I do some of my best writing on rides home. There is something about transition that pulls the right degree of nostalgia and tranquility out of me, a need to grapple with what has happened and assess calmly what is to come, to sway peacefully with my pen and my train-car. Graduating is nothing like that. It’s more like being dropped out of an airplane without a parachute. Or, rather, with a parachute made from Iliads and back-of-the-envelope calculations. And, like Columbia College, the time has come for Now!Here to drop me from its ranks. (Although, rest assured, I resist stigmatizing the lurking alum, as I will be she, at least when it comes to this publication.)

If I were to have two parting words (yelled through the winds) they would be thank you. This publication, and the passionate women and men who have worked on it, have been the bacterial cultures to my yogurt. In other words, they have made the magic happen. And happen it has: this semester, CIRCA officially amended its constitution to include Now!Here, we took in a record number of applications for our talented new board, and we designed and edited a print supplement to come out next fall. The incoming editor-in-chief, Lauren Argenti, has been tirelessly trotting the globe scouting the insider scoop on elusive subjects of all sorts, including, but not limited to, Swedish fish-loving tourists to Sweden. Trust you’re in good hands.

It is perhaps appropriate (or narcissistic?) that my last issue of Now!Here attempts to tackle a subject close to my own heart: politics. Many of this issue’s writers struggled with the question of travel to politically charged places. In “One Nation Under Braii,” Nicole Kamra explains how the South African barbecue tradition brings politically divided people together, in “My Moroccan Sister,” Dorothy Baker contemplates her experience as a woman in Morocco, in “Getting to Know Catalonia,” Stephen Gaughran gives travelers an introduction to the region, and in “The Non-Political Israel/Palestine Article,” Lauren Argenti interviews regional experts on how travelers might help the peace process. Politics can be a dangerous game, so forgive us our trespasses – we’d like more to raise the questions than to answer them.

This final time, I’ll sign off with some truisms from the esteemed political activist and travel-writer Dr. Seuss:

Be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So get on your way!

-Julie