Category Archives: Around the World

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 3-Aug

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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 miss the ease of BART … no cars, no traffic, you can sleep or read the paper or cruise hot guys, er, I mean, relax on the way to Oakland …

‘Things I’ll miss, #7

‘BART. It’s frequently overcrowded, more than often delayed by mechanical problems, it’s somewhat scary late at night, and it’s damn expensive. But if you’re trying to get around the Bay Area (or many parts of it) without a car, it’s indispensable.

‘And on a day like today, when it’s not too packed, when you don’t have to be any particular place at any particular time, and you’re not short on change, it’s a fun ride. You can fall asleep. You can peoplewatch. You can get reading done. And if you’re in a contemplative mood, there’s nothing more conducive to brainstorming or daydreaming than staring out the big windows as the train hurtles along the track and you watch the warehouses and the clotheslines and the churches and (in the distance) the hills glide past.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:54:01 | 3-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 2-Aug, Part 4

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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 stairway walks are fabulous, but they totally kick your ass …

‘Things I’ll miss, #6

‘Stairway walks. San Francisco has more than 350 stairways, some of them obvious landmarks like the Lyon Steps, some of them completely hidden discoveries, like the series of stairs that winds through the neighborhoods above Castro and 17th Street, or the amazing convoluted stairway walk through the parkland at the edge of Glen Canyon Park that starts at Portola Drive and ends by dropping you out into Glen Park. You feel like you’re in an entirely separate landscape, bucolic and almost completely divorced from the general tumult of the urban cage that San Francisco can be.

‘I discovered these walks through my friend Steve C., who had a well-worn copy of Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks in San Francisco when he lived here. We both took the walks, individually and separately, and for me, the walks were a great form of exercise, a great way to do some weekend socializing, a kind of permissible semi-voyeurism (some of the stairs wend through some semi-private nooks of the city that most people wouldn’t bother searching out), and, of course, a great way to see the City.

‘One big regret I have is that I never took the long city-wide walk that Bakalinsky outlined. Another is that I didn’t do all of the walks.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:37:09 | 2-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 2-Aug, Part 3

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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.]

‘Mitchell’s is pretty fabulous and we haven’t really found anything to equal it around AA, as of yet. Anyone have suggestions?

‘Things I’ll miss, #5

‘Mitchell’s Ice Cream. I had tasted Mitchell’s but today was the first time I’d actually been to the store, a cramped hole in the wall on a non-descript block on the edge of Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. Waiting in line was not my favorite thing: it had been a hot August day, and people were crowding around the door impatiently waiting to get their ice cream fix (and boy, do people get persnickety and weird about ice cream). Fortunately, the place has a strictly enforced take-a-number system that makes the line less of a nightmare; all you do is pick your number and wait (and wait, and wait). And the help behind the counter are polite, patient, and speedy, not surly and nasty like a lot of San Francisco service workers. And of course, there’s the payoff: possibly the best ice cream you’ll ever eat.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:19:15 | 2-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 2-Aug, Part 2

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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.]

‘Oh yeah, I remember views. Unlike here in pancake country …

‘Things I’ll miss, #4

‘The views. There are spectacular views in San Francisco that you won’t see anywhere else in the world. This is true of many places, of course; but those places aren’t San Francisco, with its unique combination of maze-like neighborhoods, its myriad (actually, 42, if you’re counting) hills, and its unparalleled landmarks.

‘—Posted by Frank at 21:07:33 | 02-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 2-Aug, Part 1

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet. An extra note on this one: It’s especially sad to see how many of these bookstores no longer exist.

‘[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 have to say that there are fabulous book stores around Ann Arbor, so I don’t miss these probably as much as Frank …

‘Things I’ll miss, #3

‘Green Apple Books. Haven’t ventured out there lately (it’s in the Richmond, and I now live in Oakland) but, for its selection, its sprawling looseness, and its rickety hardwood floors, it’s my favorite Bay Area bookstore.

‘Runners-up: 2. Stacey’s.

‘3. Moe’s Books in Berkeley.

‘4. Cody’s, also Berkeley.

‘5. Booksmith.

‘6. Aardvark (for the imperious tabby cat alone).

‘7. Kepler’s, in Menlo Park, although its atmosphere and clientele were often a little too snooty for my liking.

‘8. City Lights, a San Francisco institution, and one that was inexplicably attacked as a leftist hive (you would’ve thought it was an al-Qaida meeting hall) and a symbol of everything that’s wrong with America in several out-of-control letters to the editor in the Chronicle during its fiftieth anniversary earlier this year.

‘9. The defunct (the space is now a yoga facility) Ninth Avenue Books.

‘10. Alexander Book Co.

‘11. Modern Times.

‘12. Bound Together, for shock value alone (not anymore, but when I first moved here, the concept of an anarchist bookstore was pretty amazing). The staff was surly at best, but as someone commented somewhere else on the Internet, “If you were a left-wing anarchist, would you be in a good mood?”

‘13. European Book Company. All kinds of Europe stuff, including supercilious French staff, supercilious being a particularly amusing quality to sport at the intersection of Larkin and Geary. Years ago, I found a fat English-Dutch dictionary here and just about died.

‘14. A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, which is last because it has a great deal of sumptuous and intriguing stock to distract you, but seemingly never has exactly what you’re looking for.

‘A Different Light should be on this list—when I first settled down in San Francisco ten years ago, I had some of my most exciting times as a newbie to the City participating in a rambunctious writing workshop there—but I’m not that fond of the place anymore; it’s become too generic, too much like all of the other touristy boutiques and chain stores in the Castro. As you can tell, I spend way too much of my spare time in bookstores.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:55:10 | 02-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 1-Aug, Part 4

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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 have to agree with Frank on this one … I miss it still!

‘Things I’ll miss, #2

‘The Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is the celebrity. But the Bay Bridge has so much more majesty, solidity, and grandeur. It is my favorite bridge in the world.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:52:19 | 1-Aug-03

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 1-Aug, Part 3

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘[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.]

‘In his first postings to aSquared, Frank talked about aspects of San Francisco he would and would not miss:

‘Things I’ll miss, #1:

‘Claes von Oldenburg (another friggin’ SWEDE!) and Coosje van Bruggen‘s “Cupid’s Span” at Rincon Park. You either love it or you hate it. I happen to love it.

‘I glanced at it a lot on my way in to work over the Bay Bridge. It added a lot of (well-needed) whimsy to the Embarcadero.

‘Von Oldenburg is now apparently adding a sculpture of a gigantic banana to the sterile Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford campus (van Bruggen riffs: “The banana is a fruit with many interpretations; it’s a flower, it’s a phallus . . . the banana is kind of a wit”), which, in my opinion, is an absolutely transcendent touch.

‘—Posted by Frank at 11:45:21 | 1-Aug-03’

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 1-Aug, Part 2

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

‘Here’s another retro/anniversary post … skip it you’re not into my sentimentality. I apparently made a laundry list of things I would and would not miss about San Francisco. A year later, well, my list is holding up pretty well. I still agree with most every item on the list.

‘‘I’m Taking My Heart With Me

‘‘Frank makes note in his blog of a woman asking him for directions to Lombard Street today … quite possibly the last time he’ll have to give a tourist directions to the “Crookedest Street in the World.”

‘‘It reminds me of one afternoon after work while waiting for the cable car down to the Embarcadero at Grant and California, the heart of Chinatown, across from St. Mary’s Cathedral, etc., etc. Two tourists, obviously lost and confused, asked me how to ride the cable car. Turns out they were from Jonesboro, AR. They seemed to be enjoying themselves in Baghdad-by-the-Bay. It was just your average day in a tourist mecca, something that I’ve been rather blasé about; on the one hand, the geography, weather, history and … fabulousness … of this place is wonderful, but on the other, sometimes it can be a royal pain-in-the-tuckus.

‘‘Now, the encounter with the Jonesboro couple was pleasant, as was a 7 a.m. cable car ride up the hill to work one spring morning when I found myself riding with the members of a Swiss national folk singing choir, who sang a beautiful melody as we ‘climbed halfway to the stars.’ But other encounters weren’t as pleasant. During the summers, height of tourist season, it was often really annoying, and sometimes downright scary, to wade through the throngs in order to get to work at 700 California. Annoying because apparently people leave their brains at home when they go on vacation and tend to congregate in clumps on the sidewalk, impeding all progress by anyone else. Downright scary because I can’t count the times I’ve seen a tourist do something truly stupid in the street, either getting on/off the cable cars on California, or thinking that Grant is an open-air shopping mall, not a busy one-way street open to cars.

‘‘All-in-all, I kind of enjoyed the cachet of living in a cool place. I do grudgingly admit it. In certain ways, SF is very hip and very cool and I think the bottom line is that I’m pleased and proud to have been a resident of it once in my lifetime.

‘‘But no place is perfect; even Eden had its snakes. San Francisco can be dirty, filthy, incredibly physically stressful, amazingly packed with people in a small area (or at least so it seems to this New Mexico/Okiehoma boy); it can be ridiculously provincial while being ridiculously pretentious, all at the same time. It’s a fabulous, glorious, stinky, seething … PLACE of a city. As much as I moan and groan about it sometimes, there are things I will dearly miss. The fog has been particularly thick and pervasive for the last few weeks and as I write this, I can barely see the buildings across the street. That won’t be easy to say goodbye to.

‘‘So I’m starting a little list: Things I’ll Miss About San Francisco and Things I Won’t Miss About San Francisco. Let’s take the negatives first so we can end on a positive note, shall we?

‘‘Things I Won’t Miss About San Francisco:

• The smell of urine-soaked doorways

‘‘• The possibility that my home might fall down in an earthquake

‘‘• The approaches to the Bay Bridge

‘‘• The bad attitude that the place seems to engender in its citizen

‘‘• That ‘Excuse me’ means, when it comes from a San Franciscan, ‘Get the f*** outta the way!’ and is said in a tone to match

‘‘• Feeling like a rabbit in a particularly crowded hutch

‘‘• The stench of my neighbor’s daily 4:30 p.m. fishhead soup binge

‘‘• San Franciscans attitude towards allowing dogs to run around without being leashed

‘‘• Muni (although that one might change after I’ve ridden Ann Arbor’s public transit a few times)

‘‘• Living in a tourist mecca

‘‘• The memory that is triggered whenever I pass the corner of Sansome and Market where the bike messenger was smacked in the back of the head by the Muni bus mirror. Trust me, it was very not pretty

‘‘• Hawai’i. So close, yet so far

‘‘• Living within range of Kim Jong-il’s nuclear missiles

‘‘• The fact that the San Andreas is within spittin’ distance

‘‘• Certain nameless local television ‘news’ personalities … particularly that weatherlady who thinks that cable-knit sweaters with tight leather miniskirts or a kicky little denim tuxedo jacket over a spaghetti-strap top is … acceptable fashion for the rest of us to have to see

‘‘• Not being able to get out and just … drive without having 45,000 other people sharing the experience with you

‘‘• The incredible physical toll the place takes on you when you’re commuting to work or just buying groceries. It’s all drama. All of it

‘‘• Did I mention the urine-soaked doorways?

