It’s raining outside my window, not too hard, but a definite get-wet-if-you-stepped-outside sort of rain, going pitter-pat on everything, and it sounds wonderful.

It’s 8:54 p.m. The sun is trying to break through in the west, real golden-hour light, even though the rain isn’t abating at all. It’s almost, but not quite, Hollywood rain, the kind created by an industrial sprinkler on a bright Los Angeles day. I can hear a cardinal singing somewhere. If I weren’t sitting here, I’d go outside to look for a rainbow, but I’m enjoying the sound and the light filling the room too much to move.

The rain is harder now. Not a breath of a breeze; it’s falling straight down. Very very nice.

I know I’ve been bitching a lot lately, but today I am happy to be a work-at-home freelancer (even thought I have to go to work in, um, two minutes). But I’m working in a chaise in my own bedroom, on my laptop, enjoying the rain and the light and the cardinal. I just left Alan sitting over the remains of dinner — grilled salmon with cucumber-dill sauce, mixed green salad with herbs from the garden, Swiss potatoes — and he informed me he intended to listen to the rain for a while, too.

(Later.)

I don’t know why, but just sitting there enjoying the moment reminded me of something I heard on NPR — you know, that elitist radio network — a few days ago. Margot Adler’s story is headlined “Perfecting the Art of Frugal Living in NYC,” but it really should be called Perfecting the Art of Living, period. It was about a study of New York’s most endangered species — its starving artists, the people who in large part give the city its character and flavor, but who are also the ones least able to live in its staggeringly expensive apartments.

Wary of using too much in fair use, I urge you to click over and read the story of Hank Virgona, visual artist, who typically makes less than $30,000 per year, but still has the world’s riches outside his front door:

Virgona says when people come to see his art he never asks them if they’d like to buy anything.

“I talk about art. I talk about my love for art,” he says. “I talk about how a walk down a quiet street — especially toward dusk — is as good as going to Caracas or Venezuela or anywhere. It is nourishing. That is part of art’s purpose.”

Joan Jeffri, who directed the study for the Research Center for Arts and Culture, says for these creative people being an artist transcends every other identity — race, education, gender.

“They don’t ever think of giving up being artists,” Jeffri says. “If they have arthritis, they change their art form. They don’t retire.”

Jeffri believes these artists have wisdom to impart about living and aging. In a sense, she says, they are role models.

And what are the first programs to be cut when schools have budget troubles? Anyone? Yes, the arts. This has been your moment of Zen.

Jeez, it’s a hot one today. Of course, the hottest part of any day is late afternoon, which is when the (outdoor) kickoff party for the film festival starts. On a rooftop. Oh, well — if this day goes like the last 60 or so, it’ll be raining by then.

Some bloggage:

Of interest to media types only, a WSJ piece on the widening rift — there’s a piece of journalese, ain’a? when was the last time you used “widening rift” in casual conversation — between member papers and the Associated Press.

In the right blogosphere, Roy finds growing anxiety over “what the inaugural ball will be like” if Obama wins. I’m hoping for a five- hour set by Parliament Funkadelic, with lots of “get up offa that thang!” from the stage.

Color me astounded: Madonna’s teeing up a divorce filing. She’s said to be getting the best legal talent to preserve her giant pile of money, wherein live the souls of the men whose essence she extracted, creative succubus that she is. I think her husband’s best strategy is to go limp: Walk into the first negotiation and say, “I don’t want a dime. I won’t take a nickel. I’m off to live in a garret while I try to regain the semblance of originality and creativity I once had before you entered my life. I’m getting some futons from Ikea for the kids to sleep on when they visit. You are a curse and I am fortunate to have escaped with my life. Have a nice one of your own, what’s left of it.” And then walk out. She’d be running after him stuffing a check for $100 million in his pocket.

Not that anyone asked me.

OK, you all — work to do. Play nice.

Maybe you haven’t heard: The Detroit Newspaper Partnership is looking to cut another 7 percent in costs. Another round of buyouts is coming, but now that most newsrooms have burned the deadwood, cut the fat, stripped the muscle and amputated its pinky fingers and other superfluous body parts, it’s now time to, what? Suck the marrow?

I dunno. I tell you this only to stress that for me, for pretty much everyone with a stake in the newspaper industry, worry is our constant companion. At this point in my life I’ve learned not to let it consume me, but honestly, it’s been so long since I’ve thought next year might, possibly, lord willin’, inshallah be better than this, I can’t even remember.

So I’m always looking around for interesting job opportunities. They frequently present themselves at this time of year, summer’s beginning, when I can’t take them. This was yesterday’s:

Here’s the deal. We sell adult stuff. Not porn, but toys, lubes and all that. In our business they are called “adult novelties” Why do we sell adult stuff? Because people really enjoy buying it, that’s why. It’s called making money. The local economy isn’t doing that well, but we are doing great!

We do the website / Internet thing. We have been at it for 10 years now. It’s not too shabby. The work environment is as casual as anyplace on earth and people here are nice.

