One of my most treasured former colleagues is Bill McGraw, who spent his career — virtually all of it — at the Detroit Free Press, and now, in retirement, contributes weekly flashback stories for readers who either never knew, or forgot them. This week’s was a corker:

He was an outgoing guy. He introduced himself as Tony Jones.

But Detroit police found him suspicious, with his fancy cameras, British accent and habit of jumping out of a rented orange car to shoot close-up photos of cops arresting suspected criminals. He had no current ID.

It was January 1974. Crime was a big problem in Detroit. Cops were jumpy. So they hauled him off to the old 1st (Central) Precinct, and there they discovered the truth.

His full name was Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, the Right Honourable 1st Earl of Snowdon. He was a global celebrity, the husband of Princess Margaret, the younger sister and only sibling of Queen Elizabeth.

Yes, the very same. Tony Jones wasn’t really arrested, more like detained. He was in Detroit taking pictures for a Times of London assignment on the American “urban crisis.” We know Lord Snowdon as a portraitist, especially of the royal family. He did a set of Princess Diana late in her life that was really smashing, and I can’t find it now; I seem to recall her hair was wet and slicked back, and she looked amazing, but oh well. But he was also a good photojournalist, with the right instincts to get in close and be fearless.

He tried to stay Tony Jones, but the secret got out, and it got a little silly:

The Free Press saw an opportunity. It assigned a young female reporter, Detroiter Toni Jones, to take Londoner Tony Jones out for a night on the town. Toni Jones brought a friend, and Aris came along, too. Jones, err, Snowdon, was a good sport. Toni Jones described him in her story as modest, easygoing and witty.

They hit several long-gone night spots. At Lafayette Orleans in Lafayette Park, Snowdon met Kenneth Cockrel, the famous attorney, and appeared not to notice when a patron began heckling the band. At Watts Club Mozambique on Fenkell, Snowdon was introduced to Pistons forward Don Adams.

It’s Watts Club Mozambique that kills me. The long-gone, but spectacularly named spot burned to the ground a few years back, after appearing in an Elmore Leonard novel (“Unknown Man #89”) and playing a major role in black Detroit’s street culture. I’d love to know who came up with the name, and how they settled on it, and let’s ask the internet, and whaddaya know:

The Watts Club Mozambique was established in 1969 by Detroiter Cornelius Watts. Since the early 1960s, the African country of Mozambique had been fighting for independence, Mr. Watt fell in love with the exotic sounding name. By the late 60s, African consciousness had swept to the forefront of American culture and Mr. Watt named his latest venture Watt’s Club Mozambique. He carried the theme on and decorated the interior with bamboo wallpaper and had banana leaves draped around the ceiling. It was a hit from day one.

Never mind whether the guy’s name was Watt or Watts. I think we can all agree that “Mozambique” is a very cool-sounding name, and entirely appropriate for Detroit; the country had an AK-47 on its actual flag for a time, since removed.

The club started with jazz, but it couldn’t turn a profit, so it eventually switched to sort of a black Chippendale’s, with hot-dude dancing for women. There was a legendary dancer named Hawk, who was very popular but decided he could make a lot more money in Vegas, and bought a one-way ticket.

So many crazy stories in this crazy town. This is only one of them.

It was a good Tuesday. The centerpiece was being the guest speaker at my ex-colleague Julia’s class on feature/biographica/memoir writing at Notre Dame. I did not go to South Bend, alas — it was all via Zoom. And although I was dreading spending an hour looking into my webcam, the time flew by and it was a great class. For me, anyway.

And now I’m looking at the results of the Ohio primary, and? Ugh. We’re doomed. Ohio is, anyway.

Home again. The blind schnauzer and her bouncy baby brother were turned back over to their humans on Friday afternoon, and then the rest of the weekend took off like a rocket ship, which is to say, I had plans for one night, can you believe it? and it left me a little worn down.

But the even keel is back and all is cool. I don’t know what it is about sleeping in someone else’s bed, or a hotel bed, or any bed other than my own, for a few days — it’s different (appreciated), but also weirdly unsettling (less so).

