Continuing education

There are certain things in life that, were my income substantially more fluid, I would not hesitate to pay another human being to do for me. These include cleaning the house, laundry and taxes. Then, there are a number of things that I wish I could do for myself instead of having to shell out cash to another human being. Things like changing my oil, installing a garbage disposal or, say, a new car stereo. On the short list above, I have learned (and since forgotten) how to change my own oil. I have thought about installing a garbage disposal but have an irrational fear that my hand will get eaten off somewhere in the process. And, as of yesterday, I am now a person who knows how to install a car stereo.

I should note that I did so largely unsupported by my usually supportive spouse, Chris, who was leaning heavily towards paying $50 plus parts to have the staff of Best Buy install it. But not me. I knew I could do this. I just wasn't sure how.

All I can say is, thank God for the internet. I probably wouldn't know how to use a fork if there weren't 2,000 web sites and Wikis giving me step-by-step instructions. Similarly, there are many sites that explain how to remove one car stereo and install another.

It gets a bit tricky though, when it comes to matching up the wire harnesses on your factory installed model with your new unit. Didn't that sound impressive? I said "wire harness." Fantastic! But after a few phone calls and trips to Auto Zone, Best Buy and Home Depot and a quick lesson on wire stripping from the ol' ball and chain, I succeeded.

By the end of the day, the stereo/CD player (the only salvagable part of the dearly departed Saturn) had replaced the faulty factory stereo/CD player in our new used 2002 Toyota Corolla. And it WORKS!

I get a strange thrill from doing this sort of thing. I'm very much not a handy person, so when I can accomplish something like this, something that involves wires and tools and a little grunting, I feel like I've been endowed some sort of super powers. I feel like I could fix anything. It scares Chris. He starts glancing protectively at all our major appliances when I get that gleam in my eye.

I'm pretty sure that the buffoons who provide you with "professional installation" of your car stereo at the big box stores probably do not jump up and down like little girls with every successful install. But I did. And Chris just looked at me.

"Aren't you excited?" I said. "Don't you want to know how to do things like this?" He shrugged.

"There are other things I'd like to know how to do more than install a car stereo," he said.

"Like what?" Track down white collar criminals? Single-handedly uncover huge stock fraud rings? Oh, wait. He already knows how to do that.

"Like install flooring."

"We already know how to install flooring," I said, pointing at the gleaming Pergo floors.

Chris just smiled and walked away. Which doesn't really mean anything. In fact, now that I've typed it, I understand that that none of the conversation really bears repeating. But it's too late for that, eh? Maybe my point is that it doesn't seem that he afforded the amount of respect and reverence to a person who knows how to install a car stereo.

But that's just kind of the cross I have to bear.

Already an oven

Man, it's hot in St. Louis. It's 94 degrees today, which seems extreme for May, even for here. The weather site says it's 53% humidity but I suspect there's a "1" missing from in front of that. I forgot how much I hate this heat. I awoke this morning to the thunk of our central air kicking on, having to compete with nature even at 6 in the morning to keep our house at a reasonable 75 degrees. I listened to the whir of the system and thought, "That is the sound of money draining out of our bank account." My stomach tightened.

Here we are, though. Gearing up for another St. Louis summer, testing our systems by dashing from the oppressive heat of the sidewalks into the subzero AC of restaurants, shops, offices and homes. It wears on your system. It makes me feel tired, no matter how much rest I get. I suit up to work out and step outside and have to use every ounce of will to get me into the car and to the gym.

Complain much? Me? Nah.

It's strange to be back, living in something of a limbo state. Not quite sure what the next phase of my career is going to look like. No freelance jobs at the moment. I've cleaned the kitchen for the last week, every day. Hey Shel, I think I'm a house wife.

Weird.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran a special hour on Mike Wallace. At the end, Wallace himself introduced a section about his affinity for Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan (his alma mater) and the Knight-Wallace Fellowship.

Life in a Midwestern town

All evidence suggests that we are back in St. Louis. After a brief stop in Indianapolis -- where we were entertained all too briefly by the musical and dance stylings of my youngest nieces -- we made it back to the little blue house of love on Tuesday evening. And we were immediately struck with a case of the "now what?s" It's incredibly strange re-entering your home when it's been occupied by a renter for eight months. It smells of different people. The vibe is different. And furniture that had been arranged to someone else's priorities was immediately rearranged to my own comfortable memories.

Since my return, I've been feeling in limbo. Sometimes being in our little house seems so normal that I wonder if we ever really left. Sometimes I feel like we don't belong here anymore. And I have been ridiculously, insanely tired, seized by a complete exhaustion that could, of course, be a normal phase of my treatment for fibromyalgia. Or it could be, I suppose, the fall out from switching lives, from the emotional upheaval of our last few days in Ann Arbor.

It's been fantastic to see our friends again. Yesterday, we had dinner with a particularly favorite group of people and it was soul-healing to be around them. From the minute sweet Rachel bounded -- literally bounded -- across the parking lot to hug me to the familiar smiles I've missed to so much, it all felt really good. I've said it before and I'll say it again, among the things St. Louis seems to do best is the people.

