A busy week, what with the rap battles and all...

When I told people that Chris and I (fresh from watching the movie Eight Mile) were moving to Ann Arbor to participate in rap battles, I was, of course, joking. Imagine my surprise, then, on Friday afternoon when we walked across the Diag and came upon a group of young guys of varying ethnic heritage, huddled in a tight group, rapping away freestyle at one another.

Not twenty feet away, another - albeit smaller - group of guys postured their way around a dance mat before busting out some break dance moves. It's only a matter of time, I imagine, before Chris dives right in and starts rapping about stock fraud then spinning on his head. I'll have my camera ready, I assure you.

It has been another crazy week and I am beginning to suspect such is the pace of the Fellowship life here. There's simply so much to do that down time is a rarity. I’ll fill you in on the past week sparing you many, many details… A public editor, a Turkish feast

As I've mentioned before, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are dedicated to Fellowship events. This past Tuesday, Dan Okrent – former public editor/ombudsman – from the New York Times came to share war stories about being a critic of his own paper. Interesting stuff and on par with a theme that would run through the week's speakers - that the media needs to be actively critical of itself.

Afterwards, we began what will be a series of Tuesday night presentations and dinners. Each of the Fellows is paired with a partner and two of them give presentations about their lives and their work and two others prepare dinner for the group – which is a daunting 30-odd folk once spouses are added into the mix.

This Tuesday, the presenters were Vindu Goel, business editor of the San Jose Mercury News and Gail Gibson, a national correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. Gail’s focus of study while she’s here is free speech in wartime America, and I'm hoping I'll get a chance to sit down with her and learn a bit more about it.

Dinner was prepared by Semiha Ozturk Pisirici, her husband Sadat and Tony Norman. Tony’s a columnist and editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and I actually met him briefly a few years ago when picking up an award at the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention in Pittsburgh. Semiha is from Turkey, where she works for CNN Turk and under her and Sadat’s guidance, Tony helped serve up a magnificent Turkish feast.

We all crammed at a makeshift table that stretched from the Wallace House dining room well out into the hallway and on into the living room, passing platter after platter of delicious and quite healthful Turkish fare. We ate a salad with cucumber and feta cheese, dolma, hummus, flavorful rice, tomatoes stuffed with orzo, lamb meatballs in a tomato sauce and much, much more. Needless to say, the bar has been raised for the next gang!

Hangin’ on the 826 tip

Wednesday I began my tutoring with 826 Michigan, a mere hour of time spent helping a young girl with her handwriting before attending a tutor training session. (Yes, it seems a bit backward, but in the non-profit world, you go where the need is.) We had a wonderful trainer whose name, of course, escapes me. She teaches teachers how to teach writing and her approach and suggestions were fascinating and I realized this game of encouraging young people to write is far more complex than I had prepared myself for.

In particular, I was interested to learn that it is generally considered “best practice” in teaching – I believe she said from grades 6-12 – to step away from grammar and punctuation and encourage instead the flow of ideas, encourage creativity. That’s a change of pace for me, to say the least, as things were taught quite differently when I grew up – and today I’m a firm believer that words are powerful tools we must learn to use properly. How we say it is every bit as important as what we say. I’ll admit it will be a challenge for me to take this approach. I’m being challenged? What the hell? What’s next – growth?

We, the media

This past Thursday was the annual Graham Hovey Lecture (named after the journalist and former Fellowship program director), wherein a former Fellow of some accomplishment is invited back to address the current Fellowship class and members of the academic community.

The event was held in the back garden of the Wallace House, where a pitched tent saved us from being pelted by acorns from the trees above. All of the Fellows showed up in their Sunday best and let me tell you...not only does this bunch clean up mighty good, they make a movingly impressive group when they stand and, one after another, explain their backgrounds and the focus of their time here. I had a real sense at that moment, perhaps more so than at any other since our arrival, that we are at a magnificent juncture in our lives, truly blessed to be part of this group and at the beginning of a grand adventure. (Chris had the honor of being the only fellow whose topic received whoops and applause. Must be a mighty anti-white collar crime crowd....)

This year’s lecturer was Dan Gillmor, author of We, the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. He spoke to us quite briefly on a very large topic – the future of journalism and the role of “citizen journalists” in reshaping the way we participate in the news-gathering cycle. He opened a lot of doors of thought, drawing on the recent citizen participation in the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. His notion, as I understand it, is that the blogosphere has created an entirely new playing field in which journalism is becoming a conversation rather than a one-way lecture from traditional news media.