‘‘Things I’ll Miss About San Francisco:

‘‘• #1: The fog

‘‘• The climate

‘‘• The hills and mountains

‘‘• The Pacific Ocean

‘‘• The Golden Gate

‘‘• The eucalyptus trees outside my windows

‘‘• The cliffs overlooking the GGB and Baker Beach

‘‘• The Presidio

‘‘• Swiss choirs singing on the cable cars

‘‘• The labyrinths at Grace Cathedral

‘‘• The view from Twin Peaks

‘‘• San Francisco International

‘‘• The Castro Theater

‘‘• Standing at Fort Point underneath the GGB at the spot where Jimmy Stewart jumped into the bay to save Kim Novak

‘‘• Driving in the rain in the winter through wine country

‘‘• La Cantina Mexican restaurant in Santa Rosa

‘‘• Virgin Megastore

‘‘• Milano’s Pizzeria

‘‘• Cheap Pete’s Frames on Geary

‘‘• Mt. Sutro rearing up behind my apartment

‘‘• Sassy raccoons going through the garbage bins at 3 a.m.

‘‘• The possibility that an big ol’ earthquake might add some drama to your life at any moment

‘‘• The beagle’s favorite trail to see the feral kitties behind the greenhouse in Golden Gate Park

‘‘• The National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park

‘‘• UCSF hospital

‘‘• The daily parades in Chinatown during the entire month of February to celebrate Chinese New Year

‘‘• Attempting to order breakfast at McDonald’s at Grant and California in Mandarin Chinese

‘‘• Being able to get on a 777 and be in Paris 12 hours later

‘‘• NorthPoint

‘‘• Ghirardelli’s ice cream shop

‘‘• Monterey Bay and Carmel

‘‘• Sausalito and the ferry ride to and from it

‘‘• Giovanni’s Pizza on Bridgeway in Sausalito

‘‘• The fact that I can pretty much be who I want to be and not be hassled by the Fascists for it (mostly)

‘‘• That fact that Republicans can’t hurt you here

‘‘• And, of course, the friends I leave behind …

‘‘Hmmm. Well, THAT was an interesting exercise …

‘‘—Posted by Steve at 00:02 | 01-Aug-03’

‘Wonder what I’ll write about Ann Arbor when/if we leave here?’ [grin]

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 1-Aug, Part 1

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

Laid Up

‘I’ve been so laid up with carpal tunnel (and thank you Hillary, Michael and Dorothea for your wonderful advice and care, I do appreciate it) that I really dropped the ball on an important milestone for aSquared AirBeagle: Happy Birthday to Us! We’re a year old!

‘Because all of those entries are from my trashed Movable Type installation, I don’t have an archive of them any longer on the server. So I thought I’d do a little retrospective of our cross-country adventures while moving to Ann Arbor. Since I’m now an old fart of 40, I’ve already forgotten the particulars of last August’s continental brouhaha.

‘It appears that I had the first idea to do aSquared around 23-Jul-03:’

‘‘Beginning of the End’

‘‘Sorry for the few-and-far-between updates, folks, but things are a might busy around Le Maison du Beagle. See, we’re moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, MI, in just a very few weeks (in just a mere 23 days, in fact), so I’ve been a bit frenzied, flying to Detroit, looking for a new place (we scored a fairly spiffy new townhouse with plenty of outdoors for beagle to roam around in and not far from campus and Michigan Stadium) and packing up the books and DVDs, figuring out all the nagging logistics of a 2,800-mile, cross-country move and wrapping things up here.

‘‘It’s turning out to be possibly a month-long orgy of goodbyes … visiting favorite spots in San Francisco, taking final pictures, saying goodbyes to friends and the doctor and his staff and so on and on, so the ‘blogging is lagging. But I’m going to try to keep up. In fact, in a few days, I’m going to start a side journal, a little log of the beagle’s cross-country adventures, along with some pictures. So stay tuned.

‘—Posted by Steve at 23:33 | 23-Jul-03’’’

‘Oh, those heady days of preparing to push off into the unknown! What a fast year, in some respects, it’s been. Wow.

‘I suppose that aSquared’s official birthday was 1-Aug-03, when I posted the following:

‘‘Answering the Siren Call

‘‘Welcome to the first post in the ‘airbeagle moves to michigan’ ‘blog, your best way to track us as we move across country in the Jeep, from San Francisco to Ann Arbor. Or bust.

‘Here’s the way things work around here. The graphic at top provides a visual way to track us as we move across the country. [Ed. Note: The very first aSquared graphic, no longer available]. The first photo is, obviously, of the Golden Gate Bridge, which will we miss, here in San Francisco, which we won’t. Well, maybe just a tiny little bit. More on that later. The last photo on the right is of the Michigan Union on the campus of the University of Michigan, ground zero in Ann Arbor, where we will toil through two years, two Michigan winters, four semesters of grad school for Frank and lord knows what for me. The photos in the center will be replaced as we’re on the road with photos of spots we pass by on the way.

‘You can read each day’s journal posting, obviously, in this left-hand column and see what day and time it was posted and by whom. In the right column, you can see where we are, how far we’ve driven and an estimate of how far we have to go, plus ways to view previous entries and links to other sites, both internal to airbeagle.com and newspapers in the places we’ll pass through.

‘As the trip itself progresses, I’ll post photos of what we’ve seen that day. Fair warning: most of them will feature Bayley Murphy Beagle in some form or fashion. Just so you know.

‘Sound ambitious? Well, it is. But we’re lookin’ at 3,053 miles of America, folks. It’s a fascinating land and we want to document what we see of it. First, to see if we can document it or if we get bored or tired of it and blow it off towards the end. Second, to keep a record of what will be a strange and wonderful trip.

‘The route itself is pretty much planned thusly (although not set in stone):

‘• Day 1: San Francisco to Yosemite to Bishop, CA—because we want to avoid I-5, Bakersfield, Barstow and Needles at all costs. Been there, done that, didn’t enjoy it.

‘• Day 2: Bishop to Las Vegas—not because we want to gamble or anything, but because there are lots of cheap hotel rooms and everyone should see the epitome of wretched American excess at least once before they die. It’s kinda like Frenchmen in the sixteenth century making the journey to Versailles, then dying happy.

‘• Day 3: Las Vegas to Gallup, NM—yes, you heard me, Gallup, NM, because there might be a pow-wow going on and Gallup is probably as far as we’ll want to go that day.

‘• Day 4: Gallup to Santa Fe—because I can’t pass through my native state, my spiritual homeland without stopping off and showing off the nation’s oldest and highest state capital to Frank. If you just stay on I-40 through New Mexico, well, you’re just sad, that’s all.

‘• Day 5: Santa Fe to Oklahoma City—because it’s 527 miles of absolutely nothingness and we wish to spend as little time as possible in the Texas panhandle. Like Barstow, been there many times, bought many t-shirts, felt as spiritually flattened as the landscape, no thanks.

‘• Day 6: Oklahoma City to Memphis, TN—because Graceland is in Memphis and, as with Vegas, how can you call yourself an American if you haven’t paid homage to the King?

‘• Day 7: Memphis to Nashville—because scoring tickets to something bluegrass-y at the Ryman would be extremely cool,

‘• Day 8: Nashville to Lexington, KY—because bluegrass country is even prettier than bluegrass music.

‘• Day 9: Lexington to Ann Arbor, via Cincinnati and Dayton, OH—because an airplane nut like me can’t be that close to Orville and Wilbur and the Air Force Museum without taking a quick gander.

‘Yes, I know, we could go down here a couple of miles from the apartment and get on I-80 and go all the way to Chicago, then join I-94 on up to AA. It’s shorter, faster … and as boring as Lynne Cheney giving a patriotism lecture to a college professor. Plus you gotta go through Salt Lake City. And, just as with Barstow and the Texas panhandle, well, you get the idea.

‘So there’s the route. One can see a fair piece of road going that way, and a fair piece of America and Americans. El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. Siegfried and Roy. Hoover Dam. Palace of the Governors. The Sangre de Cristos. A giant stainless steel cross and Cadillacs stuck in the earth west of Amarillo. The Oklahoma City National Memorial. The under-construction library of our last democratically elected president. Lisa Marie, Elvis’ DC-8. Georgetown, KY. And at the end of the road, a new life. New adventures. New friends (and a couple of old ones thrown in for good measure).

‘More, ever so much more, later. The packing has just begun and I’m just plumb wore out with it all. Y’all stay tuned. The Mother Road beckons and gets more insistent every day. We’ll heed her siren call.

‘But first, I’ve got to disentangle the beagle from the bubble wrap …’

‘And so it began, a year ago last Sunday.

‘Like I said, from now until 23-Aug, I believe I’ll read last year’s posts into the record, since they don’t exist in the archives, and I’ll start with these other posts from 1-Aug-03:

‘‘Just to get things kicked off, here’s a pic of the packing frenzy beginning, followed by four pics of how worn out it made the beagle.

…

‘‘There’s nothing more pathetic than a beagle whose couch/throne has been displaced from its regular position. So, he elected to sleep through much of the brouhaha.

‘‘I just know that’s gonna be one mad beagle when he hops in the Jeep on 14-Aug … and hops out on 22-Aug in a whole new state.

‘‘Shhhh. Let’s not tell him.

‘—Posted by Steve at 00:02 | 01-Aug-03’’

Sorry about the confusing nature of this first one from ten years ago; it’s hard to quote quotes and make it coherent. Ongoing will be easier to understand. More retro posts to follow …

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 31-July

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be.

The last time I’ll give directions in San Francisco?

‘“Is Lombard down that way or up the other way?”

‘A short hip-looking woman with black hair was asking me directions.

‘I pointed up Van Ness and told her it was twenty blocks or so north (actually, it’s more like 28 from Market, a good 45-minute hike with all the red lights along Van Ness) and that she’d probably want to catch a bus.

