My workday today was precisely, I mean to the minute, 12 hours long. I rolled down the driveway at 5:50 a.m. and back up at 5:50 p.m. To be sure, I made a short detour to Ann Arbor to drop an amp off to a bassist I know there, but the rest of it was talking and driving.

This was the way west:

Super moonset through the windshield, sunrise in the rearview.

As you can imagine, I was off the internet pretty much all day, and I’m exhausted. But I think it’s important to share this, and share it widely:

On Monday, November 14, six days after Donald Trump’s election as the next president of the United States, and on the day that Trump had selected Steve Bannon to be his strategic adviser, I came home to a letter addressed to me personally, at my home.

The envelope contained four pages’ worth of anti-Semitic propaganda printed on three sheets of paper.

Here we go. Again.

Tomorrow I have a full day of reporting, complete with five hours in the car, and I have a couple decks of PowerPoint slides to get through beforehand, and… oh yeah — I have to leave at 6 a.m.

To reward myself in advance, I went on a kayaking jaunt Monday afternoon, to watch the sun set and the moon rise. The supermoon, in fact. It did not disappoint, but didn’t last long — we got maybe five or 10 minutes of a huge orange grapefruit before it slipped behind cloud cover and we paddled home. It’s difficult to photograph the moon with an iPhone, so here’s the sunset:

And that’s it for me, today. The week will unclench after Wednesday, I hope. I could use a break. We all could.

OK, I’m back. Thanks for keeping the conversation going in my absence, although my eyes were starting to glaze over there toward the end of the comment thread. But that goes with what I’d like to say, and it’s this:

No more memes, lefty America. Memes are a cheap, easy way to defer actual thought. When you see one, nod and think “I’m just going to hit this Share button,” don’t. In fact, I won’t say “no more,” but maybe “far less” social media in general. It’s a great way to catch up with old friends, to reach a lot of people quickly and cheaply, to just fritter away a lunch hour if you don’t have a magazine. But it’s a piss-poor way to stay informed, and its crack-like effect on our brains is something we should be deeply suspicious of.

And look at what social media has begotten: Slacktivism, the sort of feel-good, do-nothing gestures that help no one but ourselves. Change your profile picture to “support” the victims of the Paris attacks, or “raise awareness” of this or that. Check in to Standing Rock to throw the FBI off the scent of the protestors who are there. And so on. Fuck that shit. Use it if you must to see what people are talking about, but learn to tell the difference between original sources of news and the aggregators and rewriters who attach themselves to real journalists like agenda-bearing lampreys. Sites that have and pay actual reporters to knock on doors and make phone calls might not always tell you what you want to hear, but that’s going to be far more useful information than what the lampreys give you, spun and crafted to match all your prejudices. You have enough of those. If you have trouble telling which sites are which, I can offer some tips.

No more open letters. For the love of God, will someone put a sock in Aaron Sorkin’s mouth? Open letters are the original concern trolling, a way to direct a high-minded lecture, ostensibly to one person but really to everybody else in the room, to polish your own halo because you are so, so worried. Just stop it.

No more disruptions. Go ahead and protest — it’s the American way — but be advised that every time you shut down a light-rail line or plug a freeway, you are providing a useful video clip to Breitbart or InfoWars or whatever other shitbag propagandist is interested. And you are inconveniencing people who just need to get to work, where they may be doing something very important, like delivering babies or cleaning bathrooms. Fuck your agenda, whatever it is; respect people’s time. The same goes for vandalism, window-smashing and whatever other bad business a mob can get up to. It’s the very definition of counterproductivity.

No more hoax hate crimes. I know, I know — there have been dozens since last Wednesday, but take it from me as a journalist and as a human being with a working brain who has been around for several summers that at least some of them will be proven hoaxes. Humans crave attention, and some crave it enough to try to stage these things. We all had no problem seeing through the woman who, in 2008, claimed she’d been assaulted by supporters of Barack Obama, who wrote “B” and “O” on her cheeks, only backward, you know, like you’d see it in a mirror? Be suspicious of the ones that don’t pass the smell test, like the ones that went up on social-media sites (see above) before police were called, if they were called at all. Like the ones where there were cameras and witnesses all around, but somehow none captured or saw the incident. Like the ones where someone’s car is “vandalized” with conveniently non-damaging soap on the windows. I stress: Some of these attacks are real. Yes. Real. But some are not, and every one that isn’t undermines 10 that actually happened.

