Former rightwing attack shill David Brock has « a new website, Media Matters », ostensibly dedicated to combating the same Fascist claptrap he used to produce.
How the worm turns.
Still, donkeys are flying; let’s not criticize them too much and see how far they fly …
« Here’s how our Tough-on-Terror Boy Emperor is protecting us from evil »:
‘The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money, documents show. In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations. In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro’s regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.’
—Yahoo News
Yup, that’s the Boy Emperor’s Cabal for you … always and above-all is the ideology, while they pretend to do the opposite.
Don’t you feel safer?
The Boy Emperor’s twin ideological tenets, tax cuts for wealthy people and privatization of everything so that those wealthy get even wealthier, is « trickling down all over »:
‘This summer, when backpackers, hikers, and families—with kids in tow—pony up to get into America’s national parks, they could be in for a rude and crude awakening. Due to dramatic budget cuts some parks may be cutting back their hours, hiking trails may be un-passable, educational programs may no longer exist, and even some bathrooms may be shut down. Over the past few months, the National Park Service (NPS) has quietly imposed a hiring freeze, abandoned maintenance projects, cut visitor services, and reduced park hours at a number of America’s national parks. In response, according to Ski magazine, “Forest Service officials appear to be leaning toward a policy change that would allow more visible displays of sponsors, whose logos, names or ads could appear on items they underwrite.” The NPS believes that “its private partners in the tourism industry can help stem the decline in park visitation through aggressive efforts to lure more paying customers into the parks,” says Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, a Bend, Oregon-based environmental advocacy group.’
…
‘The National Park Service used to be one of the most dependable government-run outfits, Silver says. “From its earliest days, the idea behind the agency was that our national parks would be to America what the Cathedrals and architecture of Europe were to those countries, and most NPS officials cared a great deal for the parks and did a good job managing them.” … during the mid-sixties, the tourism industry begun to sink its claws into the NPS and “the process of Disneyfication” had become well-established by the time George W. Bush took office. Now, “politics rule supreme within the Department of Interior and it appears that when the leadership of the NPS is not misdirecting the media and the American public, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths,” Silver told me in an e-mail exchange.’
—Working For Change
Sounds like the Boy Emperor’s administration: Mortgage our future, rape our past, make our present as Orwellian as possible. The depredations of snowmobiles in Yellowstone will be looked upon nostalgically in a few years when we have to pay Dreamworks a fee to look at Old Faithful, which will only erupt after the captive audience has seen seven previews of upcoming movies starring the Olsen Twins, Jim Carrey, Angelina Jolie and William Hung.
Says Pat Boone, « ‘Censorship is healthy‘ »:
‘A healthy society needs censorship to survive, 1950s musical icon Pat Boone said yesterday. He added that he would welcome strong content restrictions governing movies and other artistic works. “I don’t think censorship is a bad word, but it has become a bad word because everybody associates it with some kind of restriction on liberty,” said Mr. Boone …’
Censorship is NOT a restriction on liberty, I see. This is a joke, right? Not exactly:
‘A more serious meeting of celebrities was when Mr. Boone was invited to a private screening of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” “After the screening was over, I turned and said, ‘Mel, you’re an apostle,’ ” said Mr. Boone, who has appeared in 15 films. “An apostle is one commissioned by God to tell the story and you are telling it more powerfully than it has ever been told or will ever be told, and you are therefore an apostle.” “I consider it the most important film ever made. It is a film that is not only of gigantic proportion but one that changes life, that affects people’s eternal destiny.” It is all the more significant, he said, “because Hollywood has an open antipathy toward Christianity itself.”’
—The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times
Mel Gibson, an apostle and The Passion the most important film ever made.
Well, I think I might actually find myself in agreement with Pat: Censorship just might be desirable … so somebody slap some tape on his mouth.
After all, shutting Pat Boone up isn’t a restriction on liberty, right?
Doing some catchup as to what’s going on around the world:
Since it was in the Village Voice, it wasn’t much noticed, but « James Ridgeway noted how … slick the ties are between the Royal Bushes and the Royal Sauds » in fact, the two familes are ‘locked together.’ Yeah, locked together in an unholy alliance that could make things very higgledy-piggledy for the rest of us:
‘If the Saudis decided to let the so-called free market take over, flooding the globe with crude and sending oil prices into a steep dive, then the U.S. would be faced with a true nightmare. Lower prices would finish off not only smaller international companies that had been enticed into the oil play by high prices, but could wipe out the domestic oil companies in the U.S., causing sheer political hell for … Bush in his little oil bastion of Houston.’
