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.

Good lord, will you look at Nashville these days? I won­der if we should send the Bas­sets dry clothes, a blank check or a snorkel. If you didn’t see the com­ments late last night, here’s the dis­patch from Chez Bas­set:

Cleanup con­tin­ues in Nashville… haven’t been in posi­tion to hear much about the rest of the city, but on my street every­one seems to have friends, vol­un­teers, who­ever com­ing by to help dump the con­tents of the house out into the front yard.

My house and the one next door are only 35 yards from the Har­peth River, which is nor­mally down a lit­tle hill, the other side of a tree­line and down maybe a ten- or twelve-foot bank. Sun­day morn­ing, though, it was counter-top high through our place, and I just added a few pic­tures of the result to my stream here.

So… we lost lots of books, all the fur­ni­ture, all elec­tron­ics and major appli­ances, clothes, so on, so forth… but I have been amazed by the level of help and sup­port we’re receiv­ing. Friends are putting us up and feed­ing us, co-workers are com­ing by to help shovel out, a total stranger walked up to me as I was get­ting into my stor­age unit and gave me stacks of boxes, tape to stick them together, and a dolly, all the wet clothes out of our clos­ets are piled in a friend of a friend’s garage and they’re let­ting us wash them, vis­i­tors came down our street hand­ing out food and drinks… really helps make it a lot more bear­able.

That said… our house will have to be stripped to the bare frame from about eye level down to the ground, doors, win­dows, and HVAC replaced, it’s gonna take awhile and be expen­sive. We have insur­ance, though, and an apart­ment, and a stor­age locker… we’ll get through it.

You always get through it. But noth­ing short of all-consuming fire destroys a house quite like a flood. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeat­ing if you’ve never been through one: In a fire, pfft, it’s gone, but after a flood you can actu­ally rec­og­nize your wed­ding album or Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions. It’s just that they have a thin layer of brown slime cov­er­ing them, and some­times it smells like raw sewage, too.

In 1993, a pho­tog­ra­pher and I went to Iowa to cover the flood­ing of the Mis­sis­sippi and its trib­u­taries in Iowa. (Fort Wayne media loves a flood. If we can’t have one our­selves, we’ll go look­ing for oth­ers’. I bet they’re on their way to Nashville now.) A home­owner took me through his house, which had filled to the gut­ters with Rac­coon River flood­wa­ters. “Check this out,” he said, open­ing the wash­ing machine. It was full of water the color of choco­late syrup, reek­ing of poo.

I think he was plan­ning on tak­ing the insur­ance money, tear­ing the house down and buy­ing some­thing on higher ground. Floods are pretty awful.

So Bas­set, we’re think­ing about you. Any­thing you need, say the word.

While we’re on the sub­ject of mis­for­tune befalling the NN.C com­mu­nity, J.C. set up a page com­pil­ing all of Whitebeard’s com­ments on one page, just as he did for Ash­ley when he left us. The com­ments are sep­a­rated from that which prompted them, but oddly enough, they make a cer­tain kind of sense. I see he was one who joined us aprés-Goeglein — his first is March 1, 2008. It’s now on the right rail, when­ever you want to check in.

I’m going to have to make this a short one today — my sched­ule for the rest of the week is insane, and tonight I’m tak­ing Kate to a school-night con­cert, the sec­ond of the year, a treat because she gives me no prob­lems (other than refus­ing green veg­eta­bles) and reg­u­larly brings home ster­ling report cards. We’re see­ing a band called Cobra Star­ship, and I wish I could tell you more about them, but in the age of the iPod, I have never even heard a sin­gle note of their music. For all I know, they could per­form hip-hop in the nude, and if they do, please, don’t spoil the sur­prise. I’m cer­tainly grate­ful that my kid is into the indie bands, because that means I only have to drive to the Fill­more, which is down­town, and not to the bleedin’ Palace of Auburn Hills, the arena-size des­ti­na­tion in Outer Mon­go­lia, Oak­land County.

So let’s skip right to the blog­gage, eh? There’s some good stuff today:

Oh, look: The co-founder of the Fam­ily Research Coun­cil is caught red-handed arriv­ing home from an extended vaca­tion with a rent­boy. No, really, an actual rent­boy, hired from Rent​boy​.com. As lame excuses go, this one cer­tainly takes the pink-frosted cup­cake:

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rek­ers said he learned Lucien was a pros­ti­tute only mid­way through their vaca­tion. “I had surgery,” Rek­ers said, “and I can’t lift lug­gage. That’s why I hired him.”

It doesn’t trump “hik­ing the Appalachian Trail,” but “please, Lucien, come over here and help me lift this” is cer­tainly a strong con­tender. The luggage-handler notes that he is uncir­cum­cised. Strange qual­i­fi­ca­tion, mmm? I’d say some­thing here, but hon­estly — what more needs to be said? How about this: The man with the heavy lug­gage is the author of a book enti­tled “Shap­ing Your Child’s Sex­ual Iden­tity.” Dan Savage’s blog entry on this is titled, “Is Every Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Chris­t­ian Bigot Suck­ing Off Rent Boys?” I think the answer is clear and sim­ple: Yes.

