Travel – Page 3 – Steven D. Krause

WIDE-EMU 2012: A Few Misc. Thoughts

WIDE-EMU 2012 (or is it WIDE-EMU 2?) happened Saturday at Michigan State and it all seemed to go off without a hitch, more or less. There might be more later, but I thought I’d write a down a few thoughts before I forget now.

This is the second version of the conference we ran successfully last year at EMU, and for me, I guess there are two related reasons why I think what we’re doing is important and valuable. First, there are not enough small, local, and low-stakes kind of conferences happening in the field, at least not in Michigan. I had a couple of folks from smaller colleges come up to me today and thank me (well, me and Derek and Bill too, of course) for doing this. Second, the WIDE-EMU is a “proof of concept” of the idea that if a conference remains small, if you can get a free space (in this case, classroom space at MSU), if most of the amenities (e.g., food, printed programs, other swag) are cut out, and if everyone embraces a little DIY spirit, and if you use tools like Google Sites and a few “borrowed” photocopies in the department– if you can do all that, then it’s really not that hard to run this kind of conference for free. And increasingly, I’m interested in conferences like this one: small and inexpensive.
My conference day started out helping people get started, registered, name-tagged, etc. I actually forgot a name tag, which is kind of bad since I’m one of the people who has preached the “bring your own name tag” message loudest. Anyway, after things got going, I wandered around and stuck my head in a couple of different sessions and I ended up staying for Becky Morrison’s and James Davis’ make/talk, which had become a sort of “let’s chat about our topic” since there were only four of us. I thought it was a great conversation.
Next, I went to Karl Stolley’s workshop on github– here’s a link to the materials.The good thing about it was I kind of feel like I want to learn something more about github (which is basically a place to share versions of open source code in a way that controls versions of that code) for all kinds of reasons and Karl knows plenty about it. The bad thing is/was I spent like 45 minutes trying install the necessary software and tools only to find that my stupid EMU computer is set up in such a way that I don’t have control to the root directory. (Note to self: erase EMU computer and start over on my own as soon as I have time).
Bill HD and Karl had had a little Twitter argument earlier in the week over the role coding should have amongst rhetoric/writing people; Karl obviously thinks “yes” and Bill had a blog post here more or less arguing “no,” or perhaps more accurately, “not so much.” I think both of them are right and wrong in that I don’t have the time/expertise/inclination to spend as much time with coding things as Karl would; on the other hand, I also don’t have programmers handy the way Bill does, so I have to do a little DIY if I’m going to get anything done. Besides, I think learning a little code– or even learning about code– goes a long way.
Anyway, after that was Bump Halbritter’s plenary talk “Teaching/Learning/Knowing Writing as Symbolic Action,” which was pretty good. I recorded it with my EMU’s new video camera and I’m trying to get it ready for YouTube on my other computer as I type this, so it should be available soon. Hopefully it turned out decent. His talk was largely about his forthcoming book, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, which I’m looking forward to reading for my own multimedia writing classes.
Lunch was kind of a bust: the original plan was to get everyone to go to this food court area that was supposed to have a variety of options, but the only thing open was a very busy Subway. So there was more dispersal to different parts than I would personally have preferred. Bill and Derek and I ended up going back to the conference building and ordering Jimmy Johns, keeping Derek’s streak alive.
I went to an afternoon session on “Robots” lead by Bill and Mike McLeod. It mainly focused on a neat little tool called If This Then That and other stuff involving APIs. Again, I go back to coding versus not coding: on the one hand, some of this stuff is too difficult for me to wrap my head around, as I wrote about here in foolishly trying to teach HTML5 coding last winter. I feel like a lot of the programming/coding required to do cool Web 2.0+ things are beyond my level of expertise. On the other hand, I am constantly reminded that a little coding and experimentation goes a long way, and it is better to know something about these kinds of things than it is to know nothing.
I shared my session with Geoff Carter, who introduced an interesting assignment in interrogating/considering videos in writing courses and Michael Salvo, who kinda summed up the conference and Geoff’s and my presentation.

Here’s a video recording of my talk:

I think it turned out okay; it occurs to me now that this is the first quasi-scholarly presentation/thing about MOOCs I’ve done that I can legitimately put on my CV since I jumped on that MOOC wagon earlier in the summer. I am certain there will be more of that soon.

