Author: AirBeagle (S P)

Wow … I don’t remember who it was, but something that somebody said about Michigan weather has stuck with me, which is that if it’s been one mode of weather for five days in a row, you can guarantee that the sixth day will be completely different. So after roughly 5 or 6 or so...

Last night I was waiting for the bus at the corner of South U and State. I guess srah’s right — the Gideons are out in force. Or at least I think it was the Gideons. It’s so hard to tell the different factions apart. Anyway, a guy with a bullhorn was standing on a...

Seen on the way home from teaching middle school social studies Friday afternoon: 1. A minivan with New York license plates and the bumper sticker, ‘I’d Rather Be In Ann Arbor’ and … 2. The happiest dog in the world, riding in a car with gleeful abandon. He was quite sad when they had to...

This pretty much sums up the hypocritical state of the Empire. « Says Mike Reiss, a writer for The Simpsons »: ‘The rules governing what we may or may not say are a little hard to follow. This year, for instance, Howard Stern’s trash talk lost him six radio stations … then gained him nine...

From Daniel Boorstin’s 1961 classic The Image: Nowadays everybody tells us that what we need is more belief, a stronger and deeper and more encompassing faith. A faith in America and what we are doing. That may be true in the long run. What we need first and now is to disillusion ourselves. What ails...

Speaking of missionaries, I guess the Mormons have a new trick going. One night last week when I was waiting to cross State, a guy appeared out of the corner of my vision and pressed a Book of Mormon card into my hand. He was in plainclothes, and he was flanked cleverly on both sides...

There was a Jesus freak standing in the middle of the Diag at noon today railing against secular humanism and the evils of going to college, getting an education, and “getting ahead,” which he described as self-serving folly and as a sure road to hell. Sounded exactly like every line I was fed by fundie...

Not only did Johnny Ramone die today, but when I stopped during my hectic day to get a bite of lentil soup at the Rendezvous annex on South University, the kid behind the counter, as she was taking my order, said, “It sucks that all the great music was made the year I was born.”...

Motley Fool says it best: ‘Think about it: Would shutting down the nation’s seventh-largest carrier really be such a tragedy? On a human level, yes, undoubtedly. The sting of more displaced workers wouldn’t be easily sedated. And yet, on paper, US Airways has been a net destroyer of shareholder value for years. The owners —...

Haven’t been posting here thanks to the ongoing drama with my hands. But I hope to get to regular posting soon. The hands are healing, but I have to take it easy. It’s a total pain in the tuckus ..

I made it to 90 miles on the Bobcat before disaster struck: A few weeks ago, I was involved in a hit-and-run with a total bitch who came from behind me while I was cycling south in the bike lane on Packard and turned right into me. I hit her car hard with my hands...

From Gag Rule by Lewis Lapham: ‘Ashcroft said that the onerous regulations under which the FBI had been operating for the last thirty years “mistakenly combined timeless objectives – the enforcement of the law and respect for civil rights and liberties – with outdated means.” ‘As modified by the context and subject to the circumstances,...

We went to Nichols Arboretum this afternoon, our first visit there. It seemed strange that there was no parking, but I found out after we got home that the main entrance is apparently on the other side from where we entered. (We parked on Oswego and walked across Geddes to enter.) The arboretum is large...

Classes only began for me Wednesday. But I officially began the second year of library school at 8.30 last Thursday morning when I volunteered to help out at one of the new student orientation events. One of the centerpieces of the SI orientation experience is showing students what it’s like to collaborate by throwing them...

A very nice sunny day today, not too hot, almost no humidity to speak of. And the light is starting to take on that languid, deep-toned, Gatsby-esque autumnal quality. I went outside briefly tonight at dusk and looked west. There is nothing in California (at least nothing in any heavily populated areas of California) to...

Student Move-In Days were this past week, from Wednesday through Friday. The dotty Ann Arbor News ran a front-pager recently featuring a list of the Top 10 ways you could tell students were back in town, but, unless you’re a Martian having made a recent first-time Earth landing, it really isn’t all that difficult to...

Odd weather this past week … for the first time almost all summer long (except maybe for a few days in May and June) we had what could truthfully be called Summer Weather with capital letters, with highs in the mid-80s, strong humidity, and relatively cloud-free skies. Then, yesterday (Saturday), it rained part of the...

Today was perfect weather (in my opinion), for summer, anyway … the sun was out, but there were periodic clouds moving across the sky, and the weather never got much hotter than 70 degrees. There was a breeze in the air and the light was taking on that lazy, hazy quality it gets at the...

From today’s Ann Arbor News: The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a wild winter with heavy precipitation and dramatic temperature swings in the Northeast. The northern Plains and Great Lakes will be snowy, the almanac says, while it will be milder in the southern half of the country. The Northeast will have unusually wet weather –...

