I used to think I would feel rich if, just once in my life, I could fly first-class to Europe. Those overnight flights are simply impossible to tolerate in a sitting position, and being able to stretch out in Delta One would be fantastic. But now? Now I think I’d feel even richer if we could do one of these trips without having to use Airbnb.

Which is to say: Alan’s trying to unclog the shower drain for the second time this week. And I’d like some coffee, but it would require me getting up to use the moka pot in this place, which makes one (1) cup at a time. Such an amazingly complicated process: Heat water in the electric kettle, disassemble the moka pot, tap a little coffee into the thingie, pour heated water into the bottom of the pot, plop in the coffee thingie, then get a towel or something to hold the bottom (because it’s hot now) while you screw on the top, place on stove. When it gurgles, it’s done. Repeat for a second cup.

Also: There’s no frying pan in the kitchen, just two pots. Also: It takes three flushes to dispose of one turd.

I’ll stop my complaining. I’m in Rome! And we finally found some good places to eat. Some Karen gave this excellent place one star because “they served my pasta in a beat-up old pot.” It was spectacular:

“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the TRUE emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”

Rick Steves says the opening acts for gladiators were animal fights, “perhaps dogs attacking porcupines.” As you stand on the higher levels of the Colosseum, you can see its underground, because the arena floor is long-since rotted away. (A partial restoration allows tourists to walk out and give the Russell Crowe speech.) Alan, looking down on the hive of underground cells and passageways: “That’s where they kept the porcupines.”

We also saw the Vatican museums, culminating with the Sistine Chapel. No photos, because it isn’t allowed, but as an art-appreciation experience, I’d put it up there with the Mona Lisa: Too many people, guards barking NO PHOTO because some people either can’t or won’t read, and not a great deal of light, probably to save the artworks. Few places to sit, too. Honestly? Look at some well-photographed art books to appreciate Michelangelo’s genius, and enjoy them in a cafe.

Final complaint: And on the fourth day, I caught a cold. But the weekend lies ahead, what sounds like a delightfully cheesy birthday-of-Roma celebration, with games in the Circus Maximus. Go, Charlie Heston!

Today we were walking across the Ponte Sisto, a pedestrian bridge over the Tiber. Approaching us, hand-in-hand with her chic mother, was a girl of about 7. She was walking as coolly as a model, wearing a tot-sized black leather motorcycle jacket.

I wish I’d gotten a photo of this startling fashion statement, but whoosh they were past us, and oh well.

Not so many photos today, because yesterday we went to a no-photos-allowed zone, it being a Monday and most of the good museums were closed. We went to the Capuchin crypt, and you can look up many photos online if you’re so inclined to see a visual marriage of the Khmer Rouge and, I dunno, maybe some scrapbookers. A long introduction tells you about the Capuchin order — there’s one in Detroit, and they feed the poor — until you get to what you came for, a series of niches decorated with, no kidding, thousands of human bones and a few mummies.

Allegedly 3,700 monks’ bones were used to create the various displays in the crypt, which were so, so strange. Catholics have a lot of premodern opinions about human remains, but it is downright weird to see floral motifs made with vertebrae and shoulder blades, to name but one of the displays on offer. You Catholics know the underlying message here — this’ll be you, one of these days, so don’t get too attached to your corporeal form — but as one who recalls the monsignor telling us that sure, we could cremate our parents, as long as it wasn’t done to deny the resurrection, it’s hard to believe this was hunky-dory with the One True. But who am I to argue.

Today we tried to go the Borghese Gallery, but didn’t plan ahead, and no tickets are available for days and days. So we rented bikes and explored the park.

That zoo entrance could be one or 100 years old — it does resemble the figures outside Comerica Park, where the Detroit Tigers play — but it hardly matters. You quickly learn, visiting here, that Italians are, as the kids say, extra:

Those are the trees so evocatively lit from above, by moonlight, in “Ripley,” now playing on Netflix. A few more days and clear weather and the moon will be up to it:

Tomorrow, the Vatican!

