Why do I do these things to myself? I signed up to take the training that certifies one to teach swimming, thereby condemning myself to another month of training that will involve one or two evenings a week, in the pool. Yesterday I fulfilled my daily exercise goal (40 minutes) by 300 percent. Got home, ate like a teenager, went to bed with wet hair. You should see it today.

Ah well, it’s just another month. And I’m not even sure I want to teach swimming. I’m not that good with children, but who knows, soon maybe we’ll need another $19/hour household income. I think I’d rather work in a weed store. Not as hard on the hair.

Anyway, one of the things we did last night was observe/participate in the pool’s weekly special-needs swim, in which children and young adults with various disabilities get wet and work on whatever. Most of them have some form of autism, and when I say “some form” I’m talking about the whole spectrum. I spotted one of my favorites from the classes I lifeguard, a gangly young man who’s making steady progress. This year he learned to dive, and believe me, that was a milestone. Anyway, he’s bright, chatty — last night he was asking his swim buddy where he went to college, high school, middle school, elementary school and preschool — and I feel very optimistic that, contrary to the remarks yesterday by Croaky, the Health and Human Services secretary who’s doing his best to ruin both, this kid will grow up to go on dates and definitely pay taxes.

I was reading about that press conference yesterday. One thin shred of hope I might have in the future recovery of this country lies in the fact these people are so goddamn bad at what they do. I know a few people with children on the spectrum, and judging from their social-media venting, they’re incensed by Croaky’s improv yesterday. One signed off on a wrenching Facebook post with, I can’t wait for this asshole to die so I can piss on his grave. How in the world did he, or anyone else, think it was a good idea for him to not just promise to find the causes of autism by the end of the summer, but freestyle about the terrible burden these people are to society? Pro tip, Bobby: When you climb in bed with actual Nazis, maybe save that for after the third cocktail at a dinner with excellent security and not in a restaurant. (Roy, as usual, finds the grim humor within.)

Throw in the secretary of education talking about “A1,” the attorney general lying through her teeth, the “gold guy” turning the people’s house into Mar-a-Lago (read that, it’s a trip; gift link) and various other fuckups we’ve seen so far, and it’s possible to think it’s only a matter of time, but who knows?

This is likely to be the last post of the week, because tonight? The Derringers and a friend are driving to Toledo to see Bob Dylan. I’ve seen him before, in Indianapolis sometime in the ’80s, and the show was terrible. Tom Petty was the opener and his band remained onstage to play with Bob, and it was one of those shows where I felt…assaulted by the sound. It was loud, it was distorted, it was painful. Today it’s a smaller venue, and I’m hoping 83-year-old Bob is in good voice and has a far quieter band. As always, we’ll see. The point of this evening is the outing and spending time with good people.

So have a great rest of the week, and we’ll see you again sometime Sunday, most likely.

I’ve been quote-unquote retired for a few years now, and I still think of the weekend as something special, look forward to it, get that Friday-on-my-mind feeling, and in fact think Friday night is the best night of the week. In Columbus, we got paid on Friday, and the table we assembled at the bar next door was long and loud. No separate checks. The rule was, you kept an approximate tally of your own damage as the night wore on and threw your cash on the table when you left, with a little extra for the tip. If you stayed until the end, you might get stuck with a bill for more than was on the table. Or, if everyone had overestimated, you might walk away winners. At a time I my life when I was on such a tight budget that I would put $5 in quarters in a mesh coin purse that I hung on a hook by my door — so I knew that whatever happened, I’d have bus fare to get to and from work, back in the days when the fare was 50 cents each way — walking away winners was like getting a little bonus.

I stayed late a lot, but mostly because I so enjoyed Fridays. I still do.

This week, I had a Friday dinner date with the friend I dogsit for. This was my thank-you for a week of service in the coldest week of the year, plus cleaning the coffee pot, a gripping take you might recall from a few weeks back. We went to She-Wolf, a spot that specializes in Roman cuisine. Had a pasta thing, and a fish thing, and gelato. It was all delicious, and it was a perfect Friday night. The rest of the weekend? Sunny, warmish, nice. Bought eggs, was thankful I already filed my taxes, ate too many jellybeans. Went to the library. The usual.

