Steven Harper's Blog, page 14

Thanksgiving Prep 2023

When I was growing up, most of my family worked in hospitals as medical workers. Hospitals never close, and someone always had to work a given holiday. This led to a great deal of negotiation and fluidity in the family. Who has to work? Who's off? Who can make it? Who can't? We eventually developed the idea of having holidays =close= to the actual day and not necessarily on the day itself in order to maximize the number of people who could come. It also gave individual family members negotiating power. ("Sure, I'll work on Thanksgiving, but I want the following Friday and Saturday off in return.") 

This tradition has continued now, even though the family has branched into other fields. Aran works at a casino, and he works every Thursday, even holiday Thursdays. Max works in security, and the same applies to him. My sister lives out of state, and she discovered that the airports are dead on Thanksgiving Day, making travel effortless but also making it difficult to appear at an afternoon dinner event.

So we've been doing Thanksgiving on Friday.

And I love it.

We have Thanksgiving at my house, and while I'm good at putting dinner together, it's also difficult. I work the rest of the week, including Wednesday, and Thanksgiving week at school is always fraught. Especially lately. The students (who are still showing the after-effects of the pandemic--immaturity, poor social skills, etc.) are more difficult to deal with than usual just before long weekends, and the marking period is coming to an end, so all the grading has to stay caught up. It makes for an exhausting three days at work--and I still have to prep for a major party. But Friday Thanksgiving is great! I have all day Thursday to prepare, it's way more relaxed, and after the gathering, I still have a full weekend to enjoy. Cool!

The prep began last weekend, of course, with the shopping. The main grocery store down here is chronically short on workers--they don't pay market-level wages--so the lines are long even on regular days. Pre-holiday times are way worse. But I soldiered through it and got everything home. I love having a garage again! In Michigan, November is cold enough to use it as a giant refrigerator, and you don't have to worry about finding space for all the extra food.

Tuesday after work, I made pirgai--Latvian rolls stuffed with ham and onion, then set out bread so it could go stale for stuffing. That was enough for the day! :)

Wednesday after work, I made the pumpkin pies and a batch of dessert piragi (stuffed with Nutella instead of ham), and I dry-brined the turkey. And that was all. 

Thursday (today), I did the rest of the prep. I peeled potatoes and sweet potatoes and set them in pots of cold water. I peeled and sliced apples and baked an apple pie. I chopped bread into cubes and mixed it with melted butter and spices for stuffing. I set up my timetable for tomorrow's cooking and prep. And that was all.

Tomorrow, I basically just have to put everything on the stove or in the oven in time to eat at 2:00. And now I have the rest of the day off. It's lovely.

Happy Thanksgiving!





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To Kill a Mocking--No!

 I never read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in school. I never read it at all, in fact, until six or seven years ago, the English department chose it one of the summer reading options for incoming ninth graders. That July, I settled down to read it for the first time.

I disliked it immensely.

Why would I dislike this much-beloved book? For the exact same reason as these teachers:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/11/03/to-kill-a-mockingbird-book-ban-removal-washington

Not only do we have the White Savior idea, we also have some poorly-written prose, an utterly inaccurate portrayal of drug addiction, and (for me) unrelatable characters. The plot, such as it is, wanders all over hell and gone. More than once, I noted in the margins, "Where the hell is this going?" I thanked many deities I only had to grade a summer reading assignment and not actually teach the book.

That said, I don't agree with the teachers who want to forbid it in the classroom. I =do= agree that TKaM shouldn't be required reading, but teachers who want to teach it (and who are willing to point out the book's many, many flaws, especially in regards to its treatment of racism) should certainly be allowed to do so.

As for me, I will happily pass my days knowing I'll never have to crack it open again.


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Kidney Stone Update: Yay!

Yesterday I got my bi-annual x-ray to see what my kidney stones were up to. Last time I checked, I had two of them. One was hanging around in the lower-middle pole of one kidney, and the other one was a speck embedded in the kidney wall. Neither were worth worrying about, but kidney stones--especially mine--have a tendency to grow. So I headed over to x-ray to have a look.