You’ll write stuff and maybe take pictures of it. We then create a webpage. People see what we have to say and decide whether to buy or not. A great copy writer will balance salesmanship with truth. You’ll be honest and upstanding. People will respect you for it and you will earn their trust.

The job is Monday-Friday 9AM – 5PM. …This is not a freelance job, nor is it a work-from-home type of thing. This is a real copy writing position. You will sit at a desk in a crappy office.

It goes on from there. They extend an offer to apply and invite writing samples about a package of bachelorette party stickers. I blinked when I saw what they wanted: “100-200 words.” Say wha? That’s a big ol’ copy block for a catalog. It sounds like they’re producing the J. Peterman catalog of adult novelties.

This could be my dream job:

The night started the way they always start — sexy dresses straight from the dry-cleaning bag, new shoes, the thrilling sight of the stretch limo pulling up to the apartment door. It’s Clarissa’s bachelorette party, and we are going to plow a wide swath through the night, starting with pomegranate martinis at dinner and ending with shooters at 2 a.m. Comes the witching hour, and here we are – Jenna is puking in the ladies’, Jess is dancing with some guy who has his hand on her ass, Cassie is slumped at the other end of the table, drunk-dialing her exes and crying for no reason. And the bride-to-be? She left an hour ago, and if you squint, you can see her through the window of the tattoo parlor across the street, stretched out on her stomach, some illustrated-man ink artist putting the groom’s name at the top of her butt crack. And you? You’re looking down at the pink bubble sticker you slapped on when the evening was young, a sticker just above your left boob that reads “flirt.” Just so you remember which one you are.

That’s 187 words. They actually sound like fun people, if you don’t mind the soul-destroying work of crafting 150 words about personal lubricant.

Wait, what?

That Craigslist ad makes me despair, actually. After our weekend of filmmaking, which would have been impossible without Craigslist, I wonder what the newspaper industry has in the pipeline to compete. Many in the business have criticized Craig Newmark for failing to “monetize” his creation; in fact, I think they have a special word for him, from a high-level econ seminar, something like “bad actor” — used to describe a capitalist who doesn’t want to make money. That implies a similar site could be monetized, while remaining free, so what are they bringing to the table? There’s always a better idea, a way to innovate. My guess is: Not bloody much. They’re GM in 1972, looking at the first Hondas rolling off the boat from Japan, scoffing, who’d want to drive that stupid thing?

As I said: I worry.

OK, on to bloggage, because that’s what we love:

Headlines that shouldn’t be written, much less clicked on: Oprah Winfrey completes her 21-day vegan cleanse.

Oh, and this just in: Copy editing outsourced to India.

And why don’t we leave it at that? Have a swell day, all.

A friend writes to remind us of Lee Abrams’ real crime:

True, this guy is one of those hilarious clueless douche bags that big thinkers at failing companies like Tribco believe will breathe new life into their franchises and, as his memo amply demonstrates, what he knows about newspapers would fit neatly under your thumb nail.

But his greatest crime is the creation of the so-called “superstar format” that transformed the wild, wonderful and creative world of FM radio into the banality of the AOR format in the 1970s. His ruthless insistence on tight playlists relegated thousands of acts to oblivion, particularly black music but also punk, metal and other kinds of rock while embracing elevator rock by the likes of Foreigner and Supertramp.

Someone in comments a while back — I think it was Jolene — made an observation about charges of “elitism” against Barry O. To paraphrase: Why do we encourage our children to excel in school, work hard, achieve, get good grades, get into the best colleges, think independently, read widely, etc., if at the end of all this they’ll stand before us and we’ll call them elitists?

Good question.

I thought of it again when I read, via Romenesko, a heart-clutching memo from Lee Abrams, a former radio guy who’s now something like “chief innovation officer” for the painfully evolving Tribune Co. He’s supposed to be the fresh-eyed outsider charged with re-imagining newspapers in the new era. A few of his thoughts:

ASSUMPTIONS: Possibly the biggest problem. Assuming. I met a reporter who spent 4 years in Baghdad. Dodging bullets…staying in Hotels protected by the Marines. Yet, I’ll bet NO-one outside of the building knew this person was risking their life in Iraq to get YOU the news. If it were CNN, you’d see rockets and RPG’s in the background as the reporter ducks shrapnel. In the paper, it’s usually a small byline.

Hell, papers should have photos of the reporter with Iraqi kids…be writing diaries. Before I joined Tribune, I had NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news…Because the paper “assumed” I knew.

THE NPR FEEL? Newspapers strike me as being a little TOO NPR. I like NPR, and their shows like Morning Edition do well. But NPR can also be a bit elitist. Morning News Radio has a lot of similarities to papers: Similar target audience; Old Media; Time restraints. It’s probably a good thing to study the feel of a well honed All News Radio station. Yeah, a different medium, but I sometimes get a slower more intellectual NPR feel from papers than a usually quicker paced and more mainstream News Radio delivery. It’s all about being INTELLIGENT…not intellectual. We are in the mainstream business. The 2008 Mainstream business. SMART…but not elite….and we DO get a little NPR at times. (And I DO like NPR…)

I can’t go back to newspapers. I just can’t.

