Click the "Back" button on your browser to "get back to where you once belonged"
It's the National Honors Conference and we're in a hotel room in the towering city of Chicago and
Paul is sitting cross-legged on the other bed making last minute changes to the html. "Let's see if
this works," he says, and I guess by now you'll be able to see if it does.
This whole thing started as an idea last spring. The plan was to have an elite squad of summer
adventure reporters who would send back postcards and journal entries to a P.O. Box in Anaheim
Hills c/o Paul Traska. We recruited over cheese squares and carrot sticks at the final honors party
of the school year, scrawled out addresses on scraps of paper aand set out with faith that the little
mailbox would a magically with testimonies and momentoes. It didn't. I sent off a couple of
postcards (none of which are reproduced on this disk), but that was it. Some time mid-summer
Paul sent me an e-mail suggesting that we compile the whole thing digitally (assuming that we ever
got the "whole thing") and I, checking my e-mail in a staiwell in South Dakota where at least three
different languages were being tossed around by my foreigner dorm-mates who were waiting for the
computer, was invigorated. After all, though we all travel the one place we all come back to in this
day is the digital debriefing rooms that are our inboxes.
This summer I kept in contact with multiple states by assigning into Yahoo! Mail. This fall my
contacts ahave expanded across the country and across the world. I've been through three states
today and crossed the Mississippi twice. Erin's sleeping a few floors above and tonight many CD's
will be burned: Gabbo Number Two. This is the Limited Collector's Edition, so some day when any
of us are famous it may be wirth a ton of cash. And if you read the writings we've managed to
compile after the fact -- I think you'll find a lot deserving of fame.
It's all here, kids: love, poetry, TV and rock 'n' roll. Some of us went across the country, some of us
went across the sea and far away and some of us stayed here at home with the palm trees and
flourescent skies. But one way or another we all got something from our summers... and now
we hope that you will, too!
Aaron Humphrey