the new agency.  She always seemed to know more than everybody else about how the office and company operated in the first two seasons, and it’s been great to see her sitting at the head of the conference table or instructing the partners on what they should be doing.  While many fans seem to think that her husband is on his way to die in Vietnam, I think that would be too simple and unlike Mad Men.  He will be leaving though, and will that mean that Joan could start another fling?

6) Sally Draper

While Betty has been one of the most uninteresting characters on the show, it has been awesome to see the effects the divorce has had on young Sally.  Whether she’s cutting her hair, talking in secret to Glenn, or masturbating at a sleepover; it has been through Sally’s eyes that we’ve been able to understand the full implications of the Draper marriage collapse.  While I hate to watch Betty in any more scenes, the excellent work of the young Kiernan Shipka has created a compelling child character (one that actually is a child) and given the scenes in the suburbs some semblance of a point.

5) Roger Sterling

Sure he hasn’t been prominently featured this season, but when he does appear Mr. Sterling is, well, sterling.  From his Lee Garner Jr.-forced turn as Santa to his racist rant against the Japanese executives, Sterling is full of awesome one-liners and great things to say. On a deeper level, however, Sterling is also still the child that Lane describes him as.  Unlike Don, Sterling never needed to ask somebody for a break (he inherited the firm, I believe), and never really has to do much work beyond keeping Lucky Strike happy.  He’s always entertaining to watch though, and I’d certainly buy his memoirs if and when they are released.

4) Pete Campbell

The former bad boy/nemesis/whiny child of the show has certainly grown up this season as he continues to assert himself towards his colleagues.  He got the huge account by asserting himself towards his father-in-law, attained a position of prominence at the firm by asserting himself towards Roger, and now was shown defending his well-earned position by asserting himself towards Cosgrove and Lane.  I love seeing the new grown-up Pete work with his peers and love how we have seen him become an adult over the past four seasons of the show.

3) Don Draper

If these rankings were done to judge the life-quality of the characters, Draper would certainly be right near the bottom as this season has featured a Tiger-esque fall from grace (or, as I hear, Vincent Chase).  However, drunken, less-than-cool Draper has been far more compelling than any of the other versions of Draper we have seen before.  And we have seen many versions of this complex man.  There is young Dick Wittman, scared and hopeless.  There is early Draper (who we saw selling fur in the last episode), not yet fully confident in his skin, and not really fitting into his suits.  There is the older Dick that only appears in California, comfortable and at ease; and there is alpha-dog Season 1 Draper, fully confident, demanding, and badass.  It’s all of the sides of the man, however, that make him a supremely compelling character, and one of the biggest reasons this show is so entertaining.

2) Lane Pryce

It was difficult to realize at the end of last season, but I was never exactly sure what Lane did.  He was something of a boss in the office, but he was also a blank slate defined by his poor relationship with his superiors more than anything else.  Midway through season 4, however, Lane has been given many chances to be seen and flourished.  His and Don’s night on the town is probably the best (non-Peggy) moment of the season, and gave the man some much needed background.  Since then, we’ve seen that Lane is really the man in charge of the firm, and I’ve grown to love him as great counter-point to Pete and Don.

1) Peggy Olson

Throughout this season, Peggy has emerged as more of a focal point than ever before.  While in seasons past the show definitely focused on her career rise, as well as her relationship with Pete and Don; this season has prominently used Peggy to demonstrated the changing times of the 1960s (a job that was previously done with Kinsey).  Peggy smokes pot with her friends at parties; she brainstorms for pitches in the nude just to prove a point; and she drives a motorcycle around in circles in empty soundstages.  While the other characters might be oblivious or only partially impacted by the changing social norms, Peggy is embracing them and giving the audience a view to the world that these characters are living in.  As the times change, so does Peggy, and there was no better way to show this than when she looked back at Pete as she head off to lunch.  She and her friends were dressed colorfully and looked happy, while Pete and the others were in black and white business suits.  Peggy is the most important and entertaining character this season, and I love that she has been one of the most prominent.  

Broadcast Snooze

A few years ago I got my start in blogging by writing a film and television review site with a couple friends from high school.  While these roots have occasionally seeped onto this site in the form of my thoughts on Lost (the character power rankings originally started on the now-defunct, yet still visible Saltystix.com), I’ve yet to write any full-fledged film reviews on this blog. 

