It took close to two hours to drive to Ann Arbor today, usually a 50-minute jaunt. The roads would be fine, and then they wouldn’t be, and then traffic would back up, and then you’d be cruising along, thinking you could nudge it up a bit, and realize whoa! Black ice!

But then it warmed up, and the trip home was much more reasonable. And the phenomenon I spoke of earlier this week came to pass: It was 15 degrees, and felt really nice out. I left the Parka of Misery unzipped, and took Wendy for a walk afterward. She flatly refused to go out with me early this morning, when it was -1 or so.

By the weekend, it will be well above freezing, and raining — only a 50-degree difference in a week. Michigan weather.

So let’s round up some linkage today, shall we?

What’s the matter with Kansas’ schools? asks an op-ed in the NYT. See if any of this sounds familiar:

Kansas’ current constitutional crisis has its genesis in a series of cuts to school funding that began in 2009. The cuts were accelerated by a $1.1 billion tax break, which benefited mostly upper-income Kansans, proposed by Governor Brownback and enacted in 2012.

Overall, the Legislature slashed public education funding to 16.5 percent below the 2008 level, triggering significant program reductions in schools across the state. Class sizes have increased, teachers and staff members have been laid off, and essential services for at-risk students were eliminated, even as the state implemented higher academic standards for college and career readiness.

Parents filed a lawsuit in the Kansas courts to challenge the cuts. In Gannon v. State of Kansas, a three-judge trial court ruled in January 2013 for the parents, finding that the cuts reduced per-pupil expenditures far below a level “suitable” to educate all children under Kansas’ standards.

…Rather than comply, Governor Brownback appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court. A decision is expected this month.

This is, in rough outline, what happened in Michigan over the last four years — education spending cut (among other trims) to finance a business-tax cut, that is. Per-pupil spending is still far above what it is in Kansas, a jaw-dropping $3,838. A reader comment on the piece explains some nuances:

Governor Brownback is ultra conservative. He wants a strong educational system in Kansas. What he is doing is simply shifting the tax burden from the general fund to local school districts. For years, the wealthy districts have been subsidizing the poorer (more rural with a lower tax valuations) ones. I’ve always been in a poor area, so we have benefitted from our wealthier cousins in Kansas City and Topeka for a long time. That was nice, but now the per student cost is VERY high in some of these areas for the state to fund and the wealthier districts are paying an inordinate amount of money to fund the others. What the new finance formula will do is simply cause a consolidation of more rural school districts, creating a larger tax base to fund the new districts. I think that we will see more distance learning in some of the larger (geographically speaking) districts to reduce transportation costs. Local property taxes will have to be increased to fund those districts. It’s like business. Everything comes at a cost. This is simply a tax shift; not an end to public education in Kansas.

Wasn’t an end to exclusively local funding of education the result of years of reforms in the 1990s? States realized they were sitting ducks for a civil-rights lawsuit, seeing as how their constitutions guaranteed “free and appropriate” education for all citizens (that’s Michigan’s language) and children in wealthier areas were getting far better educations than those in poorer ones. Now feel bad for wealthy districts for “subsidizing” poorer ones, which should just go ahead and consolidate more. Get on the bus, kids! What’s a one-hour commute? You can do your homework.

Let’s lighten the atmosphere a bit, shall we? How about Gwyneth Paltrow’s January cleanse?

“Our winter detox has looser guidelines and restrictions than ones we’ve done in the past but here is what we’re avoiding: dairy, gluten, shellfish, anything processed (including all soy products), nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant), condiments, sugar, alcohol, caffeine and soda.”

Looser guidelines? Just don’t eat anything.

I haven’t read the excerpt from the Roger Ailes book yet, but I suppose I have to. UPDATE: Read it. Highly recommended, especially for you newspaper journos, past and present. It’s about when Ailes bought the small paper serving his exurban community, and proceeded to become the publisher from GUESS WHERE.

And now, on to Thursday.

I posted the following over at Prospero’s obit:

To Michael’s friends and family,

Michael’s passing poses a very 21st-century quandary: How to sincerely acknowledge the passing of someone I’d never met, couldn’t identify in a lineup and yet still feel I “know” — via his near-daily participation in the comments section of my blog.

In fact, it was his silence on the passing of Phil Everly that led one of our number to wonder why we hadn’t heard from him in a while. As he was one of the few who knew “Prospero’s” real name, he googled and got the bad news.

