I want to be fair and openminded, so let me say it in public: It’s around this time every year that I decide Texas is perhaps somewhat forgivable, although it will be decades before any of us forget George Bush, big hair and Enron, and centuries before the world does. Those red grapefruit that make their way north in the cold hard winter are damn tasty. I had half of one for breakfast, and friends, it brightened my morning.

Doesn’t counterbalance the Bush family, but there are many more days left in winter. It’s a start.

January 5, hello, how are you? Why is my week filling with static already?

Let’s start with a few questions from yesterday. Jeff wondered if the Detroit auto show is still on. Answer: Hell yes it is. It’ll take more than a recession, bankruptcy, collapse, bailout and multiple-limb amputation to kill that throwdown. I don’t think I’ll be going this year, alas. I would like to see the auto-show version of this ad:

You really can’t beat the automotives for b.s., and their ad agencies for polishing it to a high-gloss shine. I like where the car breaks through the wall and frees a few dozen doves of peace. Because that’s what I think of when I think about Chrysler. Peace. Style. Lech Walesa.

Someone mentioned Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Notion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” Haven’t read it, probably won’t, but I appreciate the effort and I have always felt the same way, that the relentless emphasis we place on “positivity” and other happy-talk claptrap is probably not the best thing we can do for ourselves in times of trouble, although it can play a role. Ehrenreich was moved to tackle the topic after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and found the endless platitudes about positive thinking and will-yourself-well to be grating. Having read
“Illness as Metaphor” once upon a million years ago, I remember how appalled I was to learn that cancer and other chronic illnesses were once seen as manifestations of various character flaws, that doctors spoke of a cancerous personality, i.e., you brought this on yourself.

It’s not so far from there to where we are now, when the failure to be relentlessly brave and optimistic in the face of the same illness is silently disapproved of, because why? You can think yourself well? That seems to be the unspoken reproach. Argh.

Optimism has its place in the world. But it’s one of those things it’s probably best to keep to yourself sometimes, too. Especially when you’re not the one having chemo.

That said, a doctor friend of mine once observed that his most peaceful patients at the end of the line, the ones most equable about the presence of the Reaper in the room, were the most religious ones. What is death to a Christian? Just a major change of address, as Anne Lamott says.

It all kind of ties back in with the Chrysler ad, which is “dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, still prisoner in Burma.” What does that even mean, “dedicated to?” Athletes are always dedicating their victories to their mothers or some plucky kid with cancer or, in this case, a political prisoner. I’m sure it gives her a warm feeling to know someone is working on her behalf, but I’m not sure how a car commercial is part of the solution to anything other than selling cars.

Look at Ms. Grumpypants! Turn that frown upside down!

OK, how about some bloggage, then:

Thanks to Detroit Moxie and various retweeters, from whom I learned about the Belle Isle Ice Tree, now under construction at Detroit’s signature park. It has humble beginnings, but I hope it begins its transformation soon.

Rachel Maddow’s been on this story for a while, but even a grump can find the dark humor in it: American evangelicals travel to Uganda, spew hatred, and are astonished to discover someone actually listened and took them seriously:

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks. The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

A gay friend of mine told me once gets occasional mailings from his religious family, alerting him to various “cures” available through our brothers in Christ. He shrugs, and I carry the outrage on his behalf, as he is a wonderful person in every way, and the idea of someone who should know him best of all subjecting him to this is maddening. Here’s the logical end, I guess.

New book on the nightstand, an oldie but a page-turner: “American Odyssey,” which I picked up intending only to read in, and now find myself reading through it. Riveting.

Tuesday static commences! Go tune yours out.

Shortly before the blue moon, I shared a pitcher of Blue Moon with a new acquaintance, who keeps a foot in public policy. We discussed the coming shitstorm, which in politer company is known as “the financial bind local governments find themselves in as sharply falling property-tax revenues mean curtailed services, increased taxes/fees and pain all around, or all of the above.”

On the way home, I reflected once again that if Barack Obama’s first official act after changing out of his inauguration-day tuxedo was to erect pikes up and down Wall Street and start decorating each with a severed head of a former master of the universe, we’d be talking about repealing the 22nd amendment today. (I’d travel to New York just to take a picture of Angelo Mozilo’s.)

