The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has, shall we say, fallen in esteem in recent years, but that’s what happens when your feel-good, rah-rah, only-happy-news nonprofit has $40 million embezzled from it by its own CFO. Nevertheless, the conservancy was able to complete the last part, for now. That’s the Ralph C. Wilson Jr, Centennial Park, at the west end of the Riverwalk, just east of the Ambassador Bridge.

This weekend was the park’s grand opening, and the weather was cool but sunny. Seemed a good day to combine a little exercise with a little exploring. We parked near Belle Isle and rode the bikes four miles down to the new spot.

Bottom line: It’s a very nice park, particularly the children’s play area, which has some wonderful slides and climbing structures. There’s a bear.

And a beaver.

Pretty sure this is an otter.

All species native to Michigan, so points for that. The footing underneath the structures kids would be likely to fall near or from was soft and springy, and I hope it can survive a few winters. Wilson was a wealthy man, of course, and owned the Buffalo Bills, so the foundation his estate formed is spending his money on projects with a physical-fitness and outdoor recreation component. However, there are/were other zillionaires in town, including the Davidson family, who owned the Pistons. Their contribution is an open-air — but protected — pair of basketball courts.

There was also a food-truck row, and one of them was run by a barbecue dude with an array of trophies on display. What do you put on top of a barbecue trophy? There’s the obvious:

And in place of a golden athlete, this:

The angle’s not great on that one. It’s a rack of ribs.

I tried to avoid the news this weekend. It helped. But now we go on to the next one, which feels like climbing back into a demolition derby car. Let’s see what will be revealed.

Hi there. Sorry the comments on the previous post were closed. I posted that on my re-downloaded WordPess mobile app, thinking it might make posting on the fly easier. Didn’t realize it defaulted to closed comments; I just thought you guys were not into it yesterday. I need to find that setting and fix it.

How’d your No Kings rally go? Detroit’s went swimmingly, but as this is the third one, I’m no longer surprised by that. The first one, in…April? Yes, April 5. That one was a revelation, seeing thousands of people coming out to say, essentially, We Can’t Believe This Shit, And We Object. That was a moving march up and down Woodward, no speakers, just fellowship. The second, in June, was held at Clark Park, and was stationary; we came, held up signs, but didn’t listen to the speakers. (I kept hoping they’d put on a rousing playlist, but no.) This one, at Roosevelt Park under the newly renovated Michigan Central Station, was also a speaker-forward event. We walked around, took some pictures of the best signs, stayed a decent interval and left to enjoy a couple beers in the warm October sunshine.

The important thing is to show up. Be one of the millions who are not OK with what’s going on. There won’t be a quiz on the speakers’ remarks.

One guy was yelling about Palestine, with a sign that accused Biden, Harris and Trump of complicity in genocide. I pegged him as yet another Arab-American Jill Stein voter. It was a nice day, so I didn’t want to ask how the new regime was working out for his countrymen and women in Gaza. (As of Sunday? Not well.)

But it was the Grosse Pointe demonstration that was truly heartening. Officially it was for the Pointes, Harper Woods and the east side of Detroit, but it was really robust — a couple blocks of people covering the sidewalks at a busy corner, shaking signs. I didn’t stop because I was en route to Detroit, but honked the whole length of the demonstration. It was a long honk.

So we head into the cool months — I have to assume this will be the last one until spring — knowing we’re not alone, that millions are as horrified and distraught and angry as we are.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen this, you should see this:

This is what you-know-who posted early Sunday morning, after the No Kings protests had largely wrapped. I know none of these know-nothings care what the rest of the world thinks about us, but I do, and so should you. This is not just literally disgusting, it’s horrifying in what it says about the man who posted it. I wear my Is He Dead Yet? T-shirt with pride, but also dread.

This, by the way, is what the vice president posted yesterday:

[image or embed]

— JD Vance (@jd-vance-1.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 3:32 PM

I guess he really is the worst stereotype of the American hillbilly: Mean, parochial, clannish, violent.

But let’s not dwell on the bad news as the week starts, OK? Seven million of us showed up yesterday. That’s something. Have a good one. Here’s a cute dog to cleanse your palate:

Still thinking about the other side. See you at the demonstration, brothers and sisters.

It’s color season.

