That photo in the previous banner was of the temperature reading on the Jeep as we entered Brentwood. It was 114 degrees Fahrenheit when we got here …
It's Hell Being Offline
Posting and pictures have been temporarily disrupted because internet service hasn’t started at the new house. I’ll have things to post, especially pictures, hopefully later today as our service provider gets its act together.
Things are good, but we’re very tired and sore. We are in Brentwood, the dog has his backyard, the stuff arrived safely from Ann Arbor (except for some minor damage on the big screen) and I’m posting this from my spiffy new classroom, which is truly fabulous.
More later!
Heading West — Day Five
Last Long Leg
Written @ 08:35 MST | Saturday 15-Jul-06 | Salt Lake City, UT
This morning after the usual breakfast and loading of the car and checking out and making the dog mad that we’re back in the car for another long day, we went to the Beehive Sinclair station, where gas was $2.77. As I was filling up, a car drove up behind me. The man got out and said, “Wow, you’re a long way from home! Where in Michigan are you from?”
I said, “Ann Arbor.”
He said, “We’re from Tecumseh.”
We talked about what a long way it was and how he didn’t like to drive it now that they had small kids. He was Michigan real friendly, not Michigan standoffish friendly. And friends, there IS a difference.
We’re now on I-80 skirting the south end of the Great Salt Lake and the north end of Deseret Peak and the Oquirrh Mountains. The part we’ve been dreading is coming up: 500 miles of nothing all the way to Reno. It’s 100 miles to the border, then 400 to Reno. A very long day. But we gain an hour at the border. We left the hotel at 08:17, or 07:17 Pacific time, and it’s nine hours, so we should be in the hotel around 16:30 or 17:00.
We did this route eastbound to Denver in February of 1998. The desert and lake were frozen white and it was beautiful. After we arrived at the Days Inn in Salt Lake and got the dog settled, a huge snowfall came and buried us under 17 inches of the white stuff. Today, we’re doing everything opposite; it’s July, it’ll be 100+ degrees today, the desert is baking and yellow, Salt Lake has fires and green trees and we’re westbound back to the East Bay instead of eastbound out of it.
The landscape is gorgeous and I still admit that I’m a southwestern desert boy. Utah is a beautiful state, in spite of the religious insanity here. If it weren’t for said insanity, I could probably live here happily. Maybe even happier in the southeastern corner of the state, around Moab, towards Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona. That is truly gorgeous country.
We just entered Skull Valley west of Salt Lake, 70 miles from the border. The temperature was 84 when we entered it and Jeepy says it jumped up to 92 as we started crossing the valley floor. When we went over the Cedar Mountains pass and into the Salt Lake Desert, the temp fell back to 89.
Next up: Bonneville Salt Flats and the Nevada border and Pacific time.
Worn Out
Written @ 13:46 PST | Saturday 15-Jul-06 | Humboldt, NV
We’re getting pretty tired of this road and this endless drive. We’re still about 125 miles from the hotel, so in about two hours, we should be done with all of the nastiness of the drive. But we’re pretty road weary and this last hundred miles will drag on.
We stopped at a rest area south of Winnemucca and walked the dog. He wasn’t all that thrilled about getting out in the 99-degree heat, but he did it anyway. He’s had some Arby’s curly fries and a nice long walk in a nice grassy park at Elko and he’s pretty road-weary and worn out too. But the good news is that he gets to see Unca Frankie finally tomorrow afternoon.
I dropped the key in the rest area while walking to the restroom, and Unca David said a nice Mexican man picked up and gave it to him, but not before hitting the panic button and causing the Jeep horn and lights to go off. I didn’t even know it had fallen out of my pocket.
We’re going to make another pit stop at Lovelock. We just saw the first mileage sign for Sacramento: 258 miles away, which means we’re about 300 miles from Brentwood. Yay.
But we’re stopping in Reno, because 518 miles is far enough for us and the dog. We’ll get some rest, then it’s off to Sacramento tomorrow morning. We have to pick up a small U-Haul trailer in East Sacramento so we can take Unca Frankie and our Ikea shopping trip haul back to Brentwood. Unca Frankie arrives at the Sacramento station on Amtrak at 17:47 tomorrow. We can’t wait to see him. The dog will be very surprised and happy.
I’ve done lots of planning, getting some procedures and discipline plans and the syllabus and homework policies, etc., down on paper, ready to go. I imagine I’ll need the two teacher work days to organize, clean and decorate the classroom, so the more of this other stuff as I can do in the next week, the better. So, I’ll get back to it.
Almost Done
Written @ 20:35 PST | Saturday 15-Jul-06 | Reno, NV
We’re in Reno. Which is not a garden spot, let me tell you. It seems crowded and slightly ridiculous and scruffy. But it’s home for the night and we’re very happy to get off the road.
After our pitstop in Lovelock, there was some frustration with a long stretch of construction. The last 80 miles or so was kind of agony. But it was finally over.
As a matter of fact, most of the trip is over; there’s only about 194 miles left, about three hours of driving time.
Tomorrow, we go to Sacramento and meet Unca Frankie. Monday, we shop at Ikea and go home to Brentwood to the new house. Can’t wait.
For now, I’m going to Flickr today’s pictures and go to bed.
Night, y’all.
Heading West — Day Four
Wyoming is Almost Done
Written @ 12:00 MST | Friday 14-Jul-06 | Little America, WY
Last night, we went through downtown Cheyenne to get some pizza. Downtown itself is kinda cute, but a few blocks east is rather scruffy. The pizza was good though, and I also found a gas station, “Smoker Friendly Gasmart,” that had gas for a cheap-sounding $2.64 a gallon. It was a very redneck-type of place. We scurried back to the hotel with the pizza.
The dog had some pizza crusts and finally ate some kibble after three days. We then got some rest. I took a short swim, which was marred by swarms of mosquitoes and other unidentified insects and by a blond California woman in a straw cowboy hat who trotted into the pool area (which I had to myself before her arrival) with a Target shopping bag and plopped down onto a lounger and proceeded to have a loud and long cell phone conversation, complaining to the person on the other end about an encounter with some woman in Montana. The water felt good, however, and I did enjoy the swim.
After a nice night’s sleep, we got up at 06:30 and left the hotel at 07:56. Next stop: Salt Lake City, 433 miles away.
A short drive saw us flying through Laramie. I can’t ever see or think of that name without thinking of Matthew Shephard. On a fence somewhere close by, Matthew was pistol whipped and tied up and left to die. Has anything much changed since that evil day in 1998? Not really. Hate to be pessimistic, but another Matthew will happen. In fact, other Matthews happen with depressing regularity in this country. Most of them are just not as dramatic. And most of the homophobes who commit the crimes will try to get off on “gay panic” defenses.
With apologies to all my straight male friends, I’ve always been curious; why do most straight men go around thinking that gay guys want them so bad? I’ll grant you that there is a subcommunity in the gay world that chases unavailable straight men, but that’s hardly a norm. I think they need to relax. If I’m in a foxhole in Iraq and mortars are dropping in, the last thing in the world I’ll be thinking about is touching my foxhole mate’s butt. One of the most un-sexy places I’ve ever been was a locker room after a football game. For many of us gay boys, the locker room fantasy only works if there are well-built Falcon models populating the scene.
Meanwhile, back in Laramie, I doubt anything much has changed in the last eight years, the Laramie Project notwithstanding. We pass on through without stopping.
Salt Lake City is about 150 miles away. Mormon land presents a whole new set of conundrums and questions. I won’t be able to drive through the place without hearing the famous South Park song in my head: “Joseph Smith Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum.”
We’re beginning to see the snow-covered peaks of the Uinta Mountains in Utah to the south. The border is 59 miles away. I’ve been looking forward to seeing mountains again.
Utah
Written @ 13:10 MST | Friday 14-Jul-06 | Utah State Line
We just hit Mormon Land, although it was hard to tell, since the area was under construction and all the signs have disappeared. The Utah side is greener and more mountainous and that’s about the only way to tell. Plus the mile markers went from 3 to 191. Salt Lake City is 70 miles away, so we’ll be in the hotel room inside two hours, thank goodness.
Unca David is still doing all the driving. I drive around the cities we stop in hunting for dinner, but he handles the long distance stuff, freeing me to plan and create stuff for school. I’ve got a newsletter started, a calendar, lesson plans, syllabus, and first- and second-day student surveys already to go, for the most part.
Over Air America, we’re hearing the news that King George was asked in Germany about the situations in Beirut and Iran, he replied, “I thought you were gonna ask me about the pig.”
Anyhoo.
Back in Rawlins, WY, I was asleep when suddenly I was poked in the side of the face by a moist beagle nose. Before I was fully awake, Bayley had come over the center console and plopped himself in my lap. Talk about a rude awakening. He then proceeded to arrange himself comfortably on top of me, and that’s where he stayed. For 108 miles until we got to Rock Springs, our gas stop for the day.
You haven’t lived until you’ve traveled the worst (to me) stretch of Wyoming I-80 for 108 miles with a 55-pound snoring beagle lying across your body.
After our stop in Rock Springs, there was much garrumphing about having to get back in his spot so that I could use the laptop and get some work done.
We still have 723 miles left after Salt Lake City, and I’ll be danged if I’m gonna ride the whole way with a huge ox in my lap.
I’m so cruel to dogs.
Frank asked me last night if I missed Michigan. I said, “Who-igan?” Truth is, I miss the great friends we met in Michigan, but not the state. I miss the intellectual workout I got in class, but not the university. I miss the kids I taught and had fun with last year at Burns Park, but not the school system. I miss the trees and river, but not the roads and drivers. In October, I will miss the flaming reds, oranges and yellows of the trees, but in November I will not miss the freezing gray cold.
We’re heading into the Wasatch above Salt Lake City. It reminds me that at heart I am a southwestern boy. I love canyons and skies and scrub brush and tumbleweeds and high mountain passes and snow-capped peaks and varied landscapes.
I want my Michigan friends to move southwest with me. I’m grateful for a quality Michigan education. But I don’t really miss Michigan itself. Sorry.
Swim
Written @ 16:13 MST | Friday 14-Jul-06 | Salt Lake City, UT
We arrived just fine at the hotel at 14:45 MST. Checkin was quick and we got a second floor room. The best thing is the pool; indoors, very warm, accompanied by a hot tub. And when we got here, it was empty. I swam for almost an hour and had the place to myself. It was very, very lovely. Helped the joints a great deal.
It’s hot and dry here; the temp is 101, although Jeepy claims it’s 105. It doesn’t feel as bad as Oklahoma or Michigan because there’s almost no humidity. It’s still hot, though.
This evening’s agenda is about finding some dinner and then getting plenty of rest. The longest day of the trip is ahead of us: 518 miles across the Great Salt Desert and the entire state of Nevada to Reno. We’ve done this drive once before and it’s not the most fun thing to do on the planet.
