My weekly newspaper, the Grosse Pointe News, is the worst weekly in the United States. Someone needs to hold the title, and there I said it. We have a hot primary election coming up here in the GP, for the Michigan House, and the local paper has had zero coverage of it. Yes: [crickets.]

Not an endorsement, not a voter’s guide, not even a few lousy letters to the editor. I don’t know why. My first thought is that an endorsement for an open seat would confound their stated endorsement policy, which is to always back the incumbent. Yes, it’s in writing, and yes, my jaw dropped, too. While trying to inform myself on the candidates’ positions using the awesome power of the Google, I found this amazing account, on the website of the Eastside Republican Club, of a speech by the paper’s then-editor. Their endorse-the-incumbent policy was “in view of the sacrifice the citizen has made.” And you wonder how lousy government gets that way.

Of course, there’s been an ownership/management change since then, but it looks like the new owner has even less interest in government, although, oddly, they did cover Nancy Pelosi’s fly-by last week to endorse Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. This is week three of a letters-column battle over whether the Easy Riders Bicycle Touring Club does or does not observe traffic safety rules in its jaunts around town, and of course the police briefs thrive:

A resident of the first block of Muir reported that sometime between July 12-22 someone entered his unsecured garage and stole 12 brown leaf bags, a red 2 1/2-gallon gasoline can and one yellow work glove.

But nothing about the primary coming up next week. Oh, well. It’s not like it’s important or anything.

I don’t mean to rant about these things, but anyone who’s worked for any newspaper short of Grain ‘n’ Shit Weekly knows that elections are part of the franchise. No other news medium covers government the way the dead-tree variety does, and it’s one part of your coverage you should take seriously enough to do. [Cue the patriotic piccolo music, please.] When a candidate goes to the trouble to gather signatures, file for candidacy, walk door to door, shake hands and everything else, your local newspaper should take the time to notice and publish the outline of your platform. (Your TV stations certainly won’t.) Every paper I’ve worked for has published election guides, and we did them for every single one, and yes, there were probably eagles holding red-white-and-blue bunting in their beaks in every issue. It’s what you do, because it’s important.

Maroons.

Everything went fine yesterday, although Alan says I tried to engage the recovery-room nurse in lite chit-chat about my large intestine. (That’s a great ice-breaker, I’ve found.) Sleeping the afternoon away was pleasant until it wasn’t — nausea and a killer headache set in around 5 p.m. The headache was almost certainly from caffeine withdrawal, but I didn’t dare put coffee on an empty stomach, which couldn’t even hold water for a time. Alan said when he left me to go back to work, I was eating yogurt with a fork. And to think I used to be a world-class partier. No more, I guess.

A little bloggage? Sure. Much of this is pre-packed by Metafilter:

20 Ways to Die Trying to Dunk a Basketball. With video clips.

This one’s for Brian: The secret Catholicism of John C. Frémont. Everything old is new again.

Best LOLcats ever: Cats that look like Wilford Brimley. It’s …uncanny.

If it’s light and sloppy today, sorry. Ten percent of my brain thinks it wants more deep hypnotic drugs.

It was perhaps foolish to take a weightlifting class on the same day I’m restricted to a clear-liquid diet, but oh well. I’m already hungry, and the zero hour isn’t for another 20. Sigh. Gonna be a long day.

I briefed Kate on mom’s upcoming procedure, and she thinks it’s simply hilarious. “You have to drink ALL THAT? And it has LAXATIVES in it?” Then she falls out laughing, perhaps at the joy of being 11 years old and 39 years away from her first routine colonoscopy. Who can blame her? And speaking of being 50 and having an 11-year-old daughter, thanks to LAMary for passing along some handy visual aids to show why Hollywood stars keep Photoshop geniuses on retainer (and why the paps work so hard to get the unguarded shot). Jesus, cheek implants, Madge — whose idea was that?

Well, I hope she enjoys her colonoscopy.

As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking a lot about bowels today. (And I haven’t even started with the magic drink.) They really are a mystery to too many people. One day when Alan’s mom and Aunt Dorothy were still alive, we went to Defiance one day, only to be told, “Dorothy’s bowel is dead.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“The doctors say it’s just dead. Everything she eats, it just goes straight through her.”

