nancynall.com » 92 in the shade.
«
»

92 in the shade.

Sorry for tak­ing the day off. Had an early appoint­ment in Detroit Wednes­day morn­ing, a day that promised to be bru­tally hot (and deliv­ered), with an ozone alert to boot. Cur­tail your dri­ving, the radio warned. So I took the long way home.

It might have been an envi­ron­men­tal mis­de­meanor, but until you’ve worked at home, you don’t know how impor­tant it is to just get the hell out of the house once in a while. I fol­lowed Wood­ward to Jef­fer­son and took a lap of Belle Isle, which is being read­ied for the Indy Grand Prix Labor Day week­end. I’m not sure what the exact course is, but if it’s what I think, there’s one sharp turn pretty near the water, and I won­dered what the chances of a spin-out end­ing up in the river might be. That would be so awesome.

But mostly I looked at the land­scape. We’re deep in the Big Dry now — haven’t had a sig­nif­i­cant rain in weeks and weeks. A shower here, some drops there, but lit­tle more than that. It’s mak­ing every­thing look tired and zapped. In Grosse Pointe, peo­ple water con­stantly, even the median strips are sprin­klered, so it’s still fairly lush, but in Detroit, not so. In the car with Kate, I’ve taken to point­ing out dead trees — the emer­ald ash borer con­tin­ues its saw­dusty reign of ter­ror — and they’re more com­mon than P.T. Bruis­ers. Espe­cially in Detroit, where they can’t keep up with remov­ing dead build­ings, let alone dead trees. (Wait until we finally do get a thun­der­storm, and they come down on power lines.) One of the many incon­gru­ous sights in this city is a pro­fu­sion of green grow­ing over a crum­bling ruin, like the “ghetto palms” that sprout on roofs and through cracks in pave­ment. It seems to make a state­ment about the impla­ca­bil­ity of nature and the imper­ma­nence of every­thing else, but when nature can’t keep up any­more, it’s sort of creepy.

Today will be hot­ter, we’re told. Oh, I can’t wait to see my elec­tric bill this month.

Last night was taken by the tragedy in Min­neapo­lis. When­ever there’s a break­ing story like this, the first thing the over-cabled house­hold does is look for the chan­nel with the least offen­sive anchor pre­sid­ing over it all. CNN had Paula Zahn, whose passive-aggressive style requires her to men­tion chil­dren on that school bus seen “with blood on their faces” and no other expla­na­tion. So I switched to MSNBC. Keith Olber­mann can be insuf­fer­able in many con­texts, but I liked him doing break­ing news; he pref­aced every fact with a mil­lion caveats — this just in, unver­i­fied, we don’t know if this is true, chaotic infor­ma­tion streams, etc. Given how much of breaking-news info turns out to be b.s., it’s nice to hear a lit­tle hon­esty. One other thing: Olber­mann has a com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage that’s get­ting rarer every day. Yes­ter­day I heard a radio host speak of “acco­la­tions” instead of “acco­lades,” and of a body being “interned,” rather than “interred.” One of the bridge-collapse wit­nesses said he’d crossed the span moments before, “and that’s too close to call.” Of course he was upset, but he meant to say “too close for com­fort.” I don’t blame the guy for flub­bing the com­mon expres­sion, but does it have to go on the news­pa­per website?

(Note to non-journalists: You fix that by lop­ping the last two words — “…and that’s too close.” The quote is still accu­rate, and it makes more sense. Or you don’t use the quote.)

It’s unseemly to quib­ble like this when there’s been a tragedy of such mag­ni­tude. As I write this, it’s nine con­firmed dead and 20 miss­ing, which sug­gests the final death toll will be around 30. Just an aver­age day in Bagh­dad. And a final note: Much of the early TV cov­er­age con­cerned the chil­dren on the school bus, and rightly so. We’re hard-wired to pro­tect chil­dren; they are, as the great philoso­pher Whit­ney Hous­ton tells us, the future. That’s one rea­son I was so stunned to learn that, in actu­ar­ial terms, the death of a child is noth­ing much. I learned this from a man who’d had a child drown at his sum­mer camp, and par­tic­i­pated in the wrongful-death set­tle­ment. Kids, for all their inno­cence and poten­tial, for the injus­tice of hav­ing them taken from us, for the dev­as­tat­ing pain it causes their sur­vivors, the insur­ance com­pa­nies don’t really pay a lot for them. Their father or mother, yes, espe­cially if they’re sole sup­port of a fam­ily. But you don’t pay for poten­tial. This is the mar­ket at work.