Hi, everyone. In the interest of posting three blogs a week, here’s a shortie. I wanted to share the wonderful photos Dorothy sent of the NN.c meetup in Arizona between her, Scout and Mike, aka Mr. Dorothy:

It looks like a wonderful time was had by all. Today, spider balls were on special at the market. I believe you civilians would call them osage oranges.

Enjoy your weekend, whatever it entails.

Coxcomb bouquets are another sign that fall is here.

Fresh thread for those who want to discuss the firehose of news this week.

I’m gathering from the comments in the previous thread, social media and regular old media that Saturday’s #NoKings events were smashing successes. I’m the worst at estimating crowd sizes, but there were several thousand at the Detroit rally, and hundreds if not thousands more in the various suburban events. The signs were excellent, and every single one correctly spelled. Here’s my favorite of the Detroit crowd:

Mine was ridiculous, but I stood in one place for the most part, and people stopped, read it all, looked up at me and said, “I’m so glad someone is pointing this out,” so there:

Most heartening: The range of people in attendance. There were old people sitting on their walkers, young children running around waving little flags. (I saw a video on Bluesky of a bunch of old people leaving their assisted-living home for a march, on electric scooters and walkers. It was…moving.) All the colors humanity comes in, as well as all the colors tattoo ink comes in. Some trans folk. Dogs wearing signs. People passing out water and snacks. And no violence, except for a brief scuffle when some bikers wearing Detroit Highwaymen colors tried to start some shit. It ended quickly, and good for them, because they looked, for the most part, overweight and slow, and the young men who opposed them, lean and strong. It was over in a few seconds, the crowd chanted “Nazis go home,” and they did.

The best estimates I’ve heard for total numbers nationwide is in the millions, and I believe it. The No Kings organization asks for RSVPs (which I never offer, because who needs more email) and the number is based on that. It’s good to know I — we — are not the only angry ones out here.

In contrast, Tubby’s birthday party in D.C. sounds like it was ridiculous. I didn’t watch, but I saw a few clips. It looked pretty…what’s the word? Wan. Give the Russians and North Koreans this: They know how to do this. We don’t, and it showed. May we never follow their example. The best recap of it is here, and I’m sorry threadreaderapp is so ad-clogged, but as Xitter circles the drain, I guess its spinoffs must, too. (It scrolls better on desktop/laptop than on a phone.) But it’s good, the writer is an event planner and knows his stuff:

The whole parade was this: green vehicle after green vehicle. Not many bands. Not much variety. Single file. Lots of space between each thing. Would have been better if it was shorter, with the gear more densely packed. Which maybe isn’t safe? But live a little, who cares, let’s go three wide with the tanks like it’s Talladega.

Now that might have been crazy, but it would have been better TV. Watching those single tanks roll by, I was imagining the smell, the greasy diesel exhaust wafting over the crowd. Yuck.

Afterward, we attended a little birthday party for a friend who’s doing the urban-farm thing in a depopulated Detroit neighborhood. Alan remarked that we could have been sitting in a state forest campground, and he was correct.

In other words, it was a cheerful, fun Saturday. God knows we all needed it, after last week. Let’s hope the one we’re bearing down on is better.

The fun stuff first? OK. So I was at the market Saturday morning, when my attention was caught by this:

It’s a dancing Cleveland postcard! As I drew near, the tout working with the postcard had it spin around, where there was a QR code, which I scanned, which took me to a web page, which suggested I follow Destination Cleveland on Instagram. And just like that, I am entered for a chance to win a magical weekend in Cleveland. (Second prize? TWO weekends in Cleveland, har har.) The package includes baseball tickets, dinner at a brewery, admission to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, etc. Honestly? I hope I win. I always liked Cleveland, which is in many ways Detroit Junior, a post-industrial city that’s an ethnic mix of blue-collar muscle and great music. But what I want to point out is that the city formerly known as the Mistake on the Lake is rebranding itself as “The Land,” which is hilarious. My sports-watching friends say this campaign is visible in all the Guardians and Cavaliers broadcasts. I was unaware until Saturday. Now I am not.

Odds of winning? Slim. The dancing postcards were also downtown yesterday.

