Some years ago, Alan and I attended the Halloween parade in Defiance, Ohio. Those who attend such events know that a big portion consists of fire trucks, police cars and other public-safety conveyances, lights and sirens a-goin’, for the delight of children lining the route.

This particular year, one police agency showed off its latest toy — a handsome mobile command center, an enormous vehicle, a police station on wheels, presumably for use in the sorts of disasters that strike a place like Defiance. (Crickets.) OK, tornadoes. And floods. What if the police station was flooded? They would need that mobile command center.

Alan is all for public safety, but only recently we had been discussing the news that the city swimming pools might have to close for lack of funding. “But the taxpayers can afford that?” he fumed.

Of course, the taxpayers probably can’t afford that, but Uncle Sam can, and I’d wager my next meager paycheck that at least some of the bill was picked up by a federal agency entrusted with keeping Defiance safe from al-Qaeda attack. Every smart police chief and sheriff knows there’s money galore for such things, if you know where to look.

(That Klan rally in Fort Wayne I alluded to a few days ago? When the Klan spoke outside the county courthouse, the perimeter was protected by a line of sheriff’s deputies, each one holding a brand-spanking-new plexiglas riot shield. Riots are a rare event in Allen County. I began to suspect having a couple dozen tooth-challenged Klansmen hold a rally was the best thing that ever happened to the sheriff’s equipment budget.)

Anyway. I think I’m right:

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.�? But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place�? sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent�? are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

Oh, it gets better. Ready?

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

Indiana, “the most target-rich place in the nation” for terrorist attacks. They should put that on the license plates.

Even the locals are baffled: One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name. “I am out in the middle of nowhere,�? said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.�?

Amusingly enough, Lehman’s congressman is hard at work building a national reputation for opposition to wasteful government spending. Of course, just being on the list doesn’t mean Lehman qualifies for his own half-price mobile command center or anything like that. The database is “just one of many sources consulted in deciding antiterrorism grants,” the story says. It’s meant to be ” inventory or catalog of national assets,” nothing more.

Makes you wonder, however, how and why an Amish popcorn factory is considered a national asset in the first place. I mean, everybody likes popcorn. Still. It’s not like it’s Orville Redenbacher.

Here’s the whole report, if you’re in a pdf-downloadin’ state of mind.

Last year I took it easy in July and August, and consequently was so broke in September — a month that demands insurance premiums on both cars and a property-tax payment — that at one point I had $50 to last two weeks. And I applied for a job with the AP. Last fall’s No. 1 humiliation: I didn’t get a callback. From the AP. About which it is said, by those who work there: “You can’t spell ‘cheap’ without ‘AP.'”

But things corrected themselves, as they will, and for once I actually learned something from adversity, and that is: Do not loaf through July and August, at least not without some advance planning. Yesterday I spent pretty much all day on the phone and at the keys, and at the end of it came away with steely resolve:

I HAVE to redecorate my office.

By “redecorate” I mean paint and new window treatments. This and our bedroom are the last that need to be claimed as ours, and my office still has the nursery wallpaper border around the ceiling, a peaceable-kingdom scene in which giraffes, monkeys, lions and giraffes all frolic in a riot of pastel. Yes, it’s the baby’s room, where I work. No wonder I took last summer off.

Besides paying work, I’m starting to noodle around with a piece of fiction I started in the fall, shelved, rewrote, shelved, etc. Last week I found myself at an estate sale, writing fiction in my head about the people whose house it was. Nothing makes me feel more guilty or more delighted than sweeping through a house and making judgments about its owners based on the things they own. I have to stop myself every third room and mentally smack my cheeks, but I can’t help it — I have that silly reporter’s vanity that says I can look at your grocery cart and tell you everything about yourself. Which is nonsense. But it’s still fun.

My last sale was my favorite kind. Most sales are held at the dusty, cobweb-strewn homes of the elderly, and the signs are all around — a Livia Soprano lift chair bolted to the staircase, framed portraits of children already faded with age, walkers and wheelchairs and the other detritus of old age. But this sale was different, plainly the goods of a family still in its prime. There were children’s toys and stylish clothing and the sort of toys affluent people buy. You want to know why an upper-middle-class family of four needs 4,000 square feet of living space at a minimum? To hold all their crap.

