The marching band.

There is something new in the air this morning and I feel it pulling me into the Fall Semester: the sound of the UW Marching Band. It's a sound of the season woven into my life for twenty years. The band practices down in a field over by Lake Mendota and something about the acoustics of the lake and the hill of University Heights where my house sits transforms the marching music into something ethereal and poignant--a bit like a Czechoslovakian emigré composer in Canada rearranging "The Star Spangled Banner."