So there I was at the oral surgeon’s office, sitting with Kate in the recovery cubicle, enjoying her goofy post-anesthesia brain, remembering my own experience getting my own wisdom teeth extracted in 1978. Like me, one of the first things she asked when she came to was to see her teeth.

The nurse showed me mine; they were in fragments. The doctor told Kate hers were biohazards, and had been thrown away. “Like any body part,” I said.

“Don’t people keep their placenta?” she mumbled through the gauze. Funny what bobs to the surface when drugs are roiling everything underneath.

There was a sign in the recovery area, asking that out of respect for everyone’s privacy, please refrain from taking photos or video. Jesus Christ. I guess everyone wants to get the next “David after dentist” Youtube hit.

She sailed through it, all things considered. Swelling’s not too bad, not even much pain, but we still have tomorrow to get through.

One last note: As I was getting ready to leave her in the operating room, the nurse wheeled in the cart with the instruments. They were covered with a paper towel, and it slid a little, revealing the serious heft of the handles. All at once, I remembered my own surgery, the nurse slipping the needle into my arm just as another one pulled the towel off the tray to reveal…instruments of torture. Hammers, chisels and is that a fucking miniature maul? It was.

No wonder I had a chinstrap bruise for a week.

Closing in on the end of a project about Proposal 1 in Michigan; the first two parts will be published at 6 a.m., and y’all can enjoy the fun I had trying to translate this into plain English. Policy ain’t my forte; I prefer people, and that’s my next assignment. Whew.

So, bloggage? Sure.

Eternally starring in the action movie running in his own head, a would-be hero suffers a flesh wound when his gun goes off in church. During the Easter vigil, no less.

The Rolling Stone report was horrifying, mainly because no one got fired, but also because the offending writer notes how hard it’s all been on her, so that’s good to know. This Slate story rounds up a few reactions that track with my own.

I’ve never heard of the Food Babe, but if this takedown is accurate, that’s probably for the best.

Onward. Good Tuesdays to all.

I don’t get to the office as often as I should, although I do when I can, and I’ll be going more now that the weather is breaking and commuting isn’t such an ordeal. What’s the truism? If you want people to get things done, let them work at home. If you want them to be creative, put them together. Lately I have a lot to get done, so I’ve been staying home.

But today I went in. I had to do a radio show first, then headed to the office. Three doors from my building, a homeless man brayed, “You a sexy lady! Yeah, you like Beyoncé. You woke up like this!” I guess I should have scowled, but the thought of being compared to Beyoncé is so absurd I had to laugh. Another homeless guy heard this and added, “I second that!”

I should get into the office more often. The other day one of my colleagues was talking on the phone, looking out the window, and saw a hooker servicing a client in the alley, next to a dumpster. The best moment? When she stood up, lifted her skirt, turned around and offered the goods, and the john backed off, waving his hands hell, no.

She said that when she told this story later, the most common reaction is, “Did you record it?” No.

I realize those two anecdotes may make it sound like I work in some kind of cesspool of vice. I don’t. The hooker story was amazing, as Detroit has cleaned up its downtown and central city so much that you just don’t see that sort of stuff at all anymore, let alone in broad daylight. As for the homeless guys? Well, they have eyes, don’t they?

A little bloggage:

This has been going around a couple days, but it is hilarious and probably NSFW: Martha Stewart, absolutely killing it at the Justin Bieber roast. Of course she didn’t write the material, but she delivered it so well, you’d think she did.

Drew Miller, a Detroit Red Wing, almost lost an eye when he was hit in the face by a skate on Tuesday. Fifty stitches. Very scary. But when he appeared at a presser today and I saw the picture, all I could think is, when that thing heals, he is going to be the sexiest man alive. Scars are so fabulous, and a good facial scar is the best of all. I know how sick that sounds, but you’re looking at the country’s other No. 1 Omar fan.

The Hoosier fiasco continues. A friend there emailed this week to say, “I am fully fed up, fed up of course with dingbats who claim that RFRA doesn’t target gays, but also fed up with people who act as if this is an anti-gay Kristallnacht. It was a hamfisted sop by Rs for their reactionary base, a kind of consolation prize because the anti-gay marriage amendment was shot down. RFRA was a clumsy overreach by the ruling clique, and now they and Gov. FumbleBlunder are eating the shit they cooked in their own kitchen.” Shit cooked in their own kitchen — that’s it exactly. Meanwhile, here’s yet another analysis, by Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. There’s not a great deal new here, but a good turn of phrase that doesn’t bring to mind shit in a kitchen:

Pence said that the Indiana law “simply mirrors federal law that President Bill Clinton signed in 1993”—which is correct only if the mirror is the kind that adds twenty pounds when you look in it.