One of these days when the temperature rises above freezing, I’m going to do a short picture-taking tour of my surroundings. Every so often it strikes me how watershed moments very rarely happen the way they do in the movies, with fancy camera movements and a pulsating score underneath to cue you to the drama. You still get up every day, brush your teeth, make coffee. People rarely riot in the streets. It’s bleak out there, but it ain’t “The Road,” not yet. It’s in how one day you’re in the passenger seat instead of the driver’s, so you can watch the storefronts as they flash by, and notice how many are empty, how the For Sale or Lease signs have been there so long they’re now sun-bleached. It’s in how you notice the house down the street, bearing the unmistakable look of abandonment, suddenly sprouts the realty sign of a firm that handles only foreclosures, and that’s no good, but! There are painters woking in there! And the dead tree in the front yard is gone! And wow, maybe it did actually sell, but the next sign is, For Rent. And that’s hopeful, right, because no one has scrapped it yet.

Everybody is seeing coyotes, not just the guy who jogs at 2 a.m., and I find myself getting all Eugenides, wondering if they’re a metaphor, like the dying elms in “The Virgin Suicides,” only no, the dying ash trees are the metaphor, right? They’re the auto-industry metaphor; the coyotes are the subprime-meltdown metaphor.

Forgive me. I think I shouldn’t have had that glass of wine on an empty stomach. But something is happening here, the bedrock is shifting, has shifted, and no one really knows what comes next. All anyone knows is, we were the first state to enter the recession, and will likely be the last to climb out. We’re the new Mississippi. May you live in interesting times, as the Chinese say.

Actually, I’m optimistic. Who isn’t, in January? There’s something tied to throwing out the tree, I think, that feeling of light and space again. As Bossy once said, it’s like getting another room in your house. One-word resolution: Finish. Several things, actually, but that’s what ties them all together. Happy new year to all.

So let’s kick off the bloggage with some supplemental reading, the WashPost ins-and-outs list, done this year by not-Hank, but still funny: Ripped abs/Ripped jeans. I’m there.

Everything you ever wanted to know — and a lot you didn’t — about Warren Beatty’s love life. More than 12,000 women, by his biographer’s estimation, and “that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.” Noted.

Finally, the ground beef story that will push you to vegetarianism, or else toward my KitchenAid meat grinder. Pity it ran during the slowest news day of the year.

THe first manic Monday of the new year. Off and running!

It’s been a long time since New Year’s Eve was a circled-in-red day on the calendar. The idea of packing into some hotel ballroom for a warm glass of champagne at midnight and 10 minutes of kissing strangers is a vision of hell. We had an impromptu gathering at our house in Ann Arbor to welcome in 2004, and that was fun, although the year that followed didn’t play out all that well, and only underlined the idea that less is more on December 31 of any year.

If I had more money to travel, it might be fun to greet the new year in an exotic locale, Guam or atop Mt. Fuji or someplace with cheap firecrackers and new customs. File that one under pipe dreams. Truth be told, one of the best New Year’s Eves I ever had was when I was a kid, and we went next door to celebrate with the neighbors, and the lady of the house made me one apple beignet after another until I couldn’t eat any more. She was Dutch and said it was traditional. Powdered sugar was better than champagne to a 10-year-old.

The problem is the expectation of fun, of course. Even an optimist can find it hard to be merry when you’re expected to be, and after a string of underwhelming years I just gave up. Now our custom is to make a nice dinner, open a better-than-average bottle of wine, pop in a better-than-average rented movie, switch over to Times Square at 11:55 p.m. and go to bed 20 minutes later. Now that I think of it, that was one of the more memorable nights in recent memory, watching “Spartacus” and finishing 19-whatever laughing over the oysters-or-snails scene.

Whatever your plans are tonight, I hope they’re fun and safe and whatever you’d like it to be — oysters or snails.

So, then. Bloggage? Not bloody much. Having completed my entire four-item to-do list yesterday, we celebrated by seeing “Avatar.” I walked in irritable, having inadvertently chosen a 2-D screening time and unwilling to wait three more hours for the next 3-D, and got more irritable as we sat through 15 minutes of ads and 15 minutes of previews of movies I’d forfeit a kidney to avoid (“Clash of the Titans,” anyone? “Release the kraken” — are they serious?). I spent the time thinking how many people I know are calling it “Dances With Blue Cats,” and assuming this was another waste of an afternoon.