Gillmor believes that regular Joes need to be part of the news, play an invested and interactive role and that internet technology (blogs, podcasts, wikkis, etc.) is going to make that a reality – either with or without the participation of the current major news outlets. In fact, there was something fitting about the way the sky grew darker as Gillmor spoke of what he called the “democratization of information,” while ominous thunderheads rumbled their warning the distance. “This is beginning either with our without us,” he said.

I think what Gillmor’s talking about, although I confess to not having read his book yet, is creating a virtual town square, a community conversation whereby we are no longer passive consumers of the media. There is too much to this topic, both in theory and potential, to even begin to sum it up here but I left the lecture with a vaguely dissatisfied itch inside me – so many more questions. I’m still unclear how the logistics would work and how, realistically, one maintains the integrity of information from sources. If everyone can post news, how do you ensure that these “citizen journalists” aren’t mere plants, essentially lobbying viewpoints on behalf of businesses, politicians and other parties? What becomes of the journalist in this scenario and, on a broader scale, what becomes of the craft of writing itself? So many questions – which is, I suppose, the beginning of any good conversation.

An early start to the weekend

Friday, Chris and I attended a session at the Sweetland Writing Center Conference I wrote about before and then played hooky from the afternoon sessions. It was a gorgeous day and we walked across campus to some areas I hadn’t explored yet. It seems that there are very few classes in session on Fridays and parts of campus seem virtually abandoned. Chris showed me the business school where he’s taking night classes and where, apparently, the young men cut loose on Fridays by pairing a French Blue shirt with their dark slacks for a wacky change of pace. We didn’t get that memo.

We also walked through the quad at the Law School, which was absolutely idyllic, like every Oxford-ian courtyard you see in American movies, complete with the stone residence buildings, their wood-framed windows flung wide open overlooking lush green grass where the occasional student lazed reading.

Yesterday, we hit the Farmer’s Market again, loading up on sweet corn, home grown grape tomatoes and giant quarts of Michigan raspberries bleeding sweet scarlet juice onto our plastic bags. We ran some errands and the day got completely away from us. It happens so easily here and I don’t know where the time goes. I’ve little productive to show for it.

This morning, it was my intention to rise early with Chris and catch another session at the Sweetland Writing Center Conference on Imitation and Plagiarism. Our very own Charles Eisendrath was chairing a discussion with Macarena Hernandez . Now a columnist at the Dallas Morning News, Macarena was at the San Antonio Express-News when she discovered that Jayson Blair had plagiarized her work. She was a key player in blowing the lid off Blair’s legacy of rampant journalistic ifringement.

Again, it was my intention to attend this morning’s session but I had a bit of a rough night last night, haunted by the upcoming anniversary of my mother’s death and feeling distraught over the past and the present. When Chris woke me at 7:30 to rise for the session, I think we both knew I needed the rest more than the intrigue. Thus, he attended the session alone and came back to pick me up for the now-weekly Sunday brunches we have at the Wallace House.

The good news was that Charles had brought Macarena to the house and she joined us for brunch, another wonderful hodge podge affair including huevos rancheros, cinnamon rolls, roasted potatoes and much more. (This is fast becoming one of my favorite times of the week - the participants vary and it's a great chance to get to know different people in a more relaxed environment.) It was nice to chat with her a little, not just about the obvious Jayson Blair stuff but also about her current work in Dallas.

Now we’re back at the house and a thunderstorm has moved in – perhaps a side-effect of the much-ballyhooed Hurricane Rita, which has failed to deliver the level of destruction anticipated along the already-damaged Gulf Coast. The house is being pelted with horizontal rain in alarming quantities, trees bending under the weight. It’s a perfect Sunday, a lazy Sunday. I’m going to put on the tea kettle and take some time to sit and knit, something I’ve had little time for since we arrived. And then, once I’m good and calm, we’ll head back out to tonight’s David Lynch lecture on transcendental meditation which should prove, if nothing else, interesting.

But doesn’t everything here?

A few of my favorite things...

...about Ann Arbor. 1. Walkability, my friends. 2. Three - count 'em - three NPR stations 3. Giant quarts of Michigan raspberries at the Farmer's Market 4. Cafe society meets wireless internet access 5. Spending mornings in bed with my husband, doing crossword puzzles*

*This may not happen to everyone in Ann Arbor. No promises.

It is, quite frankly, the most gorgeous day outside. Not to boast - and certainly never to those still battling 90-degrees and humidity in St. Louis - but we're looking at a ridiculously clear blue sky, high in the mid-70s, gorgeous breeze. Turns out that despite years of protest, I may be an outdoorsy person afterwards - just not in St. Louis.

