9/11

Sorry for the lack of posts. School started last week, and I've been helping out with a kindergarten class at the school where I've been working for the past two years (2 years!). This past week in the classroom could be written as a whole series of blog posts including all of the funny things that the kids say or do. I have a lot of respect for kindergarten teachers. There is quite a difference between the upper elementary grades that I've worked with and kindergarten.

In addition to blogging about that, I also need to blog about the theme party we attended last weekend, and also my trip to Chicago this past weekend. But right now I want to stop and reflect on 9/11.

I wrote this post two years ago, and it still rings true. Each time I remember September 11th, the memories start flooding in: the blue sky, the sky the following days without planes flying overhead, the helpless feeling I had, the constant search for the answer to the question "why?". This year, I remembered all of this again, and all of the feelings came back to me.

One of the weirdest things to consider was when I was in the kindergarten class on Friday. The principal interrupted classes with an announcement for a moment of silence. She mentioned that many of the students may not remember what happened, or some of them were not born when this happened. The kindergartners were part of the latter group. Most of them were born in 2004 or 2005.

This group of students will only read about this occasion in their history books, or watch videos or movies about the subject. They will only be able to imagine what it felt like or how the world was changed because of it.

I don't have to imagine. I know how it changed our world. I will never forget.

Not a Sunset Picture

I forgot I had taken this picture while we were up north, and surprisingly, it isn't a sunset picture. This is the football field for Harbor Springs High School. Stein and I always try to catch glimpses of it from the road when we drive by, but you can't see much of it.

Since we were there on a Friday night, I decided to look up their schedule and see if they were playing. Sure enough, they were! It was pretty cool to see it in action, although a bit cold and rainy. We just stood behind the fence and watched the first half of the game. The stands are built into the hillside, and if you look past the field, you see Lake Michigan (Little Traverse Bay).

Books!

I actually read books this summer! Not as many as I would have liked to, but I read nonetheless. I tend to think of the Harry Potter and Twilight series books as two books each, so technically, you could say that I read five books this summer. There, that makes me feel a little better.

So I started out with the race to finish the sixth Harry Potter book, The Half-Blood Prince, before the movie came out. While I didn't finish it before the movie officially came out, I did finish it in time for us to see it at the theatre. We ended up seeing it at the IMAX theatre, which was very cool. While we were there, I remembered that I saw one of the Harry Potter movies with my Mom at the IMAX in Chicago. It does make for a very LOUD and enthralling experience. Now I need to read the seventh book. But as I told my Mom, I think I need to keep to smaller books for a while. The bigger ones have felt daunting to me lately.

I also started the third book Eclipse in the Twilight series (big books too!) a while back, but never really got into it and put it down for a while. When I picked it up again this summer, I did end up finishing it, but never really got into it. It wasn't a page-turner to me. It was interesting, but not like Twilight, where I couldn't put the book down. I will eventually read Breaking Dawn, the fourth book, but I'm really not in a hurry to do so.

I also read a book suggested by my friend Alissa. Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg is a really sweet story. Alissa knew I would like it because the story takes place in Chicago, and the author makes a lot of Chicago references. I really liked it. It was a pretty simple story, but had a few twists just to keep my interest. It was also a short read, so I felt a sense of accomplishment in a short period of time.

My mom gave me another suggestion for a book, so I requested that from the library. In the meantime, I have many others on our bookshelves that are waiting to be read. I'm so glad I'm finally getting back into reading. It feels so good to be lost in a book.

So We're Back

And we've been back for a while now. We got back on Saturday, and I'm feeling a bit depressed about it. I know, I know, in this economic climate many people can't afford to take vacations, so stop complaining, right? Okay, I will stop, but know that I'm not happy about it.

In a nutshell, the time away was wonderful. Just what the doctor ordered. We didn't have an agenda, so we just meandered, did whatever we felt like at the moment, and just relaxed. I should mention that the only thing that was scheduled the entire trip was when we wanted to go watch sunset. Around 8:20 each night, you would find us by the water, usually armed with some wine and the camera, watching the sunset.

The other day when I was helping my friend Amy in her classroom (hi Amy!) she asked how our trip was. I laughed when I told her that every picture on my camera was sunsets. So that's all the pictures you'll see in this post, sorry. I didn't take pictures of us, because really, most of them would be Stein in a chair reading, or me in a chair drinking sangria, or the two of us at a restaurant eating whitefish, or walking along the beach looking for Petoskey stones. Yeah, you know those pictures. I didn't take any of those because I didn't want you to be jealous. And also, because I just didn't feel like it.

We were able to see some new places and try some new restaurants, which was fun. Our friend Jim has a place on Elk Lake, and offered it to us for a few nights. While we were there, we ate at a great cajun restaurant, and another local restaurant that had a really cool interior, and great food too. It was nice to be in a different place, see different things, and just be.

We were also in Petoskey, where we seem to have more of a routine. We have our favorite restaurants, so we usually space them out so that we get to each one on different days. Some of the places are in Charlevoix and Harbor Springs, which are a distance away, so we try to only do so much driving on one day. We need time for sitting, after all.