And I missed “The Ten Commandments,” but Alan is no fun to watch it with. You need to make it a party, with at least two gay men and lots of people who can say funny things about the next big moment coming up onscreen. Alan just thinks it’s dumb.

“THE TEN COMMANDMENTS” IS NOT DUMB.

OK, enough. Another thing I tried to do this weekend, and should do on more weekends: Pay no attention to whatever Tubby is up to. I stay informed, but there’s a limit to how much of this shit I, or anyone, can take. I go back and forth with my friends who practice 100 percent ignorance — and I stress that I mean “ignoring the news,” not actively cultivating stupidity — about how responsible that is. Some news will always break through, but I think to be an engaged citizen, you have to be well-informed. That said, I understand the agita that being well-informed causes mere mortals these days. I think my solution is mini-breaks. And I definitely think it’s wise to avoid shit like this (gift link reluctantly extended):

What do you wear for your first trip to space?

If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit the company (or government agency) you are flying with provides. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez — journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man on the planet — you have another idea. You think, “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”

Yes, it’s a liberally illustrated, ass-smooching feature on what Jeff Bezos’ arm candy has “reimagined” for what’s supposed to be an 11-minute trip on her boyfriend’s spaceship, and it’s about as gross as you’d expect, with quotes like this, from the designer:

“Simplicity was important, and comfort, and fit,” Mr. Garcia said. “But we also wanted something that was a little dangerous, like a motocross outfit. Or a ski suit. Flattering and sexy.”

I’ll say this for the :::checking::: children’s book author: She knows how she caught her boyfriend’s eye, and she means to keep it, if it takes all the lip filler in the world to do it.

Now, here I am getting agita again. Let’s do some yogic breathing and try to start the week off right. Happy Monday. In just four more days, it’ll be Friday.

God, what a week. I guess we could sit down and talk about…so much. So, so much. But I’m tired, and today I’m taking the easy way out. I mean, it’s Friday. We’re still allowed to enjoy Fridays, right? So here, below, is the flash-fiction story I wrote in my friend Jimmy’s monthly Sunday-afternoon writing class a couple weeks back. If you remember the last one, here are the rules: You draw a face-down index card from each of four piles — a place, an animal, and I forget what the others are. Then you take about an hour to write anything you want incorporating the four words. Mine, this month, were Mumbai, monkey, yacht, zucchini. I’m not sure whether I like this one; I certainly took the easy way out with the ending, but the clock was ticking and I’d written myself into a corner.

What I find most interesting about writing fiction, more or less from scratch, is how it’s kinda like psychoanalysis, in that it often sinks a probe into your unconscious and pulls out something you might or might not want to see. Which is to say, I don’t think it’s an accident that I’d just concluded lifeguard training and my first image is a distressed swimmer.

So, no title, just stream-of-consciousness. Happy Friday, happy weekend and happy birthday, J.C. Burns, without whom this blog wouldn’t exist.

The helmsman spotted the swimmer first, far offshore and with no obvious signs of wreckage nearby. He sounded an alarm and immediately swung the wheel, putting the boat into a wide U-turn.

On the afterdeck, four women watched the champagne bucket rattle and slide a few inches before a crew member standing nearby stopped its progress and resettled it on a towel he produced from somewhere on his person. A graceful move to shame the smoothest magician, but at these prices what else do you expect.

“What’s going on?” the oldest one said, confused to be experiencing something she hadn’t pre-approved. “The captain assured me it was a straight shot to the next island.”

A mate, maybe the second or third or who knows, the twelfth, whatever, one of those guys with braid on his epaulets, materialized at her elbow, another magician move. It occurred to me I was drunk.

“We’ve spotted a man in distress,” the mate crooned in a British accent. “It’s maritime law and custom that we assist.”

“I suppose so,” the crone said. She supposed it was OK we wouldn’t let a man drown, as long as she wasn’t delayed arriving at whatever shopping destination we were visiting next. Crew members dropped a dinghy into the water and its little outboard coughed to life. We gathered at the rail to watch the rescue, the crewman throwing a line to the swimmer and pulling him aboard the dinghy.

