My old neighbor in Fort Wayne — a saint, and Kate’s second mother — has a business cleaning offices and sometimes houses. Houses were more of a sideline, but once when we lived here she told me a terrible story about one. It was a nice house, in a good suburban subdivision, maybe set back a bit from its neighbors. On her way out, she complimented the owner on how nice it was.
“Yes,” the owner said. “I’m glad we were able to save it.”
The story unfolded like this: For three years or so, it had been occupied by two teenagers, who’d been abandoned by their parents. The mother left first, perhaps due to some sort of mental crisis, and then the father was offered a job in another state. The teens objected to being uprooted, so the father said, fine, you guys can stay here on your own. He said he’d send them money, and they were told to behave themselves.
In perhaps the least surprising news possible, they did not do this.
Soon the house became known as a teen party venue, and over the course of the next couple of years, the place was trashed. One detail I remember was about the night some kid brought over several gallon cans of paint, which were enthusiastically flung out the windows, lids off. Paint streamed down the sides of the house, and onto the roof and driveway. By the time the teens finished high school, the house was nearly unsalvageable.
I wondered at the time what it would be like to have both your parents abandon you, and at such a time of your life. I wondered what happened to those young people, how they grew up. I wonder where they are now. I wonder what the cops knew.
This week a far worse case of child abandonment was revealed here in Detroit. Three children — a boy, 15, and two girls, 12 and 13 — were found living on their own in a condo where garbage, mold and feces had piled up over the course of four years. This is in Pontiac. The neighbors were stunned. Everyone else was stunned, too, stunned and amazed that this could go on so long. The kids said food was left on the front porch, usually by delivery services. The mother lived nearby, with another child. That child’s father said he had no idea about the other three.
And how was this discovered? The landlord hadn’t been paid rent for a few months, and requested a welfare check.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. Today the county prosecutor filed first-degree child abuse charges. But it’s pretty clear that when we say sometimes children “fall through the cracks,” those aren’t cracks, they’re chasms.
More will be revealed.
How can anyone do this to children. I just don’t understand.
OK! Let’s move on. My friends whose house I’m staying in this week have the same coffeemaker we do. We have a different configuration — thermal carafe with no burner FTW — but we both have Moccamasters. These are pricey machines, but make excellent coffee. Alan has us on a strict maintenance schedule for ours. My friends do not. However, I am here and this is one of the week’s services I provide: Cleaning the Moccamaster. I just finished it, and I’ll explain the process to you, if you too have a teensy bit of OCD about getting stuff sparkling.
Here are the miracle solutions, purchased from Amazon. The gray box is for the innards, the blue for the pot itself:
They’re just powders, and speaking of OCD, I’d like to have a word with Urnex about why one box contains three packets of powder and the other four, because you use them together and that is annoying to always have to be ordering one or the other. But whatever. The gray descaler goes first. You dissolve it in water and let it run through. Here’s the Before picture:
Yuck, I know. I usually let the descaler run halfway through, turn the pot off and let it sit and do its work. Turn it back on after 10 minutes or so and run it all through. Then three water run-throughs, and you’re ready for the pot cleaner. This is where it gets sexy.
The pot cleaner is the same process — dissolve it in water and pour it through. You would not believe how much oil and gunk it takes off. This is the first pass through:
That looks like coffee, but it’s just gunk. Dump it out, and send three pots of plain water through, maybe tidy up with a paper towel here and there, and here is the After:
This may be one reason a skills assessment and interest inventory I took in high school said I should maybe run a commercial fishery. There’s just something about a project like this that is so much more satisfying than, say, writing.
The weekend is appearing on the horizon, and I’ll be going home to Wendy. You all have a good one, and if you like good coffee, enjoy a cup. I think I’ll have two.
Dexter Friend said on February 20, 2025 at 5:52 am
Carla Lee provided child care for years. One motherless boy she cared for came in smelling of piss, filthy clothes, dirt caked in his outer ears.