‘Weird feeling, to realize that that may be the last time I ever get asked for directions here.’

—Posted by Frank at 20:00:31 | 31-Jul-03

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 23-July

Posted on by

For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

Beginning of the End

‘Sorry for the few-and-far-between updates, folks, but things are a might busy around Le Maison du Beagle. See, we’re moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, MI, in just a very few weeks (in just a mere 23 days, in fact), so I’ve been a bit frenzied, flying to Detroit, looking for a new place (we scored a fairly spiffy new townhouse with plenty of outdoors for beagle to roam around in and not far from campus and Michigan Stadium) and packing up the books and DVDs, figuring out all the nagging logistics of a 2,800-mile, cross-country move and wrapping things up here.

‘It’s turning out to be possibly a month-long orgy of goodbyes … visiting favorite spots in San Francisco, taking final pictures, saying goodbyes to friends and the doctor and his staff and so on and on, so the ‘blogging is lagging. But I’m going to try to keep up. In fact, in a few days, I’m going to start a side journal, a little log of the beagle’s cross-country adventures, along with some pictures. So stay tuned.

—Posted by Steve at 23:33 | 23-Jul-03’

Civil War Hospitals, the Vagaries of History and Us

Posted on by

A «sad story on the evening news» which prompted the following stream-of-consciousness (and shows how exciting my Sunday nights are): A fire destroyed a home north of Murfreesboro which was used as a hospital for Civil War troops. The family who lived there was refurbishing it and lost everything.

But the story caught my attention because just a few miles down the road to the south, in Shelbyville, our Great-Great-Grandfather Isaac James Pollock, spent October to December of 1862 in a similar hospital. In his case, the hospital was in and around the First Presbyterian Church of Shelbyville, a town which was known at the time as “Little Boston,” for its loyalty to the Union. It changed hands many times, the last in 1864 as the war moved out of Tennessee and further into Georgia.

Little Boston earned its nickname. Bedford County voted against seceding from the Union in 1861, by a majority of over 200 “No” votes, as did Henderson County to the west, home of the Teague branch of our family, in Lexington. Both counties sent troops to both sides, including our GGG-Uncles, Jasper and Leander Teague of Lexington, who ended up in the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry (US), and were captured by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who got his middle name from, yes, Bedford County, where he was born and raised.

In Sgt. Isaac James Pollock’s case, his war came to a final end in Little Boston. He contracted measles and hepatitis after only two months with the Second Mississippi regiment, stationed near Bull Run in northern Virginia. He was sent home, recovered and two months later joined the new 37th Mississippi Infantry (which would be renumbered as the 34th and then the 24th as casualties mounted). He was promoted to Sergeant of Company A, the Tippah Rangers, on July 5, 1862.

After the tactical victory/strategic loss of the Army of the Mississippi at Perryville, KY, against the Union troops of Don Carlos Buell, Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s troops retreated on the long march back into Tennessee. Sgt. Pollock and the 37th, which had been in the thick of the fighting of Oct. 8, were among them. By the time they arrived in Nashville and points south, Sgt. Pollock was ill with Pthsis, a bacterial lung infection better known today as Tuberculosis.

During a war which saw two soldiers die of disease to every single soldier who died of wounds on battlefields, Sgt. Pollock spent two months in Shelbyville for treatment before being discharged to home on permanent disability. His discharge on Dec. 13, 1862, was signed by Gen. Braxton Bragg. Back home in Ripley, MS, he and the family lived through the repeated advances and retreats of both armies over the town and surrounding countryside. Eventually, they would give up life in Mississippi and move to Arkansas. Isaac James died in 1886 in Hardy, AR, at the age of 56, leaving us to wonder if his war illnesses (measles and hepatitis in 1861 and the tuberculosis of 1862) contributed to his somewhat early death.

It is worth noting that if Sgt. Isaac James had succumbed either in the maelstrom of Perryville or to tuberculosis in Shelbyville, none of us would exist. Instead, he survived to bring his son Isaac Jackson Pollock into the world. And then his grandson would marry a granddaughter of the Tennessee Teagues in 1926, bringing together the descendants of Union loyalists and Confederate die-hards. We know those two as Grandpa Curt and Grandma Lorene Pollock.

It is Difficult …

Posted on by

“How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1965

… to keep up a blog like this one, which has, at various times in the past, been chock-a-block with details and observations from our lives. Living two years back in California, with the attendant extreme stresses, drained the blogging impulse from both of us. Plus, there was the whole medical drama on my part.

It would be great to have all kinds of observations about Nashville here, just as we did in Ann Arbor, but … well, we’re older and tired-er than we were in Ann Arbor. But still, we’ll try to do better.

Two things: Voters of Maine, except the quarter million who voted to stand up for marriage equality last Tuesday, … well, they suck. Marriage equality is coming to the United States and you will be embarrassed by this travesty of justice, this orgy of discrimination and hate, when the day arrives. I’m holding fast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” As the LA Times reported:

“It is “one of King’s most riveting lines, spoken in Montgomery, Alabama after the long and dangerous march from Selma in March, 1965. King said he knew people were asking how long it would take to achieve justice. “How long?” he asked, over and over, making listeners desperate for an answer — and then he supplied the answer. “How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It was a refrain King came to use often, sometimes referring to the “arc of history,” sometimes to the “arc of the moral universe.”“

The arc is bending toward marriage equality. It will come, probably before my I leave the planet. And to that, I will hold fast.

Secondly, I finally summoned the will and physical ability to return to the classroom and do a half-day substitute teaching, first time in six months. I have another assignment lined up for next Tuesday. It was exhausting and it was my limit (I’m not ready for full days yet), but it was also fun and reminded me why I like teaching kids. I’ll get more and more into the daily grind until the end of school in May, then have some rest time and will start a second master’s degree program, to become certified in the early childhood autism special education and applied behavior therapy. That program at Vanderbilt starts in August, and I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, the beagles are fat and happy and having fun in the leaves. I found a largish tick on Fergus yesterday, that had to be removed before going to work; it was probably a souvenir of our tramps through the woods on the battlefield of Chickamauga last weekend. Otherwise, the boys are doing great.

And Nashville … an awesome place to live. We’re coming up on the first anniversary of the flight out of California to safety and haven of Tennessee. And don’t regret for a minute the decision. Plus, our landladies and neighbor and neighborhood and schools are far superior to what we left behind in Brentwood.

So, it’s all good.

Add One More to the Pile

Posted on by

This evening’s mail brought, finally, an official copy of our California marriage certificate, which is one of only 18,000 gender-neutral, Constitutionally equally protected, legally recognized marriages. (The copy pictured here has some personal details blanked out, such as birth dates, addresses, witnesses, and parents.) I post it here as a big ol’ kiss off to Prop H8 and its supporters and sympathizers.

We’re happy and proud of this (it represents a significant victory in an ongoing struggle to educate our countrymen and realize the promise of Constitutional equal protection) … and also sorrowful for other California and American couples like us who can’t get this piece of paper … and the thousands of civil rights that go along with it.

So it’s a bittersweet moment.

Now we go buy another frame and make space on the wall. Because of the religious intolerance, ignorance, homophobia, and stupidity currently prevalent in this country at the moment, in order to have some semblance of civil rights as a couple, we have necessary certificates on our wall from the City and Country of San Francisco (two of those); the city of Ann Arbor, MI; the state of California (one domestic partnership cert and one marriage cert); and one marriage certificate from our wonderful neighbors to the north in Canada (one side in English and one in French).

Marriage Equality Arrives in Connecticut

Posted on by

The governor of Connecticut signed «marriage equality into law today». Equal protection under the law as provided in the U.S. Constitution was thereby affirmed by all three branches of the government.

‘Four years ago this week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a bill allowing civil unions. Today, with the stroke of a pen, she abolished them. Rell this afternoon signed Senate Bill 899, which incorporates the findings of the Kerrigan case into Connecticut statutes. That ruling, handed down by the state Supreme Court in October, paved the way for same-sex marriage. Both the House and the Senate spent hours yesterday debating Senate Bill 899, which passed only after an amendment was added that provides an exemption to groups who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.’

Best quotes of the day:

““This bipartisan vote is a strong affirmation of the Kerrigan decision and the dignity and respect of same-sex couples and their families,” Anne Stanback, executive director of Love Makes a Family said in a statement. “Today, fairness won out over fear.”“

and

“Sen. Andrew McDonald, a Democrat from Stamford and leading gay rights advocate, hailed the new law. “Our legislature and our governor now have ratified the Supreme Court’s decision, and today all three branches of Connecticut’s government speak with one voice: discrimination has no place in our state and will be eradicated wherever it appears,” McDonald said in a press release.”

As Frank Rich of the Times said, marriage equality in America is inevitable. Good on yer, Connecticut!

Commonality

Posted on by

Not sure why I’m even noting this, but it did catch my eye. Among the «5,000 most common names according to the 2000 US Census», Frank has a more common surname than I do.

Our names: Lester (his) is 709th, down 111 places, 16 occurrences per 100,000 names. Mine, Pollock, is 1,420th, up 20 places, 9 occurrences per 100,000 names.

Maiden names: My mother’s (Booth) is 635th, down 45, 18 occurrences per 100,000. Frank’s mother’s (Celis) doesn’t show up in the top 5000.

Other names in my family tree:

• Nelson: 40th, down 1, 153 per 100,000.
• Cook: 56th, down 4, 109 per 100,000.
• Gregory: 312th, down 28, 33 per 100,000.
• Norton: 485th, down 19, 23 per 100,000.
• Short: 536th, up 14, 21 per 100,000.
• Starr: 1,135th, down 19, 10 per 100,000.
• Teague: 1,371st, down 99, 9 per 100,000.
• Ketchum: 4,334th, up 374, 3 per 100,000.

Common. Dead common. Ha!

Tennessee Spring

Posted on by

I’m a little nervous about stormy weather here in Middle Tennessee, because this is, of course, tornado country. But nonetheless, the past 24 hours of weather have been kind of beautiful, spring rain without depressingly torrential downpours, followed by periods of clouds interspersed with clear sky.

Tonight was particularly wonderful, with a little rain followed by a peaceful clouded/clear melange at sunset. I went outside in the backyard with the beagles and took a look around, and I’m really very thankful to be here. There was the delighted song of a single mockingbird somewhere in the trees toward the front of the house, then there was the view toward the northwest — a few city lights on the other side of the river, a radio tower or two in the hills in the distance (Taylor Knob? Mackie Valley?), a view that I never dislike, and then the sweeping view toward the east through the vast cover of the trees behind us, the distance toward the hills of Todd Knob and Hermitage.

