Many years ago, 30 to be exact, back in the era when children didn’t have their pictures taken every hour, with video every day, an 8-year-old girl in Fort Wayne was abducted, raped and murdered. Her name was April Tinsley. This weekend, police made an arrest. The suspect still lives in the area.

The picture at that link is burned into my brain. It is the only photo anyone had of her, and because the crime was so heinous and went unsolved for so long, it ran dozens of times, in both papers, on all the TV stations. I never heard what happened to her family. They were poor. The neighborhood wasn’t the best. But she was loved, and this was a horrible thing. This part interests me:

In a probable cause affidavit provided by the prosecutor’s office, city police said they obtained a DNA profile from an unknown male from April’s underwear.

In 2004, the affidavit said, police were dispatched to a Fort Wayne address and two Grabill addresses and recovered one used condom from each scene. Notes at each scene were found stating the person who left the condoms had raped and killed April M. Tinsley. A DNA profile was developed from the condoms, which was determined to be consistent with the profile developed from Tinsley’s underwear.

In May of this year, the affidavit said, a police detective arranged for genetic DNA testing and analysis to be done on the suspect’s evidence sample. On July 2, using open public genealogy database research, the contract laboratory narrowed the DNA recovered in the case to two surviving brothers.

On July 6, the affidavit said, a covert trash search was conducted at Miller’s residence in an attempt to locate any items that might contain his DNA. Several items were collected, it said, including three used condoms. The affidavit said the DNA was consistent with the 2004 profile and the DNA from April’s underwear.

Another case solved by DNA and 23andme, or Ancestry, or one of those. But it’s the 2004 anecdote that interests me. Who wrote those notes? An angry lover, or the culprit himself? And all those condoms — what’s that about?

His name is John Miller, and he lives in Grabill, an Amish town. I wonder if he’s an ex-. He’s also 59, which would make him roughly 29 at the time of the crime. Imagine growing to the cusp of old age, carrying that around. When the police showed up at his trailer and said they wanted to talk to him, they asked if he knew why. He replied, “April Tinsley.”

What a world.

Some other things that happened in it over the weekend:

A jaguar escaped its enclosure at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans and killed eight animals. #badass

This column, by the widow of John McNamara, one of the journalists killed in Annapolis last month, will gut you if you have a soul.

Finally, another argument to abolish the electoral college: In about 20 years, half the U.S. population will live in eight states. Demography is fascinating.

Gotta run. A good week ahead to all.

Late update today — sorry. Been a rather busy week, but as often happens when we gallop through Monday and Tuesday, things are improving.

I have a story in Deadline Detroit today; it turns out the filmmakers who made that video for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not only Detroiters, but I already know one of them. She used to work for the advocacy firm where Bridge had its Lansing office for a spell, so I mainly recall her as one of the young people who worked in the bullpen, who I sometimes chatted with on my way to the coffeepot or giant vat of peanut butter-stuffed pretzel nuggets. (That is a disgusting-sounding snack, I know, but I tried one and soon was filling a bowl with them to furtively carry back upstairs. I’d never buy them, however, because I’d fear the disapproval of others in the checkout line.)

Anyway, Naomi’s reaction to the 2016 election was to start attending socialist-feminism discussion groups, which led in a more or less linear fashion to her quitting her job and starting a new media company for socialist candidates. And that led them to make the Ocasio-Cortez video, which is fantastic and partially credited for her success.

Predictably, the comments on the story are whack. I thought of contributing to the discussion, drafted a comment, then trashed it because why engage, and on the internet of all places. I’ll paste it here, just to get it out of my system:

Hi, everyone. As the writer of this piece, I think some of you are overlooking an important point: It’s easy to make fun of socialism. So many spectacular failures, yes. But you are also forgetting what led to it, and why it’s appealing to so many younger people. The Gilded Age and industrial revolution after the Civil War led to an era of great wealth for the few, while the working class toiled in backbreaking labor, for little money and with few to no protections, as a nervous middle class looked on and wrung their hands.