The New York Times had a recent blog entry about the theft of Face­book account data, which coin­cided with a week­end of hinky activ­ity in friends’ Face­books. FB is sort of on pro­ba­tion with me already; I really don’t want to give up my account, but if they can’t keep it more secure and respect my pri­vacy, I might have to give it the heave-ho. Via LGM, the Rocket​.ly blog on the Top 10 rea­sons you should quit.

Finally, you base­ball fans prob­a­bly know Ernie Har­well, the voice of the Detroit Tigers for decades, died yes­ter­day. As local news goes, this is on a level with an al-Qaeda strike on the Ren­Cen. But of course every­one knew this was com­ing — Har­well announced his ter­mi­nal can­cer diag­no­sis months ago — and so every­one had time to plan cov­er­age. A loyal local cor­re­spon­dent looked at Mitch Albom’s col­umn and made this inci­sive com­ment:

I was look­ing at the Freep this morn­ing for the cov­er­age of Ernie Harwell’s death. Of course I had to read Mitch to see how Mitchy he got. He didn’t dis­ap­point, as I’m sure you saw. But it occurred to me that this pas­sage is what is espe­cially mad­den­ing about the guy:

“…sim­ply by doing the same gen­tle thing over and over, sim­ply by being there, by remain­ing con­sis­tent, pure, good and true, even as things around him became any­thing but. Ernie stood out because he stood still. He was reli­able as a rock. A soul in a void. A heart in a some­times heart­less world.”

This takes an excel­lent obser­va­tion, turns it into a won­der­ful turn of phrase – “sim­ply by doing the same thing over and over again” – then over-writes it into obliv­ion. There it is, a glimpse of the old, great sports­writer, smoth­ered by the sappy pap celebrity.

Yep. I’d also note the faux-meaningful phrases — what, pray tell, is “a soul in a void” — but as con­cise sum­ma­tions of What’s Wrong With Mitch go, this is pretty good.

And now I have to get to work. Have a good day, all. I’m off to search for earplugs.

Today’s to-do list:

1) Deposit money in IRA.
2) Mail tax form/check to city of Detroit. Amount owed: $5.
3) Order kick-ass GoPro HD cam­era for self as a tax-refund, just-because-you’re-you present.
4) Clean house.

That’s a pretty good to-do list. As a self-employed per­son, April 15 is sup­posed to be gloomy, but it hasn’t been for the past cou­ple years, since we got Alan’s with­hold­ing adjusted. My new year’s res­o­lu­tion is an aggres­sive sav­ings plan, and once I get it cal­i­brated, we can do some more adjust­ing to get to the the­o­ret­i­cal ideal — zero owed on April 15 (other than the first quar­terly, of course). I’m enough of a peas­ant that I love refunds, how­ever. It feels like found money.

Some years ago, a wee­nie edi­to­r­ial writer for the other paper in Fort Wayne wrote a tax-day col­umn pro­claim­ing his love for pay­ing taxes. Sign­ing that check to Uncle Sam, he wrote, made him feel like a real Amer­i­can. He envi­sioned his money flow­ing into road-building, national parks and health care for grandma. Taxes, he con­cluded, are good. For this he was roundly ridiculed by our paper’s edi­to­r­ial writ­ers, whose tax dol­lars mainly go to food stamps for the lazy poor, boon­dog­gle public-works projects and high-calorie lunches for Tip O’Neill (the big-government bete noire of that moment). Taxes are bad.

(And that, we were often told, was why news­pa­per read­ers in Fort Wayne were the luck­i­est in the world. They had a choice in edi­to­r­ial pages.)

Taxes just are, in my book. And today I don’t have to write a check. Except for that cam­era, about which I’m already hav­ing sec­ond thoughts. It’s such a bauble, even if the pur­chase price does include a water­proof hous­ing and sev­eral mounts. While we were in Vegas, one of my film­mak­ing friends said he’d always wanted to do a short doc­u­men­tary about a day in the life of a Detroit street dog. I think this is a great idea, and haven’t been able to stop think­ing about it. It seems a small strap-on cam­era of this sort might be a valu­able tool in such a project. In fact, it might even be…tax-deductible.

Sold!

A few house­keep­ing items:

A long-overdue change in the night­stand book, right rail. The other day I was pre-ordering some­thing from Ama­zon (pub date of Mar­tin Cruz Smith’s new Arkady Renko novel: August. Sheesh.) and needed some­thing to fill out the order. I IM’d Laura Lipp­man on Face­book and said this was a one-time lim­ited offer to pimp any book, by any friend or fel­low trav­eler, and I would buy it sight unseen, no ques­tions asked, just on the power of her rec­om­men­da­tion. She sug­gested “True Con­fec­tions” by Katharine Weber. Sold. I read it on vaca­tion, and friends? She did not steer me wrong. It’s a won­der­ful, funny, breezy novel about the candy busi­ness, love and mar­riage, work and truth and all the rest of it. I’m fin­ished with it, but leav­ing it on the night­stand for a while.

