Thanks to Steve for posting the photos. The one of the spray-painted “ART NOT WAR” sign was actually not “technically” part of the fair(s); it’s been in that bus shelter on South U for weeks. But I thought it captured the zeitgeist well.

I biked to campus. It took all of 15-18 minutes, discounting time spent at the long light at Packard and Stadium. It was perhaps not the pleasantest day in the world to be biking in work clothes, though I doubt I’d have been any less affected by the humidity if I’d taken the bus. I’m getting used to the humidity by now, though that doesn’t mean I don’t long for it to be gone. Biking home was a slightly lengthier proposition, because I stopped at Kroger, but I didn’t find the ride difficult at all, and I rode along streets I would have never discovered if I had been hoofing it.

The fair’s first day was surprisingly tame, crowd-wise; I’m told the most hectic days are Friday and Saturday. Even with the crowds, and there were definitely lots of people, there was room to breathe, with the milling fairgoers limiting themselves very closely to where the stalls were positioned on South U and State and not venturing far off the beaten path. The long pathway running from the northwest to the southeast edge of central campus didn’t look all that much more trafficked than it has on other summer weekdays.

I even found a deserted corner of a brick wall off to the side of the entrance to the Fine Arts Library where I was able to eat a snack from the stands without anyone passing by—except one of the hungry (yet surprisingly finicky) campus squirrels, who was evidently not a connoisseur of pita bread.

Contrasted with the street fairs during the summer and fall months in San Francisco, I’d sum up the Ann Arbor experience thus far as follows:

• Far less claustrophobic, if not in numbers of people then in terms of the space in which they are moving; the narrow confines of Union Street and Castro Street in SF are enough to make you swear off fairs forever if you’re not inclined to enjoy being trapped in a crowd and not being able to move more than a foot forward at a time.
• The food’s definitely better, by a long shot (though no less expensive; at $3 for a cup of lemonade, it’s called highway robbery). In SF you get crappy junk and watery beverages (or, if you prefer the alternative, watery beer). Here at least the junk food is satisfying. And the lemonade is great: not too tart, but not sickly sweet either.
• The crowds here are not as catty, snippy, snotty, or snooty. Lots of families and kids. Quite a number of dogs too, though the heat seemed a little excessive to be dragging a pooch along in. One typically eager beagle straining at his master’s leash was an amusing sight.
• As far as what’s being sold in the booths themselves, not all that much difference, though I haven’t really lingered at any of the booths for very long yet.

More photos tomorrow, I hope.

Frank took some pics of the first day of Art Fair around campus today:

« Ann Arbor Art Fair ‘04: Day One »

Love that first one … so very Ann Arbor.

For the average child born in 1999, the department estimates it will cost $160,140 for food, shelter and other necessities in the first 17 years of life. For you sticklers out there, the department estimates that the inflation-adjusted amount will be $237,000.??

I guess I’m still shaking my head over the blurb in the Ann Arbor News police blotter yesterday:

A motorist who stopped to allow ducks to cross the road in Ann Arbor Saturday evening said a passenger of a nearby vehicle became enraged and began striking his vehicle and spitting at him, Ann Arbor Police said.

The 33-year-old Ann Arbor driver said he was in the 700 block of East Eisenhower Parkway at 6:30 p.m. when a group of ducks began crossing the road, reports said. He said he stopped, then honked and pointed at the ducks as a small white car drove toward them, reports said.

The man said the driver of the other vehicle then cut off his car as they began driving again, so he pulled to the other lane as they approached a red light, reports said. The victim said the passenger in the white car got out, punched and scratched his window, yelled that he would kill him, and spit at him through the window, reports said.

The victim said the man tried to open his door, but it was locked, and he simply smiled at the enraged man as it was occurring, reports said. He also said the female driver of the white car got out and was encouraging the passenger to fight him, reports said.

The creatures the first motorist was trying to save were actually probably geese, not ducks. I’ve seen a ton of Canadian geese in that area for at least a couple of months now. I’ve seen maybe a handful of ducks.

Just so there’s no risk of misunderstanding or causing offense, I’m not making any sort of know-it-all cynical grand statement about Ann Arbor. I don’t doubt that this sort of thing happens everywhere nowadays. That doesn’t make it less appalling. Maybe I don’t know the full story. Maybe the first motorist shouldn’t have honked. Maybe he should have just run over the crossing goslings. Maybe the enraged motorist would have still charged after him at the next stoplight. Who knows?

Today, I took the longest ride yet: 10 miles roundtrip on the Bobcat. We won’t talk about what it did to my hands, even though my splints took most of the shock and I really haven’t had much trouble, post-ride. We won’t talk about the right knee, either, which seems to be stiffening somewhat as I age.

I am proud I took the long trip, though, even though I’ll pay a price later with my very sore, tenosynovitis-plagued hands.

I had to meet a classmate at the UM School of Ed on campus at 4, and we needed a new can opener, so I biked the two miles to campus and then did the four miles during rush hour over to Arborland shopping center … kind of insane of me, but I did it to prove I could.

The bike performed flawlessly and was a joy to ride; Ann Arbor’s gentle hills caused me some huffy-puffy, but nothing major. And Ann Arbor’s nice city sidewalks that stretch the entire two miles from the shopping center here to the apartment meant I didn’t have to deal at all with traffic. It was a very nice ride.

They only slightly annoying moment came on a side street near the shopping center; the street was hard packed dirt with a little gravel. An old Suburban came coasting up behind me, then as he got just ahead of me, he gunned it. Whether intentional or not, I don’t know, but it looked like he was trying to spray me with gravel. I called him a bad name and took another side street.

Other than that, an uneventful ride. There are bike racks at the Bed Bath & Beyond in the shopping center, fortunately, so finding a place to tie up was easy. I did seem to get some patronizing stares from the car people; the location is definitely not bike friendly.

People in Ann Arbor are fairly bike-conscious though; everyone braked nicely for me at intersections and were nice. This is a good thing.

All-in-all, a very good experience.

