The pedestrian/cycling lane on the new bridge has been open about two weeks. The Derringers took their first shot at it today. The weather report was favorable, the schedule was clear, and so we did it.

It’s a beautiful bridge, still clean and sparkling under the blue sky. The suspension cables give you some great details in the pictures. And there are many made-for-Instagram angles.

But ultimately, it’s the sky and the water and the other people on the bridge.

That’s Alan.

It’s a long climb up, and I regretted not checking my gears first, because I’m stuck on the big ring on the front. I mean, I made it, but I was glad for the downhill. On the other side, we blew through customs in a trice. “You have any weapons?” the Canadian border agent asked. “We’re bicyclists, not bikers,” I said. And that was that. Then it was two more miles into downtown Windsor for some Chinese food, and the whole thing in reverse coming back home. My sense was the Canadian climb was steeper, the American climb longer but shallower. So pick your poison. It’s a workout either way.

But overall, I think this bit of infrastructure is brilliant. There was solid bike travel both ways, and plenty of pedestrians, too. I’m not saying it’ll have a major impact on cross-border tourism, but any way you can get people crossing the border is a good thing. Now for an entrepreneur to park a food truck on either side, and you’ve got the start of an economy. In another couple of years, who knows what can happen. All because you made it easy for people who don’t travel in cars.

Just one bit of bloggage today, called to my attention by my Ohio people. An ad for Vivek Ramaswamy, running for governor there. It’s almost like the whole state hasn’t been in the grip of the GOP for years now. I hate this timeline.

But let’s have a good weekend anyway. Summer is fleeting. Let’s enjoy it, even if it rains.

Sometimes people ask if I miss being a working journalist. The answer: No. No, no, a thousand times no. I still have major respect, even awe, for people who continue to do it in this environment, but I have zero desire to join them. Every so often I’m inspired to write something for others to read, similar to what I do here but less messy. I have outlets for that. I don’t feel the urge to do it more than every so often.

Forgive me. I’m having a lost day. Slept very very badly last night, missed my workout, feel like shit. Spent much of the day working without much spark or pleasure, feeling gloomy about everything. Stuff like this, from my city’s email newsletter:

Built with AI, probably ChatGPT. It’s simply amazing how quickly this style has taken over the internet. I see it almost every day, and so much of it is ludicrously wrong — the tennis ball about to hit the woman’s head, the weird jewelry hanging from her neck, the fact that isn’t Lake Front Park, the flag with the weird stars (because without them, we might not know where we are, right?) — to name just a few. “Game, Set, Play.” The leaves on the court. The overall busyness of it. Graphic designers are going out of business because you can send ChatGPT a press release, and it will vomit up something like this.

I figure, if you’re going to oppose data centers, and I do, you have to not do the things that require data centers, like turn perfectly understandable words into AI slop flyers.

But creativity isn’t entirely dead. You may remember that back in May or June, I wrote about the revived, very stupid idea to turn Belle Isle, currently a state park, into a commonwealth or protectorate or something, where very wealthy people could live tax-free, in return for being job creators, or something. It was an idea first rolled out in 2013, when the developer who dreamed it up self-published a novella set some years in the future, after Belle Isle had become the Dubai of the Detroit River. It was a very strange book, with an undercurrent of homoeroticism that was immediately evident to any reader smart enough to know the meaning of the word. Also, a monorail. And F1 racing.

Anyway, a local journalist, Jeff Wattrick, wrote several scathing stories about it for Deadline Detroit, back when the site was new and fully staffed. He most memorably called the Commonwealth of Belle Isle something like “the HOA from hell, with police powers.” When the idea was rekindled late last year, pegged to a b.s. poll and Trump’s idea of “freedom cities” and a very compliant media willing to do anything for content, Wattrick was no longer in daily journalism, but still a writer. He started noodling around with a fictional sequel to the original story, and ended up with a 60,000-word novel. He’s started trickling it out on Substack, along with shorter interstitials about related this and that, like the b.s. poll and other stuff.

“Belle Isle 2: Belle Isler” is a slow starter, because he has to deal with the problem any sequel writer has: How much to assume your readers already know about the world you’re building. There are some very niche humorous moments: A discussion of setting up an emergency blood bank goes sideways, because the idea of donating something and not getting fair market value in return is anathema on Belle Isle. But once the action really starts, it’s showing a lot of promise. It’s a Hiaasen-esque first draft, but I’m enjoying it.

