The Recess Ends

Thanks to my friends at DCOH for bringing this project to my attention.

The Recess Ends: Extended Trailer from B-Rilla on Vimeo.

Close Your Eyes in Your Ears

The Books ~ Group Autogenics from Ciao Music on Vimeo.

Talking Bikes

In his new book Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne shares the thoughts, adventures and observations he's experienced while cycling through some of the world's major cities. Here he is on Weekend Edition Sunday



Read an excerpt from the book here.

Cachoo

I Met The Walrus

In Verse

In Verse is a collaboration between poets, photographers and radio producers to create a new model of storytelling in journalism.

In Verse: Congregation, Witness from InVerse on Vimeo.

This installment of features Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey, photographer Joshua Cogan and producer Lu Olkowski as they cover the ongoing recovery on the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

This amazing project was created through Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0, an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, Incorporated. Check out two more pieces here.

What's Happening in the Mind's of Little Babies

Since this has been the year of the baby for my family, I offer up a recent Radiolab podcast about how babies might experience the world.

Creative Coincidences

After Merce Cunningman's recent passing, Fresh Air re-aired an enlightening interview with Cunningham's partner, the experimental composer, John Cage. It's not only really interesting to hear Cage's ideas in 1982, but also so cool to hear a much younger, and more wordy Terry Gross navigate the discussion.

Check it.

While My Guitar Gently Bleeps

Skeptical about the "Beatles: Rock Band" video game? Have a look at this past Sunday's feature about the game, and the making of it, and that skepticism will likely turn into sheer excitement.

McCartney said he believed this larger- and neater-than-life portrayal is the appropriate one. “I think it reflects where the Beatles are at,” he said. “We are halfway between reality and mythology.”

"Lazy Journalists Love Pictures of Abandoned Stuff"

Here's a piece from Vice Magazine about the cavalcade of journalists descending upon Detroit, looking for things falling, or fallen apart.

"If you live on a block near one of the city’s tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, you can’t toss a chunk of Fordite without hitting some schmuck with a camera worth more than your house."

"not a huge, tragic collapse, but a transition"

Detroit Wildlife from florent tillon on Vimeo.

On Georgia St.

Drive down a random street in a Detroit neighborhood, and you might see just as many abandoned houses and vacant lots than lived in homes. With that said though, many Detroiters are finding hope and potential in what others might see as despair. And in a neighborhood on the eastside of Detroit, Mark Covington is trying to figure out a way to bring his neighbors together, despite all the factors working against him.

I produced this story as part of WDET's Facing the Mortgage Crisis series.




---
To learn more about Mark Covington and the Georgia Street Community Collective's efforts, check out their website or their blog.

http://www.georgiastreetcc.com/

or

http://georgiastreetgarden.blogspot.com/

Single Barrel Detroit

Single Barrel Detroit is basically a Detroit-version of la blogotheque, in which musicians perform their songs live for a handheld camera, and in-front of something beautiful. For example, you can see the great Rodriguez performing solo in-front of the Diego Rivera mural at the DIA, or Daniel Zott walking around Woodbridge, or Charlene Kaye in the empty Lee Plaza Hotel. Metro Times Arts and Culture editor (and fellow former Groves alum), wrote about the project last month.

"Fame, Death, Fear, and Money"

An insightful and fascinating look at Andy Kaufman's genius and influence airs this week on Studio 360. Erik Molinsky put the piece together. My favorite part unfolds 1-minute and 52-seconds in.

Bike Among the Ruins

Despite the press, survival here isn’t so hard. Businesses like the Wheelhouse and the Hub have already shown how well Detroit can work as a new business hothouse. With the legendarily affordable real estate and without needing to pay for car payments, gas or insurance, bicyclists could rebuild Detroit into a model of a two-wheeled economy. They could pass laws promoting bikes over cars and designate entire avenues motor-free zones, which, given the state of many of them now, wouldn’t be so much of a stretch.

Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but then again maybe it’s just destiny. Look at a map and you’ll see that Detroit is designed in the shape of a wheel, with streets emanating like spokes from the downtown hub. It looks like a premonition, a city uniquely designed to alter transportation forever.

