I was driving home from the mall Sunday, thinking about driving. I was in the far-right lane cruise-controlled at 70, woolgathering about a lot of what we talked about last week — safety and road stress, mainly, but also how the hell I’m going to teach my daughter to navigate these crazy freeways. How hard it is to resist the velocitizing effect of your fellow travelers. How you should never, ever travel faster than you feel comfortable. How margins of error are so much shorter at higher speeds. I glanced in the rear-view, where a BMW grille was closing in at a terrifying pace. My foot, which had been resting ineffectually on the accelerator (cruise control, remember) twitched up reflexively, just as the Beamer blew past on my left and wove another stitch around and through the cars ahead before disappearing into the flow of traffic.

He had to have been going 100, if not more. I’m assuming it was an auto-show tourist of some sort or another. The same thing happened to us Saturday night around 11, only it was a Dodge with fancy LED taillights. I don’t know if it was a dealer or a journalist or a corporate test driver, Ryan-goddamn-Gosling or Michael-goddamn-Shumacher, but that is an ignorant, stupid thing to do on an American freeway, especially one demonstrably full of people who are doing everything except paying attention to what they’re supposed to be doing. But it’s auto-show week, and that’s what happens here.

I’ve driven fast enough times myself to know why people do it and how invincible you can feel in a new, well-made car with all the latest safety features, but treating I-75 like an F-1 proving ground has too many hazards to count, including something as simple as my automatic reaction to seeing a car roaring up from behind — to take my foot off the gas. A sudden decrease in my speed, a closing hole in the lane to the left, and we all might have ended up in a sheet-metal sandwich. (I wonder how I’d be described in the story/obit, “journalist,” “blogger” or the ignoble “area woman.”)

And it did seem the BMW driver knew what s/he was doing. It’s the multi-lane swerve-overs behind me that freak my cheese, as so much depends on the trustworthiness of your fellow motorist, and that is? Not bloody trustworthy.

While we’re on the subject, for those of you who didn’t follow the comment thread Friday, the story of the firefighter killed while changing a tire on the freeway — the very incident that started this train of thought — has taken a turn. Now it’s looking less like a tragic accident and maybe a staged one, but the investigation continues.

Hope your weekend was a fine one. We went to see a production of “The Tempest” at a local bar. It was fun, but I think I’ll blog about it over at 42 North in the next day or two. But this part is for you guys alone: The actor who played Caliban was a real scenery-chewer, and had a very funny bare-ass scene that left me thinking our own Caliban chose his handle well.

A little bloggage:

Rick Santorum quotes as New Yorker cartoon captions.

Mitt Romney and his Irish setter — the anecdote that won’t go away, by the writer who dug it up. HT: John Wallace.

Finally, some housekeeping: I think this week will be the one I’ll start experimenting with some shorter material. Classes start at Wayne today, and my life will hit another gear. I’m thinking writing posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and pix-with-linx Tuesday and Thursday. Not sure how it will shake out, but I want to put up a new post daily, but perhaps one that won’t take quite so much of my increasingly scarce free time.

We’ll see how it works out.

As no one has ever been able to explain how the use of a neti pot differs significantly from a kinder, gentler waterboarding, I’ve never been tempted to use one. I’ve never had sinus problems, and I was one of those kids whose day at the pool could be ruined by getting water up my nose — it really is one of my least-favorite physical sensations. I understand many of you may well swear by pouring gently warmed saltwater into your nasal passages as the first step on the road to a happy nose, and to you I say: How nice. But get that thing away from me.

So when, settling in for my shift of harvesting health-care news last night, I clicked onto Google’s health page and saw a headline reading, Improper use of neti pots linked to deaths, and read this showstopper of a lead —

BATON ROUGE, La., Dec. 18 (UPI) — Louisiana health officials warn the improper use of neti pots is linked to two deaths in the state caused by a so-called brain-eating amoeba.

– I felt vindicated. Although, in fairness, when you read the story, it sounds like it’s more about the poor quality of tap water in Louisiana than anything else. The brain-eating amoeba in question mainly infects swimmers in warm water in places like Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and please, hold your Cletus jokes. The fact this stuff can live in warm tap water would make me hesitant to take a damn shower in bayou country without seeing a microbiology report from the local treatment plant.

