My greenest friends, Ric and Jenn.

Cool segment here from the local Traverse City tv news, which did a piece on house addition Ric and Jenn built out of bottles and logs they pulled from a swamp. In the photo here, they're on Torch Lake enjoying their first voyage on a sailboat they restored this summer. Two of the absolute nicest people I've ever known.

Ric is one of my absolute oldest friends ever, going back to Marshall, Michigan and the days of riding bigwheels up and down Mulberry Street and sleds into trees on "Dead Man's Hill." Do you want to hear the story of why they call it "Dead Man's Hill"? Okay, here it is: once, there was a dead guy there. That was the story passed down to us, at least. Chilling, isn't it? I still carry a scar on my forehead from one of its trees. To this day, my parents won't let me sled head-first.

Last day before school day trip to an ACRES preserve.

new favorite sandwich

ham, tomato, and butter. O, and sardines with mustard and tabasco.

Thank you, Mark Bittman.

I don't have a ton of regrets in life, apart from not asking Amy Timmer to slow skate at our 5th grade skating party back in 1981. A close second would have to be not thinking of owning this bike when our chilluns were little enough to use it. I am almost tempted to go for the third kid just for the opportunity.

What a sweet way to ride that would be. If I ever saw myself owning a tiny dog, maybe one of those could fit there, but that's not likely. Maybe a terrier when I'm older.

From the great Detroit-life blog Sweet Juniper.

Left the dog out in a rainstorm today. oops.

Make magazine shows up in my mailbox every once in awhile, though I don't ever remember subscribing to it. Still, I'm happy to get it. I've never made anything from it, but I've noticed a momentum building, an urge to at least try. Last month, for example, I almost tried out their design for a cool vaccuum extraction coffee maker out of test tubes and stuff. I even went so far as to hint to our school science department head that if there were any unused glassware cluttering a storeroom that I would take it off of his hands. Then I lost interest or got busy or something. I forget.

But this month, I finally found the ambition to complete one of their challenging projects, mainly because all the supplies I needed were within ten feet of me at the time I read the article. So here it is, my first Make object: the DIY ipod speakers.

They actually work, too (kinda)! Yes, those are paper cups with holes in the bottom.

Maybe I could start making and selling them.

"Permanent Camping"

Small houses. We were at Fort Michilimackinac up north last week, looking at the spartan quarters of some Jesuit missionary, a bed and a Bible kind of place, and I go to Catherine "Do you ever fantasize about how great it would be if all you owned was--" "Yes," she said.

moral tales

Jerome in Claire's Knee

One thing I have been doing to hold onto the feel of summer in the last days of my vacation is re-watch two of my favorite of Rohmer's "moral tales": Claire's Knee and Pauline at the Beach.

It is strong medicine for me, mainly because they're set near French beaches and involve people doing very little but casually drifting together and apart, sitting in gardens and airy, sparsely-furnished cottages, maybe going boating. They make summer

seem unassailable by any thoughts of whatever and wherever it is they are summering from. They're like a seasonal pornography--the objectification of summer.

Rohmer's camera work is perfect for it all, too, full of long takes, long, static shots that somehow slow your breath and that I have resolved to incoroporate more into my own life. I'm not sure if that means staring without blinking or how exactly it will work, but I think it is worth trying.

Pauline

Also exciting is that my French is improving from watching these. I still only understand about one word out of every five minutes or so, but I can read the credits in French with a passable, but still ridiculous, of course, accent, and that is a major step for me. I would give anything to be as bad at French as I am at Spanish.

Next up from Netflix: Summer Heights High, to help me return to school mode.

Our city at night.

Whitefish Point, U.P.

Two days ago we're swimming in Lake Superior at the tip of the U.P., and now it's Ninety-Something in Indiana. No fair. When you drive, you should only drive north. Even in the winter I think that.

Had a nice, minimally internetted week. No matter how much sunscreen I put on, my body still wants to be tan. No matter how much of Mansfield Park I read, Fanny remains a cipher, or does she?

I slept a lot, too. I mean, if you don't sleep, you are wasting that dry Michigan breeze that is pushing the wave sounds through your open window.

Now it's time to start becoming teacher-man again, a persona that I hope will have more than a passing resemblance to summer-man, but it will be a challenge. Wish me luck.

Lookit my pictures

Was missing northern Michigan the other day so I made some pictures of the views I see when I go riding in the hills above Petoskey. They're from memory, so I don't think it really looks much like this, in case you are from Petoskey and don't recognize anything.

Something about having just a month before teaching starts again makes me think of the projects I should devote these remaining weeks to. One project I just concluded was to finish reading a long two part article on surfing that I came across in a 1992 New Yorker that I found while cleaning my filing cabinet. That was the first year I started subscribing, and it's pretty amazing how different the magazine was back then. Smaller type, longer articles, less glam. In tracking down part I of the article, I learned that, through the New Yorker website, I can browse and print articles from every issue ever published! Amazing! It's like a free reverse-subscription.

