A friend of mine is working on a book with a Detroit history angle, and has given me the great privilege of editing it, at least at the first-reader level. It’s great, and it reminds me of another book project I worked on, another Detroit-history volume. I spent a fair amount of time at the library, reading newspapers on microfilm, and was struck by how different history looks at ground level, as opposed to the 30,000-foot view taken in history texts.

It’s one thing, for instance, to write that “Many middle-class residents fled the city, citing fear of rising crime,” and another entirely to look at some of the crimes we’re talking about here.

One incident happened in 1976. The Average White Band and Kool and the Gang were playing a show at Cobo Arena in the heart of downtown. Gang activity was at its peak then (which tracks; my birth year was the largest of the baby boom, and I would have been 19 in ’76). As the show started, a couple hundred gang members managed to get into the arena, easily blowing past security and the few police working the show. During the break between acts, members of the Errol Flynns (they had some great names, these gangs) took the stage and started yelling “Errol Flynn! Errol Flynn!” into the live mics, while others fanned out through the crowd, robbing audience members of their watches and wallets.

Then they fled into the night, and if anything, the situation got worse, as this clipping from the time suggests:

A 16-year-old black girl said she saw 20 to 25 black youths snatch a white girl’s purse, beat her white boyfriend, and then strip her to her shoes and rape her.

Forty-seven arrests, widespread robberies, one rape, one molestation, followed by gang members smashing storefront windows and looting stores. Fun fact: One of the gang members that night? A young man named Greg Mathis, who grew up to be Judge Mathis.

Imagine if your son or daughter had gone through something like that, even if she wasn’t gang-raped in an alley afterward. You’d turn your back on that city so fast you’d spin like a top.

Something useful to remember.

I see some of you are playing Wordle. I played it for a while, deleted it, added it again. Here’s my technique:

The object of the game is to guess a five-letter word in six tries. The board starts out blank, so I’ve learned you start with a consonant blend and as many vowels as you can get up there, although I didn’t follow the rule here. Gray tiles mean the letter isn’t in the word at all, yellow means it’s there but in the wrong place, and green means the letter is in the right place.

So if the H is correct, then the first letter is probably C, T or W. The L can’t be in the third position, so try it second-from-last, then in the last spot, and then you just take guesses. Mine was lucky.

Now I’ve managed to be even more annoying than the people who tweet their results! Now there’s a winner!

This is a story probably little-noticed outside Michigan, the Midwest, and/or political-junkie circles, but the newly created Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission finished their work (for the most part) last night, approving new district maps for the U.S. House and state legislative districts.

The state is losing a district, which will make for some musical chairs. As for the Nall/Derringer co-prosperity sphere, we’ll move from the 14th to the 13th, expected to be a safe hold for Rashida Tlaib, the pottymouthed Palestinian-American squad member of impeach-the-motherfucker fame. The state districts are more of a we’ll-see situation, but most agree that the new maps, while still imperfect because of course they are, will make for a more representative state legislature and federal delegation than the disgraceful gerrymander they will replace.

There’ll be a lawsuit filed in the 13th, in fact, over the loss of majority-minority districts, and in fact, Michigan could end up with no black congressional representatives, which is startling for a state that contains America’s blackest city. On the other hand, “packing” is one of the ways to dilute black political power, and blacks have been moving to the suburbs for decades. Rashida is Arab-American, but she’s been a stand-up voice for people of color in her district so far. The courts will decide, I suppose. But for now, I’m pleased. (Tossup districts are way more competitive now — in that they exist. And if Trump tries to steal another election in 2024, we might have more of a fighting chance, at least in Michigan.)

This is the current 14th District:

And barring court modification, the purple-shaded area will be the 13th:

At least I’m no longer in a district with Pontiac, which would take me nearly an hour to reach by car. On freeways. In a densely populated urban area.

From the whining I’m picking up in rural areas of the state, I’m calling this a success.

That’s the good news. The bad? Kate went back to her house two days ago, after testing negative for five days previous AND the day after Christmas, started feeling bad, tested again and came up positive. So now we wait, and isolate. Oh well — we didn’t really have any firm plans for New Year’s Eve anyway. And she was feeling better within a day. Me, I’m fine-ish, in that I’m not sick but not not-sick, if that makes sense. Alan’s fine so far. Me, I’m running on about 87.5 percent, which is indistinguishable from the mildly bleh feeling I get after the rich foods, too much wine and scarcity of outdoor exercise during the holidays. But I’ll be safe. No socializing until I test negative and another week passes.