A few minutes after I got home, I got an alert that I had new test results at the patient portal. That was quick. A little nervously, I called it up. What were we going to see this time? How many stones? How big? Where were they in my kidneys?

The words came up, and I stared. I read them three or four times to make sure I had it right. The initial report said "no radiopaque calculi detected." In other words, I have no kidney stones!

Now this is a preliminary report, not read by my specialist, so it's possible something was overlooked. It's entirely possible the one stone made its way out, but the embedded one? Hmmm. I do have a follow-up appointment with the urologist to make sure.

But here's the thing: I felt a surge of unexpected relief. I felt lighter. Weightless.

This kidney stone thing started five years ago. I've been getting kidney stones off and on since my mid-20s, but they weren't too hard to deal with up until 2018, when they went into overdrive. I had countless painful and terrifying operations that destroyed me physically and emotionally. And every six months, I have to check on them. Not to see if they're gone--they never are--but to see if they're becoming a problem. 

It created a sense of bad anticipation. Waiting for the other stone to fall, as it were. This heavy dread became a part of my daily life, so pervasive that I stopped noticing it. 

The new test results declared me free of stones and suddenly that heavy dread vanished. I was both surprised and giddy. A weight I had forgotten about vanished. 

I haven't felt like this in a long, long time.




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Samhain 2023

It was Samhain last night. The Halloween part was very quiet--we only had two trick-or-treaters. But 20 degrees and snowing has a dampening effect.

It was the first Samhain since my brother Paul died. I set a place for him at our dinner table. We had pork and apples and roasted potatoes. I also poured Paul a glass of scotch. Later, I poured it outside for the spirits. 

The ritual part was low-key. I've been dealing with the grief and it hasn't been crushing lately, but Samhain brought a lot of it back, and I didn't feel up for more. I rather wished someone else could have taken up the mantle and put on something more elaborate so I could take part but not have to plan. Ah, well. The life of a solitary practitioner.

Blessed Samhain.



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New Computer

 My current desktop is badly buggy. It disconnects from the Internet unexpectedly. It freezes if a program is forced to multi-task or if the browser has more than five or six tabs open. It's crashed three times in the last month. 

I thought about a factory reset, then did the math and realized my computer is more than five years old. Time for a new one.
Got it yesterday and connected it to Carbonite. It's now busily downloading the latest backup from my current computer and cloning itself. (I thought about getting an imaging program that might work faster, but the imaging programs I found seem to have been written for people with PhDs in computer science, and I also remembered that I pay $80 a year for Carbonite and why the hell wouldn't I just use that?) I've hard-wired it to the internet router to speed up the process, but it's still going to take until tomorrow.
 27 hours to go... 

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More Ypsilanti

 More about the Ypsilanti City Manager. On August 4, McMullan announced she wanted to retire six months before her contract ended. Although her contract also requires her to give the city 60 days' notice, she gave barely a week's, and the Council offered her a pension and several months' salary in an agreement prepared by the city attorney. THIS IS A SEVERANCE PACKAGE, not a voluntary separation. When a City Manager quits or retires, there's no need for an agreement and no need for the city attorney to get involved. In other words, the Council fired McMullan  in late July but didn't want to say so publicly, and only admitted McMullan's wrongdoing when the former development director spilled the beans. The Council was clearly going to sweep it under the rug.  MLIVE reported: 'The agreement would secure that she has a “favorable response from council” on her departure and also ensure she can get a positive letter of recommendation from the mayor, the city manager said. “I wanted the city to agree that I had skill sets and that I’m not just running out the door. I’m eligible for retirement,” [McMullan] said.' ' “It’s going to be a big change for us. We have a lot going on, but she’s given us lots of good years of service,” Ypsilanti Mayor Nicole Brown. “I wish her the best. I hope she’s happy with the transition and whatever she decides to do next.” '
 ***
 Note that the agreement stated the Council would only say nice things about McMullan, which is always part of a severance agreement, not a voluntary retirement. The mayor KNEW the details of the agreement and therefore KNEW what McMullan had been doing, but the above quote (https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/08/ypsilanti-city-manager-intends-to-leave-post-after-16-years-with-city.html) makes it clear Brown never intended to let anyone in on the reality. The Council intended to cover this up. The Council members also need to be investigated, and then voted out of office.

