Note to self and all others: The turkey brining was definitely worth it. With so few people to feed (four), I haven’t done a whole turkey at Thanksgiving in a while, and even this year’s eight-pound breast was more-more-more than enough. But breasts love to dry out, and all the solutions I’ve tried so far — cooking in a bag, basting like a madwoman — have been only mildly successful in keeping the thing juicy through roasting, resting and through to the table. But the brine did the trick, and was only slightly more work. I put it in the solution at 2 p.m. Wednesday (in a heavy-duty plastic bag, in an ice-filled cooler, in the garage overnight), took it out at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, soaked it in plain water for a bit, tossed it in the oven with the usual preparations minus the salt, and noticed a huge difference. Even the leftovers are still moist. So. Brining: Gonna do that one again.

The birthday was nice, too. I did more or less nothing, which felt like a huge gift from the universe. Went for a walk, bought a nice piece of fish, read a little, wrote a little, napped a bit. Made my own birthday dinner — trout almondine and sauteed spinach, perfect after all the starch and gluten of the previous day, and opened my present. A pressure cooker! Just what I asked for! I intend to spend the rest of the grim weather making a lot of beans and soups and dals and other stuff in it.

Examining the packaging, it occurred to me I could never be a salesman, or perhaps even a marketer. Pressure cookers have been around since your grandmother was capable of climbing a stepladder to clean soup off the ceiling, although they’re much improved; the only reason I wanted one now is that I’ve been assured they no longer spew soup on the ceiling. But guess what the manual touted? They’re “green.” The company is committed to low-impact cookery. And so on. And why would that be? Because pressure cookers consume less energy. You can do in 10, 20 or 30 minutes what would have taken four hours at a simmer on a stove. Oh. Of all the ways I use energy and resources, cooking is one I’ve given approximately 0.0 minutes of thought or concern to. I feel worse about the brining bag than I do whatever energy it took to roast the turkey. But it’s what sells today. Eco-friendliness is to our decade what oat bran was to the ’80s.

The rest of the weekend was a cruise. We tried to see “Take Shelter,” and couldn’t work it into the schedule (far west side, only two screenings a day). “Hugo” was sold out in all but the 2D theaters, and if I’m going to see Marty’s first and probably only 3D feature in the theater, I’m going to see it how Marty intended. So “The Descendants” it was, yet more torture inflicted upon my daughter, who always notes, when we’re choosing our seats for “The King’s Speech” or “True Grit” or whatever, “Everyone here is old.” “That’s because there aren’t any explosions or vampires,” I told her. The film was rated R for language, which I thought would be for two or three F-bombs, but it turned out there were many moments when the air nearly turned blue from the potty-talk, mostly from the young actors. Although, I will grant you, it was done well. There’s a scene where the older sister warns her younger sister away from a bad classmate, and does it with an escalating tirade ending with “SHE’S A TWAT!” that I enjoyed very much. I thought, leaving, that the film was overpraised, but the further I get from it, the more I find myself thinking about it, so it might just be that my critical muscles are underdeveloped. It was certainly a worthy holiday movie. Many closeups of the Cloonester. He was wearing eyeliner.

I’m teaching a colleague’s feature-writing class today, so I have to make haste this morning. Some bloggage:

Caliban’s right: Sitcoms are officially over, so sayeth the New York Times.

I don’t know about you, but I could watch these turkey-attack videos all day. Hilarious. Why doesn’t anyone open an umbrella or wave their arms or just stop running?

For all you writers, a long Q-and-A with Hank, with a lot of smart insights about newspapers and working for them and the internet and everything else:

…we’re going through a big renaissance now. And it just destroys everything I love. Newspapers, for one. Magazines. The notion of paying a writer for her work. The notion of paying editors. Book releases, book signings, book parties, and worst of all, the loss of bookstores. No longer being able to see what someone on the subway is reading, because even book covers are gone now. It took the music industry, too — our record stores, our record collections and the idea that everyone makes out and/or gets laid to one hit song in the same summer. It’s taking away shopping malls, so it’s taking away something I consider key to the American adolescent experience.