For Sunday, the Pantheon:

If anyone tells you April is a good time to visit a European city and “skip the crowds,” laugh in their face. When we stepped into the square, it wasn’t quite elbow-to-elbow, which I guess is what a skipped crowd looks like in Rome. Rather than wait in the interminable line for tickets, we opted to pay a little more for a guided tour by a short Italian sprite, and it was worth it, just to hear her say “Agrippa.” A friend advised me, in sounding out Italian words, to “say every letter,” and you could really hear that second P in her pronunciation of the Roman general’s name.

What to say about the Pantheon besides that it’s glorious and amazing? Not much. The oculus is my favorite part:

You also have to spend some time marveling at the engineering feat, and consider that, fires and restorations aside, that dome is older than Christ. The only disappointment, if you could call it that, is that there’s no visible evidence of the pre-Christian era, but oh well. We saw Rafael’s tomb, saw the royalist guard in front of :::checks notes::: King Umberto’s tomb, saw the drain in the floor that lets the rainwater flow away, saw it all. After that, the Trevi Fountain was just kinda no-big-deal:

The crowds didn’t help, all these people milling about, bent not on appreciating the sculpture, or even throwing coins in, but getting selfies, because pix or it didn’t happen:

We stayed a bit, and left carrying some McDonald’s trash that some trashy soul or souls had left behind. At the Trevi Fountain. I ask you.

After that, we needed a drink, and I much preferred watching this woman, just inside the cafe where we sipped spritzes, making pasta by hand and then weighing out every portion on her kitchen scale:

Also: More walking, more squares, more spritzes, a pizza, the Tiber River, a genial cashier at our breakfast place who said he had been to the U.S. 14 times, and that his least-favorite American city was Houston, a point we could reach 100 percent agreement on. Speaking of Texas, she’s inescapable, she is:

More later.

I’m sure you are all thoroughly sick of the eclipse, so I’ll only share this one pic, taken at the moment of totality in Forest Cemetery, Toledo, where we were among just a few people set up to watch the show. We could have gotten another minute or two if we’d driven deeper into the zone, but I had to be at work at 5:30 and I knew I’d never make it in time if we went to, say, Wapakoneta, Ohio, birthplace of Neil Armstrong.

So Toledo it was. And a minute or so of totality was enough:

But let’s move on, if only to give you guys a fresh thread for comments. Next stop: The eternal city. (Yes, I’m packing my laptop.)

News just broke that O.J. Simpson is dead. Well, now. Like a lot of you, my knowledge of the man spans decades. I remember watching his 80-yard run in the 1969 Rose Bowl. I remember his TV commercials for Hertz rental cars. And I remember that for a long time, he was white America’s favorite black man, or at least in the top five or 10. Then everything happened, and who couldn’t have a memory of that?

In a running theme through my life, I was the only American to miss the infamous slow-speed Bronco chase. I was at a horse show in Battle Creek, and the B&B I stayed in had only over-the-air TV in the room, so I watched “The X-Files” and went to bed. Alan told me about it the next morning: “There were these people standing on overpasses, cheering,” he said, wonder in his voice. It was only the start of the weirdness.

I will grant him this: I got a few columns out of that trial, the first when I noticed the ’90s-era Sony monitor on Judge Ito’s bench had been enhanced, with paint or a Sharpie or something, so that SONY stood out in giant black letters whenever the camera was on him. I don’t recall anyone took the blame for it. My old college boyfriend Bruce, who lived in L.A., called regularly, especially after he hired a woman who, he soon learned, had been Nicole Simpson’s housekeeper. She’d been an eyewitness to much of the domestic strife between the exes, and he recounted this in her heavy accent: “Meester Oh-hay get berry berry angry with missy Nee-cole,” etc. She ended up leaving his employ after the National Enquirer paid her a modest four-figure sum for her story, and recounted the same stories in perfect English. There was the avalanche of media coverage, running from the gutter tabs to the prestige press. I’m grateful to… was it Dominick Dunne who covered it for Vanity Fair? I think so. I’m grateful to that writer and publication for teaching me that a blowjob is known in that community as “the Brentwood hello.”

And then, of course, the verdict. We all remember how that went.

I recommend two sources if you’re interested in revisiting the era: “The Run of His Life,” by Jeffrey Toobin, where you can learn that Marcia Clark thought she’d get a conviction because “black women love me,” due to her aggressive prosecution of domestic abusers. Also, “OJ: Made in America,” a multipart documentary series you can watch on Hulu. Very very worth your time.

