Fail-Safe Operation

I stayed in Joplin last night and the notable event of the day was that a man walked into a church and killed three people in nearby Neosho. Earlier yesterday, while driving in a spaghetti bowl of highway ramps near the arch in St. Louis, my car momentarily lost power. It felt like it went into "park" for a second or two. I was jerked aginst the seat belt. By the time I worked my way to an exit on the southside of town I had power back. It was 103 degrees outside. I went to a bunch of parts stores and a Jiffy Lube and the consensus was this: the fluid level got too low in the radiator, so the sensor in the coolant tank tripped the car into "fail-safe operation" mode to protect the engine from overheating and blowing the head gasket. I had the radiator serviced and was back on the road. Cutting out power to the engine without warning seems like a drastic measure. But I guess they have a reason for it. It was 104 today as I crossed the entire state of Oklahoma. I'm not a big fan of the Oklahoma turnpike. Their toll and ticketing system is inane. The best dinner I could find tonight in Amarillo was Sonic Drive-In (salad). The hotel doesn't have the Animal Planet channel so I don't get to watch Meerkat Manor on my last night with TV for a long time. I'm ready to go home now.

Terre Haute, IN

Exhibit 1: There are at least three things wrong with this picture. It captures the weirdness of Terre Haute perfectly:

1. The name of the business is "Crapo Insurance Agency"
2. The initals are CiA - like they're so unique with the lower-case "i"
3. It's a branch of the Erie Insurance group

Exhibit 2: Square donuts is sooo Homer Simspon. If it weren't for the almost-perfect coffee shop with a library reading room setup I would discount Terre Haute entirely.

Goodbye Erie

After four days of rain we had a stunning sunset tonight at the beach. I'll miss Sara's onion rings the most. I'll also miss water. Luckily El Paso is getting flooded again so I won't miss it too much.

We had a nice goodbye lunch out at a Dominican restaurant today (Rosa's Legacy) - about 25 interns showed up in all and they were slammed.

This is my favorite place in Erie: the public library reading room looking out over the Brig Niagara.

There's a few things I'm saving for next summer in Erie:

1. Getting in a boat - any boat
2. Swimming in Lake Erie
3. Checking out Perry's Monument and the lighthouses
4. Going to the Erie Book Store in the mill apartments downtown
5. Driving through the grape fields in North East
6. Seeing Lucille Ball's hometown of Jamestown, NY
7. Renting a bike, kayak, boogie board, and roller blades at Presque Isle
8. Trying the coffee at Romolo chocolates
9. Going to a drive-in movie in Corry
10. Trying the Gelato at the Italian place on Cherry south of 12th street
11. Eating at Pie in the Sky
12. Going to a show at Forward Hall
13. Movies at the Aboretum in Frontier Park

These are a few thing I enjoyed this summer in Erie:

1. Reading to kids on lunch break at the Neighborhood Art Center (the Phantom Tollbooth)
2. Going to an Erie Seawolves game
3. Hiking at Erie Bluffs and enjoying jazz at the Colony Pub afterwards with Gregg
4. Working at the Edinboro bike race finish line
5. Eating the baked brie appetizer at Pufferbelly
6. Drinking gimme! coffee at the 10th Street Cafe with a 4-inch veggie sandwich
7. Grilling veggies at Mercyhurst
8. Walking barefoot at the beach
9. Driving through Amish country with Josh and a gazeteer
10. Liberty Park free concerts
11. Services at the chapel at Mercyhurst (especially the music)
12. All the nice people I met!

Done That!

Check me out in the Erie Times News today!
Done That! For Summer Students its a Job and a Class

Erie Art Museum Blues and Jazz Festival

I failed to catch it in this image, but the Erie Blues and Jazz festival-goers are tent professionals. The giant tents with BBQ grills, carpets, and lounge chairs set up all around the perimeter of this free concert were impressive. Apparently the Museum might starting to charge rent for the best tent spots at next year's fest, which drew cries of "Foul!" and "Yuppies!" in the Erie blogosphere. The rain parted and the music came out. Real jazz is not very easy to listen to, and with the Rashied Ali Sextet (they added one to the Quintet recently) as the headliner, we got a heavy dose of real jazz. Ali was Coltrane's drummer for a spell. How 'bout them apples?

The festival took place in Frontier Park, which also hosts and arboretum and a labyrinth. This glowing dome is a small ampitheatre with stone seating against a hillside. I would love to live within walking distance of this park, in a house like this:

The houses of Erie are lovely and very undervalued. The county has the house above valued at $166K for 2006, according to my friend, the internet. Not too shabby.

Tri-This

Rumor has it that at least one member of this jazz trio is a recent high school graduate. The only thing about Tri-This that betrays their youth is their fresh attittude. Their skill, chops, and raw talent are beyond their years. They played an enthusiastic set at Molly Brannigans tonight. Most songs included an upright bass solo, a drum solo, and a keyboard solo, order optional. The gaggle of parents watching in the crowd may have dampened the ebullience a bit, and the underage friends in the back room restaurant trying to communicate via hand signals was a little distracting. If I had to pick a favorite musician, it would be the drummer. He had a Charlie Watts slack to him that I enjoyed; behind the beat a little, with rallies back up to a faster pace. They played jazz standards, and threw in a Beatles song.

