An interesting topic came up in a group chat this weekend. Here was the precipitating statement:

Are old-fashioned manners outlawed these days? As a childless uncle and aunt, we’ve always been very generous to our nephews and niece. Now that they’re adults — my niece is studying law but the boys are working — we send them sizable checks. As of today, still no thanks. Hell, we’d settle for a text. All three are good people, yet they seem unaware of basic common courtesies.

It so happens this is something I’ve noticed myself. Wedding gifts in particular don’t seem to be acknowledged. (Not by Deb’s boys, I hasten to reassure her. They wrote lovely thank-you notes.) I bought one a few years back, working from the online registry, and as soon as I hit Purchase a robo-email landed in my inbox: Bob and Sue thank you for your generosity! The hell they do. They checked a box, maybe, on their registry, to enable the robo-reply.

I know I didn’t get a proper thank-you afterward.

And having had a wedding of my own, and knowing how insane they tend to get, I don’t think this is always a hanging offense. Couples get overwhelmed, cards fall off of boxes, shit happens. But with wedding gifts in particular, so often they’re sent directly to the bride’s or couple’s house before the wedding. You want to know they arrived, at least. Porch piracy is a real thing. But it seems weird to ask, although Alan did, once. He got a mumbled yeah I think so and only learned later the marriage didn’t survive very long, and maybe that’s why the thank-you was never sent.

I blame parents for not teaching their children better manners, although given the way Gen Z reacts when asked to do anything involving setting a pen to paper, maybe they did and they were just ignored. As my friend says, just send a text. It’ll probably be enough.

So, the great interregnum of the year is upon us. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas; I know we did. Gifts and food and more food and cocktails at 3 p.m., all of it. I got some wonderful gifts, large and small. I’m currently waiting for what is supposed to be more apocalyptic weather on Sunday, torrents of rain followed by plunging temperatures that may or may not lead to snow, but will surely freeze the puddles left behind. Good thing this is my vacation from my early lifeguarding shifts.

And I’m doing Dry January, again. In fact, I’m looking forward to it, after all the rich food and 3 p.m. cocktails of the past few days. I want to eat vegetables and drink sparkling water, or just plain old water. Settle in for the long haul until spring not feeling like the Goodyear blimp.

Couple quick things: For four days now, I have been unable to load this site — my own site! — on my phone, but it works fine everywhere else. Anyone else having the same problem? I get this error:

J.C. says he blames “the DNS services your phone’s provider is serving your phone with.” I have no idea.

Another housekeeping note: I reloaded the WordPress app on my phone, thinking it would be easier to post more often, with photos and such. Alas, these posts (like yesterday’s) seem to default to closed comments, even though I thought I changed that setting. I’ll keep tinkering, but be advised I’m aware of the problem.

Finally, let’s all take note of the example of Chuck Redd, the jazz musician who cancelled his Christmas Eve jam at the Kennedy Center after the toadies running it added you-know-who’s name to the building. Harvard is buckling. Big Law buckled. Big Media buckled. But this guy didn’t. Let a million Davids bloom. Keep your slingshot handy. We are on our own, we all know that now.

I was at the Eastern Market on Saturday when a Waymo taxi passed me. Someone was behind the wheel, which I take to mean it’s still undergoing testing, but we’ll likely have the driverless vehicles in Detroit before long. I texted a friend that I look forward to setting one on fire during the bloody riots of summer ’26. I was joking, but only kinda. We all know the year ahead will be grim, as the midterms approach and the Trumpers get more desperate. Be like Chuck Redd. Maybe we’ll get through this.

Although the snow we’ve had almost all melted in the last couple of days, it’s still winter (almost), and hence, bird-feeding season. Alan has set up the suet feeder for the woodpeckers, the thistle seed feeder for the goldfinches, and the gen-pop feeder for the rest.

And now, the war with the squirrels begins.

Sometimes I’ll be upstairs and Alan down, and I’ll hear GODDAMNIT accompanied by a sharp rap on the window, and I know that, once again, some crafty squirrel has figured out how to leap from the fence onto the finch feeder, and use its sharp little teeth to rip big holes in the screen. Alan added another piece to the pole, raising the height, which would (he thought), not be reachable, but that didn’t last. Turns out squirrels are good jumpers. Now he’s talking about adding a length of wire to the takeoff zone, to foil a clean leap.