But after tomorrow, there’s only 132 miles to Sacramento and then 72 miles to Brentwood and we’re done with the cross-country odyssey. We can’t wait to be reunited with Unca Frankie. Dogs are very exhausted and need to get home to their nice, new, huge back yard. Yay!
Later, y’all!
Heading West — Day Three
Rainy Again
Written @ 11:42 CST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Gothenberg, NE
We hit a small spot of rain, but it’s nothing like day one. We’re 36 miles from North Platte, NE, which will be our first stop of the day. Jeepy needs gas and beagle needs walkies.
I’ve been sleeping since Lincoln. Nebraska is flat and it is green and has some trees and that’s about it. The road is flat and straight and goes on and on. We’re about halfway to Cheyenne.
I’ve started some lesson planning for the first week of school, but it’s a bit hard to do, since I don’t know my schedule of classes or the curriculum. I know I want the first week to be relaxed and all about getting to know each other and learning the procedures and my expectations. So I’ll leave it at that and plan for activities that do that. I’ll ease into the language arts stuff during week two, if I can.
Rest Stop
Written @ 13:00 CST/12:00 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Sutherland, NE
After stopping at a Mirastar gas station (which turns out to be some sort of weird partnership between Texaco and Wal-Mart) in North Platte, NE, we made a brief lunch stop at Sonic then drove 20 miles west to a rest area so that beagles could do beagle things. They had a designated pet area with “pooch plugs,” which were fake fire hydrants. Bayley added his own mark to the vicinity of the plug. When Unca David came out of the restroom, I went inside while he held the beagle. When I came out, Bayley was waiting and began wiggling and howling like I had been gone for three years. The whole rest area stopped and looked at the commotion.
We’re back on I-80, with about 195 miles left today. Nebraska is pretty much what I expected … flat, farms, scrubby trees, low barren hills, never-ending. We just passed into Keith County and the Mountain Time Zone, so we gained an hour, which will help. Cheyenne is about three-and-a-half hours away, so we should be at the hotel by 16:00 Wyoming time.
At the rest area, I picked up three out of the plethora of ubiquitous tourist brochures (rack cards) which are in piles in places up and down the interstate highway system. One was for Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, where it is noted that, in addition to Father Flanagan’s house, the museum, the Garden of the Bible, Father’s grave and the chapel, you can see the “World’s Largest Ball of Stamps” in the Leon Myers Stamp Center, which includes exhibits on the history of postage stamps, a collector’s corner and, of course, the four-cent Father Flanagan Stamp. Don’t forget the gift shop and cafe on your way out and admission is free.
Let’s be clear, I’m not disparaging Boys Town, but the touristy aspects thereof. Just hope the proceeds go to make things better for the boys.
Coming up is Bridgeport, NE, where you can exit I-80 and venture 34 miles north to Alliance. The claim to fame of Alliance is … Carhenge, a replica of Stonehenge created from vintage automobiles from the 50s and 60s. The cars are “planted trunk down and rise 15 to 17 feet … [and] are approximately 7 feet wide; the same size as the standings [sic] stones of Stonehenge … all 38 of the majors [sic] stones are cleverly represented at Carhenge.”
Carhenge is enthusiastically recommended by someone from Farmington, MN, who is quoted on the rack card as saying, “This place is incredible, I love it! We went 100 miles out of the way to see Carhenge and it was worth every mile and moan and groan from my children.”
We decided not to detour 68 miles out of our way to see it.
I went to sleep shortly after passing Lincoln, where I apparently missed the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The mission of said center is “to study, to collect, to preserve, and to exhibit quilts.” Pretty straightforward.
There are more than 1,650 quilts in the center, including the largest known collection of Amish and Mennonite quilts. Here’s some grad school language for ya: “… quilts are studied using an interdisciplinary approach in which the tradition is examined in its historical, social, artistic, technical, and spiritual environments. The … Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design, College of Education and Human Sciences, offers masters degree programs for students interested in analyzing the complex ways in which gender, class, ethnicity, aesthetics, politics, religion and technology find expression in the textile arts, especially quiltmaking traditions.”
Wow. Why doesn’t the University of Michigan School of Education have that? They suck.
Back to planning. I need to create a fun student information survey for the kids to work on in the first ten minutes of the first class.
Wyoming
Written @ 14:11 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Pinebluff, WY
We’ve reached the Wyoming border and are just a mere 36 miles from our stop. We’ll be at the hotel by 15:00 mountain time. Thank goodness. Also, we’re just passing the halfway point of the trip: 1,176 miles. Thank goodness, part II. We’re also out of Nebraska. Thank goodness, part III.
As we entered the panhandle of Nebraska and the I-76 split which heads for Denver, the land dramatically changed. No longer the rolling green farmland with trees, it has become the browner, flatter, wider open vistas of the true American west. You can see oil well pumping units dotting the landscape and the area is dotted with ranches, not farms. Union Pacific trains pass each other on double tracks, hauling cross-continent freight. It’s 93 degrees outside under a bright sun, with just a few high puffy clouds. Traffic has also thinned out; there aren’t as many cars on the road, leaving the interstate mostly to the long-haul truckers.
Watching the trucks and the trains makes you realize just how dependent on fossil fuels this country really is. Our entire lives are on those trains and trucks. 12,000 pounds of my own life is in a truck somewhere on this road. Everything we need (especially food) comes from far away. If that infrastructure of rail and road and train and truck is ever disrupted or destroyed, we’d be in deep doo-doo. We would see a retreat back to a civilization like it existed before the Civil War. Not that I’m an apocalyptic thinker, I’m just sayin’. We’re dependent on a thin thread that seems rather tenuous in the big picture of things.
I’ve been working up the first week’s lesson plans, creating two student surveys and an interview sheet, and working on the class syllabus. Yes, I plan to give seventh graders a syllabus. I want the expectations and what we’re doing clearly laid out. In the dim recesses of my age-addled memory, I seem to remember that a few of my junior high teachers gave them out and I know my high school teachers did. So, these kids should get used to them.
Because of my natural tendency to be easy-going and laid-back, the first week will be critical in terms of setting limits and expectations and procedures. It will make or break my entire first year as a teacher. Research indicates that there should be no more than 3-5 rules, and it’s also preferable if the students create and sign off on the rules themselves. I’ll think about that one. It worked well last year with 22 rather exceptional second graders; these 125 seventh graders I’m going to meet in less than three weeks are an unknown quantity. I like the three F’s: firm, fair, fun. The three KISses, too: Keep it simple, keep it safe, keep it sane.
I better get back to it. We’re 11 miles from the hotel.
Rest Stop
Written @ 15:55 MST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Cheyenne, WY
We arrived at the hotel an hour ago and unloaded the car. The dog had a long drink of water and a treat and watched the proceedings. He then had a scratch of the ear and settled down onto my bed. He is now loudly snoring away, a totally worn-out dog.
Cheyenne looks very small, smaller than Ann Arbor. I-80 skirts it on the south and looks down on it, so you get a pretty good view. I continue to be impressed by the speedy checkin/checkout and service at LaQuinta. The rooms have been good, the wireless internet connections great and there’s been no fuss at all about the dog or anything else.
The pool is inviting, since it’s over 90 degrees here, but it’s full of women and kids at the moment. I’ll have to wait, probably ‘til dinnertime to get some water therapy.
We’re not sure what we’ll do for dinner, but we need a nap first.
Later, y’all.
Heading West — Day Two
Field of Opportunity
Written @ 12:44 CST | Wednesday 12-Jul-06 | West Des Moines, IA
After getting up at 08:00 and having a little breakfast and loading the car, we left Davenport this morning at 09:55 and we’re now just west of Des Moines, which we didn’t really see because I-80 runs around the northern and western edges. What we did see reminded me of Kansas City and Oklahoma City.
Iowa is just gently rolling hills. It’s flat, but not West Texas flat. The best thing about is that the rest stops on I-80 have wireless internet access. Iowa rocks! We’re stopping at the next one to check it out.
Omaha is about 110 miles or so away and then we’ll stop and get rested up for tomorrow’s nastiness: 450 miles of Nebraska. Right now, David has driven the whole way again and says he’s fine, and the dog is sacked out once again in the back seat.
We’re just passing touristy stuff: signs announce DeSoto, John Wayne’s birthplace, and the covered bridges of Madison County. The road is reminding me of I-44, the Turner Turnpike, between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
And that’s about as exciting as this day gets, folks. Go ahead and yawn, you won’t offend me. I’m pretty bored too. It’s time to pull out the books on those ever-important first weeks of school, since 125 seventh graders will be looking at me for instruction in a mere 18 days, 18 hours, 58 minutes and 14 seconds. Yow.
We just crossed into Madison County. No, I’ve never read the book. I don’t see any bridges, but I do see a heckuva lotta corn. Omaha is 108 miles away.
The wireless internet connections are FABULOUS! Sitting in a cornfield on the side of I-80, updating the blog. Technogeek heaven!
I love Iowa!
Later at the Hotel
Written @ 01:30 CST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Omaha, NE
We arrived safely in Omaha, checked into the hotel, then went in search of dinner. We gassed up the Jeep and spotted a Sonic, which made me very happy. A quick trip over to the drive in, then back to the hotel for dinner was followed by a five-hour nap. It was lovely. I was very tired.
The beagle is refusing his food, although he did accept a tater tot. After my nap, I took him out for walkies and a sniff at the night air. When we came back in, we followed the usual routine of getting a treat, making him wait and then saying, “Go!” He slowly got up, went to the treat and sniffed it and walked away.
It was earth-shaking. The beagle refusing a treat?? Holy cow, what’s next, frogs from the sky?
I went to get some ice and a Coke and when I came back, the beagle had tried to bury the treat under the desk before giving up and eating it. He is very pointedly refusing the food in his bowl.
After updating Flickr, I took my bath and am now in bed. Tomorrow will be the trying day, the one I’ve dreaded, 488 miles of Nebraska. We’ll end up in Cheyenne Thursday night; the hotel has an outdoor pool, which this one does not, so I can get in some more water therapy. But it’s a very long drive away and I’m off to bed.
Good night, y’all.
Where's My Reference Librarian?
Frank usually handles these things and does a far, far better job of it. I’m pretty stream-of-consciousness on my trip writing, while he does the reference librarian thing and provides all the great writing and details that really make the blog great. But I’ll give it a slight shot, and he should feel free to chime in here as we pass through various places (hint, hint).
Iowa
According to the state’s website, “Iowa became the 29th State in 1846. It is known as the Hawkeye State, and Des Moines is the capital city. Iowa is bordered by two great American rivers (the Mississippi and the Missouri) on its east and west sides. It has a rich agricultural tradition and ranks first in the nation with corn and soybean production as well as in hog production from its 93,000 farms.”
