Late but welcome, fall has arrived. I always note that there’s a week’s load of laundry a couple times a year that contains both shorts and at least one flannel shirt, and I guess it’s this week. It was 70 and muggy when I got up Tuesday morning, currently struggling to reach 50. Dinner last night was adjusted from chicken on the grill to BLTs. Can’t deny it: It feels great.

Check with me in another month, when the whining begins.

So. The week began at a gallop and has slowed to a forward canter. Coming back from my creative-writing class at Wayne State, on surface streets to avoid the freeway parking lot, I listened to “All Things Considered,” and wondered after a spell if it might be wiser for me to just quit paying attention to the news altogether. In an interview with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, he said (paraphrasing), “President Trump doesn’t read, and doesn’t know what ‘insurrection’ means.” The reporter, with her Bias Alert going WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP, said, “I think the president would disagree with you on that.” Gee, thanks, I feel so much better now. We wouldn’t want to let an American governor get away with speaking the truth, would we?

But I can’t stop, because that’s how I’m made. Before that, I heard the last few moments of an interview with Beth Macy, who has a book out this week. She was on “Fresh Air,” and had an op-ed in the NYT Sunday, and has this piece in the Atlantic today. Title: “What Happened to Ohio?” and yeah, it’s a gift link. It’s about Urbana, where Alan started his newspaper career and from which Macy hails. Turns out it’s not the place she grew up:

I was most shocked by what I gleaned from people I’d known the longest. My childhood friend Joy, a Black lay minister who had conducted my Mom’s celebration of life, revealed that she didn’t believe George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. My niece’s husband, a type 1 diabetic, turned down not one but two life-saving transplants because the donors had taken COVID vaccines. When I spoke with my sister Cookie about my oldest son, Max, who was about to marry his husband, she used the Old Testament scripture from Leviticus to condemn homosexuality.

A friend asked recently what it felt like to spend time in a place I had once loved but no longer connected with, and I had to admit that my predominant emotion was pain. Often, I’d leave two or three days before my rental was up, eager to return home to my husband, my dog, and my largely privileged circle of friends who don’t espouse beliefs that repulse me.

Sigh. When does this shit end? Do we ever get out of it? I’m skeptical.