I can’t recall how close this was to the decline and fall of my own parents, but it must have been close, because I snapped a little. I’d grown a little tired of calling mom and dad, asking about their latest medical appointments, and being told, essentially: [Shrug.] I don’t know if they didn’t know the questions to ask or failed to remember the answers, but their attitude was always, “Ah, well. There’s nothing to be done.” It was like living in a 19th-century novel, where people were always “in a decline,” after which they’d either take to their beds and die or visit a sanitarium and recover, but there was rarely anything more to be done.

“Well, if Dorothy’s bowel is dead, you’d all better say goodbye, because the rest of her will soon be following,” I said, a little sharper than I’d intended. “You really can’t live without a bowel.”

We saw Dorothy later that day, and while she seemed to be in some pain, her color was good and she didn’t look like a person who wasn’t digesting anything, although, once again, she claimed that anything she ate would come out the other end, more or less untouched, within minutes. I kept my self-control this time and settled for muttering, under my breath, “That’s impossible.”

Dorothy lived another decade at least. I meditated on the subject for a while. The mysteries of what happens below the navel have been a source of fascination — and money-making opportunities — for as long as we’ve been self-aware. (Warning: Much grossness at that last link. Best leave it untouched. You’ve been warned.) Dogs just sniff and, occasionally, taste. We analyze.

A couple years ago, we had a marvelous discussion here about the 37-pounds-of-impacted-feces urban legend, which is said to be the postmortem fate of either Elvis Presley or John Wayne, and turns up from time to time in places it shouldn’t. Not the celebrity angle, but the standard line peddled by the colonics industry, which I still find in publications that should know better. A few months ago, a medical magazine asked me for story ideas. I replied with a few, and added a P.S.: “By the way — the colonics story in this issue? Where the writer says that all meat eaters carry three to five pounds of mucous-covered decaying meat in their intestines? That’s not true.”

I never got an assignment from the magazine, although one of my ideas turned up under a different writer’s byline a few months later. The secrets of my success, revealed!

Anyway, here’s a line I’ve been waiting my whole life to write: By the time some of you read this, I’ll have a 17,000-foot-long tube up my butt. Try to contain your excitement.

I’ll be back when I’m able, but I don’t think I’ll be able to improve on Dave Barry’s account (HT: Jen), so let’s leave it at that, eh? Fingers crossed for pink and healthy, and a 10-year break before the next one.

Later update today, folks — got an action-packed morning. In the meantime, a little video entertainment for the troops. Yeah, I think I’m going to see it:

UPDATE: Sorry guys. I don’t know how the closed-comments thing happened. Open now.

Ms. Lippman claims to be on an internet diet. As she is a very disciplined person, I believe it. (I add that I’m honored she includes this site in her restricted surfing, particularly considering it has no supplemental vitamin or minerals.) What’s more, I think she’s on to something. I didn’t miss the internet (too much) during our vacation, and I’m thinking I want to be more analog for a while.

So I’m going on a diet. I will not be neglecting this site. Too much. Same daily updates, perhaps less bloggage. Maybe you won’t notice it at all, but I’m going to restrict my time spent a) blogging and b) looking for things to blog about to 45 minutes a day, 60 at most. I have a few writing opportunities I want to explore, and if the mile of tombstones* this year has reminded me of anything, it’s that we don’t have all the time in the world, just some of it. Wouldn’t it be stupid to lie on your deathbed and think, “I spent it all blogging”? I think so.

Also, I need to do more video. Even though I am unemployable by traditional media, I like to keep the skills sharp.

What I mainly think I’m going to do is stop reading the sites that bug me. While there’s a certain scab-picking satisfaction in seeing What That Idiot Has to Say Today, it’s just, alas, a waste of time. So long, Jim Lileks. Au revoir, Rod Dreher. Farewell, about a dozen other blogs. It was fun while it lasted, and besides, I’m still reading Roy, who will keep us updated on the highlights.

* turn of phrase borrowed from Thomas McGuane, who used it as the title of an essay about a rash of deaths in his family

OK, then. What a nice weekend. Spent it at Eastern Market (July! Time for corn, peaches, snow peas, bok choy, sugar snaps, tomatoes, beets, weensy little carrots and yes I made two trips to the car), sailing, moviegoing (”Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which will go on my parental-duty roster in the plus column, but otherwise be entirely forgotten in a matter of days) and, Sunday, a Tigers game. As a recent transplant, I really don’t give a crap about the Tiger Stadium demolition, despite the Free Press’ dedication to covering every swing of the wrecking ball, and besides, Comerica is hardly a dump. It was hot and sweaty in the sun, but the seats were great (thanks, Michael and Diane) and the Tigers won. Pudge Rodriguez went four-for-four — a Hot Pudge Sunday — and there were a couple of nice homers. And the heat wasn’t even that bad; fortunately, there was beer.

