A Bird in the Band is Worth . . .

New year, new site, new blog.

Back in the fall, the death of my MySpace blog and my newspaper column gave me precious few outlets to vent, discuss, and theorize on a variety of subjects: the entertainment world, life as a band director, father of five children, politics, religion, radio and records, and other various and sundry topics.

What is foremost on my mind today is where we've spent the past two weekends -- the Tallassee High School show choirs went on the road to Decatur, Illinois and Laurel, Mississippi. I went with them and played trombone in the backing band for the performing groups.

The best word to describe the America I saw from a bus window is great. Farmlands and factories, main streets with U.S. flags protruding from practically every front porch, genuinely nice people everywhere we went. And then, I felt a strange combination of pride, longing, embarrassment, and even fear as we passed through my hometown of Montgomery.

But more on that later.

The children have eaten dinner and had their evening bathtime. We need to read a book before we all go to bed.

Now . . . it's on to the big wide world of blogging, 2008-style.