One Lap

Date: 10/16/2013

Day: 20

Location:  Dearborn, MI

Miles Today: 138

Total Miles:  4317

The Day of No, K-Zoo, An Essay, Tomorrow

The Day of No

For the first time in almost three weeks, the Colonel has no pictures to post today.  After our very long, wet, not much fun drive yesterday, today we enjoyed lunch with a good friend and a short drive from Kalamazoo to the greater Detroit area, specifically Dearborn, Michigan; home of the Ford Motor company, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.  Much more about both of the latter tomorrow.   There was, dare it be revealed, a nap this afternoon and two pretty good baseball games to watch this evening.

The Ford campus is enormous.  There are large buildings full of engineers beavering away.  The Ford test track is adjacent to the Museum complex and one actually sees cars with Velcro attached rubber snoods covering their exteriors.  All very mysterious.  If the Colonel had a vote, cars like that would be driven around the area just to occasion comment.  Perhaps they are. 

K-Zoo

The Colonel suspects that referring to the community of Kalamazoo, Michigan as K-Zoo is as outre as calling the cool, grey, city of love, Frisco, but there it is.  This is an interesting Midwestern city to visit.  The population is about 75,000, the adjacent area has about 325,000 people in it.  That makes it a big enough place to have significant industry and cultural resources and big city social problems as well.  The most remarkable thing about this place, so far as the Colonel knows, is the Kalamazoo Promise.

Every resident graduate of the Kalamazoo Public Schools is provided with a scholarship for up to 100% of tuition and mandatory fee costs for four years at any public university or community college in Michigan.  To receive the minimum 65% benefit, students must have lived within the Kalamazoo School District, attended public high school there for four years, and graduated.  To receive a full scholarship, students must have attended Kalamazoo public schools since kindergarten, the amount of the scholarship prorated according to the numbers of years spend in city schools.  The program, which started with the class of 2006, is funded by an anonymous group of very public spirited Kalamazoo-esians.  This is reason enough for many people to move to or stay in the city.

What a great idea!  I wonder how much it would cost to do this in Oakland?

An Essay on Women

Is delayed.  How much trouble to get into proves to be a difficult calculation.

Tomorrow

Job one tomorrow is the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.  Mr. Ford said of it:

"I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used.... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition."

Since there is a limit to the amount of time one can spend in any museum, no matter how interesting, there should also be time for a visit to the city of Detroit as well.

Many pictures are promised.

Wellington Boot, Col.