Well, here goes:

1. I picked both sour and sweet cherries for $0.65 (that's 65 cents)per half bushel (!) in the Niagara Falls area when I was a junior in High School. (Do you have any idea how many cherries there are in a half bushel?)

2. I played a solo of Swanee River on the Flutophone (remember those $1.00 instruments?) in front of about 300 parents when I was 8 years old, at which time I could read sheet music. (I did not re-learn how to read it again until I was in my early fifties)

3. At the age of 9 I spoke reasonably fluent German (because my Dad was a sargeant in the US Army and we were stationed there in the mid fifties).

4. For my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University I translated (into reasonably coherent English) a critical edition of a fifth century A.D. Sanskrit text on theories of Karma by the Buddhist author Vasubandhu.

5.   I was in a nightclub in Bhopal, India in 1973, listening to a reasonably decent Indian rock band, when the performance was interupted (i.e., stopped) by a group somewhat fundamentalist Hindu youth. They objected to there being a female vocalist, I think, in the company of men and in an establishment that served alcoholic beverages. They were playing that song "I'm your Venus, I'm your Godess, what's your desire." Speaking of which, who put that puppy to the charts in (either) the late sixties or the early seventies?

6. The first 'real' Irish tune I learned was Raglan Road/Dawning of the Day. It rmains a favorite, which is probably neither obscure not surprising.

7. I once managed a $7.5 billion business deal--and for no 'points'!!

8. I hitch-hiked across this great country of ours (and back!!)with no ill effects. I turned 21 in California while on the road, had a legal beer to celebrate the occasion, slept in an open field, and woke up surrounded by friendly cattle.

9. I was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but only lived there long enough to catch scarlet fever before we moved on (to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, I think.)

10. I was one block away from the World Trade Center when the second plane hit on 9/11/01. I work near and walk by Ground Zero almost every day, and it still rips me up. I guess that's neither obscure nor surprising either.

I sometimes forget how lucky we are to live in this country, a country where a wide-eyed and dirt poor army brat--with roots in an un-incorporated village in the Mid Hudson Valley, whose parents did not graduate from High School--can sit in the comfort of his own home and reflect back on the things that he has had the FREEDOM to do in the past 50+ years.

Yours in Liberty,

Tom D.

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