Today — Sunday — feels like it’s going to be a good one. I started it with a bowl of whole-grain, steel-cut oatmeal, just to, y’know, piss off Croaky.

Also, I’m going to swim in 90 minutes and need the carbs.

One of my Facebook group check-ins is with Belle Isle Photography, a group for guess-what. It’s overfull of the bald eagles that have been nesting there for a while, but every so often you get a banger like this, by Terry McNamara:

Notice where the predators started the feast: In the back, where the flava lives.

In keeping with Det. Dale Cooper’s advice in “Twin Peaks,” one way I’m trying to cope with winter this year is giving myself a little treat once in a while, and on Saturday we took a drive up to the Anchor Bay region of the Lake St. Clair flats, and crossed the water on the car ferry to Harsen’s Island, a popular spot for summer cottages less than an hour’s drive away. Even allowing for it being midwinter here, I wasn’t impressed. As I’ve said before, Lake St. Clair makes more sense as a river delta than a lake, and the area around it is naturally quite swampy. (One street in Grosse Pointe is called Grand Marais, i.e. large swamp.) So the areas that don’t have cottages on them are mainly taken over by phragmites, a.k.a. the common reed. Acres and acres of them, so driving around and through the island mainly looks like this:

Every spring, a column of smoke visible for miles rises in the northeast, as the annual Burning of the Phragmites takes place on Harsen’s and adjacent Walpole Island.

Then we jaunted up to Marine City, and had a nice fishy lunch at a seafood place on the river. Perch for me, walleye for Alan. Then it started to snow, so home we headed.

I know, I know — I should have been at a demonstration opposing ICE, but I just couldn’t. Tubby is coming to town on Tuesday, to address the Economic Club, and I’ll go to that one. I should make a sign: EVERYBODY IS LAUGHING AT YOU. Maybe. There’s time.

I can’t even offer any bloggage today, because I feel like I’ve reached my limit of bad news for a while, and I have to turn away from the despair, if only for a while. I’m cleaning closets today. I last went through the one I’m neck-deep in now maybe…four years ago. And I’m finding all the stuff I couldn’t part with then, and am equally loathe to part with now. The English Struwwelpeter? Can’t let that go, even if it is preserved in Project Gutenberg. The subtitle is “merry stories and funny pictures,” and everything you need to know about Germans is contained in the fact they consider a virtual horror movie of terrible things happening to children merry and funny. Here’s a short one, to give you an idea:

One day Mamma said “Conrad dear,
I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don’t suck your thumb while I’m away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys who suck their thumbs;
And ere they dream what he’s about,
He takes his great sharp scissors out,
And cuts their thumbs clean off—and then,
You know, they never grow again.”

Mamma had scarcely turned her back,
The thumb was in, Alack! Alack!

The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor’s come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.

Mamma comes home: there Conrad stands,
And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;
“Ah!” said Mamma, “I knew he’d come
To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb.”

Imagine what they did for masturbators.

There’s also a volume of my late great-aunt’s teaching material, poems she would read to her students. The ink is so faded it’s barely readable, but it’s part of our family’s history and I will lug it through the next few years.

Back to it. Happy week ahead, all.

I was thinking earlier today about that glorious run we had in the late ’80s, when one money-grubbing televangelist after another was going down in flames. Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart were the biggies, but they were big enough to deflate the entire grift, and that was enough. Jeff Borden and I toured Heritage USA when he was living in North Carolina, and I believe it was after Bakker’s fall, when Jerry Falwell was running it. It was…sad, but served to cement so many of my feelings about both evangelical culture and the American South, which is not my kinda place, except for visits here and there.

There was another great time, during the Clinton impeachment, when Larry Flynt, pornographer and patriot, was taking down the GOP morals squad. Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, all those hypocrites. They didn’t all stay down, but it was great to see them take fire.

We need another run like that. I feel like it must be coming, but seeing yet another of the good guys, Tatiana Schlossberg, go out early? It feels terrible. Why her and not her terrible uncle? He’s the idiot who guzzles raw milk, and she didn’t even get to see her daughter turn two.

Mixed bag at midweek, so let’s go.