He’s been making noises about electrifying it, but I’m pretty sure he’s kidding.

As for the rest of the week, let’s just forget it, shall we? Between the Reiner murders, and President Shit-for-braiins’ reaction to it, to the renaming of the Kennedy Center (which will forever be the Kennedy Center, sorry), to yet another utter disgrace at the White House, I just want this week to be over. Soon it will be.

Watch out, squirrels.

I watched “Jay Kelly,” the new George Clooney movie, this week. I found it to be entirely enjoyable, yet also, as the kids say today, mid. Which is to say it may be like the book I talked about earlier this week: It wasn’t terrible to watch, but I’ll forget every frame of it in 10 days. My main takeaway was this: George is old now.

For me, it might be the most unsettling part of aging — seeing the movie stars I grew up with turning into senior citizens. Some of the most striking women of my youth, beauties like Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, all old now. The men, those lust objects like Clooney: Old. Robert Redford had a cameo on the last season of “Dark Skies,” and looked as lined as one of those dried-apple dolls, and he’s dead now, anyway.

It’s unsettling, of course, because it means I’m old now too, which I objectively am, but apart from the pain in my knees, honestly, I don’t feel old. I feel…mature. Capable of holding my tongue in situations where I once would have let loose, to no good end. I can take the long view more often. I have no interest in chasing trends, or even knowing anything about them. You say baggy jeans are back? That’s nice. I think I have a pair in my drawer. From the ’90s. And as someone who could never, ever coast on her looks, I even think I look better than I did at, say, 30. I’m a better-looking old person than I was a young person. That has to count for something.

“Jay Kelly” is about an aging actor, and — this is not a spoiler — culminates with a career-tribute highlight reel, many of the shots recognizable from Clooney’s earlier work. He watches it with a slow tear sliding down his cheek, tinged with all the joy and regret over roads taken and not taken, and I guess that’s what life is like at our age. George and I are about the same age but he took the rich-Hollywood-movie-star-male-division life path of marrying a much younger woman, so he could have children. I wouldn’t want to be mothering twins at 56, or even 39, the age of his wife when she gave birth, but I can’t afford round-the-clock nannies, either, so it all works out.

We’ve spoken here often about growing old, and I know I’m still in early old age, that everything can go south tomorrow, but so far so good. Look me up in five years, see how I feel.

I’ve almost grown out of one of my bad habits of aging, which is to say, comparing my physical decrepitude with that of other women my age: Look at that crepey cleavage. At least I don’t have that, and so on. Sooner or later the crepe is all we have. Live until you die, I guess.

Getting older means I’m more likely to be a victim of a scam, something I’m reminded of almost daily, as I read about some miscreant persuading one of my cohort into depositing cash into a Bitcoin ATM to avoid prosecution for child porn, or something. I worry that one day I’ll get a call from someone close to me, begging for bail money, and I’ll fall for it, but it’ll turn out to be an AI sample of their voice. I think we should discuss a family code phrase to use. I think I should let Kate have veto power over big withdrawals from the nest-egg funds, so it doesn’t all go to Chinese or Russian thieves. Then I think, nah. Not time to panic yet.

Alan used to chide me for peeling off a couple singles for every panhandler we pass, arguing that it was just going to go for booze or drugs. That’s a type of scam, I guess. No one asks for money on the street for a pint of Mad Dog. On the other hand, everyone should have a small pleasure. So I keep giving.

Why so philosophical today, Nance? Can’t say. I had an enjoyable morning, meeting two friends of the blog in town for a couple days. Then a quiet afternoon. Indiana rejected further gerrymandering the state, indicating the cracks in Tubby’s coalition are widening.

I hope I live long enough to see him die, though, preferably of natural causes, in public and painfully. It’ll be awesome. How’s that for maturity?

Have a good weekend, all!

The other day I was down at Wayne State, turning in my textbooks, browsing the campus Barnes & Noble. On a whim, I bought Emily St. John Mandel’s “Sea of Tranquility,” because I loved “Station Eleven” so, so much.

