Category: Ypsi-Arbor

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Farewell Estabrook, farewell public schooling

Will graduating from EstabrookI picked up Will from school today, and we both realized on the walk home that he would never have to go back into Estabrook Elementary unless he wanted to. We both had complex feelings about this.

To be clear: on the whole, we’ve been very happy with Estabrook Elementary, part of the Ypsilanti public school system. I remember volunteering in Will’s first grade class and learning so much about teaching and pedagogy and literacy among kids that age. Completely fascinating (thanks, Mrs. Thompson!). Mrs. Rust was great for both second grade and safety patrol. Mrs. Micallef was a great third grade teacher, as was Ms.Lava-Kellar for fifth grade. Though to be honest, none of them can touch Will’s fourth grade teacher Mr. Morrison, who retired the year after Will was done with his class. He was by far Will’s favorite.

So on the whole, Estabrook was a good experience for Will and for all of us. Really. I’d recommend it to anyone. Still, it was far from perfect, and I guess there some things about the whole “farewell” ceremony that didn’t quite set right with me. Early in the festivities, the principal, Mrs. DeRossett, warned all of us that we do not woop and holler at Estabrook; we clap politely. Thus I was no longer allowed to yell “Yea!” with every award and/or performance.

After a mini-recital of various fifth grade musical talents (which included a friend of Will’s playing the James Bond theme on piano), a bunch of awards were given out. Most dubious to Annette and I was the “Principals Award,” which Will is holding in the picture. First, as far as we could tell, this was an award that was handed out to all of the kids who did not cause some kind of “trouble” or something, presumably trouble with Mrs. DeRossett. About two-thirds of the kids got this award, which obviously singled out to one and all who the trouble-makers were. Second, almost all of the white kids received this award, and I don’t think it does a whole lot to build community among the racially diverse Estabrook community to do leave a bunch of African-American and Arab-American kids sitting down while almost everyone else gets this prize.

And third, it should be Principal’s Award, as in the possessive apostrophe s, the award “belonging” to and from the principal. I will grant you that as an English professor and writing teacher that I am perhaps a little more critical about these things than most, but passing out a certificate with a grammar error like that doesn’t exactly instill a lot of confidence in Ypsilanti educators.

In any event, with the farewell to Estabrook comes a farewell for Will to the Ypsilanti public schools. While we were pretty happy with the Ypsi elementary experience, we were not confident about taking the chance on the Ypsi middle schools or high school. The original plan was to go to Ann Arbor, which has notably better public schools, but when we got caught in the collapsed real estate market and it became clear that we could not afford to move, we decided to explore our other options. We decided on Greenhills, which is an independent school in Ann Arbor.

I think we have kind of lucked out in reverse. Had we moved to Ann Arbor, I think Will would have done fine in the public schools there and I think we would have adjusted easily enough to the subtle but noticeable lifestyle differences between the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. But Greenhills is a really really great school, and I know Will is going to have opportunities he’d never get in any public school system. Instead of sitting in crowded classrooms where the teachers have to spend too much time worrying about mandatory testing and keeping the kids disciplined, Will will actually be able to learn and do some really cool and interesting things.

And we really like our house and our neighborhood and the fact that we can walk to work— well, we can walk when we aren’t carrying a lot of stuff and when the weather is decent at least. Neither Annette nor I are exactly “Ypsi proud,” the types who are all about the great things that Ypsilanti has to offer and who scoff at the snootiness of Ann Arbor. We try to put a foot into both places, liking a lot about about towns. But we’ve been here for ten years now and we’re starting to do more Ypsi-specific things. For example, last night we were out with family and friends to The Corner Brewery. This morning, Will and Annette are out and about at the annual Normal Park yard sale, which includes about 75 or so sales all in the neighborhood (as I have written this, they have brought back a snow globe and golf balls for me, and Will was inexplicably given a giant stuffed gorilla by someone). And this afternoon, we’re off to the last games of Will’s Ypsilanti township soccer league.

Still, I have some liberal guilt. Because of my line of work and my own politics, I kind of feel like that we shouldn’t be part of the “problem” of flight away from the public schools. More than one Ypsi friend of mine has thought of folks who have moved out of town and/or who took their kids out of the public schools as “traitors,” and I felt rather sheepish talking to some parents outside of Estabrook the other day while waiting to pick up Will– ah, no, he isn’t ready for West Middle School. Um, yeah, we’re going to send him to Greenhills….