Two hours later I was yelling, “Go, red dinosaur!” and reflecting that I hadn’t had this much fun watching the totally predictable since “Star Wars.” Funny how that goes — you watch the setup and reflect that the characters couldn’t be more crudely rendered if they were drawn in grease pencil, the story all but lit with neon signs, and yet you’re still completely entertained. It’s the journey, not the destination.

We’re going to have to see it again in 3-D. No, we won’t. 3-D Imax. Then I never have to see it again.

Actually, what amazes me about special-effects bonanzas like this is how the actors do it. It’s one thing to summon up emotion in a kitchen, another thing in a sound stage, another thing entirely while dressed in a special suit, sword-fighting in front of a green screen. I heard an interview with James Cameron in which he described who played the flying dinosaur Zoe Saldana leaps onto in the course of demonstrating warrior skills to her humanoid pupil — some grip big enough to endure take after take of being leapt upon by a skinny actress. Movie magic.

It’s probably just a pepperoni pizza repeatin’ on him, but the year closes out with a reminder the reaper was busy in 2009, and most of the names on his list were in boldface. Get well soon, Rusty. Because it would be bad karma to wish for a painful…fail, wouldn’t it? Bad. Karma.

Welcome to whatever new readers we’re getting today; we’re ending the old year with a small honor. This blog is included in a Detroit News feature on notable local sites, which I had to stay up late to read. My husband always washes his hands of these things, a wise move. There aren’t many rules in our lively comment section other than: Be interesting. And be aware, the content isn’t usually so lame. Every blogger gets a glide pattern once in a while. In another two weeks this blog celebrates its ninth birthday, plugging along more or less five days a week. It’s worth what you pay for it, and I hope it surprises you from time to time.

Happy new year to all, and fingers crossed for the good kind of surprises.

We’ve been having some coyote drama here of late. The story is familiar all over the Midwest — after years, perhaps a century or more, of never seeing a coyote anywhere but a cowboy movie, the critters are turning up in the suburbs and sometimes not the suburbs at all, as when a pregnant female was found trotting the streets of downtown Detroit a year or two ago. The reporter from the local Fox affiliate about peed his pants squealing about the coyote who came in from “the wild.” He kept repeating the phrase, right through his happy ending, in which the animal was released in Oakland County, i.e., “back into the wild.”

Anyway, they’re well-established in Grosse Pointe now, drawn by the same factors that lure rich people — wide-open spaces, access to clean water and plenty to eat. Unfortunately, one of the things they’ve been eating of late is cats and dogs — killing them, anyway — and this! Can! Not! Stand! So the police are hunting them with shotguns and have already killed one. They, the police, hunt the same time the coyotes do, at dawn and dusk, and try to get a clean shot between the people who like to walk their Labs and Goldens in the area at the same time.

I’m of two minds. Well, no, not really. I’m sympathetic to people who’ve lost their pets, really I am, but on the other hand all that’s going to happen in the long run is, some coyotes will be shot and more will move in, and that will be that.

One of the police chiefs speculated the coyotes moved in during a cold snap a couple of years ago, when they “crossed the ice from Harsen’s Island.” (The geography in question, for the unfamiliar.) Alan scoffed when I told him this and said, “Or else they came up Jefferson Avenue.” That’s approximately what I suggested to the police chief, too. I’m always amazed at how even people who like to think of themselves as outdoorsy don’t really know all that much about it, and I include myself in that number. One of the things I find most interesting about this crazy place is how feral it is, from the plant life to the mammals. I wonder how many feral pit bulls have joined up with coyote gangs in Detroit. Plump pheasant, squirrel too numerous to count, endless prairie joined by easily trottable paved roads? Life would be a dream sh-boom.

I haven’t seen one yet. I’m rarely abroad when the coyotes are, so I have to live through others’ sightings, and what they tell me — the coyote who flew across Lake Shore Road in a couple of strides and then leaped the wall around the Ford House like it was little more than a low hedge, etc. My secret: I’m kind of glad the police are on a fool’s errand. There’s enough domestication in the world.

