I was reminded of another very special word when I was driving into Ann Arbor this morning, and that word is homecoming. Our family's had three homecomings to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in my lifetime.
Michigan State is always welcome at Ann Arbor. Your teams in all the various branches of athletics are more frequent visitors here than those of any other institution. This is as it should be, for not two universities are closer together in every way than Michigan State and Michigan.
When I went to Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, what I really wanted to be was a radio announcer.
I went to hockey camp at Michigan because my dad has some relatives in the Ann Arbor area. We went to visit them as kids, and you start to learn the language from being around people. At the same time, when I got to college, I thought my English was better than it really was. I learned a lot over my four years.
In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing - but it worked, and I loved doing it.
I was born in Ann Arbor. I lived for a while in Ohio; Pennsylvania, California for 10 years, and now in Boston. And I lived in Iowa for a couple of years, where I studied at the Writers Workshop.
Being in Ann Arbor, if I wanted to go from my apartment to the gym, I could get on the bus and it would be a two-minute ride, or a 20-minute walk.
Yesterday I wrote the majority of a song called 'Burn the Nightclub Down' which was about kind of driving into Cleveland full of dread at the prospect of playing at this night club and actually just the night before I had called my girlfriend whose birthday it was. And it's her birthday and here I am on the road in some hellhole in Ann Arbor in Michigan.
I drove across country in my yellow 1970 VW bug (which I drove until 1986) to Los Angeles, having had enough cold weather in 5 years in Ann Arbor, and found a job within a few days.
That's one of the most important things to me is that Detroit and Ann Arbor got my back. If you don't have hometown love, then what's the point?
The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn't exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn't exist yet, either.
In the early 1990s, I briefly got involved in Italian politics. But that intermezzo lasted just two years and had little success. I also found politics emotionally empty.
Although I was paid a salary in Ann Arbor, my wife and children and I drank powdered milk at six cents a quart instead of the stuff that came in bottles. I was a tightwad.
There are other places, surely, for other people, but for me there is one place, Ann ?Arbor, for there it was I discovered what lifes bright possibilities were.
Competition is great for everyone. Sports can teach you so much at an early age, including camaraderie and sportsmanship. Competition aspect is something I've always been big on - I always wanted to compete in something. It was swimming for many years, then I moved on to basketball. I had to find a way to channel my competitive energy, so I'm lucky that basketball worked out for me.
As a child, I was very active. I was a gymnast, I played touch football, netball and basketball. When I was 16 years old, I started yoga. I started working out at an early age.