It’s a wonderfully idyllic vista.

East Bound and Down

Posted on by

One week from tonight, we will have begun our journey out of California … for the third, and hopefully last, time.

We’ll be on our way to Nashville, Tennessee, to take up a new, and hopefully less stressful way of life. Frank starts a new job with Vanderbilt University on 15 Dec. I will start the Tennessee teacher certification process and then look for a new job of my own, hopefully with grades K-2, nothing higher than that.

The last two years and four months here in California have been a real struggle. Very tough on all fronts, especially medically/physically (see posts below). It’s been good for our careers, but very hard on our bodies and minds and emotions.

We’re in the midst of packing and cleaning and getting ready. One week from right now, we’ll be in Bakersfield, then heading on west down I-40/US 70 to our new home. I was born and raised a block from US 70, lived most of my life fairly near it (in New Mexico and Oklahoma), and now will be living, again, a block from US 70, this time in Tennessee. I seem to be bound to this road somehow.

We’ve sort of let this blog go black, mainly due to the exhaustion of living in California, as well as being thoroughly disgusted with the state and not wanting to even write about it or think about it more than necessary. But I think we can be a little more enthusiastic about Tennessee. It is, if nothing else, a blank slate for us, and our discoveries can be charted here.

At any rate, we’re off on yet another adventure cross country. Should be interesting!

Wednesday

Posted on by

112 Degrees Thumbnail

This pic pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the weather this week.

It actually got hotter after I took this picture; it was 114 degrees later in the afternoon.

God, living in the valley is hell.

Rarin' to Go

Posted on by

Gavin Newsom, the man who presided over our first civil union ceremony when he was still a San Francisco supervisor, wants to get a jump on gay marriages «the evening of 16 June», instead of waiting for the next morning:

‘San Francisco officials have asked the state for permission to begin marrying same-sex couples a little earlier than scheduled, on the evening of June 16 instead of the morning of June 17. Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials are wondering when the state Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex nuptials actually takes effect. The state has told county clerks the ruling kicks in the morning of June 17. But city officials want to know whether they can legally begin to issue the marriage licenses at 5:01 p.m. June 16 – right after the end of the state’s workday.
“Unquestionably, we hope to extend beyond 5 o’clock. Why wouldn’t we?” Newsom said Wednesday. “People have longed for this for 30 and 40 years. I don’t think we should deny that just on the basis of a bureaucratic timeline.” Such a change would require permission from the state Office of Vital Records, which oversees the issuance of marriage licenses for all of California’s 58 counties.’
—SFGate.com

Exactly. We’ve been waiting 30-40 years for this. Time to get on with it.

And about the ballot measure in November? Time to mobilize a big ol’ no vote.

Rock and Roll

Posted on by

Just felt my … fourth (? yeah, fourth) … California earthquake. «A 5.6 which was reportedly on the Calaveras Fault five miles from Alum Rock, near San Jose» (Link no longer active. —Ed.).

Frank and I were sitting on the couch with Fergus, who was … well, cleaning himself in a delicate spot, shall we say … and we felt the couch move back and forth for awhile. We thought it was the dog, but David came down the stairs and asked if we felt it. It shook things upstairs. That’s when we realized the couch is pretty steady and can’t be shaken by the little beagle that is Fergus.

As for wondering what the beagle boys’ reaction to an earthquake would be, well, we no longer have to wonder. Nothing. Nada. No reaction of any kind. So, for the record, not even an earthquake can make Fergus stop licking his balls. Fredrik just sat looking dignified, and Feargal was too busy sniffing the floor for signs that the cat had visited his domain.

Yeesh.

Fresh Start

Posted on by

The principal called this morning as I was getting ready for yet another doctor’s appointment and asked if I were still available. We arranged an interview for 13:00. The interview last about 30 minutes or so and then he went and called a couple of my references, which were very positive (he said). He offered the job to me on the spot. We then went over and he let me pick out a classroom. I then found myself driving to the district office and going over all the necessary paperwork with a very nice HR lady.

The district is much friendlier and less closed off than my last one. I am cautiously optimistic about it. The assignment itself won’t be easy; but for various reasons I won’t go into, I think it will be much easier than my sixth grade long-term sub stint this spring, which was a real blow to my self-image and self-confidence.

So, the horse is back in the gate, and I’m about to get back in the saddle. Wish me luck.

About My Disgust …

Posted on by

Since we moved to Brentwood just last 24-Jul (was it just 10 short months ago?!), the following has happened, in no particular chronological order:

•My dog has been poisoned and died;
•My partner has been viciously attacked by a police dog while standing lawfully in the middle of our living room (eight stitches, by the way; more on this later … much more);
•My career has been derailed by an illness which has been made much more frustrating by the lack of doctors and hospitals and sane healthcare practices in the area;
•My career ambitions have been further frustrated by an employer which is described (and these are not my words) as having “incestuous hiring practices”; which is filled with homophobics, their enablers, and some reasonably decent people, who, while sympathetic to my plight, are too concerned about lawsuits and appearances to fight the good fight against the former;
•I have been called (numerous times) a “faggot” and had 12-year-olds write “f—- you, Mr. P.” notes to me in textbooks;
•I have had three rounds of bronchitis, two emergency room visits, and four urgent care visits … should I just stop there before I get more depressed?

And people wonder why I’ve been disgusted?

Granted, not all of this is Brentwood’s fault. Call it the cosmic misalignment of the stars, horrible coincidences, what-have-you. It’s not all Brentwood’s fault. Not all California’s fault.

Oh, hell, yes it is. It’s Brentwood’s fault that they can’t control their police dogs or keep out wanted felons from living in otherwise good neighborhoods.

It’s Brentwood’s fault that their police officers can’t arrest said felons who are weak 49-year-old grandfathers, yet still manage to elude 12 officers, a helicopter, and a K-9 unit for 30 minutes while said K-9 unit is in our living room attacking my family and threatening our puppies.

It’s Brentwood’s fault that the aforementioned employer will only hire blonde white women who are related to or have known district employees for 30 years.

It’s Brentwood’s fault that it’s full of homophobic, yakkity women who have nothing better to do than pass around vicious and nasty lies all day.

It’s Brentwood’s fault that they built houses for 40,000 people and didn’t plan any healthcare infrastructure of any kind to take care of them, preferring to rely instead on crappy ER services 10 and 25 miles away. Hell, even Duncan, Oklahoma, a town of 23,000 has a better hospital and healthcare system than this pathetic garbage dump.

It’s Brentwood’s fault. But mostly … it’s mine. It’s my fault for answering the damn job ad that brought us here in the first place. I thought it might be a reasonably decent place to spend a couple of years while waiting to move to a more sane place elsewhere in the country (meaning away from California). Little did I know just how devastating and expensive this decision would be.

And that is why I am disgusted. I can’t wait to see Brentwood in my rearview mirror (and I’m pretty sure Brentwood can’t wait to see my backside disappearing eastbound).

I can’t help it, it’s just the way I feel.

Disgust

Posted on by

There comes, in pretty much every town I’ve lived in, an extended moment, usually early on, where I truly detest the people in the town.

I’m currently in the midst of one of those moments with Brentwood.

I’ll get over it. Maybe.

Life in Brentwood. Yes, Indeedy.

Posted on by

I started a new teaching assignment last week: 60 sixth graders in two classes. They’re an energetic, fun, and talented group and I like them all very much. I’m happy to have the job and finally feel up to being an actual teacher in charge.

It’s had its rough moments, of course, behavior-wise; this is a talky group and they are also pretty snarky with each other. It’s stuff we’re working on. But all-in-all, I’m enjoying it and making the transition pretty well (from an emotional perspective).

There was one moment, however, this morning that took the wind out of my sails. While signing the weekly attendance verification forms in the office, one of the assistant principals asked to speak with me. The upshot was that a parent had called to complain that I had told the kids about having a partner. The offending phrase was uttered during the day last week when I took time out to introduce myself and have them introduce themselves to me. The phrase was, “My partner F——- and I have been together seven years and we have a 12-year-old beagle.” No other information related to this was given; I didn’t use any other words than “partner;” certainly not “gay” or anything like that. There was no advertorial/recruitment for the impressionable little 12-year-olds to come over to the dark side.

Nonetheless, this single phrase generated a hot call to the assistant principal, who was then put in the difficult position of having to promise to talk to me and then having to talk to me. She is very good at what she does and we had a good conversation, agreed on several things, and left it at that. Beyond that, I won’t say anything else about the conversation, except that it was pleasant and not a problem.

But.

It still takes the wind out of my sails. Our relationship is recognized by the state (mostly) and we’ll file a joint state tax return in 2008. Yet here comes the harassment. I’m glad there was no demand for my head or resignation or firing or “get my daughter out of his class” or any of that. But parents talk to each other. As do the kids. I know that at least two of my students now know what a “partner” is, and I know there is the potential that the parents do as well. By this one phone call about a single, honest, two-second statement, there is now a sword of Damocles over my head. While the administrators would back me up, well, when parents get angry and then say the magic word, “lawsuit,” well, let’s just say school districts don’t go to bat for their homos. I’m not paranoid, but I don’t like this.

Still, I told the truth to my students when asked an honest question. It’s a principle that I teach and expect my students to uphold; I can’t be bullied or scared into abandoning when things get unpleasant. We’ll see how this shakes out. Most probably, nothing will happen. But my wind is up, as the Brits say.

(Cross-posted in the Teach and Love blogs.)

Contrails in the Moonlight

Posted on by

While soaking my weary joints in the hot tub tonight, there was a beautiful, round full moon directly overhead. As I lay steeping in the 103-degree heat, clouds of steam swirled up into the sky and the last leaves on the tree in the front yard fingered out the light from the streetlamp; it was very movie-esque.

Looking back up at the moon, a passing jet, high up on a jetway (perhaps a Delta flight from KHNL to KSLC?) passed by just below the moon. The moonlight was trapped in the contrail left by the jet. It was a gorgeous scene. I managed a picture of the moon, but had to Photoshop-in the contrail and jet … but at least you get an idea of what a beautiful night it was:

Jet Contrail Photo Thumbnail

Jet contrail in the moonlight | Brentwood, CA | 22:33 1-Jan-07

Pleasant dreams.

Orion, Warrior of the Night

Posted on by

The clear, cold night sky above, a hot tub sending clouds of steam up into it, warrior Orion guarding all below. A late fall night in California.

