For the record, my family knows how to do laundry. I do the laundry because I’m a control freak and I like it done the way I like it done, but friends? That’s going to change. I’m done washing those goddamn towels.

You wouldn’t think laundry would be a high-skill job, but with all the fast-fashion items out there in weird fabrics, and my mania to reduce dry-cleaning bills, it can get a little complicated. Cold-water wash, low-temperature dry — ah, it’s a muddle.

But towels are uncomplicated. Wash, dry, fold, bing-bam-boom.

That was Thursday.

So much good linkage today, let’s just get to it.

This story is basically a shortened, condensed version of the Michael Kruse Politico piece on Jeb Bush and the Terri Schiavo case, spiced up with some obvious point of view. Still, worth reading. I’d forgotten how awful that skirmish in the culture wars was, but you shouldn’t. It also led me to this obviously sympathetic, 10-year-old profile of Michael Schiavo’s new woman, but hey — life is complicated.

How complicated? CLOWNS, THAT’S HOW COMPLICATED.

Finally, Ta’Nehisi Coates’ remembrance of David Carr brought me to tears. We should always have a mentor like this is our lives, but few of us are that lucky.

Oliver Sacks is on his way out. Another sad story.

Have a great weekend, all.

Sorry for the no-show yesterday. I was planning to write an information-dense, four- to five-paragraph press release for Kate’s band’s press kit instead of blogging, then I decided to blog instead, and then I ended up doing neither.

Yeah, I ended up watching the dog show. But I went to bed after the Russells. Didn’t see the beagle win. I don’t worry about missing things on TV anymore, because everything’s on YouTube the following day.

So, a day off.

A little housekeeping before you get bored: The poverty-in-paradise project concludes today, and my part is on how Aspen and Jackson Hole have instituted affordable-housing programs amid spiking real-estate prices. The Jackson Hole portion came with the help of our own MarkH, yay NN.c commentariat. That link won’t work until after 6:05 a.m. EST, mind you. The other two main pieces, on two schools up north and the exodus of young workers, are pretty good, too. There are also some short pieces; you can start here and cycle through.

That out of the way, let’s start a discussion about towels. Dirty towels. Or not-dirty ones.

Lately I feel like all I do is wash towels. Every week, I do four loads of clothing and three of goddamn towels. A while back I stopped using a fresh one every day, because what does a towel do? You step out of the shower, clean, and use it to absorb clean water from your body. Does that require a new towel every time? I think not. But I live with two people who get a fresh one every time, and that adds up to MORE GODDAMN TOWELS in the wash than you can imagine.

I started college during a summer term, one of the steamiest I’ve ever endured, and in un-air conditioned dorms. It was two- or three-shower a day weather, and I quickly ran out of towels. I’d rotate them through, hoping I could find a dry one by the time the next shower rolled around. So I’m not some hotel-dwelling, fresh-towel-every-handwash petunia. Have I underlined this enough? You don’t need a fresh towel every day.

That is all. Now to wash another load of practically clean towels.

Did you all see Neely Tucker’s WashPost piece on how Harper Lee was manipulated into publishing her first draft of what became “To Kill a Mockingbird?” You should. There’s no way I would buy this book, and unlikely I’d even read it.

The president explains why he won’t call ISIS “Islamic extremists,” as the ravening chorus is demanding he do:

“They are not religious leaders; they are terrorists,” Obama said during remarks at a White House event on countering violent extremism. “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

Obama said the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is “desperate” to portray itself as a group of holy warriors defending Islam. It counts on that legitimacy, he said, to propagate the idea that Western countries are at war with Islam, which is how it recruits and radicalizes young people.

“We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie,” he said.

Of course this won’t work, but it’s nice to hear.

The midweek hump is behind us. Let’s coast to the weekend.

A shame about Lesley Gore — how the hell did this woman, whom I associate with the early ’60s girl-singer moment of sheath dresses and sprayed bouffants — come to be only 11 years old than me? Either I’m aging faster or she was the Lorde of her day.

I guess she was the Lorde of her day.

Something I did not know: She was a lesbian. No wonder she sounded so confident when it was Judy’s turn to cry. (Check out those Mondrian shifts on her background singers! I wonder if those were original YSL, or knockoffs. Either way: Specto-freakin’-tacular.)

You know who else was a lesbian ’60s girl singer? Dusty Springfield, although that link will take you to a piece about her life with this obnoxious lead:

Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apples.

