Sunday, September 5th - Postcards of Michigan (now with improved photos!)

A selection of postcards that I found today at the Jackson Antique mall in LaGrange, IL.  Please pardon the terrible iPhone photos - only two kinda sorta came out once I emailed them to myself and tried to upload them here - the other three keep coming out upside down.  I'd work on this more but it's 11:41 - I only have 19 minutes left for today's post!  If I'm feeling less crabby about it, maybe tomorrow I'll use a real camera and make it prettier. (Update: the husband helped me fix it! Yay!)

Postmark: April 1966, Grand Rapids, MI
Card showing the interior of Finger's Restaurant, Grand Rapids, MI.
Mailed to an address in Aurora, IL
Printed text:
"Michigan's Early American Show Place"
4981 Plainefield N.E. Grand Rapids, Mich 49505
Tel 363-3836
Shown is the unique Country Store, which is only one of the many pleasant surprises in store for you along with a dining experience you will long remember.  Your Hosts - The Fingers
 Handwritten message:
Dear Mom, Dad, & Grandma;
I had the school send Sue some applications and I sent Mark some information.  I wish Doug would forget what Beth told him.  Won't be long now til youth conference.  The weather is very nice.  It reminds me of last year at youth conference.  Mickey got some crazy slides of dorm life at our dorm once.  He says they're going to be in the year book & that he's going to show them at Y.C.  I hope he's kidding.  I'll die.
Dave

Postmark: Aug 4 1927, 5pm, Oshkosh, Wis.
Text on front of card: "No. 149 View In John Ball Park, Grand Rapids, Mich."
Mailed to an address in Waupaca, Wisconsin
Handwritten message:
Dear (name unclear),
If it isn't stormy we will come Sun. morning.  Hope you are all well by now.  Papa seems a little stronger this week.
With Love,
Mother
Thur. P.M.

Identical cards showing a photo of the Upper Tahquamenon Falls, both postmarked:  Aug 15 1961, 9am, Paradise, MI.  One addressed to Mrs. Anna Mae Angus of Morris, IL; the other to Mr. and Mrs. Don Angus of Joliet, IL.  Both have handwritten messages written in green ink.
Printed text:
Upper Tahquamenon Falls
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula
White waters created by the powerful fall of water as it drops close to 40 feet from the rim of the Upper Falls of the Tahquamenon River, gives the camera enthusiast a beautiful subject for his pictures.

Handwritten message #1:
Hi Gram - having a real swell time.  So far we have really seen a lot of pretty country.  We saw these falls today.  Going on to Green Bay Wis. tomorrow.  - See you soon
Love,
Jim (your grandson)

Handwritten message #2:
This is beautiful country.  These falls are really pretty.  We enjoyed the island very much.  The kids rode bikes & Ben & I walked.  Probably get to Green Bay tomorrow.
The Angus Clan

Postmark: Aug 15 1958, Naubinway, Mich.
Mackinac Straits Bridge
Mailed to an address in Defiance, OH
Printed text: This engineering masterpiece, one of man's truly great achievements, forms a 4-lane ribbon of highway over the turbulent straits of Macinac(sic) between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, Michigan.  Its contribution to the economy of Upper Michigan and the North Country cannot help but be significant.  The overall length makes it the longest bridge of its type in the world.  Opened in November of 1957, it carries thousands and thousands of vehicles between the two great peninsulas of Michigan.
Handwritten message:
We hope you folks are making plans to come up to the club.  This bridge is something to see - weather very good.
Love - Elsie T. Glasser

Postmark: Aug 29, 1961 Mackinaw City, MI
Mackinac Straits Bridge
Mailed to an address in Aurora, IL
Printed text: connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan was opened for traffic on Nov. 1st, 1957.  It is the world's longest and most expensive suspension bridge, the length being almost 5 miles.  The towers are 752 ft. high, of which 552 ft. are above water.  Clearance at the center is 150 ft.  It carries 4 lanes of traffic which are regulated by signals operated from a control system at headquarters in St. Ignace.
Handwritten message:
Hi
Arrived up here today at 10:00 A.M.  Left yesterday and took a couple tours in two different cities.  Had a real cute cabin last night at Big Rapids.  Sure is pretty here.  Will see you soon.
Love,
Caryl Art & All

September 4th - The Tattoo

To the casual observer it might have looked like we were staging an old timey pinup photo.  I held the ends of my skirt up to to my waist while the tattooist squatted on his haunches, chin in hand, and stared intently at my legs to make sure the stencil on my right thigh lined up with the already existing tattoo on my left.  I wore bike shorts under my skirt (or "modesty pants" as I referred to them that night) and pushed the leg holes up to the top of my thighs, but still -- it looked kinda dirty.  There's a clear view from the street, a straight shot to the back of the shop where the tattooing is done, and any passersby could easily have looked into the picture window and seen us in our little moment, like some kind of erotic advent calendar scene.  I was a little embarrassed; fortunately, the tattooist wasn't looking at my face.

