The Muskie Year

Photo by Meg Fox

Kickin' @ Sitton's — The B&M's staff party jammed despite the rain. The Village Police stopped the festivities around 10:15 p.m. after complaints of clear music past Main Street (the cabin's behind Dairy Mart). Other reports suggested sounds reached the campus dorms. :) Those in attendance included (front row) Sitton, Sarah Gould, Meg Thompson and Joe Wyse; (2nd row) Crystal Kozora, Emma Lieberth and Tiffany Archer; (3rd row) John Linton, Niki Reid, Jennifer Magers, Hollie McHenry and Blake Burgess; (4th row) James Wiles, Jimmy Sharp, Zach Wagner and Seth McKinney; (Back row) Geno Alesandrini, Jeremy Abraham, Drew Smith <unknown, unknown> and Eric Elbe.

Time passes. Five years flew by in Tennessee. Where did they go? I tired of waking to the eerie sensation that an entire day may have slipped away while rest kneaded the kinks out of the machine some call the human body. At least I felt like this on a daily basis while trying to finish the damn dissertation.

I settled into New Concord, Ohio for a year to teach. Papa grew up in Ohio. He was a great man who taught me as a young child: Love what you're doing or you're cheating yourself and your employer. After all, we're only here for a little while. I wonder how much of his demeanor was directly influenced by the state?

I taught at Muskingum College in the Journalism department as part of the English faculty. While teaching as a journalism instructor, I started making Web pages for my courses, including Intro to Journalism, Feature Writing, News Editing, Introduction to Public Relations and the Journalism lab. For a class project, students in my journalism courses produced the "News Corncob" Vol. 2, No. 1 and Vol. 2, No. 2.

I also supervised The Black & Magenta, a campus newspaper run by the students. Formerly, the B&M only existed in a print form; I was brought in to take it to the Web. When I left, the B&M staffers commented on my time there. Jimmy Sharp, the originator of "Buzzworthy," even wrote a modest proposal about that time.

I met a lot of good friends and I learned a little about life. I even occasionally ran a radio show for the campus station, WMCO - 90.7 FM. The picture on the left captures Muskingum Lake at night. Different campus clubs rented the houses opposite the lake during the year. I thought it was pretty cool.

Spur of the Moment — Blake Burgess (right) juices the crowd while Jeremy Abraham (left) plays a earth-shaking bass line at the party.
I rented a cabin that sat about two blocks off Main Street. Tattau had to use Autocad 2000 just to fit the furniture in it. If you drove up at night, you'd think the cabin sits in the middle of the woods. During my spare time, I'd sit in the swing on the front porch learning to play harmonica; the screeching drove the cats away.

I'd walk up the hill everyday to campus. It did not seem so bad while the weather was nice, but once winter came on, it proved to be tough sometimes. I'd get up early in the morning and it'd be so cold that the air was literally dead. The good thing about the cold is you can keep wrapping up in more clothes. When it's hot you can only take off so many.

But Ohio does not function like Arkansas. When it snows, they keep on keeping on. I walked outside one day and the snow reached mid-thigh. I thought about calling it a day — a snow day, that is — until I saw the streets completely clear. I should have known as much as the salt trucks ran directly on the other side of my cabin. After a while, I got used to loud machinery in the middle of the night; I guess people can't just stop for anything.

Behind the cabin and just up the hill, New Concord brought John Glenn's house "downtown" and made a museum of it (I caught the cats playing in the parking lot of Glenn's house on more than one occasion). For those living in a bucket, the former U.S. Senator became the first American to orbit the earth and was also the first senior citizen in space on his return flight, where he studied the effects of space on aging. NASA's bio provides some basic facts about Glenn; Ohio State keeps his archives.

When I lived in New Concord, it featured four pizza parlors, a Subway, a rib shack in a BP gas station and, if you walked down the street about two blocks from the cabin, you'd find the best little diner I've ever had the pleasure to eat at. It opened at 4 a.m. and closed at 3 p.m. Home Cookin'... yum!

For entertainment, I'd drive either to Cambridge about 8 miles east, or Zanesville nearly 10 miles west. I kept busy trying to find a thing or two to do. There's a great bookstore in Cambridge, one of those two-story houses that's been turned into a shop; I threw away a little bit of money there. Zanesville is known for it's pottery. I highly recommend going just west of Zanesville to the wildlife refuge called "The Wilds." I should have explored more, I guess. I always meant to, but never seemed to find the time. Just as the job provided perspective on my career, New Concord provided perspective on small-town life and the cabin provided perspective on living within means. Mostly I spent time in this cabin working on the dissertation, day and night, night and day. Just big enough for me and the cats ... and that was all right.