But I’ll get over it, and I guess I’ve come to see over the years that schooling choices that parents make are ultimately rather personal, complex, and even contradictory. I can still support the public schools in general while taking advantage of other opportunities. And maybe this will get me to get more involved in Ypsilanti the community, especially if we decide we’re going to stick around in town for a while longer.

By the way, I have a movie/montage of Will’s Estabrook days I’m putting together. I’ll get it posted here sooner than later.

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Thank you for the advice, Grace L. Phillips

If you ever doubted that newspaper editors ran letters from readers that were goofy just because they (the editors, that is) found them funny, then look no further than this wisdom from today’s Ann Arbor News “letters to the editor” page:

Hangover medicines should be banned

I believe that hangover medicine should be banned. I think that they shouldn’t have medicine for someone who doesn’t do the right thing, and drink too much. Having hangover medicine may encourage people to drink more.

To prevent hangovers in the first place: Don’t drink more than one drink a night.

Your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of a beer an hour.

Alternate alcohol with

nonalcohol.

It’ll help keep your body hydrated.

Choose your drink selectively.

Congeners are dangerous poisons that appear most in darker drinks.

Grace L. Phillips, Ann Arbor

Thanks again for the advice. Maybe I’ll just stick to caffeine free Diet Pepsi.

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Concentrate on and optimize in Washtenaw county

I’m cleaning up my email this morning, and thought this might be a good place to put a link to Concentrate, which is a local start-up/blog/web site aimed at promoting various businesses and enterprises. There isn’t much there yet, though one thing it makes me think about for teaching the Writing for the World Wide Web course is search engine optimization. There’s an article here about an area company that does this stuff, and as I put the schedule for this course together this week, it makes me think that maybe I ought to see if one of these folks would like to participate in the online discussion a bit during the course.

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Dude…

From boing-boing.net comes this post on craigslist, which I will reproduce in its entirety, about the pizza business in Ann Arbor:

To The Stoner Who Works At Cottage Inn Pizza
Date: 2007-09-18, 11:30AM EDT

You: the guy who answers the phone at cottage inn pizza
Me: Hungry and stoned out of my gourd

I called you from my cell phone but had completely forgot who I was calling by the time you answered the phone. Of course, you were also baked to bajeezus and forgot to tell me that I had called Cottage Inn.

When you answered and said, “Whatsup?” I thought about it, and after a 20 second pause I told you that was hungry. You suggested I try a pizza, and I agreed that it was probably a good idea.

Then I asked you if you sold pizza and you said that you could make me one. I said I wanted anchovies and something else on my pizza. You asked me what that something else was.

We spent five minutes listing toppings until we figured out that I was trying to remember how to say: “Sun dried Tomatoes.” When you said: “We’ll bake that right up for you,” we both started laughing uncontrollably.

It was the best pizza I ever had; I just wanted to thank you for helping me out.

Ah, those sophisticates in Ann Arbor…

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Restaurant Review: Achilles Restaurant

What and Where:

Achilles Restaurant | 3075 Packard St | Ann Arbor, MI| (734) 971-2020

Ratings (1=terrible, 5=mind-blowingly great)

  • Tastiness: 2
  • Service: 3.5
  • Price (1=super cheap, 5=super expensive):2.5
  • Value: 1.5
  • General vibe: 2

    • Comments

    • An occasional feature of my unofficial blog was restaurant and coffee shop reviews, and while I haven’t been going out much lately and I am likely to be going out even less in the near future (as I get more serious about dieting, finally), I decided on a whim today to stop at the unlikely Achilles Restaurant, in part to start the reviews for the quasi-new blog.
    • I was also motivated to eat here because of the signage at this place. I tried to take a picture with my cell phone, but it was no use (I am very much looking forward to the day when I can ditch this phone for a better one, but I’m afraid that’s at least two years off). The red awning around the front of the place says BREAKFAST LUNCH DINNER on one side of the front door and GREEK AMERICAN MEXICAN on the other (because someone just might be in the mood for any kind of Greek American Mexican meal at any time of the day). There’s also a sign out front with changeable letters intended to advertise specials that has said the same thing for at least six months:

