Welcome back, OU students. Here's hoping you have a fun and rewarding year - educationally, culturally and socially - at Ohio University.

Hallelujah, it's time for my irregular quick-hit "Editor's Notes" column.

To the Editor:

My lands. I’ve never been so offended and insulted in my 96 years on God’s green earth. Imagine my chagrin when a week ago today, I sat down to my morning raspberry Jello and rice pudding, removed my false teeth, and unfolded my daily Athens Messenger before me. At first I smiled to see the photo of a sweet, infant horse in the foreground. And I smiled even wider to see the humorous pun in the headline – “Foal’s Paradise.”

The other day a future Ohio University dad shot me an angry e-mail, criticizing an  article that ran in our New Student Survival Guide (what we used to call the  Freshman Orientation Guide). The piece, headlined “Seven Ways to Avoid Getting  Caught Drinking,” talked about OU students can avoid getting written up when  partaking of alcohol in their residence halls.

Watching the “Dateline NBC” hour-long program about poverty, hunger and pluck in Athens County, I felt a mixture of embarrassment, pride, disappointment and fear. The overall impression was similar to what a fist makes on a chin in a knockout.

"Pray for me: I’m driving the Athens Roundabout!"

It´s been a full week since LeBron James magically turned himself from a world-class star into a world-class jerk. Normally, I wouldn’t feel compelled to comment on James’ “Decision” to quit his home-region Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, except in the case of LBJ, I really do feel that many in the media and sports world have been missing the point.

Sometimes I just want to slam my head into a tree repeatedly, a la Charlie Brown.

I just can’t seem to get away from Tea Partiers… Last week while on vacation in Hatteras village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, I was heading to the beach (a brutal walk on hot sand, carrying all manner of beach accessories, a sort of tourist’s Bataan death march). A grizzled-looking middle-aged gent approached me from one of the nearby cottages and asked where in Ohio our group was from. He had noticed the Ohio plates on our cars. I told him, and he said that while he now lives in Virginia, he originally came from Northeast Ohio, my old stomping grounds.

An ungainly crowd of issues have been elbowing one another in my brain, so obviously we're overdue for my periodic grab-bag "Editor's Notes"� column.

I HEREBY DECLARE THAT I'm no longer a member of the Athens County Democratic Party. I'm going independent.

However, I will remain a Democrat where state and national politics apply. This is mainly because I detest state and national Republicans so much that the Dems have a mountain of work to do if they're going to get me hating them as much as I do the GOP.