Some stuff to read in the slow week? Sure:

Here’s the always-interesting Olivia Nuzzi on Dr. Oz’s Pennsylvania Senate bid, which contains a hilarious long anecdote involving an improperly disconnected cell-phone call to Mrs. Oz:

To my surprise, she picked up — for about a second. Just as quickly as it started, the call was over. I had barely said hello. Unsure if we’d been disconnected or she’d hung up on me, I tried her back. The tone of her voice suggested it had definitely been the latter.

“How did you get my number?” she asked sharply. I told her that her number was listed in public records, and this annoyed her too. “Oh,” she said, “I should have gotten rid of that.” I was about to explain that public records don’t work that way, but she cut in. “Have a nice day,” she said, but it sounded like a cross between the way women of the South say “Bless your heart” and men of Brooklyn call some asshole “pal” after being cut off in traffic. Then she hung up.

Or she thought she did.

It may be paywalled, and if so, I’m sorry. Try an Incognito window.

Also, the battle over wind power in west Michigan. Not everyone thinks it’s wonderful.

Me, I”m off to work now.

The fallout from the school shooting continues to be felt. Everywhere. The county prosecutor has her hands full with a shit-ton of copycat threats to other schools in the area. I have no doubt they’re all bullshit, but it certainly suggests kids kinda…hate their schools? Yes, that seems to be it.

Of course, lots of kids “hate” school, but they miss it terribly when they’re not there. It’s the center of their social lives, but even kids like me — stable home, lots of support, did well in what was indisputably a first-class public school district — had days when, if the building had burned to the ground, I would have stood outside, roasting marshmallows.

Lots of the threats are at the middle-school level, which tracks. I mean: Middle school, amirite? Others are more serious, leading to evacuations, dismissals for the day, and the expected messages to panicked parents: Don’t panic!

Well, we’re all on edge. I think it’s not just because this shooting happened close to home. Rather, because we look at those mugshots of the Crumbleys and realize: I know 25 people exactly like this. How many of them leave guns lying around for their disturbed teenagers to pick up? Probably more than a few, because really, what good is a “properly secured” weapon worth in a tense situation? Home invaders don’t send advance notice; you wake up in the night and think you heard something. Or you walk into the kitchen on a warm summer day and realize someone’s there who shouldn’t be. Do you say, “Hold that thought while I unlock my properly secured weapon?” Or maybe you don’t have children, so you leave the gun in the nightstand, or on the nightstand — badass! — or somewhere else. And then someone breaks in while you’re gone, and steals it.

Someone called in a threat to my high school, maybe a year before I arrived there. Only there really was a bomb, a homemade thing made of fireworks, as I recall. It blew up a toilet, and a kid was injured by flying porcelain. The perpetrator was expelled, the only permanent expulsion I’m aware of during my time there. He wasn’t a terrible kid, just one lost in the dark tunnel of adolescence. I just looked him up on Facebook, and he appears to be fine. Has an interest in general aviation. Who knows what Ethan Crumbley might have become, with different parents? A question for the ages, I guess.

I once saw a cop show that featured a middle-of-the-night home invasion, of Regina King’s house. She played a cop. Leapt from her bed to the closet, quickly keyed in a four-digit combination on her gun safe, and took out a Mossberg pump-action shotgun, which which she dispatched the bad guys. Now there’s a well-secured firearm. I’ve heard police say a shotgun is actually the safest home-protection weapon you can have, because the rounds won’t fly through your walls or windows into the neighbor’s nursery, and you can keep it loaded with rock salt rounds (do those even exist outside of southern gothic fiction) just in case you accidentally shoot your daughter’s boyfriend, sneaking in for some middle-of-the-night shenanigans.

OK then! Must run — the Deadline Detroit holiday party is tonight, and I have to throw together my contribution to the buffet. And get a Covid test first, which is scheduled in about 30 minutes. Probably be crowded, too, what with our heedlessness and surging case load. Best get moving. Happy weekend to all.

