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.
A few of you have messaged about this bridge business. Trust me, we’re all aware.
Let’s start with a little refresher on the new Detroit River crossing, known as the Gordie Howe International Bridge, to honor the Canada-born Detroit Red Wings hockey legend. The Canadians came up with the name, which is a great symbol of the sort of two-nation relationship the bridge represents – warm, interdependent, close. (It used to be a reality, now it’s more of a nearly lost cause, but we remain hopeful.)
The bridge itself was the Canadians’ idea. The existing span, the Ambassador Bridge, is nearly a century old and was built for a different time. While it can be entered from the freeway on the American side, it dumps out onto Huron Church Road in Windsor, six lanes and divided to be sure, but otherwise just a plain old early 20th century thoroughfare. It carries a ton of truck traffic, which must navigate something like a dozen traffic lights before it intersects with the 401, the main freeway leading to Toronto and beyond.
So imagine living near this. The exhaust, the noise, the constant, 24-hour rumble of semi trucks. It is…not a good neighborhood. What’s more, the bridge is privately owned. By one family, the Morouns. The old man who gained control of it years back was the child of Lebanese immigrants, and grubbed for every nickel like it was the last thing standing between himself and starvation. He had one child, who now runs the business. It is…fantastically profitable. We did some reporting on this when I was at Bridge (the publication, not the Ambassador’s newsletter, haha), and the conservative estimates were jaw-dropping, an annual cash flow in tolls alone of something like $60 million a year. And that’s just the bridge. They also own or control duty-free shops and gas stations on the bridge approaches, significant trucking interests and lots and lots of real estate in the neighborhood, on both sides of the river. They are billionaires.
The Canadians have, at various times, tried to mitigate the damage done by the bridge’s presence, and the owners have not been very amenable. The family is perfectly willing to build a new bridge, but only next to the current one, which doesn’t solve the freeway problem. So some years ago the Canadians said, OK, fine, we’ll build our own. Which threatens the Moroun monopoly, obviously. Around 60 percent of all Canadian/U.S. trade goes over the Ambassador Bridge. (The tunnel under the river is too low-ceilinged to accommodate trucks.) And the Morouns have fought it ferociously, lobbying the state legislature and sponsoring a ballot measure to require a vote of the people (which lost), every trick in the book.
But the last Republican governor, Rick Snyder, believed a new bridge would benefit the state’s economy, and was finally able to get the deal done. The rough outlines: The Gordie Howe bridge would be co-owned by the two nations. It would be 100 percent paid for by the Canadians, to be repaid through tolls. After 30 years, the fare split would revert to 50-50. And construction began. Covid messed up the schedule, but the two sides of the roadbed met summer before last, and the bridge is expected to open later this year. It will have a pedestrian/cycling lane! A friend and I have an occasional lunch date at a Mexican spot nearly in its shadow, and we’ve been talking about biking over to get dim sum (Windsor has an excellent Chinese restaurant scene) for years now.
Enter Donald Trump, and his rant the other night that he would not allow the new bridge to open until the U.S. got a better deal. There was also some insane shit about hockey and the Stanley Cup. Excuse me? A 100 percent paid-for-by-the-other-guy bridge, which has already supported hundreds of construction jobs — we saw them in that Mexican joint often — is not a good deal? And why does he bring this up now, when the bridge is 99 percent done and construction started under his presidency?
The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.
Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Trump threatened to block the planned opening of a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, which would take away toll revenue from Mr. Moroun’s crossing, if Canadian officials did not address a long list of grievances.
Grievances. I fucking ask you.
I don’t know how this will work out. In my movie dream, the ribbon is cut in the middle and we all just start using it, staffing the customs and tollbooths with volunteers, a la Minneapolis. We just ignore him. Or name a toll plaza after him, that might do it. Because this is ridiculous.
OK, it’s Wednesday. Time to do the crossword and make a plan for he day. Have a good one.
Even in the slough of despond, it’s possible to find a little cheer. The weather has been unrelentingly cold. My nose always feels frostbitten. At the moment it’s sunny and clear outside, but you know what that means in the dead of winter — it’ll be in the single digits tonight, although the full moon will be pretty for the minute or two you can tolerate being outside looking at it.
Then you’re reminded that you have a ticket for this past Saturday’s “Symphonic PFunk: Celebrating the Music of Parliament Funkadelic” at the Detroit Opera, with the full opera orchestra backing up the current iteration of players. It was a birthday present from my friend Dustin, who was my escort. And a few hours later, you’re sipping a Negroni at the London Chop House bar, having ended Dry January six hours early, and while it’s still cold outside, there is the warmth of George Clinton and Co. just a few People Mover stops away, and friends, it was a barnburner of a show. For the “Atomic Dog” finale, a whole bunch of Omega Psi Phi brothers came dancing down the aisles and up onto the stage. (It’s their anthem and they have a particular dance they do, the Atomic Dog Stomp.)
I love this town so much. It just tickles my fancy in so many ways.
The rest of the weekend I spent working and taking breaks to scan the latest Epstein-file news. Sigh. Some of the conclusions one can draw from them are undoubtedly true, others – like the ones from the FBI tip line – give Rolling-Stone-rape-on-campus/Satanic panic vibes. No one with a functioning brain can deny the close, close ties between Epstein and his bestie over at Mar-a-lago.
I’m still waiting for the RogerEbert.com review of “Melania.” You know, our First Lady? The “hot piece of ass?”
There was other good news this weekend. A Democrat won a state senate seat in Texas by a 14-percent margin, which would be interesting, but the fact it was considered safely Republican, and Trump won it by 17 points? Slam dunk. Let’s hope the momentum can be sustained through November.
One bit of bloggage today: Greg Bovino, Mr. Sensitivity.
Stay warm, comrades.
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.