So, blog­gage:

I read the Daily Tele­graph every day. How did I miss this? Fifty must-watch web videos. They’re a tad Brit-centric, but the must-sees of all this TV are David Attenborough’s lyre bird seg­ment and, of course, the Mike Tyson mon­tage. God, that guy was an ani­mal. I don’t know why more of his oppo­nents didn’t just shit their pants and faint at the sound of the bell.

A nice decon­struc­tion of yet another legacy of the Bush fam­ily, Clarence Thomas. It con­cerns his legal argu­ments, not his video-rental habits.

Roy has a cold, too, but it didn’t stop him from appre­ci­at­ing the most recent 6,000-word geyser of crap from Camille Paglia. This one’s a gem. Read.

Off to stare at the pun­ish­ing sun and mutter.

Posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
in Current events, Media, Same ol' same ol'.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

36 responses to
“92 in the shade.”

  1. Raymond McInnis said on August 2nd, 2007 at 7:56 am

    nancy, i found out about you blog via google alerts — keith olbere­mann. i love your stuff. i don’t see a way to subscribe.

    sin­cerely

    ray­mond mcinnis

  2. brian stouder said on August 2nd, 2007 at 8:32 am

    The alicublog riff was pretty good. In read­ing about Lin­coln (and espe­cially in Herndon’s Infor­mants, a com­pi­la­tion of the state­ments and rec­ol­lec­tions amassed by Billy Hern­don), those 19th cen­tury ‘camp meet­ings’ come up sev­eral times. They sound like Wood­stock type events, includ­ing the chance to have lots of sex. But then, in exchange for a few nights of bliss, you face a life­time of sub­sis­tence farm­ing to sup­port the babies you brought into the world.

    By way of say­ing, if I was assigned to write a 6000 word-geyser of crap, the Sub­ject would be ‘why cable/satellite/internet pro­fu­sion is a net-good thing’, and the Theme would be ‘humanity’s unchanged basic desires’

  3. Dorothy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 am

    Dear Mr. McInnis:

    Just book­mark the page. No sub­scrip­tion nec­es­sary. Come back and visit often.

    Sin­cerely,
    Dorth

    p.s. Nance you’re in rare form today!

  4. Danny said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am

    Nancy, do they have the tirade of Mike’s where he freakin’ flipped out on a reporter and told him he sodom­ize him until he loved him?

    Clas­sic, Mike. I mean his voice was crack­ing and every­thing like a crazy man (edited: death to adverbs). He kept telling the reporter, “Yeah, you scared now.” I think we were all scared.

  5. Joe K said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 am

    Nance,
    I know you hate the Pres and his admin­is­tra­tion, and that’s fine, it’s your right, but to com­pare the num­ber of dead in the bridge col­lapse to Bagh­dad, I think is just a bit much.
    Just my feel­ings.
    In other news, I cashed my first retire­ment check Wednes­day, after 30.6 yrs at Dana, I called it a career and took a job as a char­ter pilot. I was at Wil­low run air­port last night pick­ing up can­celed checks to take to Cleav­land. I took off around 9:20pm and let me tell you, the city of Detroit from 5,000ft at night looks mag­i­cal, and out over the lake is DARK.
    Will sup­ply pilot reports on my trav­els from time to time,
    Liv­ing the dream.
    Joe,
    Retired fac­tory rat,
    Full time pilot!!!

  6. Kirk said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:35 am

    Box­ing stinks, but I have to say that one of the most excit­ing sports events I’ve ever seen on TV was Buster Dou­glas’ whip­ping of Tyson in Tokyo. It was a “ding-dong, the witch is dead” moment.

  7. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:35 am

    I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how the death toll from the Min­nesota dis­as­ter dropped overnight. Last night, there were some reports of seven deaths and some reports of nine. This morn­ing, there were four.

    But you’d think that, given how long the 7 – 9 report held, some­one would have said, “Where are the other three (or five) bodies?”

    What’s the likely expla­na­tion, journos?

  8. ashley said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:40 am

    Now reports say 4 are dead.

    Hmmm…that means 1000 more bridges, and they’ll almost be up to the Kat­rina and levee fail­ure death toll.

    Can’t wait for Bush to make a speech at the foot of the bridge say­ing how they’ll build them big­ger and stronger, and we’ll have the best bridges in the world.

    Kinda like what he did in Jack­son Square talk­ing about the levees.

    We’re. All. Fucked.

