Ugh, but I’m heading into yet another ridiculous round of work, so expect the scarcity from here. On the other hand, what is there to do at this time of year? We trudge to work in the dark, come home in the dark. Lately we’ve been watching “The Wire,” now that it’s in HD, and “Girls,” and otherwise wasting away.

Alan is still sick. He went to the doctor today, who said, basically, “You’re sick.” It’s the basic three-week cold that’s been circulating for a while now. We went to a New Year’s party at that same doctor’s, and he was coughing so hard then that I wondered why they didn’t call it off. Today he was still coughing. The affliction, he said, arrived around Christmas.

Friday night is car prom. Yes, pictures are coming.

In the meantime, a big court decision here on same-sex marriage. It’ still going to SCOTUS, and we’ll see what they say. And the governor vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for people with restraining orders against them to obtained concealed-weapons permits.

So, open thread for the weekend? I’ll be your roving correspondent at the car show.

You know a) you’ve been married a long time, and b) it’s January when, coming home on a frigid Monday when your spouse took a sick day, the thing you think when you pull into the driveway is, “We can watch ‘Jeopardy!’ together, and won’t that be nice.”

And that’s what we did. I don’t feel old, though; that will come when I think the same thing about “Wheel of Fortune.”

Man, it’s cold, though, and will be for the rest of the week. Plus, snow. Oh, well. This is the latitude we have chosen.

The week started with a radio appearance, one of those get-journalists-around-the-table-and-discuss-the-news deals. One panelist said, “Barack Obama has dragged the Democratic party far to the left.” Always good to start Monday on a high note, eh?

I have little bloggage, I fear. I imagine the big troll bait of the day will be the do-as-I-say, not-as-I-whine Harvard faculty story:

For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.

Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.

Raise your hand if your insurance plan is worse than this:

The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

That’s what I thought.

We lost our local gourmet cupcake shop a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Maybe that a franchise based on a baked-goods trend is a bad bet. How’s your cupcake shop doing?

When one crazy man in New York City shot two cops in cold blood, the police threw a fit, and their union leader said the mayor had blood on his hands. When this man shot two Pennsylvania state troopers in cold blood to “wake people up” and “get us back to the liberties we once had” — crickets.

Happy Tuesday, all.

Today in yoga class, my first of the year, we were invited to set an intention for the hour. I normally ignore the woo-woo aspects of yoga, but I’d walked to the studio, and the mild exercise had already gotten me in a more yoga-ish head. All at once it came to me, not just the intention for the class but the one-word New Year’s resolution I’d been looking for: Balance. Verb, not noun. I think that’s going to be the goal.

(Credit where it is due: Laura Lippman came up with the idea of one-word resolutions, and usually announces hers to her social-media networks. I think hers, this year, is Model.)

And with that, the year is off and running. We did a balance exercise in that very same class — tree pose. As usual, I sucked at it. So, I have my work cut out for me.

Not much to report over the last couple of days, but I did find some good stuff to direct you toward, so let’s get to it.

I know we’re well past the death of Mario Cuomo — and on to that of Little Jimmy Dickens — but when Roy recommends something, I pay attention, and when he said Wayne Barrett’s Cuomo obit was the best of the bunch, I read it. And I agree, especially after this lead:

Predictably, Ed Koch beat Mario Cuomo in the New York Times obit contest. Until the Times changed it a day later, the front-page introduction to the Cuomo obit described him as a “prickly personality.” Koch’s 2013 obit branded him “brash, shrewd and colorful” in its headline. Ask anyone who knew both which one was more “prickly.”

And passages like these come only from deep knowledge of your subject:

He became the prison builder to compensate for his staunch opposition to the death penalty, which became the hammer Koch used to beat him in a primary, runoff and general election in 1977, when the Son of Sam, a serial killer who captivated the city with mad murders, was arrested in August. Remarkably, at a time when death was a bipartisan bromide, Mario stood against the wind for 12 years, until the governor who beat him, George Pataki, could gleefully welcome its return. If we are looking for a list of Mario’s accomplishments, start with an end to official revenge killings, a veto of the soul.

