My day was devoid of tricorn caps, muskets, and marathoners. I heard no gunfire. I went to work without incident and returned home with zero fanfare. Today was Patriots Day and nobody in Michigan noticed.
Patriots Day! How can a holiday so central to my childhood pass by with no more than a comment about the Icelandic ash cloud? Oh, but I love that cloud. I love how a volcano erupted and the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier sublimated and jökulhlauped in a furious rage that faded into a passive aggressive aggregation of ash hanging over Europe. Thank goodness the ash cloud is commemorating the shot heard round the world, because Michigan is silent.
Patriots day is always marked by a reenactment of the first battle of the Revolutionary war, held on the triangular splay of grass in my hometown of Lexington, MA. I used to think everyone celebrated Patriots day and that every town had a square shaped like a triangle, but only when I left the state did I start yearning for the holiday and searching for alternate geometries.
Will we ever reenact the ash cloud? More things in life should be reenacted. Iceland is the only place in the world where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is on land. This is no small feat. The Ridge, yes, I’m capitalizing it, is a gaping, open-mouth zipper that spews oceanic crust out from the innards of our planet. I’d reenact that.
There are no beaches in Belize and Michigan smells like hot dog.
Two weeks ago I was eating real fruit. I was also eating plantain chips, tortillas, beans, and apparently anything else I could get my hands on. I’ve just returned from an excellent trip to Belize and in every photo, I’m eating. To be fair, my sister realized that she was capturing most of my eating moments on camera as we were on our trip, and then to be unfair, she made it her personal goal to accumulate as many as possible. I now have a library of myself with my mouth open.
We didn’t realize that Belize lacked the tropical vacation staple, the beach, until we arrived. Shoreline, yes, beach, no. After double-checking in the Lonely Planet book for pages that may have described this but were accidentally stuck together like the ones that caused Rachel to layer ground beef between lady fingers and whipped cream on the classic 1999 episode of Friends, we iterated on our intentions and embraced our adventure.
Nice beak! Lots of room for food.
Face down in warm water, our snorkel-enhanced faces watched a sea turtle mow a lawn of seagrass in slow motion. The sea turtle made me feel better about myself. Both of us were eating. Belize is known for its birds, and it turns out that they love eating too. The state of Michigan and Belizian wildlife both eat a lot, and there I was, suspended between two worlds.
My mouth was open again as my plane neared Grand Rapids and hugged the Lake Michigan shoreline. There they were: miles and miles of beaches.
On my first day back to work I rode my bike home and took a big whiff of Michigan: hot dog. I won’t ever compare to real smell savants, but I know pink pleasure as it wafts up my nostrils. I was ‘home.’ But the Michigander Fairy wasn’t done with me. I walked downtown to meet a friend for a drink and on the way I encountered this:
This is Holland, Michigan.
I’ve been in a daze lately. I started to think that my life here in Michigan is normal, but no – papaya, pineapple, and cantaloupe all taste different in real life. Real life fruit is drippy, soft, and unexpectedly amazing to those of us that usually have to get it at grocery stores in Michigan. It took a trip to Central America and another to Starbucks to wake me up. I bought a fruit cup from Starbucks on a connection through Dallas on my flight home. This fruit cup had ingredients – ingredients! And, there was one I didn’t recognize: Ver 2. What? I am not even going to give it the time of day to look it up. I know that Ver 2 makes fruit taste like chemical. Fruit, version 2. Fruit 2.0.
I’m a fan of prototyping, but there are certain things that do not call for iteration.
There is nothing quite like squeezing your body into a bathing suit when you’ve put back twelve packages of Peeps this season.
“You know how your father is, he won’t like that suit,” a mother, sitting on the filthy floor of the Target dressing room, said to her 12 year old daughter every two minutes when she came out to display a new piece of swimwear. Cheers to ambiance.
Yes, I chose to do the bathing suit shopping for my upcoming vacation at Target. Their branding team has convinced me that it’s cool enough for me to be seen in the store, and with the state of my body I didn’t want to invest in anything of higher cost. The Midwest winter has left me without self-control. It’s easier to eat Peeps than not to eat them, and now that I’m old enough to drive, I can get them whenever I want. When I was in first grade I stole a marshmallow-filled chocolate egg from Walgreens. My parents never let me have junk food snacks at lunch. Carrots, celery, even the occasional pretzel rod to really get things dehydrated – all those snacks came in my lunch bag, but each day at snack time I’d uncrinkle that brown paper and in slow motion peer over the cusp into the abyss that might, just that one day, contain a piece of candy.
One March in 1986, I could take it no longer. We were in Walgreens for a routine trip to stick our arms in the air bladder blood pressure machine. With each ‘pfft’ of the machine that was confused at the two small, unmeasurable arms, I became more and more convinced that a marshmallow filled egg would satisfy me for life.
Placing bathing suits directly in front of the entrance of the store is a horrible idea. Being seen shopping for bathing suits is the same as being seen coming out of the bathroom. Everyone does it but it’s a sharing moment for nobody. I’m not at my best with two armfuls of small plastic hangers and spandex.
The egg theft happened. I enjoyed that marshmallow egg. I didn’t understand it as a theft until years later. I confessed to my mom in college. Both the egg eating and eventual confessing were fully satisfying.
