The old Liberty Memorial Bridge is now history. Oh, the rusting structure is still there, but you can't drive or walk on it anymore. The west access road to the old bridge is being demolished so traffic lanes to the new bridge can be finished.

If you miss driving across the old bridge or standing in the center of the bridge on the walkway looking out over the Missouri River, I can help.

On the last day Memorial Bridge was open to traffic, I recorded short videos of crossing the bridge from one end to the other. So, whenever you're feeling a little nostalgic for the old bridge, you can watch the video and experience the ride across the river on Liberty Memorial from the passenger side of a car.

Just go to my "Experience the Bridge" site at http://www.darnay.com/iec/bridge.

If you pine for the days when you could leisurely stroll across the old bridge along the pedestrian walkway and pause to view the river, I've got just the thing for you. A few years before construction began on the new bridge, I shot a series of panoramic photos from the middle of the bridge. These photos were then "stitched together" to create a 360 degree view of the bridge and the river below. Using your mouse, you can literally turn in a complete circle and see everything from that perspective on the bridge.

To get this view from Liberty Memorial, go to the "Experience the Bridge" page.

The old bridge may soon be gone in the real world, but thanks to the Internet, it lives on in the digital world.

Also living on in the digital world are the Liberty Memorial Bridge Cams (www.nddot.oxblue.com/blmb) from the North Dakota Department of Transportation and OxBlue. Follow construction and finishing work on the new bridge from two camera angles: One on the east side and the other on the west side. The images are current and fantastic in sharpness and resolution. You can zoom in to see smaller details in the images, if you wish. You also can watch amazing time lapse sequences showing construction work from the beginning to now. This is a great time to visit the site and get a feel for the whole construction project and construction process.

The Music Of Our Lives

Do you know what song was at the top of the pop charts the day you were born? This is vital information to know. Think of it as "musical astrology" - the song you were born under influences the kind of person you become. There's no proof of this, of course, but who needs facts when you've got rock 'n roll? I was born under the House of Presley and the song, "Don't Be Cruel." My wife, Marian, was born under the influence of The Tokens song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." My co-worker, Mike, was born when the Prince song "When Doves Cry" topped the charts. A good musicologist can probably guess within a year or two when someone was born simply by knowing the song.

If you want to find out what song was number one when you were born, go to www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/SelectMonth.htm. Josh Hosler has done a phenomenal job of putting this site together.

I love music and the psychology of music. So I was fascinated by the book, "This Is Your Brain On Music," by Daniel J. Levitin.

Levitin notes the music we most remember is what we hear during our teen years.

"As adults, the music we tend to be nostalgic for, the music that feels like it is "our" music, corresponds to the music we heard during these years," he writes.

Why? "Part of the reason we remember songs from our teenage years is because those years were times of self-discovery, and as a consequence, they were emotionally charged; in general, we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to 'tag' the memories as something important."

Many Alzheimer's patients, despite profound memory loss, can still remember how to sing the songs they heard when they were 14.

Using this insight as a foundation, I built a Web site to test the research. Go to www.darnay.com/iec/music. Type in your name and the year you were born. You'll then be shown a list of pop songs that were popular on the music charts around the time you were 14 years old. If the research holds true to form, you'll probably recognize many of the songs as those you, too, remember with fond nostalgia. Right now, the site uses only pop music information in the results - I'll soon add country music to the mix.

Check it out and see how close the research is to matching the music you remember with a smile.

(Keith Darnay is the webmaster and designer for bismarcktribune.com. His Web site, featuring this column going back to 1995, is at www.darnay.com.iec.)