—The Village Voice
Look out. This October Surprise could get very interesting.
The BBC is all atwitter tonight about the 25th anniversary of the accession to power of Margaret Thatcher (or should I call her Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven?). I’m not sure how history will judge her. I lived in Britain when she was running for her third term in office, and even then Britain seemed a very polarized, hardbitten, driven place, and that was mostly Thatcher’s doing. There’s no doubt she transformed Britain, but was it for the better? Her legacy is what I suspect hangs over London far more than any contribution of her successors, and from all accounts I’ve read London is now a slick, humming, purring, affluent metropolis, yet essentially cold and hostile. If such is her legacy, so be it. I don’t think it’s a particularly worthwhile legacy.
My favorite artificial language. [Link courtesy Political Theory Daily.]
I must plead guilty to causing the cold snap. I lowered the roof on the Jeep for the first time since we moved to Michigan, because I wanted some sunshine and air the other day.
Now it’s too freakin’ cold to go out there and mess with putting it back up. I had a rather cool ride to and from Huron HS today for my subbing gig.
Sorry I caused the freeze. By the way, I ain’t laughing over here. This is friggin’ MAY for God’s sake!
My geography lesson yesterday was on Russia, and the textbook noted that the Upper Midwest of the United States shares the same climate as Siberia.
Yeah, like, no duh.
Speaking of high school and blogging, 16-year-old girls no longer trade secrets about hair, boys and parties. They talk about html, how to post photos and smileys on their blogs and trade web addresses and opinions on whether Blogger is a good tool or not.
No skateboard hijinks today; they were too busy playing a rousing game of ‘Hearts.’ Kids today playing ‘Hearts’??!! I thought that was a Grandpa’s game. (Not that I’m not guilty of playing it by the hour on Windoze machines … after all, that’s about all you can do on a Windoze machine without going stark, raving insane.)
Still, I learn something new every day that I go to high school …
All you can do is laugh (unless you’re kicking yourself for forgetting your gloves):
The National Weather Service in Detroit/Pontiac has issued a freeze warning for all of Southeast Michigan from midnight until 8 am EDT Tuesday.
Temperatures will fall below 32 degrees after midnight across
Southeast Michigan. Low temperatures will bottom out in the upper 20s to around 30 degrees by sunrise. Temperatures will climb above
freezing around 8 am.
A freeze warning is issued when freezing temperatures are forecast to threaten outdoor plants. Those with agricultural interests in the
warned area are advised to harvest or protect tender vegetation.
Also … potted plants normally left outdoors should be covered or
brought inside away from the cold.
My undergrad university’s alumni mag has this article on blogs in its latest issue.
Nothing out of the ordinary, that is, nothing beyond the usual cliches and cant: low readership, cool photos, rants, inside jokes, personal reflection, you can be anybody you wanna be on the Internet (yeah, right), linking to random crap “just because you feel like it,” yadda yadda yadda. I particularly savored the characterization of blogs as “an outlet for post-teen angst.” So this blog is, what? Post-post-post-post teen angst? Middle-age angst? Pre-senility angst? I know not.
I do know now, however, something I didn’t know before reading this particular piece: that the typical Stanford student’s blog is just as likely as not to be filled with photos of Jaguar XK8s and California poppies, which, I suppose, is just about in keeping with the school’s image as a playground for the spawn of the leisure class.
I also notice from class notes that someone from my graduating class lives right here in good old AA. I wonder how many other Stanfordites live in the area?
It was great to hear Loretta Lynn, God bless her, shock and tweak the boring Melissa Block on NPR today during an interview about her new Jack White-produced album, Van Lear Rose. (“It’s been good talkin’ to you too, honey.”)
Sounds like an awesome album too.
According to Total Guitar Magazine (via BBC), these are the Top 20 Riffs of All Time:
This is a more ludicrous list than the Worst 50. Granted, this is a Brit magazine (published in Bath, of all places), but come on. What defines a “riff,” anyway? Who in the hell outside of England has heard of Muse? And two Metallica and GNR selections but nothing from the Stones (”[I Can’t Get No] Satisfaction”? “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Hello?) or the Beatles (“And Your Bird Can Sing”? “Yer Blues”?) or Kinks, for God’s sake (“All Day and All of the Night”)?
