We are on what has become an annual sojourn to an old stomping ground, namely the Moo-U campus in the city of East Lansing. (We both went to school here but didn’t know each other then. It’s a huuuuuge university!) I won’t post the first photooo I took in the area today because it is of my BFF’s childhood home, which now belongs to someone else. I have many wonderful memories of that beautiful house and The Botanist’s garden behind it. The second-to-last time I was there was March 2012 and The Comm had recently died and The Botanist was a few weeks away from death (as it turned out). It was HOT that March and the asparagus crop was way early. I always like to think the Asparagus God made The Botanist’s crop come up early so The Botanist would be able to see a bit of harvest from his garden before he moved on into the inevitable.

I used to know exactly where Sam’s house was but nowadays, after so many years, I struggle. Which side of the road is it on? How close is it to the freeway? In the end, we happened to get off the freeway at Holt Road but, although we were looking for the house, we managed to get all the way to Hagadorn Road without finding it and had to backtrack. I texted a photooo to BFF but somehow I can’t post it here. Despite the good times I had there, it’s part of her story, not mine, and the house somehow doesn’t exude the same welcoming aura as it used to. I mean, closed curtains? I don’t think so.

But my own story goes on and we arrived too early to set up for the Quiet Water Symposium or check into our hotel, and we were kind of weary and the GG said, “Let’s get a beer.” So we ended up at Dagwood’s, which we both remember going to at least occasionally back in the day and got a cab (me) and a beer (him). Very boisterous crowd for a Friday mid-afternoon but friendly. I thought that the name way back then was something like “Mac’s” though. Go figger.

After that, we were able to get into the symposium venue and here is the Frog Hopper next to our space as we unloaded our stuff and began to set up.

We were both feeling pretty ragged around the edges by that time and were glad to check into our our hotel. And here’s the view from the hotel, which is right smack dab in the middle of downtown East Lansing. Certainly a fancier place than any of my living spaces here back in the day, not that I have come up in the world all that much since then.

I washed my face (!), regrouped my clothing a bit and set off for a walk. I headed down to my old apartment complex by the Red Cedar River and tried to re-create my walk to the music building. Last year I was off by a few streets but this year I nailed it! So here is the door I walked through a gazillion times during my sojourn on this campus. P.S. it was a longer walk than I remember. Somehow I think it was that walk that turned me into one of those nuts who walks everywhere…

After that, I had one more little campus “mission”, which was Mary Mayo, the dorm that The Comm and Radical Betty lived in. The music building is in the same area as that dorm and I took a picture of it last year when we were here but I still had to use google maps to find *exactly* where it was. What the heck did we ever do without google maps? I waited for the girls in the photooo to pass me. They were gabbling away about somebody’s mom doing something that was reaaalllly weird and I was annoyed at them for a split second but then I realized that when I walked this campus, I’m sure I was having a similar conversation with my friends. And *then* I imagined The Comm and Radical Betty having a similar conversation (except that The Comm’s mother, my grandmother Emily, was dead and my grandfather was busy at his career and as indulgent as he could afford to be). But you probably get the point. I felt like a time traveler.

Back at the hotel after that little jaunt and then dinner at Beggar’s Banquet as per usual, or as usual as it gets. Last year, we took our niece Chelsea out to eat there. We were missing her tonight but also celebrating her success as an MSU graduate and employed teacher.

It’s only eight-something but it’s an early day tomorrow so g’night and let the Stones alone.

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