[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

A year later, these seem pretty inconsequential things to be missing … I had mostly forgotten all about them.

San Francisco Scenes I Will Miss

Things I will miss about living in this San Francisco neighborhood: The patch where they start growing pumpkins every July to sell in the pumpkin patch a block from my apartment; the view north up Funston as you drive to Andronico’s; and getting Krispy Kremes at Andronico’s (this is a picture of my last box from there, by the way [sigh]).

—Posted by Steve at 00:42 | 09-Aug-03

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

A year later, I STILL definitely do not miss these things …

San Francisco Scenes I Won’t Miss

Things I won’t miss about living in this San Francisco neighborhood: The higgledy-piggledy and dangerous intersection of Seventh Avenue and Lawton; the 36 Teresita Muni bus which I used to catch every morning at 6:20 a.m. at that spot; and the old, creaky, breaks-down-often, nasty elevator in my apartment building.

—Posted by Steve at 00:34 | 09-Aug-03

[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.]

If I remember right, the beagle was very upset that we moved down the hall to my roommate David’s new apartment for the week before we departed for Michigan. He sulked under my bed when we got there and subsequently got himself stuck and had to be extricated …

Pouting

‘Mad beagle. Stuck under bed.

—Posted by Steve at 00:24 | 09-Aug-03

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]. 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

More retro posts to follow …

[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.]

Many mega-dittoes from me on this one …

Things I’ll miss (not)

Within the space of fifteen minutes just after 7:30 on Monday morning, within a block of the center of the Financial District, I passed by an older bearded man in rags pulling down his trousers and shouting at bystanders for refusing to look at him; another somewhat younger man standing on the corner hawking Street Sheets and imploring people to give rather than receive; and a squalid lump of human stench squatting on one of the Market Street sitting blocks (I don’t know what else to call them; they aren’t benches, they aren’t planters) a block away from that, his belongings in a discolored heap inside, on top of, and overflowing a stolen shopping cart next to him.

I don’t know what the solutions to homelessness are. I don’t know that anybody does, especially not the politicians. I don’t think the homeless should be shipped out of town like many San Franciscans do. I also don’t think they are served by wandering the streets. All I do know is that I won’t miss the spectacle in my face every single day, and that there but for the grace of the universe go I.

—Posted by Frank at 14:33:27 | 8-Aug-03

We went to see “A Home at the End of the World“ last night at the Michigan. The screening was introduced by Tom Hulce, best known for his performance 20 years ago in Milos Forman’s “Amadeus.” The movie wasn’t all that great; it was brief, the ending was very abrupt, and probably the only really two fantastic things about the movie were its soundtrack and the brief clip from “All about Eve” that flashed on the screen. What was interesting, though, was Hulce’s introduction before the flick started.

He rambled a bit, and seemed oddly at a loss for words at one point, but he clearly perceived the movie as a vision of what it was like to live in the Midwest during the 1960s and 1970s (and that first third of the film was actually pretty good), and he launched into a bunch of fond reminiscences about strolling down State and Liberty and across the Diag with friends as an undergraduate at UM in the summer of 1969. What made the evident warmth of Hulce’s memory all the more intriguing was that the summer of 1969 was not exactly the most peaceful time in Ann Arbor, with South University being taken over for three days that June by student protesters and rioters and other pitched battles going on all summer long between various protesters and the University administration.

A lot of the audience (it was sparse; it could not even be described as a crowd), composed mostly of folks our age or older, loved Hulce doing this—a lot of them appeared to relate intensely to what he was talking about, to the memory of Ann Arbor as something other than what it apparently is now. That fascinated me. All places change, of course, and change is only accelerated as we move deeper into a time where nothing is stable anymore. But I’m always engrossed with the specifics: why is Ann Arbor so different now from what it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago? I can take stabs at guessing the reasons, one of them being, I suppose, that there seems to be very little (in terms of establishments or cultural landmarks) in town left that was around 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30. The nostalgia and reverie of Hulce and the audience was way more complicated than the usual “Those were good times” scenario.

I could be totally off base on that perception, but it seems to me that history gets erased here much more assiduously than it does in other cities in the Midwest. (Unless it’s the history of UM, which gets guarded and preserved fairly zealously.) Why that is, I couldn’t hazard a guess. I don’t think it’s just a function of the generic “college town” explanation.