Have a great Thursday, all. We’re over the hump.

Alex sends along this snapshot from the Hoosier state:

Meatballs and sausage? I suspect a friend of Dorothy!

Open thread today. The week is closing in on me.

I gotta tell ya, folks, I’m astonished at the blowback over the Indiana decision. Of course it can’t last, and it’s probably out of proportion to the offense; as many have pointed out, what about all the other states that have versions of this law? Why do they get a pass? I can’t tell you why, but I do know that sometimes the stars just align, and sometimes you’re standing where their light is most concentrated.

You know, like a laser.

On the other hand, this couldn’t happen to a nicer and more deserving bunch of folks. It is enormously satisfying to see this legislature, where seldom is heard a discouraging word, writhing and blinking like moles dragged into the sunshine. Here’s David Long, the state Senate leader, and Brian Bosma, the speaker of the House, looking very uncomfortable, answering questions like, “Isn’t it legal to put up a ‘No Gays Allowed’ sign now?” Why yes, yes it is. (Note: You could do this in Michigan, too.) The governor looks more miserable and angry with every new interview and press conference. Keep in mind, this guy was a talk-radio host; if nothing else, he should feel comfortable in front of a microphone. The fact he isn’t should tell you something.

Here’s Matt Yglesias on Mike Pence, c. 2008. Just for the hell of it.

So I was thinking about our trip this weekend, and how nice it was. The train was definitely the way to go — no parking hassles, no driving hassles, time to catch up on some reading. It’s five hours from Windsor to Union Station, and this being Canada? Everything runs on time to the minute. (I kind of fell out with train travel on my Amtrak adventures in Indiana. The trains were slow and my god, were they late. When you are planning a weekend in Chicago, and you roll up to Waterloo to catch your train, and it’s hours late, only you don’t know that yet, because the station is just a three-sided lean-to with no connection to any sort of master control. No train? Just wait.)

What did we do when we were there? What we always do on city visits — walked around interesting neighborhoods, ate when we were hungry, shopped a little. (The exchange rate is very favorable now, which means that $65 cocktail hour was really a $52 cocktail hour.) Went to a good restaurant called Beast and a less-good one called Lisa Marie. Everything is small plates now, tapas-y stuff that you taste and eat and pass around. All things considered, it’s a better way of doing things than the meat/2-veg model.

We did have the best pho EVAR. Love pho.

Meanwhile, while we were in Canada, Kate was in California, enjoying a mini-spring break with a friend and with her nervous mother’s permission. They went to some two-day music festival in Santa Ana, staying one night with a family in Santa Monica, former Grosse Pointers who moved out there a few years ago. She came home referencing the strange SoCal slang she heard: “When something’s funny, they say, ‘Dude, that’s humor.'” It’s funnier when you hear it out loud.

But now we’re all home, and Wendy is very happy. The dog sitter spoiled her rotten, but now the pack is reunited, and it feels so good.

Just one bit of bloggage today, an NYT piece on the HIV outbreak in Indiana that got the gov to loosen his ideology in favor of human life. Very big of him.

I can recommend “Going Clear,” too, although it doesn’t restore your faith in humanity.

Time for bed. Lap swimming in the ayem.

Hey, guys. We arrived late last night, and after all the decompressing and unpacking and mail-sorting, I had no time to update. Then, today, I start a brutal week with two projects circling for a landing.

So you’ll have to wait for the Toronto download. We had a nice time. I will never drive there again, although I will probably take a rolling suitcase.

In the meantime, just one bit of bloggage: This piece on the Indiana RFRA situation, written by an IU law professor who’s a friend-of-a-friend. If it doesn’t go viral, there’s no justice in the world; he does an excellent job nailing the specifics down, in simple, easy-to-understand terms.

I leave you with this perfect moment: Cocktail hour at the Fairmount Royal York Hotel, where we killed the last hour before the train left. I’ve been pinching pennies all my life, and am not one for many indulgences, although I’d love to just once own a really, really high-quality black cashmere sweater. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? Anyway, we thought we’d have a drink, and the drinks were so good we had two. The waiter anticipated everything, bringing water without being asked, the wifi password, a little dish of salty snacks (that’s Alan bogarting all the wasabi peas) and, of course, two absolutely perfect cocktails — a Manhattan for the gentleman and this lovely concoction of vodka, champagne and raspberry deliciousness called a Bubbles & Berries. The bill? A mere $65. I think it was worth every penny:

Talk tomorrow, then?