The Entire Op-Ed by Detroit's Toby Barlow

G.M., Detroit and the Fall of the Black Middle Class

"They were among some six and a half million African-Americans who left the South from 1910 to 1970 in what became known as the Great Migration. They were drawn to the North by the promise of equal treatment but also by the hope of finding work: the mechanization of agriculture, in particular the advent of the cotton picker, decimated black employment in the South. As Nicholas Lemann wrote in his 1991 book, “The Promised Land,” what in fact awaited most blacks was a more subtle form of discrimination. But in Detroit at least, there were the auto plants. Ford started hiring African-Americans in 1914, offering them the same $5-a-day wage it paid its white employees, even as it limited them to sweeping the floors and pouring hot steel in sweltering foundries. To discourage African-American employees from improving their lot by unionizing, the company offered free coal to ministers of black churches who preached the Ford gospel."

Read the entire article here.

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

The first person I thought of after I heard about MJ yesterday was the guy who you'll often find dancing to classic Jackson tunes off Liberty St. in Ann Arbor, in that graffiti filled alley across from Borders. This man, who will always smile or wave when you stop to watch him strut, devotes the majority of daylight hours to dancing to Jackson in public. I wonder what he'll do now. Will he hang up his moonwalking shoes, or continue to Dance The Night (day) Away?



As of yesterday evening, after the news, he wasn't on stage.

Stochasticity

"You have to be careful not to find meaning...when it's just coincidence."

Abandoned Places

Detroit Lives, a new design team/website is up and running. I met the founder, Phil, last month when he was spending his day off digging a trench in an eastside community garden. The site offers some really cool t-shirts, and a heartfelt mission.

In their news section, there's a post about places around the world that are far more "abandoned" than the D. Check out this picture below from Bodie State Park in California. Pretty stunning.

Distillation

Ze Frank on Iran

The North End

Detroit’s North End might be best known as the birthplace of Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Diana Ross. The Gold Coast running along Oakland Avenue used to be a bastion of successful black owned businesses. But, as is the case in many places around Detroit, things aren’t like they used to be. The area has been blighted, disinvested from, and in many ways, ignored for decades. And now, the foreclosure crisis has compounded a lot of these issues. But maybe because of the hard times we’ve fallen upon, Detroiters are now be banding together more than ever. Really.

North End Vacant Lot Program by WDET

Full Power

I'll be concentrating my blogging for the next two months here, at WDET's Facing The Mortgage Crisis series page. My first of what will eventually be eightish stories aired this afternoon on DT.

Mitch and Gina For Web by WDET

More context here.

A Primer

A Primer, by Bob Hicok

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we’re not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.
It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn’t ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. “What did we do?”
is the state motto. There’s a day in May
when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

SBTB!

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Whatever Works

You know how all of Woody Allen's movies start with the credits, always in the same font? Well that font is actually called "Windsor Light Condensed." That trivia was revealed in a great feature from New York Magazine that unravels the evolution of jewish humor, then asks whether or not it still really exists. It's also about Woody Allen's new film, Whatever Works, in which Larry David stars.



(go here to see some vintage Woody photos from Life Magazine.)

"Pioneers"

I realize that I'm two years late in acknowleding a really wonderful and cool project, brought to us by Jon Brumit. You might recognize Jon from ABC news. He's the guy, who, with his wife, recently bought the 100 dollar house in Hamtramck. Now he and the Mrs. are getting ready to move here permantly, from Chicago. He's also one of the people directing NPR, Neighborhood Public Radio!

So, about the project. For the Shrinking Cities exhbit in Detroit in 2007, he made a "radio-based driving tour of Detroit featuring 12 mini-programs continually broadcast at 107.9 FM from short-range transmitters in 12 different locations." Learn more here.

La Petit Zinc

I ate lunch yesterday, and the day before, at Le Petit Zinc in Corktown. If you haven't yet been (I hadn't), you've gotta go. Amazing coffee. For my first lunch I had ratatouille served on a fresh baguette, and yesterday I tried their house special, the crepe, mine with chocolate and banana. Here's the menu, and you can read the owner's interesting story here.

The place seems to be a really refreshing symbol for what Detroit is right now. It was teeming with hipsters, elders, professionals on their lunch break, and a Eastern European guy looking for the police department. There's a really charming outdoor eating area, and behind that are two raised soil beds, which I'm assuming (hoping?) will be used to grow fresh herbs for their menu.

More pictures and context here.