  9. Jim said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:44 am

    Great piece on edit­ing from Salon:

    http://​www​.salon​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​k​a​m​i​y​a​/​2​0​0​7​/​0​7​/​2​4​/​e​d​iting/

  10. brian stouder said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:47 am

    Jolene — I think the higher num­ber came from the news­pa­per (Star Tri­bune?) and there­fore I believe it. The low­ered num­ber comes from the police.…my guess is that 4 people’s remains are actu­ally recov­ered — but the res­cuers could see peo­ple trapped and obvi­ously deceased, and as night fell, the dan­ger of fool­ing around in the tan­gle of steel out­weighed extri­cat­ing them

  11. nancy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:54 am

    Jolene, these dis­as­ter sites tend to be the def­i­n­i­tion of clus­ter­fuck. There’s dupli­ca­tion. Vic­tims are taken to dif­fer­ent hos­pi­tals. The command-post gets rat­tled, and no one dou­ble checks. Remem­ber the min­ers who were all found alive, and then they were all dead?

    Joe, I’m not try­ing to com­pare Bagh­dad and Mpls. I’m only point­ing out that when these things hap­pen state­side, our jaws drop at the car­nage. Thirty peo­ple! Think of all those funer­als, all the chil­dren who lost a par­ent, the rever­ber­a­tions of grief and mourn­ing. And it happens…pretty much every day in Iraq. Every day. Just an observation.

    If YouTube has that clip of Tyson tun­ing up the reporter, it’s not the one I linked to. That’s just punch­ing, pure and simple.

  12. LA mary said on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:59 am

    There are lots of ghetto palms in the Bronx too. I always liked the way they added an exotic flair to the area. In Hunts Point, a par­tic­u­larly col­or­ful part of the Bronx, we had Ghetto Palms, packs of wild dogs, and pros­ti­tutes too strung out for Times Square or the bridge and tun­nel traffic.

  13. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 am

    Actu­ally, the death toll from the bridge col­lapse will likely turn out to be a good day in Baghdad.

    Last night, I heard a report say­ing that 2000 peo­ple had died in bomb­ings or other forms of vio­lence in July, a fig­ure that was coun­tered by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment (such as it is). The gov­ern­ment con­tended that there had been only 1600 such deaths. So, between 50 – 65 per day or up to twice as many as the num­ber of peo­ple killed in the shoot­ing at Vir­ginia Tech. Ev-er-y day.

  14. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:23 am

    Am lis­ten­ing to the press con­fer­ence re the bridge col­lapse right now. Noth­ing funny about this, obvi­ously, but, hav­ing grown up in North Dakota, I am get­ting a kick out of hear­ing the Gar­ri­son Keil­loresque speech.

  15. Danny said on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:43 am

    Nancy, here’s the Mike Tyson we know and love. Whoa. Crazy.

  16. James said on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:50 am

    Ray­mond McInnis:

    If by “sub­scribe” you mean get­ting a RSS feed, look at the very bot­tom of this page. See the RSS link?

  17. nancy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:57 am

    Oh my God. The French sub­ti­tles really make it work: Vas de faire foutre, sale pute!

  18. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am

    Guess I’ve been lead­ing a shel­tered life. Never heard “fuck you til you love me” before.

  19. nancy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:12 am

    But then, I bet some of us hear Je t’enculerai jusqua ce que tu m’aimes pédale more or less every night.

  20. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 am

    On inter­ment vs. intern­ment: I used to work near Arling­ton Ceme­tery. When funer­als were going to be held, our secu­rity peo­ple would for­ward emails from Arling­ton noti­fy­ing us of fly­overs that would be tak­ing place dur­ing the “internment”.

    If you google “intern­ment, mil­i­tary funeral”, you’ll see many such ref­er­ences. I’ve seen it so often, I’ve begun to won­der whether they know some­thing I don’t.

  21. nancy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:19 am

    My Oxford Amer­i­can makes it clear: “USAGE: Inter­ment, which means ‘bur­ial,’ should not be con­fused with intern­ment, which means ‘imprisonment.’”

  22. Jolene said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 am

    Right, I meant to com­ment on the fre­quency of “inter­ment” in sources where you’d think they’d be pay­ing atten­tion, not the correctness.

    I’m out. Thanks, Danny, for the Tyson link. Am always happy to learn some­thing new.

  23. Danny said on August 2nd, 2007 at 11:39 am

    …Noth­ing funny about this, obvi­ously, but, hav­ing grown up in North Dakota, I am get­ting a kick out of hear­ing the Gar­ri­son Keil­loresque speech.