Earlier this week I was inspired to again review some films when one of my favorite current writers (Bill Simmons) and film directors (Jason Reitman) tweeted that they are going to be recommending films that are over 20 years old that they think people under 25 should see.  They will apparently be doing this weekly, and I hope to review their recommendations weekly in under 800 words (although if you’ve been following this blog, you know that won’t last long).

Now I know it might be weird that I’d take suggestions from a quasi-sports writer about what movies to watch, but Simmons hasn’t led me wrong before.  His podcasts have led me to my two current favorite television critics (Tim Goodman and Alan Sepinwall), and they’ve also led me to watch The Wire and Mad Men (two amazing shows).  I figured his film suggestions should be excellent as well.  Unfortunately, he’s off to a poor start with Broadcast News.

[note: my self-imposed 800 word limit starts now]

In James L. Brooks 1987 ‘romantic comedy-drama’ Broadcast News, we are given an inside look into network news operations of the late 1980s as well as a glimpse into the lives of three main players at the station.  While the set-up is promising, the execution of the film makes for one of the most boring and worthless films I’ve seen.

The plot of the film essentially centers around the relationship between three main characters, and it is where the film goes wrong from the start.  Jane (Holly Hunter) is the excellent and professional producer for the Washington bureau.  Her best friend is Aaron (Albert Brooks), an intelligent and respected (but less-than-handsome) reporter, and the two share a seemingly great (albeit non-romantic) relationship with perfect chemistry.  They talk to each other over the phone late at night, and brave the dangers of South American guerilla warfare together.  Jane produces Aaron’s excellent reporting and together they create a formidable news team.    

Dropped into the newsroom (and film) is Tom (William Hurt), the Ron Burgundy-esque anchorman that is supposedly as handsome as he is stupid.  Without any understanding of the events he reports, and a questionable sense of ethical reporting standards, Tom somehow manages to infatuate Jane even though he embodies everything in news that she is against. 

While there is a background subplot of budget cuts and layoffs at the network, these story threads are just a footnote to the romantic triangle the builds out of this premise.  It comes as no surprise when we find out that Aaron is in love with Jane, and it is even less shocking that Jane must somehow choose between the two of them towards the end of the (painfully long) 132 minutes.  What is shocking about all this is the lack of development and explanation that leads up to this point.  After a few scenes where she is inexplicably shown crying, Jane somehow falls for Tom even though she hated him for the first third of the film.  It is further unclear why Tom has any feelings at all for Jane.

This motiveless and inexplicable love triangle might work as a sub-plot in a mid-season 3 episode of Lost or as one of the many storylines in Valentine’s Day (the movie), but it makes for a boring and upsetting primary storyline in a film.  Considering that everything seemingly happens in service of the love triangle, it is shocking how undeveloped it is.  Sure, the actors do a decent enough job with their scenes, and they definitely give some quirks to each of their characters, it just isn’t enough to make the film intriguing.

Aside from the love triangle, the film has almost nothing to offer.  There is one pretty entertaining sequence where they must finish editing the film in time and another (probably) classic scene where some composers sing the new network news theme, but everything else is just there.  For a film that is ostensibly a comedy, there are hardly any funny scenes.

Further troubling for this film is the fact that it came about a decade after Sidney Lumet (director) and Paddy Chayefsky’s (writer) Network.  While the two films are certainly tonally different, they use the same setting (behind-the-scenes of broadcast news) and a similar group of characters to completely different effects.  In Broadcast News the setting is just the place where the drama unfolds, and the film says almost nothing about the present or future of journalism and news.  In Network, the setting is not only there to tell a story about the characters, but the characters are there to tell a story about the setting. 

As it might be unfair to compare the film to one of the best-of-all-time, we can also make the more modern comparison to Adam McKay’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.  While both films have ostensibly the same story (a supposedly intelligent and self-respecting female journalist inexplicably falls for the supposedly handsome and certainly idiotic news anchor), Anchorman for what it’s worth actually does have more of a central plot and conflict (the quest to be the #1 news team) than Broadcast News approaches. 

Maybe I’m being too hard.  Maybe the film is just completely outdated.  Maybe it just annoys me that the girl didn’t fall for her best friend at the end as in the far more believable When Harry Met Sally, (which came two years later).  Maybe I’ve spent too much time in recent months watching excellent television shows like The Wire, Lost, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, and have grown to expect too much. 

Whatever it is, I find it shocking that Broadcast News was nominated for Oscars and find it shocking that people actually enjoyed it 20 years ago.  I give it a 4/10 and would only recommend it to people having trouble falling asleep (I needed a lot of coffee to stay awake throughout).