I find it really encouraging that in the last year or so, two CREPE restaurants have opened in the city!

There is No Alternative to Building Alternatives

The Creativity Stimulus

"Deeply rooted in the communities that made Obama's victory possible, these centers understand their work as transformational. Their communities are the most vulnerable to assaults on creativity, but they are also incubators of the most innovative ideas and movements of our time. This "creative communities" approach has created a vigorous and vital alternative to neoliberal and neoconservative versions of change." Jeff Chang from The Nation talking about how places like The Boggs Center are integral in "collevtive leap(s) of imagination."

Speaking of The Nation Magazine and Detroit.

MELTDOWN AND RECOVERY IN DETROIT
The Economic Collapse and a People’s Plan for Recovery
May 23, 2009, 5pm to 7pm
Detroit MI
Cobo Hall 1 Washington Blvd.
Moderated by John Nichols of The Nation Magazine

America's economy is in meltdown. The banking system has crashed, millions are losing their homes to foreclosure, and unemployment is skyrocketing. As fears abound that a second Great Depression may be upon us, the crisis is clear—but what is the solution?

Join Congressman John Conyers, lifelong civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs, bestselling author and Nation contributor Barbara Ehrenreich, Detroit City Councilmember Joann Watson, noted economist and Nation contributor Robert Pollin, long-time Detroit organizer and community leader Elena Herrada, and documentarian and activist Michael Moore* (invited) in a wide-ranging town hall conversation about what caused the economic collapse and how we can find a path to recovery for Detroit and for the country. .

The event marks the publication of Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover (Nation Books) by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the editors of The Nation.

The event will also preview national and local organizing efforts leading up to the 2010 United States Social Forum (USSF), to be held in Detroit. The USSF will provide space to build relationships, learn from each other's experiences, share analysis of the problems our communities face, and bring renewed insight and inspiration. It will help develop leadership and develop consciousness, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world.

Audience questions will be taken, and a book-signing will follow the conversation.

Good Smells

Yesterday JB and I drove around parts of the city, including Belle Isle. Naively, I didn't even know about the Conservancy or how beautiful it's kept. The only other people there were an energetic elementary school class, and maybe one or two others.

With The Needle That Sings in Her Heart

A new play about Anne Frank's last months at Bergen-Belsen, inspired by In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, is a meditation on the transformative power of music, art, and creation, and it's being performed by Massachusetts high school students!

Steal Away

Aha Moment: The Underground Railroad

In the 19th century, the First Congregational Church of Detroit was a safe-house along the Underground Railroad. Today the church houses the "Underground Railroad Living Museum." For Therese Peterson, playing an Underground Railroad hero inspired her own act of bravery. Produced by Zak Rosen.

Blank Canvas

Last night, I hung out with my old friend Justin from temple. He's a painter, hoping to forge a career in the arts, both teaching and painting. I was lucky enough to get a peak at the evolution of his work over the past few years (maybe more?) on this cool site.

He talked about, and I agreed, how daunting it can be to create art in the face of unequivocal open-endedness. The possibilities are literally limitless! And that can be overwhelming, no? But also liberating of course.

Our conversation reminded me of a quote (see below) posted by a sound artist on Transom's fascinating and poetic forum about the creative possibilities of radio, and the unfortunate demand in public radio for "LITERALness."

The most challenging aspect of cultivating “new” space (or anything new, for that matter) is the absence of time for reflection.
- Galen Joseph Hunter

My favorite radio makers are ones that embrace open spaces, both real and imagined. Their work inspires a sense of wonder and humility and reverence for the void (or whatever you want to call it). And I think this is so because they not only set aside time for reflection themselves, but also make art about that very notion/impulse.

Melodramatic Popular Song

I've been pretty disappointed with the quality of Ben Folds' output since his Sunny 16 EP six years ago. I'm left wondering if I've grown out of my love for him, or if his songs are actually less inspired than they used to be. Yesterday he released his latest album, which is actually a compilation of University A Capella groups singing some of my favorite Folds songs (Not the Same, Boxing, Selfless, Cold, and Composed, Army...) The Wall Street Journal wrote about it this weekend.

I was feeling cynical about the effort after reading the WSJ article, and even after hearing "Not The Same" performed by The Spartones from Greensboro, North Carolina on the BF myspace page.