For the next couple of months, Tuesday evenings will feature presentations by two of the KW Fellows followed by dinner prepared by two other fellows. It's a chance to get to know everyone's story a bit and, of course, eat. Although what makes anyone think a bunch of journalists are fit to cater to a gang of 30-odd folk is beyond me. Apparently, it's been working for years and a couple of the gang here are real gourmands so I think we'll be in for fabulous treats. I'm surprised at how busy we are here, especially since I'm not even taking classes. There's just a wealth of stellar opportunities to take advantage of and this week seems jam-packed.

This afternoon, before the fellow's presentations, there's a talk at the Wallace House by Dan Okrent, the recently retired "public editor" of The New York Times. He's in town for a conference at the Sweetland Writing Center at U Mich this weekend, and will be giving us a private audience to talk about, among other things, how the paper handled the Jayson Blair affair.

Which is all in keeping with the conference, which is entitled "Originality, Imitation & Plagiarism: A Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Writing." Pardon the pedestrian exposition, but there's some very cool stuff offered and if you're a writer - or, I suppose, a plagiarist - you may wish to browse the offerings. I've got sessions earmarked for practically all of Friday, much of Saturday and Sunday morning.

I just got an email too about about a talk David Lynch is giving Sunday night about meditation and the creative process. I'll confess I'm not the biggest fan of Lynch's films but I'm intrigued enough about meditation that I consider this a must-see. Here's the description forwarded to me:

On Sunday, Sept 25, 7 pm, at Power Center, the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies at The University of Michigan is happy to present the renowned film director David Lynch in a talk called "Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain". Lynch will be joined by the physicist John Hagelin, who appeared in the film "What the Bleep do We Know", and the neuroscientist Fred Travis, who has done extensive work studying the neurophysiological aspects of meditation. Lynch will discuss the impact of his long-term involvement in meditation on his creative work, and the impact of meditation on the brain will be demonstrated by a meditating subject linked to EEG monitoring equipment.

And did I mention all of this - the conference, the Lynch talk - is free? Knowledge! For free! Better make that item number six on my list of things I love about being here.

I don't want to go to Chelsea

For days, I couldn’t get the Elvis Costello refrain out of my head. But the thing was, I did want to go to Chelsea. I was, in fact, pretty excited – as only a truly dedicated knitter would be – to check out the Fall Fleece Fair I’d seen advertised for this weekend months ago when we came here for Chris’ interview. The ad promised fleece, naturally, and a wealth of hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns and I promised myself I’d go. For the record, no matter what you may think, it is no feat to get Chris to go to these things with me. On some level, I think, he is merely being nice and supportive and, as he’ll sweetly put it, he’d prefer to be with me than without. But if you were to ask me, I’d suggest that perhaps Chris has developed a somewhat secondhand affection for yarn since I started knitting again six or seven years ago. I think he quite likes to pick up each ball or skein and gauge its feel and weight.

Thus, we headed out on Sunday morning to an area called Chelsea, a 20-odd-minute drive northwest of Ann Arbor. There isn’t much to recommend the drive. In fact, I was struck by how homogenous America’s highways can be. We could have been traveling on any strip of asphalt outside St. Louis or Indianapolis or Louisville. Billboards. Road signs. Big block retailers. Water towers. (Note: there seems something particularly desperate and ironic declaring yourself “Scenic Scio Township” on the side of one of those gigantic eyesores, no matter how pretty a typeface you chose.) My favorite sign, by far, was the one advertising the Teddy Bear factory outlet in downtown Chelsea. I pictured all the poor stuffed animals that didn’t quite make the cut. How horrific of a mishap would have to take place before a Teddy Bear is deemed unfit? I imagined shelf after shelf of bears with hideous disfigurements, like extra limbs, massive bald patches, four coal-black button eyes or missing ears. Couldn’t they just give them to disfigured children? Or, better yet, give them to pretty kids and watch them try to cope.

At the turn off for Chelsea, a gravel parking lot filled with RV’s boasted the sign Lloyd Bridges Travel Land and we half-prayed it wasn’t that Lloyd Bridges and half-prayed it was. We drove through the back streets of Chelsea in search of Beach Middle School, amazed at the number of McMansions set across narrow roads from modest ranch homes.

