President Obama came to Holland, Michigan this week. That’s right, B.O. himself caught wind of the Dutch frenzy that permeates the hamburgers in this town of non-risque nightgowns and large family portraits. Though he was a few days late for the massive whole-town world cup cheering, orange-wearing, and street boozing that didn’t happen at all but should have when the real Holland played in the finals last Sunday, he did arrive in time for my Thursday work day. Our leader with the unfortunate initials flew Air Force One into Gerald R. Ford International Airport (sorry Mr. President, this one is taken) and then took Marine One to Tulip City (what else) airport.

I’m glad the guy has gusto. We are on the map now for a new electric car battery plant that is about to break ground, and he had no problem calling out our local representative that blocked his efforts along the way but showed up for the ribbon cutting and sampling of what I’m sure were fine Michigander appetizers.

I didn’t get invited to (but was probably on the B-list for) the selective-audience event, but I was in a meeting in a room with a window when someone noticed the president’s helicopter fly overhead. With my neck pre-craned, I scrambled to the glass with my colleagues to get a look at a hunk of metal in the sky.

Everything else happened in slow motion. I lurched forward, head aimed at the clouds, shoulder and chin leading me on a trajectory to success. I can’t be sure of what happened next. A miscalculation or an interception? A stumble or a trip? Accidental or deliberate, it doesn’t matter how many times I replay it in my head. My body was suddenly careened into the chest of a co-worker, absorbed, and released. Newton and his laws took control and I bounced off said co-worker and missed my chance of seeing the underside of the vehicle that probably contained my President.

This is the end of my story about my visit with Barack Obama. A few weeks ago, I did an extra lap around a block on my way home from work because I thought I saw a tea party gathering. Why else would a crowd of people gather together? I think I’m worried that I’ve become numb to Holland. Do I forget what Thai food tastes like? Have my ears fallen into harmony with the flat ‘A’? We have none of the trendy au naturale frozen yogurt bars that are probably now out of style everywhere else, and vegetarians are eaten as appetizers. Does this bother me anymore? I’m starting to get twitchy and complacent. I need something to make this place real again.

Maybe I’ll stub my toe on the way to Wal-Mart.

On display in downtown Holland. I wonder if each sub-family picked their own color?

In Mid-May, Holland, MI hosted its event of the year: Tulip Time. I’m still recovering.  For the uninitiated, Tulip Time is a week-long festival of everything Dutch.  Everyone dons traditional costumes, complete with wooden shoes, and lines the streets while bouncing around arm-in-arm in a format known as Klompen dancing.  Klompen dancing is a high school sport in Holland, and they even have team jackets.  Had I grown up here, the jackets alone would have merited my participation.  Now that I live here, the combined sea of tulips and Dutch people keeps me looking.

The wooden shoes are just that, and each dancer wears around 8 pairs of socks to give sufficient padding as they pound the closed streets of our downtown metropolis. Thirteen hundred pairs of feet.  Thirteen hundred pairs of feet in eight pairs of socks and non-venting shoes. Thirteen hundred pairs of hot, sweaty goodness. Is their inner sock layer some sort of wick-away fabric?  Is this an opportunity to design performance clothing for niche local festivals?

Tulip Time is more than Klopmen.  It’s a trifecta that’s completed with Tulipalloza (real name), and a constant stream of high school bands and the range of fantastic uniforms that they are forced to wear.

Some people I’ve met here are adamant that they stay away from Holland during Tulip Time.  They have pride in their non-attendance.  I don’t get it.  I love Tulip Time.  This small town makes perfect sense for just this one week per year. Exposed Dutch everything plus miles of tulips that have been protected and manicured since December plus carnival food that looks like fried dough but is called an elephant ear (why?) plus Republicans!  How could you stay away during the week it all comes together?

Mid-week I sat in the outdoor seating of a restaurant downtown with some local friends and watched another round of Klompen.  One of my friends pointed out that Erik Prince’s mother was sitting right next to us in a soft pink sweater.  Remember Erik from that fun Blackwater scandal? Yes, he grew up in Holland and delivered this year’s Tulip Time keynote.

Like I said, it all comes together. Welkom back, Erik.

I was called out on my consumption orientation yesterday.  I’ve eaten and enjoyed meat my whole life, but during dinner last night I wasn’t sure and my poker face was no help.  I’m not ready to subscribe to one camp or another.  Then “it” was said: “you are a vegetarian.”  But, I’m not ready.  I want to change my affiliation for each new food encounter but society frowns on those that are indecisive or misrepresent themselves.  Why would you try to be something that you’re not?

Why? Because it’s much more interesting for the rest of us. Conflict! Intrigue! Gossip fodder! Go ahead and surpass awkward and head straight to bold.  If Holland put out a magazine that featured a group of seniors sitting smiling on a sidewalk on its cover, it might be authentic, but I probably wouldn’t read it unless the pages accidentally opened because some sort of coffee spill made it cling to the napkin I was using to wipe up the mess.  The saturated area would swell and give the paper that damp bubble that pills like a sweater when wet but feels extra crunchy when dry.

