God, my insomnia is SO bad of late. I was having luck for a while with just going limp — no melatonin, no cannabis, just trusting that my body would take what it needs. News alert: My body does not take what it needs. It will sometimes fall asleep for 40 minutes, then wake up for three hours. Last night was a rare can’t-get-to-sleep-at-all episode. I took melatonin. I took CBD. I took a bowl of cereal after 90 minutes of staring at the ceiling didn’t work. I did a crossword puzzle and finally got to sleep about 1:30 a.m. Awake at 6, back to sleep 20 minutes later, up for good at 7:30.

That’s not good sleep. When that happens I don’t get exercise, although I dress for it in hopes an opportunity will present itself. It didn’t happen today. It wasn’t a wasted day, but it was an unpleasant one.

It’s been hot, so the windows are closed, but sometimes, on nights like this, I’ll listen to the night sounds. My takeaway: It’s gonna be a wild summer, based on the squealing tires I hear, as well as the gunfire. So much gunfire! And yes, I know the difference between a semiauto and firecrackers. I think about all the people out there, going about their business, firing weapons, squealing tires, doing other things. Trying to sleep.

Because of my irritation of late, I read this story of Caitlyn Jenner’s gubernatorial run with some interest, particularly this graf, which I think is the nut of it:

Celebrities always have played a role in American politics, and no state has offered as many notable examples as California, with Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger morphing of course from Hollywood stars into public sector execs. But at a charged cultural and political juncture defined by Donald Trump, the most infamous entertainment-industry outsider ever, politics is no longer simply some notional lark of a second career but rather more and more a central means of creating or perpetuating renown, a newly altered electoral environment in which athletes, actors and other A-listers float bids to stoke fame.

The other day I tweeted that Kyrsten Sinema appears to have gone into politics for the sole purpose of displaying her impressive arms and shoulders on a national stage. I don’t understand why anyone would run for office and then simply fail to show up for important votes because oops I just couldn’t, that day. This is very dangerous for democracy, and a direct extension of the “vote for me, I’m not a career politician” trope we’ve been living under for 40-some years. Caitlyn Jenner has offered virtually nothing concrete in terms of policy ideas or solutions for the state she wants to govern. She does seem to be a bottomless, attention-sucking maw, however.

I looked, for several long minutes that I’ll never get back, at the main photo on that Politico story. I realize Jenner has had quite a bit of facial feminization surgery, and that the picture itself is quite stylized, but the weirdness of it is quite disconcerting. Who is this person? Does she even know herself? I doubt it.

And with that, my patience has reached its end. Time to do some skin care and, as the Detroit city motto says (in Latin), hope for better things. At least tomorrow.

Yeesh, what a weekend. Three day/nights of drinking. I don’t really overdo it anymore – a simple hangover, these days, feels like it requires hospitalization – but even a night of two, three, four drinks leaves me a little spongey the next day, and this weekend it was Friday/Saturday/Sunday, due to various social events.

The last was a fundraiser, held outdoors on a mid-80s day, in blazing sun. Started at one venue, a microbrewery, and moved to a second, a beer bar. Both great places, and one cold beer is great on a hot day, but if the taco truck is late arriving and you don’t get any food in your stomach before the second one, oy. I finally got some chow, chugged two tall soda waters, considered sitting and letting the magic of nutrition and hydration work, but ultimately made a quiet French exit, got on the bike and rode home. Weekend is over, dude, and I’m glad of it.

With all this partying, it was difficult to keep up with the news this weekend. I understand Trump did an appearance somewhere, and it was the usual. Also, Clarence Williams III left us. I was shocked that he was 81, which means he was about 30 when he started playing Linc Hayes in “The Mod Squad.” Michael Cole is a year younger, and Peggy Lipton, who died a couple years ago, was the closest to the age the three characters were supposed to be in the show, which I always figured was early 20s. According to Wikipedia:

Each of these characters represented mainstream culture’s principal fears regarding youth in the era: long-haired rebel Pete Cochran was evicted from his wealthy parents’ Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes, who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the Watts riots, one of the longest and most violent riots in Los Angeles history; flower child Julie Barnes, the “canary with a broken wing, “was arrested for vagrancy after running away from her prostitute mother’s San Francisco home.”

All three a little long in the tooth to be in a mod squad, but then, that’s why they call it acting.

Just one bit of bloggage today, as I’m still rehydrating: You know this is what’s going to happen, right? We know this. So what are we going to do about it?