We knew Michael as amazingly intelligent, eccentrically knowledgeable and never boring. His interests, his passions and, of course, his colorful vocabulary — all set him apart from the rest of us mortals.

We who knew him at nancynall.com will miss him mightily. Please know you have our condolences, and best wishes for comfort.

I also plan to make a donation to his charity — Second Helpings of Hilton Head, S.C. — and if any of you are so inclined, I’m sure it would be appreciated.

If you’re just joining us, go check out the previous comments thread. Pros’ daughter and at least one other relative checked in to say thanks for the good wishes.

What a strange world we have constructed, where we are having a virtual wake for a virtual stranger, although someone we “know” via the internet and communicate with, or hear from, almost every day.

Perhaps more will be revealed. I hope so.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I checked out suddenly. J.C. is in charge of the NN.c archive, and can do with it as he likes. Maybe there’s a book in these millions of words. Maybe there’s a new blogmaster or mistress who wants to wrangle the commenting community. At some point it won’t matter.

I have links, but I think I’ll save them for tomorrow. For now, the news of Prospero’s death cut short the Tonya Harding thread, and late in the day, a newcomer posted this comment, and it bears repeating:

What I recall, though, was how completely and utterly (Harding) reminded me of the people I knew who came from the same parts of Clackamas County she did. These were people who were just accidents waiting to happen, a deadly combination of barely-bright, poorly-educated, indisciplined-and-almost-undisciplinable shit magnets. “Bad stuff” just “happened” to them; car wrecks, arrests, lost jobs, lost husbands and wives. Tonya was a kind of patron saint for those people. She WAS them, just a little bigger, a little sparklier, a little better known.

Exactly.

You Jim Harrison fans might enjoy this:

Once I start, I very rarely change my mind about the nature of the story. And when I begin writing, it’s sound that guides me—language, not plot. Plot can be overrated. What I strive for more is rhythm. When you have the rhythm of a character, the novel becomes almost like a musical composition. It’s like taking dictation, when you’re really attuned to the rhythm of that voice.

You can’t go to it. It has to come to you. You have to find the voice of the character. Your own voice should be irrelevant in a novel. Bad novels are full of opinions, and the writer intruding, when you should leave it to your character.

I love Jim Harrison, but most of his characters sound very similar to one another, but oh well –he’s right about this.

Me, I have a big day Wednesday, and should prepare for it. Let’s all stay this side of the soil for one more, eh?

Friends, I think I have some more bad news to share, and you can thank/blame Coozledad, who has better reporter’s instincts than me, evidently.

I fear Prospero has left us.

He last commented Dec. 27, and, as Coozledad noted in an email, “It was totally out of character for him not to weigh in on Phil Everly.” Absolutely right.

The age is right, the name is right, the city is right, even the sketchy details of the obituary are right; I know he lived with a woman, had a daughter and young grandchildren. I guess it’s possible it’s some other Michael Johnson — it’s not that rare a name — and if so, I look forward to him crashing the funeral like some sort of profane Tom Sawyer. However, something in my gut says this is real.

This is such a strange relationship we all have here. I guess at some point I will have to compose a note for the guestbook, but I have no idea what to say. Dear relatives of Michael, those of us who knew him only as Prospero will miss his crazy presence in our virtual community. Or what? Honestly, I’m stumped. I guess I’ll wait a few days and then make a donation to his designated charity.

In the meantime, weigh in if you’re so inclined. The bar is open, and the wake is under way. As Coozledad said in his note, “Poor bloke. I was wondering how long his heart could take it.”

UPDATE: As he has done for our previously deceased commenters, J.C. has collected all of his comments — 7,673 of them, under at least three names — on a single page. You can find it here, in chronological order.

It’s only a local story now, but I don’t want to let another day pass without noting that yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the Nancy Kerrigan knee-whacking by agents of fellow figure skater Tonya Harding. It happened in Detroit. (Natch!) The national championships were at Cobo Hall that year, prior to the Olympic Games in Lillehammer. Just to recap:

I know it’s uncharitable of me, but in the fullness of time, I’ve come to terms with my dislike of Nancy Kerrigan. Not that I was on Team Tonya or anything, but Kerrigan, with her sense of regal entitlement, just chapped my ass. A beautiful girl, a fine skater, but her snitty display after she missed winning the gold medal to that pixie in pink fluff, Oksana Baiul, sealed the deal. “I was flawless,” she pouted, perhaps the original #firstworldproblems complaint.