It is thus a tragedy that Dusty Springfield’s whole existence was blighted by her orientation, which explains ‘the silence and secrecy she extended over much of her life, and her self-loathing’. One glance at her chin should have revealed all — but the Sixties was not a fraction as liberated and swinging as people now assume.

Oh, blow me. Although the story isn’t terrible. I’ve been thinking of Dusty lately, ever since one of Kate’s homemade CD mixes revealed “Son of a Preacher Man.” I thought mainly she’d picked it up from “Pulp Fiction,” but she said it was for a friend who had decided this was the Best Song Ever, and made the entire car fall silent whenever it came on.

Well, it is a great song.

Some bloggage: My stories (and my partner Ted Roelofs’ stories) on what we’re calling “poverty in paradise,” i.e. the widening gap between the well-to-do and the left-behind, start running today in Bridge. Part one goes live around 6 a.m. EST, so if you’re reading this afterward, feel free to click on part one. Gracias.

I know I’m late to this, but I thought this piece on the online shaming that followed a single ill-advised tweet was very, very good.

Today I discovered it is, indeed, possible to get to an ISIS beheading video in three clicks. I don’t recommend it.

Have a great Tuesday, all y’all.

I don’t know what to think about Brian Williams. On the one hand? Almost certainly a chronic exaggerator, maybe an utter fabulist. Depressingly, none of this really matters in the performance of his job. The olden days when an anchor was a real journalist are pretty much over; while they might be trotted out to do standups here and there, the producers do the heavy lifting.

When Don Lemon, CNN’s barking idiot, tweeted a photo of his smallpox scar a few days ago and called it a measles scar, and this after speculating on the air that a Malaysian jetliner might have been swallowed by a black hole, I expressed frustration to a member of the NN.c commentariat. He replied:

I think Don Lemon is just fine when you put news stories on a teleprompter and ask him to read them in sequence.

I think William Hurt’s character in Broadcast News was just fine when you put news stories on a teleprompter and ask him to read them in sequence.

That, however, has long ceased to be the CNN “anchor” job description.

I think that’s true everywhere, with maybe a few exceptions. If you have the right look, a modicum of charisma, can read a prompter and are relatively quick on your feet in a live-interview situation, and as long as you have that elusive something that makes you one in a few million — you too can be a network news anchor. It’s not an easy bunch of qualifications to wrangle under one handsome head.

Of course, once you’ve attained this level, you have to deal with this sort of thing, i.e., co-workers trashing you anonymously:

“Brian is deeply disliked inside NBC—extremely unpopular. The people at NBC are loving this,” says someone in the know. Why? “Because he enjoys being a celebrity too much.” He also doesn’t pull his weight. “He never comes in in the morning”—as a managing editor, you should. “He calls in from his apartment and shows up around lunch time, has a fancy lunch with some important person, and then at the 2:30 production meeting—close to air time—he tears everything up.”

They pay him an eight-figure salary. I expect this is part of the deal.

And now Williams has been suspended for six months, effectively ending his career. Seems a big waste of…something, but I’m not sure what.

So. What sort of bloggage am I in the mood for?

This arrived on the radar yesterday, and nobody knows how it happened. Good for the Vipers, though.

The slut shot, i.e., the HPV vaccine, does NOT turn girls into whore-monsters. Such a relief.

An oral history of Laurel Canyon in the ’60s and ’70s. Love that Joni Mitchell.

Now, I must go to bed before I collapse.

This appears to be the week in which we ask politicians what they think of vaccines.

Just think about that a minute: We’re asking politicians what they think of vaccines. Was Dwight Eisenhower asked to weigh in on the polio vaccine? I bet not. I bet it was a more sensible world in which great medical advances were celebrated, not something to debate.

Maybe Mike Judge was right. Maybe this is “Idiocracy.”

Anyway, first Barack Obama (“Get your kids vaccinated”), then Chris Christie (“I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”), and then Rand Paul (“I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines”). Rand Paul, I remind you, is a doctor.

So that was the start of the week. That, and a foot of snow, maybe an inch or two more. Kate got a rare snow day, and I worked at home, but! I got to the gym at 6:30 a.m. I had to do some crazy snow-surfing along the way, but that’s why God made big Swedish station wagons with all-wheel drive. That old sled did her home country proud.

I was the only one there. Respect.

OK, some bloggage:

You know I don’t link to BuzzFeed very often, or ever, but hell — Missy Elliott deserves to be better-known by you young’uns.