So, Friday. Shadow Show had their record-release parties over two night, Friday and Saturday, both sellouts at a local bar. We went Friday night, and Alan went back Saturday, too. (Me, I could not handle it, after a couple hours of standing on Friday night. My knees were screaming.) But it was a smashing success, and both shows were well-received. They brought in some friends to do guest appearances on individual songs, but the big surprise was the Friday-night encore. They invited Zoe, their old vocalist from the Deadly Vipers days, and they did a short set of their 2015-era songs. I was totally surprised, and it sent me back to their very first gig, when we took them to a blind pig* in the north end of Detroit. A *blind pig is Detroit patois for an illegal spot, and this place was a dark storefront that someone had briefly liberated into an underage nightspot. But the set went off well, even though I can’t tell you how, exactly, they got electricity into the place. And Alan remembers broken glass strewn across the floor; I remember a pile of beer and pop cans in the corner, perhaps waiting for deposit redemption. Whatever, I do remember that the Black Lodge closed a few weeks later, when they tried to stage a burlesque show and it was busted by the police.

Anyway, the shows this past weekend were pretty great. And they got played three times the following day on WDET, so again: Good news. A couple pix, from an admittedly terrible angle because it was crowded as hell. Here’s the bassist for Shadow Show, shown appropriately in shadow:

And here’s the encore, with Zoe looking all sassy:

Now for the break, and the national tour starts at month’s end, with the European leg to follow. If any of you live in Los Angeles — and yeah, I’m looking at you, Mary — you might want to save this date:

It’s not every day that you get to see a girl group with a psychedelic-garage sound perform with marionettes, after all. This is the gig that was cancelled in 2020 for Covid.

And that was the weekend. Tomorrow starts a perfect week — if I play it right, the best balance of work and not-work. I’ll take it.

Needless to say, Detroit has Lions mania this weekend. Everyone’s wearing the merch. A guy was walking the Eastern Market yesterday with his beard dyed blue. There was a drone show Saturday night. Flags flying from every house. The stadium sold 20,000 tickets, even though they’re playing in San Francisco; the game will be displayed on the stadium’s TV screens, a move that a local sportswriter estimates will earn the team another million bucks.

Here at the Nall/Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere, we’ll likely make pulled-chicken barbecue sandwiches and eat ’em in front of the TV. However, I’m going to try to sincerely not care who wins, because my support is, for any team, the kiss of death. There are so many ways to get your heart broken, why ask for another? And so.

Pretty nice weekend, if you forget that we discovered a wet spot in our basement, which led to Alan ripping all the paneling in the rec room down, taking down the insulation, and discovering several large cracks in the foundation. They’re not super-serious, but it’s not the sort of thing that makes one jump up and down with glee. It’ll mean Basement Guys to fix the cracks, then replacing the stuff we ripped out, and at this point I’m just going to shrug and say oh well shit happens. At least we didn’t have a flood.

Then, today, I did a driving tour of Pontiac with a journalist friend. “Over there’s the liquor store where the closing door hit someone, so he shot the guy who didn’t hold the door. …That’s the cemetery where the caretaker saw a homeless guy walking through with a bag of groceries, and they found out he was living in a crypt from the Civil War. … Lotsa shootings around here. …Gang on this street. …Oh, let’s turn in here. It’s a great little neighborhood.” And so on. I purely love journalists’ tours. We see different things than most people.

With that, the kickoff and first score has already happened, so I’m-a watch. Let’s hope I don’t jinx ’em. Go Lions.

MAGA types love to talk. That, and watch movies. They must have “Braveheart” and “The Patriot” running in loops in their houses, and over time, the dialogue seeps into their subconscious, and then out their mouths. My assessment is charitable in that I believe they’re mostly just shit-talkers, but even shit-talkers are responsible for what they say, which brings me to this:

Note the paywall, so no link. But here’s the gist:

There was a recount in a local election in December that “got heated.” Recounts are public events, so:

The event drew attendees who were investigating whether there was some sort of wrongdoing in the election, and it became tense.

And then:

At one point in the day, a person, who hasn’t yet been identified by law enforcement, was overheard saying (the county elections director) was going to be “hanged for treason,” (that same director) told The Detroit News in an interview Tuesday.

The recount turned out the way almost all of them do, in that it didn’t change the result and only shifted the totals by one vote:

But on Dec. 16, a day after (the recount), the Michigan Republican Party issued a press release, saying a “citizen-led investigation,” including a “canvassing mission” of homes in Royal Oak, found some voters who said they had cast ballots in the election but their votes were allegedly not reflected in city records.