And people make jokes about Detroit’s tap water. (Which is actually pretty good.)

With that, Monday begins. Stand by for news! But first, some bloggage:

Retiring Sports Illustrated super-photographer Walter Iooss Jr. tells a few stories on his way out, including this one about LeBron James:

LeBron became a villain to many after The Decision. I’ve seen a lot of entourages, but none like his. In July 2010 I got an assignment from Nike to shoot LeBron right after his TV special announcing his move to the Heat. We rented the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, where the Lakers and the Clippers used to play, and there were 53 people on my crew-including hair and makeup artists, production people, a stylist. I had $10,000 in Hollywood lighting. It was huge. When LeBron arrived, it was as if Nelson Mandela had come in. Six or seven blacked-out Escalades pulled up, a convoy. LeBron had bodyguards and his masseuse. His deejay was already there, blasting. This for a photo shoot that was going to last an hour, tops.

And that is how a monster is made. If you like sports, or just have time to kill today, it’s worth digging up the whole story at SI. I once knew a photographer who admired Iooss, and he taught me how to pronounce the name — yose, rhymes with dose.

A copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel inserts a rock ‘n’ roll reference that will be understood by a tiny fraction of the readership:

LAWYERS: Walker camp sues election board
VOTES: 500,000 recall signatures claimed
AND MONEY: Huge dollars flow to governor

Kim Jong Il is dead, which means it’s time to take another look at this remarkable photo, and marvel at the people who have enough time on their hands to produce videos like this, which we are encouraged to snicker at while we wait for the mood to darken as new instability encroaches upon the Korean peninsula. (Even if you disapprove of the joke, some amazing visuals.)

Finally, we have some news today.

I got a job. A full-time, actual j-o-b with bennies and everything. It’s been fun freelancing and odd-jobbing, but it was time for a change, and the change is a pretty great one — I’ll be a staff writer with The Center for Michigan. It’s a think tank. But it’s not a sinecure, that word that so often walks hand in hand with it. Maybe some day I’ll have a think-tank sinecure, but the Center for Michigan calls itself a “think-and-do” tank, which means work beyond just thinkin’. They are nonpartisan and “radically centrist,” and reject the usual institutional model of pounding out position papers for the benefit of one party’s intelligentsia, but are instead focused on being a bottom-up voice for the majority of Michigan residents who don’t fall into standard left-right slots. You can read more about what they’re about here.

I think it’s going to be a pretty good gig. I’ll be doing project reporting for their online publication, Bridge, as well as bringing a new voice to 42 North, their blog. Which brings us to this blog.

I always knew this place would be a problem for some employer, somewhere down the line. Editors don’t exactly want to own your thoughts, but they don’t like the idea of you expressing them anywhere other than in pre-approved spaces. It’s just the way it is. But over the years and with the help of everyone here, I’ve managed to attract and hold a respectable number of eyeballs for a blog that isn’t about anything in particular, and that has value these days, too. So, for now, NN.C will go on. I may throttle back on frequency a bit — perhaps three writing posts a week, and two photos-plus-links, not sure. (I still have to — wait for it — think about it some more.) I’ll be teaching two classes at Wayne this term, in addition to my new duties, so time will be short and valuable. I will be linking to my work over at the Center, of course. If you want to see NN.C continue, the best thing you can do is take the time to click there and astound my new bosses with my Venus flytrap-like drawing power.

All this begins after the first of the year. New year, new job, new directions. I think it’s gonna be a good one.

Mother-frackin’ WordPress. I just completed a 925-word entry, thinking it was autosaving all along, went to add a headline and got my log-in screen. No amount of backing out could find the draft, which I assume just went down the drain for reals.

So here’s one link, and here’s another. I had a few things to say about both, but it’s gone now. And right now I want to take a shower.

If you have time for only one, read the second. It’s amazing.

But I’m headed for the shower. Let’s hope for better luck tomorrow.

So I’ve started reading the HuffPo Detroit, or rather, I’m reading the things my Facebook and Twitter contacts believe worthy of posting. One was this restaurant review, which I clicked as part of my never-ending quest to find a decent meal outside my own kitchen.