Say hello to The Hearse, which you’ll enjoy if you also enjoy Six Feet Under.

… except that they’re not in Iraq, but in « North Korea »:

‘North Korea is likely to be producing nuclear bombs even as it conducts negotiations with the United States and four other countries on ending its weapons programs, the senior U.S. official responsible for those talks told Congress yesterday. “Time is certainly a valid factor in this,” said James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We don’t know the details, but it’s quite possible that North Korea is proceeding along, developing additional fissionable material and possibly additional nuclear weapons.” Although North Korea has asserted that it has produced weapons-grade plutonium since the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear programs began 20 months ago—and though U.S. intelligence analysts broadly believe that the number of nuclear weapons held by North Korea has increased from two to at least eight during this period—it is highly unusual for a senior administration official to concede publicly that North Korea’s stockpile may be growing.
…
“The bottom line is that we now confront a much more dangerous adversary than we did in 2001,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the panel. He accused the administration of adopting a policy of “benign neglect” even after learning that Pyongyang had a clandestine nuclear effort, and then taking “more than two years to resolve its internal divisions and settle on an approach for dealing with North Korea.”’

Gosh, I feel so much safer with the Boy Emperor’s adults in charge.

I see that Amazon.com has now adopted something called a “plog®.” The “plog” is apparently yet another marketing scheme, although Amazon touts it as:

a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we’ll post it to your Plog.

This sort of thing, while inevitable (proving once again the truth that the blog is not going away, though it may mutate into innumerable obnoxious forms and hybrids), is undeniably annoying. For one thing, while the website invites you to go to Your Account to “change Plog settings,” the only option actually available to you is to “hide purchase details” (which doesn’t really seem to “hide” anything at all), not to remove the “plog” from your front page. For another thing, who’s writing this “diary of events,” and what kind of “events” are they? And what does “plog” even stand for? Yuck.

We took a very nice five-mile roundtrip to the library today, the first time we had done a double ride together.

The M30 is rougher and tougher on me than the Bobcat, but performed fine, wonky crank and all. I need to raise the seat. But it’s not bad for a garage sale bike.

The Bobcat performed just fine for Frank. He may need to use it to commute to campus this week, what with Art Fair completely gumming up the works around Ann Arbor. It’ll be easier than dealing with the altered bus routes.

I rode to campus on the Bobcat Friday to meet with a client. That trip was rather nice. Nobody ran me down and the weather was hot, but okay. I changed shirts when I got there. I’m enjoying the biking life.

Not having biked in almost five years (my last bike rides were through rough neighborhoods in East Oakland, and while nothing ever happened to me there, I came to realize that there were probably smarter things to do than to ride through those hard streets on a new bike, not to mention more efficient public transportation-oriented ways of getting to and from my house), the roughly 5-mile round-trip bike ride I took with Steve to the Malletts Creek Library this afternoon was at first a little nerve-wracking, but it was worth it. I think I’ll be biking a lot more often from now on.

Page Six reports on a contest in which 25 celeb-writers were asked by BlackBook Magazine to write a short story in no more than six words. (This was evidently a follow-up on an episode in which Ernest Hemingway, given the same challenge, wrote: “For sale: Baby shoes, never used.”)

Here’s Rick Moody’s response: “Grass, cow, calf, milk, cheese, France.”

Um. I don’t know. Dale Peck says that Rick Moody is “the worst writer of his generation,” and as much as I loathe Dale Peck’s writing, I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not on to something.

John Updike’s response was: “Forgive me!” “What for?” “Never mind.” Meh.

Norman Mailer’s was not bad: “Satan—Jehovah—15 rounds. A draw.”

Irvine Welsh’s was pretty good: “Eyeballed me, killed him. Slight exaggeration.”

Well, nobody topped Hemingway. Of course.

My hands hurt worse than ever. I don’t understand it. They were fine before May and then grew steadily worse in June. And now I’m beyond frustrated with the situation.

I’ve never felt this kind of consistent pain and achiness before. Have appointments with physical therapy and the surgeon in two weeks. Can’t wait, believe it or not.

Much more temperate today than it’s been the past few days. I enjoy the sunlight and the warmth as long as there’s a dip in the humidity and there’s a breeze, or even a wind.

I had lunch at Frank’s today and the waitress/customer chatter was all about the upcoming Fair onslaught. There are actually four separate fairs, not just one—something I don’t think I fully appreciated until now. The university has sent out a twenty-point memo alerting one and all to the varied changes in bus route, street closures, and other attendant craziness and folderol to ensue at the tail end of next week. Some people at my place of work (and at my directed field experience) are thinking of taking vacation days.

I’m not sure whether to prepare myself merely for inconvenience or to give up and hide in the basement with the dog for four days. Steve was already through all of this once before—he was here in Ann Arbor looking for housing at this time last year while I bit my fingernails and wrapped up my job and my Bay Area existence—but I think he’s staying quiet about the enormity of it all.

Bush was today driven in a campaign bus around the UP. The first appearance of a president in that part of the state since Howard Taft visited in 1911, according to the Washington Post. (Fact-checked though that factoid must have been by the researchers at the Post, I wonder ….. Gerald Ford’s never been up there? That’s really, really hard to believe. My semi-librarian senses are tingling.) One more excuse for the Beltway reporters accompanying Bush to crack stupid, condescending jokes and make supposedly trenchant “color” observations about the UP.

Steve Mariucci, currently coach of the Lions and erstwhile coach of the 49ers, opened a Bush rally in Marquette with the words, “Welcome to God’s country,” which he would have been pelted with rocks and garbage for uttering if he’d done it while he was still in the Bay Area.

The announcer deriding the American pronunciation of the word “soccer” (“sah-kuh”), a word which is already in itself apparently an object of derision because the word the rest of the world uses is “football.” (And then he says “George W. Bush played rugby. What on earth was he doing playing that?”)

