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| Most Popular (Male) Names: Most Popular Male names for 2003: The entire alphabetized 1830 census is in "comments" for your perusal. More early Michigan census fun. Y. and friend blasted off down Whittaker. Between Textile and Merritt roads, Whittaker kinks to the west just a bit north of Merritt. Just north of where Paint Creek crosses under Whittaker, on the west side of Whittaker, lies the Comstock or Kelly/Graves Farm Cemetery, 400 feet from the road "in a grove of lilac bushes." We forged in through underbrush into a gloomy overgrown area cradled by the bending creek. At first all was well--we poked around. Then we both kind of got just a bit wary, for no reason at all--there wasn't a soul there. I started sticking closer to my adventurous friend and--call me silly--looking over my shoulder. I'll risk readers thinking me silly by saying I saw, but probably just imagined, two tiny, unsettling anomalies that gave me the willies and no mistake. Then we saw this really weird-looking, I'll go so far as to say evil-looking tree with a hole like an Odin eye pointed straight at us. The whole place had a brooding, unpleasant air that my friend, one of the most down-to-earth, no-nonsense people I know, called "malevolent." That's how I would describe it, too. Phew. We've been to a lot of wild and lonely places--an abandoned farm, lots of graveyards, and that weird junkyard deep in the woods--but this is the first and only time that either of us felt anything like this. Ugh. We were both delighted to leave (and never found any graves). The day's other graveyards were calm and beautiful places, as usual. Freedom Township, home to no fewer than 9 graveyards (most non-urban townships have an average of six), boasts a lovely Lutheran church high on a hill overlooking rolling cornfields--we gazed at this exquisite vista, backed by distant lines of brown trees, enchanted. Many fabulously beautiful, intricate, old German graves here, especially from the Haab family (the road across the street is named Haab, too). Around the corner lies a tiny abandoned 1840 Catholic cemetery, from the onetime St. Francis Catholic church, now vanished. This poor cemetery had been heavily vandalized, with few of the mid-19th-century stones escaping breakage. It was most sad to see. Evidently some local group had done what it could to fix the damage. Some stones were cemented back into their bases, and for those that were lost, a white-painted metal cross had been set into cement as a replacement for the destroyed stone. Over in York Township, a tiny cement-fenced abandoned yard of mostly Cook and Karouze family graves, sits next to a hideous new development of bloated giant houses. I got some good B&W photos here of the dignified, graceful 19th-century stones, suggesting modest, upright lives, backdropped by the monuments to wasteful excess. The graveyard with the most mysteries turned out to be the 1831 York cemetery. Here we found an immense, 15-foot-tall, rococo monument to one Ms. Irman, "purchased by her executor with her life savings." Guess she was the last of the family line, with no one else to give the money to. There was also an intriguing grave of one gentleman's "consort." That certainly left us wondering. It was another charmed day of brown fields, treeless woods, dark pewter skies, coffee from the thermos and pot roast sandwiches, slow travel on washboardy dirt roads, map-poring, and tracing faded old stone numbers--the record for oldest grave seen so far (barring those ancient melted stubs up in Salem Township) is 1831. Suggesting parallels between the Salem witch trials and modern-day post-9/11 societal paranoia, the show--accompanied by a recorded soundtrack of staticky noise, singsonging children, and chimes--opens with two puppets accusing each other and audience members by pointing and saying, "You're one." "He's one." "That girl in the back--she's one, I can tell." Puppeteer Brian announced, "Trick or treat!" and quickly distributed a treat bowl full of tiny plastic soldiers to audience members (Y. and friend both picked blue ones), after which he and puppeteer Raymond advanced upon each audience member with Polaroid cameras, snapping away. Give and take. It was quite unsettling to get one's picture taken that way--very effective in underlining the theme. A lavishly multicolor-stained white wedding dress was used as a puppet, and as a tale