EDITOR’S DESK: Nostalgia comes easy this time of year

Nostalgia can strike at any time. This issue, for example. Just talking to the folks at Mountain Mama about their 25-year anniversary triggered recollections of granola and brown rice and the days before chain stores ruled the land. In Mel McFarland's column below, he takes readers on a walking tour of Old Town in 1961. In those days, every store was privately owned. That didn't make them perfect, of course, but at least they were real folks you could talk to, or - in the case of a news person - ask for an ad or a news outlet. Corporations could care less about where they are, as we recently rediscovered when the invisible management of a certain popular designer-coffee chain on Colorado Avenue decided it no longer wished to be an outlet for community papers, including ours.        Nostalgia. It oozes out of Tom Stephenson's "In their own words" interview. And how about Rock Ledge Ranch, with its 1800s baseball game on Labor Day and the folk artists coming to its "Country Christmas" Sept. 17-19?        Yeah, it can strike at any time. Unfortunately, so can terrorists (sorry). The folks in 1961, even 1979, had a different world in more ways than one. I guess that's my ultimate nostalgia: the world before 9/11/01. Yet I find myself chiefly remembering the day itself - for the pain, yes, but also its clarion call for future action. You can only look back for so long. - K.J.