The Residual Sugar

September will be my 40th high school reunion. It's funny, but for all the things I've experienced, all the people I've known and the places I've seen; I'm still tied to those people and those years in the late '70's in Rondout Valley in upstate New York. I was always a bit of an outsider there. We moved to Stone Ridge when I was in 4th grade and it felt a bit like wandering into a conversation that had started a long time ago. But I found friends and though most of us didn't stay in touch until Facebook showed up, they have turned out to be durable friends. I suppose we were bound to measure ourselves against the people we knew in high school. But I've also grown to realize these people defined home, the place I left in 1978. It felt like we were just figuring out how much we cared for each other right about when we graduated.

This reunion has a good deal of momentum behind it, thanks to Facebook. As we've become reacquainted in the last coupl…