Startin' out for God knows where...

I chose to start a new blog today in celebration of completing my senior paper.

The topic of my senior paper?

*clears throat and continues in dramatic tone*

The Blogosphere and its Role in the News Media.

All 46 glorious pages are printed, bound, and laying on Freudenrich's desk, just waiting to be devoured.

I guess I've never been consistent in blog updating, because frankly I never thought I had much to say that was of any importance. I'm still not sure that I do. But I have to start somewhere, so here it is. I, Megan the budding journalist, the super-senior who just submitted her senior paper, do solemnly swear to nurture and feed this blog.

Heck, I even tried really hard this time to come up with a cool URL and blog name. The name is a bit long, but it's borrowed from one of my favorite songs ("Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Simon & Garfunkel) and it perfectly describes my current situation in life.

I'll explain my URL as well. Hwy61revisited should be recognizable though to just about anyone who likes Bob Dylan. It's also the title of this really cool book that I got last fall at Border's.

For those of you who don't know, I have fallen in love with my native soil now that I'm no longer confined to the smelly, dilapidated town where I spent the first 19 and a half years of my life. I plan on going back to Iowa...just not back "home."

I blame it first of all on the movie "Elizabethtown." If you don't know what I'm talking about, just...watch it. There are no words that can sufficiently describe how much that film inspired me.

The beauty of eastern Iowa really took hold of my spirit during summer vacation last year. I was a news intern at
The Hawk Eye and I had an hour-long commute from my house to the newsroom. It was always a treat to get an assignment that required extra travel--although I got lost a few times. Note to self: Mapquest lies. My dad apparently slipped from the womb fully equipped with a built-in GPS system. I, on the other hand, cannot find my way out of a paper bag.

Again, I digress.

I have a lot of those moments when the beauty of the world around me leaves me speechless. The things I find beautiful are often homely on the surface. Last summer, I observed and interacted with a world I took for granted most of my life. I went to a kennel, run by a Christian family, and talked with them about what it was like to lose several of their dogs in a horrible fire. It was out in the sticks, I was sweltering in nearly 100-degree weather. The dogs were laying in the shade, ears twitching as they dozed in front of fans. Inside the birthing house, an expectant mother pug gazed at me from sleepy eyes, her tongue drooping from her mouth.

I sat on a screened-in front porch, enveloped in cigarette smoke, with a gangly teenage boy named Dusty Trail. (Yes, Dusty Trail.) He mumbled in a deep country accent about his love for go-kart racing, spurred on by his proud mother who sat nearby and did most of the talking.

I followed a group of girls around the Des Moines County fairgrounds, scribbling down my observations on a soggy notepad as they engaged in hydro-warfare. The faintly sweet scent of hay and the pungent stench of manure returns every time I remember those county fair assignments.

I used to think I was too good for all of that. I wanted the big city life. Quirky coffee shops...a concert every weekend...metal monstrosities that stretched beyond the clouds.

Then I went home last summer, and I rediscovered what made me hate to move to the city limits of my hometown. Tall rows of corn glistening in the afternoon sun...trails of dust rising from gravel roads...acre upon acre of untamed wilderness.

Somewhere in Iowa there's a job and a little house waiting for me...hopefully not far from the banks of the Mississippi River, in some po-dunk town off Highway 61.