Since I lost weight I’ve been buying new clothes, and while I’ve never been a fashion plate and have no interest of becoming one, it is fun to look at fashion magazines and websites again and see what’s going on out there. I can report a few headlines and my own reactions:

The ’70s are back, big-time. I keep hearing that wide-legged denim is here again, and so just pack those skinny jeans up and throw them in the trash, because BELLS, BABY. As I age, there are very few things I am certain of, but one is: Not going back to wide-legged denim. I only recently bought some skinnies, but then, I live far from fashion’s nerve center. Around here, jeans and a Detroit-themed T-shirt will take you everywhere but the symphony, and probably there, too.

Anyway, no elephant bells, and I’m also going to let trendier people discover the styles of the ’70s, most of which I couldn’t purge from my closet fast enough when the ’80s finally came along. (You know what I loved best about the ’80s? All of a sudden it was all about natural fibers. Linen, cotton — man, was that a relief.)

That said, I found this interesting: Google’s predictions of spring fashion trends, based on what people are searching for. To my relief, wide-legged jeans are not on the list, but skinnies are in “seasonal decline.” Also declining: One-shoulder dresses — perfect, because I just bought one. Waist trainers? On the way up. (I think it’s a 50-shades thing.) Normcore? Outta here.

It’s a good time to be a middle-aged woman whose basic outfit is jeans, T-shirts and nothing with too much color.

A little bloggage? I think we can do that.

Here’s a profile I wrote of a high-profile tea partier in the Michigan House, but the link won’t go live until 6 a.m. Be advised.

Riots in Baltimore, but you probably already knew that. Mr. Lippman weighs in, too.

Waiting tables always seemed like pretty sucky work to me, and it is, but every so often you get a good customer. A few of those stories.

Off to bed.

As Beb notes at the bottom of the last comment thread, I am indeed recovering from my vacation — which was only a weekend. We got in about 8 last night, just in time to order and eat a pizza and watch Sunday-night teevee before hitting the sack. One more big trip next weekend, and then the summer whirl officially begins.

In the meantime, new thread while I take time to go over all the stuff that happened over the weekend. I checked Twitter early Saturday, saw the news of the earthquake, tried to find it on cable news but what were all the chatterers chattering about? Bruce Jenner, of course.

Anyway, this is me, Deborah and Heather at lunch on Saturday. Thanks for lunch, Deborah, and thanks for the company, both of you. It was fun:

Back here tomorrow.

Well, isn’t this interesting: The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival is drawing to a close after 40 years. I remember getting a flyer for this when I worked in Columbus, when the festival must have been in its near-infancy and spelling “women” with a y was considered real transgressive stuff.

Later on I wrote about it for a magazine here, and interviewed the founder and head honchess, Lisa Vogel. It was pretty clear there were already some deep divisions within the tribe, although at the time the transgender issue, which is apparently what brought the fest to its knees for good, hadn’t emerged in the mainstream. At the time, I was more agog that they banned male children from the main grounds, and by children I mean any boy over the age of 5. Vogel patiently explained that for the sort of women attracted to a four-day, all-female music and arts fest held in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan, it is a genuine, almost physical relief to not have to see or even think about the other gender. I get it; it takes all kinds, and while these women aren’t my kind, I respect their right of free association. It must have sucked to be one of those who had a boy child to look after, that’s all. They are confined to a separate boys campsite. Probably had plenty of fun there, but.

The real split came over the organizers’ rules restricting the festival to “womyn-born-womyn,” which is evidently a big split among feminists well to the left of me. The New Yorker had a thoughtful piece about it last summer, and Vogel is quoted:

Michfest, as it’s called, takes place every August, on six hundred and fifty acres of land in the woods east of Lake Michigan. Lisa Vogel founded it in 1976, when she was a nineteen-year-old Central Michigan University student, and she still runs it. The music, Vogel says, is only part of what makes Michfest important. Each year, several thousand women set up camp there and find themselves, for a week, living in a matriarchy. Meals are cooked in kitchen tents and eaten communally. There are workshops and classes. Some women don extravagant costumes; others wear nothing at all. There is free child care and a team to assist disabled women who ordinarily cannot go camping. Vogel describes the governing ethos as “How would a town look if we actually got to decide what was important?”