Just a few minutes later, he was deposited on the afterdeck, shirtless in a pair of ratty-looking shorts. He shivered in wracking waves as more crew wrapped him in blankets and the first mate, who was the medical officer, tried to ask what had happened.

“Where did you come from?” the mate asked the man.

“M–m-m-m-m-m,” he said.

“Captain, I believe he’s trying to say ‘Mumbai,’” the old woman said, smiling. Her drinking companions, daughters or granddaughters – they had the same nose – snickered a little.

“Or maybe it’s ‘monkey,’” one offered, getting into the spirit. Ten minutes ago, they were four women on a chartered yacht. Now they had a story to tell back home, at the club.

The mate paid them no attention. He’d opened his bag and was taking out a blood pressure cuff. “Bring water,” he told another crew member. “And tell the galley we need a pot of hot tea, a.s.a.p.”

“What happened to your boat?” the mate asked as he wrapped the cuff around an arm as skinny as a zucchini. “Were you fishing? Did anyone else go in the water?” The swimmer still couldn’t answer, and seemed almost ready to fall asleep, his head lolling. How long had he been fighting to stay afloat?

I figured the best thing for me to do was keep my mouth shut, although I opened it wide enough to pour in a few swallows of Red Stripe. Unlimited alcohol was included in this charter and I meant to get my money’s worth.

The crew arrived with the water, and the mate gently propped the man up and got him to sip a little. The tea came in a Thermos, and he did the same. In a few more minutes, the man seemed to be more alert, and focused on the semicircle of people standing around him. What a sight we must have been, an assortment of clean-cut crew in crisp polo shirts, the mate in his gold braid, four women with matching noses – and it was only then it occurred to me they all had the same plastic surgeon, like the Jacksons – and me, with my three-day beard and flip-flops and Red Stripe. Hey, I’m no tech tycoon. I only had a share of this charter.

“M-m-m-my boat,” he finally was able to get out. “There was a whale. A few of them. Orcas!” He seemed to be coming back to himself.

“They…they…attacked my boat,” he gasped. “Capsized it. Like a toy in a bathtub.” We gaped in astonishment, and then, from below, came the sound of a muffled but significant collision. We all looked up, first at one another, and then, just off the starboard beam, at the black and white form surfacing, its blowhole exhaling a fine mist, and just before it dove again, it rolled to the side and showed the line of its mouth. I swear it was smiling.

Oh, hey, this isn’t worrisome at all, is it?

A lawyer’s spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with his family ended on a troubling note at Detroit Metro Airport on Sunday: He was detained by federal agents, questioned about his clients, and asked to give up his cellphone, he says.

But Dearborn attorney Amir Makled, who is representing a pro-Palestinian demonstrator who was arrested at the University of Michigan last year, stood his ground. He didn’t give up his phone.

…What followed was a 90-minute, back-and-forth verbal tussle between Makled and two federal agents, who, he said, ultimately released him without taking his phone, but looked at his contacts list instead. For the 38-year-old civil rights and criminal defense attorney, it was a daunting experience that he says highlights a troubling phenomenon that’s occurring across the United States: Lawyers are getting targeted for handling issues the administration of President Donald Trump disagrees with.

What’s worse is what happened when he tried to clear passport control. This is an American citizen, mind you:

Mom and the kids got through with no problem. But when Makled’s photo was taken, a notification popped up and Makled said he heard one agent ask another agent: “Hey, are the TTRT folks around?”

TTRT? Is the Tactical Terrorism Response Team. For a Muslim lawyer coming back from vacation. The TSA people repeatedly asked him to give over his phone, and he refused because, he said, there was information therein covered by attorney-client privilege. They told him they wanted his contacts list. He ended up letting them look at it, and the encounter ended.

As I wrote on Facebook earlier this week, it’s time to stop asking whether we’re “at risk” of becoming a fascist autocracy. It’s clear we already are.