“This is a time for Michigan Republicans to stand together, regardless of differing perspectives and fight to eliminate election corruption and ensure that no Michigan voters are disenfranchised due to derelict behavior of election officials,” Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Kristina Karamo said in the mid-December press release. “We will not stand by and see our voices diminished or our presence deleted by dictatorial democrats.”

(The elections director) said some individuals at the recount wanted county officials to investigate the claims, but their allegations fell outside the scope of a recount, which is focused on tallying ballots.

This is so typical of these ignoramuses: Show up at a hearing where the activity is constrained by law to one thing, demand another thing, then yell “dictatorial democrats” when it fails, and then someone says “hanged for treason” to just put the cherry on top.

You watch: If this person is charged, they’ll howl about the Deep State uniparty, blah blah blah. “Hanged for treason” sounds real Mel Gibson-y, like something the patriots of old would do.

(I’m reminded of the first Indiana Jones movie, when he faces a foe swinging a scimitar around all fancy-like. Jones rolls his eyes, pulls out a revolver and shoots the guy. I mean, why is hanging always the preferred punishment of these idiots? The potential for spectators would be my guess, but you can make a show out of a firing squad and not have to build a scaffold.)

Anyway, these idiots are getting on my nerves. Fortunately, they’re destroying themselves. You’ve probably heard about the turmoil within the state GOP, and how the state committee tried to remove the above-mentioned Karamo at a meeting last weekend. But she is telling them she’s not going, and now there are lawsuits being teed up on both sides. It’s a People’s Front of Judea v. the Judean People’s Front all the way down the line, and Michigan Democrats are reacting exactly the way you’d want them to, which is to say: By not making a sound, a statement, or so much as a peep. When your enemies are destroying themselves, don’t interfere, etc.

So. Winter has arrived. We’re supposed to get snow today, and then next week, a deep cold snap. I, however, will not be here. A few weeks back, a friend called to pitch a girlfriends’ week away and I said OK, sure, I’m in. So where will I be while the temperatures settle into the single digits here? MIAMI. I am overcoming my distaste for all things Florida to sit poolside and sip tasty drinks. (Dry January is taking a time out, too, but I’m not going to rip the knob off or anything.) Maybe I can finally beat this respiratory crud.

But I’ll have my laptop, so no break planned here.

Topic for today: Is there a bigger hypocrite on the public stage than Clarence Thomas?

The latest ProPublica look at his fishy finances starts out with a banger:

In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

The gist of the story is, Thomas’ poor-mouthing at conservative events was what led to he and Ginni becoming the latter-day Duke and Duchess of Windsor, freeloading their way across the world, swinging from one rich friend’s guest house to the next. They vacation with billionaires, they take (forgiven) “loans” for shit like recreational vehicles, and so on:

The full details of Thomas’ finances over the years remain unclear. He made at least two big purchases around the early ’90s: a Corvette and a house in the Virginia suburbs on 5 acres of land. When Thomas and his wife, Ginni, bought the home for $522,000 a year after he joined the court, they borrowed all but $8,000, less than 2% of the purchase price, property records show.

Public records suggest a degree of financial strain. Throughout the first decade of his tenure, the couple regularly borrowed more money, including a $100,000 credit line on their house and a consumer loan of up to $50,000. Around January 1998, Thomas’ life changed when he took in his 6-year-old grandnephew, becoming his legal guardian and raising him as a son. The Thomases sent the child to a series of private schools.

I think I may have mentioned last summer, on a long drive, listening to a podcast interview with the director of a film about Thomas’ life. It was impossible not to feel empathy for him, a parent-less boy raised by his terrible grandfather, abused by virtually everyone in his life. His classmates called him “ABC,” i.e. “America’s blackest child.” His grandfather pushes him, hard, in the direction of the priesthood, for his own status-seeking reasons, but the blatant racism of his fellow seminarians drives him away. Law school at Yale exposed him to people who had been coasting on greased skids their entire lives, and Thomas thought at least here he’d graduate into some damn money, but that didn’t happen, either, and he entered government service in the Reagan era, distinguishing himself as a huge asshole at a time when there was real competition for that level. This was at the EEOC, an agency that Reagan would want a huge asshole running.

