Cheers to a New Year

Sometimes I bother myself by looking at the past year from too narrow a focus and let myself get disappointed that I'm not studying Arabic in Damascus right now or something like that. Instead, I look back and see that I started the year in Budapest, and landed up back in New York where I've been for so long...

When I look at it from a better perspective, I see that in the end I got the ball rolling on several big long-held dreams for my life. Besides, I did a lot of traveling this year after all. After landing back in the States I visited Texas, Michigan (multiple times), Georgia, a wide swath of the Great Plains via Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri, and saw more of the Northeast that I hadn't seen in my previous nine years here. And along the way Jen and I spent a great many days with people we love but don't get to see very often. Also, we got to know Margaret (who we live with) and her big, dynamic family.

Scenes from Margaret's house, New Year's Eve, 2009

In the meantime, landing back here has given me a breather needed to start working on several tracks which will hopefully pay off for a long time to come. Cheers to a new year, new opportunities to follow long-held dreams, and for the immediate-term, finally getting back to regularly updating this blog!!

A pretty blank slate.

What is it about water, by itself, that can draw people just to look at it? It's obvious why human geography has largely organized along the coast lines and major water courses of the world, and it's beyond obvious why it's so precious to us as living bodies. But why are we drawn to it as a place to stare off into? Perhaps a more interesting question: when there's a crowd of people staring off at the horizon from an overlook built expressly for the purpose of staring out over an empty sea, what is going on inside each person's mind?

If one lets it, it can be restoring to watch the open water for a long time, just as it can to watch a fireplace. It's refreshing whether you catch up with and order all the jumbled thoughts that pile up in our heads, or whether you go someplace new in your head. I guess I wonder if this is what people are mostly doing, and if so, whether they are aware of it.

Almost an island

I've always been curious and befuddled by Michigan, though I've never been able to articulate why. I remain perplexed despite having previously lived there for over eight years.

It's in the middle of a large continent, but it's surrounded by huge inland seas. It's culturally conservatively midwestern, yet also very coastal. Perhaps some of the trouble lies in that having grown up in the US, we're conditioned to stereotype coastal culture as liberal, stylish and worldly compared to an insulated, provincial continental interior.

So, life there is steeped in visuals of vast sand beaches, wooden ship steering wheels and lighthouses as home decor, sport boats, fishing vessels, giant ore tankers, gulls, huge sand dunes covered with beach grass and covering ghost forests, and ever-present horizons of open sea. Now add to that a deep-running fondness for cozy pastel sweatshirts and flannel, fleece slippers, an ingrained deer-hunting culture revolving around bait piles, big, square, American-made minivans and trucks, and a decent peppering of conservative religiosity, and you have a unique culture I've only ever seen in Michigan. Occasional whiffs of preppy looks or aspirations remind me of New England, though perhaps only a movie version of New England... Of course stereotypes never hold up upon any kind of examination, but for that matter neither do most people's dearly held self-identity.

On the surface, none of the above geographic or cultural elements should seem to be at odds with another (and likely match quite perfectly in the mind of any given reader); nevertheless, every time I go back I have to adjust my mental map. I can't shake my surprise that there are all those huge seas all around me there.

Saginaw, Michigan

We spent the first evening of our trip crossing Upstate New York, bridging the Niagara River at midnight. After an over-night across Southern Ontario, we entered southeast Michigan at sunrise. Trading the steering wheel back and forth and long naps prevented the marathon from becoming a chore. In the morning we made our way north through Michigan, stopping for a while in Saginaw.

45 years ago Lefty Frizzell sang a song called "Saginaw, Michigan". He may have only picked this town because of the rhythm it makes when singing its name, but hearing it on local radio when I lived in northern Michigan ten years ago put a version of the city into my imagination. We pulled off the freeway to finally see the place, and found what looked like a mass abandonment. I think a whole boom and bust cycle occurred here in the half-century since that song was written.

Whole blocks of houses were boarded up. Strip malls were largely hollow and wildlife has started to reclaim the sprawling parking lots. Scattered around the city were what looked like small bands of survivors waiting at bus stops. Although it was late morning on Thursday, the downtown was as quiet as a Sunday afternoon.

We stopped for breakfast at a diner, and in response to the "Hi, how are you?" greetings, the waitress said she was "blessed". Given the context of her city, I couldn't help but hear it as a reference to the fact that she was working.

Eh hem...

Back in the muggy, leafy East... 

While I anticipated more wifi access on our trip, I suppose those moments we did have access (with photos) were either too fleeting, or too much of a break to muster any worthwhile blogging. Also, couple weeks of the trip were spent prepping for a big interview, which in the end, I think, went very well. 

But, whatever the excuse for the inactivity here, the best one for me for now is that it's Summertime. And thanks to absolutely everyone with whom we visited and who hosted us during our travels this July -this summer so far has exceeded any ideal.

Open-Road Trip

I write this at the beginning of a road trip around the country to visit family -and soak in the landscapes between. We're lucky to have family living in so many interesting places: the rural shores of the Upper Great Lakes in Northern Michigan, the Open Range/High Plains of Western Wyoming, up against the Rocky Mountains of Colorado's Front Range, the rolling prairies of Eastern Kansas, and the musty old river town at the boundary of the East and the West, St. Louis, Missouri.

Every time I mention a drive across the plains someone groans with sympathy, but it's always been one of my favorite regions in the world to explore! The geography there is so rich; and made all the more so because it is so overlooked. I have goose bumps for the big sky ahead...

aerogramme outlook

Although these past several months that the blog was asleep have seen Jen and I make a transition back to the United States, I refuse to take my foot out of the doorway! For now we're living in a beautiful old house in an interesting part of Poughkeepsie, New York. The neighborhood, the city, and the Hudson Valley offer a lot of rich opportunities for geographic exploration. We're back on familiar territory, but now there's an opportunity to see it and describe it all as a traveller.

As I collected a lot of details and photos those last few months in Budapest while this blog drifted off, I still have a few things to share. Over the months ahead I'll look for ways of incorporating those things into whatever's going on at present. I hope to sprinkle the blog with little items picked up this Spring in New York, Texas, and Michigan as well. Since arriving in New York in March I've learned a little about contrasting priorities regarding quality of life. We loved Budapest and our own lives there so much that I have little doubt the eight months we lived there wont be our last.

As Jen and I plan our future and continue to look for ways to break travel out of its two-weeks-a-year confinement -blending it permanently into our everyday lives- I hope to continue sharing it all here.

Wake Up...

sarajevo pastiche #3

  

  

  

Sarajevo pastiche #2