Smuggler's Wharf

My department at work went out to say goodbye to the interns tonight (even though 3 out of 4 of us are still here!). We sat out on the docks at Dobbin's Landing and the weather was heaven. I want to ride on a boat before I leave here. Maybe just the water taxi.

Moving Out

This is what moving out is like: its 11:45 pm. The bathroom is scrubbed clean, the closet shelves are wiped down, and the living room is full of bags and piles. The trash needs to go to the dumpster. I discovered a crisper full of fresh veggies that I can't let go to waste. Out to the great gas grills of the Mercyhurst pit I went for a midnight BBQ. I took the New York Times with me and it was the first time I sat still in a couple of days.This is the heaven that I moved into at the George Carroll House in downtown Erie afterwards. After dorm life, this place is shangri-la.

Going Out

My disappointment at missing Wednesday's Poison the Well show at the Perry Hi-Way Hose Co. by arriving too late was dashed away by the romantic Gaelic tenor voice of Brendan Begley of the Boys of the Lough, who played a great concert at Mercyhurst.

After the high culture of the Boys, I went downtown, where I was delighted by an outdoor concert consisting of something other than classic rock covers. The New Wave Nation had me rocking for at least an hour. I kept saying I would leave at the first bad song but one never came. What did get me going was these two drunk interns needing a designated drive back to the dorm:
Drunk interns just love the Count. Answer me this: why are the French called frogs when green is the color of the Irish?

Picnic Grove

There's this amazing thing that happens on a humid day before sunset when the air and the water over the lake get the same silver shimmer.

This week has been organizational: putting new spark plugs in the car, Texas roadtrip route planning, bill paying, cleaning, and corresponding.

I was interviewed by an intern at the Erie newspaper for an article about interns. Is that semiotics? Please comment. The reporter's name was Andy Boyle. He was a pleasure to talk to. Anyway, they will try and fail to send a photographer to GE to shoot me at work - its very hard to get a photo permit there. The article should run next Thursday.

I played horseshoes for the first time yesterday. I got no points. The horseshoes were at an intern gathering at Picnic Grove, which is within a golf course built by GE in the 1920's. The trees there were gorgeous.

Bingo Beat

Here's our woman about town reading Pittburgh's free Bingo Beat newspaper.

Leslie and Andy looking like a million bucks (left) and the three sisters (right). The overlook was in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh called Mt.Washington. We accessed it from the famous Monongahela Incline, which is a car on rails pulled by cables up a 60-degree slope. Its actually part of the mass transit system although its heavily used by tourists seeking grand-canyon sized views. Station Square is an entertainment district at the bottom of the incline. We ate at Joe's Crab Shack there. Pittsburgh reminds me a little of Boston. The downtown is about the same size as Boston's just by the look of the skyline, and the geography of the place lends itself to lots of little neighborhoods like villages adding up to the city as a whole. The WYSE building was in Mt. Washington.

Firefly Music Festival

Low key, downhome, friendly, DIY, BYOB, green, quiet, earnest, odd, humid, outdoors, hilly, smoky, beery, hippy, lazy, etc... Who knows what I expected from the 1st Annual Firefly Music Festival. For starters, its was in a holler or at least something like it. A borrowed hillside, woods, and creek. It ran on generators. Tents grew like mushrooms in the woods. It was a two day festival, but we only went for Saturday. Pictured above was my favorite act, the Little Country Giants.

There was a lot of downtime for exploring the property, which was nothing if not green. We saw a tree toad, a caterpillar and pupae, a dragonfly, a hummingbird moth, and a great blue heron. Actually, Josh saw most of this stuff and pointed it all out to us. Thank you Josh.

Sisters

My sisters are here! Boy, do they make me feel young and beautiful just to be around them. We went to Sara's for onion rings immediately upon their arrival. Leslie got pooped on by a bird at the picnic tables outside. In this photo she's displaying the napkin she used to wipe it off. Maggie enjoyed that.Leslie and I both moved to the southwest around the same time (Texas and Arizona) and both got blue hatchbacks around the same time, unknowlingly. Ford vs. Saturn. Here's the sister cars at Beach 11 for the Rocket 101 concert that was part of Discover Presque Isle weekend here in Erie. Libby, the dog, enjoyed that.

Rain

When I'm in El Paso I love rain. But in Erie its a heavier thing; the weight of the rain seems to make me tired and indecisive. There were at least four things on my list to do tonight, and I passed them all up because of the rain. 1) A dinner cruise with the interns on a boat. 2) A Carillon concert on a lawn at Penn State Behrend. 3) The BBQ, Blues, and Brews party at the Art Museum annex (I went for a few minutes and had a delicious BBQ chicken sandwich from Pufferbelly Restaurant, while standing in the rain.) 4) The block party on State Street. I photographed this young woman on Dobbin's Landing while trying to decide about the boat ride. There were gnarly fisherman taking advantage of the rain out of frame to the left; maybe she was with them.