I got an unexpected work assignment yesterday, and should probably hop to it. Short blog, but sometimes that happens. How about another picture from this weekend? Not mine, but I admire its sauciness:

I want to say a couple things about media coverage of Hands Off before it gets too small in the rearview mirror. Generally speaking, it…wasn’t great. Both the WashPost and the NYT did stories, focused on their local areas but fleshed out with details from other cities. USA Today, of all things, did a pretty good job, and I suspect got their local Gannett outfits in on it, because here in Detroit the Freep kicked the News’ butt, and that doesn’t happen all that often.

But there were notable missteps. A local TV station said “hundreds” attended the Detroit march, a laughable shortfall later changed for the web story. And both the News and TV felt the need to ring up the Michigan GOP chair for a whining quote.

I don’t recall this happening during the Tea Party protests. But the two situations, more than a decade apart, aren’t directly comparable, either.

If nothing else, the shitty coverage reflects how hollowed-out local media is today. Never chalk up to a grand conspiracy what can be more easily explained by: the weekend crew. Never the A-team in any outlet, it’s likely to be all the short-straw holders in the organization — the young and inexperienced, toiling for a similarly distracted and overworked supervisor, all charged with filling a newscast or a diminished Metro page with stuff like fatal accidents, fun runs and other weekend afterthoughts. If anyone was counting on the media to help us through this, that cavalry isn’t coming. Trust me on this: I rewatched “Spotlight” Friday night, and it was almost from another century. A fully staffed newsroom! An investigative team given time and resources to work! A supportive research team, with dusty archives in a library! It just doesn’t exist anymore except in rare, rare exceptions.

Two more signs, the first salty, the second very salty:

Finally, here’s a Substack column to read and tell me if I’m crazy because I think the guy is on to something:

After the fall of the USSR, America pressured Russia and other former Soviet republics to quickly privatize their public assets, allowing wealthy individuals from America and Europe to dramatically increase their fortunes. It seems evident that similar conspiratorial forces are now seeking to do the same to the United States, Shock Doctrine-style. To understand this, we must consider who will benefit — fantastically — from the collapse of American economic stability.

Trump’s tariffs aligns with a plan to transform the U.S. fully into a serf society ruled by tech and AI interests. To create a pliant population, you must first destroy the middle class.

…I understand why Krugman wants to view Donald Trump’s trade policy—especially his erratic, often self-defeating tariffs—as the bumbling chaos of a vicious bumbling orangutang motivated by ignorance, populist posturing for FOX, and petty vendettas. But these apparently stupid and erratic policies are, in fact, logical instruments, when seen from a different perspective. They are designed to destroy the American middle class so our country eventually becomes a serf society similar to Russia or, eventually, North Korea, with no free thinking allowed. This will give maximum freedom for billionaires but no freedom for those trapped under economic and legal obligations as the country goes down in flames.

It makes sense. Peter Thiel put JD Vance in the job for a reason. And JD Vance is one heartbeat away, and 40 years old.

Shudder.

Let’s hope the week unfolds well, shall we?

I guess most of you saw at least something about the demonstrations on Saturday. Hands Off 2025 ranged from sea to shining sea, and organizers said at least 500,000 RSVP’d for the events. I didn’t even know that was an option; I just showed up. (Or maybe I did, saw the RSVP link that required me to give them my email, and thought: Nah, I get enough junk mail already.) Anyway, based on the turnout in Detroit on a chilly, overcast, rain-threatening day, I’d say the crowds exceeded expectations.

There were several thousand marching here. At least 8,000, I’d guess. The course was from the Detroit Institute of Arts to Little Caesars Arena down the southbound sidewalk of Woodward, then back on the other side of the street, 1.7 miles each way. The returning side was back at the DIA while some were still leaving the grounds. Lots of people, lots of horn-honking from passing motorists.

I made a sign, because George Soros promised me an extra $10 if I did:

Thanks to Dorothy for the idea. It was clever, but not cleverest by far. A selection of my own photos:

And some bangers I found on social media, mostly Bluesky:

Here’s Fort Wayne, with Mark the Shark’s granddaughter and her great-uncle Phil:

P.S. Her dad’s a pediatrician, and that little girl looks EXACTLY like her grandmother.