Friday Chris and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We've been married. For five years. In a row! What an amazing accomplishment that is.

Today is a beautiful, lazy Sunday. The windows are open, the birds are chirping. I alternate between cleaning and organizing for a while, then sinking into my overstuffed armchair to read or surf the 'net. Our house is full of light and the laminate floors we installed before leaving really class up the joint.

It would be easy to close our eyes and pretend we've never left here, except for the fact that we are, under the surface, greatly changed people for having spent an academic year with the Knight-Wallace Fellowship. I may look the same, but we stuffed about five years of lifetime experiences into those eight months and I met people who challenged me, changed my mind. I miss them. A lot.

It's hard to explain to anyone who wasn't there, what it's like to move somewhere new and have to form some sort of family and friendship out of 30-odd strangers. And it's hard to be back here where no one really knows our friends from That Life, so even though anecdotes or memories are constantly coming to mind, I stop short, realizing that the people I'm with here don't know the places or the people to which I'm referring.

It's probably time to get up off the chair again. There are still, nearly a week after our return, loose ends to put away, things we've acquired or simply can't remember where to put them. There's a fridge to fill and baseboards to scrub.

And then there's the cats who seem to have forgiven us for the trip down here. They seem to have forgotten it entirely. In fact, they seem to have forgotten everything entirely, curled as they are in the exact same spots they favored before we left St. Louis.

I read once that cats are attached to places and not to people, that they adapt more easily to familiar surroundings than they do to familiar people in strange surroundings.

As a human, it seems a particular curse to be attached to both, people and places. A curse, and also the greatest blessing of all.

Fort Wayne, Indiana

The bad news is that the alternator on the Saturn has gone for the fourth time in two years. This time, on our way back to St. Louis (via Indianapolis), complete with mewly cats in tow. The good news is that the Saturn service center has FREE Diet Coke. Chris and I are attempting to drink our $500 worth before the car is finished being repaired.

The cats hate us.

Packing & cleaning & grieving

It has rained for the past three days in Ann Arbor. Not warm, spring rain divided by bursts of sunlight and marked by the scent of fertile soil. But cold, chilly rain. Constant drizzle that never ceases, seeps into everything slowly and quietly, keeps the sky dark and gray at all hours. During these past few days, I've tried to immerse myself in the punishing task of packing and cleaning our rental house for our return to St. Louis tomorrow. I've also spent the time trying in vain to tune out the special tone of spam, commercials, retail displays and the general sense of pressure and guilt that settles upon the nation in the last few hours leading up to Mother's Day.

This is the third Mother's Day since my mother died. The first year was, as they said it would be, the worst. And last year was less worse. And so, this year, has been less worse again. But there is an undeniable strangeness in simply not being able to participate in this silly holiday. As I wrote in a column that first year, I simply no longer qualify as a person with a mother.

And that I have not yet been able to get used to. I miss my mother. And I miss having a mother. They are not the same thing.

From the time I was little, Mother's Day has been a day to acknowledge. From earnest but messy hand-made cards to a gaudy cut glass ashtray purchased with my own pocket money. No matter how sullen I grew through my teen years, even I could not deny that kudos were owed to the person who brought me into this world.

As a grown up -- depending on the phase of my life -- Mother's Day meant a phone call, a card, ridiculously expensive last-minute flowers or terrible guilt for not mustering up a phone call, a card or ridiculously expensive last-minute flowers.

But I had something to do for Mother's Day. Now I don't.

I tried just to think of my mother today, the person she was. But I'm not sure I'm far enough along in the healing process to be able to think of her without the dark shadow of her sudden death clouding my memories. I can't think of my mother most days (and certainly not this day) without sadness encroaching, without a slight nudge of anger in my belly and that last remaining nugget of incredulity. My mother's dead?

My friend N. lost her father very unexpectedly recently and I've come to the conclusion that it is -- despite what those who have anguished through the lingering death of a sick loved one -- the cruelest cut. There's an extra undercurrent of shock, a violence to the suddenness. I envy no one the loss of a parent, but the advantage of the time and opportunity a little warning affords seems undeniably precious to me.

It probably doesn't help that we're leaving this lovely place, that moving is a stressful time, that I'm going to miss my friends from the fellowship more than I can even bear to think about. It doesn't help that all my things are in boxes and even if I could name one thing that could bring me comfort, I probably couldn't find it anyway.

It does help, however, if in only the smallest way, that tomorrow morning we will head out towards St. Louis. We will stop in Indianapolis and hug my little nieces whose busy lives don't pause for such silly things as grief and self-pity. We will spend the night being fought over for affection and then, in the morning, before our novelty wears off, we will get in the car once again and point ourselves towards our tiny blue house in St. Louis. We will point ourselves home.

It just keeps me hangin' on

We're still in Ann Arbor. I know, I know. It seems like we've been saying goodbye in fits and starts for months now and yet we keep not leaving. That's about to be rectified, however, as we depart on Monday to head back to St. Louis. Apparently, no matter how long I wait, our belongings are too lazy to pack themselves. I don't get it.

In the meantime, we're cramming in as much selfish, quality time with the remaining fellows as we can. It all feels slightly pre-funereal, but we're doing our best to ingest as much coffee from Espresso Royale as we possibly can.