Nora Ephron once said all restaurant criticism can be boiled down to, “The (noun) was (complimentary adjective) but the (noun) was (uncomplimentary adjective),” e.g., “The beef was succulent but the sauce was bland,” or “The appetizers wowed but the desserts were disappointing,” etc. But that was many years ago, before citizen journalism.

This particular piece is about a Mexican/Italian place in southwest Detroit. Fusion? Never gets around to saying, although a glance at the website reveals it’s simply two menus. There’s also no address offered. As for the review itself, it’s a symphony of solely complimentary adjectives and adverbs, with notes of unintentional humor — a “hand selected” wine list, etc. I enjoyed this sentence, too:

All smelling deliciously fragrant and looking excellent upon presentation, the four of us decided to share our dishes with one another.

You know, I’ve never been one of those people who describes my job as a profession. It’s a craft at best, and anyone can do it. But we have standards, generally agreed-upon rules, which aren’t hard to learn. You could print who-what-where-when-why on a matchbook or cocktail napkin, for cryin’ out loud. And yet, every day the new wave in journalism demonstrates the public doesn’t give a fat rat’s ass about rules, standards or subject-verb agreement. If you want Free, well, this is what free is.

Li’l Miss Grumpy Pants, getting off on the right foot today.

A couple of minor housekeeping notes: I think after tomorrow, that’ll be it for the week. I’ll try to get some photo posts up for the weekend, just to give y’all something to hang your discussions about the holiday and whatever on. And Friday is my (mumble) birthday, and I think I’ll renew an old tradition of full, gainful employment and take a personal day, maybe take a walk downtown or see a movie or somethin’. Has anyone seen “Take Shelter”? I’m thinking Michael Shannon is my new movie boyfriend.

Actually, I’m already feeling a little tapped, idea-wise. We could always go with the On This Date in History space-filler:

I gotta tell you, I don’t have a story associated with this one. It was days before my sixth birthday. I don’t recall a teacher telling us anything, and even my in-home memories are murky. At some point I must have watched it — my parents weren’t the sort of people to ignore news like that — but the standard where-were-you-when-it-happened discussion always leaves me cold. I was in Columbus, Ohio, in first grade. Done.

Now, I look at that clip and think: Now there was a broadcaster. And a journalist. Back when you could be both.

Ten-thirty, and it’s not going to get any easier from here on out. Why don’t you guys take the helm, while I send nine million emails and write a story?

So this is what’s going to happen next week:

A few days back, a regular reader and sometime commenter who goes by the name of Mr. Mark sent me an email after I’d mentioned a column I wrote back in the day. He said he had a pretty big file of my old newspaper columns, which he’d saved when he was reading me in the paper (or on the paper’s website) at the dawn of the decade — roughly 2001-2003, when I left on a sabbatical fellowship. What’s more, it was all in .doc format.

Generally speaking, I despise 90 percent of what I write, especially the stuff I wrote for the paper, because…well, a lot of reasons. Mostly I’m just sick of newspaper columns in general, with their calcified structure: Open with anecdote, tie it to larger point, state your position, respectfully acknowledge opposition, regretfully disagree, finish, hit the bar. (That’s the columnists lucky enough to have freedom to state a point of view, I should add, a fast-shrinking group. Lots of editors think columnists should basically be feature writers who get a picture with their byline, and shrink from the personal pronoun. “Who cares what you think? Who made you such an authority?” they might ask at the Christmas party, to which the writer might reply, you did.)

I wasn’t immune to this. Once you learn it, it’s easy, like outlining a romantic comedy. The fact others find it difficult doesn’t make it a rare and valuable skill (unless you’re Mitch Albom), only an obscure one. But never mind that.

When I was writing my column, I only had to go through my own work product once a year, at contest time. A detail I recall from a many-years-past, great WashPost profile of the author of “Mandingo” was that he refused to self-edit in any way. “Do you expect me to return to my own vomit?” he would ask his son, who did the chore instead. I totally get that. Totally. It was agonizing, and going through this file kept by Mark wasn’t that much easier, but what the hell, it came at the right time. In lieu of new material while I’m on vacation, how about some really old material that’s still new to most of you — five of my old newspaper columns?

I know, I know: Curb your enthusiasm!

