My husband should have been an archaeologist. He really has the knack. Putting in our garden in Fort Wayne, he turned up half an ancient horseshoe and an Indian-head penny. Replacing some bushes here a couple years ago, he found a St. Joseph figurine someone had buried, probably in hopes of selling the place.

Then, yesterday, while planting a rosebush for our anniversary, look what turned up:

Two half-pint milk bottles, 3-cent deposit, property of Dairy Container Corp., Detroit, Mich. I suspect they were dropped there by the workers pouring the foundation back in 1947. I found several on eBay and other sites, just like it, in the $10 price range. But I’m not going to sell ’em. They’ll make cute little vases for the roses, whenever they come. If they come. Did I mention we had a frost warning last night?

And that the pool opens in a week?

Thought about Obama on my bike ride today, and something I learned riding horses:

When approaching a fence, do not look at the fence. Find a focal point beyond the fence, and look at that. What is a fence, anyway? A stride in the air. Keep your rhythm, don’t pick pick pick at the reins, go forward confidently, and stay focused on that spot beyond. Never ever look down; did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?

If you do it right, you should go ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump and-jump ba-dump ba-dump and-turn, and find the next focal point.

(This is also where we get the expression “take it in stride.”)

This is how I’m approaching November. The election is the fence, but I’m looking at Thanksgiving, to raising my glass with best wishes to President-elect Obama and his family. Early signs are encouraging, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a Jack Russell terrier ran out on the course and started nipping at our heels, but I’m looking to November. I’m ready to wash these Republicans right out of my hair. (Ever see a horse kick a dog? This happened to my trainer once. She turned a horse out in the paddock one morning, and it went scooting off, kicking up its heels, which attracted the Jack Russell, who rushed in to put a stop to such frivolity. The next thing she saw was the white blur of the terrier, Triscuit, flying through the air. Thud. She ran to Triscuit, who was lying in the dirt, apparently dead. “Oh my God! Triscuit!” As she mourned, Triscuit’s eyes opened, blinked a few times, and then she hopped to her feet and trotted out of the ring. What horse? What kick? For purposes of this story, I think we should change Triscuit’s name to Michelle Malkin.)

I expect the next few months will be nasty, brutish and very very long, but I’m staying focused on Thanksgiving. HBO is running promos for “Recount,” and in one, Bob Balaban, playing Ben Ginsberg, intones, “The stain of the Clinton administration is being washed away…” That’s how I’m thinking about the campaign. The stain-scrubbing.

You’ve probably all read this Peggy Noonan column by now. The stopped clock on one of her twice-a-day sweet spots, or early rope-a-dope to break the horse’s rhythm? I put nothing beyond this administration and its apologists, but maybe this is just Peggy, angling for some better TV work. There’s always a good living in criticizing your own tribe — you’re a Fresh New Voice Unafraid to Challenge Conventional Wisdom. She’s got an IRA to stock, too.

A wee bit o’ bloggage:

God, this is so creepy it makes my skin crawl. We’ve discussed “purity balls” here before, but this shit is positively Islamic, only grosser:

Loss tinged many at the ball. Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16. Mr. Clark brought Ashley, in her white satin gown, to show her that he loved her like a daughter, he said, something he felt he needed to underscore after Ashley’s father left her family a year ago.

It’s too bad Ashley’s father left. He could probably have shared in the four fat goats and six laying hens the elderly Mr. Clark paid for her “promise” to his teenage son.

OK, back to work. Make merry!

Hello, I’m tired. Greenfield Village was wonderful. I followed the wise parent’s guide to driving on field trips and kept my mouth shut. And so I learned that when you’ve had botox, the first thing you should do is call a meeting and make it a family secret, because your kid is going to talk about it with her friends.

Good thing I have no secrets, because God knows they’ve certainly been discussed in back seats en route to field trips.

I was supposed to be a Learning Team Leader, or something, for my group as we wandered through the complex, and lord knows I tried, but history is one of those things that most people don’t appreciate until they’re 40, and I can’t do anything about that. What was significant about the printing press in colonial America? the kids were instructed to answer. I gave them the talking points and tried to explain the bigger picture — the power of information, cheaply and easily disseminated throughout society, but when you’re 11, even the internet isn’t a comparison. The wheel turns.

It is interesting to see what others find interesting. One girl was fascinated by the looms, a boy by the farmhouse garden, my own by — lord knows why or how — the millinery shop. I think it was the hatpin collection that did it. That’s some lethal-looking history.

