For some reason I found myself reading the cover story in the current issue of Rolling Stone, about Justin Bieber. I managed to avoid Bieber more or less entirely; he either fell just outside of Kate’s teen-idol sweet spot, or she never had one at all. (I suspect the latter; smart girl.)

Anyway, he’s really terra incognita, so I read nearly all of this stupid story (no link; firewall), pegged to his recent screwups. And it was sort of fascinating, with many rich details of what you might call Graceland Life, that zone that rich entertainers and sports stars can afford to live in, surrounded by yes-men and layers of lawyers, managers, fixers and others who make unpleasantness go away. I learned that Bieber carried $75,000 in small bills, packed in two duffel bags — carried by underlings — to distribute to strippers’ G-strings at a Miami club. A photo array in the article featured a devastating headline: “The Wolf of Sesame Street.”

And I learned that many trace this arrested infant’s current spiral to the re-entry of his once-estranged father into his life. Pa Bieber, a brawler, recovering addict and all-around swell guy, has taken his place in the charmed circle.

And that reminded me of something I read over the weekend, a book excerpt about Lance Armstrong. A chunk of it concerned J.T. Neal, Armstrong’s first real mentor, who served as guess-what to him in the early days of his career:

Neal’s first impression was that the kid’s ego exceeded his talent. Armstrong was brash and ill-mannered, in desperate need of refinement. But the more he learned of Armstrong’s home life, the sorrier Neal began to feel for him. He was a boy without a reliable father. Linda Armstrong wrote in her 2005 autobiography that she was pleased that her son had found a responsible male role model, and that Neal had lent a sympathetic ear to her while she dealt with the rocky transition between marriages.

Neal soon recognized that Armstrong’s insecurities and anger were products of his broken family: He felt abandoned by his biological father and mistreated by his adoptive one.

Neal, ironically, was diagnosed with cancer around the same time Armstrong was. But he didn’t survive. And that reminded me of Pete Dexter’s several stories about Cus D’Amato, the boxing trainer, who made Mike Tyson into a profoundly dangerous heavyweight fighter, and then died, leaving the 19-year-old bereft and at the top of a very fast ride straight down. A father figure who left before the job was done.

Fathers. They’re so important. I bet Jeff could write a few million words about that one.

Yesterday we were talking a bit about music, yes? Their albums — especially “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now” — were part of the soundtrack of the ’70s, but I haven’t given Little Feat much thought, so I read this Slate piece on the band with some interest. I don’t know if I’m down with the first sentence; “the most underrated band of the ’70s,” really? But what the hell, it’s just pop music.

I wasn’t entirely convinced, but there were some good memories in those video links. “Willin’,” I told someone the other day, is the trucker song America was too stupid, and too busy making “Convoy” a smash hit, to appreciate.

And while it may seem the long way around, I followed a link in the piece to a Rolling Stone reader poll on the best live albums of all time. Just to see what the other nine were. And when I saw that “Frampton Comes Alive” was included by not the J. Geils Band’s “Full House,” well, that’s when I knew what a Rolling Stone reader poll is worth: NOTHING.

Some people I knew in Indiana would have an annual party in honor of Lloyd Lowell George, Little Feat’s founder, who died young. While Peter Frampton yet lives. I ask you.

And now we come to the end of the week. I’m headed out tonight to see a friend and former student play in his new band at the Lager House, one of those Detroit institutions. The band is called Clevinger, named for the character in “Catch-22.” It’s been so long since I’ve read the book I can’t remember, so I asked Wikipedia to tell me about Clevinger:

“A highly principled, highly educated man who acts as Yossarian’s foil within the story. His optimistic view of the world causes Yossarian to consider him to be a ‘dope,’ and he and Yossarian each believe the other is crazy.”

One piece of bloggage: If the Detroit Tigers can replace an entire goddamn baseball field’s worth of grass in the depths of this winter, why can’t we send a manned mission to Mars? Surely it can’t be that hard.