I’ll run them Monday through Friday next week, and they’re all loaded up, ready to go with WordPress’ scheduling feature set to release them at 12:05 a.m. (In fact, I’m writing this a few days early, so I can check out that very feature and fix it, if need be.) I’ve put notes on them explaining background when necessary, and you’re free to talk about them or, as usual, whatever else you want, in comments. I’ll read them all when I have internet access, which will be intermittently through the week.

I guess this brings up matters of copyright, and I have thunk on that a bit. I’ve decided to plunge ahead and use them without permission, mainly because, a) I’m busy this week and don’t want to call or write the new publisher and get ensnared in what likely will be a knee-jerk “no;” b) while I assume the purchase price of the paper included its archive, I can’t be sure; and c) it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. That’ll have to do. In any event, I’ll note here that the next five days of material probably belongs to The News-Sentinel, an Ogden Newspapers property of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’m sure if the owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates thought they could squeeze a nickel out of my decade-old work, they’d have done it by now.

So. Have a great week, all. I’ll be in and out, most likely, but I’m warned to expect half-a-bar cell coverage and very little 3G, and besides, I need a break. I’m concentrating on reading, writing something other than this and seeing all the Upper Peninsula has to offer. I hope it’s not snow. Enjoy the wayback machine, and I’ll be back on the 22nd.

I had a post all ready to go, but Comcast is constipated this morning. So I’m off to the morning grind, and I’ll try to catch up via the library’s connection in a couple hours, eh?

Until then, talk amongst yourselves.

I hope it’s a testament to the spirit of this blog that I made a big fuss over its ninth anniversary, in 2009 2010, and completely forgot its 10th, which happened last Friday. The traditional tenth anniversary gift is tin. I’ll take mine in the shape of a horn. A tinhorn, my dictionary tells me, is a petty braggart who puts on airs and pretends to be richer and more important than s/he is. That’s pretty much the definition of this blog, ain’a?

Anyway, I don’t mention this to set off a round of congratulations, but because I stumbled across this Crain’s Chicago Business story about the phenomenon of blog disillusionment, people who started with great enthusiasm and soon found themselves running out of things to say. This guy, for instance, thought he could get a book deal:

He founded Modern Craft in 2007 and spent seven to 10 hours a week on the blog. It received 800 to 1,500 views per post, a respectable number for an independent blog. But it launched the career not of Mr. Harbison, but of the artists he featured. While they signed deals with Target, Urban Outfitters and Chronicle Books, he got virtually nothing, save for a spread featuring him and his mid-century Evanston home in ReadyMade magazine.

“I could see it happening, but it wasn’t happening for me,” Mr. Harbison says.

Sorry, dude. Harbison went back to work at what he does best — designing his own line of textiles and canvas bags. Others featured in the story did the same, jumping in with great enthusiasm, keeping things at a high boil for a few weeks or months, and then petering out. They’d run out of things to say, it was harder than it looked, they’d grown in a different direction. And one more ghost ship is abandoned to drift along the currents of the internet, its comment section filling with spam, until one day the URL isn’t renewed and it becomes an Estonian porn site. (Don’t laugh — this happened to one of the most obnoxious radio talk-show hosts in Fort Wayne, one of Brian Stouder’s lip-flappers. One day it’s pictures of his daughters and recipes for mashed potatoes made with cream cheese, the next it’s sluts in blue eyeshadow putting something other than mashed potatoes in their mouths. It has since gone back to a placeholder, but for a while there — woo.)

Back to the story:

The feeling that nobody’s reading can cause bloggers to quit. “It’s discouraging, if that’s the reason you’re blogging,” says Liz Strauss, a Chicago-based professional blogger, web strategist and founder of SOBCon, an online business conference.

Ms. Strauss, who maintains three blogs, began in 2005, when she was one of 12 million. Now, to stand out in a sea of 31 million, “it’s no longer OK to be a mommy or daddy or business blogger,” she says. “The more narrowly you define your niche, the more visible you become.”

I’ve heard this before. I think it’s crap. How much more narrowly defined could this blog be? “One writer’s daily download,” is how I describe it when asked, and yet still, is Amy Adams playing me at the cineplex?

The only reason to blog is if you have something to say. Your readers will find you, or they won’t. And you’ll probably make more money making textiles and canvas bags.

