I had just bought a case of Spriggy’s expensive special-diet food shortly before he died last summer, and, going stir-crazy from three days confined largely indoors, it provided a perfect time to do what I’ve been meaning to do forever, i.e., bundle it up and drop it off at the shelter.

Yes, I could have taken it to the Grosse Pointe animal-adoption center, but I was in a more adventurous frame of mind. We headed out for the Michigan Humane Society, the original Animal Cop station house, which sits on the freeway service drive with the usual Detroit architectural details — the parking lot enclosed by chain link topped by razor wire and with a full-time security guard; the multiple signs pointing the way to the correct door, NOT THIS DOOR NO DELIVERIES THIS DOOR ENTER ON FISHER ONLY. There was a particularly strange one telling people to surrender animals only to clearly identified MHS employees; others might want their animals for profit, criminal or “religious purposes,” and might do them harm.

And people wonder why I find this place so interesting.

As we followed the signs to the ONLY AUTHORIZED ENTRY DOOR, two people passed us going the other direction, each holding a young pit bull puppy at arms’ length, the pups stretched out to their full length with puzzled looks on their faces. The cacophony of the doomed (or at least profoundly unlucky) beasts inside started to swell. The lobby wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, although there was a young girl holding a big mutt on a leash, and I couldn’t see anything good coming of it. The dog looked old and very very tired and was in the midst of what looked to be an epic shedding episode. Two worried cats sat in cages on the counter, one nude to the skin at the collar line. A man was negotiating some paperwork with another; I suspect it had to do with the big shedding mutt.

“Can I help you?” someone said. I turned over my 11 cans of Science Diet k/d and three cans of gastrointestinal formula to the clerk, whose expression said this was an unusual occurrence on a 97-degree day. I considered asking for a tour, but it’s clear the place was operating at something shy of battle stations, so we took a long look around and left. “Come on, you guys,” the clerk said, lifting the cats off the counter. I asked about the naked-neck cat. “Flea allergy,” she shrugged; no biggie.

Outside adjacent to the parking lot, a young woman played fetch in a fenced area for a gallumping, black Lab-y looking dog — exercise for one of the lucky ones considered adoptable. Inside the pen was a small shelter/shading structure for longer turnouts. It was decorated: BAD DOG painted graffiti-style on the back wall. It’s always good to keep a sense of humor about your job.

Michiganders, they can always use help.

Just got an e-mail from one of our regulars here. Her sister’s been very sick with some serious intestinal complaints and recently spent some time in the hospital. They come from rural poverty; our friend escaped, sis didn’t. She suffers from subclinical psychological issues and is morbidly obese, but has been able to eke out a hardscrabble living at Wal-Mart. Friend writes:

The next time I hear somebody bitch about why we don’t need health-care reform, they had better fucking look out. I just talked to my sister. She just got her hospital bill: $23,000 and change. The portion for which she is responsible: over $7,000. That is approximately what she has earned thus far this year from Wal-Mart. And she does not qualify for having her bill waived by the hospital because she probably will exceed their poverty threshold, with an annual income that exceeds $11,000. Think about that. Could either of us even live on $11,000 a year, even absent health-care bills in the four digits? And that’s just the hospital bill.

She is having problems again — she’s jaundiced and has been throwing up bile for a couple of days. She sees her doc tomorrow but absolutely refuses to go to the hospital again because she “can’t afford to miss any more work.” (And she can’t afford another hospital bill, either.) She has nothing left in savings and is living paycheck to paycheck. Barely. I’m sending her money as we’re able, but Jesus, what the hell can we really do short of hoping to hit the lottery? We’re not awash in cash either.

I don’t expect her to live a long and healthy life–not with her habits, weight, health history and all the rest of it–but I strongly suspect her death will be hastened by the lack of affordable health care.

Yes, it probably will. It does every day. Just remember: This is the greatest health-care system in the world.

Bloggage? Sure:

Poor Tyson Gay. First his name is changed to “Tyson Homosexual” by the American Family Association, and now this.

OID: How to steal an ATM in Detroit. And not succeed.

We had an old man die in Grosse Pointe yesterday, apparently because of the heat. (Still checking.) What’s the toll where you are? Storms expected later, followed by a 10-degree drop. Hurry, storms.

And have a great day.

The heat, or maybe the calendar, has brought grackles to the yard. My birdwatching is pretty casual, but I associate flocks of grackles with withering summer days. We’re going on a second week without rain, so with water in short supply, they’ve turned our birdbath into their private spa, strolling around the driveway nearby and scaring off anything smaller, except for a few cheeky robins, who are closer to their size.

