A great poem (from the New Yorker)

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

-Bob Hicok (New Yorker, May 19, 2008)

Aimee's homemade solution to 24 hours of daylight!

Too good to be true!

The chick-a-dee must have flown the coup!  This will work out good, I have to go to Ypsi/Ann Arbor this weekend, I think I'll stop at the senior villagein Chealsea and give this to Ms. Toogood.  Sally can you email me her contact information??

NOW - everyone read  Sally's blog and watch her video.  IT'S THAT GOOD!

Old Bike, New Motor

And is it sweet! 45CCs, 1 and a third horsepower, 200mpg! It only holds about a quart of gas. We haven't had it near full throttle yet. We've just been testing it out around the island. It needs a few minor adjustments, and boy is our dining room/workshop a beautiful thing right now. We need a basket and a rear view mirror, and then, Winn Dixie here we come! We? Who get's to take it grocery shopping? We like it so much, we may get another. Hey, the sound is pretty cool too, just like when we clothespinned a playing card onto our trike spokes. Check out the sound on "Beachbloggin".

Sue's Views

Well it was the "Blessing of the Bikes" weekend in Hillman recently. It almost looks like Joe Thill showed up, but he went to some other town where they had a benefit for a rider who lost his son(?). I don't know what came over me, but on Sunday, are you sitting down?, I WENT TO CHURCH! Yes it's true. I went to the church I've wanted to try for three years now. It was great! It's called Word of Life Baptist church in Alpena. Our new neighbors go there. I knew a lot of other people from the bank that also go there. They do a lot of singing so it's uplifting, fresh and new. The minister was good. I'll probably be back. I couldn't wait to tell you that I "took the plunge". (No pun intended) Ron was working at the property. Well it looks like we have another night of hockey. I'd better get out my Red Wings flag out and put in on my car. "We want the cup!"

I sure am tired!

We had a very late night last night. I am trying to wash the events of the early morning from my brain. Like Dad would say - if it was easy everyone could do it. I am blaming the loss on the Freep - yesterday, every article was practically in the past tense - as if the Wings had already won the game on Monday. They'll pull it out, but I'll have a few more gray hairs to show for it!!!

Tonight I took a hike up Ensign Peak, its just north of the Utah Capitol building. Really quick hike, basically straight uphill. This is where Bringham Young and his mormon pioneer friends decided they would make a city. They thought the great Salt Lake was the pacific ocean, but it was really a huge, lifeless (except for sea monkeys...) body of really salty water. The Great Salt Lake is to the right of me, behind that ridge that pokes up. Its a beautiful place to watch a sunset, as you can see! Tomorrow I start my first day at Kennecott Utah Copper, probably lots of riveting safety and new miner training. In other words, lots of "this is what happens when you don't look both ways" (and with 340 ton haul trucks running around, theres a good reason for that), "heres where you find so and so", "don't get on even a step ladder without the proper fall-protection-equipment", and hopefully coffee. Not that I'm a cynic, but safety is very important in mining! Anyways, I hope to have lots more pictures like this one this summer. Enjoy! Love you all!

-Walter B.