According to a brief article on the back of the front section of today’s Ann Arbor News, a recent poll by EPIC/MRA found that 61% of Michigan residents favor amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Such an amendment is under way, since the Lansing-based group that is pushing the issue (after having lost the battle in March to get the amendment passed in the legislature) has presumably collected enough signatures to put the matter on the November ballot.

What the proponents of this amendment prefer that you not know is that the proposed amendment would not just prohibit gay and lesbian couples from getting “married,” which in any case is already illegal in Michigan and across the country (remember the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed in 1996 and signed into law by Bill Clinton?). DOMA, by the way, also already allows states to refuse to recognize gay “marriages” that have been performed in other states.

Read the language of the proposed amendment. It says:

To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose.

The key phrase is “similar union for any purpose.” That can mean anything. That’s the way the backers of this horrible amendment want it.

What the proposed amendment will do if put into law, in addition to superfluously “banning” gay “marriage”:

• Make civil unions illegal.

• Wipe domestic partnership registration off the books in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Oakland County, and other Michigan localities.

• Make illegal and void any domestic partnership benefits granted by public institutions like the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and other government agencies.

Lest I be judged for exercising a partisan bias, you can judge for yourself the differing positions of the proposed amendment’s backers and opponents by clicking on the following links:

• Coalition for a Fair Michigan [in opposition to the proposed amendment]

• Citizens for the Protection of Marriage [in favor of the proposed amendment]

Whoever said that Ann Arbor is deserted in the summer? If anything, it seems more hectic during the summer than it does during the winter, when everybody’s indoors unless they absolutely have to go outdoors. There are all kinds of businessy conferences going on around the area of Michigan Union, there are hordes upon hordes of high school athletes trooping all over campus and up and down State Street almost every day of the week, the buses are almost always full, and there are tourists everywhere. Ambrosia is not packed most days, but it’s seldom empty anymore either, which I suppose is good, since it will probably not be going out of business anytime soon. I don’t even want to think what the days of the art fairs are going to be like.

Like I said, I’ll never understand Michigan drivers, no matter how long I live here.

This afternoon I was waiting to cross the street (at Division and William, I think) and a driver of a sports car stamped his accelerator and sped through the green light as though it had just turned yellow or red. What’s the point? You can use your accelerator! We’re all impressed! Big whoop!

I got off the Wolverine Shuttle bus tonight at a stop on State just before the Stadium underpass. The bus was stopped for about two minutes as I got out and as it waited for cars behind it to pass. The bus pulled away from the curb and a gray Lexus-type sports car (yeah, another sports car) sped furiously around and ahead of the bus, even though there was traffic in the oncoming lane. I guess crap like the concept of “two lanes of traffic” doesn’t matter to people anymore, whether it risks an accident or not. So, Lexus driver, you saved three seconds by cutting in front of a bus. Wow. I bet that made a huge difference in your ridiculous existence.

A list of all posts since April (when we switched from Movable Type to Textpattern) is now up and running. Now if I can salvage all the MT entries from April back through last August, we’ll be in bidness.

RSS and Atom feeds are working again; you can find links to them in the ‘Remember’ section of the navigation list on the left. Let me know if there’s a problem with them.

I’m still working on the ‘Ask’ and ‘Contact’ sections of all the journals, as well as an archives page listing all entries. Hope to have those up soon. Thanks for reading us and leaving your comments … we love to hear from you.

Southeast Michigan seems to have missed most of the Brood X periodical cicada event, but the regular “dog day” Tibicen cicadas, which are apparently more of a loner species than the Magicicada, are now gracing us with their shrill hissing mating song. I’m sorry that we didn’t get to see much of the Magicicada, but Tibicen is the next-best thing.

On the afternoon of the so-called “Marriage Protection Sunday,” Steve and I went out to the Michigan Theater and saw Vincente Minnelli’s “An American in Paris“ (1951), which I’d never seen all the way through before and has got to be one of the all-time great musicals. Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Ira and George Gershwin, Vincente Minnelli, “I Got Rhythm,” and the Montmartre: all good antidotes to the hatemongers and the naysayers. Minnelli’s masterful use of color is almost hallucinatory; it’s absolutely unbelievable on the big screen, and it makes stuff like Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” look like child’s play, no matter how much “better” the technology that modern filmmakers have access to.

It was also gratifying to see that while the screening room where the film was being shown wasn’t packed, it wasn’t empty either. There were plenty of people there, and they were of many different ages and backgrounds; it wasn’t just a bunch of stereotypical musical aficionados (i.e., gay men). A grandmother behind us in line had two girls with her about 11 or 12 years old; good for her for taking them on a Sunday afternoon to see a classic American movie instead of some teen-tween major-studio crowd-pleaser like “Sleepover” or “Garfield.”

I was over in Ypsilanti today, taking the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification at Willow Run High School, and had almost three hours between the morning and afternoon sessions. So I went to explore Ypsi, where I haven’t spent that much time since we moved here a year ago.

Driving down a street, I noticed a garage sale and a couple of bikes. On a whim, I stopped and saw a dark green Raleigh M30 mountain bike, dusty and a bit worn, but apparently in excellent shape and in the right size and everything.

I asked the nice lady how much and she said, ‘Fifteen dollars.’

I said, ‘Fifty?’

‘No, fifteen. One. Five.’

‘Will you hold it for my while I run to the ATM?’

‘Sure!’

Back in five minutes, I handed over the cash and took the front wheel off and loaded my find into the Jeep. I went to the afternoon session of my test, then went home to rest the arms.

I’ve now had a chance to look over the $15 special and am pleasantly surprised that it’s a pretty good bike. The seat was worn on the edges, but she had a new one in the original package that went with it, and it’s a very nice gel setup. I’ll need to swap it out and it’s ready.

But there is a problem with the crank; I’m not sure I can fix it, thanks to my weak arms. But I took it for a test drive and, with the exception of the wonky crank, it performed beautifully. Tires, brakes, shifters, pedals, chain—everything is good.