Friday night at the movies was something else, however — we went to the 5 p.m. show and came out in the midst of Macomb County Friday Night, a vast gathering at a new “lifestyle center” mall up in the northern ‘burbs. “Lifestyle center” = open-air. Their gimmick is, they allow dogs, and every time I go there I wonder if this will be the day disaster strikes. Because there are an awful lot of stupid people in the world, people who think dogs “enjoy” a Friday night spent strolling at the mall, in the company of hundreds of people and dozens of strange dogs, some of which are barely under control in the first place. Since we were last there the mall added an outdoor splash fountain and climbable play area, so add a bunch of toddlers to the mix, too. Every time I go there I witness at least one dog argument barely avoided, sometimes between, oh, an 80-pound boxer and a 100-pound lab, both straining at the ends of their leashes, which are held by 110-pound women who simply don’t have a clue. About anything.

Also, these trips enable me to see how many people think it is normal and admirable to put clothes on dogs. I’m not talking a bandanna around the neck, either. I ask you.

So, a little bit of bloggage:

Mitch Albom, I beg you, take the buyout. A grateful readership would thank you. I would, anyway.

And one final housekeeping note: This week is when I’m collecting the last of my doctor’s 50th-birthday presents, the one that requires a special diet, Miralax and general anesthesia. So if I disappear for a couple of days, please try not to picture what I’ll be doing. ‘kay?

I’ve lived in open-primary states all my life — first Ohio, then Indiana, now Michigan — and have been immersed in GOP Nation for so long that I can’t remember when voting wasn’t complicated. To vote offensively, or defensively? How strategic does my ballot need to me? Vote for someone, or against someone else?

We have a primary coming up in just under a couple weeks. There are a few interesting races on the table, and apparently I’m not the only one who’s strategizing.

Our state house district is reliably Republican, but no longer a lead-pipe cinch. Six Republicans and four Democrats are running for the seat opened by a term-limited exit. Normally I’d vote in the Republican primary, just for that feeling of not being disenfranchised, but the U.S. congressional seat is in play, and that one’s more interesting.

The current occupant is the Detroit mayor’s mother, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, an imperious, high-handed dame who behaves as though the seat was bequeathed to her by God. Unfortunately, her son’s problems have many suburbanites slavering to punish him by booting his mom from office — at least, if I’m reading the sudden appearance of yard signs for her opponent, Mary Waters, along such unlikely thoroughfares as Lake Shore Road in Grosse Pointe.

Here’s Waters’ TV ad, with Mrs. K’s famous meltdown of a couple summers back.

And here’s how the mayor is greeted in his hometown by a crowd of hockey fans, certainly a heavily suburban crowd. This is a fairly restrained response, based on what I’ve heard in private conversations.

Today brings fresh outrage for the ‘burbs: The mayor’s being investigated for allegedly shoving a sheriff’s deputy, who was trying to serve a subpoena on his good friend Bobby Ferguson. This happened at the home of the mayor’s sister, who is married to Bobby’s cousin, and yes, others have noted that nepotism seems to be a theme with these folks.

Anyway, I’m not sure which ballot I’ll request. It depends on whether the Republican spot for the state House seat looks to be in serious play. I don’t think it is — I think it’s going to a nice blonde lady whose qualifications include “in line to be the first female commodore of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.” Oh, how nice. Meanwhile, Kilpatrick and Waters “sparred,” as they say, on a local public-affairs show last weekend, and the former sneered to the latter, “You couldn’t carry my bra.” And people wonder why I like living here.

Of course, it would help if one of the weeklies would cover the race, but they’re too busy covering a new swimming pool opening. (Headline: Splish, splash! Zero-entry pool opens)

Dunno if you non-subscribers can read this, but there’s an interesting piece in the WSJ today announcing the “end of the Reagan Revolution,” i.e., a return of government regulation. After a bellyful of Chinese lead, the mortgage-and-banking fiascos, collapsing freeway bridges and various other train wrecks, voters are saying, “You know, maybe the endlessly creative marketplace isn’t the best overseer for this stuff.” And I know you can read this AP piece about the same issue, in tighter focus:

WASHINGTON - One of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. is teaching the food industry the truth of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak’s source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers’ favorite foods.

