A former colleague of mine, Leo Morris, died a little over a year ago. He lived a couple blocks down the street from us in Fort Wayne. A nice guy, a bit of an odd duck, which sometimes came out in conversation. He mentioned once that he’d spent the weekend boxing up all the books that he had stacked on his staircase, having long ago run out of shelf space. He was down to a treacherous, narrow path, and you know how those stories often end.

Anyway, he died, and his siblings, both of whom live elsewhere, sold his house. A friend sent me a Redfin screen capture of recent sales; it seems to have gone for about $95K, then was sold again for $101K just a few weeks later, and the $6,000 probably represents the work the first owner put into cleaning it out. Now it’s back on the market for $289,900, an eye-popping amount in my opinion, but also appears to have undergone a full gut rehab. I recall a dark interior with a pool table in the dining room. Now it’s flooded with light, hardwood floors, brand-new kitchen, the works. Even the third-floor attic space appears to have been sided with cedar, a very nice touch.

I sent it to Alex, who informs me that not only are real-estate prices skyrocketing in the Fort for the usual reasons, but my old neighborhood, in the 46807 zip code, is now known as “The 07,” and is considered the hipster ‘hood.

Story of my life. Jeff Borden and I lived in a four-flat apartment house in a strip of Columbus between two suburbs (Grandview and Upper Arlington), at a time when everyone else our age was renting in German Village. (Motto: Drive our charming brick streets, but don’t expect to find a parking place.) Alan and I bought in the 07 because it was affordable and close to our office, and the houses were solid and had lots of charming architectural details. Both that old strip of Columbus and our little piece of Fort Wayne are now considered cool. I guess I really am an artist after all. Top o’ the world, ma!

I spent a few minutes punching the zip code into Realtor.com, and hoo-boy: This beauty, designed by Joel Roberts Ninde, a female architect who worked a lot around there, is a mere $319,900, and also looks like it recently underwent some major renovations.

Three thousand square feet, four bedrooms, and check out that bathroom tile. I used to walk Spriggy past that house; I think it used to be blue. The exterior is stucco, and the owner said it stayed cool in summer until the temperatures went past 90. There are several Ninde houses around that neighborhood, and they have stuff like built-in cabinetry, second-floor sleeping porches, arched doorways and other drool-worthy features.

Downside: The 07 was, when I lived there, considered a little risky ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Maybe the hipsters have improved the place. The only violent crime I saw there pales in comparison to what happens in Detroit and environs on a random Saturday. If I had to move back I’d snatch up that house and start a hipster salon, something like Laurel Canyon in the ’60s.

This one, two blocks away, was my favorite. Not on the market at the moment:

The front door is on the side. The street-facing side is a solarium, with a fireplace on the back wall, that also serves the living room. A million-dollar house in any other city in the country. Sigh.

OK, enough real-estate porn. For a while I thought I’d contracted Covid over the weekend; I was coughing from the depth of my lungs. Then I realized it started while I was making kung pao chicken, and had been a little heavy-handed with the Thai chilis. Basically, I pepper-sprayed myself when they hit the hot oil and sent up a cloud of capsaicin into my own lungs. Everything is fine now, but I can still tell it happened.

In other news at this hour, I am very, very worried about Florida. This storm is a mofo. Please stay safe, and I hope those of you in the footprint will send up a flare (so to speak) here when you’re out of danger.

We’ve been having an exceptionally warm autumn so far. I know many of you enjoy this, but I suspect we’re headed for another SLAM BANG OK IT’S WINTER NOW seasonal transition, having missed out on the pleasures of fall, i.e., the slowly cooling days, the slowly turning leaves, all of it. Right now it’s in the low 70s, forecast to top out at 77 in late afternoon, and all I can think is: Where is sweata weatha? Love sweata weatha.

“You miss January, Nance?” a friend asked me last night. I do not. But it’s a week into October, and I was hoping to put away my sandals by now.

It’s not that winter won’t come. Winter is never all that far away from Michigan. But we’ve had a few of those SLAM BANG seasonal changes of late, and I’m not crazy about them. You spend Easter in down jackets, then four days later it’s 85 degrees and stays that way.

Oh well. My house has not washed down a mountainside, so this is just mewling.

Let’s go to the news! Ho-ho, this is amusing:

According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)

Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.