I spent the last hour fooling with it and cleaning it up. Other than the crank situation, it’s ready to hit the road. I’ll just have to figure out that problem and Frank and I can bike together, if the mood hits.

So, in the space of a week, we’ve gone from no bikes to two (plus one still marooned in San Francisco). Yay!

The other day I startled myself by referring to a carbonated beverage as “pop” without thinking about it.

Today the heat was in the 80s and the humidity was in the mid-to-high range, weather that would have made me whiny and irritable in California, but I actually said, out loud, “If this is the worst we’re going to get I’d say this is a pretty mild summer.”

The sheer exuberant number of souped-up loud-engined street racing cars, megalithic pickup trucks, SUVs, and other behemoth vehicles of all kinds all over the streets of Ann Arbor no longer surprises me. Michigan is the Motor State, after all. (Some Michiganders’ driving habits, though, I’ll never understand.)

Ignorant and/or moronic letters to the editor that appear in the Ann Arbor News that would have automatically inspired a fired-off scorched-earth acidic response when I was living in San Francisco no longer faze me. Live and let live. Or something like that.

I’ve lived longer in Michigan than I’ve lived anywhere outside of California: as of July 23, it’s now been almost eleven months. (The only other place I’ve lived outside California was England, but that ended after nine months.)

I honestly no longer miss California much. Most days, anyway.

The first commute ride with the new Marin Bobcat went absolutely great. Especially since I’m not in shape for it any more.

The only problem is that it was not only the first, but the last, commute ride to grad school. I had to defer my enrollment for a year (« see the entry on the Teach journal for the gory details ») due to my very-messed-up wrist tendons. Sounds minor, but the pain is major, as is the damage that I’m doing to them by continuing to use them in bad ways (like writing this entry instead of resting them).

For now, my biking will have to be confined to pleasure excursions around the neighborhood, making sure not to spend too much time or pressure on the wrists.

But oh, that first ride. It was a total joy to ride the Bobcat. I managed the route in about ten minutes (which is slow, of course, but hey, I haven’t done this in years). The weather was good and the best part was how I was able to ride right up to the front door of the School of Ed; no worrying about parking or paying, just lock the thing up and go inside. Even though it takes longer from door-to-door, the time to get in the door is much shorter, so the commute actually ends up being shorter and less stressful.

Going home was just as nice; no walking blocks to the car or paying $7 to the garage. Just downstairs, unlock it and go home.

The only problem was the fiery pain in my arms. The next morning, after weighing all the factors, I very reluctantly decided to defer grad school for a year and my bicycle commuting was nipped in the very expensive bud after a single day.

As they say, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. It’s one of those things. I have a physical therapy session scheduled Wednesday and hope that they don’t ban me from the bike entirely.

In the meantime, I’ll still hit the road as often as I can. The Bobcat is just too beautiful and smooth (and expensive) to sit idly in the living room.

This one caught my eye for two reasons: First, and most importantly, it’s a ringing denunciation of the bloody Cabal over the body of a 19-year-old Scottish Fusilier from a true Man of God and Peace.

Second, it occurred in the historic ancestral Land of Pollok in Glasgow, which may (or may not) be whence we sprang.

But this is just awesome. « Shame on You! »

’”I want to believe that if there’s a God in heaven then there will be justice because I want someone to pay for Gordon’s death,” Dr. Mann told a hushed congregation. “But only God may judge who is ultimately responsible and I can only admonish—I’m just a preacher. And if I were to point them out, I would say to president George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, I have only three words of admonishment. “I pray that they may some day be inscribed on the tablets of your hearts—and those three words are ‘shame on you’.”
…
‘George McNeilage, a community campaigner and family friend, said that the teenager was an “economic conscript”, forced into the army because of a lack of prospects on the impoverished Pollok estate. The teenager had simply hoped to get a driving licence and a trade from a career in the service, he said.’

Almost a thousand American families can pretty much say the same of their dead too. But God bless and save and keep you, Dr. Mann; you’re a true man of courage and conviction.

With a great deal of sadness and regret, I withdrew from grad school classes yesterday morning, deferring my enrollment/involvement with the program until next June.

I’ve had tendonitis for 3-5 years now and had surgery on my left wrist in Sept-01. Things haven’t been too bad since, because I don’t hold/grip pens and write—I type. But the pain in my wrists/hands has been growing ever since I started taking undergrad courses to get ready for grad school and started writing things by hand extensively. At one point, during my summer math grad class in mid-June, the pain was so bad and distracting I almost hit a guardrail driving back from Ypsilanti on I-94.

I ignored it as much as possible and pretended things were fine. But they’re not. Truth is, I’m 40 and my tendons are shot and I don’t like it or want to admit it, but I have a problem. When grad school started full-bore last week, each day was more painful than the last. I also tripped and fell on my right arm and that certainly didn’t help. I ended up passing out in the middle of the night a week ago and then in the doctor’s office last Friday morning being pushed, prodded, pained and poked. Now, I’ll be starting physical therapy next Wednesday to try to get things back in order, as well as assessing what has to be done beyond therapy.

Read more »

Interesting Michigan developments …..

According to a story in Entertainment Weekly quoted by Daily Kos, the GKC Theatre chain, which owns 13 movie houses in Alpena, Traverse City, Battle Creek, Big Rapids, Fort Gratiot, Jackson, Ludington, Marquette, Saginaw, and Sault Ste. Marie, with a total of 268 screens, has booked “Fahrenheit 9/11” on only one of those screens (in Traverse City). Evidently the chain’s owners consider the film to be divisive leftist propaganda.

A law clerk at a firm in Okemos has sent out a letter on firm letterhead to 85 Michigan public libraries (under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, although FOIA exempts from disclosure “information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy” [Michigan Compiled Laws 15.243, Section 13(1)(a)], which would presumably include the information the law firm is looking for) demanding that “libraries hand over patron names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses,” according to an article in yesterday’s Detroit News linked at LISNews. The clerk says that “he’s trying to gather research to create a profile of library users,” according to the article. A profile for what? The article doesn’t go into it.