And now, I prepare to collapse in a heap. Thanks for all the recipes. Next on the to-do list, sifting through them all and printing the best-sounding ones. Another item for the to-do list — just what I need.

Actually, I do. I’m coming to the end of a few projects this month, and need to repack the schedule for a few more. Maybe a cookbook — Two Days in May: Cookin’ With Nance’s Commenters — available in .pdf form for download.

What’s good to blog about when you’re tired? How about YouTube? This one’s going around this morning:

Surprise! A radio talk-show host who failed high-school history. Color me astonished. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d just admitted it early on and shut up; everyone has holes in even their basic education, and one of the hallmarks of adulthood is being able to say, “Really? I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that before? How interesting.” But he couldn’t, and he did the cable two-step: When in Doubt, Just Keep Yelling.

Next, I always wanted to do those Ann Landers “confidentials,” so today, CONFIDENTIAL to JoodyB: Did you get to the Was (Not Was) show in the Twin Cities? If not, a brief guerilla clip of one of the show’s best jokes, the “Sunshine Superfly” mashup, captured in Boston:

That’s a tiny stage.

You want more? Here’s a golden oldie, Anita Bryant getting a faceful of pie, not from the Florida sunshine tree:

Question for the room: When did pies in the face become the universal gesture for “I mock you, but I don’t find you dangerous enough to shoot”? Is it a vaudeville thing, or does it go back earlier than that?

Non-YT bloggage:

Star Jones: “If I punched every bitch who called me fat, it would be dead bitches all up and down the highway.” No need to click through; that’s the punchline.

Wear a T-shirt with a mild witticism about underage drinking? Get suspended!

Off to buy bagels. Enjoy your weekend.

It’s been so busy this week I didn’t get to tell you about Tuesday night, when I took a day off work and went to Royal Oak for May’s Mitten Movie Project, a monthly screening of short films. Our DFC class project was in it, and it got a few chuckles where it was supposed to, so I was happy.

But the highlight (for me, anyway) was a short by Mike Eshaq, “MT* Crib*: Arab American Style,” which was hysterical. (I’m obscuring the name of the cable channel’s well-known show in the title, just in case they have robo-goons out there looking for copyright violators. In the Q-and-A, I asked Eshaq how he got permission to use their name and graphics and he said, “Um, I didn’t.” So let’s keep it our secret.)

Anyway, a trip to Ali’s crib to see “how they kick it in East Dearborn” followed the template down to every jerky push zoom and quick-cut edit. The actors were all friends, it was a low/no-budget production, but it worked. The first big inside-the-house laugh featured Ali’s mother yelling downstairs in Arabic to make sure no one is sitting on her living-room couches. Talk about comedy as a unifying force; is there a single ethnic group in America where women don’t protect the living room with their lives? In the Snoop Dogg episode of this very series, there was a sign outside the living room: THIS IS NOT A KICK-IT ROOM. (There were signs everywhere in Snoop’s house, in fact. NO EATING IN THE STUDIO and CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF. Sometimes having an entourage is like being a Cub Scout den mother, I guess.) It wasn’t clear plastic furniture covers, but it was close.

The featured attraction seemed to be this; we watched all three episodes. The filmmaker wasn’t there — he’s off in L.A. establishing his showbiz career — so the stars came to the Q-and-A. I didn’t really have any questions for them; mine were all for the filmmaker, and they boiled down to “how the hell did you find room in your budget for a freakin’ helicopter,” but that was answered by someone sitting near me, who replied, “His parents are really rich,” and that was that.

The director of our little student production was there, and asked if I’d be game for a weekend filmmaking challenge associated with the Detroit-Windsor film festival next month. Here’s how it works: You assemble a team, and on Friday you’re given four elements — a location, a genre, a line of dialogue and a prop. You have until Sunday to turn in a short film (OK, video) incorporating all four, which are then screened for the crowd and judged for fabulous prizes that usually boil down to a couple hundred bucks. It actually sounds kind of fun. A veteran of one of these described his most recent experience; I forget the location, but the rest were action/adventure, “I’ll have to get back to you later” and a hat or something. “Don’t plan on getting much sleep,” he said. Deadline is a drug, as we all know. We might have to do this.

If nothing else, the making-of featurette will be a great video for NN.C.

