The Myth & The Majesty

[Raise your hand if this has happened to you...] Ten years ago, I was an unapologetic band geek. I wasn't particularly good (although not particularly bad, either) but I was committed. Jazz band, concert band, marching band -- I was there. It helped that my particular class was ... well, fun. My best friend was a fellow band geek. Some of my most amusing high school friends were super-nerds like me that happened to be there as well. And by all means, there were more "One time, at band camp..." stories than I care to admit. (Not to mention band bus stories, band trip stories, and the every-popular early morning band stories.) Of all the various areas of participation, marching band is easily the most grueling. The weeks of band camp before school started, the early mornings, the memorization, the pages of field formations -- it's a lot to take in and can take a surprisingly large toll on a person. There's more coordination required to roll step backwards w...

[Does that title make anyone else think of "Fiddler on the Roof"? I blame the Admiral. Jerk.]  My alma mater is a school steeped in tradition. It's pretty small (2500ish students) and populated by people that just don't generally get worked up over most things. There are things that go on there that you just simply can't get away with most places. Freshmen get beanies at the beginning of the year. Seniors make them sing. (Well, "make" is putting it strongly. Usually if a freshman is singing it's mostly by choice, and that senior is a previous acquaintance. I could still sing you the song, too ... but I won't.) There's a homecoming picnic that involves sliding down a concrete "M," mud "volleyball," and consuming mildly covert beverages. And seniors wear these. This is my senior hat. Ain't it lovely? Okay. Let me explain the parts of a Hardrocker's senior hat. 1. The hat is constructed of leather (the brim...

... down memory lane, that is. And let me tell you -- the things I'm finding are starting to boggle the mind. Take, for instance, this picture. Why exactly am I hitting on Calvin Coolidge? And where did that shirt go? I'm pretty sure it's the only vibrant orange shirt I've owned since I was five and I have no idea where it is now. [How do you lose something that color?] The strange thing is that it keeps turning up in pictures. Like this one, which I know for a fact was taken the year after Cal and I had our little interlude. Still orange. Still vibrant. On an unrelated note, I haven't been able to have Pippi Longstocking braids like that in two years now. I kind of miss it ... Kind of. As you may have noticed, the hill behind me in that lovely we-were-here shot is steaming. Taken during the family trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons in 2005. Where I took a few more pretty awesome pictures ... Like this. [Is that Mt. Moran? Why can't I remember?] Ab...

I really don't have much to say today. I've been spending my evening combing through pictures for a couple of upcoming projects. It's been good ... I still hadn't gone through all of my recovered files from my desktop's abrupt and fiery death in September, so there have been a lot of trips down various memory lanes. And what a trip it's been. Everything from uproarious laughter to "That was so cool..." to "I should really call her" to "Wow. I ... didn't realize there was photographic evidence of that." No regrets, but sometimes I could do without a reminder. No, I'm not posting any of those. Instead, I'll leave you with one of the most peaceful pictures I think I've ever taken ...

I took this picture at the beginning of an awesome trip last summer. My parents came to visit for the fourth of July (which I only sort of talked about a couple of times) and I got to spend a few days actually taking a break with two people who also needed that break just as badly. Until that weekend, I had never spent any particular time just hanging out with my parents as an adult -- and that was something it was well past time to fix. I don't think they realized they were getting their picture taken when I snapped this one ... These are the people who raised me. They're also the ones who taught me to appreciate good wine, craft beer, intelligence, and a solidly built bridge. They're the ones who have listened patiently as I've put myself into one weird situation after another, or as I've taken up strange hobbies. Heck, they even go along with a few of them. In fact, this was taken between geocaches ... and shortly before I tried to lose a fight with a tr...

I have, on numerous occasions, professed my love of the ranch here. It's still true. I still love the ranch. It was, in fact, stage 2 of the Great Western Trek (stage 1 involved a rapid-fire stop in Sioux Falls) and the beginning of a true vacation. And it was awesome. Wisconsin is a beautiful state, but what I miss the most -- and it took me months to place the feeling -- is wide open spaces. WIIIIIIIDE open spaces. They're wonderful. But it's not just the openness. There's a somewhat surreal quality, especially if you've spent most of your time in cities or heavily industrialized areas. There's a feeling of timelessness ... That there are things here more ancient than you can imagine. That there's ground that has never seen a human footstep. Animals that still wonder at these strange upright mammals. That in one hundred years those places will still exist and those animals' ancestors will still wonder. [Rule #2: If you open a gate, close it. Rule #...

