As featured in ONA's pre-conference mailing and on this page: "At the USA TODAY booth, visit with Gannett, USA TODAY and USATODAY.com recruiters to find out more about openings, such as a Senior Web Designer/User Experience Architect who will be part of the Innovation team that is building some of the most high-profile and cutting-edge products in the company." I'm missing the conference for the first time in years (very sad) for a friend's Chicago wedding (very happy), but to get info beyond the listing, ask around for my boss, Joel Sucherman.

Exhausted but made good time home from Jersey today — no rain and fog like pre-dawn Friday, although the Redskins made up for it — and caught the tasty end of Cousin Tim's brief homecoming from American Samoa. As the Monmouth wifi situation never got better, there's much to post, like symposium session write-ups from notes, some photo sets and videos. Sunday's highlights stretched from the latter hours of Joe Grushecky's show at the Stone Pony to a Springsteen meets Flannery O'Connor meets Walker Percy session meets… but first, sleep.

I have more posts on today coming, for sure, but those posts won't come today. We were at a Sheraton this morning and at Monmouth University this afternoon, and the hotel industry is apparently beating the heck out of higher education when it comes to guest wireless. I'm coming to you now from a Monmouth computer lab, jacking an Ethernet line and power outlet from a desktop, referred by a friendly security guard, surrounded my underclassmen who may or may not be working hard but are at least quiet. Good for them. It's hard to be young and quiet. Anyway. Finally finished ppt tonight, more or less. I decided to leave some ends open. Off to the Stone Pony in a bit to hear Gary U.S. Bonds. Cool to see Bloomberg covering the symposium (thanks to my dad for sending along the link). Will post much more tomorrow.

Prof and author Jim Cullen, whom I've read on Springsteen somewhere beyond the usual works listed for him, asks the provocative question in the day's next talk. He has his text online here. Highlight arguments:

Bruce Springsteen's success in the 1980s is a function of him being at heart a conservative artist. Period. It is no accident that the Age of Reagan corresponds to the Age of Springsteen, and I'll even go so far as to say that in some important respects Springsteen has been a more thoroughgoing conservative than Reagan ever was.

…

The choices he's made are not so much of a man who seeks to embody his time as to incorporate himself into the broader musical flow of history. If this isn't conservatism in the most elemental sense of the term, I don't know what is.

Crowd responses hit on:  rock and roll's rebellion vs. accommodation, personal caution vs. conservatism, a claim to Bruce bringing a new use of gravitas to rock, the political split of the fanbase (Cullen, to knowing laughs, after discussing religion earlier, "like Jesus, we tend to see him in our own image"), activism in Catholicism ("simultaneously the most left and the most right," among U.S. faiths, Cullen responds in part), the breadth of the Born in the USA album opening itself to misreading (and beyond — Cullen cites Darlington County's "I've seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" as how religion winds its way into common speech), symbolism and dogma (whatever remarks anyone may toss off on personal beliefs, "the symbols only have life" in the degree of doctrinal infrastructure that holds them up, Cullen says), and criticism of our systems' excesses vs. belief in the systems ("no Springsteen character goes off and lives on a commune or has a green website.")

Last one dislikes Bruce-Reagan comparison, draws claps. What's the alternative to BitUSA, Cullen asks? God Save the Queen. Good debate.

Bought the two Steel Mill Retro albums from Mad Dog in the hotel lobby and shook the hands that drummed Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Good guy. Long line for him, but he looked me in the eye to say hey and autographed both discs for "Pat." Met some cool fellow attendees in the line as well.

(Yes, if somehow you've ever wondered where this blog's "Greetings from Evanston, IL" title comes from, now you know half the story.)

Now: Psychiatrists! Smart ones!