And so on. I’m not taking a stand here, and I realize that wading into any internet comment section is a waste of time. (I’m also not going to engage with any of you further, because see previous sentence.) I’m only making a plea for empathy, to try to step out of your own shoes and into someone else’s. You can learn a lot.

It wouldn’t have done any good, of course. Which is why I deleted it.

God, the last 48 hours have been a blur. Clemency for the Oregon rancher/arsonists. NATO. Kavanaugh. Where to start? I don’t think I will. Instead, let’s be stupid on this fine July afternoon. A screen cap from the Axios newsletter a couple days ago, because I don’t have a Wall Street Journal subscription:

There’s a restaurant around the corner that does this with hot chocolate, inserting skewers laden with doughnuts, cookies, gigantic marshmallows and stuff like that, drizzled with chocolate syrup. I see a lot of kids in there who seem to be celebrating birthdays; maybe next they’ll balance an entire chocolate cake on top. But adults are supposed to know better. A $55 bloody mary! Surely we’re in the end times.

Some commenter-community news: Snarkworth has published a book – “Same River Twice,” available in the usual places. I haven’t read it, so I have no opinions about it other than Books Are Good, and Writing Books Is So Hard That They Should All Be Celebrated. (Unless we’re talking about Dick Cheney’s memoirs, or whatever.) Congratulations, Snarkworth. Now go write the next one.

I opened a credit-card statement today, something I don’t normally do. Why bother? I pay almost all my bills online, and no, Discover, I will not “go paperless” until you make it worth my while somehow, and the warm feeling of “saving a tree” isn’t doing it. Make me an offer, and then we’ll talk.

But while I was glancing through my statement, I saw that I have a credit score of 842.

850 is perfect. Anything above 750 is considered excellent. I shouldn’t be soothed by this, and yet? I am. I’m not at put-it-on-my-tombstone level, but I’ve always been a person who likes to bring home a good report card. (If you’d seen my last performance evaluation before I was laid off, you’d have been as astounded as I was.) I guess this is the adult equivalent.

How was your Fourth? Mine was…mostly spent indoors. Another 90-plus day. I took an early bike ride, when the temperatures were still bearable, then retreated to the a/c. These are not the fun days of summer, in my opinion. However, by the weekend it should be substantially better. I have stuff to work on, chores done or in progress and the weekend to look forward to. I’m babysitting Saturday night, in fact, for the 9-month-old grandson of my oldest friend. The family will be in town for a wedding. I’m hoping it’ll go smoothly, but fearing something more like this.

If nothing else, we’ll be at the nicest hotel downtown, and we can visit the bar, me and young Ezra. A martini for me, and the same for my young friend! I recall nine months as the height of babyhood. We’ll be the toast of the lobby.

Some bloggage? Sure.

If you haven’t discovered #secondcivilwarletters already, you should, even if you’re not on Twitter. The WashPost has an explainer, with the greatest hits. This one may be the best:

Okay, this is like my favorite thread ever!!, so I wanted to see what it would look like merged with a Ken Burns-ish voice reading. pic.twitter.com/E2frNNahFH

— Reetae (@Reetae27) August 19, 2017

The party of family values has given that shit up, but some of us knew this a while ago. From the Atlantic:

The migrant crisis signals an official end to one chapter of conservatism and the beginning of a terrifying new one. After all, a party cannot applaud the wailing screams of innocents as a matter of course and hope to ever reclaim the moral high ground. Trump seemed to know that, perhaps, sitting in the Cabinet Room this week, surrounded by a table of white officials. The compassion that he spoke of wasn’t really for the children torn from their parents—it was for his own party and its struggle to contain them.

A nicely written dispatch, again from the WaPo, on how this moment feels. Weird but, also, rooted in daily life somehow:

Over the past month — particularly since ProPublica released the audio of children at the border — America has confronted itself in off-hours spaces, in places reserved for politeness and deference.