So, a little bloggage:

Mitch Albom, man of the people, whines that the Wings are doing really well in the Western Conference NHL finals, and yet still there are empty seats at the Joe. Bad fans, bad! At last count, a hundred or so commenters had reminded him that the state is in a recession, and major-league sports tickets might be considered a luxury under such circumstances.

The Poor Man is back with a while new comics series — The Amazing League of Pundits. And it’s hilarious.

Something I didn’t know was happening: A few thoughts about eBay’s decline.

The scary thing about this new movie, Noise? Is that I identify so strongly. If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch with a gas-powered blower would die…

That’s it, folks. I have a doctor’s appointment in an hour to discuss a flare-up of my plantar fasciitis, and I think I’ll impress him with my commitment to fitness by riding my bike there. At this point, it hurts too much to walk.

This is something I read in Sunday’s NYT magazine; the story was about Moody’s bond- and security-rating service:

To get why (Moody’s stratospheric growth) is impressive, you have to think about all that determines whether a mortgage is safe. Who owns the property? What is his or her income? Bundle hundreds of mortgages into a single security and the questions multiply; no investor could begin to answer them. But suppose the security had a rating. If it were rated triple-A by a firm like Moody’s, then the investor could forget about the underlying mortgages. He wouldn’t need to know what properties were in the pool, only that the pool was triple-A — it was just as safe, in theory, as other triple-A securities.

Over the last decade, Moody’s and its two principal competitors, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, played this game to perfection — putting what amounted to gold seals on mortgage securities that investors swept up with increasing élan. For the rating agencies, this business was extremely lucrative. Their profits surged, Moody’s in particular: it went public, saw its stock increase sixfold and its earnings grow by 900 percent.

By providing the mortgage industry with an entree to Wall Street, the agencies also transformed what had been among the sleepiest corners of finance. No longer did mortgage banks have to wait 10 or 20 or 30 years to get their money back from homeowners. Now they sold their loans into securitized pools and — their capital thus replenished — wrote new loans at a much quicker pace.

Mortgage volume surged; in 2006, it topped $2.5 trillion. Also, many more mortgages were issued to risky subprime borrowers. Almost all of those subprime loans ended up in securitized pools; indeed, the reason banks were willing to issue so many risky loans is that they could fob them off on Wall Street.

But who was evaluating these securities? Who was passing judgment on the quality of the mortgages, on the equity behind them and on myriad other investment considerations? Certainly not the investors. They relied on a credit rating.

You may have to read this a few times to absorb it. Go ahead. When you’re ready, come back and ask yourself how often you’ve heard someone of late say, “The mortgage mess is very simple — people didn’t pay their mortgages.” I think of this as the Stupid Simple Meme. A SSM reduces a complex issue to something that can be fit on a bumper sticker, and conveniently transfers 100 percent of the blame to the most powerless saps on the stage.

The bankers? They were just doing what comes nacherly — making money. How can we blame a business for making money? That’s what businesses do! And if they did it by churning fees, by ignoring the simplest due diligence in vetting loan applications, by marketing through outright lies? Details, details. The bad people are the ones who didn’t pay their mortgages.

The disaster in New Orleans? It was the fault of the people who chose to live below sea level, and the deaths were a natural result of people who simply refused to leave. (Are you listening, the Netherlands?) Granted, not everyone had Ashley Morris yelling in their ear for the last three years, but I’m still amazed at how many people shrug their shoulders at what happened there, who say it was simply inevitable, an act of God, something no levee could have held back.

(In case you think I’m only singling out right-wing Simple Stupids, the left has them, too: Remember “the cure for homelessness is housing”? Yeah, even 20 years ago it seemed a little pat.)

I have a new rule: Whenever anyone says, “It’s really very simple…” about a complicated problem, I stop listening.

Anyway, why bother? VRSA is going to get us all, and remember, folks: It came…from…Michigan! Mm-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

(What is VRSA, you ask? Why, it’s MRSA, only with a V, for Very Very Very Scary.)

Actually, that story is worth reading, if only for yet another fascinating Detroit factoid:

Metro Detroit has a history of antibiotic resistance. Illegal drug users 20 to 30 years ago injected antibiotics with heroin in a misguided effort to avoid getting contaminated by dirty needles. As a result, many local bacteria developed resistance to penicillin and its relatives, such as methicillin.

