This is an awesome idea, especially in light of the recent vicious assaults on an art gallery owner in San Francisco’s North Beach. [CCA Santa Fe link courtesy LISNews.]

Americans are increasingly a clueless and brutal lot. Latest case in point: a San Francisco woman is forced to shut down her art gallery, after Brown Shirt thugs beat her up over the display of a painting depicting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story:

‘After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nations unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib—a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work. The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the citys North Beach district Thursday night was the worst, but only the latest in a string of verbal and physical attacks that have directed at owner Lori Haigh since the painting, titled “Abuse,” was installed there on May 16. Last Wednesday, concerned for the safety of her two children, ages 14 and 4, who often accompanied her to work, Haigh decided to close the gallery indefinitely.

Painted by Berkeley artist Guy Colwell, “Abuse,” the painting at the center of the controversy, depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a blindfolded woman.’

So that’s how it happens. Easily and quietly. Many times over the past 60 years, we’ve asked how could a country as advanced and religious and cultured as Germany descend from Beethoven to Auschwitz?

And now we must ask ourselves how America can descend from Jefferson to Abu Ghraib. It can (and obviously does) happen here.

I took the first mid-term for my Brigham Young University independent study geography course Saturday—an undertaking necessary, says the state of Michigan, before I enter grad school June 29th. (Michigan says I need 12 undergrad credits in geography, political science and economics to meet their standards for an elementary social studies minor. Ain’t bureaucracy grand?)

The exam was surprisingly easy; just 50 questions, true/false, multiple choice and matching. Compared to the online graded assignments, it was a piece of cake, even though it was closed book and no notes. Questions asked in the assignments about theory and other esoterica weren’t asked on the midterm; instead, it asked, ‘Where does the Rhine River empty into?’ [The North Sea, of course, everyone knows that!]

There was no time limit, but it was suggested it would take two hours. I finished in 35 minutes, and that was with carefully rechecking answers and dawdling a bit.

I don’t think I aced it, I’m not saying that; I know of one question in particular I missed regarding which country exhibited a certain climate type. I’m guessing that I got either a high B or low A. We’ll see in a week or so after the exam makes its way back to Provo for grading.

In the meantime, things are well ontrack for the start of the ELMAC program. Next week comes midterms in Managerial Economics and Travel and Tourism Geography. I should then be ready for finals by the 20th or so of June. Then, God and the Sovereign State of Michigan willing, I’ll officially be a fully admitted graduate student of the University of Michigan.

I still catch myself wondering what the heck I’m doing sometimes. I’m too old for this s*** …

The latest issue of Airways magazine, the 100th, reports the following tidbit about a Harris Poll ranking 60 major American companies by reputation and perception:

‘United was 52nd, putting it in the bottom ten. That was lower than both American Airlines and Halliburton, the alleged Iraq War profiteer. But United was not dead last. It beat MCi-Worldcom and Enron, as well as two cigarette manufacturers and Martha Stewart Living.’

Meanwhile, the still-bankrupt United unveiled a new paint scheme for its planes and Robert Redford voiceovers for its advertising, even as it continued its completely clueless and nasty behavior towards its customers and employees, even as it can’t figure out why it can’t make money.

One would think this Harris poll, which puts United below much-reviled-and-in-the-news Halliburton would wake up some folks in Elk Grove, but one would be wrong.

Speaking of Halliburton, the Duncan Banner reports that the company laid off 38 workers in Duncan this week.

I say that the Banner reports it, but in fact the rag just pretty much ran verbatim a company press release. It’s called lazy small-town journalism. Excerpts from the Halliburton PR:

‘Personnel reductions are under way at its technology center in Duncan to align research and development operations with current market conditions. A total of 38 people was part of the reduction in force at the Duncan Technology Center, which supports the production optimization and fluids divisions.

“The economic outlook of the industry has changed since we committed to our 2004 budget targets last year,” said Joe Sandy, director of technology. “The first quarter of 2004 has remained relatively flat compared to the same period last year.” Of the 38 employees leaving the company, 18 are contract. The remaining employee population at the Duncan Technology Center is 323. The total employee count for Duncan is 1,972, and statewide it is 2,354.’

Isn’t it great when American corporations which exist thanks to taxpayer largesse, like Halliburton, destroy 38 taxpayers’ lives and talk about it in such dry, divorced-from-reality PR language?

The press release continues:

’”We are a service-oriented company, and our customers continue to challenge us to provide low-cost, innovative solutions,” said Sandy. “As our customers and others in the industry adjust to the changing economic times, we must do the same to remain competitive. It is always difficult to face these issues, but we have to run a cost-effective technology organization. That means right-sizing our business to the market that is anticipated by our product service lines.”’

‘Right-sizing our business to the market …’ How disgusting.

Personally, I think the government of we the people need to right-size our business and cut out all corporate socialism/welfare to companies like Halliburton.

Weather today was really nice, not too muggy, sunny and warm later in the afternoon and evening. I walked home from campus after a brief stop at Panchero’s on South University for take-home burritos. It was a nice walk; East University had a couple of low-key parties going on in backyards, and you could smell barbecues grilling, a sure sign of the approach of Memorial Day and summer. Some sort of dandelion-like pollen wafted from trees on the block, which made my allergies act up for a bit, but nothing too severe (I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve escaped the allergy menace so far this spring). As I hit Stadium, the sun was starting to sink toward the horizon, and I was once again amazed at how low the sun gets here as it falls in the evening—so low that the light is all-surrounding and almost blinding if you’re moving towards it. And the quality of the light is different, too—torpid, stunning, almost mesmerizing.

I saw a bunch of different kinds of sparrows outside on my way to work this afternoon, and, of course, the usual contingent of foraging robins and starlings. Birdsong filled the air, and I had no idea what any of it belonged to, but it was nice to listen to.

But another bird, much larger and seemingly flightless, skittered across my path, directly in front of me, and then swiftly away from me, almost before I had a chance to see it, and it startled me: I had to stop and turn around to look as it hurried away across the grass, making its frantic, anxious pip pip pip sound. I think (not 100% certain, but am pretty sure) it was a northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). Wow.

