Celebrate Life

Memorial for Bill Swan (a Midlander) will be held on July 6th,2011, at 11 a.m. at St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Woodinville, Washington.

Scotts awa'

Dear readers,

Bill is no longer among us. He slipped away on Saturday morning at 9:09 pacific time in a Concord, California hospital. He fell ill during a church Synod where we were both delegates. Once he stopped breathing on his own he never regained consciousness.

It is my intention to make the tour of Michigan as he proposed and perhaps to scatter some of his ashes in Lake Michigan. When I go, I will need company.

Thank you for following his writings and for being such dear friends to him.

His wife of 32 years,
Kathy

We probably won't make 2012

Dear readers,

There is no delicate way to put this, so I will give it to you straight: Bill is on life support at a John Muir Medical Center in Concord, California. Bill fell ill during a trip to the East Bay for a church Synod and was admitted a week ago last Thursday, May 19th. He has not regained consciousness at this time. Your prayers for his recovery are solicited and very much appreciated. Thank you for being his friends.

Kathy Swan
(Wife of almost 32 years)

Plan change

Between the last post and now a lot has changed. Most of it to do with upcoming travel: my "summer at home" is now shot through with short trips, though at least they are no further East than Milwaukee (so far). Not that the extra distance to the East Coast makes much difference.

But my European meetings for next year are being set and between Madrid in April and Stockholm around October, well, I just need to take Kathy with me and tour the scenic locales. (My mother has long told me I'd love Spain, and Kathy seconds the motion.) She knows these places and speaks the languages fluently, which is an asset. But those trips alone will blow next year's travel budget.

So maybe the Grand Tour of Michigan will have to wait until 2012.

Goodbye for now

Dear readers,

I should have done this a few weeks ago, but allowed myself to get caught up in the whirlwind of this spring's travel season first. Back a few days ago from the second business trip in as many weeks, I fly out soon for another running through next week... and so on until the end of May after which, if nothing else pops up, I will have a *long* stretch at home before things pick up again in September.

In any event, last summer's visit back to Midland is receding. It leaves in my memory an odd and sad overlay of Midland as I saw it recently on the Midland I remember.

Truly you cannot go home again.

Our thoughts of a second visit next year, encompassing more of the state, remain. But until we start planning that, barring things unforeseen I will have nothing more for the blog. But I will leave it open, and will be notified of any comments.

Later...

Bill

Skiing the golf course

One of the nice things about the Internet age is the ability to keep tabs on things elsewhere. The Midland Daily News online is such a resource, and I'm never sure what I'm going to find on it. That Dow is preparing to manufacture solar shingles and (presumably) high-capacity batteries is a Good Thing, if the economics are there. I'd even hope they were there for my house, but nestled in a forest of 150' to 200' cedars in our more northern latitude with mild, damp climate it's not likely; in just the first year or two moss would take over everything. (Hmmm... are those shingles chemically resistant to moss-kill?)

But today I saw a column on skiing the golf course. St. Andrew's, I presume? What a great idea! It was sledding/tobogganing/saucer heaven when I was a boy. Of course they had the only slopes around, and one of the challenges was to try to get to the river -- and not go in if you did! (At least once I had to bail off the sled at the last minute.)

Not sure what "skating skis" are, but we have a couple of pair of telemarking skis. Unfortunately they are little used due to a physical condition that came on soon after purchase, plus lack of time, plus we rarely have snow conditions (of any sort) less than a significant drive away... but maybe... sometime... Kathy can revisit her Swedish girlhood.

"Winding Down in WA"

Amusing to read Kim Palka's column with the title above in the Midland Daily News online. She drove from Spokane to Port Orchard, WA to visit a cousin. (Wonder if she took the ferry across Puget Sound? That's always fun).

She mentions robins, buds on trees, and bulbs starting to come up. Well yes, spring gets a much earlier start here than Midland, where for me it was seeing the crocuses coming up through the snow in March. But it's a very long, drawn out start very unlike Midland's comparatively rapid switch from snow to soggy soil to sun, and without the delicious smell of the warming soil.

But, as she no doubt discovered right after submitting that column, at least through April we are subject to sudden plunges right back into winter.

(And I see from the comments section that there's another former Midlander out here.)

Snow and hills...

...are a bad combination here in the Seattle area. If, as I have, you have ever seen cars with occupants sliding down steep hills completely out of control, you'll understand.

So when snow started coming in last evening, people hurried home. I was a little concerned myself, but we hadn't had the preceding weather patterns that are the major contributor to our nasty snow problems.

And though the forecast said up to six inches, at my house (back up in the cedar hills) we had only three. And a lighter snow than the heavy wet stuff we usually get. So I was a bit eager to try out the 4WD truck we bought a couple of weeks ago -- all our vehicles are 4WD, but this is the biggest I've ever had. No problem at all going and coming, though our light little 2-door Tracker had trouble getting back up to the hill to the house this afternoon. (I've shoveled the hill now; there should be no problem at all for Kathy and the neighbors.)

I didn't learn to drive until after we'd left Midland, so I have no knowledge of what it's like driving there in winter. No hills, of course, but I remember my mother once being surprised ca 1966 when her VW Beetle broke loose and spun across the intersection by St. John's and Barstow Woods. I guess 4WD would be a help in new snow, before the plows get around. Beyond that just be cautious, I guess, and you might not end up like so many 4WD owners here -- in the ditch.

(Dear readers, you are quite welcome to comment, by the way. It would be nice to hear from Midlanders past and present.)

Michigan for retirement?

