Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

You Only Live Twice

Long time readers and old Dr. Phil friends know of my love for Chicago stuffed pizza -- accept no substitutes.

The joy of finding out about Joe Chicago's Pizza in Grand Rapids. The annoyance of learning how long they'd been open And I Didn't Know! The heartbreak of seeing them going out of business.

Twice.

Then There Was A Break And The Light Descended From Heaven

Sundays the Grand Rapids Press has been delivered with a copy of the Ottawa County Advance, a local news and advertising rag. Except recently they've been doing a good job of covering actual news in Allendale and environs. No doubt this is a result of of The Press cutting back to home delivery only three days a week and really sucking at doing local rural news.

Anyway, the latest Advance on Sunday had a article about a new pizza place on 28th Street in Grandville -- and it serves Chicago stuffed pizza.

Oh?

Mrs. Dr. Phil did a quick check for websites and other info. Seems they started some weeks ago. And it sounds like they got the equipment and the recipe from Joe Chicago's.

Okay!

Now we had a plan to get us some real pizza for the weekend.

Friday

Chicago 7 Pizzeria is at 3012 - 28th St. SW, Grandville, MI 49418 -- (616) 538-7777. Just east of Ivanrest, between the car dealer and Belle Tire. It takes 40-45 minutes to bake a real pizza, so I used the handsfree -- Speed Dial #44 (since Joe Chicago's was just off 44th Street and that Speed Dial slot was now free) -- and called from US-131 Exit 55 M-222 Martin. About where I called for Joe Chicago's. Looped around M-6 to I-196 to stay off the streets and cut down on the traffic lights, then east on 28th Street.

Pizza just boxed up when I got in.

The place isn't huge, but there was a nice couple of tables filled with families. I told them that I'd seen the article in the Advance -- the woman at the counter seemed to like that. When I asked if they had bought the equipment from Joe Chicago's, I was told they WERE Joe Chicago's, just moved. This bodes well. From the banter with the customers, it's clear some of the regulars made the move, too. This bodes even better.

Oh, and the pizza? Chicago stuffed deep dish, large 12", sausage, mushrooms, black olives and roasted red peppers. And that sauce. $22.99 -- $24.37 with tax.

Mmmmmmm. Yummmmm.

It's good to be back. Sorry, Jim, we might've had pizza for reals. And Cole? Next year in Grandville!

Dr. Phil

I Did Not Know This

NMRA -- the National Model Railroad Association -- is holding its 77th National Convention here in downtown Grand Rapids MI Right Now! It's been going on all week, 29 July - 4 August 2012.

Why did I not know about this? Well, I haven't done any active model railroading in years, though I occasionally buy some N-scale Canadian Pacific and Canadian National rolling stock. Haven't been in Ryder's or other local hobby shops in years. Been a long time since I bought an issue of Model Railroader, never was a member of the NMRA and Bob Scherzer retired from the Physics Dept. at WMU, so my local connection is gone.

And then there's the damned Grand Rapids Press. Ever since they went to three days a week home delivery, they've gotten bad about keeping up with things. The article on their daily email feed about the event showed up today, with only a day and a half left.

Sigh. Not that I had time this week to go. But it would have been fun.



Dr. Phil

A Friday Night Out

It's rather unusual for us to go out on a Friday night. Working at two different universities in two different cities, coordination becomes complicated. But one must make allowances for some things. After dropping Mrs. Dr. Phil off at GVSU's Allendale campus in the morning, we met up again at the downtown Grand Rapids campus. I picked up a pair of Jimmy John's sandwiches along the way -- the food service closes up early on a Friday -- and we had a pleasant supper sitting in the sort of indoors/outdoors street cafe commons area. Palm trees (!) and red London telephone boxes... and South Park on the telly a number of students were watching. (grin)

The light snow which had fallen might as well have been rain, as it was still 39°F. Then a long drive across the bridge and glacial progress all to go one mile to the parking structure by DeVos Auditorium. GVSU's President's Ball and the Boat Show seemed to be going on at the same time...