I hope I sleep better tonight.

On Wednesday, I was asked by a friend to do a favor that involved sitting in her house for a few hours. So I did. It was very hot outside, and she had robust a/c. When I arrived, the sky was clear and the sun, punishing. When I left around 6:30, the sky was overcast, not with clouds, but with smoke.

And now it’s Thursday morning, and Michigan has the worst air on the planet. Not the Midwest, not the entire country, the whole damn world. A quirk of the wind has swept wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota into our state, and the map footprint is eerie; of course there’s bleeding into other states, but the worst of it seems to stop at the state borders. Good news, Toledo! All the air-quality scales are pegged in the Hazardous zone. As bad as it is in Detroit, it seems to be even worse in the U.P. Here’s the Mackinac Bridge:

Another view:

We have our own a/c on, with the fan running constantly. Morning swim was cancelled. The lakefront park is closed. But never fear! John James, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for governor, the emptiest suit that ever did empty, the man whose whole campaign is, to steal a phrase from Jon Stewart, “a noun, a verb and a helicopter*,” had this to say:

As Governor, I’ll put Michigan first, demand answers, and push Canada to take real action.

As the quip goes, tell me you know nothing about wildfires without telling me you know nothing without wildfires.

* James was a helicopter pilot during the Gulf War, or “Desert Storm,” as he patriotically calls it, every time. He brings it up…a lot.

In other news at this hour, while I was sitting at my buddy’s house yesterday, I did some rabbit-hole moseying, and came upon the latest from the Indiana Policy Review, which exists as a sinecure for the former opinion-page editor of my alma mater in Fort Wayne. He’s been there since roughly 1990, so that’s a pretty good sinecure. The fact the organization barely exists at all speaks more to the pity the wealthy founding families have for their pet mouthpiece, but never mind that.

This week’s column by him (the lower-case “tcl” at the end stands for T. Craig Ladwig) is remarkable for its naked bigotry and elevation of Indiana’s lieutenant governor, right-wing Christian scold Micah Beckwith, to something resembling relevancy. (It’s a quirk of Hoosier politics that the governor and lieutenant governor don’t necessarily run as a team, as they’re independently nominated by the party faithful. The gubernatorial candidate can make their wishes known, but the delegates don’t necessarily have to do their bidding. So in this case you get a more or less normal Republican serving with a lunatic wingnut like Beckwith.) Lately, Beckwith, a pastor of sorts, has been on about the Muslim Menace, and tcl is right there with him:

The need to confront the Muslim scourge in our cities is dividing the Republican Party — or so you would expect. In Indiana, however, only Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is speaking out while other GOP leaders sit silent for fear that Julia Carson’s grandson, Andre, will call them bigots.

Indeed, the governor upbraided Beckwith for not choosing his words more carefully, for not thinking before he speaks.

OK, if the governor wants a careful word choice, how about “seditious”? That’s when you demand that your religion exempts you from a society’s norms, mores, laws and core beliefs to the degree that you would overturn them to be replaced with your own.

Freedom of religion? Do you think the Founders had in mind someone like Genghis Khan, a devout follower of Tengrism, the shamanic religion that worships “the Eternal Blue Sky.” His armies killed as many as 40 million people, estimated to be 11 percent of the world’s population at the time.

It is terrifying to realize that the leading minds of our GOP are willing to abide an openly hostile, globally controlled Islam as a benign curiosity.

To use a not-that-great internet witticism twice in one blog, tell me you know nothing about American Muslims without, etc.

And no, I don’t know what Genghis Khan is doing in there. But I chuckled when, later in the column, he mentions “the unassimilable Muslim population.” I’d like to escort this elderly hayseed on a tour of Dearborn, Michigan. He’ll see some assimilated Muslims, oh yes he will. They make delicious hummus.

OK, gotta clean the house today. Company’s coming for the weekend.

I was trying to think of something non-Trumpy to blog today, and then I saw this, and honestly, I got nothing better, so let’s start the weekend with a smile and have a good weekend, all.

