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 and am still recovering from...

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“mistakenly combined timeless objectives – the enforcement of the law and respect for civil rights and liberties – with outdated means.” ‘As modified by the context and subject to the circumstances, the phrase “outdated means” can...

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 – 123 acres – but...

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 together into groups of four...

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 compare to the colors of...

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 tell when they’re back. The...

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 day, and by close to...

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 end of summer and 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 – either as rain or snow,...

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 » More Autumn Colors and...

[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 spectrum of squirrels at Stanford....

[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 about a mile and...

[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 e-mails from alums of the...

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, lots of cognitive psych. But...

[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 other students and being sent...

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 somewhat that the month has...

[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 one big room in Michigan...

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 to grad school at 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.] 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 few new short-sleeved shirts but...

[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 side of town. Other than...

[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 in two days by ourselves,...

[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 the townhouse. Just the two...

[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 when it really hits you...

[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 digs and seeing the inside...

[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, MI We’re here!! It’s all...

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 station with any decent reception...

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 undergrads were lazily sashaying across...

[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 to the University of Kentucky...

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 protest that this intruder was...

[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 were supposed to spend 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.] 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). Official name Nashville-Davidson. Capital 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.] 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 Sally Rose. Later, through Kentucky,...

[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 eyes on the site of...

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, TX; brief periods in Duncan,...

[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 Lake to rejoin I-40. Then...

[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 Panhandle and got outta there...

[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.] Frank speaks more eloquently than I can. I have too much history and other stuff mixed up in my 20 years in Okiehoma to be objective … Oklahoma City, OK Population 506,132 (2000 census)....

[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 remember nothing of this … geez, hit 40 and your memory goes, doesn’t it? Soundtrack, Day Six Don played an album this morning that startled me: From Elvis in Memphis. I had not...

[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.] A short one … Oklahoma City was burning hell that day … ironically, this summer has been much cooler. The high there on 9-Aug-04 was just 76 degrees. Well shut my mouth! Greetings from...

[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.] Sixteen Horsepower kicks ass … and that album will forever remind me of that cross-country excursion. Soundtrack, Day Five Sixteen Horsepower’s Hoarse, one of my favorite albums. A very fitting album for the wilds...

[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, yes. Day Four. Fabulous getting to spend time in my favorite US city and fantasizing about returning (next year?!) to live there. But then we had a couple of incidents (a phone call...

[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.] Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. God, how I love Sante Fe! Santa Fe, NM Population 62,203 (2000 census). Full proper name: La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asis. Capital of New...

The damage that the Boy Emperor is doing to the nation is largely incalculable, and much of it secret, as the mainstream media is slowly and finally beginning to point out. Says « the Washington Post »: ’ Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million...

You’d think AirBeagle was moribund since there hasn’t been a post here in over two weeks … but you’d be wrong. I’m simply suffering through a period of forced inactivity thanks to the onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which began in May, reached its peak as I tried to start grad school the first of July (and knocked me out...

Unpleasant critters who leave unpleasant calling cards on your arms and ankles, and I’d never encountered them (to my memory) before moving here. Steve had to explain to me what they are. Guess I’m going to have to stop letting the beagle wander off into the bushes behind the house.

I thought the lavender wildflowers that have popped up in almost every unoccpied spot of grass in Frisinger Park were a nice addition of color (they’re deceptively gorgeous) until I read a little column in the Ann Arbor News yesterday that fingered them as spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa), a pernicious invasive weed. Originally a native of central and Eastern Europe...