Happening upon my alma mater's website several weeks ago, I saw something delightful. I just remembered it, so post it in a spare moment now: on the informational page for the painting undergraduate degree in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts is a piece by one of my classmates, Amanda Gordon. Quiet, conflicted but wry and extremely sharp, Amanda was a disciplined inspiration not only to myself but, as evidenced by her work's prominence, the department as well. I was a student with artistic talent who learned how to paint well. Amanda was a painter.

I just returned from a three-hour Civil Service Commission meeting. Quite a lot done with a room full of good, hardworking people. As I've said before, I've taken like a fish to water in working with the conception and application of rules and regulations. I'd say I should have been a lawyer but a series of sample psychological examinations were included in the commission's latest docket, and considering the undivided attention they received, I probably should have been a psychologist.

Earlier this evening, I attended the wake of a family friend. Twenty-three years ago, my parents began a "Gourmet Club," a semiannual event where five couples collaborated on a menu and made an evening of the meal. Mom and Dad discovered the concept when they lived in Maryland. The East Coast being what it is, that club was enormous; my folks were a substitute couple and attended only one dinner in six years. Not so with this club: the objective was fine cuisine and happy times. They started with countries: France first, then every other country in Europe. Some Eastern and African cuisine was attempted, wherein my mother discovered some kind of Ethiopian soup to be the only foodstuff on the face of the planet she didn't exactly care for. As years passed, they simplified and settled on making delicious meals from wherever a recipe may have traveled.

Each of the five couples had children, and early on a Gourmet Club Picnic heralded the end of the summer - the memories are too profuse and fragmentary to list here, but through the wealth of them I can describe the personality and foibles of every one of us kids. Two couples' children were younger than my sister and I; the other two each had a pair of boys who were roughly our own ages. The two eldest boys were, as I remember, best of friends; and they were all precocious, smart, agile and inventive. I admired them. Picnics always came after great anticipation.

I occasionally played with the two sons of the woman for which this is written; the older son, two years older than me and a mechanical genius, was on my Odyssey of the Mind team in sixth grade. For the next year or so we struck up a congenial relationship, succeeding in making OM State Finals, playing on a softball team and happily trading computer games that now cannot be called anything but vintage.

In 1986, one of the couples - really, the husband and wife who were the consummate entertainers and succeeded in bridging the others - moved to Indianapolis. Dinners and picnics were never quite as lively again; but the club stayed together and the remaining couples' enjoyment of one another endured. Time passed. As everyone in the gourmet club, primaries and secondaries, grew older, the club met less often. Once the children were no longer children but independent high schoolers, the picnics ended. But the club's four couples met every so often, and the children, not really so close, still never forgot one another.

The friend passed away on Sunday after a struggle with cancer. My mother and I, phoned by the husband as they returned from a temporary stay in Michigan to their home here, were asked over to the house on Friday to help the wife into the house one last time. As I tried to explain to her sons tonight, I saw a lot of strength in her. It's no surprise: at her wake tonight were scores of people, long lines and a thoroughly jammed parking lot. It was a testament to the memory of a woman who will never be forgotten, whose family will not slip from prayers.

Danny O'Brien:

Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher are stunned to learn there's such a thing as a college guy who doesn't drink because it's against the law for him to do so. Jonah raises some questions of law and culture implicit in this finding.

I don't have time to explore this in detail right now, but I personally will be 21 next month, and--as the song goes--"I've never had a drink in my life." While I'm sure you could find a couple of people who'd describe me as some kind of draconian puritan, the truth is I don't have any particular moral objection to the act of having a few drinks (though I do have a moral objection to being intoxicated out of one's right mind). I'm sure after my birthday next month I will occasionally partake in what Jonah calls the "medicinal liquids."

What I'm saying is: right now I have no reason to drink alcohol. But after I'm 21, I'll have no real reason not to drink (though, again, not to excess). So am I waiting just because of the law? I don't know. Maybe.

Mike? Gabe?

Let me first put it simply and sassily: I don't drink because there are plenty of people already doing it for me.

Now the frank, personally revealing explanation. I came to be a nondrinker almost by accident; someone I admired very much between my junior and senior year of high school appeared to be a part of the then-burgeoning Straightedge movement. Even though a misunderstanding (in fact it wasn't the case), the practice as counter-culture appealed to me greatly. As many of you who know me understand, I adhere rather easily and tenaciously to ideals - particularly those of Apollonian self-control. I like the idea of perpetual restraint and determination; in many ways I find myself following, at least in word, Harry Truman and his belief "that the first victory that 'great men' won was always 'over themselves and their carnal urges.'" Look at Keirsey's Myers-Briggs profile of me and the resulting moral tendencies, and you might better understand my disinterest and near-allergy to the idea and practice of indulgence. I'm not exactly built to eat, drink and be merry.