Walking after midnight

Chris and I ambled home last night from downtown shortly after midnight. It was a beautiful, cool night and as we turned up our street, the perfume from the spring flowers and the carpet of apple blossom betals was so heady and strong we had to pause for a while and just breathe.

The Architect in Tribeca

It is, in a lifetime of pretty neat things, pretty neat to see a movie your friend made. Not a film/video school final project or an amateur job captured on their digicam, but an actual, bonafide feature length major motion picture. And that's exactly what I saw when Chris and I were in New York a week ago today. After a whirlwind weekend in Toronto, which I wrote about here, we headed to the pomme grande (grande pomme?) last Monday morning. Chris had a little investigative work to do, but the main reason we went was to support my old friend Matt Tauber by attending the premier of his movie, The Architect at the Tribeca Film Festival.

(File this under list of things you should not do: do not walk until your feet bleed the day before you get to New York. If you cannot make your way around this city on foot, without excruciating pain, then you probably don't need to be there in the first place. Learn from my mistakes, people.)

Still, I managed to hobble around a bit on Monday afternoon after checking into a compact but clean and well-appointed room at the Hotel Chandler. So what if you can't stand in front of the closet and open the door? The toiletries are Aveda! There's a snuggly white bath robe! The bed linens are Frette, which probably means something to the kind of people who spend money on bed linens! (Note: Because of my treatment for fibromyalgia, I can't use any topical products with plant oils in them. Thus, being offered free Aveda products is actually akin to torture. However, I made Chris use them all and then spent a while sniffing at him. It's how we roll.)

Kickin' it with the big kids at the Tribeca Grand

Monday night, we joined Matt for drinkie-poos in the lobby of the Tribeca Grand Hotel. I kind of expected to get stopped at the main entrance and escorted to the staff entry but, remarkably, they let us waltz right in along with the beautiful people.

Matt was there with his friend, producer Jon Stern, who was very nice and funny. And who happened to produce two indie films I loved, Scotland, PA and The Daytrippers. After a while, we were joined by Danny Leiner , director of Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and, more recently, episodes of TV shows such as Arrested Development and The Sopranos. Danny and Matt are partners in their production company Sly Dog Film and directed their film The Great New Wonderful , which will be released in June.

Danny is, as Matt promised, a really nice, funny guy. He and Jon entertained us greatly with stories about working together years ago on a TV movie called Flashback. Then they talked a little bit about their current projects and it was, admittedly, somewhat surreal to sit around with people who, when they talk about movies, aren't just talking about what they've seen -- they're talking about what they've made and who they're working with.

For the most part, the Tribeca Grand lobby was quiet that evening, although it's sort of the unofficial hub of the Tribeca Film Festival, Robert DeNiro's post-9/11 artistic shot-in-the-arm for the city he loves so much in American Express ads. And sitting there I was suddenly painfully aware -- to the point of distraction -- that the white ankle socks poking out from the cuff of my jeans were ALL WRONG. I had, after all, dressed for walking around NY and hadn't known we'd meet up with Matt.

Of course, half the people in the lobby were wearing old jeans and ratty t-shirts. But they're movie people. They're directors and producers. No one cares what they look like. I, however, am a normal person, so I assumed that, in such fancy surroundings, I was supposed to look somewhere between unemployed-screenwriter and ready-for-my-screen-test talent. And my socks were bothering me.

So in the midst of joking around with movers and shakers, I managed to remove my socks and stuff them in my purse without anyone noticing. I think. Removing them didn't help much. It turns out that, in the world of said movers and shakers, I'm pretty much ALL WRONG. Which is okay, as we decided we'd play the part of Matt's unsophisticated and unassuming Midwestern friends. Someone has to.

Does it count if you walk the red carpet afterwards?

On Tuesday evening, we attended the show's premier at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Matt has basically worked on this baby for the past decade, when he first saw Scottish playwright David Greig's play of the same title. Falling in love with the storyline, Matt adapted and rewrote it, changing the location from Glasgow to Chicago, tweaking the characters and making it a more classically American drama.

The Architect is the story of the point at which the lives of two very different people intersect. Leo (Anthony LaPaglia) is a past-his-prime architect, resting on his laurels in the rich Chicago suburbs, falling increasingly out of touch with his family. His wife (Isabella Rossellini) is checking out of their marriage, his uber-tan daughter (Hayden Panettiere) is testing the limits of her budding sexuality and his son (Sebastian Stan) is coming to terms with his own homosexuality.

Enter a woman named Tonya (Viola Davis), an activist who lives in a housing project Leo designed decades before. She's struggling with raising her own two daughters in the development that is now controlled and dominated by gang activity. And she's agitating to have the projects torn down. She seeks Leo's support in this but Leo can't see that his design could possibly be flawed and fails to step outside of his own comfort zone to consider the reality of others.

It's a powerful situation, a really human drama, with a lot of conflict and potential. Viola Davis -- who you may not know by name but would recognize from guest star turns on shows like Law & Order SVU and CSI) gives a particularly passionate performance.