But then I watched this video of The Spizzwinks (?) singing "Landed," and most of my ill-will towards Folds and the new A Capella album evaporated.

Stella

Finally, a great piece of writing about Stella.

Then watch this if you haven't already.



Then check this out.


Michael and Michael Spoof the Billy Bob Thornton Interview from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Now I'm catching up on the Michael and Michael have issues blog.

I can't fall asleep, btw.

Wanting to Believe in That Person

I was so taken by this video that I went to My Brightest Diamond's website to check if she might be coming to the area anytime soon. Turns out she'll be performing, solo, at a place in Detroit called The Yes Farm on 4/25! The show's proceeds (donations from those in attendance) will go towards installing permanent electricity at the venue.


MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND in series: Live From Other Music from Dig For Fire on Vimeo.

The Yes Farm, according to their blog, is "a group committed to living and creating in Detroit. We believe the arts play an important role in the community and we seek to bring art into the lives of the people and places around us. Our goal is to establish a permanent location for artists to live and work. In this location we would like to host workshops and events, and have space for visiting artists to create in. We also hold a deep commitment to ecology and would like to grow food, and create artistic open spaces in our neighborhood."

I'm totally going. You should too!

Middle Cyclone

“The prison girls are not impressed, the ones who have to clean this mess. They’ve traded more for cigarettes than I have managed to express.”



It's now only every so often that I actually buy an album, usually via Itunes. Last week I got Neko Case's latest, Middle Cyclone. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote this about it recently. A great read.

Atoms, Motion & and the Void

Now that I'm pretty much settled back into the D, I'm gonna steer this blog back towards its original function of highlighting "sounds and chronicles from the world we walk in."

Not only is Atoms, Motion & the Void the best podcast title I've ever heard, but it's also one of the best, certainly the most original and moving, audio series I've ever come across. But I don't think its fair to only compare this stuff to other podcasts/audio. It's so moving and evocative that it transcends the medium, I think.

I was introduced to the Sleeves saga when Re:Sound devoted an entire show to Sherwin Sleeves and the character's creator, writer/producer/stay-at-home dad, Sean Hurley. I think that might be the best introduction to the project.

I find Atoms, Motion & The Void to be timeless in a way few other things are.

You can and should subscribe to the AMV podcast on Itunes. It will lull you to sleep and remind you why stories are the best thing we have.

Back in the U.S.S.A.

I'm back! And I've divided all of our pix into different albums according to geography.

Arambol, India

Hampi, Karnataka

Wayanad, Kerala

Alleppey, Kerala

Cochi, Kerala

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

Madurai, Tamil Nadu

Kathmandu, Nepal

Pokhara, Nepal

Tansen, Nepal

Annapurna Base Camp Trek

Upwards Over the Mountain

It had been 10-days since our last shower. But now Shira and I feel so lucky to be back in our home away from home, Hotel The Wood Pidgeon in Pokhara, Nepal. We just got back from our trek, and we're a little sun-burnt, quite blistery on the toes, and truly exhausted after having spent the last week and a half walking over and around hills, amongst Himalayan mountains, and inside the forests of Central Nepal.

Before we really understood the reality of trekking, we thought we'd try the 3-week Annapurna Circuit trek, but luckily our nobel guide, Prem, talked us out of it (mainly because in his experience, those that walk the circuit usually have issues with the high altitude ((5400 meters)), and persuaded us to tackle the much more accessible, and visually stunning Annapurna Base Camp trek).

We had heard from travelers in Pokhara before we left that the ABC trek was amazing, and really not that physically demanding, so we were confident going into it... The basic premise of the trek is to walk/hike/trek to the foot of the Annapurana mountain range (4100 meters). To get there it took 4-7 hours of steady walking a day for 6-days. But to just call what we did walking would be a vast understatement. The majority of the movement was drastic upward ascents and downward descents, mostly on stone steps, and forest floors. By the end of our first day, we feared that we were in over our heads, and that we weren't strong enough to make it. On our second day, we had to walk up 4,000 steps, then walk a bunch more to reach our destination. Eventually we learned to take it not really one-step at a time, but more like one hour at a time.

Ok, one more hour and we'll eat a snickers, two more hours and we'll have lunch, four more and we''ll be done for the day..!

