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I128 The ichian Dily -WdedyNvm er 8 20
Thankless for a Florida Thanksgiving
or as long as I can remem- boarded a plane for Tampa Bay,
ber, my family celebrated Fla. That's right: we were heading
Thanksgiving in the Mid- south.
west.
It was tradition to spend a cozy
afternoon stuffing ourselves with
food, catching up with relatives
and watching the Lions lose.
Sure, the cast of family mem-
bers would change. Last year, for
example, my long-lost great uncle,
an itinerant truck driver and ex-
convict whom no one had heard
from for 15 years, decided to make
a guest appearance. (He said he
spent his days off in the back of his
truck doing crossword puzzles.
Later that day, he also exhorted
me to try a glass of rum and coke.
My mom said no.)
While family members would
come and go, the location was pre-
determined, implied. Without fail,
our family would gather in either
Michigan or Ohio on that fourth
Thursday in November. It was tra-
dition.
This year, though, the revered
tradition was shattered. At 8:50
Tuesday morning; I reluctantly
BUSINESS
From Page 8B
but simply running a business well.
Lelcaj opened up her cafe in late
June - an unfortunate start time
for anyone familiar with the stu-
dent flight that occurs after spring
term. (She had heard about this
wondrous thing called the art fair.)
"It was a rough summer, but now
I know what to expect next sum-
mer," she said. Her goal is to stick
it out until North Quad opens in
2009. In the meantime, she said
succeeding with an eatery like hers
in an area like this one depends on
being able to adapt to the changing
customer base.
"I feed all the theater kids - I
CAPS
From Page 10B
least likely groups to seek help for
depression or mental illness. But
students who reported growing
up "poor, (with) not enough to get
by" reported higher stigmas about
depression and mental illness than
From the outset, the idea of
spending Thanksgiving in Florida
was repulsive to me. It was her-
esy. How could I spend the holi-
day somewhere warm? It seemed
almost as absurd as a hot Christ-
mas day. When I think of Thanks-
giving, the words cold, football,
family and eating come to mind,
and all are equally important for
a successful holiday. If one's miss-
ing, it doesn't work.
But I knew I had to suck it up.
The trip was an all-expenses-paid
celebration for my grandfather's
80th birthday. He had proposed
the idea, and it was our job to
acquiesce. The way I saw it, to
complain was to solidify my sta-
tus as the single most ungrateful
person in the country. And I didn't
want that title.
When we finally got to Longboat
Key, an island off the western coast
of Florida, I felt displaced. Every-
thing was different. The laid-back
atmosphere induced feelings of
love them," Lelcaj said of the stu-
dents that live in the North o Huron
Street neighborhood. But she said
that she'll have to watch and adapt
her menu as they and her other cus-
tomers graduate.
Retailers have to adapt too. Busi-
nesses like Bivouac and Downtown
Home & Garden have stayed put
because they've changed over the
years. Bivouac has always been an
outdoors outfitter, but has diver-
sified its inventory of tents and
camping gear with Kiehl's beauty
products and high-end denim to
reach the young women's mar-
ket here, while Downtown Home
& Garden now sells items like
imported dishes from Poland and
Zingerman's baked goods although
it was once best known for being
uneasiness within me. I observed
older men with slicked-back hair
and sleek Oakley sunglasses bran-
dishing tennis rackets like they
were knights about to engage in
combat. For them, this was life:
An endless cycle of tennis matches
Tradition means
the most when it's
taken away.
against Don, the retired business
mogul who lives down the beach.
It didn't seem right - at least not
in November.
Not even the picturesque Gulf of
Mexico could relieve the inner tur-
moil I felt during the trip. I often
tried to lose myself in the water's.
shimmering depths but had little
success. It didn't feel right to be
by the ocean in November. I spent
my time on the beach staring off
into the horizon, watching in awe
as water and sky imperceptibly
a feed-store you could drive your
truck into.
"Just in general I don't think
businesses in general promote cor-
rectly (here), try and reach the kids
- that's what we're trying to do
differently," Moeller said. Besides
considering what Motivation's
customers want (the shop is try-
ing to expand its women's cloth-
ing section so that one side will be
completely women's apparel), it's
associated itself with and arranged
in-store signing with popular art-
ists like Lupe Fiasco and Trey
Songz, both recently on campus.