And I do mean strolling. These birds don’t hop so much as walk. They are a motorcycle gang. They probably have tattoos under their feathers. Meanwhile, the goldfinches stay away, and even the wrens, my chatty little buddies, seem to have moved a few yards away.

The grackles alternate great splashy baths with foraging through the ground cover for their traditional diet of crap on the ground. Of course, that’s not all they eat, and I feel fortunate to have seen the display described in that link, more fortunate still to have read LAMary’s offhand comment on it:

Grackles never look sweet in illustrations. Ever. I know a very nice person named Robin. If someone was named Grackle, they would likely have a job gassing puppies at the pound.

Grackle’s second in command at the pound would be Heckuva J. Brownie, an idiot manchild. That’s one of my new favorite phrases, having turned up in a recent rewatching of “Barton Fink.” Audrey lays out the secrets of screenwriting for Barton, in this case a B picture featuring wrestlers:

Well, usually, they’re . . . simply morality tales. There’s a good wrestler, and a bad wrestler whom he confronts at the end. In between, the good wrestler has a love interest or a child he has to protect. Bill would usually make the good wrestler a backwoods type, or a convict. And sometimes, instead of a waif, he’d have the wrestler protecting an idiot manchild. The studio always hated that. Oh, some of the scripts were so . . . spirited!

Boy, you can tell I slept badly last night, can’t you? I’ve kicked the thermostat up a degree, so the central air doesn’t have to work quite so hard. It still works very hard, but I woke up before 7 a.m. with no chance of further slumber. Ah, middle age.

Or, given that I spend the hours before bedtime chasing down news, it might be that I was simply disturbed by current events. Like this story. Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf:

FARIDPUR, Bangladesh — Whenever Bangladeshi brothel owner Rokeya, 50, signs up a new sex worker she gives them a course of steroid drugs often used to fatten cattle.

For older sex workers, tablets work well, said Rokeya, but for younger girls of 12 to 14 — who are normally sold to the brothel by their families — injections are more effective.

“It’s the quickest way to make a girl plump and hide her actual age if she is just a teenager,” Rokeya said, adding that the drug, called Oradexon, is cheap and widely available.

There’s something a little smelly about the story, however, which speaks of users becoming addicted. You can’t get addicted to steroids, can you? They can screw up your body and mind something fierce, but addiction? Meh.

So, as we seem to have already cut to the bloggage, here’s a little more:

Criminals, when disposing of your guns, do yourself a favor and throw your iPhone in there, too. I once found a woman’s DayRunner lying on the sidewalk while walking the dog. I took it home and used all my powers to find its owner, via the advanced investigation technique of looking her up in the phone book. Disconnected. So I started combing through it for an address, and learned so much about her, just from the notes to herself, that it sort of scared me. She had an elderly parent. She was looking for work. The phone disconnection was maybe connected to a sticky note near the back, with the title of a bankruptcy self-help book. There was also a bill in there, with an address, and I dropped it in her mailbox the next day. I don’t think I wanted to look her in the eye.

If anyone ever found my phone, I’d be done for — calendar, contacts, games, text messages, e-mail, even my secret guilty music pleasures, all there for anyone to see. They should call them dumbphones.

How hot is it where you are? Eighty-six here, and it’s not even 11 yet.

But it’s past 10. Time to go, with apologies for aggravated lameness.

I was buying pine nuts at the Eastern Market Saturday, at one of the bricks-and-mortar stores. I was there relatively early, but by no means break-of-dawn hours, and something seemed to be missing. They’re rearranging the checkout area, but it wasn’t that. The crowds? The store wasn’t overrun, but was plenty busy. The sound system clicked to life with the opening hand claps in “Where Did Our Love Go?” and the woman behind me in line began to sing along with Diana Ross.

Of course. The Motown was missing.

It’s hard to overstate how pervasive Motown music is in Motown. Close to half a century since some of these songs were on the charts, and you still hear them, daily, in an average day’s errands. It’s the preferred Muzak in stores all over the Metro, presumably because in a vast, multiracial, frequently acrimonious place, it’s the one thing everyone can agree on. We all like the Supremes. Everyone knows “Mickey’s Monkey.” It doesn’t matter if you go stag, it doesn’t matter if you go drag, you’re sure to have some fun, I’m telling everyone, most every taxi that you flag is going to a go-go. And when you get there, they’ll be spinning some Stevie Wonder.

I hear Motown in the grocery store, Motown at the gas-station pumps, Motown at fancy-dress affairs, because it’s a way of honoring the city’s history and African American population and pre-riots glory, while still getting even suburban toes tapping. There’s a Motown store in the airport, where you enter the Northwest (now Delta) terminal, and of course it’s always playing Motown. I wonder if the clerks go insane with it after a while, or if it just becomes white noise.