Those of you who live in Michigan know we had something called a “bomb cyclone” Sunday and Monday. The U.P. had a full-on blizzard, but downstate it was a little bit of snow, a 40-degree temperature drop from one day to the next and fierce winds that made that 22-degree final temperature feel like knives on the skin. I considered talking Alan into driving south to observe the seiche effect on Lake Erie, but that wind? :::shudder:::

A seiche (French for “wave”) is what happens when a fast-moving weather system pushes lake water so hard that it effectively drains part of the basin. Western Lake Erie was high and dry, while Buffalo saw their water rise by several feet. There was one earlier this year, and the pictures were amazing, but this one was better. Here’s one from a local meteorologist’s Facebook page, credited to Austin Lada. Anyone lose a snowmobile through the ice a few years back?

Those are zebra mussels covering it, by the way. Invasive species, but the war was lost long ago.

The next time this happens, we’re going, dammit.

Some excellent journalism to point you to, also. First, the Chicago Tribune’s long read about “Operation Midway Blitz,” better known by its popular name, ICE Assholes Invade Chicago Because It’s a Blue City. It’s very well-written, with excellent photos, too. I believe that’s a gift link; at least, I hope so.

I still have a few gift links to share before the month ends, so here’s a social-media talker: Robert Draper’s NYT profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m not fooled by her apparent conversion, but there’s some spilled tea here:

For Greene, the decades that (Jeffrey) Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

Hmm. OK.

Finally, you’ve heard the expression “I did not have (astounding news event) on my bingo card,” I’m sure. Well, with the help of bingo-card generators, you too can have one. Here’s mine, from bingobaker.com:

Let’s see how I do. The next time we speak, it’ll be 2026. Remember: All we have is ourselves. Make it count.

An unlucky pig and parts of many more, as the pork-eating holiday approaches.

I’ll say this for Detroit: People here know how to throw a good party.

Saturday, I went out to a double event at the Schvitz: First, a screening of “The Concert for Bangladesh” movie, followed by a one-hour set of all George Harrison music, by local musicians. And it was kind of a blast, being able to move around the whole building, which included a nice fire on the outdoor patio, have something to eat and even take the steam. (I didn’t.)

I walked in during the film’s extended Ravi Shankar performance, and told Paddy, “George Harrison’s great genius was in convincing people to listen to this for longer than two minutes.” I guess everyone needs an opener, but man — a little bit of sitar goes a long way for me.

Things to notice about the concert film: There was a period in the early ’70s when really big bands were, well, really big. Recall Joe Cocker touring with Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which was about two dozen people coming on and off the stage, singing, playing, partying. Harrison’s band for that night, billed “George Harrison & Friends,” was equally populated, although certain players were essential — Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, a few others.

When the movie wrapped and the show started, they followed the same model, within the limits of the Schvitz stage. Four guitars, two drummers, four background vocalists, a keyboard…there may have been more. But they did a great job. It was nostalgic, but not, Just a nice reminder of one of the century’s great artists.

Plus that fire on the patio.

As for the rest of the weekend, I resolved to get work done, and I did. I’m ready for the holiday (kinda), and maybe even the holiday(s).

How about you guys?

Not much bloggage today, but I found this story about finding one’s second chapter, work-wise, to be amazingly sweet. Gift link.

Sometimes I feel bad about calling the First Lady a sex worker. (Or an old whore, depending on my mood.) First, because sex work is work, as we feminists say. Second, because I believe she’s retired from sex work, and maybe that should be acknowledged. And finally, because the current non-occupant of the now-demolished East Wing isn’t much of a First Lady this term, why quibble about what she did to get the job?

First, maybe we might address the question: Was she a sex worker at one time? (And I know we’ve talked about this before. I’m not obsessed. OK, maybe a little.) Not in the stand-on-a-corner-in-skimpy-clothing sense, no. But everything we know about her history as an immigrant, about what she did when she came to New York, the people she associated with, etc. suggests a form of…polite sex work, you might say. She was a “model,” a job description applied to many pretty girls whose photo will never appear in a magazine or catalog, or walk a runway. But she would make herself available for events requiring a certain number of hot women in attendance — parties, openings, nightclubs, etc. — and would be happy to catch the eye of the rich men in attendance. I suspect that is exactly why she came to the U.S., in fact: To find a wealthy man who might marry her and allow her to not only never see the rough side of Slovenia again, but to maybe get her parents out, too.

And that’s exactly what happened. Is that sex work? Probably millions of women consider potential life partners with eyes that cold. I think FLOTUS herself answered that best of all, when asked if she’d be married to her husband if he wasn’t rich: “Would he be married to me if I weren’t beautiful?” A transactional woman.

