I write to you from my hometown of Athens, Ohio, deep in the verdant valley of the mighty Hocking River. Seen from car windows, the buildings where I went to high school, middle school, elementary school scroll past. There's the house where I stayed as a college student. Every glance here triggers an association. There's where I shot a video about fishing in the headwaters of the Hocking for an OU class on anthropological film. I run into an influential high school teacher, Pete Lalich, at a local bookstore, and like Proust biting into his madeleine I go rushing back, a 40-year-old man become 16 years old again.
Coincedent with my visit the local public radio station, WOUB, has launched a website under the auspices of Bryan Gibson, my old comrade and fellow snare drum in the AHS marching band percussion section. They've seen fit to publish my comments on my evening at the Chicago stop of Elvis Costello's Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour. The wheel spins, landing on the very first time I saw him in Athens in 1989, coming round again to where I began.