I’ve never seen so much casually discarded money — a 10-volume video series on how to improve your golf swing, an octagonal poker table with cutout slots for drinks and chips, not one but three entertainment centers. And because the greatest sin one can commit in this tax bracket is not exercising 90 minutes a day, whole rooms of workout equipment, treadmills and weightlifting benches and elliptical trainers. Running shoes, biking shoes, skis, golf clubs. Closets full of Brooks Brothers suits and Nicole Miller cocktail dresses (size range: 6 to 8. Drat.).

I look at all this crap and construct narratives: They’ve had enough of the getting and spending, and have decided to chuck it all and move to Nepal. When, I fear, the truth is probably one of two options: 1) Divorce; or 2) Job transfer, and the crap that’s being sold will simply be replaced by new crap at the new house. After all, the 10-volume golf-swing series is on VHS, and we’ve all moved on to DVDs. And those cocktail dresses have the wrong hemline.

So I think I need to get it out of my system, one way or another.

All this by way of saying I have little or no bloggage today. Except, maybe, this question: What’s the worst thing about being a public servant?

Seeing representations of your colon on the front page of the local newspaper. That’s what.

Many years ago, some colleagues of mine wrote a story about a religious lockdown facility for wayward girls in rural Indiana, a place called Hephzibah House. As I recall, the place was secretive and uncooperative and didn’t relish the secular media sniffin’ around the yard.

Well, that was many years ago. Now they have a website.

Dorothy wondered, in the comments on the previous post, just who actually wears some of those goony modest-clothing outfits I’ve linked to in the past. Wonder no more. There’s a strain of religious fundamentalism in northeast Indiana that makes much of the so-called Bible Belt look like Hillary for President volunteers.

What a weekend. The perfect weather continues, although it’s now somewhat less than perfect, having crossed into “too dry.” But it’s not too hot, and so I was able to go to the Eastern Market Saturday without too much misery other than the usual — parking, mainly. I love the Eastern Market, having been deprived of the Rich Stew of Humanity for too long at my previous addresses, which offered fairly thin gruel at the stove of humanity. I didn’t actually buy any stew ingredients, unless you count tart cherries, which I will craft into a pie for next week’s dinner party. The season is so short that my best pie cookbook calls it “Once-a-Year Cherry Pie.” It better be good.

So, on to the bloggage:

In all my years in the newspaper business I’ve accumulated many regrets, but none so keen as this: I never had the opportunity to yell “fuck you” to my publisher. (Actually, I had the opportunity many times, but never took it, even though it would have been richly deserved.) Oh, to work in Santa Barbara these days, where resignation letters fill the air like confetti and a couple dozen journalists are accumulating stories they’ll tell for the rest of their careers.

And it’s all there: A petulant movie star, an insane owner, punishment for infractions of non-existent rules and, once again, my favorite part:

Executive Editor Jerry Roberts returned from a vacation in Crete and turned in his resignation about 9 am. He was then escorted out of the News-Press building by Human Resources chief Yolanda Apodaca. On the way out, tearful reporters and editors hugged Roberts and wished him well. As this happened, Travis Armstrong, Roberts’s nemesis at the News-Press, emerged from his office to make sure that Roberts left, reportedly saying something to the effect of, “Roberts you’ve got to go.” According to one report, Armstrong — who appointment as publisher of the News Press last Friday precipitated Roberts’ resignation — clasped his hand around Roberts’ arm to help escort him from the building. This was greeted by a chorus of “Fuck You, Travis!” from the News-Press employees bidding Roberts goodbye. The chorus reportedly continued for some time; one of the louder voices in that choir belonged to Metro Editor Jane Hulse, who likewise had submitted her resignation that day.