This week I’ve been reading it, and I was 50 pages in when I realized: I’ve already read this. And not that long ago, either. And it took me 50 pages to realize it.

Obviously, this is an affirmative diagnosis of dementia. Also, I’m out $18.

It’s still a good book. Mandel has a real gift.

How’s everyone, midweek? Man, has it EVER been winter all up in this place. It got cold early, snowed early, and now we’re getting another 1-2 inches overnight, followed by a single-digit cold snap this weekend. Our Atlanta guests are heading south as we speak, and I don’t blame them. (Also, I don’t mind the snow, either. I am large, I contain multitudes. With dementia.) Woke up this morning to two more inches of slush, with school called off, which means early-morning lifeguarding is cancelled, too, but the call came late and I was already at the pool and the pre-dawn patrol was pulling in, so? We swam. Or rather, they swam. I sat in the chair and watched.

Bloggage? Oh yeah:

President Shit-for-brains goes off-script:

MOUNT POCONO, Pa. — He had charts that he read from, touting economic data. The stage around him was filled with signs reading, “Lower Prices Bigger Paychecks.” He introduced Pennsylvanians who he said had more take-home pay because of his policies.

But if he was supposed to launch a speaking tour to connect with Americans struggling with higher prices and stagnant wages, President Donald Trump didn’t hesitate to veer off course.

He mocked the word “affordability,” touted how high the stock market had risen and said Americans didn’t need so many pencils. He launched into a number of digressions to disparage the country of Somalia, the concept of climate change and the news media in the back of the room.

Yeah, he’s back on the you-have-too-many-pencils-and-dolls thing. But remember! It’s Biden who was senile!

Miami elected its first Democratic mayor in 30 years. More bad news for you-know-who.

Can a typeface be woke? Mario Rubio sure thinks so, the dolt.

This has been a week. You might recall I’m taking a creative writing class this semester? Today was the last class. We were asked to read a selection from our final project, which encompassed short fiction, poetry and memoir. I read my memoir excerpt.

It was about Tim Goeglein. Might as well choose a vivid chapter. It got some giggles, especially from the teacher, who, like most teachers, has had her experiences with plagiarism. A snippet:

Like President Bush, I believe in forgiveness. But I also believe in shame, and we live in a shameless age. A man exposed as a thief of other’s thoughts and expression – for years – shouldn’t be publishing book after book. The online left has long spoken of “wingnut welfare,” the seemingly endless trough from which certain conservative “thinkers” can feed, in perpetuity. Scandals, whether it be taking laundered money from the Russians, sexual misbehavior or worse, don’t seem to dent people on the right, while Sen. Al Franken was pressured into resigning for making a naughty gesture in a photograph.

It was no doubt hard for Tim Goeglein to lose his White House job. But like so many of these preening God-botherers, he was shoved off the roof with a parachute on his back, and drifted gently down into another well-paid position.

What a bitch the lady who wrote that is.

Here’s something else I wrote, for the Free Press. It was paywalled when it went up, so here’s a non-paywalled link. It’s not what I’d usually do, but I assume you guys are mostly not in the Freep area, so oh well.

Tell me what you think. And have a swell weekend.

This will be quick because I have a long to-do list, as generally happens to women before a holiday. But they’re all happy errands, for the most part, so no biggie.

First, let’s go with the lighter stuff, if you consider waiting for a fool to drown “lighter,” but you know my sense of humor.

There’s a guy who’s been hanging around the local waterways for a while, navigating what’s charitably called a “homemade houseboat.” It looks like a shipping container sitting on a raft, the raft itself floating on 55-gallon plastic drums. It might not be a shipping container, but that’s about the size. Everything about it is what you’d call “makeshift,” and maybe “half-assed.” It made the papers when it required Coast Guard assistance to get through the considerable currents at Port Huron, where Lake Huron drains into the St. Clair River. Once past, though, the captain — of the houseboat — waved them off and said he was fine. He’s now docked in Lexington, Mich., and the story goes that he’s trying to do “the Great Loop,” or the circumnavigation of the eastern U.S. via the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. It’s unconfirmed, but if he is, I’d advise taking a few days off, or even a few months.