I can’t believe how great it is that the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority has finally gotten with the program and is starting to allow people with University of Michigan IDs to ride the bus without paying. (There were one or two free routes before this, but citywide is a godsend.) I’m saving easily $8-10 a week.

I’m no paragon of the spoken word, as anyone who knows me can verify, but it always amuses me when I hear students — not just undergrads, grads and everyone in between — using filler words in their speech.

“Like” I can understand; it’s an unconscious filler word, like “um,” “uh,” and all the rest. But today I listened to a couple of poli sci grad students chattering away over coffee about lesson plans, peppering their conversation with words like “ordinal” and “constituencies,” and one of them kept very studiously and carefully interweaving into the dialogue California beach bum expressions like “SWEET!” and “Okay, so … that’s cool.”

There was also the woman from Toronto I overheard larding her conversation with liberal doses of “Fer shure!” (Moon Unit Zappa, you’re wanted on the white courtesy phone.)

I blame California for all of the above.

This afternoon while I was waiting for the bus, I saw a couple of undergrad-looking guys, one toting what looked like a box containing a router and the other some other kind of electronic doohickey in a Toshiba box, and knew beyond a doubt that the influx has officially gotten into high gear. The students have been traipsing around campus all week, actually. There are more every day. No longer does the campus even have the pretense of feeling deserted, dead, or de-populated; it actually never felt that way all “summer,” regardless of the urban myths I’d heard about such a utopian state. I guess it’s almost time for the insanity to resume, alas.

[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.]

Well, it looks like this one saw me full of anxieties about leaving San Francisco for Ann Arbor:

Overwhelmed

Scenes from a farewell dinner for Frank with his colleagues:

A lovely scene tonight as Frank’s co-workers treated him to a delicious pizza dinner and cake to say farewell. They’re a wonderful set of people, gracious and unpretentious and the evening was quite enjoyable. I was a bit too tired to fully enjoy it, I’m embarassed to admit, but it was both touching and bittersweet and yet another goodbye-to-San-Francisco moment. Many thanks to Mabel for hosting the event and doing such a fabulous job with preparing delicious food for us.

And then I came home. And here we have it … that overwhelmed feeling that hits every move. Overwhelmed by the sheer physical task ahead of me … moving all I own down to a truck to be driven across the bay and loaded onto a trailer for cross-country transport. Then unloading everything into the new home.

I’m not really that great with adaptation. Never has been my strong suit. As a matter of fact, it’s my old nemesis. And this is the beginning of that bugaboo.

And as my old nemesis, it’s a very familiar feeling. One which I know I will have and one which I know what it will feel like and one which I know how to fight and one which, thank goodness, I know will not last long.

I guess tonight’s problem is simply fatigue. I’ve been packing an entire two-bedroom apartment, throwing things away, scrounging boxes, running all the myriad errands all over town, handling all the logistics of finding an apartment, closing out the old one, switching off utilities here and turning them on there, another ‘plane trip to Detroit, job interviews, handling the last-minute and therefore urgent needs of my three clients, comforting the dog, packing up my fleet of airliner models, arranging moving trucks and trailers, saying goodbyes, traipsing around all over the bay area for final look-sees, last visits to the doctor (good news there … my health is excellent), mourning the imminent absence of the great and wonderful San Francisco fog from my life, finding another auto insurance carrier after GEICO wanted to increase my six-month premium from $638 to $2,594 (!), putting a new spare tire on the Jeep, inspecting it, changing its oil, washing it and lubing it and cleaning it out, reassuring friends and relatives and explaining why-oh-why, spackling nail holes in the walls, cleaning the grill and scrubbing the balcony, cleaning, arranging, numbering boxes, painting the rust spots in my medicine chest, final vet visits for a very discombobulated beagle, who knows exactly what’s going on (he’s done this 14 times before in a mere nine years of his life), and comforting said beagle by giving lots of snuggle hugs and assuring him that his own private patch of ivy awaits him out his back door, that there will be plenty of snow to romp about on in just about 3.5 short months and that yes, indeedy, he’s going to just love Michigan.

Which is pretty much where I am. I’m looking forward to the trip. I’m looking forward to the beginning of a new life in a new city with Frank. The townhouse we’ve rented is fabulous … in other words, it’s all good. I’m particularly excited to take in Yosemite again, and the new (to me) country up and over to Lee Vining, down to Bishop and Vegas and joining the Mother Road at Kingman.