What about Ann Arbor’s own incongruous (and incomparable) contribution to rock history, The Stooges?
No Velvet Underground? Queens of the Stone Age but no Queen? Fine, “Black Dog,” whatever, but no “Immigrant Song”?
What about The Who? “Bargain”? “Baba O’Reilly”? Come on, people!
“Killing in the Name” but not “Fistful of Steel”? “Voodoo Chile” but not “If 6 Was 9”? No “Psychotic Reaction”? No “Wish You Were Here” or “Money”? No “Journey to the Center of the Mind”? I guess I must be showing my age again.
And when will they stop including that tired, worn-out Free song on top whatever lists? I had to bear the torture of hearing that song played ad infinitum when I was at Stanford—it was the semi-official anthem of the university band.
Morrissey at the Apollo????? It’s true. According to a link from Gawker, he’s playing there tonight through Friday. That is truly surreal. It’s sort of like, I don’t know, Moby at the Whisky a Go-Go.
Anyway, Morrissey’s new single (“Irish Blood English Heart”) is great, 2:39 minutes of spitting, droning glory and fury. I doubt the rest of his new album will be as good, but one can always hope.
Bush was reportedly in Niles, Kalamazoo, and Sterling Heights today on a “bus tour.” His bus has the slogan “America, Yes We Can” on it. Tell that to all the folks in Michigan who’ve lost their jobs in the past three years, Mr. President.
On another somewhat related topic, I was in Borders this afternoon and spied this book. I get a good chuckle out of books like Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men and Jacob Weisberg’s George W. Bushisms. But books like this puzzle me. First of all, how can anyone be “wrong about absolutely everything”? Is the corollary that Kerry (or someone like Kerry, or Nader, or some unknown quantity) is “right about absolutely about everything”? I think not. I don’t think that even Senator Dour, er, I mean, Senator Kerry would assert that as a logical proposition.
There is virtually nothing that would make me want to pick up a book like this; it essentially shrieks “unleavened partisan bias” from across the room. I want to read something that tells me truthfully what’s going on, not something that lulls me into a false sense of my ideological superiority. I am not blind, and I don’t want to read something that presumes that I am (and coddles and flatters that tendency).
Books like this are an insult to the intelligence. (I feel the same way about books like Ann Coulter’s Treason and Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us from Evil). I also think they’re a worrisome trend. Did we see books that screamed similar things about previous presidents while they were in office? What do books like this say about our ability as a nation to get beyond our entrenched partisan divisions? Are future presidents (no matter their party affiliation) destined to be smacked across the face by books like this 15 minutes after they are inaugurated?
It’s May 3, but the wind was astonishingly cold and biting this morning, so much so that I regretted leaving the house without coat and gloves. Same story at 12.30, still, though it had grown more temperate within an hour.
It was not empty in Ambrosia this afternoon, but it wasn’t packed, either. The atmosphere was more relaxed than it’s been in a while.
Campus had a similar feel. Fairly empty at 9 when I got there, but enough people around when I left the office around 12.30 for it not to be a ghost town. The library was empty this morning but (to my surprise) most of the computers in the Science Library on the third floor of the Undergrad were occupied when I passed by this afternoon.
By lunch Liberty was fairly crowded with pedestrians. Again, not the usual weekday school year level, but not depopulated, either. Borders was doing brisk foot traffic.
Curiously, the morning 6 Ellsworth bus was more crowded this morning than it usually is during the school year. Mostly working-class folks on their way to jobs.
The State Street corridor had some vehicular traffic on it, but nothing comapred with the standard weekday (or weekend) school year traffic.
Also, the houses along State above Packard were nearly evacuated. There was one house this morning that had a handful of party-hearty holdouts drinking beer on the lawn at 9.00, but other than that it was dead. A couple of overflowing garbage cans on one lawn. A big stack of red plastic cups for keggers sitting on the porch rail of another house. A carpet-cleaning truck had a hose running into another presumably liquor-soaked domicile. The scary-looking box on the corner of State and Stimson had a pleading, neatly processor-printed sign on butcher paper on the front of it from Oppenheimer Properties reading “WOW! 2BR APTS $745.” Yeah, wow.