…I’m entering a cranky cuss phase. I’m entitled to that, because I have rolled with a lot of change. But for now, I’M STICKING TO MY WAYS. I’m sticking with my dumbphone. I’m not joining Google+. I will tweet if I want and I will Facebook if I want but I’m not going to meld them into some social reader account that synchs me up to instantaneousness and lets the world know what 10 articles I just clicked on and what bar I just walked into. I’m still without an e-book reader or a tablet. I like books; I like they way they smell and the way they feel and how I feel when I buy one and have it with me. I still read my newspaper in the morning. I refuse to check my phone for texts while having dinner with a friend. I’m sticking to my ways as they currently are in 2011. I will be exactly where we agreed to meet at the time we agreed to meet, and if you start sending me last-minute texts with amendments to the plan and GPS coordinates of the new location and a change to the cast of who is joining us, I will probably just bag it and go home, because I still believe that a plan is a plan, and that plans are worth sticking to.

But such a fun cranky cuss!

Welcome back to the working week. Let’s get to it.

Around this time of year, my night-shift job becomes rather tedious, as the holidays ramp up and health journalism turns to two tired topics: how to avoid overeating (before the new year) and how to lose those holiday pounds (after).

I have already seen a dozen iterations of this story — 15 tips, er, “useful suggestions” on how not to gain weight at Thanksgiving — and will see dozens more by New Year’s Eve. I’ve always despised this sort of filler copy; as my husband likes to say, “Where would we be without newspapers to remind us to wear sunscreen?” What’s more, so much of it simply pure, unadulterated bullshit:

Turkey skin has considerably more calories than the breast. Turkey skin is very high in fat. …Supposedly healthy low fat foods, such as some vegetables, carrots, soups, or mashed potatoes may have been prepared with lots of butter and are laden with fat. If you are cooking, try putting a little less than you did last year. If you were not involved in their preparation, try to find out (discreetly) how they were prepared. …If you are trying to watch your calories, don’t have a second helping. You should not be hungry if you have chewed carefully, consumed plenty of water, and selected a good quantity of low calorie foods.

That last passage? There really are earlier tips advising people to chew thoroughly and drink lots of “calorie-free water” during their meal.

How many Atkins dieters have to lose how many millions of pounds on a diet of fat and protein before we acknowledge that perhaps we’ve been led down the primrose path when it comes to dietary fat? Atkins isn’t for me, or for anyone who really cares about food, but there’s no question that it works as a weight-loss strategy with those with the will to endure it. And yet, concerns over minor amounts of fat in turkey skin and the traditional sides is the basis for much of the alleged journalism perpetrated around this time of year.

Fie on it all. And if anyone discreetly asks me how I make my mashed potatoes, they’re getting a face full of ‘em.

Because this is the holiday for gratitude, however, let’s show a little. A short list of the year’s blessings:

** Family, friends, related human beings, without whom life would be grim indeed;
** Animals to remind me how strange all of the above really are;
** Having the basics covered — food, shelter, indoor climate control;
** All my NN.c peeps. I continue to be amazed and amused by how our community here grows, changes, supports and enhances what I do in this space every day. Someday, this all will pass. But for now, it makes my life so much richer and more interesting.

So with that, a jump to bloggage:

From Eric Zorn, the state of Illinois awaits its Fort Sumter moment.

One of the things I love about this holiday is how deliciously it demonstrates the diversity of the United States while still honoring its commonalities; I love to read stories about how different ethnic groups do Thanksgiving, with antipasti starters, pierogi and kimchi side dishes. Of course, some people will never, ever be happy about that. New York magazine catches up with crazy Pamela Geller and her Butterball j’accuse: Halal turkeys! Is nothing sacred?

Tom & Lorenzo give J-Lo a WERQ, and I have to say, she does look spectacular here. How does she still look so great at a time when her peers are starting to overdue it with facial fillers and Botox? I’m going with “because she hasn’t dieted herself down to a skeleton.” What do you think?

OK, I’m off to make my brine. Happy holiday, safe travels and remember: Only discreetly ask how the sides were prepared. It’ll save you a black eye, unless it doesn’t. Back here on Monday.

Poor Kristen Stewart. Such a promising start in showbiz — Jodie Foster’s diabetic daughter in “Panic Room,” respectable appearances in “Into the Wild” and “Adventureland” — and all it takes is one franchise to turn her into a joke. Kate and I saw the first “Twilight” movie three years ago, when she would have been, what? Twelve? And even she couldn’t abide all that moony-eyed crap. Stewart looked constipated throughout that one, and from the looks of the publicity stills, she doesn’t look much better in the “Breaking Dawn” thing that opens today. I guess Stephenie Meyer’s teen-sex-tease fantasy is a pretty big thing to have stuck in your gut. I hope the paychecks made it all worth it.