Then it was on to the #beerrhetorics, which was a chance to relax, eat, drink, and talk to good friends/colleagues from around the midwest who came into town for this year’s festivities. Good times, and I was the proud program coordinator/mentor as a number of folks spoke highly of the EMU grad students who presented this year. Well done!

Assuming I can get the movie of Bump’s talk to work (and I just got an error trying to import it– oh-oh), I’ll be posting that soon too.

So that’s about it. About this time last week, I remember thinking (and maybe even saying to Derek) I don’t see any reason to do this again, it’s a lot of work, I’ve got so many other things to do, blah-blah-blah, etc. And now after just wrapping it up, I’m already thinking about what we could do the same or differently when we do this next year. So the WIDE-EMU just might be rising again in 2013.

On Harry Potter-land

Let me first begin with a couple of disclaimers and/or other contextualizing moves regarding my relationship to the whole Harry Potter thing and also to theme parks generally. I like Harry Potter just fine. I read the first three books, enjoyed them– thoroughly enjoyed the third one– but then I got bogged down in the fourth book and just stuck to the movies after that, some of which make more sense to me than others. As for theme parks: it’s complicated, but while I am okay with your typical shopping, shows, and some theme park rides (including motion-oriented ones), I do not enjoy roller coasters one little bit and would generally prefer to do something else.

On the other hand, I am married to a woman who developed a very popular course at EMU on Harry Potter, who has done scholarship on it, and who was even quoted in an eOnline story about the series. And while our son Will hasn’t gotten around to reading them yet, he too is a big ol’ fan of them, having had the books read to him by Annette when he was much younger. And she is also a fan of roller coasters and he is trying to be more of a fan of them. So given this, it was just a matter of time before we were going to be visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando on a holiday trip to the in-laws.

Here’s a link to the flickr set of pictures of the trip, most of which was to Harry Potter-land. A few scattered thoughts about it all:

This is one of the “lands” in the large Universal Studios complex of “lands” that included The Simpsons-oriented “Krustyland” (fun ride, btw), a sort of Americana-land, New York-land, Hollywood-land, Marvel comics-land featuring the also fun Spiderman ride and the “no way I’m getting on that thing” Incredible Hulk roller coaster, etc. So a lot to offer, but it was very clear where everyone was going. We arrived at the park by 8:30 am and the line for the big HP ride was already 135 minutes long. So we decided to take in the other things first– Jurassic Park-land, for example. It was all a ghost town compared to Potterville. And the rest of Universal was fun and all, but not worth it without Harry Potter. I have to wonder why a) Warner Brothers didn’t build their own HP-themed park, and b) why Disney didn’t try to get in on that action.
In summary, the “Wizarding World” is a very convincing set of the town of Hogsmeade with Zonko’s and Honeydukes (“jokes” and candy, all one big store), the cafeteria-style “inn” of The Three Broomsticks, the wand shop (too much of a mob scene to even contemplate going into), a small and a large roller coaster (Will and Annette rode the smaller one), and the big enchilada, “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey,” aka the Hogwarts ride, aka the castle. Honestly, if it weren’t for all the damn tourists and palm trees in the distance, you’d think they’d done some of the filming there.
Like I said, I like Harry Potter things (and I might get back to the other books after this), but I’m not a fanatic. But I have to say one the coolest things about this place was seeing the hardcore fans interacting with it all. There were a number of kids in Hogwarts robes, for example.
Among the many features catering specifically to the HP fan was “butter beer,” which was available “regular” or “frozen” (like margaritas) and which sort of tasted like a super-sweet cream soda with hints of butterscotch. They also had real beer and pretty decent food– actually, I was surprised all-around at the less than crappy food, though maybe my expectations had been pretty low.
As for the big ride itself: first off, the wait was not nearly as long as advertised out front– more like an hour or 75 minutes rather than two. Without giving anything away, it is essentially a “motion ride” with some real motion thrown in. You’re strapped into these seats that move around in many different tilting directions to give you real motion and you watch simulated motion being projected around you. For me after the ride, there was very much a sense of “I don’t really know how they did that.” It’s pretty intense, but not roller coaster unpleasant, and I enjoyed it, though I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been worried that my keys had fallen out of my pockets during one of the many twists and turns.
In a way, the wait wasn’t long enough because they take you through a series of rooms in the “castle” that show lots of very cool Harry Potter geeky things and I kind of felt like we were being rushed by them in the name of getting on the damn ride. Oh, and it empties out into what is one of the most claustrophobic gift shops I’ve ever been in, albeit one that sells lots of neat HP geekware.
So definitely thumbs up. If I were to do this again (and if they make expansions to the attraction, I assume there will be a next time), I’d do it all in one day instead of two, and I’d do whatever I could to not go right after Christmas, the busiest week of the year for these places. The crowd got pretty intense a couple of times, but I suppose this is going to stay pretty popular and crowded for years to come.