On Monday, I took a bike ride with a friend on Belle Isle, the former city park, now a state park, negotiated as part of the city’s financial distress a while back. It being a holiday, it was a busy day, but not crazy-busy. Most of the bottleneck was at the gate, but there were fewer parking places, too, because of the Detroit Grand Prix in two weeks — they’ve been setting up the concrete barriers, barbed-wire fences and sponsor banners for a while now.

By the time we came off the island, the road coming in was blocked. Park’s full, find something else to do. But walk- and bike-ons are not limited, so people were parking on the road outside and walking half a mile or so across the bridge, then wherever the party they were seeking was.

I watched them walk by, overwhelmingly young black women dressed in the current style – waist-length braid extensions and those insane false eyelashes that look like fuzzy caterpillars. I thought about how much I despise that stupid grand prix, which squats on the island like an unwanted guest not just for three days in June, but for weeks before and after, uglying the place up and constricting park capacity. We give up so much in the name of tourism dollars, I wonder why we bother.

It was an OK after-ride, though – we got a couple beers each from the party store and sat by the sidewalk and drank them. The lady at the party store put four brown paper bags into the six-pack carton without even being asked. This town cracks me up.

And so the summer begins.

Hope your weekend was good. We cooked a little. Alan is painting the dining room, and it looks great. Let’s see what the season holds, for all of us.

Well, this isn’t great news:

…in a striking intervention, more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement of principles that seeks to make the stakes unambiguously, jarringly clear: On the line is nothing less than the future of our democracy itself.

“Our entire democracy is now at risk,” the scholars write in the statement, which I obtained before its release. “History will judge what we do at this moment.”

And these scholars underscore the crucial point: Our democracy’s long-term viability might depend on whether Democrats reform or kill the filibuster to pass sweeping voting rights protections.

The “I” here is Greg Sargent. I have no faith we can fix this.

In other news, you might recall a story I posted last spring, by a contributor to Deadline Detroit, about a cafe owner in a little town in Myanmar who is obsessed with Eminem. It’s a great story, but bad news: The writer, Danny Fenster, was arrested by government troops last week in Yangon, on his way out of the country to visit his family in Detroit. He hasn’t been heard from since. His family is very worried, obviously. If this sort of thing concerns you, you’re welcome to call your representatives. The hashtag is #BringDannyHome.

OK, then. Into the rest of the week.

Rain is lashing at the windows as I write this. I love that image – lashing rain – even though it’s not pleasant weather to be outdoors in. (Not that I’m planning to go out.) It’s a last gasp of chill before the warm weather settles in. I think we set a new personal record today in the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere, i.e. air conditioning to heat in…four days? Five? As we say around here: Pure Michigan.

Imagine being a Native American, or early settler, enduring weather like this in a badly chinked log cabin. It’s late May, and you’re probably low on firewood, and what’s outside is wet. Do you dip into the stove wood, or just ride it out? Ride it out in your smelly, filthy clothing, I expect.

And so the unofficial opening of summer dawns with lashing rain. I hope it’s not an omen. Because I have plans to be out socializing for much of the warm season. I need to make up for lost time.

And speaking of time, I don’t have much of it this morning, so I leave you with this, which should demonstrate to everyone that Detroit is still Detroit, god love it. See you next week:

Niggas in Detroit just don’t give af 😭😂✋🏻 pic.twitter.com/58LaGZWiNs

— paris (@prettigirlp) May 28, 2021

Current temperature: 88 degrees. Tomorrow’s high: 81. Thursday will be 64, and on Friday? A high temperature of 54. Maybe some storms along the way, maybe not – the all-purpose forecast of widely scattered showers seems to be the go-to. Well, it’s May. No guarantees. And it’ll be nice to take a bike ride in the cool, as opposed to the heat.

Having fulfilled my Midwestern Oath to Open Every Conversation With a Note About the Weather, how’re things?

I headed back to the gym this week. It’s masks-optional for vaccinated patrons, but there’s no verification. I decided to let go, let god, and go when very few others are there. Also, I opened the back door for a breeze whenever possible. And turned on the fan. And got in and out in 40 minutes. And I crossed my fingers and spit.

I thought I’d been keeping up with my basement workouts, but I am good and sore, although not cripplingly so.