It’s hard to stop thinking about the suicidal German pilot, isn’t it? The details keep sticking with me, especially the part about his breathing:

In the final moments, the sounds of terrified passengers filled the plane even as Lubitz — audibly breathing as a bleeping alarm warned of imminent collision — kept quiet through the end.

Heaven help us from a man who can breathe calmly through the act of taking 150 lives. It will be interesting to see how this one unfolds:

But as officials carted out boxes of belongings, including a laptop, from his family’s home in a middle-class neighborhood of this southwestern German town, questions centered on several months in 2009 when Lubitz took a leave from his pilot training.

Here’s hoping this isn’t a here-we-go-again deal. I can’t stand the stupid, as the kids say.

A busy couple of days, but a long weekend ahead — Kate is off on a solo spring mini-break, and we are off to Toronto, just for the hell of it. The house- and dog-sitter arrives in the morning, and I cleaned two bathrooms today. Vacations, even mini-vacations (this is only a weekend), are hard, until they’re not.

So, before we head off for the great white north, a few pieces of bloggage:

A sea change in Kentucky’s approach to heroin addiction. Via the HuffPost, which I don’t generally trust, but here goes:

On Tuesday night, Kentucky lawmakers passed wide-ranging legislation to combat the state’s heroin epidemic. The bipartisan measure represents a significant policy shift away from more punitive measures toward a focus on treating addicts, not jailing them.

The state will now allow local health departments to set up needle exchanges and increase the number of people who can carry naloxone, the drug that paramedics use to save a person suffering an opioid overdose. Addicts who survive an overdose will no longer be charged with a crime after being revived. Instead, they will be connected to treatment services and community mental health workers.

Speaking of drugs, and emergency measures, Indiana’s in it, too:

Gov. Mike Pence Thursday declared the HIV epidemic in southeastern Indiana a public health emergency and gave local authorities the OK to begin a short-term needle-exchange program to help fight an outbreak that now includes 79 cases all linked to intravenous drug use.

But Pence made it clear that allowing for a temporary needle exchange program does not reverse his long-held opposition to needle exchange programs.

Of course it doesn’t. He’s opposed to them, except when they work.

Fans of “The Wire,” and of the president — which probably covers everyone here — will want to watch this delightful conversation between Barry and David Simon, talking criminal justice and the war on drugs. Two smart people, jawin’. You’ll like.

A good piece by my colleague Ron on the obstacles in front of poorer high-school kids when they start to look for college options:

Michigan’s low-income high school graduates, as well as many of the state’s rural grads, enroll in college at lower levels than their wealthier, suburban peers. Those who do enroll are less likely to attend a four-year school, and more likely to drop out before earning a degree.

Some of that gap is because of differences in academic achievement that correlates stubbornly to family income. But there is another, less visible cause, one that involves physics tutors and strategically groomed extracurricular activities.

This is the after-school gap – an admissions-driven arms race that widens the already-broad college access gap between low-income students and their wealthier peers.

With that, I’m off to pack my suitcase. Good weekend, all. Eh?

Being a terrier, Wendy is a little high-strung, although not overly so. But today she came upstairs where I was working, jumped up next to me and cuddled up, trembling like a leaf. It took me a while, but I figured it out: There was a smoke alarm chirping with a dying battery, down in the basement. Spriggy was also high-strung, but brave as a mongoose, and chirping smoke alarms had the same effect. One day I came home and found him in an absolute lather — trotting from one end of the house to the other, panting, frantic. All over a little beeping.

And that? Was pretty much the extent of the news developments at this end today. That, and the usual household annoyances, plus 7,000 emails.

God, I can’t wait for warm weather. Thirty-seven degrees today was the best it got. Worst cabin fever I’ve had since…last year.

So a quick stop by the bloggage, and I’m headed to bed.

This site has been around for a while, but I’m just finding it: The Reductress, the Onion of women’s magazines. Case in point: Local woman wins stress-eating contest:

The third annual Häagen Dazs-Frito Lay Stress-Eating Contest was held this weekend at Morgantown County Fair in Morgantown, West Virginia. Eight competitors from the area took their places on the stage with one goal in mind: to stress-eat heaping piles of food until their feelings went away. But only one woman would come out on top: head server at Rocky’s Water Hole and recent, Mica Sullivan.

“I fucking deserve better, you know?” said Sullivan, in a rambling Facebook status posted at 3:14 this morning as she scraped the bottom of a bag of chips. “He’s trash.”