And then there’s the usual “Let’s ban gays from having visitation rights—oops, I mean gay marriage” hijinks, but I won’t go into that, except to say that a very depressing and predictably hate-filled opinion piece was published about the subject in the Other Voices section of the Ann Arbor News last Thursday. Suffice it to say that all the usual bugaboos were trotted out, including the ludicrous claim that gay men prefer short-term (average length 1.5 years) to long-term relationships (the fundies are getting fond of quoting a 2003 study from the Amsterdam Municipal Health service and misusing the statistics from it to further their aims), and thus are constitutionally unable to have stable relationships. Depressingly, though, I don’t see much in the way of the extremists getting their way in November, at least here in Michigan. They’ve got the signatures to put the measure on the ballot, and they’ll spend whatever it takes to advertise their message and to intimidate or hoodwink people into voting for it.

Crashing waves of anxiety, depression, nausea and panic. Not much else to report. Grad school is running better than expected, yet I’m not that happy with the program so far. More on that over in the ‘Teach’ section.

But the same old stuff that’s been going on for forty years is happening again: Adjustment Anxiety Disorder, which doesn’t do it or anyone justice. Doesn’t do the pain justice. Doesn’t do the impatience and frustration justice. It’s a clinical bullshit moniker that academics use to label things they can’t figure out.

It will pass, it always does. I’m getting by on a long holiday weekend, Vicodin, Xanax and, tonight, Ambien (although not all together, of course.) I have the first Ambien tonight and am looking forward to it. Will need to be fully knocked out until the alarm rings.

It’s just the usual ride this one out thing. And I really, really, really hate it. I don’t like when the elephant sits on my chest.

A little late this time …..

A glowing review by Larry McMurtry of the Bill Clinton memoir that covers the front page and two pages inside besides (“Some people don’t want Bill Clinton to have written a book that might be as good as dear, dying General Grant’s”). Not atonement for the scathing Michiko Kakutani review a few weeks ago (because it is running so late). But what is it? Very strange.

A full-page ad for the troubled Jonathan Demme remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate.” (Plus a half-page ad for “Fahrenheit 9/11.”)

A review of a new book by Franklin Foer that compares soccer and globalization.

A withering letter by the 80-year-old Ned Rorem that calls Bob Dylan “the singer charmless and rasping, Dylan the poet sophomoric and obvious, and Dylan the composer banal and unmemorable,” and derides the recent article about Dylan by Lucinda Williams as a “giggly postscript.”

Rick Perlstein, the writer of one of the best political histories of recent years, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, rips Josh Chafetz a new one for daring to compare Thomas Frank and Ann Coulter.

A review of a novel by Margaret Mazzantini says that “we expect unexpected reversals nowadays.” A review of Louise Erdrich’s new novel says that the book’s plot “feels natural and unforced, full of satisfying yet unexpected twists.” (One of the novel’s protagonists also “seems grasping yet is … unexpectedly selfless.”) So which is it?

A brand-spanking-new red Marin Bobcat Trail bike is in my living room and it’s a wonderful bike. I’ll write more and post some pics after tomorrow’s first commute with it.

It’s been amazingly temperate for at least the past week, if not the entire two weeks since summer began. There have been a few days of mid-80s temps with some high humidity, but those days have usually been followed in quick succession by days in the 70s with virtually mild humidity or (as was the case yesterday) overcast skies and bursts of rain. If this is Michigan summer, I like it. I have a feeling this is the lull before the real scorch-fest starts, though. I’m bracing myself, but that’s fairly futile. In the battle between my Anglo-Saxon/Swedish and Mexican genetic makeup, clearly the north has the upper hand in weather preference. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in Mexico City or Ciudad Juárez during the summer months, let alone Tucson or El Paso (or Norman, for that matter, which was one of my early choices under consideration for library school). Nevertheless, since there are a lot of other great qualities about the Southwest (including, among other things, the incomparable, bewitching light during the end of the afternoon and dusk in Santa Fe, which you can instantly remember even by looking at a couple of not-so-great photographs in the newspaper, as I did yesterday), I may as well start getting used to the idea of warmer weather.

We finally saw “Fahrenheit 9/11” this afternoon. An amazing piece of work, in many ways, and also infuriating in other ways (as everything Michael Moore does is).

This isn’t going to be a review of the film, though. What happened as I was buying the tickets was almost more startling than anything in the film.

We went to the Showcase multiplex on Carpenter Road to see the movie. We went an hour or so early to get tickets; Steve waited out in the car while I ran in to get them. I got in a not-too-long line. There were two cashiers, a woman and a man — more accurately, a teenager, because he couldn’t have been older than 18.

I asked him whether the 4.10 show was sold out. “No, there’s plenty of seats left,” he said. I was getting my money out to hand to him and he gave me a strange look.

He said, “I don’t know. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace.”

He couldn’t have been talking about the lack of sold seats. He couldn’t have been talking about anything other than the movie. I was so startled I didn’t know what to say, but to keep the transaction moving along, and curious to see if he’d go on in this vein, I just said, “It is?”

“Yeah,” he said, then, seeming to realize he had stepped out of his bounds as a cinema employee, he sort of looked down sheepishly as I handed him the cash and got my change. He mumbled something else, but I was too shocked to hear what he’d said.

A guy who was supposed to be selling me a ticket had just told me that the movie he’d taken my cash to give me a ticket to watch was a “disgrace.”

He gave me my change. “Enjoy the show,” he said, incongruously.

The magical check arrived at 2:30 this afternoon, so I hotfooted it over to Ann Arbor Cyclery to make a certain purchase.

Curses. Foiled again. AAC closed today for the long holiday weekend. I’ll be bike-less for another three days.

Oh, the agony.

Oh well, I’m sick anyway and should be in bed (won’t bore you with details, but it involves an infection that would make riding a bike not so fun). I guess I must wait it all out, then.

Heavy sigh.