(May I just pause for a moment and demand that you click the Oksana Baiul link and watch the ENTIRE slider? You must. We’ll wait.)

Granted, by her biography, Kerrigan seems a straight shooter. She’s been married to her agent for years, has three children, works for charity, pays her taxes. And to be sure, being kneecapped and subsequently under a relentless spotlight could push anyone off the rails, and she stayed on them. Harding, on the other hand, never even came close to fulfilling the promise that made her a serious threat to toothy Nancy. Her gold skates always reminded me of the gold trim packages that were popular on cars around the same time — very big-pimpin’ ghetto fabulous.

But I’ll admit to being blindsided by her popularity with working-class people. My friend Deb once overheard a couple of women from the Harding demographic expressing great admiration for the scrappy triple-axel jumper, adding, “I cannot STAND that Kristi Yamaguchi.” People who’ve been screwed over tend to remember who did the screwing, and many of them looked like the ethereal, unflappable ice queens we watch every four years. When Harding asked for a do-over during her long program I knew she was toast; the Kristis and Nancys of the world don’t break their laces in competition.

Years later, Harding would be arrested — what a surprise — for assaulting her husband with a hubcap. Alan and I were in the car when this news was reported, and the DJ puzzled aloud for some time about the strangeness of the weapon. A hubcap? Really? Finally, Alan snapped at the radio: IT WAS AN ASHTRAY, YOU IDIOT. Indeed.

The years haven’t been kind to Harding, but we all could have predicted that. Kerrigan, on the other hand? Still a great looker.

So. The polar vortex is still howling outside, and Kate has a second day off school, nearly unprecedented here. If you do, too, here’s some bloggage:

First, a story that may be of interest to Jeff the mild-mannered, from Bridge, about a growing pushback to zero-tolerance disciplinary policies in public schools. It includes this nod to mediation, i.e., “restorative justice:”

Under this approach, a trained mediator convenes a group that includes the offending student, the teacher, those harmed in the incident and the parents or siblings of the student. The idea is to encourage students to accept responsibility for their actions and learn from the experience.

“Kids have to come face-to-face with the people they harmed. This is aligned with conventional discipline,” he said.

Sower said it has proven to reduce suspensions and expulsions, but is only being used in a handful of Michigan districts.

It’s a good story, as is the sidebar, about a kid caught in this Kafkaesque whirl.

More sneer worthy is this piece from the Atlantic, where former GOP strategist Frank Luntz calmly measures out the rope and then hangs himself. He’s depressed, see, and has been since the 2012 election:

It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor.

…Luntz knew that he, a maker of political messages and attacks and advertisements, had helped create this negativity, and it haunted him. But it was Obama he principally blamed. The people in his focus groups, he perceived, had absorbed the president’s message of class divisions, haves and have-nots, of redistribution. It was a message Luntz believed to be profoundly wrong, but one so powerful he had no slogans, no arguments with which to beat it back. In reelecting Obama, the people had spoken. And the people, he believed, were wrong. Having spent his career telling politicians what the people wanted to hear, Luntz now believed the people had been corrupted and were beyond saving. Obama had ruined the electorate, set them at each other’s throats, and there was no way to turn back.

Luntz is dealing with his depression by moving to Las Vegas, where he expects to be “intellectually challenged” again. I just sprained my eyeballs.

With that, I guess we’re back in the groove. Happy Tuesday, all, and let’s get this new year rolling.

I warn you that the following contains elements of many of my least-favorite things, including nostalgia, crotchetiness and mountains-from-molehills. But some things need to be said.

A story on the WashPost website used the word “astonishing” to describe the subzero temperatures that are expected to last two days, tops, in much of the country. That just goes to show you who took the buyouts — anyone with a memory from before 1980, or even later than that. Granted, subzero has become a rare thing, even in southeast Michigan, but the idea that it’s astonishing is silly.

By my recollection, growing up in Columbus, Ohio, every winter contained at least one bitter cold snap. Columbus didn’t get a ton of snow, but I learned the phrase “Alberta clipper” early in life, and a 10-below night or two, or three or four, was simply part of a typical winter. I remember an early meteorological observation, when they would finally pass: Jeez, 25 degrees feels practically balmy. And it did.

Then came the mid-’70s. Two of my three college winters were some of the worst in Ohio history — ’76-’77 and ’77-’78. Everyone remembers the big blizzard of 1978, and it was certainly memorable, but it bigfooted recollections of the prior year, which should not fade so quickly.