Continue on to his Notre Dame speech, when every word was a prayer for tolerance, a careful reconciliation of a church he loved with a constitution he loved at its point of collision, the abortion issue. “We know,” he said to Catholics, “that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might try someday to force theirs’ on us.” The convention speech he gave in San Francisco in 1984 was not so much “the tale of two cities” as it was the tale of two Cuomos—the one his soul yearned for, which he could express on a national stage, and the one who governed New York, where every dollar was a decision.

Woo, it’s been a fortnight for death, hasn’t it? And now Stuart Scott, whom I know mainly from watching his silent lips moving on the gym TV, but I’ll take others’ word for it.

I think I’m going to want to read this book:

The book is ambitious — verging on frenetic at times as it hops through the flotsam of our exploded economy and culture — but its central thesis is that the plutocrats of the Internet (the Mark Zuckerbergs and Larry Pages of the world) have availed themselves of an astonishing spectrum of rights while wholly disregarding their responsibilities.

And…

Amazon — which customers rightly love for its efficiency and ease — does not, in fact, want to make the world a better place. Neoliberals would argue that the company enriches our culture by upping access to content and products. But Keen argues that “the reverse is actually true. Amazon, in spite of its undoubted convenience, reliability, and great value, is actually having a disturbingly negative impact on the broader economy.” He points to what he describes as Amazon’s brutally efficient business methodology, which has squeezed jobs out of every sector of retail, according to a 2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report that Keen cites. The report says brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales, while Amazon employs only 14. Perhaps the question Keen is getting at is this: Are we consumers, or are we citizens? It’s a frustratingly complex inquiry.

Man, I’ll say.

Anyway, I guess it’s back to the grind for those of us lucky enough to have some time off, and back to the week for everyone else. Happy Monday to all.

And so this is new year’s, and what have you done? (To mangle a little John Lennon there.) I’m not much for end-of-year wrap-ups — I had plenty in my newspaper years — and I’m a big believer that the future arrives every day, every minute and every second right on schedule, so if you want to make a resolution, why wait for January 1? Even our calendars are electronic now, so we don’t get much of a charge from starting a new one.

Me, I stepped on a scale today, to come to terms with the holiday damage. The result? Three pounds, which for me counts as “no damage.” Yay me. I did have to say goodbye to a dream this December, after I went running — once! — and paid for it in knee pain for days and days and days. Friends? I will never be a triathlete. Give my space in the June event to someone with better joints.

2014 wasn’t the best year, but it was a long way from the worst. Hello, 2015.

On the off chance you’re short of reading material, this is the time of year when lots of media outlets/great writers publish their best-of reading lists, and I guarantee you’ll find a lot you missed the first time around. So here are a few suggestions:

The 20 most popular recipes of 2014, from the NYT. A lot of these look great. Bookmarked. (By the way, I’d be interested in reading a story about the evolution of food photography. When I started at the Dispatch, the paper had its own kitchen, where the food writers worked. Photo shoots were serious business, with large-format cameras and perfect, and I mean perfect, presentation. Lazarus, a local department store, loaned tableware and accessories. Then we moved into another era, with extremely shallow depth of field, where a plate might be photographed from the side with the biscuit in the foreground in sharp focus and the sweet potatoes on the other side of the plate out of focus. Now we see plates that look like someone’s already been eating from them, complete with dirty silverware. Any photogs in the house? Discuss.)

Longform.org’s best-of list, packed with goodies. We already went through “The Case for Reparations” back when it was published, and I know I mentioned “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie,” too, but I bet it was less-read than Ta-Nehisi Coates’ epic. Those are Nos. 1 and 2. The list goes on and on from there. Refill your drink before you settle in.

A bunch of Nieman Fellows (the Harvard competitor to the Michigan program I did) and high-profile journos pick their best-ofs. Some duplication with other lists, but lots of new stuff, too.