Professors, time management, and summering

There’s some trouble brewing in Texas about how faculty are spending their time in their cushy jobs, as this Chronicle of Higher Education piece explains, “Efforts to Measure Faculty Workload Don’t Add Up.” It’s behind the firewall, but basically, it rehashes a lot of the problems that have been around for years about measuring faculty work time. This discussion is also covered a bit in “Texas Coalitions Spar Over Scholars’ Time, Research, Pay.” And basically, critics of the Texas system are saying that faculty don’t teach enough, don’t work with enough students, don’t work enough in general, etc.

People who don’t really know what the job is about tend to think that a professor who teaches three classes a term basically works about 15 hours a week: those classes plus office hours, and that’s about it. The problem is that the people who don’t now better also tend to be the people who ultimately control budgets: regents, legislators, voters, etc. Professors, of course, dispute this, arguing that no-no-no, they work more like 100 hours a week because working as a professor is much MUCH more than teaching classes. A lot of this is reflected in the “What I Do With My Time: Pamela S. Gossin,” which is a diary of her work in the course of a week at the University of Texas at Dallas.

I’m not going to go into great detail explaining why this notion of “lazy professors” is wrong because a) if you are reading my blog on a regular basis, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve read that here before, b) there are a lot of other places to read about this in more thoughtful ways, and c) anything I say here as a professor will sound defensive anyway. I have a “reverse ethos” problem. I’ll just note that for the most part, I agree with the defenses that professor-types make about the amount of work they do, and, whenever I contemplate it, I am always surprised how much of my work really has nothing to do with teaching and even scholarship. There’s a lot of paperwork shuffling and meetings and such in this job.

I think one of the biggest problems professors have is that we have a lot more in common with people who work out of their homes and/or who are “telecommuters” than people who work in normal white collar settings, even though we’re most visible to people when we are actually teaching and/or on campus. This is different from K-12 teachers (who are generally at the school all day long, even when they aren’t teaching), and this does vary from university to university and even among faculty in my department. I once applied for a job at a university where the administrator-type interviewing me said he expected all faculty to be on campus five days a week, and at least one of my colleagues actually uses his school office to work. And with my department moving back into a newly remodeled building this fall, maybe working in the office will become an increasing trend.

The idea that most professors work outside of their classrooms, labs, and dingy university offices doesn’t register with the popular imagination and/or “as seen on TV” image of professors, and it is also out of sync with most student interactions with professors. I will run into students in the “real world” once in a while, and it is always a little odd– particularly with undergraduates– when they spot me in a restaurant or on the street or wait on my in Target while I’m buying toilet paper. It clearly doesn’t fit their assumptions about me (“I thought he only existed on campus”).

The other problem that lots of professors have– myself and Pamela Gossin included– is time management and/or the leaky borders between “work” and “life.” Here’s a passage from Gossin’s diary:

7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Answered e-mail and coordinated summer research project, a digital-humanities project. Prepared for a forthcoming conference and read reports on a Texas bill that would allow concealed handguns on state-college campuses. Also read new information about the university’s retirement plan.

9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Watched a television special about John Muir for her class in nature writing: “I needed to watch it so I would know if their extra credit was valid.”

10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Sent e-mails and did more preparation for summer research. Made contact with a research assistant she hoped to hire.