The biggest media fail I’ve seen so far comes from the Detroit News, which so dropped the ball they ended up posting a story about the march in Wyandotte, a downriver suburb. Three hundred people showed up, Debbie Dingell spoke, and they gave four paragraphs of pushback to the chairman of the state GOP, who sneered at what he called a “fake grassroots organization.” Are you kidding me? It was so grassroots it smelled like a new-mowed lawn. At least he didn’t talk about outside agitators or paid protestors, but I don’t know what the reporter left in her notebook. (And George Soros better pay me that extra ten bucks!)

I took the bus there and back, because we’re down to one car this week and Alan was supervising some plumbing fiddling over at Kate’s before she moves in. Stopped on my walk back from the bus stop for a slice of Buddy’s Pizza, and a nice Girl Scout was selling cookies outside. Now that’s what I call a good day.

Posting early for timeliness’ sake. Hope your Hands Off was fun and heartening, too.

It’s amazing, how events like this week’s can make you understand things like the butterfly effect. I just looked it up: “The Apprentice” first aired January 8, 2004. I was living in Ann Arbor. It was a Monday. The Knight Wallace Fellows had our seminars on Tuesday and Thursday, so the following night would have been the first of the new year. If I recall correctly, it was a duck barbecue at the director’s house. None of us would have suspected that a fuse had been lit the previous night, that one TV producer had breathed life into a monster that would blow up the richest country, a beacon of freedom all over the world, not 20 years later.

You “Game of Thrones” fans remember little Arya Stark, making her way in the wilderness and putting herself to sleep at night with her own form of fantasy-novel doomscrolling: Reciting the list of people she wanted to kill for having wronged her. I have my own list, although I’m not homicidal and some of them are dead already (hey, Roger Ailes!), but Mark Burnett, producer of “The Apprentice,” is on it. He’s a very public Christian and has never once expressed regret for having rehabilitated this transparent phony, this con man, this moral homunculus who just today cost my household 3.37 percent of our life savings, into what we used to call presidential timber. Today presidential timber is a termite-infested telephone pole.

A Kennedy Center Honor is coming for Mark Burnett. Bet on it.

Today I got an email from an old friend who asked I use no identifying details in telling their story. They and their spouse are laying the groundwork for permanently leaving the U.S. for Canada in the next year. The details involve applying for permanent residency, picking a home base, checking out neighborhoods, etc. This sentence in their letter stood out:

I have admired Canada since I first started visiting here in 2001. I’ve simply given up on the U.S. Even if Trump and Vance were to die tomorrow, the GOP and Fox have so corrupted the country I see no way to truly combat an active embrace of falsehoods. It’s never going to end.

I’m reminded of a line from Neil Steinberg, way back in the first Bad Administration: I’d rather be on the last train out of town than the first. Me too, but I don’t fault my friend one bit. Meanwhile, measles is starting to spread in Michigan.

OK. Sorry to be a downer, and after I was feeling pretty good yesterday. It’s hard to stay on the sunny side, this week.

Check out this interview with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “one of the best-known evangelicals in the United States, famous for his writings on faith.” Today, his faith compels him to support you-know-who, and to argue against empathy. Here’s one passage:

You’re talking about the Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador. The White House claims that they were all gang members, but we actually don’t know that. It seems like some of them were not. Time magazine wrote about these men: “Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.” The President and his Administration were revelling in this.

I think you ought to have a concern about the mistreatment of anyone. Look, I take a very Augustinian view of state power. You know Augustine, the Church Father?

I’ve heard of him.

This is the main Western theological tradition in Christianity. Am I making sense?

Yup.

An Augustinian view of government says that government coercion is never pretty. It is necessary, but it’s never pretty. And, when government acts in a coercive manner, it always leads to some form of pain. That’s what government coercion is. And so I am not justifying it. I’m simply saying that if you are going to return people against their will to their country, where they are seen there as gang members and they’re going to be treated as criminals—

They were Venezuelan, and they were sent to El Salvador, but go on.

O.K. No, that’s true, but at least in theory, they are to be sent back to their home country. And I think that’s a part of the spat between the Trump Administration and Venezuela at the moment. But, I also think the vast majority of Americans would say, Look, our understanding of refugees who are legitimate refugees does not include gang members who clearly are coming to the United States with an effort to expand their colonization of criminal activity.