By the end of the first day, we were able to see the mountain peaks, and from there, we kept getting closer. Some mornings we'd wake up to a stunningly clear view of the mountains that were so big and pristine and overwhelming, they became almost unbelievable to comprehend. "How are they so huge, I've never seen this before, Is it close enough to touch, How do people actually climb these monsters!?"

The path we walked for the entire time was well worn and established. People have been doing this trek for decades. It's hard to go more than an hour or two without passing a guest house/restaurant that serves everything from dal bat to cheese pizza. Interestingly enough, all guest houses have almost exactly the same menu, and are required to charge a pre-set amount for each item, depending on where they're located. The higher the places are, the more the food/drink/toilet paper/filtered water, etc. will be. The only way for restaurants/guest houses to get items to their doors is for porters or donkeys to bring them up themselves. Apparently, there didn't use to be any type of regulation for how much weight a porter could carry up or down, but now there are. However we wouldn't have had any idea because these guys were carrying MASSIVE loads on their backs. Everything from gigantic cans of kerosene, to cases of beer, to a dozen live chickens!

By the beginning of the third day, my right knee started to give me some real trouble (it might have been a pull), and ten-minutes into the hike I was hobbling along desperately. I wanted to give up and turn back, but Shira wouldn't let me give up! She was able to motivate me through the 5-hour hike with words of praise and confidence. The thing about trekking is, you can't really give up. Once you've walked for a few days, the only way out is to walk. There are no roads for a car to rescue you, so once you're in it, there's really no turning back.

After the grueling limp-fest, we decided to take the next day (my b-day) off. We slept in (till 6:45) and took in the much needed r and r. I was ready to go by the next day, and that's when we finally started to believe that we'd actually make it to the base camp. To pump each other up we'd ominously whisper to one another, "in a few days we're gonna summit." or "The ascent is upon us..." Then we'd see a 65-year old Korean woman move diligently past us, as if the trek was no big thing for her! And then finally we found ourselves, on the sixth day of the trek, moving up and toward the Annapurna Base Camp in sub-freezing temperatures. The final leg of our ascent to was so dramatic and like nothing i've ever felt. For some reason, Shira, Prem and I we're the only ones climbing from the Machhapuchre Base Camp to the Annapurna Base Camp at that particular time in the afternoon. It was just us, heaps of untouched snow, and the mountains surrounding us from all directions. We were too tired and too spread apart to talk, and the solitude was staggering. All we could hear was the chilling wind and our thudding hearts. And then, finally after two-hours of walking uphill in the snow, we had made it!

We were and are so proud that we did this, and both agreed that we haven't ever challenged our bodies like we have for the last 10-days. We agree that it was an incredible trip, unforgettable really. And we agree that we have no desire to ever do it again!

"Don't Forget Me"

This past week, we've been doing a whole lot of nothing, and really enjoying ourselves in the process. Shira and I have both buried ourselves in some great reading (Into Thin Air, Mr. Nice, A Fine Balance, Brooklyn Follies), and have eaten some really excellent pizza (four out of our last seven dinners), while sadly missing Indian food for every meal.

This past weekend we ventured to what we hoped would be Lumbini and then Tansen. Lumbini is the actual place that Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha) was born. And Tansen is a charming hill station, situated b/w our base here in Pokhara, and Lumbini. So from Pokhara, we boarded an early morning bus and drove for about 7-hours until we reached Butwal, a town still about 55 km north of Lumbini. When we asked why we were stopped there, we learned that there was a bus strike in progress, and that we wouldn't be able to bus further south to Lumbini because of it. We wondered why no one thought to tell us this earlier, or why none of the Nepalis really seemed surprised by this. We were told that the only way to get to Lumbini from where we were was a 2000 rupee rickshaw, so instead of that, we got right back on a different bus and headed back north, for about 2-hours to Tansen.

When we finally arrived, we couldn't yet see why our Lonely Planet guide gave Tansen such a warm write-up, but as we settled in, the charm of the place started to seep in. Tansen is nothing like Pokhara in that there's only one tourist restaurant there and less than a dozen hostels. The streets are so steep and narrow that cars are seldom seen. The architecture is simple but beautiful and medieval. While there for two days, we only saw two other white people! We took a nice 1-hour hike up to a ridge, past a Hindu temple just north of town, and there we saw for the first time, the snow-capped peaked of the Himalayas (we would have been able to see them by this time in Pokhara, but unfortunately, it hasn't rained here for over 6-months, so the air is dusty and thick).