The Grand Rapids Symphony in Concert
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Friday 17 February 2012, 7pm, DeVos Performance Hall, Grand Rapids MI
Loge Left, Row D, Seats 10-11, 2×$67 (Sold Out)

The 200-some musicians, choral and youth chorus members, plus our featured soloist voices, take a well deserved bow afterwards.

It was Friday 16 October 2009 when we saw the first installment of the LOTR trilogy with live symphonic and choral accompaniment (DW). A year later for the second act. And now, the war itself and the denouement of Mister One-Ring-To-Rule-Them-All.

Of course by now we've seen all the movies, including The Return of the King (19 December 2003) many times. Alas, this is the theatrical length version and not the Extended Editions, though, really, the orchestra has over two hours of music to play over nearly four hours including the intermission, so let's not feel bad about this.

Whether it was because we were so much closer to both speakers and orchestra, it was good they had the subtitles on, because the full on score overwhelmed some of the dialogue at times -- but this is not a complaint. Howard Shore's score is lovely. In particular, the violin solo theme for Rohan, introduced in The Two Towers, whether alone or against the orchestra, was gorgeously played by the GR Symphony's concertmistress. And the flutist on the penny whistle brought her themes high above the fray as well.

One of my favorite scenes, oddly enough, is the lighting of the beacons. And I couldn't be happier with the result.

Mezzo Soprano Kaitlyn Lusk has been touring with both the concert and film/symphony versions of the LOTR since she was 14 and her singing fits the moods of the film so well. She even belts out a pretty convincing Annie Lennox during the credits.

I am so pleased that I have been able to see all three movies with full symphony and chorus. Grand Rapids is one of the few cities in the world which have been given permission to do this, bringing in the soloist and conductor who has done most of these productions. Not to say that the movie score on the DVD is in any way shabby, but this was special.

Sigh.

The Hobbit with or without full symphony anyone? (grin)

Dr. Phil

Oh Yum

Needed to grab a bite to eat after picking up Mrs. Dr. Phil at work. So we bopped over to Mugshots right in Allendale for a second visit. Gotta love a place that features fried local asparagus. And look on the specials board -- last time we talked to the owner of doing a burger sampler. And there it is. Okay, let's guild the lily and try their onion rings this time.

You know how I judge an onion ring? It needs a great breading and not too much grease hanging around. But the onions themselves have to still be rings, tasty, but able to bite through. Nothing I hate more than trying to bite an onion ring and having the whole damned thing come out of the breading -- or those fake onion rings made with pulverized onions. Had no complaints with these.

Owner stopped by again. They're about to come out with their fall menu. We'll be back.

Benjamin Franklin - Leader Extraordinaire - A Constitution Day Event

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, 7pm

Historian Gleaves Whitney of the GVSU Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies gave a talk on that extraordinary British American patriot, Ben Franklin:

America was fortunate that Ben Franklin was one of its founders. Although his origins were humble, ambition and talent carried him far in both the U.S. and Europe. No other middle-class human being has risen to such an array of leadership positions. Franklin led our nation as a best-selling author, businessman, scientist, inventor, educator, philanthropist, statesman, spy, and more. In this talk, we will explore all the ways Franklin helped found our nation -- and continues to inspire us today.

Franklin was a world-famous delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and he helped make sure the new frame of government was ratified in the 13 states.

