The University I did not get a degree from
My sense of homesickness has surpassed all of the other feelings. Those other feelings are not small and inconsequential either, like a person must feel when they change histories of things here and there to make themselves appear to be something or like a person must feel when they have to destroy another to feel like they are a something. My sense of homesickness is stronger than watching people hack the internet and show off how they can make the world look small and ugly and full of an anonymous elite -- my homesickness towers over the saddness of that even.
And, about towers, my university has a well known watertower. It is actually quite funny to look that more than 100 year old thing up on google maps and I wonder if they would have built it if they knew there would be a future where you could get such a view of it. I think/guess probably yes, they would have built it because that satellite view is the same kind of funny that it is to drive past it. If you are driving through that city, it is highly recommended that you drive past that water tower.
Living there in the community; I wouldn't choose the watertower to be the symbol of what living there is like. It is mostly just funny and a memorable part (but not the most memorable part) of an interesting community which doesn't even surround it -- that tower. My days in college are more steeped with memories of access to some incredible equipment via the university and live music via the off campus culture and the real city was an interesting conglomeration of auto industry workers, urban housing projects (inevitable with the decline of the auto industry there) and the campus and in many ways, it worked out pretty well with just a little respect to the natural man-made boundries that existed there.
The difference between home and everywhere else is the familiarity which allows you to complain at home but keeps you from complaining when you are not in your home. It might be a little late to be like that about California (not complain because it is not my home) -- my biggest complaint is the wrongness of all of the situations that sent me here and how horrible almost everything looks while I sit here -- and there is little else to do. The idea that I did some nice things and was part of a good project and that should be enough is a great idea. It is a little lost though because I am having to think that way while not home and not enjoying that fact and not having any real reason for that except that I suggest to you that from my experience, the good feeling that can be had from the sense that you are being a good friend is perhaps dangerous.
The rest of todays entry will be me complaining about something I know and something I am familiar with that was much more a part of my university life than that water tower was. It is that square that is pictured here. You can locate it on the maps by moving from the satellite north a little ways or by looking here. It was supposed to be the topic of a paper I was going to write for my technical writing class and it probably is not a complaint that is limited to just my university either. Anyways, you can skip my complaint easily by not clicking through, unless you are reading this from my actual web log....
Cow paths, hogbacks and decorative cement
I labeled the buildings with the names in this screenshot of the google map. My classes were in Strong which is located in this image in the upper left corner. The physics and earth science departments are located in this building which was built as a response to Sputnik -- a little thing that orbited the earth a few times and emitted a beep that everyone could hear. One can argue that Brian Eno's computer wake up note is one of the more important noises that ever was written -- I suggest that the sputnik beep (long ceased before I was born) was far more important to the evolution of the whole planet. Especially since it was destined to crash, not relied on to do other things and hopefully not crash....
I walked through the square in this image a lot while taking classes there. Sherzer, the building in the lower right corner of the screenshot -- it was the art building. I say 'was' confidently because the Sherzer building that I walked to was mostly gutted from a fire in 1987. It had been the science building before that satellite beeped and the observatory was atop it. A new observatory is atop the new building which is probably still the art building there. Briggs Hall, at the lower part of the image -- that is where we paid for our tuition, picked up paychecks and also the checks for whatever was left over from grants and student loans. I joked long ago and recently about how, especially while looking at the world from Strong, behind Briggs Hall is the 'place where the sun never shines'. It is south from Strong. The fact that all of the schools finances ended up there just makes what I said extremely funny as well as a truth (that is shared by all buildings at many locations on the earth). Mark Jefferson was where the chemistry classes were held. Most of the marks on the grass in the square which is the subject of this homesick rant are from students going to the Mark Jefferson building.
I made yellow lines on the screenshot to show where I walked usually. If you look at the full-size version, you can see that the people start on the sidewalks and then find a more efficient path that goes straight to where they need to be. I have no idea what that building is in the upper right corner of the shot -- but the cow path starts kind of there and ends up at the chemistry building. That was the rant. That in my opinion, they should put the buidings in and then build the sidewalks a few years later after the paths had been worn in. The sidewalks there -- very pretty from that aerial view, and pretty while standing there also, but totally useless. If you follow those sidewalks, they lead you no where. To points between buildings; to a no mans land that you additionally need to walk around some stuff to get into a parking lot that there is a good chance that it was full before you got there.
So many of our real roads are built on old cow paths or hogbacks which (without looking it up to make sure I am using the words correctly) were made from moving the farm animals around. They avoided swamps and streams, steep hills and tended to only walk in a not straight fashion if it was truly inconvinient. Students at universities, and I know this because I was one, are more like farm animals than not especially when it comes to getting from one point on campus to another.
I remember being so enraged about those sidewalks that go nowhere. 'Of course', this rage had nothing to do with difficult homework, tests and ends of semesters looming shortly ahead in time, broken automobiles that were needed to keep jobs which paid rent which bought food and things -- forget the fact that they needed insurance and licensing as well! Stupid, futile and often infantile college romances and I even got to have the experience of being allowed to grade the astronomy labs while in jail because even if I was driving safely, it was not perfectly legally -- of course, I was infuriated mostly about the sidewalks!
I still am mad as hell about how things get built this way. Paths that lead to nowhere. It is not the landmark that I would choose to represent the area; it is a landmark of landmarkings though -- and satellite photographs of the same area at different times of the year would show even more 'cow paths'. I don't think that anyone should bother going to Ypsilanti to see these cow paths; I suggest that there are enough of these to be found throughout the world.
This page was made by pyblosxom [1.3.2 2/13/2006] on 2008-01-27T09:10:47-08:00.