There were at least four moving trucks within the environs of our complex this afternoon.
More slurpees today. I’m developing a serious addiction to FCB’s slurpees, particularly coke and wild cherry and white cherry. Nirvana. Thank god they’re downtown and have inconvenient parking at best, or I’d be spending what’s left of our money on them.
We went downtown to return movies to the library and I didn’t want to put the top up on the Jeep, the sun felt so good. But it was pretty chilly; had to run the heater full blast to stay warm. But the sun is great and you have to grab the opportunity for it when you get it.
We were visited by two beautiful birds today, a resplendent bluejay and a shyer cardinal (hence the not-so-hot picture of it). They muscled in on the squirrels and scored some bread. The squirrels pretty much didn’t care, but kept their distance.
Even with the cool weather this weekend, spring around here continues to be fabulous, colorwise.
I’ll give Ann Arbor this, the seasonal color right outside our bedroom window is wonderful, especially in the autumn and spring:
Gorgeous.
The town does appear to be clearing out. We took a little drive this afternoon. The area around our neighborhood was quiet, way quieter than usual (as “usual” has been for the past eight months, that is). There was some traffic (foot and cars both) in the Liberty area, but it was nothing compared to the usual level. And the State Street corridor around campus was relatively deserted.
There’s a big fat front page story in the Ann Arbor News today headlined “Library considers big changes for main branch downtown.” Apparently the fight is between the District and the Downtown Development Authority, and the issue is the parking lot next to the library building on South Fifth.
The library doesn’t own the parking lot; the DDA does. And the DDA doesn’t want to give up 16 of its 223 spots to help the AADL transfer the entrance of the library from the spot where it is now, facing Fifth, to what would basically be the north side of the where the front of the building is now (I guess, looking at the map, where the young adult section currently is), with a passenger dropoff section presumably replacing the 16 parking spaces that the DDA is concerned about.
The crux of the story is that the library board of directors evidently feels that without the transformation of the lot, the main library branch, which has been at the corner of Fifth and William since 1957, is doomed and will need to relocate, possibly to a building somehwere half its current size, though nobody seems clear on where downtown they’re going to find a building that fits that description.
Now I can see the library’s point; the current situation is not that functional. There is absolutely no way you can get out of your car (or other vehicular conveyance) in front of the main branch now without getting creamed or causing a major accident. Fifth Street is basically a one-line north-south highway, and woe betide you if you’re a pedestrian trying to get across the lanes of traffic. Thus, you either use the DDA parking lot or you park elsewhere and walk.
However, the idea that a new building for the main branch is going to materialize downtown when there’s no space for anything downtown seems odd (not to mention the idea that a building half the size of the current building will be able to hold the current collection).
On the other hand, why the DDA is balking at accommodating what is undoubtedly the most significant use of the parking lot next to the library is a mystery that remains unanswered by the article.
Can’t express my disgust for LunarPages and their sysadmin ignorance in terms strong enough or colorful enough. I’m just now putting the pieces back together of this site, and doing multiple installations of Textpattern for each individual subsite. Whatta pain.
Fortunately, Textpattern is easy, straightforward and quick, thank God. It’s very nice to work with and shouldn’t trip any LunarPages lunacy.
Now we’re mostly back in business, but the archives are a mess and the galleries still need work and I have to figure out the photo stuff, etc. So it still needs much more work. Yuck.
Nuggets from the current issue of « Harper’s »:
‘The phrase “national security” undoubtedly will make numerous appearances in the campaign speeches between now and the November election, and if the ritual holds true to form it will add to the country’s inventories of fear instead of increasing its store of courage. To define the national security as a wonder of aircraft carriers or a marvel of surveillance cameras is to mistake the lesser for the greater instruments of American power, to miss the point, made by the signatories to both the Constitution and the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, that the republic’s best and only chance for survival rests on its freedom of thought and force of mind.’
—Lewis Lapham
And in the Sanctity of Marriage Department:
‘Percentage of the 958 same-sex unions granted to Vermont residents since July 2000 that have since been dissolved: 3
‘Percentage of U.S. heterosexual marriages that are dissolved within five years: 20’
Nice comparison, but a better one is:
Vermont gay marriages ending in divorce: 3 percent.