The Fleece Fair itself turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, for us at least. The school cafeteria was packed with tables piled high with giant beach ball size spheres of brightly colored wool fleece ready for the spinning. I spin not, and the selection of ready-to-go yarn was a lot more meager than I’d hoped. I did learn a couple of things. Instead, I just wandered around dipping my fingers into baggies filled with unbelievably soft angora, cashmere and alpaca and discovered that yak and camel is much more pleasing to the touch than you’d imagine. I also discovered that if you’re crazy enough to learn how to spin, these “luxury” fibers cost a hell of a lot less to buy as fleece than yarn shops charge for neat little skeins.

Chris was deeply disappointed that it wasn’t an outdoor fair and that there was no face painting or funnel cakes. Thus, I promised him we’d find him a nice brunch instead and, on that count, we succeeded nicely. We found our way down idyll streets with beautifully painted homes, a scene straight out of Thornton Wilder, a slice of time gone by. The two or so blocks of downtown Chelsea with its small shops and quiet grace kept the tone. It’s similar to a hundred small American time Main Streets I’ve walked but it’s precisely that charm and predictability that makes it so pleasant, so effortless. (I actually remembered to bring my camera with me for the first time since I moved here but, of course, the batteries didn't work...)

That said, we were not prepared for the quality of brunch we enjoyed at The Common Grill, which we stumbled upon by default – it was the only full-service restaurant we found in downtown Chelsea. (In fairness, others may have been closed and we may have been too weak with hunger to notice….) It’s a beautiful, open and airy place with shining wooden floors and crisp white table cloths. Our waiter was a delightful young man who seemed to be doing a perpetual audition for a stage play with his overdrawn gestures and precise pronunciation. But he quickly brought us a basket of warm, buttery, yeasty poppy seed rolls, at which point anything could have been forgiven.

It seems that The Grill specializes in seafood dishes and I chose a concoction involving Maryland crab cakes on an English muffin and Chris got a lobster and shrimp omelet. Both were outstanding and we salivated over the regular dinner menu and dessert selections with a future visit in mind. Yes, it seems, that not only did I want to go to Chelsea, but I may just want to go back again.

Zingerman's is overrated

There! I've said it. And any minute now, I expect the Ann Arbor cultural committee to come and usher me into silence. When I tell people I'm living in Ann Arbor, anyone who has ever been here before asks, "Have you been to Zingerman's yet?" Anyone who has never been to Ann Arbor is no doubt wondering, "What is a Zingerman's?" Zingerman's is more than just a deli/gourmet food shop/bakehouse/coffee shop/brand name/way of life - it's a veritable Ann Arbor institution. I shall never argue that they do what they do well - and they do a lot. Situated on a diagonal street called Detroit, a few blocks northwest of campus, the "main" Zingerman's is a tiny, cramped deli-cum-gourmet shop selling much-ballyhooed sandwiches along with fresh, house-made cheeses, their own breads and the sort of thing that makes gourmands swoon, like 50 year old balsamic vinegar aged to a syrupy consistency.

Next door is, appropriately enough, Zingerman's Next Door - a coffee house with generous space that does double duty as seating area for deli meals purchased next door. It is not, however, a quiet place as the unfailingly nice and welcoming staff circle at all times, carrying trays loaded down with $10 sandwiches and hollering the names associated with them. That said, I have been there on non-weekends, in non-peak hours and sat in the relative quiet of the upstairs tapping away on their free wireless. It is a nice place where they produce good food - but we're not certain it's fantastic food. Granted, we're spoiled rotten from the low cost of living in St. Louis but even by Ann Arbor standards, Zingerman's seems a bit over-priced for what they deliver. Compared to a New York deli, however, I'm guessing it's par for the course. (I'm just saying that if I pay $11 for a regular-sized sandwich, I want it to change my life somehow....)

The truly interesting part about Zingerman's - which also operates a bakehouse, creamery, mail order service, catering company and bona fide restaurant over on our side of town - is perhaps what you don't see. Or, rather, what you don't realize you see - a truly admirable commitment to customer service. In fact, under the name Zingtrain, the company shares its wisdom and philosophies on organizing and management. It's an unusual - and unusually cool - approach. And so maybe that's not a $5 brownie you're really paying for, but a hat-tip to a workable and respectable business model.

I mention Zingerman's today because we just came from there, among other stops on an overcast afternoon spent wandering around Kerrytown. Chris decided to skip this week's football game and donated his tickets to a group of Fellows who don't have them and we decided to hit the Farmer's Market again. (Seriously, wasn't there a football game just last weekend? How often do you people need to watch this sport?)