Whatever Huffington Post is, it ain’t journalism.

I’m exhausted. Have a good Tuesday, all.

Hey, I’m back. That felt like a long trip, and I guess by most standards, it was: I was gone from predawn Tuesday to Friday twilight, and I barely had a minute to myself, although at one point I turned on the TV just for the noise of company and actually watched a few minutes of a Real Housewives episode.

What a wonder! I’ve never beheld this spectacle for more time than it takes to change channels or watch Jon Stewart mock them on “The Daily Show.” I’m not clueless. I know the basic gimmick: An assembly of polished, high-dollar women are followed by camera crews as they go about their days, with various trumped-up activities thrown in to give them something to do. Sometimes they sit around their lavish kitchens and drink wine. Sometimes they go to parties and drink wine. On this particular day, the Beverly Hills flock was arriving at some sort of reception or opening or something similar in one of those southern California restaurant courtyards that makes a Michigander wonder why she doesn’t live there.

Everyone wears a curve-hugging sleeveless sheath dress. Everyone’s hair falls in barrel curls. Everyone’s makeup is perfect, if a bit overdone. (Lots of false eyelashes.) Everyone air-kisses. Everyone drinks wine. And then the “reality” begins, as one character approaches another for a tete-a-tete. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but apparently there’s some bad blood there.

“What do I have to do?” one asks. “Eat your pussy?”

Whoa. This is basic cable now? A scene of comic relief followed, in which all the housewives discuss cunnilingus. (The relief comes from one who hasn’t ever heard the term.) And then suddenly I had a camera-pulls-back moment and realized I was actually watching “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” and turned it off.

I swear, we are going to be cutting the cable cord very soon.

The rest of the trip was very nice. I was reporting a project that will appear in another couple of weeks, concerning conditions at the tip of the mitten. Along the way I met some almost freakishly nice people – it’s true what they say about friendliness around here – and saw a lot of good and bad and beautiful things. Of course, ice covers the water, but ski season is in full swing. One night I peeled off to the dark-sky park up there, the Headlands.

True to Connie’s warning, the stargazing was subpar with a bright, waxing moon in the western sky, but Orion looked close enough to touch and the moon was a veritable spotlight. I was absolutely alone out there, and the weird feeling that started as I pulled in began to build. It was helped along by the various information stations on the road in, which featured life-size human cutouts; I only recognized one (Galileo), so I gather the others were pioneering astronomers, too. But with the single-digit cold, the blazing moon, the snow-covered road and the utter absence of other humans, it all took on a sort of Blair Witch vibe: WHAT IS THAT? WHO IS STANDING IN THE WOODS? Ohit’sjustGalileo. I stopped the car at the very end, got out and looked up. The silence was absolute. There was no wind, so the ice wasn’t shifting out in the Straits of Mackinac. No rustling from the surrounding woods. No owls. Even the cooling car engine seemed to stop ticking in just a minute or two. I strained to hear anything, but the best I could do was the far-far-off laboring of a big engine, probably a logging truck on the Mackinac Bridge.

All this while standing in the clearing, under the moon. I watch “Game of Thrones.” If a White Walker had emerged from the forest on a zombie horse, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I stood there until the cold penetrated deeply enough to make me uncomfortable, and left. I’m going back this summer, I think. There’s a guest house there you can rent. Alan will love it.

So that was sort of the sublime and ridiculous of the trip. Now to write all these stories.

In the meantime, I have some bloggage, some of which you posted in the comments last week.

A dive into Jeb Bush’s role in the Terri Schiavo catastrophe, reported and written for Politico by the talented Michael Kruse. Long, but well worth your time.

Something you’ve probably heard of, but didn’t know there was a name for: Tip-overs, the hazard that kills a few children every year, and doesn’t need to. If you have little kids at home, be advised.

Finally, a Free Press story simultaneously inspiring and infuriating: A Detroit man walks 21 miles, every single work day, to get to his job. From the timeline I gather he has about four hours in his day when he’s not getting to, or doing, his job. I hope with all my heart that by the time you read this, some kindhearted used-car dealer has gifted him with reliable transportation, and the rest of us have donated money to pay his insurance bill.

And so the week begins. We’re currently in the midst of a snowmageddon, and my poor baby has to work tonight — at the pizza place where she’s been since the fall. A pizza place on Super Bowl Sunday during an 8-inch snowfall? It’ll be a character-builder for sure.