The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

When we were in Cali, garden to the U.S., this was a very big story. Tomato growers were worried about losing their shirts while investigators tried to find the needle in the haystack. Meanwhile, consumers refused to buy tomatoes, restaurants pulled them from their menus and the nation twiddled its thumbs. Good thing the availability of our favorite foods wasn’t disrupted.

OK. Friends, I am looking out the window at what appears to be a lovely day. Time to exercise the Freelancer’s Option, and go enjoy it. Good weekends to all.

The incidents of scrap-metal thievery are great enough in number that they make a bona fide trend story, but I’m finding them lacking something, say, a sense of outrage. You can pile up the details all day, and there are scores — the theft of a green plaster statue of Jesus from the outside wall of a church, mistaken for copper; the stripping of a landmark fountain on Belle Isle, a six-figure repair for maybe $200 in scrap; the “NO METAL” signs on houses and commercial buildings around the city; the catalytic-converter gangs that can cut yours from your car without tripping the alarm — but still not get a sense of how bad it is.

A couple weeks ago, I heard an NPR piece on the theft of manhole covers in Philadelphia. A driver can hit an open manhole and do hundreds or thousands of dollars of damage to a car, but a cyclist can do the same thing and die. So you might say I paid close attention to this. The reporter interviewed a spokesman for a trade association of metal recyclers, who, in the tradition of weasel spokesmen everywhere, said scrap buyers bear no responsibility for this trend, and perhaps the cities most affected should work harder to secure the valuable ($20 in scrap, hundreds to replace) items, or maybe replace them with something less valuable, like fiberglas.

This being radio, and public radio at that, I waited in vain for the reporter to ask, “Are you telling me that a buyer has no obligation to raise questions when someone brings in five manhole covers reading ‘City of Philadelphia’ on them? Because I’d really like to get you on the record here.”

The linked story above has no scrap-metal spokesman — maybe he was busy doing a Black Mass or something — but it does mention the usual feeble effort of the city to crack down:

Last year, Detroit tightened its ordinance on scrap sales by requiring all dealers to produce paperwork and a video of all scrap sale transactions. “It has reduced copper theft in the city of Detroit,” said Bettison. “But now many of the scrap thieves go outside the city to sell their stolen metals.”

Well, that’s comforting.

As usual, Jim at Sweet Juniper has a beautifully written piece that captures the agony perfectly;

With China’s voracious demand for raw materials and the shocking increase in value of recyclable metals over the past few years, increased scrapping and theft are no surprise. But in places like Detroit the problem is so vast, fighting it seems almost futile, like those farm workers beating away the locusts in Days of Heaven. Occasionally a scrapper will die cutting a live wire, but six more step forward to take his place.

You see scrappers all the time in their beat-down old cars and trucks filled with metal: aluminum siding, radiators, steel fixtures, copper piping. I often see them inside Detroit’s wide-open and abandoned historic structures. Most artifacts of architectural significance have long been pillaged (for example, the terracotta lions from Lee Plaza that passed through the Ann Arbor antique market before being incorporated into new condo developments in Chicago). But there is still some rusty metal to be ripped away from the walls in most of these buildings. While showing that BBC documentary crew around a few weeks ago, we came across a mini van filled with metal driving around inside the old Fisher Body 21 plant. They are like maggots feeding on wounds; parasites devouring the viscera of this dying city.

We’ve already heard of aluminum docks around our lake place in south-central Michigan being stolen. Are scrappers taking your city apart, too?

No bloggage today — it’s already time to get changed for twice-weekly weight class, which recently went to a new teacher who believes it’s not weightlifting until the bar is sagging, apparently. Kill me now. If an open manhole cover doesn’t kill me first.

Talked to a couple of old friends in the past few days. One recently had a hysterectomy, and it went well. She described the moment when the doctor came in to her hospital room and announced she could be released, just as soon as the surgical packing was removed from her vagina — gauze, mostly.

“You know that trick where the magician pulls out a long string of scarves, and it just goes on and on and on?” she said. “It was like that, only grosser.”