In short, hurt people hurt people, and Thomas was very good at it.

But what would Thomas, with his famous bootstrap philosophy, think of a person who bought sports cars and houses with practically no money down? He was earning around $176,000 at the time, or $300K in 2023 dollars. He would call that person fiscally irresponsible. And he would be correct. But money seems to be the bass line of so much of Thomas’ resentment. He was delivering big for the nation’s conservatives, and he expected tribute for it. Well, he got it. No one will remember him as a keen legal mind, but rather, as the fat man who rarely spoke, but always ruled predictably.

Breaking Detroit journalism news this afternoon, as local podcaster Charlie LeDuff was arrested last night for domestic violence against his wife. I’m watching the reaction unspool on Twitter. It’s interesting to see how many people are behaving, and commenting, exactly as you’d expect. The guy who loves a shiv when you’re not expecting it has deployed his own. The guy who now works for a right-wing policy shop points out the judge in the arraignment was a protege of the Democratic attorney general. There’s a lot of “not surprised,” which is Duh, because no one who knows, or even heard of, LeDuff should be even mildly surprised by this development.

Not two months ago, he was fired from his contributor’s gig at The Detroit News for calling the aforementioned attorney general a cunt on Twitter. At the time, I described him as “a downward-spiraling journalist who fancies himself a Jon Stewart/Hunter Thompson mashup and desperate to ‘go national,’” and I’ll stand by that. But I won’t do an end-zone dance; it’s sad when someone throws their career away, and he’s been doing so with both hands for quite some time.

If I were his friend, I’d tell him to follow the path of Neil Steinberg, arrested in very similar circumstances 18 years ago, who sobered up and has stayed that way ever since. But we’re not, and he didn’t ask. It’s up to him.

OK, then. Tomorrow is cleaning day. Cleaning and wrapping. As the days tick down.

Every so often someone will ask me if I’ve ever considered “monetizing” this blog. After I finish wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, I consider my options and conclude, yet again, that it ain’t gonna happen. Mostly because of my laziness, but also because I simply don’t care who reads this blog, or how many people read this blog, or even whether this blog exists into the next year, or the year after that. I have no idea what my traffic is. I haven’t checked my analytics in at least a decade, and don’t even know how I’d do it. Probably Google, but honestly? Who gives a shit.

In January, I think we’ll be coming up on — what is it, J.C.? — 23 years? I think so. I was a blogger before blogging was cool. Only MySpace and LiveJournal, maybe a few others, pre-date NN.C. Then, post 9/11, blogging got hot, and cooled off when the enthusiastic adopters realized you have to update the things once in a while, and what a pain in the ass that is. Then social media came along and destroyed it outright, because if you can’t say it in 140 characters, what’s the point? And yet, on I trudge, like the anachronistic crone I increasingly suspect I am. Yesterday I went to a party wearing skinny jeans. All the younger women — and everyone was younger than me — were in bootcut jeans, and it reminded me that skinnies are out-out-out, but oh well. This blog is like the woman who won’t go outdoors unless she’s wearing a hat and gloves.

Personally, I don’t think I look good in bootcut pants, plus I HAVE ALL THESE GREAT BOOTS and goddamn they need to be seen, not hidden under a bell of denim. I guess I could wear more skirts, but what if I have to get on a horse? Or a bicycle? Just doesn’t work.

And that, friends, is why I won’t be signing up with Substack anytime soon. Because of MySpace, jeans and boots. You can’t monetize that kind of meandering. Besides, J.C. has me with WordPress, and it is a fantastic content platform. In my paid work, every so often I’m asked to update a particular business’ website, and it, too, is on WordPress. Sometimes it takes me a while to get the update done, but so far I’ve always been able to do it. I told my boss that WordPress is like walking into an unfamiliar kitchen to make lunch. You may have to open a few drawers to find the right utensils, but you’ll find them. You won’t have to look under the pillows in the bedroom for the spoons.

And I suspect WordPress will still be around when Substack, et al, join MySpace in the great internet beyond, drifting like ghost ships, or space junk, or whatever metaphor you prefer.