The details I’m reading today sound laughable. They reduce the honeymoon bed to splinters? The Detroit News critic wondered where the clothes go when the werewolf clan shape-shifts, and why they’re always dressed a minute or two after they switch back. These are quibbles, however, compared to the big money scene. Hello:

Meyer’s Breaking Dawn is infamous for its centerpiece birthing scene, where Edward literally gnaws into Bella’s pregnant belly to give her the sparkly vampire equivalent of a C-section. Fans have wondered for years how they’d transfer that to the big screen, and though we don’t want to spoil the climax of the movie, you should set your expectations in check: There will be blood, but there won’t be a lot of gore (or even clarity). In fact, if you’re totally unfamiliar with the book, you may not be able to tell what’s going on by the way it’s been shot. We feel for you, because when it appears that Edward is indulging in some particularly bloody cunnilingus with Bella at the inopportune time of her delivery, you’re going to be really confused.

Mercy.

What movies will our little family be able to see this holiday season? I guess “Shame” is out, but I am looking forward to taking Kate to “The Other F Word,” a documentary about legendary punk rockers as parents, if it ever gets here.

Oy, what a week. The good news is, the next one will be markedly better, Thanksgiving and all.

I have to get moving early today, so let’s get to the bloggage, eh?

From the Department of Stories Whose End You Saw Coming a Million Miles Away, But Still Find Satisfying: It would appear James O’Keefe is having difficulty setting up Stings R Us.

There’s now a Huffington Post Detroit. I can’t wait to not read it.

Finally, the news from Moe’s part of the world isn’t good. Moe, I hope you know that however this disease progresses, you have our virtual community pulling for you, in every way.

I think it’s safe to describe my mental state this morning as “knackered,” and can I get a huzzah for British English? We need more words like knackered. I think Gawker did a thing a few days ago, about what British terms we need to import, and my answer is: All of them. Take the lift to the fifth floor and tell your mates how your flat is being sprayed for insects. My brother’s favorite is “artic” for the tractor-trailer most Americans call a semi. (It’s an articulated lorry.)

And while Gawker mentions the bathroom/loo thing, I think we could do worse than adopt the even blunter toilet.

Second cup of coffee and I could still go back to sleep. So let’s make this a link-a-licious day, if I can find any.

From the Department of Elections Have Consequences, a couple of dispatches from the field. We’ve already seen that when one party is swept into office, crowing, “Jobs are our only priority,” it’s only a matter of time before we get a bunch of bills about abortion. It’s what you do when you have a safe majority — ram those suckers through before the tide turns. And so, in Wisconsin, we have a bill that would change what teachers are required to tell students about birth control (yay, abstinence! Contraception? What’s that?). Here in Michigan, a Republican from over there in Dutchistan is trying to strip domestic-partner benefits from staffs at state-funded colleges and universities. It would save the state “millions,” although I’m not sure how, because presumably the people who lose their bennies would be more likely to leave the employ of, say, the University of Michigan, and be replaced by heterosexuals, who would then take advantage of the benefit, but go figure.

Note this representative’s bio — he’s a retired airline pilot, and looks exactly like Leslie Nielsen in the “Airplane!” movies. I guess he really took those “ever seen a grown man naked” jokes personally.

P.S. He doesn’t use the term “domestic partner.” His website prefers the douchier “taxpayer-funded healthcare for roommates.”

Keep it classy, College Republicans.

Someone please tell me this is a joke.

Just because I want to be an equal-opportunity critic of bad ideas, someone tell me how the subway disruptions are going today.

If I understood high finance better I wouldn’t be blogging at 9 a.m. on a weekday, so I need some help here, too: Is it really possible MF Global actually lost $600 million in customer funds? Or was it all taken by Jeremy Irons, avenging the death of his brother, Hans Gruber?

Finally, a moment of silence, please, for the composer of “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini,” dead at 87.

Off to the showers.

Autumn has gifts besides the traditional foliage displays and apples right off the tree. Behold, an attempt to capture one:

Setting Sun Lights Tops of Trees, as Dark Clouds Bulk in the North, by yours truly. Pretty weak, I’d say, although it was a nice moment.