The gales of November are blowing as we speak, with a blizzard bearing down on the U.P. and just general misery everywhere else. If that ridiculous thing leaves the safety of its current mooring, it’s bound to be broken up before he reaches Saginaw Bay.

On a darker note, I don’t know how I missed this earlier in the week, but here’s a gift link to a great analysis of the Epstein emails by that guy whose name I always have to look up, Anand Giridharadas:

At the dark heart of this story is a sex criminal and his victims — and his enmeshment with President Trump. But it is also a tale about a powerful social network in which some, depending on what they knew, were perhaps able to look away because they had learned to look away from so much other abuse and suffering: the financial meltdowns some in the network helped trigger, the misbegotten wars some in the network pushed, the overdose crisis some of them enabled, the monopolies they defended, the inequality they turbocharged, the housing crisis they milked, the technologies they failed to protect people against.

This is Giridharadas’ particular hobbyhorse; he writes a lot about the global elite, who care less for the rest of us than they do their own spouses. But it’s pretty perceptive, rich with detail and observations like this:

Many of the Epstein emails begin with a seemingly banal rite that, the more I read, took on greater meaning: the whereabouts update and inquiry. In the Epstein class, emails often begin and end with pings of echolocation. “Just got to New York — love to meet, brainstorm,” the banker Robert Kuhn wrote to Mr. Epstein. “i’m in wed, fri. edelman?” Mr. Epstein wrote to the billionaire Thomas Pritzker (it is unclear if he meant a person, corporation or convening). To Lawrence Krauss, a physicist in Arizona: “noam is going to tucson on the 7th. will you be around.” Mr. Chopra wrote to say he would be in New York, first speaking, then going “for silence.” Gino Yu, a game developer, announced travel plans involving Tulum, Davos and the D.L.D. (Digital Life Design) conference — an Epstein-class hat trick.

Landings and takeoffs, comings and goings, speaking engagements and silent retreats — members of this group relentlessly track one another’s passages through JFK, LHR, NRT and airports you’ve never even heard of. Whereabouts are the pheromones of this elite. They occasion the connection-making and information barter that are its lifeblood. If “Have you eaten?” was a traditional Chinese greeting, “Where are you today?” is the Epstein-class query.

A long read, but it kept my interest throughout.

And with that, it’s off to tackle the to-do list. At the end, I’ll have a homemade apple pie, a brined turkey, the makings of tomorrow’s green-bean dish and maybe time for a cleaned bathroom or drink with a friend. (I’m hoping for the latter.)

Have a great Thanksgiving, all. Back after.

Oh, no. I haven’t written anything today. Or yesterday. I am sorry. But I was cooking for, and wrapping for, the birthday twins’ celebration, which was yesterday. We had dinner, cake, gifts, the first half of the Lions game. I didn’t sleep well, and today I’ve been dragging ass, as they say. But it was a good party.

The individual gifts aren’t as important as my one brainstorm for a family gift that all three of us November babies can enjoy (along with three friends): A two-hour cruise on the J.W. Wescott, i.e., the mail boat that services freight vessels on the Detroit River. It advertises itself as the only floating zip code in the country (48222), based on when it would deliver mail to ships on the Great Lakes for weeks at a time. Now that letters from home aren’t so important, they do package and food deliveries — yes, you can order a pizza or a shwarma to be delivered to, say, the MV Paul R. Tregurtha as it passes through town — as well as pilot changes, which is what I’d really like to see. They pull up next to a ship under way, match their speed, and send the new pilot up a rope ladder, and take on the guy coming off duty.

I think that’s also how they’d deliver a pizza, only with a basket or some sort of conveyance, now that I think about it.

It all sounds exciting, different, fun and very Detroit. I can’t wait. Now to herd all our cats aboard.

The Wescott website talks about how they got their start, ferrying letters to ships in a bucket tied to a rope, and it reminded me of the Columbus Dispatch bucket, the fifth-floor bucket the staff would drop to photographers coming back from breaking news, on deadline. They’d deposit their exposed film in the bucket, and by the time they got parked and back into the building, the film was being processed. Was it ever used by a particular photographer to purchase weed from his dealer down on the sidewalk? I’ll never tell.

