Now, why would I begin a column with a picture of my high school ring? Hidden from view, inside the band, is an inscription, Jimi Jai. It’s a disaster phonetically, but I was “going through a phase.” A new wave of conservativism was sweeping the country, and I had recently discovered my older sister’s record collection, with its hopeful strains of the late ’sixties and early ’seventies. I wanted to be a hippie, change my name from James to Jimi – yes, like Jimi Hendrix – and swim against the prevailing current of Reagan-era optimism and conspicuous consumption.