I recognized none of the birdsong I heard walking home tonight. The daunting Birds of Michigan (Auburn, WA: Lone Pine Publishing, 2003) makes you feel like such a nitwit when you open it up and see meticulous descriptions of the calls and songs of hundreds of Michigan birds.

The Eastern kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus—what a great Linnaean name) has a call that is described as a “quick, loud, chattering kit-kit-kitter-kitter; also a buzzy dzee-dzee-dzee.” How can you tell the “kitters” from the “dzees”?

The black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens) has a song that is a “slow, wheezy I am soo lay-zeee, rising slowly throughout; call is a short tip.”

LeConte’s sparrow (Ammodramus leconteii) has a “weak, short, raspy, insect-like buzz: t-t-zeeee zee or take-it ea-zeee.”

Here’s the American goldfinch (Carduelis tristis): “song is a long, varied series of trills, twitters, warbles and hissing notes; calls include po-ta-to-chip or per-chic-or-ee (often delivered in flight) and a whistled dear-me, see-me.”

And the (male) red-eyed vireo (Vireo olivaceus): “song is a continuous, variable, robinlike run of quick, short phrases with distinct pauses in between: Look-up, way-up, tree-top, see-me, here-I-am!”

Now how is anyone who hasn’t been a birdwatcher for years supposed to distinguish calls using those descriptions? I guess the answer is: You’re not. You learn by listening, not reading.

The only call I thought I recognized tonight was a couple of distinctive hooot hooot sounds from what may have been a mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) somewhere behind the house.

Weird how eerily quiet it was tonight ….. except for the occasional sound of what had to be firecrackers in the distance. Is today some holiday that I’m not aware of?

My first time in the Fine Arts Library in Tappan Hall today. It’s a smaller library than the behemoths next door, but it’s got its charms. There’s a nice, extensive reference room, and across a landing, there’s two floors of stacks (deserted when I visited today). I didn’t find the James Gillray books I was looking for, but I did snag a nice Caravaggio volume.

Crazy Wisdom Books on 114 South Main is worth a visit at least once.

They’re well-stocked. They have two floors, one with a fairly decent selection of metaphysical and “alternative religion” (pagan, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) books, though the inventory within each category is not as deep as the amount of categories is wide, and the second floor with a cafe-type space, a meeting room, and an assortment of yoga and meditation materials. There is the usual new-age store bric-a-brac, including every type of incense you would want (yes, Nag Champa included), candles, tarot cards, and other fine products. The music was determinedly Celtic (or faux-Celtic), with a lot of fiddles and flutes and female-voiced ululations, and the store employees were determinedly businesslike.

They had, near the front door, a shelf with a number of prominently-displayed anti-Bush books. This is par for the course in Ann Arbor, naturally, but I’m fascinated by the concept of a “spirituality” bookstore jumping on the partisan bandwagon. I suppose they’re only doing what every other bookstore in their position would do, but it still seems incongruous that customers coming in looking for a little zen or centering or whatever would also want to take home a little political red meat with their $16.00 peace-to-the-world-in-20-languages candle. Just one more example of the “divided electorate,” I guess.

For a new age store, they were about the grumpiest, sourest bunch I’ve ever encountered. I suppose they aren’t paid very much to dust the Goddess figurines and Tibetan prayer squares they’re required to attend to. Also, people weren’t lining up out the door to purchase stuff. And, on a cynical note, recent events in the world haven’t exactly encouraged belief in the supernatural.

But if you can’t find good humor and lightness of soul in a New Age bookshop, where, for crying out loud, can you find it?

Apparently everyone’s not universally thrilled with the new Seattle Public Library.

A blog called Caminothoughts opines:

Will it take half the electricity production of the Skagit River dams just to keep the greenhouse-like building at a tolerable temperature during a warm and sunny summer? This afternoon with a little sun and a large number of visitors, it was close to uncomfortable. Will the stench of the unwashed street people who will soon call the library home, several of them were walking around looking for a place to settle when I visited today, make the air all but unbreathable unless the library becomes a ventilation wind tunnel as its continuous floor plan will facilitate? Will the escalators work, and if so will they become a noise generator just like the escalators in the old central library? Will noise levels in the vast hard-surfaced spaces make the building an aurally uncomfortable place to be, let alone allow it to be a decent place to read, think, and do research?

A Live Journal user chimes in:

On a rainy day like yesterday—and Seattle has plenty of rainy days—the lighting was inadequate, the space gloomy, the area under the slab dim. Yet because it’s the floor that looks up on the vaulted enclosure it somehow manages to be uncomfortable to agoraphobics and claustrophobics alike. All that exposed glass, already covered with sticky children’s pawprints, must be a maintenence nightmare. And the escalators manage to combine the worst of airport sensibilities with creepy Disney-gone-horribly-wrong permanent multimedia “exhibits”. The floor is stainless steel plate held down with machine screws.

I can remember similar critiques of the new San Francisco Main building when it opened in 1996: sterile, cluastrophobic, cold, menacing, unpleasant, a magnet for the homeless. None of which is an invalid criticism.

But it’s a public building. A public library. What design features would have made the library building less enticing to the homeless? Are public libraries supposed to have homeless detectors or security guards at the front door to throw the bums out on their rear ends? Would it be better to have a sign on the front of the building saying “Seattle Public (NON–HOMELESS) Library”?

Oh, and we can’t have “exposed glass” because it will attract “sticky children’s pawprints.” I guess we should just toss the kids out of the library while we’re at it. Libraries are supposed to be antiseptic, germ-free, humanity-free caverns of research and learning, after all.

Maybe the best library model would be one based on the Thatcher Memorial Library in “Citizen Kane.” Thompson, the reporter, has to get an appointment to use the library, in which no books are visible except the single one that Thompson has had to place a request to view. The stern, bun-wearing librarian, Bertha, informs Thompson that he is to read only pages 83 to 142 of the selected volume and tartly tells him, “You will be required to leave this room at 4:30 promptly.”

[First quote courtesy Librarian.net; second courtesy LISNews.]