Actually it’s not amusing, it’s terrifying, because the rest of the paper informs us this is still anybody’s race. I mean, I’m glad the newspaper that practically considered it a crusade to get Biden to drop out is finally turning its attention to Trump, but who is listening at this point? Nobody. The few allegedly undecided voters, aren’t. As soon as early voting opens, I’m going in, casting my ballot with grim purpose, then returning to scan real-estate listings in countries where the language isn’t too hard to learn, and has some sweata weatha.

How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was fine. We saw “Megalopolis,” two of roughly six people in the theater. I’d describe it as…an ambitious mess. Those critics who keep saying, “Remember, ‘Apocalypse Now’ was a laughingstock at first” either never watched “Apocalypse Now” or weren’t there when it opened. I think it had been in theaters one weekend, and people were practically stopping me on the street to talk about the first three minutes, with the Doors and the chopper landing strut going through the frame, and the napalm. Three days after seeing “Megalopolis,” what I mostly remember was…none of it, really. Lush visuals, silly story, not much else. The girder scene, maybe? Aubrey Plaza trying her hardest, checking my phone inside my purse because I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the actress who played Julia before (she was Missandei in “Game of Thrones,” and her name is Nathalie Emmanuel) and ticking off the members of the Coppola Family Players who had parts (Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Laurence Fishburne) along with Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and others. I think the ultimate explanation was the closing title, after FFC’s, “To my beloved wife Eleanor.” Eleanor Coppola died in April; this has the feeling of her surviving husband writing last notes and closing books.

Speaking of which, you know how Francis Ford Coppola got his middle name? His dad, Carmine, was a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1936-41, the depths of the Great Depression, and his son was born here. The Ford Motor Company basically carried the orchestra through the Depression, sponsoring their performances and keeping roofs over musicians’ heads and food on their tables. Carmine gave his baby the middle name in gratitude.

On Saturday, I went with a friend to see Jonathan Richman at the Magic Bag. The show was great, but short — one hour start to finish. Today I saw someone describe him as “Lou Reed’s nicer cousin.” He opened with this number, which I loved.

And now I’m going to enjoy this lovely Sunday. I leave you with this:

What we know is that these two men have 17 children with 6 different women but it’s women’s bodies that need to be controlled! pic.twitter.com/1oadrzY55i

— nazir afzal (@nazirafzal) October 6, 2024

Have a great week.

Because Twitter has lost virtually all of its legit advertisers — new releases from major studios/publishers, large corporations, etc. — it’s getting interesting. “Interesting” in the sense that if you’re into cheap Chinese gadgetry, hoo-boy. But also certain self-published, or practically self-published, books. You know me; I can resist neither bad writing, nor procrastination. And that’s how I ended up here:

To this writer’s credit, however, at least he’s finished something. Can’t say that here. I look forward to duplicating this exercise when “Melania” drops…whenever. Just looked it up: October 8. Imagine that. I guess we’ll see what that old ho’ has in store.

Speaking of propaganda, I’ve been alternately appalled and amused by the Tenet Media story (gift link). That is, the Russia-buys-U.S.-influencers story. Will Sommer, the WashPost reporter who covers such things, was chuckling through his briefing on “On the Media” the other day. It’s hard to believe anyone could be this stupid, but what do I know:

Most of the six members of Tenet’s “talent” team claim they did not know the money was coming from Russia. (Canadian activist Lauren Southern has not issued a statement as of this writing.) The indictment alleges that Tenet’s founders and Russian backers misled at least two of them, (Tim) Pool and (Dave) Rubin, about the source of Tenet’s funding by inventing a fictitious Belgian investor named Eduard Grigoriann.

Ah yes, an Armenian Belgian with an extra N on the end. I wonder if this real Eduard Grigoryan is getting any mileage out of this. I also wonder if Pool, Rubin and the other dullards on the team saved any of the money Tenet was paying them, as they were standing smack in the middle of a virtual firehose of cash. Because I doubt misfortune will smile on them in that way again.

Finally, the work peak is leveling out. I hope I have more time for you guys. I will. If I wanted to work this hard, I wouldn’t have retired.

More later this week.

Another scorcher of a weekend, but that’s summer, or at least it’s super-heated climate-change summer, eh? After a Thursday/Friday work thing, I jumped at the chance to do something I haven’t done for years, i.e. attend a simple county fair with friends. In this case, Monroe County, just south of Wayne.

What did we find? Animals, junk food, crybabies. The crybabies were in the county GOP tent:

Oh, sit on a pin, people. I found this goat far more compelling:

What fascinating animals goats are, with those horizontal pupils. I scritched a few bony skulls in my pass through their lodgings.