Despite the grey skies, it was an ideal way to spend a few hours on a Saturday. As I've mentioned before, the Farmer's Market is not grand in scale, but it's always fun to browse the stalls with their competing styles of heirloom tomatoes, tiny wooden baskets filled with miniature eggplant, painted tin cans threatening to tip under the weight of bunches of giant sunflowers. It feels like an unbelievably civilized way to live, to shop and do business with independent folk among other city dwellers.

And the walking...while my rear is still getting adjusted, can I just say there is a particularly healthy type of thrill living in an area where you can park your car once (or step off the bus) and make your way around wherever you need to go by foot? Last night, for example, Chris and I parked the car centrally in town and walked a few blocks for a sumptuous feast of Ethiopian food at a restaurant called The Blue Nile.

Afterwards, we wandered for a while, walking up and down streets, exploring the neighborhoods, marveling at some truly amazing houses that must have once been the most beautiful private homes - and today stand in various states of disrepair, their innards divided into as many as nine different apartments for student housing.

When we felt we'd earned a respite, we walked down to Amer's and treated ourselves to coffee and dessert and sat doing a crossword puzzle by the window as students made their way past, their night just beginning as ours wound down. Honestly, at this phase in my life, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a more pleasing way to spend an evening. I tell you, people, I'm liking this college town living.

It's sweater weather! Woo hoo!

Now, this is more like it. At first I was unsure if we’d moved far north enough – a line of thinking you’ll no doubt remind me of mid-January – when the temps were in the 90s earlier this week. But last night it rained (and I’m just enough of a Scorpio to adore the rainfall) and I awoke this morning to a chilly 50-odd degrees with a high hovering somewhere just about 60 today. I realize that would make some people shudder but for me, it’s heaven. I plucked a fluffy sweatshirt out of the pull and snuggled into it with glee this morning. Despite my previous entry, there are some things about fall that make me incredibly happy, most of them quite simple. With each passing day, we get a little more settled and situated here. I now know my way around – at least in theory – although my appallingly inept sense of direction gets me turned around every time I exit a storefront. Everyone should get either a map or a smart husband to help point them in the right direction. I have both, and I still don’t know when I’m headed South. If the fate of the pioneers rested in my hands, the Donner situation would have been the exception rather than the rule.

As part of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship, Tuesday and Thursday early evenings are largely spoken for with a series of planned events to which spouses are always welcome. This past Tuesday, we were invited to the home of KWF president Charles Eisendrath and his wife Julia who, as the name suggests, is a lady of great refinement and legendary kindness. Whilst he had us captive, Charles gave us a presentation of his life story which includes a number of hair-raising incidents while working as a foreign correspondent in places like London, Paris, Argentina and Chile. It was very cloak-and-dagger stuff harkening back to romantic days of investigative journalism I’m unsure still exist. He played a role in unraveling the infamous French Connection, which resulted in serious threats on his life. If his schedule had worked correctly that day, he would have been interviewing Salvador Allende in his office in the Presidential Palace in Chile on the morning the Chilean military attacked. Instead, Charles watched from a rooftop as planes carrying missiles targeted Allende's office - missiles Charles believes were actually what killed the president. (I also discovered that Charles grew up in St. Louis, attended John Burroughs and began his journalism career – entirely unintentionally – as an intern at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

If that wasn’t enough, Charles ended his talk with the most riveting tale of all. While leaving Costa Rica after a family trip five years ago, the small plane carrying Charles, Julia, their two sons and daughter in law crashed into the jungle. Somehow – and when you see the photographs of the wreckage, you do wonder how – they all survived.

The point of telling us the story, however, wasn’t to impress us with his survival skills. It led into what Charles believes is the real point of the fellowship – the active and energetic pursuit of one’s dreams in an all-too-precious lifetime. (It's a philosophy he explains in this piece from the 2001 Michigan Fellows Journal.) When people hear Chris was awarded this fellowship, they often think it’s a year of teaching or just a year of study. But the atmosphere and the real intent of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship seems so much more than that. How many people ever get the gift of a paid year away from your regular job where you’re encouraged to engage in whatever you think will help shape or reshape your life – as a journalist and as a person?

The journalists here are being encouraged to enhance themselves within their fields, certainly – otherwise, why would their employers let them come? They’re also being encouraged to pursue other dreams. One fellow is studying healthcare issues of immigrants but also wants to learn how to make her own chocolates. Past fellows have seized the opportunity to learn things they’ve always wanted to – or, in some cases, were afraid to – like learning to play the guitar or ice skating.

