From a bit down the road...

Yesterday, completely by accident, I wandered onto a listing of Toledo, OH area bloggers. Being the publicity whore that I am, I immediately applied to join, since, while I live in Ann Arbor, I do work in Toledo and occasionally even blog from there. Once I saw Arbor Update there, I figured I was a shoe-in, and FTR was listed by the end of the night.

I wasn't surprised to see AU there, since Ann Arbor seems to be a favorite getaway for Toledoans. Around campus, it's not uncommon to hear faculty and students alike swooning about their recent or upcoming visits to Tree Town, invariably winning sighs of envy from their audience as they hold forth on the wonders of Zingerman's, Shaman Drum, Whole Foods, or the Ark.
US 23 in southern Michigan is one of the blandest stretches of highway I've seen, but for Toledoans, it's the yellow brick road itself. I'm told occasionally how lucky I am to live here, to which a respond with a shrug and some whistful murmurs about housing prices.

FTR readers know I'm a bit circumspect about the amenities of my accidental hometown. There are a lot of good things going on here which you will not find in towns of a similar size, even in some that host universities of a size similar to U-M : visiting authors and other speakers, splendid free art exhibits, clubs for almost any interest, concerts. Some good dining and drinking retreats, though few of truly outstanding quality. But there is also a lot of pretention and smugness about the place, frequently reflected in the city's cultural or commercial venues. A writer of my acquaintence said after a visit here that Ann Arbor was the most homogenous place he'd ever seen. That hadn't occurred to me before, but it's the truth--it's very much a reservation for affluent liberals, with few rough edges to cut into their self-satisfaction.

Still, when Kristine and I go out to amuse ourselves, we usually head down Plymouth road into this cultural-elite theme park, just like my colleagues and students at Toledo. You take the good with the bad wherever you are, and I can think of plenty of places where the good is harder to pick out. I probably ought to do a reverse road-trip, going down to Toledo some weekend to explore a bit, as I've been promising myself to do since I started working there three years ago. While I've said that Toledoans have rated Ann Arbor too highly, my behavior usually affirms that rating.


This weekend, I'm headed to my own little shangri-la, which other folks occasionally confuse with a remote, limited backwoods hamlet: Grayling. Kristine and I are taking part in the the annual river cleanup sponsored by Gates' Lodge. She and I will be working on the Au Sable mainstream between Burton's Landing and Louie's Landing. Hopefully, I'll find a moment to wet a line at some point while we're there.