The other one told a few stories about her work life, which are the best stories ever. I’d pay money to see her one-woman show someday, and maybe I will. If you want to collect good stories about people, don’t bother becoming a bartender. Become a house cleaner instead. Better stories. One of my editors used to say a mailman knew more about your life than any other stranger who touched it. I say it’s your house cleaner, who knows the state of your marriage from the remains of your romantic dinners for two, and certainly by the number of votive candles arrayed around your bathtub. This friend used to clean empty houses for Realtors, and could tell the ethnicity of the former owners with astonishing accuracy:

“Asians lived there,” she said. “Long black hairs in the bathroom, lots of spilled rice in the pantry.” Indians left behind cooking smells, and favored certain paint colors. (White folks like neutrals.)

The best story she told me was about a lovely house in an upscale suburban area that one of her clients picked up very very cheap. It had been trashed, she said, by the previous owner’s children. It seemed that one day mom ran off with her boyfriend and moved to a faraway state. Then, a few months later, dad accepted a job in another distant city. When the teenage children, who were entering their junior and senior year of high school, objected to the relocation, he said, “OK, you kids can live here until you finish school. You’re old enough to take care of yourselves. I’ll send you some money. Bye.” You can imagine what happened: It became party central, a cushy crash pad for every local kid who needed a place to drink, get high or get laid. And over time, no doubt egged on by the effectively orphaned tenants, the place was very nearly destroyed — they threw cans of house paint out the window onto the driveway to see what it would look like, let the pool go back to nature, wrecked the furniture and carpets, punched holes in the walls and so on. Rehabbing it was a six-figure job, and it was practically a new house to begin with.

That should be a movie, don’t you think? The most interesting stories are be-careful-what-you-wish-for stories.

I have the bestest friends.

Bloggage:

My new rock-star husband, Don Was — yes, Rodney Crowell, while I will always love you, it’s all over between us — was in the Metro Times last week. I missed the show he was promoting, The Don Was Detroit Super Session, and yes I am kicking myself. But he’s so generous in his interviews, which is one reason I love him. They just go on and on and on, and he says so many interesting things. I bring this up because we were talking about the Jill Sobule album-financing deal a while back, and lo, guess what happened:

MT: Other than the Todd Snider project, do you have anything else major coming up?

WAS: Well, just before that, I finished an album with Jill Sobule. She did the original “I Kissed A Girl,” but she shouldn’t be judged on that. She’s a really deep songwriter — both funny and profound. She has a devoted fan base, and she had a “telethon” on her website where fans could contribute as little as $18, for which they got a T-shirt and an early download of the album. For $10,000 — which some people actually bought — you got the hyper-platinum package which allowed you to come and sing background vocals on the album. And she raised $85,000 in about three weeks. Then we made that album — recorded and mixed it — in less than two weeks. Same basic principle. And, you know, there’s just, something about it – that immediacy.

And also in the Metro Times, one of the Starbucks that’s closing is the one on Jefferson in Detroit. Alas, it was beloved by someone other than the usual nobodies:

Long before Renee Zellweger’s brief marriage to country “singer” Kenny Chesney, long before Jack White married model Karen Elson while floating down a Brazilian river, the movie star and the rock star were, as your grandparents might have called ‘em, an item. Zellweger spent much time in Detroit, in fact, which was a shocker to us regular folk who spotted her wandering about in supermarkets and dining in restaurants like someone who is, as she calls herself, “just kind of normal”… “Oh, yeah,” she says, drawing the “yeah” out with a few extra vowels. “I’d like to say hi to my friends at the Starbucks on Jefferson. Nice guys.”

A little housekeeping: I’m now on Twitter, as NNall. Like Facebook, I don’t quite get it, but maybe I can figure it out.

The Starbucks closing list is now public, and I’m pleased to see our local isn’t on it. I’m generally pleased with Starbucks, except when I am not. I won’t rehash all the standard bitching about the mermaid, because it doesn’t matter; Starbucks introduced dark roasts to much of America, and give them that at the very least. If it’s much more difficult to palm off a watery brown tincture as something worth your $1.25, then they’ve done the world a service.

Of course there’s a downside. I saw it last week in the Las Vegas airport, on a short layover when all I wanted was a great big cuppa strong black coffee, and got stuck in line behind the eight pickiest people in the world. When one opened with, “I’d like two tall skinny soy lattes, one just a tad cooler than the other,” I threw up my hands and sought out a fast-food place down the row.

