2004-11-10-12:41 p.m.: ASIDE FROM JIMMY CARTER, WHERE IS THE CHRISTIAN LEFT? asks Leonard Pitt's well-written column in today's Detroit Free Press."So I look at the success conservatives on the so-called Christian right have had in claiming Him as their exclusive property and I wonder, where in the heck is the Christian left? Where are the people who preach -- and live -- the biblical values of inclusion, service, humility, sacrifice, and why haven't they coalesced into an alternative political force?
"Instead of a movement like that, we have an old peanut farmer building houses."
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-09-11:00 p.m.: ESTIMABLE LOCAL HISTORIAN JAMES MANN will be doing a post-Thanksgiving booksigning and giving a talk at Frenchie's Monday, November 29, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. 0 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-09-9:16 p.m.: 
"GENTLEMEN, WE CAN REBUILD HIM...
...We Have The Technology!"
But we wouldn't have the technology were it not for the helpful comments from Lynne, Addiann, and Brian: many thanks to them.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-09-9:56 a.m.: GOOGLE PULLING UP BLOGS: While poking around for something, the news story "57-year-old to give birth to twins" caught my eye. It turns out to be...a group blog. I'd thought of blogs as sort of like bottom-feeding carp too far down for the Google net, but I guess not. Are people going to start regarding babbling blogs as valid news sources? I hope not. 6 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-08-10:12 p.m.: URBAN EXPLORATION: Tucked away on the east side of Runway Blvd. off Concourse Dr. on the east side of State St. just south of Ellsworth, in an industrial park opposite the Ann Arbor Airport, lies a weird abandoned 30s-era poured-concrete Bauhaus house--the only Bauhaus house in Ann Arbor. Ypsidixit and her ever-present adventurous friend carefully explored this odd site last weekend.The tiny garage, built for a small Depression-era car, contains a pile of drywall and detritus, crowned altar-like by an easy chair. This unnerving tableau shows that others have explored this site and may in fact be on the premises: proceed with caution.
Heading into the big living room: one wall is entirely covered with a red, orange, and black mosaic of triangular bits of tile. All the other walls, and those in the rooms glimpsed beyond, bear sinister scrawled black graffiti. The living room's main feature is half of a dilapidated plywood half-pipe some skater kids built here. It's kind of cool to imagine skater kids whooping it up in this odd old home.
Upstairs is a onetime master bedroom, small by today's bloated standards, and a dusty bathroom filled with piled building materials Someone graffitied in the bedroom closet: "NOTHING YET WILL STAND." I took a picture of that, teetering on the crap in the bathroom, and took pictures of the other graffiti and of the many angry holes blasted through the walls by unknown vandals, which gave the place a dark air.
Y. and friend gazed from the living room into the backyard, where several fetid mattresses are slowly merging with the Earth. This sleek, modernistic home devolved into a skate-punk hangout, then into forgotten weathered curves of concrete. In its day it was far outside the Ann Arbor city lines; one wonders what futuristic-minded eccentrics/visionaries once lived here.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-08-7:51 p.m.: COPS SWARM THOMPSOM BUILDING: Ypsidixit worked late and left the Ypsi bus station to bike home at 7:30. Approaching the Thompson Building., Y. noticed a cop car parked out front. Another pulled in behind it as Y.'s light turned green. She started up Cross, but curiosity led her down Cross and west on River to check out what was going on. Circling back, Y. noted a third cop car going west on River and turning east onto Maple. OK, now I had to find out, so I rolled into the depot's gravel parking lot, melted into the shadows around the depot to survey the scene, and lit a smoke. Just then a fourth car, one from the county, drove west on River--I saw the flash of the officer's face and knew I'd been spotted. Sure enough, he turned into the gravel lot and checked me out. I feigned the mild curiosity of the innocent and calmly smoked...just hangin' out in the dead of night at the derelict depot, Officer...you know, as usual, no big deal...it worked. He drove on, and also went up Maple. At this juncture I deemed it prudent to remove myself from the scene before I was tossed into the brig as an accessory to whatever was going down, so I crept away down River and up Forest.Burglary? Probably not--strange time of day to do it, it seems. Why 4 cars from 2 different police departments? Why the Thompson Building area? At any rate, any kind readers in the Depot Town area might wish to be extra careful tonight.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-08-12:55 p.m.: ALERT READER c.c. kindly reports that the aurora borealis should be visible from ypsi tonight.3 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-08-1:12 p.m.: FEATURE FILM "TRAP" SHOT ON MICHIGAN AVE.: This thriller about "abuse and fate in the lives or two American couples," is headed for Sundance. Eventual Ypsi viewers of "Trap" will see scenes showing the signs for the Tap Room and TC's Speakeasy, and other telltale landmarks. "Ypsilanti was a really good location visually," said film director and writer Jim Bonner. "It was really no contest...Ypsilanti is photographically beautiful." Well of course it is. Watch a Quicktime preview clip.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-10:20 p.m.: THE REUBENS OF WASHTENAW COUNTY: Ypsidixit's favorite sandwich is a fat, drippy, messy reuben, and she recently has been sampling them around the county:
1. Baker's Square restaurant in Oak Village shopping center south of 94 west off Whittaker Road: GOOD. This heaping mound of corned beef is a generous portion.
