Amendment 2 went into effect as the law in the state of Michigan at midnight. I don’t really have anything else to add.

« Was the founder of the Republican Party and our Greatest President gay? »:

‘The subject of the 16th president’s sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away. In “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln,” to be published next month by Free Press, Mr. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln’s sexuality once and for all. The author, who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America’s greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man.’

The findings are disputed by another scholar or two. And the fascists will certainly have a thing or two or ten to say when the book is released next month. What fun it will be.

« Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men won’t fit under this Christmas tree »

Wow … it’s been a hellacious eight weeks. Ever since my poster presentation on October 20, it’s been one wave of insanely intense schoolwork after another (although, as always, procrastination stuck its head in there along the way as well).

I watched election coverage and updated the results all night on Election Night for the Internet Public Library, along with three or four days preceding that involved meetings and lots of hand-holding from the patient tech person at IPL setting up the technology to make the file transfer happen for the election updates. Then I had a huge hour-long PATRIOT Act presentation in Information Policy on November 3, the night after the election. A short breather (of course the breather included the usual diet of weekly “problem sets” and homework assignments that held up the work I had to do on larger projects). Then a take-home final in Cataloging (the course is called Organization of Information Resources at SI). Then a long paper in Information Policy. Then a presentation in Government Information. Another presentation last night in Cataloging. I have a paper due on Monday in Cataloging, and then my term will be officially over.

I’m not saying that my plight was unusually dire. It wasn’t. I consider myself fortunate (in more ways than I can go into on this blog). I have heard stories of other students at SI (especially the HCI students) who have had far more intense terms than I’ve had this autumn. So I’m definitely not holding myself out to be an exceptionally burdened grad student. And my hat is off to all of my student colleagues, many of whom have to juggle commutes and kids and all kinds of other commitments.

But I will say that I’m glad it’s almost over (for a couple of weeks, anyway).

Let’s sing some C(onsumerism)hristmas Carols, shall we?

All together now: « To the tune of Let It Snow »:

‘Oh, the war in Iraq is frightful,
But for Lockheed and pals it’s delightful,
Since the Pentagon continues to pay,
Let ‘em stay, let ‘em stay, let ‘em stay.

‘Insurgents show no signs of stopping,
Americans can’t stop AK’s from popping,
Since it keeps Boeing’s prices high,
occupy, occupy, occupy.

‘When there’s a bombing or firefight,
It means moo-lah galore for GE,
And ev’ry IED laid at night,
means they’re buyin’ a brand new Humvee

‘As long as some Black Hawks keep crashin’,
The Complex can really cash in,
More war equals much more dough,
Let’s not go, never go, let’s not go.’

More snow overnight in southeast Michigan, a welcome sight … but the temps rose as the morning went on to 37-38 degrees, so the snow melted pretty quickly. The skies stayed gray all day, though.

The snow was still a nice sight. I walked to Kroger this afternoon and reveled in the white and the absence of traffic (both car and foot). It was cold, but not cold enough to be merciless. I went back home through Frisinger Park and a murder of crows was calling amongst each other in the treetops. They were obviously exchanging some kind of code. Their caws changed in tone as I passed under the trees and then as I walked away, their loud, 2-note “HAAAW–HAAAW” was almost a “All clear” signal.

There is excellent reading/viewing/listening « at the Oral History Project of the Urban School of San Francisco »:

‘We went through a number of Dr. Mengele’s dreaded selections where we would have to remove our clothes on the pretext of a medical checkup. During the time between while we stood in line waiting for Dr. Mengele to decide who should live, and who should die – with his glove on, and a little stick in his hand – many people would just faint. It took a lot of energy to go through such excitement, and later on we no longer had this energy. Of course, if you fainted they just dragged you away. You were too weak. There was always another transport to replace anyone who did that. Right in front of me I saw all these people from our town taken away just like that. They went through, by this time, also a number of these selections, which would always happen spontaneously. We never would know, surprise selections. I can go on, but do you really want me to?’

« Our Life in Michigan – Snowy Saturday »

I’m getting close to my first fillup on the Grand. Since it’s a bigger tank, it will probably cost me more, even though it gets me further down the road.

After one week, I’m even happier with the Grand than I thought I would be. The more I look at it, the things that I liked most at first are now some things that I’m not so crazy about: the Dark Khaki is a nice color, but kinda bland; and the front headlights are a bit … goofy. Or something.

I was at lunch in Delhi Park on Wednesday afternoon and pulled out to go back to work. Another brand new Dark Khaki Grand went down the road in front of me. That’s when I sort of noticed the blandness of the color and the back end.

Still, I like the boxier look and it feels like a nicer version of the Cherokee which I missed so badly the last four years. I love the heated seats and leather and the smoothness of the ride and the stereo system with the wheel mounted controls. It’s nice to have a cruise control again (even though I don’t use it that often) and the remote entry is fabulous.

So far, it hasn’t cost me anything. The only wrinkle: I got a nasty letter from Chrysler Financial yesterday demanding over $1700 for ending the lease on the Wrangler ‘early.’ Guess they weren’t informed of the ‘pull-through’ program. I hope this isn’t a harbinger of big-time pain with them in the future. I’ve got a call in to the dealer to find out.

Meanwhile, it’s great to drive. Frank hasn’t driven it yet, but that’s going to have to be corrected this weekend.

An historic moment: « the first US passenger jet to land in Vietnam since 1975 lands at Ho Chi Minh City ». Oddly enough, it was flown by bankrupt United Airlines, and odder still, carried as a passenger … wait for it … David Hasselhoff, of all people.