I have a few thoughts on “Treme,” but I want to watch the whole episode again, unin­ter­rupted, to fully absorb it. My first is the same as Ray Shea, a NOLA blog­ger who pointed out one quib­ble: In the scenes were peo­ple are return­ing to their homes after the flood, everyone’s door opens eas­ily. As a for­mer 20-year res­i­dent of a flood­ing city, I can sec­ond that — the door of a flooded house never opens eas­ily. It’s warped and swollen, and stuff is piled up behind it, and, well. That’s not much of a crit­i­cism, but when I saw Clarke Peters’ clothes still hang­ing in his closet, look­ing pretty damn clean, I thought of it. (Real NOLA res­i­dents have their own thoughts, here.)

My other first impres­sion: Jesus Christ him­self must have writ­ten some of that music. Watch­ing “The Civil War” for the first time many years ago, the Ken Burns project, my pal Lance Man­nion turned to the room after the first musi­cal break of Afro-American spir­i­tual music and said, “And South­ern­ers thought these peo­ple were less than fully human. Imag­ine that.” Yes.

But more later.

And now off to the long-neglected gym.

Not every­one gets to stay up late enough to see “The Col­bert Report,” and I hope I’m not spoil­ing any­one who catches it on the next-day reasonable-hour replay, but last night’s guest was David Simon, and guess whose name he dropped? Ash­ley Mor­ris’. (You can watch the clip here, and thanks, Del, for dig­ging that up.)

I’m so proud of my stu­pid lit­tle blog. It may not have many read­ers, but it has the right read­ers.

(Pause.)

Where is my money?

(Pause.)

For those of you new to this blog, after Ash­ley left us sud­denly in 2008, our web wiz­ard J.C. set up a script that pulled every com­ment he ever made here into a sin­gle thread. The link’s in the right rail, or here. What I find amus­ing about it is that, even sev­ered from the posts he was talk­ing about, they still make a cer­tain amount of sense, and you can dip in and out of them at will and still get a feel­ing for the man. Here’s one from near the top:

In St. Peters­burg in 1997, I was walk­ing down Nevsky Prospekt, and stopped at the Grand Hotel Evropa. They were adver­tis­ing “Bud and Burger: $8″. After a week in East­ern Europe, this actu­ally looked good. So I order my burger, get my Bud (they can’t call it Bud­weiser there because the Czechs own that name), and pound it down. I walk up to the bar for another Bud, and this gor­geous blonde is stand­ing beside me. Being a fear­less vir­ile Amer­i­can het­ero­sex­ual, I say to myself, what the hell. So I look at her and say “Hi, what’s your name”. She responds “Two hun­dred dol­lars”. With­out miss­ing a beat, I say “Is that your first name, your last name, or is that what your friends call you?” She looks con­fused, thinks for a sec­ond, then says again “two hun­dred dol­lars”. Finally, I’m served my Bud, and I walk away. And out in front of the hotel were all of the Russ­ian Mafia guys wear­ing the uni­form: khaki pants, black shirts, ital­ian loafers with no socks, and wrap-around sun­glasses. Oh, and they were all lean­ing on black mer­cedes, black BMWs, or black some­things. I didn’t fol­low my Rick Steves guide and try to strike up a con­ver­sa­tion…

For those even newer to this blog, Ash­ley pro­vided the loose frame­work of the char­ac­ter in “Treme” played by John Good­man. It’s an “inspired by,” not a “based on” char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, so don’t go get­ting any ideas; it’s not a line-for-line copy. But know­ing that Creighton Bernette’s lines were in some cases lifted from Ashley’s blog, it was funny to read this, in Hank’s review today:

His char­ac­ter was added to the array late in the show’s assem­bly and his dia­logue is sad­dled with dis­till­ing “Treme’s” social com­men­tary.

When a British jour­nal­ist inter­view­ing Creighton asks if New Orleans is worth rebuild­ing — since its destruc­tion and sink­ing is con­sid­ered by many to be Mother Nature’s fait accom­pli — the bel­liger­ent Creighton assaults him, tries to hurl his TV cam­era into the Mis­sis­sippi River and lets loose with the fiery coun­ter­ar­gu­ment that is “Treme’s” (and New Orleans’s) broad­est con­cern: The floods were a man-made dis­as­ter, trig­gered by a hur­ri­cane but caused by years of gov­ern­ment neglect and an inept fed­eral response.