Oklahoma straight marriages ending in divorce: 60 percent.
Here’s a head-scratcher:
‘From the Frequently Asked Questions page of the U.S. government’s Hurricane Research Division website.
Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?
During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms …’
The Amurrican Empire. Whatta country.
Perhaps I’m doing something right in the classroom … As I arrived at a northeast Ann Arbor high school this morning, I met a student who was in a history class I guest taught over a month ago. He stopped me and asked me if I was going be in that class again today and said, ‘Oh, man! I so wish you were, dude!’ when I told him I was headed somewhere else.
And later, a sophomore in one of my English classes pronounced me, ‘Best. Sub. Ever.’ Another said she ‘hearted’ me.
It ain’t Teacher of the Year, but I’ll take it.
But I wonder if it had something to do with me allowing a sixth-hour student to practice skateboard tricks in the middle of the room during free reading time?
And Sunday’s “move-out today,” or so goes the scuttlebutt (heard as I walked by a couple of people sitting out in front of Ambrosia this morning, one of whom was talking about how much she was looking forward to the atmosphere of the town once all the students are gone).
Helicopters circling over central campus, lots of clueless out-of-towners wandering around, lots of ties and shirts and trousers as opposed to jeans and shorts, people scrambling around to assemble poses for video cameras, the worst traffic on State and South U that I’ve seen in weeks if not months ….. yep, today must be graduation day.
I’m done. The end of the year has come for me, and I seem to have survived. (The true test will come when grades get posted, but I’ll assume for now that I did okay.)
Damn. One year under the belt, one to go. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.
Today’s Duke Ellington’s birthday. A tip of the hat to the incomparable Sir Duke.
One of the north-south streets through East Pasadena is Michillinda—it starts up in Sierra Madre, near where my sister lives, and descends into San Marino.
Something I never knew (I always assumed it was just a corruption of an Indian or Spanish name) was that Michillinda was named by the original families that settled in the area in 1873-1874—some of whom were from Indiana, but others of whom were from Illinois and Michigan. (Mich ….. Ill ….. Ind[ian]a.)
Probably inspired by Charles Nordhoff’s accounts of the curative powers of Southern California’s dry climate (not the same Charles Nordhoff who co-wrote Mutiny on the Bounty, but an earlier one), all of the “Indiana Colony” families had fled from those three states to Southern California and the San Gabriel Valley to escape the harsh Midwestern winters.
Things are beginning to look up; I should be able to get back to posting soon … and lord knows there’s plenty to post about.
Unfortunately, LunarPages has officially trashed my MovableType installation and it’s all dead. The other sections of this site which I controlled with MT are temporarily dead until I get TextPattern installations up and running for them.
I hereby officially withdraw any recommendations I made for LunarPages. Their actions and lack of communication are bad business. Too bad. Things had been going very well.
In the meantime, enjoy the new Dayley Bayley section. And thanks for stopping by. We appreciate your bidness.
I had no earthly idea that I was living with a closeted “Love Will Keep Us Together” fan. Good lord, you think you know someone …
But having said that, I suppose I am forced to disclose myself. I’m more comfortable, as mentioned before, with movies; I’m a real Homer Simpson when it comes to music (“We Built This City” is kinda catchy) and I know next to nothing about it. But oh well …
Also, some old Southern Gospel standards. And that “Tarzan” song. And the one where the guys sings “I Wanna Be A Cowboy.” And one to drive Frank really nuts:
I’m such a music idiot, I don’t even really know if any of the above are cool or not. I just plead guilty to having them in my iTunes library.
And I’m sorry, but I have to be unrepentent about Madonna “Ray of Light”—’Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder …’
(In my defense, I usually have XM Radio tuned to the Blues, Traditional Jazz, 40s or Classical stations, and my iTunes is full of kd lang, Harry Connick Jr., Ottmar Liebert, Miss Ella Fitzgerald and Doris Day, so I’m not a total music lackwit/philistine.)
Now can we talk about movies?
Meanwhile, record-breaking temperatures back on the left coast. Pasadena, my hometown, hit 99 degrees (breaking a record set in 1992 by 7 degrees). The weather station at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, near where my friends Kit and Erin now live, recorded a temperature of 103. Normally temperate Santa Barbara hit an intemperate high of 98.