If something contradicts itself an even number of times, is it true?

Holland took the opposite route. It put out a magazine cover that screams of an urban identity and downhill skiing.  Wow! Now this was a magazine I couldn’t pass up.  I even picked it up with bare hands from the free stack near the coffee shop bathroom and paged through, vigorously looking for the place where the secret urban mountain is located.

Would the urban mountain have good hot chocolate? Tattooed people? Democrats?  Would it be a haven for the apres-ski set? Are there other half-French words I could learn there? Are there sandwiches named after movie stars?

I’ll skip ahead.  We all know that Holland didn’t deliver on the urban mountain, but kudos for the generative cover. In this era of diminishing print media ID magazine has shut down but Holland magazine was packed with enough intrigue to get me to page through.

I wonder if the urban mountain has any vegetarians?

I hurled my body down an icy chute yesterday in a day of luging that just might have made the entire state of Michigan worth it.   In order to luge, you lay down on two big blades and the flimsy hammock that connects them and flex your entire body.  To turn, you look the direction you want to go and use your calf to lean your outer blade into the curve.  In order to stop, you sit up and pick up the front of the blades, or, in my case you allow yourself to continue to hurl until you smash into a giant foam cube.

I wish foam cubes had a greater presence in life.  Awkward conversation with someone you wish you were friends with? Lean over into the giant foam cube.  In the middle of saying one of those sentences that you can’t figure out how to end so you keep adding more and more words hoping that some kind of closing magically comes out of your mouth?  Fall face first into the giant foam cube.  Giving a presentation and a booger accidentally floats out of your nose? There should be a giant foam cube for that too.

It’s a subtle sport, the luge, and Michigan should be proud to be home of only one of three such tracks in the country.  I’d like to take part in more sports that can only be done here, but I’m not sure what they are – any ideas?  What would a Michigan triathlon look like? Deer hunt, snowmobile, luge?  Each state should design its own sport.

My whole body hurts today.  I wonder if the Olympians hurt this much after their races? Speaking of hurting and Olympics, it’s that time of year again – time for me to get teary while watching the Olympic torch relay on TV.  Each runner with an emotional story – it’s like watching a hyper-condensed version of Extreme Makeover Home Edition – waterfalls.

The Olympics are in Canada and the US government has its commercials on TV in case Americans get any crazy crazy ideas about not coming back, or don’t realize that Canada is a different country.  The spots are reminders to bring a passport if you go see the games, and the website they’ve created for it is www.getyouhome.gov.  The embedded subtlety, that getting home is more important that going out and seeing the world, is on par with that of a luge turn.

Our country and Apolo’s facial hair may always stay the same, but if you’re looking for something new, let Michigan deliver you down a hill on a luge.  We have foam here.

Hello again, chin fuzz.

I’m partial to one side of the street in downtown Holland, MI.  I’ve tried the other side, but really, I have no interest in it other than looking in at the seniors eating bagged lunches at the downtown retirement home.  Brown paper lunch bags are fantastic in their own right, but I also slow my gait and people-watch the elders as they watch me.  I like the messaging that’s packed into a senior citizen.  They’ve seen everything come and many things go and, with each one you may or may not have a gold mine of experience, a fortune cookie message that you might save in your wallet or leave on the table.  I don’t know what age you have to reach to employ the Q-tip hairdo, but if it’s bold enough to tackle my straightness I will embrace the halo of white fuzz as my own.

That's it?

In the meantime, I usually walk on the non-retirement side of the street.  I counted 40 storefronts between my house and the one coffee shop that makes me feel like people live here.  Out of the 40 storefronts, eight of them are empty. For effect, I’ll repeat this fact in a different, generalized, and therefore slightly inaccurate form that highlights the economic downturn: twenty percent of the stores in downtown Holland, Michigan are empty.  The feel of a barren corridor of previously Papyrus font-laden establishments is particularly enhanced on Sunday, the day when nothing is allowed.  I went out to breakfast this morning and found myself excited as we pulled up, simply because the place was open.

My norms might be shifting and I will be the first to tell you I’m a bit delirious, but I still know a winner when I hear one.  On the radio station that used to wake me up with sub-par humor but has switched to all Christmas music, all the time as of November 1, I heard a radio contest this week where the winner was to be awarded one dozen frozen pigs in a blanket.  One dozen, frozen, pigs in a blanket – might as well throw in a whole chicken and can of hairspray.

The potential joy of the arbitrary will keep me listening to the Christmas music for another 40 days.  Pigs in a blanket can overcome pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.  Why is the unexpected refreshing?  Why does it take the unexpected to show us the obvious?  What is the most unexpected item I could put in a brown paper bag?

In fact, I saw hundreds, maybe millions.  I was in the middle of an improv everywhere stunt, except the Republican canvassers didn’t sing show tunes, or freeze in place for five minutes.   They were real, and they all wore navy blue polo shirts and planted themselves at regular intervals down the central corridor of the Holland farmers market.

For a God time call...