At least he didn’t suggest we all write STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS with random caps; Like This; …like our READERS DO. They’ll understand, because more of them are like Lee ABRAMS, a man who made a fortune in radio but DIDN’T KNOW that reporters actually GO PLACES LIKE IRAQ to cover Iraq. The paper just Assumed he knew that when a Story has a Dateline that says BAGHDAD, that means IT WAS WRITTEN THERE.

OK, I’ll stop.

But this is, simply, bullshit. I love the part about crafting the paper more in the model of all-news radio than NPR. Of course, I am an elitist — THERE, Lee Abrams, I SAID IT — but I’ve been listening to NPR so long now that I simply cannot abide any other sort of news radio. It’s imperfect, granted, but on most days it’s an oasis, and if it were to disappear tomorrow I’d just throw all my radios away. YES, Lee, I WOULD. Of course, I happen to hate all-news radio with a passion. Hate. The weather on the sevens, traffic on the nines, sports brought to you by your friends at GutterHoods.com, the constant yapping commercials, all of it. Some of us are trying to understand the world’s events, not cram a few phrases between ellipses and call it news.

Someone told me the other day that the anchor of one of Detroit’s morning drive all-news/talk stations makes $1 million a year. I think it was Paul W. Smith. He writes a column for the News. Here’s a selection from one of his most recent:

I can only imagine (but I never hope to find out) the roller coaster of emotions that affected Metro Detroiters have been experiencing since storms knocked out the electricity last week. Some people were without power for up to a week, and I don’t blame them for being angry and wondering why it took so long to fix it. Too many cuts? Where do power officials put the extra thousand workers or so when everything is O.K. — when we take for granted that the lights will come on when we throw the switch? We sure shouldn’t be angry at those men and women who have been climbing those poles, clearing those limbs and holding on for dear life as the next storm rumbled through.

He goes on to note that melons are a luxury item in Japan, condenses a press release about a zoo fundraiser and concludes with this bit of Abrams-approved self-promotion, not a photo with Iraqi kids but good enough:

Thank you, Marketing & Sales Executives of Detroit for presenting me with your 2008 Executive Leadership Award this coming Wednesday.

There’s a newspaper column written — or phoned in — in the precise style of all-news radio: A rhetorical question, an opinion no one would find objectionable, an oddity from a funny foreign land and finishing with an air-kiss to the buttocks. INTELLIGENT, not intellectual, as Abrams might say.

I’m assuming Abrams is not being paid in hugs and kisses. And yet he is unembarrassed to write, Before I joined Tribune, I had NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news. Why is it OK to call a smart person with smart-person attitudes and taste an elitist, but not to call Abrams, well, ignorant?

Just wonderin’.

EDIT: You toss off something in 15 minutes between chores, and the next minute you’re on Romenesko. Our comments policy: First-timers go to moderation before appearing. I will try to keep up, but I have to go out in a bit and there may be a delay.

Preach it, Jon Carroll:

One day last month, representative of the California Highway Patrol visited classrooms to deliver some bad news: Some classmates of theirs had been killed in traffic accidents. Alcohol apparently was involved. The students, as might be expected, were stunned. Many wept. Some screamed. School stopped as people comforted each other.

Then, a few hours later, the administrators announced that it was all a joke. Well, not a joke – it was an educational experience. The administrators had set up the stunt to make the students understand how very sad death is, and how drinking booze and driving is a bad thing. It was something the students will never forget, the administrators said, and oh how true that is.

The takeaway is: Don’t trust anyone. Grown-ups will lie to you and try to make you feel bad. The world sucks even worse than you thought it did. Guidance counselor Lori Tauber defended the exercise: “They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized. That’s how they get the message.”

Note that’s a rather lengthy pullquote from Carroll’s column. Long enough for the Associated Press to price it at, oh, $50, which last year constituted about 15 percent of this blog’s revenue. The AP’s proposal to start billing blogs for as little as five words of fair-use quoting has the blogworld in a tizzy, but I’m holding my fire, for now. Far too much hot air has risen heavenward since the beginning of the blog/MSM relationship, and there’s no need to add to it. Here’s a typical comment left on the original story linked above:

Wow. It’s amazing how a major news organization like the AP can be so woefully ignorant on this topic. Charging blogs for the privilege of fair use? Amazing! The AP should be thanking bloggers for linking their way, not trying to tax them for snipping a couple sentences.

I’m not unsympathetic to this argument — I’ve used it myself, when it suited my purposes — but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the AP works. As we were taught in j-school: The AP is a co-op. Member newspapers pay a fee to use its content, and agree to contribute in turn. (Some have subscription-only memberships; Wikipedia’s entry is about how I remember it being explained to me as a student.) Content is generated by those contributions, and by a relatively small staff of AP-employed correspondents. The daily call from the AP is a ritual on most metro and state desks, and sending them copy is part of the desk editor’s job. Once upon a time, this worked pretty well — there was lots of money to pay the fees, and lots of copy to keep the wires full, full enough that most papers employ a full-time wire editor just to stand by the sluice all day, directing stories to different departments and keeping an eye on breaking news elsewhere.

