One afternoon in September of 1992, I ran into Karol Ludtka in Safeway. Karol's father, John, long-time editor and publisher of Ellensburg's Daily Record, had recently sold the paper, and a new editor was at the helm. The new editor, Karol informed me, was interested in recruiting local column-writing talent. It was Karol's contention that I was just the man to cover the town's fringe element.

It so happened that I had in my possession an article I'd written on Ellensburg resident Larry Almberg, at that time the world record holder for the road mile for men over forty. Not exactly fringe activity, but I dropped the article by the Daily Record anyway. "The Fastest Miler You Never Heard Of" saw print in October of 1992, and the editor dubbed me his "Air Guitar" columnist, suggesting I concentrate on personality profiles, not just of Ellensburg's fringe, but a cross-section of Kittitas Valley residents.

I wrote "Air Guitar" columns for the Daily Record on a weekly basis until early June of 1994, and during the summer of 1995, I wrote a similar column under the heading "Another Day in Rodeo Town" for a new paper in town, the EllensburgWeekly. I interviewed cowboys, musicians, college professors, old-timers, athletes, shop owners. artists, actors, social workers, race-car drivers, recycling activists, bookstore owners, radio announcers, firemen, police chiefs, dog breeders, opera singers, Russian mental-health counselors, trout fishermen, Latino-rights advocates, behavioral psychologists studying chimpanzees (Roger Fouts, author of Next of Kin), criminologists and more. And, as I worked each interview into column form, it invariably transformed into a story bigger than the individual I'd spoken with, so that in some cases only first names were used, and in other cases no name at all. What I learned, as time went on, is that true community consists of a mosaic of such interrelated stories, and gradually a picture of Ellensburg emerged that is cohesive and richly diverse. Ellensburg has a magic about it, a way of assimilating whatever new comes along, and if you're looking for a place to live life on a human scale, you need look no further.