I knew that this was a super-conservative area of the country, but as I walk around town, I find it hard to believe that the majority of people around me can tolerate the extra ten bars of volume of Fox News. I want to reach out and touch them and ask them to tell me why, but I think they’re telling me already.  I found a flyer on the ground next to my car today. Without my glasses I live in my own happy haze, and I saw it, thought “Great! Someone wants to have a good time! Me too!”  Then I picked it up.

I’ve never lived somewhere where religion defines the community.  For instance, last night I went to a bar to watch Michigan football with a couple folks I’ve met.  I sinned right off the bat by asking if it was University of or State, but was allowed to repent and followed along with the game, cheering when other people clapped, slapping my hands and yelling out a: “here we go” approximately every 7 minutes to keep up appearances.

I’m waiting for the iPhone app: how to be a sports fan when you already feel awkward for being the new person.  Think of it – tips about match-ups, key games, things to shout at bars.  I’m not thinking the boring statistics trivia either.  None of the: “this is the fourth highest ratio of players to fans at a game in the in the Midwest in the last 11 years.”  I can listen to a semi-circle of large men wearing earmuff headsets for no apparent reason if I need data.  I’m talking good, juicy information.  Tidbits that are entirely irrelevant to the game that I can weave into sentences with strangers.  “I’m so glad Jones doesn’t like tuna. I don’t like tuna either.  Go TEAM!”

The boys in blue at the farmers market were collecting signatures for congressman Pete Hoekstra’s (R-Michigan, headquarters 25 yards from my door) bid for governor.  Now, how many of you walk faster and prepare excuses and faux-polite ‘no thank yous’ in advance of seeing any sort of person with a clip board that might ask you to sign a petition of any sort?  These people are a nuisance, right? Wrong in Michigan.  People were lined up five deep to scribble on these clipboards.  It was the most non-presidential election excitement I have ever seen. I wanted to sign just so I could be part of something and yell, “Go TEAM!”

Too bad my teams weren’t playing.  I don’t mix my politics and religion, but I have no problem mixing design with business, or art with geology.  Why is this? As designers we know the power of leveraging one discipline with another.  A large portion of American conservatives have figured out the same.  Wow!  What are the qualities of a successful pairing of disciplines / disciples?  What two groups, when joined, could really make a difference in the world, tear it down, or make us laugh?

So yes, now I live amongst the people that voted for Bush, but they’ve inspired me in a way I didn’t see possible.

In between cuts, my head gains five pounds. My hair grows fast and by some grace of genetics I have about twice as many hair follicles in the mohawk zone of my head than on the sides.  You’d never know this unless you saw baby pictures of me where said mohawk filled in before anything else decided to grow.  My parents say they used to call me Cochise, after the Apache Indian leader, but I have yet to find a picture of the actual Cochise with a mohawk.  Historically accurate or not, my head had been exploding with hair, especially in the mohawk zone, for the last month.  As of 10am this morning I had no flights to Boston booked in the near future and decided I needed to brave a visit to Illusions.  No, wait: Innovations.  Maybe it was: Ideations?

Hair-Portraits of First Ladies by Christina Christoforou, NYTimes

Red flag: I called at 10am and was able to get an appointment at noon.

Red flag ignored.

Red flag: I arrive at the salon and don’t have to wait for my stylist to finish up with someone else.

Red flag ignored.

Red flag: Stylist may or may not still be in high school.

Red flag deliberately ignored because of my own age-bias experiences – topic for another time.

Haircut commences and proceeds through the standard phases: (1) initial wash and chat, (2) comb out and realization that you have no common topics to talk about, (3) cut and dig for any question to break the awkward silence, and (4) amazingly long dry and fluff where at least the hairdryer noise fills the void of conversation.

When it was all over, I ventured a look, fully expecting that I would look weird today but after two days of growth things would fall into place.  To my surprise, I looked good! Pleased and proud of myself for making it this far, I stepped out from under the cape, through the weight I’d shed on the floor, and up to the counter to pay.  Now, I didn’t ask the cost of a cut beforehand, and would not have blinked if she told me it was anything up to $70.  I would have been pleasantly surprised at $45.  Are you ready?

Twenty-three dollars.

Go ahead and read it again.

I had to jut my chin out to hear her say it twice, and then left her with just about a 50%  tip as it just didn’t feel like I’d paid enough. The experience left me feeling good about the Midwest, but wondering who was actually innovating (the salon name was, in fact, Innovations) on the haircut experience.  I recalled a piece in a couple years old Metropolis magazine about a place called Rudy’s that I’ve always wanted to try.  Admittedly, the only reason I remember this article is that the magazine has sat in the bathroom that my sister and I used to share at my parents house for the last few years.  If we aren’t home and visiting, nobody uses that bathroom, so the reading material rarely rotates.  The well-read Metropolis and the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy hold court.

Who else is innovating on the haircut experience? How much does a haircut cost where you live? Have you ever had a haircut that wasn’t awkward?  Men, does any of this resonate with you?  I’d love to design a salon – give a holler if you want to open one.