Once upon a time America drank coffee. And America was strong. An America that drinks tall skinny soy lattes — one just a tad cooler than the other — is an America that is, dare I say, French.

Ah, well. I have bigger fish to fry today. Picked up the dog yesterday, and could feel his bones poking through his coat. He’d been off his feed most of the week, the vet said. OK, can’t blame him — abandonment in one’s dotage is probably grounds for a hunger strike. Since he’s gotten home, he’s done nothing but eat. And then sometime last night, he got up and pooped on the dining room floor. Which is either the beginning of the end, or just evidence of a senior citizen’s discombobulated constitution. I’m going with the latter. Poor old man. In seven weeks, he’ll be 17. Deaf, mostly blind, but still swingin’.

Speaking of dogs, let’s swing into some tasty bloggage today with one I’ve been carrying around a while. I don’t know how many of you read the NYT’s magazine cover story weekend before last, the one on psychotropic pharmaceuticals for pets, but it made me laugh so hard I nearly had my own dining-room accident:

Aggression is a feline problem too. A few weeks after visiting Dodman, I went to the home of a man in West Los Angeles whose pet was on Prozac. The owner, Doug, asked me not to use his last name because he didn’t want business associates to know about what he called his “cougar psycho little miniature stalker” — Booboo the cat.

Booboo was apparently poisoned by an unfortunate dried-flower-eating incident, which led to the onset of, I dunno, catzophrenia:

From then on Booboo was different. He would periodically ambush Doug. Over time, Doug noticed that attacks were more likely if he smelled at all abnormal — for instance, if he had been near a woman wearing perfume — so he would take a shower after coming home and then change into his designated cat-wrangling outfit.

…Doug led me up the stairs in his house to the second floor. He donned a pair of khakis that he had lined with heavy-gauge ballistic nylon and washed up because he had shaken hands with me. He crept toward the master bedroom, where Booboo was permanently quarantined behind a door that had been remounted to swing outward to facilitate quick escapes by Doug. “Just behind this door lurks the Tasmanian devil,” Doug said before slipping inside. I squatted at ground level and watched through a transparent doggy door. The 400-square-foot room had a walk-in closet, a four-poster bed and a floor-to-ceiling view of Beverly Hills mansions dotting a scenic canyon. The suite belonged entirely to Booboo, though Doug said he was now able to sleep over a few nights a week. Booboo slinked past the window and gave me a steady gaze. He had a tuxedo coat, mostly black but with patches of white on his feet, underbelly and forehead. Doug scooped him up and they nuzzled face to face. “He’s just warm, soft and fuzzy, and he purrs, and he’s cuddly,” he murmured.

The theme of the story: These critters wouldn’t need all these drugs if we, their owners, weren’t quite so crazy ourselves. Good reading.

Those who can get back to the land, do. Those who can’t, delegate. Another reason to hate California foodies:

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden? That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves. Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

Here’s a story that’s been getting some play here of late, about a Michigan woman who escaped from prison in 1976 (drug charges), went straight, assumed a new identity and was found 30 years later living the good life in the suburbs of San Diego. The question is, of course, how do you treat a self-rehabilitated soccer mom whose original crime was non-violent but whose escape from custody remains unpunished? As one, the howl goes up in Michigan: Send her back to prison, for a very very very long time!

I am not among those howling. Of course she deserves punishment; the state has to do something. But jailing her again seems pointless, and what’s more, I know of a punishment that will a) hurt; b) hit her where she lives; and c) help the state of Michigan. Among many other things. And it is? Ahem. Fine her.

Fine her big. If her family wants her on the outside so bad, make them pay a hearty sum. Half a million, say. Or more. Why is this so hard? You’re welcome. Just call me Solomon.

Off to the gym, which I am dreading.

Please don’t get me started on flying commercially in this country. I don’t do it very often, but I have many strong opinions, most involving the stubborn refusal of too many customers to check their bags. It really chaps my ass, getting on a plane with a bunch of people, all of whom are trying to shove 10 pounds of bag into 5 pounds of overhead storage. It’s like traveling with a bunch of Soviet Siberians, back when the only place you could buy anything was Moscow, and you had to shlep it home on the Trans-Siberian Express. Of course, if you asked any of my fellow travelers, they’d say they’ve all lost luggage, oy but it was a nightmare and never again.

