Back in Ann Arbor

Well, back in Ann Arbor for the Labor Day weekend. No knock against Blacksburg, but one very severe crimp on my style is the lack of a decent bookstore in town. There is a Barnes and Nobles, but its a Barnes and Nobles. They do have a Books a Million, hadn't gone in yet but it doesn't really get my heart racing.

First thing after I got into town was to go to Borders, not so much to buys books, I can get that on Amazon andPowells, but to be around mounds of books and to revel in the atomosphere. That is one thing Barnes and Nobles never got right. Borders did for a while, until they started to lose money. The ethos in the bookstore is often more important than the books themselves. The kind of people in there, the dawdlers, the vicarious readers, the book sniffers, the brownian motion browsers, the flutterby butterflies, and the time killers are a determining factor. The type sof books, the relative chaos of the store itself, the cloggedness of its aisles, the relative sqeekiness of the floorboards, and the level of disgust of the carpeting, all contribute to the desirability of the book shopping experience.

Even though the weather is still stinking hot here, the smell of fall is ever so slightly impinging on the heat and the humidity. You can distinctly hear the excitement over the football season. The energy is palpable. Here in Michigan the sacrificial lamb for the home opener is Appalachian State of North Carolina. A Division I-AA powerhouse. I shared a ride from the airport to home with an Appalachian State fan. A self professed redneck, this fellow and I traded tales through the half hour ride. Somehow it came out that he was staying at a hotel close to the Detroit Wayne County Airport. Why was he heading for Ann Arbor on a Friday afternoon, some of his redneck buddies were at a campus bar in Ann Arbor waiting for him to come and get drunk with them.

I couldn't help but think of him and his unseen buddies today as Apalachian State Mountaineers of Boone North Carolina upset the Big 10 powerhouse, formerly pretender to the national championship at the Big House with six seconds to go. God love the Davids of the world, the Goliaths need the humility lessons.