Can you tell it’s Grumpy Monday around these parts? The weather has turned — and just as the redbuds were emerging, dammit — and we’re promised two-thirds of a week when we’ll be lucky to see 50 degrees, joy oh joy. We spent the last day of mild temperatures opening the cottage, which was both uneventful (no squirrels came down the chimney and decomposed under the pillow, like last year). Unfortunately, the shared dock has become a real problem. What was originally agreed upon as a sensible policy — two boats per cottage, back when a boat was an outboard with a 10-horse motor on the back — is now ridiculous. When did a recreating family of four come to need a ski boat, a pontoon and two Jet-Skis? A pox on all their houses; when gas goes to $5 a gallon maybe we can have a little water to actually swim in. I kept my head down, raked leaves and scrubbed things. There’s something about cleaning that empties the head and calms the spirit. Add a leaf fire, and things get just about perfect.

Bloggage? Oh, a little:

A few weeks ago I wondered what would happen to a newspaper if you took away paper, ink, trucks, Teamsters and the like. Answer: The Capital Times of Madison, Wis., which becomes an online-only paper very soon. Future: Very very murky. (This was the plan for my alma mater, derailed when Knight Ridder derailed itself. Never happened, but I will still watch this transformation with interest and, i fear, dread.)

The photo with this story kind of startled me, because as soon as I looked at it, before I even registered who was in it, I said, “Oh, huh. Indiana.” It has to do with the color and height of the cloud ceiling, something about that color of brown, I dunno. For a second I even thought it was Fort Wayne, and if pressed, I’d have said it was on Pontiac Street, beside the old Rialto theater. No, it was Anderson, but still: Indiana. Weird.

Not much, I know, but hey — it’s Monday. Give me some time to get rolling.

Photo by Andrea Bossy, with Andrea’s camera.

This was what it boiled down to, after (mumble) bottles of wine and blueberry-vodka shooters — see the young minx with glasses in the front row? in front of the supermodel with glasses? they were her idea — and lo, it was fun. Suddenly it was after midnight and I had to pack my half-eaten tiramisu and go home, and it’s just as well, because after I left, someone went out for White Castles. White Castles, on top of a blueberry-vodka shooter, would have been lethal. And then I would have missed the very picturesque car fire I saw from the freeway, yet another area of urban excellence in which Detroit leads the nation. Good thing it was happening near a tricky interchange, or I might have stopped for a photo.

The company was great, and I’ll be adding links to the b’roll as soon as I sort them all out. The face to my left, Michelle, said she wanted to figure out a way she could spend all her time sewing. She said she made quilts. I’m thinking, OK, very nice, quilts, sewing, yes yes yes. And then I saw some of her quilts, and thought, I sat next to an artist all night long and didn’t know it.

Anyhoo, all thanks to Andrea, our hostess (first face to Bossy’s right), and just because food this good should be spread around, here’s her recipe for…

Fabulous Salmon Spread
(recipe comes from the Complete Book of Hors d’oeuvre, which is out of print)

1 T. butter to grease pan
4 oz. sesame crackers
one stick (1/2 cup) of butter, less whatever you used to grease pan, melted
2.5 pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
4 eggs
1/2 pound smoked salmon (not lox but the smoked fillets that come vacuum sealed)
1/2 cup finely chopped scallions (including some green)
1/4 cup minced fresh dill

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use approximately 1 T. of butter to thoroughly coat the bottom and sides of a 9″ springform pan. Crush crackers and dust some up the sides of the pan. Then mix the rest of the crackers with the melted butter, and press into bottom of the pan.

Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and eggs thoroughly until completely mixed and smooth. (It’s okay if there are a few tiny bumps here and there.) Crumble salmon (without skin) into the cheese mixture, and add scallions and dill. Beat again until mixture becomes lighter and fluffy. Pour into pan, spreading and smoothing with a spatula.

Bake 5 minutes at 350, then reduce heat to 325 and bake 50 minutes more. If you don’t trust your oven, check for doneness: cake should be just set in the middle. If you’ve opened the oven to check, give it a couple of minutes to heat back up to temperature again, and then turn it off. Do NOT open door. Allow salmon fabulosity to cool completely in oven with door closed. This will take several hours.

If serving the same day, do not refrigerate, as this tastes much better at room temperature. It tastes even better the next day, however, and keeps well for several days, so feel free to make ahead and refrigerate once it’s cooled. (Cover tightly with plastic wrap first.) Just bring up to room temp before serving. Serve with lots of crusty bread for spreading.