Fear Factor

In the days leading up to my departure from America last summer, my youngest brother asked me if I was scared.  While I answered the question in the only way that I could by saying no, the reality at the time was that I thought I was scared.  And I would have had every right to be afraid.  Up until that moment in my life, the longest I had ever been out of the country was ten days vacation in Europe, the farthest away from ‘home’ I had ever lived was a two-hour drive (including moderate traffic), and my most extensive experience with people that spoke other languages were my years caddying with guys that I thought were illegally imported from Mexico. 

At the time I was utterly unprepared for the adventure I was about to embark upon.  I had turned my back on years of hearing the Boy Scout Motto and had jumped at the first opportunity that presented itself.  I told my brother that I wasn’t scared because I was confident that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing at that point in my life.  The real reason that I wasn’t scared, the reason I didn’t feel fear at that moment is far more complicated.

It’s far too often that people (including me) talk about fear as if it’s something that they think.  If I’ve learned one thing over the past year, however, it’s that fear isn’t something that we think, but something that we feel, and feelings are exponentially more difficult to understand than thoughts or opinions.

Valentine’s Night off Gili Trawangan

When we were travelling last winter, my roommate and I decided to make our way down to the Indonesian island of Bali, and while the prostitutes and peddlers have made for interesting stories, the real reason we flew south of the equator was try something I probably should have done many years before: Scuba Diving. 

Despite the fact that I had swam all throughout high school, worked for five summers as a lifeguard/swim coach, and received just about every aquatic merit badge my Boy Scout camp had to offer; I had never actually been Scuba Diving.  As it was something I was definitely interested in, we arrived on the island of Gili Trawangan and quickly got to work getting our Open Water certification.  Three days later, we decided to continue with the program and get our “Advanced Certification”.

Now I don’t think I would describe any of my myriad skills as being at the advanced level (except maybe my encyclopedic knowledge of The O.C.), but I’m pretty sure that it takes most people more than 5 days to get up to the advanced level at any skill, hobby, or talent.  Despite this, on our fifth day of dive instruction we had completed eight dives and were one away from “Advanced”.  The only thing standing in our way of some shiny new certification cards (since our old  ones were a whole two days old) was the final dive: the night dive.

In the days leading up to our night dive, I was admittedly a little scared.  Not that I actually felt fear, but in my mind I was scared of the idea of going 20 meters underwater and only being able to see things that my flashlight shined upon.  It was a new and uncertain situation that I was about to put myself in, and thinking about it worried me—but in retrospect it did not strike fear into me.

On the evening of the dive, we gathered with our instructor and a couple divemaster trainees at the dive shop.  It was Valentine’s Day and the divemaster trainees (who were dating) seemed to think it would be romantic or something to join us on the night dive.  As I looked up at the ominous clouds hovering over the island, however, romance was the last thing on my mind.  If nearly a decade of caddying and lifeguarding had made me advanced at one thing, it was being able to feel the changing winds and tell when a storm was coming.

We carried our gear onto the boat and I felt it: the winds were changing, a storm was coming.

As soon as I felt the changing winds, I also began to feel something else.  A shivering down my spine, a quick tremble of my hand, I started to move quickly towards no place in particular.  I couldn’t stand still for a moment as I walked back and forth between the boat, the dive shop office, and the bathroom.  My eyes shifted all around the sky and my breathing became faster and more uneven.  And then, just as we boarded the boat for our dive site, I saw it in the distance: a flash of lighting.

It wasn’t much at first, but a small flash in the distance.  However, that small flash would have been more than enough for me to close any of the pools I had lifeguarded, and it almost certainly would have called the golfers off the course where I had caddied years before.  Now I was sitting on the side of a boat with a metal tank strapped to my back and a flashlight in my hand preparing to dive into the ocean and all I could think about was whether or not I should ask the dive instructor if it was safe to go diving in an electrical storm. 

I shifted my weight.  Spit into my mask and wiped it clean.  Felt the tingle down my wetsuit covered spine.  Put the fins onto my subtly shifting feet.  I made sure that air was entering my regulator and BC.  Looked up to the flashing sky in terror as it slowly started to rain.  Secured my mask over my eyes and my regulator over my mouth.  I heard thunder in the distance as our boat stopped at its destination. 

I was scared.

