The Wheels on the Bus...

The process of consolidating two small school districts is not an easy thing.  My dearest hope is that it will be like sausage when we are all done -- no one will want to see the process but an amazing result will come out of it.

The recent moves to find a superintendent for the district went poorly:  Instead of an open search, the board opted to privilege internal candidates.  This pitted the two supers of the old districts against each other and against a well-qualified and extremely well-supported HR director from one of the districts.  The school board put all three through a public interviewing process only to retreat to the position that they felt they needed to the two current supers because, by their contracts, we have to pay them anyway. Perhaps to mitigate the unrest keeping them would cause (there is great displeasure with one super in particular), the board intends to contract with the intermediate school district for a superintendent who then will hire the two current supers as associate supers...

I could say many things about this, but I'm going to restrict myself to three conculsions:

1) The unified school board screwed up in the process of making this decision but I don't think it was because they are evil.  In some ways they were set up to fail by the WISD (Washtenaw Intermediate School District) board who chose the school board for the new unified district.  The WISD put three members of the old school boards on this new board.  These people all had good working relationships with their superintendents and probably felt some loyalty toward them.  They certainly relied heavily on these two supers and firing someone on whom you have counted must suck.  FWIW, both superintendents did work hard for this consolidation.  Never once did they moan in public about it being the end of their jobs, though talk all along has been that there would be only one super for the new district...

2) The board should make a sincere and public apology to the three internal candidates.  They need to say that they went about this all wrong.  That they made a mistake in opening a search at all.  They should beg the HR candidate to stay and then accept it with grace (and guilt) when she does not.  The board should support our two current supers (as much as their individual record as administrators merits) in their search for the next job, because we all need to be clear that they are serving out their contracts and nothing more.  The bold, fresh leadership we were promised with this merger will have to come from WISD's Scott Menzel for now (I actually think he'll have some in him) but must come in a full and thorough OPEN search in 2014 or 2015.  And for what it is worth, I favor 2015, when we have an elected school board to run the search and make the choice.

3) There is lesson to be learned here and I hope the board and administration(s) show that they learned it with their actions.  I want to see a clear, detailed, and transparent plan for what decisions will be made when (and how) over the next six months, at least.  The plan the board voted on last night should have been proposed with the proposal to vote on consolidation back in August or in the moments following the November vote.  What has to be decided now?  What can wait?  How can we position ourselves to do the big things.  In other words, what do we need to do to take care of business for now but not tie us down so that we can't make the substantial changes we want once we have them planned out.  I suspect this will be particularly important to plan as we hire teachers for the coming year.  If we think the superintendent decision was painful, I can hardly imagine how hard the teacher decisions will be.

More on that soon...

The Lot

A few weeks ago I joined up with a few friends to create a little experiment in urban farming. We threw some money into a hat (ok, really it was a paypal account) and bid on an empty lot in a tax foreclosure auction. Today we headed out to break ground and start planning. Most of us, like myself, won't be doing the farming ourselves, but a bit of digging and layering of ingredients for the first bed was certainly in order. So, here we are, checking things out on a gorgeous fall morning.

Summer Beer Fest 2011

I went with my dad again and we hung mostly with Kristen and Natalie (and Willa!). Along the way I ran into a couple of colleagues and a number of other friends and acquaintances.

My notes, as always, are not terribly useful and run from “um, no” and “gack” to “eh” to “bottle that!”

I was actually disappointed in the offerings of some of the big heavies in Michigan brewing. Founders didn’t bring much new/interesting, neither did Bell’s, Dragonmead, or Arcadia. Dark Horse made an interesting play for “top dog” by having booths in every tent. Their Smells Like Weed IPA was delicious – but then it always has been, but I didn’t see anything else in their vast offerings that I needed to try. I hope they don't get to too big for their britches…

Short’s brought many beers and I was delighted to see among them Dan’s Pink Skirt Ale (bottle it!). I’d had it once at Ashley’s a few years ago and couldn’t find it anywhere after that. It was hoppy and lovely (tho too much bitter finish for Dad).

In the “decent beer from places new to me” category, I’d put the Black IPA from Kalamazoo’s Old Peninsula’s Brewpub and Black Magic RyPA from Sparta’s Michigan Beer Cellar. We also had (surprisingly) pleasant selections from Benton Harbor’s The Livery but I failed to note what they were!