Dutch Village Restaurant

At the Dutch Village Restaurant in Clymer, NY the homemade bread is thick and doughey and white. The grilled cheeses are big. On Wednesdays you get a free loaf of bread to take home with any tab over $15. The restaurant is listed in a brochure of Amish shops open to "English" customers, but the asterisk by its name indicated that it was not actually English-owned. They sell an absurd variety of scented candles in the gift shop. They serve a specialty lo-carb ice-cream which did little to mitigate the damage done by the bread. In this photo, Josh and Corinne split a vanilla milkshake. When the waitress took their order Josh asked Corinne "What flavor?"
and Corinne replied, "Any."
"Strawberry," Josh told the waitress.
"Eyugh," said Corinne.
"Vanilla," said Josh.

Findley (Sunset 3)

Findley Lake, NY is a stone's throw from Erie and is an adorable little lake community. We parked and skipped rocks. I laid down in the grass and let bugs crawl in my ears.
We saw a flying owl on the drive there that came out like a flying turtle in the photo. Looking out the front window over Corinne's shoulder at Amish country.
A farm in French Creek, PA. Its much better to be driven than it is to drive.

Liberty (Sunset 2)

These piers are in downtown Erie. The spit of land in the background is Canada. Just kidding. It's Presque Isle. I saw some Border Patrol trucks on another pier and was confused, thinking I must be back in El Paso, but then I realized I'm on another border... Another world...

The last of the "8 Great Tuesdays" outdoor concert series was tonight. Its a lot like Music Under the Stars in El Paso, but a little earlier and more beer. Next Tuesday is doomed without this.

Seen on Sassafras.

Seven (Sunset 1)

Cranch Avenue park is at the end of yet another grassy mall lined with trees in the middle of a neighboorhood called Lakeside. It's not far from the GE plant.

Country Drive

An Amish family in an open wagon drives along a dirt road near Palmer, PA. They ask you not to take photos of them in their shops or wherever you may encounter them in public, so I took this picture from far away to be respectful. I bet the kids in the back could see what I was doing. As we arrived at the next intersection they passed us by and all waved. The little boy on the back seat kept waving even after they'd gone past, twisted around in his seat to watch us.

A little father down the same road we were greeted by a friendly chow. The Amish call modern people "English." If my only impression of how the English live was this trailer I'd prefer to live Amish too. We passed a beautiful clapboard house with 30 buggies parked out front - a million kids running around and men at the picnic table, all in Amish dress. A party was underway, and it sounded like any party in the Sosa family with lots of kids making noise.

Water lilies on Pymatuning Lake on the Pennsylvania/Ohio border. We drove along a road called State Line Road, where the cars parked at houses on one side of the street have Ohio license plates and have little plastic mailboxes for the Ohio newspaper, while people on the other side of the street have Pennsylvania license plates and subscribe to the Erie Times News.

Tractor Pull

The Pioneer Steam and Gas Engine Society of Northwestern Pennsylvanias's 40th Annual Show featured a tractor pull. The farther they pull the draggin' wagon sled, the heavier the sled becomes, and the harder it is to pull. The best tractors went about 200 ft pulling 4000lbs.









There's some history of oil drilling in this area too, so we saw some steam powered engines used for oil wells and farming. I tried to video an old gear mesh from on of these machines but a funny thing happened between the rotational speed of the gear and the sample rate of the video camera, and it looks like the gear is staying still, unless you watch the dot on the side of the gear rotate. You can hear the steam cylinders puffing away.

Seen Your Bull Frog

Erie has all of these frog statues in weird places all over town. I wonder if there's a google map for them (leave a comment if you know of one). My regular grocery store, Wegman's on Peach St. has a matator frog - a "Seen Your" bull frog to be exact. He even has bulls-eyes (see photo inset). There's also a golden frog whose tongue is made of rubies outside a credit union on Pittsburgh St.

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Erie has two jobsites going right now. On Saturday I worked at the Union City, PA jobsite with 12 interns from GE on a two bedroom house that's slated to be be finished (and occupied?) by August 1 to comply with the requirements of the county grant they used to help in the land acquisition. So we worked away--I helped with the windowsills and linoleum floors. We made the windowsills out of oak stair treads; they were gorgeous. It was a fun day and a good time was had by all.

Beach 10

Waves on Toes Video

Sparrow Flight Video

Beach 1

The series on concerts on Wednesday nights finished tonight with the Tennessee Back Porch band. We skipped rocks and waded in the lake up to our knees. The fog on the water had a silence that seemed heavier than the live music. At sunset the light got a little pinker. I discovered the Erie County Farms wholesale fruit and vegetable distributor today. The standout items were red peppers, giant zucchinis, black plums, peaches, a huge variety of apples, and more greens that I could name. All of this at half the price of any grocery store. The drawback? They close at 6pm and are often more crowded that Walmart. They also have a repectable meat counter with more things I couldn't name. Our cashier worked at lightning speed, knew all the prices and all the foods, and shouted them all out as she weighed them, then shouted the weights and net prices of each food item as she went. I inquired about her skill with numbers, and she verified that she had been to college for accounting but had quit over a man.