Now, I totally relate, understand, and resemble this work schedule. But part of the problem that I have (maybe Gossin has this problem too, maybe other academics out there can relate) is I am not good at limiting my email usage. Not. At. All. And every efficiency/productivity guide out there will tell you that if you want to get things done, you need to ration/limit the time spent on email. As with most efficiency advice, this is perhaps a good intention rather than something that can realistically be put into practice, but still.

This diary also demonstrates the fuzzy definition of “work” in academia. I get what Gossin is saying here about watching that John Muir show: it is work, but my guess is that she might have watched it anyway. There’s lots of reading, web surfing, writing (is this entry work? maybe?) I do that is in that in-between space, which is not surprising because I like what I do. But generally, people (especially Texas bean counters who want professors to account for all their time) define “work” as “something you would otherwise not be doing if it wasn’t for the job and/or the money.” So I would bet that if some Texas efficiency wonk sat down with Gossin and looked at that entry about watching the show on John Muir, that wonk would say “that ain’t work.” And that wonk would be kind of right, kind of wrong.

And then there is summer. My extended family– who are all college graduates but who are also not academics– have learned by now that the best way to get an earful from either me or Annette is to say something about how it must be great to have so much “summer vacation.” That’s not vacation, buster– that’s time for the work! the writing, the scholarship, the research, the clawing and fighting to get tenure and then promotion and then beyond– work work work work!

Well, I have a confession to make. It really ain’t all that bad.

Oh sure, it is true for many academics that the space between winter and fall is time to write and research, and I have a couple of scholarly projects on the back of the stove right now. While it is technically possible for faculty at EMU to completely check out (we’re on an 8 month contract here, more or less) for the entire spring and summer terms, realistically, there are still meetings, students to advise, paperwork to be done, etc. And then there’s spring/summer teaching. We can’t really afford to not teach at least one of the 7.5 week terms (the pay is essentially overtime), so that’s obviously work.

But even with all of that, I can’t really complain. We’ll be doing some traveling soon, I finished today (while procrastinating and writing this post) my painting work on the back part of the house, I play a little golf, etc. There is time off, and in a few years– when Will is through Greenhills and onto college (it’ll be sooner than we think)– I am sure that Annette and I will take advantage of all four of those months.

Though oddly, I get antsy for work. I’ll probably spending some time planning one of my classes for the fall after I post this….

#cccc11 recap

This is kind of scattered because I started it over a cup of coffee Monday morning and finished it Wednesday morning before meeting meeting meeting/grading grading grading. I’m super DUPER busy with wrapping up the winter term. The last day of classes was yesterday, and I’ve got at least four stacks of things I need to/want to assign grades to by the end of the day a week ago. I know.

But before I get to more detail than you want to know, I thought I’d make four general comments:

Partly in response to Derek and Alex and Kyle and I am sure others: I’m not particularly grumpy about the quality (or not) of the panels or anything else at this year’s conference. Yeah, the hotel was too expensive, but that’s why I didn’t stay at the conference hotel. Yeah, there was no decent wifi and I think that should indeed be addressed, but most major conference hotels have the same problem and I always plan ahead and assume I won’t have decent wifi anyway. Yeah, I kept running into the same people, but I kind of like that and I always have the odd experience of running into the same people at a particular year of the CCCC and not others– for example, last year I ran into Brian McNely everywhere, but this year, I didn’t see him once. Etc., etc. I think I preferred the Louisville location to Atlanta for a variety of reasons (though I had a lot of fun in Georgia), but Atlanta was a lot more reasonably priced than New York or San Francisco. And I don’t want to be too critical because….
… I don’t want to get involved. While I do have some complaints about how the CCCC and the NCTE do business in all sorts of ways (its conferences and a lack of willingness to offer alternative formatted presentations like poster sessions, its publications and its confusion about the paperless publishing world, its view of what an organization is and how it ought to fund itself, its dumb as a bag of rocks view of anything resembling the internets, etc., etc.), I feel like I more or less give up my right to complain too loudly when I am unwilling to do anything about it by getting involved in the organizations’ governance. I’m not willing to run for the Executive Committee of the CCCC or anything else involving the NCTE. I thought about it at one point, but it just isn’t the sort of administrative/service work that interests me– at least not now. So if I’m not willing to pitch and and “make a difference,” so to speak, then I can’t complain too much about the people who are willing to do that.
I don’t know if the conference has changed that much or not, but I know I’ve changed. The first CCCC I went to was (I think?) in 1995, and I attended and presented at the conference pretty consistently through about 2005 or so. When I was a graduate student and first starting my career down the tenure-track, listening to what people had to say at the CCCC was part of my education and presenting at the conference was real scholarship. But this year wasn’t my first rodeo, and I’m all tenured/promoted -out. I still learn some things from panels; but mostly, it’s variations on things I’ve heard before, simply by virtue of the fact that I’ve been around long enough to have heard a lot of stuff before. I still propose to the CCCC so I can get on the program (and thus some funding for the trip), but I need another CCCC presentation on my CV like another hole in the head. So sure, the conference isn’t as “new” and as “exciting” as it once was; but neither am I.
Having said that, I do think there’s more that the CCCC could do to reorganize itself (more like– dare I say it?– MLA by having subject areas organize panels instead of assuming that we’re all there to talk about freshman comp in some variety; have a wider variety of presentation-types; have published proceedings; etc.); and, in an era in which I can communicate with like-minded scholars all over the world via email and the blogosphere and I can publish a media-rich version of my presentation for free, I think the fundamental purpose of the “academic conference” has to be questioned. Why do we spend the time and resources to do this anymore? The answer to me is not panels; it’s being in meet/meat -space with other scholars in the field.