She told me, “There’s something that I experience on the land when I walk at night without a flashlight in the woods and recognize that for that moment I feel completely safe. And there’s nowhere else I can do that.” She continued, “If, tomorrow, we said everyone is welcome, I’m sure it would still be a really cool event, but that piece that allows women to let down their guard and feel that really deep sense of personal liberation would be different, and that’s what we’re about.”

I feel passionately about a great many things, but this isn’t one of them. You have to respect those who do, however, even if it may seem a bit, oh, much. I’m glad my ideology is still a little more flexible.

For now, anyway.

Another big rewrite today, another just-plain-write tomorrow. So how about some writing by someone else?

Did you know there are kosher kitchen gloves? Well, there are. Speaking of rigid.

You know Jay-Z has been living in the bubble too long when he launches his “better for artists” streaming service by parading a bunch of his millionaire friends up on that stage and having them get all windy about Art. Predictably, Tidal is tanking.

And so am I. Happy weekend, all. I plan to sleep.

Whenever I spend a day writing, I find myself not wanting to spend a night writing. Which explains a dark Wednesday. Guess what I did on Wednesday? Yep.

But we cannot have two dark days, can we? No, we cannot. So let’s start off in that great NN.c tradition of bitching about the weather.

Today it didn’t reach 50 degrees. In fact, it barely reached 45 degrees. It also snowed, and rained, and snowed again. On my way to the parking garage, a three-block walk that can feel like 300, I passed a wan little family headed to the ballpark, dressed for a polar expedition. What a sucktastic night for baseball.

However, it was a good excuse to wear boots for one more day. It’s always a little hard to put some nice boots away for the summer.

I guess in the Department of Following Up on Stuff, I should note that the 78-year-old man on trial for having sex with his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife beat the rap. What a terribly sad story, and what a waste of judicial resources. I hope he enjoys what years he has left.

I’d say it’s also not looking good for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who made the mistake of flipping off a camera in his cell, now a nice exhibit for the prosecutors who want to give him the needle. He’ll get it, I expect, but for once I agree with his defense team; it’s far from a definitive message. He may well have been saying f.u. to the camera itself, which I don’t think anyone would welcome in a personal space.

There’s also talk of a “smirk,” another expression it’s unwise to wear in a court of law.

Amy Schumer isn’t everyone’s cup of dirty tea, but if you’re in a safe office or with headphones, you might like this — “Last Fuckable Day.” I know I did.

Weren’t we talking about teratovas the other day? Ew.

With this weak, thin effort, it’s my bedtime. Zzzz.

Based on the Twitter recommendation of JeffTMM, and the fact “Game of Thrones” was still 15 minutes away, we tuned in “A.D. The Bible Continues” for a while Sunday night. Jesus asked Peter if he, Peter, loved him. Of course, Peter replied.

“Then feed my lambs,” Jesus said. He asked the question again, and got the same answer. “Feed my sheep,” he tells Peter.

Alan said, “Feed my dog.”

Cracked me up.

Why are so many biblical dramatizations so awful? Actually, they pretty much all are — Jesus is too pretty and everyone’s teeth are too white. All the poetry is lost. It’s like the opposite of “The Godfather,” in which a pulpy, craptastic story was turned into a spectacular, operatic movie. These shows take the greatest story ever told and turn it into bad community theater.

I will say, though, that I never come away from these things unimpressed with the Roman soldiers. The ones in “A.D.,” etc. had breast plates with nipple rings on them. Yes, little rings dangling from the nipple part of the armor. I guess it’s so you can tie a rabbit’s foot there, or your keys.

I know Rome was wealthy, but is it possible every Roman soldier had identical fighting gear? The production of all those leather minis and brush helmets must have been a logistical nightmare.

I just figured out why the centurions wore those brush helmets. So their men could pick them out on the field of battle, right? Plan for retirement, should it ever come: Read up on that stuff.