Inside restaurants at dinnertime.

Outside private homes on quiet streets.

In office hallways as people are trying to work.

Warning signs have become alarm bells, and some people are trying to be academic about it, by debating social graces in careful tones.

I’m going to go try to calm my dog, who doesn’t enjoy the rockets’ red glare, happening now. If you have to work the rest of the week, you have my sympathies, but I’ll be right there with you.

Woo doggies, this heat. Mid-90s all weekend, and that is no fun, my peoples. From a glance at the weather map, it appears much of the NN.c readership knows what I’m talking about. We went sailing for a while on Saturday, and that helped, but the sun was a weapon for sure:

It was worse in northern Michigan, if you can believe that. Ninety-nine degrees at Boyne Mountain, way up near the tip of the mitten. Kate and her boyfriend went camping in the Upper Peninsula and came home a day early, after they were caught in, quote, the worst thunderstorm I’ve ever seen, unquote. The tent was flooded and they couldn’t get a hotel room, so they slept in the car.

When I wasn’t on the water, I tried to stay indoors. Ventured out to do some weight work at the gym, and even with the a/c on, it was still miserable. I told Alan that’s the last exercise I intend to do that’s not in a pool until this is over. I guess I’ll be spending some time in the pool.

When I was indoors, hiding from the heat, I did some reading. There was a lot of good reading to be done this weekend, so let’s get to it.

Everyone reads the New Yorker online, but I prefer the ink-on-paper version, and just saw this, so maybe it’s old, but what the hell — it’s a good read about the farce that ensued when Milo Yapyapyapalot came to Berkeley, or tried. You might recall that interlude, when he announced he’d be bringing a slate of high-profile conservative speakers to Berkeley for “free speech week,” and then it turned out the only losers who showed up were Mike Cernovich and Pam Geller, both creatures who actually live under the barrel, not at its bottom:

“Milo, what’s the deal tomorrow, man?” Cernovich said. “Are we speaking on campus? Off campus? What the fuck is going on?”

“O.K., so this hasn’t been announced yet, but we’re giving a big press conference on Treasure Island,” Yiannopoulos said. “I’m going to make my entrance by speedboat, with a camera trailing me on a drone, and we’re going to be live-streaming it all on Facebook.”

“I don’t do boats,” Geller said. “I projectile-vomit. But I love it for you, Milo, it’s a fabulous idea. I predict two hundred and fifty thousand viewers watching that live stream, at least.”

“I’ll be wearing this gorgeous Balmain overcoat—I’ll show you—with this huge fur collar,” Yiannopoulos said.

Geller and Cernovich changed the subject to Internet censorship. “They kicked me off Google AdSense,” Geller said. “I was making six figures a year from that. You can’t even share my links on Pinterest now! I’m ‘inappropriate content.’ ”

Yiannopoulos looked bored. “You guys are so selfish,” he said. “We used to be talking about me.” He turned to his stylist, a glassy-eyed, wisp-thin man, and whispered, “Go get the coat.”

They continued hashing out plans. “So we’ll walk in with you, through the streets of downtown Berkeley,” Cernovich said. “If there’s a screaming Antifa crowd, and if I maybe have to street-fight my way in and break a few noses in self-defense, that’s all good optics for me.”

“Maybe we should line up on the Sproul steps,” Yiannopoulos said, “surrounded by Berkeley students wearing ‘Defund Berkeley’ T-shirts.”

“Why don’t we march in with our arms linked together, like the Martin Luther King people, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’?” Cernovich said.

“We’ll do our thing, and then at some point the protests will turn violent,” Yiannopoulos said. “That will become the focus, and then we can just get ourselves out of there.” He reclined in his chair and smiled. “It’s all coming together,” he said.

The stylist came back with the coat, and Yiannopoulos squealed. “Pamela, is this coat to die for or what?” he said.

“Oh, my God, Milo, I’m dying,” Geller said. “It’s sick.”