Best slogan for the Boy Emperor’s campaign I’ve seen yet:

‘Bush-Cheney ‘04: Don’t Change Horses in the Middle of an Apocalypse’

Still waiting on the magical check to fund my bike purchase. Feeling very under the weather with an infection, so it wouldn’t matter anyway. But looks like Wednesday might be the day!

I love this, and I’m not sure why: NPR’s ombudsman scolding NPR for producing and airing music commentary that’s too “hipper-than-thou.” The ombudsman (Jeffrey Dvorkin, whose last major public acts were to criticize those who got their information about NPR from blogs and to assert that NPR would continue to ask permission from people seeking to link to material on its website) intones:

For some listeners, the music sounds harsh and the journalism that attempts to explain it, sounds equally irritating (and impenetrable).

Here’s brief quotes from some of the reviews he thinks are impenetrable:

“Tweedy uses savage, wild lunges to punctuate the verses and sometimes to inject a little danger into otherwise lovely songs.” [June 21 review of Wilco’s new album A Ghost Is Born.]

“They’re disciplined little gems of composition, poison-pen letters set in the first person and caustic, coffee-shop observations propelled by not particularly heroic desires. The best of them tell about being deluded in love or not being able to let go of an old flame.” [June 9 review of Magnetic Fields’ new album i.]

“Morrissey has always seemed to be a walking paradox, both playful and morose, ambiguously asexual, political but hopelessly self-involved, which is why You Are the Quarry is still a classic Morrissey album.” [June 4 review of Morrissey’s new CD.]

Now, I can see where sometimes NPR’s CD reviews are a little on the patronizing side. But what’s so “inscrutable” about the quotes above? Would this column have been written, I wonder, about any of NPR’s jazz reviews? Or are jazz reviews supposed to be condescending?

No, it seems that the rock reviews are guilty of the horrible crime of “alienat[ing] mainstream NPR listeners,” according to Dvorkin. The ombudsman, in the midst of wanly complimenting another piece, this one on Timbaland, that “alienated” some “mainstream NPR listeners” because his “sound was jarring and very un-Morning Edition-like,” then completes the circle by writing, “Like some who wrote in, I initially confused Timbaland with a well known pop singer called Justin Timberlake.”

Dvorkin sounds a lot like the Newsweek reviewer who wrote of the Beatles in February 1964:

Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified Edwardian beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically, they are a near disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of yeah, yeah, yeah!) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.

At least that reviewer didn’t whine that the Beatles were “alienating” mainstream Newsweek readers.

Would we ever move back to California? Sometimes I fantasize about it, I admit it, despite being in complete agreement with Steve that there is much more room to breathe here in Michigan. I think of places I love in California, like the Bay Area, parts of Los Angeles County, the desert area around Palm Springs, the farther north around Mendocino and Humboldt Counties, and I wish that I could go back (if there were a place in California that was acceptable to Steve and I both) because there are many things about the state that I love and miss—its beauty, its vibrancy, its energy, its native home-ness (for me, anyway).

But then I read articles like the one that appeared in today’s Los Angeles Times. A key quote:

Home prices have so far outstripped income growth in California that the average worker would need to save every penny he earned for more than eight years to buy the average house. In Wisconsin, that worker would need less than 2½ years of income to pay cash for a house. [Emphasis mine.]

With stats like that, only an independently wealthy or insane person would want to head to the Golden State. (The two categories are not mutually exclusive, unless you’re an independently wealthy person who likes taking big gambles that an inevitable big earthquake or a firestorm won’t eventually destroy the property you buy. Those are real dangers in California, especially along the coast.)

But the same article adds:

The 2000 census tracked movement of college graduates around the country and found the metropolitan areas around Atlanta, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix were top magnets …. Experts say the migration inward has accelerated since the census, as housing prices in California and New England have soared …. Though the colder, grayer Midwest has proved a less attractive draw, cities such as Minneapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Ann Arbor, Mich., and Madison, Wis., are also beginning to lure professional families from the coasts.

So, yes, with apologies to those Wolverine natives upon whose territory I’ve encroached, I suppose I’m technically part of that group that was “lured” to Ann Arbor from California, though I imagine that the reason for my “lure” was more practical than most. (Steve lived in California for 5 years, but he would bristle at being called a Californian. He’s a New Mexican at heart, and always will be.)

But the prospect that much of the rest of the country is on track to be “Californianized”—by that I mean an influx of Californians with money to throw around ratcheting up housing prices (and other costs of living) in parts of the country not heretofore affected by the skyrocketing costs of housing on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts—is absolutely depressing. (Though I seem to have noticed far more New Englanders here in Ann Arbor than Californians.) And I say that as a now former Californian.

We took a little drive to Saline, where we noted that the Dairy Queen is much nicer than the ones in Ann Arbor. We then went over to Curtiss Park and sat by the river for awhile. It was most pleasant … the nicest stretch of weather I’ve seen in quite some time.

I tend to prefer Chelsea to Saline, for some reason. It just has a different look and feel to it that I like better, although I can’t explain it. Still, it was nice to get away. As I’ve said many times before, if I want to get away from home here, it’s a simple 10-minute drive. In San Francisco, it took six hours and you were on crowded, insane roads all the time.

It’s nice to have some space to breathe.

I’m making progress on getting all the various pieces of AirBeagle working with new layouts. I added the new photo galleries portal page today as well as a new gallery.

Here’s what works from the nav menu at left:

• Bike – Adventures in the bike lane
• Dayley – The return of the Dayley Bayley
• Fly – Airliners and flying
• Live – Asquared – where you are now
• Print – Books
• Screen – Cinema
• Teach – Grad School and Education
• View – Photo Galleries (to be expanded)

There’s still lots of work to do, but we’re getting there. The other links will go active as I get those sections done.

It was a beautiful day and would have been perfect for riding, if only my first bike wasn’t still in San Francisco and the new one wasn’t still in the store, unpurchased.

The nice man at the UPS store here in Ann Arbor tells me it will cost roughly $150 to ship my Bianchi from San Francisco and it has to be put into two boxes. It cost over $400 new. So I suppose I’ll have to do it.