I can’t wait to see my native state again. From border to border, New Mexico makes my soul and spirit resonate … it vibrates in me with a hum and excitement … it revives a connection that has been there since birth. I can honestly say that, as far around the world as I’ve travelled, few (if any) places on the plant make me as truly happy as the Land of Enchantment makes me.

I’ll also enjoy showing Frank, I-40 virgin, what America is really like … that it’s not George W. Bush’s Amurrica, that it is, in fact, a vast and exciting and varied and colorful and wonderful place … peopled with the occasional fascist nut, but , hey, no place is perfect, right? Keep the radio off the AM dial and stop and take plenty of pics and … enjoy … the experience. A New Mexico sunset. The cool piney altitude of Flagstaff. The folks of Oklahoma. The Lisa Marie, Elvis’ DC-8, sitting in a park at Graceland. The Ryman Auditorium. And so on. The trip will be simply fabulous, as will the commencement of our new lives in a new city, state, time zone and mentality. It’s all good.

It’s just that here at 11:45 p.m. on the last night before the deluge, I have to rearrange all the boxes and furniture, load up the kitchen stuff, pack the fragile pics and posters, disconnect a huge home theater system and 46-inch TV … and make changes to a project for a client and start another one for her, pick up moving equipment at U-Haul, wait on a glass company to fix a chip on the windshield of the Jeep, meet with a client and then start hauling everything down the hall to our one-week temporary apartment.

It’s a long, exhausting, sometimes nightmarish thing, is moving. I have to say that this one, other than the physical demands on me, is turning out to be less problematic than the other 15 I’ve done myself since April 1994.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Until I’m standing underneath a waterfall in Yosemite and then crossing the Nevada border a few hours later, it will be hard to believe it’s going to happen.

And yet, two weeks from right now, we should be sleeping in … Oklahoma City, OK. Whaddya know?

Good night, ya’ll.

—Posted by Steve at 03:12 | 05-Aug-03

[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 admit to being a snob here; I always preferred SF to Oakland, which never really grew on me, its storied past notwithstanding …

A note about Oakland

It may seem that I’m dissing Oakland by writing about things I’ll miss about the Bay Area (and concentrating most of them on San Francisco). I’m not dissing Oakland, but I’m not fully embracing it, either.

I live in Oakland much of the week, and there are things I love about it—its sprawling hugeness, its rolling hills, its vast parks, its hidden neighborhoods, its insistent heterogeneity, its stubborn retention of a certain working-class scarppiness in spite of all of Jerry Brown and Jacques Barzaghi’s efforts to domesticate it. (There are also things I don’t like so much about Oakland, but this post isn’t about dissing Oakland.)

But I don’t have a car (right now), and to properly love Oakland you have to have one, without a doubt. To properly love San Francisco all you need are a MUNI pass and two feet.

—Posted by Frank at 08:50:09 | 4-Aug-03

[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.]

Fog. Oh, the fog. Yes, indeedy, god knows I do miss that …

Things I’ll miss, #8

The fog. It doesn’t come in on “little cat feet,” as in the Carl Sandburg poem. It comes in like a crushing Genghis Khan army.

Friday night as I was on my way to Base Airbeagle, I walked along Kirkham and up the hill on Locksley—and the fog was so thick, it was exhilarating. You could see maybe ten yards in any direction, tops. The fog rolled over the neighborhood like a massive gray carpet being shaken by a giant pair of hands. The mist crashed against your face, driven by the wind. This wasn’t Cornwall or the Cotswolds, it was the Inner Sunset.

When I first looked for apartments in San Francisco, it was in the Inner and Outer Sunset that I looked, and I hesitated because I found the fog irritating, depressing, and forbidding. Now, I can’t think of any feature of San Francisco that I’ll miss more—and that I have already missed more living most of my week in Oakland.

—Posted by Frank at 08:40:29 | 4-Aug-03

[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

I was walking along William today and a man sitting on his porch was blasting what sounded an awful lot like Billie Holiday out one of the front windows of his house.

Ah, summer.

[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

[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

[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

[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 a iversary 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

[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

[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

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]

[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.]

This was Frank’s first post to aSquared:

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

Saw the surgeon today: Verdict was basically the beginnings of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Ergo, I won’t be using the computer much for the next six weeks and so won’t be posting here much. I’m to remain splint-ed up for the whole period and he injected my wrists/hands with cortisone and an anesthetic which made things really, really weird for awhile. Another injection in six weeks and maybe surgery will follow.