One of the presets on my car radio abruptly changed format a few weeks ago. To country. Because it’s too depressing to see what’s become of commercial radio in search of another, I left it there and commenced one of my every-few-years anthropological examinations of the strange world of country music.

It lasted about two days, and alas, wasn’t very surprising. Like so much pop music, it sounds like it’s written by a robot and recorded by an ad agency, the better to shorten the trip between the radio and the beer and/or truck commercials they all seem to be written for.

I do find country music refreshing, for about 15 minutes. I’ve always enjoyed it as a form of pop music that deals with adult problems and concerns, from the Pill to D-I-V-O-R-C-E. But of course, those songs are 40 years old now. The stuff I heard this week was mostly, as I said, good-time ditties about drinkin’ beer and drivin’ trucks, and sometimes self-reflective self-pity about farmin’ and America. Nashville lyricists do have a way with words, though — rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, a little bit of whiskey makes my baby frisky, etc. But otherwise, it was a little like visiting Real America. I may be a citizen, but I don’t feel at home there.

A colleague of mine used to do this comedy routine at lunch sometimes: Stevie Wonder struggles to write “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” the treacle that announced to the world that “Innervisions” and “Songs in the Key of Life” were well in the past. He’d do Stevie at the piano, tearing his hair out: “I just called to say…what? Let’s have lunch? What’s happening? I know! I love you!”

That’s country music these days, alas. Obvious, dumb, beer, trucks.

Or maybe I’m just not tuned into the right station.

Bloggage today? Here’s a compare-and-contrast to show you what a good writer and a bad one can do with the same subject matter — Mitch Albom and Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s embarrassing.

I’d have more, but in my scans tonight, I can’t find a headline that doesn’t start with “5 Ways,” “8 Ways” or “How  X Happened, And Why You Should Care.” God, sometimes I hate the internet.

When we were in New Orleans, a tragedy: A drunk woman lurched past Kate at the Krewe du Vieux parade, sloshing beer onto her phone, which was unfortunately in her front pocket, top-down. The speakers and power port were drowned. And so: New phone shopping today.

She’s a good kid, and she takes care of her things. But I’m damned if I’ll pay a $175 early termination fee for a phone that isn’t even manufactured anymore. The model that came after it isn’t manufactured anymore. And so into a new plan we are swept, which is less money, except when it’s more. Looks like a wash, but the new iPhone was $39 out the door and the data plan is truly insane. And no, I don’t want uVerse or the home security system.

“What do you use for home security?” the salesman asked?

“Light bulbs,” I said, allowing his pitch about the digital locks and timed windows for entry and all the rest of it to wash over me. Someday I might need all that crap, but for now? Light bulbs and common sense — doors are never left unlocked, ground-floor windows ditto and plenty of lights left on. It helps that we don’t have much worth stealing, the great gift of not being rich.

If I were really paranoid, I’d wonder why the people we trust with certain information — the letter carrier who’s not delivering the mail this week, the newspaper carrier ditto — don’t sell it for a cut of the antiques. Maybe because they’re just good people. The world is held up by people who don’t act on actionable information, while we lionize the ones who would steal you blind just because they can. Yes, I’m talking about Wall Street, wolves and all.

Bloggage? Sure.

I need to read more H.P. Lovecraft if I’m going to understand “True Detective,” evidently. There are huge gaps in my sci-fi education, mainly because I dislike the genre in general. So maybe I should concentrate on “War and Peace” or something.

I don’t understand Bitcoin, but this story looks like it’ll take me a ways down the road toward getting it.

Sarah Palin is looking positively strange these days; what’s with the Tammy Wynette hair?

Sorry for lameness, but Tuesdays suck.

I’ve long felt that we should listen to people who have traditionally been shut out of the public conversation. But you don’t have to do what they say. I’m thinking some of the discussion over the “Dallas Buyers Club” Oscars falls into the latter category.