(Note: the day of the premier, I rode in the elevator at the Hotel Chandler with Davis and one of the other actors. I didn't know who she was at the time but I smiled at her and said hello and she just looked away. I guess she thought I was an annoying fan or something when really I was just an annoying stranger.)

If applause -- and the genuine tears of the guy sitting to my right -- were any indication, I'd say The Architect was well received. After the show, most of the cast joined Matt on stage for a brief panel Q & A. (Rossellini was absent since she had two other films going on at the festival, I believe.) It was kind of an odd set-up with a limited number of questions from the audience but moderately informative. Plus, it was just fun to see the same folks you'd just seen on screen standing in front of you.

Then we had some time to kill until the after-party so we wandered around Tribeca a bit, passing the infamous Nobu, and stepped into the cozy (if painfully understaffed) Viet Cafe. We did the small plates thing but perhaps didn't go for enough variety among the lemongrass crab cakes, Hanoi "pillow" dumplings and the spring rolls. Nothing was outstanding but it was plenty filling and the place has a good vibe.

Next, it was time to hit the after-party at the Tribeca Cinemas. It's not always easy wandering around Tribeca because, unlike most other areas of New York, the highway divides some of the streets so the maps can look a little misleading in terms of how to get from point A to point b. So it took us a little longer than we'd thought, but we got to gawk up at a number of cool loft buildings, so it was worth every extra step.

Got a lovely chance at the bar to catch up with one of Matt's oldest friends, producer and documentary film maker Maurice Bisaillon, who just finished the biography of Barack Obama for A&E's program Biography. He also previously worked on American Justice with Bill Kurtis which, of course, gave this fan of schlocky crime TV a great thrill!

It was pretty entertaining, watching the whole "scene" take place. It wasn't quite The Player, but there was a definite networking bent in the air and since we're so completely removed from that vibe, it was funny to observe. Though probably not somewhere I'd want to live, you know?

So we wrapped up the night with a quick goodbye to Mattie-poo and plans to meet the next morning for breakfast at the Soho Grand Hotel. Which we did, along with Maurice, Matt's sweet and lovely girlfriend Claudia, and two other friends of his from DC, Thom and Lisa.

Matt had to excuse himself during breakfast to film an interview with HDNet and, when he was done with that, the film's stars started arriving for their turn. I will say this about Anthony LaPaglia, who I got to check out from about a foot away -- he's far younger looking in person than those screen close-ups on Without a Trace make him appear.

In the meantime, we had a really nice breakfast and it was great to get to know Claudia, Thom and Lisa. All good people, doing good stuff. New friends! Yay!

Life after the film premier or How Normal People Live

After breakfast, Chris went off to do some sleuthing and I hooked up with a friend from St. Louis for lunch at the famed Shake Shak in Madison Square Park. Brilliant idea, that -- shakes for lunch! The weather was absolutely gorgeous and so I had a really nice time sitting outside and chatting in the sun and marveling that New Yorkers would patiently stand in line like that for a shake.

We were lucky enough to have a chance to hook up with Min-Ah (from the fellowship), who's in New York spending some time with family before she travels the globe and eventually returns to Seoul. I always feel like choosing a restaurant is such pressure in New York -- there are so many amazing ones that if you choose randomly, you could miss a potentially life-changing eating opp.

Min-Ah was meeting us at our hotel in Murray Hill, so Chris investigated some and we settled on Ixta, a really beautiful "cocina Mexicana" on East 29th Street with sleek decor and colorful accents in my favorite warm tones of oranges and reds. Turned out to be a good choice and we split a number of small plates, perhaps the best of which was an Ensalada de Noche - a salad adorned with calimari, jicama, banana, walnuts and a chili-lime crema dressing. Good stuff.

(It also had amazing sinks in the bathroom, these square concrete things filled with stones and a copper faucet like an open pipe that poured over the stones. I don't know why, but I have a thing for truly beautiful bathroom sinks and one day I'll become the crazy lady who takes her digital camera with her into restaurant restrooms. Beware!)

We walked Min-Ah to her subway stop and seeing her off was extremely sad. I really like her a great deal and with her return to South Korea, I'm not sure when we'll be able to see her again. Thank God for email, I suppose.

True New Yorkers would probably be appalled to know that we were back in the hotel in be by 10 o'clock Wednesday night, but we were just exhausted. In fact, I probably would have been okay with heading home that night.

But we had one more day to fill before our evening flight out of New York on Thursday and we spent the vast majority of it, yep, you guessed it -- wandering around, popping in and out of shops, and generally killing time NYC-style. (I bought only one thing: a summer pair of Merrell's which I considered a medical necessity.)

Then it was back to Ann Arbor. Back to face the very end of this experience and pack our things to head back to St. Louis on Monday. We've been around so much it seems strange and unthinkable in some way to head back to our old lives. I think we can handle it.

I feel like an amputee

Somewhere between the Detroit airport and LaGuardia last week, the power cord for my laptop disappeared from my bag. Thus, I've been feeling like someone stole my baby and haven't been able to blog about my fabulous time in the Big Apple. (I'm able to access things briefly thanks to a loaner cable from Gail G.) If the replacement cable ever arrives, I'll have regular access to my blogging set up again. And then I really won't have any excuses about why I'm not writing regularly. Sigh.