I forgot that “vacation in Crete” part. That’s the phrase that’ll kill in barroom retellings: “I recall the editor had just returned from vacation in Crete when…”

Meanwhile, breaking butter-cow news from Ohio, for all fans of butter sculpture. The shocking detail: The butter used in the annual state fair sculpture? Comes from Texas. There’s good detail — the only creamery in Ohio capable of providing the one-ton chunk needed for sculpting only makes salted butter, and the sculpture requires unsalted. The fair director offers this alternative: “In Ohio, we’re No. 1 in Swiss cheese production, but I don’t think it would look real good if we had a holey cow instead of butter,” Strickler said. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

No, it wouldn’t. But it would be interesting.

Make merry in the comments! I have work to do.

In “The Virgin Suicides,” Grosse Pointe native Jeffrey Eugenides’ first novel, he uses the dying elm trees of the 1970s as a metaphor. Leans a little too heavily on it for my taste, but that’s me and J.E.; I like his books fine, but stop short of love.

Anyway, this is another Summer of the Doomed Trees. Cock an ear, and you can hear chippers almost every day, somewhere around our neighborhoods. It’s not elms this year but ash trees, thanks to the emerald ash borer. Our next-door neighbors have a particularly nice specimen in their front yard, and have spared no expense in trying to spare it; a man comes every month or so to treat it with pesticides and other potions.

But it’s an exception. All over the Pointes, you can see ash trees wtih neon-colored Xs on the trunk, the arborist’s kiss of death. Oh, it’s so, so sad. I feel a metaphor coming on.

Sometimes a tree disease is just a tree disease. Diversify your rootstock and prune regularly.

Bloggage:

Alcohol: Cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. More on the missing-arm case. (Warning: As of this morning, the Freep servers were either drunk or had molasses poured in their works. FYI.)

Lance Mannion delivers a lecture I’ve heard a few times in person already: Why Taxation Isn’t (Always) Theft. Part 1 and Part 2.

Slate offers an amusing slide show on the history of the bikini. I loved the part about the bathing machines. Of course, if you can’t wear a bikini, there are alternatives.

Have a great weekend.

Today’s no-comment only-in-Detroit story:

Wife’s severed arm leads to arrest.

And great details:

A Romulus man whose wife mysteriously lost an arm early Sunday has been arrested and is expected to be arraigned Thursday on several charges, including drunken driving causing serious injury, police said today. Stephen Humphrey, 39, is now in the Monroe County Jail. His wife, 34-year-old Brenda Humphrey, arrived at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Superior Township missing her right arm. Police have searched for days for both the crime scene and the missing arm but have found neither.

If you find an arm lying around somewhere in southeast Michigan, please contact the authorities.

The weather here is perfect. All week, perfect perfect perfect, edging toward “a bit warm” by the end of the week, but otherwise, el perfecto. So let’s dispense with the weather chitchat and let me ask your opinion of a question currently gripping Casa NN.C:

Is the phrase “strappy sandal” redundant?

Alan, Mr. Editor, claims it is. He remarked upon it after finding the usage in a Wall Street Journal story about the flirty new skirts, or something like that. The writer remarked that the flirty new skirts require just the right strappy sandal.

He remarked that it’s the nature of a sandal to be strappy, that strappiness defines the sandal at its core, and to imply otherwise is, well, stupid. Like calling a shoe “soley,” perhaps.

I argued that there is indeed such a thing as a strappy sandal, and I couldn’t define at which point an ordinary sandal tipped over into strappiness, but that I knew it when I saw it.

This is a strappy sandal. This is not.

“So a strappy sandal has, what, extra straps?” he asked.

“Basically, yes.”

“That’s really stupid.”

Alan then noted my Teva sandals, which have noticeably more straps than his Teva sandals, and wondered if those were strappy. Of course not, I said. No Teva can ever be strappy. Strappy sandals are dress shoes, or dress-up shoes, or at least dressier shoes, but utilitarian? No.

Men just don’t have Shoe Eyes.

Any other mysteries of female clothing you want explained? Leave them in the comments.