It so happens the owner of my gym had a heart attack during the pandemic. Not a serious one, but he’s been taken by the spirit, and has become a prophet of Vegan. He says it’s making a difference, and I’m sure it is, but honestly, every time I even consider it, my head starts to hurt. I’ve probably said it before, but it strikes me as similar to staying kosher; you always have to be thinking, where is my next meal coming from, who will prepare it, and how can I be sure it’s up to my standards? You have to familiarize yourself with fake meat, tofu and other unfamiliar offerings. We’ve been experimenting with Beyond and Impossible meats, and found they work best in stuff like chili or tacos, because a burger is a burger is a burger. But you look at the nutritional information on the package and think, this is healthy? Who knows what’s in that stuff?

Ever since the Great Fat-Free Panic of the ’80s/’90s, I’ve been suspicious of any food masquerading as another food. Artificial sweeteners, Olean fake fat and now, faux-meat. Grinding nuts and loading them with spices to make…something. Vegetarian I can handle, but take away my eggs and cheese and you’ve got a fight on your hands. So while I don’t judge if this is your thing, it ain’t my thing.

Jeff, you just discovered Lord Huron? I too am a fairly recent fan. And what’s more, I learned that for a couple of years, I edited the front man’s father, who contributed to Bridge. And yes, they’re named for the lake the family has a cottage on.

What else? I’m weary of outrage, but man, it sure is plentiful these days. Between MTG and LB, I’m just about exhausted. But we can’t let down.

OK, I’m about out of anything to say, and Wednesday work awaits.

People always speak of the suburbs as being quiet. Ha ha ha ha ha. I bet if I walked around my neighborhood with a decibel meter, I’d easily come away with higher numbers than I would in downtown Detroit. There, you have traffic and occasional honking, but overall, it’s far less jarring than a typical day around here.

(You’ve heard these beefs before, yes. Feel free to check out if you like.)

After a week of the usual clamor — lawn services, some heavy equipment from a digging job in the next block — Saturday began with one of our adjacent neighbors turning on his gas blower at 7:50 a.m. He ran it for about five minutes, then shut it down before getting in his car and blasting out the driveway. I’d love to know what bugged him so much that he had to clean it up before leaving. But really, I don’t.

Those neighbors who don’t have lawn services handle their own yard work on the weekends (which includes us), so there were more mowers, more power edgers — which are almost put-a-pillow-over-your-head-and-scream, nails-on-a-blackboard irritating all weekend long. More gas blowers, too, as this is late spring and trees are shedding things like oak flowers and maple whirligigs and other seeds. All of this must be banished from walks and driveways, loudly.

The bluetooth speaker era is upon us, and we are treated, sometimes, to competing soundtracks. We have neighbors who are very nice, but the husband likes to sit in his driveway and play the same record over and over. They seem to change with the year; for a couple summers it was Mumford & Sons, then Dire Straits, and he’s been on a country kick this year. Short playlist, the same five songs or so over and over and over. And over. And over. He’s had it on for a half hour just now, and we’ve heard Aaron Lewis’ “Story of My Life” twice.

The gas blower guy behind us does the same thing, only with head banging stuff Kate refers to as “butt rock,” although he went on a summer-long Wu-Tang Clan kick. “Enter the Wu-Tang,” specifically, which is not an album I’d turn off if it came on the radio (I own it, in fact), but after a few weeks of hearing it at cocktail hour? Not so much.

In short, in the suburbs, every tool is loud, no one listens to jazz and honestly, just hearing some children play would be a treat. There’s a block nearby full of kids who all seem around the same age and play outdoors the way I remember playing with my friends as a child. The other day they’d duct-taped a lawn chair to two skateboard and were pushing one another up and down the sidewalk. It was great.

And that was the weekend, such as it was. Had an outdoor get-together with my colleagues Friday, did the usual stuff Saturday, and spent Sunday laying in groceries and reading a few more Hemingway short stories. Yes, yes, I picked the book off the basement shelf after the PBS thing, obviously. I’ve read a few, but not all. I don’t know how “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” evaded me until now, however. Short review: I’m enjoying them, although there is some very un-P.C. racial language in a few, and as always, his attitude toward many of his female characters is…not good.

And now, Monday is so, so close. I hope it’s quiet at midnight.

Following up on comments yesterday:

I know “gypped” is considered a slur, but I didn’t know “gypsy” was, too. I know it’s a casual term for Romany people, but getting back to first principles, i.e. clarity, I’ll continue to use it as a synonym for “nomadic,” in various forms. But as I rarely write about Romany people, I doubt it’ll come up there.