Up north, San Francisco hit a high of 82, Oakland hit 84, and the nasty, unfriendly, xenophobic town of Livermore, probably the single most scary place in the nine-county region (and that includes the East Oakland flatlands, Cloverdale, North Fair Oaks, and the outskirts of Novato), became even nastier at a temperature of 92.
srah said it was snowing this morning ….. and sure enough, when I took the dog out, there were unmistakable flakes in the air. I never thought I’d see the stuff this late. Amazing.
In the interest of full self-disclosure (to a point), people in glass houses, etc., I hereby present a brief (and by no means exhaustive) list of songs that I love that would probably be highly likely to appear on a 50 worst list somewhere, and probably, in fact, do appear on such a list (double points if you can ascertain which one actually does appear on the worst recommendations over at Stereogum):
Oh, yeah, and one of these lists I’ve linked to places Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” on the list of worst. Sacrilege!!!
Says the National Weather Service:
‘Tuesday Night: Patchy frost. Otherwise, increasing clouds, with a low around 34.’
Oh, c’mon now, people, it’s pretty much frickin’ May already. This southern boy shouldn’t be seein’ ‘patchy frost and 34’ forecasts in the weather … Lord, will I make it another year amongst the yankees and eskimos? (No offense, y’all, and don’t mind me … just a wee bit homesick for Nuevo Mexico right now.)
More candidates that I hadn’t thought of for 50 worst songs (from Stereogum):
However, Swing Out Sister should not be on the list. “Breakout” is cheesy in retrospect but no other song screams 1987 quite so well as that one.
An amazing quote from a new biography of King James I by Alan Stewart that I’m saving to read until after the end of schoolwork (the quote is from a memoir by the seventeenth-century writer John Oglander):
“If he had but the power, spirit and resolution to have acted that which he spoke, or done as well as he knew how to do, Solomon had been short of him.”
I went to work around 9.00 this morning and the campus seemed blessedly deserted. I saw maybe five people cross my path as I walked from the corner of State and South University to the Undergrad Library.
By the time I got off work at 12.15, though, the campus was exploding with people. The fourth floor of the undergrad was packed with studying students. Almost every table and carrel was occupied. The center of campus was a boom town. Ambrosia was more packed than I’ve seen it in a long time. Everyone’s getting in their last push before the end.
I was disappointed, having expected this to be the start of the clearing-out and mass exodus, especially after Friday night, when everything around the Diag as I left work seemed so sunbathed, idyllic, and laid-back it could have been a scene from the video for Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the Sun” or an advertisement for “The O.C.” But I guess the real exodus won’t really occur till this coming weekend, based on the conjecture at work and the above observational evidence. I admit that I’m looking forward to the quiet, in more ways than one.
Saw this today on Metafilter—a nice place to compare statistics and see photos of cities all over the country. I pulled up the stats for all the place I’ve lived in over the last 40 years to see how they stacked up against each other and my current residence, AA, MI. Sorta kinda interesting. (All stats from 2000):
Roswell, Chaves County, NM (Dec-63—Jun-71)
28.9 square miles
Pop: 45,293 (Male/Female: 48.2%/51.8%)
50.9% white/non-hispanic
10.8% foreign-born
Median Resident Age (MRA): 35.2 years
Median Household Income (MHI): $27,252
Median House Value (MHV): $60,100
HS Grads: 73.8%
College Grads (BS/BA): 16.9%
Graduate Degrees: 6.8%
Unemployed: 9.7%
Married: 52.7%
Never Married: 24.1%
Divorced: 11.8%
Widowed: 9.1%
Commute: 16.2 minutes
Clovis, Curry County, NM (Jun-71—Jun-74)
22.4 square miles