Last fall I mentioned that I’d purchased a birthday gift for all three of us, the November babies — a two-hour cruise on the J.W. Westcott, the mail boat the services the freighters on the Detroit River. We thought we might be able to schedule it right around Christmas, but the cold weather and ice came in early, and they said we’d be better off waiting until spring.

We set it for Sunday. The day couldn’t have been more perfect — the smash-cut to full summer I’d been predicting for a while. It was clear blue skies, 80 degrees, not a hint of rain and not even that much wind to make the water choppy. The party limit was six, so it was the three Derringers plus friends Dustin, Will and Cam, Kate’s boyfriend.

Upriver or down, we were asked. Down, we decided. None of this see-our-lovely-riverwalk-and-Belle-Isle for us; that’s easy to see. But to go down to look at the dirty ass crack of the industrial Midwest? Yeah, that’s more our speed.

We set out from the Westcott dock in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge and passed under the nearly complete Gordie Howe Bridge — which our idiot president has threatened not to “allow” to open…

…and got up close and personal with a bulk loader that looks surprisingly good, maybe because it’s only eight years old. Dig that cute little lifeboat. Best wear your seatbelt when it makes its getaway.

Past the zombie-apocalypse hellscape of Zug Island…

…and into the Rouge River aka the other American river to catch fire, back in the day. (Ohioans know the other one — the Cuyahoga, in Cleveland.) It’s much improved, but I wouldn’t go swimming in it for all the tea in China. But it’s where the stuff that makes other stuff gets delivered and taken away and made into more stuff. Aggregate, coke, all that stuff. Even the tugboats look like they’ve seen some shit.

The bridges got out of our way.

Except for on the way back, when we had to stop to let a train go past. Then it was back up the river to the dock and, later, a table for six at a nearby Mexicantown spot. We all agreed it was a fine day out.

This is a trip to take when you’re convinced the city has no more to show you, that you’ve seen it all. You haven’t. I hope it’s a nice day for your cruise, too. And you get to do a mail delivery to a big ship. Although the crew said it’s mostly Amazon boxes these days. And pizzas and Door Dash.

Now I’m dehydrated and sun-dazzled and ready for an early bed. Two more days of summer heat before it moderates again. Eighty-seven tomorrow.

Filled up the tank of my Subaru Outback on Saturday. Seventy-five bucks. I haven’t driven it today; took my bike to a spot three miles distant to have Mother’s Day lunch with Kate. It was a pretty day, on the cool side, so I didn’t arrive all sweaty.

Pro tip, though: If you plan on drinking beer, a jumpsuit is a bad choice. As someone funnier than me observed, once you’re in the bathroom, it’s just you and your bad decisions.

Look at the weeds growing up around the struggling little street tree. Sometimes I wonder if the sheer homeliness of Detroit’s physical footprint is doing something to my brain; sometimes I’ll see some truly wondrous public installation of something, somewhere other than here, and wonder what it must be like to enjoy that sort of thing on the regular. But Mack Avenue resists all such beautification. As Elmore Leonard is said to have written, during his advertising career, “Some cities get by on their looks. Others have to work for a living.”

One thing about a bike ride down a city avenue, you find yourself with time and reason to run little errands. Into Staples for a dry-erase marker I (and only I) can use for the Wednesday whiteboard workout at the pool. Into Village Market for a teres major for dinner. Certainly I didn’t opt for a filet mignon, once I got a look at the price: $50 a pound. On sale. And then home for an afternoon snooze, because: Mother’s Day. And beer.

Here’s something Jeff Borden sent the other day, when he was in Hyde Park, where the Obamas once lived:

Too good to be true? Perhaps. But every so often I see something like this, and I’m gobsmacked, yet again, by the speed of our fall. I saw the first posters for the MMA fight on the White House lawn, and I wanted to cry. I remember the week after the 2016 election, sitting in the conference room in Ann Arbor, and our fearless leader confidently said Trump would get bored by the job and quit after six months, or else he’d be impeached. Well, he was half right. We thought the job would change the man. We never reckoned on this particular man, however.

Let’s go into this week with a spirit of optimism, however. You never know what any day will bring.

A chilly spring morning, and off we went to Elmwood Cemetery for one of the occasional history walks they offer. This is a very old cemetery, with every name you now see on street signs, or in the names of Michigan counties, on some monument — the founding fathers (and daughters) of the state. I think the theme of this one was Art and Architecture, so we stopped at a lot of artists’ stones, but as always, the interesting stuff was everywhere.