We just don’t know for sure that they were gang members. There’s been some reporting that suggests some of them are not.

I understand that, but want to be honest with you, and I think you’ll be honest with me. Look, you can’t say that everyone with that tattoo is a gang member, but there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.

One of the “gang members” had another tattoo entirely, but do go on, Reverend.

OK. Three blogs this week is the best I can do. Let’s see what the financial markets do tomorrow. Maybe we’ll all be penniless by next Thursday, eh?

Happy weekend! Hands off!

Happy Liberation Day, fellow Americans. Elon Musk spent more than $20 million for his candidate to lose a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and all he got was this stupid hat:

On, Wisconsin!

So that was nice to wake up to today, as was the lack of physical misery. I finally got around to getting my second shingles vaccine Monday, and it kicked my ass hard. (Keep in mind this description comes from a total wimp where physical discomfort is concerned, which doesn’t bode well for a cheery old age.) It was roughly 24 hours of low-fever no-fun, and as I lay in bed, whimpering, I wondered what it would be like if I was a Wisconsin voter in the election-security era Republicans want to return to — i.e. only in-person voting, only on Election Day. I might have chosen to sleep through the day. Or what if the weather had been like it is today, a driving, cold rain that’s threatening to flood roads and make even a quick scuttle to the garage miserable? Ditto. This is but one reason I’ve come to loathe Republicans.

But we have at least some limited good news to enjoy today – the narrowing of the margins in the Florida races, the blowout in Wisconsin. Maybe it’ll light a little flame in the national party. Maybe they’ll decide it’s better to fight than to roll over and play dead. We can hope, anyway.

So, Wednesday. The rain pushed me to look at Saturday’s march weather, and it’s not good, but I don’t want to be dissuaded. Somehow, walking in a cold rain means more than coming out on a perfect spring day. And as we say at this latitude, there’s no bad weather, just the wrong clothing.

As I’m still a little tapped, here’s some bloggage to consider:

Another banger by Roy, this one on JD Vance, as he considers what, exactly, about Vance attracted Trump’s eye:

I know Tubby likes to have stone bastards around him, but he also likes to keep people close that he can smack around. Fortunately for him, some of his freakshow inner circle can fulfill both functions — like I’ve said, this is the last respectable job any of them will ever have, and they know it. And he’s also got a couple of fuckfaces he can definitely treat like shit whenever he wants: one’s “Little Marco” Rubio and the other is Vance. Trump sends them out specifically to step on their own dicks, which they always do, and he not only gets the pure joy of that spectacle but also a chance to send the world a message: That he’s the kind of guy that can and will do that to people, so everybody better watch out. He can’t really do that to Miller or Musk, but he sure as hell can do it to these clowns whenever he likes.

Exactly right. The Greenland trip was a fiasco, concluding with VP ChubbyCheeks essentially threatening military action to a (for now) ally, while standing on its soil, the sort of diplomatic…you can’t even call it a “misstep” or “faux pas,” it’s such a dick move. Tubby isn’t going to live forever, and none of these guys have what it takes to keep the movement together. Vance will end up going back to blood, I suspect — drinking from a shoulder-supported jug with “XXX” on the front and yelling at his TV.

I can hear sounds from the back yard even through this downpour, and sure enough, it’s what I’m calling the motorcycle gang — the flocks of starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds that come through every spring. The latter are notorious for defending their nests, to the point that some local parks have to restrict movement near where they’ve chosen to do so. It’s pretty funny; every year some runner or child gets dive-bombed, leading to an outcry on social media, where stupid causes go to nest. I just watched one perambulate through the yard, making his shrieky call and flexing his epaulets with every one. Must be mating season.

OK, then. Enjoy the day, no matter what it’s doing outdoors, and remember: Wisconsin is lighting our path.

I’m thinking of going to a Hands Off demonstration this coming weekend — there are several in the metro area. But I need some ideas for a sign. Bottom line: I want it to be mean, because fuck those guys. So far I’ve got:

HEY ELON
YOUR SON
is NOT a
HUMAN SHIELD

Too obscure?