Pop: 32,667 (M/F: 48.0%/52.0%)
55.6% white/non-hispanic
5.5% foreign-born
MRA: 33.1 years
MHI: $28,878
MHV: $64,500
HS Grads: 77.5%
BS/BA: 15.7%
Grad: 5.9%
Unemployed: 6.9%
Married: 54.8%
Never Married: 22.9%
Divorced: 12.6%
Widowed: 7.6%
Commute: 15.3 minutes
Duncan, Stephens County, OK (Jun-74—Apr-94)
38.8 square miles
Pop: 22,505 (M/F: 47.3%/52.7%)
83.3% white/non-hispanic
2.6% foreign-born
MRA: 40.3 years
MHI: $30,373
MHV: $59,000
HS Grads: 76.8%
BS/BA: 19.7%
Grad: 5.8%
Unemployed: 7.2%
Married: 61.7%
Never Married: 16.5%
Divorced: 10.1%
Widowed: 9.6%
Commute: 18.7 minutes
Plano, Collin County, TX(Apr-94—Sep-96)
71.6 square miles
Pop: 222,030 (M/F: 49.8%/50.2%)
72.8% white/non-hispanic
17.1% foreign-born
MRA: 34.1 years
MHI: $78,722
MHV: $162,300
HS Grads: 93.9%
BS/BA: 53.3%
Grad: 17.6%
Unemployed: 3.1%
Married: 66.5%
Never Married: 21.1%
Divorced: 8.4%
Widowed: 2.7%
Commute: 27.5 minutes
Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa County, CA (Sep-96—Feb-98)
7.1 square miles
Pop: 32,837 (M/F: 48.5/51.5%)
76.6% white/non-hispanic
14% foreign-born
MRA: 39.0 years
MHI: $67,489
MHV: $294,000
HS Grads: 93.1%
BS/BA: 42.5%
Grad: 13.1%
Unemployed: 3.7%
Married: 53.3%
Never Married: 26%
Divorced: 12.7%
Widowed: 6.9%
Commute: 30.3 minutes
Highlands Ranch, Douglas County, CO (Feb-98—Nov-98)
23.5 square miles
Pop: 70,931 (M/F: 49.5%/50.5%)
6.7% foreign-born
MRA: 32.2 years
MHI: $86,792
MHV: $235,100
HS Grads: 97.8%
BS/BA: 59%
Grad: 17.2%
Unemployed: 1.8%
Married: 73.1%
Never Married: 17.6%
Divorced: 6.9%
Widowed: 1.8%
Commute: 27.5 minutes
San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA (Nov-98—Aug-03)
46.7 square miles
Pop: 776,733 (M/F: 50.8%/49.2%)
43.6% white/non-hispanic
36.8% foreign-born
MRA: 36.5 years
MHI: $55,221
MHV: $396,400
HS Grads: 81.2%
BS/BA: 45.0%
Grad: 16.4%
Unemployed: 4.6%
Married: 38.7%
Never Married: 44.8%
Divorced: 8.6%
Widowed: 6.1%
Commute: 30.7 minutes
Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, MI (Aug-03— )
27.0 square miles
Pop: 114,024 (M/F: 49.4%/50.6%)
72.8% white/non-hispanic
16.6% foreign-born
MRA: 28.1 years
MHI: $46,299
MHV: $181,400
HS Grads: 95.7%
BS/BA: 69.3%
Grad: 39.4%
Unemployed: 4.2%
Married: 38.5%
Never Married: 50.3%
Divorced: 7.1%
Widowed: 3.2%
Commute: 18.8 minutes
Even though AA is a place that prides itself on its ‘diversity,’ seems to me that there’s far greater diversity in my birthplace, Roswell. Heck, we even got aliens there …
There’s a seven-minute (or so) segment in the bonus features on the DVD of Jeffrey Blitz’s 2002 documentary “Spellbound” that features a semifinalist from Ann Arbor. There are a few seconds of footage of the town at the beginning of the segment, with interesting choices for shots—the Greyhound bus depot on Huron and the bridge (Ann Arbor Railroad?) that Jackson goes underneath as it turns into Huron—but no obvious Chamber of Commerce shots (the central campus, Michigan Union, the Huron River, etc.).
Today, a first: a trio of homeless people kicking back with their cadged shopping carts in Frisinger Park. They must have been there because the police rousted them from the center of town for the Book Fair. I was surprised to see them—the homeless in Ann Arbor are virtually invisible, unlike in San Francisco, where they are virtually a city unto themselves. I almost experienced a double take.
I don’t know what tactics Ann Arbor uses to “control” (i.e., get rid of) the homeless population here, or what other factors (other than the weather, which is not exactly friendly most of the year to the “residentially challenged”) militate against their presence here, but they are effectively absent, unless you count the handful who use the Downtown branch of Ann Arbor District Library as a rest stop, or the few who stop and rest at the North University entrance to central campus, or the man (or different men taking shifts) who doggedly sits and panhandles every day between White Market and the GNC outlet on William.