Three laps in and out of the dressing room later I accepted a polka dot suit as the only option. I’ve been seeing spots everywhere lately. Spots are super-hip. Bored with the usual? Add spots. Feeling chubby? Add spots. Last weekend I enjoyed this excellent spotted wall in Grand Rapids.
It's easier to paint them than wear them.
I also saw this giant spot, know to many as the Sun, for the first time in months. Exaggeration is for people that live in sunny places. This was a feat.
It does exist.
Finally, the local grocery store, which also happens to be a behemoth that two Wal-Marts could fit inside, presented this gem in the cranberry juice section.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to get a photo of my spotted swimsuit.
Free the giraffes into their native cranberry bog habitats.
Dutch costumes should only be resold on wire hangers.
“Let’s push it out of the road and into the church,” said the Michigander. Yes! Let’s. As a friend pointed out, I was “lucky there was one nearby.” Friday was my Jeep’s first day with its new Michigan license plate. I made it approximately half of a mile before it broke down in the middle of Holland.
If you’re unfamiliar, this license plate was a long time coming. Months of struggling with the California DMV ended with a blog post, contest, and subsequent connection to two fantastic California DMV employees, Jan and Kitty, that Arnold should promote if he hasn’t already. Arnie can you hear me? I consider it a major life achievement (check!) that a DMV employee called me at home.
"Plate it your way" -State of Michigan
As winner of the contest, Micah Lande was given the opportunity to design my new Michigan plate.
A friendly neighborhood Republican helped push my car out of the street and half-into a parking lot that is shared between a church and the Holland Tulip Time Festival Store. A patch of ice and tolling church bell prevented us from making it all the way.
Have you seen those mini shorts with writing on the butt that many teenagers think they can pull off but can’t? My car was essentially wearing butt shorts as it stuck out of the church parking lot.
Don't dare bring one that's not laundered.
Before I even finished dialing AAA I was pre-annoyed with the tow truck company. What do you do if you work in a job where you are set up for failure? It is impossible to be excited when calling for a tow, but what a design challenge! Can the experience of a tow ever exceed expectations?
When you are stranded, even in your own town, you see things you would have otherwise missed. It’s neat to be forced to look at what’s around. The feeling is similar to doing user studies in design. How else would you know that the Dutch Costume Resale next week is the 59th straight resale?
It's official.
Remember the days before mobile, internet-ready phones when we read Sweet n’ Low packets as we waited for coffee, and shampoo bottle ingredients as we sat in the toilet at a friend’s house? Your mind seeks something, anything, to take in to pass the time.
When the truck finally came my Jeep was hoisted up and its butt shorts were rolled through town. The process was fast – too fast. Shouldn’t there be more pomp and circumstance? I waited 45 minutes for a process that only takes six? What a great word – pomp! More things in life should involve pomp.
There’s a strange exhilaration that comes while watching your car being driven by another car. Is everyone looking at me? Hey everyone, look at me! It’s a combination of awkward exposure plus pride.
I sat in the faux-Italian-themed Holland, Michigan restaurant waiting for what I knew would be sub-par pizza to be carried the six feet from the kitchen to the checkout counter. I allowed my eyes to blur in an attempt to trick myself into thinking I was at least in the Las Vegas Venetian, and a small dust ball rolled across the floor and completed my desert meditation. Only when the small dust ball focused itself into a mouse, did I really hit Holland jackpot.
A shriek emerged from the waiter helping me. He had one of those bodies that took control of him from the knees and lurched him like a marionette. A second man emerged from behind the open kitchen area and tried to stomp on the mouse with his boots of rebellion. I immediately decided that I would still eat the sub-par mouse turd pizza, if only for the sake of talking about it later.
Last week I went to Grand Rapids, aka G-Rap, for the second ice hockey experience in my life. My first game was in third grade. I went to a Boston Bruins game with a classmate and his dad and spent the entire game milking the Fruit Roll-up that his had given us for a snack. Illegal in my house, I wrapped that snack jackpot around my left index finger and when I finally sucked it clean an hour later my finger was pink and wrinkled for a week.
At Grand Rapids Griffins hockey games, pizza falls from the sky. Like any good Midwestern sporting venue the Van Andel Arena (if you ain’t Dutch you ain’t much) shoots t-shirts out of air canons, hurls hot dogs with sling shots, and drops pizzas with parachutes from the stadium ceiling. My long torso did nothing to help me grab meat and cheese out of thin air, but with a seat right behind the goal net, I had something better. I had Newbury.
Who doesn’t love a good, strong mustache? I finally had something to root for – let’s go Newbury! Bring in Newbury! Newbury for Senate! I eagerly awaited the shift from second to third period so Newbury would be fully featured once again. Skip to 1:04 for a frontal view and stroke of said Baleen.
I thought of Newbury as I sat and watched the mouse turd pizza place lose stars in real time on my Yelp review. A third employee came out, looked at the skittering bundle as it easily outran the boots of rebellion, then shrugged with conviction as he looked at me and stated, “That’ll happen.”
In July 2009 I moved from the San Francisco bay area to Holland, Michigan.
Every day reminds me that I am living abroad in my own country. This blog contrasts my experiences in the Midwest with the rest of my 30 years spent on the East and West coasts.
I love design, emergence, awkwardness, building skateboards, and all types of mapping.
This site reflects my views only and does not represent the beliefs or positions of my employer.