(Yes.)

So that’s why I’m so tired and not particularly productive today. But tomorrow is another one, and it won’t involve cake and two bottles of wine. So let’s see how it goes.

Sad, sad news came at midafternoon on an otherwise perfect post-election Wednesday. I was going to spend today’s entry gloating, but then word came that Richard Battin, who hired me in Fort Wayne, has died. And so, once again, I find myself overtaken by events.

Grief, too. And recrimination, because I was going to stop in to see him the last time I was in Florida, and didn’t. Next time, I told myself. I am now the second person in my circle in recent days to learn the hard lesson that sometimes there isn’t a next time. But enough about me.

Richard was my first interview in Fort Wayne, which, like other Knight Ridder papers, had a particular style of vetting applicants: You did a round robin of virtually everyone in the newsroom who mattered, and you took tests. Apparently I did well on the tests, which was no biggie, but also was, kinda. It was basic Reporting 101: You’re working alone on a Sunday morning and hear over the police scanner that a plane has gone down at the airport. Who is your first call? Answer: A photographer. There was also some copy editing stuff that boiled down to having an eye for unusual spellings of notable names. Barbra, not Barbara, Streisand. Charles Addams, not Adams.

But after that, you were shipped around to this editor and that, and Richard was mainly my shepherd. You went to lunch, and then dinner. We ate at Hartley’s and Casa d’Angelo. I left knowing I’d get an offer, because my connection with Richard was almost a mind-meld: We got each other’s jokes and references, and had a similar outlook on the world. I also loved his stories about growing up in San Jose, and working for the storied Mercury-News before coming to Indiana to step on the management track. I remember he told me early on that he’d been drafted and refused induction. He didn’t go the conscientious objector route or hightail it to Canada, just flat-out said he wasn’t going. To be sure, he’d have made a terrible soldier. He was slight and not very tall, and while he could wield a wisecrack with lethality, probably would have had problems with a weapon. Lord knows he wouldn’t have thrived in prison. But in a stroke of almost unbelievable luck, his case landed before a San Francisco judge who hated the Vietnam war as much as he did, and gave him community service or something.

As a reporter, his skills were similar to mine: Not much for spending hours in dusty libraries doing research, but a nimble hand with a Page One bright. He showed me a picture once of the time he’d taken a turn on a saddle bronc at a rodeo, for a story, wearing borrowed chaps that said GARY down one leg. He said it was his alter ego.

He loved good writing, and was adept at it himself. He had a brief role in a community-theater production of “A Few Good Men,” playing the officer who gives the Tom Cruise character his mission, then disappears until curtain call. He would deliver his lines, then pop out for a drink at a nearby bar, still in his costume. People would clap him on the back, say “thanks for your service, colonel” and buy him a drink. He thought that was so funny he wrote a play about it, called “Feint of Heart.” He said it was about “love and language,” and contained several lines and speeches I recall from the newsroom.

It also had the story of how he met his wife, Adrienne. She was with another guy, a friend. He saw the two of them walking toward him one day and thought to himself, “What is she doing with him? She should be with me.” Soon, she was. His first wife wanted no children, and insisted he get a vasectomy. He reversed it when he married Adie, who gave birth to two daughters, and then got another, making him the second man I know who’d had two vasectomies. I always found this amusing, and he was always willing to talk about it.

What else? Even in a shitstorm of breaking news, he could keep his cool and often power through on jokes and coffee. On Fridays, during the last morning news meeting of the week, he’d print a little quiz, as a TGIF gesture. The only one I aced was about all the lyrics to “Ode to Billy Joe,” given on June 3, of course. He had a round scar on his jawline the size of a dime; it didn’t look like skilled work. He told me he’d hurt himself as a youngster but his parents couldn’t afford to take him to a doctor, so a local veterinarian did the work. I think about that when idiots discuss health-care policy.