The biggest thing I get out of the CCCC at this point is the incidental contact. So, along with the actual and direct activities, here’s more or less the order of things as I remember it:

Continue reading “#cccc11 recap”

CCCC 2011: The prelude

I’m getting ready for what is setting up to be a somewhat unusual CCCCs in Atlanta this year. My connection to the conference this year is not through a regular presentation, but through a couple of what i guess I would call “group projects.”

One of the folks who organize the CCCC IP caucus contacted me after my presentation on RiP! a Remix Manifesto last year and asked me I’d like participate in the event for 2011. How can I turn down an invitation? I don’t completely know how this will go, but I’m on a roundtable on RiP! during this session. Here’s a link to a web site I put together for it– it includes a little info on the movie and my notes. It might ultimately include some links/information from my co-roundtable-ish folks, one of whom is a former MA student here at EMU. So we’ll see how that goes.

The other thing I’m doing is a roundtable with some of my EMU colleagues, “A Department in Exile: The Challenges of Contested Spaces and Roles.” It’s an interesting story– at least to me– about how this all came about. When the theme of the conference was announced– “contested spaces”– I immediately thought about the literal contested space that we’ve been put in here at EMU, being displaced out of our building while it is being remodeled.

Anyway, I put together a roundtable with a bunch of my EMU colleagues and we sent it in. It ended up being rejected initially, which I found odd. I mean, I realize that the theme of the conference is supposed to be metaphorical notion of “contested spaces,” but you’d think that there would be room on the program for a literal discussion of contested space. So I appealed, and the good news was we were ultimately accepted into the program. The bad news is we are near the very very end of the program, the last session on Saturday. I am assuming we will be a group talking amongst ourselves.

So, in part to make the talk actually usable and to help my colleagues figure out what to do, I put together this video:

We’ll see how it goes. My assumption is that this will be a presentation like one I gave on a Saturday at the CCCCs in New York a few years ago, one where I put together a comic book of sorts, assuming (correctly!) that not a lot of people are willing to turn out for a Saturday presentation.

Part the “adventure” for this conference is Bill H-D and I are driving down on Monday and then coming back (with Derek M) on Sunday. Part of the problem for me with this version of the CCCCs is the IP thing is on Wednesday and the roundtable thing is on Saturday. It’s potentially not a good idea for all sorts of obvious reasons, but I didn’t like the idea of being in Atlanta the whole week without any transportation. Once again, we’ll see how it works out. The adventure starts Monday morning.