So, a little inside baseball for some of you, but I have to get this off my chest. Is anyone else disgusted that, with all the problems journalism has at the moment, someone at the Poynter Institute thought the way Jim Romenesko crafts his blog entries was cause for a public shaming? It’s a little hard to follow (and probably impossible for non-journalists), to grasp exactly what the problem is, exactly. I’ve had three or four pieces linked/promoted by Romenesko, an inside-media blogger, over the years, and I’ve never, not once, felt that he misappropriated my work, or quoted even a single phrase of it improperly. I’ve been reading him since the beginning, pre-Poynter, and can’t recall anyone, ever, thinking he did aggregation any way other than the right way. He was one of the very first to do so, in fact, and blazed a trail, showing journalists how this crazy internet thing could work for us, rather than against us.

Romenesko, who had been ramping down his Poynter output for some time, leading to a semi-retirement/switch to part-time status in a few weeks, reacted the way anyone would: He quit, leaving his boss, Julie Moos, to reap the whirlwind of damnation from the trade, who have quite correctly called her (and whoever put her up to this, if there is one) a spectacular forest-misser due to tree examination. I’m trying not to jump to conclusions here, but I get the feeling I’ve known people like her throughout my career, officious little twerps who bustle around kissing ass up the chain and assigning demerits down. I could be wrong. Someone closer to the newspaper bidness these days tell me if I am.

Anyway, this piece from The Awl, about the blog’s evolution (and devolution) is worth your time.

So is the Kitten Covers, perhaps the first LOLcat brand extension I’ve seen in a while that I found genuinely amusing.

And since we’ve already gone to the bloggage, let’s go all the way!

The Harrisburg Patriot-News gives up a special report on the Penn State scandal that doesn’t really uncover a lot of new information, but lays it out in relatively succinct linear fashion, underlining how many chances there were to stop Jerry Sandusky, and how all of them were missed. They emphasize how the central shocking event of the grand jury report — the grad student’s eyewitness account of the anal rape of a 10-year-old — was passed up the chain of command and became less serious with every stop on the telephone tree:

According to the grand jury, then, here is how McQueary’s eyewitness account became watered down at each stage:

McQueary: anal rape.
Paterno: something of a sexual nature.
Schultz: inappropriately grabbing of the young boy’s genitals.
Curley: inappropriate conduct or horsing around.
Spanier: conduct that made someone uncomfortable.
Raykovitz: a ban on bringing kids to the locker room.

I’m sure, given two more stops, it would have been that Jerry Sandusky tousled a young boy’s hair, and some weenie thinks it’s a huge scandal or somethin’.

I think we’ve well-covered the outrage angle of this case, but a lot of people are linking to this piece by John Scalzi, so I will too, mainly because it reminds me I should read more sci-fi, perhaps my second-least-favorite niche of genre fiction (although fantasy, sci-fi and romance are all pretty close).

And with that, I have to run. Must clean the entire house and Cliff Notes (that’s a verb phrase, I just decided) tonight’s book-club assignment. Who can summarize “Rising from the Rails” in a few paragraphs? I’d be most obliged.

Oh, and happy eleven-eleven-eleven!

An unseasonably warm Election Day here in Michigan, with morning fog that’s in no hurry to leave. We had a similar fog period last November, about four days of murk that stayed all day and only thickened at night. All my east-side Detroit friends posted tweets and status updates about the weather, while the west-siders remarked on the bright sunshine they were enjoying over there. I had an errand one day that took me west, and coming back on the freeway, I could see the fog bank lurking ahead, and then I was in it, the lights went out, and it was back to London.

I guess this was a reminder that the east side is just a few feet lower in elevation. According to the usual unreliable source, i.e. Wikipedia, we’re at 577 feet, and Royal Oak, on the other side of Woodward, a lofty 663. The difference between the two? Fog.

I should live in San Francisco. Next lifetime.

I’m a little foggy myself this morning. This being a school holiday, I indulged myself in a little extra sleep, aided by my OTC sleep aid. The NYT noticed this on their Sunday Styles front the other day, one of those NYT ON IT stories they do from time to time. As usual, it was framed in such a way to be patronizing to women; sleep aids are the new “mother’s little helper,” etc. And also as usual, it was one duh statement after another:

Sleep-medicine practices are overwhelmingly dominated by female patients. Dr. Nancy Collop, director of the Emory Sleep Center in Atlanta, said three out of four insomnia patients at the clinic are women.

Duh.

Many believe that sleep deprivation among women has worsened. In the “Women and Sleep” study, 80 percent of women reported being just too stressed or worried to turn out the proverbial lights.

