One More Week :-(

Today, in a frantic effort to see what I can of upper Michigan, I drove to Wilderness State Park, which is just to the left of the "tip of the mitt" -- on Lake Michigan (geographically challenged readers: see map).

I was surprised: one side of the bay was sandy in places and the water clear -- almost like an ocean. There were sand bars meters out into the ocean that were only a couple inches deep.


The other side was rockier, and there were many seagulls. Supposedly the endangered Piping Plover inhabits the area, but of course I didn't see any.


Besides seagulls, I saw a crayfish (?).

On the way back I stopped in Cheboygan to see the matinee showing of Stardust, which was fun, if simplistic like all fairy tales. Speaking of stars, a meteor shower is supposed to peak tonight. There's no moon, and I can see the milky way here on normal days. Anyway, while I was walking in the residential area killing time until the movie, I came across this deserted Carnagie Library. They always make me a little bit sad.


Bonus: here's a picture from Petoskey (see map again).

The Empire Strikes Back?

Russian planes flying near Guam on Wednesday were heralded as harbingers of a new Cold War. But I wonder if that's not wishful thinking. Wouldn't we all rather have another 40-year stand-off with a known enemy than face, say, China? The C.W. made for great spy novels and space ships, and at least we didn't have to deal, as in the current situation, with religious rhetoric (at least not on the Russians' part) or curtailed civil rights (except for the wee McCarthy episode in the 50s). I'm all for it, unless it accelerates the whole 80s trend in fashion and shoulder pads come back. I'm NOT wearing shoulder pads no matter what the state of global diplomacy. Although, shoulder pads were really in vogue during glasnost and all that -- during the waning years. Maybe I should be more concerned about the poodle skirt . . . Now THAT is a scary thought.

Sad :-(

Chinese river dolphin feared extinct. First extinction of large vertebrate in over 50 years. Anyone who isn't sad that a dolphin species goes extinct is a HORRIBLE PERSON, and I hope you have BAD DREAMS in which Flipper grabs your ankle and drowns you.

PersonalDNA

Yes, yes, yes, I should be doing other things. But it is hot and I have an ear infection and I can't really make myself get up.

It's STILL hot!

Whine. And tomorrow is forecast to be yet hotter. WHIIINE whinewhinewhine.

They are having volleyball play-offs today. I say "they" because I am not on a team, and today I am especially glad. I swam again at noon, and got more sunburnt. I'm still reading food blogs. I honestly had no interest in cooking and saw it as a great inconvenience until I was somewhere without a kitchen. And THAT is a deep insight into my personality, actually.

I called Ann tonight, and we talked about how we used to giggle in, and usually AT, chapel, and about our landlady with the cotton in her ears, and the bottles of wine we kept under our bed, and how we didn't have any heat in our house all winter.

Drat the Heat!

It's warm here -- not warm compared to other places, but warm for Pellston, and it's making me ill. I spent two hours in the lake this afternoon, which was wonderfully cooling at the time, but not so nice now with the resultant sunburn. Indeed, I am very attached to the lake. I spend a great deal of time sitting in my hammock and looking at it when I should be reading. I'm reading Anna Karenina, which has very short chapters, and so makes me feel accomplished even though I've only read a couple pages. So I read a "chapter," set the book down, and stare listlessly at the lake for awhile. While staring listlessly is generally to be discouraged, staring at a lake is somehow more wholesome than staring at a parking lot. I had to buy dryer sheets today. They keep mice away, and I heard a mouse in my wall for the first time last night. It is quite loud for a small creature.

Hungry, hungry in my tummy.

At the beginning of the summer, I was elated about not cooking. I'm still not complaining . . . much. Some days are good -- like pizza day, or quiche and soup day, or curried chickpeas over rice day. Others leave my tummy growling, like when the vegetarian option contains eggplant, which is slimy and disgusting.

I have found myself reading recipes and lusting after certain foods like

lasagna

falafel

tabouli

but most of all...

dense, chewy, multi-grain BREAD, preferably with a big hunk of cheese.

I may have to betake myself to Petoskey on Sunday to go food-hunting. There IS a good middle-eastern restaurant halfway there called "Mim's." I like the name, too. It reminds me of the wicked witch who has a magic competition with Merlin in the Disney version of The Sword in the Stone.

Frustraries of librations

Non-librarians often accuse book slaves of organizing things in an abstruse manner, and subtly hint that we're hording information so that we are not rendered obsolete by Google Scholar. In response, some libraries are trying to "simplify" things by getting rid of traditional classification systems, where each book has a unique number or alphanumeric code, and instead grouping them by broad subject area. Do I really have to explain why this is a bad idea, and how frustrating it would be to weed through hundreds to hundreds of thousands of biographies (depending on the size of the collection) to find one on the Bronte sisters, when previously one could head straight to 828 B87O?