Vocalist Matthew Santos - who
sung the hook on Fiasco's "Super-
star" - is up next, and Moeller says
they're trying to snag Mos.Def after
he performs at Hill Auditorium in
became one.
Celebrating Thanksgiving din-
ner in a restaurant also didn't help
me cope with the differences. The
dinner was delicious, but it wasn't
the same as eating in a snug liv-
ing room. I'm used to our family
packed together elbow to elbow
at a wooden table, which would
undoubtedly be covered by atable-
cloth aadorned with turkey graph-
ics. Literally and figuratively, our
family is closer in the Midwest.
And of course eating in a res-
taurant also means no homemade
cooking. There's no sweet smells of
roasting turkey or apple pie. There
are no opportunities to bond in the
kitchen with family as the meal is
collectively prepared.
Although I tried, I couldn't
comprehend this massive depar-
ture from our traditional family
gathering. It was too different, a
change of plans that was wholly
disorienting. I kept grasping for
a sense of the familiar that was
absent. I needed to ground myself
in something that wasn't there. I
wanted to relive Thanksgiving as
January.
A lot of people are worried about
the state of the Great Lakes State.
How many of the layoffs in the
Detroit area are going to affect us?
People moving out of metropolitan
Detroit and out of the state to find
jobs only means that they will no
longer be coming to Ann Arbor to
go shopping or to the theater or to
have a nice dinner. And even if they
do stay in Michigan, those who are
financially strapped will be able to
afford those nice dinners a lot less
- who knows what that will say for
Main Street.
But there are ways to start at the
foundation and make sure the busi-
ness environment stays conducive
to good business, ignoring, for the
moment, any outside factors. The
Maybe there should be. Poverty
can create stress and low social
support and, as Eisenberg's stud-
ies have found, strongly correlates
with higher reported levels of men-
tal illness. So what can the Univer-
sity do to help these students? Can
posters, discreet brochures and
events to promote awareness really
destigmatize a disease that comes
with so much baggage in so many
I had always known it. I wanted to
bridge past and present. I wanted
tradition back.
Tradition is something that's
both universal and intensely per-
sonal. We all have our traditions,
but they mean different things
to each of us. And yet to articu-
late this feeling sometimes seems
impossibly difficult. Tradition,
indeed, can seem both elusive and
intangible. That is until it's taken
away. For me, it then became
concrete and identifiable. I could
definitively say that something
was not how it used to be. There
was a void that needed to be filled.
Something was missing, and I
yearned for its return.
So while it was nice spending
time with family, Thanksgiving
this year wasn't the same. My final
verdict on the trip is still clouded
by uncertainty.
And so that's where I am now,
somewhere lost between water
and sky.
-Brian Tengel is a staff
writer for The Michigan Daily
only way to stop a massive bleed-
out like South University Avenue
in the 1990s is for landlords and
realtors to realize that to "maintain
long-term value of the assets is to
look at the long term - when you
sacrifice tenants for the quick buck
you ultimately end up losing out
when the other tenants go bank-
rupt," Clark said.
And there must be a balance.
Bluestone Realty saw through the
American Apparel deal at Liberty
and State Streets, but before that
had to turn down quick-food res-
taurants like Qdoba and Panera.
"You have to have food desti-
nations, but you also have to have
entertainment, you have to have
bars - you have to maintain the
mix," Clark said.
circles? Maybe. But even if the Uni-
versity does its part in reaching out
to these groups, perhaps the first
step is teaching students that the
service is free and anonymous or,
even better, where the counsel-
ing offices are located, room 3100
of the Michigan Union - a detail
CAPS says more than half of stu-
dents, rich and poor, white and
otherwise, don't know.
those who identified as "well off"
or "comfortable."
The trend seems to mimic find-
ings of studies of the population
at large. Recent surveys have
shown that, on the whole, adults
with lower income levels are sig-
nificantly less likely that those of
higher income levels to seek care
for mental problems like depres-
sion and bipolar disorder.
"You would think that (socioeco-
nomic) disparities would go down
on a college campus because ser-
vices are free," Eisenberg said. But
that doesn't seem to be the case.
The reason why isn't exactly
clear, but it is clear that the Univer-
sity hasn't been able to do much to
combat it. There are no luncheons
or ad campaigns targeted at low-
income students with depression.