Oy, what a day. Driving, meetings, then another meeting via speakerphone, which is only marginally better than driving nails into your palms, but does have the advantage of a mute button.

So let’s get to the bloggage, which is, coincidentally enough, mostly blogs:

Neil Sternberg bought some shoes. And wrote about them.

Gin & Tacos on the increasingly tiresome call-out culture.

Some simple rules for eating. I know, I know — to add to the million previous simple rules for eating. But they’re good rules.

Monday is over, so bring on Tuesday.

I’m writing this on Sunday the 19th, which means you’re reading it on Monday the 20th. April 20. If ever a date deserved the #abandonallhope hashtag, it’s April 20. Very dire portents — Hitler’s birthday, anniversary of the Columbine shootings. Today, the 19th, was the Branch Davidian fire anniversary and the event it ultimately inspired — the Oklahoma City bombing. The Boston Marathon bombing was on April 15, and I cannot tell a lie: I was sure it was carried out by domestic terrorists seeking to make a point about taxes and freedom and the rest of it. Of course, they were domestic terrorists, but not that kind.

It’s a zero anniversary for the OKC bombing. Twenty years. At 20 years, you should understand pretty clearly what led to a tragedy like this, but I’m not sure we do. Anyway, I’m grateful that Hank Stuever posted this piece from his WashPost reporting days, about the father of one of the victims, who chose to forgive Tim McVeigh. JefftMM, you’re going to want to read this, if you haven’t already.

I will admit it: I find forgiveness difficult. I suspect most people do. As a child I picked scabs and I guess I never got over it, but let’s face it: Forgiveness is hard. That kind of forgiveness, to forgive a man who murdered your child? That has to be the hardest kind of all. And the funny thing is, I think I’m fairly good at empathy; it’s what makes people interesting to me. But to use that empathy to get to a place where I can let an offense go? Man, is that hard. So I recommend you read Hank’s piece about Bud Welch, and take its lessons to heart, to the best of your ability.

Here were some key phrases: Finding his way to a mercy he still doesn’t fully understand and “What’s the difference between ‘reconcile’ and ‘forgive’? Really, I don’t know,” he says and I finally realized it was an act of vengeance and rage if we killed either one of those guys. And that was why Julie and 167 other people were dead — because of vengeance and rage. It has to stop somewhere.. I think that’s the hard part. The surrender to something you don’t understand, especially when people like McVeigh haven’t even asked to be forgiven. You just have to do it.

That might be the final lesson of April 19, 1995, as it was lived in Oklahoma City and everywhere else in this country. Which brings us to the other thing I dug up today, also an old piece, from the Observer. It’s about the OKC memorial, which opened with a speed after the event we’ve heretofore not seen in this country. I think Philip Weiss gets to the problem with it:

There are so many symbols here as to obliterate the poetry of any one of them. There are so many faces on televisions inside the museum describing their pain to you that you feel wrung out like a rag. Worst of all, the memorial has nothing to say about the important historical issues that triggered Timothy McVeigh’s madness.

The problem is obvious. “The wishes of the Families/Survivors Liaison Subcommittee are to be given the greatest weight in the Memorial planning and development process,” said the memorial’s mission statement. This was a mistake. The victims’-rights movement has been an important one that has reformed the justice system. But here it has gone too far, and turned a memorial that should address issues of national disunity into a site for the bereaved. When Mayor Bloomberg said recently that he does not want a “cemetery” downtown, he may well have had in mind the field of 168 chairs, which resembles a graveyard and is inaccessible to the general public, roped off on the day that I and hundreds of others showed up by the busload. In 100 years, those chairs will seem meaningless.

Meantime, the memorial declines to show the curious where McVeigh parked his Ryder truck packed with fertilizer. And the National Park Service Rangers who work the site sound like funeral-home workers.

A memorial should emphasize the Who, of course. But if it says nothing about the Why, it fails. I guess Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C. began the contemporary emphasis on the Who; while local monuments might carry every name that perished, a national one never did (or rarely did, I’ll qualify; what I’m really saying here is, “I don’t know of one”) until Lin’s tremendously sad wall. Lin is a native of Ohio, but of Chinese ancestry, and the wall has a certain Asian minimalism, the way it starts small and swells to the crescendo of 1968 and then tapers off again. If it had been left alone it would have been perfect, but the usual squawkers started meddling with it, so now we have a row of flags, and the Three Ethnically Diverse Soldiers Looking at It, along with the Don’t Forget the Nurses statuary.