You think about Motown the record label, and the way it has squatted over Motown the city, and it’s no wonder most people elsewhere know little about the depth and breadth of music the city has produced, before and after. I understand why you don’t hear Eminem or Kid Rock at the airport, but couldn’t they throw in some John Lee Hooker or White Stripes? The MC5 didn’t have “motherfucker” in all their lyrics. They play Bob Seger, you say, and yes, they do. But for every Bob Seger song, you’ll hear 25 spins of “Tears of a Clown.”

I love this music as much as anyone, but even I can get a little impatient with it. If you’re going to play it that much, give us some B-sides and deep cuts for variety, if nothing else. And stop playing “Tears of a Clown.” I mean it. That one’s about to join “Respect” and “Dark Side of the Moon” on my If I Never Hear It Again, I’ve Already Heard It Quite Enough, Thank You playlist.

So, it sounds like everyone had a nice holiday. We’re having a heat wave in my part of the world — maybe in yours, too. As during cold snaps, now is the time when general-assignment reporters at newspapers all over the affected area pick up their phones and pretend to be deeply engrossed in productive conversations when their bosses stand at the end of the bullpen with that eenie-meenie-minie-moe look in their eyes. No one wants to do this weather story. A good tornado? Sure, I’ll roll on that in a heartbeat. But the heat-wave story makes you stupider just thinking about it, let alone reporting it. You talk to an indulgent ER doctor at a local hospital, one who is perhaps being hazed by his colleagues. He gives you his expert medical opinion on how one might avoid heat exhaustion: Stay in air-conditioned buildings as much as possible. If you must go out, make sure to drink plenty of fluids, but not alcohol or caffeine. Really, water is best. Avoid standing in direct sun — seek shade. If you feel dizzy or otherwise impaired, by all means, stop what you’re doing and rehydrate.

On the metro desk of the Nance Times, we tell people that heat waves are an excellent time to exercise strenuously outdoors, right around 4 p.m. Don’t drink water; in fact, high heat is an excellent time to lose that pesky water weight. Have a beer if you’re thirsty. Have five! Then have a long nap on the front lawn, preferably in direct sunlight.

So, some bloggage for an indoors-in-the-AC day? Sure:

When I was growing up, Cracked magazine was the B-team version of Mad. When did they start running stories like this? It’s actually fairly smart.

What do we think of Floyd Landis’ latest spill on Saint Lance? I find it pretty convincing, but you? Maybe not.

If you’re not reading Coozledad when he gets cranky, you should.

Via Hank: One of the Stranger’s better writers goes to see Gallagher’s act in suburban Seattle. Yeah, he’s still alive. No, it ain’t pretty.

Welcome back to the week. Short one. Yay.

It’s well-known that no one can speak or use the English language correctly no more, and I should stop fussin’ about it. I’ve had many teachers in my journey from illiterate neophyte to somewhat competent writer-person, one of them our own Kirk Arnott, who had a way of condemning sloppy usage at the Columbus Dispatch, where we worked together for a time, that struck terror in my soul. There was something about the way he could mutter from the desk all the way to the coffeepot and back that made me want to never, ever be the cause of that muttering.

One of his biggies was the misuse of the legal term garnish, which is what happens when your wages are seized. An order of garnishment is made by a court, and one day you open your paycheck to discover the IRS, or your ex-spouse, or minor children, or some other party has already lopped off a chunk. Kirk insisted that we write “his wages were garnisheed,” pronounced gar-ni-SHAYed, and muttered if anyone wrote “garnished,” because that is what you do with parsley.

Well, times and language changes times change and language changes, and now “garnished” is pretty widely accepted, and even my online dictionary says it’s OK. Nevertheless, when I read a sentence like this…

Carey Torrice’s $622-a-week commission salary is being garnished by an insurance company that claims the couple have failed to make court-ordered restitution payments.

…I cringe. Especially when I’ve already cringed over this:

…a private investigator and actress who gained national attention two years ago for posting scantily clad photos of herself online.

The photos are not scantily clad, although “nude photos” is pretty much how we describe photos depicting nudity, so I guess that’s OK, too. And “photos of herself, scantily clad” sounds strange. Actually, “scantily clad” is one of those stupid cliché phrases you only read in newspapers, anyway. It’s one case where I’d actually advocate for more words, if it paints a more vivid picture in the reader’s mind. In the case of Torrice, I’d write:

Photos of herself in several ridiculous, “sexy” outfits reveal her toned physique and obvious breast implants, including one suggesting a policewoman, if the policewoman were the co-star in a porn film.