Two pieces on the board today. This one compares Jared Leto’s portrayal of a male-to-female transsexual to Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy in “Gone With the Wind.” And this one scolds the “Dallas Buyers Club” makeup artists (!!!) for acknowledging the “victims of AIDS” instead of the preferred nomenclature of “persons with AIDS.” Hmm. Apparently these two brush-wielding wrongthinkers didn’t get the 31-year-old memo, quoted within:

In 1983, 11 gay men with AIDS who were in Denver for the fifth Annual Gay and Lesbian Health Conference, gathered in a hotel room and composed a manifesto. The document, which became known as the Denver Principles, began:

We condemn attempts to label us as “victims,” a term which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally “patients,” a term which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others. We are “People With AIDS.”

(And capitalize the W, fuckers! The P, too!)

I recall when this discussion was going on, and my fallback position on nearly all these matters of nomenclature: Call people what they ask to be called. It’s good manners. Frankly, in 1983 there wasn’t a lot of difference between an AIDS victim and someone who simply had the disease, as it was terrifyingly fatal. But as time rolled on and the new drugs emerged, it made sense. Not everyone who had HIV/AIDS was a victim, but someone living with a (fingers crossed) chronic medical condition that could be managed and wasn’t necessarily cause to put your affairs in order immediately. This passage overstates the importance of the language shift, I think –

Policing vocabulary is a tricky business—raising a stink about offensive nouns and incorrect pronouns can make outsiders feel defensive and annoyed—but there are times when it’s absolutely essential, and this was one. A 328-word statement penned by a tiny group of guys on the fringes of a second-tier medical conference saved millions of lives around the globe, even though very few people have ever heard of it. That revolution began when the people at the center of the crisis declared that they were not victims.

– but OK, whatever.

The former piece, about Leto, is more obnoxious.

Not long from now — it surely won’t take decades, given the brisk pace of progress on matters of identity and sexuality these days — Leto’s award-winning performance as the sassy, tragic-yet-silly Rayon will belong in the dishonorable pantheon along with McDaniel’s Mammy. That is, it’ll be another moment when liberals in Hollywood, both in the industry and in the media, showed how little they understood or empathized with the lives of a minority they imagine they and Leto are honoring.

Hmm. OK, so make your case, then. The movie takes liberties with the facts, the writer contends, which makes it like about 99 percent of all fact-based filmed dramas; the plane carrying the Americans out of Tehran was not chased down the runway by Iranian soldiers, as it was in “Argo.” Hollywood requires drama; real life isn’t sufficiently dramatic, most times.

Leto’s character, Rayon, was entirely fictional, likely added (speaking as someone who knows just enough about screenwriting to be almost entirely ignorant about it) to give Matthew McConaughey’s character a foil, and to set up his prickly relationship with the gay community Rayon represents. Screenwriting 101: Conflict = drama. The fact Rayon is silly I flat-out disagree with.

What did the writers of “Dallas Buyers Club” and Leto as her portrayer decide to make Rayon? Why, she’s a sad-sack, clothes-obsessed, constantly flirting transgender drug addict prostitute, of course. There are no stereotypes about transgender women that Leto’s concoction does not tap. She’s an exaggerated, trivialized version of how men who pretend to be women — as opposed to those who feel at their core they are women — behave. And in a very bleak film, she’s the only figure played consistently for comic relief, like the part when fake-Woodruff points a gun at Rayon’s crotch and suggests he give her the sex change she’s been wanting. Hilarious.

Again, everyone’s perspective is their own, but I didn’t find Rayon a sad sack at all, and in fact seemed pretty close to my memory of the drag queens and trans women I knew in that era. It was 1981-ish, after all, and just to have the gonads to live your life that way already put you out on the fringe. Another transsexual I knew at the time was still coming to work in a coat and tie. Needless to say, I didn’t know she was transsexual until years later.

And the earliest victims — that word again — of AIDS in that era were disproportionately addicts and prostitutes, after all. I mean, I guess Rayon could have been a super-together lawyer who preferred navy suits, but let’s be realistic. I love that “men who pretend to be women” contrasted with “men who feel at their core they are women” part. I’m a woman, and right now I’m wearing jeans and a sweater, an outfit I bet most trans women wouldn’t be caught dead in.