So much other news this week, but honestly, I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Abortion restrictions in Arizona, whatever the former president farted out of his mouth in the last 24 hours, have at it. I’ll be back early next week, depending on the wifi strength in our lodgings.

Friends, I have a crazy week ahead, mainly because I have to cram in a bunch of work in three days, not the usual five. That would be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, because two exciting events bookend the week. You all know about Monday’s eclipse, and we’re going to do our best to get into the path of totality, probably down Toledo way. The forecast is iffy now, but today was clear and sunny and after the winter we’ve had, we’re owed another clear one for this event, goddamnit.

And on Friday? Why, we’re off on another European adventure. Wheels up for…drumroll…Italy. First stop: Rome. We’ve got a house-sitter, but as usual, I’ve got 19 different to-do lists and they’re starting to be illegible. But we’ll make it. It’s been a very good year for the nest egg — thanks, Biden.

Depending on eclipse success tomorrow, a photo post, then sketchy until we get to the eternal city, I expect. But you all carry on.

Friends, I don’t see how this newfound detente between sports and gambling ends well. Check out this story from the Athletic:

Carson Barrett tore his meniscus earlier this year. The injury required surgery, but this is the last run for the Purdue senior. Though he’s never seen a whole lot of playing time in his career, he wanted to at least have a shot at getting on the court this season. So Barrett delayed the repair work, gladly taking the exchange of some pretty painful nights with a throbbing knee in favor of even a few minutes of hooping.

This season he’s played a grand total of 21 minutes and scored six points. Three of them came in the NCAA Tournament. With 37 seconds left in a game long decided, Barrett drained a baseline 3 against Grambling State, putting himself in the box score of Purdue’s first-round victory. As the ball swished through the net, the bench erupted, Barrett’s teammates knowing full well what he’d sacrificed and endured. His bucket would be the last for the Boilermakers as Purdue cruised to a 78-50 win. Back in the locker room, Barrett picked up his phone and scrolled through the congratulatory texts from friends and started to search through his DMs on social media.

He stumbled on this:

You sure are a son of a b—.
Hope you enjoy selling cars for the rest of your life.

Followed by:

I hope you f-ing die.

And then the kicker:

Kill yourself for taking that 3 you f-ing worthless loser. Slit your f-ing throat you f-ing f– that was completely uncalled for. I hope you f-ing kill yourself.

The Boilermakers were 27-point favorites against Grambling. Barrett’s bucket meant they won by 28. “I had no idea what the line was,” Barrett said. “I’m just out there, making memories with my friends.”

Jeff Borden used to share an opinion about email vs. snail mail. If you wanted to unload on a journalist, or anyone for that matter, in the olden days, you had to hunt up a pen and paper, scrawl your message (or roll paper into your typewriter, or sit at your keyboard and hit Print), find an envelope, find a stamp, walk to a mailbox, drop it in. There were lots of steps along the way when you could say Nah and forget the whole thing. Email makes things so much easier. Social media, easier still. Just find the person you want to abuse, in the heat of the moment, and fire away. Imagine telling a 22-year-old kid to kill himself.

This kid was absolutely right to take his shot, and I’m pleased he made it. When gambling inevitably throws a Super Bowl, or World Series, or NCAA championship, we can say we brought this shit on ourselves.

Let’s make this an all-bloggage blog, shall we?

Elon Musk is an idiot, chapter a jillion:

Musk is now using his dominant presence on the social network, which he has renamed X, to convince people that the 2024 presidential election is rigged. His efforts dovetail with the lies of Donald Trump, who recently claimed that Democrats are “allowing” undocumented immigrants to enter the country and “signing them up to vote.”

Musk promoted a post from @EndWokeness, a popular account that promotes bigoted conspiracy theories, that claimed to have uncovered “data” showing that hundreds of thousands of “illegals” have registered to vote since the start of 2024. Musk shared @EndWokeness’ post with his 170 million followers and called it “extremely concerning.”

…To begin, “illegals” cannot get a Social Security number. Most people who have Social Security numbers are citizens. In some instances, non-citizens can receive a Social Security number — usually in connection with a work authorization — but only if they are legally present in the United States. The idea that using a Social Security number to register to vote is evidence of undocumented status makes no sense.