What was even weirder than my hands going suddenly numb after having a needle shoved into the sensitive parts of my wrists was that the surgical office is at Domino Farms, an Ann Arbor experience I hadn’t had yet. Plunked down in the middle of the Ave Maria art gallery, bookstore and radio station is the doctor’s office. When I was sent for x-rays, I had to walk through the whole Ave Maria/Bleedin’ Christ/radio station blaring in-your-face fascist propaganda thing.

In a large glass case was a lifesize plaster statue of the torso of Christ in agony with his arms outstretched and hovering overhead the crown of thorns, about to descend on his bleeding brow.

Being of the protestant/pentecostal background, we were always told that the Catholic penchant for depicting Christ in agony on the cross was a work of Satan because the cross should always be empty, signifying his triumph over it and death. Needless to say, in Duncan, Oklahoma, even at Assumption Catholic Church, there is nothing to compare to the very weird confluence of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, farm animals and bleedin’ Jesus that is Tom Monaghan’s Domino Farms. I’ll never be able to look a Domino’s pizza in the face ever again.

It was all very Mel Gibson, especially when the doctor shoved the needles into my wrists.

I got lots of very pointed and suspicious looks as I walked through the halls trying to find radiology. You think Opus Dei can tell you’re a heathen trailing fire and brimstone behind you? Sure seemed like it.

But then again, it could just be because I happened to have toted along Jimmy Breslin’s new fire-and-brimstone indictment of the Catholic church for its greed, venality and sexual abuse entitled The Church That Forgot Christ. The lettering on the cover is white on black, so it stands out.

Yeah, maybe that was it.

Meanwhile, time to splint things up and lie on the couch. For six weeks.

Good god.

John Kerry’s speech had its eye-rolling moments, but it also had it’s total kick-ass ones too. He’ll have to keep hammering these points home if he expects to decisively send the Boy Emperor packing in November, but it’s a good start. Excerpts:

‘We can do better and we will. We’re the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We’re the can do people. And let’s not forget what we did in the 1990s. We balanced the budget. We paid down the debt. We created 23 million new jobs. We lifted millions out of poverty and we lifted the standard of living for the middle class. We just need to believe in ourselves—and we can do it again.

…

‘Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities—and I do—because some issues just aren’t all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn’t make it so.

‘As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system—so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

‘I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can’t tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they’re out on patrol at night and they don’t know what’s coming around the next bend. I know what it’s like to write letters home telling your family that everything’s all right when you’re not sure that’s true.

‘As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: “I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm’s way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent.” So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.

‘And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.

…

‘And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and ears to the truth, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

‘You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The stars and stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of you here and all across our country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. It was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men I served with and friends I grew up with. For us, that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good.

‘That flag doesn’t belong to any president. It doesn’t belong to any ideology and it doesn’t belong to any political party. It belongs to all the American people.’

Amen, brother, amen!

Warning to the untutored:

Do not try to tie a firecracker to a bunny rabbit, fail in your attempt to explode said rodent, and then post the photographs of the spectacle to the World Wide Web, as some teenage lifeguard apparently did recently in Castro Valley, CA (and knowing that he was from Castro Valley told me what I needed to know about why someone would do such a cruel and asinine thing to a defenseless animal).

Again, don’t do it. The Humane Society might catch wind of it, somehow, someday, somewhere. Hint: It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason.

The lifeguard was quoted as saying that a lot of people are judging him and his friends without knowing them. I wonder why?

Yesterday I saw a campus tour guide leading a large group through the Diag, attempting to make her comments about the Physics Building heard over the monologue of a preaching regular who was standing on one of the short stone walls surrounding the Diag and delivering a sermon to thin air about how you can be the biggest winner and the brightest person in the world but it doesn’t matter if you’ve sinned against God.

I don’t know why, but in addition to the lazier-than-usual vibe around town, these all feel like signs that summer is starting to enter its waning stage (even though the season’s only been here five weeks, it’s been here much longer in terms of the academic calendar):

• Lots of students gradually making their way back to campus and settling in for the coming year; some students are even using the libraries.

• Lots of guys wearing tank tops and women wearing belly shirts even on days when it’s not particularly that hot outside.

• Lots of feverish clean-up work going on around the student flophouses along State below Packard.

• Lots of For Rent signs.

There’s another thing I don’t understand. I freely admit I’m not yet with it when it comes to cell phones. I use them when they’re necessary, but not much otherwise. And I just don’t get why people use them in places like theaters and libraries.