Kate and Alan had a father-daughter date Friday night, which left me on my own. So I ran an errand, had a solitary dinner at the bar of a spot I’ve never tried before, and went to a record release show in Hamtramck. Leaving around 11:30, I was rolling east on Mt. Elliott when a bunch of flashing blue lights were suddenly coming up fast behind. I pulled over, and three DPD units went by so at such a speed that I could barely catch that they were, indeed, DPD.

I got home, checked Twitter, and realized where they must have been headed: To the Crumbley manhunt, because news here doesn’t just happen, it warps and metastasizes and becomes SuperNews, a school shooting where the perp’s parents are accused of involuntary manslaughter and try to lam it, despite what their lawyers say. (The lawyers say they always intended to turn themselves in. They were simply “getting their affairs in order” and spending the night in an artist’s studio 40 miles from their home, nbd.)

Yes, it was a week where the news just didn’t quit. The Crumbleys iced the rancid cupcake. I’m sure you’ve all seen the pressers by now, the prosecutor explaining that the Parents of the Year not only bought their 15-year-old a semiautomatic handgun for an early Christmas present, they blew off school reports that young Ethan was exhibiting disturbing behavior and, on the day of the shooting, came to school for a conference and refused to take their boy home. And the school, for its part, didn’t exactly cover itself with glory by allowing him to go back to class without searching this backpack or locker.

This case is going to be with us for quite some time. I also have a feeling the gun people are simply biding their time and waiting until some of the spotlight has dimmed before they Well-Actually into a defense of the Crumbleys. It’s gonna be ugly.

Time will reveal more, but I’ll say, just to wake up on Saturday and see the entire family arrayed in mugshots, all occupants of the same county jail, was surreal.

Then I ran my Saturday-grind errands, had dinner with a friend and watched U-M win the Big 10 championship. So it was a good weekend after all.

Now it’s the week, and I have no energy. Half the people I know have Covid now, so I’m hoping it’s not a prelude to that. Pfingers crossed and pfaith in Pfizer, anyway. I’ve been careful, but not 2020-careful.

Fresh thread for now, and we’ll hope for something more stimulating in a day or two.

At Eastern Market Saturday, I saw a familiar face – a downtown homeless guy, temporarily relocated to a higher foot-traffic area.

If I recall correctly, he’s an addict, and he looked even worse than the last time I saw him, pre-pandemic. He’s also fairly young and pretty smart. Once he asked for money from my editor as we walked back from lunch, and my editor, the softest touch in the world, stopped to peel off a couple of bucks for him. He rarely just forks over the cash, however, and as a true journalist, likes to engage in some small talk at the same time. Soon he was offering to help the guy get a state ID so he could apply for jobs, and I ducked into a coffee spot for an espresso while they hashed it out. When I came out, the homeless kid was saying, “…but there’s an opportunity cost for me in that situation, too,” and all I could think was: Kids, don’t do hard drugs.

Tuesday is election day, and I’m working again. Same precinct. This will be my fourth one there, and I think I’m going to ask for a transfer to the absentee counting boards for 2022, where there will at least be constant work, rather than the long stretches of ass-numbing crickets in our sleepy little precinct. The area we serve is pretty poor, hit hard by depopulation, and turnout is generally abysmal, even by Detroit standards. I think we had 35 voters, total, in August.

But I’m doing my part. I got my Covid test, copied my CDC vax card, printed out my assignment, and will be there at 5:45 a.m. ready for 14 hours in a mask. It’s important.

I know the crowd here skews older, but I have to ask: Do any of you watch comic-book movies? I made it through “Black Widow” on the flight home a couple weeks ago, and at the end had the same reaction I have to all the previous ones I’ve tried: Well, that was a movie. They’re so, what’s the word? Boring. The hero’s journey, spiced with several action sequences, ending with the sequel setup. Plus, if you haven’t followed the Marvel franchise through however many films they’ve squeezed out of it, you get the sense you’re missing in-jokes and backstory the producers simply assume you are familiar with. It’s like millions and millions are spent on people who go to various Comic Cons around the country and stand in line for four hours to listen to colloquia on Spider-Man.

Honestly the most interesting part of “Black Widow” was examining Florence Pugh’s remarkable heart-shaped face. Talk about a movie-star mug. Now to see if she can continue to deliver performances.