This boy lived with his dad, who worked but gee, he couldn’t care for his kid. My wife had him shower and clean up, trimmed his unruly hair, bought him some new clothes and…taught him to read. Yeah, this boy had been shuffled along and was in Grade 3 , but was illiterate. The boy was transformed.
I was so proud of my wife’s dedication.
It takes a village. Hilary told us that.
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Dorothy said on February 20, 2025 at 7:00 am
I read that horrifying story yesterday and it haunted me. Dexter that is a wonderful story about your wife and her heartfelt reaction to that sweet boy! I have a happy sort of story to tell, too.
I’m in two quilts guilds in Columbus. One of the guilds had our monthly meeting on Tuesday this week. Our guest speaker was a woman in the Columbus Department of Health, and she works with women having babies and who need vital assistance and guidance. This guild has been donating baby quilts to this organization for 19 years (I’ve only been a member for 2.5 years). Valerie brought three co workers with her, one of whom was a recipient of a quilt when she had her fourth child four years ago. She brought the quilt with her, and said her 4 yr old son still loves this quilt. From the back of the room one member, Barb, spoke up and said “Oh! That’s one that I made!” Well, they made a beeline for each other to hug it out, and I’m positive most of us in the room got very misty-eyed and we all clapped wildly!
Valerie said they helped 766 babies and moms last year. We hadn’t kept track of how many quilts we gave them last year, but that night there were 51 to give them to distribute in 2025. We’re going to try to get at least 400 quilts made for the year. Words can’t describe how fulfilling it is to do something that makes an impact, however small, for a mom and new baby.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2025 at 7:31 am
You guys are making me cry:
We’re in Southern California for our truncated trip because of the serious surgery of my husband’s granddaughter’s father. We will be seeing them Friday. Right now we’re at Miracle Manor in Desert Hot Springs, a spa in the middle of the desert with a natural hot springs pool. It’s heaven to soak in. The place is zen like, simple, spare and quiet. A good place to be while all the chaos is whirling around in the world because of the current regime.
Next we go to Anaheim to see the granddaughter, we usually stay with them but because her father is still in a hospital bed set up in their living room we’re staying in a hotel for a few nights, then we go back to NM.
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Jeff Gill said on February 20, 2025 at 7:41 am
Huzzah for caring for kids, society’s most basic function.
Nancy made me think of “Cannery Row,” both the Steinbeck novel (excellent) & Nolte/Winger film of 1982 (excellent in different ways from the book, but both worth your time). A commercial fishery sounds good right now. Our local politicians are lying like Berber, and it’s increasingly hard to find ways to get the word out “their lips are moving, so…” to my fellow citizens, a few of whom still want to care for children and the vulnerable.
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ROGirl said on February 20, 2025 at 7:47 am
This Day in History: in 1939 20,000 people attended a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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Jeff Gill said on February 20, 2025 at 7:56 am
For the record as you read the latter third of this, I’ve never once been contacted by or spoken to anyone from the law director’s office. Which makes their claims here… interesting. To whom ARE they speaking?
https://www.thereportingproject.org/heath-council-approves-camping-ban-saying-plans-for-a-special-court-to-help-unsheltered-people-persuaded-them-to-vote-yes/
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Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2025 at 8:04 am
Not sure about the blue box, but I’d lay odds the gray one is mostly citric acid. You can get it in a big bag for next to nothing. This is a Good Thing*, because Orlando water has a lot of minerals, and someone is using the electric teakettle pretty much once an hour. *Isn’t that what Martha Stewart used to say?
I could write for hours about neglected children and filling the gap, but then I’d be neglecting today’s duties, so I’d better be off to tackle them.