It’s Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Lady Ella, wherever you are.
Strange how you can have two very different experiences at two not-all-that-dissimilar chain restaurants. We had dinner at Macaroni Grill on Thursday night, and that was fine. The food was great, and although the restaurant was somewhat crowded, all we had to contend with was a loud cell-phone chatterer at a table behind us (and an annoying conversation at the table next to us about Biblical “textual deconstructionism,” whatever that means). Tonight we had dinner at nearby Bennigan’s, where an ill-behaved toddler at the table across from us whined loudly through the second half of the meal and where an indescribably boorish jerk stopped to jawbone a busboy and stood with his Neanderthal rear end not five inches from my face. Should I have made a scene? I felt like it, but where would it have gotten me? Oh, well, at least our server was the height of solicitousness.
Pickerel Lake is hardly a unique appellation. Turns out there’s at least 22 other lakes in Michigan with exactly the same name.
We drove past campus today and saw undergrads dutifully trundling their belongings out to sidewalks and cars, along with a few half-hearted, exhausted lawn parties sputtering along and a ton of “For Rent” signs all the way from the center of campus out to past Zeeb Road as we drove out to Dexter-Huron Metro Park for another beagle excursion (this one much shorter than the epic Pickerel Lake trek last weekend, because we were all kind of groggy and tired, including our friend David, who’s been visiting this week from San Francisco).
Wow. It’s kind of astonishing, actually, having been in the Academic Time-Space Continuum for (seemingly) so long and all of a sudden being dumped back unceremoniously into everyday existence. It’s hard to believe, but the end of the year is here (if you can call eight months a year). Now if I can just get this last paper written …..
Maybe we didn’t give it enough of a chance, but I was kind of underwhelmed by the Ann Arbor Book Festival today. (It fills a portion of North University for a couple of days every year around this time.) There were a sizable number of people there, but nowhere near as many as I expected, and nobody seemed thrilled to be there; there was a lot of milling, very little excitement.
Of course, if you’ve seen one book fair, you’ve seen them all, I suppose. They’re mostly booths full of T-shirts and merchandising opportunities (as opposed to books). But is there some magic that this fair has that we were not plugged into? Or is this another case of the notorious Ann Arbor über-hype at work? I don’t know.
Update: Bentley points out that this is actually the first time the Book Festival (as an outdoor, pavilion-type event) has been held. The Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair (which is held in Michigan Union on Sunday) is actually the event that’s been around for 26 years. This would explain much. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m really, really going to have to take (and see through) 502 next winter. Damn.
Having said that, I know (especially now that the term’s essentially over) that there’s no way on God’s green earth I could have taken it this year (along with my other courses and my job and my DFE) and survived. That is the simple truth.
Can’t recall the last time I slept for 10 hours straight, but that’s what I did last night. It felt great.
I was on the bus this afternoon and passed through Party House Row on South State. One of the roofs had about fifteen subscriber newspapers, still in their wrappers, scattered all over it. I wonder what that was all about.
Sometimes I wonder where the hell I’m living. It seems that the Michigan House has just passed a bill that, if it gets approved by the Senate, will permit doctors and other health care providers to refuse to treat a patient on “moral, ethical, or religious grounds” (with the exception of emergency treatment). Those grounds would include sexual orientation. Of course, I would not want to be treated by any physician who had any objection to my being who I am, or who thought it was any of his or her damn business, but I can envision any number of circumstances in which I might not have any choice in the matter.
I suppose the fine, decent, thoughtful people who pushed this piece of legislative garbage have never heard of Hippocrates, or if they have, think he was just another ancient Greek pederast. Two other bills passed that would provide similar opt-out passes for insurers and “health facilities.” I sure hope I never have the misfortune of needing major medical attention in the next 15 months. This is not exactly the kind of development that motivates me to want to stay put in the Wolverine State.
Done, done, done ….. up till hours I’m ashamed to divulge finishing it, but it’s done ….. don’t know how coherent the product is, but it’s done. Hallelujah.
Now, the CS 810 paper awaits. But that will actually be fun to write (I tell myself).