Her empty, loveless marriage suggests they both got what they wanted from it. After all, this is a woman who wouldn’t move into the White House until her prenup was recast to her satisfaction. At this point, she doesn’t need to have sex with anyone. She has a child and a wedding ring; she will never go quietly, unless it’s with suitcases stuffed with cash.

But I get salty when I hear the most repulsive of the MAGA crowd go on about the warm, elegant, refined Michelle Obama, calling her “Big Mike” because she used to be a MAN, doncha know? They photoshopped dicks onto her dresses and say her husband is gay, then complain that no one will put Melania on the cover of Vogue. “That old whore?” I reply.

This is counterproductive, I know. It won’t bring people together, join hands across the chasm of our differences, etc. But it seems the only response.

What else is going on today? There were some demonstrations in Dearborn yesterday. One was initially organized by a fringe candidate for governor — go ahead, guess which party!!! — protesting SHARIA LAW, etc. He called it off after claiming to have a change of heart about our Muslim neighbors. but the ball he started rolling didn’t stop. This guy appeared to be behind the wingnuts:

At about 6 p.m., there was a growing crowd confronting Jake Lang, a rightwing activist from Florida who organized one of three rallies Tuesday. Police then brought up several metal barriers around Lang and his supporters, keeping them separated from the crowd, who yelled back at Lang at times.

Here’s the gubernatorial candidate:

Another gathering was led by Anthony Hudson, a Republican candidate for governor who initially was planning an anti-sharia rally, but had a change of heart after spending four days last week in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, visiting mosques and Muslim leaders. Hudson told the Free Press in an interview his rally was to promote unity, but also to tell Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud to be more respective of Christians and their concerns. Hammoud faced criticism earlier this year for berating a Christian minister, but later said the city welcomes all.

Note the misuse of “respective” by the reporter. The word he was trying for is “respectful,” but unfortunately, all the copy editors were purged in some previous round of cuts, apparently.

Listen to this douchebag, though:

Hudson said he visited the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Dearborn Community Center, the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights and the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, where he met with Imam Mohammad Elahi, a prominent Islamic and interfaith leader in Michigan. He also visited Eternal Light, a nonprofit in Dearborn Heights, and a food bank.

“We’re proving the point that we didn’t see sharia law in Dearborn,” Hudson said. “We didn’t see women getting assaulted or disrespected. We saw women business owners that were yelling at men, telling them what to do. We saw young women walking at night to go to the bars and they weren’t being harassed. We saw the gentlemen’s clubs, which is against sharia law. We saw the liquor stores, which is against it. We just saw so many things that were against sharia law that I made the determination that during my trip, my four days, there was no sharia law.”

Afer living here all these years, I notice the wingnut panic over Dearborn runs in cycles. They all seem to take their cues from one another, because they have so few original ideas, and the wheel has turned again. The other day I looked up M*ll*ssa C*ron*, the fameball from the 2020 election cycle, and even she was posting “content” from Dearborn during the call to prayer, barking, “How would you like to listen to this five times a day?” And I considered that nearly all the people within earshot are Muslim themselves, and Melly herself lives in goddamn Macomb County, so what’s her damage? It’s just Dearborn’s turn, I guess.

God help us if they discover Hamtramck. OK, then. Time to find a grindstone and press my nose to it. Happy Wednesday, all.

Oh, no. I haven’t written anything today. Or yesterday. I am sorry. But I was cooking for, and wrapping for, the birthday twins’ celebration, which was yesterday. We had dinner, cake, gifts, the first half of the Lions game. I didn’t sleep well, and today I’ve been dragging ass, as they say. But it was a good party.

The individual gifts aren’t as important as my one brainstorm for a family gift that all three of us November babies can enjoy (along with three friends): A two-hour cruise on the J.W. Wescott, i.e., the mail boat that services freight vessels on the Detroit River. It advertises itself as the only floating zip code in the country (48222), based on when it would deliver mail to ships on the Great Lakes for weeks at a time. Now that letters from home aren’t so important, they do package and food deliveries — yes, you can order a pizza or a shwarma to be delivered to, say, the MV Paul R. Tregurtha as it passes through town — as well as pilot changes, which is what I’d really like to see. They pull up next to a ship under way, match their speed, and send the new pilot up a rope ladder, and take on the guy coming off duty.