It wasn’t the type of scared that you think about, however, but the type that you feel.  I was beyond logically thinking about my predicament and could feel this all-encompassing fear consume my body.  It was a tingling that went down my limbs and a shaking that consumed them.  I didn’t know how safe it was to dive in an electrical storm.  I thought I had been scared just thinking about the idea of diving at night, but as dusk became darkness it was more terrifying in the brief moments when we were enveloped by the brightness of the lighting. 

I could barely speak, and I wouldn’t have to, because as the rain started to come down I put my hand over my face and flipped off the side of the boat and into the water.  Once the whole group was off the boat, we let the air out of our vests and started to sink down into the darkness.  When we got down to the ocean floor (roughly 13-17 meters at this point), however, it wasn’t as dark as I imagined it would be.  Sure it was dusk on the surface, but below the water there was pretty good visibility. 

That didn’t last long.

Within ten minutes I was surrounded by an ocean’s worth of blackness in all directions.  The only things that could be seen were those that were illuminated by the lights we were holding.  I would shine my light down to the ocean floor and see a devil ray flutter its wings along the sand.  I could shine my light towards the shoreline and see the bottom part of a dock.  I could look behind me without my light and see the vague lights of the divemaster trainees in the distance, and if I hadn’t been so fearful I would have found that cute. 

The surreality of the moment was like something out of a video game or science fiction movie.  It was as if nothing existed around us until we shined our light on it.  While earlier in the week I had compared the strangeness of diving underwater to the planet in Avatar and considered how just a few meters deep was so alien compared to life on land, the night dive took the experience to another level of awe.  For a moment it was almost peaceful in the darkness, until the water became illuminated.

When the lightning struck, it illuminated everything around me.  Unlike on land where a flash of lightning is focused on the sky above you and maybe on the horizon in front of you, underwater the lightning briefly engulfed me in a flash of brightness.  Above and below and in every direction the eye could see, the water was illuminated.  If diving allows us to take advantage of the three dimensions around us, then the lightning was bringing all of these dimensions into a greater focus in a brief and spectacular moment. 

During our 45 minutes underwater that night there were probably 15 of these large flashes, and every time a flash occurred I just about lost it.  I would be breathing normally, floating through the water and looking at something and then: FLASH.  My body would flail a bit, my breathing would become all messed up and out of sync, and I would have to calm myself down and continue to swim slowly and purposefully.  This happened again and again and again, until I was continuously looking at my gauges hoping that it would soon be time to go to the surface. 

When it was finally time to surface, we stopped momentarily to cover our lights, and nothing beyond nothing could be seen all around us.  Briefly, I saw some tiny glowing specks of creatures floating through the water, but once our lights were shining again there was nothing to be seen.  Finally, the time had come and I pointed my light straight up to the surface and looked up as I approached.  I could see my light shining up at the surface from below, and the rain pounding against it as the drops were magnificently illuminated, and I came closer to the drops and the light shone brighter on the surface and I emerged.

I took off my mask on the surface as the cool rain pelted down on my face and I pointed my light to the sky as our boat came around to pick me up.  The others surfaced after me, and soon enough we were all on the boat with our metal tanks off our backs and the lighting striking off in the distance.  We got back to the dive shop and unloaded our gear, and the next morning we received our “Advanced Certification”. 

Even after we had finished I still didn’t want to know how safe it was to dive in an electrical storm, I was just glad it was over and that my fears had subsided.

Books and Blogs

Towards the end of April I published my last column in The Observer.  Knowing that I had probably exceeded my welcome on Fridays in South Bend and that I was getting bored of writing about Notre Dame I decided it was time to call it quits and retire.  Five awesome semesters with the paper had brought me more fun than I ever could have imagined.  My column had given me a sense of purpose through all the senseless debauchery of my senior year, and kept me connected to campus through times good and bad in China.

After sending in the column, however, I felt a sense of loss.  While blogging is great and valuable, it creates no sense of drive.  Blogging doesn’t have mandates and deadlines and sometimes doesn’t even connect you to an audience.*  Even though I still had two months of teaching left in Yanji, I was ready to figure out what I was going to do next. 

*For example, the entry you are currently reading could have been posted months ago.  The fact this is the first true blog post I’ve written since May exemplifies how blogs don’t intrinsically motivate or act as a driving force for me. 

In the back of my mind I had a lot of projects that I had been thinking about.  Screenplays that could be outlined, short stories that could be written, and other ideas that had been nagging at me for months and even years.  One idea, however, was inescapable.  It was something of a dream (although I never actually dreamt it); one of those things that I had thought about, but had never thought would be possible.  Without an upcoming Observer column to focus on, however, I started researching.  I sent emails with questions and found answers that demonstrated to me what was possible.