The AP doesn’t sell advertising. They collect fees and manage their content. It has no financial interest in eyeballs on their copy, except as it affects their member newspapers and broadcast outlets. The copy — er, “content” in the 21st century — is the coin of the AP realm. Make it too freely available, and it’s devalued.

(There’s another problem presenting itself, and that is the shrinking of its contributing membership. At my old Indiana newspaper, we once had a full-time correspondent in Indianapolis. He covered the state legislature, but obviously he couldn’t be everywhere. The AP filled in the gaps when he was elsewhere, and in turn we contributed his stuff to the wire. When we lost that position, the AP became our de facto Indy correspondent. But even the AP can’t be everywhere, and needs member contributions to be effective. So the AP shrinks, too. Less government coverage all around. You see why this stuff is important to keeping an eye on democracy? And please don’t give me that crap about citizen journalists picking up the slack. They. Are. Not.)

Already, several major papers post virtually everything that comes over the wire on their websites, under their brand and surrounded by their ads. Bloggers pick it up and repost it on their sites, perhaps with a few comments, perhaps not. The AP gets bupkis for this. Which brings us to another comment from that original BetaNews story:

Freedom of the press isn’t apparently. It should be completely free to take and quote from AP as long as it cites its references. Originally I thought it was just an issue of plagiarism but now I see the AP is just a bunch of greedy AH’s.

Astonishingly ignorant, that. “It should be completely free” because…why? Journalism fairies will pay the AP staff’s salaries? And “greedy”? Friend, let me introduce you to a witticism offered frequently by grimly smiling AP staffers, usually when ordering the least-expensive item on the menu: “You can’t spell ‘cheap’ without ‘AP’.” I’ve known a few AP lifers, and believe me, none of them were getting rich, and many were barely middle-class. All had working spouses.

There’s the issue of “fair use.” This it the legal doctrine that says I can quote a limited section from a piece of copyrighted material, in the interest of commenting on it. Fair use is what it is, but I doubt it covers the internet ritual sometimes called “fisking,” in which a blogger quotes a few paragraphs from an outside source, mocks, quotes a few more, mocks, and so on until the entire story is reproduced and the blogger feels very, very proud of himself.

This line in the sand may be a trial balloon. (Block that metaphor!) Or it may be a chicken coming home to roost. It’s certainly not popular. But the day is coming, people: News doesn’t assemble itself into nice 600-word chunks. People need to eat. The AP’s content is worth something, because it cost something to produce. Sooner or later, we have to figure this out. Or the entire blogosphere will be reduced to the equivalent of ham radio: Hi, this is Roberto in Mexico. Who and where are you?

So, then.

Read that Jon Carroll column. Give the San Francisco Chronicle the eyeballs. Me, I’m off to brainstorm six-minute gangster movie ideas.

It wasn’t until I saw the flag box in the grocery store vestibule that I remembered how patriotic this part of the state is. A retired mailbox, it was repainted white and emblazoned (in red and blue, natch): DEPOSIT WORN-OUT FLAGS HERE FOR PROPER DISPOSAL. I own a flag, but it’s only been flown on patriotic occasions, so I figure it’ll last a lifetime. I can’t imagine going through so many that I’d need to use a special flag-disposal box, but like I said, Mio, Mich. is a patriotic place.

We were in Mio to launch the boat for a little downstream floating, part of CampFest 2008, the first of three planned summer trips. Somehow, two people who rarely passed a year without a camping trip managed to give it up entirely when the kid came along. (Wonder why? Wonder no longer than it takes you to imagine changing diapers in a tent. Keeping toddlers happy in a tent. And so on.) So this was Kate’s first, but not her last. At least, I hope so. We had torrential downpours both nights, our campsite was invaded by tent caterpillars, the mosquitos were vicious, and there was a war going on across the river, and she still had fun. Fingers crossed.

Yes, a war. We camped in Grayling, home of Camp Grayling, and as usual, maneuvers were under way. The town was clogged with camouflage, and at night, the sound of machine-gun and artillery fire rang through the woods. It’s actually not objectionable at all — it wasn’t terribly loud, they’re good neighbors, and the plug is pulled at 10 p.m., which, at this time of year and at that latitude, isn’t even full dark.

Most people around here know the charming story of the Kirtland’s Warbler, an endangered little songbird once thought extinct, until a few were found nesting near the National Guard’s firing ranges. KWs nest in jack pine forest, but only in trees about head-high; they need a recently burned landscape to survive. In the years of vigorous fire suppression, they lost habitat, and only found it in the places where artillery shells had started small fires, stimulating regrowth. And so the wee birdie found refuge with the big soldiers, and if we could add some kittens and rainbows to this story, we would.

Actually, we can. This was Saturday:

Yep, that’s a threatening sky. I’m just glad the hailstorm came when we were in the car.