A security guard apparently maced a couple of kids who were using their cell phones on Saturday night while “Catwoman” was showing at a movie theater in St. Petersburg, FL. I don’t think the couple should have been maced, but I think they should have turned their cell phones off. I was doing some research at Hatcher this afternoon and a woman sat at a desk in front of me carrying on a conversation on her cell. She was positively quiet compared to the jock who stood in front of the reading room nearly shouting into his cell.

If you’re in an emergency, I can see pulling out your cell phone and making a call in a library. But otherwise, why? Other than the fact that it’s quiet there and you just don’t care about anyone else around you overhearing your loud conversation. The library staff has probably become resigned to cell phone breaching the library space at this point; I have never seen any librarian (or anyone anywhere else, for that matter) pull aside a cell phone user and ask him or her to stop, because doing so would probably risk an incident of cell phone rage.

Okay, I’ve lost the ability to understand what it ws that I’m supposed to do in an elevator when it stops on a floor and there are people waiting to get in and I’m waiting to get out. It used to be that the normal behavior was for the people outside to wait to get in until the people inside got out. That’s gone by the wayside. I was in an elevator in Hatcher the other day and a whole troop of people started pouring onto the elevator before I could get out. I’m honestly clueless here. Do I just barge out and rudely shove the people waiting to get on? Do I stay on and push through the wall of people after they’ve already boarded? I don’t get it.

« President Al Gore spoke to the Democratic National Convention this evening »:

’”I sincerely ask those watching at home who supported [The Boy Emperor] four years ago: Did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for?” Gore said. “Is our country more united today? Or more divided?” Gore asked. “Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow?” Joking that he was the first American laid off during the Bush administration, Gore said Bush’s economic policies drove up deficits and cost millions of jobs. … “To those of you who felt disappointed or angry with the outcome in 2000, I want you to remember all of those feelings,” he said. “But then I want you to do with them what I have done: Focus them fully and completely on putting John Kerry and John Edwards in the White House.” … “Are you troubled by the erosion of some of America’s most basic civil liberties?” he said. “Are you worried that our environmental laws are being weakened and dismantled to allow vast increases in pollution that are contributing to a global climate crisis?” “No matter how you voted in the last election, these are profound problems that all voters must take into account this Nov. 2.”’

You tell ‘em, Mr. President!

« Gay bicyclists camp torched in northern Michigan »:

’ Dozens of sleeping gay cyclists scrambled for their lives as an arsonist set fire to their campsite. About 75 members of Friends North were on a summer bike outing. Twenty in the group set up camp near the town of Honor and bedded down for the night Sunday. About 12:30 a.m. a member of the group awoke to find a portable toilet on fire and flames spreading to nearby belongings. The cyclist woke up the others fearing the fire would spread to the dry grass and encircle them. Flames were shooting 20 feet in the air a member of the group said. Later, about two dozen hate messages were found scattered throughout the area.

“We’re all very devastated,” Friends North member Rose Clement of Grawntold the Record-Eagle. “If that fire would’ve spread into the field, this could’ve been horrific.” “There was some very foul, very mean-spirited stuff,” said Kirk Mallow, a Friends North board member who also had a rainbow flag taken in the incident. “It was pretty scary.”’

Lovely.

A driver on Stadium honks impatiently at a car in front of him/her who was trying to turn right onto a side street.

It was rush hour, but so what? I mean, I can understand honking in certain limited circumstances. Someone cuts you off. Someone jams on his or her brakes abruptly. But this?

Ridiculous.

I don’t normally quote politicians in this blog, but I have to say amen to these words from John Kerry, spoken in the Columbus neighborhood of Park Ridge Village today:

I’m proud to hear the voices of democracy. Sometimes they’re a little loud, but that’s the nature of democracy and we welcome that. What we really need to do in America, frankly, is stop shouting at each other and start listening to each other.

One of my favorite parts of the summer so far has been the way the light looks at dusk, especially when the fireflies come out and start lighting up the backyard with their silent fireworks. That and the very noisy small group of cicadas that has set up shop somewhere in many trees behind the house and over the fence in the yards of the houses on the other side of us.

There weren’t any out-of-the-ordinary explanations for the temperature drop late last week. According to the Ann Arbor News, a cold front made it way through southeastern Michigan on Friday. The low temperature on Saturday morning matched a record set in 1904 (the temperature got down to 49 degrees both days).