Miles & miles, Toronto-style

My feet hate me. I did it again. We arrived in Toronto Friday night and I spent Saturday walking mile after mile, through neighborhoods and city blocks and university buildings until the balls of my feet feel raw and my shins yelp with each step. And tomorrow we head for four days in New York. They don’t make shoes comfortable enough for all of this. Our brief weekend jaunt to Toronto was a bit of a last-minute affair. Kim, Gerard and Graham were heading North for a road trip that will take them from Toronto to Montreal to Vermont and into Boston to reunite with Rainey for a few days before the three of them head back to Ann Arbor. It’s a bit of a North-Eastern road trip, a chance for Graham to show the Aussies his part of the country. (Rainey often calls Graham a Canadian trapped in an American’s body.)

Anyway, Chris and I, already feeling the sting of Rainey’s departure, invited ourselves along to get a little more quality time in with the gang. Plus, we’ve been four hours or so from Toronto for eight months and hadn’t made the trip yet. So a little of Chris’ online magic got us a cheapie room at the Sheraton City Centre and we rented a car since it’s no longer a safe bet that the Saturn will make it out of the driveway without dropping any number of fluids and/or a radiator. Somewhere in that whole process, Lisa & Chuck decided to swell the ranks of those Northbound and we had a bonafide group on our hands. Chris and I took off Friday afternoon and with some ridiculously bad timing and a bad route (thanks to Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest), headed out of Ann Arbor and through Detroit in construction – at rush hour. It took us two hours, most of which was spent at a standstill, to get out of the area, by which the novelty of the satellite radio – and just about everything else – had worn off.

By the time we rolled into Toronto (and by rolled in, I mean, missed entirely, got lost, turned around and re-approached) and checked into the hotel it was after 10. I’m sure greater and younger folk would still have ventured out to find the nightlife, but we were drained and sought instead a quiet soak in the hotel Jacuzzi before bed. We shared the large Jacuzzi with a handful of youth group boys firing on a group of giggly, bikini-clad 16-year-old girls. Relaxing? Maybe not. Entertaining? Yes, in that “Man, I’m glad I’m not that age” way.

Saturday we woke up to an absolutely gorgeous day. Our room at the hotel had a lovely view of Nathan Phillips Square. Who Nathan Phillips is, I have no idea. But there’s a large statue of Wisnton Churchill in his square. I just thought he’d want to know. (There’s also a really lovely public ice skating rink but, what with it being empty and warm out, there wasn’t much happening there.)

I was worried about being cold since I’d smartly left my jacket back in A2. But the sun was shining brightly and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. Neither Chris or I had been to Toronto and we both wanted to go. We just didn’t have much idea of what to do when we go there. And so we explored the way we like to – on foot, wandering from area to area, checking out the people and the city and the feel of it.

Our hotel was really in a great location, right at the start of Queen Street West where the funky boutiques and small eateries start. We got a taste of those shops, along with streetside vendors and artists and a great whiff of my favorite store on earth, Lush. (The meds I’m on for fibromyalgia require me to stay away from plant oils and so Lush has gone from being a grand indulgence to a terrible, forbidden temptation.) I stayed strong and kept walking, past shops offering up everything from kick-ass prom gear to trendy jewelry to underground records to books. You name it.

There are also a number of restaurants along the way and, both of us starving, we couldn’t resist the smell of warm chocolate coming from a creperie. Thus, we stopped in to shore up our energy with a couple of lattes and crepes – Chris’ with pipin’ hot Nutella and mine with gloriously simple lemon and sugar. Eating this way gives me no energy whatsoever but, man, does it taste good.

Heading just a tad further west on Queen Street, we hung a right on Spadina Avenue and wandered north. Within a block or so, the shop signs start making the transition from English to Chinese and then you’re suddenly deep in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown. Plenty of little shops with wares piled up front, everything from Hello Kitty backpacks to rubber flip-flops to barrels of ginseng and other mysterious dried herbs, prawns and beans.

The sidewalks were packed with people poring over produce outside the Chinese grocery stores, stooped old women picking over fifty-cent peppers to find the perfect one, turning over giant hunks of taro and selecting just the right melon. From inside the shops wafted the pungent, fishy odor of strange seafood. A few people sold still-crawling crabs to scrutinizing buyers and people came and went in all directions, weighed down with white plastic shopping bags bulging with fresh food.

There’s a certain everywhere-ness to Chinatowns. The scents, sounds (and sunny weather) were all reminiscent of San Francisco’s and if you squint just so and pretend the architecture’s blocking you in more, it could maybe be New York. But I love these places. I love the feeling of being so unfamiliar, of signs promising something I can’t read and wide barrels of things I can’t even identify. It helps me stay right-sized, if you know what I mean.

