Just wanted to memorialize this: I’ve had two pieces stemming from my November China trip published recently. The online local newsletter, Cool Cleveland is running an overview this week  http://www.coolcleveland.com/index.php?n=Main.Cozy

and the St. Petersburg Times, a Florida newspaper that regularly publishes my book reviews (check out the archives at www.tampabay.com), ran a big takeout of mine on Beijing a few weeks ago http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/13/Travel/For_Far_East_intrigue.shtml

I’ll be writing more about China in the coming weeks.

So I finally got through to the people administering the University School website, apparently convincing them I’m alive. The website, www.aaus.net, listed me as dead and misspelled my name as “Wolfe.” One of my oldest friends, Eddie Violet, e-mailed me today to tell me he’s about to retire from the state Bureau of Workers Compensation in Columbus; going through old e-mails he noticed that he’d told me about my premature demise several years ago, checked the website and lo and behold, I was still dead.

I went to University School, an arm of Ohio State University, from the time I was 5 until I was 15, when my family moved to the Boston area. That year was 1959. I spent my last two years at Newton North High School in suburban Boston.

But University School, which I recall with great affection for its open-mindedness and progressiveness, was essentially where I learned to think. So it matters to me that my association with it is accurately chronicled. I went there as a faculty brat; my father, Kurt H. Wolff, was a professor of sociology at OSU before Brandeis University hired him northward.

Today, I called Columbus information and got hold of the numbers of the AAUS.NET publisher and archivist; the latter told me she couldn’t recall who had informed her of my alleged death, and the publisher called me later apologizing for the error. I expect my reanimation will surface soon on the website. Weird how the Internet can spread bad information. Glad I caught the error.

Karen and I were in Adams County, Ohio last weekend, getting away from it all at Murphin Ridge Inn. That’s a kind of expanded bed and breakfast in West Union, a speck of a town about 75 miles north of Cincinnati. It’s 250 miles south of our house, so it took four-and-a-half hours to get there. It was worth it.

Anchored by an 1830s brick farmhouse, Murphin Ridge Inn features a handful of cabins, none older than seven years and some of them named. We stayed in the Frolic, a 2004 cabin with a big Amish king bed, a Jacuzzi, one of those neat electronic fireplaces, a glass-enclosed shower with a rain head shower head, a coffee maker and some furniture. No TV; semidecent WiFi. Breakfast was part of the package. We ate it in the farmhouse, and it was great, like dinner was. The first night Karen had tiger shrimp, while I had steak au poivre. Nice wine, too, served by our hosts, Darryl and Sherry McKenney.

We spent Saturday at the Serpent Mound, an eerie earthworks in the shape of a serpent, dating from about 1100 A.D. We visited Miller’s Furniture, an Amish empire featuring gorgeous furniture (natch), a killer bakery and a bulk-foods building. We wound up at Herb Erwin’s barn sale. Herb’s a hustler; a realtor and auctioneer, he lords it over a sprawling farm where he keeps peacocks, mules, goats, sheep, hens guinea and otherwise—and raises Newfoundlands. We might get a dog, though I’m still mixed about this. We went back Sunday to tell Mrs. Erwin we might be interested in a Newfoundland pup.

The countryside in this Appalachian-Amish region is hilly, winding, the poverty deep and inescapable. How little Adams County towns like Peebles and Meigs and Franklin survive, I have no idea. But I do know how Murphin Ridge Inn gets along: Quite well, thank you. It’s a magnet sure to draw us back.

I’m sitting next to Laura, Lylah’s bud. Laura and Lylah are shrieking. Lylah’s my daughter, on the verge of 13. She’s obsessed with Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas, aka the Jonas Brothers, the minihunks on the Hannah Montana Tour, the hottest rock ‘n’ roll ticket in years. Karen, my wife, made Lylah cry for joy when Lylah unwrapped a very special Christmas present: three tickets to the Jan. 3 Hannah Montana show at the Q. Karen won’t tell me what she paid for the tickets.

The show ran from 7:15 to just before 9:30. The production values were impeccable; the Jonas Brothers opened with a half-hour of their perky boypop, a skillful amalgam of ballads and boisterousness that at its best stomped with the authority of early rockabilly. They were pretty good, and they were indisputably athletic. Screamfests greeted “S.O.S.,” “Kids of the Future,” “Year 3000” and “When You Look Me in the Eyes.”

Then Hannah Montana, the blonde half of the Miley Cyrus-Hannah Montana presentation, came out for about 45 minutes. Her songs were perfect pop product, their cues straight from the ’70s and ’80s songbook of ABBA and Journey. The empowerment message, compactly calibrated for her proto-teen audience, came through loud and clear in “We Got the Party,” “Nobody’s Perfect” (an acute expression of feeling like an outsider, a message many young girls relate to) and “Old Blue Jeans.” That last was nifty in its blend of saucy and cute, Hannah and her girls prancing, all buff and casual, to lyrics about the joys of familiarity. Hannah makes girls feels safe and edgy at the same time.

After ducking into a little room onstage, Miley Cyrus came out, hair dark and clothing rougher than Hannah’s. A biker chain dangling from her tight pants, Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter, who stars in the Disney TV show “Hannah Montana,” delivered “Start All Over” (she was tough here), “Let’s Dance” (all she missed in this busy presentation was Lionel Richie) and “G.N.O.,” or “Girls’ Night Out,” a pitch for bonding with her audience. Not a problem.

The show was a triumph of branding and packaging. The drummer was great, the messages sharp as those in a good political campaign, and the way Hannah-Miley wove those cuddly Jonas Brothers into the act was well thought out.

At the same time, with her commands to yell “Hannah” and “Montana” and her self-referential remarks, Hannah-Miley spoke to the narcissism at the core of her appeal. Hers is a branding effort geared toward some of the most impressionable among us, girls on the tip of adolescence. By delivering three separate brands - The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus - she’s keeping the product, itself a commercial for Disney (world/channel/radio) diverse and marketable. God forbid scandal befall her, something the cheerily purposeful Miley, in contrast to predecessor Britney Spears, seems unlikely to generate. Miley Cyrus is only 15 – and already in control. May she retain that as she grows up.