Things you will want to read today:

This lovely, sensitive piece on a lesbian couple planning their wedding in Oklahoma, where the wind — and the judgment — comes sweepin’ down the plain. The main part of the narrative concerns what happened after they sent their invitations, and waited to see who would attend:

The person Kathryn wondered about most was her biological father. He had raised her; after his divorce from Jane, it was the two of them alone in a small, boxy house in the middle of open plains. He was a rural postman and the job suited him — a solitary route that took him down the same path, every day, a hundred miles of roads. His world was predictable and contained, and Kathryn hadn’t found the right way to talk to him about the wedding.

Tracy didn’t know they hadn’t spoken. She sent his invitation in a batch with all the others — and now Kathryn had no choice but to call her father, or he would learn about the ceremony by checking the mail. As the words about the invitation came spilling out, they became words about why she and Tracy had decided, despite all their worries, to have this wedding.

She told him that she didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way she and Tracy felt about each other. She said that marriage was an important rite in the history of humanity, something people had been doing throughout time, and something she wanted to be a part of. She told him that marriage, as a value, was American.

He didn’t say anything. There was only silence on the other end of the line.

It’s really wonderful. Read.

For comic relief, you’re going to want to watch this clip of Sarah Palin at the Iowa Freedom Summit last week. Whenever I see her, I think of the Republicans I knew who were head over heels for her in 2008, at least for a few weeks. Looking at her now must feel like the morning after a hot, fevered night with a beautiful stranger who looks so, so different in the cold morning light. That what have I done feeling must be overwhelming.

And back to sensitive: A good one about the evolving view of divorce by the Catholic church, and by “evolving” I mean “the same, but at least some people are fighting about it,” i.e.:

The battle lines are clear: Some high-level church officials, most notably the conference of German bishops, want the church to relax its rules so that divorced Catholics can more fully return to church life, particularly by receiving communion, even if they have remarried. Traditionalists are pushing back fiercely, arguing that the indissolubility of marriage is ordained by God and therefore nonnegotiable.

I’ve been done with the church for years, but in that time, I’ve come across some annulment-seeking Catholic divorcees, and given testimony in one. All were granted. Nothing seemed to make a difference; 20 years together and three children? Hey, sounds like it wasn’t a true spiritual marriage; go on and get married again, folks. I totally understand why spurned ex-spouses fight so hard against them, as one of the unfortunate Kennedy brides did — seriously, what is the point of being against divorce if you’ll de facto grant them for a few hundred bucks and some nosy questions?

In the testimony I gave — and don’t be deceived by the grand nomenclature; all I did was fill out some forms — there were questions about whether I had knowledge the couple used artificial birth control. Of course they did, as 90 percent of all Catholic couples do, but I thought, well, that’s clever. Talk about your built-in grounds for Catholic divorce.

And so the week begins. Snowpocalypse in the east, cold here, and I’m headed north.

Question for Brian and the other Fort Wayners: What was the name of the taxidermy museum that used to be at one of the city parks? It just came to me: The Diehm Museum, something like that? It was the sort of place that older people love, because they came of age when your only chance to see a bobcat was in an Encyclopedia Britannica or something. Today you have the internet, the zoo, 500 channels of NatGeo footage filmed with remote cameras in the wild.

But the story I’m thinking of was before the internet. One of our reporters did a piece on the declining fortunes of the museum, and the manager/owner was just furious about it. How could people not see the value of taxidermy, the animals arranged in fierce poses? Where else would a child in Indiana see an ocelot, or at least a pelt stretched over a form that resembled an ocelot?

I thought of that when I read this piece in the Freep today, by the talented John Carlisle, who used to be the Detroitblog guy, liberally linked here for years. It’s about the old keeper of a historical museum in Galesburg, Mich. He’s not angry, just sad and old and getting older, wondering who is going to care for his museum when he’s gone, when no one seems to care about it now?

Some days, he might get a few visitors. But there are also whole weeks when he gets none. Yet twice a week, right on time, he dutifully lights the red neon “Open” sign in the window with a yank on its cord, unlocks the door and waits in case someone out there shares his passion for the past.

He’s here because he simply loves history. He loves to teach. And because nobody else will do it.

Most of the museum’s founders and supporters have moved on or passed away over the years, and he’s worried if nobody comes along soon to replace him, all these objects and photos and antiques he’s worked so hard to save might vanish or get thrown out.

It’s a really good story, sad and wonderful at the same time. Y’all read.