OK, now for the less-fun stuff. Obviously, the National Guard stuff in California is a terrible and terrifying escalation, and if there are any MAGA chuds reading this, isn’t it interesting how quickly the stated aim of deporting criminals has moved to home-improvement stores where day laborers congregate, hoping for work? Do you ever wonder, if these crews are such a threat to national security, why the arrests never seem to include the owners of the landscaping and construction companies who do this hiring?

Anyway, I fear it’s going to get very ugly. Who’s going to a protest on Saturday? I’ll be at the one in Detroit, which is, coincidentally, at Clark Park, in the heart of Mexicantown. We may be under martial law by then, of course.

A little bloggage:

Here’s a curtain-raiser in the WSJ about the new dawn at the Kennedy Center, as it prepares to launch under Dear Leader. There’s now a new position there, director of faith-based programming, and they’re off to a gangbusters start:

[New director Richard] Grenell requested a June 1 public screening of “The King of Kings,” an animated feature film about the story of Jesus, as told by the character of Charles Dickens. Grenell ordered that the free event take place in the center’s biggest venue, a 2,500-seat concert hall, at a projected cost of $29,000 for staffing, gratis popcorn and other expenses.

The event featured a prayer wall where visitors could post their written prayers for the nation, and was sponsored by the Museum of the Bible and Moxie Pest Control, whose founder made an unsuccessful run at a Republican U.S. Senate seat in Utah last year.

When advance sign-ups for tickets indicated a full house, Kennedy Center leaders added a second screening, increasing the total cost of the event.

Employees, who said there is typical attrition for free events, said the actual turnout left the hall 55% full for the first screening and 58% full for the second.

Brought to you by Moxie Pest Control! Comedy gold.

Meanwhile, I can recommend a podcast that Eric Zorn’s Substack alerted me to, although it’s a year old. (Like Cleveland’s rebranding, I totally missed it.) “Chameleon: The Michigan Plot” covers the conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And while everyone here knows my biases in this case, and while I recognize and understand the ways a storyteller can subtly tilt a tale in sympathy of one side or another, I must come away from this with a grudging admission: This was likely entrapment, or at least a very obvious push in that direction by the multiple FBI informants who were trying a little too hard to get a bunch of extremely stoned halfwits off their butts and into a plan. Quarter-wits, I should say — rarely has the tragedy of left-behind, uneducated, unmotivated Michigan manhood been so vividly portrayed as in the hours of covert recordings (most of which were never played in court) unspooled here. I found myself almost physically recoiling from listening to these guys talk about pretty much anything. They had atrocious grammar and little vocabulary beyond f-bombs. No wonder one of them lived in the basement of a vacuum repair shop.

OK, then. It’s Sunday, and I have a feeling the week ahead will be…not good. Maybe the TACO principle will apply; it would save a lot of bloodshed. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Because misinformation is bad no matter who is spreading it, I note there’s a meme (as in a viral idea, not a picture with words on it) going around, that the reason Trump is going hard after Harvard is because his son Barron was somehow an unsuccessful applicant.

I’ve seen zero evidence this is true, and I doubt very much it is true. Everything I know about the family suggests Harvard is the last place Barron would apply. I’m sure his clingy mommy was thrilled he chose NYU, which is not a safety school for many people. Anyway, even if he had applied and been turned down, no one would know about it. I think the Harvard admissions office doesn’t comment on who gets in and who doesn’t, and I’d think even leaking that information would be a firing offense.

Facts matter.

Well, here we are, Wednesday. A short week, and already full of horrors. So let’s go bloggage-heavy today.

First, a decent Tom Friedman column about Israel, with a gift link:

I just spent a week in Israel and, while it may not look as if much has changed — the grinding Gaza war continues to grind — I felt something new there for the first time since Oct. 7, 2023. It is premature to call it a broad-based antiwar movement, which can happen only when all the Israeli hostages are returned. But I did see signals flashing that more Israelis, from the left to the center and to even parts of the right, are concluding that continuing this war is a disaster for Israel: morally, diplomatically or strategically.

You can say what you will about the Mustache of Justice, which I think was one of the names lefties bestowed upon Friedman during his world-is-flat era of interviewing Middle East cab drivers, but in general, I think he knows his shit about Israel, and if you’ve had your eyes averted in horror for a while, it’s a good catch-up.