Another list, by Gawker writers. Not as bad as you’d expect. In fact, some good stuff here.

To Michigan football fans, Congratulations on the purchase of your new Harbaugh!

Finally, not a list, but a shortish piece by Charles Pierce on something we should all never forget, especially as it pertains to Steve Scalise, GOP majority whip.

With that, I wish you all the best possible 2015 and the best possible last year of 2014. I’m going to take a shower and go buy some salmon for dinner.

With Christmas comes winter, and it appears to have arrived late, but today it was 15 degrees on our morning dog walk. Wore the flannel-lined pants and it was pleasant — cold mornings frequently are, as long as there’s no wind. Wendy disagreed, and was pulling for home fairly early. When we got there, she stood in front of a heat vent, turning first one way, then the other, so both sides were toasted. And yet, she refuses to learn Down. This dog.

But it looks like it’ll be a beautiful, chilly day. Maybe I’ll put her jacket on and tramp around Belle Isle or something. I cleaned the basement yesterday, and earned some fresh air.

So. Yesterday we (Bridge, that is) ran an op-ed by an MSU professor who has made vaccines an area of study. Michigan has one of the laxest refusal laws in the country, and is starting to pay the price — a measles outbreak in Traverse City shut down a school for a week last month, and pertussis is coming back here and there. I imagine most of us here are pretty pro-science and don’t have to be persuaded of the efficacy of modern medicine, but even I’m sort of amazed by how strong vaccine refusal has become in this country, and no, I don’t think it’s because of Jenny McCarthy — the woman is a twit, and simply doesn’t have the following many imagine. But there are probably thousands who believe in organic this and natural that who don’t necessarily believe the autism link, but just “feel,” somehow, that the schedule is wrong or their little baby is too sensitive, or whatever. I see the same objections popping up in social media and on comment sites: What if you have an egg allergy? (The amount of egg protein in vaccines is infinitesimal, but if you’re so worried, have them done in a hospital, and how widespread are egg allergies, anyway?) Why are there so many vaccines, anyway? We didn’t get this many when we were kids! (Because there are more diseases that can be prevented this way — good news!) What if my child has a reaction? (They may well — my daughter did. She ran a 100 degree-ish fever for a couple hours, which I treated, bad mother that I am, with Tylenol. My point being, most vaccine reactions are very mild.)

We saw “Whiplash” a few weeks ago, and there’s an extended tight closeup of a young actress during one scene. All I could see was the chickenpox scar between her eyebrows. She’s young enough she could have gotten the vaccine; I wonder if her mother was a refuser, or took her to a chickenpox party, believing the immunity bestowed by actually getting the disease is somehow better than a shot. Well, she has a lifelong reminder that she got it the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, about the op-ed piece. This was fascinating:

Research shows that vaccine noncompliance is more common among better educated parents and among parents of higher socioeconomic status. Over the last decade their numbers have been growing. Today, nearly 40 percent of parents of young children report they have refused or delayed a vaccine that their children’s physicians have recommended, and more than 12 percent have refused or delayed one of the state-mandated vaccines. In Michigan, some of the lowest vaccination rates are found in the state’s most expensive and elite private schools.

“Education” as a remedy for parents who refuse to fully vaccinate their children is based on the belief that noncompliance is the result of misinformation or simple ignorance on the part of the parents. The best research on the subject shows that the mythbusting approach to increasing vaccine compliance often backfires.

In this month’s journal Vaccine, researchers reported that about 43 percent of Americans incorrectly believe the flu vaccine can give you the flu. After educating them to correct their misunderstanding, researchers found a significant reduction in acceptance of the myth. However, paradoxically, they found that their education campaign also significantly reduced participants’ willingness to get the flu vaccine. These findings are in line with other studies that have similarly demonstrated that correcting myths about vaccines is often not an effective approach for promoting immunization.

Teach them, and they’re less likely to get the flu shot than they were before? What’s going on here?