The hot tub is one of about only three places where I get relief these days (the other two being the jacuzzi tub in the bathroom and the bed while I sleep). I try to get into it 3-4 nights a week.

I will always associate Orion with California winters. Every time I’m out at night, giving Bayley his nighty-night walkies or, like tonight, hot-tubbing it, Orion is always there.

Tonight, his side is pierced by a long shaft of light from a searchlight a couple of miles to the southeast of us on Brentwood Boulevard. I don’t know why anyone down there is advertising anything at this time of night; the town seems to shut down at 9 p.m. and about the only thing along that stretch of road is the new police station. But it’s been there the last few nights, always piercing Orion’s side. It’s hacking me off.

But thank god for hot tubs. And winter skies. And guardian Orion.

A Phone Call

Posted on by

My sister may have breast cancer.

I don’t know how to respond to her news.

This is not supposed to be happening. Surreal. I don’t want to think about it.

I don’t like all this getting older.

About the Banner

Posted on by

That photo in the previous banner was of the temperature reading on the Jeep as we entered Brentwood. It was 114 degrees Fahrenheit when we got here …

BrentwoodTempPhoto

It's Hell Being Offline

Posted on by

Posting and pictures have been temporarily disrupted because internet service hasn’t started at the new house. I’ll have things to post, especially pictures, hopefully later today as our service provider gets its act together.

Things are good, but we’re very tired and sore. We are in Brentwood, the dog has his backyard, the stuff arrived safely from Ann Arbor (except for some minor damage on the big screen) and I’m posting this from my spiffy new classroom, which is truly fabulous.

More later!

Heading West — Day Three

Posted on by

« Photos from Day Three »

Rainy Again
Written @ 11:42 CST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Gothenberg, NE

We hit a small spot of rain, but it’s nothing like day one. We’re 36 miles from North Platte, NE, which will be our first stop of the day. Jeepy needs gas and beagle needs walkies.

I’ve been sleeping since Lincoln. Nebraska is flat and it is green and has some trees and that’s about it. The road is flat and straight and goes on and on. We’re about halfway to Cheyenne.

I’ve started some lesson planning for the first week of school, but it’s a bit hard to do, since I don’t know my schedule of classes or the curriculum. I know I want the first week to be relaxed and all about getting to know each other and learning the procedures and my expectations. So I’ll leave it at that and plan for activities that do that. I’ll ease into the language arts stuff during week two, if I can.

Rest Stop
Written @ 13:00 CST/12:00 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Sutherland, NE

After stopping at a Mirastar gas station (which turns out to be some sort of weird partnership between Texaco and Wal-Mart) in North Platte, NE, we made a brief lunch stop at Sonic then drove 20 miles west to a rest area so that beagles could do beagle things. They had a designated pet area with “pooch plugs,” which were fake fire hydrants. Bayley added his own mark to the vicinity of the plug. When Unca David came out of the restroom, I went inside while he held the beagle. When I came out, Bayley was waiting and began wiggling and howling like I had been gone for three years. The whole rest area stopped and looked at the commotion.

We’re back on I-80, with about 195 miles left today. Nebraska is pretty much what I expected … flat, farms, scrubby trees, low barren hills, never-ending. We just passed into Keith County and the Mountain Time Zone, so we gained an hour, which will help. Cheyenne is about three-and-a-half hours away, so we should be at the hotel by 16:00 Wyoming time.

At the rest area, I picked up three out of the plethora of ubiquitous tourist brochures (rack cards) which are in piles in places up and down the interstate highway system. One was for Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, where it is noted that, in addition to Father Flanagan’s house, the museum, the Garden of the Bible, Father’s grave and the chapel, you can see the “World’s Largest Ball of Stamps” in the Leon Myers Stamp Center, which includes exhibits on the history of postage stamps, a collector’s corner and, of course, the four-cent Father Flanagan Stamp. Don’t forget the gift shop and cafe on your way out and admission is free.

Let’s be clear, I’m not disparaging Boys Town, but the touristy aspects thereof. Just hope the proceeds go to make things better for the boys.

Coming up is Bridgeport, NE, where you can exit I-80 and venture 34 miles north to Alliance. The claim to fame of Alliance is … Carhenge, a replica of Stonehenge created from vintage automobiles from the 50s and 60s. The cars are “planted trunk down and rise 15 to 17 feet … [and] are approximately 7 feet wide; the same size as the standings [sic] stones of Stonehenge … all 38 of the majors [sic] stones are cleverly represented at Carhenge.”

Carhenge is enthusiastically recommended by someone from Farmington, MN, who is quoted on the rack card as saying, “This place is incredible, I love it! We went 100 miles out of the way to see Carhenge and it was worth every mile and moan and groan from my children.”

We decided not to detour 68 miles out of our way to see it.

I went to sleep shortly after passing Lincoln, where I apparently missed the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The mission of said center is “to study, to collect, to preserve, and to exhibit quilts.” Pretty straightforward.

There are more than 1,650 quilts in the center, including the largest known collection of Amish and Mennonite quilts. Here’s some grad school language for ya: “… quilts are studied using an interdisciplinary approach in which the tradition is examined in its historical, social, artistic, technical, and spiritual environments. The … Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design, College of Education and Human Sciences, offers masters degree programs for students interested in analyzing the complex ways in which gender, class, ethnicity, aesthetics, politics, religion and technology find expression in the textile arts, especially quiltmaking traditions.”

Wow. Why doesn’t the University of Michigan School of Education have that? They suck.

Back to planning. I need to create a fun student information survey for the kids to work on in the first ten minutes of the first class.

Wyoming
Written @ 14:11 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Pinebluff, WY

We’ve reached the Wyoming border and are just a mere 36 miles from our stop. We’ll be at the hotel by 15:00 mountain time. Thank goodness. Also, we’re just passing the halfway point of the trip: 1,176 miles. Thank goodness, part II. We’re also out of Nebraska. Thank goodness, part III.

As we entered the panhandle of Nebraska and the I-76 split which heads for Denver, the land dramatically changed. No longer the rolling green farmland with trees, it has become the browner, flatter, wider open vistas of the true American west. You can see oil well pumping units dotting the landscape and the area is dotted with ranches, not farms. Union Pacific trains pass each other on double tracks, hauling cross-continent freight. It’s 93 degrees outside under a bright sun, with just a few high puffy clouds. Traffic has also thinned out; there aren’t as many cars on the road, leaving the interstate mostly to the long-haul truckers.

Watching the trucks and the trains makes you realize just how dependent on fossil fuels this country really is. Our entire lives are on those trains and trucks. 12,000 pounds of my own life is in a truck somewhere on this road. Everything we need (especially food) comes from far away. If that infrastructure of rail and road and train and truck is ever disrupted or destroyed, we’d be in deep doo-doo. We would see a retreat back to a civilization like it existed before the Civil War. Not that I’m an apocalyptic thinker, I’m just sayin’. We’re dependent on a thin thread that seems rather tenuous in the big picture of things.

I’ve been working up the first week’s lesson plans, creating two student surveys and an interview sheet, and working on the class syllabus. Yes, I plan to give seventh graders a syllabus. I want the expectations and what we’re doing clearly laid out. In the dim recesses of my age-addled memory, I seem to remember that a few of my junior high teachers gave them out and I know my high school teachers did. So, these kids should get used to them.

Because of my natural tendency to be easy-going and laid-back, the first week will be critical in terms of setting limits and expectations and procedures. It will make or break my entire first year as a teacher. Research indicates that there should be no more than 3-5 rules, and it’s also preferable if the students create and sign off on the rules themselves. I’ll think about that one. It worked well last year with 22 rather exceptional second graders; these 125 seventh graders I’m going to meet in less than three weeks are an unknown quantity. I like the three F’s: firm, fair, fun. The three KISses, too: Keep it simple, keep it safe, keep it sane.

I better get back to it. We’re 11 miles from the hotel.

Rest Stop
Written @ 15:55 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Cheyenne, WY

We arrived at the hotel an hour ago and unloaded the car. The dog had a long drink of water and a treat and watched the proceedings. He then had a scratch of the ear and settled down onto my bed. He is now loudly snoring away, a totally worn-out dog.

Cheyenne looks very small, smaller than Ann Arbor. I-80 skirts it on the south and looks down on it, so you get a pretty good view. I continue to be impressed by the speedy checkin/checkout and service at LaQuinta. The rooms have been good, the wireless internet connections great and there’s been no fuss at all about the dog or anything else.

The pool is inviting, since it’s over 90 degrees here, but it’s full of women and kids at the moment. I’ll have to wait, probably ‘til dinnertime to get some water therapy.

We’re not sure what we’ll do for dinner, but we need a nap first.

Later, y’all.

Heading West — Day One

Posted on by

« Photos from Day One »

The Very Rough Last Night in A2
Written @ 13:30 EST | Tuesday, 11-Jul-06 | Ann Arbor, MI

The beagle gave me a rough night. After the farewell party, I went and gassed up the Jeep and then back to Ann’s to spend the night. I was informed he had howled at the kitty several times and generally been a bit of a pain. We went up to bed at midnight, David taking the spare room and the beagle heading to Rachel’s. The drama began.

He paced and panted and whined at the door. I put him up on the bed twice to settle him down and twice he jumped down. Finally, I gave up, took a couple of pillows down the couch and prepared to settle in.

Bayley took a long drink of water and flopped on the kitchen tile. He then ate his breakfast from the previous morning at 01:30 and flopped back down again. My head was throbbing and I waited for the Alavert to kick in. Suddenly at 02:12, Bayley jumped up off the kitchen floor and ran to the front door, howling his head off. Scared the crap out of me. I jumped up and almost killed myself on the loveseat and hissed at him. I thought everyone would wake up, but only David heard him, fortunately.

I chased him, but he ran up the stairs and in the dim light from the bathroom window behind him, I could see him staring down at me. I was too tired and sore to run upstairs, so I went back to the couch to wrestle with the insomnia.

The next morning, we said goodbye to the girls and went to Burger King for breakfast and to Dunham’s to buy a Thule rooftop canvas bag to haul crap to California so the beagle wouldn’t have to ride up near roof in the backseat. Then it was off to the townhouse to do the final cleaning and turn in the keys. It took three hours to get things ready to go. It was hell.

We turned in the keys to the sourpuss apartment manager, left the forwarding address, got a coke one last time at Circle K, then headed out onto I-94.

When I saw the sign on south State pointing west for I-94 to Jackson, I admit I got a little choked up.