That night for dinner, we decided to eat at the tiny and dank one-table establishment across from our hostel instead of going to the one tourist restaurant for the second night in a row. Literally every time we've forgone the touristy restaurant for the questionable looking, astoundingly cheap local place, we haven't been disappointed. The Tansanians ? embraced us with so much humor and hospitality that soon after sitting down to our plate of cold, yellow, potato curry and spicy hot pan-fried noodles, the men sitting at our table (the only one!) offered us home brewed Nepali wine (think gin + water), and began good-naturedly making fun of our accents.

And then a young mother, and her two daughters joined in on the fun, and soon after invited Shira to their one-room home a block away to take pictures. They eventually invited her to sleepover there but she graciously declined. Before we left our friends at the hangout to go to sleep, a young Nepali man who I had been talking to at our table gently spanked my butt and quietly said, "Don't forget me...And when you go back home don't tell everyone that people in Nepal are all sad and poor." As we left that night, after having had an experience we won't possibly forget, my perception of Nepalis as a poor and sad people couldn't have been further from what we've experienced so far.

Chicken Soup for the Foreigner's Bowl

Sorry for the long delay since our last update, but here in Nepal, there are only 8-hours of power per day. It's easy to get frustrated with that reality, but then I have to remind myself that I don't live here, and it's not me that's really inconvenienced, but the Nepalis who rely on power for much more than writing a blogpost...

We flew into Kathmandu from Delhi on Friday, and stayed in the capital city until this morning when we took a 7-hour bus ride (only 200 km!) to Nepal's 2nd biggest city, Pokhara. We were received at the bus station by radio friend, Laura's dear friend, Prem. He works here as a trekking/tour guide and looks a little like a young Nepali Elvis. In a bit, Shira and I are going to eat dinner, dhaal bat (a rice, lentil, and vegetable dish that most Nepalis litterally eat for every meal)with Prem and his wife and their baby boy at his apt. And then in a week or two, Prem is gonna take Shira and I on a 17-day trek in the Annapurna region, just outside Pokhara. We'll likely walk the Jomsom and Annapurna Base Camp trails.

In the meantime, we'll enjoy our three-dollar a night hotel room right on the lake and take some day trips/hikes/excursions in the area.

But first, some noteworthy India stuff.

Much of our last days in India were spent in Kodaikanal, as I mentioned in the last post. Towards the end of our stay we met a really fun and sweet American couple at a Tibetan restaurant I couldn't get enough of. The four of us decided to venture out on a long walk to a supposedly gorgeous lookout in an area called Pillars Rock. When we got there though it was so overcast that we couldn't really see anything except the local red-faced monkeys fighting over any scrap of human food/human food container they could get there hands on. After having posed with random Indian families wanting to take a picture with Americans, Shira and I and the couple we were with were talking outside an area where tea and t-shirts were sold. At one point I looked to my left to see an older Indian man standing in our conversation circle, nodding his head in acknowledgement, as if he had been there for the whole time. Naturally, he asked us where we were from, and when he learned we were American, he told us about his son who used to work for GM in Detroit! I was so excited to make the connection, then even more excited when his son came sauntering up with the rest of his family to greet us. The older man was so gracious and told us that it was "his duty to welcome us." Then he bought Shira and I two cups of chai tea and put his arm around me like he was my grandpa.

_______

India was really amazing and perplexing and idiosyncratic that it's hard to sum up in this post. Spending what seems like a long time (5-weeks) in a foreign place isn't the way to get to know it fully. Instead, my observations and thoughts are fragmented and confused. I knew next to nothing about India before landing there, but now, after having spent some time there, it feels like I know even less in a way. The country is developing so fast and is dealing with so many big issues; its relationship with Pakistan, its crowded cities, its still present caste system, its gender roles, its widening gap between rich and poor, its balancing act between tradition and modernity... To me, these are just concepts that were in small ways illustrated during my time there, but for Indians, they're obviously much more. I think the main thing I learned in India is how important Michigan and Detroit and of course all of you are to me. Shira and I have met so many travelers so far that seem to disavow where they came from. But conversely, we both feel, even more so now, a real pride and commitment to our own roots.