Bloggage? Not much:

I guess everyone has seen the Wienie Roast Bomber’s undies by now. Tell me, how are full-body scans going to catch this? The explosive was sewn up tight in the crotch. I think the next step in airport security is going to be one of those sniffing machines; we had to go through them before being admitted to the Statue of Liberty a couple of years ago. Each turn took about 15 seconds. Multiply by the number of people on your flight, and have a nice day.

Here’s an interview with David Simon. I haven’t read it yet. Don’t I already know enough about this guy? Nevertheless, I salute anyone willing to give this much time to a pesky reporter.

Off to the shower with me. This is my to-do list today:

Bank
Post office
Beer
Library

That beer isn’t going to drink itself. Have a good one, all.

There was a photo on the front page of my New York Times Sunday, and for the life of me I can’t find it online, sorry. A police officer is directing his bomb-sniffing dog through a check of luggage at Detroit Metro airport, and not just any luggage, but the long, logo’d bags you see in every airport the day after Christmas. Skis. The bags are surrounded by the other thing you see in every airport the day after Christmas. Young people, getting ready to fly out to Colorado or Utah or somewhere else with mountains and snow; one is wearing a sweatshirt with the name of a local high school. The young people are watching the dog work, smiles on their faces. Even the cop looks nice and relaxed. Only the dog looks concerned.

Don’t you feel safer already?

I’m so, so glad I don’t have to fly very often, and when I do, only in the context of taking a vacation. I’m nice and relaxed and don’t mind hanging around the carousels for my bags, which I check, leaving the overheads to hysterical business travelers. I’m glad that if and/or when full-body scans become standard boarding procedure in the nation’s airports, I will be spared the worst of it.

And I’m sure they’re coming. Aren’t you? I mean, we managed to miss a guy who’d been dimed out by his own father using the human method; technology better save us. You hear El Al’s security techniques mentioned frequently when these things come up; Israel’s national airline is known for brutal and unapologetic profiling and more security hoops than you can count, right down to armed air marshals on every flight. You get the idea they would not have missed this guy. You also get the idea it’s good Israel is a very small country and El Al likely doesn’t send that many flights out of it.

Yes, it was quite an exciting weekend in the D. I’ve barely looked at other blogs, but for my Idiots file, and that was enough to scare me away from the internet for two weeks. It’s nice to see experts in armchair trigonometry calculating what the terrorist might have been trying to hit on the ground by detonating his device juuuust so. Jihad urban renewal! Detroit is so cutting edge sometimes, it just kills me.

Lots of things are cutting edge these days. The Dutch hero who bravely wrestled the Roasted Wienie Bomber down and then talked and talked and talked about it on CNN? He’s a very modern sort of hero, as Gawker explains.

Also, Joe Lieberman, WTF? A third front in an endless war we can’t win? Why not?

And that’s it for me, posting late before another killer Monday. Expect light-to-intermittent posting for a few days, while I enjoy a little of the break everyone else seems to be giving themselves. And get a little housekeeping done around here.

There’s something about a headline like this…

Expert: Beef up airport security

…that makes a person never want to fly again.

Nevertheless, glad all were safe. Way to welcome the holidays, though.

UPDATE: If anyone is interested, the new “How to Cook Everything” appears to be more wonderful than the original. Thanks, family.

Well, this is interesting. The Mexican good guys had a big win last week, killing a high-ranking gangster, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, in what is inevitably called “a gun battle.” The soldier who killed him also died in the shootout. Although it’s customary for police and military officers involved in anti-drug work to be anonymous and wear ski masks and other clothing to obscure their identity, once one of them is killed, their identity is made public. Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova was hailed as a national hero. His mother was presented with the Mexican flag at his funeral, in much the same ritual we’ve seen in this country during military funerals.

The day after, Leyva’s henchmen burst into Córdova’s family’s home and killed his mother and three other relatives.

People today use the word “decimated” casually. We forget what it means. Decimation was a specific punishment for one’s enemies, and it meant one in ten — you humiliated and humbled the conquered by killing 10 percent of their soldiers. That was considered punishment enough. What’s going on here is something much worse, a zero-sum game that isn’t, really, because the lesson I mentioned yesterday applies here, too: There’s always a demand for drugs, legal or otherwise, and always a new generation of people willing to take them. Legalize everything and you take the gunplay out of it, but otherwise, there you are.

[Pause.]