Chinatown led us right up the east side of the Kensington Market, a web of small streets offering everything good and odd and strange and wonderful across any number of vintage and first-hand clothing boutiques, coffee shops, pubs, health food shops, bakeries, cheese stores, etc. I wasn’t in the market (or in the mood) for picking through the racks of prairie skirts, blazers, tees and tanks outside the shops, but I loved walking among them. Many of the streets feature these beautiful little Victorian gems whose crumbling facades are cheered up with bright coats of paints, the lower floors turned into store fronts. Many of them have what I can only assume is original stained glass windows and decorate detailing around the eaves.

We had meant to continue further north to the upscale Bloor shopping area but I was working directions from memories and wasn’t quite sure how far we needed to go. We missed the mark and wound up wandering back eastward on College. It’s not a terribly exciting street, but we did get a feel for the southern boundary of the University of Toronto campus and a distinct balance (or argument, depending on your tastes) between distinctly modern and unmistakably old architecture.

Our plan was to meet up with the rest of the gang at 3 at their hotel, so we killed a little time wandering Yonge Street, one of the main thoroughfares of downtown Toronto. We’d hoped for a nice sunny café in which to grab a quick bite but between the shwarma shacks and pizza joints, couldn’t quite find something that would work. We wound up running out of time and ducking into the Pickle Barrel by Eaton Square mall, mistaking it for a small eatery before being led down an escalator to a labyrinthine dining room below. We were handed a menu on par in volume to the Cheesecake Factory’s ridiculous offerings and I picked out a fair sandwich I had neither time nor ability to eat much of before we had to head to meet the others.

I should mention that, at this point in the day, we had probably clocked about four miles or so and that my feet were already growling at me. In addition, I’ve been finding that if I walk long distances, my right hip gives me trouble. But the minute I say “hip” and “trouble” aloud, I sound 80. So never mind.

Chuck, Gerard, Kim, Lisa and Graham were all waiting in the lobby for us and we discussed briefly what to do. They hadn’t much in mind, although Birgit had suggested we check out the Casa Loma, a medieval-style castle built by some Richie Rich a while back. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that, having visited real medieval castles, this could hold much interest.

I had, however, read that the Harbourfront Centre was worth checking out, offering up shops, restaurants, entertainment, etc. And Lisa said she thought the castle was down on the waterfront too. So we decided to hoof it all the way down Yonge to the waterfront. Not a great idea. Not only is it a really boring walk, with the retail shops giving way to boring office buildings and, ultimately, the highway underpass but it’s also a long frickin’ way.

Gerard spent most of the way down pining (or was that whining?) for a gyros and, oddly enough, when we finally reached the waterfront there was a tiny gyros shack dwarfed by the giant Captain John’s ship & restaurant. So sustenance was found and everyone was happier. For a bit. Because, as far as we could see, there just isn’t much to the waterfront. It’s pretty and all, but other than a walk way leading along, there was little reason to have headed down there. Unless you like schlocky restaurants or are heading to a specific event at the theater. And we weren’t.

No one seemed to have an idea of what they really wanted to do or see, so Chris and I suggested Kensington Market. We headed back north, winding our way around the base of the CN Tower and the perimeters of the Sky Dome. The area was practically deserted. It reminded me of downtown St. Louis on a Saturday, with easy street navigation thwarted by behemoth concrete parkways, buildings and domes. Not much fun but, did I mention, the weather was beautiful?

Up Spadina we went, passing through the quiet fashion district, markable from that street only by a couple of fancy dress shops. And no matter how much I begged, Kim would not go into one of them and try on a big, frou-frou dress that looked like a sparkly pink meringue. Spoil sport! Thus, we kept going, through Chinatown again, and delivered everyone to the Market.

Chris and I bowed out of another go ‘round and took seats outside the Moonbeam Café at the Market’s edge as they split up and explored their own pursuits. Lisa and Chuck joined us after a few moments. Seems the vintage wasn’t as vintage as they’d like and Lisa was feeling a little beat too. The others walked through the Market and further north to Little Italy to scope out dinner prospects for the evening.

We got a quick break back to the hotel – long enough to put my feet in the tub and my aching neck on ice for a few – and cabbed it to dinner at Sotto Vocce at College and Clifton. It was a tiny, cozy joint, which made it tough to hear the conversation at times. The appetizers were quite nice but the boxes of Barillo pasta visible from the dining room raised my suspicion and, sure enough, the linguine dish I ordered wasn’t remarkable but filled me up well enough.

It was quite chilly by the time we headed outside, debating whether or not to brave the street car but deciding that none of us had the knowledge or the coins. Thus, we meandered slowly back towards our hotels, stopping for scoops of ice cream along the way. Delicious, if imprudent, given the temperature. Not that I cared, since my chivalrous husband had insisted I take his leather jacket.

I was surprise, but my feet actually held up just enough to hobble back to the hotel and collapse into a shallow but fantabulous bath. Depending on who you asked, and how much they wanted to make me feel good about it, we walked somewhere between seven and ten miles yesterday. Makes me feel better about the pasta and ice cream bit.

Now we’re in the car heading back home. We had breakfast with the gang at Fran’s Restaurant. Kim, Gerard and Graham have probably already arrived in Montreal. Lisa and Chuck were spending one more day in Toronto and then a night in a B&B on the way back. Chris and I are heading back to Ann Arbor for about 15 hours. Tomorrow morning, we board an early flight to New York where we’ll be visiting with some friends, attending the premier of “The Architect” at the Tribeca Film Festival and, if I have my way, not walking nearly as much as last time.