Yeah, we’ve had a couple of whiffs of the hog production during our ride.
Iowa was home to John Wayne, Herbert Hoover, Glenn Miller and Grant Wood. The state website says it was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition “and many other historic events” but doesn’t bother to name them.
Davenport, IA
“The Quad Cities rests on the banks of the Mighty Mississippi River and share a population of 400,000. The region is made up of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Moline/East Moline and Rock Island in Illinois, and surrounding communities.”—VisitQuadCities.com
This area is home to « John Deere » and there is lots of green and yellow here. There is the world headquarters, the John Deere Pavilion, the John Deere Store, the John Deere Historic Site, the Deere Run golf course, the John Deere Collectors Center and the John Deere Historic Homes and Gardens. There’s also a restored 620 LP Standard tractor on display and you can buy a toy replica of it. If that’s your thing.
Downtown Moline is getting the redevelopment fix with more than $40 million of new development around the Mississippi waterfront.
The River Music Experience boasts local and regional R&B, jazz, and other related music; the VisitQuadCities website boasts that visitors can interact with “larger-than-life video performances of icons like Tina Turner, B.B. King and Johnny Cash. Visitors can also take a ride on the Mississippi on the “Riversong,” a former New York canal tour boat. Which sort of all makes me go, “Huh.”
Middle America. What a country.
Des Moines, IA
According to the city’s website, the history of “Des Moines can be traced to 1834, when John Dougherty, an Indian Agent at Fort Leavenworth, Ks, recommended that a military post be established at the point where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers merge. Nine years later, May 1843, Captain James Allen and a company of dragoons from Fort Sanford arrived on the site. Captain Allen proposed to name the
garrison Fort Raccoon but was directed by the War Department to use the name Fort Des Moines.”
Raccoon, IA. That would have been interesting.
The city continues, “Some people feel that ‘Des Moines’ is derived from the Indian word ‘moingona’ meaning
river of the mounds which referred to the burial mounds that were located near the banks of the river. Others are of the opinion that name applies to the Trappist Monks (Moines de la Trappe) who lived in huts at the mouth of the Des Moines river. French voyagers referred to the river as La Riviere
des Moines. The consensus seems to be that Des Moines is a variation of Moingona, Moingonan, Moingoun, Mohingona, or Moningounas, as shown on early maps.”
Okay, glad to have that cleared up.
There are now more than 200,000 people in Raccoon, er, I mean Des Moines, which bills itself as the third largest major insurance center in the world. The other claim to fame is the city’s climate-controlled skywalk system, which makes up more blocks per capita than in any other city of comparable size in the U.S.
Well, there ya go.
Nebraska
Nebraska is the home of the nation’s only unicameral legislature. The website « On Unicameralism » notes that the state was bicameral for 68 years until Nebraskans voted to get rid of half of their state legislature in 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, ostensibly for class reasons: “… The constitutions of our various states are built upon the idea that there is but one class. If this be true, there is no sense or reason in having the same thing done twice, especially if it is to be done by two bodies of men elected in the same way and having the same jurisdiction.” The influence of New Deal Republican senator George Norris, who wore out two sets of tires while he drove around campaigning for the ballot measure, along with the Depression and two other ballot issues on local prohibition and pari-mutuel betting, resulted in a 286,086 to 193,152 vote in favor of unicameralism. The Senate was the body retained and legislators are referred to as senators.
Nebraska’s other Unicameral claim to fame is that it is the only nonpartisan legislature in the country. “… a candidate’s political party is not listed on the election ballot. The two candidates who obtain the most votes in the primary election face each other in the general election. Also unlike other states, Nebraska’s legislative leadership is not based on party affiliation.”
Nebraska has numerous official state symbols, including the “state motto, seal, flag, flower, bird, tree, fossil, gemstone, rock, grass, insect, soil, mammal, fish, American folk dance, ballad, baseball capitol, village of lights, river, soft drink, beverage, poet laureate, poet, [and] song.” Makes you wonder if Senator Norris was really right about a one-house legislature concentrating on the people’s business and being more efficient and cheaper to run.
Omaha, NE
Omaha’s claim to fame is Boys Town, Father Flanagan’s place immortalized by Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. It’s also home to Offutt Field, the former SAC Air Force Base, which isn’t mentioned much on the convention bureau’s website, nor is the fact that Omaha is the rabbit hole where King George fled on 9/11.
Moving right along.
The « Strategic Air and Space Museum » is home to 300,000 square feet of WWII and Cold War aircraft and artifacts. The museum’s website is proud of SAC’s role in “keeping the peace,” but doesn’t mention nuclear weapons scattered in silos around the place or any of that kind of stuff.
And that’s Day Two’s travelogue.
Heading West — Day One
The Very Rough Last Night in A2
Written @ 13:30 EST | Tuesday, 11-Jul-06 | Ann Arbor, MI
The beagle gave me a rough night. After the farewell party, I went and gassed up the Jeep and then back to Ann’s to spend the night. I was informed he had howled at the kitty several times and generally been a bit of a pain. We went up to bed at midnight, David taking the spare room and the beagle heading to Rachel’s. The drama began.
He paced and panted and whined at the door. I put him up on the bed twice to settle him down and twice he jumped down. Finally, I gave up, took a couple of pillows down the couch and prepared to settle in.
Bayley took a long drink of water and flopped on the kitchen tile. He then ate his breakfast from the previous morning at 01:30 and flopped back down again. My head was throbbing and I waited for the Alavert to kick in. Suddenly at 02:12, Bayley jumped up off the kitchen floor and ran to the front door, howling his head off. Scared the crap out of me. I jumped up and almost killed myself on the loveseat and hissed at him. I thought everyone would wake up, but only David heard him, fortunately.
I chased him, but he ran up the stairs and in the dim light from the bathroom window behind him, I could see him staring down at me. I was too tired and sore to run upstairs, so I went back to the couch to wrestle with the insomnia.
The next morning, we said goodbye to the girls and went to Burger King for breakfast and to Dunham’s to buy a Thule rooftop canvas bag to haul crap to California so the beagle wouldn’t have to ride up near roof in the backseat. Then it was off to the townhouse to do the final cleaning and turn in the keys. It took three hours to get things ready to go. It was hell.
We turned in the keys to the sourpuss apartment manager, left the forwarding address, got a coke one last time at Circle K, then headed out onto I-94.
When I saw the sign on south State pointing west for I-94 to Jackson, I admit I got a little choked up.
Goodbye, Ann Arbor.
Scattershots
Written @ 15:00 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Battle Creek, MI
Random thoughts while sitting shotgun for the first couple of hundred miles:
Near Battle Creek is a sign for the “Moonraker Restaurant.” What’s that all about? Is it part of Drax Industries?
The beagle has been noshin’ on pretzels and Chex Mix from time-to-time since we left Ann Arbor. Yesterday, he had French fries and Auntie Ann and Cousin Rachel gave him some Cheez-Its. After 106 miles, he’s finally settling down into his VERY cushy back seat and having a nap. He has the whole back seat to himself and it’s piled with his beagle bed and blankies. His treats are handy, he has his own a/c vents, there’s a water bowl close by and everyone is pampering him shamefully, which he is accepting shamelessly. Now THAT’s the way to travel to California. I SO wish I were a beagle!
As we head into Kalamazoo County, I see a sign for “Fort Custer National Cemetery Industrial Park.” Huh? What’s that all about?
I turn XM Satellite Radio to ABC Talk Radio and get a full-blown earful of Sean Hannity spewing nonsense in full-bore screaming, vein-popping, red-faced mode. I quickly find Air America. If I’m gonna sit on an American Interstate Highway and listen to screaming, vein-popping, red-faced radio, it’s gonna be screaming, vein-popping, red-faced radio that affirms and confirms my own political and worldview prejudices and conceptions.
Paw Paw, MI? Any Relation to Quapaw, OK
Written @ 15:30 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Paw Paw, MI
Approaching Paw Paw, MI. Paw Paw Days will be 15-Jul. Sorry I’m gonna miss that. America, what a country.
Still listening to Air America, I hear a sort of weird, deja-vu ad that gets my attention. It’s for a website for “middle school teachers, featuring inquiry-based learning curriculum for science education from the National Institutes for Health.” Which gives me a bad acid flashback to my science methods course from last January, which, I might add, was the only blemish on my grad school grade record, an 89% B+. The ad sort of gives me chills.
But the weirdest thing is when the announcer repeats “middle school teachers.” It hits me at mile marker 60 on Interstate 94 West near Paw Paw, MI, that the announcer is speaking to me. I. Am. A. Middle School. Teacher.
Good lord and holy freakin’ cow.
Don’t you hate those sudden, jarring, unexpected epiphanies at odd moments in odd places? It’s almost like when you open your mouth and you hear your mom or dad speaking phrases that you used to hate, which I mentioned before I refer to as the “Whippersnapper Routine:” “When I was your age …” etc. But this was even more jarring, I think. Over the last couple of weeks, things have been happening so quickly that I’ve lost track of time and feel like I’ve just been floating through the summer like an old leaf on a fast-moving stream. It will all gel, but it’s quite weird.
We’re approaching Benton Harbor and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line. In a few minutes, we say goodbye to Michigan and the eastern time zone and start feeling like we’re really on a road trip. We’ll be making a quick stop in La Porte, IN, to visit Wells Fargo and take care of the final piece of the moving puzzle, the financial details of the house rental. The lease is signed, the goods are headed west, the car is loaded and we’re on the road. Ann Arbor is 158 miles behind us.
Have I said holy freakin’ cow already?
Farewell, Michigan, the “Pleasant Peninsula”
Written @ 16:00 EST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Approaching Lake Michigan
The rain looks like settling in for a very long stay. It started raining around 14:30. A minivan with Alaska plates just suddenly hit the brakes and pulled into the right lane in the heavy rain, right in front of a semi. The trucker was not pleased. Haven’t heard an airhorn blast like that since I last went to an Oklahoma Sooners game. The goober in the minivan was fairly oblivious that he had a very large and very angry trucker breathing up his rear. Wonder if he’ll make it all the way home to Fairbanks or Anchorage or wherever.
The rain is so hard that it’s unlikely I’ll get a very good pic of the “Leaving Michigan” and “Welcome to Indiana” signs. How gooberish is that?
How do I feel about leaving Michigan? Well, it was tough last night saying goodbye to everyone. Very sad. I will miss everyone terribly. I got a big lump in my throat taking one last, long look at the empty townhouse as we left. It was the first place that Frank and I shared together, our first home as a couple. We got married nearby, in Windsor, Canada. We had three amazing years. Met wonderful people, friends for life. Had great experiences at the university and in school. And some not-so-great ones, but that’s life. Michigan was good for us in some ways, bad in others. I mentioned before that I find “Michigan Lefts,” where you turn right-left-left in order to turn left, as well as aggressive Michigan drivers, and 42-wheel semi-trucks, aggravating and baffling. I found some teachers I dealt with baffling and aggravating as well.