I think it’s a combination of things. I think, as contemporary modern life has shown us over and over that institutions, whether under threat or not, will always seek to protect themselves first — sort of an immune reaction, kind of a vaccine thing — individuals are reacting accordingly. We know big pharma, like all corporations, put profits first; why shouldn’t even a sane parent believe it’s not a factor in vaccine policy? We know the Catholic church protected pedophiles for decades; why not assume every priest is a threat until proven otherwise? And the government! Hoo-boy, once you’ve internalized the belief that the president is a pretender and your senator is a crook and all that by-the-people stuff is nonsense, can they possibly have the public good in mind when it comes to health care?

It’s an overall erosion of trust in more or less everything. Unfortunately, it will have consequences at the doctor’s office. And outside it — measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to man.

One bit of bloggage, on a similar theme: The Tragedy of the American Military, a sharp essay by James Fallows. Sample:

At the end of World War II, nearly 10 percent of the entire U.S. population was on active military duty—which meant most able-bodied men of a certain age (plus the small number of women allowed to serve). Through the decade after World War II, when so many American families had at least one member in uniform, political and journalistic references were admiring but not awestruck. Most Americans were familiar enough with the military to respect it while being sharply aware of its shortcomings, as they were with the school system, their religion, and other important and fallible institutions.

Now the American military is exotic territory to most of the American public. As a comparison: A handful of Americans live on farms, but there are many more of them than serve in all branches of the military. (Well over 4 million people live on the country’s 2.1 million farms. The U.S. military has about 1.4 million people on active duty and another 850,000 in the reserves.) The other 310 million–plus Americans “honor” their stalwart farmers, but generally don’t know them. So too with the military. Many more young Americans will study abroad this year than will enlist in the military—nearly 300,000 students overseas, versus well under 200,000 new recruits. As a country, America has been at war nonstop for the past 13 years. As a public, it has not. A total of about 2.5 million Americans, roughly three-quarters of 1 percent, served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years, many of them more than once.

So, the sun is blazing and I’m thinking it’s time to get a few chores out of the way, then go enjoy it. Enjoy your day, too.

And just like that, Christmas is in the rear-view. As always, I break the tape with a mixture of gratitude and relief. We front-load this holiday with so much bullshit we’re astonished when the day turns out well. And it did. I got a new pair of flannel-lined pants for cold-weather dog-walkin’. And some jewelry, the new George Clinton memoir, and a pair of shearling-lined flip-flops. (I plan to use the latter for collecting envious glances at yoga studios.)

And we all saw family. Which we don’t do often enough.

It was strange to visit Ohio and drive on the Buckeye state’s smooth, smooth roads. Michigan’s are now among the worst in the nation, and boy, do you notice it when you cross a border. The legislature has an answer to this — it’s been on the governor’s to-do list, and the electorate’s, forever. Their answer? Make the voters decide, and even the Republican editorial page in Detroit isn’t pleased. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to disengage a bit — reading ink-on-paper novels, staying offline for hours at a time, the usual. But I have a little bit of bloggage if you like it.

Laura Lippman’s father died a few days back, and her husband did a wonderful appreciation of his career on his own blog.

Childish fun, but fun just the same: The year’s best TV-news bloopers.

“Sperm diplomacy” — a charming detail of the Cuban negotiations.

More regular posting returns this week, but not before I follow Wendy’s example and take a few more naps.

And so we enter the end-of-year zone, eh? Last night Alan and I went out to dinner with friends, then to two parties, one of which featured a silent auction of blighted gingerbread houses, with the money going to buy plywood sheets to board up the worst abandoned homes in the Cornerstone Village neighborhood of Detroit. The party was held in a newly purchased foreclosure, which the new owner wants to turn into her second bed-and-breakfast, or maybe a regular rental, adjacent to her urban duck farm. New name: The Quack House. (You can see, just taking apart that sentence, why I find this place so interesting.) The joke in the out-of-focus photo above is explained here.