Rainey days and Tuesdays

Well, it's official. Rainey left yesterday, cramming all her stuff into their Camry and hitting the road for the 12-hour drive back to Beantown. I guess there's no denying it anymore -- the fellowship is, apparently, over. I can tell because I wake up in the mornings now and I'm no longer planning my day around a director's lunch, that afternoon's seminar or an evening dinner. I'm not mining my email trying to juggle plans with all sorts of different people. I'm not feeling the pressure of class deadlines.

We're all going to be petering out of Ann Arbor in the next few weeks. Tony heads back to Philly on Thursday. Min-Ah leaves for some time with family in New York soon and then heads out for a month or two of world travel before showing up for duty in Seoul. Graham, who drove back to Boston with Rainey yesterday, flies back to Ann Arbor tonight to concentrate on finishing up his screenplay. In May, he'll drive across country with Gerard and Kim, who will then spend some time in Malta and the far East before arriving back in Sydney.

Vindu will make the long drive back to California in the not-too-distant future. Thomas will stay in Ann Arbor until June, when he makes his way to England. Vanessa plans to travel in the Far East before coming back to Ann Arbor, gathering her things and cats, and then pointing herself back towards Miami.

Gail returns to Baltimore some time soon, although she'll be in and out of Ann Arbor. The Butters head back to their home in Ferndale which, while not actually that far from Ann Arbor, seems a million miles away in theory. After school gets out in June, the Lindsay crew goes back to Alexandria.

Not sure yet when and where Chuck and Lisa are heading; their adventure contains some variables not yet resolved. Fara and John Bacon, who both live in the Ann Arbor area, will turn their focuses back to their "real" lives here. Charles Clover's spending the summer here finishing up his book on Russian conservatism before he goes back to London.

Chris and I are already doing that thing, where we're deciding what we can start to pack. Nothing's made it into any boxes yet, but the promise looms there in stacks of books and piles of winter clothing. We'll spend a few days in New York starting May 1, to attend a friend's movie premier at the Tribeca Film Festival. Then it's back here to really pack for our mid-May departure and return to St. Louis.

So it's a strange transitional time for us here. We're here, but without the fellowship, we're not exactly here together. Plus, people are placing one foot firmly in their "real" lives and testing the waters of re-entry.

It doesn't help that the weather has been largely overcast and dreary today. Not one bit.

Oh, what a night!

I was already drunk by the time I arrived at my senior prom, a rather imprudent move that was highlighted by a prom videotape that shows me spending about twenty minutes breathing wine on my French teacher as I told her how much I loooooooooooved the language. It was just the first of many gaffes in a night that, perhaps fortunately, I don't actually remember too much about. I know that my date and I were each other's last resort and that he spent the entire night sitting at a table, basically not talking. I know that a bunch of us had a hotel room and champagne was involved, although sex wasn't. And I know that at the faculty-staffed after-prom breakfast I nearly became the stuff of legends when my safety-pinned skirt came undone and nearly wound up around my ankles.

Fortunately, there were no such moments at the first ever Wallace House prom. Instead, there was an awesome spread -- partly mined from graduation leftovers but also including the Zingerman's hummingbird cake I dream about (thanks Drew & Sally.) The place was decked out in candlelight and silver decorations and never looked so homey or beautiful. Furniture was cleared out to make for a dance floor we all took to, reluctantly or not, at some point in the evening.

The soundtrack was Kim's iPod, the result of hours of collecting our favorite (and often cheesiest) tunes from the 80s and 90s. And everyone showed up in their best dresses and in good moods, pushing aside the impending melancholy we're all struggling with. (Vindu, Vickie and Thomas were our MIA's, the former two out of town and Thomas, unfortunately, sick.)

Tremendous fun was had. Chris danced with me more that night than in our eight years together combined. I finally knew what it was like to be at the prom, madly in love with my handsome date, and feeling like I belonged there, among real friends and people I truly love. It beats that 1988 hotel ballroom affair any day. Some more pics:

Me and my handsome prom date.

The gorgeous spread!

Chuck cutting a rug with Mrs. Eisendrath.

The prom queen and king, Vaness and Charles, perform for us...

School's out for summer

Sigh. Graduation Day -- which, having been through several at this point, I think is by nature slightly anticlimactic -- is over. Everyone donned their best outfits and crammed into Wallace House to be feted and honored by staff, faculty, family members and miscellaneous members of the academic community. Charles gave a thoughtful (if not hopeful) state of the union about the year in journalism before handing out a variety of, uh, unique awards to fellows. They also received a lovely framed certificate and photo of the class.

Chris won the "Elliot Ness Award" for his sleuthing and commitment to fighting online crime, which seems perfectly fitting. On the other hand, Vanessa's "Belly Dancing Award, Amateur Division" puzzled most of us, including her.

Tony, Jamie and Fara delivered lovely speeches in an attempt to wrap up a year that is, in many ways, indescribable -- accompanied by a nice slide show Chuck put together. Though our three reps delivered very different speeches, each representative of the individual, the common theme among them was not the professional development or the contacts made or the academic achievement. It was the friendships we've formed.