He put the coat on and turned around, again and again, examining his reflection in the darkened glass of a window.

“It’s fabulous,” Geller said. “It’s sick. I hate you.”

Sorry for the long quote, which breaks my three-paragraph rule, but it’s a long piece. If you had any doubt that the whole free-speech-on-campus “crisis” was manufactured bullshit, this should settle it.

That story is like one long terrible joke. This one, on largely the same subject, isn’t:

The two (SCOTUS) decisions were the latest in a stunning run of victories for a conservative agenda that has increasingly been built on the foundation of free speech. Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals, have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.

We’ve lost our ambassador to Estonia, friends. (He was an Obama appointee, so no biggie.)

Finally, an essay by Virginia Heffernan you should read, on how profoundly lost the nation’s moral compass is at the moment:

There’s plenty of talk in Trump times about an assault on factual truth. But the more vicious attacks are on human perception, common sense and baseline notions of right and wrong.

…The Trump syndicate leverages this ludicrous stuff every day. It’s repeated and amplified by trolls and botnets, Fox News, far-right haranguers like Tomi Lahren and Milo Yiannopoulos, and, of course, the president himself.

It gets loud.

And then the stupid inversions of reason are picked up by influential voices who should know better. Worse yet, they’re given a hearing, as American citizens are forced to sit for monotonous schoolings in the media conceit of “both sides.”

It’s really good. Me, I’m going to make tacos and edit a podcast. A good week ahead to all.

A long day today. A very long day. Kind of a depressing day, given the news. Gileadian, if you catch my drift. I take consolation in one thing that I know: That you never know. You just don’t. Whatever it is you’re afraid of, it won’t be exactly the way you imagine it. Stuff happens. Wheels upon wheels turn, and then there’s our old friend Chaos who could yet throw a wrench into the whole works.

Who knew a 28-year-old socialist could defeat a cemented-in-place incumbent who outspent her almost 20-to-1? Nobody. Supreme Court justices get cancer and drop dead unexpectedly, just like your uncle. Presidents, too. No, I am not wishing for anyone’s death. I’m just saying, you don’t know.

The future could be better than you fear. It could be worse. So waste no time fretting over it. Do the work you need to do, do it well, and wait. All will be revealed.

(I think this is a line in the Tao Te Ching, in fact. I just looked it up. Close, but not quite. Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful sentiment, so here you are:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you: This is no time to be zen. I get it. All I’m saying is, you can drive yourself crazy with this stuff, and you should save your strength.

Meanwhile, this is who will likely be Hope Hicks’ replacement.

What a day! Have we hit bottom yet?

I have a friend that I see every few weeks or so. About five years older than I am, so…Medicare-eligible, but not old-old. Whenever I mourn the current state of affairs, he tells me not to get so fretful, that things were worse in the ’60s. He’s right. We forget, but he’s right.

Unrest in American cities — race riots (Detroit, Newark, D.C., Los Angeles, et al.) and police riots (Chicago). Families torn apart by Vietnam, one way or another, either the ones who sent their sons who never came back, or the ones where the sons refused to go, and lit out for Canada or refused induction outright. Families torn apart by even worse things, like hair or hemlines or birth-control pills. It was far worse than today, he always says.

I’m usually reassured by that. But I usually want to know how much further we’re going to slide before we come to our senses, either on our own or because some horrible, 9/11-type event slaps us silly. Today, it’s plain we have a ways to go.

I think it was Neil Steinberg who, in the days between the election and inauguration, compared that period to the clack-clack-clack feeling of the roller coaster climbing the first big hill, and we know the plunge is coming, but we don’t know what it’s going to be like, so we just have to hold on and ride it out. Today the Sun-Times published his column, with this subtle headline: Donald Trump is a racist leading our country toward disaster, so you get the idea how he thinks the ride is going.