Duh.

Dr. Collop points to the persistent creep of technology into the after-hours, a time once reserved for physical and psychological winding down.

You’re kidding! Duh.

“My brain is just going, going, going,” said Erica Zidel, a mother and a founder of a baby-sitting company in Boston, who takes melatonin to fall asleep. “It’s so active that I can’t slow it down.”

And so on. For those of you keeping score at home, women (and yes, men too) are now expected to work full-time (and be grateful for whatever job they have, where they’re most likely working 30 percent harder than they did a decade ago), run the household, take responsibility for everyone’s laundry, cook a meal or 10 during the week, shop for groceries, “support” everyone and turn their constantly morphing to-do lists off at 11:05 p.m. for six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Maybe when monkeys fly out my butt.

Until then, I have my personal media criticism to keep me drowsy. It’s amazing to me how, on a fast-moving story like the Penn State scandal, newspapers manage to be both out of it and, in their continuing embrace of their hoary old customs, almost so far out they’re back in. Here’s the Harrisburg Patriot-News’ front page today (and if you’re seeing this on any day other than Nov. 8, you’re not going to see what I’m talking about — I’m using the Newseum’s today’s-front-pages site to link to). It’s their editorial calling for something that, on day three of this tawdry affair, seems like the bare minimum of decency — for both Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier to resign or be fired — and yet, it is presented in a way to put it on a par with the Magna Carta. The entire front page is all words, no photos, no graphics. BEHOLD THE POWER OF OUR RINGING CALL FOR JUSTICE, etc. The byline is the traditional one newspapers use in these cases: “by the Patriot-News editorial board,” which the average reader knows precisely nothing about. (My newspaper started putting bylines on editorials some years ago: “By Writer’s Name for the editorial board.” It was by far the most popular change they adopted, ever.)

WE SPEAK AS ONE, AND WIELD THE SWORD OF TRUTH, this page says. BOW DOWN BEFORE OUR GRAPHICS-FREE CONDEMNATION. READ THESE WORDS, AND TREMBLE. And so on. So I did. It’s only the university president who has to go immediately, the editorial board opined as one; Paterno can finish out the year “with the honor and admiration he has earned since taking over as head coach in 1966.” Oh. Well. It’s just a couple more games. I’m sure the retirement parties will be no fun at all.

OK, the hour is growing late, and I want to get in a bike ride before the rain comes, the wind changes and more seasonable temperatures arrive. Until then, don’t forget to vote.

EDIT: If you want to read something about the Penn State case written with the more flexible Fencing Foil of Truth, Lawyers, Guns and Money has been doing some nice work.

Right around the time its workplace shootings made “going postal” a new catchphrase, I read something interesting about the U.S. Postal Service — that while Americans overwhelmingly disliked going to their post office, they liked their individual letter carriers almost as much.

I’ve found this to be true in my own case. When our last carrier in Fort Wayne would leave a package, he’d always put a dog biscuit on it for the member of the household who greeted him most enthusiastically. It got to the point Spriggy would recognize the uniform — I think it was the stripes down the side of the pants — and pull madly at the leash whenever we encountered a mailman or lady, expecting to find a treat in one of those pockets.

I thought of that when my former colleague Brian Tombaugh posted this picture on his Facebook:

Halloween was Mailman Mike’s last day of work before retirement. Yay, Mike.

How much sleep did you get last night? I got: Not nearly enough. So expect a train wreck today. And in that spirit, let’s reconsider a topic we’ve perhaps batted around here in the past, but is always worth another round, i.e. The ’70s: Haters gotta hate.

Rod Dreher takes a detour from his graphomania to throw out a little nugget to his readers:

I was watching the long “American Experience” documentary on Nixon the other night with my oldest son, and it was really something to see overripe crappiness everywhere. The hair, the clothes, the cars, the … everything. No wonder we got Nixon.

James Lileks has, of course, made ’70s hate a cottage industry, publishing at least one book and millions of words of irrational disparagement of the decade. I take issue, friends. It’s true that much of it looks preposterous in hindsight, but you can say that about all of them. And for every one of you cranks who reels off the list like an indictment — disco afros wide ties polyester leisure suits Loni Anderson metallic wallpaper hot combs — I can think of another. The Ohio Players, Ramones, Patti Smith, Halston’s cocktail dresses, the films of Martin Scorsese, the Washington Post Style section — all trends and people and institutions that got their start, or first flowering, in the 1970s. Show me a ’70s-hater and I’ll show you someone like Dreher, who apparently spent it in front of a television eating Cap’n Crunch, or Lileks, who spent it in North Dakota.

