Top 10 Things of the Summer: #4 Leelanau

Since I am teaching an AP class this semester, I had the privilege of attending a week-long AP institute in Glen Arbor, Mich., on the Leelanau Peninsula. This trip was a two-fold treat: first because the class I took for 7 hours a day provided some of the most insightful methods and inspiring pedagogy I have ever encountered in an education course. It was refreshing after the many stresses and disappointments resulting from my first two years of teaching. The instructor is herself an AP teacher, and to me, she was the epitome of everything right with education these days. I hope to find myself emulating her in both attitude and practice.

The second perk of this week in Michigan was the opportunity to explore the glorious location. I had no idea that northern Michigan was so beautiful. The Leelanau School, which hosted the conference, has acres of campus next to a beautiful blue bay of Lake Michigan. The rest of the lakeshore in the area is primarily Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, so some major sand dunes had been preserved to provide some great hiking opportunities.

On my second day of class, I made a point to walk the majority of the shoreline around the bay, which took me slightly more than three hours--and I was booking it! (Keep in mind this is all barefoot on sand, too!)

A few photos from my walk:











































On the third day, a group of other teachers from the class took a hike to the top of Pyramid Point--one of the tallest dunes on the peninsula and one of the best views of the lake.


































A final note about Leelanau: in Glen Arbor, I ate at a tiny diner called Art's Tavern. Great food, great atmosphere--a perfect spot for a late-night snack while on summer vacation in a beach town. If you ever pass through Glen Arbor, this is the place to eat!

Top 10 Things of the Summer: #5 Eric Clapton Concert

Clapton is incredible, a rock music god. I saw Clapton in concert for the first time this summer at Verizon Wireless Center in Noblesville, IN, with my friends Matt and Corrie and some members of Corrie's family. Verizon is such a great venue for a concert because what can beat listening to live music while lying on the grass under the stars? Clapton was a man of few words, letting the music speak for itself. He walked out onto the stage, burst into a few songs I'd never heard before getting to "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Outside Woman Blues." Most of the first set featured his band and Clapton on electric. The second set was the highlight of the show for me because Clapton took up an acoustic and sat on a chair in the middle of the stage while the band took a break. Here we were treated to what the man could really do as he launched into "Motherless Child" and "Running on Faith," two of my all-time favorite songs.

Running on Faith:


We could see ominous clouds in the distance even before the show started, but during the acoustic set, we saw lightning striking, and pretty soon it was surrounding us. We danced in the rain to "Wonderful Tonight" and a kick-butt version of "Layla" in an all-out downpour. They ended up cutting the show short, so we missed out on "Cocaine" and "Crossroads," which would surely have been Clapton's encore.

It took us at least 20 minutes to make our way back to the car. The storm was beating down full-force during the entire time, and we were shoulder-to-shoulder with people all trying to cross the bridge to the parking lot. I'm usually freaked out by storms, but for some reason this one felt awesome instead of frightening, although considering that we later found out that tornadoes touched down within 5 miles of where we were, I probably should have been more frightened than I was, but it felt more like a thrilling end to an incredible evening.

Top 10 Things of the Summer: #6 Tennis Lessons!

I know I strike everyone as the macho athlete type, but I must confess, I'm not all that coordinated, and despite my intimidating bulging biceps, there's really not much power in my punch. But, I've always hoped to find my sport, and after playing a few "games" of tennis w/ my friend Matt over the past few years, my pride was wounded enough that I decided tennis lessons might be of some benefit over the summer.

I signed up for a 13-session summer course through the Fort Wayne parks dept., and had a blast improving my game (okay, barely developing some semblance of a game) with a bunch of other beginners and two extremely patient, enthusiastic, and occasionally smack-talkin' instructors in the 80-degree heat this June and July. I am proud to say I can now return a serve at least 20% of the time, and I can serve the ball into the appropriate service box at least 1 out of every 4 serves.

But hey, I've found my game.

(Videos and pics intentionally omitted from this one in order to keep my pride in tact.)

