It was a few years ago that I started to notice a particular type of billboard on our travels up north. Once the subdivisions give way to forests, they come fast and furious: A smiling old person sits in a wheelchair, while a young woman in a gaily printed medical-scrub top stands nearby, or perhaps kneels so as to look up into the old person’s eyes. In the big type, one of two basic messages:

When you think joint replacement, think (name of hospital) “Joint replacement” is interchangeable with “cardiac catheterization” or any other surgery unlikely to be performed on people under 50.

Your No. 1 choice in health-care careers: (name of community college)

What this tells any half-bright observer is that you’re entering an economic dead zone, a post-industrial (or, in the case of northern Michigan, post light-industrial) wasteland filled with old people who lack the will or cash to move. Or you’ve entered Florida, Arizona or North Carolina. But this is a signifier, as the proprietor of Gin and Tacos knows well:

Visit the website of any derelict Rust Belt city and search for references to the number of hospitals or the strength of the health care sector. It won’t take long to find them. It turns out that along with local government and, of course, prisons, hospitals are one of the few things that remain open when everything else closes. They may not have jobs anymore, but someone still needs to lock ’em up and occasionally stitch ’em up. The hundreds of Fast Company-style articles in the business media over the past few years proclaiming nursing as THE NEXT BIG THING in the job market always puzzled me… is it really a sign of the strength of our economy when the best job (supposedly) is to take care of the rapidly increasing number of dying old people?

When I went to New York last fall, I was amazed at all the strollers being pushed around Brooklyn, even as I knew Brooklyn is the breeders’ borough of choice. I felt like one of the old people in “Children of Men,” P.D. James’ novel about a dystopian future where all the women in the world have become infertile. Michigan is an aging state, even below the up-north regions, something our booming health-care sector indicates. I’m not quite one of those women who, at the sight of a baby, wants to run up and beg to stroke the infant’s downy-soft flesh, but I feel I’m getting there. This maybe the the grandma years asserting themselves, I admit.

But if I’m such a grandma-in-waiting, why did I seriously consider making this — “tatted up, overweight, half-ass English speaking gap-tooth skank ho” — my Twitter bio yesterday? This is from the woeful recent works of a local judge, who was booted from the bench yesterday, and you can follow the link to get the rest of the story, but for some reason that line stuck with me. Some people can really make a text message sing.

Oy, what a week. The cold is finally, finally breaking. Wendy and I worked at home today, and that usually means a morning/noon walkie, but we both stood at the back door and just scowled; as the misery drags on, we both seem to be getting weaker, not stronger.

And Opening Day is Monday. I can’t decide if I want to go to the office and behold the spectacle; it could be terribly ugly.

A little light bloggage: I’ve talked before here about urban farms in Detroit, really more like super-gardens. Here’s a charming story about a woman I know here, who raises ducks on four lots adjacent to her home. Actually, she doesn’t exactly raise ducks, but rather has them, and collects the eggs. At some point you can’t really say you’re raising livestock if you’re unwilling to swing the axe on the chopping block, and Suzanne treats her flock like friends. She has a B&B on one side of the complex, and if any of you are interested in visiting the Paris of the Midwest, I’m sure she can hook you up for a great price.

Otherwise? That’s it for me. Have a great weekend, all.

A friend sent me this map yesterday, a data illustration of the nation’s population — half of it, anyway, residing in 39 metro areas. Half. I think it’s safe to say none of these areas would be considered Real America ™ as defined by Sarah Palin, and maybe that’s, in a nutshell, the problem with the Republican party, even though many of these metro areas are solidly red. It’s more the idea the country has of itself, with its SUVs that never see so much as a gravel road and its field hand breakfasts for people who haven’t beheld a field since the last time they drove to Cleveland.

We are city people, and have been for a good long while. But we like to think we have one foot in the soil. It’s one reason I’m grateful for Coozledad’s presence on this blog, and his regular dispatches from the soil of his vegetarian farm and petting zoo; he knows things about the way we used to live that the rest of us have conveniently forgotten.

So how is everybody’s week going? Mine is slogging along. Someone sent me this today; what is it about Mitch Albom that even his charity is self-serving? He just got back from the Philippines. Book-touring, but with heart:

“I’m donating 40 boats up there, but more importantly than that, we’re gonna try to reopen some libraries and put books from myself and some of my author friends from America like Stephen King, Amy Tan and John Grisham… My hope is that maybe we can draw some attention to the situation (in Tacloban),” Albom said.

Why don’t people laugh in this little man’s face when he says stuff like that?