Hey, it’s the Christmas season! Let’s turn the page and move on to something cheerier! You know the newspaper racket is in trouble when the freakin’ New York Times, home of the top-of-3A daily Tiffany ad, etc. etc., accepts a full-page ad for the Amish miracle-heater fireplace. It’s a throwback to the days when companies would run ads that looked like newspaper copy, because apparently there are still seven or eight suckers who believe that on one page of the New York Times you can read about the al-Jazeera cameraman who spent six years at Guantanamo Bay, and on the next a full page devoted to the “miracle” that an electric space heater enclosed in an Amish-made plywood box can make your heating bills “drop to a fraction.”

One of the funnier moments I’ve spent in the company of Alan’s family came when his sister Jenny related her conversation with Aunt Dorothy, who wanted to order one of the “free” heaters for Jenny:

“I don’t want one,” Jenny said.

“Why wouldn’t you want it if it’s free!?” said Dorothy. (There’s such a perfect logic to this, I don’t know what to say.)

Anyway. The scam of the Amish miracle heater is pretty easy to figure out, if you read above a third-grade level: The Chinese-made heater is just your average 1500-watt space heater, available at any Wal-Mart for around $20. You pay $350 for the “Amish” mantel that goes around it. There’s a website, of course. Poke around in there and enjoy yourself; did you know the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is “prestigious?” Srsly.

The Amish are no strangers to this sort of thing. Alan once visited an Amish farm in Indiana that turned out olde-timey kountry wagons used in displays at Bath & Body Works. Knock together some scrap plywood, throw on some out-of-round wheels, slap a coat of paint on everything and then turn the kids loose on it — each one was “hand-distressed” by Amish boys and girls, who assaulted it with chains, steel wool, chemicals and whatever, preparatory to its placement in an American shopping mall. I love this country so much it hurts.

Two days left, and my list is painful to look at. Yesterday’s excursion to the mall was fruitless but for the picture of Olga the mannequin in her hello-sailor cocktail dress. The sooner this fashion flies, the better. Kate tried on a dress at Betsey Johnson, just for the heck of it, and looked adorable. Two hundred dollars for a dress seemed a little steep, she said, and of course I agreed. But it’s funny how a Betsey dress can be just as short and just as strapless, but looks fun instead of trashy. That’s why they pay her the big bucks.

Happy Wednesday, whatever yours holds. I’m outta here.

My favorite detail from the Brittany Murphy stories? Let’s take a look. TMZ:

Paramedics moved Brittany from the bathroom to the master bedroom, where they found a slew of prescription drugs — “A check of the nightstands revealed large amounts of prescription medication in the decedent’s name. Also noted were numerous empty prescription medication bottles in the decedent’s husband’s name, the decedent’s mother’s name and unidentified third party names.”

According to the notes, the medications included Topamax (anti-seizure meds also to prevent migraines), Methylprednisolone (anti-inflammatory), Fluoxetine (depression med), Klonopin (anxiety med), Carbamazepine (treats diabetic symptoms and is also a bipolar med), Ativan (anxiety med), Vicoprofen (pain reliever), Propranolol (hypertension, used to prevent heart attacks), Biaxin (antibiotic), Hydrocodone (pain med) and miscellaneous vitamins.

I love how that phrase comes at the end of a long list of central nervous system antagonists, like a good punchline. It’s important to stay healthy with the right nutritional supplements.

Actually, this isn’t funny, is it? Or rather, it’s funny how the rest of the world learned this lesson with Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, but Hollywood learned a different one, i.e., that there is an endless supply of young women out there to be chewed up and spit out. The young women learned there’s always a doctor who can be persuaded to write the next prescription. And if the local pharmacy gets suspicious, well, write it to your personal assistant or mom or whatever.

How is it possible I’m this far behind in the week and it’s only Tuesday? Go figure. The shortness of the week has something to do with it, as does the unmopped kitchen floor. But the swing through the cop shops yesterday was brutal, a veritable parade of wrongdoing — all the thieves in the world are doing their Christmas shopping in the Pointes, it seems, stealing everything from cars to wheels to iPods. It did lead to an interesting conversation with the police about the details of auto theft; I jotted down notes about “drop cars” when I got home. Drop cars are the easy-to-steal P.O.S. vehicles thieves drive when they’re looking for something nicer. Check plates around the empty parking spot of a stolen car, and you’re likely to make a recovery of the drop car. I guess that’s good for the statistics, but from some of the reports I’ve read you wouldn’t want your drop car back, unless you relish starting it with a screwdriver for the rest of its life.