It was the last day of the fair, and the livestock auction was going, with cages full of chickens and rabbits selling for a couple hundred bucks, mostly. What a far cry from my time as the Ohio State Fair reporter, when there was a doping scandal around the grand champion steer. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before in this space, so I won’t bore longtime readers, but the basic outline was: Losers in the beef cattle competition accused the winner of doping, but blood tests showed the champion was clean. The following year more accusations were made about the winner, more testing showed no shenanigans, but when they slaughtered the animal and stripped off the hide, great globs of silicone gel fell from the carcass, and oh my but did hell break loose. Farm kids, improving their animal’s contours with plastic surgery of a sort? And here we thought those kids were innocents.

Today I spent my morning editing video — see Thursday/Friday work obligations — and drifted the afternoon away in a friend’s pool. Man, did I need that on another 90 degree day. And now I’m making a promising dinner from the NYT — this one — and planning my week ahead, which I devoutly hope will be less crazy.

How’s ’bout you?

Columbus was fine, if you’re wondering. Every so often I think I should swing home via Newark and check in with Jeff Gill, but I don’t. I go straight up U.S. 23 because I want to get home, and then, three hours later, I am home.

But it was a good trip, weaving family with friends in just about the right proportions. I even had time to swing past my childhood home. You might recall it from this post, which found it, in 2022, seemingly at the end of an extensive renovation. It looked like this:

I said at the time I hoped it would be mellowed with landscaping and shutters and all that. It appears to be done. And now? This:

Um. OK. They’ve added landscaping. And shutters. And whatever the hell that thing is sticking out over the front door, but what do I know? The trend today is MODERN FARMHOUSE, and if your AMERICAN COLONIAL won’t play ball, you make it so.

I drove away reflecting on this passage in Elmore Leonard’s “City Primeval,” which I’ve been carrying around in my head for a while:

Bottom line: Don’t get sentimental about cars, or real estate. It’s a house, not Tara. Your family hasn’t been there for 29 years. Let it go. Houses are for keeping the rain off your head and hosting the Thanksgiving dinner. And when you sign the papers, they’re for someone else’s Thanksgiving dinner.

I came home and told Alan about this, who happened to have spent that very day in his hometown of Defiance, Ohio, helping his recently moved-in sister with some things in her new condo. He said his family’s old house, also sold years ago, is now “easily the worst one on the street,” with all kinds of shit like trampolines and recreational garbage in the front yard, not the back. “And there’s a sign nailed — NAILED — to my father’s ash tree,” he reported, horrified. “It says ‘No Trespassing.'”

Like anyone would want to. That nail hole will have bad juju down the road, but one day we’ll all be gone from the earth, and it won’t matter.

No, I’m not depressed. Just taking the long view.

I tried to disconnect from the news, to the extent I was able to, this weekend. It was easy, in the sense that it was all about Will Biden Drop Out, and in the sense I have no control over that, it was easy to do.

What do you think? Oh, and happy week ahead.

What is the best thing about summer? Outdoor get-togethers. Friday night we had an impromptu thing atop the Park Shelton downtown. The heat relented as the sun went down, and a full, red moon rose over the skyline around 10 p.m.

Strawberry moon, I read. So named for its proximity to strawberry season, but this year’s went a little extra, as you can see.

The next morning, in the market? Blueberries. My blueberry guy said they’re two weeks early this year. No surprise. Everything is two weeks early this year — the fish flies, the heat wave, all of it. Next year, maybe two and a half weeks. As always, we’ll see. I was thinking about taking us on a little trip, less than a week, to New Orleans in the fall, and was surprised to see the hotel rates in September are way lower than I expected. Then I thought: Prime hurricane season. Miserable weather. Maybe try for November. I think that’s the play.

So how was your weekend? Alan came home from a four-day fishing trip, bringing to a close my staycation of bad TV, girl dinners at hungrytime, not dinnertime — one night I found myself eating sautéed onions and chickpeas with a runny egg on top at 4:45 p.m. — and other pleasures of only having to look after oneself. As I say whenever this happens, I’m happy to see him go, and equally happy when he returns. Too much solitude isn’t good for an extrovert like me.

Then Sunday rolls around, and even though I’m “retired,” it still feels like I’m looking down the tunnel of the work week, planning. I still make a weekly to-do list on Sunday, and love looking at it on Friday and seeing all, or most, of the entries crossed off. And writing that sentence makes me realize I really do not have a goddamn thing to say, and should get to the bloggage, two items today, both from the NYT, both gift links.