The encouragement to make the most of this year is extended to the spouses and partners of the fellows. Originally, I assumed I’d take the time here to force myself to hammer out the book I know I have in me and attend a few classes at the University of Michigan. It’s funny how things change. As I’ve mentioned, the class situation didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped this semester but, in one of those rare revelatory moments in life, I’ve stumbled instead onto something I feel strongly I’m supposed to be spending me time on.

A few years ago, author Dave Eggers started an organization at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. The point of 826, as it came to be known, was to encourage children to write via a number of free services, including after-school drop-in tutoring, workshops and the mere existence of a supportive, nurturing environment. In the United States there are currently four 826s – the original, 826 New York, 826 LA and, of all things, 826 Michigan, right here in Ann Arbor.

For a while now, Thomas Crone (a good friend and fellow writer in St. Louis) and I have bandied back and forth the idea of teaching writing workshops to children. Suddenly, the idea of taking classes simply because I could seemed much less appealing (and inspiring) to me than spending dedicated time each week volunteering with and essentially shadowing the good folks at 826 Michigan.

I’m told there’s already an organization underway in St. Louis basing itself on the 826 model and, at first, I found that a bit discouraging. (After all, I wanted to be the one to bestow it on my home land!) But there’s so much to learn here that could be applied in a million different ways and, most importantly, it matters to me. It feels like the right thing to do, so I think for now I’m just going to do it – starting with training to be a tutor for the drop-in sessions – and we’ll all see where it takes me from there.

Maybe it's just difficult

I know some people who embrace change with reckless abandon, certain that all shifts bring some good. I know others who fear it more than anything, except perhaps death itself. And here I sit, in the middle of some pretty massive change and I'm not sure what to make of it. Fortunately for you people, I'm not of a mind to wax too philosophically about it. Because - and you can put this on a bumper sticker and make a mint - change just is. Fall is particularly poignant, I think, because the changing leaves harken new back-to-school jeans and school supplies. But there's also a certain melancholy in the air for me as fall approaches. There's so much going on around me but my eye keeps slipping towards the end of this month, which is rapidly approaching. My feelings, in the meantime, are floating upwards, settling just below the surface, ready to explode at the slightest stimulus, the gentlest poke with a stick. Right after September ends, October begins, and I wonder if I'll ever get back a time when it's just another month, instead of the month in which my mother died and everything changed more than I ever imagined. Am I dwelling on this? Am I boring people with it? Two years later and shouldn't I, as a super-modern-humor be "cured" of grief by now? If life is about progress, then I should note that the sadness is by no means constant, that it comes now in waves and now it's almost seasonal. But this is the season.

It's harder to walk through this in Ann Arbor, away from all my fabulous friends. In a cafe, with a skim decaf latte (damn you, Weight Watchers!) and not enough food in my belly. But there you have it.

Oh, and did I mention it's raining here today?

Skin and technology

I'm gradually discovering the best ways to find out what's going on in this here town at any given time - which is, usually, a lot. There are a bunch of little local indie mags and zines of varying quality and circulation that appear to largely focus on entertainment and upcoming events. Easily the best of the bunch seems to be the Ann Arbor Observer and its online counterpart ArborWeb, which has helped me dig up the following two gems for my To Do list:

Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase presents Dustin Diamond. September 30 & October 1. This comic actor is best known from his role as Screech in the various Saved by the Bell movies and sitcoms. His stand-up act features edgy topical and observational comedy. Preceded by 2 opening acts. Alcohol is served; all 8 p.m. Friday shows are nonsmoking shows. old VFW Hall (below Seva restaurant), 314 E. Liberty. $14 reserved seating in advance, $16 general admission at the door. 996-9080.

Comic actor? I don't even have the time or energy to debate whether or not having starred on SBTB even gives one a passing acquaintance with comedy, but "edgy topical and observational comedy"? I almost need to see this one to believe it. Much like:

Ann Arbor Solid Waste Department 10th Anniversary Fall FestivalAll invited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the city's recycling and trash disposal center with hayrides and tours of the facilities. Also, hands-on kids activities and informational displays. Cider & doughnuts. Materials Recovery Facility, 4120 Platt Rd. Free. 994-2807.

Bring the kids and let them take hay rides around solid waste! And then treat them to donuts! Good Lord. It seems that the universe does not want me taking any writing classes this semester - or, hell, anything remotely interesting. (It does, however, want me to join Curves, which I did today when the first song they played after I walked through the door was a dance-beat-infused version of "Life In A Northern Town." Sometimes, I know when just to obey....) So I'm leaning towards the radical decision not to take any classes this semester. In addition to that book I keep yammering about - which I suppose I'll have to start at some point - I've got a little something up my sleeve to make the most of my time. I'll let you know when/if it pans out.