It just started pouring rain. Forget what I said.

We went to Tios the other night. Very good Mexican restaurant (odd location, though, across the street from the Ann Arbor News building and nothing else around it). The atmosphere was pretty laid-back, the rows and rows of chili bottles lining the walls was a nice touch, and the food, though a little too rich for my increasingly cranky stomach lining, was excellent (and the portions huge).

We went to Seva (a vegetarian restaurant at 314 E. Liberty) last night. Also very good. Actually, excellent. Steve had a bowl of some of the best tomato soup I’ve ever tasted and a breakfast-type plate, I had quesadillas. And a piece of carrot cake. On a related note, a Canadian on some vegetarian discussion list snootily called this restaurant “an oasis in the midst of ‘Nugentland,’” as though the rest of Ann Arbor were nothing but gun racks and road kill. I love Canada, and good ol’ AA may be overrated, but come on.

The New York Times has an amusing article today about blogging. It’s essentially the same idea as most articles or mainstream media treatments these days. Blogging is an addiction (therefore morally suspect), people sit on the toilet and blog into their laptops for hours (even on their anniversaries!!!) and ruin their relationships, people who blog have no lives outside of blogging (so why do they have jobs and relationships, then?), bloggers are only read by immediate family and a few weird lurkers and strangers, people who blog are so obsessed with their activity that they’ll opt to blog instead of doing paying work, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, bloggers are truly a scourge. In this paragraph, the Times encourages the identification of blogging with other unidentified nasty, pernicious, antisocial habits:

Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don’t keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, like Mr. Wiggins, quietly so as not to call attention to their habit.

As Steve points out, if blogs are so unsavory, why did the Times article link to six of them?

The sun seems to be making a reappearance the past two days. It’s in and out, but it’s definitely there. I would say I guess the worst of the rainy weather is over, but I know better anymore than to hazard any guesses about Michigan weather.

One of the State Theater’s recent offerings was “Latter Days.” It was not a great movie, but after seeing it, it’s difficult for me to suppress a chuckle watching those duos and trios of schlumpy, black-suited, backpacked Mormon missionaries who traipse around campus handing out their proselytizing flyers. I saw a group of them hand out their literature this morning to an amused-looking student who smelled as if he’d just smoked a couple of joints. I wonder if the Church gives them debriefings on what to say if any of their interlocutors brings up the movie. My father, who was raised a Mormon, must be spinning in his grave.

From an introduction to an otherwise typically dry BBC story tonight about an international NGO conference:

Host: Hello, Francis.

Reporter: Hello, Max, how are you?

Host: I’m well, thank you. Do carry on.

I know that they’re the coming evil mark of the beast destroyer of privacy hand in glove with the USAPATRIOT Act, but after spending the morning doing inventory for my favorite AA middle school library, I’m beginning to wonder if San Francisco’s position about the joys of RFID technology in library books isn’t so bad after all.

I’m having a great deal of problems this week with my old nemesis, tendonitis (for which I had surgery in 2001), and the repetitive motions of pulling a book out, holding the bar code scanner in my right hand (the bad arm) and pushing the scan button for all of the 800 and 900 classifications of the school’s library is playing hell with me today.

Wouldn’t it be easier to have RFID chips in the books that could be read without such physical pain? Bar codes were a wonderful invention; I can’t imagine having to do this inventory the old fashioned paper way. But I’ll be paying a painful price for this all night long.

Surely there’s a way to moderate the wonderful aspect of the RFID technology and completely protect the privacy of patrons. But we live in extremist times and I’m not holding my breath. Give Johnny Reb Asscroft another four years and the spectre of FBI agents using USAP to drive in front of your house and read the RFID chips in your library books and build a damning reading list just isn’t all that far-fetched, no matter how tinfoil-hattish it sounds.

Speaking of the 800 and 900 classifications … call me an elitist snob but I just still have problems with the biographies. Come on, professional librarians, can’t we have a ‘sports, entertainment and worthless flavor of the minute’ section in biographies? I mean, I HATE shelving that volume of Refrigerator Perry next to Admiral Perry. Dennis Rodman really shouldn’t be keeping company with Eleanor Roosevelt. And oh the indignity of forcing Thomas Jefferson to share shelf space with the likes Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson.

Okay, I’ll shut up now.

Flooding in St. Clair County ….. a tornado watch in 15 southeastern Michigan counties till 11.00 ….. over a dozen tornadoes swept through southern and southeastern Nebraska and nearly wiped out the town of Hallam overnight. So far it’s been quiet here except for a few showers and a brief rush of torrential rain earlier this afternoon.

Weather has been much calmer in the past 24 hours. There were a few scattered raindrops when I took the dog out a few minutes ago, but nothing beyond that other than the sight (which I love) of a sky full of gray rainclouds tumbling overhead in a dark night framed by the lonesome-looking telephone poles on the side streets beyond our house. A tornado devastated the small town of Bradgate in north-central Iowa Friday night, and the recent storms were blamed for three deaths in Berrien and St. Joseph Counties. Although there was very little in the way of rain here Saturday, the Free Press says that four tornadoes were reported between Flint and Saginaw. I guess we’ve been fairly lucky here.

… And then there’s a whole discussion thread (same site) about libraries in which someone says she never goes to libraries because the thought of touching books that someone else has handled freaks her out, which is about the strangest reason not to go to a library I’ve ever heard.

She writes, seeming to think she’s got it all figured out: “In the end, I buy my own books and add them to my personal library.”

What, so people don’t handle books in bookstores? Even your nicely-boxed Amazon delivery has been handled by a stock person. Guaranteed.