2. Flim Flam restaurant off Plymouth: VERY GOOD. You can barely get your hands around this one.
3. Sidetrack: GOOD. As if there's anything that's not good at the Sidetrack.
4. Pickle Barrel in Willis: VERY GOOD. Lots of juicy sauerkraut, yum.
5. Zou Zou's Cafe in Chelsea: HUH? Slices of...turkey? on a hemisphere of round herb bread with a tiny smear of dressing and not a strand of sauerkraut in sight. It was tasty, but not a reuben.
Ypsidixit remembers eating Chinese food in Maine that was about as Chinese as my left pinky toe, and suspects that no matter how good local reubens may be, they doubtless don't hold a candle to one from Manhattan, where the reuben was invented--no, wait, it was invented in Omaha, Nebraska!
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-9:14 p.m.: 
A CHAT WITH A FALCONER IN AN ABANDONED CEMETERY: Ypsidixit and her adventurous friend stared at the ground in an abandoned cemetery in Freedom Township, swishing leaves aside with their feet, dodging the weathered carrots and nibbled turnips of a deer bait pile, and unsuccessfully combing the area for stones. Man in camo appears. Uh-oh. He turns out to be the next-door neighbor who's also been curious about the cemetery. Ypsidixit runs to the car to get the cemetery book, to show him information, as her adventurous friend and camo-man fall into lively conversation. The absence of stones is discussed, and camo-man says he heard that a preservation group came through, cleared the brush, and...maybe removed the stones? Where are they now? A peek in the book shows that the person who reported the cemetery was a James of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution?! Do they have male members?) Maybe this James knows the story.Camo-man talks animatedly and affectionately of a cemetery he used to visit all the time when he was growing up in Sylvan Township. Bending on one knee, he draws a map to it. He asks us to send him info if we learn any more info about Cooper Cemetery, where we're standing, and explains the "bird" part of the email name as relating to his former profession as a falconer. He talks about the many coyotes that run through the cemetery, next to his house, and through his back yard each night and the racket they make. We depart, thanking him, and head for the cemetery on his map, a site tucked deep inside the Waterloo Nature Area, very happy to have chatted with a falconer in camo, learned about coyotes, and learned that people all over the place quietly love old cemeteries.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-8:44 p.m.: PEACOCK AT ABANDONED FARM, ELLSWORTH ROAD, LODI TOWNSHIP: A faded white house with the empty flat-black windows signifying abandonment. One huge red weathered barn, a smaller one, and a collapsed structure. The big barn door is slightly ajar. A peek inside fills the lungs with hay-scent and shows a cathedral space floored with piles of scattered hay and a few pieces of old junk. In the smaller barn, a mountain of hay mounts up under a partially collapsed roof letting light stream in. Much of the house's handbuilt stone foundation has crumbled, creating caves into the cellar. There's a window open in back, with a wooden milk crate set under it: we're not the first ones to explore here. We teeter on the milk crate, set on an angle on a lip of a cave yawning into the cellar, and peek in. Dilapidation. Drywall long gone, the studs outline former rooms. A door faces me whose 19th-century keyhole once took a skeleton key. Seen through the studs, in the front room: an upright piano, its front panel gone and strings exposed. The lonliness of departed lives fills the house and quiet site set among stubble-filled cornfields.
"What's that moving?"
A peacock, sunning itself on the side of the house. Annoyed, it walks with stately grace to the front of the house. My companion and I look at each other.
