The First Blog: An Introduction

Most people who start blogs have some sort of noble purpose in mind: to share their scholarly reflections, to enter the political dialogue of our country in an attempt to contribute to the debates surrounding democracy (or oligarchy, or whatever we have-- neither here nor there as far as this venture is concerned), to share stories of how they are healing sick or injured animals back to good health. Well, I've tried my hand in the first two of these areas before, and my resolve never stuck. Perhaps my heart wasn't truly in it. Perhaps I didn't love history or political thought sufficiently enough to pry the ideas from my lazy, resistant mind. Maybe I'm just not clever enough. Or maybe those old blog subjects were a little close to home, a little too much like the "intellectual work" that already consumes the life of a graduate student, er, Duke... yes, a Pumpkin Duke. And of course, as Max Weber famously put it, "Politics [and history] means slow, strong drilling through hard boards, with a combination of passion and a sense of judgment." I'm more of a sense of whimsy kind of guy. So, thought I, why not turn to something more frivolous, if only slightly. 

Try, try again. Welcome to my latest effort to slough off the doldrums and join the 21st century. On this page you will find (I hope) the delightful musings, thoughtful criticisms, incessant mutterings, and self-indulgent ramblings of two pumpkin beer connoisseurs. The PumKing and I love pumpkin beer absolutely.  The spice, the crispness, the hints of brown sugar, nutmeg, or cinnamon (depending on the brand), along with the crunch of fallen leaves on the walk to the bar, the smell of autumn air, and the palpable feel of Halloween that accompany drinking these beers combine to make them a magical part of autumn.   Every year, as fall creeps closer, we nearly bankrupt ourselves on the stuff. We begin buying in mid-August, when the first label usually appears, and keep doing so until the last of it runs out in wintertime. In no small part, of course, the joy of drinking pumpkin beer lies in the social enterprise of the experience. It would be far less fun to drink them alone, and so we drink them together as often as we can, waxing as eloquently as possible about the virtues of the pumpkin. This is where you-- the reader-- come in. We invite you to listen in as we discuss a subject about which we know only as much as our lay tastes impart in the moment of imbibing, but about which we expound upon with as much eloquence and elan as we can muster. We try to use words like "elan" as much as possible as a form of puffery.  

To wit, we'll try to bring that same to style to bear on this blog. We'll be sampling as many pumpkin beers this season as possible, a staggering task that will surely cause us to stagger home often, if all goes well. The number of pumpkin beers available on the market has grown incredibly in the last few years, commensurate with the rising popularity (and dare I say, respectability) of the brew. We shall try as many as we can, and, as we do, we'll evaluate them all on a completely unscientific scale that is remarkable for having no discernible metric or consistent internal logic whatsoever.  So, sit back and prepare for the journey. Stayed tuned for my next posting, "A Word on Our Names," to be followed by our first reviews, which we'll get around to whenever we feel like it.