Someone wrote in to I Love Books asking what it was like to work in a bookstore. Here’s one answer:

You don’t sit around and read and discuss literature all the time when you work in a bookshop. You do tell customers where the latest Mitch Albom book is a million times a day. You learn to identify bestsellers by cover color. People insist they have just seen a certain book in paperback at another shop and your explanation that the book has only been out in hardcover for a month and will likely be in paper within a year is listened to with disbelief and an insulting air indicating you are a moron AND a liar. You listen to people tell you they could get every title in your shop more cheaply at Sam’s Club. You learn the inner significance of the deep philosophy in science fiction and fantasy titles. You get lectures about why a certain author is or is not fantasy or science fiction and how only feeble minded idiots would mis-shelve them as dismally as you and your colleagues have. You sometimes get to handsell a book you believe in to a person who might actually enjoy it. You watch terrific books languish on the shelves and eventually get sent back to the publisher while Nicholas Sparks titles must be reordered bimonthly. You become expert at finding the most popular TV talk and news show sites on the web instantly because customers want “this book they were talking about on the Today Show, it was written by a general? Someone in the military anyway.” You become accustomed to being called a liar when you tell someone a certain book is out of print. “It can’t be out of print, (you are informed.) It was only published 5 years ago!” You learn every single day that (1) Amazon has it cheaper and (2) Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax.

From Tuesday’s Ann Arbor News:

A 34-year-old man admitted he punched a pedestrian in the face in Liberty Plaza Park in downtown Ann Arbor Monday because he didn’t like the look on his face, city police said.

The 53-year-old victim said he was walking through the plaza at 7:40 a.m. when he was suddenly punched by a man who didn’t say a word. A passerby called police, and the victim pointed out the man who struck him, reports said.

The suspect told police that he didn’t like the look on the man’s face and he felt intimidated, so he punched him. The man was arrested on assault charges.

From yesterday’s Ann Arbor News:

A 19-year-old Ypsilanti man told several people waiting for a city bus that he planned to rob them, then ran from police when they tried to question him, Ann Arbor Police said.

The incident occurred at the Blake Transit Center in the 300 block of South Fourth Avenue at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday. An officer stationed there said he was approached by several people who pointed out the suspect and said he was telling people waiting for an AATA bus that he would rob them, reports said.

There’s an article in today’s Ann Arbor News about cafes that you may have seen. I’m happy to say Ambrosia wasn’t mentioned in it once, not because I don’t wish Ambrosia long luck and much prosperity, but because it’s nice to know there’s a cool cafe that somehow manages to slip under the radar of whatever is supposed to be cool and hip in Ann Arbor.

There’s a new Starbucks opening soon on Liberty and Main, which is kind of bewildering. There’s already a Starbucks on Liberty and State (a huge-ass one, by the way; the News informs us that this Starbucks is the sixth largest Starbucks in the country), just seven blocks away. The News says that with the addition of the new store there are five Starbucks in town, but if you count the two at Briarwood Mall and the two within the Maple and Plymouth Road Kroger, that makes eight. (That’s still nowhere near as many as San Francisco, which at last count has a whopping 68 Starbucks, with a new one opening any day now at King and Fourth in China Basin.)

Anyway, I’m all for coffee shops, and I want to try out some of the places mentioned in the News article that I’d not heard of before, but I’ll probably stick with Ambrosia (and occasional visits to Espresso Royale). If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

What gets me is that the town boosters quoted in the article seem to think that that ineffable quality of coolness that Ann Arbor is eternally chasing like the fabled holy grail is synonymous with being “rich with coffee shops,” as though that represented some sort of bragging rights over Ypsilanti or Dexter. It is to laugh.

A quote from his new book, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) In the Future Tense (quote courtesy New York Times):

In America, it is acceptable to cut off any driver in a vehicle that costs a third more than yours. That’s called democracy.

If that’s democracy, then Michigan has democracy (or, I guess, reverse democracy, since the cutting off usually comes from the vehicles that “cost a third more than yours”) in spades.

But David Brooks never makes any sense, so never mind.

Where to begin?

• The Pixies are back together for a reunion tour, are not apparently tearing each other limb from limb, and are like a breath of fresh air.

• Morrissey has relased a new album (with a sadly ironic cover photograph of himself holding a Tommy gun), You Are the Quarry, of which the Guardian observes acidly, “And who could have guessed that Morrissey’s seventh solo album would open with a hip-hop breakbeat?”

• Prince has a new post-Jehovah’s-Witness-conversion album out called Musicology that is doing well on the charts (for Prince these days, peaking at #3 for 3 weeks is doing amazingly well) and sounds about as weak as instant coffee tastes. The lead single (and title single) is basically Prince rewriting the themes of Stevie Wonder’s 1977 hits “I Wish” and “Sir Duke” and rolling them together into one song, and not doing a very good job of it. (Nobody could touch those songs, though, so I guess you could say that Prince has cojones for trying.)

• Teena Marie has released an album (La Dona) that has debuted in the top ten. She has never had an album in the top ten. The last time she had an album anywhere near the top ten (let alone debut there) was 1984, the winter of “Lover Girl” and “Help Youngblood Get to the Freaky Party.” Unfortunately, the powers that be have decided that it would be cool to tart Teena up on the CD cover to look like Lil’ Kim. It doesn’t work.

• The Cure are touring the United States this summer for, what, the 4378th time, coinciding with the release of their 13th studio album.

Ref Grunt has closed its doors. Long live Refgrunt.com, although its posts appear to be dismayingly intermittent.

There are many cool things about Michigan weather, I’ve discovered. One is that it’s so unpredictable (within reason). Another is the months of snow, which I have to say I’ve missed. And another is that when severe weather happens, it reminds you that Mother Nature really is still in charge, not us puny humans.

That aspect is not always as evident in California, where, although weather is obviously a fact of life, in some regions it’s not as much a fact of life as a publicity brochure selling point. You don’t usually move to Los Angeles unless you have family or friends there, adore (or are obsessed with slaving for) the entertainment industry, have a well-paying job somewhere in that or another LA industry, or, a good enough reason for most people, you’re in dire need of constant great weather with no surprises.

Same goes with the Bay Area, with some slight alterations. Like: you don’t move to SF unless you know something about SF weather first. For example: Weather in SF is not like weather in LA. Not even remotely. Nor, actually, is it like weather across the bay in Marin or Alameda Counties. Not even remotely. Nor, actually, is weather on the west side of the city like weather on the east side. Not even remotely. You can be in the Sunset or the Richmond on any given day and be completely socked in with the most glorious, comforting fog (or, depending on your point of view, the most odious, hateful, depressing fog) and take a bus or drive over to the other end of the city—or even just a walk over to the Haight—and have sunlight galore. Or, you can be in one part of Nob Hill or Telegraph Hill, walk a few blocks, and have wind and chill where a few blocks back there had been warmth. That’s one of the great things about SF, but it can drive you crazy if you’re not prepared for it.