Speaking of baffling, the state motto is, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” That is just … kinda awkward and weird. Why would I be seeking a pleasant peninsula? Whatever.
It’s 16:22 EST, or 15:22 EST, and we just crossed the Indiana line.
Well, shut my mouth.
Goodbye, Michigan.
Sidetrip
Written @ 15:45 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Porte, IN
Our first stop of the trip is in the rain. Indiana looks much like Michigan. Horses in the field, green trees. Beagle is asleep in the back, snoring softly. When we get to the bank, I’ll give him a walk in the rain. He’ll be hacked.
We pass under the Indiana Turnpike, which is actually I-80, our first glimpse of the road we’ll become intimately acquainted with between now and Sunday.
I’m writing all this stuff while David drives. I’m a total technogeek and have been known to do many odd things while driving, including studying for exams, reading Shakespeare, eating a Sonic hickory cheeseburger (Mmmmmmmm, Sonic!), etc. But I’ve never actually used a laptop and typed while driving. I don’t think I’ll start now. So, there will be gaps in the journal when I’m driving or sleeping. Which is like saying the sun rises in the east, I know. I have no idea why I’m even writing this stuff, but it passes the time.
Pine Lake is pretty in the rain. It’s 72 degrees. Downtown is busy and bigger than expected. It’s small town America at its best, and there are some real goobers in pickup trucks on the streets.
Time for a break.
The Beagle Poops on Indiana, his 15th State
Written @ 16:05 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Porte, IN
The beagle had a nice walk in the rain, around the block. La Porte was a surprise; being this close to the nastiness that I have seen from Amtrak around Gary, I was expecting something less … than stellar. La Porte is actually a quaint, middle American town. Quintessential as the saying goes. There does tend to be quite a few American flags all higgledy-piggledy, but there are also “End the War Now” and “Bring the Troops Home” bumper stickers, interestingly enough. It’s only 20 miles from South Bend, yet I see no Fightin’ Irish stickers, although there is a lone Catholic church with children out front having a blast playing in the rain while adults watch from the open, lighted doorway. There are big brick planters on every street corner downtown with great flowers in them and signs reading “Adopt a Planter.” One is adopted by a school bus driver, another by a married couple, another by the United Homosexuals of Indiana. Just kidding, just wanted to see if you were paying attention.
We just passed the Thunderbird Lanes bowling alley, pub, and fishing tackle store, which seems to be interesting because I’ve never seen a combination bowling alley and fishing tackle shop. Wonder if you can buy bait while waiting your turn in the fifth frame? Also, I haven’t seen many things named “Thunderbird” this side of New Mexico. It makes me homesick. Lots of things between my hometown, Roswell, and up in the mountains of Ruidoso are named Thunderbird. When I was a wee lad, I once took an old white sheet and created my own Thunderbird flag and went out in the woods near Clovis and played War. Not sure what army I was supposed to be in, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Good times, good times.
Jammed Up With Boston Boy
Written @ 15:24 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Chicago, IL
We’re in the thick of it now. Traffic backed up like a clogged drain at Cher’s house. We’re stop-and-go trying to get to the toll gates on the I-80 tollway. Plus, it’s 17:30, rush hour. We have XM tuned to Chicago weather and traffic, which is getting old and not giving us any good news.
I’ve spotted a fellow traveller with Massachusetts plates, towing a small U-Haul trailer behind a small SUV of some sort. And I mean fellow traveller in the “gay old time” sense. He’s quite lovely to look at while sitting here on the concrete at Western and 171st on the south side.
At least the rain has stopped for now.
The toll is 60 cents. The way ahead is clear and we’re chasing Boston boy. Unfortunately, someone else is in the passenger seat, slumped down asleep. Still, he made things pretty for a little while, since he was sitting there all Jake Gyllenhaal-ish.
Have I been away from my husband too long? Yup.
Keep the Internet Connection On for Us
Written @ 15:46 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Chicago, IL
I call the hotel in Davenport to confirm our reservations. “We’ll see you when you get here.”
Well, at least she didn’t say, “We’ll keep the light on for you.” Ain’t ever stayin’ at THAT place.
Nope, LaQuinta has the two requirements we have when we travel: they like beagles and their rooms are wired with highspeed ethernet connections. It ain’t the Ritz Carlton, but it beats a tent on the side of the road.
And it’s still 130 miles away. Roughly about the distance between Duncan and Dallas, so about two-and-a-half hours before the beagle gets his dinner.
David is still driving after 273 miles and seems content to do it. As far as I’m concerned, he can do the whole 2,300. But that’s asking a bit much. I’m grateful for as much as possible. I’ve done the cross-country to California thing way too many times. I’d rather sit and play voyeur, peering at weird stuff by the side of the road and cuties in hot SUVs.
Corn, Prisons, and Stan
Written @ 18:40 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | La Salle, IL
Shortly after crossing the Des Plaines river at Joliet, the land stretches and flattens out. We saw our first corn fields west of Joliet. We didn’t see the prison, however, which is mostly what Joliet is known for, Al Capone and all that.
Talked to my friend Stan in DC for a few miles as he drove home from work. We noted that it’s been almost 30 years that we’ve known each other.
For the last three years, almost at least once a week or more, he’s called me as he leaves work in Bethesda, MD, and commutes home on the Beltway and I-66 to home in Chantilly, VA. I’ve kept him company, but the move to California will affect that, since we’re three hours behind. When he’s going home in the evening now, I’ll still be in my last period with the seventh graders. And that’s gonna suck.
Not sure how those are all connected, but my brain is pretty much on autopilot today.
By the way, more and more corn is appearing. There’s a helluva lotta corn out there.
Mississippi River
Written @ 19:49 CST | Tuesday 11-Jul-06 | Moline, IL
Illinois is almost finished. We just entered Rock Island County, last one before the Mississippi River and Iowa. The hotel is about 30 minutes away. The dog is completely zonked, but he’ll be ready for his dinner when we get in place. The road is flat and mostly straight and there are very few people on it; the crowd has thinned out considerably. There is still intermittent rain from time to time, but it has been a mostly pleasant trip on Day One.
I’ve finally run out of things to say. Next up: Mississippi River pictures and a much-needed stop. More later.
Worn Out Dogs
Written @ 01:29 CST | Wednesday 12-Jul-06 | Davenport, IA
We’re pooped. We got into the hotel after a beagle walk, then went back out and picked up dinner. I then swam for thirty minutes, talked to the hubby for awhile while doing laundry and walking on the treadmill, then it was back to the room to sort all the stuff I brought because there wasn’t time to do it in Ann Arbor.
I’m going to post some pics from day one on Flickr, then it’s off to bed. Tomorrow’s agenda: Up at 8, breakfast in the hotel, then it’s back to I-80 westbound, headed the 304 miles to Omaha, By God Nebraska.
I miss my fellow ELMAC’ers. It feels like I’m heading off into the unknown by myself and have suddenly lost the support of my homies. This sucks.
I’m not quite ready to say I miss the actual University of Michigan yet. Maybe next week. But I do miss the gang I spent the last year with.
Off to bed. Catch ya on down the road.
Night, y’all.
On Restless Beagles and Night-Before-Road-Trip Insomnia
Okay, so I thought the next post would be from Davenport, IA, but, thanks to one of the most wonderful women in the world, I have a nicer place to sleep than my empty townhouse, as well as a working internet connection, so what they hey. I also have insomnia; it’s 1:30 a.m., my last few hours in Ann Arbor, and I should be asleep, given the work we have to do in the morning and the cleaning and the driving to Iowa.
But I’m still up, with an allergy attack and a very restless beagle, who refuses to sleep in the bedroom in my friend Ann’s house, who so graciously opened her home to us on our tonight so we wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.
Bayley just will not sleep in Ann’s daughter’s room, so we came back downstairs, where he had a long drink of water and finished off his dinner, which had been waiting for him since around 3 p.m. He finally has plopped down on the kitchen tile and is snoring. I have no idea why he prefers the cool, hard kitchen floor to a bed, but I have never pretended to understand the inner workings of beagles.
His world, for the 15th time in his short life, is topsy-turvy again and he’s about to spend seven longs days in the Jeep and seven long nights in strange LaQuinta hotels. Poor dog has lived in five states and visited 14 others. He’s gotten around quite a bit in 12 years.
But he looks good to go for another round, which is a good thing. In a short six hours, Ann will wake us up and we’ll head back to the apartment, where we still have to clean the ‘fridge and mop the floor and vacuum the living room and basement. I also have to finish packing and loading the Jeep, which was looking like a hopeless cause this evening, until I realized you can get rooftop bags that attach to the luggage rack and free up much needed space inside the car. Our first mission in the morning will be to search out such a thing.
Instead of sleeping, I’m waiting for the Alavert to take over and the head to stop pounding. Naturally, the internet beckoned. My niece in Fort Worth(less) tried to IM me earlier in the evening and show me pics of her fiance, who I’ve never met and probably won’t until the wedding next June. It’s a weird, strange thing to be 42 and have young nieces who are getting married.
Viewing her website led me to her brother’s MySpace site, which has strange and wonderful pictures and weird and mystical writings. Which loops my thinking right around to the recurring theme of my teaching: internet safety/privacy.
(Warning: Favorite subject/broken record rant follows. Scroll down and ignore. I’m a harmless ol’ coot complainin’ ‘bout the whippersnappers for the next couple of paragraphs.)
Does my nephew’s generation really think that ANYthing they post on MySpace, etc., is really private? That only their friends see their … interesting (given my family’s hyper-religious background) pictures, comments, and other postings? Maybe they think us old fogies are terminally clueless and don’t know how to use the internets, forgetting that at least one of their uncles is young enough to have been creating websites and doing web consulting (and, for that matter, trading naughty IMs with guys from New York to California) since they were little bitty snot-nosed kids in elementary school. And that said uncle is married to a research librarian and knows a thing or two about how to use the new-fangled Inter-netty thang to find out some v-e-r-y interesting things.
Or, in this particular case, have I been so distant from the Texhoma nexus of the family that I’m off the radar, a non-entity who jets in occasionally from the faggy, er, I mean, foggy place, bitches about Oklahoma, and then jets back to his fabulous social life of slurping Jello shooters off the taut, muscle-rippled bodies of 21-year-old gym bunnies on Gay Pride Parade floats every weekend? Or so they seem to think when the reality is so much more … boring?
I can do little about the family thing, save sending a little smack-down IM or e-mail, but I will have to do something at the new job. Middle school teachers, particularly in language arts and social studies, have to not only get ON the band wagon, but get out in front and lead the band. Or else terminally un-hip and un-cool uncles 2,500 miles away might just run across pictures better left to dark desk drawers. Trouble is, most teachers not only are not leading the band, but they haven’t a clue that a band just went through town, although they have heard tell that some contraption called a wagon might have been spotted in the neighborhood.
