I need to start carrying my camera on bike rides again. I need to start getting some photographic evidence of the money sump I find myself living in. Or near. Today I wandered down a previously unexplored side street in the Farms; I was trying to find a straight shot to the lake, so I could turn for home. (This is my rule on bike rides: Stay out 40 minutes minimum, and always ride along the lake for at least a short stretch.)
I can’t remember the street, but I knew I was getting close to the water when I passed several places that looked like English manor houses, only bigger, each one likely sheltering a family of four or so. You know you’re in Plutocrat Acres when you start passing middle-aged Latina women in smocks, walking tiny little dogs. “Deliveries to side entrance” signs blend in with the landscaping.
“I feel like knocking on the door,” said my sister when she visited in July, “and asking, ‘Hey. How did you make all this dough?'”
But that’s the Farms. Up in the Shores, the money is newer, and it shows. One of my favorite places is a fortress-like English Tudor, the driveway lit by a series of nymph statues, each one holding a torch aloft. Honey, tell the groundskeepers that nymph No. 3 is burned out, OK?
And then I come home to the Woods, where I keep it real with my peoples. We walk our own dogs up here in the G.P. ghetto.
Summer won’t let us go. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but not long after I wrote that DetNews blog entry about the lazy summer day outside my home-office window, I had to close it and turn the a/c on. It hit 90 today; not good in a brick house.
But I got some work done, which means the day yielded little of note. If you want someone to jeer, try Timothy Noah in Slate over why the New Orleans police were correct to ban Snowball from the evacuees’ bus. All I gotta say is: Where I go, Spriggy goes.
Connie said on September 12, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Picture the Grosse Point mansion in the movie Grosse Point Blank to get a picture. Of course it got shot up at the end.
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Nance said on September 13, 2005 at 8:41 am
Other than a few brief aerials of Lakeshore Drive, the whole of that movie was shot in Toronto. As the spouse of a son of Defiance, Ohio, we were vexed to learn that but for a few establishing shots, “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” was shot in Toronto, too. Hollywood North, eh?
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Dorothy said on September 13, 2005 at 9:30 am
Mr. Noah made some good points, but I have the feeling he’s never been a dog or cat owner. How could he possibly write something that doesn’t acknowledge the joy and love people receive from their animals? And the trauma and shock it would put individuals through to give them up? Those folks are going through enough terrible experiences, and to deny them the comfort of having their animals close by is beyond cruel. His arguments are legitimate. Still, there should have been more leniency. Harumph.
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Nance said on September 13, 2005 at 9:40 am
My sense of humor may be returning, however — I chuckled at the idea of the couple insisting their potbellied pig be rescued, too, and its additional weight nearly sinking the boat.
I also note the pig weighed 125 pounds. Which means it’s not a true potbelly at all, but one of those crossed with domestic swine — looks adorable as a piglet, but grows way, waaaaay up.
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mary said on September 13, 2005 at 2:23 pm
The whole pet thing is a tough question. If I had advance warning, I would get out of town with pets. I wouldn’t stay in a place that was unlivable for the sake of my pets, though. I love my pets, all five of them. Embarrasingly adore them. If it came down to leaving them and getting my kids to a safe spot, though. I’d leave them.
On the subject of Tim Noah, did you see the piece his wife did in Vanity Fair? I started it last night when I was really too tired to give it its due. I’m going to read it more carefully this afternoon. She writes very honestly and personally about her cancer and facing death.
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