What you get in place of dramatic storms and blusters in California are earthquakes and fires. Which, in its own way, is somewhat scarier, because neither of these is subject to prediction. There are days when you live in certain parts of the state that you utter silent prayers before you get out of bed in the morning that a quake doesn’t hit or a fire doesn’t erupt.

Ambrosia, which is staffed by a bunch of avid, amiable fishing enthusiasts who would probably be much, much happier in Berkeley if it weren’t for the lack of walleye and lake trout, was all abuzz this afternoon about the near-tornado. “You could feel the hair raise on your arms and you could smell the copper in the air,” one of them marveled. The buzz was either about the tornado or the CD on the stereo, which made me feel like I was being cast back to a lazy afternoon in some hippie SF cafe (the cafe would not be in the Haight, where the Dead are now disdained as way too obvious and touristy and you’re more likely to hear Detroit techno or world music, but probably some lonely, underpopulated spot in the Outer Sunset, where the owner is struggling to keep the place open because of the high rent and there’s a bunch of anti-Bush and anti-imperialism flyers on the bulletin board and an aloof tabby cat is sunning herself on the bay window facing the sidewalk) listening to KFOG—because the CD was the Grateful Dead, of course, and, of course, one of the regulars came in and pounded on the counter and excitedly asked what the twenty-minute jam was on the CD. “That is some really long jam! Sounds like Europe ‘72, man! Is it ‘Dark Star’?” “No,” the counter guy replied. “It’s actually San Francisco ‘69, and it’s ‘Morning Dew.’” Somebody will probably write to correct me that the Dead never played “Morning Dew” in 1969.

I walked through the connector between the undergraduate and graduate libraries yesterday and today on my way to work. Late yesterday afternoon, an impressive storm was brewing that turned out to be the near-tornado of last night. This afternoon, a similar storm was brewing as I walked through. I stopped to look out the window at it, at the way it rolled and broiled across the sky, the way it made the birds scatter for cover, and got a couple of glares from passing students, as though I were somehow not supposed to stop in the middle of the connector to look out the window, but also got a little conversation out of a passing library worker, or maybe a person visiting from out of town—she was surprised when I told her about the storm last night and expressed the opinion that the one brewing right now looked pretty substantial as well. Five minutes later, I was walking with everyone else in the undergrad library to the basement after an announcement over the PA system that DPS had ordered everyone to take cover until further notice. We all herded down to the windowless basement—everyone in the building, evidently, amounting to about 55 or 60 of us—and waited out the tornado warning.

The students seemed more annoyed and inconvenienced by the enforced confinement than anyone else. The library workers and the visitors stood around and chatted. The students, many wearing shorts and flip-flops, sullenly stomped around the basement, looking aimless and unhappy, as though the weather were some sort of unfair adult imposition. Some of them eventually sat down and started reading or doing work. Others just continued wandering around the perimeter of the basement, as though it were a track.

One of my co-workers recalled a tornado that had hit Ann Arbor 15 or so years ago and downed power in parts of the city for 3 days. One of my SI cohorts came over and said hi and we had a brief and somewhat humorous conversation about the weather, during which it became clear that not only had I never had to “duck and cover” as a kid for any reason, but I still couldn’t keep straight the distinction between a tornado watch and a tornado warning even though Steve has reminded me of the distinction, oh, maybe 50 times. An undergrad wandered over and started chattering about his brother in San Diego and the hellish firestorms they had out there last October. Finally, and anticlimactically, the PA system came back on and the announcer said, with more than a note of tentativeness, “DPS has given the all-clear signal. You can now go back to ….. your various library locations.”

All in all, it was a combination of nervous energy and random conversation that would never have happened without the tornado warning and all of us being forced to spend a half hour in the basement of the library.

Acording to Atlas of Michigan (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1977), which places this paragraph above a path map of an apparently really nasty tornado that hit southeastern Michigan on 12 April 1965:

Tornadoes are usually spawned by an advance of a strong cold front into a mass of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the presence of dry air over the frontal zone of middle levels of the atmosphere, and high-speed winds aloft fostered by the jet stream. Such conditions, although they combine relatively infrequently in Michigan, have resulted in some devastating tornadoes in the state.

The atlas is useful for lots of things, though it’s obviously somewhat out of date (its color photograph of a grinning and youthful-looking William Milliken being the most obvious indication). Among its interesting factoids: the Washtenaw County area usually gets its first snowfall of an inch or over between November 22-29 or shortly thereafter, which pretty much jibes with our experience this past autumn.

Before Ann Arbor became Storm Central in the past 48 hours, birds were everywhere. One reader (and someone who knows her avians), Dorothea of the fantastic Caveat Lector, wrote to tell me that the bird I was mystfied about the other day was a yellow-shafted flicker, otherwise known as a Northern flicker, or by its Linnaean designation, Colaptes auratus.

Inevitably, according to North American Bird Folknames and Names (Foster City, CA: Bottlebrush Press, 1996), the flicker has something on the order of 100 other nicknames as well. I’ll just settle on “flicker” and leave it at that.

Some other interesting factoids about the flicker: It’s the only member of the woodpecker order to regularly feed on the ground, perferring ants and beetles (the flicker’s anti-acidic saliva neutralizes the acid defense of the ant). According to Birds of Michigan Field Guide (Cambridge, MN: Adventure Publications, 1999), the flicker “undulates deeply in flight while giving a loud ‘wacka-wacka’ call.” I like that: Wacka wacka! Birds of Washtenaw County, Michigan (University of Michigan Press, 1992), says, in a triumph of understatement, “The Northern flicker is a conspicuous bird.”