Notes on Grown-Up Camp and the End of Summer (more or less)

We have returned from just shy of a week at “The Inn” at “The Homestead,” which is up in Glen Arbor, Michigan. Here’s a link to a Flickr set of pictures. Some thoughts more or less as they occurred on the trip/occur in the photos:

We stayed at The Homestead, where Annette made a reservation back in May or June in a fit of “Argh! I need a vacation!” It is a huge property of condos, cottages, time-shares, private homes, and a couple small hotels which is part real estate scheme/part resort, a place where many things are named with a pretentious “The” (e.g., “The Homestead,” which includes a few shops and such in “The Village,” an area of rentals called “The Cottages,” and the small hotel where we stayed called “The Inn.”) I was sort of prepared to not like it because it’s too expensive and a lot of the reviews online are mixed at best. But just about anyplace in this area of northern Michigan “in season” is too expensive, and since we wanted a comfy room with Internet access and close proximity to the beach (maybe 200 yards away from one of the best in Michigan) and a pool, this worked out great. We had a room with a gas fireplace, a nice sitting area, plenty roomy, and it also included a great patio. It was quirky though– for example, none of the doors quite opened or closed right.
This was designed to be a “vacation,” as opposed to a “trip” like the one we took to California and Oregon in June. Will was away at Camp Lookout just down the road, so the idea was to mostly do nothing– sleeping in, hanging around the beach and the pool and the patio, reading, going out for nice dinners and drinking cocktails. You know, camp for grown-ups.
We did go on a hike that was about seven miles long one day along the Bay View trail. It was quite nice because it was beautiful views and because it gave us a chance to try out our new picnic/wine backpack (we bought at “the store” or whatever it was called at The Homestead– a good deal, too). But that was the hottest day up there, so not necessarily the best timed trip.
That night we met with a friend from our PhD program who teaches up at Northwestern Michigan College, John, and his wife and all-around groovy person, Karen. We also ended up out there with John’s parents, who were visiting, and some local-yokel friends of theirs too. Low-key up-north fun: sit around, drink a little wine or beer, light a fire, and wait for the stars to come out. And we saw lots of stars, including the Milky Way pretty clearly. It’s nights like that which make me think that the ancient’s belief that the sky was a roof high above the earth was logical under the circumstances.
But there was work on this trip. For starters, I was (and am!) still teaching two classes online and Annette, despite her best efforts, just couldn’t stay completely away. We had ethernet connectivity in the room, but no wifi (note to self: next time I go on an extended trip like this, bring one of my Airport Express modems). But there was wifi in the lobby area, which was probably better because we pretty much had the place to ourselves, room to spread out, and a tremendous view. Older vacationers would look at us scornfully and mumble how we were “wasting” such a pleasant time. Younger vacationers asked questions about how they too could get good wifi in this place.
We had a couple of hours of “drama” on Thursday when I thought I had lost my keys to the car, the only set of keys we had. We turned the room upside down, looked through every stitch of clothing, walked on the beach and searched under chairs by the pool. I had called a lock guy with the theory that I could get to a valet key in the glove box, though we were dreading that key not being there and having to get towed to Traverse City and spending lots of time and hundreds of dollars to get back on the road. And then I picked up a bluetooth keyboard that was on the desk area, a keyboard that I am certain that both Annette and I had moved in the course of the last two hours, and there they were. We both gasped as if I had just pulled off the greatest magic trick of the century.
We ate well on this trip: two times at a place at The Homestead called Nonna’s, mainly because it was close, very good, and reasonably priced for this quality of food. And then the last night we went to a place in Glen Arbor called Blu that was really really good, certainly as good as any really good restaurant I’ve been to just about anywhere. Don’t tell Will, but that even includes Bouchon.
We picked up Will on Friday a little early, and then made a stop at Cherry Republic for him (and us too) before getting back on the road.

And then as soon as I got back to town and was running errands, I sensed the end of summer. The grocery store had fall plants for sale out front. A pile of end of the term grading awaits. Fall term will start soon….

Our midwest casino tour

We were in Cedar Falls, Iowa this past weekend, dropping off Will for a few days to spend with his cousins and grandparents. So on the return trip, minus our minor and with the dog safely stowed in the kennel, Annette and I did something we never do: we gambled our way home, stopping at three casinos along I-80 and I-94 in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Here’s a link to a few gambling picts.