Sometimes it works the other way, though. Patrons, too, can be puzzling. When scholars in a certain field become accustomed to using a few specific journals, they begin to abbreviate them in citations. This causes problems for librarians, which can be addressed only by wild guesses or an immense tome of a reference book: The Periodical Title Abbreviations, now in its 13th edition. So when we are given "NLCK" as a journal abbreviation, we can go somewhere to find out that OF COURSE it stands for the New Library of Catholic Knowledge. Sometimes it's not that simple, though. "NM" can stand for 14 different serials, ranging from the Naval Magazine, through Northern Miscellany and Nautical Magazine, to the Numismatiska Meddelanden. Wild guesses, at this point, become practically unavoidable. Some abbreviations are understandable. Who in their right mind would want to write out "Neue Jahrbuecher fuer das Klassische Altertum, Geschichte, und Deutsche Literatur" when they could simply jot down "NJKAGDL" -- which can also be abbreviated "NJKA" or "NJKIA," or simply truncated to "Neue Jahrbuecher fuer das Klassische Altertum""

A president for paranoids like me

For those of you who don't read the NY Times, here's a positive article about Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate who I would bother to vote for. I fit in pretty well with the rest of his constituency -- my first fear after 9/11 was that the military-industrial complex would expand, I think George W. Bush has a lot in common with Darth Vader (bumper sticker I saw in parking lot: "Republicans for Voldemort"), and I'm not entirely sure that the neocons don't secretly worship an owl god.

Of course, my other, only slightly less-favored, candidate is Dennis Kucinich. As the article says, there is a "seldom-avowed common ground between the hard right and the hard left," and that's where my political views rest. My first poli sci professor -- a communist who gave me an automatic "A" for knowing who drafted the Constitution -- always said political views were like a circle -- the left-leaning and right-leaning anarchists have more common ground with each other than with the moderates of either side.

Oscar the Gauche

Matthew says I'm not a very socially intuitive person. Maybe my intelligence in other areas leeches all my social intelligence. Or maybe I'm just ornery.

Generally, I mind my p's and q's. The community here is fairly progressive. I've learned not to assume things about relationships. For example, don't assume that, just because a man and a woman have lived together for 20 years and have children, they're MARRIED. Don't assume that two guys dancing together would rather be dancing with girls (I think they were joking about that, but I'm not positive). The best way to not disturb the animals is to maintain a pleasant, non-insinuating smile at all times.

But sometimes I can't help but put my foot in it.

The other day at dinner, I realized that I can be shockingly progressive, too. I was talking to a group from S.C. about men holding doors. A guy from Michigan, whose mother happens to be a women's studies professor, said very diplomatically,

"I think it's just polite for people in general to hold doors for each other, regardless of sex."

Everyone nodded and smiled, and one of the southerners tried to bring consensus by summarizing, "So holding doors isn't offensive?"

I should have left it at that, but my dark side kicked in and said,

"Actually, I DO get offended if a man GOES OUT OF HIS WAY to hold a door for me. I'm not some delicate little southern belle, and I'm probably more capable of opening the damn door than most men."

Conversation stopped. I saw a little caption pop above my head that said "second-wave feminist."

Harry Potter-mania has also been tempting my dark side. It is deeply disturbing to me that 3 out of 20 headlines on the BBC and the NY Times are about a rather unremarkable children's fantasy series. Have we indeed reached the end of history? Norman Mailer never created this much hullabaloo. I went to see the most recent Potter movie, and frankly it was dumb. People popped in and out of the plot to save Potter, and there was much waving of wands. I don't object to teenagers reading the books, but, come on people, let's at least move on to Anne Rice if we're over 20. I actually thought the first few books were fun, but if I wanted a dark, depressing, doomed bildungsroman, I'd read something with a little more stylistic "oomph" -- by Dickens -- or maybe even Hardy or Dostoevsky.

Anyway, Potter is quite popular here (scientists -- not necessarily literary afficianados), so there was probably no excuse for my snide comment at breakfast:

"Yes, the Potter books came out a bit after my time. I had already moved on to more complex literature . . ."

The prudent part of my brain preserved me from saying ". . . by the time I was ten."

Incidentally Green

(Do you like my new template?)

More and more I like it here. Some of the best parts are:

1) Being VERY close to nature
2) Living in a one-room cabin that takes little work to maintain
3) Driving once a week or less (my car is parked 1/2 mile away, uphill)
4) Being queen of a cool and airy domain filled with books, computers, and earnestly-studying students. I frequently feel that lowest of pleasurable emotions, schadenfreude, when I see them hunkered over their lab reports at 2 a.m.

I've also been trying to make plans for my new life in Missouri. The culture, of course, will be strange, but it will also be a change to go back to a normal American lifestyle after this summer. And I'm not entirely sure I want to go back.

Some things can't be helped. I chose to rent a house 20 minutes away from the University, since those nearby tended towards the palatial or the slum-like. There is no public transportation, and so I will have to drive, which I tend to avoid simply because I don't enjoy it. I will also not be as close to long forested trails. The neighborhood will be safe to walk in, and there are parks, but I will also probably join a gym to avoid the extremes of temperature.