The other cool-looking bird I’ve seen recently has got to be a common grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). I say this because it resembles the European starling from a distance, it has an unmistakable glow to its head and neck plumage that sets it apart. The sources differ on the exact color of this glow. The USGS site I linked to above says the plumage is of a “purple and greenish iridescence.” One book said the plumage was blue. Another said black-blue. Who knows? Whatever the color is, it’s incredibly beautiful.

Okay, Yankees, when the sky turns as dark and ugly GREEN as it did at 2:30 this afternoon, that means you’ve got yourself a tornado somewhere VERY. CLOSE. BY. This means get in the cellar, fool, ‘fore you get sucked up like Helen Hunt’s daddy in that Twister movie.

But the sirens didn’t even sound today. Meanwhile, just a block away, the mayhem you see in the pictures above happened; one of the beautiful, tall and stately pine trees toppled over during the swirling green blowby. Fortunately, somebody with sense at the UM libraries herded everybody including Frank into the basement for awhile, so he was okay.

Now, I’m sorry to be such a Nervous Nellie. But my Okie heritage … well, it’s just hardwired in my genes.

I remember the aftermath of the tornado that hit Duncan 22-Feb-75, killing a woman. Some cousins were living in a trailer house temporarily next door to my great-aunt’s house. The twister hit and they barely escaped as the trailer whirled into the air … only to be beaten to a pulp by hail as they hightailed it for my great-aunt’s cellar. We saw them the next day; they looked like they had been beaten with two-by-fours.

Still, Michigan storms seem to be pretty dang benign by Okie standards, so I’m not diving into the hole yet. I’m actually greatly enjoying the show. For the last seven years in San Francisco, the most exciting weather feature was, well, nothing really. This is more like home.

And yes, the Beagle slept through this afternoon’s storm (and the one going on right now too). With the sky so dark and green, I strongly requested that he come downstairs with me, poised to hit the basement. He woke up briefly, gave me an extremely dirty look as if to say, ‘This ain’t no storm. Why, in Texas, it’d just be a lil’ ol’ rain shower, son! Chill out …’

Good advice.

[BTW: USAToday has more on ‘Going Green’]

The title of a paper given by MIT meterology professor and chaos theorist Edward Lorenz at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC on 29 December 1979:

Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

From Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (1900):

The time’s come: there’s a terrific thunderstorm advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up ….

And, last but certainly not least, the inimitable Dorothy Parker (from “Fair Weather” in Sunset Gun [1928]):

They sicken of the calm, who know the storm.

We had a ‘possible-tornado-producing’ storm last night with blowing sirens and one-inch hail and minor flooding in Ypsi and a house burned after a lightning strike. It was all higgledy-piggledy for awhile around midnight.

The native Californian was in denial about it all for at least a few minutes, lying in bed as the sirens blew before getting up, while the (somewhat) native Okie opened the window to get a better listen and then got into some shoes and grabbed flashlights and prepared to hit the basement.

We Okies don’t mess with tornadoes; when the sirens blow, that usually means bidness and bidness means getting into the cellar and tying the kids down with the rope so they don’t get all sucked out the door.

The frustrating thing about being up here with Yankees who don’t understand tornadoes is the absolute dearth of information. You know, call me weird, but once warning sirens blow I like to have as much information as possible … such as, what’s about to descend from on high, where’s it coming from and when, things like that. There’s a write-up in today’s AA News (Motto: ‘Absolutely Still the World’s Worst Website’), but, ya know, I kinda like to know where the tornado is BEFORE it blows me away, not reading about it 12 hours later.

I slam my ancestral state where I lived for 20 years often about its politics and general cluelessness, but on weather forecasting and information, it has no peer anywhere in the world. Even in that god-awful movie Twister, starring that actress that Frank likens to broken glass being scraped across a chalkboard, the only realistic parts were those starring Oklahoma’s TV weathermen, such as the legendary Gary England of KWTV 9, Oklahoma City.

Gary has been the Storm King of Oklahoma since God was a boy; he’s chased tornadoes and been the target of a few as well, including the May 1999 F-5 monster that ripped up the city. Now THERE’S weather information; channel 9 (and others) have equipment so sophisticated that it can tell you what city block the tornado will be at at what time. Heck, not even United Airlines can tell you when their planes will arrive with as much accuracy.

And so, last night with the sirens blowing and local radio playing the BBC and Dr. Laura as if cricket match scores in Pakistan and Fascist FunDumbMentalist ranting were more important than the wall cloud bearing down on a city of 110,000, I missed, for awhile, Oklahoma, I must admit.

As for the beagle, well, he’s a Texas beagle (loathe I am to admit it); he was born in a double-wide trailer house in Kemp, TX, and thunderstorms make him yawn. During the storm, I had to entice him with treats to get him to come downstairs in reasonable proximity to the basement in case things began to look dicey. Thunder, lightning, wind, hail, floods … these things don’t phase Bayley. But try to clip his nails … now, THAT’S scary.

How fun to get something like this in your e-mail box at midnight:

‘On Monday, May 17, the University of Michigan Administrative Information Services determined that a small selection of personal student data elements may have been exposed to some individuals within the University community through the Wolverine Access Web site. The data elements that may have been viewed include UMID, Social Security number or National ID, and home address information. It has been determined that this situation may have existed between February 9 and May 17, 2004.

‘We are notifying you as a precaution because there is a slight possibility that your personal data may have been accessible to someone within the University community who was not authorized to see this information. Because of the obscure nature of the vulnerability, we believe it is highly unlikely there was unauthorized access of student information during this time. However, as a precaution, we encourage you to observe practices like monitoring billing statements for accuracy, checking credit reports, etc. Identity theft has become a growing concern in our country and these are good practices to follow as a matter of course.

‘If you believe your Social Security number has been used fraudulently, file a police report …’

That’s a laugh. Been there, done that; a friend had his i.d. compromised 10 years ago this month. The official police line: ‘It ain’t defrauding you if someone gets your SS# and gets credit cards and runs up debt; they’ve defrauded the companies involved not you, so dry up and blow away.’ So, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. He’ll finally be free of said 10-year bankruptcy next Dec. 24.