I know him -- the tattooist; he's a friend and colleague of my husband, but somehow this didn't dissipate my sense of humiliation.  If anything, it amplified it.  My husband's friend and colleague was at this very moment staring at my naked thighs.   I'd talked about getting this tattoo for months, maybe longer, and finally made the appointment a few weeks ago via an exchange of email messages on facebook.  M has a thing about not tattooing me -- he says if he had to look at his own work on me he'd only ever find the flaws in it.  As a result, I have very few tattoos; one, to be exact. 

The stencil properly positioned, I climbed onto the massage table that had been set up for this purpose, and lay supine, my back and head propped up at an angle as if I were a grande dame stretched out on a fainting couch.  "Are you nervous?" he asked, "yeah," I said.

The first and only other time I got tattooed, I held onto the chair-back so ferociously that my arms and back ached afterward.  I don't know if it was knowledge of what lay in store, but I was able to relax this time, folding my hands on my stomach or tucking them under my head, elbows splayed out.  With my free leg I alternated between pulling my foot in closer, making a triangle, and leaving it sticking straight out.  It took about an hour and a half, same as last time, and while I started to get a little punchy towards the end, (at about an hour and fifteen minutes I told my husband, in a whisper: "make him stop", and said things like "that's not a very nice thing to do to someone" to the tattooist) it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as I expected. 

At four a.m. I woke up with the bedsheets stuck to my leg; I'd peeled off the bandage in a half-sleep because the tape adhering it to me was bothersome.  I gently freed myself from the bed and got up to look for the Aquaphor in the medicine cabinet, a healing ointment that we always keep around for this purpose.  I couldn't find it, and began to feel woozy and oddly panicked.  After a moment I located it, and started dabbing the stuff onto my new tattoo.  Every time my fingers made contact with it, a little wave of nausea passed over me.  Maybe it was the four mixed drinks I drank with Angelica after getting tattooed (my limit is 3 of anything, I'm a cheap date), or maybe it was my weak stomach for blood or anything resembling it, but I began to see swirls of colored dots in my field of vision.  I sat on top of the toilet for a moment, and when it passed, got up to make my way back to bed.  I made it as far as the threshold of the bathroom when the swirls came back, little demons filling the space in front of my eyes, and I knew I couldn't make it as far as the bedroom.  I kneeled to the floor right where I was, and yelled "dammitdammitdammitdammit!"

This caused my husband to come running.  Our conversation went something like this:
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know, I feel weird."
"What kind of weird?"
"I'm dizzy."
I began hyperventilating, and my husband ushered me closer to the toilet.

And then, just like that, it passed.  My breathing returned to normal, M covered my thigh in saran wrap, and we went back to bed.

I spent most of today lazing around; having a new tattoo is a great excuse for that.  And now I'll have "matching" legs -- it's bothered me ever since I got the first one that there was nothing to balance it out on the other side.  Even my niece, one year old at the time, and exactly the right height to inspect my thighs, had looked at the tattooed leg, then toddled her way over to the other one to see what was there.  "I know," I said to her, "there should be something on the other one too."

September 3rd - more lists

Songs I never wanted to hear again that are played on a regular basis at work:

1. Urban Dance Squad, "A Deeper Shade of Soul", 1989, from the album Mental Floss for the Planet

2. Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney "Say, say, say", 1982, from the album The Pipes of Peace

3. Dead or Alive "My Heart Goes Bang", 1985, from the album Youthquake

4. Phil Collins, "That's All", possibly from 1985's release No Jacket Required, but I really can't be bothered to do the research

5. Murray Head, "One Night in Bangkok", 1984, from the album Chess

6. Toto, "Africa", 1982, from the album Toto IV

7. Van Halen, "Dreams", 1986, from the album 5150

8. John Parr, "Man in Motion (St. Elmo's Fire)", 1985, which, shockingly, does not appear on any John Parr albums

9. Kenny Loggins, "Footloose", 1984, appears on the album of the same name

I really need to start bringing headphones to work.