People leave change, and an occasional bill, in the lap of this lady, who serves as the unofficial logo of the cemetery.

This coffin-size bronze is actually the entry to an underground vault for one family. It’s only been opened once in modern times, the staff historian told us — on her day off. The lid alone weighs a ton, but once it was raised, they could see inside to several niches with initials on the end. And it was totally pristine, no water, no seepage from the earth. Whoever built it, built it to last.

The co-founder of Pewabic Pottery. There was originally an open pot in that niche, but weather took a toll and it was later replaced with the mosaic.

A plate on a natural rock monument:

It exists, and you can get it via Project Gutenberg. Wikipedia:

He practiced for several years in Mansfield, Ohio until he started his journalistic career in 1860. He was the editor of the Port Huron Commercial (Port Huron, Michigan), and the Detroit Evening News (Detroit, Michigan). In 1880, he abandoned journalism and entered the US Patent Office. He was appointed principal examiner in 1886 and served until 1893. In 1877 he became Washington correspondent for the Scripps Syndicate, serving several prominent newspapers.

He continued in this capacity until after publishing his groundbreaking 1893 work “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” which brought him international fame throughout the English-speaking world. The book’s sales continue to this day.

This was followed in 1895 by “A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life” (considered by many his superior work), then “The Divine Pedigree of Man,” and finally “The Law of Mental Medicine” in 1903, published just days before his death from heart failure on May 26, 1903, in Detroit.

A more modern resting place. “Asiwaju basegun” is apparently a title associated with his native tribe; he was Nigerian. Also, an accomplished medical doctor.

I was reminded of the Sedgwick Pie, the burial ground of the Sedgwick family (Edie and Kyra being the most notable examples), in Massachusetts. The patriarch and matriarch of the clan are buried in the center, with descendants arrayed around them in concentric circles, feet toward the middle, so that on judgement day, when they arise from their graves, they only have to see other Sedgwicks. Ha ha ha.

After that, we had a late lunch at Saffron De Twah, came home, collapsed into dual naps and awoke to find the wind had changed and the temperature had risen by 20 degrees. Everybody outside was in shorts. I opened the windows. We’re still alive, might as well enjoy this warm breath while it lasts.

So much news over the weekend. Orban ousted, JD Vance fails in Pakistan, the president farts out another few emissions on Truth Social. I’d rather enjoy the spring weather and let my laptop run a software update. So take it away in the comments while I eat a piece of cake and enjoy the sounds of playing children through the open windows.

It was a few years ago that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” hit the premium pay level of streaming new-release movies, and stayed there an inordinate amount of time. So long that when I checked months later, when the rental price should have dropped from $20 to $6, it was still at $20. Even after the Best Picture Oscar, they still expected me to pay the theater price for Alan and I to watch it from the couch.

So I forgot about it for…three years.

Then it appeared, as if summoned by the God of Stuff You Forgot About, on one of the streamers this weekend, free with the price of your subscription. Saturday night at home? Sure, let’s check out this best-in-all-the-land movie.

We turned it off at the two-thirds mark. I was yawning more or less continuously, had utterly lost the thread of the plot — such as it was — and could see the resolution coming like a marching band in a parade. Spoiler: Love is the answer. In between, it was just irritating. This has been Old Woman Considers the Oscars, with your host, me.

Should have watched “Nuremberg” instead. Something cheerier, you know.

Nevertheless! Sunday was a true spring-like day, temps over 50, so we put the bikes on the car rack and took them to Belle Isle for a lap. It was…windy. Sustained at 16 mph, gusting to maybe twice that. All I know is, the flag at the entrance was standing at full extension and it was hard pedaling on the back half of the loop, with the wind in our faces, but we made it. Just a shakedown for the first bike ride of 2026, but I’d call it a win. Still ice on the river in the slow parts:

But look at that sky.

Finally, ai-yi-yi, this war. I just don’t have the bandwidth to write about it on a day to day basis, although my jaw is perpetually in my lap every time I open a news site. I’ve started thinking about false-flag attacks, which would indicate I have not quite gone off the deep end, but I’m standing on the edge of the pool looking into it. I will sign up to work the elections this year, though; that might keep my head from exploding until November.