First, excellent reporting on the one-man grift machine that is Michael Flynn. Correction: One-family grift machine:

Since leaving the Trump administration under an ethical cloud, Michael Flynn has converted his Trump-world celebrity into a lucrative and sprawling family business. He and his relatives have marketed the retired general as a martyr, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for a legal-defense fund and then pocketing leftover money. Through a network of nonprofit and for-profit ventures, they have sold far-right conspiracy theories, ranging from lies about the 2020 election to warnings, embraced by followers of QAnon, about cabals of pedophiles and child traffickers.

…A New York Times investigation found Flynn family members had made at least $2.2 million monetizing Michael Flynn’s right-wing stardom in recent years, with more than half of that going to Mr. Flynn directly. That total includes several payments not previously reported, but it is still a low estimate, since not all financial records are public. The Times’s reporting also raised questions about whether America’s Future had properly disclosed its payments to Mr. Flynn’s relatives.

Bad people, bad behavior, idiot followers. That’s MAGA in a few words.

And in the magazine, an interview with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, an indication that she’s being taken seriously as a 2028 presidential contender. It’s a pretty flattering interview, but then, she’s competent, so you expect that.

Separate from what happened to you during this period of the pandemic, I do want to ask you about some of the lessons that you may have learned. Michigan’s stay-at-home order did last longer than other states’. You closed all the schools in March 2020, and you didn’t urge them to be reopened until a year later. Now that we have the fullness of hindsight, do you think schools should have reopened earlier?

I have said many times that if I could go back in time with the knowledge we’ve accumulated now, there certainly are things that I would have done differently. I also want to remind everyone that during that period of time, Michigan was so hot compared to the rest of the country. It was New York, Detroit, it was Chicago and it was New Orleans that were having a massive impact from Covid. Our hospitals were at a real brink.

No one really knew how to deal with this. It’s less about what you were facing but more specifically about schools. You’re seeing in Michigan chronic absenteeism, students performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math.

I think we have to remember that we were looking at lessons from the Spanish flu, and that particular virus absolutely was devastating to younger people. And as a person taking in as much information as I could from our epidemiologists and our public-health experts, the thought was that we might have a lot of school-age kids that were going to die from this virus. That’s really what motivated our actions and the actions of lots of governors when we stopped kids going to school. It has carried a long, hard price tag with it. We’ve made massive investments in early childhood and in free breakfast and lunch for all 1.4 million Michigan kids, and literacy coaches. So we’re working to help get our kids back on track. But absolutely, if I could go back in time with the knowledge we have now and knowing this virus didn’t disproportionately kill children, would I have done some things differently? Yes.

Finally, I see some of you have caught up with the Rep. Neil Friske (pronounced “frisky”) situation here in Michigan. More will be revealed, and I trust it will be hilarious.

Good week ahead, all. Hope your to-do list is full of scratch-offs by Friday.

Another day, another email from the wine place:

It needs a few moments of swirling to unlock scents of blueberry pie, cassis, and preserved plums, eventually giving way to a gorgeous perfume of violets, star anise, cedar chest, and iron ore. The medium to full-bodied palate shimmers with bright, fresh black fruit layers, framed by firm, ripe, rounded tannins and Pavie’s signature tension, finishing very long and very fragrant. This is breathtaking!

Something I learned from these missives: There’s this thing called en primeur, which is when you buy wine that hasn’t been bottled yet, based on early impressions from how it’s developing in the barrel. It’s…wine futures. You say, “my guy says this one has great promise” and put your money down for bottles in 2026, say. And you cross your fingers and hope this vintage lives up to your expectations. Like buying a yearling racehorse at the Keeneland sale.

Rich people. What will they think of next.

So. A sultry Wednesday afternoon in the a/c, waiting on a thunderstorm. Quiche for dinner tonight — Swiss chard, bacon, pine nuts, raisins and gouda cheese. Trying to finish a story I was going great guns on yesterday, but ran out of gas for today. Got most of my to-do list crossed off, and just thinking what I want to do with the rest of my one wild and precious life. Or week, anyway.