I’ve never lost my luggage. Maybe it’s just luck. To be sure, I don’t fly often. But before every flight, when the agent is tagging my bags, I check to make sure they have the right city on them. I rarely board with anything larger than what can be tucked under the seat. And for an extra 15 minutes at baggage claim, I am not one of the problem people.

How often in your life do you get to say this? If only there were more people in the world…well, like me.

Back and happy to be so. A few thoughts/clarifications:

** Just for the record, I didn’t spend my entire vacation thinking about the food movement in northern California. But I always need something to think about, and the Kingdom of Foodies made for satisfying vacation cogitation — not particularly consequential, and a lot less scary than, say, the fate of Fannie, Freddie and IndyMac. Plus, it was reinforced with every overpriced-yet-tasty meal.

So please don’t get the idea I’m obsessing about this. But I just came back from my post-vacation replenishment of the fridge and pantry, and it’s on my mind. Again.

Here’s what I spent a lot of time thinking about: Why do people I have so much in common with bug me so deeply? I enjoy eating well, eating local, eating slow. Few things bring me as much joy as a farmer’s market in July. I think fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers is a good thing. I want the earth to be replenished by our agriculture, not depleted by it. I think farm animals have a right to cruelty-free lives.

And yet, one morning when we were getting dressed, the local NPR affiliate carried a local feature about a speed-dating event for people interested in green living, i.e., people who believe all those things about food, plus a few more covering how they live their lives and get to their jobs. One of the interviews was with a man who went away disappointed at the lack of commitment he found — people who thought recycling a few bottles and tolerating compact-fluorescent light bulbs constituted a green lifestyle. As opposed to him, for instance, who did everything short of composting his own excrement.

It wasn’t what he said that struck me so much as the tone — that blend of 90 percent smugness and 10 percent whining. It tickled a zone of deep familiarity in my brain before I figured where I’d heard it before. It is precisely the same one employed by certain Christians (I’m thinking Missouri Synod Lutherans here, but your local variety may be another denomination) when they’re finding fault with a world that fails to live up to their expectations and, far more important, reward their piety with social approval. And that’s when it clicked: This isn’t a lifestyle choice or even a movement, it’s a religion. And there’s nothing like religion to rinse all the fun out of something.

** How’s this for irony? When we were in Carmel, Clint Eastwood’s hometown, guess where he was? In our hometown.

** Sorry, Danny, didn’t make it up to Muir Woods, but we did spend an afternoon at Point Lobos State Reserve, and another kayaking on Elkhorn Slough. We got a pretty good dose of California’s loveliness.

** Someday I’d like to live in NoCal, if a) I can somehow go there with about $10 million in my pocket; and b) I can ever figure out the weather. As a Midwesterner, I prefer our Fisher-Price version — it comes from the west, it can be seen coming for days and days, there are no mountains to impede its progress and “summer” generally means “temperatures above 75 degrees.” The coastal breezes were wonderful for the first 48 hours — hey, why are all these people wearing down vests? — until we got acclimated, and then it was just, well, freezing. The rule seemed to be: Whatever the weather is in the morning, it will be the opposite by afternoon. Although it could be something else entirely.

Well, I have my old weather back now: The humidity smells like mold, not sage. The weather is on its old pattern, and sorry this is a disjointed mess but I have to go pick up the dog, whom I miss more than I ever imagined. Hang on, Spriggy — I’m on my way. The rest of you, back in a bit. And thanks for being such good chatterboxes when I was gone. You can run my bar anytime.

There’s a church here. You probably have a church. If you’re like most Americans, somewhere in your church you hear the phrase “Father, son and Holy Spirit.” In church here, they say, “Organic, humane and sustainable.”

It’s sort of annoying; I think food should nourish, not polish your ego. But it makes for some tasty lunches. Yesterday: Cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, bread from the Acme Bread Company, sausage from some place next door, wine ditto, chocolate ditto. We ate it on the observation deck overlooking the bay, outside the Ferry Building:

(There was supposed to be a photo here, but like I said: Our internet connection is spotty and imperfect. Couldn’t upload to Flickr.)

I don’t mean to clog up your time with these updates, which aren’t that interesting. But I needed an entry to hang this bit of bloggage on, which is worth clicking through just to see the picture: Internet sting nets ‘World’s Greatest Dad’.

Off to Monterey today.