I am now realizing that I had several black IPAs. This is a trend that I can get into. In addition to what I’ve already mentioned, Original Gravity from Milan also had a nice one.

And finally, what you really want to know… Worst Beer of the Evening! I declare a tie between the gluten free (I know, I know) Bees Knees Honey Ale from Old Hat Brewery in Lawton and Smokin’ Hatter Smoked IPA from New Holland. On the latter, I leave you with Natalie’s reaction: “Ick, why would you get that?” Ah, the adventure…

Pride... the weekend.

We finally had weekend worthy weather on a weekend, which was awesome with so much going on. E was sick and hung around the homestead. O, however, ably served as my assistant in the Ypsi Pride cleanup day. Once again, I was the site leader for Recreation Park. We had the EMU basketball team this year (last year it was football) and I was ready, having borrowed extra tools (college students never have tools). O got everyone signed in and took charge of the donuts. Once his friend L arrived, they also joined in on moving wood chips under the play equipment. We also got the gutters of the parking lot cleaned out, the pavilion swept, and the park de-trashed.

The basketball players were awfully nice to O -- calling him by name, listening intently to his stories, letting him help with any job he chose, and making sure the rest of the team did the same. It does make me wonder why. O is certainly a dynamic kid, but they responded to him immediately, even before he'd had a chance to charm them (or produce the donuts). O was dressed in his sporty duds -- last year's baseball team cap and athletic pants -- was it a boy sport connection? Or was he more accessible than me? The players were perfectly polite, but they didn't chat with me and I seriously doubt any of them remembered my name (but they all knew the name of my kid...). Anyway, O enjoyed it and I enjoyed watching him enjoy the attention. Young adults, beyond those we pay to teach them, are often not so attentive to little kids.

For next year, I'm thinking we need to enlist more kids. After the basketball team left, we got a third load of woodchips. I had O, L, and one other volunteer left at that point but we'd all been moving woodchips for a couple of hours. I gathered an armload of shovels and rakes and headed toward the pile, inviting the parents of kids playing on the equipment to lend a hand. None of them budged. Really? Who can watch volunteers work on something you use and not help for ten minutes??? Well, their kids showed them up. They got interested in what we were doing and I offered them the tools and they ALL helped (to the best of their abilities) while we chatted about how cool it was to help take care of "our" park.

Overall, this year seemed to go more smoothly than last and I think we did a good job of putting things in order for the summer. Bike Ypsi launches most rides from here, so we have a special affinity for Rec Park. Between Jeff, O, and myself, I think BY has done right by this park!

Hop Wobble

A high-point of summer in Ypsi is Beer Fest. Michigan has an abundance of amazing craft brewers and tasting a good number of their offerings in the park by the river on a summer evening is just lovely.

So here is the run down from this year...

The drinkers: me, Biscodo, brother, sister-in-law, Stacey, Brooke, Shawn, Julie, KK, the injector, and a few others who I ran into and clinked plastic cups with along the way.

The overall beer scene: seemed pretty balanced this year. The fruit beer and sour beer trends seemed to have been reined in this year (yay! that silliness was going too far). People brought summer wheats and ales, but folks also brought porters and stouts (good). Since we went on Friday night, only a few beers had run out, so most of what we wanted to try was there for us.

The beer: I'm grouping into three categories. Beers in the top category did exactly what they were supposed to do -- solid beers in all ways, no mistakes in nose, taste, texture. The middling sort includes both novelty beers (interesting but not something I would ever buy in a bottle or even drink a full glass of) and more traditional beers that did well, but didn't stand out from the crowd. The last category is for bad beers -- experiments that went wrong (or were never right to begin with) or beers that could not do half of what their name called for. My notes from the night are in quotation marks after the brewery.