Meanwhile, Politico is writing about the trials of being a young, single member of the administration, the Washington Post leads us into a right-wing group’s safe space for young Trump-supporting women, and Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant. Dim glimmer of amusement in Jennifer Rubin’s blog about that last incident:

Anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller, who pushed as hard as anyone for snatching kids from their parents, was dining in a different Mexican restaurant last Sunday when, according to the New York Post, a protester called out, “Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?”

Remember a couple years ago, when I wrote about the Float Down, this sort of fun, renegade floatie trip on the St. Clair River up near Port Huron? The wind picked up out of the west and blew all these drunk Americans in their inner tubes across to the Canadian side, and the Canadians rounded everyone up, warmed them up, and drove them back across the bridge to the American side? A French jogger went for a run along a Canadian beach in British Columbia and wound up on the U.S. side. She was arrested. Her mother hustled down to the immigration office with her passport, hoping to clear everything up.

She was held for two weeks. TWO WEEKS.

I’m so, so tired of this. I’m tired of current events. I want to pick up a fat novel set in someplace like Victorian England and just tune all this crap out until, oh, November, without feeling like I’m not doing my part.

I want to live in a world where the French lady would be told to turn around and head the few steps back into Canada and have a nice day. I remember that world.

Well, another weekend gone. It was a good one. The Claressa Shields fight was great, and I wrote a column about it for Deadline Detroit. I’ll add a link when it goes up.

Otherwise, let’s get to the week ahead.

Guys, I feel this as strongly as my own heartbeat: The coat is a deflection. Don’t be fooled. She’s wearing the coat with the right hand, but you should pay attention to the left.

Don’t get upset about the coat. These are not normal people. Don’t rail about how they don’t get it, or don’t understand optics, or whatever. That’s all they understand. They are all about surfaces. But something larger is going on. Don’t forget that.

I mean, it’s a $39 coat. That woman doesn’t carry $39 handkerchiefs.

So. A long, busy day, but the thing about busy days is, you put on the harness on Monday and the next thing you know, it’s Thursday and the week is almost over. So there’s that.

Just one bit of bloggage to take you into the weekend: The meltdown of Qanon, and if you don’t know what Qanon is yet, you should, because it’s the craziest crazy shit that’s ever been crazed. If you’re on Twitter, follow Will Sommer and JJ McNab, both of whom keep up with the far-right fringe, and are mostly very entertaining, to boot.

Me, I gotta sleep and rest up for a big night tomorrow — the Claressa Shields fight, topping an all-female night of boxing in downtown Detroit. Can’t. WAIT.

I suppose it’s a measure of my increasing disengagement with media inside baseball that I noticed this when it was happening, but didn’t register it as an issue I should care about, but I’m glad Farai Chideya (a name you public-radio people should know) said something:

I was at Harvard for two conferences last week: one on gender bias in the technology industry, the other on fighting disinformation in news. While I was at the tech conference, tweeting out notes on presenters’ data-driven studies of gender in the industry, I also composed a Twitter thread on the story the death of designer Kate Spade and the coverage of it. “The class-based assumptions in the writing are staggering,” I wrote. “From A1 lede: ‘Buying a Kate Spade bag was a coming-of-age ritual for a generation of Americans.’” What about those of us, like me, who grew up wearing a mix of clothes from Sears and JCPenney, secondhand garb, and outfits my mother sewed; and then, in college and after, continued to shop at vintage and discount stores?

Yep. That was me, too. We were a long way from poor, but my parents were Depression children, and the idea of buying overpriced accessories as a “coming-of-age ritual” for their children is laughable. College was enough of an uphill climb; a plain-but-fancy bag in a shade usually reserved for the phrase “pop of color” would have prompted my mother to raise one eyebrow and give me her you-are-kidding-right look. She was a stylish woman, but her style came from inside, not labels. I remember showing her a pair of $90 Frye boots in Glamour magazine, and her reaction was, “Layaway.” And I did — I laid them away and paid $10 every so often until they were mine.