It’s a crying shame what that dolt has done to Twitter. The For You side of my feed is absolute garbage, especially at night, when it’s all manosphere incels, rad-trad lunatics, clips of people falling into meat grinders and other nonsense. And as decent users trickle away, the Following side isn’t much better. But here we are, enjoying our free speech.

Speaking of Twitter, Trump was in Grand Rapids the other day. One of the ceremonies of the day was the bestowal of the endorsement of the Police Officers Association of Michigan. Cop unions are the worst, keeping bad ones on the job and generally sheltering their membership from negative consequences, no matter how self-inflicted. Of course they were happy to stand behind their hero, who has pledged to pardon J6ers who beat the shit out of cops between taking dumps in the halls of Congress:

Several of these guys are self-described “constitutional sheriffs,” and I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that.

Comic relief! Gary Shteyngart — a niche writer enthusiasm, I’ll grant — was among the passengers on the inaugural cruise of the Icon of the Seas, and while some of the shots are cheap, they are well-deserved.

And that’s about all I have for Thursday. Enjoy your weekend, all.

Apologies for no post coming into Monday. Honestly, I was kinda empty, and in cases like this, it’s best to respect the dry well and let it refill.

Then, today, John Sinclair died. :::cracks knuckles::: Ok, then.

If you don’t know who he was, no worries. He was strictly a local celebrity who briefly went national, if you’re the sort of obsessive music fan who reads the liner notes. He’s most often described as the manager of the MC5, a local activist in the hot heart of the ’60s, an unapologetic stoner who co-founded the White Panther Party and lured John and Yoko to Ann Arbor for a benefit after he was sent to prison for giving two joints to an undercover cop. You might remember the White Panthers from one point in their multi-point manifesto: Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock ’n’ roll, dope and fucking in the streets.

I can’t recommend my friend Bill McGraw’s obit in the Freep highly enough; he really captured the guy, including his rock-solid, lifelong sense of humor and absurdity. The White Panthers weren’t Maoist scolds, or even 100 percent serious, and damn, I’d have liked to party with those guys.

I only met Sinclair once, although you could often spot him at this or that event around town. He’d been in declining health for some time, getting around with a walker or in a wheelchair, but his mouth was always in good shape. After marijuana was fully legalized in Michigan, a local attorney held a news conference in his conference room, and Sinclair was a guest. There wasn’t much news coming out of the event, something about a lawsuit, but at one point Sinclair went off on a recent story in one of the papers, that had showcased police concern for what might happen to their drug-sniffing dogs in this new era. “They’re boo-hooing about their dogs!” Sinclair raged. “Their fucking dogs!” The TV reporters despaired of a spicy clip they couldn’t use, but I laughed. And I quoted him accurately in my story.

He wasn’t all about weed, as this passage from Bill’s obit notes:

In 1972, after having been freed from prison for his marijuana conviction, Sinclair found himself in more serious difficulty. A federal grand jury indicted him and two other White Panthers, Plamondon and Jack Forrest, for conspiring to dynamite a clandestine CIA recruiting office on Main Street in Ann Arbor in 1968. The FBI maintained Plamondon planted the bomb.

After U.S. District Judge Damon Keith in Detroit ruled against the government for tapping Plamondon’s phone without a warrant, the three hippies squared off against the Nixon Justice Department in a landmark wiretapping case before the high court in Washington. Sinclair and friends won, in a unanimous decision that scuttled Nixon’s national legal strategy against numerous other radicals. It was a major defeat for the self-proclaimed law-and-order president.

“When that case came down, every pending Black Panther, Weatherman, antiwar conspiracy case in the country had to be dismissed,” said Hugh (Buck) Davis, a Detroit lawyer who worked on the Sinclair appeals as a recent law school graduate, with nationally known legal heavyweights William Kuntsler and Leonard Weinglass, fresh from defending the Chicago 7. “They were all based on illegal wiretaps.”

Good for him.

John Sinclair got high every day, and moved to Amsterdam for a while to make it easier, but he came back. Detroit is a pretty lawless town, and getting marijuana isn’t exactly difficult, even when it was a crime. Or, as he put it:

Detroit, Sinclair said, “was the place where you could hear jazz all night long and cop weed or pills whenever you wanted to.”