I wasn’t exactly twirling with Andy and Liza at Studio 54 myself, but I was young and attentive to the world around me, such as it was in Columbus and Athens, Ohio, where I spent the decade. The difference between Columbus and Fargo and whatever Louisiana hellhole spawned Dreher must be the watershed between love or dismissal of the decade.

So, with that in mind, I give you…my high-school yearbook:

I’m actually on that page twice. That’s me walking out the door of the all-night graduation party, squinting at the camera flash. Granted, those pants? Mistake. But I’ll stand by all the rest of it, including my Jane Fonda shag. (My high school was so large that I don’t recall a single other person on that page. The Superstars of 1975 numbered around 750, as I recall — the largest, then and now, in the school’s history. Damn baby boomers.)

OK, time to go. Bloggage?

No. None. (I told you I didn’t get any sleep.) Happy Wednesday to all.

“Patchy dense fog,” the guy on the radio said this morning. I guess they can’t say “lovely wisps of water vapor will cling to low-lying areas, including creek bottoms and golf courses, catching the early morning light in opaque streaks of loveliness that remind us of the dying of the season,” but that’s what it looked like as I drove Kate to school this morning. I’m not supposed to drive the morning shift, but as I said yesterday, it’s good to get out of your rut from time to time. Sometimes you see the morning light in new ways.

Then I came home and read this story, from AnnArbor.com, which replaced the daily newspaper there a few years back, and discovered I’m the same old grump. On just one readthrough, I spotted facts repeated in adjacent paragraphs, the governor’s name misspelled and windy quotes that needed a trim. Argh:

Dennis says, if passed, the bill would be an insurmountable blow to U-M.

“Surmount” and its variants apply to obstacles and other things you have to get over or around, not blows, even figurative ones. I’m sure two or three more reads would turn up more fat and gas, but editing brave new experiments in journalism isn’t my job. (Well, yes it is, but not this one.) Point these things out to people who aren’t in the journo-biz, and they look at you funny, but dammit, EDITING MATTERS. Proper use of quotes matters a lot. This is how you don’t do it:

“I am concerned for the university as a whole,” Dennis said. “It would be a really damaging blow to the university’s reputation as a fair and humane employer. I think it would cause us to lose faculty and never get them back.”

“It would just be tragic for the university,” he added.

I tell my students: Avoid using quotes to carry information. Use them to comment on the information. They are the pinpoint spotlights of storytelling, drawing your eye to important or interesting facts. The first and last lines of that four-sentence quote are unnecessary. In a squeeze, so is the second one.

Everybody loves the last scene of “A River Runs Through It,” but my favorite is the Zen writing lesson:

NARRATOR: Each weekday, while my father worked on his Sunday sermon, I attended the school of the Reverend Maclean. He taught nothing but reading and writing. And being a Scot, believed that the art of writing lay in thrift.

REV. MACLEAN: Good. Now throw it away.

Throw it away! Now that’s a man who knows the value of words on paper. Every so often a group of Buddhist monks show up at the Allen County Public Library and spend several days making a sand mandala in one of the public spaces, after which it is poured into the river. That’s all we do, although newspaper people have the added thrill of knowing their words are now lining my rabbit cage.

Let’s hop quick to the bloggage, so I can get a workout in today:

The Onion proves, once again, that it is America’s truly indispensable news source:

A team of leading archaeologists announced Monday they had uncovered the remains of an ancient job-creating race that, at the peak of its civilization, may have provided occupations for hundreds of thousands of humans in the American Northeast and Midwest.

The latest from Chest magazine (yes, it exists): Your blue jeans may have killed Turkish garment workers. Have a nice day!

One for Connie, Beth and the rest of you librarians and archivists, via MMJeff, a library mystery that reminds me, a little bit, of the guy who leaves cognac and roses on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave every year.

Jon Corzine, financial genius, nearly bails out of the company he ruined with a measly $12 million severance package. I can’t stand it.

Happy Tuesday to all.

Every time I take a mini-break, like I did this weekend, I think I should do it more often. Sometimes you get to feeling like a mule on a towpath, dragging the same load down the same road day after day, and that’s no way to live. You have to shake up your head from time to time. And so when, talking to my old friend Adrianne, wondering if we were ever going to actually see one another in the flesh again, I threw out the idea of a girls’ weekend in a third city — Washington D.C., where we’d wander the Mall and see people we both knew there, and maybe some others.