I should point out that neither Annette nor I are exactly “high rollers.” I’m pretty sure we gambled less than $50 between the two of us, all of it at either video poker machines or slots. I should also point out, for those of you thinking “casinos? in the midwest?” that we could have easily stopped at eight or nine different places, maybe more. Once you start looking, you realize there’s lots of gambling out there.

We started at Jumer’s Casino and Hotel, in Rock Island, Illinois, just across the river from Iowa. This was mostly a breakfast stop for us, a little over two hours from my parent’s house. I give this place high marks for convenience, with “easy on/easy off” of I-280. It was all shiny and new, and probably not a bad place to stay on a road-trip– while we were eating breakfast, we saw a lot of people on the way out of the hotel part and back onto the Interstate. I also give this place high marks because the whole thing was non-smoking. I could see us stopping here on the trip to and from Iowa again. But the down-side for me was that I screwed up in my betting and managed to lose about $10 on one bet on a quarter poker machine.

Stop number two was at Blue Chip Casino, Hotel, and Spa in Michigan City, Indiana. While there are lots of gambling options in the midwest, there are some kind of screwy laws on this, and in Indiana (apparently), gambling has to take place on the water. So what you’ve got with this place is a giant and shiny hotel, theater (upcoming acts include Paul Revere and the Raiders), and a parking deck, right next to the casino, which is actually a giant barge floating in a pond right next to the buildings. But you’d never know this if you weren’t looking– the connection between the building and the boat is permanently in place, and the boat clearly never leaves. Where would it go?

Anyway, I give the Blue Chip a definite thumbs down. Far too off the Interstate to make it worthwhile as a roadtrip stop, and you show me someone who makes a point of going to Michigan City to play slots and I’ll show you someone who has a bit of a “gambling problem.”

We wrapped things up in Michigan at FireKeepers Casino in Battle Creek (btw, sorry for the noises on their web site), where we stopped for a little gamin’ and dinner. By this point, I think it’s fair to say that I was reminded of something I already knew: every casino everywhere I have ever been– Vegas, Iowa, Michigan, wherever– pretty much is the same. They all have that same kinds of blinking lights and things, the same games (with a few very subtle variations), the same hypnotic background noise of jingling machines, the same crazy-patterned carpets, the same smell of cigarette smoke (well, except for Jumer’s) and piped-in air/oxygen/air-freshener. Annette and I did enjoy the nickel poker machines here though.

So, what did we learn?

Midwest gambling is dominated by old people– in some cases, very very old people. Though to be fair, I am sure all of these places attract a more youthful clientele after 8 pm.
Midwest casinos are located in places where people would not otherwise go and/or stop– Rock Island and Michigan City, for example, not to mention a number of parts of Detroit.
One trend I noticed was a number of “machines” that were there to replace/replicate table games. At one of these places (the specifics all blend together), I noticed a computerized version of a three card poker game; at another, it was a roullette game. In both cases, it was people sitting around a gaming table like they would be if it were being played with real cards and/or a real dealer, but it was all computerized instead. Sort of like the casino equivalent of those machines where you scan your own groceries.
Casinos seem to generally attract rather unhealthy-looking people, some who might even be zombies, cocktail-drinking, smoking, trucker-cap wearing zombies.
A closely related observation– midwest casinos seem to attract extremely fat people, the kind of fat where my response, as someone who is himself clearly overweight, is “hey, there’s nothing wrong with me because I’m not that fat.” This was particularly true in Michigan, where I recall seeing at least two people being wheeled around because they were clearly too fat to propel themselves and where Annette and I witnessed a rather grotesque scene in the restaurant that had us making cruel jokes about Mr. Cresosote requesting a bucket and being offered a “wafer thin mint.”
Finally, stopping at the casino on the highway is not the same as Vegas, no matter how hard those Midwestern casinos might try.

Pacific Coast 2010

The last part of our trip was the super-nature-y part, the part which defines terms like “sublime” beauty, the southern Oregon/northern California coast. When we lived in Ashland, we made a couple of trips to the coast, though only a couple because while Ashland is maybe 100 miles from the Pacific, there are mountains and foothills in the way.