One thing I won’t be doing: Going to the great reopening of Michigan Central Station, the Ford Motor Company’s project. NYT gift link to a piece aimed at a non-Detroit audience here, a story I did the first edit on, not that I am bragging — always happy to give a first read to a friend. I interviewed the project leader on this undertaking last year, for a story on adaptive reuse, i.e. giving old buildings new life. The scope of the station project was enormous; Ford is said to have spent $900 million all-in, which included rehabbing a couple nearby buildings as well. I said to the guy, “It’s amazing what you’ve been able to do,” and he replied, drolly, “With enough money? You can do anything.” I liked that.

Anyway, tomorrow is the celebration concert on the lawn out front, with Eminem and Jack White and Big Sean and a bunch of other people. Then even dug up Diana Ross to swing back through her hometown and sing a little, although we’ll see how that goes: I don’t think she’s performed in years, and she’s 80 now. It’ll be streamed on Peacock or Paramount or one of those networks I don’t subscribe to, but they’ll show a condensed version free in a few days. I don’t really enjoy going to shows where you have to stand up for two hours, anyway, and this will surely be one.

Oh, and these guys are back:

The return of the fish flies means summer’s here. No, summer’s here! Let’s enjoy it.

If this is the first weekend of summer, I’ll take it. ‘Twas a good one.

Friday, we went to see Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble at Orchestra Hall. It was a tight update on Was (Not Was), and a fine way to kick things off.

Saturday: Laundry and groceries, but also a lovely piece of salmon for dinner, with sautéed rapini and key lime pie for dessert.

Sunday: A sunrise rave, part of Movement weekend, i.e. the techno fest. I’ve come to enjoy techno, at least in connection with Movement. I associate it with spring, and the promise of summer. I met up with a friend there. We talked drugs and real estate and related matters. Went home, chilled and did a writing group later that day, then finished it out with a prime New York strip, grilled asparagus, morels and an excellent red.

Tomorrow? Ribs. Even though it’s raining buckets now. It’s not tomorrow yet.

A few notes before we let the weekend go, however:

For the last few years, we’ve bought a couple cases of wine for summer, roses and whites from a vineyard we visited in France when we were there. It comes through a wholesaler in Chicago. We could probably get the same thing here, but every time we open a bottle of summer wine from the vineyard, it reminds me of France, so who cares? It’s not that much money. And I get added to the mailing list, which means I regular receive emails that describe certain vintages thusly:

“Really perfumed nose, highly scented with purple flowers and dark ripe fruit – black currant, damson plum and black cherry. Deep aromatics with lots of tobacco and clove spice on the nose. It’s heady, strongly scented and alive. Cool and crisp on the palate, smooth, so silky, really effortless in the tannin presentation. Juicy and clean, so bright, but not sour or tart, just the right side, so it’s lifted but not overly austere. Once the acidity calms down in comes the salty, mineral base giving lots of liquorice, wet stone and graphite tones, putting you squarely on limestone.”

Or like this:

“Medium intensity ruby, this is a little reserved at first, in the best way, in that it has the hidden depths that are just so promising during En Primeur, real sense of sapidity, squid ink, violet reflections, extremely vibrant, really like this, blueberry, sage, slate, lift on the finish, delicious.”

I’m sorry, but this is hilarious. I ate squid ink not long ago, but can’t tell you what it tastes like, much less violet reflections. But I enjoy reading it.

Finally, there was a would-be mass shooter in Fort Wayne last week. A young man live-streamed his declaration of intent to murder, then carried his phone with him through a local Kroger until he fired off a volley at someone standing at the deli counter. He somehow, miraculously, hit no one, but not for lack of trying. I heard about this on Reddit, where I was able to watch his livestream. (It’s since been removed.) So I went in search of a legit news source story about the incident. All three — two from TV stations, one from the remaining newspaper — read the same, all having been written from police press releases. This is inconceivable to me; when I was there, we’d have flooded the zone with people, and dug up everything about the shooter within hours. Today? Why bother? We have no staff.

OK, then. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

The first person to wish me a happy Mother’s Day was on Saturday. Total stranger, just “happy Mother’s Day” as I walked past, so I said, “Same to you, or to your wife or whatever.” Kinda weird.

More HMDs came at Eastern Market, and today, on actual Mother’s Day, I got several just pushing my cart at Kroger, again from strangers.

I did not post social-media photos of my mother, nor of Kate and me (“the one who made me a mother” is the usual verbiage, I believe), and in fact didn’t even see her, but she called from Berlin. She comes home tonight, and we’ll observe this holiday at some point, I guess.