Goodbye, Ann Arbor.

Scattershots
Written @ 15:00 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Battle Creek, MI

Random thoughts while sitting shotgun for the first couple of hundred miles:

Near Battle Creek is a sign for the “Moonraker Restaurant.” What’s that all about? Is it part of Drax Industries?

The beagle has been noshin’ on pretzels and Chex Mix from time-to-time since we left Ann Arbor. Yesterday, he had French fries and Auntie Ann and Cousin Rachel gave him some Cheez-Its. After 106 miles, he’s finally settling down into his VERY cushy back seat and having a nap. He has the whole back seat to himself and it’s piled with his beagle bed and blankies. His treats are handy, he has his own a/c vents, there’s a water bowl close by and everyone is pampering him shamefully, which he is accepting shamelessly. Now THAT’s the way to travel to California. I SO wish I were a beagle!

As we head into Kalamazoo County, I see a sign for “Fort Custer National Cemetery Industrial Park.” Huh? What’s that all about?

I turn XM Satellite Radio to ABC Talk Radio and get a full-blown earful of Sean Hannity spewing nonsense in full-bore screaming, vein-popping, red-faced mode. I quickly find Air America. If I’m gonna sit on an American Interstate Highway and listen to screaming, vein-popping, red-faced radio, it’s gonna be screaming, vein-popping, red-faced radio that affirms and confirms my own political and worldview prejudices and conceptions.

Paw Paw, MI? Any Relation to Quapaw, OK
Written @ 15:30 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Paw Paw, MI

Approaching Paw Paw, MI. Paw Paw Days will be 15-Jul. Sorry I’m gonna miss that. America, what a country.

Still listening to Air America, I hear a sort of weird, deja-vu ad that gets my attention. It’s for a website for “middle school teachers, featuring inquiry-based learning curriculum for science education from the National Institutes for Health.” Which gives me a bad acid flashback to my science methods course from last January, which, I might add, was the only blemish on my grad school grade record, an 89% B+. The ad sort of gives me chills.

But the weirdest thing is when the announcer repeats “middle school teachers.” It hits me at mile marker 60 on Interstate 94 West near Paw Paw, MI, that the announcer is speaking to me. I. Am. A. Middle School. Teacher.

Good lord and holy freakin’ cow.

Don’t you hate those sudden, jarring, unexpected epiphanies at odd moments in odd places? It’s almost like when you open your mouth and you hear your mom or dad speaking phrases that you used to hate, which I mentioned before I refer to as the “Whippersnapper Routine:” “When I was your age …” etc. But this was even more jarring, I think. Over the last couple of weeks, things have been happening so quickly that I’ve lost track of time and feel like I’ve just been floating through the summer like an old leaf on a fast-moving stream. It will all gel, but it’s quite weird.

We’re approaching Benton Harbor and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line. In a few minutes, we say goodbye to Michigan and the eastern time zone and start feeling like we’re really on a road trip. We’ll be making a quick stop in La Porte, IN, to visit Wells Fargo and take care of the final piece of the moving puzzle, the financial details of the house rental. The lease is signed, the goods are headed west, the car is loaded and we’re on the road. Ann Arbor is 158 miles behind us.

Have I said holy freakin’ cow already?

Farewell, Michigan, the “Pleasant Peninsula”
Written @ 16:00 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Approaching Lake Michigan

The rain looks like settling in for a very long stay. It started raining around 14:30. A minivan with Alaska plates just suddenly hit the brakes and pulled into the right lane in the heavy rain, right in front of a semi. The trucker was not pleased. Haven’t heard an airhorn blast like that since I last went to an Oklahoma Sooners game. The goober in the minivan was fairly oblivious that he had a very large and very angry trucker breathing up his rear. Wonder if he’ll make it all the way home to Fairbanks or Anchorage or wherever.

The rain is so hard that it’s unlikely I’ll get a very good pic of the “Leaving Michigan” and “Welcome to Indiana” signs. How gooberish is that?

How do I feel about leaving Michigan? Well, it was tough last night saying goodbye to everyone. Very sad. I will miss everyone terribly. I got a big lump in my throat taking one last, long look at the empty townhouse as we left. It was the first place that Frank and I shared together, our first home as a couple. We got married nearby, in Windsor, Canada. We had three amazing years. Met wonderful people, friends for life. Had great experiences at the university and in school. And some not-so-great ones, but that’s life. Michigan was good for us in some ways, bad in others. I mentioned before that I find “Michigan Lefts,” where you turn right-left-left in order to turn left, as well as aggressive Michigan drivers, and 42-wheel semi-trucks, aggravating and baffling. I found some teachers I dealt with baffling and aggravating as well.

Speaking of baffling, the state motto is, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” That is just … kinda awkward and weird. Why would I be seeking a pleasant peninsula? Whatever.

It’s 16:22 EST, or 15:22 EST, and we just crossed the Indiana line.

Well, shut my mouth.

Goodbye, Michigan.

Sidetrip
Written @ 15:45 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Porte, IN

Our first stop of the trip is in the rain. Indiana looks much like Michigan. Horses in the field, green trees. Beagle is asleep in the back, snoring softly. When we get to the bank, I’ll give him a walk in the rain. He’ll be hacked.

We pass under the Indiana Turnpike, which is actually I-80, our first glimpse of the road we’ll become intimately acquainted with between now and Sunday.

I’m writing all this stuff while David drives. I’m a total technogeek and have been known to do many odd things while driving, including studying for exams, reading Shakespeare, eating a Sonic hickory cheeseburger (Mmmmmmmm, Sonic!), etc. But I’ve never actually used a laptop and typed while driving. I don’t think I’ll start now. So, there will be gaps in the journal when I’m driving or sleeping. Which is like saying the sun rises in the east, I know. I have no idea why I’m even writing this stuff, but it passes the time.

Pine Lake is pretty in the rain. It’s 72 degrees. Downtown is busy and bigger than expected. It’s small town America at its best, and there are some real goobers in pickup trucks on the streets.

Time for a break.

The Beagle Poops on Indiana, his 15th State
Written @ 16:05 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Porte, IN

The beagle had a nice walk in the rain, around the block. La Porte was a surprise; being this close to the nastiness that I have seen from Amtrak around Gary, I was expecting something less … than stellar. La Porte is actually a quaint, middle American town. Quintessential as the saying goes. There does tend to be quite a few American flags all higgledy-piggledy, but there are also “End the War Now” and “Bring the Troops Home” bumper stickers, interestingly enough. It’s only 20 miles from South Bend, yet I see no Fightin’ Irish stickers, although there is a lone Catholic church with children out front having a blast playing in the rain while adults watch from the open, lighted doorway. There are big brick planters on every street corner downtown with great flowers in them and signs reading “Adopt a Planter.” One is adopted by a school bus driver, another by a married couple, another by the United Homosexuals of Indiana. Just kidding, just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

We just passed the Thunderbird Lanes bowling alley, pub, and fishing tackle store, which seems to be interesting because I’ve never seen a combination bowling alley and fishing tackle shop. Wonder if you can buy bait while waiting your turn in the fifth frame? Also, I haven’t seen many things named “Thunderbird” this side of New Mexico. It makes me homesick. Lots of things between my hometown, Roswell, and up in the mountains of Ruidoso are named Thunderbird. When I was a wee lad, I once took an old white sheet and created my own Thunderbird flag and went out in the woods near Clovis and played War. Not sure what army I was supposed to be in, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Good times, good times.

Jammed Up With Boston Boy
Written @ 15:24 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Chicago, IL

We’re in the thick of it now. Traffic backed up like a clogged drain at Cher’s house. We’re stop-and-go trying to get to the toll gates on the I-80 tollway. Plus, it’s 17:30, rush hour. We have XM tuned to Chicago weather and traffic, which is getting old and not giving us any good news.

I’ve spotted a fellow traveller with Massachusetts plates, towing a small U-Haul trailer behind a small SUV of some sort. And I mean fellow traveller in the “gay old time” sense. He’s quite lovely to look at while sitting here on the concrete at Western and 171st on the south side.

At least the rain has stopped for now.

The toll is 60 cents. The way ahead is clear and we’re chasing Boston boy. Unfortunately, someone else is in the passenger seat, slumped down asleep. Still, he made things pretty for a little while, since he was sitting there all Jake Gyllenhaal-ish.

Have I been away from my husband too long? Yup.

Keep the Internet Connection On for Us
Written @ 15:46 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Chicago, IL

I call the hotel in Davenport to confirm our reservations. “We’ll see you when you get here.”

Well, at least she didn’t say, “We’ll keep the light on for you.” Ain’t ever stayin’ at THAT place.

Nope, LaQuinta has the two requirements we have when we travel: they like beagles and their rooms are wired with highspeed ethernet connections. It ain’t the Ritz Carlton, but it beats a tent on the side of the road.

And it’s still 130 miles away. Roughly about the distance between Duncan and Dallas, so about two-and-a-half hours before the beagle gets his dinner.

David is still driving after 273 miles and seems content to do it. As far as I’m concerned, he can do the whole 2,300. But that’s asking a bit much. I’m grateful for as much as possible. I’ve done the cross-country to California thing way too many times. I’d rather sit and play voyeur, peering at weird stuff by the side of the road and cuties in hot SUVs.

Corn, Prisons, and Stan
Written @ 18:40 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Salle, IL

Shortly after crossing the Des Plaines river at Joliet, the land stretches and flattens out. We saw our first corn fields west of Joliet. We didn’t see the prison, however, which is mostly what Joliet is known for, Al Capone and all that.

Talked to my friend Stan in DC for a few miles as he drove home from work. We noted that it’s been almost 30 years that we’ve known each other.

For the last three years, almost at least once a week or more, he’s called me as he leaves work in Bethesda, MD, and commutes home on the Beltway and I-66 to home in Chantilly, VA. I’ve kept him company, but the move to California will affect that, since we’re three hours behind. When he’s going home in the evening now, I’ll still be in my last period with the seventh graders. And that’s gonna suck.

Not sure how those are all connected, but my brain is pretty much on autopilot today.

By the way, more and more corn is appearing. There’s a helluva lotta corn out there.

Mississippi River
Written @ 19:49 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Moline, IL

Illinois is almost finished. We just entered Rock Island County, last one before the Mississippi River and Iowa. The hotel is about 30 minutes away. The dog is completely zonked, but he’ll be ready for his dinner when we get in place. The road is flat and mostly straight and there are very few people on it; the crowd has thinned out considerably. There is still intermittent rain from time to time, but it has been a mostly pleasant trip on Day One.

