0 w w w w mw s w w w w w w 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.