Ice cream!

I adore ice cream. And it's my good fortune that we live within walking distance of three ice cream shops ... all well-suited to satisfy three different moods. When I have an appetite for serious ice cream, the kind you can scoop, the kind that can handle big chunks of chocolate and big bites as it totters on top of a sugar cone, we can walk to Clark's.

When I want predictable, we can walk to Dairy Queen and enjoy smooth vanilla ice cream and precise portion control.

Almost always, though, I'm in the mood for soft ice cream and for supporting the mom and pop shops of our town, which is why we headed to the Frosty Freeze tonight.

There's just something sweet and old-fashioned about the Frosty Freeze. Even its name makes you think of the "good ol' days." The menus taped to the window are a bit haphazard and rattle off almost every kind of ice cream concoction you can imagine. Case in point - Matt got his usual Boston Cooler tonight (a smooth blend of ginger ale and vanilla ice cream).

I don't think I've ever seen anyone over the age of 15 working at the Frosty Freeze and there's almost always a line-up of cars at its drive through, and a pile of kids at the walk-up window.

I nearly always get a vanilla or chocolate dip, because it just sounds sooo good, and often regret it when it means I finish my treat faster than Matt finishes his. There's really no way to lick and leisurely relish a dipped cone.

I love that even in this recession, even in Detroit, people are still enjoying simple treats like ice cream. Maybe even enjoying them more than they ordinarily would. I think we are!

A Berkley surprise

I'm a sucker for those free, weekly community newspapers that come in the mail. You know the kind, the ones with fourteen pages of ads and four pages of news about the high school basketball team, the parks & recreation's summer art camp, and the police beat. Ours is called "Woodward Talk."

Well, from now on I will always read the Woodward Talk because on Friday, while I was eating my cereal, I noticed an announcement in the paper that Greg Mortenson, author of the New York Times bestseller "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace, One School at a Time," was speaking at Berkley High School, which is three blocks from our house.

Now you have to understand Berkley and the surrounding area to understand my shock. Not that there isn't an appreciative audience for Greg here. It's just that there are far more literary, "lecturey," peace-promoting types in nearby towns. Towns like Ann Arbor. The last big event in Berkley was probably the Berkley/Ferndale football game.

So this was major.

Plus, I had read the book this fall with my book club and completely loved it. I won't go into great detail about it, but to summarize, it's about how an ordinary man made a promise to a village in Pakistan to build them a school, and how this one school has now turned into 78 schools, and how education, especially the education of women, is furthering peace and thwarting terrorism.

So today Matt and I went to hear Greg speak. It was standing room only, so perhaps there's more of an audience for him here than I realized, and as expected, he was inspiring.

After the talk, Matt and I went across the street for lunch. As we munched on our fries, Matt said, "So what did his talk make you want to do?"

I thought about it for a bit, and while I really wanted to say it made me want to be with the poor, I can't say that was my first instinct. It did make me want to have more faith in the impossible and believe God for more. It did tap that special place in my heart for reading, reminding me of how urgent my desire was to learn to read when I was young, and how tragic it is that some people never get that gift.

So I mentioned those things, but then, pessimist that I can be, I started to think about the all ordinary people who make promises to build schools, clothe the poor, heal the sick ... and don't meet their goal. I mean, not everyone succeeds or accomplishes the impossible, right? You never read books about those people!

Matt just shook his head and admonished me lightly for my pessimism.

So in the spirit of optimism, I'll end on an upbeat note. In 2000, at the height of the Taliban, there were 800,000 kids in school. Today, there are 7 million, 2 million of which are female.

Green goes blue

An article ran in today's issue of the Detroit Free Press, recognizing a new eatery in Waterford, MI called Pekoe & Joe (don't you love the name? tea and coffee!), an environmentally friendly drive-through restaurant.

It turns out that Pekoe & Joe is one of only three certified green restaurants in the state of Michigan. One of the other three happens to be right up the street from my house in Berkley, MI -- Amici's Pizza and Living Room.

What I like most about these two eateries is their unassuming locations. Going green is rather trendy these days, and I can think of plenty of towns in metro Detroit that are far hipper than rather blue-collar Waterford or Berkley.

Not that there's anything wrong with these towns! They are both charming in their own right. It's just that an organic, LEED-certified restaurant sort of seems out of place when it's surrounded by a drive-through A&W and other lard-dependent family restaurants, a doll and toy soldier hospital, a stamp shop, and increasingly obsolete print and copy shops.

I'm not sure what makes Waterford and Berkley desirable locations for green eateries. Maybe it's lower tax rates? Maybe we're on the verge of gentrification, and this is just the beginning? In any case, I'm not going to complain!

You can read more about Pekoe & Joe here, on the Free Press' Web site.