Historical Ohio/Sunny Indiana

Move my car on the map from Pennsylvania, clear through Ohio, and halfway through Indiana.

Miscellany:

T-shirt that made me smile: "I don't have ADD. It's just that I... Oh look, a Squirrel!"

Most disturbing sight: An Amish man drinking a cup of Starbucks. I'm thinking maybe he was Mennonite, or maybe he was an Orthodox Jew. A friend of mine who is/was an Orthodox Jew told me that outside of New York, people ask him if he's Amish, but I don't think Orthodox Jews wear big brimmed straw hats. When I saw this man today, I thought of that John Mellencamp lyric, "Ain't that America?"

Wisest for me to avoid (and I did, but was tempted): A farm stand labeled "Homemade Amish Bakery"

Tourist Site easy to Avoid: The Little League Museum. Jingoism meets prepubescent testosterone.

Presidential Sites Signage I passed: the William McKinley National Monument -- check the photo to see what I missed. He and his wife are buried there. Also in Ohio: The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. It made me realize that I know nothing about him, and started thinking I believe he was president in the 1870s and his wife's name was Lucy. Just googled her, and she's an interesting character. She was the first First Lady to be a college graduate. Wikipedia says his presidency was "uneventful."

Also in Ohio: Thomas Edison's birthplace.

Welcome Sign: I sort of get a kick out of the billboards that welcome you to a particular state -- and Indiana's calls itself "the crossroads of America." No, it isn't. Isn't Times Square the crossroads of the world?

Checking Out

OK, I couldn't resist photographing the decorations on the way out.

It took me about 20 minutes to check out with one person in front of me because it was this 50ish-year old woman (with tattoos) who clearly didn't know how to work a computer and she would grumble and sigh and grumble and sigh and then someone would come by and she'd ask them what she was doing wrong, and they'd say, "Oh, you have to press ENTER" or something like that -- not complicated. She'd try again and mumble to herself, "Why isn't this working?" and someone would come by again and they'd say, "You have to move the cursor to the box..." This was basic stuff. I didn't really care that I was standing there and she kept looking at me worried and apologizing... so I had time to soak in the decorations.

Rainy Pennsylvania

If you imagine one of those old movies where they move a little cartoon car across a map, you can move my little car to the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. But my car's not so little... the rental car woman this morning upgraded me to a premium car, without even asking. I'm not quite sure why -- I was a bit discombobulated when I walked in because my street was closed due to subway construction so I had to schlepp my bags to First Avenue, then get a cab and I wasn't going that far, but the street closure made it a roundabout route. I had a great driver who actually thought I overtipped him but I was just grateful that he cheerfully put this giant suitcase in and out of the trunk.

So she upgraded me. While I was waiting for my car, this older Australian couple was returning theirs. This was their first trip to the US and they came to New York and then drove to the Great Smokey Mountains -- it just sounded like an odd combination. I always wonder what people think of this country -- they appeared to love it and love their time in Tennessee.

I have decided that with Mapquest and Google Maps, you need to add an hour for every three hours they say. Has anyone ever made it in the amount of time they say? I couldn't have stopped for more than 30 minutes total -- didn't even have to get gas, and it was more like seven hours, not five.

I was thinking that I don't think they allow for any kind of traffic -- there was a long jam up where everyone had to get into one lane and it took forever, and then you drive for miles on the one lane and there's not a worker or machine in sight. Drove in and out of a few bad thunderstorms, and it's raining here now.

When I get to Wisconsin, I am staying for the week in a Microtel. I had never stayed in one, just thought of it as a chain -- but when I was making a hotel reservation for tonight and tomorrow night, I found a good rate at a Microtel.

Well... DUH ON ME about the hotel. When I pulled up, it looks fine; it looks like any other medium grade chain hotel. The lobby is annoyingly decorated with cheap USA-type decorations, as if they are left over from a July 4th party... still didn't think anything of it, or the name... Continental breakfast area looks the same... Go to my room, am pulling my huge bag, juggling my purse, the room key, still holding the car keys, have to go to the toilet and I gasp. The room is TINY.

I had to laugh because the MICRO in Microtel didn't connect in my brain. Just never thought about why the chain is named this. Bear in mind that I think it's small based on someone used to NYC apartments! It's small. Actually it's sort of cozy, like a room on a boat with a place for everything and everything in its place. If this was your room on a cruise ship, you'd think "Wow, it's not that small."

The TV is on top of the closet which is more like a double locker. But it's very clean, very new, very sparkly and I thought if I had to give up new, clean or size, I would gladly give up size. And it's all mine for $62. And the cable includes both
Travel Channel and Animal Planet so I can watch Whale Wars and my ghost program. Now, that's living!