It does make me wonder a bit if I shouldn’t be educating teachers and parents instead of seventh graders.
‘Nuff. 30 minutes have gone by, the Alavert is beginning to work, I’m starting to bore even myself with what I call the “Whippersnapper Routine;” you know the one, where your dad’s standard phrases like, “kids today,” and “you young whippersnappers,” and “when I was your age” come out of your mouth and you mean them. I have renewed a vow to shut my mouth, forcibly with my hand if necessary, this year in the classroom if I feel the “Whippersnapper Routine” coming on.
And now I have to go smack down another sort of whippersnapper; it’s 2:12 a.m. and the beagle just jumped off the kitchen tile and starting howling. God only knows at what, but I’m pretty sure he woke up the longsuffering friends who are putting up with us today/tonight (not to mention the entire frickin’ neighborhood) and gave them a heart attack. Beagle baying at 2 a.m. wakes the dead and scares the living to death.
Ann, I owe you, big time!
Now where did I put that muzzle??
Night, y’all.
Farewell, Ann Arbor!
This is the last post on ASquared AirBeagle. And my last blog post from Ann Arbor.
Beginning Tuesday night, we become BSquared AirBeagle, the BSquared meaning Brentwood Beagle. The beagle and I will leave Ann Arbor Tuesday morning and drive to Davenport, IA, our first stop. On Sunday, the whole family gets reunited when we meet up with Unca Frankie in Sacramento. The beagle will be so happy. As will I. It seems like this two months of separation has been an eternity, and I can’t wait to be together with Frank again.
This would be a good place and time to sum up my three years in Ann Arbor. But … I’m too tired, too brain-fried. It’s been an incredibly hectic year and in the space of a few very short weeks, I will have gone from being a grad student in Michigan to being a middle school teacher in California. The pace of this summer is like none before it; I’ve never experienced such a headlong rush of a period of time in my life.
I’ll miss certain aspects of Ann Arbor. Others, not so much … chiefly, the way people drive and the abysmally dreary weather. There’s something else I won’t miss, but my momma taught me to be more polite than that, so I’ll keep it to myself. Oh, yeah, and Michigan left turns, which are really right-left-left turns.
I’ll think more about it after the move is underway. The movers arrive here in just about six or seven hours, then I have some cleaning/disposal to do, then a farewell party with friends. Tuesday morning, it’s on the road again and I’ll try to think of pithy things to write about our three years in Ann Arbor.
I can’t believe it’s over. So long, ASquared! And thanks!
I’ll post again Tuesday night from Iowa. Y’all take care!
Countdown Begins
No, not of the shuttle Discovery, of my final week in Ann Arbor.
It now seems like an amazingly fast three years. I’ve so many wonderful friends and accomplished some incredible (for me) things and I don’t regret our time here at all.
But new jobs, houses and vistas await. Time to get on to the next phase of life.
At this point, the Beagle and I will be driving to Davenport, IA, a week from today, Tuesday the 11th. Then it’s up to Mitchell, SD, then over to Mount Rushmore and Casper, WY, on the 13th. The 14th will see the Beagle posed in front of Old Faithful and spending the night in West Yellowstone, MT. On the 15th, we point it towards home, heading south to Twin Falls, ID. On the 16th, we’ll do the Nevada thing, ending up in downtown Reno. The 17th will see us back in Yosemite National Park. Finally, on the 18th, we’ll pull into Brentwood and start the unpacking. I have new teacher orientation the following Monday, the 24th, and I’ll be teaching 125 7th graders the Monday after that, the 31st.
Suddenly, it’s all moving so fast.
But first, a farewell party with my fellow ELMACers next Monday night will be a celebration of my final Michigan moments. It will definitely be bittersweet, just like our time here.
I’ll start posting lots of things here during our trip. I’m not the researcher and interesting writer that Frank is and since he’s not going to be on this trip, it might be a bit dull (in more ways than one). But I’ll give it my best shot.
A2 to B2
As you can see from Frank’s post below (and the graffiti on the masthead above), half of us is in California and the other half is still in Michigan. (Or is that 1/3 in California and 2/3 in Michigan, counting the beagle? Better put it that way …)
Yes, I wouldn’t have minded, in some ways, staying here. The job situation is abysmal, however, and there are some other features of A-Squared that I really won’t miss (namely, hyper-aggressive drivers, particularly the women, and the gray, depressing weather). We’ve had our ups and downs here. I’ve enjoyed the wide-open spaces (compared to the Bay Area) and the cheaper prices and the better education system. I’ve hated the political scene, the A-Squared folderol snooty nonsense and did I mention the gray, depressing weather?
The beagle and I will be here for another couple of months. At this point, I have to finish the final work on my master’s degree for UM. That all ends on 15-June (a month from today, thank god) with much celebrating. Then comes the packing and the retracing of steps we took three years ago (has it already been three years since we moved to Ann Arbor?!). I plan to bid adieu to Midwestern Wholesomeness around the Fourth of July (tentatively) and head the Jeep west, to return to the decadent Land of Fruits and Nuts from whence I came.
My feelings about returning to Caly-forny are complicated. In many ways, I’m glad to go. In some ways, I dread it. I dread the crowds and the freeways and the expense. And Ann Arbor certainly doesn’t have a corner on snobbiness. But I miss the weather and having my marriage (at least somewhat) legally recognized and the job situation is so much better and we have friends there (one of whom had to be evacuated down the slides from his Palm Springs to San Francisco Alaska Airlines flight this afternoon when the MD-80 filled with smoke after landing at SFO … but he’s fine and no injuries, thank goodness).
The education climate there is difficult. Very difficult. It will be a very, very interesting first year of teaching. And I will greatly miss all of the wonderful friends I’ve made during this year. One already landed a job; she will be teaching third grade at a school on the lower east side of Manhattan. So, the end is nigh anyway. Our little band of comrades is breaking up, preparing to go hither and yon.
And so it’s time to say farewell to A-Squared AirBeagle. The site’s not going anywhere; I’ll just re-brand it. I’m considering B-Squared AirBeagle (which stands for Berkeley and the Bay), but that’s pretty obscure. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.
In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my final two months as a sort-of Michigander. The Beagle and Frank and I thank you for reading over the past three years. The next three in California should be … interesting, to say the least, so stay tuned!
Prez. Gore Addresses the Nation
If only …
Goodbye Ann Arbor
I’m in California as of yesterday afternoon ….. goodbye, Michigan!
There a lot of friends and colleagues I’ll miss, and also a lot of things about Ann Arbor that I’ll miss. It’s amazing how many people have told me that they’re envious that I was coming back to California. It’s true that Michigan is going through a lot of pain right now, with a moribund economy, a flailing auto industry, and a state of what can only be called political gridlock. But if things had worked out differently, if the stars had aligned around the possibility of both of us getting good jobs and settling down in Ann Arbor, I can’t think of any prohibitive reason that we wouldn’t have done it, at least for a few years. (Steve may have a different take, though.) Proposal 2 was a daunting obstacle, but (I hate to say it) a lot of other states have passed or are getting ready to pass similar initiatives. If you’re making your choices about where to live based solely on whether laws have been passed against you, you’re giving victory to bigots.
Alas, settling down in Ann Arbor wasn’t to be.
Goodbye, Ann Arbor. I’ll miss you.
Corruption Enthroned
I’d heard of this from somewhere before (definitely not in the main media). As as always, « Molly Ivins cuts to the chase » and gives us the info we need to know.
Seems that our bribed and paid-for House of Representatives is stripping health safeguards after the food industry ‘spared no expense to ensure passage’ of a particularly odious bill.
What, people are surprised? You voted for the Rebooblican agenda, now eat it!
‘Earlier this month, the House effectively repealed more than 200 state food safety and public health protections. Say, when was the last time you enjoyed a little touch of food poisoning? Coming soon to a stomach near you. What was really impressive about HR 4167, the “National Uniformity for Food Act,” is that it was passed without a public hearing. “The House is trampling crucial health safeguards in every state without so much as a single public hearing,” said Erik Olson, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This just proves the old adage, ‘Money talks.’ The food industry spared no expense to ensure passage.” Thirty-nine attorneys general, plus health, consumer and environmental groups, are opposing the law. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the food industry has spent more than $81 million on campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.
‘The bill would automatically override any state measure that is stronger than federal law, the opposite of what a sensible law would do. The NRDC says state laws protecting consumers from chemical additives, bacteria and ingredients that can trigger allergic reactions would be barred, and that includes alerts about chemical contamination in fish, health protection standards for milk and eggs, and warnings about chemicals or toxins such as arsenic, mercury and lead. Happy eating, all.’
—Alternet
Molly quotes Abraham Lincoln:
‘Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in few hands and the republic is destroyed.’
Consider it destroyed.
Moving On
Yep … Steve’s right. After almost 32 months in Michigan, nearly but not quite 3 years, we’re on our way back to the Bay Area, something I have to admit I truly never thought I’d never be saying. (Which points up ever more succinctly the wisdom of that old adage “Never say never.”)
It’s been close to 3 years of: an unforgettable cross-country move; crushing, seemingly endless toil in grad school (for both Steve and I); long nights in the basement trying to get assignments and papers and presentations and lesson plans finished before sunrise; stretches of “week after week of single-digits and howling winds — a sunless horror, devoid of joy or hope” (to revisit that unforgettable turn of phrase from Dixie Franklin‘s Michigan travel book); lots of snow, lots of summer humidity, lots of thunder and lightning, and one terrifying tornado our very first night in town; lots of beagle howls and walks and maintenance; brazen squirrels and amazing birds (jaunty robins and cardinals, majestic ravens, obnoxious mockingbirds); college football madness; Ann Arbor Art Fairs; Dairy Queen excursions; several films at the Michigan Theater; Huron River walks (and one excellent paddleboat afternoon); a year of having to live with the miserable, cynical debate about the passage of Proposal 2 (not to mention the even more miserable and cynical 2004 presidential election); uncounted mornings sitting in Cafe Ambrosia on Maynard listening to jazz on WEMU and reading the New York Times or going through notes for class; one Harry Connick concert and one Michael Moore talk; several gymnastics events; one intense trip to Detroit during a monster blizzard; a few very memorable trips across the border into Ontario (once for our Canadian wedding ceremony); a couple of trips to Lansing (mostly school-related, thus not much sightseeing); and one very early visit to the breathtaking Leelanau Peninsula (unfortunately, our grad student schedules made it very difficult to see much more of Michigan than the southeast corner, which is regrettable).
The news is that I have a fantastic new job at UC Berkeley that I’ll be starting on May 15. With the job market for librarians the way it’s been, and rumors of budget cuts in the air at the University of Michigan, I’m very fortunate to have found a full-time job that dovetails so well with my interests in government and politics.