And people wonder why I have a cow when some outsourced, offshored corporate lackey in the Philippines or India asks me for my date of birth or ID when I call MCI to correct this month’s phone bill screwup.

Thanks, UM! (Ain’t computers and technology and the internet grand sometimes?)

More stuff on the Seattle Public Library from LISNews:

The New Yorker calls the new central library “the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been trumpeting the new library, with an overview and groovy QuickTime panoramas of various of the library’s floors. The new library will have 65% of its material available in open stacks (the old library had 35%). City Librarian Deborah Jacobs has been working it, clearly; the publicity is unlike anything I’ve ever seen for any library, public or otherwise.

I know that the Internet was not such a huge part of our lives back then, but this makes the “publicity” attending the opening of the San Francisco Public Library’s new main building in 1996 look like the opening of a chicken coop. (The SF could have taken lessons from Jacobs’ leading high school journalists on a tour of the library and joking with them that you could use the fifth floor to look down four floors below to see if your blind date was worth pursuing. The SF has a similar birds’-eye view, but nobody seems much interested in it, or if they are, they immediately draw suspicion fromn security guards afraid that there’s going to be a jumper.)

The best part, for me, though, was this:

And don’t ever expect to hear this new building called the Starbucks Library or Microsoft Library. Unlike other Seattle buildings that bear the name of big donors, this will be the Seattle Public Library.

“We’d never allow the building to be named,” said Jacobs. “This is the people’s library.”

There’s also another appearance by Nancy Pearl, in another Post-Intelligencer article. She teels the story of how she once was accosted by a homeless man holding an iron (he was trying to find an outlet to plug in his iron so he could prepare for a job interview, he said). Not a few people would have flinched or called the cops. Nancy Pearl led the man to her office so he could iron his shirt.

Her point was that the public library should not be a substitute for shelter, or even for a hygiene station where the homeless could spruce themselves up. But she didn’t waggle her finger at the man and say “Tsk tsk.”

Great story.

Today’s LISNews links to a New York Times article about Fundrace.org, an intriguing site that allows you to track campaign contributions by neighborhood. This is information you can go down to any registrar’s office and legally view; nothing unusual except in the presentation and the speed of access to the information. One Ohio woman was interviewed who objected to her privacy being violated in this way, because she’s a Democrat and lives in a predominantly Republican town, yet not only did she allow her name to be used in the article, she posed for a photograph in the middle of what was presumably her street (with a row of houses identifiable behind her) and a big Kerry for President button on her lapel. I’m scratching my head here. If you think the site is an invasion of privacy, you go and perform perhaps the most publicity-seeking display imaginable (short of jumping up and down and screaming “Kerry for President!” in front of a Fox News crew)? In any event, the story’s made Fundrace.org quite popular. I tried to do a search on some San Francisco data just now and the site is overwhelmed.

According to the radio, not only are cicadas on the way (though so far the hype has exceeded the reality), but gypsy moths, European chafers, Asian longhorn beetles, Japanese beetles, mosquitoes, and of course the pervasive emerald ash bore are also about to make their presence known. (According to the Michigan State University Extension entomologist they interviewed, the gypsy moth caterpillar is something that “most people are allergic to.” Great.)

I’ve seen wasps, bumblebees, carpenter ants, and a lot of oddly-shaped beetles crawling and/or flying around the house. (Forget about the spiders; they’re around all the time.) The massive infestation of Harmonia axyridis that happened when the temps first started warming up a couple of months ago appears to have largely dissipated, though.

Still no cicadas to speak of. Steve says it’s not been consistently warm enough for them to want to come out.

I have, however, seen lots of birds, including a number I can’t identify (I’m waiting for a field guide on hold at the University library to help with that). One of them I’ve seen twice in the yard this week, pecking at the ground looking for food. It’s a large-ish bird for the type of bird it is—about 7 or 8 inches long, with a long black beak. It’s mainly brown in color, with spots on the tail feathers, but it has a striking black band across its chest and an even more striking stripe of bright red across its nape. I’m really curious to find out what this bird is.

Tony Randall passed on Monday, followed yesterday by Elvin Jones, probably the greatest drummer (never mind greatest “jazz drummer”) who ever lived.

Jones was born in Pontiac and got his start in the Detroit jazz scene in 1949. He played on some of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded, including Charles Mingus’s Pithecanthropus Erectus, Sonny Rollins’s A Night at the Village Vanguard, Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, and Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil. He also played on what some consider the greatest jazz album bar none, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (he appeared on most of Coltrane’s recordings from 1960-1966). Jones also recorded many classic albums as leader of his own combos.

But no mention of Jones in the local papers. Go figure.

No titillating “overheards” from Ambrosia today; just a bunch of employees meeting over cheesecake and listening to their benefits person yack about how awesome Blue Shield of Michigan’s health coverage is.

Why this company’s HR meeting was being held in a sidewalk cafe I don’t think I want to know.

In a mere 25 minutes or so, the first homo marriages in the United By-God States of Amurrica will take place in Massachusetts.

[sarcasm] We’ll be hiding in the basement so that the Angel of Death and Divine Retribution ‘Gainst the Homos and Homo-Loving will pass us by as this cataclysmic event foisted upon us by Activist Judges occurs and God gets really, really angry. [/sarcasm]

Actually, the ADDRGHHL will probably concentrate his efforts just on Masschusetts tonight, so we’ll be quite safe right here in God-Fearing-and-Respecting Michigan, where they treat us homos like we’re supposed to be treated: Denied medical care if a ‘christian’ doesn’t want to treat us.

‘Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice‘ indeed. (And yes, I’m a bit jealous of Massachusetts gay and lesbian couples tonight. Oh well, it could be worse … we could be in [shudder] Oklahoma.)

Before the dandelion adventure, we paid a brief visit to the University of Michigan Museum of Art. (We were thinking of doing part of the 16-site Wander Washtenaw event sponsored by the Washtenaw County Historical Consortium this weekend, but I didn’t get my act together enough to realize that it went on all day yesterday but only three hours today, which wouldn’t have been enough time to do much.) I have passed by the museum almost every day on my way to class or work for the past nine months and today was the first time I’d been inside (pretty pathetic, I know).