And thanks to Alex for finding this artifact of the ever-deepening swamp of weirdness that exists in the far-right fever swamps. This is the MMA fighter who was arrested in Dekalb County, Ind., for either leading the police on a high-speed chase (the cop version) or just being normal freedom-loving citizens with a baby in the back and some car trouble (their version). I was fascinated by their repeated request for “three forms of ID, as required by law.” Is this a new wingnut thing? Say what you will about lefty lunatics, but at least all they do is refuse to get their kids vaccinated.

And so the next 10-day to two-week stretch begins, when I will be working my butt off and maybe dying, but I will try to open a new thread from time to time. I’ll be on the lookout for some interesting images, which is what we foo-foo people say when we mean “pictures.”

Have a great weekend, all. I’ll be in and out.

Not quite midway through the week, and I’m on my second glass of wine, watching my second state-of-the-something speech of the night. Michigan’s was a 7 p.m. — pre-empting “Jeopardy!,” I ask you — and now it’s Barry and his beautiful wife Shelley and her fabulous suit. I am going to miss her like crazy, because no one in the White House is going to look that good after the 2017 inauguration.

Oh, well. How was your MLK day? I worked. I’ll be doing some traveling next week, for work, and may have some photo posts then, but the groundwork must be laid this week, and so no holiday for this girl. I hear Dinesh D’Souza trolled the internet Monday, just doing his part; Vox put together this explainer for those who haven’t heard his schtick before. I knew almost every single incident and comment, but somehow, reading them all together was uniquely appalling. Like Agema, D’Souza prefers ever-louder dog whistles, and I’m told his Obama documentary features a scene where he travels to Africa to call on the president’s relations there, bringing a gift of goats. Really. As one blogger noted, it’s as though he feared the gift of fire would frighten them. I almost feel like I have to see this thing.

You know it’s bad when even Mean Girl Megyn can’t keep her mouth shut.

Boy, does Boehner look uncomfortable. I’m thinking he’s going to reach for the Nicorette in 3, 2, 1.

So. I’m prepping to go up north next week for some reporting, and will likely not be very present here. I’m sure there will be some photo posts here and there, and you’ll have to carry on your chatter there. I’m hoping I can peel off to the new dark-sky park up there, if only to look around a little. They have a guest house that sleeps 20 that you can rent for $250/night. ROAD TRIP.

The SOTU is deep into its 50th minute, and Boehner definitely looks like he’s having a major discomfort moment. But Obama is his usual cool self, just loose and groovin’. How long will he go? We’ll see…

I was out and about in the car today, and heard a Washington Post reporter on an NPR show, talking about the resurgent campaign of Mitt Romney. Tanned, rested and ready! What’s more, she said, he intends to run to the right of Jeb Bush, because he is so clearly, clearly a conservative.

I was reminded of last Monday, when I was on the radio, and one of the journalist panelists said Jeb would be a darling with conservatives, his credentials being totally solid.

“Really?” I asked, because every conservative website or blog I see delivers the usual litany of blah blah Common Core blah blah immigration blah blah BUSH complaints. And now we have Mitt Romney counting on the entire GOP having collective amnesia about the 2012 campaign.

As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own point of view, but not their own facts. Although “our own facts” is sort of our birthright these days, isn’t it? Otherwise Snopes would go out of business, and Birmingham would be a Sharia zone.

So, then.

One of the things that makes life interesting is how new technology is adapted in ways its developers never envisioned. I read somewhere that the inventor of the birth-control pill thought it would be used exclusively by women in their late 30s and 40s who had completed their families but were still fertile. Ha ha ha. I wonder what we thought cell-phone video would be used for. This might be the next video looped on the evening news: Two Grosse Pointe Park officers beating and kicking a handcuffed carjacking suspect in Detroit. The beatdown was captured by a woman shooting through her front door. As you can imagine, the commenting score is now 5 katrillion to 7 in favor of the cops. I won’t say more about it; just watch it and see what you think. The action is in the first two minutes.

Today, I get to visit Flint, city of light, city of magic. Many years ago, the city of Hamilton, Ohio, briefly added an exclamation point to its name, i.e. Hamilton! I think Flint might try that: Flint! Or maybe consider changing a consonant, too: Fling! Or add some vowels: Flaunt. Whatever. Tomorrow, it’s Flint, in the single-digit cold and under sunny skies. I’ll tell you all about it later.

Have a good Wednesday, all.