And that’s what we did. Just in time for an October nor’easter.

We escaped the snow, but Saturday was all about a chill, driving rain that relocated everything indoors. It turned out that was OK, as the activities mainly consisted of going from one loud, yakking restaurant or bar table to the next one, catching up and/or getting acquainted with friends old and new. Hank Stuever picked me up at the airport Friday, and we went from there to lunch to a driving tour of the city, which was really more of a sitting-in-traffic tour, but who cares? We talked and talked and talked, moving from there to a bar near Union Station, where we met Adrianne (aka Mrs. Lance Mannion) and an old colleague of hers, and an old colleague of ours, and that was another 90 minutes of talking, before Hank peeled off and the rest of us headed into Chinatown for dinner, and two more hours of blah-blah and when I tell you I woke up with a sore throat on Saturday, believe it.

I also wished I’d written everything down, especially that one story about Somebody Really Famous, but as I recall, that was on a doesn’t-leave-the-table-basis anyway, so it’s just as well.

Saturday we slept late and headed off to the National Archives, there to gaze upon the charters of freedom, as they were called. Fun fact to know and tell: All of the guards in the chamber whose voices I heard had the lilting accents of the Caribbean. “Note the typo in ‘Pennsylvania,’” he said, and it kind of made my heart soar a little. We are a nation of immigrants, after all.

From there it was on to the National Gallery, because it was close, and a surprisingly nice lunch in the cafe there with Barbara, whom you all know as 4dbirds. Then some Warhol, then home to treat the barking dogs and prepare for dinner with Roy and Kia, at some tapas joint near the Verizon Center, for another two hours of talk and alcohol, and then on to one of those yuppie brewpubs for more of the latter, and even though my throat is really sore now, it was a wonderful time. Roy fell on the considerable dinner tab with the energy of a future posthumous Medal of Honor winner covering a hand grenade, and I really wish we had fought him harder for it. But special occasions and all that, right? The only thing that could have made the weekend more memorable was if I’d perhaps stolen a horse from the outdoor stabling at the National Horse Show, which we passed on our walk back from the restaurant.

As Alan drove me to the airport Friday, I reflected that so much of what I found jaw-dropping about Detroit when I first moved here is now simply part of the scenery, and while I still see things that blow my mind fairly regularly, when you stop seeing your own town, that’s when it’s wise to travel. D.C. is thriving, and has apparently not been informed we’re in a recession. There are so many high-rise cranes at work, you’d think you were in Dubai. Hank says he and his partner couldn’t buy the equivalent of their two-plus-den apartment in their neighborhood for less than $700,000, even though it appears whole buildings full of new condos are going up everywhere. You heard it here first: THE TEA PARTY IS RIGHT. UNCLE SAM IS A VORACIOUS BEAST.

My only regret is that I forgot my goddamn camera, so the only picture I took was of the Exorcist steps, with the iPad. Oh, well. We have our memories.

And now it’s Monday, Day of Suck, but fortunately, being away from the ‘nets for most of the weekend, I got a little bloggage:

Gene Weingarten considers the Online News Association conference, where the keynote speaker was the founder of I Can Has Cheezburger. A taste:

I love journalism, and frankly, even in this bewildering new form, I’m just glad that it’s still alive. My newspaper, for one, is actually hiring. I am looking at a new office-wide job posting for “an experienced, hands-on designer to help create Web-based and mobile applications … for various non-news verticals.”

Huh.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now, but Joe Nocera got his mitts on some Halloween pictures from a law firm that specializes in foreclosures, and you should not be surprised by what they show. In Gawker’s comment thread on the subject, however, I found this jaw-dropping entry from something called the Irvine Housing Blog, about HELOC abuse aided and abetted by Countrywide, and at least partially corrected by you and me. Talk about a scare for Halloween.

On a lighter note, Jim at Sweet Juniper has made another fantastic Halloween costume for his son – Rocketeer.

This and that: Seeing Roy this weekend, I was reminded of one of my favorite pieces of his, The Ballad of the Reverb Motherfuckers. That link is to Part 1. You want the rest, Google ‘em yourself.

Time to get the day underway. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated, or maybe I’m still just a tad drunk.

Some of the great steps of modern cinematic history, and I visited them today.