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Courtney said on February 20, 2025 at 8:56 am
I realize this is absolutely not the point of this group but because right now I’m absolutely paralyzed whenever I read the news, I’d like to suggest this recipe. It’s savory, simple, and EVERYONE ate including my (occasionally) picky boyfriend and my foodie 14 year old and my 11 year old son who doesn’t like “fancy” food. And me. I liked it too.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016135-rishia-zimmerns-chicken-with-shallots?unlocked_article_code=1.r04.cMIp.qGBl4rBXEL0v&smid=share-url
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Dorothy said on February 20, 2025 at 9:46 am
This group discusses cooking ALL THE TIME Courtney so don’t apologize for sharing that recipe! I just made a NYT easy chicken soup recipe on Monday for our dinner that uses ground chicken instead of chicken pieces and it was delicious. I didn’t have a box of regular chicken broth, only a box of Swanson’s spicy chicken broth. (I don’t know how I bought that accidentally…). And i had some Better Than Bouillon in the fridge, so I came up with 8 cups of broth easily. The spicy broth was a little too spicy so we put a dollop of sour cream in our bowls for each bowl,and that made all the difference. Delicious.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 11:55 am
Courtney! I thought that one looked familiar and I see that I cooked it a while back. I love just about anything that combines dijon and tarragon, and as I remember this was like a different take on chicken Provencal but same method basically.
In case anyone missed it, Neil Steinberg’s column yesterday was much like the story coming out of Pontiac only this one was about the abuse and neglect of a dog. What was especially shocking is that the dog’s owner was a well-to-do pediatric physician but who also happened to be a hoarder. The dog was discovered near death in a plastic storage tote by a cleaning service that came in to help the owner prepare for a move to Florida, from where she has been extradited to face animal cruelty charges in Illinois. Few stories bring me to tears but that one certainly did.
Maybe I should have stayed in Illinois. I was quite moved by Governor J.B. Pritzker’s state of the state address in which he recalled the threatened neo-Nazi march on Skokie in 1978 and drew parallels between the present political moment and Nazi Germany and our urgent need to act. We’ll never see such courage from the Trump bootlicking MAGA governor of Indiana.
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Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2025 at 1:27 pm
An Illinois state senator went spluttering on camera about how Gov. Pritzker owed him and all Republicans an apology. I wrote on his page that HE should be apologizing for his silence in the face of the tRump putsch. Now, the Kane County Republican Party is cross with me. Oh, my. Whatever will I do?
Isn’t it wonderful that under tRump we’re embracing a bloodthirsty dictator leading an international pariah state? Aren’t you proud that now ‘Murica joins Iran, Korea, Belarus, Hamas and Hezbollah as Russian allies?
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 1:42 pm
“Oh, we don’t want to put homeless people in jail,” as they vote for an ordnance that says exactly that.
One of the things I always emphasized to my fellow planning commissioners was that it didn’t matter what anyone said about what their plans were, or what pretty pictures they showed, what matter was what got written in the code.
But the Supreme Court has given jurisdictions permission to criminalize homelessness now, and they’re rushing to do so, though it doesn’t actually solve any problem.
We have had a Community Court here in Redmond, with associated services, and it’s been successful in its way, but what it has not done is affect homelessness much. You can help people with mental health and substance abuse, but a community court can’t manufacture affordable housing.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2025 at 3:03 pm
I keep getting texts to donate to various Democratic organizations to combat what is going on with the Trump regime but what I’m not hearing is what is the donated money going to be used for? Throwing money at it doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to me. Are they buying time on TV stations? Are they helping the campaigns of Dem legislators up for elections in 2026? If so who are they? It’s aggravating to constantly have to type Stop only to have them still contact me. It’s not helping them from my standpoint.
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David C said on February 20, 2025 at 3:17 pm
The money goes to consultants for doing focus groups to determine the exact correct amount of fascism the Democratic Party should support in their 2028 Presidential campaign.
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Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2025 at 4:13 pm
The supine Senate allowed tRump to run the table on his nominees. Kash Patel is your new FBI director. Enjoy your new regime, ‘Murica.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 5:52 pm
I think I should call up Bobby Jr and tell him that in the spirit of Elon, I have a guaranteed program that for losing weight for people in this country, that will work for almost everyone.
My plan? I’ll cut off everyone’s legs! Guaranteed weight loss!
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 6:51 pm
I’m not sure why they’re even bothering with the sleight of hand, but here’s what I predict will happen with all the federal cuts.