I think what bugged me most about that piece was its anger, the same that followed some of the Dr. V’s putter coverage, slinging around terms like “cis privilege,” “transphobia” and other jargon as though everyone knows exactly what we’re talking about. Even the sympathetic may find themselves mystified by this world, which I remind you requires no fewer than seven letters to cover all its iterations — LGBTQIA. That’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer/questioning, intersex and asexual/ally. If you really want to set your head a-spin, check out this video from Stephen Ira Beatty, born Kathlyn, and try to sort out the language. If that’s not too ableist of me.

Sorry, I liked “Dallas Buyers Club” and see it as a step forward, a very human film. I wish people could cool their jets about it.

That said, Lupita Nyong’o was the star of Sunday’s telecast. What a rare beauty, and what a sparkling speech. As Tom & Lorenzo would say: LUH HER.

How do we feel about the Kim Novak presentation? I am mixed. I read a very sympathetic defense of her by a film blogger whose work I admire, but I came away not 100 percent convinced. Novak is 81. I understand the need to feel beautiful, but at some point, isn’t it infantilizing her to blame cruel, cruel Hollywood for driving her to such lengths? The babe ship sailed decades ago; there’s no reason a natural beauty like Novak can’t look at least presentable in her dotage.

I do think this gets it right, though: If you have two X chromosomes in Hollywood, you just can’t win.

A little warmer today, but only a little. Ugh.

Sunday night, watchin’ the Oscars — at least until “True Detective” comes on. I hate most of this red-carpet silliness, but I have to say, just the glimpse I caught of Charlize Theron in that snaky black number is probably worth all the bullshit.

People get bent out of shape about fashion, and I’ve been among them from time to time, but I think I’ve finally learned to appreciate it for its own sake. I no longer get irritated that the dresses are too expensive or can’t be worn by anyone other than human hangers; I just enjoy them, knowing I’ll never wear one.

Who does buy those things, anyway? Actors get them free, but most are only loans. So who pays $14,000 for a dress? Russian mobsters’ girlfriends? I’m baffled.

Oh, Jared Leto, what a nice speech. But I just realized I’ve been mispronouncing your name for years.

And enough of that, I think.

So, we had snow over the weekend. Because we really needed it, you know. The landscape is positively Siberian; the giant heaps of snow at the end of every driveway and block have been hazards for weeks now. Now they’re 4.5 inches more dangerous. And yet. We’ve had some thaw-y days here and there, and enough has melted to start exposing the winter’s detritus, trash and dog poop and other grossness, so in spite of my thorough done-ness with this winter, when a fresh blanket falls on top of the gray, honeycombed drifts, part of me always says: Sure is pretty.

Current temperature: 2 degrees.

Siberia is probably more pleasant this time of year. They have their winter culture down pat — the glasses of tea, the steaming loaves of black bread, all that stuff. Whereas we have the green banners heralding St. Patrick’s Day, a day for planting peas, as the gardeners say. Not this year.

Sorry for excessive lameness. It was a lame weekend, spent cleaning bathrooms and watching “House of Cards” and on Saturday night there was this:

That’s the exceedingly creative Creative Jazz Ensemble, which this season consists of three violins, four or five guitars, drums, vibes and my little girl on bass. They do mostly original compositions, as I expect it’s difficult to write charts for “Take the A Train” for that particular lineup. Not one horn this year. Fortunately, they’re very creative.

I don’t have much linkage today, but I will say this: “House of Cards” tried my patience this season, even as it whipped me on and on. There were moments of humor, however, among them, spoiler-free:

Claire selecting a dress for her CNN interview from her closet, which is a mass of black, white, beige and navy. “Maybe something less neutral,” she says. As though she owns anything that isn’t neutral. She ended up in black. I guess because it’s not beige.

Claire entertaining the first lady, and she brings a bottle of red wine to where they’re both sitting, on the Underwoods’ white couch. Everything in the Underwoods’ house is neutral, like Claire’s closet, and it’s really weird how not only do they dress to match the furniture, so does everyone else in the show. Anyway, Claire picks up the wine bottle and, no shit, pours them both glasses while holding them OVER THE COUCH. This was a moment far more suspenseful than any plot twist. Don’t spill a drop, Claire!