So while I mourned Kate Spade in a general that’s-very-sad sense, I didn’t wail and gnash my teeth. Bottom line, Coach is what I consider a luxury handbag, but only the leather ones, not that C-branded crap you get at the factory outlets. And I have plenty, and don’t need any more.

This is a weekend to look forward to: J.C. and Sammy are headed our way, en route to opening their cottage in the U.P. They’re not staying over, but maybe if we pour enough likker down their throats, they’ll be forced to. It’s a good time of year to have your friends swing by, as I could rustle up a wonderful dinner from a speed-shop at the Eastern Market on Saturday. Morels are plentiful, as well as strawberries and leafy greens and all the rest of it. We split a New York strip tonight with some sautéed morels, grilled romaine and a pasta thing I sorta threw together. It’s a wonderful time of year in Michigan.

Meanwhile, do we have any bloggage? Yes.

The Divine Dahlia, on the shameful separation of families at our southern border:

Most of the women I know are as heartsick about the obscene actions taking place at the borders as I am. I think a year ago we would have been out on the streets, were the government stealing the children of asylum-seekers and refugees and sending them halfway across the country or stacking them up like lumber in detention facilities. But today, I worry, we are horrified but numb. We want to be told what to do.

I think about this numbness constantly, because I worry about normalization all day, every day. Numbness is something thrust upon us, a physical or emotional reaction to external shocks, a natural bodily response. It is also maybe a buffer we put up against the devastation of being part of a group that is constantly told it is worthless and undeserving of meaningful attention.

That we are finding ourselves unable to process or act or organize because the large-scale daily horrors are escalating and the news is overpowering is perfectly understandable. But we need to understand that and acknowledge it and then refuse it any purchase. Because to be overwhelmed and to do nothing are a choice.

God, yes. Once you live through a national crisis, what blows your mind is this: The dailiness of life never stops. You still have to put food on the table, drive kids to school. This is “normalization” of a sort, but you never stop checking yourself. What do we do? You tell me.

Hank has some thoughts on how you might spend your summer TV time. Me, I’m working my way through “The Americans,” even though I saw some spoilers about the series end, and don’t care. I love the long scenes in Russian, because — wonder of wonders — I’m understanding about 10 percent of it.

And with that, I welcome the dawn of the weekend, and hope you do, too.

Yeesh, it is but Tuesday and I’m already hitting the wall. Part of this is, I have taken another half-time job. Two halves = one whole income, more or less, and about 50 percent less energy for me.

But once again, I’m going downtown on the bus with my bike on the front rack, and that puts a merry song in my heart. I love working at home, with Wendy as my constant companion, but there’s a lot to be said about coming into a downtown office building, and not one of those hipster co-working places with the free coffee and pop-up lunch opportunities, but an old-school lobby canteen with regular old coffee and snacks.

My boss has been bringing me a small bottle of Perrier every morning, which he picks up there. The proprietor gives him half price on the bottle, because he’s a regular. This is my new goal: $1 Perrier because I’m a regular.

I’ll post my stories when I start producing more of them. Never fear.

I think now is the time to discuss the North Korea agreement, right? As I see it, we got real concessions out of the Iranians, but that was a bad deal. From the Norks, a vague promise, but this is Nobel material. I give up.

Just a little bloggage:

Did you know that, in addition to being Prime Minister McDreamy, Justin Trudeau is also a boxer? You didn’t? Now you do.

Also, what do we think of the DeNiro thing at the Tonys? My feeling is Meh, but I got an outraged email from a Bernie supporter quoting, of all things, a Federalist piece claiming Bob gave the right a great gift by potty-mouthing the president in New York City.

Sorry for the Tuesday/Wednesday blahs, but I’m sleep-deprived. Damn birds are waking me up at 4:30 a.m., but I’ll take the longer days.

Greatest invention of summer: The Bluetooth speaker. With no trouble at all, you can have high-fidelity outdoor sound. No wiring required — just pair it with your phone, boot up Spotify and enjoy.