Coming Soon -- Another Road Trip

I leave tomorrow for 10 days of a business trip. Will be driving to Wisconsin. I have gone to this convention for 30 years, every July, literally... I just couldn't face that same flight, that same gate, that same walk to the rental car garage in Milwaukee. I'm doing it slowly -- 15 hours of driving over 3 days. Hope I have a good adventure. And by that I mean a pleasant adventure.

I am fairly organized for this trip -- the mistake I made on my last road trip was not bringing enough music and so I was going through all my CDs tonight -- hadn't looked at them in a while, and I was like What?? Why did I buy this? I didn't recognize some of them.

More later from PA.

I write like...

Mary just called me about a website she heard about on NPR. It's called I Write Like... and you submit a writing sample and instantly it tells you what famous author you write like.

For personal writing, I cut and pasted the "Remembering Bud" entry below and my almost instant analysis was that I write like David Foster Wallace. Actually I'd not heard of him, but here's what Wikepedia says:

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[2][3] which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006).[4]

I read on and saw he committed suicide. That might not be a good omen for me.

Undeterred I submitted the first five paragraphs of an article I wrote for a trade magazine. It came back that I write like James Joyce! Wow, I hope my clients appreciate that.

So give it a try, and let me know who you write like.

ps. the illustration is James Joyce.

Remembering Bud

Bud was an early boss of mine. She was a beautiful older woman, with silvery gray hair that she wore sort of pinned up in this bun. She was a widow. The year I graduated from college, I worked in a hospital, at night, in the accounting department typing (yes TYPING!!) bills for the outpatient department. I believe my hours were 5 pm to 10 pm.

Anyway, today I was having a new mattress delivered. I had planned it for today because my cleaning woman comes today and changes my sheets and so I planned it that the delivery would be in the morning and the clean sheets would be applied in the afternoon. No muss, no fuss... for me. No wasted energy of taking sheets off and then putting them back on.

When my mattress was delivered, I was patting myself on the back for my organizational cleverness. The angel on my shoulder was telling me what a genius I am to have this work out, while the devil on my other shoulder piped up with how incredibly lazy I am to have plotted this.

And now we're back to Bud.

She once said to me, "The laziest people in the world are also the most efficient because they will figure out the easiest way to do something." This is why I loved this woman -- she made my laziness a virtue.

I was thinking about her and I have to say she was one of the first independent women I knew... she wasn't the "poor widow" but she was this dynamic woman who was living a life she enjoyed. One day, on the way to work, I had a fender bender car accident. No one was hurt, but it was my first car accident and it really shook me up. I called Bud, voice trembling, saying I'd be late for work because of the accident and she told me to not even think about coming to work, that I should go home and pour myself a stiff drink and relax. I couldn't believe it. It never occurred to me that I not go to work and it was great to just go home.

On this night shift, there were Bud, me and one other woman. I can't remember her name, but she looked and talked like Fannie Flag -- deep southern accident. Whenever it was stormy, very cold or raining this woman would say, "Tonight's the night to be in bed with a good book or a good man, and you know which one I want..." and she'd look at me expectantly.

And I'd think... good book? good man? Hmmmm... both have their virtues. But all these 30 plus years later, on a stormy dark night, I often say to myself, "Tonight's the night to be in bed with a good book or a good man."

Take Me Away

I was reading a column Stephen King writes -- this week was about summer books, and he gives these disturbing statistics:

One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college grads never read another book after college.

Growing up, my parents both read -- my mother loved the old Perry Mason books by Erle Stanley Gardner. I loved just reading the titles... they were all The Case of like The Case of the Careless Kitten, odd names like that. I never read them. It seems as if there were dozens of them.

As a child, my reading was mostly comic books and Landmark books (those were the young adult history books). We would go to the library at school once a week, and you could take out one book.

The first grown-up book I read was in 5th or 6th grade. It was about Lizzie Borden who took the axe and you know the rest. Small type, no pictures, and I was hooked.

I remember when my brother was young (are you reading this, Sam?) and he would only read sports books, Guiness book of World Records, type books... and I knew that he would someday outgrow that and he did. I think he was about 12 when he discovered Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Then he went on a reading blitz and kept reading that same book over and over... I think he read it seven times in a row. Finally I said, "Don't you want to read something different?" and he said, "Do you only look once at the Mona Lisa?" I remember being stunned since that was a pretty sophisticated answer for a child... and it shut me up too.

A few years back, The Old Man and the Sea was celebrating its 50th anniversary and I sent Sam a copy of the book which he read -- now for the eight time... and he told me that when he first read it, he identified with the boy, and now he identifies with the Old Man.

That's the sheer pleasure of reading that these folks are missing. Is there anything better than being transported by a book -- either to Perry Mason's courtroom or to a tiny fishing boat?