Bennett Konesni '05, a double major in Environ-
mental Studies and Music from Appleton, Maine, has been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that will fund a year of post-graduate study and travel. His Watson research project is titled,
" 'Haul Away, Joe': Exploring Musical Labor of the Land and Sea," and it will take him to The Netherlands, Germany, Ghana, Tanzania, Vietnam, Switzerland, Mongolia, and Italy. While at Middlebury, he co-founded Middlebury's student-run organic garden, a bluegrass band that moonlighted as a circus orchestra, and Mchakamchaka, a Tanzanian-style running and singing group.
For me, a truly good evening meal in Proctor never lasted less than two hours. At the start I would intend to stay for only a half an hour, and then run along to the next meeting, assignment, practice. But inevitably the meal would become too interesting to tear myself away.
It wasn't the food, really. Proctor's specialty was basic fare, while other dining halls served more exotic meals cooked in smaller batches. And it wasn't the layout. Proctor's flowered curtains were garish, its chairs comfortable but not luxurious, the tables decidedly institutional. And in the good old days the halls and doorways were so packed with buzzing students that getting a glass of chocolate milk c ould be a 10-minute roundtrip. Hardly convenient for a student rushing to save time. But that was the glory of the place: in a school and a world that was spinning too fast, Proctor was almost stubbornly slow.
And everyone knew it, so they just hung around and enjoyed it. What a scene: the whole school would be there, sitting for hours in large groups, heatedly discussing campus politics, telling jokes, watching the great human parade at the salad bar. Someone would slip and drop their tray, and the jerks would clap and jeer, and the good people would jump up to help mop. It was mostly good people. Soon your crush would walk by, setting off endless speculation about where she lived, what she was like, and if she would be interested. Inevitably, it was concluded, she would not. So the talk would turn again to national news, or ways to make the campus better, or good business ideas, or fun Proctor pranks. It was an exciting time, each night at Proctor.
And the dining hall was as useful as it was exciting, because you could go in at 6 p.m. and pass along 15 messages in person about this event or that meeting, and be confident that they would stick. All business became pleasure because it was framed in Proctor's thrum. And everyone knows that people show up for fun events. Proctor was very useful in this sense: successful mass networking without the pain of group e-mail.
Today, Dining Services serves great food in upscale new dining halls, and I visit them often for fresh salads and tasty salmon. I appreciate the emphasis on good food at Middlebury, even though it has lured the crowds away from the old dining hall. But I will always love and return to Proctor for the unhurried pace and the great conversations. Those are the best parts of any meal and that's why old-school dinner at Proctor was the defining scene in my Midd experience.