So farewell, John. As a final note, here’s a piece of research Bill passed along to me when he was composing his pre-written obit. Note the police description of a jam session: “…a party at which the participants entertain themselves with bongo music and marijuana.”

Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” is getting a fair amount of attention, as Big Books by Big Authors tend to do in the days following their publication. In a nutshell, Haidt argues that smartphones — not Covid, not climate change, not mass shootings — are at the root of Gen Z’s well-covered tendency to be more depressed and less optimistic than older Americans. He talks mostly about the corrosive effects of social media, but it’s another part of the grinding-down aspect of smartphone life that interests me: Surveillance.

Haidt is friends with Lenore Skenazy, who made a big splash a few years back when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old find his way home from Bloomingdale’s (they live in New York City) alone. The kid had a $20 bill for emergencies, but no phone. He had been riding on public transit for years and knew the system. And he was fine. The piece splashed so big that Skenazy spun it into an organization, Free Range Kids, that advocates for loosening the tethers that worried parents place on their children, to give them age-appropriate freedom and independence. Let go, let God. It’s good for them. Etcetera.

I think this is a good idea, which is easy for me to say, as my own child is 27 now, but looking back, I reflect that life got easier when I did the same thing. We live in a safe community, but in conversation with Kate’s peers’ parents, I got the impression that few others think so. At least with regard to their own offspring.

Which I get. Your child is the most precious thing in the world, and you’d do anything to protect it. But around here, parents go to insane lengths to do so, and increasingly, the smartphone is key to everything. For instance, it’s commonplace for people around here to leave their phone’s location-sharing on all the time, and share with their family. So not only do parents know where their kids are, kids know where their parents are. Spouses track one another in real time.

This is always explained, and justified, as a matter of safety, trust and love. It’s a way of showing up for each other, to say “if you need me, this is where you can find me,” or “I worry about you, so it helps to know you’re safe.” Bad things happen to people. A couple years ago, a freshman went missing at Michigan State after a night of heavy drinking. Common sense would tell searchers where to look (the Red Cedar River, running through the middle of campus), but it took weeks to find him, and that’s exactly where his body was. The discussion afterward centered on improving security with more cameras (the one nearest where he fell in was out of service), not discouraging the blackout drinking that leads to these incidents.

Kate had a friend when she was young, who lived a block away. She liked to spend time over there — they had video games and better snacks — and by the time I’d call her home in wintertime, it would be dark outside. They never failed to drive her one block home, and when I suggested that was excessive, the reply was always, “If anything happened to her, I’d never forgive myself.” That nothing had happened to any child walking home in our community, that anyone could remember, meant nothing. There’s always a first time.

I think about the kids we see in Europe; we usually go during the school year and have seen uniformed children on the streets and squares of Paris and Barcelona and Morocco and Madrid. No adults are in evidence, and if they are, they keep their distance. These kids get on and off buses and trains and play freely with one another — a soccer ball seems to be all they need to have a good time. I don’t recall seeing any phones in a child’s hand in these street encounters. While I’m sure they have video games and their own anxieties, they don’t seem to be the American kind.

The night of Kate’s high-school graduation, her band played a gig in Hamtramck. They all surrounded me and begged to borrow my car, a Volvo station wagon at the time, for their upcoming tour. It would be two or three weeks on the road, all of them 18 years old. I thought about it for a while, considered that they had been playing unsupervised gigs all over one of the country’s most dangerous cities (according to the stats, anyway) for a couple years now, and finally said yes. And while I’m certain there was drinking and weed-smoking and other stupidity taking place over that fortnight, they came home safe. They were ready.

OK, getting to week’s end, have to finish a piece, so here’s some bloggage:

Neil Steinberg speaks for me when he suggests Ronna McDaniel’s betrayal of her own country shouldn’t be excused easily:

The former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee thought she could shed her Trump-coddling, election-denying, democracy-shredding raiment and simply rejoin polite society. And, sadly, the out-of-touch NBC brass hoped she could too, briefly. Imagined McDaniel might provide some of that good old fashioned Red State perspective, make the case for lies and delusion, maybe snag a few viewers drifting away from Fox News.