If I seem a little aimless today, it’s because I just finished a long story and feel like I’m finally caught up with everything I missed during my time away. And I had too much to drink last night – didn’t rip the knob off, just poured two cocktails into an empty stomach – and feel like my best strategy for today is a bike ride and a nap and maybe some TV. So here’s my new favorite picture: Kate and the band at their show Friday night (which we missed). They were Josie and the Pussycats! I love it. See you later this week.

Well, this is not good:

BRUSSELS — The European Union is set to advise member states that they should reintroduce travel restrictions for visitors from the United States, three E.U. officials said on Sunday, as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations have surged in the U.S. in recent weeks.

Starting Monday, the officials said, the United States will be removed from a “safe list” of countries whose residents can travel to the 27-nation bloc without additional restrictions, such as quarantine and testing requirements. The suggested restrictions, made by the European Council, will not be mandatory for member countries, and it will remain up to those countries to decide whether or not to impose them.

Not mandatory. So there’s a chance that…France, say, might decide to allow only vaccinated Americans in. So the lights aren’t out on our trip yet. But they’re growing dim.

Feeling smug about only booking places with generous cancellation policies. But very blue about missing beaujolais nouveau season in France. All fingers crossed.

I’m not here to whine, because holy shit New Orleans:

A slow-moving Hurricane Ida has left all of Orleans Parish customers without power due to “catastrophic transmission damage,” according to Entergy New Orleans.

The intense storm had caused all eight transmission lines into the New Orleans area to go down, spokesman Brandon Scardigli said in an emailed statement. That created a load imbalance that knocked all power generation in the region offline, Scardigli said.

A million people without power in not just one city, but an entire region. This is gonna get ugly. I’m not a big fan of nostalgia, but I’m recalling the aftermath of Katrina, and not just what happened, but how ugly and discordant the national discussion around it was: Sure it’s terrible what’s happening there, but they had the chance to leave and they didn’t, so? :::shrug::: But we’ve grown so much and learned so much since then, right? I’m sure it’ll be much better this time.

A steamy, oppressively hot weekend that ended with a banger of a thunderstorm. Alan was off fishing all weekend, and said his experience was the same, only a little cooler. He had to shelter from a huge one under some trees (yeah, I know) and actually bail his drift boat, because it was coming in so fast. We’ve had at least half a dozen, maybe 10, of these storms this summer. The most recent one before this was…Friday, I believe. A short one that cooled things off by maybe a degree or two until the sun came out and heated all that rainfall into steam. A friend and I stopped at a free techno show for a bit; the artist, an EDM musician, if turntables count as instruments, was launching his own weed brand and announced a pop-up show at the last minute. He threw free samples to the crowd and I marveled at our changing world.

However, I also marveled at the lack of masks, the close quarters (although still outside) and the flying sweat droplets. So we didn’t stay long. I’m booking a test on Wednesday, anyway.

The last storm broke the back of the heat, at least. Cooler today, then mid to high 70s the rest of the week. Ahh.

While we welcome Monday, let’s keep a good thought for Louisiana — the good parts, anyway.

Made some time to watch “Malice at the Palace,” a short (about an hour) documentary about the infamous brawl between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers. It was Nov. 19, 2003, and I remember it mainly because Alan had a job interview in Detroit that day, and they’d made him an offer. We were moving to Detroit. Then I came downstairs that Saturday morning, turned on the TV and found it looping on almost every channel.

We laughed and laughed – hey, it’s our new home! What a crazy place! And beyond the usual anniversary pieces, the tiresome Albomesque chin-scratching about Our Violent Society and Won’t Someone Think of the Children, I haven’t thought much about it since.

So I’m glad I watched. And I came away feeling bad for laughing. I hadn’t thought enough about what it meant to the players who were suspended, losing millions of dollars and being derailed for an entire season. And I certainly hadn’t given enough consideration to the jerkoff fans who started the thing, in particular the guy who threw the cup that set things off. His name is John Green and while he expressed regret, I can’t say I felt much of it coming through the screen.

The players, though – that was rough. Ron Artest, who appeared to have a few mental health issues. Jermaine O’Neal, all sweetness and regret. Stephen Jackson, still pissed. And so on.