of the accused and pregnant "witch" it represented was told, a tiny lurid baby was rolled down its front to suggest birth. Ypsidixit's favorite puppets were two with dolls' heads and cometlike streamers for bodies, which fluttered like weird fiery ghosts over the stage. The 15-minute preview show will be presented in New York next week and return as a full-length show to the Riverside next spring, one most definitely not to be missed. Oct 4th - Wheat 1.06 pr Bu this day in Ypsilanti Pretty terse. No mention of the lavish beauty of the fallen leaves carpeting everything, or the brilliance of a yellow tree against the deep blue sky, or the pleasure of scoofling through thick fallen leaves blanketing the sidewalk. John Geddes was a lot more no-nonsense than the fall-dazzled Ypsidixit. Excerpts are from the John Geddes diaries online [scroll down to peruse by year]. "NOTICE: Whereas my wife Mary has left my bed and board without any just cause or provocation, this is to forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on my account, as I shall not hold myself liable to pay any debts of her contracting after this date. JOHN MEAD. Scio, May 17, 1847." --Michigan Argus, 5/19/1847. "NOTICE: Is hereby given, that my wife Marianne Buchoz, formerly of Whitmore Lake, has left my bed and board without just cause, and this is to caution all persons against trusting her on my account, as from this date, I will not pay debts of her contracting except such as I will previously agree to pay. L. R. BUCHOZ. Whitmore Lake, Jan. 1, 1850." --Michigan Argus, 1/2/1850. "NOTICE: Whereas my Wife Mary has left my bed and board without any just cause or provocation, this is therefore to forbid all persons harboring or trusting her on my account as I shall pay no debts of her contracting after this date. Scio. Oct. 6, 1852 Benjamin Culey." --Michigan Argus, 11/03/1852. Ypsidixit wonders what drove these women from the fireside into the unknown in an era not conducive to a single woman's employment. Did the Scio women hop on the Michigan Central where it passes through Scio township? (The interurban route, shown as green dashes, wasn't built till 1890, the AA-Ypsi portion, anyways). Marianne Buchoz and Mary Culey left in the dead of winter and in fall, respectively, seemingly the least promising times of year to strike out on one's own. Did they return from the wild West to relatives back East? Head to Chicago? Ypsidixit notes that Marianne left on New Year's Day. Somehow this suggests that she made some kind of vow to herself that if some unknown bad condition didn't change by 1850, she was history...and so she is. Anyone else think it a bit odd that the only people bothering to count dead Iraqi civilians are...not our government, not our army, not our media, but....a British medical journal, of all things? Ypsidixit happens to know, via osmosis, that the "young man" who then "looked at his watch, and decided he had done enough work for that day," is (whispers) in fact, none other than the estimable Mr. Mann himself. The column goes on to detail moaning overheard in the firehouse, sounds of creaking from the site of a hanging in a onetime barn at Prospect and Geddes, and footsteps and slamming doors in an EMU greenhouse, the site of another hanging. Worth a read. This view is looking southeast from, roughly, the Farmer's Market driveway off Forest. Note ornate depot in background and the famous gardens at left. 1. THOMPSON BUILDING TUNNELS: When the Michigan Central came into Ypsi in 1839, it found the ground around the depot wet and mushy. The railroad build several drainage tunnels in the depot area. A couple decades later the Thompson building was built, and currently sits over several tunnels. One story relates how some small boys managed to find their way into one and fearfully probed forward, only to hear rats rustling around. The kids, for some mysterious reason, thought there might be men hiding in the tunnels who were "counterfeiters," and fled. Ypsidixit is mystified at that "counterfeiters" bit. Onwards. 