While essen­tial to any story of life in New Orleans, such moments are nev­er­the­less “Treme’s” bur­den to bear. No mat­ter how hard the writ­ers seemed to have worked to avoid it, much of Goodman’s dia­logue in the early episodes has the fla­vor­ing of op-ed screeds, and it some­times seeps into other char­ac­ters’ scenes.

That’s what a blog is, isn’t it? One long op-ed screed. Ashley’s blog is still up, and while not quite a ghost ship, it’s tended inter­mit­tently by his widow, Hana (who was paid for her husband’s inspi­ra­tion). Spam­mers have flooded the com­ments, but I rec­om­mend the “great­est hits” links down the left rail, espe­cially “My Life in Porn,” because it links back here in sort of an orgy of log-rolling and ass-kissing.

Hank says “Treme” is good, by the way. It pre­mieres Sun­day. Although I will not be see­ing it until Tues­day. I’ll explain that later.

Think­ing about J.C. and his web wiz­ardry, he asked me once, when we were dis­cussing how I’ve still not made a last will and tes­ta­ment, “All I want to know is, who has con­trol of your online con­tent?” I thought for half a sec­ond, and bequeathed it all to him. As far as I’m con­cerned, if a blood ves­sel bursts in my brain today, I trust J.C. to keep the bar open. This ghost ship could sail for years. Maybe we can set up a guest-bartender sys­tem.

One bit of blog­gage today:

By my count, this is the sec­ond near-tragedy to strike the Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers sausage race in my mem­ory. HOW MUCH LONGER MUST THIS DEATH RACE BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE? (This one’s the first.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go chase down a rab­bit. Back later.

I guess you should save these sorts of entries for birth­days that end in a zero, but in pre­vi­ous years I’ve let this day blow right past me, and if 2009 taught us any­thing, it’s that you never know when your num­ber might be up. One minute you’re a painfully thin plastic-surgery addict who needs hospital-grade anes­the­sia just to grab 40 winks, the next you’re in long-term stor­age in your golden cas­ket while your insane fam­ily fights over the DVD rights to your funeral ser­vice. You know? Never pass up a chance to party. And so…..

[Toots madly on party horn.] Happy Blogver­sary Day! Today we are nine.

I remem­ber it as though it were yes­ter­day: J.C. set me up with Adobe GoLive 5.0, and designed a sim­ple tem­plate. I huffed and puffed and scanned and uploaded and sized and resized and cursed and scratched my head and sent out a bunch of e-mails invit­ing peo­ple to my “per­sonal web­site.” There was a pic­ture of 4-year-old Kate, one of Alan, one of Pilcher House (home of my col­lege news­pa­per), a few more this and a dozen more that. My links page, what the kids today call a blogroll, was a big wad of nar­ra­tive prose, explain­ing why I liked all my links. (That was what the inter­net was all about then — hav­ing the atten­tion span to read 200 words at a stretch.) I believe I may have included the cof­fee pot at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity, but maybe not; that was very early-WWW, and I’d had broad­band for two years by then.

I con­nected to the server, uploaded the whole thing, sat back and allowed myself to be proud of my per­sonal web­site for about 15 min­utes. And then it dawned on me: What am I going to do tomor­row?

Because that, as always, is the conun­drum. You can have a cor­ner of the inter­net to your­self, and you can invite all your friends to see it, but unless you’re a some­body, and even if you’re a some­body, it has to change once in a while, and if you’re a nobody like me, it bet­ter be chang­ing a lot. And so I got up the next day, took down the first day’s main-page copy, and wrote some­thing new. What to write about, now that I’d intro­duced myself? The events of the pre­vi­ous 24 hours, that’s what, and that’s how we got started.

At the time, I was a news­pa­per colum­nist writ­ing four times a week in the paper. Just­likethat, I became a per­sonal web­site oper­a­tor writ­ing five times a week for the inter­net. (I hadn’t yet heard of a weblog.)

Some­times peo­ple ask me what I told my bosses. I told them I was set­ting up a web­site, and was that OK? As I recall, the only ten­ta­tive objec­tion was from the edi­tor in chief, who won­dered if I might end up in com­pe­ti­tion with them by “sell­ing some­thing.” Yes, ha ha ha ha. I think every­one in the office checked in the first day. I got 100 hits. And then every­one for­got about it, and NN.C became the naughty cousin of Nance-in-the-newspaper. I’m still amazed at what I got away with, just because peo­ple didn’t read it.

For instance, I told the story of the army men at Fort Wayne News­pa­pers: One day early in the decade, and sorry, but I’m not dig­ging up old CD-ROMs to find out which one, an employee noted a soli­tary green army man, the toy kind you buy by the bag, placed high on a stair­well win­dowsill. It was aim­ing its gun at the stair­case. Look­ing around, the employee found another. A search revealed they were all through the build­ing, maybe a whole bag full, in unob­tru­sive places, atop vend­ing machines and dusty shelves, appar­ently mobi­liz­ing for attack.

