Kristin’s Playground

This past Sunday was the 2nd annual Festifools parade in Ann Arbor. The tradition started last year, on April Fool’s Day, as an attempt to bring people together and create public art complete with giant papier-mâché puppets and silliness all around. I missed this happening last year, but I’m quite glad I found out about it this year. There were tons of puppets, costumes and people all around, and I was quite glad to have an excuse to use my camera. So, enjoy the photos under the cut - you can see the full set here. It seemed that everyone and their brothers had their cameras out, so if you want more than just my perspective, check out the Festifools Flickr group. (P.S. There’s also going to be a show with photos from the event at a local coffee shop. They’re accepting 5 submissions from each photographer for consideration, so let me know which ones you like best and you think I should submit! I’d be really excited to have my first photo in a show!)

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Brian Vander Ark is coming to The Ark on April 19th. He’s the former lead singer of The Verve Pipe, which had the hit song “The Freshman” awhile back. While I liked that song all right, I thought it was a bit overplayed, so I never really paid much attention to the band. However, when my favorite radio station here played Brian’s single, “Survival,” last year, I wanted more. I finally got the chance to hear more last summer at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival where he played for free. Unfortunately, it had been a rainy afternoon, so there was almost no crowd, but I went anyway. It was great. I loved all his songs, and bought his CD. Since then, he’s played in Ann Arbor a couple of times, and Logan and I went to go see him at his last show at The Ark, and again at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival this past January. We just bought his newest album, and are really looking forward to his next concert.

Besides having great music, he seems like a really nice, laid-back guy, too. He allowed flash photography at his last concert at the Ark (so I’m definitely bringing my camera this time), and during the summers he’s taken to doing Lawn Chairs and Living Room tours, which I think is awesome. Anyway. He’s worth checking out, and if he comes on tour near you, I think you should go. You can go here to download a free copy of his song, “Lily White Way,” which I think is quite good, myself.

Last week, the contract between the Graduate Employee’s Organization, the union that represents the grad student instructors (GSIs here - you may know them as TA’s at other Universities) and the University expired, after negotiations failed to produce a new 3 year contract both sides could agree with. The University’s Financial Aid department had published a number about how much it cost to go here as a grad student, and it happened that this figure was more than the current GSI salary. Because of this discrepancy in pay, GEO planned a two-day work stoppage last week to try and speed up negotiations. After the first day of the strike, negotiations resumed and an agreement was tentatively reached, preventing the second day of the walk-out.

While there are undergraduates who supported GEO’s actions, the walk-out did cause some hostility amongst others. Some were upset at the greedy grad students wasting their tuition dollars for missing a day of class, others blamed them for the huge rises in their tuition. Yesterday, I saw a flyer on one of the kiosks on campus with the headline: “Coming Soon: Higher Tuition. Thanks GEO”. The flyer talked about GSI salaries, all the benefits they get, and how outrageous their requests for higher pay were. It encouraged people to call the University’s president and ask why these “giveaways” were necessary when it would cause higher tuition.

Now, I’m all for undergrads getting involved in politics and the running of their university, but GSIs are not the overwhelming cost of running a university, and state funding cuts are the biggest reason for increasing tuition. Also, the flyer had a number of misleading “facts” about how much GSIs got paid. Even though I’m not a GSI, nor a member of GEO, this really angered me, so I felt the need to write a letter to the school’s paper about it. They printed it this morning (I only sent it last night at 8 or so - they must’ve been desperate for content!). You can read the full letter there, but basically the flyer quoted the full-time salary that a GSI would make ($13,977 per semester), when GSIs are almost always a half-time employee - meaning that they make half of what the flyer says. Also, When they quoted the new salary they would get, the quoted it for the final year of the 3 year contract, not next school year, which exaggerates the raise (in addition to again being for a full-time employee). It occurred to me (after I submitted the letter, of course) that the first number they claimed was also for the 2004-2005 school year, the first year of the newly-expired contract, exaggerating the raise further. This year, the median GSI made $15,199 for 8 months of teaching.

Again, I’m not a member of GEO (my husband is, for full disclosure), and I had mixed feelings about their strike, but lying on a flyer isn’t the way to fix the situation.

At the University of Michigan, one of our most famous sculptures is The Cube (technically entitled the Endover). It is identical to the sculpture “The Alamo” in Manhattan and was a gift from the artist (a UM alum) that was installed in 1968. The best thing about it is that it rotates on its axis; the look on new students’ faces as you walk up to it and push it is great.

Anyway, this year, somebody decided to pull an April Fool’s Day joke with the cube. It amused me greatly.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my dog. I do! Look at her, she’s a cutie!

That being said, there are some days where I get quite frustrated with Anya-bear. Those days usually happen any time I’m involved in getting her nails trimmed. Such as today. Suffice to say, Anya does not like getting her nails trimmed. At all. While it never occurs to her to try and attack you to prevent you from trimming her nails, she will do everything in her power to run away from you. This involves climbing up your shoulder, thrashing around in her harness, yelping like you were an axe murderer, and never sitting still long enough for you to grab a paw and trim a nail. And, if you’re not careful about your choice of attire, she can leave some pretty nice scratches on you as she tries to climb over you.

Lately, I’d been taking her to a vet to get her nails trimmed, and occasionally giving her a sedative beforehand to calm her down. It works well. The techs take her back, trim her nails, and I wait patiently in the front, not getting scratched and covered with Anya hair. (Being allergic to her, I prefer not getting scratched and covered in Anya hair. My generic claritin works in general, but it can’t stand up to that.) Taking her to the vet costs a bit more, and they said she’d been getting better about it, so today I tried to take her to one of the walk-in grooming places. Bad idea. The poor lady managed to get a few nails done before asking me to come back and help hold her/calm her down. So, of course, she climbs all over me (and I’m wearing my brand new Glee Club sweatshirt), covering me with hair, and manages to scratch up my wrist pretty well. Even with me holding her it doesn’t go well, so they get another lady to help. They eventually get all her nails clipped, but since Anya struggled so much they inevitably got the quick on one of them. As I take her out of the arms of the groomer, the nail opens up again and gets blood all over the floor of the place and on my new sweatshirt. ::sigh::

It’s a great morning. Time to go switch over laundry.