Because I shopped like a madwoman all day yesterday, I missed most of the coverage of the cop shooting in New York. I was shocked to hear about the police turning their backs on the mayor. Every instinct in your rational brain tells you this is simply the pain of a fraternity that suffered a terrible loss yesterday. And the rest of your brain says these guys simply don’t get it. I hope this isn’t a portent of more pain ahead.

Finally, great news at this end: Young Katharine has achieved a major goal — being admitted to the college of her parents’ choice, i.e., the University of Michigan. Early decision. We’re all thrilled. She’s still waiting to hear from Oberlin and NYU, and the decision of where to go will be based on finances, but this was all of our first choice, so I’d say that unless NYU rolls out the green carpet, she’ll be going to Ann Arbor next fall. Such a relief as we head into the holidays.

Intermittent posting through New Year’s, but I’ll take lotsa pictures.

Quite an evocative photo from my former workplace, which I stole from a friend’s Facebook page. Behold:

Note: That is not the actual winner of the Positive Attitude Award. That is my friend Emma, who used to work there but doesn’t any longer. I’m told the actual winner of the Positive Attitude Award left the company before the year of primo parking was up, and got a better job. Outstanding.

There are two kinds of bosses in the world, I think: Those who think awards like this are a totally great idea and a swell motivator of the workforce, and all the rest. We could fill a shelf of books with stories of both, but mainly the first kind. I’m frankly amazed why so few sense the weird, Soviet vibe of such a designation, but Fort Wayne Newspapers always had a rich vein of that stuff running through it. So did Knight-Ridder, may it rest in pieces, which once rolled out a chain-wide initiative aimed at customer satisfaction. “We’re obsessed with it!” an editor wrote, suggesting he wasn’t entirely clear on the concept of obsession.

Anyway, it was all for naught. Budget cuts, more budget cuts, still more budget cuts, a sale, even more budget cuts and finally – the Positive Attitude Award. This is how American capitalism ends, folks.

Not that I am bitter!

So, I started a new book this weekend, an impulse buy on the Kindle: “400 Things Cops Know.” I remember picking up a similar book from a free pile years ago, with a similar title, and emerging from a blinking fog hours later. You can dive in and not surface, or just nibble at random, and it taught me a new bit of jargon: You know what you call a perp’s butt crack and/or rectum? A “prison wallet.” I’m sorry, it just makes me giggle.

Other things I learned today: The passing of Cat Fancy magazine tracks with the watershed in feline culture in recent years, from purebred fluffy Persians to internet cat culture of LOLcats and Caturday and Grumpy Cat and my favorite, Henri, le chat noir.

How was all y’all’s weekend? Bill Bonds died here, and as I’ve always said, the mourning over long-running TV personalities is not yours to indulge in when you’re a transplant to a city. I’m sure I already missed the passings of the various TV personalities of my youth. Luci of Luci’s Toyshop, Flippo the Clown, Bob Braun – all gone to the great beyond. But Bonds was special, or so they say. An early version of the Freep mentioned that his career was “derailed” by alcohol, true enough but a hell of a load to put in the first sentence of a man’s obit. He was on TV here for 30 years; surely there was more to him than a dapper drunk.

Hope everyone’s week will be stellar.

It sounds like everyone in the NN.c commentariat got through Thanksgiving OK. I did, anyway. As frequently happens, the day turned on the fulcrum of 11 a.m., when I opened the fridge, beheld the bloody mary mix within, and figured hell no, it’s not too early. Not that I spent the rest of the day in an alcoholic haze, only that there’s something about that warm feeling that the first drink in a semi-stressful situation offers that makes you understand why people turn to it so often. “Cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems,” as Homer Simpson said.

I only had one, then two glasses of wine with our ridiculously early dinner, then a nice nap, because how can you not? I read in my birthday present (“Wild,” Cheryl Strayed; somehow I’m the last American to give it a whirl), watched some Netflix (“Fading Gigolo,” uneven), went to bed.

And every year, I say “never again.” Next year I’m going to the parade, maybe the football game, and screw this country-ass midday Thanksgiving. I expect this time next year, we’ll do it exactly the same.