They had a fantastic exhibition called “The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Art” (it goes on through next Sunday), with fantastic engravings, paintings, lithographs, and photos of places like Vauxhall and Versailles, including a fantastic seventeenth-century allegorical drawing depicting the sense of smell, with a couple of French nobles descending an estate staircase with flowers held up to their nostrils and their hounds beating a path in front of them, plus some unexpected stuff: a photograph of the San Gabriel Sanatorium, a place I hadn’t known existed; a photograph of San Francisco’s own Crissy Field; and a photograph of the gardens at the Huntington Library, a treasure in the backyard of my hometown which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been to.

Apart from the exhibition, there were some astoundingly beautiful pieces of art, including Dirck Baburen’s “Christ on the Mount of Olives” (1620), Bertholet Flémalle’s “The Illness and Cure of Hezekiah” (1614-1675), Daniel Huntington’s “In the Mountain Fastness” (1850), Charles Wimar’s “The Attack on an Emigrant Train” (1856), Eastman Johnson’s “Boyhood of Lincoln” (1868), Christian Adolf Schreyer’s “The Retreat” (1860-1899), and John Stanley’s “Mount Hood from the Dalles” (1871). The only slightly annoying aspect of the collection are the patronizing curatorial descriptions affixed near some of the paintings to alert you to their horrifying political incorrectness.

Haven’t seen this many dandelions in a town ever. Like with the squirrels, AA believes in plenty of something.

Opus Bayley took a much-needed dandelion break in the park next to the Jewish Community Center. It’s been a fabulous day …

Looks like « someone wrote a really good letter to the editor of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal », right there in full red-meated Dubya country. Congratulations and keep your head down; those Texas fascists will be gunning for ya now:

‘Bush Priorities Questioned
‘Where did I go wrong? I’m a registered Republican because I believe in fiscal integrity, fiscal responsibility. Well, we all know what happened to that.
‘So, we wound up with a president who is in office by virtue of one vote in the Supreme Court—and thinks he has a mandate.
‘As governor of Texas, he blew the $2 billion surplus Ann Richards left him, and we’ve had a deficit ever since. As president, he took a $2 trillion surplus and, in two years, turned it into a several trillion dollar deficit. And this “borrow and spend” administration is spending at a record clip. And that’s fiscal integrity.
‘And about the war. Retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf recently made a remark with which I heartily agree. “Stormin’ Norman” said he’d noticed that the only people anxious to go to war are, for the most part, those who have never been shot at—like the four musketeers Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Bush.
‘Ross Perot said there are three reasons for the first Gulf War: oil, oil and oil. The same reasoning, it seems to me, applies to the current war.
‘I think Mr. Cheney knows where they’re hiding the weapons of mass destruction; he just won’t tell anybody. Hans Blix and David Kay couldn’t find them. So our military is protecting us from what?
‘Dubya has two priorities—pay back the people who financed his “landslide” election and get re-elected. We may survive such short-term thinking, but it’ll take awhile.’
‘RONALD PRESTON/Lubbock’

Now THAT’s guts, folks. Telling the truth in Texas always takes mucho bravery. Thank you, Ronald Preston.

I had this conversation with a friend not too long ago: If you have a ton of books to choose from to read, what’s your strategy? I am myself addicted to having way more books around than I’ll possibly have time to read. This entails choices. Some books you’ll never get to. Some you can weed out by reading reviews, flipping through and gauging whether you really think you’re going to read the book cover to cover, or starting and seeing how you feel once you’ve gotten through a chapter or two.

But what if the book is okay, but not great? Something you feel as though you should finish because you’ve already committed time to it, but are not feeling compelled enough to complete? I used to be of the mind that I had to finish everything I started, but no more.

Elizabeth George, author of the recent Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life [HarperCollins 2004], had a great way of putting it on BBC Radio:

I always tell my students to read up. Always read people whose work you admire. And if you start reading a book and you realize that it’s not good enough and not something that you would aspire to, then just don’t finish the book.

We went to the downtown area today and did some window shopping. West Side Book Shop was one of our stops. I’d never been there, and it’s a cozy, well-stocked store, if a little crowded and tilted more to the antique side than to the standard used-book trade. (There were some fantastic rare books on hand.) We also dropped in at Books in General, which I could spend hours browsing at. There are all kinds of finds there, including a wide selection of rare books that I think might be better than the selection at West Side. This store has a small but thoughtfully gathered British history section, including an amazingly exhaustive (and very Anglo-typical in its compulsiveness) chronology of British historical figures that was unfortunately priced beyond my reach, along with two copies (?) of The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes. I also saw a reproduction of the original 1726 edition of Gulliver’s Travels (which I am currently obsessed with; Jonathan Swift is working some sort of spell on me). We played a while with the owner’s dog, a rambunctious and friendly 3-year-old Lab/Chesapeake mix named Lucas who seemed absolutely convinced that my arm was a chew toy (I haven’t been gnawed on like that since I lived with another Lab named Rudy Doogle), and the owner convinced me to buy a used (2004, but not “new”) copy of The Almanac of American Politics [National Journal Group, annually], which no political junkie can (or should) be without.

Meanwhile, 140 miles away, in Kendallville, IN, a petition is being circulated to stop a proposed $7.9 million library building. Once the opposing signatures are submitted, the library will have 30 days to gather competing signatures. Whoever gets the most signatures wins. The new building is being opposed for the usual reasons. [Story courtesy LISNews.]

On Tuesday night, Frisinger Park was jam-packed with cars and trucks and a girls’ softball team and their parents and boosters. Passing through the park, which I normally do on my way home as a shortcut, was inadvisable. Wednesday night was less of a zoo, although there were a handful of boys and their dads engaged in softball practice. Last night, the park was deserted, except for a few starlings and sparrows and robins poking in the grass, along with the odd squirrel. The park is full of dandelions in full bloom. When you walk or drive past and there’s a wind, a blizzard of seed-bearing dandelion pods explodes all around you. Fortunately, the dandelion is probably one of the few flora I’m not allergic to.