From the movie Born Yesterday, starring William Holden:

‘The whole history of the world is the story of the struggle between the selfish and the unselfish … all that’s bad around us is bred by selfishness … sometimes selfishness can even get to be a cause, an organized force, even a government, and that’s called fascism.’

Amen.

It’s been a very nice, temperate few days in southeastern Michigan. The high humidity of a week or so ago seems to have abated for the moment. No rain in the past few days. The highs have been mild, in the low to mid-70s. The sky has been a perfect shade of bold azure. The conditions remind me a lot of good Bay Area weather. The squirrels are back out in force again, tormenting the poor befuddled beagle and making their daily appearances at the back patio for bread. I haven’t been able to enjoy the weather (or do much else) because I’ve been fighting a harsh tonsil inflammation (and my seasonal allergies, which have inexplicably returned after a couple of months in abeyance) for the past several days. We did go out briefly yesterday, because I had to pick up my paycheck at the university cashier’s office. We considered getting in line for Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but the line, while not around the block, was definitely not short, and I still wasn’t feeling all that well. Maybe next weekend.

So, let’s see if we’ve got this straight.

Virgin USA has its corporate headquarters in New York, but its flight ops headquarters will be clear across the country in San Francisco.

They need to hire 3,000 people from pilots to baggage handlers in the next year and start running ‘low-cost’ operations to compete with JetBlue and Southwest sometime in 2005.

They haven’t decided which planes to buy and no routes have been announced.

So their first order of business?

Why, « spending millions to secure naming rights to Candlestick Park in San Francisco », of course:

‘Mayor Gavin Newsom, in his hunt for new revenue for the cash-strapped city, has proposed entering into a naming rights agreement for the ‘Stick with the San Francisco 49ers who play their home games at the city-owned stadium. The football team, in turn, would make a deal—and probably some money in the transaction—with a company that wants to put its moniker on the wind-blown stadium in the southeastern corner of San Francisco. The mayor’s office now has five companies interested in competing for the sponsorship deal, according to Newsom administration officials. They are: Virgin USA; banking giant Wells Fargo & Co.; Monster Cable Products Inc. in Brisbane; Macromedia Inc., a San Francisco internet and multimedia software firm; and Organic Inc., a digital services firm in San Francisco.’

How ‘bout a three-way deal? Name it Organic Virgin Monster Point. But I digress.

I am mildly curious why an airline with no pilots, planes or routes is negotiating with the City of San Francisco to spend millions to put its name on a crappy football stadium.

Sounds like they’re already off to a great start …

From the Jack Ryan 2004 Website:

‘Jack Ryan on the Defense of Marriage:
‘I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries. I believe that we are all equal before God and should be before the law. Homosexuals deserve the same constitutional protections, safeguards, and human dignity as every American, but they should not be entitled to special rights based on their sexual behavior. The breakdown of the family over the past 35 years is one of the root causes of some of our society’s most intractable social problems-criminal activity, illegitimacy, and the cyclical nature of poverty. As an elected leader, my interest will be in promoting laws and educating people about the fundamental importance of the traditional family unit as the nucleus of our society.’

From The Smoking Gun:

‘In what may prove a crippling blow to his U.S. Senate campaign, divorce records reveal that Illinois Republican Jack Ryan was accused by his former wife, actress Jeri Ryan, of pressuring her to have sex at swinger’s clubs in New York, Paris, and New Orleans while other patrons watched. … The salacious charge leveled at the politician was made by Jeri Ryan, who has starred in TV’s “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Boston Public,” in a court filing in connection with child custody proceedings (you’ll find a portion of that heavily redacted September 2000 document below). The performer alleged that she refused Ryan’s requests for public sex during the excursions, which included a trip to a New York club “with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.” … The Ryans were married in 1991 and, in November 1998, Jeri Ryan filed for divorce citing “irreconcilable differences.”’

The court filing also states that Jeri Ryan fell in love with another man after she and Jack started having problems, but before the divorce went through.

Traditional. Republican. Family. Values.

Don’t let the door hit you on the backside on your way out, Jack.

Hello, Senator Obama.

PS: Tristero sums things up nicely:

‘The GOP: home of public sex orgy lovers (Ryan), high-stakes gamblers (Bennett), drug addicts (Limbaugh), adulterers (Gingrich, Hyde), avowed Hitler admirers (Schwarzenegger) and racists (Lott).’

He adds that if that seems an extreme characterization, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what the above slings on an hourly basis.

A group of right-wing ‘bloggers, responding to President Gore referring to them as ‘Brown Shirts,’ have proudly donned the mantle and are featuring a logo on their sites which has a photo of Sturmabteilung leader Ernst Roehm on it. A swastika was on there as well, but was removed because it was ‘offensive to some.’ They wear the logo as a badge of honor and slam any naysayers by hiding behind a cover of ‘it’s only satire.’

They also say it’s in the tradition of gays calling themselves ‘fags;’ co-opting the insult robs it of its sting.

While I’m all for that (and it has the added benefit of taggin’ ‘em so you can immediately know they’re fascists without havin’ to read their claptrap), I wonder if they really know what they’re doing? I doubt it.

After all, surely any intelligent individual would pause and think long and hard before identifying (even in the cause of ‘satire’) with the movement which was principally responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people between 1933 and 1945. Right?

I honor his accomplishments, but for god’s sake can we shut up about Lance Armstrong already?

Since I’m starting grad school and parking and transportation around central campus is a pain, I decided to start biking it.

Only problem: My very good and nice and fabulous Bianchi Lynx bike is still in San Francisco because I had problems attaching it to the Jeep securely enough for a 3,000-mile trip to Michigan and so had to leave it behind.

It’ll cost about $150 to ship it and my ex-roomie will have to go to some pains to do it.