And that’s how Human Resources treated it, as an OMG OFFICE SHOOTING EARLY WARNING, and there were hushed con­ver­sa­tions in offices and the strangest memo I’ve ever seen, that spoke of the army men with­out actu­ally say­ing what they were, so that you’d read it and be some­what alarmed but not informed, and, well, it was one of those days wor­thy of “Office Space.” I wrote all about in here, even quoted from the memo. It got linked by a cou­ple other blog­gers, ha ha, and no one said a word about it in my office because nobody read it.

NN.C was my shadow col­umn. In the paper, one Nance, on the inter­net, dog Nance, because on the inter­net, nobody knows you’re a dog. Nobody knows you’re a nobody in Fort Wayne, Indi­ana, either, and that was the other rev­e­la­tion of the inter­net for me. (The first was that every­body can talk to every­body; I sent an e-mail to War­ren Zevon and he wrote back, a stun­ning devel­op­ment.) The sec­ond was that for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to be lim­ited by my newspaper’s lousy cir­cu­la­tion. I’m bad; I’m nation­wide.

You think this is noth­ing, but you don’t know that one rea­son I took the job in Fort Wayne was, I thought it might lead to big­ger things. Knight-Ridder was then a respected news­pa­per chain, and I fool­ishly believed they treated their smaller papers as farm teams for the bigs in Philadel­phia, Miami, Detroit, San Jose. They did, but not the way I thought they did, and any­way, by then I was part of a cou­ple and had a mort­gage and life was get­ting com­pli­cated. I despaired of ever get­ting out of the place, and in 2002 Bob Greene finally got his junk caught in his fly. I banged out a few hun­dred words, uploaded, went to bed and got up the next morn­ing to look at e-mail. The first one was from a writer at the freakin’ New Yorker: “Great rant,” it began. Holy shit.

Over the next few days I gave an inter­view to Newsweek and one to a mag­a­zine in Japan, answered dozens of e-mails, got linked all over. I thought maybe I should give my bosses a heads-up that I was likely to be quoted in a national mag­a­zine. Oh, you wrote some­thing about Bob Greene? Are you still doing that web­site thing? They still weren’t read­ing it.

Well. I don’t want to go on too long here. But I do want to note the day, because it was a turn­ing point. I got my Knight-Wallace fel­low­ship because of the blog. I got my first free­lance con­tacts because of the blog. I met a dozen or more peo­ple that I cor­re­spond with today and visit when I can because of the blog. I haven’t enjoyed every day of this, not by a long shot. I’ve con­sid­ered shut­ting it down for a few weeks or months, just to clear my head and maybe let some­thing else fill in the time I spend here, but then I stop and con­sider that every good thing that’s hap­pened in my career since Jan­u­ary 14, 2001 was because of the blog. (A cou­ple of the bad things, too, but not many.)

Some­one once wrote me and said, “I read some­where that there are peo­ple who like to write and peo­ple who need to write, and you must be one of the sec­ond kind.” I never thought of it that way, but I guess it’s true. This is, and remains, my daily down­load, my quasi-diary, my shadow life, my bat­ting prac­tice. In Pete Dexter’s final news­pa­per col­umn, long after he’d become a suc­cess­ful nov­el­ist and screen­writer, he wrote that a Hol­ly­wood pro­ducer of large repute asked him why he still both­ered to write a col­umn for peanuts. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I just need it.” The rest of the col­umn was his announce­ment that he no longer needed it, but I’m not there yet.

Happy Blogver­sary Day. Time to get to work.

Friends, I have a pile of stuff today, and won’t be free until late after­noon. Until then, talk amongst your­selves. Pro­posed topic: Is Coo­zledad afford­ing his plush retire­ment by pub­lish­ing under a pen name? Dis­cuss.

LATER: My morn­ing inter­view was post­poned and I have a lit­tle win­dow here, so some more meat on the table: Class of 2011 in pre­dom­i­nantly Arab high school rethinks an item of spirit wear. I won’t even touch the com­ments on that one — they’re exud­ing lit­tle smell lines.

Detroit! Never bor­ing, this city, and I mean never. The Wayne County pros­e­cu­tor dragged the for­mer mayor — the dis­graced felon, that is — back from Texas, where he now lives, for a pro­ba­tion hear­ing, to answer ques­tions about his finances, to wit: Why is he claim­ing poverty when it comes to pay­ing his resti­tu­tion to the city, while at the same time liv­ing in a man­sion in the Dal­las sub­urbs? He gets on the stand and drops the bomb: He was the recip­i­ent of a quarter-mil or so in “loans” from some of the city’s most respected busi­ness­men, i.e. Roger Penske, Pete Kar­manos, et al. The busi­ness­men say the money was grease intended to slide the stub­born bas­tard out of office so the city could “heal,” etc. All released state­ments say­ing the bal­ance owed “remains out­stand­ing.”