It appears Ben Carson is crazier — or just more offensive, in every way — than we thought. Here’s Carson and Armstrong Williams watching the SOTU:

“He looks good,” Williams said. “He looks clean. Shirt’s white. The tie. He looks elegant.”

“Like most psychopaths,” Carson grumbled. “That’s why they’re successful. That’s the way they look. They all look great.”

For those unfamiliar with the mood of America’s far right, casually branding the president a psychopath is exactly the sort of talk that strikes a chord—and just the thing that has made Carson a sensation in the GOP. Today the former pediatric neurosurgeon—who’s never run for elected office—is suddenly besting candidates like Jeb, Marco, and Rand in some 2016 polls and preparing to announce his campaign for the White House. As for the current resident, well, Carson is sometimes encouraged to cut him just a little slack before he hands over the keys.

Psychopath. Good one. Keep it up, guys. This is a winning strategy if there ever was one.

Facebook as the great publisher of the future. Oh, joy.

Killer Wednesday ahead. Expect…not much posting until Thursday.

I see Monica Lewinsky has started her big comeback tour. As Jeff the mild-mannered likes to say, grace and peace to her. You can’t say this poor woman ever tried to cash in on her bad luck, and in fact has really suffered for it. Imagine being her, carrying that name and face around for the last 18 years. Imagine going on a date. (Imagine being the guy who dates her.) Imagine just walking down the street, with her famous, fabulous mane of hair. And imagine introducing yourself: Hi, I’m Monica. Better that she be named Kate or Heather or any other, more common young-woman name. Anyone who lived through Lewinsky 1.0 would know her instantly.

I just can’t imagine. All for a little fling with a married man who flung with so, so many. The wheel spins around and you, yes you are the one who gets to pay. And pay and pay and pay.

Funny that she’s apparently chosen cyberbullying as her issue, when her ordeal happened largely before cyber was a thing — her shaming was more old-school. But she can certainly speak with authority about what it’s like to see your privacy go up in smoke, justlikethat. I’m glad the NYT story didn’t skimp on the fact this was a story in which both left and right disgraced themselves:

Ms. Lewinsky was quickly cast by the media as a “little tart,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The New York Post nicknamed her the “Portly Pepperpot.” She was described by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times as “ditsy” and “predatory.”

And other women — self-proclaimed feminists — piled on. “My dental hygienist pointed out she had third-stage gum disease,” said Erica Jong. Betty Friedan dismissed her as “some little twerp.”

“It’s a sexual shaming that is far more directed at women than at men,” Gloria Steinem wrote me in an email, noting that in Ms. Lewinsky’s case, she was also targeted by the “ultraright wing.” “I’m grateful to [her],” Ms. Steinem said, “for having the courage to return to the public eye.”

Yep. She was collateral damage in the right’s effort to destroy Bill Clinton, and in their reflexive defense of him, the left lined up to kick her, too. Besides, isn’t she what every married woman fears? The office girl with the glossy hair and the big boobs, lingering by the copier to bat her eyes at your husband? We don’t blame him, we blame her. I know I did, and I hadn’t been married five years yet. I took my turn putting her through the wringer; they’d have pulled my columnist card otherwise.

I still don’t think young single women should go putting the make on older married men, but I’m older myself now, and I no longer see her as the villain. I recall my friend Lance Mannion fuming, “I can forgive him the sex, but not the stupidity. It’s not like Washington isn’t full of beautiful, promiscuous, discreet thirtysomething adulteresses; he could have had anyone he wanted. But he picks an intern.” Yep, exactly. For a man so practiced in the art of extramarital stepping out, he really, really should have known better.

And while Monica bore the brunt of all of this, the whole country was put through the wringer. The impeachment was a nightmare of comic misery; I remember sitting in the Meijer parking lot, my chin on my chest, listening to …who was it? Larry Flynt? Talking about the dirt he had on Bob Barr? I think so, but it could have been any number of other freeze-frame moments from that very weird interlude that gave us Linda Tripp, Linda Tripp’s plastic surgery, Lucianne Goldberg and her spawn, a million pearl-clutching mommies moaning about having to explain oral sex to middle schoolers, Ken Starr and his ewwww report, blue Gap dresses and Maureen Dowd’s Pulitzer and all the rest of it. I loved the ’90s as much as anyone, but not that part of it.

So, some bloggage:

Congratulations, white guys! You win the race again! In the age of exquisite sensitivity to diversity, how the hell does this happen?