September 2nd - Predecessors

Among the tidbits my predecessor left in my workspace is a handwritten list on a sheet torn from a yellow legal pad.  I found it tucked into the inside pocket of a three-ring binder while I was looking for something else.  On it, a selection of soups available at the hospital cafeteria have been sorted under the headings: "like" and "never again".

Like:

tomato florentine

twice baked potato

harvest grain w/portabello mushroom

broccoli

asparagus

vegetable lumberjack

Never again:

cheesy cauliflower (bacony)

wisconsin cheese (bacony)

yukon gold potato (bacony)

fire roasted veg. (too hot-spicy or too salty)

cream of mushroom

She must not have been a bacon person.

September challenge - a post a day

My friend Angelica is doing a challenge this month - write every day, even if it's just a sentence.  I started working on my 90 day review at work this week, (crazy that it's already been that long, more on that later).  At the very bottom of the self-review sheet is a section titled "Employee Comments and Feedback".  This will be a true test of my supervisor's sense of humor, among other things.  Here's today's entry for the September challenge:

Getting paper from the storage room is the bane of my existence.  The colored paper and card stock has all been lumped together and shoved in a corner next to a bowl of rat poison, and every time I need more paper I have to ask someone for the storage room key and go rifle through reams of paper.  More often than not, what I need isn’t there and I have to settle for whatever I can find.  I look forward to the day I can order what I need instead of searching through moldering papers that are bursting out of their protective wrappers and curling in the humidity.  It seems like half the paper there is a bright orange shade that nobody will ever want to use.  It’s been sitting in there for over a year in the damp and mildew, (not to mention rats), and at some point soon I think we should cut our losses and start ordering paper instead of poking around a pile that Scott bought on eBay in an online bidding frenzy.  We could donate the remaining stash to the Montessori school or some other organization.  I foresee a day in the not too distant future where I’m lugging misshapen reams of paper from the storage room through the snow and wind; it’s not something I look forward to doing.

It happened so quickly...

Diouf

I'm not sure which I heard first - the sound of footfalls landing hard and fast behind us, or screaming.  We had spent a relaxed evening strolling through the neighborhood, and then went for a walk along the oceanfront.  We stopped at the statue of Diouf, Senegal's star soccer player, their Maradonna.  We took pictures of each other posing next to it.  We moved like an amoeba along the ocean's edge, stopping to look out onto the horizon, climb rocks, and take pictures.  Idy suggested returning to the house (why do I always remember these kinds of details after the fact?) but there was a drumming circle up ahead that we wanted to explore.  We ventured off the path, away from the street lights (the only streetlights I remember seeing in Dakar) and began hiking over a hill towards the music.  There were six of us, Idy and five women.  And then, and then... I think it was the screaming I heard first, and then the footfalls, although that's out of sequence.  Memory can be deceiving.  We had split into two groups - me, Idy, S and A in front, and a few yards behind us, E and K.  The sounds of running, the sounds of someone - or some ones, being knocked to the ground.  A heard something, and turned around to see this: her sister on the ground, an unknown person dragging her by the feet.  It was then that she started screaming, it was then that my brain was pierced with reality.

Diouf and friends

There were two of them in the dark with us.  "Run," A screamed, and then "RUUUUN!"  My pupils dilated, and I could see every tree root and pebble on the ground in front of me.  I ran as fast and as hard as I could to where the edge of the path met the highway.  There was nowhere else to run unless I went into the busy road.  I turned around and counted.... there were 1,2,3,4,5 of us - all the women were accounted for.  The instant that A began screaming, Idy bent to the ground and picked up a rock in each hand.  He threw one at the attackers, then ran towards them with the other.  Set against the dark blue sky, it was like watching wood cutouts in stop motion animation.  I could hardly believe that I was here in this moment, watching this, right here, right now, my dance teacher fighting off two assailants.  The attackers retreated, running back in the direction they'd come from.  Idy joined us at the lip of the highway.

"Cowards," he spat, his brow furrowed, "they were just kids."  "You're bleeding," I said.  "Your hand, and your face."  Idy touched his face where he'd sustained a small cut, then looked at his hand, where another small cut was visible.  "What about you?" Idy asked E and K, who'd been jumped.  K checked herself - a small tear in her dress, nothing more; E looked at her arm and for the first time noticed the trail of blood that started at her shoulder and ran all the way to her fingertips.  She lifted her ripped shirtsleeve and exposed the wound, an asterisk of open flesh.  I did exactly what you're not supposed to do when someone's been injured -- my eyes popped open, my jaw dropped and I slapped my hand to my wide-open mouth.  I might have said something horrible like "OH MY GOD!"  E, cool under pressure, said "let's not make it out to be worse than it is," closed her hand around the wound to slow the bleeding.  "Let's get back home," Idy said, and flagged two cabs down.