If autoerotic asphyxiation pays that well to the prostitutes who do it, I may have to consider a career change. That’s serious bank.

I’ll think of some more, just as soon as I take all the red, orange, cerise and other jarring tones out of my wardrobe. I have a takeover of the U.S. government to plan.

So let’s head into the week, and hope we can get to the end without freezing to death or seeing war in the Crimea.

Texas and Arizona are getting all the ink, but Michigan is having its own gay-rights moment this week. A lesbian couple is seeking to overcome the state constitution’s same-sex marriage ban in federal court, so they can get hitched and formally adopt the three special-needs they’re raising together. They’re already a family, but the children had to be adopted by each woman as singletons, which puts their custody at risk should one of them go the way of all flesh.

This family is right out of 21st century Central Casting, and absolutely adorable.

I predict the state is going to lose. Their central argument is that the ban is valid because being raised by gay people is objectively worse for kids than by straight ones, and they’ve got the experts to prove it:

In meetings hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington in late 2010, opponents of same-sex marriage discussed the urgent need to generate new studies on family structures and children, according to recent pretrial depositions of two witnesses in the Michigan trial and other participants. One result was the marshaling of $785,000 for a large-scale study by Mark Regnerus, a meeting participant and a sociologist at the University of Texas who will testify in Michigan.

The judge has telegraphed his thinking before; he continued the case for several months until the SCOTUS cases were decided, and with no jury, a lot of people see this as yet another domino ready to fall.

And so we arrive at the end of the week; how long was it, exactly? Twenty days, or forty? Wendy’s going to the vet tomorrow, as she has not shaken her malaise. It’s supposed to be 7 below by daybreak and more snow is coming over the weekend. Can you see why I’m not exactly energetic at the keyboard these past few days? Let’s have a good weekend, all.

I forgot to add this detail of the trip: We did Airbnb for the first time. As children get older, it’s harder to travel with them unless you’re a very rich person and can get a second room. When we’re in normal cities, we go for a two-room suite, but a destination city during season? We need an alternative. Airbnb it was.

We ended up with half a shotgun house in the Uptown neighborhood, and that part of it was great; you really do get a different sense of a city when you stay in a neighborhood. Ours seemed to be yuppifying from African-American to brussels sprout-eating hipster. The property next door was being renovated out to the lot line and up into a second floor, and the carpenters arrived at 8 a.m. every morning to BAM BAM BAM for a while, and then leave.

But the main thing was that it was a classic New Orleans shotgun duplex, which meant it was a) small (to live in, that is), and b) loud. Oh, so loud. Our neighbors the first night played their music at top volume, and I mean top volume. I was five minutes from knocking on the door when they went out, only to return at 5 a.m. and STOMP STOMP STOMP around their side for a while. As a means of not going insane, I reflected on other noisy lodgings of my life, both my own and others’. When Alan first took his job here, the paper put him up for a month in a furnished apartment in Royal Oak, where, he reported, the couple in the unit above had loud, scream-y sex every night at 11:08 on the dot; it lasted for just a few minutes and wrapped by 11:15 or so. I recalled neighbors whose arguments I could clearly hear through the walls, babies crying.

When I was a reading tutor, I had to meet my student at her apartment, in a subsidized-housing development in Fort Wayne. It was a warm night, and the overwhelming impression was of the thrumming noise — every window broadcast the sound of television dramas, music, domestic affairs.

I tried to think what it would be like to live next to the Hip-Hop Clydesdales all the time, not just for one night. It made me very grateful I don’t.

Pretty good read in Bridge today, about how a beloved ski resort in northern Michigan became a ruin. Laff line:

But anyone in Leelanau County who wanted local government to condemn and seize the long-shuttered resort faced an uphill battle. The seven-seat County Commission, controlled by small-government, Tea Party activists, expressed concern with Haugen’s efforts to inspect Sugar Loaf, with some citing United Nations conspiracy theories as a basis to thwart economic development plans in general.