Top Beers:

Crooked Tree IPA, Dark Horse ("hey, big boy..." "excellent")
Smells Like Weed IPA, Dark Horse
Hoprocket Imperial IPA, Arcadia
Hopmouth Double IPA, Arcadia ("lovely")
Golden Rule Organic IPA, Shorts ("crisp, good, dry English hopped)
Honey Ginger IPA, Original Gravity ("fun, sweet near the front")


The Middling Sort

Boffo Brown, Dark Horse ("fine")
Wheat and Rye ESB, Liberty St ("weird combo")
Kolsch, Round Barn
Full Garde, Copper Canyon
RyePA Double IPA, Copper Canyon ("good, sweet end")
Simcoe Silly, Kuhnhenn ("nice")
Confusion Double IPA, Kuhnhenn
Screw the Hop Crisis IPA, Rochester Mills ("sweet")
Hopopotomus, HopCat
Sage Against the Machine Pale Ale, Hopcat ("smell only")
Wood Butcher's Ale, Lily's Seafood ("nice")
Barnacle Bob's Boatyard Ale, Lily's Seafood ("fine")
Little Italy Honey Basil, Right Brain ("Pale, novelty, good smell")


The Bad

Michigan Malted Red Ale, Kuhnhenn ("blech")
Organic Wit, Rochester Mills ("not very witty")
Solar Eclipse Imperial Stout ("ridiculous")
Oops-a-Hefe Imperial Hefeweizen, Big Rock Chop ("strange")
World Wheat, Black Lotus ("cloudy, watery, forgettable")
Ancho Chile Dutch Double Chocolate Porter, Right Brain
Rye Hatter, New Holland, ("liquor smell and taste, bitter and then nothing')


A few other awards: best "what this beer is" conversation came with the brewer at Shorts in reference to the Soft Parade and the Golden Rule IPA. (He even talked me into trying a fruit beer -- but it was a fruit RYE beer...). Best 'novelty' beer (and there were plenty to choose from in this category) was OG's honey ginger IPA. Best unknown brewery in Michigan is Lily's, which offers pretty straight forward beer, well-crafted, no hype. The most over-hyped brewery title (a title Jolly Pumpkin has claimed ALL other years) goes to Right Brain -- all novelty without having gotten down the basics of basic beers.

And what you've all been waiting for... the worst beer of the evening? I'm going with Kuhnhenn's Malted Red -- part of that may be that the description was sooooo lovely and the beer just couldn't come close to the promises made.

So... that was a whole lot of beer I tasted, eh? Yes, yes it was. But, once I settled in, I enjoyed it enormously. Okay, I maybe could have done with one or two fewer beers, but a lazy Saturday turned out to be just fine.

Pride

Ypsi Pride. Recreation Park. Three kids, four Bike Ypsi folks, three neighborhood people, three EMU students, a gaggle of EMU football players and their handlers. Two dozen donuts. Two misplaced shovels.

We cleared the gutters of glass, condoms, and assorted trash; weeded the playground areas and re-mulched them; trimmed around trees; and generally tidied up.

Thomas is broom-wrangler supreme.

The football players brought flowers, so FOUR of them went to plant them under the sign. I finally pulled two of them (I was 'Site Captain' doncha know) and a few others to help mulch around the fence at the pool. A few other scraped and painted benches at the Senior Center.

Jeff spent quality time with Trey's weedwhacker. So did Andy. The quarterback wanted it too, but the team handlers said no (he didn't want to explain to "Coach" how the star had cut off a toe). O had a go at it too, fortunately a 6 year old can't manage the choke and pull cord very well and he never got it started.

At the end of the morning there was picnic in the park. It was not the lavish spread of previous years -- no doubt a reflection of the poor state of the economy -- and my kids ate the last pieces of pizza.

O says, "Thanks for organizing it. We had a good time. Are you willing to do it next year?" I am.

Heritage Festival Festivities

Caught a bit of the Heritage Festival on Friday night. We started with dinner (and beers, of course) at Sidetrack and then had a mellow amble through the happenings.

Saturday morning we paraded with 'Local Motion' -- a combo of Bike Ypsi, Ypsi Food Coop, Growing Hope and a local farmer. Pete, the farmer, brought along a trailer with goats and chickens in it and other folks had some rabbits in cages on wagons. Best part? We were behind the Willow Run High School band (and not some singing-to-canned-music-Christians on a float -- whew). The route was short, which was probably best as riding at 2mph is, um, hard. It is extra hard when you have an impatient 6 year old on a trail-a-bike attached you.







After an afternoon spent recovering from the parade at home, the kids and I set out for the festival again. We got ice cream at Luwak and watched the robots for a while. The high schoolers even let O drive one for a bit and both had fun being chased around the parking lot by a robot with a pizza box body (and it was made with an Aubrey's box, even!). A kind friend brought me a beer to help sustain me through the hour we volunteered to work the bike valet booth -- something the kids did not want to do. We talked about pitching in and keeping commitments and all survived. That left only eating sandwiches and grooving to Hullabaloo to round out the evening.