No more fear. Many of you may be members of groups that have very good reason to fear the coming presidency, but screw your courage to the sticking place and be brave. Find others in the same boat, organize, tend your networks. But the more you quake in fear and tell the world how fearful you are, the more time you waste, time that could be spent making progress. Remember the popular vote. They have the power stick right now, but if they start using it to club people, others are going to speak up. This isn’t Nazi Germany, for god’s sake, and even if it were, don’t you want to go down fighting? I do. I remember reading a story about Meyer Lansky, the Jewish mobster, and his lawyer said that if the Jews produced more men like him, there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust. You can argue that, certainly, but I take his point.

As for me, I’m going to do my job. If the people of rural Michigan voted for Trump because they thought he would make their lives better, well then I’m going to be monitoring the progress. I’m going to keep an eye on our Muslim population here, and see if anyone’s stirring the shit to harass or assault people there. I’m going to keep my eyes open, my powder dry and my bullshit detector turned up to 11. Useful skills for the coming era include an open mind, a fair and just heart and a willingness to confront one’s own assumptions — all of them. I’m not giving anyone a pass, but I’m done feeling sorry for myself.

Remember “Gone With the Wind?” I often call it the best bad novel in the English language, and I’ve read it several times. The scene in the movie that ends the first half — “as God as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” — plays differently in the book. Scarlett has just arrived at Tara, after the terrifying trip from burning Atlanta, only to find her home ruined, her father enfeebled, her mother dead. She walks to a neighboring plantation in search of food and finds a row of radishes in the garden, about the only thing left, eagerly unearths one and eats it, only to throw it back up almost immediately. She collapses in the garden and swoons for a long while. And then she pulls herself together:

When she arose at last and saw again the black ruins of Twelve Oaks, her head was raised high and something that was youth and beauty and potential tenderness had gone out of her face forever. What was past was past. Those who were dead were dead. The lazy luxury of the old days was gone, never to return. And, as Scarlett settled the heavy basket across her arm, she had settled her own mind and her own life.

Throughout the South for fifty years there would be bitter-eyed women who looked backward, to dead times, to dead men, evoking memories that hurt and were futile, bearing poverty with bitter pride because they had those memories. But Scarlett was never to look back.

That’s way too dramatic for what we’re talking about here, absolutely granted. But that’s kind of how I feel now. Time to settle the heavy basket over our arm and go forward. We’re going to need everyone to help.

Still not ready to form coherent thoughts yet, so here, have a bunch of links.

I read this Jeb Lund piece Tuesday, marveling at the pungency of its language…

Why rail against the latest Donald Trump atrocity when simply waiting a day or two would see two or three more spatter across the collective consciousness like a goose shitting off a balcony? Donald Trump lies every other breath, with the mechanical dependency of a barfly sucking a Doral to offset the flavor of $2 well drinks.

…and thinking that whatever else this candidacy was good for, it was good for some pretty good writing. I read it early enough in the day that polls were still open. Well. Four more years of this, I guess.

So we got that going for us.

Little else, though. Lately I’m thinking of Ivanka, a woman whose acreage I want to see sown with salt, and all her works cursed. Maybe because I live among her minions.

Finally, I’ve been thinking about the young men who support Trump. I’m not sure where I’m going with that. We’ll see.

…I felt less sad and upset after 9/11. Everything gets more difficult for us (meaning me and mine) from here on out — work, finances, everything. I hope this isn’t going-on-2 a.m. drama, but we’re now in uncharted waters, and there be many, many monsters about.

I HAVE to get some sleep, because it’ll be battle stations at work tomorrow and god knows what thereafter. Talk amongst yourselves, and I’ll be back when the well refills.

You know what you have to do today, if you haven’t already. I’m grateful to have an employer whose collective managers call us a “citizenship company,” so if I have to wait in a long line to do my duty, well, so be it. Many people don’t have that, and the lines are long this year, especially in Detroit, which is not helped by having 64 (for realz) souls on the school-board ballot.

But I’ll be in and out fast, once I get through the line, if there is one. I’m-a vote so hard that tabulating machine gonna feel it.

Apparently someone decided in the past few days that Michigan is in play. I don’t think it is, but it hasn’t stopped the candidates and their surrogates from coming through like buses. Barack Obama was in Ann Arbor yesterday, Sarah Palin in Detroit Sunday night. (She stopped in at a bar near my old office. Called the Town Pump. Snicker.) Ivanka dropped in to Hudsonville, over by Grand Rapids. Hillary was here last Friday, her husband the day before — a surprise! The waitresses at the coney island where I have my Saturday breakfast were all showing off their iPhone photos of him posing with the gang. This douchenozzle was here on Sunday, too. Trump himself is ending his campaign with a stop in Grand Rapids.