2. DEPOT TOWN TUNNELS: A siding used to branch off of the Michigan Central line at the Sidetrack and run behind Aubree's and the north line of Depot Town Buildings to the onetime mill just west of the northern strip of Depot Town. Well, the Freight House parking lot area used to have several sheds and outbuildings, and people were finding it mighty dangerous to try and dodge the trains coming 'round the blind curve by Aubree's. So they built tunnels from Depot Town buildings to the outbuildings so that they could safely cross under the siding. The tunnels still exist. During excavation work in the 1980s, a bulldozer fell into one. 3. MICHIGAN AVE TUNNELS: At the point where the tracks and Michigan Ave cross, the Michigan Central again found this area mushy, and built several drainage tunnels. 4. PROSPECT PARK TUNNEL: There's a fairly reliable rumor that a little girl once entered a tunnel at the Huron somewhere near Frog Island and walked all the way to where the tunnel opened up into the onetime cemetery in Prospect Park. The function of this strange tunnel is unknown. 5. DOWNTOWN UTILITY TUNNELS: Modern tunnels exist in the downtown area for utility maintenance. They are said to be pretty nasty places. 6. EMU TUNNELS: As at U-M, there's a network of utility maintenance tunnels under EMU. One Eastern Echo reporter who once ventured into them got the heebie-jeebies and, halfway around a giant outer ring tunnel that circles the campus, declared abruptly, "It was decided that we turn back." And of course, there are Henry Ford henchman Harry Bennett's lion-tunnels on his fabulous estate near St. Joe's, that intrepid Ypsi explorer Ypsidweller, kayaking there some weeks back, mentioned here to everyone's (I think it's safe to say) fascinated attention. "Only a sensationalist [!] magazine like NGS would pit a scientific question against God...and teach others to think likewise," fumes one commentor. Whatever that means. Another commentor: "Go ahead and bring your bible to school. Read it to yourself like you would your cheap romance novel. Discuss it in your literature class. But do not try to deny science because of a set of non-applicable stories." A 2001 Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."
Awesome multimedia doodad. Checks you write will be processed and the money withdrawn instantly, but, oddly, there will still be a few days' processing time for deposited paychecks. Net result: a giant windfall, for the banks, of hefty overdraft fees this weekend. Ypsidixit never floats checks but is predictably irritated at this change. I write checks for everything, or pay cash, instead of electronic banking, because like other old-fanglers I like the perhaps illusory tangibility of paper. I have a Visa for emergencies, paid off every month, but won't get a debit card--too hard to keep track of and too evanescent in general. This move feels like a move towards phasing out checks entirely, which makes Y. uneasy. The take-home message is that people need to ask their banks to start sending them what's known as a "substitute check"--a different entity from the Xeroxed pages of cancelled checks Y. currently receives from her bank. The Xeroxed sheet cannot be used in a court of law to prove you paid for something--only the mysterious "substitute check" can. If your bank starts charging you for supplying you with "substitute checks"--time for another bank. Ypsidixit sighs to recall the [19th-century?] days when a check could be written, and honored, on the back of any old scrap of paper. Check out the ornate 1834 Bank of Washtenaw 2-dollar bill. A parking lot opens onto Adams. Tucked away between the lot and the school is an inviting garden and plaza area. Five beautiful low-relief carvings, each about a yard high and a yard to a yard and a half long, have been set into a four-foot-high. 20-foot-long brick wall cradling the plaza. The three largest rectangular carvings form the central trio. In a fluid, pleasing, naturalistic style evoking the early 1920s, six male runners, a group of hatted Scouts (?) saluting a ceremonial torch of some kind, and a half-dozen male footballers appear. This trio is framed by a square carving on the left depicting a large "Y," and another square on the right showing a crouching male runner about to take off. Ypsidixit was delighted to examine these fragments of the old 1915 school. In Googling around for information, she was further delighted and quite astonished to find out the name of its yearbook: "The Ypsi-Dixit." Hypocrites. The Fire House is said to be haunted by former longtime firehouse worker Alonzo. Not too long ago, Firehouse caretaker B. McCrary was working in the firehouse tower. Suddenly, McCrary froze to feel two hands clutching at the neck. But--they seemed awfully tiny. Turns out it was a pet raccoon who'd been trained