But it’s real legacy is the names. The 168 chairs is a direct result of the Vietnam wall, and I don’t see how you can deny that. Where else would you leave your bouquet of flowers? Who even mourns in cemeteries anymore? I think Weiss’ broader point, that memorials have to be more than just places for flowers and teddy bears, is very sound, though. Time has to pass, sometimes, for that to happen. When I was a Knight Wallace Fellow, we had a seminar one night by the man who chaired the 9/11 memorial committee in New York, and I asked him the too-soon question. He said that was probably true, but hey — New York City real estate can’t just sit around waiting.

Maya Lin did that one, too.

So. New subject.

Did anyone read the story in the New Yorker a few years ago about the guy who was running fake marathons? Or fake-running fake marathons? Whaddaya know, it too is online. A good story about deception and the way it can ensnare a person. Interesting that it happened to be marathon running; remember when Paul Ryan said he’d had a sub-three hour marathon, but “couldn’t remember” his exact time? A friend of mine, who’s run three Bostons, said, “You NEVER forget your time once you break three, or in fact, ever.” He’s right. There’s really nothing like a marathon to encourage obsession, is there? The months of training, the online training diaries, the months of boring your friends with your workouts (“Hey, come back here, I wasn’t finished!”), and finally, the race itself. It really lends itself to lying and deception. So the guy in the New Yorker story is one, and now there are two (that I know of), a woman who crossed the finish line in St. Louis to “win” the women’s race, only not really. It’s funny when you consider bragging rights is all you’re competing for in most of these races, and honestly, a winner’s story isn’t all that interesting. I’ve never heard one, I should say; who knows people who actually win marathons? Those are super-humans who are usually on the next flight out of town and en route to their next training run, culminating in the Olympics or something.

Lying about your marathon performance is like lying about yoga — what’s the point?

So now this weekend, that started out warm and sunny, is closing out gray and chilly. Such is April, but I’m still glad we got a gorgeous couple of good ones before the week begins. We were owed, dammit.

Happy week, all. Let’s get it going.

Every time I get irritable about terrible health quackery peddled on the internet, something happens to remind me that newspapers were really on the bleeding edge of this stuff. Behold:

I felt like sending away for some, just so I can see how those pads manage to pull all that gunk out of the soles of your feet. Toxins!

Another mixed grill of bloggage today, because my life is just that boring.

You know a city has arrived jumped the shark when the people who left a hundred years ago come back and everybody makes a big stupid fuss over it. In this case: Alice Cooper and John Varvatos. The former called the latter “pure Detroit,” and delivered this stunningly dumb line, although he gets a pass because he was the paid entertainment and it’s not like we expect pith or intelligence:

“This is great,” Cooper said before his performance, “because Varvatos is pure Detroit, and this is the beginning of building this downtown area the right way. The restaurants are all here. People are coming into these old buildings and they’re opening these really cool restaurants, which is going to draw people and they’re gonna start drawing in the boutiques and everything, and pretty soon it’s going to be a very hip city.”

Back to Arizona on the first flight, I expect.

Evildoers II: Change one letter, go back to war! Coming soon to a campaign near you!

Alan, today at breakfast: “In any other city, this would be on Page One.” In Detroit? Page three: It takes cops five tries to find a body in a house. The house was being looted the whole time. Now there’s a contrast with that gala boutique opening, ain’a?

Bridge had some good stuff this week, about a class-action lawsuit filed by juvenile prisoners incarcerated in the adult system. You can find the links on the right rail.

OK, I gotta get on the horn with some people. A great weekend to all, and to all some nice weather for a change.