But legitimate NBC journalists rebelled, on air. Thank God. That’s how it should be. Some things cannot be forgiven. Maybe casting a ballot for Trump two or three times, in the privacy of the voting booth, can be reframed as a secret shame. But at some point, as you rise up the ladder in the pyramid of cowards, quisling and craven opportunists, you lose the chance to walk away from your treachery. At some point you end up in the dock in a plexiglas booth.

Yep. Also, Joe Lieberman is dead, and someone will mourn him, but it won’t be me:

Lieberman’s last term in the Senate was not one in which he shined. He played an absolutely critical role in making sure that the Affordable Care Act had no public option. He told Harry Reid he would filibuster any effort to create a public option. And while he wasn’t the only Democrat to torpedo a far better bill than what got passed, Lieberman has more than his share in the blame to make that happen. A lot of people were disgusted by his behavior in the 2006 election and he was only polling at a 31 percent approval rating in 2010, so he decided to retire at the end of his term. Chris Murphy replaced him and finally Connecticut Democrats had a real senator representing their interests.

…Lieberman may have theoretically supported Clinton in 2016, but he was happy to work with Trump. In fact, who did Betsy DeVos have introduce her to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee for her confirmation hearings as Secretary of Education but Holy Joe himself. Great that he was willing to vouch for such a lovely person. Lieberman always had a soft spot for Trump. Speculating that the latter could run for president in 2000, Lieberman said in 1999, “The Donald is quite a ladies’ man. He’s going to have, if elected, an all-female cabinet … Secretary of Energy Carmen Electra, Secretary of Defense Xena the Warrior Princess.” That’s some hot comedy from our favorite senator there! Trump nearly named him FBI director to replace James Comey, which would have been a total shitshow. I wonder if Lieberman would have toadied up to Trump in the required manner or whether his “look out for me and me alone” mentality would have let to a total blowup. I almost wish it happened just so we could have yet another reason to hate the man.

A good weekend to all. At the end of it, it’ll be April.

The world continues to fall apart. The collapse of the Key bridge in Baltimore was — is — shocking. I had to get off Twitter once the For You stream sent me a series of posts suggesting this WASN’T AN ACCIDENT and was likely caused by TERRORISTS or JEWS or it was a CYBER ATTACK ON THE SHIP or some other rage-farming bullshit. Why is it so hard to hear those hoofbeats and think horses, not zebras. Or they know it’s horses, and they’re just exploiting the once-useful social network ruined by Elon Musk.

Worse was the local resident who carped to a reporter that now the harbor and port would be closed, and traffic would be terrible, and you can forget about same-day deliveries from Amazon, yes you can. I know Baltimore is a tough town, but please: A moment for fishing the bodies out of the harbor before we move on to petty annoyances.

I recall reading a story, years ago, in the Washington Post. The subject was maybe Fear or Phobias or something, but it included a short piece about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, also in Maryland. The bridge employs drivers for so-called “Timmies,” i.e. people with phobias about driving over such a long bridge, but nevertheless required to do so, usually for a job commute. The Timmies (for “timid,” duh) pull over in a designated area and the driver gets in. They can handle the drive however they want — calmly in the passenger seat, crouched under a blanket in the back, whatever. At the other end, the driver gets out and goes to the waiting area for a ride going the other way.

At the time it seemed amusing. But the last time I drove the Mackinac Bridge I did deep breathing all the way across and found myself oddly unsettled. I used to love it; I’d change lanes back and forth between the paved outside lane and the grated inside lanes (for icy conditions) just to hear the hum of the grating passing under my tires. But now I stick to the pavement and try not to think how far down the water is. Not a Timmie, but maybe Timmie-adjacent.

Anyway, look for a lot more Timmies crossing bridges in the coming days.

Collapse elsewhere: I try not to think too much about the British royal family, either, but man, Friday’s news about Princess Kate was a shocker. It certainly silenced the Too Online Encyclopedia Browns for a hot second, after which they roared back to life, blaming her cancer on the Covid vaccine, because rage-farming waits for no one. I was left mainly thinking, when do the bad guys get a hit like this? She’s a young mother with three young children; when does Tubby McBronzer get his fatal stroke? When does Roger Stone get hit by a truck? Where is karma when you need it, goddamnit.