One year, the phone company brought in new phone books for the newsroom, and a stack of the old ones piled up in a wheeled recycling bin where they sat for days and days. (The janitorial services in that building were basically non-existent.) One day Richard pulled one out and said, “I think I read there’s a trick to tearing a phone book in half. It’s not strength, it’s technique.” He figured it out, and tore one successfully. Then I, and a couple more people did, and then David Heath, a reporter notable for his red hair, tried. He couldn’t get it, and strained so hard his face nearly turned purple, an arresting sight under that hair. (He went on to great success as a journalist, so don’t feel bad that he couldn’t tear the Fort Wayne phone book in two.) My point is, that’s the kind of boss Richard was, serious when he needed to be but capable of being a great, merry prankster during down times.

People would be absolutely justified in asking anyone my age why they went into this field, currently stripped to its bones by rapacious vulture capitalists, tech bozos and other horrible people. The reason is, when it was good, it was very good – fun, but also serious, a real public service, from recipes to investigations of corrupt public servants. And one of the people who made it so was Richard.

I hope if there’s something after this, that I see him there.

I was at a political fundraiser Friday. Never mind who– Oh, let’s not be coy. It was for Jocelyn Benson, who’s running for governor as a Democrat. I wasn’t there because I am a huge fan, although I think she’ll be the nominee and as usual, the people on the other side are ghastly. I was there because the event was being held at a friend’s former house, and she wanted to see it, three years later. I donated to justify having a glass of wine and some little phyllo-wrapped cheese things.

The wild card in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial race is Mike Duggan, outgoing mayor of Detroit, who’s running as an independent. He’s not just any third-party flake, and has a chance to spoil either party’s chances, depending on the nominees. Given that Duggan has been a lifelong Democrat, it could easily be the Dems. Given that he has coddled the Detroit billionaire class (en route, to be fair, to transforming at least part of the city), it could also be the Republicans.

I mentioned this to someone during the chitchat portion of the evening, and she confidently asserted that Benson has little to fear from Duggan. And she knows this how? “AI says so.”

Which is the long way around to saying that in a very short time, a shocking number of people I know have integrated ChatGPT into their lives. They ask it the current value of a particular classic car, the chances of rain a week from Tuesday, to tell them a joke. Condense this document I don’t want to read. Give me some questions to ask this person when I talk to them. And so on.

I know I, too, use AI; I’m not naïve. I use Google, which now gives you an AI summary of your results whether you ask for one or not. If they sound fishy, I double-check them. I should always double-check them, because I’ve gotten straight-up hogwash more than once.

The other day, while lifeguarding, I couldn’t get the pace clocks — the natatorium wall clock that counts seconds in big digits, so swimmers can time their 50s and 100s — working correctly. So I turned them off with a shrug, figuring every minute spent fiddling over it is time I wouldn’t have eyes on the water, and that’s more important. Someone piped up, “Ask AI! It’ll tell you!”

The ones that really floor me are those who use AI to essentially do their jobs for them. The product is obvious — bland, anodyne, with the weird absence-of-humanity feel to it, which are then sold to clients. Sooner or later, the client will figure out what they’re being served and think, logically, what do I need this clown for? Way to put yourself out of business.

Do any of you do this? Is it worth it?

I finally figured out the pace clock via the time-honored tradition of asking someone who had the job before me. It turns out you have to set one to Lead and the other to Follow, and they sync themselves and work just fine.

It was a good weekend. Not much bloggage, but here’s a gift link: How a bad man got a good paramedic fired because he didn’t like what she said about Charlie Kirk.

Have a good week, all.

It’s been my experience that one of the best experiences one can have with art is to find a great piece of it before you know too much about it. There’s so much commentary, especially about movies — review shows, reviews, talk shows with clips, internet content, all of it. Don’t get me started on interviews with actors, etc., where SPOILER ALERT appears literally one word before the spoiler.

So, with all that said, I won’t spoil anything, or tell you too much, or anything at all. Just go see “One Battle After Another” and thank me later.

That was the highlight of the weekend, which was, as usual, filled with chores and, this weekend, yet another summer weekend — temps in the 80s. It won’t last past Monday, and I guess I should be sad, but I’m ready for fall.

And with that, I’ve kind of emptied my already shallow bin. Let’s try for better later this week.