This makes a large quantity, suitable for a party. On a buffet table with lots of other foods, this quantity would safely cover 30 people. It’s quite rich and goes further than you’d think.

Also, thanks, Saturn, for being Bossy’s corporate sponsor.

There are farmers’ markets that are basically foodie self-esteem polishers, and markets that aren’t (I’d link to the South Side Market in Fort Wayne here, but it’s so “aren’t” it doesn’t even have a website). Detroit’s Eastern Market is somewhere in between. The long winter precludes locally grown produce much of the year, but there’s a major produce hub in the city, and lots of wholesalers use the market to offload stuff that’s just a little too close to its sell-by date, so even in the dead of winter you can get some bargains on grapefruit.

But there’s always a healthy percentage of mom-and-pop outfits, and a few weeks ago I paused at one in the furthest-flung shed, where a portly Lebanese man stood behind a booth offering “extra extra virgin olive oil.”

“Extra extra virgin?” I said. “I spend all this time learning olive oil grading, and now there’s a new one?” He wasn’t amused. “Try some,” he said, gesturing to a basket of oil-soaked croutons. I told him no and asked what made it so virginal. “I make it here from my family’s olive trees, in Lebanon,” he said. “It is the best.”

I thought for a moment about how a guy would go about importing just his family’s personal olives, what sort of border inspection would be involved, the problems of transporting delicate produce halfway around the world, etc. Then I looked at the bottles. It was a cold morning, and the oil had congealed in the bottles to a murky green glop. “You take it home, it warms up, it is fine,” he said. No salesmanship, just plain statements and a certain rock-solid dignity. This is why I stay out of animal shelters; I would select all the one-eyed, three-legged puppies and kittens. It was $15 for a liter. What the hell.

I took it home and put it on the shelf. Four hours later, the glop had diseappeared, and the oil was a lovely yellow-green. I tipped a little into a saucer. Waiters and foodies are always gassing on about olive oil — how you can cook with this grade and not that one, how this one is fruity and this one is acidic, how the Italian product differs from the Spanish, etc. — but I confess I’ve never been able to taste huge differences in them, unless the bottle had been spiked with peppercorns and garlic. I buy 90 percent of my olive oil from Costco, and rely on the vinegar to carry the day on the salad. It just so happened, this day, I had a loaf of fresh Italian bread. Broke off a piece, dipped it in the oil, and…

Well. My mouth went to Lebanon for a few moments. It wasn’t Hezbollah’s Lebanon, but a sunny place in the country, with a view of the ancient hills. I rested in the shade of a tree with a gnarled trunk as big around as a 200-year-old oak, but it was still warm enough that the breeze was like breath, and…

Blinked. Back in Michigan. Friends, that was some butt-kicking olive oil. I actually licked the saucer. I’ve heard that Mediterranean fisherman sometimes begin their day with a shotglass of the stuff, instead of coffee. I’m going to start doing that. Or maybe pouring it on my cereal.

I mention this because? Not sure why. I have to go make tiramisu in a few minutes — Bossy’s coming to Detroit tonight — and I need to get in a food head. Not that I will be putting olive oil in my tiramisu, mind you. It’s just fun to think about food on a Friday.

It beats thinking about politics, but Bryant Gumbel offered an in-between stop this week. On his HBO “Real Sports” show, he profiled Barack Obama, basketball player, featuring footage of Obama playing then (in Hawaii) and now (with some friends, in long Adidas exercise pants, not shorts). He’s not bad, I have to say, quick and crafty for a 46-year-old, a real (dare I say?) team player. Gumbel made a mention of Obama’s game being a factor in “basketball-mad Indiana,” and I wondered if he was right. Indiana loves basketball, true. But it doesn’t love all basketball.

It’s safe to say the Hoosier game is the Knight version — no showboating, no star antics, very Larry Bird-in-college. The NBA style, the ghetto game, not so much. Obama made an interesting comment about basketball being a black art form much like jazz, paraphrasing from memory, “individual improvisation within a defined structure.” Improvisation starts with an I, and you know what they say about where that letter appears in “team.” Beware, Obama. Tread carefully.

Only one bit of bloggage before I tiramisu (yes, it IS a verb), but I recommend you treat it with extreme caught: typeracing! I had no idea I could type 70 words a minute — if only my brain worked that fast.

Have a good weekend, all.