“The Derringers don’t set a lot of store on the Hallmark holidays,” I told her when she called, which we say every year; it’s kind of a joke.

Who made Mother’s Day into such a huge thing? (Social media.) Mitch Albom wrote a drippy column about how much he misses his own mom, and all I could think was, “then celebrate some mother in your family, or even your own wife, dumbass.” But no one listens to my thoughts but me. We all miss our dead mothers, if they were good ones.

Hope yours was good. I washed all my bedding and changed the sheets, restocked all our provisions. Alan potted annuals and our usual herb array. The growing season is on.

And, because it’s an election year, this is happening, too:

Four words in the location tag, three of them misspelled. That’s MAGA for you.

We won’t be attending, but four years ago, we saw one in progress, going past our shoreline. I think we passed through the rump end, heading back to the marina. Here’s hoping for a dangerous thunderstorm, and at least two non-fatal sinkings.

There’s an interesting, alas paywalled, story in the News this morning, about a woman suing Detroit Animal Care and Control after her husband was fatally mauled by three free-roaming pit bulls or pit mixes or “American Staffordshire” mixes or whatever. Bully breeds or mixes, all. My friend Dustin and I call ourselves breedists where pits are concerned. One attacked and nearly killed his family’s Bichon, years ago; I just don’t like or trust them. I know they can be wonderful dogs, that it’s irresponsible owners who make them that way, all of that. It doesn’t change my opinion: Where pits are concerned, proceed with caution. Always. (Actually, that’s not bad advice with all dogs, but some kind of sweep that caution off the table when they jump on you and lick your face.)

Anyway. This woman is alleging that the department knew the couple who owned these dogs were irresponsible, etc., but the part that caught my eye is this:

The lawsuit also names a nonprofit called Friends of Detroit Animal Care and Control, which supports the city agency by supplementing its budget, applying for grants, holding fundraisers and forming relationships with donors and foundations. Some of those relationships have been with national organizations that have pushed for lower euthanasia rates in shelters.

The lawsuit contends the city allowed the nonprofit to “exert extensive influence” on animal control as to how and when the city’s dangerous animal code is enforced in exchange for the money the nonprofit gets from being affiliated with some of the national organizations.

“While animal lives were being spared, dangerous animals remained and unaddressed and ever-present threat to the safety and lives of people within the City of Detroit,” the lawsuit reads. It called the no-kill model “utterly ineffective, reckless and deadly as it concerns dog owners like the Goodmans, and dogs owned by them.”

I don’t know anything about this nonprofit, but that they are against euthanasia, etc., absolutely does not surprise me. If there’s one thing that has changed enormously over the course of my life, it’s been the way we treat dogs. Some of these changes have been good, although I think we’ve gone overboard on many of them. Dogs in affluent communities like mine live better than human children in Detroit. We no longer open the back door, let Fido out, and collect him at the end of the day. If you lost your dog back then, it was because “he ran away,” i.e. got hit by a car. I step in way less dog poop than I did as a child, when virtually no one picked it up. A new dog park opened in my community over the weekend, and I’ll be taking Wendy for some r’n’r when I get a chance. Of the whole fur-baby thing I will say little other than this: I dislike that term. It disrespects an animal’s essential nature. Anthropomorphism: bad.

At the same time, I’m flabbergasted by what people are willing to spend, and risk, in their efforts to keep frankly bad dogs alive. Years ago, The New Yorker published a lengthy essay by a woman whose efforts to “rehabilitate” a dangerous pit bull suggested she was the one who needed therapy, not the dog. My respect for Ira Glass, the “This American Life” host, plummeted after I heard the segment on the show about Piney, another psychotic (and sickly, and weird) dog he kept, even as it utterly took over his life, and that of his wife (from whom he’s now divorced; not sure if Piney was a factor). A segment from the transcript:

Piney’s a smallish, sweet-faced pit bull. Think Little Rascals, not Michael Vick. He’s a rescue, a very pretty dog, white with these big light-brown patches. He’s timid. He can get scared of puppies and other animals much weaker than he is. But when he gets anxious, he sometimes attacks people.

He has to wear a muzzle whenever he goes anywhere outside Ira’s apartment, including the office. Ira and his wife never have friends over, because Piney would go after them. Piney is fearful and anxiety prone. And he has to take Valium to keep from being even more aggressive.

Ira Glass: It’s almost like somebody who’s fearful who is also a pit bull. If you imagine–

Nancy Updike: It’s exactly that.