Evidence.

Actually, the story is pretty amusing, cringeworthy usage and all, and people will read the shit out of it, if only for the headline:

Did sexy politician, husband stalk her election rival?

Although I take issue with the lead:

It has all of the makings of an old-fashioned mystery — a sexy private investigator, a handgun and a bizarre car accident.

I’m sorry, but try again. An old-fashioned mystery, by my lights, features Sherlock Holmes, a drawing room, or Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the lead pipe. A sexy private investigator, a handgun and a bizarre car accident belong in the dirty movie described above.

And ouch, dude:

According to a police report obtained by the Free Press, Sprys was driving home at 10:15 p.m. after a board meeting when an acquaintance of the Torrices, another private investigator, appeared to lunge himself into Sprys’ SUV, one witness said.

Lunge himself? Did the whole blue-pencil staff take the buyout? Launch himself, or just lunge into.

As for the story itself, besides being entertaining, my only comment is: Too Macomb County for words. Which is a very Grosse Pointe thing to say, but honestly, people, once you’ve put scantily clad photos of yourself on the internet, all bets are off. Check out the “fun stuff” section, here. Fun fact to know and tell: Besides being a Macomb County commissioner leading a campaign to end euthanasia in the county’s animal shelter, she’s also a foot model.

Someone told me once there’s a gay men’s group in Macomb County that calls itself “the 586s,” for the area code. The gay men in the 248, and even the 313, think this is hilarious.

Well, as you can probably guess, I’m already in my holiday-weekend head, although I’m working on the holiday and the day after. Today, however, I think I’m going to the pool. Any bloggage? Oh, we can probably scare some up:

Mel Gibson, radical Catholic and sinner.

Funniest thing I’ve read today was the Facebook status of one of our commenters, Velvet Goldmine: I’m working on a Bollywood-style TV show about a group of plucky kids trying to start a show choir in India. I call it: Ghee!

Want to watch a sports movie free of sports-movie clichés? Rent “The Damned United.” Great to play in the background at your World Cup parties, too.

Have a great holiday weekend. I’ll be back…at some point.

One of the funniest passages in “True Confections,” featured on the nightstand a few months back, concerned the disastrous introduction of a white-chocolate product to a small, family-owned candy company’s long-established line. It begins with a candy trade-show encounter with the products of Green & Black, a chocolatier of which I’d never heard.

The author, Katharine Weber, throws in a lot of real candy brands in the course of her story, I assume for verisimilitude. But the line at the center of it is entirely fictional, so I wasn’t sure about Green & Black. I eat plenty of chocolate, but until recently — until reading “True Confections,” in fact — I have stayed away from most candy bars. It’s a terrible vice for a stuck, non-smoking writer to be near vending machines, and I overindulged when I still had an office job. Of course I make exceptions for the usual Halloween/Easter events. Not to do so would be wrong.

But I’ve discovered what probably everybody does, eventually — two or three squares of really good dark chocolate is more satisfying after a meal than a piece of cake, and has fewer calories, too.

Anyway, the “True Confections” narrative goes on at some length about Green & Black’s white chocolate bar. Rapturous length, in fact — its texture and strong vanilla flavor and so on. And so, last week, when we stopped for the night in Toronto en route to Montreal, I had the strongest possible endorsement fresh in my memory when I stopped in to a little grocery in search of a newspaper and found a checkout display of Green & Black chocolate bars. They exist! They come in a million different flavors! And there, right there in front of me, was the storied white-chocolate variety. Newspaper forgotten, I snatched up a 100-gram bar and tucked it into my purse.

We didn’t eat it until the next day. But it didn’t last long. It was too irresistible, too easy to break off square after square, place it on your tongue, and let its creamy vanillatude melt in your mouth. Weber points out that too much white chocolate is chalky and overly sweet, but this had just the right proportions of everything.

I saved the label and hit the website when we got home, and was amazed to discover it’s available at Kroger, Target, Meijer and other run-of-the-mill stores. Where have you been all my life, Green & Black? When I visited Target, I learned where: Hiding behind the better-known Lindt and Godiva and Ghiradelli, that’s where. Target only had two varieties, the original dark and the newest — peanut. My guess is, G&B doesn’t have the cash for big-time slotting fees at places like Kroger. My search will go on, and I believe I’ll only have to travel as far as the nearest gourmet grocery.