I’ve finally run out of things to say. Next up: Mississippi River pictures and a much-needed stop. More later.

Worn Out Dogs
Written @ 01:29 CST | Wednesday 12-Jul-06 | Davenport, IA

We’re pooped. We got into the hotel after a beagle walk, then went back out and picked up dinner. I then swam for thirty minutes, talked to the hubby for awhile while doing laundry and walking on the treadmill, then it was back to the room to sort all the stuff I brought because there wasn’t time to do it in Ann Arbor.

I’m going to post some pics from day one on Flickr, then it’s off to bed. Tomorrow’s agenda: Up at 8, breakfast in the hotel, then it’s back to I-80 westbound, headed the 304 miles to Omaha, By God Nebraska.

I miss my fellow ELMAC’ers. It feels like I’m heading off into the unknown by myself and have suddenly lost the support of my homies. This sucks.

I’m not quite ready to say I miss the actual University of Michigan yet. Maybe next week. But I do miss the gang I spent the last year with.

Off to bed. Catch ya on down the road.

Night, y’all.

Farewell, Ann Arbor!

Posted on by

This is the last post on ASquared AirBeagle. And my last blog post from Ann Arbor.

Beginning Tuesday night, we become BSquared AirBeagle, the BSquared meaning Brentwood Beagle. The beagle and I will leave Ann Arbor Tuesday morning and drive to Davenport, IA, our first stop. On Sunday, the whole family gets reunited when we meet up with Unca Frankie in Sacramento. The beagle will be so happy. As will I. It seems like this two months of separation has been an eternity, and I can’t wait to be together with Frank again.

This would be a good place and time to sum up my three years in Ann Arbor. But … I’m too tired, too brain-fried. It’s been an incredibly hectic year and in the space of a few very short weeks, I will have gone from being a grad student in Michigan to being a middle school teacher in California. The pace of this summer is like none before it; I’ve never experienced such a headlong rush of a period of time in my life.

I’ll miss certain aspects of Ann Arbor. Others, not so much … chiefly, the way people drive and the abysmally dreary weather. There’s something else I won’t miss, but my momma taught me to be more polite than that, so I’ll keep it to myself. Oh, yeah, and Michigan left turns, which are really right-left-left turns.

I’ll think more about it after the move is underway. The movers arrive here in just about six or seven hours, then I have some cleaning/disposal to do, then a farewell party with friends. Tuesday morning, it’s on the road again and I’ll try to think of pithy things to write about our three years in Ann Arbor.

I can’t believe it’s over. So long, ASquared! And thanks!

I’ll post again Tuesday night from Iowa. Y’all take care!

A2 to B2

Posted on by

As you can see from Frank’s post below (and the graffiti on the masthead above), half of us is in California and the other half is still in Michigan. (Or is that 1/3 in California and 2/3 in Michigan, counting the beagle? Better put it that way …)

Yes, I wouldn’t have minded, in some ways, staying here. The job situation is abysmal, however, and there are some other features of A-Squared that I really won’t miss (namely, hyper-aggressive drivers, particularly the women, and the gray, depressing weather). We’ve had our ups and downs here. I’ve enjoyed the wide-open spaces (compared to the Bay Area) and the cheaper prices and the better education system. I’ve hated the political scene, the A-Squared folderol snooty nonsense and did I mention the gray, depressing weather?

The beagle and I will be here for another couple of months. At this point, I have to finish the final work on my master’s degree for UM. That all ends on 15-June (a month from today, thank god) with much celebrating. Then comes the packing and the retracing of steps we took three years ago (has it already been three years since we moved to Ann Arbor?!). I plan to bid adieu to Midwestern Wholesomeness around the Fourth of July (tentatively) and head the Jeep west, to return to the decadent Land of Fruits and Nuts from whence I came.

My feelings about returning to Caly-forny are complicated. In many ways, I’m glad to go. In some ways, I dread it. I dread the crowds and the freeways and the expense. And Ann Arbor certainly doesn’t have a corner on snobbiness. But I miss the weather and having my marriage (at least somewhat) legally recognized and the job situation is so much better and we have friends there (one of whom had to be evacuated down the slides from his Palm Springs to San Francisco Alaska Airlines flight this afternoon when the MD-80 filled with smoke after landing at SFO … but he’s fine and no injuries, thank goodness).

The education climate there is difficult. Very difficult. It will be a very, very interesting first year of teaching. And I will greatly miss all of the wonderful friends I’ve made during this year. One already landed a job; she will be teaching third grade at a school on the lower east side of Manhattan. So, the end is nigh anyway. Our little band of comrades is breaking up, preparing to go hither and yon.

And so it’s time to say farewell to A-Squared AirBeagle. The site’s not going anywhere; I’ll just re-brand it. I’m considering B-Squared AirBeagle (which stands for Berkeley and the Bay), but that’s pretty obscure. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my final two months as a sort-of Michigander. The Beagle and Frank and I thank you for reading over the past three years. The next three in California should be … interesting, to say the least, so stay tuned!

Goodbye Ann Arbor

Posted on by

I’m in California as of yesterday afternoon ….. goodbye, Michigan!

There a lot of friends and colleagues I’ll miss, and also a lot of things about Ann Arbor that I’ll miss. It’s amazing how many people have told me that they’re envious that I was coming back to California. It’s true that Michigan is going through a lot of pain right now, with a moribund economy, a flailing auto industry, and a state of what can only be called political gridlock. But if things had worked out differently, if the stars had aligned around the possibility of both of us getting good jobs and settling down in Ann Arbor, I can’t think of any prohibitive reason that we wouldn’t have done it, at least for a few years. (Steve may have a different take, though.) Proposal 2 was a daunting obstacle, but (I hate to say it) a lot of other states have passed or are getting ready to pass similar initiatives. If you’re making your choices about where to live based solely on whether laws have been passed against you, you’re giving victory to bigots.

Alas, settling down in Ann Arbor wasn’t to be.

Goodbye, Ann Arbor. I’ll miss you.

Moving On

Posted on by

Yep … Steve’s right. After almost 32 months in Michigan, nearly but not quite 3 years, we’re on our way back to the Bay Area, something I have to admit I truly never thought I’d never be saying. (Which points up ever more succinctly the wisdom of that old adage “Never say never.”)

It’s been close to 3 years of: an unforgettable cross-country move; crushing, seemingly endless toil in grad school (for both Steve and I); long nights in the basement trying to get assignments and papers and presentations and lesson plans finished before sunrise; stretches of “week after week of single-digits and howling winds — a sunless horror, devoid of joy or hope” (to revisit that unforgettable turn of phrase from Dixie Franklin‘s Michigan travel book); lots of snow, lots of summer humidity, lots of thunder and lightning, and one terrifying tornado our very first night in town; lots of beagle howls and walks and maintenance; brazen squirrels and amazing birds (jaunty robins and cardinals, majestic ravens, obnoxious mockingbirds); college football madness; Ann Arbor Art Fairs; Dairy Queen excursions; several films at the Michigan Theater; Huron River walks (and one excellent paddleboat afternoon); a year of having to live with the miserable, cynical debate about the passage of Proposal 2 (not to mention the even more miserable and cynical 2004 presidential election); uncounted mornings sitting in Cafe Ambrosia on Maynard listening to jazz on WEMU and reading the New York Times or going through notes for class; one Harry Connick concert and one Michael Moore talk; several gymnastics events; one intense trip to Detroit during a monster blizzard; a few very memorable trips across the border into Ontario (once for our Canadian wedding ceremony); a couple of trips to Lansing (mostly school-related, thus not much sightseeing); and one very early visit to the breathtaking Leelanau Peninsula (unfortunately, our grad student schedules made it very difficult to see much more of Michigan than the southeast corner, which is regrettable).

The news is that I have a fantastic new job at UC Berkeley that I’ll be starting on May 15. With the job market for librarians the way it’s been, and rumors of budget cuts in the air at the University of Michigan, I’m very fortunate to have found a full-time job that dovetails so well with my interests in government and politics.

Michigan is really an indescribable place (despite Dixie Franklin’s brave attempt), and even after nearly 3 years of posting entries about my impressions of it, I’m at a loss as to how to summarize what it’s been like to live here (other than to realize that living this close to Motown has cemented my passion for R&B and the blues). Bruce Catton (quoted in the Franklin book) wrote, “Michigan is perhaps the strangest state in the Union, a place where the past, the present and the future are all tied up together in a hard knot.” I could possibly agree with the first part of his sentence, but the second part? You could make that “past/present/future” analogy about virtually every state in the Union (except maybe California, which lives to destroy the past).

There are people and places in Michigan that I will miss (Cafe Ambrosia!), and there are many things about being back in California that are going to take some getting used to. All in all, I think I’m making the right move, though, and as I said, I consider myself very fortunate.

Winter, Blah

Posted on by

Not much snow (ergo, not much winter). We’re almost a month into winter, and it’s been mostly rain, fog, overcast skies, and the occasional stretch of sunshine. Last year at about this time Steve was driving us through the heaviest snow of the season to get to the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Right now about the only evidence of snow is the 4-foot-high pile of forlorn-looking icy gray sludge sitting in the fire lane next to the carport outside the house.

I’ll still take falling snow over falling rain any day of the week. Oh, well, at least I’m not in water-logged Seattle, where it’s rained now for 27 days straight.

Notes on Caribou Coffee

Posted on by

Caribou Coffee (corporate headquarters in Minneapolis) about a month and a half ago opened a franchise on the corner of Packard and East Stadium, a somewhat curious place for a coffee house except for the fact that it’s a one of the busiest intersections in town and will attract, presumably, plenty of vehicular traffic. The same spot used to be an independent market that didn’t get a lot of business and had dust on the shelves. Now the building has been subdivided into the Caribou franchise, a liquor store, and a smoke shop. It’ll be interesting to see how long the Caribou survives on this corner. The other corners of the intersection are occupied by a gas station, another gas station (and Circle K), and a branch of Bank One.