Speaking of that party yesterday, a pro tip: If you day-drink, know when to stop, and even then you’ll probably feel like damp garbage afterward. Also, even excellent champagne is no substitute for good hydration. I’ll leave it there. But it was a fun party. Now the week, the last week before the holidays, begins. This should be the merry-and-joy week, but I suspect here at my house it’ll be the oh-my-god-we’re-out-of-tape week, the when-was-the-last-time-we-mopped-the-kitchen week, and of course the grocery-store-onslaught week. But it still lasts only seven days.

OK, a little bloggage, then:

Would you like to invest in Detroit real estate? Here ya go:

I saw this on Facebook Marketplace. Asking $180,000. Listed 13 weeks ago. Some caveats apply, of course:

NO SELLER FINANCING
HUGE PROJECT
NEEDS FULL REHAB

All 1 bed 1 bath units
Message for address and more details

But would you look at that beauty, and imagine what it might have been like to live there in, say, 1940. The ground-floor units with that little covered patio — imagine sitting out there on a warm spring night, listening to the rain. The second-floor units, with walk-out decks on top of them. All the rest. I don’t know if the one-bed-one-bath deal was the original configuration, or if it got carved up later. But yes, NEEDS FULL REHAB. There are some developers who are taking on projects like this, but as always: Location, location, location.

And speaking of outdated content platforms, I stumbled across this the other day, a glimpse of Benjamin Dreyer, of “Dreyer’s English,” before he was famous. Here’s his annotation of the first paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” and if you want to know what an editor’s job is like, read. I’ve known only a handful of editors even a fraction this skilled and thoughtful, and considered it a privilege to work with them.

OK, then. I got up early this morning and the murk is just now lightening to somewhat-less-murky in the sky outdoors. (Confession: I really don’t mind the murk, this time of year, except when I do. It’s like permission to not be outdoors, and I’m fine with that when it’s cold.) Enjoy your murk, or sunshine, wherever you are. And start on your to-do lists before you have to besiege the grocery store! Thank me later!

Years ago, a famous journalist told me a story about the day he came to Detroit for a job interview. He’d just dropped his bag on the floor of his RenCen hotel room when the phone rang. He answered, and a man’s voice asked, “Is Cinnamon and Sherelle there?” “Um, no,” the writer replied, adding that he’d just checked in. “Well, do you want ’em to be there?” the man replied.

That bit of lawlessness, the idea that the first phone call you get in Detroit could be from a pimp, has always been one of the things I like about this place. After 20 years in Indiana, living in a municipality known as the City of Churches, I’d had enough “wonderful place to raise a family” to last a lifetime.

I thought of the writer’s story at the Thanksgiving parade last week, which I had to attend for work. Float after float of nice corporate entities putting on their best public face rolled under multiple plane-towed banners advertising cannabis businesses, the other side of Detroit’s business economy.

If you want to see fewer FREE WEED banners overhead, know this: As long as cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, it will continue. Cannabis businesses can’t advertise with Google or the social-media platforms, as they fear asset forfeiture should another Jeff Sessions assume control of the Justice Department. So – in Michigan, anyway – they’re pretty much confined to billboards, merch and other locally run advertising outlets.

Can’t have a Detroit Thanksgiving parade without the Big Heads, the walking troupe of notable Detroiters. This was their staging area. I see Aretha Franklin, Gilda Radner, Tom Selleck, Rosie the Riveter, Bob Seger, Rosa Parks and…not sure about the white-haired guy at the end of the row, but he’s probably Mort Crim, former anchor for the station that always carries the parade.

Here’s Stevie Wonder and Barry Sanders:

It was a good holiday weekend. Besides the parade, we had a Thanksgiving-for-two that was just fine, followed by a relaxing Black Friday, festive Birthday Saturday, chill post-birthday Sunday. The Lions lost, but the Wolverines won, and that was fine.

There’s leftover birthday cake. I want it gone by tomorrow morning, and then I MUST go on a sugar/alcohol fast for a few days, because I feel like one of those balloons floating over the parade.

Because of my sloth and indulgence, I didn’t get too much bloggage, but there is this, an infuriating look at how the Trump team cheapened and coarsened the pardon process, from the NYT:

Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed.

Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate for clemency.

A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses.

Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr. Braun’s commutation are becoming clearer, raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term, when he would have the power to make good on his suggestions that he would free supporters convicted of storming the Capitol and possibly even to pardon himself if convicted of the federal charges he faces.

A loan shark, but a well-connected one. Of course Jared Kushner is involved, as is Alan Dershowitz.

On that depressing note, I leave you to your end of weekend/start of week selves.

A nondescript building was torn down on our commercial strip here in Grosse Pointe Woods, to expand parking for an adjacent business I’m told. Look what was revealed:

Looks like it was painted yesterday. Without going to a library and doing serious research, I’d estimate its provenance as: Likely late ’50s/early ’60s, maybe? Our house was built in 1947. The “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot” slogan goes back as far as the ’20s, but it lasted years. Dossin’s was a local bottler, and a prosperous one — they commissioned the Miss Pepsi hydroplane. And there’s the phone number, with the old TUxedo exchange for this area. The Oxford Beer Store is still around, although it’s moved one door west and is now Oxford Beverage; it’s where Kate would ride her bike for frozen Cokes when that was her pleasure. This building is now a dry cleaner.

I mention this for two reasons: One, because one thing I noticed when we moved here was the abundance of wall-painted signage, just way more than you saw in Fort Wayne or Columbus, and lots of them are pretty great. So let’s celebrate the good ones. And the other? I’m sure some dipshit property owner or city father will order it covered with white paint before too much longer. So let’s at least say it was here for a while, and we all got to enjoy it.

We recently had a case here that may have gotten some national attention, a suburban man who put out a social-media call for others to go “hunting Palestinians.” He was arrested in fairly short order, by the police in Dearborn. I googled his name, and whaddaya know, he’s a troublemaker of long standing:

Carl David Mintz, 41, was charged Monday in connection with the alleged threat posted last week to social media in a case that heightened fears of fallout from the Israel-Hamas war in a region with a sizable Arab American population.

Mintz is a former school board candidate who ran on “ending critical race theory,” and was previously reported to have posted Islamophobic YouTube videos. He’s a also a licensed Realtor whose firm tells the Free Press it “released” him Monday after he was charged.

…In a 2010 road rage incident that grabbed headlines, Mintz shot 20-year-old Faith Said in the arm in Oakland County.

After an initial trial that tested the limits of self defense and ended in a mistrial, Mintz ultimately pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon, according to Free Press archives.

Another story said Mintz repeatedly tapped his brakes until Said got out of his car and approached, after which Mintz shot…him, I presume. Although the name is given in two places as “Faith,” I’d be willing to bet it’s really Fatih, which goes better with the surname.

Anyway, Mintz is your garden variety Islamophobe shithead, and we’ve all heard of the Palestinian mother and son wounded/killed by another Mintz in Chicago, so let’s worry about what some college students said about Israel.

OK, this will be it for the week for me. Heading to Columbus tomorrow for a long weekend, mostly reconnecting with old friends and family. So it’ll be great, I know it will.

You all have a great weekend.

There are people in your life who are entirely happy with things as they are, and bless ’em, that’s great. There are others who are happy but are still restless, still looking for the next thing, still focused on moving forward.

My friend Michael is one of those. And he’s had quite a journey so far. He attended a seminary high school, thinking he might become a priest, ended up a lawyer, married once, divorced, married again, worked with Coleman Young, served on the Wayne State Board of Governors, did this, did that, came out as gay, divorced again (but remained, and remains, BFFs with his ex-wife), etc. and added a lot more accomplishments and interesting turns to the journey. Let me put it this way: We met in a digital filmmaking class. That should tell you something.

And on Saturday, he did this:

Yep, Michael is now Father Michael, having prostrated himself before God and being ordained in the Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony, home of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, informally known as independent, not Roman, Catholics. (Here’s a story about the church from 2016, and it’s pretty good.)

I was raised Catholic, but this was the only Mass of Ordination I’ve attended. There was a small choir that sounded much bigger, thanks to the operatic voices within; the leader had a basso like Paul Robeson. The homilies were personal and casual; I learned that Michael had been the straw buyer when the archdiocese refused to sell the closed church to the ecumenical bishop, among other things. But it was a joyful, moving occasion, and I’m so glad I went. And now I have a new place to donate clothing, something I’m overdue to get moving on.