Meanwhile, while we’re talking books and things I didn’t know about until recently, I have to say that until the ridiculous and widely mocked trailer for Glenn Beck’s new “book,” I didn’t even know such a thing existed — trailers for books, that is. Excerpts, sure. Not videos. So I apologize for being late to the party, but it’s a pleasure to offer this one, for Laura Lippman’s own upcoming release, “I’d Know You Anywhere:”

The book doesn’t drop (as the hip-hopper say) until August 17th, but I just spent some Amazon bucks to pre-order it through my store, Nance’s Kickback Lounge, and if you’re planning to do the same, well, I thanks you.

Now I have Laura’s and Martin Cruz Smith’s new novels to look forward to in August. Get outta my way, other lazy bums.

Bloggage? OK:

Christopher Hitchens has cancer. Sad news for anyone, and the second throat-area cancer diagnosis I’ve heard this week, the other being Mike Harden, my former Columbus Dispatch colleague and, like Hitchens, another long-time smoker. Smoking is only one risk factor for esophageal cancer, which Hitchens has. Another is drinking, two activities Hitchens has excelled at for years. I know he’s unpopular in many lefty circles, but let’s not go there, OK?

Alan is perplexed by this story, and wants someone to explain it to him. As near as he can tell, it’s about a hipster doofus who decorates axes and sells them to other hipster doofuses, and if there’s more to it than that, please send up a flare.

We haven’t had an OID (only in Detroit) story for a while, so here’s one: The acting superintendent, the woman who blew the whistle on the board president for fondling himself in front of her during their meetings, didn’t have her contract renewed. But the board president was charged. For “misconduct in office.” I’ll say.

And with that, it’s off to work. A good one to all.

A motorist pulled up next to me while I was riding my bike the other day to say she found me “difficult to see.” I was wearing a black top and beige shorts — monochrome, c’est moi — and I could see her point. So yesterday I put on a pink top and headed out to Target for some exercise gear in colors to induce eyeball hemorrhage.

My local Target is in a mall that is becoming increasingly racially segregated, and I’m not the race it’s selecting for. That means the local Macy’s has a men’s millinery department, but it can be difficult to find a jean skirt for Kate that doesn’t say BABY PHAT across the butt. However, it has a Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sears and Target, so we spend a good deal of cash there.

I quickly identified the bright-eyes tops and snagged two, one of which makes my complexion look like I’m in the last stages of a terrible liver disease, but this isn’t intended to flatter. I wandered over toward the skin emollients and was drawn into the orbit of a woman in the uniform of the U.S. Postal Service, having a very loud conversation on her Bluetooth:

“Well, that’s some BULLshit, then, because we’re getting three GPS errors a block on that system. …uh huh…uh huh…I’m telling you, until you get out there, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s the truth.” Her tone was decisive edging into belligerence; who in the world was she talking to? Surely not her boss. A union rep? A colleague?

“You don’t know that because you never been a clerk. I’ve been a clerk! I know what it’s like!”

Whoever was on the other end had better be listening, because I believed every word she said. Eavesdropping is one of my favorite things to do, and I recommend it to anyone who aspires to put words in another’s mouth. Of course, no one eavesdrops like Lance Mannion. Read and imitate.

And that’s pretty much all I did yesterday, other than writewritewrite. I don’t like to self-pimp, but here’s something I wrote yesterday, for the other site I run, on a topic that increasingly interests me these days — what is to become of our public institutions as public money falls short of sustaining them. The solution reached in Grosse Pointe schools isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty big step forward, at a time when many municipalities and school districts around here are still wringing their hands. In the Pointes, many are still fighting over tax increases that translate to lower tax bills, i.e., raise the millage while property values are falling, which means a lower tax bill, but not quite as much as if rates were left alone. Some of the rhetoric is ugly, and suggests some won’t be happy until every employee who draws a paycheck from the public is living on bread and water. Anyway, what I mainly want to do is pimp a really good “This American Life” episode we listened to en route home from Canada, “Social Contract,” which was sort of the inspiration for my column.

And which leads us into the bloggage:

Elena Kagan, funny lady: Where were you on Christmas day, Ms. Kagan? “You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

I swear I saw a classified ad once for three pairs of men’s underwear, “like new.” I was not surprised to find u-trou on a list of 20 things you should never buy used, but on the other hand, do you have to tell people this? And who in their right mind buys used makeup?

Rod Blagojevich hates Carol Marin.

Finally, the miracle man, Mark Bittman, does it again — following last summer’s hugely popular 101 salads feature, here’s 101 foods to grill. With delicious-looking pictures. I know what I’m doing for the rest of the summer.

I was sitting in the midst of Bitches Brew Revisited, one of the opening-night concerts at the Montreal Jazz Festival — excuse me, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal — when it occurred to me why jazz is so popular here: Because French Canadians are basically French, and the French can be reliably counted on to embrace anything most Americans hate. It makes them feel superior. Perhaps they are superior. They’ve certainly got the charming-city thing figured out. “Bitches Brew,” I’m not so sure. There are moments in that record that feel like genius, others more like the emperor’s new clothes. That’s when your mind wanders.