But it gets bet­ter: Matty Moroun, the bil­lion­aire who owns the Ambas­sador Bridge, was even more gen­er­ous, mak­ing his cash pay­ment an out­right gift. The Moroun prose style, revealed in the let­ter that accom­pa­nied the check, is a metaphor-mixin’ thing of beauty:

“My heart strings are tugged when I think of the storm your fam­ily has weath­ered, and my heart is heavy that you and your chil­dren have been harmed while doing every­thing pos­si­ble to strengthen your fam­ily… Enclosed, please find a token of my affec­tion for the Kil­patrick fam­ily.”

The let­ter goes on to state Moroun “thought long and hard” about “what I could do that would be an encour­age­ment and help as you per­se­vere and rebuild your fam­ily.” I can imag­ine that thought process: Fruit bas­ket? Jelly of the Month Club? A sub­scrip­tion to Reader’s Digest? A free ticket to a moti­va­tional sem­i­nar? No, I know: Money.

Even bet­ter is the fol­low­ing para­graph in the News story:

Moroun’s spokesman on Thurs­day insisted that while Moroun is try­ing to win fed­eral approval of a sec­ond span beside his bridge to Canada, the per­sonal largess lav­ished on Kilpatrick’s wife and chil­dren wasn’t aimed at influ­enc­ing Kilpatrick’s mother, U.S. Rep. Car­olyn Cheeks Kil­patrick.

No. No, I’m sure that had noth­ing to do with it.

Of course, 50 grand is a drop in the bucket for a fam­ily like the Kil­patricks:

Kil­patrick and his wife deposited nearly $1.2 mil­lion into their bank accounts after Kil­patrick was sent to jail on Oct. 28, 2008 — and have spent nearly all of it — accord­ing to a pros­e­cu­tors’ analy­sis.

The analy­sis was con­tained in a two-page doc­u­ment which was entered into evi­dence. It says the Kil­patricks had no money in their joint account and in Car­lita Kilpatrick’s account on Oct. 15, 2008.

By Oct. 13 of this year, they had deposited $1,160,374 and writ­ten checks or with­drawn $1,150,498, leav­ing a bal­ance of $21,761.

Kar­manos is already bruised for hav­ing given Kil­patrick a cushy sales job with his soft­ware com­pany when he got out of prison, defend­ing it on the grounds that the guy was worth it. I won­der if the family’s big-spending lifestyle is a rebuke of sorts to his bene­fac­tors, a cer­tain “don’t expect to see your money again, suck­ers.” I guess that’s between the Kil­patricks, their lenders, and the con­sciences of all involved.

P.S. Kil­patrick took the fifth when asked about his tax returns.

I sus­pect Moroun doesn’t care about his rep­u­ta­tion, but the rest — patrons of the arts, titans of the charity-ball cir­cuit — surely do. It’s a pity the term has picked up racist con­no­ta­tions, because in the strictest pos­si­ble sense, Kil­patrick is the embod­i­ment of the char­ac­ter from the folk tale: The tar baby. Every­one who touches him becomes ensnared in his stick­i­ness. I bet the brier patch sounds like a dip in a cool lake to those guys, right about now.

The ex-mayor is still a sharp dresser, how­ever: That four-button suit is a thing of beauty, even on a big man.

So, then: I should pause a moment and thank all of you who’ve been shop­ping Ama­zon via my store. While not a cash bonanza accom­pa­nied by trea­cly notes from bil­lion­aires, the income gen­er­ated makes Google Ads look like the crap they are. It’ll help with my Christ­mas shop­ping, much of which I’ll be doing through Ama­zon, so hey — it’s a loop of love.

Only the shop­ping I can’t do locally, that is. Now more than ever, Michi­gan needs every dol­lar, every sales tax penny, every warm body walk­ing through the malls. But for some things, eh, I’m happy to sup­port the big A. I’m a one-woman stim­u­lus pack­age.

And if that isn’t the title of a dirty movie yet, it should be: “The Stim­u­lus Pack­age.”

And now it’s 9 a.m. and time for me to do a few mil­lion chores I’ve been putting off. Hop­ing to get Kate her H1N1 vac­cine today, if the doctor’s office has any left. I’m won­der­ing if she may have already had it — her “chest cold” week before last was accom­pa­nied by a day of 102-degree fever, and for those who have been lucky enough to get the mild ver­sion of the virus, it sounds famil­iar. Prob­a­bly too late to test for it, but if that’s what it was and that’s all it was, I’m grate­ful.

Have a great week­end, all.

I’m in Ann Arbor, doing online jour­nal­ism train­ing. About to eat roast beef. Carry on, all.

Thanks to all of you who made Day 1 of the Ama­zon store such a suc­cess. I earned $15.43! This is bet­ter than Google has done me in a sin­gle day, ever, and while I know it can’t last, I’m pleased to know how many of you are will­ing to do me this small favor.