We were walking the dog in a completely deserted Frisinger Park this afternoon when I looked up into a tree and saw what must have been a downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) doing a strange little woodpecker dance as it hung onto one of the branches of the tree with its feet and circled the branch 360 degrees, stopping to quietly drill every few seconds. First time I’d ever seen a woodpecker up close. It really didn’t seem at all alarmed by our presence, completely ignoring us for a minute or more before it finally winged off to a higher branch on the tree. Amazing.

I’ve started reading the new book, The Anatomy of Facism, by Robert O. Paxton, so I’ll probably have plenty to add to my entry on Fascism below. So far, it’s a good overview of fascism as a phenomenon and takes a better approach; namely, that merely defining fascism (if that’s even possible) isn’t enough to fully understand it. [I’ll post a review over in the Print section at some point.]

Reading ahead, I see that Paxton lists several ‘mobilizing passions’ behind fascism:

’• A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of traditional solutions;

• The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;

• The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

• Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

• The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

• The need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

• The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

• The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;

• The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.’

Interesting. More on this after I finish reading the book. In the meantime, I shall continue to call the ruling right-wing Republican hegemony in this country the Fascist FunDumbMentalists, until Paxton shows me where I’m wrong. And I’ll do so unapologetically.

While helping a (female) friend shop at the mall last night, I witnessed something rather odd for the midwest: two early twenty-something guys (with 70s hair and tattoos and sunglasses) in the women’s department of a store trying on size 4 women’s jeans. Inexplicably. And they seemed to be having a pretty good time. And no, they weren’t obviously gay or transvestites or anything … they apparently just wanted some tight-fitting jeans.

It prompted one of the salesgirls to say, ‘You sure have to be secure in your masculinity to carry this off!’

Metrosexuals in Ann Arbor?

There’s a lot of debate these days about how “polarized” the country is. If you were to base your conclusions simply on perusing the list of new non-fiction titles at the Ann Arbor District Library (or any other good-sized library, for that matter), you would have enough fuel to argue about the phenomenon (and isn’t that another sign that we’re polarized—that we have to argue about whether we are?) for weeks.

Just a sampler:

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy [Lewis Lapham]

A Hole in the World: A Story of War, Protest and the New American Order [Jonathan Schell]

Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man [David Hardy and Jason Clarke]

American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power [Christopher Anderson]

How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office: The Anti-Politics, Un-Boring Guide to Power [Adrienne Brown, William Upski Wimsatt, and Davey D]

Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think [Jed Babbin]

The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry [Steven Hayward]

I guess as the titles get longer, the content gets more strident, shrill, and asinine.

As a followup to the post below about a white woman’s encounter with a group of suspicious swarthy men on a flight to L.A., « the truth is finally coming out »:

‘Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, overreacted, to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS. The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service. Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women. The lady was overreacting, said the source. A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane.

The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsens actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves. Air marshals only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger. They have to be very cognizant of their surroundings, spokesman Adams confirmed, to make sure it isn’t a ruse to try and pull them out of their cover.’

Ain’t it grand? I’m keeping an eye on Women’s Wall Street to see if they post a followup or retreat from the story. So far, they’re only linking to followups on fascist websites.

What fun the Fair was! Lots of good food … crowds of strangers carrying artsy things on sticks … fiddling boys playing for tips … an earnest young woman pressing a brochure into my hand that proclaimed that ‘Jesus was the greatest Artist of all time.’

And as I was walking east on Liberty at the Fair yesterday, a thirtyish guy, definitely not from Ann Arbor, kept up a running commentary behind me (for the benefit of his silent and bored girlfriend) as we passed all the political booths.

‘Howard Dean?! Yeah, right. You people are crazy. Pppptttttt.’

and the prizewinner:

‘I’m gettin’ really tired of all this peace crap.’

Yeah? Well, just stick around if the Boy Emperor regains the throne in November, buddy. You won’t have to put up with any ‘peace crap’ for at least four more years.

Still and all, it was a fun event and the weather was wonderful.

The one really enjoyable part of yesterday’s Fair was the weather. After five days or so of high-80s temps and punishing humidity, the temperature and the humidity both just suddenly dropped into the cellar (the cellar for July, anyway). It was probably no higher than 72 degrees and the humidity never got near 50%. There was a light breeze and everything was bright and blue and sunny but it was all somehow a lot more manageable. There were even a few instances of civility and politeness: people holding doors open for each other, saying “Sorry” and “Excuse me” when they bumped into you, etc. The weather’s continued that way today: right now it’s 72 degrees and the humidity is only 22%. This is summer weather I can heartily endorse.