‘United Airlines Flight 869, from San Francisco, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, at shortly after 10:00 p.m. Friday (10 a.m. EST). The flight — carrying 260 people, including some Vietnamese who fled their country after the war — was first U.S. commercial plane to touch down at Tan Son Nhat International Airport since the wartime capital of South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975. … Many Americans who fought in the war have vivid memories of Tan Son Nhat airport, where they caught Pan American “freedom birds” home or to rest stops such as Hong Kong and Japan. Now-defunct Pan American was the last commercial U.S. airline to fly out of Vietnam before Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s state-owned airline has expressed interest in opening its own route to San Francisco by the end of next year, or early 2006.’

Now about that Domino Theory, among other things …

Rain all week ….. the occasional patch of blue sky ….. even eerie fog and gloom on Tuesday (I think it was Tuesday). But no snow.

Aargh!

It’s supposed to snow 1 to 3 inches tonight. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sadly, I haven’t actually ridden the bike in a month. What with the new drug for the arthritis, and the subsequent nasty allergic reaction to aforementioned drug, and the onset of cold and rain, the Bobcat is in the basement attached to the stationery stand, awaiting a more opportune time to get out and about. It probably won’t be this weekend; 1 to 2 inches of snow are predicted.

After the last time I rode the bike to work at the high school not far from my house, i had my appointment with the rheumatologist, who diagnosed ‘reactive arthritis’ and gave me sulfasalazine to get the inflammation in my joints down. I had an allergic reaction to that and am still not fully recovered.

Still, I plan to put on the snow tires and try some snow riding, if we actually get that much white stuff. I’m beginning to feel the effects of the lack of riding on my middle section, where my newly loose-fitting size 36s are now my very snug-fitting size 36s. It sucks.

So Ann Arbor middle schoolers today tell explicit jokes about incest during their lunch periods.

Who knew?

Apparently, « Imperial troops are putting wounded Iraqis out of their misery by shooting them in the head », kind of like you’d put down a horse:

‘A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty at his court-martial Friday to killing a severely wounded 16-year-old Iraqi, the military said. Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., was charged with the Aug. 18 slaying in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the scene of fierce clashes earlier this year between coalition forces and Shiite rebels allied to firebrand anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

‘According to accounts given by witnesses at previous hearings, the soldiers, including Horne, tried to rescue an Iraqi casualty from inside the truck. The victim had severe abdominal wounds and burns and was thought by several of the witnesses to be beyond medical help. The criminal investigator had said that the U.S. soldiers had decided that “the best course of action was to put (the victim) out of his misery.” Another military hearing into a soldier charged with killing another Iraqi in a separate August incident in Sadr City is expected to continue Friday.’

More prosecutions will be forthcoming:

‘Capt. Rogelio Maynulet, 29, of Chicago, will be tried on charges of assault with intent to commit murder and dereliction of duty, which carry a maximum combined sentence of 201/2 years, said military spokesman Maj. Michael Indovina. During Maynulet’s Article 32 hearing, witnesses testified that the driver had been shot in the head when Maynulet saw him. A fellow officer said Maynulet told him he then shot the man out of compassion.’

What a completely sordid, tragic mess.

What did I hear this afternoon wafting from a window of a classroom in Mason Hall but Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” not as the soundtrack to an anti-war protest in the Diag as it probably was on this campus almost 40 years ago, but as the soundtrack to what was probably an undergraduate American history course taught by some SDS refugee from the 1960s?

From vanguard of the revolution to ….. boring whiny song we have to pretend to listen to in history class. Somehow simultaneously depressing and appropriate.

Ah, yes. Today it was back to the Ann Arbor I know and love. I was on the bus coming home tonight, sitting next to the window. A woman on a cell phone sat down next to me and started yacking. This went on for five minutes. I pulled the cord to ring the bell for my stop. I stood up when the bus pulled over. Nothing. She was still yacking and doing everything she could to ignore me. I said, “Excuse me, can I get out?” She barely bothered to stir herself and made a sour face at me while continuing her life-or-death conversation. Some of the other riders glared at me as though I had committed some sort of breach myself because I wanted to get off at my stop. Whatever.

As often as I complain about etiquette and rudeness, it would be downright impolite of me not to include acknowledgment when a day happens like today, in which not only was the town of Ann Arbor socked in with fog (!!!), but several random episodes of politeness occurred as I made my way through the day.

To wit:

• A circ clerk at Ann Arbor District Library took my returned CDs and DVDs, then went back to see if a book I had put on hold was ready to pick up. She didn’t see it in the front shelving area but was sure that it was in back. She left and was gone for two or three minutes. She came back and apologized; it wasn’t there yet. I had a dollar out to pay a late fine and I handed it over to her. She shook her head no and told me to keep the buck. “For the inconvenience,” she said. I was flabbergasted. It was only a buck. But still … I appreciated the gesture, and I told her so.

• I lost my gray wool cap in a restroom in Hatcher. I ran back about an hour later on the off chance that it might be on the floor somewhere. (I’d already checked lost and found.) Some kind soul had carefully placed it on the shelf above one of the sinks. Thank you, whoever did that!

• The counter guy at New York Pizza Depot was incredibly polite.

• A woman held a door open for me.

Oh, well, everyone will probably be back to snarling and scowling tomorrow, but it was nice while it lasted.

Looks like the « ‘how I love the smell of Napalm in the morning’ boys are firmly in control » of the Imperial military:

‘The US has already admitted that it used napalm during the siege of Baghdad. The truth was reluctantly confirmed by the Pentagon after news reports corroborated the evidence. The military has tried to conceal the truth by saying that there is a distinction between its new weapon and “traditional napalm”. The “improved” product carries the Pentagon moniker “Mark 77 firebombs” and uses jet fuel to “decrease environmental damage”. The fact that military planner’s even considered “environmental damage” while developing the tools for incinerating human beings, gives us some insight into the deep vein of cynicism that permeates their ranks. …

‘The charges of “war crimes” and use of banned weapons comes on the heels of a confidential report just released by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The report confirms that the US military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The report concludes that the military has developed a system to break the will of prisoners through “humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions….The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.” (New York Times)’

Be sure and « check out the latest from Fallujah at the ‘Fallujah in Pictures’ blog ». You can’t support the Imperial war effort and not look closely at these pictures, which graphically show the cost of war … to both sides.