So, bloggage?

Dahlia Lithwick says the contraception mandate is likely toast.

That’s all I have tonight. Enjoy Thursday.

For as long as I’ve been able to hold a pencil and take personality tests in glossy magazines, I’ve considered myself an extrovert. I like to be around people. I feel more energetic in a group setting. Like to talk, like new experiences, blah blah blah.

Then I became a freelancer, and spent most of a decade working alone out of my spare bedroom. Something must have changed in that time, because I now find myself…less of the textbook extrovert, in the sense that all I want after a day around people is a few hours alone, or nearly so. Last night I came home, changed clothes, walked the dog, threw together some dinner and sat on the couch for two hours playing a laptop game called 2048 (WARNING WARNING ADDICTIVE ADDICTIVE CURSE YOU ERIC ZORN FOR LINKING TO THIS), thinking sooner or later my cup would refill enough to blog a bit. Didn’t happen. Extroversion had finally exhausted me. It did yesterday, anyway.

Or maybe it was the getting up at 5:30 a.m. to swim. Yesterday was one of those days when I was steaming through the morning, smugly thinking I so totally have this life thing knocked. Swim, bakery for the first loaves of the day, home, make lunch for Kate, dry hair, assemble breakfast for me — oh, you are such a lovely poached egg, yes you are — sit down and get ready to put my customary six or seven drops of Sriracha on the egg, only to watch the whole cap come off and a tablespoon, easy, drown the egg. I sat there for a moment considering my options, and finally decided: OK, today will be chili-sauce egg day, and you know what? It was sort of delicious.

Now it’s Wednesday morning, and my wind has returned. Either that, or it’s the coffee. Working at home today.

This story caught my eye in today’s NYT, mainly because gentrification has been a topic of conversation in Detroit lately. It’s about how New York City rents — Manhattan rents, anyway — have started forcing bookstores out of a place that considers itself the center of the literary universe:

When Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson bookstore in Lower Manhattan, set out to open a second location, she went to a neighborhood with a sterling literary reputation, the home turf of writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Nora Ephron: the Upper West Side.

She was stopped by the skyscraper-high rents.

“They were unsustainable,” Ms. McNally said. “Small spaces for $40,000 or more each month. It was so disheartening.”

Forty. THOUSAND. Dollars. Every single month, even the ones with 30 days? Holy shit. And there you see the problem with turning the city, any city, into a gated community for the super-wealthy. Last year, a former head of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce self-published a book, a novella of all things, about his idea for how Detroit can save itself: By turning Belle Isle, its river park, over to developers and by making it a commonwealth of the United States. Of course it would be exempt from any and all taxation. And then a miracle would happen! Dubai with snow, Monte Carlo with snow, etc.

The book was atrociously written, and had a weird undercurrent of homoeroticism that one of the local snarkers had fun with; the story was populated almost entirely by men, and a strange attention was paid to details of interior decorating and clothing choices. But even this ham-fisted Cliff Notes version of “Atlas Shrugged” had some sort of subsidy for artists and artisans to live on the island. Even he understood that a world populated solely by the super-rich and the businesses they enjoy — hint: not bookstores — is a pretty grim place.

OK, now it’s after 8, and I have to get moving. Happy hump day, all.

We live close enough to Lake St. Clair that we see some strange wildlife from time to time. My vet is on call with the local police for animal rescues, and keeps a photo album of his greatest hits, including a multi-point buck spotted swimming in the lake in midsummer, far enough from shore he likely would have drowned without help. But mostly it’s less dramatic. Today I was walking home from the bus stop and saw two turkey vultures slowly circling around the hospital on the corner. Circling, and then landing. Vultures.

I wonder if they were there for some sort of evening feeding. I think I’ve seen too many western movies.

Cold today, but nice to get out, even if it was just to see some vultures and walk to and from the bus stop. Even in the gentrifying downtown, Detroit has such ..interesting street life. Raving schizophrenics, doddering drunks, pacing crackheads — you see them all. It reminds me of the early ’80s in Columbus, when the big mental institution near town closed abruptly and suddenly the streets were awash in the…well, none of the names are OK anymore, so let us say the halt, the lame and the insane. What became of them all? Some died, some found their way to other towns and…well, I’m not sure. There was one guy who pushed a cart through downtown, crowing like a rooster. He was hit by a car.

So, do we have some bloggage? Sure.

If you’re reading this after 6 a.m. EDT, look to the right rail for some stories by my colleague Ron, about what happened when a two high schools in central Michigan merged, one mostly white and more affluent, the other mostly black and poorer. It’s a sensitive topic, but he did a really nice job with it. It’s in four parts; start at the beginning.