Of the woefully unprepared security team, we will say little, other than to echo O’Neal’s contempt that one of the cops didn’t recognize Reggie Miller and came close to giving him a mace facial. True, he wasn’t dressed in his uniform – he had a broken finger – but he was in a very nice suit and trying to break things up; you’d think even a suburban cop would realize a 6-foot-7-inch black man in a suit with courtside access was not just another rioter.

(I once stumbled across a stray piece of video from a couple years back. Miller, who has moved on to sports broadcasting, was walking across a court in an empty arena, hours before a NCAA championship game was to start. A few balls are scattered around the floor. Miller is, again, in a nicely tailored suit. He picks up a ball, dribbles twice, shoots and drains it, from well into the three-point zone. Does it again, does it again, does it five times, each time nothing but net, outside the line. All of this is captured by a photographer he doesn’t see. After he’s shot all the balls within reach, he walks off to wherever he was headed. It’s such a pleasure to watch someone who is that good at what he does, doing what he does. And I’m not even a sports fan.)

The worst offenders, of course, are the media. The word “thug” comes up again and again in the coverage, while people in suits sit in front of cameras and opine straight out their asses. Having been an out-the-ass opiner myself, I know the job often requires you to have opinions about shit you know little to nothing about. Still. Man, I’m glad I don’t have that job anymore.

Anyway, it’s on Netflix, and well worth an hour of your time, sports fan or not.

And with that, we await the weekend. The sunrise was lovely this morning, but it’s gonna be a hot one. Stay cool.

On Friday, I saw the sun rise…

…and set:

Both times over water, so you know it was a good day. The sunset came with a group:

I haven’t been kayaking in forever, so it was a good evening. We came for the moonrise, but clouds obscured the view. Even when you miss it, though, there’s something about paddling for home down the Detroit River at night that feels pretty great and makes up for everything.

On Saturday we went to the Detroit Golden Gloves tournament with my trainer and his wife. This bout was called a draw early on, when the guy on the right got a bloody nose:

And I include this pic for the ref’s mullet, which was amazing:

We came out into a heavy rain, which only got heavier. Our fave pizza place down the block was closed, the alternative had a one-hour wait, the second alternative was closed and by then, it was raining so hard I was worried about getting home. No way was I taking the freeway, not after seeing what happened the last time. So we headed back on surface streets, with the visibility almost nil — that’s how hard it was coming down. I couldn’t see where the deep spots were, but there was a car in front of me, so I just watched his tail lights. Of course — of course! — these people were undeterred:

They cannot be stopped. They are the cockroaches of the party scene, and will survive when every other place in town closes. I call them the Woo People, because every time you see them, the people onboard are saying WOOOO. On the water Friday night, there were the aquatic version, i.e. floating tiki huts with a small outboard motor, the most ridiculous things you ever saw, but they seem popular. There were also two larger ones, pontoon boats with free-spinning, non-functional “paddle wheels” on the back, along with flashing LED lights. Just ridiculous. As the rain continued to come down harder and harder last night, we passed one of the pedal pubs with its isenglass curtains rolled down, because cuz, there’d been a big change in the weather.

Everybody who’s spent time in the Midwest knows these storms; sometimes you have to pull off the freeway under an underpass to wait it out. They rarely last longer than a few minutes, but this one went for half an hour, easy.

When we got home, the basement was dry. As Aretha says, don’t know what I’m doing, but I must be living right.

So the plan to squeeze all the juice out of summer is going well. I just wish this rain would give us a break. Our butterfly bush is dying, and Alan says it’s from being drowned. I don’t doubt it.

A little bloggage? Sure.

J.D. Vance continues to devolve into an ever-more-horrible p.o.s. To wit:

Vance also took aim at the Democratic Party, saying that it had “become controlled by people who don’t have children.” He also claimed that politicians running the country do not have a “personal indirect stake” in improving it because they do not have children.

“And why is this just a normal fact of American life, that the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal indirect stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children and grandchildren,” Vance asked, noting that he was not referring to people who are unable to have children.

Joe Biden has children. Nancy Pelosi has children. People all over the Democratic caucus have children, children, children. Vance’s principle principal sugar daddy, Peter Thiel, has no children. Fuck this guy.