Caribou has an interesting setup. Apparently, the corporate founders’ “‘aha’ moment” was achieved at the summit of Sable Mountain in Alaska, which is the first time I’ve ever heard of a spectacular mountain view being the inspiration for the founding of a coffee shop chain (“the breathtaking panoramic view became the entrepreneurial vision for Caribou Coffee”). The insides of each store are set up to resemble a mountain lodge, although the resemblance is strictly incidental in the case of this particular store, since it’s so small and cramped that it’s more like an apartment done up in corporate-lodge decor. The shop looks deceptively spacious from the outside but when you get inside you realize that most of the space is taken up by the counter and everything behind it. There are several cutsomer tables at the front of the store, smashed up as close to the windows as they’ll go. It’s hard to determine if the idea is to attract sitting customers or to-go customers; there’s not really enough room for more than a dozen sitters, but the room for people to stand in line to order and get their fare is ridiculously inadequate, and there’s lots of awkward cutting through spaces in line and bumping into people who are waiting to pick up their carry-out items.

On the plus side, although the aggressive faux-friendliness of the baristas is similar to that of Starbucks baristas (though not quite as steroidal), and the Caribou slogan is somewhat obnoxious (“Life is short — stay awake for it”), the tea is very tasty, and there’s the nice touch of the barista handing you a small cup along with your order, presumably so you can dump excess and make room for milk/cream if you wish. Not something that Starbucks ever does.

Another Ann Arbor Winter

Posted on by

Winter has settled in with a vengeance and the solstice isn’t even until tomorrow (at 1.30pm, to be exact). The storms began well before Thanksgiving and there have been at least three or four of them since then. The temps have been getting steadily chillier and chillier, and the snow on the ground, since it’s never completely melting, is semi-deliquescing and then re-solidifying into unfriendly slates of sometimes invisible gray snow-and-ice. The ice that forms on the back steps makes it hard for the dog to go out and do his routine.

There have been nights when I’ve walked home from the bus stop and heard absolutely nothing in the air except the sound of my own feet crunching in the snow on the pavement — one night in particular, it was so eerily silent that I could hear the whoosh of the wind pushing mini-drifts off the surface of the snow that was already on the ground. There’s something to be said for that kind of stillness — you can almost feel the earth turning beneath your feet.

The First Snow of the Season

Posted on by

Yesterday was the first snow of the season ….. just a few flakes, but there was a definite dusting on the ground this morning, and the temps are unmistakably wintry. I guess Indian summer is officially over.

Mike Cox: Republican Hypocrite

Posted on by

Before I forget, I didn’t fail to notice that the « Fascist Michigan attorney general who is trying to strip faithful Michigan couples of all their health insurance is himself an adulterer »:

‘Attorney General Mike Cox announced Wednesday he had an extramarital affair and accused the state’s most famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, of threatening to expose him unless Cox dropped an investigation into Fieger’s alleged violation of campaign-finance laws. “A number of years ago, I was unfaithful to my wife, Laura,” an emotional Cox said at a news conference, as his teary-eyed wife stood by his side in his Detroit office. “What I did was inexcusable and it was entirely my fault.” Cox said he told his wife about the affair in 2003, three months after he took office.’

Interesting how the family values crowd was stone cold silent when, according to the Leviticus that they love to quote, they should be throwing stones.

Despicable. Disgusting.

Typical.

Birds of Summer

Posted on by

Saw a bird hopping around on the grass on my way to the bus stop Tuesday morning that I couldn’t identify (nothing new there, I still can’t identify most birds) — gray and brown tail feathers in alternating patterns, sort of robin-sized, and sporting a prominent bright red spot on the nape of its neck. I e-mailed Scott, who’s a birdwatcher, and he immediately tagged it as a yellow-shafted northern flicker — “common in these parts, but not in urban areas usually,” he said.

Several weekends back we were taking a walk with the dog behind Allen Elementary and a pair of low-flying bluish-black birds kept meticulously dive-bombing the grass. I was thinking that they might be purple martins, but Scott told me that those are rare — more likely a couple of swallows.

I’ve heard a lot of unusual bird song this summer, but actual sightings of unusual birds have been rare. Mostly the usual assortment of robins, starlings, and sparrows, with an occasional cardinal thrown in. I misidentified a cardinal sitting on a shrub branch as a tanager and got a chuckle from Scott one day a few weeks back when we were walking across campus.

Price of Tea

Posted on by

Recently the price of tea went up from $1.59 to $2.12 at my favorite pitstop, Cafe Ambrosia. Seeing as how the price hadn’t been hiked in 2 years, they were entitled to charge a little more. Nonetheless, there’s a subtle psychological barrier that makes it unappealing to buy a pint glass of tea for over two bucks, a barrier that wasn’t present when the same product cost a buck and change. It’s only a 53 cent difference. But that 53 cents will buy, for example, that day’s copy of the Ann Arbor News or Detroit Free Press (if I’m inclined to spend it on either, and yes, I recognize that I spend way too much spare change on tree-based news delivery sources). On the other hand, while tea still costs $1.86 at nearby Espresso Royale, and the taste of the tea is no different, the experience at Espresso Royale is not as appealing. The phrase “opportunity cost” springs to mind … and I realize that I spent way too much time immersed in econ my last term at SI. I’m just glad my caffeine habit is fairly bare-bones: I’ve never liked coffee, and thus have no compulsion to buy fancy cappuccinos or lattes.

Retro Post—24-Aug-03 #3

Posted on by

[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.]

Oh, those heady first days … and now it seems like we’ve been here forever instead of just a year.

Ann Arbor: Day Three

It’s a puzzling place.

The lush greenery is almost headache-inducing in its vastness and omnipresence. The traffic, alas, is not much better than the traffic in the Bay Area was. You see lots of cars with militaristic stickers like “AIR ASSAULT” nestled next to University of Michigan logos. Everyone seems to be in sort of a hurry, though it is unclear why.

The home improvement stores are a smash hit, with lots of big-muscled, tightly-wound Michigan dads and husbands taking self-important walks into the hugeness of the outlets with their wives and kids, almost as though to demonstrate how all-American they are.

The churches are not prominent and those who frequent them seem to be enraged that this is the case, judging from the perversity and intensity with which one of the patrons of one of the said churches tailgated us on our way home from Lowe’s today.

The Borders bookstore I went into while Steve bought beagle food at Petco was a strange and conflicting melange of not-quite-identifiable styles and feels, with the store music system playing Warren Zevon’s “Sacrificial Lambs” (“Krishnamurti said,/’I’ll set you free/Write a check/and make it out to me’”) while a line of customers waited patiently to make their buys.

Everything seems a little too well-appointed, a little too eager to please, a little too perfect. It reminds me some of Palo Alto, though shorn of that town’s always-aggressive yuppie ethos.

Every four blocks in Ann Arbor has a neighborhood name, which, even by the standards of name-crazy San Freancisco, is a bit on the obnoxious side. Our little housing subdivision, in a neighborhood helpfully called Bryant/Pattengill (most of the neighborhoods are named after the K-12 schools in their midst), seems very quiet, almost oddly so, and yet also very much each one to his own, with not much in the way of demonstrable neighborliness either from the current residents to newcomers or between the denizens already ensconced.

I saw and apologized to our next-door neighbor today for our trailer being parked in front of her door while we unloaded and she nodded and grimaced a tight, grimacing smile at me, as though I had just boasted to her that Bayley had taken a dump in her yard.

There is a real and pleasurable beauty about the surroundings, a large-ish park next door, a gym with a bunch of new equipment, a modest showiness about the houses and apartments, yet something does not quite fall together.

I think that the reality is that I still feel unsettled, and not just because things have not quite fallen together yet for me and for us, and the clash between this still, tranquil place and the memory I have of commuting every day to work and strolling through the urine-soaked passageways of MUNI up to the homeless-draped sidewalks of Van Ness and Market, with the same pathetic old woman sitting on her stoop every morning and squeaking an emphysematic “Morning” to the changing cast of harried and exhausted and studiously indifferent passersby, and the painfully buzzingly hectic pace of life in the Bay Area, and the rush of the packing and the semi-goodbyes and the cross-country voyage, and the urban sounds of sirens and car horns and yells and squawks, have yet to leave me. It’s all just very strange.

There are tons and tons of boisterous, chattering, fearless squirrels everywhere here, another reminder of Palo Alto, except the ones in California are brown and these are squirrels with patches of fiery orange and yellow on their breasts and legs. There are also insects that make strange rising and falling whirring sounds all day long in the bushes, like a cross between the hiss of an angry cat and the sound of a rattlesnake rattling. Steve tells me these are cicadas. The squirrels and cicadas own Ann Arbor, no matter what the people who allegedly live here think.

—Posted by Frank at 23:59:00 | 24-Aug-03

Summer Is Icumen In

Posted on by

Signs of approaching summer everywhere. The temperature was up in the high 60s today. Robins aplenty, but a strange and unsettling squirrel hiatus. Humidity rising. Blue sky. Roofers getting ready to lay new roofing in our complex. Guys in shorts, girls in belly shirts, both sexes in those ridiculous Venice Beach flip-flops. Oh, well. In my khaki slacks and unlogo-ed polo shirt I may be a borderline sensibly-dressed geek, but I’m still a certifiable geek.

Lots of tourists roaming around campus, gaping and pointing. The grinning ones are the “prospies,” the frowners are the parents about to shell out tens of thousands for the prospie’s education. I can’t be sure, because the academic calendar on the University’s website seems useless to me, but I’m getting the impression that sometime not too long ago the break between the two intersessions began, because the campus, until recently fairly active, is suddenly like a becalmed frigate in the middle of the South Seas.

As I walked home tonight along East U, there was a stocky blond frat boy blowing up a kiddie wading pool in one grassy front yard and a bunch of undergrads playing hacky sack in the front yard next door. Aggressive joggers making their solemn, insistent, dogged courses along Packard. Bikers dressed head to toe in Lycra. Way too much vehicle traffic for 7.30 at night. An impatient driver in a black SUV whose determination to get where he or she is going knows no bounds doesn’t stop to let a car in front make a left turn off Packard, instead roaring into the right-hand bike lane and speeding off around the turning car. I’m barely missed by another black SUV making a left turn from Packard onto Wells. Nobody in Frisinger except a parent and a toddler in a swing and someone resting on one of the benches.

And who needs stupid, laggard, overhyped cicadas when you have the merry, monotonous industrial music of all-daylight-long motorized mowing equipment going on all over the complex from sun-up to sunset? It’s like cicadas without the shells and the flying into your ears. Another unexpected benefit: the mowing equipment temporarily drowns out the high-end car stereos of those residents of the complex (or their visitors) who think that it is their duty to share, at glass-shattering volume, the booming bass of their new CDs with everyone within a mile’s radius. Anyhow, apparently the edgers take the morning shift and the big guns come in during the afternoon shift. Cut grass on sidewalks all over the place, an allergy nightmare.