Breaking: Iran has replaced Ayatollah Khamenei with…Ayatollah Khamenei.

Let’s have a good week, all.

Had a phone catchup with an old buddy, and we were flinging outrages back and forth across the wires. “When did we decide Bibi Netanyahu was co-commander in chief?1” one of us said, and then the other replied, “And why do we have to find ourselves agreeing with Candace Owens when we say stuff like this?!”

It was a spirited discussion, as they say.

This war is not going to go well. It’ll end someday, they always do, and the people who started it will say we won, but nah, we aren’t going to win anything other than another Middle East tinderbox. I got into another spirited discussion with a group chat, which I started by asking when we might see retaliatory strikes in this country, by civilians. One or more targeted mass shootings at synagogues, perhaps. Or worse. One of our number said I was thinking too small, that it’d be another 9/11-scale event. Hijack a UPS or FedEx plane (smaller crew to overcome), then fly it into a packed stadium. There’s a cheery thought. Or truck bombs, detonated randomly around the country. They certainly won’t find it difficult to get guns, not in the freedom-loving United States.

Operation Epic Fury is perhaps the dumbest marketing tag for an American war I’ve yet heard, but there you are. It will soon be one of the most ironic details about this whole misadventure, I fear.

In the midst of this chaos, we went to see Bridget Everett last night. You might remember her HBO show, “Somebody Somewhere,” which is loosely based on Everett’s own life. She was as expected — loud, sloppy, sings great, very blue. The seats, in the first row of the balcony, were the most uncomfortable I’ve ever occupied. Think the tightest airline seat you’ve ever occupied, then subtract 20 percent. Also, the drunken WOOOOOs from the audience were annoying, but that’s the Bridget Everett fan base.

She was very entertaining. Not a bad way to do a Monday night.

I wish I had more to report, but alas, it’s one of those weeks.

Monday was cold and windy and I was sluggish and dull-witted, so I took the keys off the hook and ran a meaningless errand. And then I decided to look for the east side beavers. I didn’t find them, but did discover evidence of their work in a riverfront park:

A picture of this tree popped up on Reddit earlier in the month, and I wanted to see it before their work was done. And so I did.

It must be confusing to be an urban beaver. They can’t really dam anything. That tree will die for nothing, but it’s interesting to see the remarkable consistency to their work as they move around the trunk. And the grooves their teeth make. It illuminated a very dull winter day.

A winter I am throughly sick of.

Did you get up early to watch the gold-medal hockey game on Sunday? I did not, but I gather that for hockey fans, it was a barn-burner. Secretly I was hoping Canada would win, just because it would piss off you-know-who. But the U.S. prevailed, in overtime, so yay team. The rest of it you have probably already heard — Kash Patel pushing his way into the locker room, the women’s-team snub, all of it. Honestly, I’m putting myself in Patel’s shoes and imagining being a spectator at a game, my team wins, and somehow, I end up in the locker room. Where would I be? Where would any reasonable person be? Standing back along the wall, allowing the people who won the medal to celebrate amongst themselves. It’s their medal, not mine. Be happy for them? Certainly. Grab a bottle of champagne and start dousing others? Hell no.

It’s just manners.

Afterward, I texted with Kate, who graduated with one of the U.S. team members. Did you know him? I asked. Was he in any of your AP classes? She replied:

He never gave me the time of day and he was definitely not in my AP classes but I remember him calling Will a fag

I like the “definitely” there. He now plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets. I told him if she ever sees him again (un-bloody-likely), she should say, “Hey, I saw ‘Heated Rivalry.’ I don’t know much about hockey, but are there a lot of fags in the NHL?”

Finally, in this endless winter, I made the time to watch “Downfall,” also known as the movie that generated the Hitler-rants scene that’s been meme’d to death. It’s about the last 10 or 12 days of the war, as the top German command whiles away their days in the bunker. It’s very good, although unrelentingly grim as the Russians close in. Probably not a good choice for seasonal depression, but I’m glad I saw it. Bruno Ganz is amazing. Alan’s review: “The guy who played Goebbels bears a strange resemblance to Stephen Miller.”

It’s free on Amazon Prime.

OK, then. I have work commitments tomorrow, so I will be a beaver, too. Hope your Wednesday is fine.