I read and liked — and blogged about — the NYT op-ed that most likely prompted this book contract, so I guess I’d better read the book, too. Paul Clemens’ “Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant” sounds worth the time, even though, as the critic points out, it’s not so much about a closing auto plant as a closed one, being disassembled by specialized crews and shipped, piece by piece, to countries where the labor doesn’t expect quite the wages they do here.

I was struck by the numbers; at one point he notes that this plant, Budd Detroit Automotive Plant, Stamping and Framing Division, employed 10,000. That was the figure that the International Harvester factory in Fort Wayne once employed, back when it was the biggest employer in town. It closed in 1980, an event that seared the city’s consciousness the way World War II did my parents’ generation. One-quarter of the city fell into a slide it never recovered from, a disaster that affected uncounted businesses and families. Detroit is a much larger city, of course, and Budd was only one player, and nowhere near the largest. All over the city are plants like it, and many more that are considerably smaller, the mom-and-pop tool-and-die shops, the widget factories, whatever. Many are being disassembled the same way this one is. We live in interesting times.

Oh, but let’s close on a high note, shall we?

Bloggage:

What Roger Ebert will miss about Regis Philbin, a YouTube bouquet. Philbin really has the gift of not taking himself too seriously. He could teach his co-hosts a thing or three.

Gene Weingarten made reference to this yesterday: Kate Winslet admits to wearing a merkin for a brief scene in “The Reader.” An old story, but when it comes to merkins, you can never be overinformed.

I was more struck by the question that prompted it, from a reader:

I saw the show “Hair” at the Kennedy Center some weeks ago, and while I liked it more than disliked it, one thing in particular bothered me.

Directors, costumers, set design etc. try so hard to put an authentic feel to a show, and yet this show, about free love, about community, about the Vietnam war, and famously about full frontal nudity…didn’t show one follicle of pubic hair. Really? Was it too much to ask the actors to let it grow out for the run of the show? So anachronistic, it took me out of the moment.

Man, it would me, too. Really? That’s bad direction, if you ask me.

And now the coffee has fully engaged, so it’s time to get dressed, get showered, and get to work. Not in that order.

Calvin Stovall is a former colleague of mine, now editor-in-chief of the Binghamton Press in New York. He recently lowered the Sword of Justice upon his newspaper’s comment sections. You think your life is sad and pathetic? Getta loada this:

We had to remove racist and insensitive comments on a story about the birth of the first baby of 2010 in Broome County, born to a black woman. Just Monday, I had staffers take down comments on a story about a motorcyclist killed in an accident involving a school bus and a minivan in Kirkwood.

During the past three weeks, I banned three people for life from our site because of abuses, including attacks on one another and racist comments. They returned to the site under different usernames. We confirmed who they were and blocked them again, and we will continue to do so until they get the message that they’re not welcome on our site.

First, imagine being the sort of person who feels the need to comment on a first-baby-of-the-year story. I’d imagine being banned for those shenanigans would be the Scorsesean camera-pulls-back moment that momentarily puts you outside your life and allows you to briefly observe it from, say, a high corner in your room: Yep, that’s me all right, rockin’ the Dell laptop. Boy, the way I type really rattles the card table, doesn’t it? And that bare lightbulb — none of those socialist twisty things for me! Kiss my ass, Mr. born-in-Kenya Obama!

(On second thought, you always run the risk that, once outside himself, your readers will like what they see.)

Internet eggheads are always telling lamestream journalists that they have to jump into their comment sections. Many of them run sites where the comment sections are kind of like our own here at NN.C, rich and smart and, to continue my oft-used Cheers metaphor, a place where everybody knows your name, there’s a fire in the hearth and the bowls of peanuts are always full and warm.

There’s another kind of bar out there. It’s where alcoholics line up to get a drink at the earliest possible opening hour. It smells bad, no one talks and the toilets frequently overflow. This is what newspaper comment sections are. I really can’t blame someone like Calvin, who has enough to do just getting the paper out, from wanting to engage with the sorts of pinheads who would, once banned from the worst bar in the world, try to sneak a way back in, re-registering under new user names, so that people can hear their thoughts on the skin color of the first baby of the new year.