More video later. I have a busy morning, and then a busy week. I think I mentioned this once before, but lo it has come to pass: I’m on a team participating in the Detroit-Windsor International Film Festival Challenge, which takes place this coming weekend. Everybody meets at a central location, and each team is given a genre, a location, a line of dialogue and a prop, and we’re given 48 hours to make a four- to seven-minute film incorporating all four. The location has already been leaked — the Ambassador Bridge. There are six possible genres, which means I (the writer) have to have at least six vague ideas for short stories in each one. That’s not too daunting, is it?

Also, a final note: I freely admit to being the most out-of-touch writer in the world, but even I was amazed at the Princess Diana-ization of Tim Russert’s death. My last media intake was Friday night, after midnight, when MSNBC was still live “Remembering Tim Russert.” When I resurfaced Monday, glancing at the headlines in USA Today at the Grayling McDonald’s (did I mention I forgot the coffee in the camp kitchen), there were stories about sudden cardiac arrest and “what it means for your health.” It must suck to be famous. Is there really a demand for this? Judging from some of the vox populi out there, a lot of people felt personally connected to the guy. I don’t get it, but I’m sorry for the loss.

Back in a bit.

It is finally spring here in Michigan, and we’re trying to make our space a little nicer. The enormously expensive back-strip landscaping is fleshing out nicely, and we’ve added a couple bird feeders. Of course this attracts not only the wrong birds — if I wanted mourning doves, I’d have put on a funeral — but squirrels. My experience firing a shotgun last week leads me to fantasize about more interesting target practice, preferably on those little bastards. The other day I wondered idly what they might taste like.

It turns out squirrel cookery is in Alan’s immediate bloodline. His parents used to go hunting together, and sometimes brought home a bag of them. “I remember my mom would boil them, and then fry them,” he said. Alan’s mom was a humble cook with a limited repertoire, but I give her points for guts and pluck for even trying to cook a squirrel. (Although, to be sure, boiled-then-fried sounds positively vile.) Turns out I’m not the only one giving this critter some thought:

(Squirrel) meat is selling faster than butchers can get it, not least because it is currently nesting season. Ever since Kingsley Village Butchers in Fraddon, Cornwall, began offering grey squirrel two months ago, it has shifted up to a dozen a day.

That’s from the Telegraph. The British can be very strange.

The story goes on to reveal the astonishing price English butchers are fetching for “tree rat:”

At £3 to £4 for one, the shop-bought variety is hardly an obvious answer to keeping the lid on an escalating grocery bill.

Jeez. At current exchange rates that’s almost $7 per squirrel. Alan and I split a one-inch Delmonico from time to time, which at current prices costs us around $14. And for that we can get two squirrels? The dollar is weak, but please.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Via Nervous Rod Dreher, a profile of Marston Hefner in GQ magazine, teenage son of you-know-who:

Marston doesn’t actually live in the Mansion—not anymore, not since his parents split up in 1998 and his mom, the blond Playmate Kimberley Conrad (January ’88), moved into a more modest house that adjoins the property. He’s 18 now, about to graduate from high school, a tall and lanky kid with heavy brows, watchful, slightly sad eyes, and a complexion that says “I spend too much time playing video games.” He has none of his dad’s swagger or mothlike attraction to the bright lights of Hollywood—which you could attribute to a young man struggling to define himself in opposition to his famous father, or to the fact that they just don’t spend that much quality time together these days. Marston doesn’t make it over every day. He’s usually here on Thursdays, though, for…backgammon night?

Nervous Rod thinks the kid is a slack zero, because of course GQ is the last authority in all things, and because he disapproves of Hugh Hefner. I’m a parent, too, and I had a different reaction: Marston Hefner is turning out about as well as can reasonably be expected, a typical child of a parent who blots out the sun, his odds in life perhaps 50-50 — his money will provide him cushion and opportunities, while the essential weirdness of his upbringing and its attendant pitfalls will try to take him down.

And while I’m always happy to see a freelance writer getting some work, I’m less fond of hit pieces against people who don’t deserve it, and while the hit wasn’t aimed at young Marston, he’s certainly collateral damage in passages like this, in which the writer interviews Hef pére:

Did you ever try to explain the fact that, just after the separation, you started dating seven blond women?

“Not really. What is there to say?”

There was never any conversation about monogamy or marriage?

“What kind of conversation would that be?”

What kind of signal does that send?

“I think the signal that it sends, quite frankly, which the boys liked, was that instead of somebody replacing mama, I dated a bunch of girls.”

After about forty-five minutes, Hef appears to be losing steam. I turn off the tape recorder, and he rises from the couch. As he does, he rips the kind of fart that one does not even attempt to hide from. No one in the room blinks.

News flash: Hef was a lousy father, and 82-year-old men fart unexpectedly. Wow. I bet Ronald Reagan was the picture of refinement at that age, too. (And, to be sure, not much of a father, either.)

Let’s just hope they had better taste in picking the mothers of their children.

Nice David Edelstein appreciation of Sydney Pollack, actor.