Well done, Bike Ypsi... but now what?

Run down of the bike festival:

1. Gorgeous day. Bright and chilly in the morning, but stayed bright and got warm quickly.

2. Lots of folks. Maybe 20 on the long rides and 60 on the not-so-long rides. Over 100 rode the community ride.

3. Good booths. Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition, St. Joe's, Project Grow, PEAC, Rails to Trails, and the Ypsi Food Coop all had tables. Wheels in Motion and Tree Fort really turned out. The former tweaked mechanicals on lots of bikes, including a bit o' work on my back wheel and squishy brake. My next biking business will go to them.

4. Minimal no-shows. AATA was supposed to send a bus so we could let people practice putting their bikes on the racks but some sort of crisis downtown distracted them and the bus never came. I did get a call from them this morning apologizing (good) and they are eager to come out to our next happening. Two Wheel Tango notified us a few days before the event that they were not going to come -- disappointing, but at least they let us know. Ypsi Cycle just plain did not show. I do not understand that one.

5. Surprise hit. Bike polo and kids apparently go together quite nicely. I was really happy to see that the usual crowd of polo playing adults mostly wore helmets and then happily worked with the kids who got curious to teach them the game and let them play.

6. Nice rides. It looked for a while there like I was again going to have to shorten my ride, but the folks who were not up to the 19-20mph pace of the fast group proved happy to do the whole 30 miles at 16mph. I don't mind riding slow... as long as I get to ride long. I did have to do a few wicked sprints to move between the front and back of a way stretched out group (which we eventually broke into two) and a mechanical breakdown and the main group. Pretty fun to see that I could get 23.5mph -- and not just on a downhill. The community ride (pictured above) was a bit intimidating to launch but rolled nicely once we got going. Letting the group break into groups during the ride actually seemed to work, but that was mostly due to having sooooo many Bike Ypsi people there to make sure somebody who knew the way and would look out for the group was at the head of every clump of riders.

7. No major disasters. One kid fell (he was fine), we ran out of hot dogs (Andy got more), we forgot to mention that we were selling t-shirts (let me know if you want one!)... but really? Nothing big. No fires to put out. Nice.

So now what? I've been a part of planning the Bike Ypsi Spring Ride and Festival for months. K tells us it has been [deep breath] 5 months in the works. Wow. I didn't really notice that because there were a few other issues along the way (like weekly rides, Bike to Work, and preserving the Ford Blvd road diet/bike lanes) and because I really enjoy the people in Bike Ypsi. The meetings were fun, the post-meetings involved happy hour at the Corner, and the between-meetings meet-ups usually had us on bikes pedaling out and about in the world.

I suspect that with this second big and successful event (you might recall that we had a fabulous fall ride in Oct 2007), there will be some fresh blood looking to get in on the Bike Ypsi love and the group will change because of that. There will be new agendas. Organizational issues will have to be dealt with. People will take us back over ground we have already covered. Personalities may clash. I'm happy to have new recruits (we don't want to burn out!), but I just gotta say, this first year has just been a blast.

Parking

Workwise, I've got several balls in the air at the moment... I've been writing an essay on teaching, starting the article on the Minneapolis anti-porn movement, shuffling all the etiquette material I collected in DC, and reading early twentieth century planning journals.

The latter is full of discussions of how to improve the "civic good" (as defined by a bunch of middle class white people) through changes to the built environment. Under discussion are things like trash cans, street lighting, rest rooms, playgrounds, and parks. They agonize in great detail over designs for each of these items. What is most sanitary? What will be most aesthetically pleasing? How will the design impact people's behavior? Because I am interested in the reforms pushed by and for women, most of the journals I am reading come from the "City Beautiful" camp of city planning (as opposed to the "City Efficient" movement). These reformers and planners firmly believed that a beautiful environment and one designed to meet the needs of the population (play spaces for children, for example) would convince people to act better toward their city and their fellow residents. "Good" planning as a means of alleviating social tensions was at the foundation of the field of urban planning -- whichever camp the planners were coming from -- and I suspect that basic concept has not changed much even down to today (though ideas on how to do it certainly have).