Franklin is such a personal hero of mine. We might have to pop in the DVD of 1776 pretty soon. (grin)

To hear the list of his successes (and failures) is pretty damned impressive. At question time, I asked something along the lines of: "As a rich British entrepreneur, Franklin clearly understood the English money system. But then he came up with the logical and rational decimal coin system for America, which inspired the French revolutionaries to invent the metric system. Could you comment." And Gleaves said that I had pretty much said it all -- which the audience loved. And then he made a few more comments, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping to get some analysis on. (grin) Talking about Franklin's role in the decimal coin system and the metric system is something I do with my introductory classes every year -- I guess I hoped to gain a new story. (double-grin)

Other than a GVSU student reporter, we were practically the youngest people there. Despite the sponsorship with GVSU, I was disappointed that we didn't see the students show up as they do at Loosemore Auditorium just a couple of blocks away. Come on, guys, if you can make it as far as the Burger King, you could go two more blocks to the Ford Museum. For them, a missed opportunity -- for us, a lovely hour.

Dr. Phil

Friday 17 February 2012, 7pm, DeVos Performance Hall, Grand Rapids MI

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them.
One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.

The Grand Rapids Symphony is going to do a live orchestra performance to the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Yes, this is the continuation of the 2009 concert of the glorious The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings and the 2010 concert of the haunting The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

The battle for Tolkien's Middle Earth ignites in this epic cinematic masterpiece and final installment of the timeless trilogy! Watch the complete film, projected in HD on a huge screen above the orchestra, as more than 200 musicians perform the lush and mystical score.

While the other two movies were shown in October and with two shows, this one is one show in February. Not sure when tickets go on sale for non-series purchases, "Single tickets on sale later this summer." But I swear if the weather is bad we'll get a downtown hotel room. (grin) If anyone is interested in attending with me -- let me know.

(And I bet you thought I was going to talk about Harry Potter, didn't you?) (palantir-grin)

Dr. Phil

Well, Finally, I Suppose

$100 million gift supports new WMU medical school

March 22, 2011

KALAMAZOO--A $100 million cash gift, the largest ever made to a Michigan college or university, will be used to give birth to a private medical school at a public institution--Western Michigan University.

Announced today by WMU President John M. Dunn, the anonymous gift is among the 10 largest cash gifts ever made to an American public university and the 15th largest in the history of American higher education. The gift will serve as the foundation funding for a school of medicine that WMU is developing in partnership with Kalamazoo's two major hospitals, Borgess Health and Bronson Healthcare.

You'd think that in this economy, this state budget crisis and this university's budget, that this would be a terrible time to start a new medical school in West Michigan. Especially since last fall Michigan State's School of Human Medicine just moved from East Lansing MI to the Medical Mile on the hill in Grand Rapids. But really, this was inevitable.

Even before we moved down to West Michigan in 1991, PBS had started airing their multi-year NOVA study on Harvard Medical School's New Pathways. Not only was it a fascinating topic in its own right, it gave me some perspective about the pre-med students that pass through my Physics classes. And somewhere in learning about the Grand Rapids area, I found out about the plethora of top flight hospitals in both Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo -- and the large numbers of med students who come through here in their rotations -- and the lack of a local medical school. Having a medical school on this end of the state has made sense for a long time. Having two, one in Grand Rapids and one in Kalamazoo, might strike some as overkill, but I can see the Kalamazoo hospitals wanting to get in on the action. Remember, a lot of med school faculty are on staff in teaching hospitals. In town is not the same as out of town. (grin)

So I know that there are a lot of faculty probably upset with this, figuring that a new med school is going to be a drain on resources. But the claim from the start has been that Western has needed to privately fund this new medical school and not try to draw on dwindling state resources. A huge $100 million gift goes a long way towards making certain that private funding. The cynical might think that having a medical school at WMU will insulate the university from any discussion by the state to put Western on the short list if they feel they have to cut one of the state universities. Of course, the discussion about a medical school predates the current state government and budget slicing. (grin)

A school of medicine in Kalamazoo has been under discussion and in the planning stage since late 2007. In 2009, WMU received an anonymous $1.8 million gift that was characterized as "seed money" to allow the University and its community partners to begin development of the school.

Early in 2010, WMU filed a letter of intent and was awarded applicant status with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the group that accredits medical schools in the United States and Canada. Earlier this year, following a yearlong national search, the University announced the selection of Jenson as founding dean of the school. Committees with communitywide representation have been formed to tackle the development of curriculum, facilities, finances and communication.