Or

ELON MUSK:
GENEROUS WITH HIS SEMEN
STINGY WITH YOUR MONEY

Too wordy.

Or

VANCE & TRUMP:
FATMAN & ROBIN

This only works if you know the Burt Ward Robin.

Something along those lines. If you have any brainstorms, drop ’em in the comments.

An amusing story in the WashPost today (gift link) about the disappearance of the Oval Office ivy.:

The ivy sat atop the fireplace mantel for most of the past 50 years, providing a backdrop for meetings with countless leaders and foreign dignitaries at the White House. It has filtered the air breathed by Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Whitney Houston.

Cuttings were given to exiting staff members, to propagate their own plants. “Countless” people have Oval Office ivy descendants in their own offices and homes now. A sharp-eyed trustee of his own ivy plant noticed something different on the mantel now:

In its place, conspicuously, are seven gleaming decorative objects, seemingly made of gold. A Maryland writer named Jamie Kirkpatrick noticed them earlier this month, around the time of the contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when the mantel was visible in nearly every photograph of Trump and Vice President JD Vance arguing with Zelensky.

What were those? Kirkpatrick wondered. Golf trophies?

No. And they’re not trash, but they are golden objects for a president who loves golden objects:

They’re artifacts from the White House’s own collection. The central gilded bronze basket, called a compotier, was made in France around 1815 and gifted to the Nixon administration in 1973. To its left and right are a pair of urns from the Monroe Plateau, a set of gilded tableware acquired by President James Monroe in 1817, shortly after the British burned the White House. The outer two sets are from a collection acquired during the Eisenhower administration that are usually displayed in the Vermeil Room, which is named after its contents. (Vermeil is gilded silver.)

Click through for some shots of the ivy before and after the gold-plated president sent it back to the greenhouse. God, what a jerk.

Another gift link, to a story in the NYT, about a woman who rode her “medical freedom” to an early grave:

In 2007, more than 1,440,000 Americans were diagnosed with cancer. Dawn Kali was one of them. Then in her mid-30s and raising three kids, Ms. Kali’s natural warmth and openness made her a popular waitress at the raw-food restaurant where she worked in San Francisco. When her doctor told her she had Stage 1 breast cancer, the fact that survival rates for her cancer type were in excess of 90 percent (and rising) did little to soften the emotional blow. Ms. Kali knew what cancer entailed: a barrage of medical treatments that seemed to sap people of their quality of life. And then they’d die anyway. “That’s not going to be me,” she swore.

Nope! Instead, Kali fell in with a quack:

She discovered “The pH Miracle,” a 2002 book written by a charming self-proclaimed naturopath named Robert Oldham Young. Mr. Young asserted that deacidifying the body through diet, exercise and his pH Miracle-branded pills and creams could cure virtually any sickness. Cancer, Mr. Young taught, was merely a symptom of an acidic internal environment. His credibility was bolstered by his appearances on national talk shows that featured him as a diet guru.

Ms. Kali adopted Young’s “alkalarian” program: an all-liquid, low-acid diet of vegetable smoothies supplemented by Mr. Young’s proprietary pHour Salts, purified water drops and green powders. Soon she was drinking a gallon of juice each day. Now, she controlled her treatment. The prescribed combination of a strict diet, meditation and exercise left her feeling empowered.

It also left her cancer free to spread. You can guess how her story ends. I will say that Kali did finally wise up, but too late. The story is about much more than Dawn Kali, and I’ll bet you can guess whose name pops up.

OK, then. A nice weekend. Kate closed on her house! She moves soon.

We celebrated with champagne, and took some of it at the kitschy basement bar, likely to be a rehearsal space:

I did my friend Jimmy’s fun-fiction class again. The class is in Hamtramck. Followed this deep thinker through a few stop signs:

Sigh. As my friend Deb texted me last week, just once I want to wake up, look at my phone and not say, “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Let’s all have a good week, eh?

Seems I’ve been neglecting this venue in recent days. Sorry about that. Life and work has piled up, but the pile is manageable now, and so: Back to it.