The driving is just as fun as the sitting. Short trips through the small towns up north just make you slow down. The roadside stands with fruits and vegetables, sometimes unattended and on the honor system for paying. Some of the bigger stands have signs that have the available fruits and vegetables listed on them. While we were up there, cherries were just about done, and peaches and apples were aplenty. Also, tomatoes, corn, and peppers.

I said to Stein when we got back, "I'm sad to be done with vacation, but happy to be home." So true, but I would love to be back there. Right now.

Our Bags Are Packed

By the time you read this, we'll be Up North. We are going on a much-needed vacation. Yes, I know we've been relaxing and enjoying the weather at home, but we need to get away. See different scenery. Without a schedule, without an agenda. It's been kind of a crazy summer, with all kinds of life stuff happening around us. It will be good to let go, and let be. Play a few games, eat, read a few magazines, drink, look at water, and be merry.

Have a great week!

P.S. Happy Anniversary Stein! Lucky number seven. I'm the lucky one. Cheers to many, many more!

You Say Tom(A)to, I Say Tom(ah)to

Our tomatoes are going a bit crazy this year. This year we also grew some yellow tomatoes, which I really like. Very sweet, but in a tomato kind of way.

It's that time of the year, when people all over are scrambling to pick their tomatoes so they don't get rotten or they're not eaten by critters. You may be getting some from neighbors who simply can't keep up with the harvest in the backyard. Or maybe you have too many yourself and you're the one giving them away. Regardless, I'm in my glory. I tomatoes. Well, let me rephrase that. I love homegrown tomatoes. Ones that don't always look perfect next to those waxy ones at the grocery store. Ones that have character, with sweetness and juiciness to back up that character.

I like to slice into a tomato, sprinkle some salt onto the slice and eat it like that. But if I have to share, it's usually with a tomato salad. At this time of the year, we eat a lot of tomato salads around here. And salsas too. We like our salads with sliced tomatoes, basil, and some goat cheese sprinkled on top (this picture makes it look like powdered sugar - it was the end of the container). Add a couple glugs of olive oil swirled around the plate, some salt and pepper, and you're good to go.

What's Black and White and "Red" All Over?

Well, the newspaper, of course, silly.

Unfortunately, our newspaper is gone. The Ann Arbor News closed its doors a couple weeks ago, and we already miss it. I know this is the way that a lot of newspapers are going, but I don't like it.

I remember starting out college in the journalism program, and listening to one professor tell us what the future of journalism was going to be like. In print journalism, everything would be on the computer, including the daily newspaper. Not to date myself, but back in my college days we didn't have the internet yet. Cell phones weren't even a thought. So when he said that everything would be on the computer, I wondered, how is all the information going to get to my computer? On a floppy disk? Would this floppy disk be delivered to houses everyday? But I mostly thought about reading the paper on a computer. Would it be on a computer similar to the computer in the crowded labs that I spent countless days in front of, writing the required paper for every class, and waiting in line to pick up my dot-matrix print-out? I couldn't imagine spending my "free time" as an adult reading things on the computer. It was enough torture during my college days.

To me, and apparently to other people who protested the closing of the newspaper here, the newspaper needs to be held, and smelled, and heard. Holding the thin sheets of newsprint, smelling the fresh ink on the pages, and hearing the crinkling of the pages is all part of the ritual for me. I grew up with this ritual, and I miss it when it's not part of my Sunday.

As kids, we would grab the money needed and run over to the man selling the papers in the vestibule of our church. We would always buy both The Chicago Tribune, as well as The Chicago Sun-Times. The comics were different in both papers, so it was a bonus for us kids. I never understood just what my mom and dad were reading about. I thought it looked so boring, all of those words crammed into columns with few pictures on the pages. But the comics were a different story - I could laugh at Charlie Brown's latest antics, and try to do the puzzles. (I never understood the detective comics like Brenda Starr, but they were cool to look at). My dad would sometimes read the comics to us, and use different voices for the characters. It was a different medium, but it was the idea of listening to the story that I loved (and still love).

Fast forward to after college, when I lived with Chris and we would have the Sunday paper delivered. On Sunday mornings, most often we would just step over the paper on our way out to breakfast with friends. And then once we got back, we would pick up the paper on our way back inside, split up the sections and read for a couple hours.

When I moved to Ann Arbor, we had the Ann Arbor News delivered. Although the paper wasn't as thick as the Tribune or Sun-Times and had a lot of AP articles rather than ones written by reporters here, I still enjoyed the comfortable ritual of reading it on Sundays.

Now the majority of the paper has been moved online (I guess my prof wasn't so crazy) and there is a paper that is delivered to our house twice a week. And that paper? It's like a neighborhood paper, with human-interest stories. If you want to know who was in the park this weekend flying kites while walking their dog, this paper is for you. How about the latest festival pictures? You got it. The sports section yesterday had an article about the Rec League's baseball program.

We don't even read it anymore. It has gone from our driveway to our recycling bin without being opened. There is always the Detroit Free Press, which we will probably subscribe to eventually. And there are always articles we can read online. I guess this will just add to my computer reading time. At least I can do that at home on the couch.