Well ….. the Friday crowds were definitely way bigger than the first two days. It was a little overwhelming at times, actually. Not completely claustrophobic; if you wanted to get away you could still move to the areas beyond the booths and find some open space. But very difficult to take photographs or do much of anything else; Steve and I and our friend Scott grabbed some lunch and found an out-of-the-way spot to eat. So, no observations to make about the second two days of the Fair (I suspect it’s even more packed today; our entire complex is deserted today, and I have a feeling a lot of people have gone to the festivities). But I did enjoy the first two days. It was well worth experiencing; I wish I’d made time to see more. Maybe next year.

The most frequent conversation I overheard at the Fair was along the lines of the following:

TEENAGER: I wanna go hooooome!

MOM: No, we’re not going home.

Or:

KID: I don’t wanna waaaaalk anymore!

MOM: We’re gonna keep walking.

Just three pics today … « Ann Arbor Art Fair ‘04: Day Three »

First, it started with a first-person account of a « white woman’s scary encounter with swarthy scary Ay-rabs »: It seems that 14 scary swarthy men did mighty suspicious things on a flight to L.A. The incident apparently was scary enough that she thinks we should chuck civil liberties out the window (as evidenced in the very first paragraph of her story:

‘On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.’

—Women’s Wall Street Journal

It’s quite a tale (and goes on and on and on for pages). And if it happened the way she describes, well, it’s a matter for concern, of course.

But she completely undermines her credibility by turning the report into a right-wing polemic/agitprop piece, quoting Ann Coulter, of all people, which alone pops up red flags all over the place.

Fortunately, there are a few (very few) people left in journalism willing to do a little investigating, and the National Review Online’s « Clinton W. Taylor did a follow-up »:

‘Columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin confirmed some of the details of Jacobsen’s story with the Federal Air Marshal’s service, but the identity of the band remained the subject of much speculation. … Nour Mehana (a.k.a. Noor Mehanna, or Nour Mhanna, plus various permutations of those spellings) is, in fact, Syrian. He performs both “new-agey” hits and old sentimental Middle Eastern classics in a style called Tarab. In this catchy ten-minute video of Mehana on stage, (scroll down; the name is rendered Noor Mhanan this time ) you can see he has a rather large backup band helping him out. (The resolution is low, but Jacobsen might recognize some of the band members Mehanna is interacting with.) Followers of news from Iraq may have heard about the U.S. tour of the “Iraqi Elvis.” Well, Mehana comes across not as an angry jihadi, but rather more like the Syrian Wayne Newton. …

‘Anyway, this is good news. Nour Mehana’s band might have acted like jerks on the plane, but it appears safe to say they were not casing Northwest Airlines for a suicidal assault, and we can quit worrying about this being a “dry run” or an aborted attack. And if Jacobsen was wondering why one man in a dark suit and sunglasses sat in first class while everyone else flew coach, well, it seems pretty clear that this was the Big Mehana himself.’

Taylor then strikes a more moderate tone, with which I pretty much agree, and notes where the true concern should be:

‘Liberals will likely decry the suspicion and interrogation the musicians faced on Flight 327. And the principled Right will regret that that was necessary. If the band’s English wasn’t very good they might not have understood the instructions. But a polite word and some helpful gestures earlier on, rather than a guilty PC silence, might have saved them some embarrassment. In any case, the police-state parallels fade quickly: In a real police state, like, oh, Syria, you are not even allowed inside the country with an Israeli stamp in your passport. June 29 was no ordinary day in the skies. That day, Department of Homeland Security officials issued an “unusually specific internal warning,” urging customs officials to watch out for Pakistanis with physical signs of rough training in the al Qaeda training camps. The warning specifically mentioned Detroit and Los Angeles’s LAX airports, the origin and terminus of NWA flight 327.

‘That means that our air-traffic system was expecting trouble. But rather than land the plane in Las Vegas or Omaha, it was allowed to continue on to Los Angeles without interruption, as if everything were hunky-dory on board. It certainly wasn’t. If this had been the real thing, and the musicians had instead been terrorists, nothing was stopping them from taking control of the plane or assembling a bomb in the restroom. Given the information they were working with at the time, almost everyone should have reacted differently than they did. Jacobsen’s fear was quite natural under these circumstances, and she has done us a service by pointing out some egregious shortfalls in our airline security. Danke Schoen, Darling. Let’s hope the right people are listening.’