Michigan is not in play, and if Hillary doesn’t win by at least three points here, I’ll buy you all a beer.

So, to leave the thread open today, or what?

Duh. Open thread. Nail-biting all the way.

It was an Old Detroit kind of weekend, when it all wrapped up. Saturday night at the Players Club Invitational, a guest of my friend Michael. This is a different Players Club than the one on 8 Mile, a strip club. This is a more than 100-year-old men’s club in the tradition of Hasty Pudding, and those men’s theatrical clubs of a bygone era.

“Men joined this club to get away from their wives,” Michael said. Very Babbitt, actually. They do a production every month or so (I think), for members only, no ladies allowed. But twice a year, in spring and fall, there’s an invitational, when XX chromosomes attend, but only to watch. All parts are played by men, just like in ol’ Bill Shakespeare’s time. And so you get a slamming-doors farce like “Boeing, Boeing,” where Gloria, the American flight attendant, looks just a little…tall:

I mean, even in kitten heels.

Michael said he’d been in one production so far, an episode of “Gilligan’s Island.” It so happens he bears a strong resemblance to Brian Dennehy, and I assumed he’d been cast as the Skipper. No, he said.

“A rather stout Mary Ann.”

Now that I’d have liked to see.

Anyway, a very enjoyable evening. Seating is dinner-theater style, and guests bring picnic baskets of food and drink. It was a stitch.

Sunday was ladies day at the Schvitz. It was a perfect day for being outdoors, riding a bike, raking leaves or otherwise being under the sun. I considered all this and went to the dank, steamy Schvitz. I’ve been feeling a little, how you say, tense. And one of the other schvitzers said she was inviting a massage therapist, a stronger lure than any sunshine.

“I think this election is driving me insane,” I said to the woman who invited her.

“You’re telling me,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming about people chasing me around, telling me who to vote for.”

We both got massages. The therapist said my back felt pretty knotted. You’re telling me.

She also told me I needed an adjustment. But I’m not much of a believer in chiropractic, so I said nothing. The few times I had it, nothing much seemed to change, and the doc gave me a big anti-vax pitch toward the end of our course of treatment. Ugh.

Hope the rest of you had a pleasant weekend. Adrianne saw this ad during a football game yesterday and was appalled. Juuuuust a wee bit anti-Semitic.

But of course, this is the big news of the weekend – Hillary’s emails, cleared. Who is scripting this ridiculous movie, anyway?

I think it was last week, when I was running around lower Ferndale on this and that errand, that I started thinking about how we treat our dogs. There’s a small hobo encampment under an overpass, and not far away, a pet boutique on Woodward called Fur Babies or something, a term I’m always struck by.

I coo and baby-talk to Wendy as much as anyone, but I never call her a fur baby, although I refer to myself as her mom, Alan as dad and Kate as sissy, so I can’t really talk. The biggest gift you can give an animal in your care is to simply try to understand them, to the best of your ability, knowing you’ll never get it all the way right. And while they show their devotion to us in many ways, our relationship is not parental. At all.

I think back on the way we treated my first dog, which we got when I was in junior high school, and want to cringe. Housebreaking was done by rubbing their nose in their accidents. You corrected chewing and other slights with a rolled-up newspaper across the nose. Crate-training was unheard-of; while you might confine a dog to the kitchen or another room with a baby gate or something, for the most part, when you left the house the dog was simply left to its own devices and expected to figure things out. If they didn’t, if they chewed up a sofa pillow or magazine or something, we applied the rolled-up newspaper. This was a commonly accepted training practice; everybody did it.

Don’t get me started on spaying and neutering. OK, go ahead. Only female dogs were ever sterilized, but often only after a litter or two — people spoke of “letting” their dog have puppies first, as though reproduction was a matter of personal happiness for the animal. Males were never neutered, because it was an understanding that no male would willingly inflict castration on another, even in a different species. And so lots of mutts happened, because here was the other thing: Dogs were generally free to roam. Not every dog; some were confined to a yard or tied out on a long line. But an amazing number were simply let out in the morning and did their dog thing in the great outdoors all day, at least in good weather.

Alan’s dad had a pair of Irish setters that lived in the garage, year-round. The cat stayed out all night long. Sometimes she brought home a frog.

