Unsea­son­able warmth here of late; today’s high is pre­dicted to be in the mid-80s. Of course jour­nal­is­tic objec­tiv­ity requires me to insert the phrase “so-called” in front of “global warm­ing,” so I’ll refrain from bring­ing it up.* I’ll only say it makes for some strange mornings.

Sum­mer flip-flops, for instance, are not made for my dri­ve­way these days, lit­tered so heav­ily with acorns it’s like walk­ing through a land­scape of mar­bles and bro­ken glass. The birds are qui­eter as the sky light­ens, so the ear­li­est sounds of the awak­en­ing city come from the free­way, half a mile as the (less talk­a­tive these days) crow files. Zoom. Zoom. The rum­ble of a truck. The blat of a motor­cy­cle. I lie there and think: I went to bed 4.5 hours ago. Why am I awake? Answer: Because the uni­verse hates you and wants you to suf­fer. The leaves are chang­ing right on sched­ule, the mums replaced the coleus and impa­tiens on the front porch two weeks ago, but they have to be watered just as often, because the fall rains aren’t com­ing. Also, 85-degree tem­per­a­tures take it out of even hardy mums.

Mean­while, Char­lotte died. She was a spi­der that spun her web in a cor­ner of our back door­way. I watched her the other evening, catch­ing her just as the spokes were com­plete and she started on the orbital sec­tions. She didn’t look quite like E.B. White’s descrip­tion of her name­sake — she was a pale beige, not gray, and smaller than a gum­drop. When she fin­ished, she took her place at the cen­ter of the web to wait. The next morn­ing, the web had a few torn spots in it — left by the ensnared bugs, I expect — and Char­lotte was gone. The fol­low­ing night, the web was unre­paired and Char­lotte was back, but she wasn’t mov­ing. I touched the web, and she raised one leg, rather weakly, it seemed. The next day, the web was in tat­ters, Char­lotte was gone, and that evening, she didn’t show up at all.

I dunno. Maybe she moved.

Thus con­cludes the Annie Dil­lard wannabe por­tion of today’s post. As I occa­sion­ally point out, at least 50 per­cent of the rea­son I started this blog was to force myself to keep a daily jour­nal of some sort, and some­time in the future, I’ll be glad I wrote all this down. Also, low-rent wool­gath­er­ing about the weather keeps me from think­ing about the Grosse Pointe News, my local weekly. Motto: One of America’s many lousy news­pa­pers..

Just to show you where I’m com­ing from: The state of Michi­gan nar­rowly avoided a gov­ern­ment shut­down early this week. Unem­ploy­ment is up, rev­enues are down, deficits are huge. The state needs more money, but oppos­ing taxes, any taxes, is now an actual reli­gion among Repub­li­cans. The no-new-taxes crowd said the deficit could be made up by cut­ting ser­vices, but when pressed to be spe­cific, couldn’t be. The stale­mate dragged on for months. At the very last minute, quite lit­er­ally the last minute, the leg­is­la­ture passed a sales tax on ser­vices and an income-tax increase, cri­sis averted.

The Pointes’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive voted for the tax increase. His name is Ed Gaffney. Page One head­line in this week’s edi­tion: Gaffney defends tax gaff. See, it’s a play on words! And, oh yeah, “gaffe” is mis­spelled, but what the hell. And the head­line is out­right edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing. Never mind that. He had his rea­sons for vot­ing for the increase, which he explains in the story. He doesn’t say that he’s a lame duck thanks to term lim­its, and the story doesn’t men­tion it. An edi­to­r­ial does, but that’s on another page. (It also speaks of his “gaff.” I’m won­der­ing if I missed a photo of my rep­re­sen­ta­tive run­ning around Lans­ing bran­dish­ing a long pole with a hook on the end.)

The edi­to­r­ial makes a big deal out of not­ing how fis­cally con­ser­v­a­tive the com­mu­nity is. On the fac­ing page, a man-on-the-street inter­view asks locals how they thought the cri­sis should be solved. Of six peo­ple inter­viewed, three were Point­ers. Of the three, two answered: With new taxes. Ha.