Athens is in southeast Ohio, in the Appalachian foothills, and typically features winters that are more about chilly rain than heaps of snow. Spring comes early; forsythia sometimes bloom in late February. But these two years, the conditions, day after day, were more like you’d find in Minnesota. Snow fell in heaps, but mostly, it was cold.

My early warning was sometime in November. I’d slept over at my boyfriend’s, arose woefully underdressed for the overnight snow, and arrived in my first class shivering in a cardigan sweater and clogs, of all things. But the real fun came after Christmas break. My winter-quarter schedule arrived, and I made the mistake of lamenting that the late-morning and early-afternoon classes I’d requested had all been switched to 8 a.m. sections. My father mocked me for thinking this counted as a hardship. He had no idea.

The subfreezing cold settled in by early January and didn’t let up for weeks. And merely subfreezing were the good days. Many days dawned with the temperature well below zero, right around the time I was, yes, walking to those 8 a.m. classes. I recall that was the year I gave up what was then the standard Ohio University student winter protection — hooded sweatshirt, Levi’s jacket, down vest — for a full-on parka. Everybody wore the same footwear, hiking boots from the Rocky boot company in nearby Nelsonville. You could get a pair at the factory for about $20; they came with bright-red laces. Their Vibram-sole prints were what you saw as you trudged around the freezing landscape, head down to keep the latest snowfall out of your eyes.

I have many memories of the trials of those two winters, which have become misty and water-colored, the way memories do. Here’s one: The public-works staff in Athens were stretched thin. This was highly unusual weather, and over time, snow and ice built up thick on the brick streets, like a layer of asphalt. Working late at the student paper one night, we heard heavy equipment and came outside to find backhoes and front-end loaders taking advantage of the car-free streets to break up the ice. It was a pushback of brute strength against a winter that felt like it was doing the same. The grave-size pieces were dropped into waiting dump trucks, which trundled down to the river to deposit it onto the frozen riverbed. I was taking Russian at the time, and wondered if this was how they did it in Moscow.

Here’s another: Walking up Jeff Hill, the steepest on campus, on a brilliant morning when the temperature was somewhere around 20 below. Breathing was painful, but the very air itself seemed to sparkle, a phenomenon pointed out to me by Peter King, now the big-shot sportswriter, who gamboled by huffing out great gusts of air and watching the condensation shatter into crystals.

Somewhere around that time, Frank Reynolds took to ABC’s evening news to report that some scientists feared we were entering a new ice age. Yep. I saw it with my own eyes.

All of this was endured without the many conveniences of more recent years. Cars with front-wheel drive were a novelty, and four-wheel drive was confined to specialty vehicles. Even the rear-window defroster was rare. I pushed so many stuck cars, I can’t tell you. Those were also the years I learned to attach jumper cables and how to rock a car out of a parking place. Miracle fabrics like polypropylene and Thinsulate were unheard-of, and fashion went by the wayside. It was hardly a haute couture era among college students anyway, but the weather did away with any impulse toward individuality. We plodded around campus in our red-laced boots and puffy parkas, as uniform as North Koreans.

And this, I remind you, all happened in southern Ohio. Alan, who went to school in the northwest corner of the state, recalls those winters as the ones in which his father nearly lost his feet to frostbite when his diesel Rabbit gelled up out in the country, and as the time when he had to explain (to an el ed major, ha ha ha) that no, putting a blanket on a car battery wouldn’t keep it warm overnight. A friend remembered a girl in her dorm who raced to the health center with frostbite on her earlobes, and was told that while not wearing a hat or earmuffs had probably contributed to it, her biggest mistake was wearing 14K-gold earrings in 20-below weather — gold is an excellent thermal conductor, after all.

Climate change has accustomed us to superstorms, tornados half a mile wide, a hurricane season from hell, but it has blunted the common experience of winter at this latitude. Two years ago, I saw the first daffodils starting to push through the soil in January, a phenomenon I find far freakier than a couple days of bitter cold. People my age around Detroit talk about skating to Canada when they were children. Henry Ford drove one of his cars around a racecourse on the Detroit River ice. Bootleggers routinely ran trucks back and forth across the frozen waterway. All of these things would be exceedingly rare today.

So when you’re enduring the misery of the next few days, think back to those two tough years, when the Ohio River froze (and Jerry Springer was mayor of Cincinnati!!) and a coal strike made us wonder if we’d ever see a well-lit room again (at least in coal country). Friends, we used to be stronger. We still can be. Bundle up.