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Ypsilanti City Manager Under Investigation

 So has everyone heard about the scandal surrounding the (now former) City Manager Frances McMullan?

https://a2independent.com/2023/09/13/police-investigating-former-ypsi-city-manager-for-alleged-crimes-related-to-use-of-city-credit-card/ https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/09/police-investigating-former-ypsilanti-city-managers-alleged-misuses-of-city-credit-card.html

City Hall is in chaos. Their manager is a criminal, the city's development director left because of harassment, and employees are revealing how vindictive and vengeful McMullan was.

I love this part. When she was hired, this story appeared in the news. It said, in part:

McMullan said she hopes her experience and investment in the community as a resident of Ypsilanti Township since 1985 shows she can be viewed as a source of reliability. “I’ve been (with the city) 12 years and I’m already one of the longest tenured employees,” she said. “I think that alone helps people know they have someone they can trust.”

Kimberly Jones, who has been a city payroll technician for 17-years, said McMullan fits that bill. “We have someone that is qualified, capable and that we all trust,” she said. “She’s done a great job for the city. I don’t think anybody can question her work ethic.”

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2019/04/ypsilanti-hires-interim-as-new-city-manager-after-three-stints-in-the-role.html
*** Wow. Just wow.


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The Cruise: One Last Stroll, One Last Meal in Venice

 The vaporetto dropped us off in our old neighborhood Dorsodura near Zaterre. Our flat was only a couple blocks up the canal from our previous one, which made everything so much easier—we already knew the area. If you visit Venice, find a place to stay near the Zaterre station in Dorsodura. It's easy to get to from the airport—the vaporetto takes you right there for 15 Euros—and all the good stuff is within easy reach. St. Mark's Square is either a 20-minute stroll or a ten-minute water bus ride away. The Guggenheim is in Dorsoduro. There are great restaurants. The Grand Canal is an easy walk away. But the best part really is that ease of access from the airport. Large parts of Venice aren't accessible by vehicles, and we saw lots and lots of sweaty, unhappy tourists towing huge piles of luggage through the streets because their hotel wasn't reachable by car or boat. Anyway, our new studio flat was quirky fun. The flat is accessible through a little green door  that opens into what looks like a short staircase upward that ends in a blank wall. When you push on the wall, though, the wall rises up. It's a secret door! When you finish climbing the staircase, you're in the flat proper. The secret door drops back into place behind you, and you see that it's become a bench with a little rope handle at the bottom so you can lift it back up when you want to leave again. The whole thing is a clever use of space. We arrived a few minutes after check-in time, but a cleaning lady was still finishing up from the previous renters. She spoke very little English and we spoke very little Italian, but we were able to communicate perfectly well: "We leave our luggage and go eat?" "Good! Bathroom first? It's through there." "Thank you, yes." Our favorite restaurant was only a block away, and yes, I'm afraid we've become the kind of people who have a favorite restaurant in Venice. Over a luscious lunch of lasagna (me) and roasted chicken (Darwin), we canal-watched and figured out how to get back to the airport tomorrow. We'd come to Zaterre from the airport twice, but never done the reverse. The schedule we found online said the boat came every half hour, so we should be safe, but tomorrow was Sunday, and sometimes public transit runs a different schedule then. We couldn't find anything that said so. Still, we crossed our fingers. I had thought to Do Something on our last day in Venice, like go to a museum or tour a cathedral, but after two weeks of many such things, we were in information overload. Neither of us was in the mood to do anything that required thought or concentration. So instead, we went back to the flat (the cleaning lady had gone, leaving the smell of vinegar in her wake), showered, and went back outside, intending just to stroll the lovely Venice streets. There was one tiny snag—the sun. Boy, was the sun strong! And Dorsodura faces west, so our street got the full brunt of not only the sun, but the sunlight that reflected off the canal. It was like walking into an oven lit by klieg lights. Fortunately, we only had to dodge down a side street. The moment we were out of the sun, the temperature plunged and the air became soft and pleasant. We wandered the wonderful little streets and alleys of Venice, often hand in hand, noticing details that had escaped us before—this church was actually over 1000 years old, that block had an actual lawn, this building had the remnants of old carvings high up on the walls. And the insanely romantic canals everywhere. Really, Venice has become my favorite European city. (Sorry, Heidelberg!)  When we got hungry, we stopped at another canal-side restaurant and shared a prosciuto pizza. Did I mention how romantic all this was? Well, it was. We climbed into bed in our secret Venetian flat. What a fine day! In the morning, we got up early, rolled our luggage down to the Zaterre stop, and the vaporetto zipped up right on time. We endured the usual long lines (I love Venice, but its airport is on the bottom of my Nice Place list), boring waits, and one sprint for a connecting flight, but at last made it home. It was the best vacation ever! We're already planning the next one. 