OK, Friday. I’d looked forward to a long, relaxing bike ride today, and in the last half-hour three e-mails arrived that will see to it I’m desk-bound for half the day. Better get to work. Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll see you back here after.

My commitment to saving gas is so pathetic as to be comical — I mean, a fair-weather cyclist who works from home is hardly capable of a real sacrifice in fossil-fuel consumption — but I’m trying to approach it with some level of seriousness. And I’ve set a goal: The one-month tank of gas. Fourteen gallons in 30 days.

It’s not that far-fetched. I made it to three weeks between fill-ups recently without making myself a hermit in the bargain. If you can go three weeks, you should be able to go four, right? Here are my main rules and strategies:

1) Combining trips. If I’m going to Royal Oak for a meeting, I try to think of other stuff I can do while I’m out there. I mean, besides eat lunch. If the trip takes me past Costco (and most do), I make a stock-up stop.

2) Telling my dear only child, “Can’t you ride your bike? Lansing’s not that far. ”

3) It’s difficult to shop for a week of groceries on a bicycle, but easy to get a day’s worth. I pretend I’m French and live in a tiny Paris walkup with a refrigerator the size of a shoebox.

4) All shopping excursions requiring the car get a second, third or fourth look. All chances to interact with other human beings I don’t even question. The idea is to save gas, not become a crazy miserly energy tyrant.

5) You can fit more on the back of a bike than you think, if you have the right bungee cords. It does make the thing a little light up front, however. And carrying home certain loads — a few bottles of wine, a big bag of dog food — make you look like a crazy person who lost her driver’s license to multiple drunk-driving convictions. But it’s fun to be crazy. At least people get the hell out of your way.

6) Finally — and this is huge in Detroit — I started driving the speed limit. There’s an essay in that, because absolutely nobody in this town, in the state, does so. The default driving style is fast, cheap and out of control, and while it can be fun, it doesn’t exactly make the real-time mileage gauge on the dash track a nice steady number. Driving the speed limit in Detroit is like being an atheist in Colorado Springs. People not only look at you funny, they think you’re with al-Qaeda.

If none of these strategies seem particularly earth-shattering, well, you lived through the ’70s, too. It’s hard to make you younger folks understand how unsettling that era was, and prices aside, it was unsettling. Stations closed at 5 p.m. Some areas restricted sales to every other day depending on last name or plate number. Lines at the pumps stretched a block or more. And it happened so fast — one day gasoline was an expense for most households the way coffee was an expense, and suddenly it turned into a mortgage. I drove to Cleveland with some friends for a day trip during this period, and we delayed topping off the tank. As we turned for home, we entered a strip of gas stations near the freeway entrance, and justlikethat, they all turned off their lights and closed for business, and it was like that all over town. We had to spend the night, like pioneers stranded by a blizzard.

For teenagers accustomed to getting a couple days’ driving out of a dollar’s worth of gas, it was shocking.

A few years later came the big coal strike that led to voluntary restrictions on electricity use, deep into one of the coldest winters on record, and certainly in my lifetime. I think of that era as cold, dark and expensive, and it changed my energy-use behavior forever. I’ve never bought a car without at least considering its gas mileage. I never set the thermostat above 68. I watch my tach as closely as I watch my speed, and shift to minimize RPMs whenever possible.

This sort of era can turn you crabbed and mean; the dark side of thrift is miserliness, a refusal to share in any sort of bounty for fear of a coming shortage. But I’m sympathetic to those caught flat-footed. Many of my neighbors are in the automotive business, and many drive enormous, hulking, high-profit-margin vehicles that are surely running them to the poorhouse, one tank at a time. (Remember, this is the industry that, when confronted with the early Honda subcompacts, offered as competition the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto.) Many are younger than I am, and don’t remember the fun old days. Ah, well. As my parents responded to my whining then with stern reminders of the deprivations of the war years, so too do I nod in sympathy, as I roll past on pedal power.

How do you save gas without being totally anal about it?

By the way, today I’m having lunch on the patio at the Detroit Golf Club — a planning session for our movie challenge entry, next month. See Rule #4, above. I’m so starved for a non-family human interaction I’d drive to Ypsilanti for donuts with Mitt Romney. (Downside: Again, it’s not even 50 degrees yet. Maybe they’ll have to serve us our coffee in thermal casks.)

A bit o’ bloggage:

In addition to the big essay on conservatism, I also read this in the New Yorker this weekend, about Katie Couric’s travails as anchor of the CBS Evening News. I read it with the same sense of awe I have whenever I think about the evening network news — that somewhere in this country there are still people with nothing better to do at 6:30 p.m. than watch 22 minutes of old-skool network news. So, I think, does Nancy Franklin, who wrote the piece:

The evening news continues to have value for millions of people, but millions more are now turning to the Internet. Increasingly, and in more ways than one, there is an end-of-the-day feeling to the nightly-news half hour—there’s ad after ad for products that treat all the things that go wrong with your body after you’re fifty, and in the broadcast itself there’s the endless use of the tired phrase “pain at the pump,” for stories on fuel prices, and always, in stories about pharmaceutical companies or warnings about drugs, the same shot of pills moving rapidly along a conveyor belt.