Some exceptions: Cats were routinely neutered, because tomcats spray, but the females were more often left to go in and out of heat. But cats were hardly ever confined to a house.

There were consequences to this, of course. Dogs getting run over by cars was a thing that happened, a lot. Stepping in poop was another thing that happened, often, because no one carried bags on walks. Dogs and cats defecated where they wanted and it was left to the property owner to clean up or step in. Oh, and lots of dogs ran away and were never seen again.

This was just pet culture.

When did it change? Hard to know; I went through a long pet-free phase, but when we got Spriggy, everything was different. He was my birthday present in 1991, and Alan bought a book by the Monks of New Skete, who are known for their beautifully bred and trained German Shepherds. From them, and others, we learned just how wrong we’d been doing it. Housebreaking was learned through routine and reward, with messes cleaned up quickly and without incident. We used a crate. He was neutered promptly at six months and needless to say, never roamed free. When we walked him, we carried poop bags. The world was different.

Things seem to have shifted a gear again. I can’t tell you how many people I know who share their beds with their dogs, and not little dogs, either. Sometimes multiple dogs. Those cushy dog beds Orvis sells — my first dog slept on an old blanket on a concrete floor, in the basement — are only for when the family, “the pack,” isn’t sleeping together in the king-size. It’s routine for people to expect to take their dogs everywhere, on vacation, out to the bar, even to work. I’ve known people who get insulted when told their dogs aren’t welcome at a particular place, because of allergies or whatever reason, including because it’s a dog. People do DNA tests on their dogs, expensive surgeries for conditions that would have suggested euthanasia just 15 or 20 years ago. Aging dogs get assistive devices, slings to help big ones up and down stairs, even diapers.

You can see why I think of dogs when I see homeless camps. Most middle-class dogs live better, eat better and certainly sleep more comfortably than a great many humans.

It’s not just household pets, either. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are way out there on the fringe, but the fringe has a way of working its way to the center. Today I saw this ridiculous PETA video about what normal people call selective breeding and PETA calls “rape.” Yes, rape. Of animals. “I am you, only different,” one woman says, holding up a photo of a cow.

No. Sorry, but you’re not. This is what I mean about understanding animals, about their essential nature. What are they about? In many ways, the dogs of my childhood, turned out to sniff and poop and hang out at the bitch-in-heat’s house, may have had a better life than the pampered, bed-sleeping ones of today, provided they could avoid getting hit by cars. I don’t believe dogs want to necessarily live like humans. I think they want to be dogs, if a dog can be said to want anything so abstract as the experience of being themselves.

Here’s Wendy, not minding the floor one bit:

And woo, looky here — another whole politics-free post to take us into the weekend.

One piece of bloggage: Farhad Manjoo states the obvious, that we’re living in a fact-free world, and in posting it I’m dedicating it to everyone who clogged my social media with the “news” that the Chicago Tribune was calling on Hillary Clinton to step down, when in fact it was one Tribune columnist, and the jerk one at that.

Happy weekending, all. Not much longer now.

I don’t know what got me thinking about the Mr. Olympia contest the other day; probably saw a reference to it in the zillions of words that fly past my face in a typical crazy-ass day. The contest was held in September. In Vegas, natch, but for years it was held in little old Columbus, Ohio. In the early ’80s, before the internet, when personal fitness was barely getting started and bodybuilding was a weird subculture with a seriously gay vibe, I attended one. Alone. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was working at the Dispatch, a rookie, in the women’s department, when the press people for Mr. Olympia came calling. I’m sure they’d started with the sports department, and struck out, because as far as the sports department was concerned, bodybuilding was not a sport. It was a weird subculture with a seriously gay vibe! No one wanted to be associated with that; no one in sports, anyway. And so somebody with Mr. Olympia called my editor in the women’s department and pitched a really crazy idea: Women who lift weights and train and do bodybuilding contests. It so happened that the reigning Mr. O, Frank Zane, was married to a beautiful woman named Christine, with whom he trained. We could interview them both at the Sheraton down the street that very evening. I got the assignment.

Thinking back, I’m amazed at how strange this idea seemed — a woman pumping serious iron. A friend of mine was working at the time at a fitness studio called Spa Lady. She wore tights and a leotard and leg warmers to work, as did all of the customers. They had dance classes and a few pieces of equipment, and if any weight was lifted, it was no more than one or at most, three pounds. You’d move more pounds putting away your groceries. Women didn’t lift anything heavier because, conventional wisdom maintained, she would get grotesque, Popeye muscles, just like the guys in Mr. Olympia. And if she for some crazy reason wanted such things, and then quit, all those muscles would “turn to fat.”