Partly it’s a function of size — the more people you let in, the worse it gets. Our own community got some new members after the Goeglein affair, but I think the quality stayed high, even as some of our best people left (farewell and adieu, Danny, Marcia, Gasman, many others) and were replaced by newcomers. I sometimes find myself at a loss for words when people ask what this blog is about. Is it political? Sometimes, but that’s not its purpose. Pop culture? Same answer. Personal, a diary? Kinda, but not really, no. So what is it? It’s just a place where I drink my morning coffee and work the kinks out of my fingers, but even on days when I’m not particularly present, the best reading is in the comments.

Once again, thanks to all you readers, silent and otherwise. I lift a glass to you, and the next round is on the house.

So, election day. I haven’t voted yet, but I will. There aren’t a ton of seats at play locally, but there are some — governor, state house and senate seats, and my local school board. The latter races have kept me hopping over at my other site, and just because there’s never enough to do that you can’t do a little bit more, yesterday’s police rounds were ridonkulous, a side effect of Halloween, I guess. Reading over my report, I’m kicking myself for not connecting the “29 minors” rousted from an underage drinking party to the Chilean miners, somehow — that could have generated some yuks. But in a week when the file offers you an actual scene from a Cheech & Chong movie, you take the low-hanging fruit.

So, off to the gym and the polls. No real bloggage today, but there’s this — the awful, no-good health care law that’s actually bringing health insurance to small-business employees.

Civic duty! Onward!

First, some housekeeping: No conventional blog entry tomorrow, but probably something — I’m attending TEDxDetroit all day, and my usual blogging time will be colonized by…something inspiring, I hope. I will admit to skepticism about this event, and fear an all-day pep rally, but what the hell, I guess if it is, no one’s holding me hostage or anything. I expect the hall will be wired and wi-fi’d to a fare-thee-well, so that we can tweet and status-update and blog and all the rest of it. In any event, I’ll have my laptop and will be ready to mojo something, should it become necessary. I’ll also be operating on about five hours of sleep. Better pack some business cards, so I can introduce myself if words fail.

Regarding pep rallies: The wife of a friend worked in sales, for a radio station. Let me stipulate upfront that while I know many of our readers are radio people, or were, my brief time in radio convinced me it was the worst business on earth, or maybe second to sex slavery. Certainly it was the weirdest. I was always meeting someone who gave me hope, followed by 10 social outcasts, weirdos, nitwit provocateurs or other oddballs, who would make me despair. I remind you that both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, before they were loathsome public figures, were just regular old radio guys, and no doubt fit right in at whatever station employed them. Certainly I met many less-talented or less-ambitious versions of both, and I was only a dabbler. So, that said, my friend’s wife said her station’s main competition started each day with a meeting of the sales-department staff, and that it was always styled as a pep rally.

“They have to clap and cheer every sale, and then they end with a chant: KILL MAGIC! KILL MAGIC!” she said, Magic (or “Majic”) being the station she worked for. I guess the bosses saw it as motivational; they were all men, and this sort of display was imported directly from the locker room or team huddle. I can tell you right now, being asked to participate in a Two Minutes Hate like that would be a dealbreaker. I refer you to observations about the radio business, above. (Public radio being the exception, although nowhere near as much as they’d like to think.)

Did you know that you have to apply to attend a TED conference? Srsly. That right there almost put me off. The original TED requires an invitation and a $6,000 ticket, in fact. Local TED only wanted my Twitter handle, “three links to help us learn more about you,” and a voluntary contribution of $21. Apparently there is a waiting list, so I can say I was at least more desirable as an audience member than someone, although my guess is, knowing a member of the organizing committee didn’t hurt one li’l bit.

Anyway, we’ll see. But since pickings are already slim, let’s skip to the bloggage.

And the MacArthur goes to…Mr. Laura Lippman (and at least occasional reader and once-or-twice commenter here at NN.C). I still get fewer than 1,000 unique visits a day, but as I like to tell people, they’re the right ones. Congratulations, David Simon. If I ever get to Baltimore or New Orleans, YOU are buying.

(I bet Mr. Lippman gets bombarded with invitations to TED conferences.)