Not sure what my other projects need to be, though, after hearing a story on NPR this morning, I am developing a plan to make crows like me. I also think I am going to paint a series of telephone poles covered with those vines with orange trumpet-like blooms on them. But now I can't find any of them around town, so I can't do it en plein air. Got to get started on something, though.

secret garden

Our home & garden thing went so nicely this weekend. I started the weekend with vague worries that people would try to take my books, but that didn't happen. Instead, people were just nice! Imagine! And I loved seeing students there. I'd missed being around them, I think.

When it was over, we went for our first visit to the newest section of Mike and Michelle's garden, just visible to the left. This is probably my favorite garden, like what you see in the magazines and all.

But the problem with taking Catherine out places is that she always embarasses with some kind of outrageous behavior, like eating other peoples' flowers.

You're not actually . . .

OMG you did . . spit that out!

I can't take you anywhere.

back!

Out of action for a few days there. Was attacked by a snake. Hahaha not really. Really, this python was the most normal animal displayed by one of the stangest small-town fair traveling menageries I have ever seen. Who needs zoos when you have enthusiastic-but-shady families of people willing to drive their RV's full of poisonous reptiles and insects right to you?

Hey, and the local paper did a very nice article on our house in the Sunday paper--almost all the quotes are almost all accurate! The online version has a link to the left with a photo gallery.

After the passing of both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett today, my friend Travis pointed out that momentous events are often said to occur in 3's. Travis was wondering what that third happening would be, and that is when I realized that it was here, in my own house: the amazing quesadillas I made tonight. They were so good.

It is a little strange to be connected to two such famous people in this way, I mean, why me, right? But really, we're all just tools of the cosmos and sometimes, to remind us of this connection, all it takes is a little of that not-all-that-old lime you have sitting under some bananas squeezed onto your quesadillas. What a day.

In other news, it breaks my heart, but I am considering having our dog Smokey put to sleep. It's one of the saddest decisions I can imagine making, but . . . she just won't stop panting in my face. It's driving me crazy, and the vet says there's nothing we can do. A shame, really, especially because she's in perfect health.

Photos for a mother who is on the road for a week with the Vera Bradly RAAM team.

We went for strawberries but here Michelle and J get caught up in a swath of early raspberries.

Mike taking a free sample. What are the rules on this, I wonder. I made up a rule that most of the strawberries I ate had to be somewhat blemished or touching the dirt, and that seemed to work okay. I swear, when you kneel on the straw between the rows and throw that first strawberry in your mouth, no other food seems relevant or necessary to life on earth.

And then the second one is good, but not as good, and you end up trying to recapture that first berry, which doesn't ever quite happen but this is not really that serious of a problem in the big picture.

Mr. Mike is patient. B's latest catch phrase is "better luck next time, old boy!" He looks like he could be saying that here, but I don't know.

Two nights of camping practice in a row now. Instead of ghost stories, I read "gnome legends" out of that old book about gnomes--the one with the gnome skeleton and pictures of actual naked gnomes. I'm pretty sure it's a kids' book, at least. The legends have a lot of dying in them, though.

Things that have been in the house recently:

A sandwich.

New glasses.

A baby.

You might think you're done with babies but then you spend time with one and you can't help but think "awww . . no, that's crazy." How do they do that? Even the cry makes me smile. I love it when this one cries, like the idea of an infant's problems are cute to me or something. I wonder how long that will last with my own kids; I already find myself worrying about how it will feel when I know that they are genuinely depressed or sad or anxious or down on themselves, and that's saying something, because I basically gave up worrying in the fall of 2001, which was kind of a strange time to do that with 9/11 and all, but that's how it happened.

But babies, dang. They are always trying so hard. Everything they do, pure concentration. How do you get that again? I have been trying to listen to less music, and that has helped, but we're not quite there yet.

The third-ever season of "Hamlet Tag" just concluded, and I finally got some photographs to document this growing sport that combines agility and inevitability into one of the few athletic challenges out there that really asks the big questions.

A short primer on the rules that I remember: In the middle of this image is "Hamlet," who is shown in the act of pursuing various other players like the "player-king" and the "gravedigger" because the "ghost" player is on the field, spurring him to his revenge.

When the ghost is on the field, then, players caught by Hamlet yelp "I am slain" and fall to the ground. When they get bored, they can get up and run around again.

Here we see Hamlet being chased because the ghost has left the field, making him lose his resolve. When I was a kid, we called this "smear the queer," but I don't think we were aware of the ugly connotation at the time.

When Mr. Hill is on the field, everyone has to stop and talk about "how postmodern this game is." Eventually, the poison flag is thrown, everyone dies, and the Fortinbras player steps onto the field, announcing "I win."

We had a couple of strong teams this year, and one was even allowed to play at full-speed, the first time that has happened since season one.

Such great classes. I'll miss them.