Legal collapse: The Supreme Court heard arguments in the abortion-pill case today; here’s a heartfelt defense of IVF that lays out the stakes, i.e. babies for people desperate to have one vs. crazy people who believe eight cells in a Petri dish has full constitutional rights. Not crazy, bad people. Bad, bad people.

OK, then. Let’s let the investigations unfold and hope for the best. Later.

Proof that this is a stupid, stupid country comes with an emerging theme of the Trump campaign: Asking if you’re better off than you were four years ago.

I can answer that one instantly and unequivocally: Yes. Hell yes. Take all the yes under the sun, pile it high, double it and double it again. Yes.

The Washington Post, being cognizant of its liberal media presence, added a qualifier to its headline: Trump asked if U.S. was better off in his last year. In many ways, the answer is no. The “in many ways” is perhaps justified by the subhead: A look at the third week of March 2020 reveals a nation that was plunging into a pandemic, and a leader exhibiting the erratic characteristics that his supporters love and his detractors revile

Hmm. Well, OK, maybe some people found those daily Covid briefings entertaining. But the story (gift link) lays out what we all remember:

Four years ago this week, the stock market was collapsing — hitting its worst week since the Great Recession of 2008 — as the country spiraled into a years-long pandemic that claimed more than 1 million American lives, cratered the economy, upended daily life and, arguably, helped cost Trump a second term in the White House.

…Reported covid cases exploded that week, growing from 588 to 3,659, and covid deaths more than tripled, from 16 on Sunday the 15th to 52 the following Saturday. Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump regularly indulged in his most combative and erratic impulses, alienating large swaths of the public along the way.

During that seven-day stretch, Trump promised the country had “tremendous control” over the virus and that “we’re winning it.” In fact, the opposite was true.

Yep. That’s how it went. When I read stuff like this, I sometimes go back to my photos from that period. I don’t take as many pix as I probably should, but I take a few. Many of these images will be familiar to you, and they suggest that no goddamn WAY was the country better off in March 2020.

It was a bad time to run out of toilet paper, or “bath tissue,” as the sign suggests.

It was a good time to be making sanitizers of all sorts. This was for a story I did for Deadline Detroit. I think this guy was getting something like $50 a tub for these alcohol wipes.

My boxing workout briefly moved outdoors, socially distanced by the yard markers.

I look about as excited to be at this Zoom cocktail hour as anybody would be. “You are the only one here.” Solo drinkers should look more hangdog, if you ask me:

A closed bar in Grosse Pointe. Cardboard Conor McGregor was probably left over from St. Patrick’s Day, a couple weeks previous.

I got a tip that certain bars were opening on the DL, reviving the city’s grand tradition of speakeasies. I was using a jukebox app to try to find them, but never connected with one. I did capture this image of the neon installation on the modern art museum in Detroit, with Woodward Avenue empty of everything but my Subaru:

A friend did have a small speakeasy group with three friends, one of whom owned a bar. They’d go there, sit several stools apart, and drink together. Was it fun, I asked. “Not at all. Kinda depressing, actually.”

A socially distanced teen hang in an empty middle-school parking lot. Note all the late-model cars. Rich kids, but at least they were being responsible:

Then the Unlock Michigan movement got moving, whipped along by social media. They insisted the shutdowns and restrictions were all either a hoax or overblown or not worth the economic damage. Many of the ringleaders looked like this:

I just looked up Kevin Skinner. It appears he’s now pushing the ballot initiative to do away with property tax in Michigan. Of course.

I have to say, though, that there were moments of calm, happiness and beauty. Kate and I went down to the lakefront to try to catch a flyover of the Blue Angels, who were saluting health-care workers all over the country. It was a lovely day.

I had two cameras that day, my phone and my Nikon SLR, loaded with Tri-X pushed to 1600. A friend saw this and remarked, “Man, even Wendy looks hard.”

We were looking out at the water, thinking that’s where the planes would be. But suddenly we heard them, and saw them only a few seconds later, behind us. I swung around, raised my camera and took a hail-mary, and whadday know, it turned out great. High-contrast, but I like it.

So. Better off? You better believe it, even if the Blue Angels aren’t flying around. My 401K recovered, I now see friends face-to-face and when I want to wipe my bum, I have the t.p. to get the job done.

Happy Sunday/Monday. A busy week ahead, but afterward, all downhill.