      NEW
      MANAGEMENT
      WELCOME

      I believe what they are shooting for here is “Welcome the new management,” but it sounds to me more like a request, as in “New management would be welcome at this place.”
    • Sadly, Greek/American/Mexican food at Achilles turns out to be your typical coney island food, which is to day Southeast Michigan for “diner.” I think most of these places get their menus from the same warehouse someplace. When I asked about a favorite between the cheeseburger and the chicken gyro, the waitresses disagreed. I went with the chicken gyro. The sandwich was the definition of “okay.” It came with passable a salad, which, once I picked out some of the more questionable parts, was pretty good, and some also “okay” french fries.
    • The inside of the place was neat and tidy, though there was a smoking section. I didn’t get too much of a whiff, but smoking sections are still always a downer for me, even in diners. The only person smoking in there while I was eating was this guy who looked to be about 104.
    • The waitresses were very nice and the service was prompt. Perhaps this was because of the welcomed new management; perhaps they were aiming to please in order to encourage whatever new management were to happen to come in to feel welcomed.
    • All in all, it was one of those experiences that I had so I can now say to people “hey, I’ve been in there.” I probably won’t be back, though I will also admit I am not really a connoisseur of diners/coney islands to begin with. Maybe I should have gotten the cheeseburger, or one of the hot dogs….
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    It’s more than a book store; it’s a really big book store with gadgets

    As a winter break family outing yesterday afternoon, Annette and Will and I went to the new Borders after we picked Will up from school. And yes, our family is such that going to a book store is considered a “family outing.” This new store is a “concept store,” and fairly accurately summarized in this CNNMoney.com article, “Borders Celebrates Grand Opening…” Borders, which has its headquarters in Ann Arbor and which has been hemorrhaging money for a few years now, sees the store as at least one of the futures of the business. I guess.

    Anyway, the store is located in a big-box strip mall over near Ann Arbor-Saline Road in the space that used to be a CompUSA store. One of the reasons why Borders opened this store here is because the Borders suits are here, and when we were there Tuesday, there seemed to be tours of various Borders employees underway, which was a little weird. It’s a big store with snazzy lighting and furnishings and all of that, kind of arranged in a sort of wheel/spoke pattern. In the middle, there were sections of food and wine, travel, exercise and diet, and something else I’m not remembering.

    My wife the Children’s Lit professor scholar noticed that a good half of the book space of the story could be included in her classes: besides a big children’s book section, there was a lot of “young adult” and whatever the book category is called for the kind of junior-aged high school kids, and a very large section on Manga, Anime, comic books, and graphic novels. So much for the “kids today” not doing any reading– or I guess the “kids today” just aren’t reading “Literature,” which was sort of shoved off into a corner of the store.

    But probably more than half of the store was devoted to the miscellaneous stuff that all big box book stores sell nowadays (stationary, candy, bags, notebooks, etc.), music, and “gadgets.” Over in one corner they had a LongPen station, which was (apparently) invented by Margaret Atwood to do virtual book signings. I couldn’t find a picture on the very bad LongPen web site, but basically, it’s kind of a station sort of thing a bit bigger than an ATM with a camera and a microphone, a screen that would presumably show the author doing the signing, and a surface where you put your book and the mechanical pen thing. I dunno. The argument is that these people are saving the environment by reducing travel. It seems to me though that they’d do a lot more environmental benefit by publishing fewer books on paper and making eBooks compelling and affordable. Really, I think the main reason for the device is that Margaret Atwood (and others like her) must really hate to travel.

    And then on the other side of things, somewhere between a half and a third of the store, is a very large technology stuff/gadget section. They had the Sony Reader on display, which makes sense as a book store techno-gadget (and after playing with it for about 10 minutes, my reaction to the grey and $300 price tag was who in the hell would want to buy this thing?), and they also had a display of those frames with the electronic pictures in them and some exercise gadgets, too. They were selling FlipVideo cameras and other digital cameras (I knew way more about the FlipVideo than the sales dude), and there probably were some non-iPod mp3 players in there too. They had some computer kiosks where you could download mp3s to your iPod (or whatever) right there, or you could burn them to a CD, for about a buck apiece, and they had a station where you could print out your digital pictures. And then they also had a station where you could print a customized book (I couldn’t get that thing to work) and a station where you could do family genealogy (??).

    Anyway, it was an interesting idea and I’m sure it will evolve, but right now, it had the look and feel of a bunch of stuff thrown against a wall to see if it would stick. eBooks and custom printing of trade books hasn’t quite taken off yet, and it seems to me that the only people who would use an in-store/f2f service to do things like download mp3s to a disk or print digital pictures are folks who aren’t all that comfortable with technology in the first place. And genealogy? Seriously?

    So we’ll see what happens over the next couple years. We did all spend some money there. I bought Blogging Heroes more or less as a risky but potential BAWS resource since I have not had any luck so far getting high profile bloggers to participate in my survey or case studies. Though after looking it up on amazon.com (which is what I link to above), which features some free chapters and a $5.38 price tag, I feel like I’ve been ripped off, which is not a good feeling to have upon reflecting on a new store.