An excellent commentary from a reader of the Los Angeles Times named G. Llloyd Helm appeared in today’s edition:

The other day I was in Barnes & Noble and an ugly fact came home to me. I can’t afford to buy books anymore. I used to pick up a book every week or two and was never without a paperback book stuck in my back pocket. Now buying a book is a major purchase.

Hard-bound books are averaging $25 apiece, and paperbacks are often more than $5 each. If you are making minimum wage, that boils down to four hours’ work for a hard-bound book. …

The National Endowment for the Arts released a study in July that found the reading of literature over the last 20 years had gone down like an express elevator; only 57% of Americans read any book at all last year. Part of the reason is that there are thousands of young people graduating from high school who can barely read anything more complicated than “Dick and Jane.”

But even those who can read aren’t doing so, and it should be obvious even to those dunderheads in publishing that the price of books has something to do with that. When a kid, especially one who doesn’t read well anyhow, can go to a movie or buy a computer game for less money than it costs to buy a paperback, which one is he or she going to choose?

I almost never buy books anymore unless I absolutely have to. I have more books sitting on my floor than I could possibly read anyway. And even if a lot of books I see in Borders look enticing, their prices are an instant disincentive (and I’m not singling Borders out). This was true even when I wasn’t a poverty-stricken grad student. Tonight in Borders I lingered over the following books, but I would never have bought them at their list prices:

• Augusten Burroughs: Magical Thinking: True Stories (St. Martin’s Press, $23.95)
• Geoffrey Stone: Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism (W.W. Norton, $35.00)
• Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik: Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $34.95)

One more reason for the preservation of libraries. And, paradoxically, one more reason for publishers to hate libraries.

• Thieves steal DVDs from public libraries in Macomb County and sell them to pawn shops.

• A candidate for a spot on the Lapeer District Library Board was denied a spot even though he was the only candidate running. He also not coincidentally happens to be gay. One of the county commissioners, a Democrat from Columbiaville, cracked during a public meeting to consider his candidacy that the man applying for the job (his first name is Gale) wasn’t really a man.

[Sources: LIS News and Queer Day.]

Not to beat a dead horse. But I will anyway.

On September 13, Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 2208 into law. The law in California now requires insurers doing business in California to treat domestic partners the same as married partners for purposes of coverage on home, health, life, auto, and renters’ policies. The insurance code in California is now in consonance with the rest of state law. (Gray Davis signed AB 205, the most sweeping domestic partner benefit legislation in the country, into law in September 2003, shortly before he was forced out of office; AB 2208 basically makes sure that the insurance code harmonizes with the rest of California statutes affected by AB 205.)

Now, Schwarzenegger signed AB 2208 into law without a ceremony; it’s doubtful most people in California even know the law exists. Nevertheless, contrast that with Jennifer Granholm’s actions this week. Of course, it’s mostly about “political capital.” Schwarzenegger has nothing to lose. Granholm has everything to lose. But beyond “political capital,” there’s such a thing as political risk-taking for the purposes of principle, and Granholm seems allergic to it.

Thanks for checking back in with me; I’ve been sick for two weeks (I won’t bore you with the details). I hope to start gearing up the postings back to a more readable level soon.

Some fascinating reading is to be found in « The Assassination of Danilo Anderson »

‘I remember on September 21, 1976 the FBI vacuuming the broken glass on Embassy Row’s Sheridan Circle, after the bomb ripped through Letelier’s car. “These people are pros,” an FBI agent commented. The FBI arrested two of the Letelier-Moffitt killers, years after the murder. They pled guilty, got twelve years, served seven and got paroled. The INS then re-arrested them as undesirables, but in August 2001 George W. Bush insisted ­ over strong objection from the INS and FBI — that these “Cuban patriots” deserved to return to civilian life in Florida. Good terrorists receive US hospitality. Bad terrorists, those with Arab names, feel the wrath of US bombers, troops and prison guards at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, whether or not they did anything criminal. Ironically, the prissy John Ashcroft ordered the arrest and confinement of thousands of innocent people. They did not know the nature of the charges against them, much less have access to an attorney. Yet, Ashcroft refused to sign the indictment of Pinochet, the initiator of the 1976 car bombing in Washington.’

Same old song and dance from completely amoral men.

« Molly Ivins is freaked out ». It’s a great column, but the ending is … a tad naive, I’m afraid.

‘In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, why are people representing our government, paid by us, writing filth on the Korans of helpless prisoners? Is this American? Is it Christian? What are our moral values? Where are the clergymen on this? Speak out, speak up.’

You know I love you more than my luggage, Molly, but you’re just not fully aware of the new reality in the Empire today, even though you’re almost there: According to my own sister and other family members, knee-jerk supporters of the Emperor all, this IS American … this IS Christian … and this IS the way things should be … and to speak out and speak up is to be a much-hated and much-reviled evil liberal monster.

Like me.

‘Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.’
—Heinrich Heine

« Alabama Fascist calls for ‘gay’ book purge »

‘A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for “the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the “homosexual agenda.” … Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed. “I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them,” he said. When asked about Tennessee Williams’ southern classic “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,” Allen said the play probably couldn’t be performed by university theater groups. Allen said no state funds should be used to pay for materials that foster homosexuality. He said that would include nonfiction books that suggest homosexuality is acceptable and fiction novels with gay characters. While that would ban books like “Heather has Two Mommies,” it could also include classic and popular novels with gay characters such as “The Color Purple,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Brideshead Revisted.”’