After a walk across the Diag this afternoon to reach a coffee shop, I observed once again that things have changed drastically since I was a young lass at school. Students today seem to have a lot more skin and a lot more technology. I wonder what, if anything, is missed when you walk across campus yapping on your cell phone or plugged into the isolating bliss of an iPod rather than actually being in your space and noticing things and people around you? Laptops appear to be standard issue. I don't remember if I even had a calculator in college, but that was probably because it was Webster and, hell, what was I going to calculate? How many theater students it took to fill the cast of Into the Woods?

Fashion tends toward the revelatory - shorts are short, shirts barely qualify. Also, the girls are so unbelievably thin and those who aren’t stick out like awkward sore (and large)thumbs. The world is not kind to fat folks and at this time in space, it seems worse than ever. For that (and a number of different reasons) I'm grateful not to be navigating the end of my adolescence on a college campus these days.

Higher education: narrowing down the options

Okay, so I think I'm getting narrowed down on the classes that I want to take. I've decided to try and limit my classes to Mondays and Wednesdays because there's that book I keep yammering about and I may actually need to dedicate some solid time to it. Thus, I think I've narrowed it down to three. First, we have a class called "The Sincerest Form," taught by Nicholas Delbanco. It's an interesting approach to writing short fiction which ivolves studying then mimicking the styles of authors such as Hemingway, Woolf and Joyce. From what I've heard - none of it first-hand, I assure you - Delbanco's operating from the belief that there is no original writing style and that we can learn by imitating others. It's so contrary to every other writing theory I've encountered, where finding one's own unique voice is stressed, that I think it might be good for me to give it a shot. I think the fact that the idea makes me uncomfortable may indicate a potential for something really annoying, like growth and broadened horizons. I've emailed the prof to see if I can get in, but haven't heard back yet.

I'm supposed to meet with another teacher, Tricia McElvoy, to discuss the possibility of auditing her class on Contemporary Scottish Fiction. She seems concerned that I won't be interested in all the class, as it is a freshman college writing course, but that I might enjoy the discussion portions. So I'm hoping to work something out there. I've got the obvious cultural interest in it and just hope it's not all reading Irvine Welsh, otherwise I'll have to bail. I get a headache just thinking about reading his books. Last, I'm hoping to get into a course called Anthropology of the Body & Senses. What's it about? Honesty, I'm not 100% certain yet, but I found something intriguing enough in the following course description to email the instructor:

This course is about the human body and the senses from the comparative and historical perspective of anthropology. People in different cultures have strikingly different ways of using their bodies to "make sense" of their worlds. Our purpose in this course will be explore such questions as these. How do people communicate with each other through the gestures and movements of their bodies, including their faces. Is there a natural order of the senses? What would be the nature of a world organized around smell, touch, or sound, rather than sight, as a dominant mode of knowing, or a world perceived through the feet? How do people acquire their bodily educations, for example, their notions of gender, age, beauty, purity, or strength? Is there a politics of the body and the senses? For example, why should "taste" be a mark of social class? Are social relations species-specific, or might our bodies and senses (for example, as mammals and vertebrates) provide us with means of communicating and relating more broadly? Could we ever get a sense of what it is like to be a cat or a bird or a tree? We will begin with an over view of how anthropologists study the body and the senses from a comparative perspective, focusing especially on the sensory construction of social worlds. Then we will focus on case studies of our key questions, concluding with a consideration of how attention to the varieties of bodily and sensory experience might contribute to our understanding of human behavior overall.

Yesterday, after a tour of the graduate and undergraduate libraries - accompanied by a rather dizzying intro to the university's online resources - we hung out with some of the Fellows at a rather crowded, stereotypical college bar, called Ashley's. One of the Fellows, John Bacon, is actually a native of Ann Arbor and is proving a valuable source of tips and info.

There, I had a really fascinating discussion with one of the international fellows, Min-Ah Kim, about the role of women in politics in her native South Korea as compared to here in the US. (That's the focus of her studies here at UM.) Interesting to know there's not actually too much difference between women's struggles in a completely different culture. Deputy editor of The Kyunghyang Daily News in Seoul, Min-Ah's a terrific person, warm and fascinating and filled with the kind of earnest questions about American culture that make you think about our country differently.

Min-Ah's just one of several international fellows here, which include a female reporter from CNN-Turk in Istanbul; a freelance writer from Rwanda; the executive editor of La Razon, from Buenos Aires, Argentina; and an editor from BBC World Service News. In case you were wondering how international I'm being, the answer is: very.