Michigan is really an indescribable place (despite Dixie Franklin’s brave attempt), and even after nearly 3 years of posting entries about my impressions of it, I’m at a loss as to how to summarize what it’s been like to live here (other than to realize that living this close to Motown has cemented my passion for R&B and the blues). Bruce Catton (quoted in the Franklin book) wrote, “Michigan is perhaps the strangest state in the Union, a place where the past, the present and the future are all tied up together in a hard knot.” I could possibly agree with the first part of his sentence, but the second part? You could make that “past/present/future” analogy about virtually every state in the Union (except maybe California, which lives to destroy the past).
There are people and places in Michigan that I will miss (Cafe Ambrosia!), and there are many things about being back in California that are going to take some getting used to. All in all, I think I’m making the right move, though, and as I said, I consider myself very fortunate.
Oops.
Has it really been almost two months since we posted anything? Yeegads. Apologies.
Let’s see. In the past two months, I’ve survived a narrow brush with winter, a hellish brush with three intense grad school courses orginally designed to be taken over four months crammed down into one, hideously exhausting but fun days in the second grade, a professor or two from hell, a blond undergrad from Toledo who smashed up the side of my Jeep, an unfortunately less-than-fruitful trip to Colorado and … skinned knees, winter-induced arthritis pain, a small fire in the clothes dryer and missing by only two hours one of A2’s two winter suicides who chose the parking garage my classmates and I use while we attend classes at the School of Education.
Plus, Frank has news. I won’t let on except to say that ASquared AirBeagle’s days are numbered; come mid-May, one-half of us will be returning whence we came and come mid-July, the beagle and the other half of us will be joining him back in whence we came (I have to stay here to finish my master’s on June 15th and end the lease on the townhouse).
(Weird side-note: WordPress has this cutesy little plugin which produces quotes from Hello Dolly at the top of the administration panel. The one currently up there as I write about leaving Michigan says, ‘It’s so nice to have you back where you belong.’ Which is both sorta cute and sorta creepy at the same time. Maybe a better song selection would be, ‘California, here we come. Right back where we started from.’)
All of which is anxiety-inducing, so I have to go plan a writing workshop minilesson for tomorrow. Apologies for the long silence. Thanks for following A2 AB for this three years; it’s been quite an … interesting time here in the great white yankee north. There’s still four months to go, so I’ll have lots more to say. Maybe when by July when it finally gets warm again up here and my fingers thaw out.
Ciao.
Random Stuff
1. Brokeback Mountain. In 30 seconds. « Re-enacted by bunnies ». Hilarious.
2. The opening of The Simpsons done in « live action ». Excellent.
3. Autistic basketball team manager enters game in final minutes, « scores 20 points ». Inspirational.
4. Me? I’m fine. Barely hanging in there. The whole grad school sucks thing. But graduation is less than two months away, so it’s all good. Don’t go ‘way. I’ll be back in June.
True Journalism
Molly Ivins … I’m more in love with her with every column she writes.
« Her latest » shows why she’s a true journalist and all the others are just empty, meaningless hacks. She covers the story from an angle entirely missed by everyone else:
‘Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal—only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: “Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants.”
‘In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature—a “lock ‘em all up and throw away the key” type—the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime neophyte to see Harry Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little basic education on the cost of prisons.
‘When Whittington was the chairman of Texas Public Finance Authority, he had a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds. As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no effect on crime.’
—The Huffington Post
Molly, one in a million.
The Efficiency of Dictatorships
David Brancaccio interviewed Lawrence B. Wilkerson this weekend in an interview that was completely ignored by a country which really should be paying attention. Wilkerson was Chief of Staff at the Department of State from August 2002 to January 2005 and helped Imperial Foreign Minister Colin Powell make the case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq before the United Nations.
A military veteran and lecturer at war colleges, Wilkerson is no flaming terrorist-loving liberal. « What he has to say about the Emperor’s cabal is quite fascinating »:
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: There’s an argument that swashbuckling executives, Defense Secretary and the Vice President making executive decisions without involving the bureaucracy is very efficient, gets the …
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: … job done.
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: But you’re saying that …
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This is the argument that’s marshaled by presidents from Truman on. Although I will say that Truman and Eisenhower were probably the two least apartment to do this sort of thing.
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well think about it. Involving, just for starters, the entire National Security Council on, for instance, evaluating the intelligence that— would help inform a decision to go to war in Iraq. And that’s going to slow things down. They’re going to be dissenting opinions. You’re never going to get that war done.
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: You mean kind of like what our founding fathers intended when they put the Constitution together? Checks and balances, dissent would be listened to and so forth and so on. … Ferdinand Eberstadt writes to Walter Lippmann and … Ferdinand says to Lippmann, “I understand that this may be a more effective process, that a few men making a decision maybe a more effective process, a secretive process may be very efficient.” But suppose we get a dumb man? Suppose we get people who can’t make good decisions as FDR was pretty good at. I’m worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we’ve designed than I would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And that dumb strongman is his felicitous phrase.
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: You’re worried that we not have come to that but that we’re heading down this path of …
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh I think it’s come to that. I think we’ve had some decisions at this administration that were more or less dictates. We’ve had a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very selected administration lawyers doesn’t pertain the way it has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the Constitution.
‘And these people marshal such stellar lights as … Alexander Hamilton. They haven’t even read Federalist Six. I’m sure they haven’t. Where Alexander Hamilton lays down his markers about the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief executive. This is not the way America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.
‘DAVID BRANCACCIO: And if the system were shown to work that might be one thing. But … in the case of recent US for…
‘LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Dictatorships work on occasion. You’re right. Dictatorships do work but I … I’m like Ferdinand Eberstadt. I’d prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.’
—PBS.org
Everyone laughed back on 18-Dec-00 when the Emperor said, and I quote, ‘If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I’m the dictator.’
Anyone still find it funny?
Progressive-Conservative Party. U.S.A.
R.J. Eskow, writing in the Huffington Post, « puts forth a manifesto for ‘progressive conservatives », which has 13 points:
‘1. To conserve our traditional moral values by standing up for for our longstanding national mission – to protect the weak, house the homeless, and defend the powerless.
’2. To conserve our Constitution by protecting us from unreasonable searches and seizures, much of it performed in ways our forebears couldn’t have imagined.
’3. To conserve free enterprise by defending smaller businesses from the depredations of supercorporations that suppress supply and demand – with the collaboration of the politicians they’ve bought and paid for.
’4. To conserve our democracy by attacking corruption and all forms of vote fraud, electronic and otherwise.
’5. To conserve our rights as free Americans to live as we please, love whom we please, and liberate ourselves from the “mind-forged manacles” of preconception and bigotry.
’6. To conserve our liberties by standing up for freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. That means conserving the separation of church and state, too. It was good enough for the founders and it’s good enough for us.
’7. To conserve our environment by protecting it for the many against the greedy few.
’8. To conserve our national assets by spending no more than we collect, and by making sure the wealthiest among us contribute their fair share to the country that made them wealthy.
’9. To conserve America’s military might by using it only when needed, and only where other avenues have failed.
’10. To conserve the bipartisanship and dialog that’s been the lifeblood of our political system, by dismantling the debate-crushing machine that’s hijacked Congress for the last five years.
’11. To conserve the values of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, which are under attack from all three branches of government.
’12. To conserve a freedom we’ve never had to name and defend before – “Freedom of Science” – from the commisars of the right whocientists what they can research and how they’re allowed to discuss it in public.
’13. And lastly, to conserve the future itself by ensuring we feed, care for, and educate all of our children.’
—Huffington Post
Somebody get it together and form this party and get candidates on local, state and national ballots and I’ll vote for it. Straight party ticket every time.
Storm Warning
« Yet another reason to hate Ma Bell »
‘The National Security Agency has secured the cooperation of large telecommunications companies, including AT&T, MCI and Sprint, in its efforts to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls by suspected terrorists, according to seven telecommunications executives. The executives asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the program. AT&T, MCI and Sprint had no official comment.’
—USAToday
A perfect storm … the convergence of increasing state power and increasing corporate power. Batten down the hatches.
Just Thinking …
It was interesting last night during the Golden Globes presentation of clips from Brokeback Mountain: scenes involving the two male leads involved them hitting each other or herding sheep or riding horses or solo shots; scenes involving the male leads’ interactions with the female characters involved weddings, kissing, hugging, etc.
Speaking Truth to Power
« President Gore spoke today ». The President compared the wiretapping of Martin Luther King to the broad surveillance now imposed on Americans by the Boy Emperor:
‘Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”
‘The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. ‘Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.
‘Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously? ‘It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.
‘We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens’ right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the [Emperor]‘s apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.
‘I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, “The [Emperor] has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will.”’
—Raw Story
But don’t bet on it. The Golden Globes are on and Angelina Jolie is pregnant and they didn’t even tell Jennifer! Oh, snap!
Still, good on yer, President Gore. Good on yer!
Remember
Today: « Visit. Remember. Think. »
High Crimes and Misdemeanors
With the crush of having three graduate courses which have four months worth of work squeezed into just over a month, I don’t have much time for blogging. But this three-day weekend is helping me out.
Grad school is intense, with lots of tedious work and pretentious snarkery, but I still have straight As and we’re more than halfway done. These three classes are the nadir of the year, at least for me: research, science methods and teaching/learning. They have their engaging moments, but for the most part, they’re pretty dry and far removed from reality. But hey, you jump through the hoops, you get your job, you get on with life.
Speaking of reality and the three-day weekend, I see that « President Gore will speak on Martin Luther King Day », and he has some choice words for the Usurper:
‘In a major address slated for delivery Monday in Washington, the … President is expected to argue that the Bush administration has created a “Constitutional crisis” by acting without the authorization of the Congress and the courts to spy on Americans and otherwise abuse basic liberties. Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language. The Democrat who beat Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the 2000 presidential election has agreed to deliver his remarks in a symbolically powerful location: the historic Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But this will not be the sort of cautious, bureacratic speech for which Gore was frequently criticized during his years in the Senate and the White House. Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a “call to arms” in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.
‘… Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican who served as one of the most conservative members of the House, plans to introduce Gore. Barr, an outspoken critic of the abuses of civil liberties contained in the USA Patriot Act critic who has devoted his post-Congressional years to defending the Bill of Rights, refers to the [emperor]‘s secret authorization of domestic wiretapping as “an egregious violation of the electronic surveillance laws.” Count on Gore, who has pulled few punches in the speeches he has delivered in recent months, to be at least as caustic.’