I got in a cab with S and E, S instructing her roommate to "breathe..."  The two of them breathed together, E closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, then exhaling slowly.  E's bleeding arm was next to me.  "I have a washcloth," I said, dug into my backpack and grabbed for it with shaking fingers.  I handed it to E and she pressed it against the wound.  The blue terrycloth turned red in an ever-widening circle.  E continued to breathe deeply, and I closed my eyes.  I felt lightheaded, as if it were me who was losing blood in the backseat of a Senegalese cab.

Fina wasn't home, Mustafah was watching Ma-Ibou and Mamie.  "Take them out of here," E said as the kids began drawing near with curiosity.  I nodded, led them upstairs with A and distracted them with crayons and paper.  Idy followed momentarily.  "We're going to the clinic," he said.  He kneeled and looked into his children's eyes, implored them to be good for me and the Polish sisters, then left the house with E, S, and Mustafah.

Mamie looked at me, opened her mouth and showed me what was inside -- the remains of a chewed up crayon, then closed her jaw tight.  "Spit it out!" I said, my hand in front of her mouth.  She would not be moved.  "Crache-le!" I said in French, hoping this would register.  The child would not respond.  "This is going to be a long night," I said, inserting my index finger between her lips until she opened her mouth and allowed me to remove the bits of crayon.

Our babysitting stint was mercifully brief, in what seemed like less than an hour everyone returned; E with a stitched up arm and a prescription for antibiotics, Idy with a bandage on his hand.  We spent the next hours rehashing the scene: the attackers had waited for an opportunity, we decided.  They watched our pack split into two groups, then made their move.  We'd started to feel at home, and become too relaxed -- in Chicago, we would never stroll along the lakefront path at night.  We'd become comfortable, too comfortable -- we drew attention; we were goofing off and had let our guard down.  "Well," S said to E, "if we weren't friends yet, we're friends now!"

Idy felt terrible, nothing like this had ever happened in over ten years of bringing people to Senegal for this tour.  When Fina walked through the door full of sprightly energy, he touched her arm, took her aside, explained in Wolof.  She was livid.  "It does something to me that this happened to you," she said to us, her eyes welling with tears, "and A -- you see your sister on the ground, you don't scream, you kick and punch!"  She said, taking a swipe at the air as she spoke.  "If I'd been there..." she trailed off, shaking her head.  Then she told us stories of how she'd defended herself in the past; how she was on a crowded bus once and felt someone get too close, reached into her purse for a razor blade, and cut the man before turning to see that it was someone she knew.

The second group of women were due to arrive -- two Swiss sisters, B and F, and their friend C, who were joining us for the second week of the tour, then heading north for some exploring on their own.  Unlucky as their timing was, we welcomed them and updated them on the events of the evening.  They moved into the room previously occupied by Idy and his family.  Restless and unsure of what to do next, we went to a neighborhood club and danced the night away to a live Cuban band.  We danced hard, sweating away our insecurities, metabolizing the adrenaline that had built up in our bloodstreams.  We counted our blessings: nothing had been stolen, E's purse was ripped, but nothing was missing from it; K's camera made a funny noise when she turned it on and off, but it still worked; K had bruises, but nothing more; we had another week to ease the shock of the evening's unhappy incident with newer, better ones.

We went to bed at 3:30a.m., a little shaken, a little wiser, a little more tightly knit together.

We've been here for a week, but it feels like much longer - Senegal contd.

taxi cab

We've been here for a week, but it feels like much longer.  After breakfast we walk to the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor for our dance class, or if we're feeling lazy we split into two cabs.  The fare is negotiated before we open the door to the cab, the price is bargained down by increments that sound impressive, but amount to less than a dollar.  The cabs are all dilapidated in one way or another -- the passenger side door doesn't open, or it can only be opened from the outside.  None of them have seat belts.  We pass a car that has no windows at all, two men riding in the front seats of a rusted shell that looks as if it might stop working at any moment.