Worst invention of summer: The Bluetooth speaker. Because your neighbors, the ones who think Christian rock is the cat’s ass, all have them, too. Also, they are deaf, or at least have no concept whatsoever about what constitutes a polite volume level in a densely platted neighborhood.

I have two neighbors with these things. One I like, the other I can’t stand, even though he’s throttled way back on the behaviors that made me despise him, i.e., insane fireworks displays and shooting squirrels with a pellet gun. Now that he’s got a bomb-ass backyard speaker, he’s back on my shit list. His concert starts in late afternoon, generally with hip-hop before abruptly switching to what Kate calls butt rock, i.e. undistinguished radio filler that sounds like the lead singer is bearing down on a toilet somewhere.

The nice neighbor also has fairly terrible taste, but his problem is repetition — when he likes something, he puts it on repeat. Last summer it was Mumford & Sons, i.e., slow banjo/fast banjo/slow banjo. This year it’s something I don’t recognize, but it, too, is first cousin to butt rock, and like I said, the same few songs over and over and over. And over.

Some years ago, when we had our lake cottage, a neighbor’s speakers cranking AC/DC cycled through the same album three times before I went over to ask him to either turn it down or put on another record. The front door was standing open and our neighbor was snoring on the couch. I walked in and turned off the stereo. He never stirred.

You might ask why I don’t call the police. First, because I like the one neighbor, and I don’t think there’s a code in the Uniform Crime Reports database for lame taste in music, and as for the other one, well. I’m making it a practice not to call the police for annoyance issues. I just don’t trust police anymore, and besides, it’s a minor issue, all things considered.

Alan likes to sit on the patio in the dark on warm nights, sipping a drink and listening to KEXP out of Seattle on our own Bluetooth speaker. Turned very low. For what that’s worth.

I guess I should be glad none of the neighbors have teenagers. This was our outdoor-music alternative, as I grew up in a time before the boom box.

Anyway, how was y’all’s weekend? Mine was OK. Got a lot of stuff done, but I’m recovering from one of those bike rides where you feel great, oh let’s go fast and far, and then you get to the turnaround point and realize you are running on fumes and now have to go all the way back. If I hadn’t looked like death warmed over I’d have stopped for a hot dog somewhere, but my hair was dirty and sweaty, my legs were hairy and even a coney-island crowd would have looked askance. So I powered home, ate some leftover spaghetti, showered and went to bed with a book. All told, not a bad Sunday.

On the way, I thought about the news coming out of the G-7 conference in Quebec City, and saw a tweet somewhere that said something like, when are we going to face the reality that the President of the United States is an agent of the Russian state? Can’t disagree.

At least we had the Trooping the Colour ceremony to watch. I know it’s part of the queen’s birthday celebration, even though her real birthday is in April. I confess I don’t know exactly what it means, except that it has something to do with dressing up real fancy and riding horses in even fancier uniforms. The Royal Family’s Twitter had a bunch of pictures, but if you want to know who’s who in those big furry hats, I hope you can recognize family members from their noses, because that’s all you can see.

And speaking of horses, I watched the Belmont with my heart in my throat, once Justify jumped out to set the pace. Noooo, don’t do such a crazy thing, I thought. This is a 1.5-mile race, and its history is full of early leaders that faded to sixth place in the stretch, but Justify was the real deal, leading wire-to-wire. He was beautiful and clean for his winner’s circle appearance, whereas all the horses that had been behind him had dirt all over their chests, heads and legs. Justify’s dirt. He’s a true champion.

I’ve been enjoying David Letterman’s Netflix series, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” at least until the Howard Stern episode, which debuted this month. Easily the weakest of the bunch, but I’ve never been a Howard Stern fan. He just isn’t interesting at all.

And now we head into the weekend, having alienated our closest and most loyal allies. Maybe we’ll be in a shooting war with Canada soon. Signs and wonders.