Sorry for the late update today. Just flat ran out of gas last night. Fueled by coffee this morning, however, I wish you a great day.

Huh. Well, isn’t this interesting:

Federal health authorities on Tuesday reported a stunning 43 percent drop in the obesity rate among 2- to 5-year-old children over the past decade, the first broad decline in an epidemic that often leads to lifelong struggles with weight and higher risks for cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The drop emerged from a major federal health survey that experts say is the gold standard for evidence on what Americans weigh.

That is, indeed, a stunning drop. If the data is good, it’s…well, it’s unlikely due to just one thing. Complicated problems rarely have simple solutions, so my guess is, it’s a combination of things, from doubling food-stamp dollars at farmers’ markets (which they do in Detroit) to curtailing garbage snacks in school vending machines to simple awareness, awareness, awareness.

There was a restaurant critic at the other newspaper in Fort Wayne, who was, for most of the time she was on the job, morbidly obese. Then she lost a pile of weight, gained some back, and I don’t know where she is at the moment, but I caught a radio interview with her during her skinny phase. She was telling the audience how much she had to learn when she was dieting, oh my goodness. She revealed that she’d routinely eat a package of Pepperidge Farm Lemon Nut cookies at her desk every morning, and she thought they were good for her — after all, the had “lemon” and “nut” in their name, and aren’t those things healthy? (Apparently the “cookie” part was blurred out on her package.) You laugh, but I bet more overweight people than you’d imagine have this sort of magical thinking. Maybe now they are simply paying closer attention.

That’s why, even though I think it’s not much of a step, I don’t really object to things like calorie counts on fast-food menus or restrictions on enormous sodas in New York City. I don’t eat much fast food, but when I do, I pay attention to calorie counts. I think, “I’m starving and I’m getting a burger, but I’m leaving off the cheese and — oh, this is hard — skipping the fries. The burger will fill me up, and there will be french fries to eat on another day. Just not today.”

And if I really, really, really want the fries, hell, I get them. I just take a moment to ask whether I really, really, really want them, or am just ordering them out of habit.

But this is kids we’re talking about here, which suggests maybe parents are making smarter decisions in regard to their children, too. Which is very, very good.

And yes, I give the first lady some of this credit; after all, it’s her signature issue. Not that I expect many to give her a shred of credit for it, though. Because she wants to take away Mrs. Palin’s Big Gulp, of course. And look how skinny Sarah is!

OK, enough of this. As predicted, today was a better day than yesterday, but it was busy, and now I must toddle off to bed. I leave you with? Bunnies!

Happy Wednesday, all.

It’s been one of those days, pals. Post-vacation workload, lousy weather, husband with the nastiest cold he’s had in years — just the sneezing makes me cringe — and even Wendy has lost her list. Apparently she went on a bit of a hunger strike at the boarding kennel, and still hasn’t bounced back; she’s sleepy and throwing up now and then, and had an accident in the house today. She’s in that gray zone between take-to-the-vet and let’s-give-her-one-more-day. Yes, she’s had all her shots and no, she doesn’t seem seriously ill. She just feels the way we all seem to, today.

I passed a mirror today and thought, Who is that old bag? I downloaded our vacation pictures from the memory card and thought, The short haircut is NOT working. I know, I know: Poor, poor pitiful me. Grow up. Stop complaining. Do something good for someone else. And consider the alternative. Sooner or later we all end up here:

But the haircut? Not working. Too short:

Louis looks pretty good, though.

Power through this week, and let’s see what the next one brings. I rowed 35 minutes on the erg today and didn’t die. Maybe spring will come. In the meantime, here’s something to warm your black heart: A man who had “been drinking all day” demonstrates to his girlfriend that his weaponry is unloaded, taking three separate handguns, pointing them at his head, and pulling the trigger. You can guess what happened. Hello, Darwin awards.

Tomorrow promises to take me out in the world a little bit. Tomorrow, I predict, will be better. Fingers crossed.