Second, a truly fascinating story out of Hamtramck, the Detroit suburb. (I guess you’d call it that, although it’s completely surrounded by the city and is nowhere near an outer border.) Close observers of the news might remember that the mayor was nominated by Trump to be ambassador to Kuwait, as payment for being MAGA and likely tipping his city’s immigrant population in that direction. Hamtramck has gone from a Polish enclave to an immigrant melting pot-slash-hipster enclave to a culturally conservative, mostly Muslim melting pot, most of Yemeni and Bangladeshi descent. That aspect of the community is the subject of a long reporting project currently running in the Freep. Not to be a homer, but I found this story from The Detroit News far more interesting, and illustrative of the growing divide there, than a thousands-of-words chin-scratcher. It’s a report on last night’s city council meeting, in which the all-Muslim body voted to suspend the non-Muslim city manager, who himself had suspended the Muslim police chief, and hoo-boy these are some details:

During Tuesday’s regularly scheduled council meeting, (City Manager Max) Garbarino defended his decision to put the popular police chief — the city’s first of Yemeni descent — on suspension.

“When a police officer in any state, any county, any city across the whole nation is suspected of this, they are put on administrative leave. This is how this works,” he said.

Garbarino told The Detroit News he put the chief on paid suspension after receiving information from a Hamtramck police officer that Altaheri [the police chief] worked with an associate of President Donald Trump to bribe the president between $1 million to $5 million to pardon a federal prisoner who was convicted of financial crimes, among other allegations.

Oh really? The mayor and ambassador designate hasn’t taken the job yet, and presided over the meeting last night, huh. Also, my former editor watched the whole thing on YouTube and said the three-hour meeting was nuts, including several statements by residents in Arabic that were not translated.

Can I see the hands of those who believe Trump is incapable of bartering cash for pardons? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

An earlier Freep story on this mess, plus others, if you want a deeper dive.

As I said earlier, the week is already full of horrors. Croaky announced the government will no longer recommend Covid boosters for children, pregnant women or anyone other than we Elders. While I’m glad I can still get one, Kate, who works all winter in crowded clubs and bars, will have to either get a doctor’s note or pay out of pocket. This motherfucker. He’s another one I’ll ululate over when he checks out.

OK, time to get to work.

It really doesn’t feel like Memorial Day until someone reproves you for expressing happiness that you have a day off. There are MAGA scolds everywhere, especially since they jumped down Kamala’s neck for daring to tweet “enjoy the long weekend.” MAGA scolds spend the day in prayer and reflection, perhaps leaving church long enough to nibble on a hot dog and wave a little flag.

We’re having barbecued ribs here at the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere home base. We are happy it’s a nice day. We are concerned these may be some of the last nice days the U.S. gets, as we have a lunatic president and a crew of enablers bound and determined to destroy it. Here’s his Memorial Day message:

Once again, I will say it: I can’t wait until this motherfucker is dead. I will celebrate. I will dance. I will open my windows and ululate.

This being MemDay weekend, it’s also Movement weekend, the big techno dancefest that seems to grow every year. For a while I collected drug stories around the festival, as stimulants and hallucinogens are pretty deeply embedded in the culture. (Not all techno fans, etc. etc. But when Kraftwerk plays an impromptu set at 4 a.m., a real thing that happened at an after hours a while back, that audience wasn’t staying alert on black coffee.) My fave was the tale, perhaps true perhaps not, of the dealer who set up shop outside one of the more popular nightspots in an RV, and served his wares out a side door, like a food truck. Detroit, and illegality, is a rich garden of economic innovation. However, my friends who do the festival regularly are now deep into their 30s, weed is fully legal, and I’m reliably informed that as the weekend wanes, you’re more likely to find restorative yoga brunches than a Xanax party.

We went to a Thursday-night jazz-cozying-up-to-techno set last week, and it was very nice. The trumpeter had an echo pedal on his mic, not something you see every day.

As I am an Elder, my main — my only — mind-alterer is a nice cocktail. Alan just served me one, in fact. Isn’t that a pretty mojito?

I appreciate the choice of the green straw. He’s always had an eye.

If I were a harder worker, I’d come up with a few paragraphs about the sacrifices of war. But today, I’m not. Enjoy the long weekend.