Our witty pal Alex once described the overarching theme of network news as “somewhere, someone younger than you is spending your tax dollars on things you wouldn’t approve of,” and that’s word, too. Later:

But I don’t think that people want less news; they want, I believe, the same kind of informed passion and doggedness that TV-news people displayed while covering Hurricane Katrina, and they want anchors to go deep into issues. Who knows, young people might turn on their TVs in droves if news organizations had a few choice strands of Michael Moore’s DNA in them, and pointed out when, say, a public official wasn’t telling the truth. Jon Stewart is a lightning rod both for people who decry the notion that young people get their news from watching “The Daily Show,” and for people who think that his (and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”) is the only current-events show worth watching. I’m not a Stewartite, but when Dick Cheney denies making certain statements about the war in Iraq and Stewart shows three video clips that prove he’s lying, I think he’s providing a real service to the country, and I’d like to think that that’s what his fans are responding to.

That’s exactly right. I’m late to the Jon Stewart fan club, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see him on a network newscast — it would ruin his magic — but I’d drive an SUV to Ypsi to see him do an author interview before I would, say, Brian Williams. (His dissection of Jonah Goldberg is a minor classic.) Stewart brings a level of honesty to the table that so-called professional journalists either can’t or won’t, because they interpret “objectivity” so strictly that they can’t call a spade a spade. Haven’t they figured out that the people they cover are wise to this? How many books does Scott McClellan have to write before it gets through: Sometimes the people behind the podium? Are LYING. It’s not bias to point this out. It’s, um, journalism.

Well, don’t want to start ranting.

Why newspapers are dying: Because they think there’s no room for ALL the “Sex and the City” movie-premiere fashion pictures. But Jezebel does.

The morning, she is slipping away. Better go select my long underwear for visiting the golf club on the 28th DAY OF DAMN MAY, FOR GOD’S SAKE. Have a good one.

Some broad has a column about Indiana in the Washington Post. “What you need to know,” or something. It’s twinned with a piece by some guy writing the same thing about North Carolina. They both say their states are a mass of contradictions. Meh. I think they need to get better writers.

But this is it, Indiana — an extraordinary primary in this year of years, so drink it up. I was on the phone with Mark the Shark last week (I was on the phone with a few Hoosiers in the past week; see above), and he was reminiscing about the time he snuck out of lunch at Bishop Luers to see Robert Kennedy’s car drive past, the last time the Indiana primary mattered. Mark the Shark wears hearing aids now. The next time this happens, you could be dead. Drink. It. Up.

Then enjoy the familiar feeling of the day after, when your ardent lover of the past few weeks has moved on and now ignores your number on the caller ID. “Indiana who?” he or she will say, if you get through. “Oh yeah — one of those ‘I’ states.” Like …oh, Iowa.

During my chat with Paul Helmke, we talked about his famous Theory of Horizontal Stateitude, which I believe we’ve discussed here before. To wit: Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are three states divided the wrong way. The upper third of each has more in common with one another than the rest of their own territory, ditto the central and southernmost thirds. The north of each is blue-collar and ethnic (Cleveland, Gary, Chicago), the central a frontier of the Mid-Atlantic states (Columbus, Indianapolis, Springfield, the south a remnant of the Dixie/Appalachia that lies below. It’s an interesting theory, imperfect in parts, but sound as a whole. He reminded me of Indiana’s role in the 1920s-era KKK, which many people see as evidence of a deeply entrenched racism, but that’s too facile. The Klan’s big issue in the ’20s was anti-immigration and stamping out the menace of Popery. When they made a play to take over the state’s Republican party, it was the northern-third party members who put a stop to it.

He also reminded me of the influence of foreign policy on this insulated, heartland area. His family were all Democrats “until Woodrow Wilson invaded the Fatherland,” and all the good Germans turned Republican overnight. “And I’m hearing from a lot of Republicans who plan to vote Democratic in the fall,” he said, over disgust with the Iraq war. Goes to show you things change everywhere, even in Indiana.

So how are the rest of you on this fine spring day? Speaking of demographic and historical influences, I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It read: “Turkey: Take responsibility for the Armenian genocide,” which counts as a sentiment you don’t hear expressed much in other parts of the country. Yesterday, while poking around Sweet Juniper’s related sites, I ordered this from his photo store. It looks as thought it was taken in the Dequindre Cut pre-renovation, although I could be wrong. Title: “Feral dog, Albanian graffiti.” Yes, there’s an Albanian presence in Detroit. Yes, that’s the country where the fake war was in “Wag the Dog,” a place so reliably obscure the writers believed it could pass as “one of those ‘A’ countries,” and it did. Not here.

OK, enough half-assed sociology. On to the bloggage:

The 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of all time might be funny, but I didn’t get beyond No. 50 — for Annuale, the once-a-year period. It seemed unfair to the other ad parodies to have to compare with that one. Love the pink ax.