I posted some pictures the other day; here’s a link to the Coos Bay/Bandon part of things, and here’s a link to the Redwoods part. One of these days, I’ll have to pull together a “highlight” reel of these zillions of pictures, though I have to say it’s tough to take a bad looking picture out there. More than you want to know after the jump. Continue reading “Pacific Coast 2010”

Ashland 2010

We are at the main destination/reason for our westward trip, Ashland, Oregon, the town where Will was born in 1997 and where I took my first tenure-track job in 1996. We were only here two years, frankly because my job at Southern Oregon University was bad and also because Annette’s job prospects at SOU and in the area were poor. I’m leaving a lot of details out of that last sentence, details I’m not going to dwell on for mostly obvious reasons. Let’s just say that if we had stayed here, I’m pretty sure neither one of us would have stayed in academia.

Anyway, I’m happy to visit now as a tenured and content professor at EMU, one who happens to be married to someone who was just granted tenure, and I’m happy that we are sharing our trip down memory lane with our 12 year old son who left this town where he was born before he was one. Here’s a link to a bunch of flickr pictures of the area (including Crater Lake) so far; more details after the jump.
Continue reading “Ashland 2010”

Napa, 2010

We’re about to conclude the first leg of our trip out west, the Napa Valley part of things. Here’s a link to the Flickr set of photos and one video; Annette also uploaded a bunch of stuff to Facebook, but I’ll worry about getting those pictures downloaded and uploaded to Flickr when I get home.

A couple of quick thoughts before Ashland:

The idea of this trip, more or less, was to cash in our frequent flyer miles (meaning the flights cost us about $40 or so) and to take a trip to see where Will was born and where Annette and I started our post-PhD program lives, Ashland, Oregon. But first, Napa.

Our flight into Sacramento was uneventful, but we didn’t get to the hotel/motel until almost 1 am west coast time or 4 am east coast time, so our first day in Napa was pretty quiet, actually. We stopped in downtown Napa for lunch– good food, but not much reason to stop there tourism-wise. Drove past wineries, stopped at Bouchon Bakery for lovely pastries and coffee, and then got to our hotel, a Best Western in Calistoga, CA. Great place, actually– lovely little town, nice hotel, reasonably priced, etc.

Tuesday night we went to Bouchon, which is a Thomas Keller restaurant in Yountville. I would have preferred going to Ad Hoc (because I have a cookbook from there), but it was closed both Tuesday and Wednesday. And The French Laundry, well, that would have been a little out of our budget. Bouchon was great, and surprisingly accessible and not crazy expensive. We have spent as much or more in a couple of different restaurants in Ann Arbor, and this was much better. Will had a great mussels dish, Annette had a bib lettuce salad that she thought was the best ever (and some good lobster bisque), and I pigged out over some deliciously fatty pork shoulder.

And then Wednesday, we got up and really had tourism proper. Napa Valley is a little tricky with a 12 year-old; as Annette put it, it’s sort of like how adults feel about a place like Chuck E. Cheese: sure, there’s stuff adults can do there, but the place is really made for kids. So is the case with wine country. As a result, we ended up keeping it pretty simple and mostly kid-friendly. We went to the California petrified forest and the “Old Faithful” of California; both were pretty much tourist-traps, but kinda fun. We went to the Sterling winery, which has the kid-friendly attraction of a gondola ride from the parking lot to the winery itself– that was pretty cool, and the views from that place were spectacular.

But the real surprise and hit of the day was Castello Di Amorosa, which is basically this pet/vanity project of a guy who has been active in the Napa Valley wine world for a long long time. Check out the link and the pictures to see what I mean; but basically, I would say it was an all-around hit for our group. I thought it was going to be super cheesy, but actually, it was a really well-done castle reproduction, and as some of the picture suggest, it looks quite a bit like quite a few things in Italy. We had a great guy serving us up too much wine in the tasting room, and it was pretty good wine, too.

We didn’t get to see a lot more than that, unfortunately, but what we saw was lovely. Oh, almost forgot– we did get a chance to go into the the west coast branch of the the Culinary Institute of America, which has about the best kitchen tool/toy/porn store I’ve ever been in. I ended up buying a couple of great looking CIA cookbooks, which are not the kind of thing you can typically get at a Borders or something.

And now on to Ashland. I’m finishing this post now from here, and I am sure I’ll photos to upload in a few days.