—The Nation
Now when Bob Barr teams up with Al Gore, you know it’s getting weird and serious. While I applaud tomorrow’s effort, more people who are actually in power need to start growing a spine and chanting ‘Impeachment!’ as often as the mikes are on. Yes, I know Dracula is waiting in the number two spot, but if they actually bring impeachment charges, he’ll just have yet another heart attack and keel over. In the meantime, Denny Hastert can get indicted and we’ll make it a clean sweep of all the fascist bastards.
Bring it on.
Winter, Blah
Not much snow (ergo, not much winter). We’re almost a month into winter, and it’s been mostly rain, fog, overcast skies, and the occasional stretch of sunshine. Last year at about this time Steve was driving us through the heaviest snow of the season to get to the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Right now about the only evidence of snow is the 4-foot-high pile of forlorn-looking icy gray sludge sitting in the fire lane next to the carport outside the house.
I’ll still take falling snow over falling rain any day of the week. Oh, well, at least I’m not in water-logged Seattle, where it’s rained now for 27 days straight.
Brokeback Nation
We went to see Brokeback Mountain last weekend. It was … all the superlatives that have been said about it: beautiful, moving, heartbreaking, terrific performances, lived up to the hype, etc. etc. etc.
I was a trifle detached about it, however, I have to admit. See, I’m really sick of the American macho man who has to hide for 30 years because of who he really is thing (see Knotty Boy’s critique below).
Tired of living in a society where everyone watches this movie, says, ‘Isn’t that sad?’ and life just goes on.
Bored with ignorant ‘real cowboys’ being interviewed on CNN about this movie and snortin’ out, ‘Ain’t no sucha thang as a gay cowboy out here!’ when of course there are.
Nauseated that Matthew Shephard is still dead and James Dobson and Pope Been-a-Nazi XVI are still alive and exercising such poisonous control over millions of minds.
More than a little angry that Jack’s plan for himself and the love of his life to go off and live on a ranch together peacefully for 30 years is nigh-on impossible in a country that prides itself on freedom, liberty and equal justice for all.
Part of my detachment stems from growing up around the type of atmosphere portrayed in the movie. I know one real-life person in Oklahoma who right now has lived the same kind of lie for the last 30 years that Jack Twist lived in the story, longing for a man, stuck in a heterosexual relationship that was foisted on him by society in the 70s by people like his own siblings, who once famously admitted to wishing they had drowned him when he was a child because they suspected he was gay.
I guess, in other words, the movie hits me too close to home. I, thanks to the accident of being born in 1963 and not being 20 years old in 1963, was able to escape. So many have not and do not.
Awesome movie. Horrible reality.
Welcome Knottyboy
Added to the blogroll tonight: « Knottyboy », aka I Bet After Sex He Smokes a Ham. All the way from Etna, Wyoming, ladies and gentlemen.
A sample:
‘I saw it. After months of hoopla I saw it…Brokeback Mountain. Now don’t get me wrong, the sexually charged scenes were intense, raw and beautiful. And Ang Lee did a great job of filming and the scenery [wasn’t Wyoming except for a few bits, Canada mostly] was breathtaking and set the tone of this outdoorsy flik. But for the love of god let’s not produce another pathetic-closeted-fag movie. I mean really! Some say that’s how it was in the 70’s for gays. Well pardon me my dear but the calendar I have next to my desk says 2005.
For the sake of your mother’s eyes won’t you please stop drudging up the past in a way that shows just how fucked up the identity of gays were. Oh, and this doesn’t even cover the 5 women’s lives these two mentally fucked up. You like dick? Yeah? OK you’re what we like to call gay. Now go off find some cock of your own, buy a fixer-upper and turn around and sell it for oodles of cash. In the mean time have a couple of dogs and read the Theater section of the New York Times. THE END. END OF STORY. No blood, no one has to get bashed, no one has to watch these two “confused”, albeit muscly men rifle in their trousers for each others willie, knowing full well that they’ll be going home to their chain smoking, booze binging wives.
‘I thought gay used to mean happy? Well let’s try to do our parts please.’
—Knottyboy
Breath of fresh air. And check out his profile. There’s hope for Wyoming yet.
Notes on Caribou Coffee
Caribou Coffee (corporate headquarters in Minneapolis) about a month and a half ago opened a franchise on the corner of Packard and East Stadium, a somewhat curious place for a coffee house except for the fact that it’s a one of the busiest intersections in town and will attract, presumably, plenty of vehicular traffic. The same spot used to be an independent market that didn’t get a lot of business and had dust on the shelves. Now the building has been subdivided into the Caribou franchise, a liquor store, and a smoke shop. It’ll be interesting to see how long the Caribou survives on this corner. The other corners of the intersection are occupied by a gas station, another gas station (and Circle K), and a branch of Bank One.
Caribou has an interesting setup. Apparently, the corporate founders’ “‘aha’ moment” was achieved at the summit of Sable Mountain in Alaska, which is the first time I’ve ever heard of a spectacular mountain view being the inspiration for the founding of a coffee shop chain (“the breathtaking panoramic view became the entrepreneurial vision for Caribou Coffee”). The insides of each store are set up to resemble a mountain lodge, although the resemblance is strictly incidental in the case of this particular store, since it’s so small and cramped that it’s more like an apartment done up in corporate-lodge decor. The shop looks deceptively spacious from the outside but when you get inside you realize that most of the space is taken up by the counter and everything behind it. There are several cutsomer tables at the front of the store, smashed up as close to the windows as they’ll go. It’s hard to determine if the idea is to attract sitting customers or to-go customers; there’s not really enough room for more than a dozen sitters, but the room for people to stand in line to order and get their fare is ridiculously inadequate, and there’s lots of awkward cutting through spaces in line and bumping into people who are waiting to pick up their carry-out items.
On the plus side, although the aggressive faux-friendliness of the baristas is similar to that of Starbucks baristas (though not quite as steroidal), and the Caribou slogan is somewhat obnoxious (“Life is short — stay awake for it”), the tea is very tasty, and there’s the nice touch of the barista handing you a small cup along with your order, presumably so you can dump excess and make room for milk/cream if you wish. Not something that Starbucks ever does.
Lost in 2005
There were some remarkable people who left us in 2005:
‘When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses.’
—Shirley Chisholm, who died 1-Jan-05
‘“We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch.” The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. “We put an instrument inside,” he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer or sing “God Bless America” or count backwards. … “We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded.” … When she began to become incoherent, they stopped’
—Dr. James W. Watts and Dr. Walter Freeman, report on frontal lobotomy on Rosemary Kennedy, who died 7-Jan-05
‘I had a happy marriage and a nice wife. I accomplished everything you can. What more can you want?’
—Max Schmeling, who died 2-Feb-05
‘Without alienation, there can be no politics.’
—Arthur Miller, who died10-Feb-05
‘America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.’
—Hunter S. Thompson, who died 20-Feb-05
‘Me, I’m good at nothing but walking on the set with a pretty dress.’
—Sandra Dee, who died 20-Feb-05
‘I’m just not the glamour type. Glamour girls are born, not made. And the real ones can be glamorous even if they don’t wear magnificent clothes. I’ll bet Lana Turner would look glamorous in anything.’
—Teresa Wright, who died 6-Mar-05
‘It’s inevitable that the company come back.’
—John DeLorean, who died 19-Mar-05
‘War is a defeat for humanity.’
—Pope John Paul II, who died 2-Apr-05
‘There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever… money, for instance, or war.’
—Saul Bellow, who died 5-Apr-05
‘I work hard in social work, public relations, and raising the Grimaldi heirs.’
—Princess Grace about her life with Prince Rainier Grimaldi of Monaco, who died 6-Apr-05
‘Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.’
—Andrea Dworkin, who died 9-Apr-05
‘Well, the musicals give emphasis to love, longing, melancholy, sadness. All of that is always there.’
—Ismail Merchant, who died 25-May-05
‘I don’t really care how I am remembered as long as I bring happiness and joy to people.’
—Eddie Albert, who died 26-May-05
‘I’d like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period.’
—Luther Vandross, who died 1-Jul-05
‘There’s nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who’s in love with him.’
—Ernest Lehman, who died 2-Jul-05
‘Abhorrence of apartheid is a moral attitude, not a policy.’
—Edward Heath, who died 17-Jul-05
‘Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.’
—William C. Westmoreland, who died 18-Jul-05
‘I’m not tired of [beam me up Scotty] at all. Good gracious, it’s been said to me for just about 31 years. It’s been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It’s been fun.’
—James Doohan, who died 20-Jul-05
‘I will be father to the young, brother to the elderly. I am but one of you; whatever troubles you, troubles me; whatever pleases you, pleases me.’
—King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz, who died 1-Aug-05
‘There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.’
—Robin Cook, who died 6-Aug-05
‘It’s a brassiere! You know about those things, you’re a big boy now. … It’s brand new. Revolutionary up-lift: No shoulder straps, no back straps, but it does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge. … An aircraft engineer down the penninsula designed it; he worked it out in his spare time.’ [from Vertigo]
—Barbara Bel Geddes, who died 8-Aug-05
‘I think Alexander Hamilton has received a little bit of short shrift from history, and I think Jefferson has been treated a little bit too generously. I admire them both, but I admire them both about equally.’
—William Rehnquist, who died 3-Sep-05
‘I’ve often wondered if maybe I tried to tell too many stories in The Sand Pebbles.’
—Robert Wise, who died 14-Sep-05
‘Sid Luft was no gentleman. He was a weight lifter. He was a former test pilot. He was a gambler. He’s still one of those old-time Hollywood guys.’
—Lorna Luft about her father, Sidney Luft, who died 15-Sep-05
‘The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.’
—Simon Wiesenthal, who died 20-Sep-05
‘I said to myself, where are we living? In the United States of America where you’re innocent until proven guilty, or Nazi Germany with the Gestapo calling?’
—Tommy Bond during the Robert Blake trial. Bond died 24-Sep-05
‘All I was doing was trying to get home from work.’
—Rosa Parks, who died 24-Sep-05
‘I- I- I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall – looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it.’
—Donald Pleasance in 1978’s Halloween, produced by Moustapha Akkad, who died 11-Nov-05
‘The changes in both radio and television are mind-boggling.’
—Ralph Edwards, who died 16-Nov-05
‘Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.’
—Eugene McCarthy, who died 10-Dec-05
‘There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at.’
—Richard Pryor, who died 10-Dec-05
‘Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.’
—William Proxmire, who died 14-Dec-05
Lost in '05: Hunter S. Thompson
The year that was: « Goodbye Hunter S. Thompson »:
‘‘Politics is the art of controlling your environment.’ That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s President’ has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World — or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property — or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons — or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.’
—Hunter S. Thompson via John Cusack in the Huffington Post
Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays!
Blogs?
Apparently, one of the words to make the annual Lake Superior State Banished Words List is “blog” (and, according to the list, all of “its variations, including blogger, blogged, blogging, blogosphere”). The reasoning behind the banishment is unclear — except that, again according to the list, “[m]any who nominated it were unsure of the meaning,” which of course is always an excellent reason to banish a word.