Detroit and Miami are the auto-theft capitals of North America. I think the city’s motto should be whatever “don’t leave your keys in the ignition, not even for a minute” translates to in Latin.

The best car-theft story I’ve read since we’ve lived here is about a teacher in Detroit who’s had 13 vehicles stolen 14 times. The only reason it’s not 14 cars stolen 14 times is, she finally figured out the route to a quick recovery — keep the gas tank close to empty at all times by buying $5 worth of gas daily. The car runs dry within hours, and it’s found relatively close to where it was taken.

Big-city survival skills. It’s not all about keeping your purse clutched under your arm.

Oh my, look at the time. Must fly. Two must-see videos:

Roomba-riding cat beats down pit bull. And, if you ever find yourself craving Chinese food in Honolulu, you might be better off with a burger.

Well, Washington, you must be verrrry pleased with yourselves. In the words of a headline my friend Adrianne likes to quote, You’re snow king! And you can’t handle it. Although God knows why not. I know this is an unusual event, meteorologically speaking, but it’s certainly not unprecedented. As long as I’ve been reading newspapers, you can count on the eastern seaboard to be buried at least once every two years or so, and you’d think you’d have it figured out by now.

As a Midwesterner, I think it’s amusing that every storm on the east coast is covered like an attack by al-Qaeda. You read the NYT roundup, and they mention how “60 million people” were affected by the storm — or, as the NYT likes to call on its college education from time to time, that many people had “Whittier’s snowbound American landscape recreated” for their edification. (The web story contains a link to the poem. Thanks, English majors!) The unspoken subordinate clause, “…30 million of them journalists.”

I’m just grousing here. Detroit got less snow over the weekend than Columbus, Ohio, which is where we were on Saturday. We’ll catch up, we always do, but by the winter solstice, I’m yearning for the blanket of white to reflect what little light there is.

If I’m talking weather on a Monday, it’s a bad Monday. In the great traditions of Short Attention Span Theater, let’s make this an all-bloggage day.

Staying offline most of the weekend was the best thing I’ve done in a while. I should do more of it. You sign back on after a day away, and discover Brittany Murphy died, and your first thought is “drugs,” your second “anorexia,” and your third, “It’s sort of embarrassing that I even know who Brittany Murphy is,” although I always thought her work as Luanne Platter was her best.

In three minutes, Michigan’s attorney general is going to outline a lawsuit he plans to file, designed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. Kind of funny, when you think about it. Sue the bastards!

You are commanded to listen to the podcast/webstream of “This American Life” from this past weekend, which was about the drinking culture on the campus of Penn State University, only of course it wasn’t just about Penn State, but college in general. You are especially commanded to do so if you have a kid in college, or headed that way. It was, how you say, grim. Listening to the students speak of the rituals of college drinking — the tailgating, the pregame, the brand names, the “fracket” — I was reminded of rituals at another well-known American center of binge drinking, the Indian reservation. The students aren’t yet consuming hair spray cocktails, but that’s the next logical step after Red Bull and Vladimir vodka, in my opinion.

I kept asking myself if I was in any position to talk. I drank in college. Almost everyone did. I sometimes overindulged. Almost everyone did. I did it often enough that in sober moments I reflected on how fortunate I was to live on a small, walking-centered campus, rather than one that required a car. I asked myself if I would stand on the steps of a fraternity house, dressed in a tiny cocktail dress and towering stilettos, shivering in my fracket (defined as a cheap, crummy jacket you wear to frat parties, because you know it’s going to get vomit on it by night’s end, and you don’t mind losing it), hoping my tits or legs or pout or whatever will stir the doorman enough to grant me entrance to the party, because that’s where you go to get hammered, and that’s what a girl has to wear to get in — if I would have done this at the age of 19, and I think the answer is no. I didn’t know anyone at Ohio University who had to go to the E.R. from drinking, a common event in State College, Pa. Barfing? Sure. Hospital admissions with a BAC of .25, the average among hospital visits? No. And O.U. was a party school right down to its bones.

Sad, sad listening. And I don’t know what’s to be done.