In the meantime, I need a really good bike now. I’ve narrowed it down to basically five choices:

• First choice (tie): Marin Bikes Bobcat Trail hardtail alloy mountain or Trek 7500 FX hybrid
• Second choice: Marin Bikes Hawk Hill hardtail alloy mountain
• Third choice: Marin Bikes San Anselmo hybrid street
• Fourth choice: Giant Bikes Cypress LX

Some of my thinking: I like the hybrids, but if we move to Santa Fe or a similar place in a year, it might not be versatile enough. I want disc brakes and the Trek doesn’t have them. The Trek is also $150 or so more than the Bobcat Trail, but I like the wheels better. The others are kind of also-rans. The Hawk Hill is a step up from the Bobcat Trail, but curiously doesn’t have disc brakes.

I took six test rides Tuesday; two at a shop in Chelsea and four at Ann Arbor Cyclery, which was an enjoyable experience. Both places were very helpful and non-pressuring. If I buy a Marin or the Cypress, I’ll buy from AAC, since it’s halfway between here and campus, so if something goes wrong, I have a convenient repair point.

Decisions, decisions.

This appears on the front cover of the hyped-to-death Karen Joy Fowler novel The Jane Austen Book Club (Miss Austen would be most amused by her post-mortem fan club; or maybe mortified).

What does this even mean?

“If I could eat this novel, I would.” — Alice Sebold

Reading it so you don’t have to …..

A full-page ad hawking Toni Morrison’s new line of handsome paperback editions of her novels “with deeply personal forewords reflecting on each work.” (I’ve never been able to finish the first chapter of a Toni Morrison novel. Maybe it’s just me.)

An ad for a new book called How to Have Children with Perfect Teeth. And, no, it’s not about genetic manipulation (I don’t think).

A review of a first novel by a Brit named Paul Burston called Shameless. The novel’s about the gay dating scene, so the title is absolutely appropriate. Apparently the problem with the book (although not a problem for the reviewer, who thinks it’s just dandy) isn’t its title but its content; the reviewer says the book “makes the gay singles scene ‘cute’” (the gay singles “scene” is about the farthest thing from “cute” imaginable) and that the author/narrator is comparable to “Bridget Jones’ gay brother.” Oh, great. Just what we need.

Reviews of four collections of short stories, kind of a departure for the NYTBR. One is by Julian Barnes (“helps sustain a reader’s faith in literature as the truest form of assisted living”), another by E.L. Doctorow (“His is a reasonable imagination”), and one by David Foster Wallace (“Too often he sounds like a hyperarticulate Tin Man”). One is a first collection by a Canadian writer named David Bezmozgis (“The collection is appealingly anthropological”).

A review of the first volume of the letters of Isaiah Berlin, published by Cambridge University Press (“Merely as a human story, Berlin’s life was astonishing”).

Reviews of a book about the murder of a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga (” … on Oct. 14, 1976, screams pierced the warm, inky Tongan night”) and a book about abuse at a school for the mentally disabled in Waltham, MA, in the 1950s (“documents the Dickensian abuse daily endured by the boys at Fernald and its consequences”).

Last but not least, a very odd essay by Cristina Nehring titled “Books Make You a Boring Person.” Her thesis is that book lovers are dull, pathetic, desiccated snobs, which is curious considering that her essay has been published in what is arguably the single publication that panders to more book snobs than any other in the world. Is it because she shops at Barnes & Noble that she is so bitter? Would a trip to Borders improve her mood? (" ‘Absolutely not,’ I wanted to yell, and fling my Barnes & Noble bag at his feet. Instead, I mumbled something apologetic and melted into the crowd.")

Here’s her key graf:

There’s a new piety in the air: the self-congratulation of book lovers. Long considered immune to criticism by virtue of being outnumbered by channel surfers, Internet addicts, video maniacs and other armchair introverts, bookworms have developed a semi-mystical complacency about the moral and mental benefits of reading. “Books Make You a Better Person,’’ a banner outside a Los Angeles school proclaims. Books keep kids off drugs. They keep gang members out of prison. They keep terrorists, for all we know, at the gates …. To be a reader these days is to be a sterling member of society, a thoughtful and sensitive human being, a winner.

Actually, come to think of it, this may be her key point:

Books were a mixed bag, and they still are. Books could be used or misused, and they still can be.

Which, is, um, enlightening. Wow. I never knew that a book could be “misused” before. Gee.

“Even a hint of idolatry disables the mind,” Nehring sonorously and pompously intones, reminding us finger-waggingly to be critical readers while making a golden calf of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she quotes three times in the space of two paragraphs. (She also ignores any discussion of a topic that Emerson would have found vital, namely, what is it that books are supposed to do to us? Is reading a book or other text merely a one-sided proposition? Nehring appears to think so.)

Best of all, Nehring is a whiz at straw-man argument. “Perhaps the best lesson of books is not to venerate them—or at least never to hold them in higher esteem than our own faculties, our own experience, our own peers, our own dialogues,” she warns.

I have not met a single person, book-lover or not, who does that, but maybe I don’t know the people that Nehring claims to know. She says, “We all know people who use a text the way others use Muzak: to stave off the silence of their minds.” Maybe that’s how Nehring uses a text, but I doubt that anybody I know uses any text that way. If anything, books help “stave off” the over-hyper amphetamination of modern culture: they still a mind that is too jumbled with facts and sensory input from cell phones and websites and TiVos to settle down. Books are a meditative experience, not a filling-the-emptiness experience.

“If only we [would] disperse the pious fog that is gathering around book culture,” Nehring sighs. Well, I’d rather have a “pious” book culture any day of the week—a culture that at least makes a pretense of still respecting intellect and history—than what passes for culture in this age of reality TV, screeching pundits, and teen-flick glut, but I suppose that makes me a dull snob.

I can’t speak for myself, not being objective (maybe I do over-venerate books), but the people I work with, go to school with, and am friends with, and most acquaintances I have met, love books for all the usual reasons: books are a complement to life, they make life much richer, they help make life understandable and better to negotiate, but they are obviously no substitute for life, and I have never met anyone who thinks or professes that they are.