I wanted to publish Things Notre Dame Students Like as a book.

I sent emails to authors of Notre Dame related books, people in the publishing industry, representatives from the bookstore, old professors, family members, and friends until one day I found myself sitting in the English office at my school in Yanji gChatting with one of my friends and going over all of things that I had been told.  We talked about the market and the bookstore and all of the people that had been reading the website.  It got so far along that my friend wondered if the ND Bookstore would allow me to have a book signing, while I wondered about who could possibly be interested in me signing a book.

I stood up and left the office for the bathroom.  My arms were shaking and my hands were trembling a little.  Even though it was the end of April and the weather was seemingly about to turn (supposedly), I was shivering.  It wasn’t because it was cold, but because I was fearful.  Without even knowing it I had already made the decision to fully pursue publication of my work, and the idea that I could actually succeed at getting the book on shelves brought fear to my spine.

The fear I felt wasn’t confined to my mind or even in my mind at all.  In fact, I didn’t even know I was scared until I realized that I was feeling the same way I did on that boat in Indonesia with lightning striking the ocean in the distance.  Lightning had struck again, but this time it was in my mind, I was scared because I was going to pursue publication, but when push came to shove I pursued publication because I was scared that day. 

My fear that day guided my actions and in the months that followed I was again driven.  I finished the manuscript, revised the original blog entries, commissioned some charts and illustrations to augment the text, recruited friends and family members to edit my work, and found a publisher that was willing to take a chance on 50,000 words of sarcastic love.

So my blogging was put on-hold for a hiatus that will hopefully be more successful than Michael Jordan’s stint in baseball.  I’m not sure right now if it was, but I’m about to find out.  The book hits the shelves of the Hammes this week, and you can now order it online.

I’m scared a little bit, but as I write these words I’m not feeling fear.

My Last Night

One of the most awkward things about Yanji was going out to dinner with teachers.  Not that the dinners themselves were awkward, but the process of getting off the teachers’ bus with the people that we wanted to go out with were.  Because almost none of the teachers actually owned cars, and all of us had to take the same bus from the school back to the city, we had to be super-stealth when inviting people.  We couldn’t be too loud because then random people would just come along, and being too quiet might result in no dinner happening at all.

Because of this system, I was terrible at inviting people to dinner.  I’m not a quiet person, I hate sneaking around, and I’d never want to purposefully exclude people (especially when they can see you excluding them).  This was further complicated on my last night in Yanji because I didn’t really want to be the person doing the inviting.

Anyways, as we got closer to the place where we’d get off the bus, my roommate started to tell a few of the English teachers that we were going to out for dinner and beers (inevitably this would become a lot of beers).  He got the attention of most of the teachers that we wanted to come, but we couldn’t get the attention of the last teacher before we got off the bus (because being too loud would let too many people know that we were going out).

So there we were (myself, my roommate, his girlfriend who was visiting, and two of the teachers) standing on the sidewalk yelling towards the last teacher to get off the bus and come with us.  Despite the fact that it was now obvious what we were doing, another teacher with us had already started walking towards the restaurant and was a couple blocks ahead of us by the time we started walking.    

As we continued to walk, the group was spread along a couple blocks (because clearly it would have been impossible for us to walk as a group), and I started talking to my roommate’s girlfriend (who was visiting from America).  We talked about her job for a bit and then about the fact that I was leaving Yanji the following day and she asked me how I felt about it.  I could have said I was excited to see the friend that was meeting me in Beijing the next day.  I could have said I was sad because I was leaving the people I had lived with for the previous year.  But at this point I knew how I felt.  I remembered that boat in Indonesia and that gChat a couple months earlier, and I could feel the tingling down my back and the subtle twitching of my hands.

I was feeling fear.

I hadn’t been scared when I left America for China ten months earlier, but on the eve of my departure from Yanji I could feel the fear and I didn’t know why.  I didn’t know if I was scared because on that day it had been ten months since I had seen a single person that I knew a year prior.  I didn’t know if I was scared because my friends back home had inevitably changed over the year I was away.  I didn’t know if I was scared because of my increasingly uncertain job situation for the fall.  I didn’t know if I was scared because earlier that week I had sent off the final manuscript of my book (or so I thought at the time).

I had no idea why I was fearful, but at least I knew that I was fearful.  Not because I thought it, but because I felt it.

Helen, Lois, Jenny, Me, Lambert, Gavin (my roommate), and Kelsey (his girlfriend)