The first academic panel gets underway. Yale prof Steven Southwick explains resilience theory, how people reconstruct their lives from turmoil and trouble: finding positive role models, seeking humor, fostering "signature strengths" and more. No mention of Bruce. Then Dennis Charney, dean of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, begins relating resilience factors to the music. Optimism/hope: Born to Run, Better Days, Working on a Dream, Land of Hope and Dreams. Acceptance and personal growth: Terry's Song, The Last Carnival. Embracing a personal/moral compass: Ghost of Tom Joad, American Skin, Devils & Dust, Long Walk Home, The Rising. Facing fear: Into the Fire. Others. Moving through stages of life… Children/family: Living Proof. Friendship:  Blood Brothers. Marriage: Kingdom of Days, If I Should Fall Behind.

Personal note: You know how much I use music as an emotion handler in this blog. Above, connecting these songs to these themes doesn't take a doctoral degree, but what's interesting to me is seeing songs fall across the scope of resilience and our seeking across the scope.

Charney moves onto discussing the resilient brain — overlap between where music affects the brain and where happiness, fear and anxiety live. Negative music bringing effects just like positive music. Obvious, but cool to see it in the brain imaging and to think about potential next steps — music as therapy for different medical issues, Charney notes.

Last up, Yale prof Linda Godleski uses her background with veterans in "telemental health" study — mental health care through remote video conferencing — and membership in Greasy Lake. She then digs into the Bruce boards, gratification theory, how people use the Web for coping, and emotional threads. Among them: "What songs make you cry," the meaning of life, debating Mary's Place, a poster hearing Independence Day after losing a father, saving Tillie, and dealing with Danny's death. Second part of the last item: "Danny Fund" charity fundraising online. Good close: Talking community, Godleski pulls out, "come home from work and wash up and go racing in the street." Unexpected quote.

Drive was four hours, no traffic, great radio, and now we're underway.

Intros from organizers, and now Grammy Museum chief and Bruce-tied author Bob Santelli is kicking off a cool panel with early E Street Band drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez (wearing a Mad Dog T-shirt) and Tinker West, who built the Castiles, Springsteen's first band, and who had Bruce, Vini and the late E Street keyboard player Danny Federici live in his surfboard factory in the late '60s, long before Born to Run, before E Street became E Street. They're talking Danny's life and Asbury music. Santelli was working on a book with Danny when he died last year.

Update during: Vini begins by talking about his beginning in music — playing bugle in a drum+bugle corps. Santelli mentions Danny's start, with his mom booking him for accordion gigs. Vini talks about how fast he could set up his drum kit. "Still can. I can set 'em up in five minutes, boom." Describes how he and Danny went out to a club to see a guy named Bruce Springsteen play. Current E Street bassist Garry Tallent and early E Street keyboardist David Sancious already bouncing in and out of the scene in the stories. Tinker now on building their sound rig. Santelli mentions Danny's wild run-ins with the law. Vini: "We all had a problem with the law." Tells story of Danny pushing speaker over on police chief. Tinker calls police chief a Nazi. Vini talks about cops waiting to arrest Danny after a show, Bruce pulling the crowd up onstage, and Danny then slipping out as the show ended and everyone left stage. Tinker mentions how Bruce didn't know how to drive — "He had girls drive him everywhere" — until he forced him to help a drive to California. "I didn't sleep. I was petrified." Vini explains how Danny's station wagon got split up from Tinker and Bruce's car. Story involves Danny and Vini racing to catch up, then figuring they were ahead, then waiting by side of road for eight hours. Story growing shaggier. Vini: "Then we heard congas…" Pot brownies, phone book are involved.

SCORE: Just got floor tix with Jim for November D.C. show. Karma!