Sunday was lovely, sunny and warm, so my friend Bill and I made what will almost certainly be my last trip of the year to St. Clair for some river swimming. The water was about 67 degrees — bracing for a pool swimmer, but as we told everyone who gaped in astonishment from the boardwalk, not bad at all once you got used to it. The current seemed stronger than usual, and the autumn light on the water as a cold front rolled in was stirring. We watched the Lee A. Tregurtha pass, upbound, from the water, and when we signaled for a salute, the pilot gave us one! Just a short toot, but it counted. That is one big ship. I just checked its location on Boatnerd, and it’s closing in on Drummond Island, headed for Marquette.

“This is a very Great Lakes kind of experience,” Bill remarked, and it certainly was.

And that, friends, is one reason we’re putting off our European trip until March/April of next year. So much happens in the fall around here. You don’t want to miss it.

Some bloggage? A little:

Headline: Anti-abortion activists worry they’re on the wrong end of a Faustian bargain. Ha ha ha ha ha, she chortled bitterly. Fuck you.

Ron DeSantis is a horrible, horrible person, who has destroyed a quirky public college in Florida, trying to make it into a southern Hillsdale. However, even Hillsdale has higher standards:

Gone are gender-neutral bathrooms, hallway art that in some cases featured nudity and student murals that had been completed in February and were expected to remain for several years. Student orientation leaders had to remove Black Lives Matter and Pride pins from their polo shirts. A student government election this week pitted a returning student against a new student backed by a newly formed campus chapter of the conservative organization Turning Point USA.

Dan Duprez, a former New College admissions officer, said he was troubled by the tactics used to grow the incoming class, noting that the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of new students were lower than those of past freshman classes. He recalled a colleague showing him an admissions essay that was a screenshot of cellphone notes, “riddled with incorrect spelling and grammar, saying, basically, ‘I just want to play ball.’”

Finally, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the only presidential candidate the Michigan GOP was able to lure to its biannual leadership conference on Mackinac Island, promising the moon and stars:

“How are we going to find our way out of this, to win the war that we are losing? First step we have to take on the managerial class,” he said. “As your next U.S. president, if you all put me there, we will shut down the unconstitutional fourth branch, 75% headcount reduction in the administrative state in Washington, D.C. Rescind unconstitutional federal regulations. That’s a majority of federal regulations on day one that we are done with.”

Promising that those unprecedented cuts would “unlock the U.S. economy,” Ramaswamy said they would also clear the way to fully embrace fossil fuels, despite the impact on climate change.

“When you get the administrative state out of the way, we will drill, we will frack, we will burn coal. We will embrace nuclear again in this country without apology. That is how we grow our economy,” he said.

Yeah, sure, he can totally do that. What a winner! Snort.

OK, then, let’s have ourselves a good week, eh? I’ll do my best.

Today was a good day. Walked out to go to my early swim workout and saw a vivid star in the east, which I assume is Venus. Decided I’d try my new iPhone 14 and see if Alex is correct that it can capture starshine:

Affirmative, although a pretty crappy photo overall. Shoulda turned out the back yard light, done a better job of holding still, etc. Well, I was on my way out.

Afterward, a little work, then downriver for something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: Catch a closer look at the under-construction Gordie Howe International Crossing, and whaddaya know, it is coming right along.

It’ll be open by the end of next year, we’re told. It struck me, looking at it, that other than road-building, it’s hard to find an under-construction engineering marvel in my part of the world. But this bridge is 100 percent paid for by Canada. That’s how little they care for the Moroun family, owners of the Ambassador Bridge farther upriver. Much of the work is being done on this side of the river, and the paychecks are signed by Johnny Canuck. Best thing about it? It’ll have a bike lane. I can’t wait to commute to Canada on a bicycle.

Also spotted today: The Detroit-to-Windsor truck ferry.

I’ve seen signs for it, read about it in the papers, but never actually seen it at work. So there you are.

Then I met up with a friend and set off for a photo tour of lovely Delray, but the roads around there are so littered with debris that my bike got a flat 15 minutes in. So it wasn’t a perfect day, but it was an excuse to stop for a taco and Topo Chico at the Mexican cantina nearby. Which we did.

Then pizza for dinner, because why not. I’ll fix the flat tomorrow.

Have a great weekend, all.