The only time I ever studied abroad was in Cleveland, in 1998.

On that early spring afternoon, the air was unsettled and the temperature was in the 80s.

As we learned from our voracious Earth Day research last issue, there is a tiny little interval during which civic merrymaking can be comfortably enjoyed before the infernal brilliance of a Birmingham summer sears us in our own juices.

The presidency of Barack Obama ended April 4. It was a pretty good one, given that it lasted only two years. He managed to get some health care reform enacted, rescued a couple of car makers and generally helped the nation weather an economic tsunami resulting from eight years of a Bushquake.

If April 16 were National Refrigerator Store Day or National Radiator Store, this piece would take a radical turn toward the esoteric, but because it’s National Record Store Day, we shall stick to the mundanely arcane.

I know you don’t care about Medicare. The very word is redolent of mothballs and Aqua Velva. Medicare is old people’s business, a topic ill-suited to a zeitgeist manual such as Birmingham Weekly. However, the loosest cannons upon Capitol Hill are taking aim now at the largest health insurance program in the country, and if they succeed in destroying Medicare, they just might take your future with it.

It was a curious afternoon in the venerable Virginia Samford Theatre and the first time I’d been backstage. The occasion was a salute to the late Cousin Cliff Holman, legendary host of children’s television shows since Kermit the Frog was still in a fabric shop.

Is this all about oil? Or are we actually saving people’s lives? Those questions recur every time American military might is brought to bear upon the Middle East.

In the wake of the tsunami, we are reminded that nothing brings our enormous planet down to size quite like its basic building block.

It occurred to me the other day that the last bastion of true democracy is the license tag renewal line.