Okay, I've been gone for decades and even when I left "retirement" was something unimaginably far in the future, since I had years of preparation for my career still ahead of me.

But the article Painful sacrifices could push retirees out of state, in the Midland Daily news, caught my attention.

This is a big retirement state,” he said. “Retirees spend a lot of money here.

Sure, from time to time I'd thought about returning when I retire, and maybe that was reinforced by our visit last summer. Not sure about returning to the Midwestern climate (I am awfully spoiled by Seattle for all I detest its dark, gloomy winters), but I sure miss the Midwestern culture.

Rate of change

I've never thought much before on *how* cities change over time. That it happens is inevitable, but it seems I've mostly been there while the changes occur, like the 28 years I've lived in the Seattle area, so I haven't taken much note. And even when I visited Midland last summer, after 42 years' absence, the main thing I noticed was that our old house was still there, my school buildings still standing.

But right now I'm sitting in the Salt Lake City airport, returning home from a week of technical committee meetings at a conference in Las Vegas where, despite having little free time, I got to see "change" in a very big way.

I first visited Las Vegas for a trade show in 1982, and evenings had some time to wander around. I'm not into gambling or shows (still haven't seen any), but took in the sights and the lights seen from the street. I didn't return again until 3 years ago, a quarter-century later, and was amazed at the change. The casino hotels I remembered were all gone. I could only identify the street my hotel (the Sands?) was on by the peculiar angle of that street to Las Vegas Blvd.

But none of it quite hit home until my return to Las Vegas a week ago where, on the Strip to get dinner, I contrasted Vegas of memory with Vegas today. And I thought of Midland which, though it is different from Midland 42 years ago, seems to retain much of what it was then, in sufficient enough ways to look little different. And Redmond (WA), somewhere in-between, remaking itself at a rate somewhere in-between.

So I wonder: what drives the change, and what the preservation of what they were? None of these cities are poor, lacking in money, and yet there is such a difference in their rates of change.

That old hymn

Sitting here in the computer room, and Kathy gets an email with a link to a presentation whose audio track is a country-western rendition of "How Great Thou Art." It's not in our hymnal, but whenever I hear it it takes me back to Midland mid-60s and the worship-music program on the AM station WMDN (the call letters now belong to some station elsewhere) on Sunday evening for which this was the theme.

What a different time that was.

Note for next visit

Nice to see some institutions living on. The Midland Daily News reports today on the 50th anniversary of Pizza Sam's. I don't have clear memories of the place and certainly won't now because it's moved, though I do remember the Community Drug Store mentioned in the article.

We will have to come by the next time we visit Midland.

Response to "WA Adventure #2"

With a bit of downtime today (next trip is 2-1/2 weeks away and it's a short one, to Lost Wages NV), I thought to check up on the Midland Daily News online. Living in Washington State, the column/blog titles WA Adventure #2 naturally caught my eye. Welcome to the Evergreen State, Mrs. Palka, and if you get across the Cascade Range to the Pacific Northwet side, give this old Midlander a jingle.

But I noted your remark:

So I wonder why it is that we have such sameness across the land? From Birch Run to Spokane, I could have stopped at identical outlet shopping malls. I had the choice of 5 of the same hotel chains everywhere I went. The same 5 fast food restaurants were listed at every major highway exit. The landscape changed beautifully, my retail options did not.

As a too-frequent traveler I rely on the sameness of hotel chains, and sometimes restaurants, to predict what I will encounter. Some of the sameness comes from corporate presence or brand identity -- for example, my employer's products look the same no matter whether you're buying them in Midland, Mumbai or Moscow.

But even though a brand hotel or restaurant may look the more or less the same around the world (though you can't buy beer in an American McDonald's the way you can in Germany), there is another difference: the staff. They can make a big difference: I found the staff at Midland's Hampton Inn to be typically Midwestern: friendly and helpful. In Germantown MD where I have stayed over many years, they're nice enough but hurried or harried. Other places can be worse. (Or much better, as a no-name 3-star old hotel in Bangalore turned out to be: not fancy by any means but if I needed something they were on it instantly -- I'd go there again quite happily.)

Maybe one just needs to travel more to pick up on these differences. All I can really say is that on our visit to Midland my wife and I picked up on the welcoming difference between Midlanders and much of the rest of the world. Restaurants and hotels alike.

Congratulations, Midland!

I was just reading a news item about the Grace A. Dow Library (it was certainly a great library when I lived there --I wish it hadn't been closed when we drove by last summer-- though it's odd that I remember it being somewhere else nearby), but at the end of the article they had to explain a little about Midland:

Midland is a city of nearly 42,000 people and is the international headquarters to The Dow Chemical Company and Dow Corning Corporation. According to the October 2010 edition of Forbes Magazine, Midland is considered to be the fourth-best area in the U.S. to raise a family.

Fourth-best? I don't see how it could get much better. Unless you get rid of the muggy summer days (though I guess most everybody has A/C these days -- we don't in Seattle but it's rare that we even want it) and February. Still, this echoes what my MHS classmates said at the reunion. And it's FAR better for raising a family than anyplace I've lived since. Bested by Marquette, Manitowoc, and Dubuque in this rating, but I'd take Midland hands-down.

Looking at the article's photos, I remember downtown Midland looking like Warsaw, Ind.

There are some things I like about living on the West Coast, but I still miss the Midwest.

Ouch

I just realized it was 43 years ago today that my father announced we were leaving Midland. Nothing significant; anniversaries of larger life events have sometimes passed unremembered. But... 43 years! Now I feel old.