These are some of the things I knew to be true as I walked to my interview with the Zanes.

A publicist opened the door to their hotel room. This is approximately what they looked like, only they had more clothes on. In street clothes, she was a slender beauty and he, a guy with really broad shoulders. Charming, down-to-earth people. They told me what we now know about women and weights — that we lack the hormones to put on bulk, that a muscle cannot actually turn to fat, etc. And so on. I took notes, the photographer took pictures. As I left, I asked Frank to “make a muscle,” as people said then — flex his bicep. He did, and a bowling ball rose on his upper arm. I gave it a little squeeze. It felt like a bowling ball, too. The publicist handed me a couple passes to the event that upcoming weekend.

My story was just a lame advance for the contest, on a page that approximately zero people who were interested in it would read. But I started noticing more broad-shouldered people around town that week, of all colors, speaking languages I could only guess at, as they arrived to compete and watch. Probably a few thousand of them all told, from all over the world, and my dumb story on page D6 was the only notice the paper took of an internationally famous event.

When the contest came, I asked some friends if they’d come with me. None were interested. So I went by myself, carrying my Nikon with the longest lens I had, a paltry 135mm. Veterans Memorial was sold out. Let me tell you, it was an experience. The gay vibe became a full-throated roar during the pose-offs, hundreds of muscle freaks screaming like banshees as Frank and the others turned and flexed their lats and delts and so forth. Real appreciators of the human form, this crowd. I walked down the aisle and took a few shots as close as I could get, most of my new friend Frank. Who repeated as Mr. O, in the end.

The next day, the photo editor came out with a worried look on his face. The AP was calling, wondering why the biggest paper in town hadn’t covered this international sporting event, and could we give the co-op anything in the way of photos? It so happened I had the roll of film I’d shot, and handed it over, black-and-white Tri-X, my favorite. They ran it and brought me a contact sheet. Is this the guy? the editor asked. Yep, that’s Frank.

And that, my friends, is how young Nancy Nall got her first and only photo on the AP’s sports wire. Or any wire.

The Zanes are still together, and are still adorable.

I think this is what got me thinking about Mr. Olympia; I must have glimpsed a promo when it ran a few days ago, but just got around to reading it today, a profile of Phil Heath, who is …startling-looking, at least in the performance photos. This guy trains, eats and sleeps. Just like Michael Phelps, only his food bill probably isn’t $1,000 a week. And like Zane, he seems more or less normal. Not crazy, anyway.

What draws people to such things? The same instincts that push us up mountains, I imagine.

No more links today, because everything good I read today was posted by you guys in the comments yesterday. After you guys went off on a tangent about barfing, I was going to link to Atul Gawande’s magnificent 1999 essay on nausea, but it’s back in the paid archive. I reread it a few years ago, when Kate Middleton had hyperemesis of pregnancy — that’s the through line — but they locked it back up.

So no politics today! Woo! Just a few more days…

Halloween was a whirl, the usual madhouse. I gave away probably 300-plus pieces of candy and turned off my light with 20 minutes or so left to go. I could have made it to the bitter end if I’d not been fooled by a lull around 7; I started giving away doubles, for fear I wouldn’t run out. Plus, I discovered the assortment bag I bought was heavy with Almond Joys, and do kids even like those anymore? With all that coconut? I paired those with Whoppers and then full night fell and we were besieged.

I didn’t feel too badly, though, as the kids showing up late already had buckets that were overflowing with treats. No one went un-sugared.

Then I came inside and read the latest Trump tax story. I expect you’ll want to talk about that. Me, I have a heavy lift of editing to do this morning, so I’m-a open the floor to sputtering outrage and slip off into the wings.

Is there a trustworthy real-estate developer on this planet? Do any of them play by conventional rules?

Oh, and if you haven’t read this outstanding Fahrenthold piece on the GOP nominee’s “philanthropy,” you must. It rings on the anvil of truth, fo’ sho’. My favorite nugget:

New findings, for instance, show that the Trump Foundation’s largest-ever gift — $264,631 — was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of Trump’s Plaza Hotel.

Its smallest-ever gift, for $7, was paid to the Boy Scouts in 1989, at a time when it cost $7 to register a new Scout. Trump’s oldest son was 11 at the time. Trump did not respond to a question about whether the money was paid to register him.

It won’t change a vote, but it’s a great read.

Happy Tuesdays, all.