Speaking of nomadic populations that are often associated with grifting, what about Irish travelers? Every summer in Fort Wayne there’d be a warning story from the police about traveler scams, usually involving home repairs; a couple of men would find a house in need of painting, quote an insanely low price, and the paint would come off the first time it rained. Or, in measuring the house for another job, one would gain entry somehow — “we need inside measurements as well” was usually the excuse offered — and then “head to Lowe’s to pick up supplies.” They’d never return, and the homeowner would find one or more small valuables missing.

I think the women busied themselves with shoplifting and returning goods for cash.

Haven’t heard much about those folks since we moved to Michigan. Must not be on the route.

Here’s an interesting story about the traveler community in South Carolina. As so often is the case, the members of the group claim it comes down to discrimination. And some other factors:

History teaches us that to survive all cultures must evolve with an ever-changing world. For some, change comes slowly and often at great sacrifice requiring the loss of old-world traditions in favor of acceptance. Irish-American Travellers because of their reluctance to change have become people at odds with society. We are a people that belong more in the past than in the present. Arranged marriages, the need to find safety within our small community, and refusal to accept change all bring into question our longevity.

Wise words, those.

OK then. We’re sliding into the weekend, again, and I’m thinking about devoting at least some time this weekend to serious meal prep for the week ahead. I was down to having only four pandemic pounds to lose and am now back to 10, and it’s going to be in the high 80s today. This can’t go on, so I’m gonna stop it. Or at least try.

Enjoy your own, wherever it may be.

Weekends are too damn short, I must say. One minute it’s Friday afternoon and wooooo it’s time to shut the laptop and have some fun, baby, and the next it’s Sunday night and the sun is setting and all you have to show for it is…a long bike ride, a shorter bike ride, dinner out with friends, dinner in on your anniversary and a very clean kitchen. So I guess it’s better than nothing. I just hate to have to cram all my me-life into two days and work gets the remaining five.

I guess it doesn’t have to. That’s why after-work socializing was invented, but who has the energy for that anymore? On the other hand, it’s amazing anyone has the energy for anything, these days.

I did go shopping Saturday, too. Wore a mask. I will continue to do so, for all the reasons you’ve already heard. I may return to the gym, though, at extreme off-peak hours and preferably with the doors cracked open. I’ve kept my membership going, to support the place — might as well get something for it.

Something else I did this weekend: Caught the first couple episodes of “Halston.” I am in full agreement with Tom & Lorenzo in their essential disappointment. I actually went to a fashion show in his famous Fifth Avenue “aerie,” as it was inevitably called. Liza was there. The clothes were great, but he was past his prime a bit by then. I was enough of a hippie that I found Ultrasuede kinda gross; it violated my principles that clothing materials should be natural, dammit, and I never understood the appeal of the famous Ultrasuede coat dress, although I don’t have much of an eye, admittedly. The ’70s are, in my mind, a pastiche of polyester and Pucci and knock-offs of Pucci and, yes, Halston.

Anyway, I guess the upshot of the weekend was, I’m glad to be less-masked, for now. Don’t have much more to offer, other than this photo of the weekend:

And this is why more women should be in charge of things.

📸 Mark Gormus, @AP pic.twitter.com/JvCE3M4NoM

— Lisa Kirbie (@lisakirbie) May 15, 2021

Week ahead, let’s get to it.

The boat launch went fine, thanks for asking. It was freezing — mid-40s — but ah well. The marina is under new ownership, and have deprived the main guy who handles this, Pete, of his assistant, so I had to be there. But no major mishaps.

While Pete and I were pulling the mast this way and that so Alan could attach the shrouds, we talked a little bit about this phase of life. (We’re all the same age, give or take.) He said he and his wife had unloaded a big house on a very nice street, and were now living aboard their boat at the same marina, and liking it more than they ever thought they would.

A big part of it, he emphasized, was “getting rid of all our shit.”

I thought of this while some of you were talking in comments about your own shit, or your parental shit, or all the other shit that gets dumped on you as you age. Pete said nothing felt as good as personal shit-liquidation, selling all the furniture and gewgaws and collectibles and other stuff that once seemed so important. Watching it go out of the house during the estate sale, he said, was liberating. “You don’t know how tied down you are until you get rid of it,” he said.