My sister would have called Jon "stormy-cloudy." This was perhaps why we were friends so quickly -- he wasn't any more prone to covering his emotions than I was. It was easy enough to figure out what he was thinking and that made him seem much less complicated than the other people I was meeting. Jon was the first best friend I had at Tech, the first person I lured into conversation with popcorn and the first person with whom I stayed up chatting for hours. He introduced me to "Donnie Darko" and Chuck Palahniuk; I helped him with his Chem 112 homework. We played sardines at the home of people neither of us had ever met; we talked religion and learned how to play Risk. Soon we were part of a pod of second floor Connolly people that ate, played, battled, and occasionally studied together. He was the guy that carried Barb down the Harney Peak trail after she wrenched her knee, who hid out of bounds when we played games in the quad, who didn't notice ...

(Originally posted Saturday, June 20th. No changes have been made aside from this note.) It was April 26 th , 1995 when we first saw him. The day before, the neighbor's dog had given birth to a large litter of tiny, wriggling purebred labs, five black and five yellow. Their eyes were still closed and at any given moment it was hard to distinguish one from another. We oohed and aahed and came back every day for the next couple of weeks, waiting for them to get big enough for us to play with them. As is inevitable, we started begging for a dog. My family had always been a cat family; it had little to do with personal preference and a lot more to do with kindness. Until the previous year, we had been "city kids" -- no room for a large dog in the house in Sioux Falls and my parents refused to get "a Nick," a reference to my grandparents' small yapper -type dog. But now we lived in a considerably more rural area; we had space for an outdoor kennel, room to take ...

One week before I head west for Shorty's graduation! It's a little alarming, to be completely honest. The poor kid is forever eleven in my head, just as he was when I moved out seven years ago. In the meantime, he's grown up and turned into the kid at school in drama, soccer, debate, on the honor roll, leading the youth group -- and the one that takes the Swedish exchange student to prom. I don't know how they all fit together. He used to be the kid that was utterly tortured by his two big sisters ... He was kind of a scrawny kid and we could gang up on him a little too easily. We kept him hyped up on Santa beyond the healthy age and he was scared of the basement because we had him convinced there were monsters down there. It wasn't until he was about nine that he had a chance against us -- and by that point we had moved into the Fiercely Protective Sisters range. No one was going to be messing with him on the bus. Now he's the golden child. He's...

This particular day, the second in a weekend backpacking up by Deerfield Lake during my last semester at school. This photo is titled "Map Check #35." Obviously we weren't terribly lost -- we found a bridge, after all. Yeah. No attention span when the weather is this nice. I'm going outside now. Goodbye.

Well. Here we are. It's 2008. This is a time for reflection. Remembrance. And most of all, looking to the future. And who am I to get in the way of the norm? I think I remember the first time I thought about this particular year. It was my freshman year in high school, and it was during the careers class we had to take with health and P.E. ... That would make it roughly March of 1999. In any case, we were "mapping" what we wanted to do after high school. At that point in time, my plan looked something like: College: secondary education, August 2002 - May 2006 Peace Corps, June 2006 - June 2008 Grad School: English or biology, August 2008 - May 2010 Oh yeah. I had it all planned out. I suppose this goes to show that, when you're 14, you probably don't have much of an idea of what your life will entail, particularly when you're planning for something that won't even start for 3 years. [And, interestingly enough, even then My Plan didn't follow The Plan, ...

They say scent is one of the strongest memory triggers. I believe it if only because it's always been extremely true for me. In the last couple of days there have been some random trips down memory lane, chiefly about things I haven't thought about in years. For instance, yesterday at work I got my usual Friday popcorn. (We have popcorn every Friday at the office -- carnival-style bags.) And suddenly I was at a football game my senior year of high school. I don't do much thinking about high school anymore, but that memory was a happy one. My senior year was my one truly good year in Lennox ... I even went so far as to go to almost every football game (something I had never done before and didn't do in college). Maybe it was because it was my last year; maybe it was because my friends were going. I think a lot of it had to do with a feeling of independence that started when I realized I could go to the away games. This morning, I stepped out onto my deck to put out a pla...