One more amus­ing detail: At the end of the angry edi­to­r­ial, there’s a sub­head. Late break­ing news. (Yes, no hyphen, my copy-editing friends. Argh.) Under it: While going to press we heard that Mr. Gaffney, in bud­get nego­ti­a­tions, was able to get an addi­tional $800,000 to $1.2 mil­lion for the Grosse Pointe and Harper Woods school dis­tricts. Oh.

It’s like no one edits this paper at all. It’s like it just assem­bles itself. The Weekly Mir­a­cle, indeed.

Are you ready for some bloggage?

Snort:

LOS ANGELES — A Malawi cou­ple has com­pleted adop­tion paper­work for Sean Pre­ston Fed­er­line, 2, and Jay­den James Fed­er­line, 1, after their mother, Brit­ney Spears, lost cus­tody of the chil­dren Monday.

It was Ms. Spears’ inabil­ity to pro­vide car seats that ini­tially brought the plight of her chil­dren to the atten­tion of the Malawi cou­ple, who wish to remain anony­mous, and who will be referred to here as Mr. and Mrs. M. But it was the widely cir­cu­lated pho­to­graph of Ms. Spears’ vagina that really drew their con­cern. “In our coun­try, a good mother does not show her busi­ness to the press,” Mrs. M said. “It is very bad luck.” After Spears’ “per­for­mance” at MTV’s Video Music Awards, the adop­tive cou­ple knew they had to do some­thing. “We could not allow inno­cent chil­dren to live under such hor­rific con­di­tions any­more,” they explained. “The Third World can no longer turn a blind eye to the tragedy affect­ing so many U.S. celebrity children.”

Chris “Leave Brit­ney Alone” Crocker is com­ing to Detroit Sat­ur­day:

On Sat­ur­day night, Crocker is sched­uled to appear at Ice in Ham­tramck, which bills itself as Detroit’s pre­mier gay night­club. What will he be doing there, other than being his fab­u­lous self? “It’s a sur­prise,” said Crocker, who uses a pseu­do­nym. “It’s going to be worth it, for sure.”

If you get on the road now, you can still make it. I’ll change the sheets in the guest room.

Oh, and finally, the Freep takes a look at how Islam is lived on the majority-Muslim foot­ball team at Ford­son High School in Dear­born, sneer­ingly referred to as “Dear­bor­nistan” by peo­ple who have never been there. Join us as we see how the high-school ath­lete copes when Ramadan falls dur­ing foot­ball season:

Last sea­son, Ford­son High’s foot­ball team, which is about 95% Mus­lim, started 4 – 0.

Then Ramadan came.

The team lost its next four games, all held dur­ing the holy month. After Ramadan, the team won its last reg­u­lar game of the year, squeak­ing into the playoffs.

Did the fast­ing affect their per­for­mance? Maybe.

But this sea­son, new head coach Fouad Zaban isn’t mak­ing it an issue.

“It became an excuse, whether legit­i­mate or not,” said Zaban, a for­mer star run­ning back at Ford­son. “It became a dis­trac­tion, some­thing we had to deal with the last four to five years. …But our motto this year is: ‘No excuses.’ We will not bring the issue up, and we haven’t.”

Zaban is a devout Mus­lim and fasts. But he’s leav­ing the choice up to his play­ers: There’s water on the side­lines if they want to drink dur­ing work­outs. Dur­ing a prac­tice last Thurs­day, though, the play­ers chose to sweat it out.

Really inter­est­ing story.

Have a great weekend.

* Of course I am kid­ding. We are cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing cli­mate change that is almost cer­tainly man-made and will be cat­a­strophic, and not just to the bot­tom of our boat when we try to get it out of the har­bor this fall, now that the water has dropped pre­cip­i­tously. Sorry for any mis­un­der­stand­ing. That is all.