So I’m starting a list: Things the French Love that (Most) Americans Hate. So far: Modern jazz, sweetbreads, politicians with wandering peckers. Let’s leave Jerry Lewis off for now. Dig deeper.

And yes, we had a fine time in Montreal. You are free to disagree with my contention that French Canadians are “basically French.” I’m aware that to a Parisian, a French Canadian is a knuckle-dragging, fur hat-wearing lummox. A former editor of mine was French Canadian on his mother’s side and spoke the language, and told me a story once of riding in a taxi from the Paris airport, chatting up the driver, who complimented him on his graceful usage while simultaneously disparaging those blockhead Canucks who massacre it every day in his taxi, and… Suddenly this is sounding very much like a taxi story, I realize.

Whatever. I did enjoy being immersed in a different language for a few days, because it reminds you both of how very much you know and how very much you don’t know. I pointed out to Kate several times that faking it through a foreign country isn’t so hard, that much of it is non-verbal puzzle-solving and other tricks. The elevator button for the hotel lobby says R instead of L, but it’s nothing you can’t figure out. Besides, it’s so amusing. The Lonely Planet guide said that even in France, stop signs are red, octagonal and say STOP, but in Quebec, they’re red, octagonal and say ARRET. Still, if you know the red octagon part, you can figure out the rest. And it’s fun to speak fake French, and speculate on why it’s the language of diplomacy; my theory is that it sounds much classier to call someone le sac du douche than just a douchebag.

More stories to come as the week wears on. For now, just this one, transitioning into the bloggage: We were questioned closely at the border, entering Canada, about our plans for the week, and whether we were going to stop in Toronto for the G20 conference.

“The G20 is meeting in Toronto?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“I thought, as journalists, you would know about the half billion we’ve spent on security, the anarchist protestors, and all the rest of it,” the guard said.

Shamed! I was shamed. To be sure, the G20 is one of those things I pay attention to when it’s going on, but criminy, buddy, the pregame is sort of the definition of a local story. Nevertheless, once we were in the Globe & Mail circulation area, it was hard to avoid, and coming home Saturday, we stopped for dinner in a suburb of the big T, and watched the violence on live TV. It looked pretty bad, but I’m just going to throw this out there and see what you think:

Police love nothing more than expecting trouble. It gives them a big, big bargaining chip to present to their municipalities, in return for a blank check. When the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Fort Wayne, the sheriff’s deputies fell out in a long row behind a line of riot shields that were so new you could practically see the stickum where the price tags had been. Riot shields are not normally gear the Allen County Sheriff’s Department uses, and I’m sure that was only the beginning. News that the world’s anarchists are coming to your city is music to a cop’s ears, as it represents huge overtime checks, helmets and gas masks and, for the bullies, a license to swing a club.

Which is not to say they wouldn’t rather be patrolling a pleasant summer day in the park. I’m just saying there’s a time in every job when you’re needed, and that feels good to everyone. I’m not saying I agree with the contentions in this rather paranoid article — short version: that, in need of a reason to use all that new equipment and justify its expense, that the police started their own riot — but it’s interesting to think about. The stuff about the shoes is intriguing.

I don’t know what the total damage in Toronto will be. But if half a billion in advance spending couldn’t stop it, maybe a different approach is called for next time.

Full-on bloggage today:

A story for Pride 2010, via Hank: After 45 years, a wedding. Also, an 89-year-old Stonewall vet sits it out this year.

The Back of Town blog — the “Treme” people — gets some love.

The Texas GOP comes out against oral sex. Way to nail down the swing vote, guys.

Susan Ager came out of retirement to write a very long account of her recent brush with endometrial cancer in Sunday’s Free Press. I know the lady had — has — a lot of fans, but I was rarely one of them. She didn’t even rank on the Albom Scale of Irritation, but she could get on my nerves. I can take or leave Sunday’s story — it’s certainly better than most of what they run on that space — but can I just say something? When I was a columnist, I got a certain amount of fan mail, and it wasn’t all from Brian Stouder. But when I published reader letters, I cut that stuff out. If someone wrote me a letter, told me how much they liked my column and then commenced to ask a question about something else, I cut right to the question. So when I read stuff like this…

(The surgeon) smiled at my bedside and said, “You’re meeting me for the first time, but I’ve known you for years through your work.”

