best lie i told today

at target, when asked whether i wanted to save $4 by getting a credit card:

"my sponsor told me i can't get any more cards."

tonight, i launched a new collaboration and competition, in my college among the faculty, staff and students...

Attention TCAUP Wordsmiths,

I propose a friendly collaboration in the spirit of two recent-ish volumes, Dolores Hayden's A Field Guide to Sprawl + McSweeney's Future Dictionary of America

Let's imagine a future in which some of the current urban or suburban phenomena are hard to pinpoint. What are the phrases that will need definition? Will there be forms, functions or practices that need clarification and explanation to native and non-native English speakers? The Future Diction*ry of Urb*nism will capture and catalogue our understanding of the people and places that define urban life in Ann Arbor (and beyond) circa the imagined future.

So far, as I have floated this idea, I have composed or collected three entries. And, I understand one of our deans emeritus is cooking up a definition as I type.

Last spring, when I called for a month long celebration of urban haiku, dazzling lines appeared in my inbox, under the door and over the transom...especially from the TCAUP staff. Bring it on.

Drop me an email, slide something under my office door at 1248B or leave your contribution in my faculty mailbox. I might be obligated to consult the editorial board (right after I convene an editorial board) before we circulate and "publish." Watch for updates on The Future Dictionary [...] in your e- mailbox or on bulletin boards in A+AB in November.



early entries for the dictionary include:

_K_
Kinkadify /v/ to renovate and redecorate public and private spaces so as to appear cozy, sun dappled, pre-industrial homesteads.

and also

Kinkadification /n/ the massive renewal project to reconfigure the built environment in the order of the bucolic luminous scenes in the "art" produced by the "Painter of Light"(TM), Thomas Kinkade.

Professor Mitnick's lecture on kitsch inspired his mischievous students to Kinkadify the Third Floor Gallery with garlands of ivy, glowing lampposts, dewy mists, and quaint cottages.


_M_
mulchy-culturalism /n/ the practice of gardening as a strategy for community formation in multi-racial, multi-ethnic, mixed income neighborhoods. [thanks erin and beth for this brilliant one!]

In September 2006, as TCAUP M.U.P. students Erin Schumacher and Beth Rothman dug holes and planted coniferous and deciduous trees in a public park in northeastern Philadelphia, they realized the power of mulchy-culturalism to enliven empty lots and to encourage social interaction.

_S_
St. Arbucks /proper noun/ 1. The patron saint of street corners. Devotees and adherents made daily visits to sites paying $3-$5 for frothy, milky hot and cold caffeinated beverages. (St. Arbucks was canonized in 2016)

Pilgrims flocked to St. Arbucks to take beverages as ritual acts of thanksgiving and as ritual acts of contrition.