But I do know what’s to be done today, and that’s work-work-work. So I’m outta here.

I love it when the New York Times introduces me to the rituals and stories of cultures I would otherwise never encounter. White people from Pittsburgh, for example. Today’s food-section piece on the local custom known as the cookie table was a series of delights, starting with finding out about the tradition in the first place. Pittsburgh brides celebrate their wedding not only with cake, but with a long table groaning with cookies, all makes and models, heavy on the ethnic varieties made only on special occasions, like pizzelles and lady locks. How could I have spent my whole life in the Midwest without knowing this? (Answer: Probably by never getting closer to Pittsburgh than the freeway exits.)

Many people have noted many times that the country is becoming increasingly homogenized, and they’re right. It’s nice, then, to read paragraphs like this:

No one knows for sure who started the tradition, or why it hasn’t exactly taken hold outside this region. Many people credit Italian and Eastern European immigrants who wanted to bring a bit of the Old Country to the big day in the New World. Given that many of them were already well practiced at laying out a Christmas spread, baking 8 to 10 times as many treats for a few hundred special friends and relatives may not have seemed like such a stretch.

But even amid the increasing professionalization of the wedding, with florists mimicking slick arrangements ripped from Martha Stewart’s magazines and wedding planners scheduling each event down to the minute, the descendants of those Pittsburgh settlers continue to haul their homemade cookies into the fanciest hotels and wedding venues around the city. For many families today, it would be bordering on sacrilege to do without the table.

Elsewhere in the food section was a piece on the southern “little layer cake,” the towering cakes turned out by little old ladies, constructed of not two or three layers, but a dozen or more, each one relatively thin. Alan grokked it immediately: “You get more frosting that way.” These are the cakes made for Fostoria cake stands like mine, I suspect, and while making one doesn’t really interest me, I’m fascinated to read about the technique involved, which requires a certain do-si-do with the oven and the frosting station — the cakes are iced while warm, and use boiled frosting, which is difficult to make. Kim Severson, the Times’ peerless food writer, finds the sorts of details that would shame the most skilled anthropologists:

…There are Lane cakes, made with an 1898 recipe named after Emma Rylander Lane of nearby Clayton, Ala., who called it her prize cake. The cake was a childhood favorite of President Carter, whose hometown of Plains, Ga., is a few hours’ drive from Clayton. Harper Lee, who grew up in Monroeville, Ala., mentioned Lane cake in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The Lane cake is made with lots of egg whites, the yolks reserved for a rich filling of ground pecans, coconut and raisins flavored with bourbon or local wine. That makes it something of an illicit treat here in dry Geneva County, which is thick with non-drinking Baptists, some of whom substitute grape juice.

Like many of these layer cakes, the Lane cake gets better with a little age. Some cooks still store theirs in a tin with cut apples, to keep it moist while the alcohol mellows and flavors meld.

Whenever I watch “Top Chef,” I’m always amazed at how many of these kitchen wizards, who can turn out sous vides and cat-vomit “foams” and other latter-day trends with such ease, confess they are utterly flummoxed when it comes to dessert and make these soggy fruit things atop some sort of wan pastry thing with a fancy Italian name. How hard is baking? Piece of cake. If you’ll permit me the foodie wordplay.

Bloggage? Oh, a little.

David Leonhardt’s column headline says it all: If Health Care Reform Fails, America’s Innovation Gap Will Grow. Really? People choose jobs based on whether they get health insurance? Really? My husband has been saying this for year; maybe he should be invited to a meeting in Washington, but let’s let Leonhardt state the obvious:

Economic research suggests that more than 1.5 million workers who would otherwise have switched jobs fail to do so every year because of fears about health insurance. Some of them would have moved to companies where they could have contributed more, and others would have started their own businesses.

This link between insurance and innovation isn’t relevant merely for the obvious reason that Congress is in the late stages of debating health reform. It is also relevant because the United States is suffering from an innovation deficit.

Nobody lives forever: God kills Oral Roberts for failing to raise more money.

I went looking for Pilot Joe last night on FlightAware, and found that contrary to his stated intention to fly to Chicago, his plane was actually en route to Alabama. Does Mrs. Pilot Joe know? Hey, Joe — pick up a little layer cake next time you’re there.

And with that, I’m away.