At the front of the house, there it is, tucked up in a ball, enjoying the sun. I whip out my camera. Closer...closer...uh-oh, it's leaving. I snap a picture, forgetting I have black and white film.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-2:57 a.m.: CLUELESS TECH REQUEST: Ypsidixit is thinking of buying a digital camera...for the blog. Yes, it's come to that. Anyways, she dreads the thought of going to some big box and being confronted with five million choices, poorly explained by harried salespeople, and ending up with something that doesn't work. So, if I may humbly ask for a bit of advice from knowledgeable and kind blogreaders, I'd be grateful. My question: I have an iMac with OS9 and precious little memory available for new software. What I want to do: take low-res pictures (72 dpi is the standard for Internet use) and plop them on the blog with minimum fuss. What I'd really like? A cheap camera with some kind of magic cord that I can connect to the iMac & just press some magic button to make pictures magically show up on my desktop. As you can tell, I know nothing about the process, and the best way to cut through the Gordian knot of ten million web sites out there offereing confusing advice is just to ask those who know--at least one person on my blogroll that I know of has a Mac and a digital camera.
Please drag me, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-2:51 a.m.: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: HOW YOU COULD HAVE HAD MY VOTE. Very thoughtful. Worth a read.0 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-07-12:59 a.m.: NIGHT-TIME IN WILLIS: In darkness, the dim brown lump in the stony dirt road leading to the feed milll is a hunched-up cat, staring intently at its front paws. A tiny black shape stumbles free from the paws, and staggers to the side of the road. The cat trots after it to continue the game. Nearby, light spills from a tiny garage filled with a hulking white truck, whose owner leans in through the passenger door, fixing something. Tools and extension cords litter the floor. Tinny country rock floats out.
Red, green, blue, and yellow light bulbs blink dimly through the white plastic of a suitcase-sized 1950s-era sign protruding over the door of a mustard-colored cinderblock building. AUCTION TONIGHT. OPEN. The glass door shows the coveralled, burly backs of men in folding chairs watching a man up front address them while he lifts an axe. Across the street, backed by dark silhouettes of houses and trees, peering into the auction house door is a passing man and woman. Overhead, sparse confetti of constellations shine crisply in the cold.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-05-8:14 p.m.: 
SURPRISING CORRELATION BETWEEN RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY AND VOTING: Conservative columnist Matthew Spalding notes that "[s]econd only to party affiliation, the leading indicator of how one votes -- ahead of sex, race, age, income or level of education -- is how often one attends religious services.""...Here is the moral of the story: Cultural liberalism is increasingly unattractive to a significant and growing segment of the American electorate. If this trend continues, and continues to solidify, the Democrats will never again be a majority party in the United States." The article.
Maybe. Maybe not. Freedom [from religion] is on the march. "The number of adults in the U.S. identifying with "no religion" has doubled since 1990; from 14.3 million (8%) in 1990 to the current 29.4 million (14.1%)," as this creationist site* fumes (ah, how sweet it is!)
*Scroll down for more poll data.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-05-12:59 p.m.: 
"SORRYEVERYBODY.COM" is a site where Americans may send their pictures with apologies to the world for the election results.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-05-12:50 p.m.: WASHTENAW "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" report cards, for Ypsilanti and for Ann Arbor school districts. YHS and Ann Arbor's Pioneer and Huron high schools all failed to meet state requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress*, penalties for which include loss of federal funding.*Commie High passed.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-05-8:42 a.m.: 
DAVID SEDARIS'S wonderfully funny, non-family-friendly monologues Santaland Diaries and Season's Greetings come to the Riverside December 2-5 and 9-12, via the local company Luree Productions. As kind readers know, Santaland Diaries is a vinegary portrait of Sedaris's stint as a department-store Christmas elf. Season's Greetings involves a woman chirpily relating end-of-the-year family news that's just a bit grim. Not to be missed!2 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-04-8:46 p.m.: RESURRECTING LADY LIBERTY: Ypsidixit wonders if at this grim post-election wartime juncture the time has come to jettison our national icons of a pancaked martial eagle and the oafish aw-shucks Uncle Sam and readopt the popular 19th-century icon both parties can embrace as a gentler and nobler reminder of the values supposedly fundamental to this country regardless of party: Lady Liberty.