Bill Moyers, « in a speech to People for the American Way »:

‘Of this, I am sure, you can be fearful or free, but you cannot be both. If you are fearful, you put yourself at the mercy of priests and princes and accept their conceits and usurpations as the health of the state and the means of salvation. But if you are free, no one and nothing, not even fear, can intimidate or subjugate or hijack your soul.’

We’ll miss Bill Moyers. His is « the one resignation that matters ».

The clever and — you have to give this to them, tactically and strategically brilliant — proponents of Amendment 2 spent hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in the months leading up to the election insisting that the amendment was all about “protecting marriage.”

On the rare (very rare) occasions when the media called them on their inconsistencies, the proponents would redouble their efforts to obscure their true designs.

Gary Glenn, the head of the American Family Association of Michigan, had the absolute audacity to write in a letter to the Detroit Free Press on November 8 that

Every citizen has equal protection under Michigan’s marriage laws, and equal access. Any person can get married, which by definition means to someone of the opposite sex. There is nothing discriminatory or unequal about that.

No, there’s nothing discriminatory or unequal about that, unless you’re homosexual, in which case you can take “equal access” and stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.

The governor and her chief employment officer abruptly decided on Wednesday to remove a negotiated same-sex partner benefit package from contracts with the state’s five public employee unions because of fear of litigation. This is just the beginning. The Michigan Daily had an article in today’s edition that makes it clear that right-wing legal advocacy groups are chomping at the bit to take the University of Michigan to court to force it to stop providing same-sex benefits to its employees. The University says it will vigorously defend its right to continue providing those benefits, which is fine and good, but we’ll see if that holds up once the lawsuits actually go forward.

I’ve talked to at least two local people in the past week or so who were shocked to find out that Amendment 2 is a Trojan horse for eliminating same-sex partnership benefits from all Michigan public institutions.

I have to ask this, even if only hypothetically: If you live in a certain state of the Union, and your citizenship is routinely and systematically stomped into the ground by political and legislative thuggery, do you decide to stay, or you decide to leave?

A lot of people are going to be asking that question.

Q. Who would you rather be run over by?

(a) A driver behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade sporting a “KEEP HONKING WHILE I RELOAD” bumper sticker.

(b) A bicyclist with a gray crate tied by bungee cord to the back of her bike, the crate sporting a peeling, faded bumper sticker bearing the words “PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS.”

I was almost run over by (b) this afternoon as I walked through Nickles Arcade. The bicyclist was in her fifties, ponytailed, seemingly in all kinds of intense and frantic hurry until she passed me, upon which she slowed down considerably and had plenty of time not to walk her bike through the pedestrian arcade and to look in the window of every single friggin’ shop and boutique in the place as she pedaled past as though in a sudden-onset dream state.

I guess if irony were a way to die, (b) would be the way to go. This episode goes in my “Only in Ann Arbor” Hall of Fame file. This kind of thing wouldn’t even happen in Berkeley. I suppose the bicyclist conluded that now that Bush has gotten a second term she might as well toss all that “random kindness” crap out the window.

So, « this forum pretty much addresses my whole ‘Isn’t it sort of a girly car?’ » problem. One example:

‘I am 32, male, living in the city of Chicago. I used to be a VW Jetta driver, but traded it off for a new 2002 Red Liberty a couple of years ago. … I have had zero problems with it in the 25 months that I’ve had it. The gas mileage factor was a bit of an adjustment, especially coming from a Jetta. When I first bought the Liberty, I heard a couple of people say the same thing about it being a girly car. I took offense to this, since I thought my Jetta was much more girly than the KJ. Still, there are ways to “Butch” it up with add-ons. You can buy the Renegade edition light bar and rack, add off-roading parts and guards, etc.

And so on. I guess my opinion of the Liberty continues to move over to the more positive side. I just can’t get over them trashing the original Cherokee.

If I go with a new Liberty, here’s what I want and what it would cost:

2005 LIBERTY RENEGADE 4X4 D Pkg . . . $23,560.00
» Primary: Dark Khaki Pearl Coat . . . $150.00
» Interior: Dark Khaki/Light Graystone . . . Included
» 3.7L Power Tech V6 Engine . . . Included
» Command-Trac HD Part-Time 4WD System . . . Included
» Corporate 8.25 Rear Axle . . . Included
» 3.55 Axle Ratio . . . Included
» 4-Speed Automatic Transmission . . . $825.00
» Premium Leather-Trimmed Bucket Seats . . . Included
» P225/75R16 OWL All Season Tires . . . Included
» 16” x 7.0” Aluminum Wheels . . . Included
» Trailer Tow Group . . . $365.00
» 6 Speakers . . . Included
» AM/FM Stereo Radio with In-Dash 6-Disc CD Player . . . $300.00
» Heated Front Seats . . . $250.00
» Power Driver’s Seat . . . Included
» Air Conditioning . . . Included
» Luxury Group . . . $1,245.00
» Engine Block Heater . . . $40.00
» Power Sunroof . . . $700.00
» Tire Pressure Monitoring Display . . . $75.00
» Skid Plate Group . . . Included
» Delete Light Bar . . . ($120.00)
» Fog Lamps . . . Included
» Speed Control . . . Included
» Base Price . . . $23,560.00
» D Pkg. . . . $750.00
» Options . . . $3,830.00
» Accessories . . . $0.00
» Destination . . . $610.00
» MSRP . . . $28,750.00
» Cash Allowance . . . -($1,750.00)
» Bonus Cash . . . -($1,000.00)
Net MSRP . . . $26,000.00

I could make some sacrifices; heated seats, tire pressure monitor and 6-disc cd changer I can do without. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve had three Jeeps before: a ‘92 Black Cherry Cherokee Sport; a ‘98 Dark Green Cherokee Sport; and an ‘01 Patriot Blue Wrangler Sport (my current vehicle). I love them all, but was especially happy with the Cherokees.