Entering college one year later and perceiving crude displays of irresponsibility all around me only galvanized the desire to separate myself from what I saw as deliberate attempts to forfeit one's control over one's own life. Strange as it sounds, I find that sort of thing, that cycle, hurtful - as if those who do it are trading precious moments of life for hazy ephemera - even still. But in those heady days of a loner's philosophy, it made me angry. I had harsh words for revelry and gave it as wide a berth as I could.

As the years in college passed, I began to temper my beliefs; I didn't drink but accepted those who did. I found that I could laugh at some of the more innocent stories of friends gone blotto, and I worked to make my increasingly rare beliefs fun: on my 21st birthday, a friend left a bottle of O'Doul's outside my door (still in my folks' fridge) and I came to my birthday dinner in the dining hall with Teen Idle Xs.

Today, I still do not drink. I've made a few technical exceptions like nonalcoholic wine but continue to enjoy beverages that require only the check-and-balance of appetite. I'm still uncomfortable with overconsumption but have come to terms with the habits of good people, keeping close attention to C.S. Lewis' warning that "a cold, self-righteous prig...may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute." I truly enjoy watching my friends and family enjoying a drink or two. I'm always asking buddies Ed and Paul about the beers a waiter has set down in front of them. If my introduction to the stuff had been in an environment of moderation, I might have walked the same path as you, Danny: ready to take advantage of my 21st birthday with respect and care. During my own journey, I found justification for my temperance; it's a commitment I began and intend on seeing to the end of my life. To you, I say "enjoy."

Epilogue: Just as I had finished writing this, OX called me. He's coming over to review today's recordings. "Should I bring some root beer?" he asked. "I'm such an anachronism," I laughed. "Nah," he said, "it's part of your charm."

I just returned home from a recording gig for a film with my friend OX. The day began on bank hours, involved an across-town trip (two for me, my fault) and will likely generate a lot of happy memories. A strictly routinized fellow, I worked hard to keep my wits during such an abrupt change of pace. I did well. It was a successful return to my second-favorite hobby, a session I'm quite proud of - in no small part thanks to OX and a choir director and their masterful direction of the production (not to mention the knowing presence of my old rock band's keyboardist, whose father is the director).

And in the face of forecast clouds and rain, it's sunny, hazy and fifty-five degrees. Fabulous. More later, including some clips, after I decompress a bit.

Both photographs I pushed in Photoshop, yes. Even so: can you say, "beautiful morning," boys and girls?

I love a good craft, and setting up shop cost me nothing. Thus Figure Concord on CafePress. Who buys novelty ceramic mugs for $12.49? Well, I thought that was a question worth trying to answer.

No liability, so why not? I'll offer more designs and merchandise as I find the time.

Here's another shot from Williamsburg. I will note that the trees had not yet bloomed in Virginia; only the flowers, bushes like the one above and other harbingers of spring. What's more, Ohio may not be as far behind as I thought. When I glanced out my apartment window this morning I noticed one tree along the parking lot's green space periphery that was well along towards blooming, its buds having gone from mahogany to a light russet. The flowering, typically, was the only of its kind among the few dozen trees around the apartment grounds and the thousands behind it in the Metroparks valley. But a coworker who lives thirty miles south reports that his lilacs are well on their way. And cold as it may be, steady rainfall has produced some luminous grasses. So in fact Cleveland has everything it needs from nature but deciduous leaves, blue skies and warm temperatures. Can we haggle for more?

Here I have a selection of snapshots from yesterday. My photography experience from college left me with the conviction that unless an image is part of the means to a design end, cropping is for the inexperienced, the hurried and the unimaginative: my pictoral decisions are made through the viewfinder instead of at the enlarger. With that in mind, the Kodak's tiny lens compressed nearly every wide-angle opportunity I spied from the passenger seat. The curvature of the cabin of my parent's minivan only complicated matters, so I had to wait until I was right on top of a subject. It took some adjustment. And convenience aside, two megapixels are two megapixels - and the computer I'm using is without appropriate touch-up software. So we have our caveats; now a few sights from the trip to Maryland.

The drive was a pleasant one: Pennsylvania is stuffed with endless natural masterpieces, the landscape stretching on like a Mobius Strip. Each time you crest a hill, you can find a breathtaking view in every direction - hills, valleys, it doesn't matter. Green trees, brown trees, white trees; driving the length of the Keystone state is never a bother if you appreciate beauty. You can almost forgive Harrisburg for stubbornly posting 55 MPH speed limits throughout half the state. And did I ever take photographs: spending most of your life with the understanding that your camera cannot physically give you more than twenty-four or thirty-six chances to capture an image for every few dollars introduces one heck of a digital shock. Nearly 200 shots, you say? I can delete the substandards when I review my shots, seconds after exposure? Megapixel, Humbug: this $99 trinket of the office's is solid gold.

Time to return to the family and house hounds: photographs later.