to play "horsey." The poor thing just wanted to play "horsey" and get a ride, no doubt at the expense of several hundred points of McCrary's blood pressure. At any rate, the raccoon was reunited with its nearby owner. So I'm told, anyways. Y. also learned that the 3 graceful, squarish homes just to the north of the Thompson Building were used to house officers during the Civil War (the soldiers themselves were billeted on the Thompson Building's third floor, and big kitchens were in the basement). Y. stared intently at those broken and plywooded third-floor windows while walking home from the bus station this evening, trying to discern or even just imagine a flicker of a ghost soldier's gaze. First stop: what's probably the county's oldest cemetery, way up in Salem Township just shy of the county line. Hidden deep in a woods, this tiny site held tilting stones eroded to smooth lumps, the words long gone. The crack of a twig alerted us to a wandering bowhunter who was doubtless none too happy to see us mucking about and scaring off the deer. Off we went to Scio Township, the county's hotbed of abandoned cemeteries, with no fewer than 3. The first site, off Huron River Drive, lay in a piece of land festooned with unfriendly "No Trespassing" signs, so we let that one go. The next one seemed to be plowed under--we went back and forth along the road, measuring distance with the odometer, but no dice. The last one was the jackpot. In a tiny fenced site little larger than a bed, we carefully brushed leaves off two huge, ornate flat stones lying on the ground only to find: the grave of none other than early Ann Arbor blogger and prominent settler John Geddes and his wife...Prudence?*. We were absolutely astonished at this amazing discovery. I took pictures and carefully made a paper and charcoal rubbing of Ms. Geddes's headstone. It was one of those moments when the veil between the present and past lifts for a moment. A picnic and walk in the metropark near Dexter preceded more rapt exploration. It was a day of leaf carpets, hot yellow foliage against pewter skies, weather-melted stones, hidden treasure, and discovery. *Now, her name was quite a mystery, since John Geddes's wives' names were said to be Fanny and Julia. A different John Geddes? Or perhaps "Fanny" was a nickname? And we'd thought John Geddes had lived not to the west but on the northeast side of AA, lending his name to the onetime settlement of "Geddesburgh." A Kansas paper accurately calls the Michigan electorate "ornery" in a story about the state's large yet hopeless slate of Libertarians. Oh, and Ypsilanti donated an aircraft engine to Lake Michigan yesterday and made news in Chicago when a 747 cargo plane from Ypsi-based Kalitta Co. reported mechanical problems--when the NY-bound plane landed at Detroit Metro, they found one engine missing. "Along with the medic, the linguists, the forensic photographer...an essential component of every recovery team is the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, whose job is to handle those tricky situations which arise when a shovel hits suspect metal or, as happened on my first day, someone finds that the stubborn lump of clay dumped into his screen contains a live grenade...[the ordnance specialist] Traub moved swiftly toward the object from which everyone else was fleeing...[t]he first grenade, an M-79 40-millimeter fragmentation, he declared to be inert; the second, a Vietnamese fragmentation hand grenade with a pin so rusty it might easily slip from the spoon, was another matter. "Has anyone got a penny?" he asked, and afterward pronounced the grenade "good to go." "[In 1967,] [r]eports from other helicopters on the mission indicated that all four crew members had escaped and scattered into the forest. Over the next few days, searches were conducted by air and on land, and eventually three of the men were rescued. On two occasions, within twenty-four hours of the crash, rescue aircraft had spotted flashlight signals. The pilot, however, was never found." Ypsidixit, unsure of whether comics are art, nevertheless thinks it sounds interesting. 1.