Alas, they stopped making them in ‘01 and, while I’d love to have a third one, the newest ones are now four years old and have upwards of 40,000 miles on them, often with no warranties.

So I’ve begun the process of looking into a lease on a new ‘05 something or other and the most likely suspect is a Liberty Renegade or Sport. Now as much as I love the Cherokee and hated Daimler for ending the marque in ‘01 and replacing it with what I originally thought of as a girly car, I have to admit that I took a test-drive of a Liberty Sport on Saturday and it pretty much changed my mind.

I still far and away prefer the Cherokee, but the Liberty isn’t quite as … silly as I thought. It handles beautifully, has a solid ride, is loads more quiet than the soft-top Wrangler I have now (of course) and comes with enough bells and whistles to change my mind.

I also drove the redesigned ‘05 Grand Cherokee and was expecting to be happy with it. I came away disappointed. There wasn’t much wrong with it; it’s just that it’s entirely the wrong Jeep for me. I felt like a hetero dad on his way to the mall to pick up the wife, 3.4 kids and dog. The GC is just huge. It seemed like major overkill.

The one problem I had with it was the visibility. The windows are so narrow, especially at the back, that I was scared I was going to back into something. Obviously, my point of view is skewed by spending the last four years in the Wrangler, with it’s big ol’ windows and short body. But the GC was just … well, I felt like I was in a box. And looking out the front wasn’t much better; two very thick front pillars obstructed my left and right scanning/peripheral vision in an annoying and potentially scary way.

Disappointed with the GC, I didn’t even get it out on the freeway like I did the Liberty. I’m still a bit squeamish about the Liberty’s … okay, sue me if you think I’m being misogynistic and maybe I am … sort of girlie looks. But the way it drives and handles and everything else pretty much made me change my mind, for the most part. I mean, if I can’t have a brand new ‘05 Cherokee, well, maybe this is almost as good.

So, why not another Wrangler? I love my Wrangler. It handles beautifully and it’s easy to park and maneuver and I like the convertibility of the soft top. I like the shorter body. But.

The ride is rough. It did fine when we came to AA from San Francisco, but it was rough. And there was no cargo room (the poor beagle was squashed in there for eight days). And the cargo thing is my biggest objection. Getting groceries is hell, especially in bad weather.

With my arthritic hands, unzipping that window makes my knuckles bleed in the winter. And you get dirty. And there’s not enough room for groceries, which go skittering all over the place. One of the Liberty’s big pluses for me the other day was discovering a row of multiple grocery bag hooks in the cargo space. Woo-hoo!

The Wrangler is a great second car, something to have fun with. I love it and enjoy driving it, but it’s not practical. If I had the money, I’d just pay off the lease and keep it and go get a Liberty or even an ‘01 Cherokee and be very happy. Alas, I’m not in that position; I’m a poor grad student and future teacher.

The other thing: I got pretty ripped off in San Francisco on the Wrangler. I can actually reduce my embarrasingly high lease payment with an ‘05 Liberty. And in spite of the rumors about its low gas mileage (which won’t be a shock to me; the Wrangler is hitting 17 around town), saving money on the payment is the most important deal. I don’t drive long distances.

The Wrangler only has 20,765 miles on it. The lease officially ends in April, but they’re willing to end it early if I’ll get a new one.

Works for me. I’m doing my research and I’m going to a couple of dealers tomorrow to see what we can work out.

FYI: Visit the UM Medical Center Emergency Room on a holiday weekend Saturday night and you should feel lucky that you’re only there a mere eight hours for a relatively minor complaint.

See, this sulfa drug that my doc prescribed for my reactive arthritis caused a nasty reaction. As in high fever, terrible aching and did I mention the silliness, zaniness, loopiness and nonsense rhyming and singing and forgetting and spacing and saying inappropriate things in public?

The ordeal started Thanksgiving night and for me it was mostly a blur. I remember bits and pieces here and there, but reality and fantasy were seriously mixed up for quite awhile. For Frank, it was hellish. Poor guy.

We arrived at the ER at 20:00, didn’t get into the treatment area until almost 01:00 and we got home at 04:00. They took an x-ray of my chest (clear), lots of bloodwork (all normal), urinalysis (no problems) and gave me an IV (which just caused me to have to quickly stagger to the restroom) and then they misdiagnosed me (‘you’re having a viral syndrome’), shot me full of morphine and told me to keep taking the drug to which I was reacting.

The rash started Sunday afternoon and by Monday morning, I was loopy again. I saw my regular doc and he called it correctly, prescribed prednisone and within a few hours, I was back to normal, playing with the dog, grumbling about ignorant fascists in the newspaper and so on.

I still don’t remember a whole lot; it seemed that sometimes I thought something and then realized that I might just have said it out loud. People probably thought I was some crazy drunken homeless man in my pajamas, slippers and blanket wrapped around me. The whole ER scene was bizarre anyway, although I’ve seen worse.

It was quite the surreal and weird and painful and hallucinatory holiday weekend. The best part by far was the morphine.

And so how was your Turkey Day?

First snowfall of the season Wednesday night when I was at work ….. it was nice walking in the semi-sleet/semi-snow combination from Hatcher to the bus stop, though I admit it was equally nice that the bus showed up a few minutes after I got there.

The snow fell steadily the rest of the evening, but it stopped well short of anything major. Still, there was a nice thin blanket of snow on the ground for the beagle to go exploring in Thanskgiving morning. And it was pleasant to see the first white of the season on the ground. I see where it snowed up to 8 inches in parts of Illinois.

