traveled to vermont with sammy the last few days. though i have been known to romanticize the south, i love new england, where i've never lived. vermont is incomparable: the mountainscapes, lake champlain, the tiny towns each with its own tiny eccentric congregational church. it's a bit quaintified into vermont-world, however. along the lake it reminds me of the coastal northwest, and the weather was cool and cloudy when we were there.

of course, my main men were new englanders, such as emerson and thoreau, nathaniel rogers, josiah warren, lysander spooner, adin ballou, mit romney, etc. they must be doing something right to produce such a cussed group of fierce, freedom-loving eccentrics. especially mit.

sam dug the u of vermont, the only place we took a tour and shit. we'll throw them an application, i would think. i'd never been to bennington college, which is obviously a highly eccentric institution. usually every college makes sure there are signs everywhere directing you to the campus. not so bennington which is entirely unsigned. we found it after wandering around. it was completely isolated in the countryside: no even little college strip or anything: a completely insular little academical world, lushly beautiful on a pond/marsh of the walden variety, with that-era buildings too as well as some distinctive modernist additions. i never would have gone there, and neither will sam, but it struck me that i would have actually flourished in a place like that, where you do nothing but read, think, and talk.