My fellowship director referred to upmarket business attire as “power clothes.” He always wears power clothes, but of late, I have an allergy to them. I have a meeting with two editors in about an hour, normally a power-clothes occasion. They proposed we meet at a coffeehouse about two miles from my house.

“In summer, I try to enforce a no-drive zone for errands like this,” I said. “How would you feel if I wore shorts and arrived a little sweaty, but fully alert? I’ll be riding my bicycle.”

“I think that’s admirable,” she said.

Admirable! I think I’m onto something. T-shirts = the new power clothes.

So I have to get ready. In the meantime, Slate explains why in the battle between condoms and abstinence as a means to control STD transmission, the condoms are winning. (Hint: Because they work better.) However, what I noticed about it was that the anti-condom forces, who continue to insist, in the face of all the evidence, that you gents’d be better-off wrapping up in a few inches of mosquito net for all the good they do, is led by my ex-congressman.

Last month, biological warfare on Colombia, this month, science denial. Par for the course.

Back later. Make merry in the comments, if you wish.

A weekend in the country — at the lake, actually. Ah, the country. All my favorite colors, your greens and blues, dabbed here and there with the orange of tiger lilies. And, of course, my friends the birds.

I’ve probably said it here before, so go ahead and skip this paragraph if you want, but for a low-stress hobby made for midlife, you really can’t beat birding. And if you want a high-stress hobby, you can make it that, too; you can travel all over the world and bag beaks for your life list like any extreme-sports nitwit, but I don’t recommend it. Not when merely lying in a hammock with a good novel and a sharp eye for movement in the trees overhead can be so rewarding.

I got into birds about the time I got out of movie stars, when I realized I could no longer summon a care about who Jack Nicholson was sleeping with or whether REM’s next album would really be a throwback to “Murmur,” or what. I watched a pair of cardinals practice mate-feeding in my back yard, in which the male takes a safflower seed in his beak, turns to the female and gives it to her, the movement very much like a kiss. I was entranced. Alan gave me a feeder and Roger Tory Peterson, and we were off.

I added the Stokes guides to bird behavior, the perfect step up from your basic crow-robin-blue jay identification. Stokes taught me about crows, although it couldn’t explain the goose-macking I saw last year, nor the sparrow-whacking later in the summer. Still, very useful.

This is the thing about birds: They really don’t care about you. While you’re down on the ground thinking your small thoughts, they’re living out a complex drama 30 feet overhead, and to be a witness to it, all you have to do is look up. How can Jennifer Aniston’s love life hold a candle to this?

Here’s another thing: You get better with time. You learn to identify birds the way you identify family members when they’re just out of sight or earshot, through their posture, distinctive movements, silhouettes. Yesterday, just before we got on the freeway, we passed a wetland at 50 miles per hour. I did a speed-ID of a belted kingfisher perched on a wire overhead.

Which doesn’t exactly make me a black belt, to be sure. But I remember the time, years ago, when we went to a friend’s lake house. His wife was lying on her floatie with a pair of binoculars. “I’m looking at the most amazing loon,” she said. Wow, a loon? Not unheard of in northeast Indiana, surely, but unusual at that time of year (June). I borrowed her binocs, and focused on the spot.

It was a great blue heron. Even I, way back in the day, knew that.

I’ve come a long way, maybe.

So, bloggage:

Kate asked me the other day if there were still pirates in the world. I said yes, but added they weren’t the cutlass-and-argh pirates she was thinking of. I’ll say.

Crossed fingers, good thoughts, prayers or your chosen change-the-future incantations, today, for the hardest-working man in show business, Roger Ebert. He’s recovering today from emergency surgery.

In the Department of It Couldn’t Have Happened to a Nicer Guy, a self-described KKK leader got his ass kicked this weekend. If he dies, maybe I’ll tell the story of the day he led a rally in downtown Fort Wayne. If he doesn’t, I expect it’ll hold for another day.

Finally, after enduring “Bully,” I didn’t think anything could change my mind about sleazebag filmmaker Larry Clark. This doesn’t, exactly, but it’s a good essay just the same.