To the people who ruined our back yard, sometime in the ’80s:

Look, I understand. It was a different time. Gas was cheap, no one talked about climate change, and you liked to hit the open road in your RV. And, after all, it was your house. You could do what you wanted. For the record, I support your right to screw up what became my property 20 years later. Even though it was a really, really stupid thing to do. (Stipulated: It was a really, really stupid thing to buy, as well. The last kick the newspaper business gave me was relocating my husband to Detroit in the middle of the damn winter, at a time when we absolutely needed two sets of parental boots on the ground to make our life together work. We were, as they say, over a barrel, and inventory was a little tight.)

On paper at least, it must have made sense to pick up the garage and rotate it 90 degrees, then pave pretty much everything that was left. You needed RV parking, not grass. Grass was for golf courses, RVs were for pavement, and so you did what you thought you needed to do.

Even though it wrecked the yard. You putzes:

Little by little, within the constrains of our meager budget, we’re trying to undo the damage. That strip along the back fence used to be gravel, but we paid a fortune last year to have it dug out and filled with decent topsoil. It’s now our kitchen herb garden and (shh) a raspberry patch. But until we a) save a contractor’s child from drowning*; or b) write a best-selling novel, the garage will have to stay there. But I have a plan B. It involves a strong thunderstorm, a trip away, and this tree:

It’s the one in the middle, the one covered with ivy. It’s an ash, and like many of the ashes around here, it’s dead. Because it’s back behind the owner’s garage, he doesn’t pay much attention to it. They painted that garage last year, and when the owner came back to trim some limbs so the painters could get to it, I asked if he was starting the removal process. He looked startled; why would he want to remove it? “Well, it’s dead,” I pointed out. He honestly didn’t seem to have even considered such a thing.

Here’s what I’m hoping: That some day when we’re both gone, that tree will come crashing down on our garage, hard enough to make it a total loss. Then we’ll have a little seed money to tear it down and rebuild from scratch. Ideally we’d do so at the end of the driveway, where it belongs, but I’d settle for expanding it to encompass that concrete pad on the far side of the structure, where you can see my car’s butt:

Alan recently got a new car, so that’s the “old car” spot. Yes, because even though that may look like a two-car garage, alas it is not. It’s a 1.8-car garage, or at the moment, one-car/one-boat. Not the boat you see, although that one lives in there, too, so I guess it’s one-car/two-boats. Whatever.

* This sorta worked for our neighbors. They gave a landscaping contractor a big down payment on fixing their back yard a few years ago, and he absconded with the dough and used it to feed his drug habit. One day last spring he turned up on their doorstep, 12-stepping it through the “making amends” part. He ended up transforming their back yard into a place of glory, giving them far more than their money’s worth. It’s sort of like a modern version of winning the lottery.

Anyway, that concludes today’s spell of grumpiness. I see you folks have taken to speculating on the Pennsylvania primary. OK, I’m in: Clinton by…7 points. And Pennsylvania comes off looking as bad as Michigan. Or like a horizontal version of Indiana.

Brief bloggage:

I can’t believe I ever liked Richard Cohen. I mean: Can’t. Believe.

Back to my big monster writing project, which is mostly research, which is turning up fascinating factoids, including this: Della Reese’s original first name was “Delloreese.” Imagine that.

Who or what is responsible for museum sleepovers? “Night at the Museum” — inspirational children’s fantasy film or threat to maternal lumbar health? Yeah, whatever. That’s where I was this weekend. At the Henry Ford/Greenfield Village complex.

Remind me to never do it again. There’s nothing wrong with the idea, but the execution’s all wrong. The root problem is, when you put 30 fifth-grade girls together on a warm Saturday with 24 hours of fun activities ahead of them, they get a little excited. So what’s the first rule? No running, no loud voices, no this, no that, no no no. This casts all the chaperones in the role of Joseph Stalin, a familiar one for the modern parent, but not a comfortable one. I had five girls in my mini-group, and all I did was nag. Knock it off, cut it out, don’t make me tell you again.

At some point, there’s a good argument to be made for just turning them out, like yearling fillies. Let them run around the pasture kicking up their heels before you try to teach them anything.