Ira Glass: It is exactly that, yeah.

Nancy Updike: It’s not even like it. That is what is it.

Ira Glass: That is what it is. He was a normal dog until a wedding that Anaheed took him to. Anaheed drove up ahead of me, and the dog was there with her and was a puppy. And all these people were hanging around.

And there was a moment where he bit the host’s daughter, Hope, who was 9 or 10 at the time. He just got up off the floor, saw her come into the room, walked over, and bit her. And then he bit a friend of ours, Vicky, her son.

Nancy Updike: At the wedding, he bit two children?

Ira Glass: He bit two children.

And that was only the beginning of Piney’s adventures. That show aired in 2012, and I expect Piney’s gone to dog heaven by now, and even though I know it can’t possibly be true, I’d hope it was before he reached the end of his natural life, because that dog was damaged, and needed to be put down. Humanely, of course; I’m not suggesting the Kristi Noem solution. But this mania to rehabilitate animals can go — and has gone — too far.

The people in Detroit who owned the dogs who killed the man whose wife is suing were bad owners, period. Those dogs had gotten loose and bitten people before. They should have been confiscated, and killed. Again, to let them live, or to try some sort of “rehabilitation,” misunderstands their nature. A dog can’t talk, can’t reason with you. It can’t tell you it understands why biting is bad and it needs to stop. A biting dog either needs to be super-duper securely confined, or euthanized.

OK, then. Time to get in a workout and try to make sense of the week ahead.

Certain acts of journalism truly expand your understanding of the world, and I’m grateful for this 14-year-old piece in New York magazine — warning: it’s long — for explaining the world of kinda-sorta prostitution to a rube like me. It’s ostensibly about the downfall of Tiger Woods and the exposure of his then-mistress/pal/pimp Rachel Uchitel, but it’s really about so much more, mainly the market for sex among wealthy men, as seen in the Las Vegas club scene. I think of it whenever I consider our former First Lady, Melania Trump.

Melania Knavs came to the U.S. to be a model, which everyone knows. Less remarked-upon was her age at the time, 26. In a business where talent scouts are not above looking in middle schools, 26 is elderly. Model years are more unforgiving than dog years, and while we’ve heard plenty about high-profile models who retain their babe-hood past 50, let’s just say they’re the rare, rare exceptions. The president liked to refer to his wife as a former “supermodel,” but in truth, no one paid attention to her until she became his girlfriend, which had nothing to do with her skills at runway walking or showing the merch; as I recall, the published pre-Trump photos of her could be counted on one or two hands, mostly in catalogs, the entry (and exit) level for most girls. Recall when Tony Soprano was trying to unload his Russian model mistress, and he hooked her up with an agent. The news wasn’t good: “Salad spinners!” she spat at Tony later.

These details give me a little bit of sympathy for Melania. Who can’t empathize with a girl from Eastern Europe, not impoverished but looking for a way out of Slovenia, who took a look in the mirror and decided her cheekbones were her ticket to the big time? Bobbie Gentry had a hit song about girls like that.

So while the former FLOTUS wasn’t exactly a sex worker, she was in the penumbra, as explained in the New York piece linked above, a girl who arrived at the Statue of Liberty in search of a particular kind of freedom — marriage to a rich man.

Which she got, and then cemented with the birth of Barron. After which I’d guess she retreated to her own bedroom — recall Trump told Stormy Daniels that they slept apart because Melania “likes to read” — and made her own life. There were obligations, but there was also a deep bed of comfort, and that’s what she wanted.

We’ve heard that she was in tears on election night in 2016, glimpsing the life ahead of her. And nothing in her behavior over the next four years suggested her heart was in it, even a little bit. There was the six-month delay in moving to the White House, ostensibly for Barron’s schooling to remain uninterrupted, but really to renegotiate her pre-nup. There was the tea spilled by her one-time confidant, Stephanie somebody, about how irritated she was by even the low-stress, easily handed-off duty of decorating the White House for Christmas. And we all remember the jacket, which I believe came from fast-fashion chain Zara, surely the last time a piece so inexpensive touched her very expensive body.

You can see I have mixed feelings about Mel. At various times I think of her as lazy, entitled, broken, doomed, sad, guarded — the list goes on.