Meanwhile, you think it’s bad here? This is the U.K. Do note the Trump flag in the crowd:

I can’t believe I’m tweeting this. As an ICU doctor who has given everything they have trying to save lives this makes me want to cry.

“Get their names, email them to me. At the Nuremberg trial the doctors and nurses stood trial, and they hung”. pic.twitter.com/9tZeqru1Vk

— Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden 💙 (@sbattrawden) July 24, 2021

And with that, I have to clean a bathroom and finish overhauling a closet. Happy Sunday/Monday, all.

I lived in a flooding city for 20 years. (Many of you still do.) In that time, I covered, or observed, probably at least a dozen flooding events, big and small. 1985, that was a biggie, caused by the usual factors – spring rain plus snow melt. But there were also weird one-offs like the one-river event in 2003 (I think), caused by a single, small storm system that stalled and dumped apocalyptic rain on a fairly small watershed.

In general, I think Fort Wayne has handled its flooding problem as well as can be expected, particularly in the area of turning floodplain into parkland. I think they also installed some massive infrastructure thing underground; a basin or something? It was after my time. But Fort Wayne’s flooding comes from the nearby rivers, and should surprise no one.

The ones that hit my community over the weekend mainly came from below, in backups from sewers and floor drains, although the streets were so full that some of it came in via the front door. The reaction in Indiana was usually: Shit happens, time to clean up. Here, it seems to be: Who can I sue?

Floods are awful, and I’ve said this before, but I think they’re the worst of all natural disasters. Tornadoes sweep everything away, fires burn it up, but floods cover your precious possessions with shit, sometimes literally. It’s devastating. Also, you have to do much of the work yourself, and lugging waterlogged crap up basement steps is back-breaking work.

The cleanup is continuing here. And it sucks. Many people are discovering their homeowners insurance doesn’t cover flooding. That’s a shit thing to find out.

Meanwhile, I’m following your own various miseries in the comments – the heat, the moving, the pooping cat. Man, it’s a trying week.

Things are getting weird everywhere. Apparently the South Dakota National Guard is now a mercenary force, for starters.

I’ll leave you with that, and let’s get through the midweek without melting or drowning, eh?

While the rest of you were discussing heat in the Pacific Northwest, we had our own extreme weather here – 6.5 inches of rain in 24 hours, which left the whole city and much of the suburbs under water. Probably the worst were the freeways, where the underpass pumps failed in large numbers. People had to abandon their cars and now, 36 hours later, large stretches of the freeways still look like this:

I-94 at Cass Avenue in Detroit: pic.twitter.com/tj8Nfbs7O1

— Dustin Blitchok (@SincerelyDustin) June 26, 2021

This looks like it was taken closer to sunrise, not long after the worst of it passed:

The flooding in #Detroit is nuts. Here’s a pic of the expressway 👀😳 roads are closed, homes/cars damaged… and more rain is headed that way. Be safe everyone!!! pic.twitter.com/L8KfhvcRLl

— Blake Keller WNEM (@blakekellertv) June 26, 2021

And how did the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere fare? Amazingly, astoundingly well. Two floor drains puddled and then receded. Zero damage. The kind of luck that makes you think you live under a lucky star, or something. The hand of fate spared us, this time. In Grosse Pointe Park, which is connected to a pumping station that failed, they weren’t so lucky. Basements were inundated – floating furniture, ruined electronics, the whole bit. We helped some friends pump out a minor flood in their own basement (6 or 7 inches), and it was just like being back in the Fort, I’m telling you.

It also reminded me to do two things in the next few weeks: Have our drains rootered, just because it’s been a while; and move stuff up off the floors and lower levels in the basement. It’s only a matter of time.

More pictures? Sure. These were the freeways Saturday morning:

Every few years, Grosse Pointe does one of those public art projects where they give blank objects to artists and let them paint them, then sell them as a fundraiser. Since we’ve been there, they’ve done frogs, dogs, fish and this year, hearts. Businesses buy them and put them outside their businesses. This one was bolted to the wall of this office building, but when the water rose, that fish obviously saw his opportunity to make an escape:

And with that, I just got a text asking for help clearing a sodden basement, so I think I’ll go polish my karma a little. You all stay dry out there, or cool, or otherwise adapted to whatever apocalyptic weather event is befalling your part of the world today.