…I cringe. What happened to self-effacement? There was a DetNews columnist who did the same thing. When she was off sick, she’d come back and write a column about how sick she’d been, peppered with reader notes about how much they’d missed her beautiful face smiling out of the newspaper. I ask you.

And now I ask you for leave, because, as usual, Monday is a killer.

Hank Stuever had a post on his blog yesterday, about a happy time in his life that coincided with a happy time in my life, i.e., working on the college newspaper. And even though his happy time was a decade after my happy time, it sounds as though the technology we used was about the same, and that was part of the fun of it:

I miss layout. It was probably the only crafty, tactile skill I ever mastered — starting in the journalism room in high school. I miss the waxer, the long strips of freshly developed type set in column inches, the bordertape, the pica poles, the photo reduction-ratio wheels, mitering my corners, the Zip-o-Tone, the 20-percent gray screen half-tones, the light-tables; writing headlines from count orders (”they need a 3-36-1 in 19-pica column width, and don’t forget that flitj only counts for half a character”). I miss the monstrous and cantankerous photostat machine. I miss light blue Copy-Not pens. I miss being able to fix a typo with a knife instead of a reset.

Much of that is probably gibberish to most of you, but to me, that paragraph, loaded with all those terms of art, is what separates a writer from a layout artist. I hadn’t thought about Zip-o-Tone (Zip-A-Tone, to be exact — sorry, Hank) since maybe 1978, and just that phrase brought it all back — the late nights at the Post doing just that, fueled on day-old doughnuts and bad coffee, trading jokes and insults. Disco light table! someone would squeal when “Don’t Leave Me This Way” came on the radio from down Parkersburg way, flicking the switches on and off during the chorus.

But I think I may have covered this topic before. What I meant to point out was this apt comparison later in Hank’s mini-essay:

I think I derived the same joy from laying out a newspaper that quilters derive from quilting bees. It required concentration, measurement, technique, artistry — but it never distracted you from conversations and gossip and laughs with your collaborators.

Yes. Exactly. It’s the craftiness of it. I’ve never been much for crafts, but like Hank, I miss the camaraderie of building something with your hands in a group. I got a little of that during my time on the copy desk; the work wasn’t so difficult you were risking anyone’s concentration by occasionally noting, out loud, “Name Redacted is the worst writer this newspaper has, and I’ll fight any man who disagrees.” We were just Amish ladies stitching squares together.

So thanks, Hank, for that. And yes, I will join your Layout Club. We can put out a newsletter or something, ol’ skool. I may still have some Letraset lying around here somewhere.

J.C. will probably use his admin status to post a photo in comments from those days. He was one of the supervisors of our backshop, back in the day.

So, anything else today? There’s this: You may have heard how the president of the Detroit Public Schools board imploded last week, or rather…[cue boom-chicka-wow soundtrack] maybe I should say, exploded. Mathis was briefly shamed into resigning after the superintendent accused him of playing pocket pool during their meetings, and if you want the gross details, well, read all about it.

I say “briefly shamed” because he had no sooner resigned than he tried to take it back, claiming “health problems” caused him to take matters into his own hands, ha ha. I think Laura Berman sums up the man in a few devastating sentences, here:

After graduating from Southeastern High School with a D-plus average, he got into Wayne State University in a program for the academically unqualified. When he failed to pass an English language writing exam required for graduation, he sued, claiming the exam discriminated against African-Americans. When the exam was dropped, a decade later, he duly received his bachelor of science degree.

Mathis was praised by his colleagues for his coolness under pressure and his lack of defensiveness: qualities that have stood him in good stead over the years, as he faced down challenges to his competency. As he told me in a March interview, his deficits had been written about before. “People make a lot of noise for a while and then it all blows over,” he said.

Maybe he felt compelled to test how low expectations might really go.

And they were already pretty damn low, let me tell you.

With that, an announcement: I’ll be scarce around here for a while. We’re taking a few days’ vacation, and this time we’re going someplace my cell phone contract doesn’t cover, so no mobile uploads. And where might that be? They speak French there, but it’s in North America. Where could it be? Let me put it this way: I told Kate I wanted to take her to Europe, but we can’t afford Europe, so we’re going for the closest equivalent within driving distance.

So: Au revoir for now, and I’ll see you back here Monday.

What a swell Saturday we had. We celebrated Father’s Day on a noon Saturday-to-noon Sunday schedule, and Father wanted to go on a sunset sail, so that’s what we did. Hit the marina around 8:30 p.m. and away we went. Perfect breeze, perfect night, no mosquitos, not even many fish flies. We didn’t get back until close to 11 — too late for ice cream, but by then Kate was doing the zombie walk. I keep waiting for the much-advertised teenage circadian rhythms to kick in, but so far, no such thing. Her body clock wakes her around 7 most mornings and has her dragging by 9 p.m. She was born to collect eggs on a farm somewhere, preferably one with broadband internet access.

