I found this set of magnets online yesterday, and immediately decided that they were the best things ever.  I don’t even know if I can get them shipped to the U.S. yet, and I’m already debating between the virtues of magnets or buttons.  Magnets would allow me to engage in Montreal-related nostalgia whenever I open the fridge, but buttons would mean that my baby would have one precociously pretentious diaper bag.

No, this isn’t going to be a post about my tight bond with the city of Montreal, or wanting to move back to Wisconsin or Quebec.  (I mean, if Pete’s college decided to up and relocate itself to either of those two places, we’d follow in a heartbeat.  But one rewarding, teaching-centric tenure-track job in a collegial liberal arts environment is a rare and handy thing in what’s inevitably referred to, in dismal and ironic tones, as The Current Academic Job Market.)  In North Texas we stay and settle for the foreseeable future.

But those pithy little distillations of the city-via-Metro-architecture make me wonder how I could construct the cultural and aesthetic equivalent for where I am now.  The names and images of local Sonics and Targets?  The abbreviations for local farm-to-market roads, with grass and cattle?  The awesomely earnest new business development styled as a dead-on accurate replica of a Croatian village, complete with stone bell tower next to unfinished parking garage?

You know, I really need to get out with my camera more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 11:27 am and is filed under bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.