Elsewhere, rarely have I been more grateful that I don’t smoke as when the e-cigarette craze caught on. Now it’s called gaping — stop changing it to vaping, autocorrect — and you should not be surprised to learn there’s a festival:

The vapers at Vapefest look as if they’re taking a smoke break — sorry, vape break — from a sci-fi convention or a Harley-Davidson ride. Some of them are clearly sporting scabs from skateboard accidents. Some of them are clearly wearing one of their half-dozen Men’s Wearhouse suits. Some of them look like they belong at a Leesburg PTA meeting, or in Middle Earth, or the 1910s. One vendor here sells both “shire malt” and “Grandpa’s cough medicine” e-liquids (or “juice”), the vials of flavored nicotine that are electronically vaporized when you suck on the mouthpiece of an e-cigarette, or “mod,” as the vapers refer to the device.

And from the WashPost archives, a blast from the past: A profile of the late Fred Phelps that is surprisingly revelatory.

Me, I’m off to bed. I hope the vultures don’t get me. Nor you.

This is the time of year I really start to feel divorced from my fellow man. Evidently there’s a basketball tournament going on now? I dunno. I watch the comments go by on my Twitter feed and it’s like watching a game played on another planet.

So, how was your weekend? I took a yoga class for the first time in at least a year. It was the same as it always is: It feels like nothing more than a lot of stretching until the next day, when it feels like you have hamstring cancer. I hit the market. Made cookies. Made macaroni and cheese. Made chicken. Made a salad with the leftover chicken. Slept late (clear til 7!) and watched the news of all the same-sex marriages going on until the court of appeals issued its stay. Watched “Nebraska.” And little by little the weekend slips through the fingers, and here we are at Monday again. Oh, look, snow flurries on Tuesday. But! Almost all the snow is gone from the yard and now it’s…well, it’s still frozen mud. But little by little, the earth thaws.

If only it were happening a little faster.

What did the weekend’s news sources cough up for bloggage? Let’s get started:

Here’s a lovely piece by Brian Dickerson at the Free Press, about how the judge in the SSM case found himself becoming acquainted with the world of gay families — in his own office. It’s a very human story, but don’t read the comments, because many of them are horrible and hateful.

Don’t read the comments on this story, either, about changes in the food industry pushed by the first lady. Where does the world find these people?

This story on Upworthy will make you vomit. It did me, anyway. Metaphorically, of course.

Time to watch “Girls” and see what the week brings.

I guess it’s a measure of how brutal the winter was that the arrival of spring yesterday passed unnoticed by me. Current temperature: 37 degrees. Signs of spring so far: Pretty much zero, unless you count potholes, which are epic this year. I heard the beeping of the cold-patch truck coming down my street today, which will have to do in place of birdsong.

But I know it’s only a matter of time, and before winter slips entirely away, I’d like to give a shout-out to a few of the items that made it bearable this year. Cue the montage!

These shoes:

In a cold, wet climate, it’s more important to keep your feet warm than your head. These were my birthday present last fall. If I’d been buying them for myself, I’d have skipped on the shearling lining and gone for Thinsulate, but Alan is a sweetheart and splurged. L.L. Bean. I stepped into a few drifts that came over the top, but the shearling never really allowed the loose snow to penetrate to my feet. So kudos to these workhorses. A key supporting role was played by…

These cleats:

These seemed a little bit of overkill when I got them. They were another present from Alan. I’d asked for Yaktrax, but Alan decided these were sturdier. They are, and though they hurt my knees when I wore them on dry pavement, they were essential on snow and ice. We had LOTS of ice this year, at least three storms that started as rain and turned to snow, followed by a deep cold snap. All that slush froze solid into icy lumpy fuck, and walking was absolutely treacherous. But not with these cleats! Of course no footwear ensemble is complete without…

These socks:

Rag wool for the Bean boots, which run a little large, and merino for when you don’t want to feel like you’re wearing carpet on your feet. These are Smartwool knockoffs from Costco, but I have lots of the original. I’m wearing a pair right now, in fact. Moving up from the feet, we have…

These longjanes:

Capilene from Patagonia, and I also had some silky polyester ones from Land’s End. I went days without taking them off for anything other than a shower. When I had to go outside, I threw on…

These pants:

More L.L. Bean classics. They are frumpy as hell, adding 10 pounds at least. The rise is so high, and the zipper is so long, that I felt like someone’s grandpa every time I put them on. But low-rise jeans that hug your butt don’t come with fleece lining. I may have looked unfashionable, but goddamn I was warm. Which brings us to the star of the show…