This was my first trip to Dearborn’s big attraction, and between bouts of arm-twisting, I could see why it’s so popular — it really is a fine museum, dedicated to the American experience, particularly in Ford’s lifetime, probably a subject beyond the appreciation of most fifth-graders. Not mine, however. It’s hard to look at some of the exhibits there and at Greenfield Village — Thomas Edison’s workshop, Henry’s Model T, the Wright Brothers’ bike shop — and not be impressed. Here’s Orville Wright in the dunes at Kitty Hawk and he faces the wind in his strange contraption, then cables home to dad: “Inform press.” Henry’s great idea, the assembly line, drops the price of a car by more than 60 percent and his factories create the American middle class.

I wanted more of the dark side, though. These 20th-century titans were as much defined by their flaws as their virtues (as all of us are). There’s a whole section on the civil-rights movement — including Rosa Parks’ bus — but nothing on the Dearborn Independent (that I saw, anyway, and admittedly I didn’t see every part of the place). It would be a tricky exhibit to put together, but I don’t know why someone shouldn’t try.

Day two, spent outdoors at Greenfield Village, was better. Sleep deprivation sapped everyone’s horsing-around energy, so other than having to smack down the incessant blowing of the Weinermobile whistles, we had a nice time. Ran into an avid cyclist in the Wright Brothers’ bike shop, who pointed out the slot in the actual W.B. bike seat in the window. The slotted seat was recently revived for modern cyclists, and is said to relieve a whole set of nasty symptoms, including the dreaded Cyclist’s E.D. And yet, all anybody wants to credit them with is that dumb flying thing.

I left early, however, and ran off to the Detroit Film Center to take a half-day class in lighting. I don’t expect to use it for anything other than appreciating movies, but I learned a thing or two, including:

* Many of the old Hollywood babes had lighting issues written into their contracts, usually specific clauses saying they had to be lit X thousand foot-candles brighter than anyone else. Because they’re stars, dammit, and stars shine.

* No one in showbiz is as bugged by “Hollywood rain” as I am. This is the artificial rain created by sprinklers, usually on sparkling Los Angeles days, so you get the incongruous shot of the stars embracing in a downpour, casting sharp shadows through rainbow sparkles. This is just what rain is, in the movies. Deal.

* Directors of photography carry a bag of tricks that require trucks to haul around, so if you looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t see Kim Basinger looking back, don’t feel bad. Neither did she.

* SunPATH, sun-tracking software, is a sextant in reverse. Instead of using the sun to find your position on earth, you use your position on earth to find the sun.

* Gordon Willis loves wet gutters. The teacher worked with him on “Presumed Innocent,” and said he had a standing order that in all street scenes, the gutters be wet. Crew guys walked around with tanks on their backs, keeping them nice and puddly. They give the scene depth, he said, a nice delineation between sidewalk and street.

Oh, and I also learned the difference between a gaffer and a key grip. But I consider it my secret.

Bloggage? Oh, let’s leave that to you folks. Anyone see “Expelled” this weekend?

Did the president really tell the pope he gave an “awesome speech”? Sigh. “Awesome” is one of those words I banter with my 11-year-old about. I tell her I’m really not being a language cop or anything, oh no not me, but it’s a crying shame how we took a perfectly fine word like awesome and stretched its meaning to cover, well, let me give a recent example:

“Have you tried the breadsticks? They’re awesome.”

I’m not opposed to using “awesome” in its slangy sense, but in using it in casual conversation with the damn pope, George Bush has plumbed new depths. See, the Vicar of Christ’s business is awe. He claims to speak for God on earth; he wants to literally be awesome. Awe is, after all, a “feeling of reverential respect, mixed with fear or wonder.” Reverence. Respect. Wonder. That’s the pope’s stock in trade, and our president uses the word the way skaters do, while praising one another’s half-pipe moves.

OK, then. A couple of pix from Michael G, regular commenter and, today, citizen journalist. (Can you feel the awesome?!) They’re from his California perambulations, and of interest to us because? Because we all drink Two Buck Chuck from time to time, and yes, folks, this is where they make it. Note the Napa Valley, “Sideways”-style charm of the entrance to the Bronco Wine Co.:

As Michael writes:

Bronco is not your typical yuppie winery. There is no sign, no tasting room, no tour, no nuthin. They seem to be a tad shy. Shy to the extent that the property is surrounded by a border of barbed wire topped fencing and screened by very close set cemetery trees. I don’t know the proper name. They’ve always been “cemetery trees” to me. The front gate has a guard shack. This is a quite large facility and the only way to distinguish it from all the other processing plants and packing sheds along 99 is the huge tank farm out back.