I’m equally pleased to see my report from Ama­zon tells me what you bought. No names attached, alas, although some of you announced your pur­chases in com­ments. So I know Del is prob­a­bly the one behind “The McCleers and the Bir­neys;: Irish immi­grant families-into Michi­gan and the Cal­i­for­nia gold fields, 1820-1893,” but I have no idea who might have picked up “Strip To It: Core Moves and Fan­tasies Sexy Striptease (exotic danc­ing)” on DVD. Although I have my ideas ::koff::BrianStouder::koff::. And truly, I am delighted, because it would seem to indi­cate we’re draw­ing a younger demo­graphic. Money in the bank!

One of these days J.C. and I will put together a proper but­ton for the side­bar, but for now click either the cur­rent On the Night­stand book or the link below. Oh, and Laura Lipp­man, if you’re read­ing this, we also sold a copy of “Life Sen­tences.” Onward to the best­seller list.

So. I haven’t said much about the Gen­eral Motors sit­u­a­tion, mainly because the more I read, the less I know about this com­pany — or know that I know, any­way. I don’t want to be one of those pun­dits whose advice to the com­pany boils down to “duh, make cars peo­ple want to drive,” as though run­ning the largest indus­trial cor­po­ra­tion in the world, with a few hun­dred thou­sand employ­ees, plants all over the globe, a prod­uct line that takes years to develop and pro­duce, that’s expen­sive and prone to the vagaries of com­mod­ity and labor prices, trends and a fickle pub­lic — all this is no more dif­fi­cult than run­ning a cup­cake bak­ery some­where.

For­tu­nately, in Detroit, there are lots of peo­ple who know more about this than I do. I e-mailed one and asked him his take on the Wag­oner busi­ness. I don’t think he’d mind if I pasted his thoughts:

I think Wag­oner got a raw deal. But I also think GM could use a lit­tle out­side agi­ta­tion. It’s a huge com­pany. And huge com­pa­nies are hard to turn around. Maybe a new face at the top will help. Cer­tainly the gov­ern­ment has the right to call some shots.

But two of the biggest prob­lems of GM were cre­ated a long time ago – shitty cars and bloated union con­tracts. The third – health­care costs – is out of their hands. Wag­oner went a long way to turn­ing qual­ity around. (It’s ironic that he’s out a week after Buick offi­cially ended Lexus’ 14-year run at the top of JD Pow­ers “Most Depend­able” list.) And he took a huge step in bring­ing union costs in line with the last con­tract. He cer­tainly blew it when they decided not to build a Prius-like hybrid when Toy­ota did. But he’s admit­ted that mis­take and GM is catch­ing up. (And he gets no credit for the fact that GM was devel­op­ing that tech­nol­ogy as fast as Toy­ota and Honda. They just made the strate­gic mis­take of not think­ing the mar­ket was ready for it … a mis­take that must be viewed in the con­text of the fact that GM strug­gles to make money with small cars under the weight of their stag­ger­ing health care costs.)

True to Wag­oner form, he didn’t stamp his feet and make a fuss. He is the rarest of birds – a CEO with very lit­tle ego. GM is in trou­ble, much of it by their own hand. But that trou­ble started a long time ago. Rick Wag­oner was the guy turn­ing it around … until a bank­ing and credit cri­sis clipped him from behind.

…One more thought. I made this pre­dic­tion late last year, and this lat­est news makes me think it’s more likely that this sce­nario will unfold: The gov­ern­ment over­seers will, with sup­port from Nancy Pelosi et al, right­eously force GM to shift its focus to smaller, more fuel effi­cient cars. Not much will be done about health care costs, of course. So these cars won’t make money. Toy­ota and Honda, mean­while, con­tinue to invest bil­lions in their truck fleet, fight­ing for a spot in this sec­tor. With Detroit money sucked away from truck devel­op­ment – Chevy’s new Sil­ver­ado gets bet­ter gas mileage with its V8 than Toy­ota can get with its V6 – Toy­ota and Honda will rush in and seize this highly prof­itable high ground. And that, my friends, will be all she wrote.

I might add: While gas prices remain low, lots of Priuses are sit­ting on lots, too. And Toy­ota sales are down as much as the domes­tic com­pa­nies’. When peo­ple are los­ing jobs and can’t get credit, a car that flies would be a tough sell, let alone a Volt. Although Toy­ota saw some­thing in hybrids that GM didn’t, and was will­ing to carry the Prius for a good long time until it wormed its way into the zeit­geist. And now when peo­ple think of Toy­ota, they think Prius, not Sequoia, High­lander or Tun­dra. And GM will for­ever be the mak­ers of the Sub­ur­ban. (Which I still see a lot of on the streets, btw.)

A bit of blog­gage before we depart? OK:

Detroit­blog unearths another great story, about a old-time west-side schvitz patron­ized mainly by Russ­ian geezers, but on week­ends? It’s an orgy venue. More pix (noth­ing spicy) at the first link, easier-on-the-eyes black-on-white text here.