I think that’s also how they’d deliver a pizza, only with a basket or some sort of conveyance, now that I think about it.

It all sounds exciting, different, fun and very Detroit. I can’t wait. Now to herd all our cats aboard.

The Wescott website talks about how they got their start, ferrying letters to ships in a bucket tied to a rope, and it reminded me of the Columbus Dispatch bucket, the fifth-floor bucket the staff would drop to photographers coming back from breaking news, on deadline. They’d deposit their exposed film in the bucket, and by the time they got parked and back into the building, the film was being processed. Was it ever used by a particular photographer to purchase weed from his dealer down on the sidewalk? I’ll never tell.

(Yes.)

So that’s why I’m so tired and not particularly productive today. But tomorrow is another one, and it won’t involve cake and two bottles of wine. So let’s see how it goes.

How many of you have young-adult children? And how many of them are at least as disgusted with the Democrats than the GOP? Are they even, perhaps, more disgusted, because at least the GOP says it’s the enemy of things that are important to them, while the Dems pretend to be on their side? And refuse to leave their elected positions until, like, oh, Eleanor Holmes Norton, they have to be forced or shamed out due to their physical and mental deterioration? (Note: This hasn’t happened yet, in Norton’s case. She plans to run again.)

How is the Surrender Caucus going over with those young people?

This combination photo of eight senators who are facing criticism from the Democratic party for their deal to end the government shutdown shows Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., top row from left, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and bottom row from left, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. (AP Photo)

Fucking Dick Durbin in particular:

Whoa — Sen. Durbin went to up Leader Thune during the vote last night to tell him that on the shutdown vote and ACA promise that "8 of us are sticking our neck out that you're going to keep your word. I hope you will. He said 'I assure you I will,'" Durbin says just now

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 12:59 PM

We had one week — not even! — to savor our victory before the Neville Chamberlain Caucus ripped it away.

When people tell you that the GOP is unpopular, but the Democrats are even more so, this is why. The scoundrels.

So: With that mood established, I made the mistake of reading comments on a story about a local billionaire’s divorce. Thirty-year marriage, five children, which included one son who died young of an incurable disease (neurofibromatosis). They were together when they were young, and they split up when they were rich. See if you can guess what at least some of the online reaction was?

But of course. She’s a ho’.

Can you tell it’s been cold the last two days? Bitter wind, all of it? Yep. Let’s hope the back half of the week is more promising.

The plan for Saturday evening was fairly straightforward: To head to the Dakota Inn Rathskeller, another beloved Detroit business absorbed by my friend Paddy Lynch so that it may continue. (His previous purchases: The Schvitz and Dutch Girl Donuts.) But! It was also the 250th birthday celebration for the U.S. Marine Corps, and if you’re wondering how the Marines are older than the country itself, well, so was I, but I read up on it.

The birthday is actually celebrated Monday, November 10, but the 8th was a Saturday. It’s also observed with a cake-cutting and various associated rituals, and a German restaurant on a Saturday night with a resident piano player seemed like as good a place as any.

The bad news: The place was a madhouse, packed to the rafters with German-food enthusiasts, and a 1.5-hour wait for a table. We decided to go to the basement Rathskeller to wait for the cake and singing. Which came around 7:30, with a long windup about Tradition, but not so much that it killed the vibe. The cake is traditionally cut with a Maltese Mameluke sword, but we’ll use this knife, etc.

And the cake was cut, with the traditional order of serving: First slice to the guest of honor, who was the guy whose family owned the restaurant for two generations before selling it to Paddy. Second slice to the oldest Marine present, i.e., this guy, who fought at Guadalcanal:

Third slice to the youngest Marine, who was very strapping. And then we all sang the Marine Hymn, which contains my favorite passage in a military song, the dis at the very end:

If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.

And then the friend I went with started feeling ill, so I took her home and met our third for tapas at a quiet Spanish place.

Happy birthday, Marines, including our own Jeff Gill. Glad the pugil sticks didn’t leave you with brain damage.

The rest of the weekend? Shopping errands work workout until Sunday afternoon, when I swam 2,000 yards, came home and ate ravenously, then dozed and read the afternoon away. In other words, a pretty good one.

Hope yours was, too.

In other news at this hour, the GOP is still trash. This is a direct response to the SNAP crisis. I checked.

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.