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The Cruise: Trieste

 After Croatia we spent one more day at sea. Days at sea are great for the guests and hell for the crew. All the guests are on the ship all the time, which means everyone wants to eat all the time. And drink. The bars are crazy. The pool is mobbed. Darwin and I were content to hole up in our cabin and sneak out to the dining room every so often. The following morning, we put in at Trieste. Final disembarkation was the next day. Our cruise was almost over! We hadn't explored Trieste the first time we were there, thanks to the cruise's shortfalls in communication. I hadn't signed on for any excursions this time, but the main town was within easy walking distance of the ship and I wanted to go have a look. Darwin said he was tired and not really interested, so I went off on my own. I discovered that although settlements at Trieste date back to the stone age, and that although Trieste has been an economic powerhouse for centuries, its buildings are very new. By European standards, anyway. The grand government buildings that make up the town square and the nearby cathedral were built in the mid-1800s. A huge church up the block was built in the 1950s. A famous hotel in the 1920s. And so on. I didn't find anything older than 1830. I'm sure somewhere in Trieste are buildings considerably older (the famous Roman theater, for example), but I didn't see any. The buildings in question are quite grand, though. So much ornamentation! So many Roman statues! I took to taking photos of them so I could show them to my mythology students later and play "Name That God." The ringer is a statue of a half-naked man. It's only when you look closely that you realize he has a lion skin wrapped around his waist, which means it's Hercules—a demi-god. The town square also houses an impressively ugly fountain. No, seriously, it's awful. It looks like a cement mixer pooped and someone stuck some random statues into the mess before it dried. It dates back to the 1750s, which means the designer was probably tarred and feathered instead of put into the stocks, but he deserved whichever one happened to him. After it went up, the thing was moved four times, probably because no one wanted it in their yard. It's been subject to vandalism several times, including from a slightly deranged man who eluded police long enough to climb to the top and knock the head and arm off one statue with a lead pipe. If they'd been smart, they would have let him finish the job. That said, the rest of Trieste was delightful. I explored little streets and unexpected open-air markets and wandered through a church where the pipe organist was practicing and gave money to street musicians. A man was panhandling in mixture of English and Italian with a Swahili accent. I gave him a Euro. When we went our different ways, I wondered at the long, long series of events that had to flawlessly come together so that a man from North America might meet a man from Africa in an Italian city and exchange a coin minted in Greece.  Eventually the sun grew hot and I grew hungry, so I ambled back to the ship for a shower and a change of clothes.  And then the packing began. Our main luggage had to be in the corridor outside our cabin by midnight so it could be bundled off to customs for inspection. Meanwhile, disembarkation was at about 8:00 AM. So everything had to be done up the night before. This took considerable time, but at last we had it all ready, with only a few bathroom items left out for morning.  In the morning, we had breakfast and left the ship one last time. The stories of Darwin handcuffing himself to the balcony rail and howling that he wasn't leaving, not ever, are slightly exaggerated. We weren't actually leaving Italy just yet, though. We had one more night in Venice. We got on board the cruise's shuttle—yes, there had been one from Venice, too, but no one told us about it—bound for the Venice airport. By now we were experienced Venetians and we trotted straight to the vaporetto taxi and our final night in Italy. 