Dahlia Lithwick looks at the demented decision to try 12-year-olds as adults. One our own juvie-justice guy, whose name has already been dropped once, might like to read.

I haven’t finished this Michael Kruse piece on Jeb Bush and his problems on the GOP right, but I will. The first third looks pretty good.

So! Let’s have us a week, why don’t we? Hope yours is great.

Today at work we had a lunch meeting with some important people, and we ordered in subs from a well-known national chain that, I guess I should say, is not Subway. My bun was stale and the cookie was cold, which made it tough and not particularly good. Of course, even with these shortcomings, I pretty much ate it all, because that’s the way I was raised. Leave edible food on your plate? Unless you’re gagging or maggots are crawling on it, you clean your plate, girlie.

Hard to break those habits, isn’t it? But we filled out a very sternly worded feedback form on the website.

Are French children taught to clean their plate because of the starving ones in China? Good question. Answer: Probably not.

The food was bad, the meeting was better, the day was a parade of sniffles, but! Fewer sniffles than yesterday. The corner may have been turned, and I feel better, although my voice is worse. So what, I don’t work in radio. But let’s skip to the bloggage.

Eric Zorn looks at the Michael Brown/Ferguson situation and observes the truth is complicated:

Yes, Brown never even said nor pantomimed “hands up, don’t shoot.” But Wilson’s exoneration is not tantamount to an exoneration of American law enforcement in how it interacts with minority communities.

Yes, the explosion of destructive rage in Ferguson was rooted in a lie, a lie that advocates should disown, as Capehart did. But that lie is rooted in a broader truth.

A lie can reveal a truth — such an ironic message, and it’s the one many are missing about Ferguson. Brown may not have done what we’d like him to have done, but the incident didn’t touch off weeks and months of protests over nothing, which is what the DoJ report revealed.

I’m beginning to think of “Empire” as the guy you fall madly in love with for three days and then wake up, climb out of bed and say, “What was I thinking?” Tom and Lorenzo at least partially agree. Great fun, but the season is over, and you just know they’re gonna fuck it all up next year.

At least John McCain tried gentle correction. Rick Santorum just stands there. What a profile in courage.

Have a great weekend, all. I’m-a try to get better.

I lived in Indiana for 20 years, a state that didn’t observe daylight saving time, and ached for it. Part of it was the simple embarrassment of living in a backwater, one of two states in the union that didn’t observe it; Indiana was fond of dumbshit policies like that, like keeping its welfare system not at the state or even county level, but townships. People in Indiana, as charming and down-to-earth as they are, could also be stubborn in truly unique ways.

The problem, we were told twice a year, was that the state lies at the western edge of the eastern time zone, and the line kept getting fiddled with. At one time it was in the Central zone, then the line ran through Indianapolis, bisecting the state. Now it’s the western border, except for carve-outs around Evansville in the southwest and Chicago in the northwest. So those practical Hoosiers threw up their hands and said enough, and opted out.

Oh, but we’ve been through this many, many times. Indiana now observes DST, adopted the year after we left. And now it would seem Hoosiers were ahead of their time.

This week a Michigan lawmaker introduced a bill to end DST in Michigan. It’s not going anywhere, but it accompanies a wave of anti-DST blah-blah, the two previous links coming from Slate mainly because I’m too lazy to dive deeper.

This happens more often in recent years, I’ve noticed, and only in the spring. No one ever complains about getting an extra hour of sleep in the fall, even when it means gloomy evening commutes and grilling dinner by flashlight. When did we get so soft? It takes a couple days to adjust, but before long we’re all enjoying the long evenings and warm nights in the yard and bike rides after work. Aren’t we? I do, anyway. I can’t recall a single thumb-sucker about how stressful DST was until fairly recently.

Of course, that might be because there weren’t a million websites looking for clickbait, too.

So we limp into the weekend. I’m feeling my general energy return, probably because the light is returning, too. I’m even cleaning the house again. Woot.

Bloggage? Hmm.

Me, on Michigan’s aging northern region.

If you missed it in the comments yesterday, Bob Pence, a now-deceased member of our readership (but who only rarely commented) was revealed to have left $1 million to the ACRES land trust, sort of a local Nature Conservancy in northeast Indiana, dedicated to preserving natural areas. Good old Bob.

And while we’re on sort of a Hoosier kick, it looks like Fort Wayne daughter Nancy Snyderman is out of work at NBC News. I talked to her a few times and always liked her, but to judge from the comments, many, many others did not. She’ll land on her feet. But still.

Have a good weekend, folks.