I bring this up only because last weekend on my way back from Louisville inner-city Detroit and I were on a definite collision course. I had no way to traverse the 15 or so miles from the airport back to the Windsor tunnel (yes, the Windsor tunnel...) and my options quickly became a taxi for $40 and about 20 minutes or the city bus for $1.50 (or more, if I got mugged) and who knows how long. I thought about taking the bus but the idea of getting lost and walking alone down 8 mile road with my large backpack of stuff and nothing but bad breath between me and a mugging quickly turned me back to the taxi stand. I mean parting with $40 kind of hurt, but like I said, had I taken the bus and been mugged (which, in my opinion, was a relative certainty...) it would have cost me much more than that. Truth be told I probably could have taken the bus and been fine. But I was tired and didn't want to bother. My sanity was worth $40.
When I went to a Tigers game a couple weeks ago we met some people from western michigan (not Detroit) on the tunnel bus going across the border. Turns out a lot of people, Americans included, stay in Windsor when they visit Detroit. During the Super Bowl last year the Windsor hotels were exponentially more full than the Detroit ones. Enough said.
Work has been going fine. The hardest part of working alone is deciding what to do next all the time. Keeping the big picture in mind when working on individual reactions can be tough. Tuesday I arrived at work to find the power out to the entire building. Apparently someone blew a transformer somewhere and most of the university was without power. We stood around for about an hour until the consensus was that the summer slaves (the undergrads...us) could have the day off. We sat by the river, went to the mall, pretty much did nothing all day. It was great.
There's a new German postdoctoral researcher in our group. He is living in the same building as Andreas and Thorsten so he has been hanging out with us sometimes. The last two nights the four of us played poker with sea shells from the dollar store. Matthias is quite proud of his bargain hunter skills. I suppose 200 shells for a dollar is something to be proud of. Andreas' poker skills embody the statement "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with bullshit". He will raise when he has the cards, he will raise when he has nothing. His favourite move is to go all in on every hand regardless of what cards he has. Thorsten clearly is the most skilled of the four of us and our lack of tactics drives him crazy. I think he isn't used to playing with such crap poker players. He plays as if we know what we're doing. Apparently randomness is a tactic in itself.
Photos below include me at my glovebox and (left to right) Thorsten, me, Andreas at the Tigers game a couple weeks ago.
Photos courtesy Mr. Thorsten Holtrichter-Rossmann
7 comments:
I win again!! I'm the first comment biotch..HAHAHA!!!
So I'm pretty sure that I would have taken the taxi as well. Except..I'm a female and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be anywhere in the United States in the dark alone.
I'm glad you updated..I was getting worried :)
The taxi was probably your best choice.
Hope things continue to go well.
Wow that photo of you and your glove box is exellent. I love the look on your face. Greg I have made judgment call for you. You need to quit this whole chemistry gig and start writing a book or something. Call it, "The Adventures of Greggle." I m only half kidding when I say that. But seriously you are a good writer and I will be the first one to buy your book
Jonny Mac
Dude, I totally left a comment here... and it was the FIRST comment, but it's gone! Stupid computers... stealing my moments of glory! I'll get you next time gadget!
Now I don't even know what I commenter on... but it was good... whatever it was...
Thanks for the photos and the update! I agree you are an interesting writer. Keep updating!
You CAN teach old dogs new tricks----It just takes longer.
I agree it is a great way to communicate and I'm enjoying it.
All is well here in dora land and the sunshine valley. Things are speeding up, and straightening out so there WILL be an International ball tournament this year. It'slife was in jeopardy for a while. Uncle M. is here and I am driving back with him on Sat. to Kerrobert and Saskatoon. Con. to enjoy your summer.
I must disagree with the post above mine Louisville is without a doubt a Southern city! Now honestly, I do see why you’d think it has a Midwestern under-culture, but it is a major city. The same argument, I assure you, can be made of New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston. Major cities have major immigration, and people from all over the country--and the world--make their homes there. Sad as it is, it has shown its effects on the cities, but I assure you, at Louisville’s core, is the South. It has even been said that during the darkest days of the war, Louisville had more “Johnny Rebs” and “Southern Belles” than the entire state of Mississippi. As an historian, I might be inclined to believe that. Having mentioned Southern Belles, you’d be well advised to note Sallie Ward was a Louisvillian. Her portrait is often named “The Southern Belle.” That is because she was THE Southern Belle in the ante-bellum days. More Scarlett O’Hara than Scarlett herself! Literally, she was considered THE belle of the South! None of that is even mentioning that, as someone else noted, Louisville is a river city, giving it all the more reason to intermingle cultures. Nonetheless, to the trained ear, one can hear the traces of Southern accents in downtown Louisville, and thick as molasses accents among some of the older residence. Step outside the city limits--you can no longer judge the South by its cities. Anyone who lives in a Southern city will note the changes over the years. They’ve become melting pots, good or bad! Oh, and what is Louisville’s nickname? You don’t know? Let me tell you, “Gateway to the South!” That’s a take on its old days as a river port, and its being a Southern city, noted for two great Southern pastimes, horseracing and bourbon!
From a cultural geography perspective the usual northmost line of Southern cultural influences in the lower Midwest is US 40, so it might be more accurate to consider southern Indiana and Illinois more southern than it would to consider Kentucky Midwestern. The Southern Focus study referenced earlier seems to confim the Southern character of Kentucky. About the only part of the state that could be considered Midwestern are the three northern counties across the river from Cincinnati.
Louisville is probably a bit more unusual in that it has aspects that are not traditionally associated with the South. In terms of historical aspects the city was settled by Virginians, and then recieved a large immigration from Germany and Ireland. Unlike other Midwestern cities it did not experience input from the second immigration from southern and eastern Europe to any signifigant degree, and lacks any historical "ethnic neighborhoods" that characterize true Midwestern cities like Dayton or Fort Wayne or South Bend. Louisville has experienced in-migration from the rural areas of central and western Kentucky (the areas directly south and west of the city), which has reinforced its southern character in modern times, which reinforced the southern character of the local working-class.
Louisville was and is industrial, but that is not necessarily a marker of being a Midwestern anomaly in a southern region, as numerous southern cities have an industrial base, such as the textile cities of the Carolina Piedmont. Louisvilles industial development was part of the New South, and marketed to the South, and its leading newspaper editor of the postbellum era, Henry Watterson, was considered an expontent of the New South ideology. During the postbellum era the L&N Railroad, headquarted in Lousiville, was a major carrier into the deep South, terminating at Pensacola and New Orleans, and painted its locomotives "confederate gray".
Another aspect of Louisville that gives it a historical and modern Southern character is the experience of slavery. Louisville did have a large slave population (one of the largest), and slaves were used in industry (44 worked for one company), building trades, steamboat trade, and as household servants. During the Jim Crow era Louisville did segrate blacks and whites into seperate school systems, and event tried to enact ordnances restricting blacks to certain neighborghoods (found unconstitutional by the USSC). One did not see this type of legal Jim Crow elsewhere in the Midwest. Some of the residential patterns of black settlement also paralled other urban south centers. In Midwestern cities blacks settled in older inner city neighborhoods, but in Louisville there was a tendancy for blacks to settle on the urban periphery, originally in Smoketown, but later in neighborhoods like Little Africa (later Park Duvalle) and in the Wet Woods (the Newburgh Road area). This pattern is similar to that identified by Harold Rabinowitz in his "Race Relations in the Urban South", where freed slaves formed settlements on the edges of Southern cities (which is quite visible in Lexington, too).
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