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    I don’t care how you say it, it’s still a jelly doughnut

    It’s not just “super Tuesday,” you know; it’s also Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, etc., etc., and around here, that means it’s time for one of the few foods I think of as being at least kind of unique and/or a “specialty” of the greater Detroit area, the jelly doughnut confection known as the Paczki. (BTW, the other food I associate with metro Detroit is the coney island hot dog and the restaurants that serve them, the diners known as “Coney Islands.” With foods like these, it’s shocking that Detroit has long been considered one of the fattest cities in America, isn’t it?)

    I read a nice entry on the local food blog Kitchen Chick, one that even includes audio for the proper pronunciation of the Polish word “Paczki.” Her first recommendation for the best in local/ Ypsi-Arbor Paczki was the restaurant Amadeus, but considering that this was a bit out of the way and it sounded like special ordering was involved, I took the next best option and went to the Copernicus European Deli in downtown Ann Arbor. They get their Paczki in from some bakery in Hamtramck, which is a town completely within the boundaries of Detroit and known for its Polish population.

    I went on my Paczki run before going to the gym (no kidding). If nothing else, it was nice to visit the Copernicus Deli, which was connected to a bulk food place and a Brazilian food place on Main street in Ann Arbor, and it was clearly a very local and very Polish-immigrant-run business. At least I think they were speaking Polish. Nice little shops.

    The flavors available were plum (aka prune), strawberry, raspberry, cream, and rose. I asked about the rose one first, and the woman explained to me it was a kind of jelly that had a sort of floral taste. So I ordered a couple plum/prune and a couple rose, and I ate one of each on my way to ride the stationary bike and lift weights. So I figure I didn’t gain any weight today, but I sure as heck didn’t lose any either.

    The details here are all in the filling. The plum/prune one reminded me of these things my Grandma Krause made once in a while called Kolaches, which is another one of these East European pastries, so I guess that makes sense. The rose one was interesting, kind of like a strawberry or some other smooth and red berry jam with a flowery smell and aftertaste. And I mean that in a good way.

    But I have to say, with apologies to Detroit-city purists/loyalists, you can call ’em what you want, but they are still jelly doughnuts, ones with really good filling, but jelly doughnuts nonetheless. They were sugary and doughy and heavy and– dare I say it?– nothing that special.

    Don’t get me wrong– I’ll probably have one next year, and I may very well get mine from the Copernicus Deli again. But it’s not like I’m going to start a calendar count-down to next year’s Paczkis.

    Oh PS: Will likes ’em too.

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    Restaurant Review: The Sidetrack

    What and Where:

    The Sidetrack Bar and Grill | 56 E Cross St | Ypsilanti, MI| | 734- 213-6762

    Ratings (1=terrible, 5=mind-blowingly great)

  • Tastiness: 3.5
  • Service: 3.5
  • Price (1=super cheap, 5=super expensive):2.5
  • Value: 4
  • General vibe: 4

    • Comments

    • I can’t believe that after 15 or so of these reviews, I have yet to do the Sidetrack. I guess I’m just too familiar….
    • The Sidetrack is the quintessential “bar and grill.” What I mean is this: if you were a producer from the classic Hollywood film era and you were to call down to “central casting” and ask for a “bar,” they’d send you the Sidetrack. A beautiful main bar (dark wood, ornate carving, mirror behind it, etc.). Fireplaces and darkness all around. Animal heads and kind of sketchy prints hanging about. And yet, it’s also a place where you can take a family (well, at least before about 10 pm), which very much reminds me of the bars/roadhouses I visited as a kid with my parents and grandparents in northeast Wisconsin
    • There’s a fine selection of beers on tap here, along with all the rest of the usual bar things.
    • If you can only visit this place once, be sure to get the burger deluxe with sweet potato fries. The regular fries are so-so, but the sweet potato version (with their sauce) are excellent. And their burgers– well, I don’t know if it really is one of the 20 burgers you have to have before you die,but it is dang good and what I almost always get when I go.
    • Really, just about all the food here is good. I’ve had good luck with most of the fish dishes, particularly the Lake Perch basket. I think the Turkey Reuben is great, though maybe not that much different than a lot of other places that offer that version if the sandwich.
    • As far as other bar food goes: Personally, I think the onion rings are over-breaded, but I have many friends who enjoy them. Some folks I know swear by the fried pickles they serve here, but frankly, I think that a fried pickle pretty much tastes like a fried pickle. But I’m a big fan of the humus, the other fried veggies (zukes, mushrooms, etc.).
    • On the whole, a must-stop in Ypsilanti. Go check it out if you are in the area and haven’t yet.