In other TED news, today is the 50th anniversary of Ted Williams’ last game. In another month, it will be the 50th anniversary of “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” John Updike’s first and last baseball essay, but maybe the finest one ever written. Charles McGrath pays tribute. Essay here.

Richard Reeves: The Tea Party has it backward.

And now, with papers to grade and stuff to post, I’m off to…pour some more coffee.

Hank Stuever had a post on his blog yesterday, about a happy time in his life that coincided with a happy time in my life, i.e., working on the college newspaper. And even though his happy time was a decade after my happy time, it sounds as though the technology we used was about the same, and that was part of the fun of it:

I miss layout. It was probably the only crafty, tactile skill I ever mastered — starting in the journalism room in high school. I miss the waxer, the long strips of freshly developed type set in column inches, the bordertape, the pica poles, the photo reduction-ratio wheels, mitering my corners, the Zip-o-Tone, the 20-percent gray screen half-tones, the light-tables; writing headlines from count orders (”they need a 3-36-1 in 19-pica column width, and don’t forget that flitj only counts for half a character”). I miss the monstrous and cantankerous photostat machine. I miss light blue Copy-Not pens. I miss being able to fix a typo with a knife instead of a reset.

Much of that is probably gibberish to most of you, but to me, that paragraph, loaded with all those terms of art, is what separates a writer from a layout artist. I hadn’t thought about Zip-o-Tone (Zip-A-Tone, to be exact — sorry, Hank) since maybe 1978, and just that phrase brought it all back — the late nights at the Post doing just that, fueled on day-old doughnuts and bad coffee, trading jokes and insults. Disco light table! someone would squeal when “Don’t Leave Me This Way” came on the radio from down Parkersburg way, flicking the switches on and off during the chorus.

But I think I may have covered this topic before. What I meant to point out was this apt comparison later in Hank’s mini-essay:

I think I derived the same joy from laying out a newspaper that quilters derive from quilting bees. It required concentration, measurement, technique, artistry — but it never distracted you from conversations and gossip and laughs with your collaborators.

Yes. Exactly. It’s the craftiness of it. I’ve never been much for crafts, but like Hank, I miss the camaraderie of building something with your hands in a group. I got a little of that during my time on the copy desk; the work wasn’t so difficult you were risking anyone’s concentration by occasionally noting, out loud, “Name Redacted is the worst writer this newspaper has, and I’ll fight any man who disagrees.” We were just Amish ladies stitching squares together.

So thanks, Hank, for that. And yes, I will join your Layout Club. We can put out a newsletter or something, ol’ skool. I may still have some Letraset lying around here somewhere.

J.C. will probably use his admin status to post a photo in comments from those days. He was one of the supervisors of our backshop, back in the day.

So, anything else today? There’s this: You may have heard how the president of the Detroit Public Schools board imploded last week, or rather…[cue boom-chicka-wow soundtrack] maybe I should say, exploded. Mathis was briefly shamed into resigning after the superintendent accused him of playing pocket pool during their meetings, and if you want the gross details, well, read all about it.

I say “briefly shamed” because he had no sooner resigned than he tried to take it back, claiming “health problems” caused him to take matters into his own hands, ha ha. I think Laura Berman sums up the man in a few devastating sentences, here:

After graduating from Southeastern High School with a D-plus average, he got into Wayne State University in a program for the academically unqualified. When he failed to pass an English language writing exam required for graduation, he sued, claiming the exam discriminated against African-Americans. When the exam was dropped, a decade later, he duly received his bachelor of science degree.

Mathis was praised by his colleagues for his coolness under pressure and his lack of defensiveness: qualities that have stood him in good stead over the years, as he faced down challenges to his competency. As he told me in a March interview, his deficits had been written about before. “People make a lot of noise for a while and then it all blows over,” he said.

Maybe he felt compelled to test how low expectations might really go.

And they were already pretty damn low, let me tell you.

With that, an announcement: I’ll be scarce around here for a while. We’re taking a few days’ vacation, and this time we’re going someplace my cell phone contract doesn’t cover, so no mobile uploads. And where might that be? They speak French there, but it’s in North America. Where could it be? Let me put it this way: I told Kate I wanted to take her to Europe, but we can’t afford Europe, so we’re going for the closest equivalent within driving distance.

So: Au revoir for now, and I’ll see you back here Monday.