The continued disjuncture between the “blogosphere” and the majority of the American “peoplesphere” is no laughing matter, though. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in March found that 48% of its respondents never read blogs.
The “blogosphere” has been seduced, partly by the mass media’s combination of anxiety and fascination with it, and partly by its own echo chamber, into believing it has far more influence and importance than it does. It’d be great if blogs could change the world, or even the political landscape, but although you can marshal some evidence that political and cultural elites (and certain specialized readers) care about the effect of blogs, if not their content, when you come across cultural mileposts such as the Banished Words List, you start to wonder whether blogs are much more than a tempest in a teapot. It’s not a question I have the pretense to an answer to. I’m a certified blog addict, and I would feel very de-oxygenated without my daily diet of blog reading (which is perhaps a problem in itself), but when I step back and look at the attention paid by the “blogosphere” to certain events and stories (for example, the revelations that Bush has been authorizing wiretaps of American citizens since October 2001) in contrast with the attention paid the same stories by the mass media, I wonder what blogs actually do, in the larger scheme of things.
I don’t think the response is to sneer at people who don’t read blogs (though I can see the “blogosphere” reacting in such a way). Increasing numbers of Americans get their information online, but is there a corresponding increase in the numbers who get that information from blogs? If not, why not? And would the answer to that question only matter to a blogger?
Reg Dwight Gets Hitched
High-profile celebrity civil commitment ceremony: check. Quaint British setting (the same location as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ ceremony in April): check. Crowds of paparazzi: check. Almost as many everyday well-wishers: check.
Only, the couple is Elton John and David Furnish, and for some reason, in the UK (and in Canada, and in a number of other Western countries) it just really isn’t that big of a deal. “He’s a queen, but he’s our queen,” one Brit cracked, as she held aloft a banner congratulating the couple. When the first ceremonies were held in Belfast (Belfast! ! !) on Monday, there were a number of protesters, to be sure. But I didn’t see a single torch, pitchfork, or gibbet.
Meanwhile, politicians in this country do everything in their power to make sure that not only gay weddings, but any law or resolution that sanctions same-sex relationships, is a crime against the state. You are made to feel like a felon (or worse, as though you are un-American) for wanting to visit your partner if he’s incapacitated and winds up in a hospital bed.
There was a long article in last Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine about a two-woman couple from Fredericksburg, Virginia who left the state for Maryland because of that state’s restrictive laws against same-sex couples. The reporter had an online exchange with readers after the story appeared, and along with the expected rage from those who questioned why so much space and time was wasted on a same-sex couple (and, as well, the surprising numbers of Virginians who expressed their regret that the couple left the state) were a few messages from readers who said that they knew gay people and thought they were “nice” but didn’t see why they should be making such a fuss.
I can actually muster more comprehension for the messages from the people who said that all gays currently living in Virginia should pack their bags and leave the commonwealth (with good riddance).
Time for a Trial. Then Jail.
Another Ann Arbor Winter
Winter has settled in with a vengeance and the solstice isn’t even until tomorrow (at 1.30pm, to be exact). The storms began well before Thanksgiving and there have been at least three or four of them since then. The temps have been getting steadily chillier and chillier, and the snow on the ground, since it’s never completely melting, is semi-deliquescing and then re-solidifying into unfriendly slates of sometimes invisible gray snow-and-ice. The ice that forms on the back steps makes it hard for the dog to go out and do his routine.
There have been nights when I’ve walked home from the bus stop and heard absolutely nothing in the air except the sound of my own feet crunching in the snow on the pavement — one night in particular, it was so eerily silent that I could hear the whoosh of the wind pushing mini-drifts off the surface of the snow that was already on the ground. There’s something to be said for that kind of stillness — you can almost feel the earth turning beneath your feet.
Breaking the Quiet
It’s been a long month ….. working on various projects at the library, including a set of pages about the 2005 election cycle, fighting asthma, hibernating with the onset of what was an earlier onslaught of winter weather than usual. Steve has been fighting asthma and bronchitis, and he’s been snowed under with a heavy ELMAC workload. Coming up for some air now — and hopefully to post a little more regularly than I have been.
Asi es Nuevo Mexico
Stuff like « this » makes me wonder if my desire to return to my home state is really all that wise of an idea:
‘An essay contest at a New Mexico high school asks students to explain why preserving marriage between men and women is vital society and why unborn children merit respect and protection. The contest, at Farmington’s Piedra Vista High School, is being held in connection with an essay contest sponsored by United Families International, an organization whose primary mission is “to strengthen the family by promoting marriage between one man and woman and the protection of human life, including unborn children.” The students were given the option of either writing a response to two questions about preserving marriage and the protection of the “unborn” or submitting a personal narrative.’
—365Gay.com
I wonder … what would the parents have done if the questions were about granting constitutional marriage equality to all and preserving a woman’s right to reproductive choice? I think I already know the answer. Yet another reason to erect not only a wall of separation between church and state in the schools, but also between politics and state in the schools. And yes, there is a difference.
Our World Tonight: Cast of Characters
« Meet George W. Bush »; he can’t catch a break, even from « an old comic book character ».
Now, « meet Deborah Davis ».
And « meet Al-Jazeera ».
And finally, « meet Frank Rich », who sums it all up rather nicely.
Rational Revolution
Joining my rather long blogroll is a fascinating read: « Rational Revolution ». Highly recommended. Check it out.
He Lied, People Died
“How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people?”
Just keep piling up « the evidence » baby, maybe we’ll have an impeachment yet:
‘Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, [the Emperor] was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 [Emperor’s] Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.
‘The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “[Emperor’s] Daily Brief,” a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders. One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.’
—National Journal
How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands?
White Thanksgiving
Wow. Winter’s back. And it’s already Thanksgiving! Where did the year go?
Thank You and Good Night
“… it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.”
Everybody needs to take note of this rather extraordinary thing that has happened: the Iraqi government that our Empire installed has called for our legions to be withdrawn and declared that killing said American legions is « perfectly acceptable »:
‘Leaders of Iraq’s sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq’s opposition had a “legitimate right” of resistance. The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens. The participants in Cairo agreed on “calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces … control the borders and the security situation” and end terror attacks. The conference was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers, as well as leading Sunni politicians.’
—The Guardian
Let’s repeat: The only people who want American troops left in Iraq, under fire from both Islamofascist terrorists AND a ‘democratically elected legitimate’ government are … the Emperor and his hard-core supporters.
The communique went on to condemn attacks on Iraqi civilians and property and called for an end to Abu Ghraib-like abuse and Guantanamo-like snatch-and-grab detainee policies:
‘“Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships,” the document said. The final communique also stressed participants’ commitment to Iraq’s unity and called for the release of all “innocent detainees” who have not been convicted by courts. It asked that allegations of torture against prisoners be investigated and those responsible be held accountable. The statement also demanded “an immediate end to arbitrary raids and arrests without a documented judicial order.”
And what’s significant is that in two places, one specific and one implied, our American troops are seen as legitimate targets for Iraqi resistance.
We have no more reasons to stay. Not national pride (that was dragged into the mud long ago), not Iraqi democracy (that democracy just spoke loud and clear and said, ‘Get your butts outta here or die!’), not world opinion (the coalition is now, what, us and 168 Mongolian warriors? C’mon!), and definitely not a clear and significant majority of the American public which is paying for, bleeding from, dying in and mourning over this illegal, disgusting and immoral war.
I say if there is not a plan for withdrawal in place by Christmas to have our boys and girls home where they belong by, oh, say, Easter, then it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.
Enough is more than enough.
Courage and Conviction vs. Cowardice and Coercion
“Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero!”
We need more courageous heroes like « Rabbi Eric Yoffie » to speak more truth to power:
‘The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them “zealots” who claim a “monopoly on God” while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler’s. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said “religious right” leaders believe “unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person.” “What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?” he said during the movement’s national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday. …
‘He used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children. “We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations,” Yoffie said. “Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”’
—Associated Press
Amen, Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero.
Meanwhile, Fascist FunDumbMentalist leader Jerry Falwell announced he’s starting « a religious holy war against anyone who won’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ », complete with McCarthyite snitches in the public schools:
‘Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces. The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the nation’s public schools. They’ll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: “Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it.”’
—SF Gate
Rabbi Yoffie … Jerry Falwell … not much of a contest as to which one is closest to G-d, eh?
Paradox? Or Hypocrisy?
“Jesus, save us from your followers!”
I’ve been meaning to blog this for weeks, to read it into the record, so to speak. But what with grad school hell, I just haven’t had time.
I’ve long thought that we need to take Jesus back from his followers. And Bill McKibben wrote up « some persuasive arguments » last August in Harper’s:
‘Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
‘Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.
‘And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.’
—Harper’s
McKibben goes on to sum things up nicely in a way with which I wholeheartedly agree:
‘But straight is the path and narrow is the way. The gospel is too radical for any culture larger than the Amish to ever come close to realizing; in demanding a departure from selfishness it conflicts with all our current desires. Even the first time around, judging by the reaction, the Gospels were pretty unwelcome news to an awful lot of people. There is not going to be a modern-day return to the church of the early believers, holding all things in common—that’s not what I’m talking about. Taking seriously the actual message of Jesus, though, should serve at least to moderate the greed and violence that mark this culture. It’s hard to imagine a con much more audacious than making Christ the front man for a program of tax cuts for the rich or war in Iraq. If some modest part of the 85 percent of us who are Christians woke up to that fact, then the world might change.’
To which I can only add, ‘Amen!’
The First Snow of the Season
Yesterday was the first snow of the season ….. just a few flakes, but there was a definite dusting on the ground this morning, and the temps are unmistakably wintry. I guess Indian summer is officially over.
In the Rain
I love this!
‘… I thought he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy muttering of
drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind
grass dams. He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed the fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.’
— Robert Morgan
from Working in the Rain
in the Garrison Keillor anthology Good Poems for Hard Times
Mike Cox: Republican Hypocrite
Before I forget, I didn’t fail to notice that the « Fascist Michigan attorney general who is trying to strip faithful Michigan couples of all their health insurance is himself an adulterer »:
‘Attorney General Mike Cox announced Wednesday he had an extramarital affair and accused the state’s most famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, of threatening to expose him unless Cox dropped an investigation into Fieger’s alleged violation of campaign-finance laws. “A number of years ago, I was unfaithful to my wife, Laura,” an emotional Cox said at a news conference, as his teary-eyed wife stood by his side in his Detroit office. “What I did was inexcusable and it was entirely my fault.” Cox said he told his wife about the affair in 2003, three months after he took office.’
Interesting how the family values crowd was stone cold silent when, according to the Leviticus that they love to quote, they should be throwing stones.
Despicable. Disgusting.
Typical.