All your recipes sounded wonderful. I’m thinking it’s turkey tetrazzini for the Derringers tonight.

But first, it’s 55 degrees outside, and that means? A bike ride.

In the meantime, I offer you riches of bloggage:

I didn’t know Trump had a presence in Toronto, but I am not in the least surprised to learn the restaurant within is called America, nor that the food is wonderful the the rest of the experience so ghastly that the Globe and Mail advises readers it’s simply not worth it, starting with the sort of guy you meet in the bar:

Greg has an ex and a kid, he says, but he “got off” paying just $200,000 in yearly support. And anyway, Greg adds, à propos of lord knows what, Greg makes $10-million annually. He’s the sort of patron you’d pay that much to never have to sit beside. At America, the tacky, new-money restaurant on the 31st floor of the Trump International Hotel and Tower Toronto, a guy like Greg no doubt feels right at home.

Every era demands a Trump. You only wish we wouldn’t inflict him on our polite neighbors.

I don’t normally link to BuzzFeed, but I cannot tell a lie: This photo collection (“34 photos that will satisfy all perfectionists”) amused and comforted me. Yes, comforted — I’m a person who cleans toilets when I’m stressed.

I always enjoy Neil Sternberg’s blog, Every Goddamn Day. On Sunday, he considered the world of street-corner fire-and-brimstone types from their perspective. Enjoy, y’self.

This commentary on Black Friday brawl videos doesn’t quite deliver on its premise, but the embedded links within are amazing, especially this one, which gives me a whole new reason to despise Fox News. Effie Trinket couldn’t have done any better.

I’ve been absent a couple of days, yes. (Insert the usual excuses.) And I would have posted something last night, but I went out on a rare Tuesday night to see Doggy Style, which I guess you’d call a gay bar popup in an otherwise straight bar. It’s very informal; sometime after 9:15 you look around, and everyone’s a handsome man. The bar TV system switches to a mix of campy old videos, including a montage of Joan Collins-Linda Evans catfights from “Dynasty,” Vanity 6, Li’l Kim, the Scissors Sisters and miscellaneous Euro-popsters from the ’80s with Flock of Seagulls hairdos.

But it was a warm place on a cold night, so there it is. And I worked at home all day, so it was nice to get out.

Meanwhile, thanks to Roy, who for some reason tracks right-wing bloggers, for finding this National Review appreciation of Glen Larson, recently deceased creator of a lot of bad ’70s/’80s television, including “Quincy, ME.” (The ME stood for medical examiner, as we all know from watching CSI, right?)

The writer singles out “Next Stop Nowhere,” a landmark Quincy investigation into the dangers of punk rock. It’s amusing because I know someone whose parents dumped his punk records (“including a few 7-inches that are worth something now”) into the trash compactor after viewing this alarming episode. Today, it looks as ludicrous as it would have to most people who weren’t your parents back then. But the National Review, god bless ‘em, doubles down:

Made long after social causes of the week and Klugman’s penchant for soppy lecturing had begun to capsize the series, the fabled punk rock episode serves as an ironic touchstone for aging hipsters keen to remember when they were all scary and hilarious. On a fresh viewing, however, “Next Stop Nowhere” paints a fully true picture of punk rockers as they really were: deceitful social predators who wouldn’t think twice about framing you for murder and forcing you into a codeine overdose.

Forced into a codeine overdose! So that’s what really killed Sid and Nancy.

What kind of echo chamber do people live in to write this stuff?

Two inches of snow allegedly arriving today. I know that’s nothing to you guys in Buffalo, but here? It’s 18 degrees and I’m not looking forward to the solstice, still a month away.

A good day to all.

On edit: I can’t let today pass without noting it’s the 10-year anniversary of this hilarious event:

Alan had just accepted his job here, and we were preparing to move. We laughed maniacally over this event, and hoped our new home would always be this exciting. It hasn’t let us down yet. Detroit! This is why I love you! You’re never, ever boring.