sufjan stevens

thanks to the eclecticly well-versed Dave Lilley, i give you Sufjan Stevens, who has been helping me reconnect with my native Michigan. from a distance. if you do nothing else with Sufi, go here and click "Paradise," up in the Upper Peninsula towards the east. and Sault Saint Marie, of course, which i have the privelege of knowing the correct pronunciation for ("Soo Saint Marie").

i'm enjoying sufi on a two day break between trips. First STEP is done, which is a pity because the middle schoolers are much more, if not innocent, at least ready to engage in a hearty stretch of goofy childlikeness, than high schoolers. tomorrow we leave for a ten-day program in conjunction with Upward Bound, a program for local high schoolers who want to be the first in their family to get a college education. i'll be bouncing up to Algonquin Provincial Park in lovely Canada with the UB graduates for a canoe trip. which is kind of a pity because i have new waterproofallleathersh*tkickingrockthumpingmudslogginghiking boots and a new hiy-uge gynormouse 5300 in3 uber-backpack into which i could no doubt load everything along with both the kitchech and bathroom sinks. but not a new paddle or sunglasses. o well. i guess that just means i'll have to keep on hiking after STEP. :)

in other news, we picked up four freezers' full of ice cream at the food bank for only 17 cents a pound. so while we don't have any real food in the house outside of mac n' cheese and eggs, our dietary needs are met by vanilla/crunch bar ice cream bars, popsicles and pints of Perry's Cookie Dough. last night we went and played in the waterfall at Wiscoy--the water was low enough to pile into the little cave behind the falls (more of a "nook" than a cave) where we bemoaned the lack of beautiful women and then looked at each other in horror, recalling all the anguished conversations of the past several weeks, and determined right then and there to not kiss women until we were ready to marry them. sometimes it royally sucks to be a guy. we firmly banished womanliness from our minds by psyching ourselves up to do stupid things, like exploring further up into more dangerous waterfall sections as darkness fell. we urged each other on, shouting ourselves hoarse over the roar of the waterfall with little bits of manly wisdom such as, "because it's there!" and do you know how we got maps? because men went to the edge of the maps they had and walked off!"

at least that's how they did it in the old days. now they use satellites from a safe and cold distance. bah and humbug.

have fun exploring the infinite abyss!