18 June 2020
Choices, always choices. On a beautiful late spring morning, no clouds in the sky, light falling so warm from the east, one must make serious decisions. Among them is this. Do I just sit here and sip my coffee and wait for the day to grow warm, or do I continue with the path I have been following lately energetically walking to try and reclaim some healthful vigor? Given I have an MRI coming up tomorrow to see if I remain cancer free, the walk is the optimal choice.
Breakfast eaten and coffee consumed I dress. There is a hat. It is a sunny day. Original Six proclaims the chapeau showing my affinity for hockey. But there is more than just a hat I need to grab. Given the pandemic, I need to pick out a mask to wear. For the most part it will not be covering my mouth as I travel about. However, if a runner passes close, by or if someone is forced into my pathway for whatever reason and looks as if they will crash my two-meter bubble, up goes the mask. Depending on when exactly I head out will decide if I wear my Ray-Bans or not. On a day where the high will be in the upper 80s and the temperature now is 56, a light shirt that can be removed and stuffed into my satchel is a sensible choice.
Dressed appropriately, at least by my standards, I took a fifty plus minute walk onto the campus of Michigan State University. My visit to my alma mater’s grounds was motivated by a desire not to be repeating again and again the same routes. One must work to avoid pandemic boredom burnout. As I took this walk, I snapped a number of pictures with my iPhone. When I finished the walk and was seated at the table on my porch, I posted some of images on my Facebook feed. What I posted didn’t really capture what was in my mind as I took these shots. So, let me run through what was in my head as I decided what to photograph.
Two photos from Forest Avenue, East Lansing, start out the set. The first is a long shot looking down Forest Avenue heading south. This image was captured close to Forest’s point of origin at Northlawn Avenue. Secondly there is a photo of a of a vividly colored garden.
Have no doubt I love this one block of Forest. At this point the road is basically an alley. A number of houses on the adjacent road to the west have garages that empty onto Forest. A sidewalk could not be fitted on this stretch. No curbs are to be found the grass lawns overlapping the thin asphalt band. Above this particular block for almost its entire distance is a canopy of deciduous trees that are tall and broad leafed. This first block of Forest is the coolest block of my whole walk, the trees giving off so much oxygen.
Like I said this block of Forest is basically and alley and alleys have fascinated me since I lived in Ocean City, NJ. Back in the mid 1970s I rode the alleys of OC to and from work. There was an entirely different life that opened out onto the alleys. Back then OC was a town of single-family homes for most of the length of the barrier island. In the postage stamp back yards facing the alley, between the parking spot for the family car and the next lot line, people did all sorts of kitsch decorating. I remember one dwelling that had a six-foot-tall faux light house that had channel marker lights affixed to it glowing green and red and a fountain at its base. Some very comfy chairs surrounded this and there was a grill off to the side. Everyone had their own little piece of heaven facing those alleys.
At least one family on Forest has created their own heaven. When you head down Forest you come upon a wonderfully well-tended garden. Throughout the summer the garden is vibrant filled with a veritable rainbow of different colored flowers. Clearly the owners have curated this garden with love and care. The mere existence of this garden makes Forest a more welcoming place for everyone who lives on that block. This is the kind of thing I used to love as a teen as I tooled up and down those alleys of Ocean City.
The next photo was of a runner. At seven a.m. when I start my walks there are very few people out. The dearth of people on the sidewalks and roads during the early hours of the day is why I go out then. I am older. I have health concerns. Me, I don’t want to be dodging people who believe that Covid-19 is a hoax and that masks are for pussys. Most of the folks I see clearly show an awareness to social distance. Most have a mask that they pull up if for some reason they have to draw closer than six fees to another person. Such dedication to exercise and to keeping others safe makes me feel a camaraderie with these seven o’clock runners and joggers and cliques of walkers.
What comes next is a photo of a legal clinic sign. Al Storrs and I went to law school together. He was a tall gregarious black man with a grin that just wouldn’t quit. Throughout our time at law school we got along. We hung out. We drank beers together and went to parties. Al’s interest was tax, he was drawn to it with great fascination. Me, always the uber liberal, I took all the constitutional law I could. We were following different paths but we found a friendship. I remember nights drinking at parties with Al and just having a great time talking about everything and anything,
The fact that the clinic exists means that Al died way too young. I think about Al and how unfair life can be taking a person so vibrant from life so early. I always grow a bit melancholy as I pass this sign. Life is too short; we get too few sunsets. We don’t get enough time just shooting the breeze and drinking some decent beers.
The next three photos are of the north end of Michigan State University’s north end of campus. The first is a monument pre-1955 that references Michigan State College. (It looks like a monument that was created in the 1930s as part of a WPA project.) The other two are an exterior shot of Beaumont Tower and of a stained-glass window in the tower.
That monument at the Abbot entrance to the campus is one of the first things I remember about Michigan. In early summer 1968 maybe, could have been a year or two either way, we were travelling to Whitehall to visit the Jorgensens. These were long term friends of my father. As we rode through East Lansing, it was sunset/twilight. Grand River Avenue was dense with trees, I believe the median was filled with Elm trees. From the Union to the point where Michigan Avenues splits off the trees, the light, the ivy and the bricks made Michigan State look like everything a university should be, especially with Beaumont Tower in the distance. My exposure to that summer scene of MSU’s oldest buildings virtually cemented my attendance at the school. 
When I lived on campus, more particularly when I lived in Mayo Hall the chiming of the hours by Beaumont Tower marked my day’s progression. When I was a student I would often walk past Beaumont as I headed to the river. Being a child of the ocean, I needed water to still my mind. I needed to feel the flow of life the Red Cedar captured. So many days in sun, snow, ice and heat I would cross the bridges by the library or by the Administration Building and I would just stop and watch the water. Ripples and cataracts, trees swaying and birds singing, these can bring peace to a troubled soul no matter what the trouble is.
The turtles statue reminds me of the phrase my oldest son is fond of, “It is turtles, all the way down”. Turtles all the way down is a way of stating the epistemological problem of infinite regress. The question, “You say that the world rests on a turtle? What does that turtle stand on?” The answer, “Another turtle and then another turtle. It is turtles, all the way down.” Stated most simply If you claim a fact exists based on the existence of another fact, then you have to prove the other fact, and then the fact that is the second fact is based on ad infinitum. Yeah that is what I experience on my daily walk.Yeah that is what I experience on my daily walk.
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