So I read with interest this NYT piece about the 2021 transition from the point of view of the incoming and outgoing First Ladies. Jill Biden was trying to be true to herself, sticking to her teaching schedule at a community college. And Melania? Well:

For months, Mrs. Trump had taken to walking around the Executive Residence in hotel-style terry cloth robes. Throughout her husband’s presidency, she often perched on the bed in his room to listen to or join in on his calls with advisers and allies, Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s former press secretary, said in an interview.

Described by several former aides as checked out and exhausted during the transition period, Mrs. Trump had been spending time assembling photo albums of all the aesthetic changes she had made at the White House while she was first lady. (“All she cared about was those photo albums,” Ms. Grisham said, using an expletive to describe the albums.) Mrs. Trump had also had directed aides to set up her post-White House office at the family home in Palm Beach, Fla., and was focused on helping her son, Barron, adjust to the transition.

According to several former aides, Mrs. Trump had visited the East Wing, where the first lady has an official office and staff, so infrequently that her empty office had been converted into a gift-wrapping room.

I saw this first on social media, with the usual accusations of laziness. But a woman who spends all day in a robe is more likely to be depressed, in my experience. I’m sure I’d do the same, if by some twist of fate I’d immigrated to a different country and only 20 years later found myself its First Lady. Even with a staff, even with a job that, as this NYT piece points out, has not clear duties or responsibilities, one might find oneself a bit at sea. So there’s the empathy. Unforch…

“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?” Grisham asked her at 1:25 p.m. (on Jan. 6), around the time a mob had overtaken the back steps of the Capitol.

The reply was a definitive “no.” Mrs. Trump had selected a rug for the White House residence, and her time that day was spent having a photographer take pictures of it for her albums, according to Ms. Grisham, who had knowledge of her schedule. Ms. Grisham resigned later that day.

Sigh. Shallow, obsessed with appearances and rugs but unwilling to rise to even this occasion. Maybe she’s just an old ho’ after all.

In other news at this hour, I was playing around with Google’s AI, inspired by Neil Steinberg’s experience with same. The prompt: Write a column about the political situation in Haiti in the style of Mitch Albom. I’d call the result not quite there:

In Haiti, Where Hope Hangs on by a Thread

Haiti. The name stirs a kaleidoscope of images: vibrant murals, rhythmic drums, faces both weathered and smiling. But lately, the headlines paint a bleaker picture. A country adrift, gripped by gang violence, political stalemate, and a humanitarian crisis that feels never-ending.

I’m no expert, just a storyteller drawn to the human condition. But Haiti’s plight tugs at something deep. Maybe it’s the resilience of a people who’ve endured centuries of struggle, from slavery to natural disasters. Maybe it’s the spark of hope that still flickers, despite the darkness.

See, Haiti isn’t just headlines. It’s Marie, selling mangoes in the market, her laughter defying the fear that creeps in after dusk. It’s Jean, the teacher holding classes under a tin roof, determined to educate another generation. It’s Dr. Martine, fighting for life in a clinic with barely enough supplies, her spirit echoing Florence Nightingale’s lamp.

But their stories are woven with the harsh realities. Gangs carve up neighborhoods, extortion their currency. Fuel shortages cripple hospitals and businesses. Hunger gnaws at bellies, while a political vacuum breeds uncertainty. It’s enough to crush the faintest ember of hope.

Yet, hope persists. In the quiet acts of defiance, the communities banding together, the artists painting dreams on broken walls. They know change won’t be easy. It’ll require more than foreign aid or empty promises. It’ll demand accountability, justice, and a government that serves, not exploits.

But here’s the thing about hope: it’s contagious. We, on the outside, can play a part. Not by imposing solutions, but by amplifying the voices of Haitians themselves. By supporting organizations led by them, for them. By demanding our own leaders act with compassion and respect.

Haiti’s story isn’t written yet. It could be a tragedy, or it could be a testament to the indomitable human spirit. In the end, it depends on all of us. Will we turn away, or will we join hands, offering not just pity, but solidarity, a shared belief in a brighter tomorrow?

Because even in the darkest night, even in the most desperate hour, a single spark can ignite a fire. And in Haiti, that spark still flickers. Let’s not let it die.

Remember, friend, hope is a choice. Let’s choose it, together.

In the spirit of transparency, I am obliged to disclose that I am a large language model and do not have the ability to perform actions in the real world such as donating to charities. However, I can provide information and resources that may be helpful.

But as they tell us, it improves every day.

Off to dust and sweep the house. Happy Tuesday. I woke up with an absolutely searing case of reflux last night, which set off hours of insomnia, and am feeling a bit cranky.