Well, no more Retro Posts, folks … we made it successfully past the one-year mark and what a year it’s been. I’ve forgotten lots of things that happened, but I do remember one thing: The trees were still green this time last year! Yesterday: « Our Life in Michigan – Another Sunday in Frisinger Park...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] The first squirrel encounter … and it’s been a year of lots and lots of squirrel encounters! [Yes, it has — I thought I’d had my exposure to the...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Settling in … Ann Arbor: Days Seven and Eight After orientation yesterday, I walked home from central campus, all the way down State past the underpass of East Stadium....

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Rethinking things … Developments Our blog (specifically, my entry about the library-lessness of orientation yesterday) has been linked by librarian.net (which I found out after getting a couple of...

Say hello to The AntiFascist, your antidote to that famous right-wing website run by that famous Florida queen-in-denial. (It’s brand-new, so bear with us …)

Oh, yeah: I’ll be on the other side of the LGBT table this year (this coming Thursday), helping greet incoming first-year students as a board member of LILA.

It’s more than somewhat embarrassing to re-read last year’s entries from about this time about the School of Information, actually. I still feel, a year later, as though the school is emphatic (occasionally over-emphatic) in its attention to Information with a Capital I. This means lots of computer-related coursework, lots of technology, lots of econ,...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Does he feel the same way? Orientation: Day Two The second day was quite an experience. The highlight of the day was being put into a group with four...

This was the first day all month that actually felt like August. Most of the rest of the month has alternated between day that were what could best be described as tepid and days that were actually cold and/or thunderstorm-filled. I’ve had no problem with the mild August, though it seems to have disconcerted Steve...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Immersion … Orientation: Day One Well, Orientation Day One is over and I can report that ….. it’s gonna be a busy two years. They had us all in...

Bear with me as I indulge in some sentimentality … What’s interesting to me about glancing back at the retro posts from last year at this time is how new this all was to me: not just Ann Arbor, although that was certainly a big part of it, but the whole adventure, from going back...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] The calm before the grad school storm … Ann Arbor: day five Today was a bumpy one. We went out to get some supplies and victuals. I bought a...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] More of our first days in AA … Ann Arbor: day four We went out to dinner with Scott tonight at Gourmet Garden, a Chinese restaurant on the west...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Some memories are better left blotted from the mind … All moved in (mirabile dictu) What a weekend. We basically just unloaded an entire trailer full of our stuff...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] I do remember the exhaustion here … Day Eleven Sorry there haven’t been any posts this weekend, but we’ve moved 7,500 pounds of household goods, from the trailer into...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Ouch. Moving in is almost as bad as moving out … Ann Arbor: Day Two We signed the lease documents and started moving things into the townhouse. This is...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Has it really been a year already?! Ann Arbor: Day One Steve was out and about today making sure the trailer was in place to unload at the new...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Ahhhhh … home at last. A year ago today, we arrived in Ann Arbor. Whatta year, whatta year … Day Eight Day Eight — Lexington, KY, to Ann Arbor,...

One thing that I’ve really learned in my time in southeast Michigan is an increased appreciation for the blues. You have blues played on the radio and blues festivals in the Bay Area, to be sure, although for historical reasons I don’t understand, the Bay Area, as anyone who listens to KFOG (the only radio...

The students are definitely back. About the only thing that hasn’t happened yet is the start of classes, so the mad throngs of students filing across central campus haven’t materialized yet, but otherwise the “quiet” of summer is pretty much over with. The traffic on State is back to snail’s pace levels. A couple of...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] My second visit to Lexington, which I think is rather a pretty place … Lexington, KY Population 260,512 (2000 census). Seat of Fayette County. Second-largest city in Kentucky. Home...

The first time I met Bayley was the first time I set foot in Steve’s apartment in the Sunset in February 2000. Steve opened the front door and a beagle was on the other side of it. When Bayley saw the stranger (me), he looked at me, let out a loud, reproachful, prolonged howl of...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Memphis. Ugh. Tennessee drivers. Ugh. Maybe I shouldn’t have embarked on this journey down memory lane … Day Seven Day Seven — Memphis, TN, to Lexington, KY Surprise! We...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Thank god for this music … it distracted us from the homicidal/suicidal Tennessee drivers on I-40 … Soundtrack, Day Seven Between Memphis and Nashville, Emmylou Harris’s The Ballad of...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] I kinda enjoyed Nashville, but we need to go back and spend more time there … Nashville, TN Population 569,891 (2000 census; figure covers Nashville proper and Davidson County)....

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Ugh. Maybe on another visit it will seem okay; last year, it was the pits to me … Memphis, TN Population 650,100 (2000 census). The first European to set...

Bayley Murphy Beagle was born in a double-wide trailer house in Kemp, Texas, near Dallas, on 20-Aug-94, to Laddie Lattie and No-No Emmitt. He came to live with David and I on 17-Oct-94. He is better travelled and has lived in more places than most people I know. He has lived in Dallas and Plano,...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Day Six started out wonderfully and with lots of fun in Don’s airplane flying above Sundance Airport northwest of Oklahoma City. We then drove around Norman and around Thunderbird...

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.] Ah, Day Five … Santa Fe and Oklahoma City … my old stomping grounds. Some great things happened, some nasty things happened, but at least we survived the Texas...