The WMU School of Medicine will open in fall 2013 or fall 2014. For more information, visit wmich.edu/medicine.

So... Welcome to the WMU School of Medicine in Kalamazoo.

Save Us From P.R. Events

Of course there have been hints that this announcement was coming. Friday I got an email that had a Western email address, but was clearly not put together using any sort of standard university framework. Instead it talked about Operation:Historic Moment and Witnessing History -- and featured hyperlinks in dark blue against a black background? Spam fail?

I mean, what was I supposed to think, when one is faced with a graphic which reads WWW . OperationHistoricMoment . COM and the link looks like:

www-dot-swiftpage2-dot-com/SpeClicks.aspx?X=2U0MAA4EHZW31JNK01BTWM

This is classic spammer behavior -- bait-and-switch websites. And of course the university's email spam system lets tons of bad emails through, so it's not like I don't know what a suspicious looking email with a university email address looks like. (evil grin)

Monday, there was an email through more normal channels. And at this point I knew the Medical School was on, because what else would be considered so historic from the administration's point of view?

Dr. Phil

No Apologies Here

As I mentioned the other day, one of the most impressive Super Bowl ads was the two-minute Chrysler 200 ad "Imported From Detroit". It didn't pull punches and it didn't apologize for being from Detroit. If anything, it suggested that being forged in Detroit is a positive, not a negative.



The more I think about it, the more I like this ad. Except for five years in White Plains NY outside New York City and three years of high school in Greensboro NC, I've spent my whole life along the Great Lakes. And at this point, over half my life has been spent in Michigan. Up and down economies, progress and Rust Belt. And a lot of people, including a lot of movers and shakers from the East and Left Coasts, are ready to write off Detroit and Michigan. Hell, Newsweek declared Grand Rapids to be a dying city -- Number 10 on their list of ten. This was a shock to West Michigan, which has sort of basked in the knowledge that things are much brighter over here than in Detroit. GR Mayor Heartwell responded with a letter to Newsweek saying that they didn't know what they were talking about.

And the Chrysler 200 ad did about the same thing.

How Does One Roll With The Punches?

Monday night FOX-TV premiered their next big new cop show, The Chicago Code. The hook is that it is about a war between a bright new police superintendent and a corrupt alderman. What? A Chicago show about crime, murder, corruption and rigged city bids? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. I'm sure Chicagoans might feel the same way that Detroiters do about Detroit 1-8-7. On the one hand, the latter surely reinforces stereotypes about Detroit as the Murder Capital and a decaying city. On the other hand, there's Hamtramck! And you can see the love some of the characters have for the old city. After all, New York has survived all the countless murders of several incarnations of Law & Order plus CSI: New York, Philadelphia has survived Cold Case and, perhaps even more germane, Baltimore survived the stellar Homicide: Life on the Streets.

In other words, a little publicity is good, especially if they spell your name right.

And in that spirit, Chrysler certainly poked America on Sunday and said, "Detroit. Deal with it."

Dr. Phil

Been Remiss In Telling This Tale

The last few weeks have been quite abuzz in Grand Rapids, with the second annual ArtPrize competition. What is ArtPrize you say? Well, it's Rick DeVos' contribution to the Grand Rapids community -- a very public art show and contest with a very substantial set of prizes totaling over $450,000 voted on by the public. It is said to be the largest public art prize anywhere, which of course is the big draw for the artists. The 2009 ArtPrize took everyone by surprise, what with the interest and the numbers of people who both viewed and voted. ArtPrize 2010 turned out to be even bigger and more successful, with art and artists pulled in from all over.

No, I didn't go downtown and no I didn't vote. I've been nursing a bad back/leg and so tons of walking wasn't for me. And they've got the voting set up so that you have to register onsite, so you have to actually BE there at least once to vote. This is not American Idol where you can vote 10 times a day nonsense.

