On Summit

Editor's Note: Portions of this post appeared previously in Jeff Regensburger's Google+ account. It turns out that I've got something of a dilettante's appreciation for hobos. By that I mean that while I find myself intrigued by hobos and their place in the pantheon of American archetypes, I haven't actually taken the time to really, well, learn anything about them. As a result, my understanding of hobos has been shaped more or less by their depictions in popular culture. My Man Godfrey , Emperor of the North , and countless cartoons featuring threadbare vagabonds percolate in my memory alongside odd bits like John Hodgman's zenish list of 700 hobo names . Oh, I tried reading William Vollman's "Riding Toward Everywhere" , but honestly it sort of bogged down. That failed attempt at a more academic appreciation of the subject notwithstanding, I'm left pretty much with the cartoon version of hobos that most of us likely share. Still, the idea of h...

...or, Why I Can't Write About the Past. The Preamble This is really hard. See, there's this thing from the past (a song actually). On the face of it, it's nothing more than semi-obscurist musical footnote; an unreleased track from a third-tier act that might or might not matter. It's the kind of cultural ephemera that, in another era, would have passed quietly into history, inviting neither comment nor reflection. Clearly though this is not another era. It's the age of Web 2.0; the age where everything can be digitized, shared, and commented on. No shred of information is too small, and no piece of the information puzzle is too trivial. So, there's this song. I've been considering sharing it, but I just couldn't pull the trigger. First of all, I'm not quite sure how to do it without coming off as wistful, misty-eyed, or nostalgic. I'm also not sure, in some larger sense, if it's even important enough to share. I mean, I think it's import...