Our snow started melting today, and as far as I can tell, the next chance for anything resembling snow is Tuesday night.

I never write about or identify my family on my website. They absolutely hate that and have raked me over the coals numerous times, pouring out their venom and anxiety if I so much as dare to mention them on AirBeagle.

So, of course, being the contrarian that I am, I have to post an entry about them after yet another nasty phone call with one them last night, a nameless, sexless sibling.

The conversation, which frequently veered off into the absurd, the freakish, the loud, and the just plain weird, was fairly typical of what’s been happening with them the last few years, particularly after they finally got the message that Frank and I were together.

Their desperation and venom and anxiety (and I can’t quite think of any other words for it) is coming through more and more. A huge list of topics is off-limits for discussion, everything from the usual politics, sex and religion, to work events (the family thinks public schools are demonic and should be closed and don’t want to hear about my teaching) to the dog (dogs are to be kept outside and killed when they become inconvenient usually within a couple of months and usually either by a car, a predator or a blow to the head), to … well, just about you-name-it.

After last night’s extreme unpleasantness, when I found myself saying things I had kept a lid on for 20 years, and even in spite of the sibling stating that they didn’t want to ‘cut things off,’ my conclusion is increasingly that things should be cut off.

At issue, of course, is that one tiny part of myself that enrages them so much, along with my political and religious beliefs. They can’t accept any of this and I can’t be anything or think anything else. I can’t be a different person, a person that they wish I were and that they think they could be proud of. To be so would be to be dishonest and deceitful and I can’t do that anymore.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that they demand total honesty from me, but then go completely off the rails when I am honest. They’ve set up a Catch-22 situation which is guaranteed to hurt themselves and others around them and cause pain and I’ve long wondered or thought that they really must enjoy it, they wallow in it so much.

I was supposed to call them tonight for Thanksgiving. I think I’ll be only accepting calls from now on. For over ten years, I’ve shelled out mega-bucks for phone calls, cards, gifts and travelling to Oklahoma. In that same time, my siblings have been to see me exactly twice and my parents have been to see me probably less than a dozen.

At what point do you stop fooling yourself and realize how one-sided things are? At what point do you stop the dysfunctional insanity? I really think I’ve reached my point. I’ll answer the phone and be polite when they call. And because I have some treasured things still in Oklahoma that I need to pick up, and because the parental’s 50th anniversary is coming up in April, I’ll make one final trip, and then I just have to be done. It’s not healthy for any of us.

None of my friends treat me this way. Families are simply nuts. I wish them much health and happiness and good, long lives. And I also wish they would grow up and get a clue about the world around them.

Lots and lots of dreams lately. Mainly induced by Vicodin, perhaps, or the new Sulfasalazine I’ve been on for just over a week now.

The pain still continues. Yesterday was a pretty good day, but today has been awful. I ache like I’ve got the flu, except it’s all in my joints, and some in my back.

I think the doctor’s theory of reactive arthritis is the most plausible I’ve heard yet, and I hope that the drugs will begin to kick in and let me live a somewhat normal life soon. I also hope to get back to grad school in June.

Other than my joints and the state of the Empire, everything else is fine; I’m very happy at home and with Frank and Bayley and really enjoy working most of the places I’m sent to as a guest teacher. Sometimes I go home hurting, but it’s just something to live with right now. I’m usually home by 16:00 at the latest, so I can take a nap and get some rest.

The shorter days and it being November and today’s snowfall make things depressing, but that’s just my usual yearly cycle. I hate November and always have. Bad things, particularly with family, have always happened in November and it’s my lowest ebb point in the anxiety cycle. But fortunately, we’re already at Thanksgiving and November is almost over. December is usually better.

Other than Jack Ruby’s live TV murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, 24-Nov-04 was a pretty boring day in history:

1926 KVI-AM in Seattle WA begins radio transmissions
1947 John Steinbeck’s novel “The Pearl” published
1947 Un-American Activities Committee finds “Hollywood 10” in contempt because of their refusal to reveal whether they were communists
1954 1st US Presidential airplane christened
1963 1st live murder on TV-Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald
1966 400 die of respiratory failure & heart attack in killer NYC smog
1969 Apollo 12 returns to Earth
1971 Dan “DB” Cooper parachutes from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000
1989 Communist Party resigns in Czechoslovakia

’[Reinhard] Heydrich reported 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned (with 177 totally destroyed) and 91 Jews murdered during Kristallnacht. Heydrich then requested new decrees forbidding Jews from having any social contact with Germans by excluding them from public transportation, schools, and hospitals, essentially forcing them into ghettos or out of the country. Goebbels said the Jews would be made to clean out the debris from burned-out synagogues which would then be demolished and turned into parking lots.’

I’m watching Shoah again. Haven’t seen it since it aired on PBS in 1986 or so. Just as shattering as I remember.

From « Shoah Film Handouts »:

‘Henrik Gawkowski (Malkinia) — heard the screams coming from the cars behind his locomotive. It was distressing to him since he knew the people behind him were human, like him. He was paid with liquor, and drank every drop he could get: it was the only way to stand the stench when he got to the camp. … Told of foreign Jews who rode in passenger cars to the camp, and one instance when a foreign Jew left the train to buy something at the bar, and as the train pulled out this man ran to catch up to it.

I’ve been pretty lucky thus far in my largely pedestrian life in Ann Arbor, because I have a vigilant attitude about vehicular traffic, honed over the years as a pedestrian in the notoriously high-traffic Bay Area. I’ve learned how to stay out of the way of vehicles here for the most part, although the layout of the city is about as unfriendly to pedestrian traffic as it gets. (Not enough stoplights, way too many crazy-quilt intersections, way too many wide boulevards without crosswalks, not even a semblance of a grid anywhere outside of the center of town.) The city lavishes money and attention on bicyclists, which is generally for the good, but if you’re a pedestrian, you might as well not exist.