Today the powers-that-be in Ypsi are trying their hand democratizing the practice of planning. The city has at least one urban planner, has master plans for parks, and conceptual designs for the Huron River Corridor. But today, all of these are coming before the public in an effort generate ideas and suggestions for revamping two of the city's finest parks: Frog Island and Riverside. I've got to wonder how much of today's design charrette is going to be about Murph and other city officials managing the public's expectations. I'm anxious to see what my neighbors bring to the discussion -- if they come at all. Oh, I'm sure some of the usual suspects (Pierce, Maynard, Getto) will be there, but will the stroller-pushers, dog walkers, joggers, and bench loungers also come? I hope so. And then there is the part of me that wonders, for all I know about historical efforts to design, redesign, and use public spaces, particularly parks, will I (that'd be Prof. Smarty Pants to you) have anything of use to offer?

I do love these parks and use both of them regularly. So what is my wish list for these parks? I want them to remain fairly natural -- the biggest draw for my kids is that they can stand on the river's edge and throw sticks in the river and watch the current catch them (and they can do this for hours). I want them to continue to be festival friendly. For a tiny city, we have the best festivals around. Space should also be open for community group events that do not have the funds of a big festival. I want the parks to continue to function as a bike-friendly cut through from downtown to Depot Town and the Corner Brewery (though the upper path around Frog Island should be widened and better maintained). There should be a decent place to pee while one is there. It should be lit, but not in an obnoxious, light-polluting way. Friendly kid space back from the river bank would be swell -- so caregivers for small people can zone out in the sun without worrying that Suzy is going to go from slide to river in a blink of an eye. Signage should be better -- including a map of the park system. Pedestrian/bike entrance should be more inviting -- the end off Cross is all about the cars when it is open and when it is not... well, it still hides the park behind the drive/parking lot and people have to go through the parking lot to get to the tridge. There should be bike racks near every entrance. There should be non-stair ways into the park at every access point for bikes, strollers, and wheelchairs. Boat pull outs would be swell -- I'd love to kayak to the Heritage Festival! I'd like the dog runners to continue to be able to use some part of the parks for that -- it is nice group of folks who regularly turn out with their pups after work. I would also like the parks to be able function as a political space (place of public discourse, a physical location for the public sphere, if you will -- that last bit of language was just to thrill the Habermasians out there). If we can festival in the parks, we should be able to rally in them without having to negotiate a bunch of red tape with the city (I'm concerned that once more infrastructure goes into the park the city will make them harder to use for such purposes). Ooh, and how about some cool public art? All the better if it is useful art (like play structures or bike racks). Okay that is probably enough wants for now...

If'n you want to come out and participate, the charrettes are today (Thursday, Nov 8) from 3-5:30pm (this is the one I'm going to) and from 6-8:30pm at the Senior Center on Congress in Ypsilanti -- next to Rutherford Pool.

My Dear Ypsi

I like where I live. Not necessarily the house, though it is fine, but rather the town. This little city is pretty diverse and has lots of character (and characters). There are at least a couple of decent restaurants, better coffee shops than surrounding towns, lots of festivals, a lovely community pool and, of course, a brewery. The schools have their issues, but they are decent overall and my kids do well in them. The city is pretty liberal overall and a couple of fine social service/justice and environmental community organizations call the place home. I'm feeling very pro-Ypsi these days.

This is why it is strange to yet again witness a somewhat contentious political issue grip the city while I sit 100 yards from being able to participate. Yep, as Ypsi as I am, I actually live just over the line in the township. As was the case for the highly contested mayoral campaign last year, proper-Ypsians struggled to figure out what to do with a city in severe financial straits. The city long ago slashed such "luxuries" such as the recreation department (which is why there is a "community" pool instead of a "city" pool -- local folks raised money and found grants to take over what is so clearly a "public" function). Eastern takes up a huge chunk of city land and pays no taxes. The city is hurting. Not surprisingly, someone came up with the idea of the city income tax.

The issue itself is dead for the moment -- defeated at the polls yesterday by a clear 2/3 majority. Since I couldn't vote on it anyway, I choose to not invest the effort to decide if I am happy or disappointed. What I am reflecting on this morning is how much some of my friends struggled to decide how to vote on both the tax and the mayor, how mixed and numerous the yard signs were in many neighborhoods, how thoughtful some of the blog posts were... I guess it all leaves me with the feeling that even if the budget for the place sucks at the moment (oh, and it does), it is a pretty politically healthy city.