I think we all know that in twenty years, we'll remember the people who influenced us and pushed us to grow far better than the study topic each fellow selected when applying for the fellowship.

There were more than a few teary eye in the crowd. (Besides Rainey, of course.) In fact, I claim two of them.

Then we made a big to-do of presenting the traditional class gift to the Wallace House. Bearing in mind that it's supposed to be something useful to the 2006-2007 fellowship class, we decided that a giant, high-end kitchen island with two beautiful red leather and chrome stools was the route to go. (Many thanks to Lisa for enduring all of our input in selecting the gift and arranging it's delivery.)

Amy Butters and the Butter Beans even decorated a couple of Wallace House aprons with maize and blue handprints. Perfect for cooking those gigantic group dinners the next round of victims don't yet know anything about.

We finished up the evening by refusing to leave the Wallace House, snacking on the delicious spread they laid out and lingering inside for while before gathering on the front porch. One last go on the porch swing before reality sets in. If there's one thing that was made clear by the day -- and here, I'm not braggin', just sayin' -- it's that we've been a truly unique class. Eisendrath mentioned in his talk that from day one, we've used the Wallace House to greater advantage and organized more group activities than any class before. Sunday brunches, Friday film nights, Thursday poker gatherings, tango lessons, wine tastings, Valerie Laken's narrative writing workshop, the Fairy Tale party, etc.

From the start, we've sought out each other and created opportunities to get to know each other in more intimate settings. Of course, not everyone attended every event, but there was enough variety that if you were willing to show up, you had the chance to get to know everyone. Kids included -- and that can be difficult in a class where the majority of us don't have any.

And our fun's not over yet. Tonight we're blazing new trails by having the first Knight-Wallace Fellowship prom, as planned by a stellar committee including Vanessa, Fara, Lisa, Kim and Min-Ah. (Forgive me if I've forgotten anyone else.) Sound a little cheesy? A little silly? A little weird?

You bet. And that's the Knight-Wallace Fellowship Class in a nutshell.

CLASS OF 2006 RULES!

And also...

He is now upstairs playing "It's the end of the world as we know it" at top volume. Sigh.

Off to a good start

Today is graduation day for the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship class of 2005-2006. Chris kicked his day off by crawling back into bed, pulling the covers over his head and declaring, "I'm not going! They can't make me!" No, this won't be a difficult day at all.

Won't you be my neighbor?

It occurred to me this week that I hadn't taken a whole lot of photos of Ann Arbor during my time here. So as I headed to Wallace House this afternoon on a particularly beautiful and sunny spring day, I brought my camera along to depict some of the sights I encounter along the 1.5-mile or so stroll that takes me through part of downtown and across campus.

The resulting Flickr set is available for your viewing pleasure, complete with captions about the sights and, uh, a rather abrupt end as I forgot what I was doing right before I arrived at Wallace House.

Mission accomplished?

I wrote a friggin' screenplay. Now, I'm not the first person associated with the fellowship to complete this task. In fact, I'm, like, the fifth. But when I handed in this thick stack of hole-punched pages held together with somber-looking brass fasteners, I had an immense sense of accomplishment. A feature-length film! Something I never really thought about doing. A whole different approach to writing for me. Nice. It's good - and important - to feel such a sense of accomplishment about somethin as the fellowship draws to a close. Because otherwise I'm obsessed with the seemingly general sense of dwelling on what we didn't get done with our time here. Which is, frankly, just about everything else. Sigh.

I had some lofty goals coming in. Read (and understand) all of Shakespeare's work. Lose 800 pounds. Become fluent in French and Spanish. Write a book or two. Learn how to repair tuckpointing. Record an album of dance hits. So many dreams...

And yet here we are, now firmly entrenched in the Phase of Lasts. We had our very Last Seminar on Thursday, with Kevin Close, President and CEO of National Public Radio. He played to a packed house, including members of the academic community, and gave us an interesting talk on the state of news, in general, and public radio news, in specific. I'd tell you all the details but it was, of course, Off The Record. For the Last Time. Then we had our Last Post-Seminar Wallace House Dinner, served to us by the always-delightful Jenny of Katherine's Catering. They deserve a shout-out for keeping our gullets full throughout the year. If it wasn't for the food following next Thursday's graduation, I'd start panicking about our actually having to provide our own meals! If nothing else, we have been extremely well-fed this year.

It's a strange time for us. People are distracted by the notion of re-entry into their regular lives and there's a sort of detachment taking place as they stick one toe back in reality. At the same time, there's a sense of clinging to the time we have left together. I think it's all pretty much the norm for human beings. Considering human beings are crazy.

I'm torn, just like everyone else. I'm eager to get started on the next phase of our lives, because I think that we're going into it changed by this experience. I suppose it's possible to emerge from this -- or any other experience -- unchanged, but only if you choose it. Only if you decide not to grow and push yourself and learn from all the experiences, good and bad. (Although, in the interest of accuracy, the good have outweighed the bad drastically this year.)

And that is, as far as I can tell, the Last Thought in my head.