—National Review Online

The story has been all over the ‘blogosphere, and « some wags are having fun with it »:

’… although now pretty much discredited, Annie has managed to be on at least a couple cable news shows, several talk radio programs, has been mentioned in the NY Times, and has become something of a hero to the whiny right. She will probably be invited to address Congress, and will end up getting a book deal out of all this. So, I figure it’s time to tell MY scary air travel stories, in the hopes that I too can cash in. … About ten years ago I was traveling for work. One flight (an inter-European one) was on a small prop plane that held about 20 people; most of the other passengers were Arabic men wearing traditional Arabic attire. They had Saudi diplomatic passports. They all seemed to know each other, and spoke amongst themselves. In ARABIC! Instead of a ham sandwich and an apple, they were giving a snack which accorded with Islamic dietary laws. But I saw one of the men reading a Playboy on the flight. Since this violated his religious beliefs, Allah could have punished him (and everybody else) by making the plane crash. While we didn’t actually have any trouble on the flight, I was really scared, if it will get me on TV.’

—World O’ Crap

Funny stuff. But I pretty much agree with Taylor. We don’t need racial profiling and the wholesale scrapping of civil liberties like Jacobsen calls for, nor do we need to be completely clueless either. We need to be alert and focus on and challenge behavior, whether it’s by an 80-year-old white grandma or 14 Arabs. The debate over race is just a distraction.

After all, who committed the second-worst terrorist attack on American soil? A white male rightwing extremist. And who was planning a massive terrorist attack within the last year? A couple of white rightwing extremists.

It’s the behavior, stupid.

The second day of the Fair(s) was more crowded than the first, but there was still plenty of elbow room. I started out at the area around Fifth and Liberty and made my way east and south to campus, taking a few photos as I went along and getting rapidly done in by the humidity. By the time I reached Hatcher Library I was done for; the cool building was a blessing. (The Ann Arbor News said that two people were treated for “heat-related illnesses” during yesterday’s festivities.) Of course, this is nothing compared to the South, or so I’m told, so I consider myself lucky.

I hope to take a closer look at the booths tomorrow. Today was mostly trying to get some decent atmosphere shots; I didn’t have much time to do anything else. I didn’t buy anything—just gawked and took photos. The constant “JOBS NOT WAR” signs everywhere (along with other similar insignia) were reminders that for the Midwest, Ann Arbor’s a pretty liberal place to be. (I read in the Free Press today that the mayor and the Common Council of Madison nixed the idea of Madison doing a “sister city” arrangement with a Palestinian town in the Gaza Strip because the act was too political or radical or controversial or something. I don’t know the full story, but that seems kind of odd coming from Madison, which already has sister cities in Cuba and Vietnam.)

I see that « some local reporters have more chutzpah than the national press »:

’… as reporters in Omaha, Neb., proved last week. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz visited the area, where he observed a military ceremony and gave a July 9 speech sponsored by the Omaha Chamber of Commerce. Wolfowitz’s office invited several regional reporters for a post-speech discussion with the deputy secretary. … Wolfowitz’s public affairs officer, Bill Turenne, began by asking that Wolfowitz’s comments be attributed to a “senior Defense Department official.” The Kansas City Star’s Canon took immediate issue with these ground rules. “I was less heroic than you might imagine,” he says in a telephone interview. Canon politely explained to Wolfowitz and Turenne that the conversation would be of no professional value to him if he couldn’t name Wolfowitz as the source of the remarks. There just wouldn’t be much use at his paper for such blind quotery. “My complaint was less about the practice in general than that it would be a waste of [Wolfowitz’s] time.”
…
‘The moral here isn’t that reporters can eliminate the scourge of background and anonymous sourcing with a wave of the hand. Omaha ain’t Washington. But it does illustrate 1) how background sourcing has become the default setting for many government sources and their handlers—they request it even when they don’t need it!; 2) that the smaller the group of reporters, the greater their leverage in getting information on the record; and 3) a reporter never knows what resistance to authority will get him unless he resists.’

I think the moral here is that the national press is shirking its responsibility and needs to grow a [collective] spine.

« Dear America »,

‘On November 2nd, please elect a new government.
Signed, Your Friends in Canada …’

Frank took more really great pics of day two of the Ann Arbor Art Fair:

« Ann Arbor Art Fair ‘04: Day Two »

Again … so very Ann Arbor!