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The Cruise: Croatia

 In the morning, the ship was off the coast of Korsula (KOR-shula) in Croatia. Croatia is a country made up of over 100 islands, and it's gorgeous. The climate is mild, the sea is clear. It's a lovely, lovely place. Korsula can't handle a big cruise ship, so it anchored off-shore and everyone took shuttle boats to shore. Darwin and I had signed up for a short excursion—a 90-minute walking tour of Korsula.  When we boarded the rocking shuttle boat and took up seats, I heard a familiar voice yammering at everyone within earshot. Maggie. Oh, lord. She didn't notice or recognize us, but that was probably because she was yapping non-stop at her bench-mates, just like before. As the boat pulled away from the ship and bounced toward shore, Maggie started talking about spirituality. "I don't believe in that reincarnation stuff," she blithered to an Indian family. "It's all right for some people, but not for me. I need something more believable." "Don't," Darwin murmured to me. I didn't say anything, but I did listen. Maggie blabbered on, but she didn't actually proselytize or whip out one of her little cards. Ah ha! Someone from the cruise had spoken sharply to her. Good. To our relief, Maggie wasn't in our little group, and we left her behind to fall in with Luka, our shockingly handsome young guide. He looked like a magazine model—tall, dark-haired, chiseled face, and big brown eyes. He led us through Korsula. Korsula is a tiny town officially dating back to the fourteenth century, though it's really been around a lot longer. Over the centuries it's been handed around to different occupiers. Luka said that people born in the early 20th century became citizens of five different countries. These days, however, Croatia has its independence. Korsula's architecture is blocky, with little carvings everywhere. Narrow alleys with apartments and shop entrances, just like in Venice. Large market square with big, blocky church named St. Mark's, just like in Venice. It used to be a cathedral, but got downgraded when the seat of power for the bishophric changed.  The inside was elaborately done. This was Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. Statues and carvings and shrines and a big pipe organ and water fonts. I did some counting and leaned over to Darwin. "Seven altars, no waiting," I said. We also saw a little museum about Korsula. The recreation of a kitchen was most interesting to me. The kitchens in Croatia were always on the top floor in case of fire—easier to escape if the flames are above you. The kitchen displays had utensils from the Middle Ages to the 1940s. Interestingly, there was a stone basin in the corner with a drain in it. This, it turned out, was the toilet. You did your business in a pot—Croatians didn't treat bathroom functions as private—and dumped it down the kitchen drain. When we left the museum, Luka lectured about the public square some more, and I spotted an ATM. We were almost out of Euros, so I made quick use of it, but it took longer than I expected, and when I was done, the tour group had vanished.  Oops. I tried raising Darwin on my phone, but there was no connection. I hunted for the group, but no luck.  I wasn't worried. Korsula is tiny, and I knew where the ship was. It was more annoying than frightening. I wandered about on my own, then ambled down to the docking area and waited there. About half an hour later, Darwin and Luka strode into view. Darwin was a little worried, but not hugely upset. We compared notes. He had called and texted me. I had called and texted him. Nothing had gone through, though. Reunited, we bid good-bye to Handsome Luka and went to lunch at a seaside restaurant housed in a 400-year-old building. Darwin had aged steak and I had seafood pasta, and we both had fresh focaccia garlic bread and the ocean gleamed and the sun poured down and the umbrellas gave us shade. It was wonderful. We boarded the shuttle boat—no sign of Maggie—and bounced our way back to the ship. Thank heavens Darwin and I are completely unaffected by motion sickness! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing Nothing Much, which was also wonderful. 

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