I guess this is the real end of the holidays. The tree is still up, but it knows its time is short. I’m back at work and the only thing to look forward to is some truly atrocious weather coming next week — single-digit highs on Monday and Tuesday, with the latter’s accompanied by high winds. Yay! My character will be totally built.

The parka of misery has been my main coat this year. My fleece-lined jeans, in a hideous cut but so, so warm, are indispensable. Oh, well. There’s a reason January is National Soup Month. We started with a homemade tomato tonight, along with, yes, grilled-cheese sandwiches. What do you have after a seven-inch snowfall?

In keeping with this theme of misery, and beauty, and a hope for better things, a photo essay on life in a Russian village. Lovely pictures.

Today’s long read: A speck in the sea. The moral of the story: Don’t fall overboard.

What happened when Axl Rose rented my apartment.

Now it’s snowing in New York, and you know what that means: IT’S SNOWING IN NEW YORK!!!! OMG, MORE STORIES!!!

A good weekend to all.

Happy new year to all! I’m taking a break from closet-cleaning to cook for our dinner party tonight. Just two guests besides us, and here’s the menu: Prime rib, pommes dauphine, spinach sautéed with garlic and olive oil, chocolate mousse. Our guests are bringing a seafood appetizer and a fennel-arugula salad. If I were Jesus and could perform miracles, I’d whisk you all here and multiply the menu loaves-and-fishes style, but alas, I am but me.

It was a good year, and I’m hoping for another. There were trials along the way, but we got them into the rear-view, and no one got seriously sick, injured or estranged. I saw a lot, did a lot, drank a bit of wine. Today’s breakfast was a scrambled egg with some leftover black beans and rice, topped with pico de gallo. A tasty final breakfast for a tasty year.

I hope yours was as good, and the same for the future.

Laura Lippman is doing her one-word resolution again. I cheated in 2013 and made three — focus, floss, finish. I accomplished two, which I guess serves me right. The hygienist was unimpressed, said I still had gum recession, and counseled an electric toothbrush. Well, OK.

So for 2014, a continuation of those three, and a new one, just one word: Prune. As in, to trim, to cut back, to pare away deadwood, to leave behind bullshit that isn’t working anymore.

We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I’ll see you around these usual haunts. Because this place, year after year, slump after peak, still works.

If you’re off today and tomorrow and looking for something to read, let me make a recommendation: This. Henry Allen was one of the first people I met in my professional career who made me say, “I want to be that guy,” and this essay, about his grandfather’s house in Orange, N.J., shows why. Not too long, a beautiful journey down memory’s potholed path.

Happy 2014 to all.

The only thing more pathetic than the silver-painted statue buskers are the people who are charmed by them.

I’m not exactly a hoarder, but some of this crap make me think I might be a candidate. Although most is in the trash now, including these remnants of my early-adulthood fondness for stealing blank letterhead. (I was a big sender of prank mail, back in the day.) Including:

This is the station that became WTBS. TCG stood for Turner Communications Group, if I recall correctly. (Ted was into billboards as well as UHF TV stations.) J.C. worked here in the early ’80s, and I used to fly down for weekend visits; Delta had a cheap flight out of Columbus. We’d always go to the station for at least a little while, because J.C. was always working, and I’d play in the wrestling ring while he finished up. Georgia Championship Wrestling was taped Saturday mornings. Good times.

Other of my friends tended to work for print outlets:

Including me.

This is my Uncle Arthur’s casket flag. It’s a nice cotton one, and I need to get it out and fly it. Casket flags are slightly disproportionate, a flag maker told me once, and we don’t have a pole, but in Columbus we displayed this on July 4 by hanging it from nails driven into the mortar of our brick house. Think I’ll do that here.

I kept this because it’s a movie waiting to be written. A madcap comedy.

And while I loved my time in Ann Arbor, both of these went into the trash. Just not a hat girl.

Off to closet no. 2 now. MORE COFFEE.

I am embarking on a major stuff-reduction project this week. I don’t expect to finish it by New Year’s Day, but if I can make a dent by then, and a goal by springtime, I’ll be happy. Along the way, I will tweet, and post, some of the oddities found along the way.

Today’s exasperation: Journalists rival only the Special Olympics for plaque-passing and ribbon-pinning. I hope, in this project, to find the inner strength to pitch Major Awards like this.