Abdou in his home

There are no stop signs or traffic lights, but somehow the traffic circulates.  When Abdou, who was my French teacher in Chicago, picks me up from the house one afternoon, he points to a car in the parking lot across the street and says: "That was my first car in Dakar."  It takes me a minute to realize that he means that is the actual physical car he used to own, not just the same brand and model.  I grill him on all the things that don't make sense to me.  His is the only car I've seen that has seat belts.  "Why don't cars have seat belts here?" I ask. "This is Africa," he replies, as if this explains everything.  I continue in my line of questioning, which no doubt sounds infantile to him: "why do people throw garbage in the street?"  "This is Africa," he repeats, "if you tell someone not to throw garbage in the street they'll say 'why, is this your uncle's house?'"  At this he laughs, and I laugh along with him, although I don't get the joke.  He asks me how the trip is going.  "It's going great," I say, "but it's very different.  I thought I would be more prepared, having visited Morocco a few years ago, but..."  "This is Black Africa," he interjects, "this is different."  I'm dumbstruck by his pronouncement, and remain quiet for a moment.  Abdou has made a career as a journalist, and has traveled the world meeting dignitaries and interviewing heads of state.  He moved to the US with the idea that he could break into American journalism, "I thought I could get a job at the New York Times," he once told me.  When it turned out not to work out quite that easily, he turned to teaching.  He returned to Dakar four years ago, and runs his own PR firm.  He wears an ear bud constantly, and interrupts our conversation to take calls from clients. 

Car radios that work are tuned to loud music or talk shows.  There seems to be a penchant towards playing music loudly, no matter how cheap or tinny the sound system is.  One night at dinner the TV (which was only in the house for a few days) is tuned to a station playing music videos.  Fina joins us, and brings her cell phone downstairs.  Seemingly oblivious to the music that is already playing on the TV she begins playing a song on her phone and turns the sound up.  Music blares from vendor stalls on the side of the road, and from TVs in convenience stores.  One night we walk past a group of people watching TV out in the open, seated on folding chairs.

Our bodies are becoming used to the environment - some are having more luck than others.  My roommates both get upset stomachs; first A is up all night running to the bathroom, the next night it's her sister who's ill, then it reverts back to A again.  E has a bad reaction to her malaria pills because she takes one in the morning with breakfast just before dance class, and S gets sick from eating too much bread (she's allergic to wheat).  I keep expecting it to be my turn, but my body has reacted well so far.  I'm thankful for my gut of steel, or my luck of the draw, or whatever it is that's keeping everything in check.  I've learned to use very little water when I bathe, and very little toilet paper (we had to bring our own).  Our new-found habits are certainly more environmentally friendly, if not uncouth in western terms.  I joke that my mother would be so proud of me -- eating on the floor, sticking my hand right into communal plates of food.  Sleeping on the floor has gotten easier for me, but sitting cross-legged on the floor at dinner has gotten harder.  I shift and squirm at mealtimes, moving from one side to the other.  "What I wouldn't give for a table and chairs," I find myself saying to my roommates one night, just before drifting off to sleep.

The dancing is sublime, as I knew it would be.  It's not until after our first class that I feel like myself in this new place, my sweat pushing out any inhibitions and doubts I might have had about making this trip.  We practice our moves after dinner in the living room, Idy snapping his fingers to the beat and giving us notes on how to perfect our moves.  We're due to have a recital at the end of our stay, in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor.  We've watched other dance troupes practice there, moving with the grace and agility that comes from a lifetime of dancing.  From time to time we're invited to participate, the dancers approach the perimeter of the room where we are generally seated, take us by the hand, and pull us into their dance.  As with anything, if I don't think about what I look like while I'm dancing, I do just fine.

We venture out into the city as a group, touring the fish market, and an area known as the Village Artisanal where vendors have set up their wares in booths.  If a vendor catches my eye they speak to me, and sometimes take me by the hand, walk me into their shop, show me their wares and tell me they'll give me a good price.  Idy and Mustafah act as intermediaries for us, bartering and negotiating prices.  I end up buying some fabric; two miniature buses made to look like the Touba buses -- Renault vans that have been colorfully painted and are used as public transportation; carved masks depicting the seven days of the week; and three hand painted signs -- two listing prices for haircuts, one listing prices for the treatment of various medical ailments.  The highest price for a men's hair cut is listed next to the word "toubab" (white person).  I get home before I realize that one of the panels on the medical ailments sign shows a man farting, painted lines emanating from his buttocks into a cloud that is surrounded by flies.  Another shows a man vomiting, "look," I say to my roommates, "it's you!"

fabric

women's hairstyles

men's hairstyles

medical ailments

toy Touba bus

Touba, public transportation

vomiting

stomach ailments