I’m running way short of time this morning, so let’s skip straight to the bloggage:

An interesting story from the Boston Globe magazine, with an irresistible headline: Inside the mind of an anonymous internet poster:

Certain topics never fail to generate a flood of impassioned reactions online: immigration, President Obama, federal taxes, “birthers,” and race. This story about Obama’s Kenyan aunt, who had been exposed as an illegal immigrant living in public housing in Boston and who was now seeking asylum, manages to pull strands from all five of those contentious subjects.

In the next few minutes, several equally innocuous posts follow, including a rare comment in favor of the judge’s decision. Then the name-calling begins. At 2:03 p.m., a commenter with the pseudonym of Craptulous calls the aunt, Zeituni Onyango, a “foreign free-loader.” Seconds later comes the lament from Redzone 300: “Just another reason to hate are [sic] corrupt government.”

Of course, come the Rapture, you’ll be floating in the sky, en route to Heaven. But what about your pet? Who will feed your cat?

And now, I must splutter: I can’t believe how far behind I am, and the week has barely begun. Here, have a picture, and I’ll be back later:

Well, it’s good to see that some spills can be contained, and for my money, the Joe Barton blurpage of toxic substances is win-win for Democrats. He said it; it can’t be unsaid; and the craven way he tried to unsay it hours later — that thing I said with great conviction earlier today? I didn’t mean it — only underscores what a mess the GOP’s big tent has become.

I don’t think politics is a zero-sum game. I don’t think heads-I-win has to mean tails-you-lose. I really, truly and stupidly believe that politics should be concerned first and foremost with the good of the country and its people — all of them — and that no party has a monopoly on solutions to its problems.

But people like Barton are part of the problem, this mindless worship of business and corporations at the expense of all common sense or perspective. They represent a huge chunk of the Republican party. It’s time everybody knew what the logical end of their butt-kissing is.

Remember all that stuff about respect for the presidency, especially on foreign soil, that we heard when the Dixie Chicks dared to express an unkind opinion about President Bush back in the day? What’s the calculus when it’s in the halls of Congress, and the opinion is expressed to a foreign-national head of a corporation? Where’s the my-country-right-or-wrong then?

There’s actually a pretty good debate to be held about this, and you can see it laid out in this NYT analysis. For my money, Rahm Emanuel gets it right:

To Mr. Obama, this is all about rebalancing the books after two decades in which multinationals sometimes acted like mini-states beyond government reach, abetted by a faith in markets that, as Mr. Obama put it at Carnegie Mellon University a few weeks ago, “gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.” When Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican, opened hearings Thursday about the gulf oil gusher by accusing Mr. Obama of an unconstitutional “shakedown” of BP to create a “slush fund,” he was giving voice to an alternative narrative, a bubbling certainty in corporate suites that Mr. Obama, whenever faced with crisis that involves private-sector players, reveals himself to be viscerally antibusiness.

The reality, not surprisingly, is more complex.

Mr. Obama clearly sees his presidency as far more than a bully pulpit — he has cast himself as a last line of defense against market excesses that take many different forms. “In the past, corporate America was not only at the table, they owned the table and the chairs around it,” Mr. Obama’s combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said in an interview Thursday. “Obama doesn’t start off confrontational, but he will be confrontational if there is resistance to the notion that there are other equities.”

Well, these — Barton’s people — are the same ones who said the forest fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 could have been prevented if we’d just let timber companies come through and log it from time to time.

By the way, I haven’t been to Yellowstone since 1992; how’s it looking these days? We went in 1988 and again the year after, to see the changes. Even a year later, it was fascinating to see the green meadows blooming under the charred remains of lodgepole pine, and four years later, the aspens were well-established. The oddest places were a few acres here and there where there had been a lot of fallen dead trees before the fire; this is where the blaze burned hottest, from forest floor to canopy. It left behind the classic post-fire landscape and we heard a lot of nonsense about “sterilized soil” that would never support growth again in 100 lifetimes, etc. You know what I bet? I bet that wasn’t true.

I know MarkH lives out Jackson Hole way; maybe he can fill us in.

And now it’s Friday morning, and I have to get moving for my 9:30 GPT meeting. This week has been a little thin, content-wise, but as so frequently happens in weeks like this, the comments have been tremendous, especially Wednesday. It only serves to remind me that we’re truly a community here. Let me slaver my thanks, once again.

And now off to the bike. It’s going to be a hot one today. Have a good weekend, all.