I read something remarkable in the New York Times while looking for restaurant recommendations in New Orleans:

Though the city has fewer people than it did before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, it has 70 percent more restaurants, according to a count by Tom Fitzmorris, a local expert who does not include fast-food or chain restaurants in his tally.

I believe it. When you announce you’re going there or recently returned, everyone mentions crawfish. Of course you had the etouffe, or the boil, or whatever, at some high-end Creole showplace. Nope. Not even one. This was only my second trip there, and I still remember the disappointment of our meal at Galatoire’s, which we visited more than 20 years ago. Maybe it was a bad night or something, but I have a feeling it has more to do with all that damn tradition. I always remember, poking through a heavy cream sauce at whatever lies beneath, that a lot of the details of classic cuisines evolved because frequently meat and fish arrived in the kitchen in…not the best of shape, shall we say.

(And pardon me for lowering the tone, but I try to remember that whatever I pay for this meal before me, in 12 to 24 hours it will be on its way to the sewage-treatment plant. It puts a $52 lobster thermidor, mentioned in that same NYT story, in perspective.)

So you can have your K-Paul’s and Galatoire’s and Antoine’s and so on. Give me the smaller places which are, in many ways, much closer to the new places popping up in Detroit and all over the country, where the emphasis is on the best local ingredients, imaginatively prepared but lightly messed with. The best thing I ate all week? The shaved brussels sprouts salad at Cochon, one of the hot new places but still requiring less of its diners than the old guard. We ate there with Laura Lippman, a part-time local who knows what’s what. (She also has a new book out, “After I’m Gone,” which I predict you will enjoy very much. More on that later, or maybe later this week.)

We also had good Vietnamese food, Mexican food and yes, Louisiana food — po’boys and red beans and rice and muffalettas and gumbo and beignets and coffee with chicory, because you have to go to Cafe du Monde, that’s like a law. The worst meals were in the French Quarter, because they can get away with it.

We had a nice time. I walked too much and wrecked my feet, but it’s the best way to see the city. We stayed in an Airbnb place Uptown that was sort of a dump, but very economical. It was just a few blocks off Magazine Street, a gentrifying neighborhood with construction going on everywhere. Besides the dozens of new restaurants, there were also vintage clothing shops and bars and clubs and the proverbial music everywhere. I came to appreciate the city’s tolerance of alcohol, because it’s nice to take a beer to go and just stroll and window-shop.

We toured Tulane, which Kate liked well enough to put on her short list. (Notable alumni: Newt Gingrich, Jerry Springer.) We saw a snake slithering across the sidewalk, and gathered this was a pretty typical thing, along with lizards. We tried to get into the storied music clubs on Frenchmen Street, but none would let 17-year-old Kate cross the threshold, even with her parents. Fortunately, there was a great brass band on one of the street corners just tearing it up — four trombones, three trumpets, two drummers and a Sousaphone. We were enjoying a cool sangria at a cafe on the same street two days later when an ambulance pulled up and took an obvious OD out of one of those same bars, so it’s good to know they were keeping the wrong element out.

One day as we were leaving a cab, I noted a pair of men’s pants sitting on the seat. “These yours?” I asked the driver. No, they were from an earlier customer who was “pretty messed up,” he reported in one of those what-can-you-do voices. Bourbon Street has either changed, or I have — it’s almost unbearable after dark. (It was NBA All-Star weekend when we arrived, so it’s possible this amped things up considerably.) We rented bikes and saw parts of Treme and, of course, the Louis Armstrong statue and St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Lafayette Cemetery, in the Garden District. We rode the streetcars all over, even when the city seemed bound and determined to make that as difficult as possible.

We saw a lot, but not everything. You never see everything. That’s why you go back.

And now we’re back. We left behind temperatures in the 70s and missed two significant snow/ice/thundersnow events in Michigan, which left the driveway buried in ice, so much that we literally couldn’t get into our gated back yard when we returned. And just when I think I’ve accepted that it’s cold again but it will soon be as warm as New Orleans, guess what’s coming? Polar Vortex III: The Freezening. I can’t stand it.

But I’m back. Cold, but back.