Other things are up in the air. Currently, I am a vegetarian. On an emotional level, I find killing animals distasteful, though not unethical. The manner in which animals are raised and slaughtered, however, may actually be unethical, and possibly dangerous to the humans who eat them. I do think that humans are naturally omnivorous, and since soy doesn't agree with me, I may go back to eating some meat if I can find a local provider. Many of my neighbors are elderly and have gardens, so I am hoping to be able to trade for fresh produce.

I will maintain some lifestyle changes. The house I rented, for example, is one bedroom, and there is very little storage space. This will limit my accumulation of things (though, I hope, not impede the visitation of friends). I have a small yard where I can hang clothes out to dry.

Dana is a source of inspiration in intentional living -- not letting a society of consumption back one into a default lifestyle. I'm not very crafty, I'm not really a cook, and I've never tried gardening, but reducing still gives me more time to enjoy reading, music, writing, camping, and hiking.

I do think we are ruining our world, although perhaps not at the rate predicted by Al Gore and other environmental prophets of doom, but that is not why I am making these changes. I don't believe I can save the world anymore than I can "rock the vote" in a national election. Kant's universal law has always seemed like hooey to me. But while participating in the national government reduces my pleasure, living a simpler life does, I think, increase it.

I enjoy hanging laundry, walking to do errands, having less house to clean, and paying smaller utility bills. I don't eat Bic Macs because they make my stomach hurt, and I don't have cable TV because it gives me a headache. There are certain aspects of modern life that I would never relinquish, even if they were going to cause the world to end in 50 years: my internet connection and air travel (which is, in fact, an environmental ill), for example. So please don't accuse me of trying to be a good person.

Then and now...

Pictures from here...




And from there...

More pictures from now in this Facebook album.

Hemingway in Michigan

I'd been meaning for awhile to see precisely where in northern Michigan Hemingway spent his childhood summers. Turns out Walloon Lake is not terribly far from Douglas Lake. Perhaps I will track Ernest's footsteps some Sunday.

Diary of a Field Librarian

I started this post about a week ago and I've had a hard time finishing it...so I am going to break it down into days...

Monday

The library doesn't tend to be busy in the morning. Those who are awake are in the field, and those who aren't are asleep. I have discovered that I am mildly allergic to book dust, which is unfortunate. I sit at my desk and "hachoo" all day.

Wednesday

We had a picnic on the Fourth of July. I must admit that the tofu ribs and gardenburgers were not particularly appetizing. But the nastiest kinds of meats tempt me -- hot dogs, pepperoni, sandwich meat -- so it is probably best that I remain steadfast in my vegetarianism and avoid the nitrates. I was sitting with the invertrebrate zoologist, who told me that diatoms were "beautiful -- like Glinda's bubble in the Wizard of Oz."

Thursday

I love the quiet here. A chipmunk cheeping at nothing is an actual disturbance. Although the Bio Station is a pedestrian and cycling area ("Mackinac Island without the horse poop"), there are occasional disturbances. Guests are allowed to drive their vehicles down to their cabins (slowly, so as not to kick up dust), and unload. The sound of an SUV engine is deafening when it passes not three feet from my cabin door.

What I despise, however, are motorized pleasure boats. The station has a variety of canoes, row boats, motorized dingies, and two pontoon boats for field trips. None are driven at high speeds, and the water is usually quiet and undisturbed. The holiday, however, has brought weekenders -- and their boats. Shunning simple, elegant craft that use man- or wind-power, they must purchase the loudest, most powerful engines they can, together with towering plastic monstrosities of boats. Furthermore, it is their American prerogative to sweep by not 30 feet off our isolated shore -- right beyond the "swim zone" buoy. It is the American consumer's birthright to kick up algae, rock canoes with waves, frighten swimmers, dump human waste, import invasive species, leave a rainbow patina of oil on the water, and silence the birds with the roar of their engines and the louder roar of their music. As I speak, an alien jet ski dodges the buoys like a cowboy at a gymkhana. Evidently playing roulette with human lives is also part of the fun. At such high speeds, of course, a large inland lake is too small, and the entire shore must be sped by to create the marine version of the Indy Speedway or Cedar Point.

Friday

Got accidentally lost in the woods after dusk. More afraid of Indian ghosts than black bears, I'm afraid. Finally made my way back.

Saturday

Did laundry in the AM and hung it out to dry. Dryers are one of mankind's sillier inventions, like the dishwasher. Hanging clothes in the sun is both gentler on the clothes and more energy efficient. There were three loons out on the lake flapping their wings and ducking, but not making their eerie call. Probably two males and a female. Went "owling" today with Ted Anderson, the ornithologist. About dusk, we whipped up some Whippoorwills with our caller, but didn't actually see them. In another location, we did call two Barred Owls right down on top of us.

Sunday

The air is oppressive and still. The hottest day since I've been here. It rained this morning. The thunder woke me up about 9:00 as the storm started, and I dashed over to the library, pulling clothes over my pajamas, to close all the windows. In the afternoon I helped pull zebra mussels, which are an invasive species, off of the native clams. As I finish the post, two jet skies roared into the north fishtail, chasing a loon for sport. They nearly hit it several times, but it seems to have escaped and recovered with miraculous amnesia.