Seen here, at a bit of a distance:

The road was narrow and there was no place to stop so I took the pix as I drove by. There’s a blurry one of the warmly welcoming entrance to the property and the hospitality room cleverly disguised as a guard shack and one of the caves, I mean tanks where the product is aged. I know TBC has to be referred to by Bronco as “product” rather than wine. You can tell by looking at the place.

So there you are, but as it turns out, there is nothing to be seen at Chuck’s house and that’s just the way they want it. Still, how many people have actual pictures of the place?

Every time I drive around Detroit, I’m reminded anew that we make things here, and making things ain’t pretty. I won’t recall, yet again, my husband’s adventures with industrial food production in Napoleon, Ohio, except to say that it put him off Campbell’s Soup and frozen pizza for life. But making anything on a factory scale is pretty grim; no wonder people like to tell themselves lies about free-range chicken and artisanal cheese. So much easier not to think about.

And that, my friends, is it for me today. Got a couple of projects that require close attention, and I need to give them some. So go forth and have, dare I say, an awesome day.

Everybody knows certain foods have gender. Quiche = female. Chili = male. I like both, so I guess that makes me bisexual, or maybe just fat. But if food gender falls on a spectrum, I’d put ribs way over on the male side, even more macho than chili.

I’m not a huge ribs fan. They’re too Fred Flintstone for me, and require more work than escargot — and that’s just in the eating, with the gnawing and copious napkins and all the rest of it. And the sauce overwhelms everything; it seems you could get the same effect by dipping white bread into Open Pit and dabbing a little around your face and clothing. It seemed like Chinese food — not worth the effort to make at home, and best left to restaurants.

In my weekly trips to the Eastern Market I usually make a stop at Gratiot Central, aka the Meat Mall, and there’s a pork place there that always has acres of ribs piled up for Saturday sales. They look good, and there’s never a shortage of portly black dudes standing in line to stock up. I always feel I’m passing up something I should be finding a way to enjoy. (Note: I never feel that way in front of the tripe, hog maws, tongue and other offal cuts.)

Alan, like most guys, likes ribs, and in my effort to spice up the dinner table during grilling season I went looking for a decent recipe for the things that we could make at home and would please both of us. Ladies and gentlemen, I found it. No boiling is required, no sauce is involved, and only middle-school-level grill skilz. There’s a spice rub, and a three-hour turn on indirect heat from a very cool fire (300 degrees, tops), a little action with the hickory chips and several cooking variations to make ’em Chinese-style, etc.

It’s in Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything,” but you can find the recipe here (scroll down — it’s toward the bottom), called Chris Schlesinger’s Slow-Grilled Ribs. In that linked story, Bittman writes, “These are ribs the way they should be, but you need a day off with an empty schedule to make them.” Not exactly. Three hours will do. I started mine at 4 and took them off the grill at 7, and they were fine. Gas grills make it easier, too.

I made them with the first potato salad of the season. And even I liked them.

Speaking of white bread and rib sauce: There are chains that cater to white suburban rib-eaters (Damon’s comes to mind), but I learned to enjoy sloppy ribs after closing time, at black-owned places in dodgy neighborhoods, dragged there by various rib-loving men in my life. They always served their ribs in styrofoam boxes, with a big stack of the whitest white bread available, the kind that makes Wonder look like a health food. That, the baked beans and the greens were always my favorite part of the meal. At least, as I remember those blurry late-night suppers.

(Obligatory boring story: I once attended a party where the barbecue cooks were “secret” lovers, in the sense that everyone knew, only we were supposed to pretend we didn’t. The night before the party someone said, “Where are Name Redacted and other Name Redacted?” and someone else said, “They went off to rub the meat,” because that was, indeed, where they said they were going. There was a pause, then uproarious laughter.)

Bloggage:

Roy Edroso’s clip-n-save guide to the right-wing blogosphere, in the Village Voice.

Can any of you observant Cat’licks out there tell me if there’s a particular reason the Bush women dressed like crows to meet the pope yesterday?

Black is fine and slimming and all, but you’d think Jenna might have chosen something a bit more suited to a lovely April afternoon. And where was NotJenna? Do only betrothed young presidential daughters get to greet the pope?

These guys accented with a hint of color:

Now that’s more like it.

Got your Passover Coke yet? You’re probably out of luck — it sells out fast, and to gentiles.

Me, I have to get to work enjoying another fabulous spring day.