    Yeah, those peo­ple are way into the long “O” sound. Hav­ing loved PHC for years and hav­ing had my wife take me to see Gar­ri­son when he did a show with the San Diego Sym­phony (under the guise that they were the Young Luther­ans Sym­phony), I too noticed the pronunciation.

  24. Jeff said on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm

    jusqua?

  25. Kath in Mpls said on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    I was watch­ing the local news when they announced at 6:14 that the bridge had col­lapsed. Because they didn’t have any­one on the scene yet, they con­tin­ued with the usual fluff accom­pa­nied by scripted light-hearted ban­ter about the weather for the upcom­ing week­end. I know they’re not Wal­ter Cronkite, but I think some sort of change of tone was war­ranted. It was 10 min­utes before they put some guy who was look­ing out on the bridge from his apart­ment win­dow on the air.

  26. Jeff said on August 2nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm

    Oh, and Cane Ridge was 1801, Dr. Paglia. Just vis­ited there on the way back from Mam­moth Cave, KY, and the “shrine” is a church-ish build­ing built around the old­est, largest log struc­ture in North Amer­ica: http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​a​n​e​_Ridge

  27. Rich B said on August 2nd, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Thanks a lot. Now I’m gonna have to spend an hour and a half trans­lat­ing french for a cou­ple of sec­onds of literati titallation.

  28. derwood said on August 2nd, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Danny,

    Where in North Dakota did you grow up? My bet­ter half is from Minot.

    daron

  29. brian stouder said on August 2nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    Why not Minot?

  30. Danny said on August 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    der­wood, not me. Kath grew up there.

  31. brian stouder said on August 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    Sign of the times — our 3 year old loves (amongst other things) Dora the Explorer, and for her recent birth­day she got lots of Dora stuff (along with glit­tery shoes, which she loves — but I digress).….and today we are work­ing on prop­erly return­ing much of it, as it was affected by the leaded Chi­nese paint prod­uct safety recall by Fisher Price

    And indeed, that story was ‘news we could use’

  32. LA mary said on August 2nd, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    They have a sign there ask­ing that exact thing, Brian. Been there? It floods nearly every year. Tsuris River. Or Souris, depend­ing on your outlook.

  33. brian stouder said on August 2nd, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    Makes me won­der what the cham­ber of com­merce in Cli­max Michi­gan says

    (edit: here’s what google pro­duced, regard­ing Climax -

    Cli­max, Michi­gan, in Kala­ma­zoo county, is 9 miles SW of Bat­tle Creek, Michi­gan and 99 miles NW of Toledo, Ohio. The vil­lage is located in the Kala­ma­zoo — Bat­tle Creek met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Cli­max has a pop­u­la­tion of 791.

    The Peo­ple and Fam­i­lies of Cli­max
    In Cli­max, about 66% of adults are mar­ried. Lots of Cli­max peo­ple are mar­ried off. Large house­holds are nor­mal in the vil­lage. Be care­ful dri­ving in Cli­max, since the vil­lage is home to many young children.

    Wealth and Edu­ca­tion
    In 2000, Cli­max had a median fam­ily income of $50,625. Poverty is less com­mon in Cli­max than most places. The vil­lage enjoys an edu­cated population.

    Polit­i­cal Incli­na­tions
    Res­i­dents of Cli­max gave more cam­paign money ($250) to George W. Bush than to the other peo­ple run­ning for Pres­i­dent in 2004. Res­i­dents gave more to the Repub­li­can party than any of the others.

    Cli­max Hous­ing
    Own­ers occupy 78% of the hous­ing units in Climax.

  34. Dorothy said on August 2nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    Is Derwood’s real name Darren?

    And Rich — an hour and a half? Go to Dic​tio​nary​.com and use their trans­la­tion fea­ture. Took me about 10 sec­onds total.

  35. Danny said on August 2nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm

    I’ve never used it, but I often see Babel Fish ref­er­enced in the cycling forums when they have to trans­late some­thing from the for­eign news services.

    By why trans­late your­self. Mike already speaks French and trans­lated for us.

  36. Rich B said on August 2nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    Ah ha, thank you Dor­thy. Another time saver would be a spellcheck in the!!!??? Hey, there is a spell checker in the replies field.

    I mis­spelled spell check and found a spell checker by right click­ing within the Reply field bor­ders. It’s my Mozilla/Firefox on my home com­puter, because I had no such sup­port on my work com­puter ear­lier in the day.

«
»