--each candidate (think third, fourth, &c. party) has exactly equal access to the media. *arguably the greatest legacy of any living president. Sure beats some silly library somewhere. One sad, small story (scroll down to story #2) describes the attempted construction of a sledding hill--till local residents objected. Now "plans for the hill are gone," and the city is offering you the dirt for free. On a marginally cheerier note, the Yankee Air Museum has recovered some charred artifacts and received $15,000 in donations. "The cake for Daniel will be an entire construction site on top of a sheet cake - but I need ideas! Mom suggested Twizzler logs for girders, and I thought brown sugar piles for the dirt. What else? I have Necco wafers, but don't know what to use them for. Chocolate sprinkles for gravel?" *there's nothing "fun" about getting a shrunken morsel instead of a full-size candy bar--I've resented that term for years now. **a recent find at the ypsi food coop--they're really good, actually. I like seaweed. The news story says they are "hip" and have "funky lamps"--well, that sounds like just the sort of thing that will pull in the Ann Arborites in droves. But Ypsidixit is mildly puzzled, since she thought Ikea was cheap stuff for poor-ish yet determinedly hip and funky people. Surely Ann Arborites are too well off to condescend to buying Ikea. But I could be wrong. Ypsidixit prefers her home's timeless, classic Garage Sale Chic look to some Swedish nonsense. Ypsidixit is trying to think of a clever name for a bar in the middle of the Water Street Condos. You know that house on the northwest side that's protectively bulwarked by huge boulders? Read this to find out why. *agreed, that's quite a conceit--this Chesterton has an imagination that staggers the mind. No. It's a "shame" that the "News" can't "afford" any "proofreaders." City residents: call 483-1100 to request an application. Ypsidixit notes with disapproval that, whereas the township website offers comprehensive absentee info, in a prominent link on its main page, the city page offers zero info anywhere (I searched) on how to vote absentee. Perhaps they don't want the hassle? What gives? There's oodles of arcane info on the meaning of ash tree markings and peak trash pickup times...but not a whisper on how to perform the most basic function of a democracy. Why, pray, is the city apparently discouraging absentee voting? The sites I've been reading tonight discuss memes on the level of an entire culture, but it seems to me that memetics is applicable on smaller scales. Ponder the arc of a relationship. It too has its own tiny culture, one shared only by the two people in it. The memes may be references to past events, in-jokes, or favorite shared activities. Over time one member learns that tasteless jokes aren't appreciated and the other learns how to make their companion laugh, so the culture of the relationship shifts a bit and evolves. Perhaps memetics is also in operation within the culture of the individual. Unicorns were a favorite meme of mine when I was in high school, but I don't favor them now. I could have cared less about old maps in high school, but I love them now. Hopefully this may be seen as evolution from some fantastic, meaningless symbol to a concern with informational, historical documents. A good clear one-page summary of memetics. --commentator on today's "Diane Rehm Show." Someone at work who just learned that I bike to and from work each day laughingly asked, "Why would you do such a thing"? A Czech ossuary-church lavishly decorated with human bones, including a chandelier made of every bone in the human body.
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CRUCIBULUM INFIDELIUM: Ypsidixit and her adventurous friend got the much-appreciated chance to see a preview of the entrancing, dark, and quite beautiful and magical puppet show Crucibulum Infidelium. We were mesmerized.
YPSI'S RAIL YARD IN 1905: Wow! Look at all those tracks! Ypsilanti was apparently a real railroad town a century ago. 
DON'T FLOAT A CHECK FOR THAT HALLOWE'EN COSTUME: as of October 28, the opportunity to "float" a check--i.e., write a check when you know you don't have the funds but have just deposited a paycheck, trusting that the paycheck will be processed in time to cover the floated check--will vanish. 
OLD YPSI HIGH SCHOOL'S SALVAGED ART: Acting on information from knowledgeable Ypsilanti explorer Ypsidweller, Ypsidixit hopped off the Huron River bus at St. John's and walked a block east on Cross to check out the old high school's carvings, salvaged from the former partial demolition.
YPSILANTI LORE: Ypsidixit was regaled with Ypsi lore last night as she and her adventurous friend wandered around the Depot Town environs at night. 