A survey of newspaper editors around the world reveals they believe the newspaper of the future will be free (congratulations, folks, it already is); have more opinion and comment (groan, because of course they’re doing such a bang-up job competing with the internet on that one already); and that “some traditional editorial functions will be outsourced” (more errors). A limping industry falls into its future.

Celebrity “journalism” is great fun and all, but I miss the days when all we did was take Sean Penn’s picture when he was leaving a restaurant with Madonna. Poor Mischa Barton (a phrase I never thought I’d write).

For those of you who missed the Tom Cruise/Oprah interview last week, Bossy has a recap.

Off to the gym. Be good, now.

It’s standard for parents of children my age to mourn the loss of their Widdle Girl, as the less-widdle adolescent begins to make her appearance. And, truth be told, I sometimes take out the box of baby pictures and get a little wistful. Mostly, though, I look on a successful passage out of elementary-school as an affirmation that at least we made it this far. And then we work, again, on those pesky time-telling skills.

I missed this story when it went around a couple weeks ago: Columnist Lenore Skenazy, who lives in New York City, did a shocking thing.

Skenazy recently left her 9-year-old son, Izzy, at Bloomingdale’s in midtown Manhattan with a Metrocard for the subway, a subway map, $20, and told him she’d see him when he got back home.

And guess what? He made it. But Skenazy suffered a few wounds of her own:

As she wrote in her column about Izzy’s big adventure: “Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.”

Izzy had been bugging his mom for a while to let him try it. The reaction was predictable; Skenazy anointed herself America’s Worst Mother afterward, and I get the sense she was waiting to do so. But so what? I, as America’s Second-Worst Mother, salute her.

Say what you want about Michael Moore, and “Bowling for Columbine” might have been mean to poor old Charlie Heston, but he hit on a very important truth in that movie, and hardly anyone talked about it: Americans are constantly spoon-fed a diet of Fear, and it shows in the decisions they make, including how they raise their kids.

One day last winter, I called Kate at a friend’s house, a friend who lives one (1) block away. I’m sitting at my bedroom window now, and if there weren’t a house in the way, I could see this friend’s house. I told her it was time to come home. Two minutes later, headlights swung into the driveway — my neighbor, dropping Kate off.

Later I said, “Please, just let her walk home. It’s one block. She won’t freeze.” I assumed Kate had asked for a ride because it was cold outside. But no: “Oh, really, I don’t mind. If anything happened to her, I’d never forgive myself.” The chances of something happening in one block are, as Skenazy points out, about the same as being struck by lightning, but ah well.

“What do we pay outrageous taxes for, if not for safety?” I replied. She pointed out that taxes don’t buy safety, and she’s right. But fear doesn’t, either. Sometimes you just have to take your chances in the world. Paul Campos, a Rocky Mountain News columnist, wrote of Skenazy:

Skenazy notes that one acquaintance told her that he requires his daughter to call home after she has walked the one block to her friend’s house, even though they live in a typically crime-free suburb.

Other parents informed her they don’t allow their children to walk alone to the mailbox.

This kind of thing encourages children to see the world in fear-ridden terms, and to grow up to become the sort of people more interested in having their government protect them from largely imaginary threats than in preserving their civil liberties.

Here’s Rod Dreher, the banner-carrying Crunchy Conservative, a man whose very existence is defined by fear and whining, showing his faith in his fellow man:

John Podhoretz told me once that growing up in NYC in the big bad Seventies, he used to take the subway around by himself when he was not much older than Matthew is now. And that that wasn’t unusual. Nowadays, though, you’d be out of your mind to let your kid do that in NYC, which is vastly safer than it used to be. Or if not out of your mind, at least that kind of behavior would be extremely unusual.

This was in the midst of a big post about how his own children can’t go around the neighborhood unsupervised, but can in his Louisiana hometown. (For some years now, Dreher’s been threatening to go off the grid and retreat to a plot of organically farmed land, to encase his family in the warm cotton batting of no television and homeschooling. I wish he’d just pull the trigger and put the rest of us out of our misery.) Note the twisted logic: John Podhoretz navigated the city safely when it was far more dangerous. Now it’s far, far safer, but if you let your kids do it today, “you’d be out of your mind.”

I live in a suburb so safe that the vandalism of a For Sale sign makes the newspaper. (Seriously: The headline was “Sign bent.”) I may live to regret it, but just for today, I’m going to assume my taxes buy something other than potholes and lousy city government. Fly free, little bird.

(Oh, and about those time-telling skills: Of course Kate can tell time. She just loses track of it. One condition to the freedom I give her is, she has to be home on time. Inevitably, she forgets.)

More on America’s Worst Mother, and her blog, Free Range Kids, where you can read the column that started it all.

So, bloggage:

While we’re on the subject, I wasn’t offended by Miley Cyrus’ back, either.

God bless America? No, god DAMN America! And John McCain asked for his endorsement.

My Indiana alma mater’s circulation: 24,196. One-year drop? More than eight percent. I confess, my jaw dropped.

Back to work.