Top 10 Things of the Summer #7: Gig at Espresso Gallery with Steve

Steve (a.k.a. Mr. Clough) and I had been hoping to land a gig at Espresso Gallery for months, and when we finally got permission to play there, we couldn't seem to coordinate a time in our summer schedules to play, but we ended up rehearsing for two days and performing on July 25 for a small crowd of anyone who would listen (it grew to about 25 people by the end of the evening). It was my first time performing with both vocal and guitar since I started playing two years ago. It was a good night overall, and, for a beginner, I was pretty proud of just being able to get up and churn out a few tunes.

Here's a pic of Steve and me after the show:
And the set-list of songs I played:
Me & Bobby McGee (vocals w/ Steve)
Wolves (w/ Steve)
Vincent 52 (w/ Steve)
Next to the Last True Romantic (w/ Steve)
River
First Day of My Life
Language
2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
Guaranteed
I Don't Wanna Know
That's The Way Love Goes

Top 10 Things of the Summer #8: The St. Louis Arch

I visited St. Louis for the first time at the end of July to see my friend Jeff who recently moved there. The city proper is average, especially when compared with Chicago, or even Indy, I felt, but the enormous silver arch sets its skyline apart from any other city. I was surprised at its size (1/2 the height of the Sears Tower) when I first drove into the city, and its presence seemed almost otherworldly, as if it had not been built but descended, or as if it were more a part of the sky itself.

Because the arch is, well, arched, conventional elevators could not be installed, so someone came up with the idea to send people to the top in pods connected to a pulley system. The pods contain five tiny seats, zero leg room, and an arched roof that ensures that no one can sit up straight. Basically, it was designed with the Olsen twins in mind.

The inside of one of the pods:


The view from the top was amazing, though, and well worth the miserable ride.

Top 10 Things of the Summer: #9 Johnny Flynn's A Larum

Listening to the debut album by Johnny Flynn, a 25-year-old folk/rock musician from London who also happens to be a trained Shakespearean theatre performer. The music has a lot in common with Dropkick Murpheys and The Pogues--some kind of mishmash of alt-country and what you might think of as traditional Irish instrumentation--but Flynn's stuff is lighter in sound, if not topic. It's just an all-around gem of an album. (After all, you can't go wrong with a back-up band called The Sussex Wit.)

Favorite Tracks: "The Box," "Brown Trout Blues," "Eyeless in Holloway," and "Sally."

Top 10 Things of the Summer: #10 Sam & Meg

I started this blog in early June, but haven't written on it, mostly because I've struggled with deciding how to start writing. I've been under the impression that my first post had to be some kind of monumental definition of Self, something that really summed up who I am, that would draw countless hits to my site, get my blog featured in EW's PopWatch, and maybe even provoke a few tears.

I've given up on that post.

Instead, I'm going to actually get started on this dang thing with a Letterman-style Top 10 List of the best things about my summer. Lame, perhaps, but substantial compared to a blank page.

So...My #10 Thing of the Summer: Hanging out with Family Friends, Sam & Meg


Now, this might seem like an unlikely blockbuster summer event, but I hadn't seen Sam (my dad's best friend from his teens, and the brother of the guy I was named after) and his partner, Meg, for three years since my family visited them in San Francisco in summer of 2005. They are the most esoteric people in many ways, always becoming comsumed, sometimes passionately, in the smallest pursuits. This summer, they were really into figuring out the best way to make sun-tea, watching every single episode of The Twilight Zone, coming up with one-syllable nick-names for public figures (Barack Obama was BOb), and using their fingers to predict the time of sunset to the minute. (You can do this by facing the sun, making a fist, extending your arm toward the sun, and counting the number of fingers between the bottom of the sun and the horizon. 20 minutes per finger. It really works!) These interests seem insignificant unless you hear Sam and Meg talk about them with all the passion of a zealot. I, for one, find myself infected by their enthusiasm, and I end up becoming just as consumed by these gems of curiosity as Sam & Meg.