I'm not sure what everyone else is up to for the upcoming weekend. I know the couple from Sydney, Kim and Gerard, have rented a car and are bravely going up North to explore. Chris and I are going to continue settling in, I suppose. He will be using his student tickets to attend the football game tomorrow. (Friends reading this may wish to consider the game schedule when planning trips to visit - I can pretty much guarantee that his spare ticket will go unused.)There's a big books sale, and a ton of other little goings-on, including a student comedy improv troupe we may check out tomorrow night. I'm also excited (as only certain people can be) about the Fiber Fleece Festival in Chelsea on Sunday. The rest, as they say, is up in the air.

Welcome to Ann Arbor

I thought, perhaps, that I would spend at least part of my time in Ann Arbor writing thoughtful, personalized updates on our fellowship year to my friends and families. Please. I can hardly find my way to the grocery store. And thus, I fall back (again) on this, the cheapest of communications tricks - the blog. Here I will regale you with tales of our move from St. Louis to Ann Arbor for the 2005-2006 academic year, as Chris has been named a Knight-Wallace Fellow. Where to start? I have no idea. It's now Thursday...I think. We arrived late Sunday night and I feel as though we've spent the majority of time running around trying to get ourselves situated. And failing miserably. Nothing is in order. Everything feels chaotic and I find myself naming things and assuming I will be overtaken by a sense of calm when certain specific things are achieved. (For example, when I get enough ice cube trays or when the cats come home from the vets.) This never pans out because, after all, the question becomes "enough ice cube trays for what?" and we could spend all day on that one.

If I sound insane, it's probably because I am. This is the first week of classes and the town is packed with young, thin people. Aren't there any fat college students anymore? (I suppose that question may be addressed by a lecture seminar I'm thinking of taking entitled "gender and eating disorders," apparently inspired by a statistic claiming that a good 80% of female college students suffer from an eating disorder. Of course, I have no idea from whence this stat was sprung, but I sure like a good heavy-handed statistic, so I'm sticking with it. We had to pick our way through the quad to get to the graduate library, where I am tapping into their wireless system. (We have only dial-up at the house we're renting, which seems punishingly archaic.) I can't believe how many students there are here. I think there were more students in the quad than have ever attended my alma mater, Webster University. God bless the tiny lib arts college with its five-person class size and two-to-one teacher to student ratio. I'd have drowned in a place like this.

We've met the Fellows and their Spouses, an impressive lot across the list. Haven't gotten to know anyone enough yet to get a sense of bonds or friendships that may form, but it's an interesting group. Provided I can get this massive chip off my shoulder about being one of The Spouses. Maybe if they'd stop referring to us as, say, The Spouses.

Taking classes hasn't panned out the way I'd hoped for the semester. I'd wanted very much to take a grad level writing workshop, however that's been shot down. I can understand that there's limited room in the workshop and I suppose it only makes sense to save room for MFA students. You know, the paying sort. But I'd also hoped to take a conversational Spanish class and it seems those are pretty packed as it is. It's a far more complicated ordeal than I expected.

I'm trying not to freak out about what I will take and I'm ignoring the fact that it's the first week of classes and just browsing the catalog for lecture classes I may wish to take. Those seem pretty easy to pop in and out of with minimal disturbance to teachers and students alike. There's a senior-level media law class that Chris and I are thinking of taking together, so that we can sit together and scribble love notes on our notebooks when the class gets dull. We're still trying to figure out how to figure out if we can get in or not.

The Fellowship has activities most Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, which are mandatory for Fellows and encouraged for Spouses. Today, we're meeting up with everyone at 4 pm on the steps of the Graduate Library for a tour of the facility! Little do they know I'm already holed up here! I'm so ahead of the game! Wait...what time is it?

Here's the thing, people: academics are complicated, and while Fellows get advisors, spouses don't. So I'm just following Chris' lead, as I often do in life. Sorry. Nearly bust a gut on that one.

On the home front, we have accumulated some usable groceries, at last. I say "at last" because we've been to about eight different grocery stores and it was like moving slightly north reduced our shopping acumen. We kept arriving home with food, but not quite the right sorts to assemble anything resembling a meal. Last night and today we ate probably our first meals at home in four days and it was surprising how much walking through the routine of preparing a meal, washing dishes, wiping counters went a long way towards restoring some semblance of routine.

Like it or not, I will be posting more in the weeks and months to come. Do me a favor, would you, dear family and friends? If you have a moment, help keep the Read Julia forums alive in my absence. Dang, you're the best.