Among Kate’s graduation presents is a ticket to the Rolling Stones show coming up in July here in Detroit, at the baseball stadium during the All-Star break. No, I won’t be going, too — I already saw the Stones, coincidentally in the first days after my own high-school graduation 40 damn years ago. I recently ran across a photo of the event on The Plain Dealer website. I’m stealing the photo with great guilt, because I couldn’t figure out how to link to just the picture, and I wanted the impact of seeing it right here on this page in all its gray monumentality:

Photo by Robert Dorksen, The Plain Dealer.

Cleveland Municipal Stadium, June 14, 1975. The “Tour of the Americas,” a fairly snooty name for a Stones show, but if you were facing a crowd like that night after night, you might think you were some sort of Lord McDonowrong, too. Anyway, I don’t remember much other than that the crowd was so huge and thirsty and toilet-flushy that there was zero water pressure in the fountains. This being before everyone went around with huge water bottles all the time, I was feeling woozy in the heat in no time at all. I went to the first aid area, took a seat and said, “If I don’t get some water, I’m going to need some first aid.” They gave it to me, took my blood pressure, had me sit a bit and drink a little more, then released me back to my seat. I don’t recall much of the show, except for “Fingerprint File,” sung by a tiny figure way off in the distance who might have been Mick Jagger, but in those pre-Jumbotron days, who’s to say?

But I left with what I came for — the ability to say I’d seen the Stones. If you’d told me that night that in 21 more years I’d give birth to a daughter, and that she too would see the Stones in the first days following her high-school graduation, I’d never, ever have believed you. But life has symmetry that way.

Man, look at that crowd. Insane.

Kirk’s wife once told me an incredible story about crowds at Cleveland rock shows. It has a terrifying setup, which I’ll try not to gloss over too much, but basically: She and a friend were kidnapped, more or less, one night in Cleveland. I forget whether they invited two strangers into their car or they forced their way in, but basically, they thought they were doing two guys with a broken-down car a favor and almost immediately realized they’d made a terrible mistake, as the guys either showed or said they had a gun and directed them on a long, terrifying route through some very dodgy neighborhoods. They didn’t know if they were going to be raped, murdered or both, and it went on for some time. Then, abruptly, they were both put out of the car and the two guys sped away. It was very upsetting, of course, and the police came, there was an investigation, but nothing came of it. Almost a year later, she was at a big show like this, in a crowd that was being herded like cattle toward a gate, with another crowd coming the opposite way for some reason, and in this sea of faces her eyes lit on one and it’s THE GUY. He looked right at her, and she knew he knew who she was, but before she could even open her mouth, the crowd swept them both in opposite directions and she never saw him again. Freaky.

I’ve also been neglecting my Saturday Morning Market posts, not because I’m not spending time there, but because WordPress’ mobile app will no longer let me post custom photo sizes, and the posts were getting all fubar with huge pictures, and I just didn’t care enough to do them after I got home. But I really want to show you this bike:

The guy who owns it is one of those dyed-in-the-wool, no-bullshit, back-to-the-landers-in-the-middle-of-Detroit folks. He and his wife sell all year, specializing in sprouts. They don’t own a car, but they own this bike-truck thing. I think he said it was custom-made for them, or maybe not — anyway, it’s European. The middle section is where the cargo goes. The kids — they have two — have their own trailer and they may even have more add-ons. I wonder how that thing is geared.

Finally, here’s a story to turn your head inside out, about a 78-year-old man on trial for having sex with his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife in her nursing home. Just when you think you’ve heard every detail you didn’t want to think about, about pulling those nursing-home curtains around beds for privacy, etc., it gets into some interesting discussions about consent, about how we’ll live our last years, and of course, yet another area in which the baby boomers are changing things.

Another late night last night. Man, I gotta stop this stuff. Happy Thursday — the weekend draws nigh.

Back in 2008 I was sitting with an acquaintance in a bar, one of those funny loudmouths who likes to troll you in casual conversation, and especially in bar conversation. He said he was voting for Obama over Hillary, because you couldn’t trust a woman with her finger on the button. Hormones, you know.

I laughed, even as I understood that there were people in the world who believed that, and weren’t joking when they said the same thing. (Although probably all were voting for Mike Huckabee instead.)