And The Winner Is...

Grand Rapids artist Chris LaPorte's 28-foot-wide pencil drawing "Cavalry, American Officers, 1921" won the ArtPrize 2010's $250,000 top prize on Thursday.

You may think you've seen this picture before -- just a black & white photograph of some Army officers. But while this began from a faded photo bought in an antique store, this huge life size pencil drawing had such detail and such work, that it brought tears to many of the viewers.

This year there was also a juried award, for those who felt that a strict popularity contest by the public might not pick the truly worthy pieces of art. I believe their top 10 only included two of the public top 10, and the jury's selections also enriched the whole conversation -- so good on them for including this in ArtPrize 2010.

And indeed, there are complaints that the top 10 nominees from the first week by the public were all large works, in the main center of downtown, and seemed to reward sentimentality and hard work over artistic creation. *** So be it. The fact is there WERE over 1700 pieces of art and there WERE over 400,000 votes cast, and for over two weeks the news was dominated by ART.

Still, I have to say that the weather has cooperated mightily, and after the surprise of the first year, the many downtown restaurants and coffee shops managed to sustain the crowds. And there have been some good suggestions about how to modify the voting to give much more visibility to all the works -- one would add a third weekend to the contest and have an initial nomination list of 100 works before the top 10 are voted on, another would break the downtown into several regions and have nominees from each area. There is no question in my mind that there will be an ArtPrize 2011 and it will be amazing, too.

Apology

I definitely feel bad about not ever getting around to posting about ArtPrize 2009 -- what with a giant table and chairs erected atop the Blue Bridge downtown and a giant foam sculpture of Nessie in the Grand River (and now to be displayed at the John Ball Park Zoo). And this posting is too late to do any good attracting anyone to the art or the voting this year. But I shall endeavor to do better. And with two successful years under its belt, ArtPrize is not going to be a one-hit wonder.

Art. In Grand Rapids, Michigan. With thousands of entries and hundreds of thousands of viewers. Who'd've thunk it?

Dr. Phil

*** - This would sort of preclude a friend of ours, who created a metal tree sculpture on display outside of the Grand Rapids Public Library, from having any kind of "real chance" at winning ArtPrize 2010. If I were running things, I'd have some additional prize pools for some of the smaller collections away from the big central venues and large works.

A Beautiful Weekend For Sliding Down The Streets

After yesterdays post about Day 1 of the 500 foot waterslide down Lyon Street in downtown Grand Rapids, the news reports on Monday talk of 30,000 people showed up with about 10,000 making the slide. And of course there's video, with the obligatory opening commercial and a long interview with a girl in a bikini (snort):

500 waterslide opens

Although the event was free, there was stuff for sale, including tickets to "skip the line".

Fire hoses along Lyon Street NW gushed about 20,000 gallons of water per hour, ACP Entertainment General Manager Ryan Strayhorn said, although all of the water was recycled, thanks to Dykema Excavators.

(Rob) Bliss said he sold about 470 of his 500 T-shirts, priced at $10 each, as well as numerous $30 skip-the-line tickets, although he was unsure of the exact amount.

...

Bliss said that while most of the day Saturday included starting, stopping and fixing glitches, Sunday was practically seamless.

"Today was how it was supposed to be all weekend. Sunday was what I had been envisioning since I started on this project. (Saturday early afternoon) was very scary, very painful, very difficult. I thought there was the possibility that we'd have to cancel the event," Bliss said.

Overall, Bliss said that it was "absolutely" a successful weekend.

"I think that may be have been the coolest thing I've ever done," he said.