Oh, it’s so cute when news­pa­pers have April Fool’s Day sto­ries, isn’t it? I’m amazed they’re toy­ing with sub­scrip­tion can­cel­la­tions at a time like this, frankly.

I am stu­pid and law-abiding, because my first ques­tion, read­ing this, was, “Why not sell at a loss?” I know noth­ing.

But I have a lot of work to do. So off I go.

Today starts the Grand Exper­i­ment, i.e., no Detroit paper-made-of-paper on my doorstep today. Our progress so far…yesterday I got the Sun­day Free Press, and no New York Times. On Sun­day, this is like get­ting the bill and the mints at the cash reg­is­ter, but no break­fast. I actu­ally had to read Albom. Alan insisted on call­ing for our copy, and it was deliv­ered six hours later by an old man in a bat­tered car. He walked with a limp as he made his way up the walk, but his man­ner was courtly and his apol­ogy, sin­cere. A new com­pany is doing the deliv­ery, he said, and this was an early glitch. So sorry.

Today there was a New York Times, but no Wall Street Jour­nal. Since I can’t speak Eng­lish until after my cof­fee, I opted to han­dle it online. In red type on the Ser­vices page:

Due to some delays in your area today, you may expe­ri­ence late or missed deliv­ery of The Wall Street Jour­nal. We are sorry for the incon­ve­nience.

It’s sad when the old world meets the new. Noth­ing but blood on the floor. And yes, the ironies have occurred to me: This is hap­pen­ing on a day when the biggest local story in months is break­ing. Also, that the per­son who pays more than $700 a year for news­pa­pers is the one being incon­ve­nienced, so we can cater to the free­load­ers. (Jeff TMMO linked to some­thing Jim Lileks had to say on this sub­ject today, but I won’t, because as usual he buries his point in sev­eral hun­dred words of blather about what he had for din­ner Fri­day night. Kind of like, oh, me.)

But it’s Mon­day, it’s cold and there’s snow on the ground. Let’s turn our thoughts to hap­pier sub­jects, shall we? Not what I had for din­ner Fri­day, but what I made for dessert two weeks ago. Speak­ing of news­pa­pers, the New York Times food-front main story a few weeks ago was about whoopie pies. Noth­ing like a pic­ture like this to get your mouth water­ing. Nor­mally my bak­ing runs toward more tra­di­tional fare, but it looked like some­thing Kate would enjoy mak­ing with me, and so we gave it a whirl.

Ours did not resem­ble the Times’:

But they were quite tasty, although if you’re plan­ning to fol­low the same recipe, a word of advice: The cakes are fine, but drop the pre­pos­ter­ously rich but­ter­cream fill­ing and just go ahead and whip up a bowl of plain old cream, with lots of pow­dered sugar and vanilla. The recipe is adapted from Zingerman’s Bake­house in Ann Arbor, and once you look under the hood of one of their con­coc­tions, you see how they jus­tify their prices. There’s just no rea­son for every one of those suck­ers to have the equiv­a­lent of a half-stick of but­ter in it. Use whipped cream, refrig­er­ate briefly and hand them out at a child’s birth­day party. Yum.

A house­keep­ing note: Start­ing today, I’m intro­duc­ing some small steps toward a mod­est mon­e­ti­za­tion of this site. Oy, you don’t know the time I’ve grap­pled with this, but what I’m grop­ing toward is a few lit­tle trick­les that might add up to a stream some­day. Today, I’m reviv­ing my old Ama­zon Asso­ciates store, which I’m embed­ding in the “On the Night­stand” link. Click on Ms. Lippman’s lat­est, and instead of being taken to some review of her work — all of which have been very com­pli­men­tary, by the way — you’ll go to my Ama­zon store, Nance’s Kick­back Lounge. If you buy the book, or any­thing else, through me, I get four whole per­cent of your pur­chase. But you can buy any­thing there, not just “Life Sen­tences.” I’ve high­lighted a few of my favorite cur­rent books, movies and so on, but if you sim­ply access the greater Ama­zon site via my store, it all goes back to me. (Click on the “Pow­ered by Ama­zon” logo to access their main page.)

In com­ing weeks and months, I’ll try a few more things, most of which will be unob­tru­sive and that which isn’t, I hope, will be some­thing you’ll enjoy. My work­ing model is, if it’s in yo’ face, it’s gotta be some­thing extra. We’ll see.

I men­tioned snow on the ground. It came through last night, a lit­tle squall that when it started deliv­ered flakes the size of coast­ers, it seemed. We all stared out the win­dow, resent­ing the hell out of it, even though it won’t stick and won’t last past 10 a.m. today. I resented it even more for being so pretty — the big flakes were very Hall­mark. At least they were last night. Today, they’re just sort of…Monday. Enjoy yours.