So imagine my non-surprise when I saw this thing, written by an author whose work I sorta respect, if “been meaning to read ‘Weekends at Bellevue’ ever since I heard a thing on ‘Fresh Air'” counts as respect, on that very topic. I guess Time magazine, like all media outlets, is just click-whoring these day, but for cryin’ out loud:

The long phase of perimenopause is marked by seismic spikes and troughs of estrogen levels, which can last for more than a decade in many women. But afterward, there is a hormonal ebbing that creates a moment of great possibility. As a psychiatrist, I will tell you the most interesting thing about menopause is what happens after. A woman emerging from the transition of perimenopause blossoms. It is a time for redefining and refining what it is she wants to accomplish in her third act. And it happens to be excellent timing for the job Clinton is likely to seek. Biologically speaking, postmenopausal women are ideal candidates for leadership. They are primed to handle stress well, and there is, of course, no more stressful job than the presidency.

In other words, bitches be crazy, but after they dry up, they’re wizened crones, natural-born healers and midwives and oh go fuck yourself.

I am not, repeat not, a woman who sees sexism lurking around every corner. I understand that social change takes time, and am buoyed by the different gender landscape I see forming in the young people of today. And even though this piece reaches a crescendo of a group hug about women’s beautiful differences and the necessity of treating our moods as nature’s “intelligent feedback system,” I just don’t need this crap right now. Totally.

Although it did bring back a flash memory I haven’t recalled in ages, about a former Washington bureau chief at the Columbus Dispatch who once told a reporter doing a “girls on the bus” feature in the ’80s about how he didn’t think women were suited for campaign-trail work, because Periods, and he always knew when one was in progress, because of his very sensitive nose.

It was a good thing that guy only came to town twice a year, is all I can say.

Speaking of moody bitches, there’s not much in Slate that gets me reading past the first take, but I did enjoy this piece on “haterbragging,” i.e., the practice of using one’s online critics as self-promotion, with novelist Jennifer Weiner as the queen of all haterbraggers, citing her epic online joust with Jonathan Franzen, who always comes off as a dour old poop while she runs giggling rings around him.

A final female-centric story to make it a hat trick: The return of sidesaddle riding. Charlotte comes from an old horsey family, maybe she knows better, but as for me, this is one style I was never, ever tempted to try. One thing I learned from this, though: If conventional, leg-on-either-side horsemanship is known as riding astride, sidesaddle is called “riding aside.” Two letters makes all the difference.

Finally, I remember a friend whose sister went to work for Yugo, the now-defunct car company, in the former Yugoslavia, which was at the time a guaranteed-employment economy. The day she first toured the plant, the leader was embarrassed to come upon a large bin of upholstery scraps with two or three loudly snoring workers catching a midday nap. I guess this story shows it could have been worse.

Happy Tuesday! Sorry for the late update today — I did Kate’s taxes last night. She’s getting a refund.

So, after the thrilling return of “Mad Men” last week, this Sunday brings (brought) “Game of Thrones,” “Silicon Valley” and “Veep.” So it’s a happy day, except that I’m having trouble writing this, due to having sliced my finger yesterday trying to get through a bagel. I have three stitches in the left index finger, a very big bandage and if I weren’t backspacing and correcting constantly, this sentence would look like this. No, too much right hand there.

It would look as though a person who couldn’t find the T, G, V and B keys very well. And now I’m hitting them pretty well.

The guy who stitched me up was swell, an orthopedist from the Philippines who had to settle for being an urgent-care physician’s assistant (or nurse practitioner, can’t remember) here. He would have had to go through another residency, which he couldn’t afford and didn’t want to do, anyway. I liked him right up until I changed the dressing this morning and discovered he didn’t use non-stick gauze, at which I would have favored execution.

A little soak in salt water put things right, although it violated the don’t-get-it-wet rule.

So now here I am, lame but happy because spring is here, tra la and it’s warm enough to open the sun roof and the workload has eased a bit for now. Just a bit feels like a vacation.

Anyway.

Bloggage? Not much, but…

… Actually, I don’t think I have any, but I’m sure you do. Take it away. Bring on Monday.