Like most of you, I’ve been watching the unfolding of the Signal scandal — and it is a scandal, and not one I’ll affix “-gate” to — with a growing sense of horror. The initial horror of the deed, followed by the exasperated horror of the spin: Seriously this is not the big deal you think it is, nothing classified was shared, anyway Signal is secure, anyway that guy should have revealed himself anyway HILLARY DID IT FIRST, etc. As a friend said, wait until Hegseth leaves his phone in a bar somewhere. Because you know that’ll happen. But at this point I don’t have anything special to say about it that hasn’t already been said, so let’s just continue that conversation.

I do have a number of photos to share.

Got my car washed yesterday, because it was shamefully dirty. I don’t know about your car wash, but mine is like an explosion of small-market capitalism, the long hallway from the drop-off to the pickup bays lined with windows — so you can watch the wash, of course — and under that, stacks of stuff for sale because you never know what you might be missing. Peanut-butter pretzels are big this week; a while back it was barrels of cheese puffs. Office supplies of the sort sold near the checkout lines at Staples — tissue, Post-its, legal pads. Lots of car-related stuff like air fresheners or steering-wheel covers (a product I’ve never used, nor felt the need for). Shop towels, microfiber and cotton, in bulk. Lately they’ve been selling generic versions of those Scrub Daddy sponges. There’s a mechanical horse for children to ride while they wait. Self-published books by local authors, and the traditional bulletin board of business cards. But lately I’ve been taken by the family-business displays, like this:

The car wash is called Mr. C’s. That is the original Mr. C, although I’m sure he perished long before it opened. That is one impressive mustache. Sicilian, of course, because northern Italians weren’t the main immigrants from the boot, but rather, the impoverished southern ones. A framed obit near this photo tells more of the story. Sorry the picture is so crappy, but I can read it:

The subject being remembered is the second Mr. C, son of the mustache man. After the original Mr. C came here and earned enough money, he came back to Sicily, married, and left his pregnant wife behind while he crossed the water again and started his grocery business, “pushing a vegetable cart on Detroit’s east side.” At some point he sent for his family; his little boy was 6. The cart became a store, then another store, and by the time that little boy retired in 1969, he went to work in his children’s businesses, which by then included another market, and then a line of delis. The car washes came in 1991, across the street from one of the delis. His son, Vito Jr., is now called Bill. (Or was — this obit is from 2000. Dunno if he’s still with us. The top-tier wash is called “Bill’s Best,” and that’s the one I got.) The Mack Bewick Market is now deep in the hood; it was owned by a friend of a friend’s father for a time, and was notable for not having any bulletproof plexi between the customer and the clerk, “however, the clerks were never more than an arm’s length from a gun,” friend reports. I found a social-media post by someone who said “you could get ANYthing there,” and she wasn’t talking about drugs, but rather, the things that make hood life possible, like low-cost infant formula, counterfeit license stickers for your plates, etc.

An inspiring family story. I wonder how they feel about current U.S. immigration policy.

It’s been chilly this week, but it won’t last, and yesterday Alan raked up all the plant detritus, mulched it with the mower, ran out the gas in the snow blower and set the stage for the first green shoots, expected soon:

We’ll check back in a few weeks, see how it shapes up.

Finally, I followed a link on an old blog a few days back and lo, it still works, and isn’t this story more interesting now:

Boeing should have rejected then-President Donald Trump’s proposed terms to build two new Air Force One aircraft, the company’s CEO said Wednesday.

Dave Calhoun spoke Wednesday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, just hours after Boeing disclosed that it has lost $660 million transforming two 747 airliners into flying White Houses.

This was in 2022, and Boeing was already $660 million in the hole, and responsible for all cost overruns, under a contract signed during the first Trump administration. Meanwhile, I read this story last month:

President Trump, furious about delays in delivering two new Air Force One jets, has empowered Elon Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster, including relaxing security clearance standards for some who work on the presidential planes.

What could possibly go wrong! Keep an eye on this. It could get good — or funny!! — really fast. I want someone to only finger-tighten the bolts holding down the POTUS-only toilet. If regular civilians have to fly on planes with the doors blowing off, it’s the least they can do for us.

Thursday already! Have a great one.