Someone asked the other day if I was feeling OK. The answer, as of today, is: Hail, yes. Yesterday the temperature topped 70, and I took the bike out for what I hope is months and months of heart-pumping daily exercise in the great outdoors, which is, lately, the only kind I can handle. (Gyms — threat, menace or just boring as hell?)
And everybody was feeling good. I rode out past the G.P. Hunt Club, where a cute gray gelding had just been turned out. He rolled on his back, scratching the last of the winter coat off, before clambering to his feet and running off, bucking and farting. There’s a springtime sight to lift your heart. I kept riding east, turning north when I dead-ended, until finally I came around a corner between two McMansions in the Shores, looked out and — cue hallelujahs — there it was. The lake. All my life I’ve been waiting to live next to something that isn’t muddy and running toward something else muddy. Lake St. Clair may be polluted, but it’s blue and it’s close.
It’s also shallow. Alan went out and bought one of those U.S. Geological Survey maps of the lake, and the depth markers were the biggest surprise — it’s only about a dozen feet deep, except for the shipping channel, which is dredged to about twice that. I guess that fits, since at the north end it’s basically a river delta. But it’s packed with sailors and kayakers, and so it suits our purposes. And after a long winter, it’s a welcome sight.
Which seems as good a time as any to introduce you guys to my new fave website, Boatnerd, which covers Great Lakes shipping traffic the way only a boat nerd can — with love. And lots and lots of pages.
Note to self: Since I missed the March memorial service for Great Lakes shipping at the Maritime Church of Detroit, mark calendar for the November Edmund Fitzgerald service. Yes, this is the church Gordon Lightfoot sang about. It’s also where Patti Smith married Fred “Sonic” Smith.
Not much other bloggage to report today, other than how depressing it is to see Prince Rainier, ruler of an inconsequential country the size of a golf course, is getting better play for his obit than Saul Bellow is for his.
Also, since the WSJ doesn’t allow for casual linkage, I can’t direct you to yesterday’s outrage — a story about how pregnant women, increasingly denied maternity benefits by health plans — are reduced to haggling with doctors over what they’ll pay to give birth. One midwife was quoted as saying at least half her clients come to her not for the crunchy-granola experience of giving birth at home while surrounded by one’s family, aromatherapy candles and Miles Davis on the CD player, but because it’s cheap.
But remember: The health-care crisis du jour is whether a husband should be able to make medical decisions for his brain-damaged wife. I ask you.
Did you know the Pope is lying out there on his bier…unembalmed? Ewwww. I knew it would pay to read Amy this week.
Finally, whenever I hear these Italian priests on TV this week, I’m reminded anew of how much I miss Father Guido Sarducci.
Me, I’m off on another bike ride. Today: south. Full report later.
Jeff said on April 6, 2005 at 10:07 am
Re: Bellow vs. Rainier and, for that matter, the recent obits for Arthur Miller — marry a movie star, no matter how briefly, and get a good obit.
But Herzog and Augie March and Seize the Day will be read long after even “Death of a Salesman” is only a period piece, even if a very good period piece.
I can’t wait to hear the NN.C take on the Maritime Sailors’ memorial service in November. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitgerald” was the source of the first truly vehement argument my wife and i had while dating, she calling it “repetitious dreck” and me saying “folk music for our time.” The fact that we dealt with the disagreement so well was my first realization that we would simply have to get married.
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Nance said on April 6, 2005 at 10:31 am
Ha! Can I come down in the middle and say, “It’s both.” When I’m driving alone in the car on a gray day and it comes on, I listen with guilty pleasure. But I’ve also adapted it to a party situation, adapting the lyrics to whatever disaster was at hand:
And then she dropped the vodka,
and boy we were pissed,
’cause now we can’t have kamikazes.
If Gordon Lightfoot won’t bother to rhyme, why should I.
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John said on April 6, 2005 at 11:32 am
Definitely not dreck, but a haunting tune…calling it a folk song is probably accurate. I liked the song better than its contemporary drivel.
Her sister ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, is still hauling ore.
http://www.boatnerd.com/pictures/fleet/ama.htm
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mary said on April 6, 2005 at 12:03 pm
I read Amy on your recommendation. Nice tie in to your pygostyle message.
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mary said on April 6, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Mentioning the farting gelding made me think of ninth grade English class:
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu.
Groweth sed and blweth med,
and springeth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu.
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
wel singes thu cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.
The bucke verteth too.
Happy Spring.
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ashley said on April 6, 2005 at 3:02 pm
No reference to Gordon (hic) Lightfoot’s classic would be complete without Richard Jeni’s version. A couple of choice lines are something like the women all turning to drugs and prostitution and the mens lungs all filling up with water. I can’t belive I can’t google this. What the bleep is the bleeping net for if I can’t find Jeni’s new lyrics, I aks you?
As far as the papal coverage, I hope to once again enter the “Find the popes in the pizza” contest. Viva father Sarducci.
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Dorothy said on April 6, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Oh my GOODNESS!! There I am, flashing around like a hot ‘n tot on Nancy’s Photoblog picture! This is fun watching some of my pictures undulate before my eyes! Thanks Nance!
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mary said on April 6, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Hey Dorothy, love the haircut. You must have been a child bride if you’ve been married for 25 years.
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John said on April 6, 2005 at 4:15 pm
Dorothy…
I like seeing my pictures fly by too. Greeneville looks lovely, I’m ready to move.
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Dick Walker said on April 6, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Excellent song for the arrival of summer. In the fall, it goes
“Winter is icumen in
Lhude sing goddam”
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Dorothy said on April 6, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Aw shucks, Mary. Not quite a child, but I was two months past my 22nd birthday when we tied the knot. Thanks for the nice comments. Greenville IS lovely, John. The downtown area is just amazing – crowded nearly every night of the week with diners, strollers. See if you can Google the Reedy River Falls, which is also on the fringe of downtown. They just finished a new bridge over the falls and the views are just great. We’ve taken visitors there about 6 times now and never get tired of going.
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