Kind of fun to have something silly like this happen in the dog days of August on a beautiful summer weekend. (grin) And it's probably better than the sliders slid at a modest 10 mph or so, instead of the 40-60 mph which had been predicted. (duh)

Dr. Phil

Updated numbers: 8-26-2010 Th

The Usual Apology

It's that time of the semester -- Grade-a-thon -- as we finish up the rushed 7½ weeks of the Summer-II Session here at Western Michigan University. My PHYS-2070 University Physics II class, Electricity & Magnetism, is now done. The Final Exam was Friday. We are so ahead of the usual curve here. Admittedly, I have just 41 students instead of twice that many, but except for one double-quiz and the Final which are being done by my grader, and the Science Literacy book reports which I am doing now, I've got all the other grades, re-grades, corrections and turned in late scatter-gather quizzes, graded and recorded in the spreadsheet. That has got to be a record for me. (grin)

I've even done 17 of 40 papers. Time for a nap, before my eyes close for me.

Driving Hazards

But that's not what this post is about. Instead, I think it was Tuesday's drive in, about 9:52am EDT, as I was heading south out of Grand Rapids on US-131, heading up the hill past the exit for 84th Street, I saw something slithering across both lanes of the highway. Minivan ahead of me half drove onto the paved right shoulder, but I was going to have to move over a bit further -- and of course I was on the brakes -- to avoid running over...?

A spinning ladder. A two-section aluminum extendable ladder, which had spun on the pavement and now came to rest across all of the left-hand southbound lane and most of the right-hand. Just about perfectly perpendicular to the flow of traffic. There was plenty of time, relatively speaking to dump a lot of my speed before hitting the rubble strips on the right shoulder. I had no intention of running over an aluminum ladder at 70 mph and I also didn't want to hit the shoulder, paved though it might be, at 70 mph given that it was likely to have stones and other trash.

So no problem. Hazard avoided. Though there was plenty of southbound traffic behind me, and ladders don't sprout legs and walk themselves out of the way, so I hoped that those behind me could see that two vehicles had just dove onto the shoulder to avoid something.

Ah, But The Idiots

Of course as I'm passing the ladder on the right at 40-50 mph, there's some import SUV crossover clattering over the ladder in the left hand lane at 70+ mph. Nailed it good, so it just made a lot of noise, but didn't spin out to whack me or anything. Near as I can tell, no attempt to slow down or move to the right or left. Hmm, pay attention to one's driving much? I don't know if the driver was actually on the phone or whether that's just wishful/evil thinking from several days out on my part. (grin)

In that driver's defense, though, I did notice that further up the hill on the left-hand shoulder was a blue pickup truck -- and it was starting to back up. One would suspect that he's the one who lost the ladder. And he is the one I wish to vent my ire on.

See -- I didn't see any sign on the ladder that it had a red flag tied to either end. Or at least not a big one or a very visible one, a very common complaint of mine. And this pickup truck had no ladder rack, just the usual 8-foot bed. And given that this ladder, unextended, was nearly two full lanes wide, that tells me that the damned thing was too long for that pickup truck bed, which means it was probably just tossed in the back and sticking out over the tailgate, unsecured. Which means this was an accident just waiting to happen. No doubt the guy was accelerating up the hill when friction failed to keep the ladder in the back -- who could ever conceive of such a thing happening? (ironic grin)

I've seen a lot of this lately. Various construction and service vehicles with open backs and gear just lying around. One of my favorites was a truck carrying concrete construction forms which had these racks holding these foot-long or so spikes -- looked like multiple rocket launchers on the back. One had a slight angle on it, but one was completely level. How would you like to be behind this guy when he guns it and those spikes slide out of their slots and into your lane? Look, I understand Physics, so I'm not asking that things be hermetically sealed at all times. But Michigan roads are not smooth surfaces, and bouncing can move things. And I don't want to have to dodge your tools and I don't have time to rebuild my vehicles. 'Kay?

Likewise, I don't drive behind trucks holding trash bins or asphalt -- seen too many stones, clumps of stuff and trash fly out behind these trucks.

I tell you, folks, it's a jungle out there. Doesn't anyone ever write tickets?

Dr. Phil