For instance, just try to figure out how to get across the intersection at State and Stimson without jaywalking or rolling the dice and making a run for it. There are bus stops on both sides of the street, but neither of them is anywhere near a stoplight. The three-way stoplight that’s at the intersection was absolutely not designed with pedestrian traffic in mind; the timing of the lights doesn’t allow time for a pedestrian to cross, and even if it did, no drivers pay attention to the lame excuse for a crosswalk there anyway. To add to the general free-for-all, there are also railroad tracks crossing the intersection diagonally; trains rarely come through, but the presence of the tracks makes the intersection all the more difficult to negotiate in the dark.

Nevertheless, as cautious as I am, I almost got run over as I was walking home tonight. I was bound south on Industrial, not taking my usual route on the relatively quiet east side of the thoroughfare but for whatever reason taking the west side instead. I was passing the Colonial Lanes bowling alley, and I briefly took my eyes off the boulevard because I was busy trying to make sure nobody was roaring out of the parking lot. A northbound car made a left off the boulevard and flew into the lot without stopping. If I hadn’t seen it and I hadn’t instantly frozen in place, I would have been creamed. I suppose I was stupid to walk along that side of the street after dark (even during daylight it’s iffy), although for the life of me I can’t figure out what drivers are thinking when they seem to deliberately ignore pedestrians, and I have the chilling feeling that if I had actually been hit, the car would have sped off without stopping.

Snow today in Joshua Tree National Park, Twentynine Plams, and Yucca Valley … and up to 12 inches of snow in the San Bernardino Mountains …

But it was sunny and mild here today.

It’s supposed to be snowing here by Wednesday, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

There’s a big game this weekend. Oh, yeah, then there’s that insignificant UC Berkeley/Stanford “Big Game”. (Believe me, I’m not about to stick my foot in my mouth on this one.)

Stanford will likely lose, judging from their abysmal record this year, but then again, pigs could fly. Anyway, SFist links to this hilarious interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, judging from his ignorance of all things NCAA, should be mighty glad that he’s not the governor of Michigan or Ohio this weekend.

Q: Who do you think is going to win the Big Game on Saturday?

A: [Pause] What is the Big Game?

Q: Cal-Stanford.

A: Well, your guess is as good as mine. I was wrong with the Red Sox and my wife won that bet, as a matter of fact she was so excited she jumped up and down and broke her foot. So I’m not going to go into, I’m not that good at predicting the victory.

Q: You are the people’s governor, you should say University of California.

A: That is what I wish but it is not what I can predict will happen. I wish that is the direction it goes.

You mean he’s not just this way on the written page?

I took this class because of Prof. Wallace’s reputation as an author. What a mistake! This guy just likes to hear himself talk, and he won’t shut up. He knows how to play the part of a enigmatic “genius” all right …

[Link courtesy Bookslut.]

I can see that Ashbery might stake a claim to being the most influential poet since 1955, though, given how many of his poetic descendants fall over themselves to be even more willfully inscrutable and opaque than Ashbery.

For instance, there’s Not Even Then, a recent volume by Brian Blanchfield (who teaches at Pratt Institute), which is called a “confident debut” in the NYTBR.

One of the poems (“Ferdinand, The Prize”) uses an epigram from Althusser about interpellation, which is a grad student’s idea of perfection.

At the end of the book are “Some Notes,” including:

“Code Orange under Love, Part I” is informed by the discussion in William Eggleston’s How the World Became a Stage of similitude and contagion as concepts integral to medieval “sympathetic magic.” Apparently unrelated, a placard in the Sonora Desert Museum World of Darkness reads “Agitation produces both hailstones and cave pearls.”

And:

“One First Try and Then Another” is informed by the video work of Martin Schwember, which was used in the Ballett Frankfurt’s production Kammer/Kammer, a work its director, William Forsythe, describes as “oriented around the idea of voice, instrumental and literary, that dilates between an immediate, raw desire to articulate and the European tradition of virtuoso.”

And:

“Receipt” fits on a receipt for admission to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Actually, the notes are more poetic than the poems themselves, which I defy anyone outside of Blanchfield himself to make sense of. A sample from “Infraction”:

The body hurries. And then not pants, after all,

is the trouble in the offing, the percent sign

with the little o’s these legs went to wear.

Why have math wrecked by the bed? Is any

aptness outlasting the stereo’s shuffle mode,

planted hours ago, tracking our hideous goodnight?

The NYTBR intones that the Blanchfield poems “appear at first to depict nothing at all,” which is accurate enough, then observes that “they come into focus and portray a life: a young gay man learns to inhabit New York City, seeking out peers and lovers while sifting through information overload.”

I’m sorry, I don’t see that at all, not even remotely, unless the lines “Crotch high, the problem will not, itself a hundredth/the privation of pain, be pressed and hurry out” somehow imply “young gay man learning to inhabit New York City” in some mysterious way beyond my limited powers of comprehension. (Perhaps the attraction of poems like this is that they obscure concrete detail and leave out the explicit stuff, which seems to be the style these days, following in the delicately mincing footsteps of Reginald Shepherd and Mark Doty.)

But then I’ve never been the typical poetry reader. So the publishers of poetry (in this case, the University of California Press at Berkeley) can keep grinding out their pointless runs for a rapidly diminishing audience, while at the same time lamenting that nobody really seems to want to read anything written more recently than 1955, and the questions about poetry’s relevance will keep bouncing inside an increasingly rarefied echo chamber until somebody somewhere finally realizes how solipsistic the world of modern poetry really is and does something about it, maybe (God forbid) even writing some poems that speak to somebody outside of an advanced graduate seminar on postmodern semiotics.