Caitlin Flanagan, a writer I often find myself at odds with, watched “Nomadland” recently and came up with this observation:

The make-or-break moment for the viewer is right at the top; if you’re the kind of brute who doesn’t enjoy watching a woman in late middle age poke around her storage unit, you should take your leave. Personally, I could have watched an entire movie on that subject alone. You spend your whole life accumulating things, and then they end up in a storage unit, slowly losing their charge of sentiment and memory and transforming into a bunch of junk. Fern is there to pick out what she will bring with her on the journey. In the end, she chooses the least practical thing of all: a box of china, white with a pattern of red leaves on the rim. That’s not the last of that china I’ll be seeing, I thought to myself, and I was spot-on.

Since Alan stopped working, I’ve been on my own smaller-scale shit-liquidation purge, and I’m making progress. Last week I dragged pretty much all my Fort Wayne ephemera to the curb, including all my newspaper clips and, comically, my journalism awards. I saved some photographs, but will probably go through those and pitch a lot of them, too.

But some things cry not yet. The doll bed I played with as a child and Kate, not so much — I can’t get rid of it yet. Some of her crib bedding, ditto. A couple of her favorite stuffed animals.

And god, so many books. Books are one of those things you’re supposed to be happy to purge, but after I cleaned up the basement enough to make it my pandemic gym, I shelved and dusted all the books down there and thought: Can’t get rid of these. I love many of them too much. But on the same shelf are many 78 RPM records from Alan’s dad’s collection, and god knows why we still have those.

For the next move, I guess we’ll grapple with all of this. For now, I’ll settle for slimming down.

Speaking of female writers I often find myself at odds with, do you know how much it pains me to say, “Mona Charen is right?” A lot. And yet:

Today, we stand on the precipice of the House Republican conference ratifying this attempt to subvert American democracy. They are poised to punish Liz Cheney for saying this simple truth: “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.” In her place, they will elevate Iago in heels, Elise Stefanik, whose claim to leadership consists entirely of her operatic Trump followership.

Let’s be clear: The substitution of Stefanik for Cheney is a tocsin, signaling that the Republican party will no longer be bound by law or custom. In 2020, many Republican office holders, including the otherwise invertebrate Pence, held the line. They did not submit false slates of electors. They did not decertify votes. They did not “find” phantom fraud. But the party has been schooled since then. It has learned that the base—which is deluded by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin—believes the lies and demands that Republicans fight. As my colleague Amanda Carpenter put it, the 2024 mantra is going to be “Steal It Back.”

If Cheney must be axed because she will not lie, then what will happen if Republicans take control of Congress in 2022 and are called upon to certify the Electoral College in 2024? How many Raffenspergers will there be? How many will insist, as Pence did, that they must do what the Constitution demands? How many will preserve any semblance of the rule of law and the primacy of truth?

Well, if we have to flee, I hope Canada will take us. If not, Mexico is warmer and has livelier food. And there’s always Europe, although I don’t think they can accommodate that many refugees. Maybe we’ll stay here and be the resistance. Works for me.

Happy Wednesday. A pic in parting, as another boating season begins:

Boxing is a dying sport (but MMA is thriving, go figure) and there may come a day soon when it will no longer exist, but what will we do with all the language it’s given us?

Throw in the towel, hit the canvas, come out swinging, neutral corner, down for the count — if I had a day to think of all the common expressions that come out of the squared circle, I probably wouldn’t get them all. Sailing is another sport hardly anyone practices, and yet just today I sent a peevish-sounding text to my colleagues, after changing “jive” to “jibe” in a long-published story. To jibe with something is to be in agreement: His story doesn’t jibe with what we already know, etc. And if I had a dollar for every time I saw “tact” where the writer should have used “tack” (it’s a point of sail, and refers to the zigzag pattern you have to make to go into the wind; you “take another tack” when you have to adjust your direction to get closer to where you’re headed), well, I’d be in France right now, not in a few months.

Don’t get me started on fox hunting. There are a few from there, too. I will instead go to ground.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this. Probably because I saw someone write “here, here” and I snapped.

And another week limps into port. I spent a couple hours this morning listening to Naomi Wolf, D-Crazytown, testify to the Michigan legislature on vaccine passports, which no one’s yet proposed but the leg wants to pass a bill preemptively banning. I’m trying to work out my thoughts on this for a column, but right now all I can come up with is: That chick crazy.

Are you ready for this week to end? I am. So let’s do it.