Comments on: Off the Florida keys.

By: Jeff (the mild-mannered one)

Jeff (the mild-mannered one) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:41:18 +0000

Middle Path is/was gorgeous, and we walked down a bit of it at 2 . . . but the Nintendo DS was calling, calling us home.

Hoosierism — last i heard, people still bragged that Fort Wayne and/or Muncie were used as test markets for food and consumer goods because . . . we’re so average! Yes, this is usually said with immense pride. Nuttin’ wrong with it, just . . . why would we be proud of it?

Yet we are. (Foam-finger: We’re 50th percentile! We’re 50th percentile! We’re . . .)

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:55:47 +0000

That is an excellent description of Indiana. “Why can’t it just be 1950 again?”

Back in my Indiana newspaper days, I remember talking with a state legislator about Hoosier attitudes. He said whenever a new proposal came up, the first question would be, “What other states are doing it?” Innovation is an unappreciated notion in Indiana.

If you look on almost any ranking of the 50 states — doesn’t really matter what category — Indiana is usually hovering right around 25. “Don’t wanna be last … but don’t wanna be first, neither!”

And we LIKE it that way!

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:55:05 +0000

Ahh Jeff what time were you there?! I was actually in the bookstore twice yesterday, minutes apart. Because I purchased a pocket calendar and then had to return it. I didn’t notice it was an academic one (DUH!), and it only started with June 2008. After my second visit a friend flagged me down and I sat on a bench with her for 10 minutes or so before heading back to work. This was around 3:00.

Isn’t Middle Path just mind boggling-ly gorgeous this week?!?!

By: Jeff (the mild-mannered one)

Jeff (the mild-mannered one) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:05:09 +0000

Dorothy, my apologies, but i ran through Gambier today after two days of sleep-over science camp with my 4th grade grimy young fellow, and snagged some Penguin Classics from the bookshop and a chocolate muffin for the Little Guy, who was agitating enough to keep me from sticking my head into your office door and saying “hi”, for which i feel quite guilty.

Maybe when Jamie Lee is in the neighborhood?

By: Dexter

Dexter — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:04:04 +0000

Yes, if Dad had had a thatch of red hair and a ruddy face old Orville would have run him out of the office. Dad must have impressed Orville with his Anglo looks. I tell people there’s a Norman Rockwell painting that looks as though Rockwell used Dad as a model. HERE it is.
“Dad” is the sailor with the twinkle in his eye here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last year NYTimes did a feature on the single gear bicycle explosion. Nice lookers. I still use fixed gear coaster brake bikes to exercise Princess Labrador Retriever. People warn me I am going to get tangled up in Black Lab and fall, but I have perfected the technique and have not fallen off for three years now. She’s an old dog now and we are in perfect harmony on our walk/rides.
My ride today will commence as soon as Pandora stops playing “I was so much older than that, I’m younger than that now.” I have XM radio, but free Pandora is better…I love that music genome access.
Yes, I have a couple lighted bicycles…here it’s a whopper of a fine if the police are in that sort of mood and catch us riding sans illumination. One of the bikes is also a vintage Schwinn 10 speed that I rehabbed . It has a huge round generator powered light on the front.

By: Cosmo Panzini

Cosmo Panzini — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:00:53 +0000

Nance– Somehow you must find and post the video of Ben Stein in the crowd of Richard Nixon’s staffers as the beloved ex-prez addressed them right before leaving the White House for the final time. I found it….amusing. Jolene– Word, baby. That Eisenhower thing. Once in a conversation, Eisenhower’s name came up, and a couple people looked a little vacant, caused me to ask them if they knew who he was. Nope. Oh, alright, he was a WWII war hero and president during most of the Fifties. You know? Nope, that was before I was born, one of them said. I guess they don’t make history books like they used to.

By: Jeff (the mild-mannered one)

Jeff (the mild-mannered one) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:34:37 +0000

‘Ceptin’ this; ’tweren’t never the way it us’t to be. The way it used to be is how we recently decided we like to remember that it was.

Hoosier note — you can trace a chunk of this pathology back to James Whitcomb Riley, author of a wonderful dialect pome titled “The Bear Hunt,” and an awful one that took on a life of its own, “Lil’ Orphant Annie.” Riley, from upscale Lockerbie Square on the east side of Indianapolis, helped to pioneer the myth that the pioneer days were twilight idylls of charm and belongingness . . . but don’t look too closely at Annie’s backstory.

Of course, Riley on his best day couldn’t turn out an epic narrative like “The Four Yorkshiremen,” with the immortal refrain “And ye know what? We LIKED IT . . .”

By: nancy

nancy — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:04:37 +0000

Charlie Gunrights was quite the tasty morsel back in the day, wasn’t he?

That’s quite the story about Orville Hubbard, yet another demonstration that even bad people aren’t bad 100 percent of the time. At least, not to other white people. (I’m making an assumption, Dexter.) Ironic that Dearborn is now heavily tipped into the swarthy zone. If Orville’s spinning like a lathe, well, he needed to lose some weight.

Not single-gearing it yet, but in a few minutes I’ll be picking Kate up on our vintage five-speed Schwinn tandem. Which, I understand, is all the rage in NYC.

By: Dexter

Dexter — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:52:49 +0000

Orville Hubbard knew Henry Ford and shared opinions with him.
Dad left the farm in Indiana and sought employment in Detroit . He found a rooming house and hit the bricks searching for a job. He was having no luck when the owner of the rooming house spoke to him . He knew Orville Hubbard, and arranged an appointment for my dad to meet the mayor. Dad went to the meeting and left with a letter from the mayor to take to the Ford employment cattle call.
“Anyone here have a special trade or documents?” , the foreman boomed out.
Dad showed the letter and was immediately ushered into a general foreman’s office.
“Where did you get this letter?”
Dad explained the simple tale.
“This letter is good as gold almost any day but today we hired all we need…come back tomorrow and we’ll set you up.”
For some reason Dad never went back to “Ford’s”. He landed a job on the way home from that interview, but he liked to tell that story.
As I began to read the papers and found about Orville Hubbard, I was dismayed that the guy who went overboard to help a farm boy in the big city was himself a man of questionable opinions.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:27:39 +0000

God help me, my must-click-through moment of the day was that Charlton Heston photo. Everything after is a fog…