Harold Bloom calls John Ashbery in the upcoming Poetry Issue of the Sunday New York Times Book Review “our major poet since the death of Wallace Stevens in 1955.” I don’t know where that leaves Allen Ginsberg, for example, but it seems a highly dubious claim, especially given inscrutable, maddening lines like these, from a poem called “Silhouette” in As We Know:

In the white mouths

Of your oppressors, however, much

Was seen to provoke. And the way

Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes

Not heard of for years at a time, did,

Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise

It was inside the house,

And always getting narrower.

All of Ashbery’s poems read like this. Way too many commas, way too many subordinate clauses, way too little in the way of meaning. I take nothing away from them but frustration.

I had some time to kill this afternoon, so I did some reading in one of the carrels on the third floor of Hatcher. I turned to look out the window and saw a fascinating display on the radiator below the window. The radiator was one of those old 1960s/1970s models with hundreds of vents, and each of the vents had a sloping slat on which it looked like various students who had used the carrel over the years had scribbled slogans, epithets, and messages.

This wasn’t the usual obscene stuff you see scribbled on bathroom walls, though certainly there was some of that. This was a meticulous collection of pithy and often trenchant comments, most of which were carefully dated, as though adhering to some unspoken tradition. I didn’t copy all of them down, but the ones I did copy were mainly comments about the weather on a given day, along with the occasional complaint about grind courses.

10/7/90 Dreary!

10/22/90 Horny!

10/4/91 Raining

11/17/91 Kinda cold but you can go w/o a jacket & not freeze

3/4/92 55° sunny

4/28/92 Sittin’ at home watchin’ Arsenio Hall

5/5/92 Dismal & muggy

11/2/93 Physics bites!

10/4/95 Cold & rainy

1/30/96 Windy, cold

12/16/96 Snowing

11/11/97 Cloudy & cold

11/17/97 Cold 28°

11/23/97 Frustrated

3/23/00 Perfect

12/17/00 Econ loathes me

2/18/04 Damn this blows!

I went into Ambrosia twice today, once at 11.30 and once at 3.15, and both times it was too packed to find anywhere to sit down inside. I realized that the place has hit its tipping point of popularity, although Ambrosia has always kind of flown under the radar, never winning (or even placing on) any of those ridiculous Best Of polls that college towns are known for. I went in this morning and grabbed my tea to go (this thoroughly obnoxious law student was cursing a blue streak and bragging about a relative being the prosecuting attorney for a county north of here, and that was enough to drive me out), but it was even more packed this afternoon, so I just picked up my tea and sat at one of the outside tables and read some poetry. The weather was cold, but not really chilly by any means; I didn’t have to wear cap or gloves today, and it was actually kind of gloomily nice out there, with the delivery guys wheeling supplies on hand carts past me into the Indian restaurant next door and the cars whipping up and down Maynard as though it were a major thoroughfare and not a side street. Atmosphere: Ann Arbor does not lack in that. It may not be a given person’s kind of atmosphere, but that’s a debate I don’t get into. Other blogs are way better at those debates than I. Anyway, now that Ambrosia’s hit the big time (and their new counter people are getting snootier and sniffier and more Starbucks-ish), I wonder if it’s time to look for a new hangout? I really don’t like the utilitarian Espresso Royale much, I’m sorry to say. It’s almost always packed, and when it’s not, it’s good for a ten-minute sit, but not for lengthy meditation and musing. There are other coffee shops around, I know; I just have to start looking.

Tomorrow is my final registration appointment at the University of Michigan. Hard to believe.

Damn, these 15 months have gone by fast! I am pretty sure what I’m going to take, including the dreaded 502 class that I put off last winter and now have no choice (poetic justice, since the title of the course is Choice and Learning) but to take. I hope my plans work out, and that none of my chosen classes are schedule conflicts, and … the usual stuff. I have been pretty lucky this term. It’s been incredibly busy, but I’ve actually had time to breathe once in a while. I kind of doubt my last term will be that way. Last terms never are.

I was taken to task (well, gently corrected, truth be told) by a couple of natives for the previous dumb-headed post. I humbly apologize (and also to any other Michiganders I may have teed off). Like I said in the comments, I was not trying to be snarky (I was genuinely more curious than anything else), though I can see it having come across that way.

My ditzy Californian naïvete reliably shines through once again. Though I guess I kind of suspected it, I suppose Detroit is not exactly a place you go exploring.

Again, my apologies.

Weather has been creeping toward winter, but (I could be wrong) less steadily than last November. The evenings and nights have been in the low to upper 20s. But the days are still getting up to the high 50s. Today was thoroughly gloomy, overcast and even drizzly at points, but the temps were still in the 50s. I won’t be convinced that winter’s coming until I see the snow start to fall.

This is the opening of Billy Collins’ “The Long Day” in the November issue of Poetry:

In the morning I ate a banana

like a young ape

and worked on a poem called “Nocturne.”

In the afternoon I opened the mail

with a short kitchen knife,

and when dusk began to fall

I took off my clothes,

put on “Sweethearts of the Rodeo”

and soaked in a claw-footed bathtub.

Excuse me for asking, but what makes this a poem? Not much, I imagine, other than the placeholder idea that “Billy Collins is a Poet.” (Therefore, anything he writes must be a poem.) Of course, the acclaim doesn’t hurt, either.

And there is hand-wringing over the fact that the only way a journal like Poetry can stay afloat is with a posthumous deus ex machina gift from a generous donor? Seriously: Why should anyone care about poetry or read it if all it is anymore is self-indulgent crap?