Thomas Nast 1864 engraving, published in Harper's. The ten smaller pictures surrounding L.L. are captioned, clockwise from the top, Making the Flag, Returning From the War, On Board, Around the Dead, In Camp, At Home, In Church, In the Hospital, In the Field, and Going to the War. Missing is Sulking at the Keyboard.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-04-8:20 a.m.: IN HER SYDNEY PEACE PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH "Peace and the New Corporate Liberation Theology," Bengal-born Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy examines Bechtel's corrupt corporate practices at length, noting, "In what can only be called unconscionable, [antiglobalization activist] Naomi Klein writes that Bechtel has successfully sued war-torn Iraq for 'war reparations' and 'lost profits'. It has been awarded 7 million dollars."Since Roy's speech is reg. req., I am reprinting it in "comments," with a copyright notice.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-03-11:26 p.m.: 
DISPUTED NORTH POLE DISCOVERER ROBERT PEARY AND SOUTH POLE DISCOVERER ROALD AMUNDSEN BOTH VISITED YPSILANTI. The 1896 visit of Peary [at right] was a fundraiser for his eventual 1909 trip to--or just near--the North Pole. He likely showed lantern slides of the Arctic exploration he'd already done by then, and afterwards probably hopped on the Michigan Central railroad to head for the next town on a speaking tour.Amundsen dropped by after his victorious 1911 dash to the South Pole to chat with Normal School (EMU) geography professor Mark Jefferson [para 2]. Why? Ypsidixit's adventurous friend, bribed via pork chops and braised leeks into spinning historical yarns, speculated that their conversation was "mutually beneficial to both men"--whatever that might mean. Jefferson, internationally famous for his cartography, went on to play a pivotal role in redrawing the map of Europe after WW I.
Allegedly, Amundsen is said to have remarked, upon leaving Jefferson's house on Normal Street, "Ypsilanti is the coldest place I've ever been." Ypsidixit views this askance, and suspects this apocryphal-sounding bit of the tale is a creative addition added by one of the storytellers who handed down the story. Both visits have been confirmed by period newspaper accounts.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-03-4:52 p.m.: THE GOAT'S HORN IS THE MOTHER OF THE SPOON, and two knives gave birth to a fork. Timeline.
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-03-12:20 p.m.: 
HISTORICAL TIDBIT: It's not widely known that Chinese Communism would never have happened were it not for nerdy American kids reading comic books.Puzzlingly, this historical re-creation [at right] depicts a racist caricature of a Chinese man in--a Maoist type uniform. Hmm.
The rest of the story [warning: graphic religion].
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-03-9:52 a.m.: A TINY BIT OF HUMOR to counter the gloom: "What if Ralph had won?"Excerpt: "President Nader takes part in his inauguration parade by riding down Pennsylvania Avenue in a custom-fit "smart limo" that runs entirely on compost."
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____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-02-8:47 p.m.: JUST GIMME A MAP: the NYTimes has a good one, showing the electoral vote breakdown.21 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-02-7:18 p.m.: VOTING IN THE 19TH CENTURY: Take a look at this gorgeous 1874 plat map of Lodi Township and ponder the effort it took to vote in those days. You'd have to yoke up the team and travel for, doubtless, miles, at around 6 mph or so to cast a ballot. Oh, and the women could stay home, of course. Far as I can tell, voting in Washtenaw County started around 1830, when an election was held in the home of Saline founder Orange Risdon [scroll down to the "Townships Formed" section].3 comments--add a comment
____________________________________________________________________________________________2004-11-02-9:48 a.m.: PRECINCT 4 REPORT: Precinct 4 was completely overwhelmed. I got there at 7:10 a.m. There was a line 200 yards long extending from the church. And it was NOT moving. The federal election--federal, mind you!--consisted of 3 small tables, 2 name-checkers (there were more name-checkers in the primary--if anyone can explain why that is backwards I'd appreciate it), one optical-scanning machine, and a measly 16 rickety booths set up not even in the church proper but in the tiny foyer! As a result of this poor preparation, it took me from 7:10 a.m. till 8:45 to vote--ridiculous.
At any rate, I'm glad I went and did it early. The rules say that for evening voters, if you're in line at the time the polls close, you get to vote. But while I was there, the line was continually being added to, way out there in the parking lot. I can't imagine an electioneer telling someone who's just joining the line at 8 p.m. that he or she can't vote. Could get ugly.
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