It’s 6 March 2014…
The last time I was in Michigan, I was perhaps twelve or ten… somewhere along those lines, but definitely not along those points. When we’re twelve or ten, we obviously appreciate things differently than when we’re thirty-two or forty-eight… somewhere along those points, but definitely not along those angles. At my age now, whenever I visit different states, I always start to notice how they label their roads and how they move their traffic about. I specifically become interested in what the signs they use to label their state highways look like. Minnesota, for example, uses a kind of blue police badge, while Wisconsin uses a white rectangle with a white triangle superimposed over it, and Michigan uses a diamond that sometimes has the letter M above the road’s number. Some state’s are more interesting than others. Washington, for example, uses a profile of Washington. I’ll still remain partial to the blue police badge, probably because it’s one word away from blue police box.
However, then I start to notice things that irritate me about how another state does things. For example, something I’ve found irritating about Wisconsin is that they label county highways with letters, which sometimes results in hilarious combinations like ZZ. I also get irritated with how they mount their traffic lights parallel rather than perpendicular to the ground (i.e. traffic lights aren’t arranged nicely with red on top, yellow in the middle, and green on the bottom, but instead–if I’m remembering–red is on the left, yellow in the middle, green on the right). What I’ve noticed about Michigan is that they prefer to mount their traffic lights on wires. So, an intersection has a cross of wires, which results in traffic lights being placed on the hypotenuse. What I find irritating about this, is that you can’t use the lights as a gauge for where to stop, because lights closer to the right side of the road are closer to where you stop, whereas lights closer to the middle of the road are farther away from where you stop.
However, if there’s something about Michigan that I adore (and really, the only thing about Michigan that I don’t adore are the traffic lights on wires, if that’ something to adore or not), it’s the fine Interlochen Center for the Arts. Fellow UW alum and instructor at the center, Matthew Schlomer, hosted breakfast for Clocks in Motion and me at his home, and then he graced me with a wonderful tour of the campus.
Although technically a high school, this was a college campus. An art gallery and a concert hall and a dance studio, practice rooms with plenty of windows to let in sunlight, a creative writing center, an entire hallway chronicling all that has happened and is happening on campus. And I apologize for all that I am forgetting to mention. But, a gem of Michigan through and through, to be sure. And all in a stunningly gorgeous setting among evergreens that I’m sure in the summer must saturate the air with their bracing aroma. I suddenly thought I was standing in northern Minnesota, surrounded by so many evergreens. Absolutely exquisite.
Michigan further fascinates in Lansing. If there’s something else I like to notice about visiting other states beyond lights on wires and rectangles with superimposed triangles, it’s the state’s capitol building. For as long as I can remember (well, since I first visited a state capitol that wasn’t Minnesota’s, but instead was Utah’s, many, many years ago), government buildings (particularly the capitols) have fascinated me. They were always the same but a little bit different. While Michigan’s capitol building is on the smaller side than I’m used to, it’s still worth a visit. It has all the basics, as these buildings should: an office for the governor (and the less said about him the better, if I may be so boldly obvious), a place for the senate and the house, and a place for the supreme court (although they’ve long since left the capitol building and are now currently housed in the Michigan Hall of Justice). For whatever reason, I hold high esteem for the offices of certain governments around the world (the United States’ included), and I feel a kind of pride for certain governments ever more so when I’m in buildings that epitomize the work government can do (when they put their minds to it, as much as I want to punch politicians in the nose more often than not).
But, beyond the crossed wires of intersections and how people in Michigan drive way too fast for my liking, there’s lots to love in this state. There’s a grittiness to the proceedings in certain areas (and no doubt I’ll be mentioning more of that grittiness in tomorrow’s post when I write about what I saw today in Detroit), but there’s also a northern quaintness to the state that I wasn’t expecting for whatever reason. I always associate rows and rows of evergreens with northern Minnesota and western Montana, but even this far “south” in Michigan they continue to enliven the countryside in numbers that impress.
Lastly, if at thirty-two I concern myself with differences in road signs and whether they’ve got rows and rows of evergreens or not (when at twelve I didn’t), what, then, at fifty-two will I concern myself with?