Musk will continue to gut the federal work force, maybe even getting into the Pentagon. That still won’t produce the kind of paper savings he needs to produce, so he’ll have to cut more programs. The goal is to produce enough “savings” to justify making Trump’s tax cuts permanent. They expire this year otherwise.
Then, once those tax cuts are locked in, the services the federal government was providing still need to be provided, so now it’s time for the contractors to step up to the trough and get paid to do what employees were doing. Look for Palantir to be the modern day Halliburton – the all purpose government contractor. Sure, it will cost more doing it this way, but who cares about the deficit?
I’m really not sure why they’re even bothering going through a budget process with Congress, since they just ignored the last one. Just sign an EO declaring the tax cuts permanent, and hell, make ‘em bigger. Why pretend?
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Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2025 at 8:04 pm
A very sad story from church this morning–elderly parishioner who has run through all her money. She somehow signed up to live at a senior residence that costs 4K per month; not even assisted living, just cleaning and meals on top of the apartment. She sold her house and it just seemed like she was getting so much money that she never did the math on long it would last.
Now she’s had an expensive car repair and she can’t make rent next month. She understands that she needs to move, but thinks she can sell some antiques to raise the money. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how little they’ll be worth.
Both husbands dead, only child dead, she called her cousin to ask for a loan and he told her she was delusional. I agree, but it’s gonna be a long, hard road.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Paul Krugman seems to think what’s happening is more like a mafia protection racket. Trump will make carve outs for those in Congress who kiss his ass and punish anyone who doesn’t. His beneficence toward Eric Adams and Rod Blagojovitch is meant to show he’s not going to be strictly partisan about it.
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Andrea said on February 20, 2025 at 9:54 pm
It’s been a long, long time since ol’ Blago identified with the Democratic party and an even longer time since they claimed him. Not sure he counts toward the bipartisan label. He campaigned for Trump the last couple of elections.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 11:38 pm
Even our local TV stations are complicit in the deceit.
WANE TV is so desperate for access that it gives a total pass to Congressman Marlin Stutzman when he says that DOGE has uncovered billions in waste and fraud. Among the egregious crimes, Stutzman says that they uncovered $20 million given to Iraq for a “Sesame Street program” that could have been better spent in towns like Kendallville or Bluffton. A good journalist would have followed up by asking, “So where is that clawed-back money going to be spent? Are you saying that it’s actually coming to Kendallville and Bluffton? And if so, what are they going to do with it?”
A good journalist would also ask what the fuck he’s talking about. A Sesame Street program? Is he saying we’re putting on expensive puppet shows for Iraqi children? Or grooming them to be homosexuals, a favorite theme of the right, especially when it comes to public television? It looks to me like they’re letting him speak in code to the nutters without decoding it for the rest of us. That money spent in Iraq might very well be going toward some very legitimate and worthy purpose but we’ll never know unless someone actually asks what the fuck Stutz the Yutz is yammering about.
But don’t expect anything like that from the wizened telecom majors who never made it out of the minor league markets like this one.
On Edit: Andrea at 20: I know that Blago was a sellout long ago, and Trump loves a sellout. He just made one Director of National Intelligence. And he’ll reward any other Democrat who sells out, or any never-Trump Republican who does the same. Consider JD Vance.
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Suzanne said on February 21, 2025 at 9:57 am
This is an excellent assessment of where we are and how we got here:
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/conspiracists-are-about-to-get-a-dose-of-reality-c2fltx0xd
“But an underrated factor in modern irrationality and zealotry is the West’s stability. Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable. You can rattle the bars of the cage as fiercely as you like but you will never actually escape the comfort of the zoo.”
“As the economy flounders, political crises loom, vaccination rates fall and science deniers enter government, the West is becoming a more dangerous place and its fools are less insulated from the repercussions of their own beliefs. The Texan antivaxers may only be the first to find out. The paradise of fools is coming to an end. I do not hope for an apology or recantation. I just hope they do not take the rest of us down with them.”
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