More from the panel: Q&A begins. Vini talking about Bruce and Danny as working out many of the early songs together. Regimentation came during BtR sessions. Vini: "Me personally, that's all well and good, but I'm still gonna do what I like." Santelli on time since: Bruce has respect for musicianship, and musicians work within the vision. Hmm. Question about why Danny was barely on BtR album proper. Santelli describes Danny as disappointed over that, felt that new piano sound from Roy had Bruce's attention during recording. "At the time, he felt shorted. He felt pushed aside." But Danny said he understood after he heard the finished album. Question about Danny and soul music. Vini: "We cut our teeth on the R&B stuff." Says Danny was more into jazz, but "he certainly knew where to go" when it was time to play blues. Bob, Vini talking about Southside Johnny's R&B record collection. Bob talks about Jersey Shore links to Philly soul. "In Iowa, when they played Greetings from Asbury Park, they had no reference point." … Vini again mentions his revived Steel Mill band, their new CD. Panel ends with reference to, I think, Crown Liquor. Vini: "We drank enough of it."

Didn't win the Costello-Springsteen taping tix today but did get this.

When you hit a Planet of the Apes moment while prepping an academic presentation late at night, it's time for bed. Mine tonight, as I prepared for next weekend's Springsteen symposium, paced the apartment and nervously ate my way through the fridge: Wait… I'm not making a case about Springsteen… I'm using Springsteen to make a case about us!

Maniacs… zzzz…

Sometimes I think I use too many metaphors in this blog — that I don't dig enough at outright statements or admissions. Even context is hard. Context easily falls as overexpression — self-complicating.  And among statement, admission and context, your interconnections come strong. Leave one out, and the other two grow endangered. The writer has to sign an implicit liability form. The reader has to watch in thrill or horror.

But there's never so much drama. No amusement park, sky-high-flying, rubber-bound, powdered-palm sweats. How our stomachs got flipped, I have no idea. Personal lessons sent flying land as shared smash-ups.

"We begin to know by making metaphors," Fr. Andrew Greeley writes, and it's good to have friend there tonight. The line comes in his essay "The Catholic Imagination of Bruce Springsteen" — everyone needs a starting point — penned for America magazine after Tunnel of Love.

Why look to metaphors? Refusal to let our lives go unexamined. Our transmissions may be "ineptly accomplished," Greeley says, but still.

The preconscious is the ceaselessly active, nonrational, childlike, playful dynamic of the self that we observe knowing the altered states of consciousness between sleeping and waking, between dreaming and "full" consciousness. It is the leading edge of the self, the fine point of the organism reaching out for union with the rest of reality.

It is, I think, the spirit of the self St. Paul had in mind when he said that the Spirit speak to our spirit — the self insofar as it is charmed and fascinated by the Ultimate as mediated by the good, the true and the beautiful of creation. It is where the Spirit encounters our spirit, seduces it, invites  it to dance all night long, and then endeavors to hold it in thrall for ever and ever. Amen.

Ordinarily, these are the dynamics of our grace, hope, renewal experiences — processes in which God works through the secondary causes of the regular processes of experiencing and of giving name and meaning to the phenomena of life. I do not exclude the possibility of other models in which the Spirit whispers directly in our ear, models fondly loved by pious letter writers and by cardinals coming out of conclave. I merely assert with the Catholic tradition that ordinarily the Spirit enters the dance with our spirit through secondary causes and not through special direct intervention.

It is hard to describe this aspect of the self in a way that does not make it sound like a "part" of the self, a mental counterpart of an arm or a leg. But while the right hemisphere of the brain might be the locale of its activity, the dancing self is not a "faculty" of the self so much as it is a modality of the self — or more likely a collection of modalities, or "altered states," of different but related ways of knowing.

Here's the video of the first song that night — a night that completed a conversion begun three years earlier. I don't have any notes. I know I e-mailed my then-girlfriend an excited song lyric before the concert and days later wrote a friend, "I SAW SPRINGSTEEN!" And that's all I know.

Thanks to: friend Jeff for coming with me, cousin Matt for selling me his extra pair of good seats, friend Steve for telling me to dump the cheap seats I'd originally bought for cousin Matt's, and the Postie who shall remain nameless who bought those original seats from me. The final seats were lowers by Clarence, perfect for three hours of conversion.