Ladies and gentlemen, the parka of tribulation:

Sturdy enough to stand up on its own, surprisingly heavy, the North Face McMurdo parka came to me a decade ago, via eBay. That was the year I was in Ann Arbor, and I was seeking to duplicate my college experience, when my very first down parka protected me through the fearsome back-to-back winters of the late ’70s. I think I paid about $100 for it new with tags, two-thirds below its retail price, probably because it didn’t include the fetching coyote ruff for the hood. It’s so warm it becomes uncomfortable when the temperature is much above 20, but as I’ve been whining for months, we didn’t have too many of those days. In most winters, this is a specialty item worn for only a few days. This year, it was my main coat. I just put it back in the front-hall closet, where it lives in the off-season. I think of it as you might a spouse you’re divorcing, but don’t actually despise. You respect and admire the work it does, but if it’s all the same, you’d rather not see it for a while. A long while.

Supporting roles were played by hats, several pairs of gloves, scarves and sweaters, but you don’t have to see everything in the closet today. Yesterday I wore a lightweight trench and was perfectly comfortable. Of course it rained.

Bloggage for today:

I had fun reporting this graffiti story for Bridge.

I’m only about halfway through this Grantland story on the world’s greatest juggler, but I’m enjoying it very much. No transsexuals in this one (so far), but a great lead:

I feel like I should let you know what you’re in for. This is a long story about a juggler. It gets into some areas that matter in all sports, such as performance and audience and ambition, but there’s absolutely a lot of juggling in the next 6,700 words. I assume you may bail at this point, which is fine; I almost bailed a few times in the writing. The usual strategies of sportswriting depend on the writer and reader sharing a set of passions and references that make it easy to speed along on rivers of stats and myth, but you almost certainly don’t know as much about juggling as you do about football or baseball. We’re probably staring at a frozen lake here.

A few juggling videos are embedded below. I hope they help. We may fall through the ice anyway.

And finally, one for March Madness: What white people don’t see, watching basketball.

A great weekend to all. It’s supposed to be sunny and over 40. Spring!

One reason I’ve been feeling so scattered this week is a big life change: I’m going to work again. Same job, new office. In Detroit. It really is the best of both worlds: We can work at home or at the office, and no one is expected to be there five days a week. This week I’m trying for three, and that is just about perfect: Enough face time with my colleagues to feel like we’re a team, enough alone time to seriously concentrate and keep the dog from flipping out.

But man, it’s been a while since my commute has been more complicated than walking from the breakfast table to the spare bedroom. Get this: It turns out that if you work in an office? You have to wear pants. Every day. I know, right? Seriously, though, it’s so complicated: Breakfast, coffee, paper, shower, grooming, dressing, and then? The commute, parking, and so on. How do you people do it? I used to have this down, and now it’s like writing checks with my left hand.

Sooner or later it’ll come more easily. I might even take the bus.

Meanwhile, such fun: Elevators, restroom keys, takeout menus. The mundane details of adult life.

Our office is a few steps from Comerica Park. The first rule the building manager offered: Get here early on opening day or you won’t find a parking space. Which is in less than two weeks. The snow is thawing, but the forecast is not universally cheerful until then. It could be a fairly horrible day for baseball.

And now it’s home, and the great indulgence of the working mother: A rotisserie chicken, which I accompanied with a couple cut-up sweet potatoes and some broccoli, roasted together in the oven at 425. It kills me to think of all the time I’ve spent screwing around with vegetables, when oven-roasting with some olive oil and salt works for almost all of them. And it makes the kitchen nice and warm on the chilly evenings.

So, some bloggage? Sure:

Half of all Americans subscribe to some medical conspiracy theory. You mean, like the government might have let a group of African-American men carry syphilis through their lives, just to see what the disease could do? No! That could never happen.

After the bang-up job he did in 2008, why would Hillary hire Mark Penn again? It is to puzzle.

Finally, in food news, the Obamas are losing their pastry chef. And if you like the idea of oven-roasting vegetables, you might enjoy this piece on cooking an entire meal on a sheet pan. Both NYT links.

The hump has been cleared, and the week is on its downslope. Enjoy it.

I feel like I’ve been half-here for a while, but there you are. Sometimes life intercedes. Tonight was the annual college fair for the two Grosse Pointe high schools, always an event. We picked up flyers for the obvious bigs — OSU, MSU, UM-Ann Arbor, Wisconsin — and a few long shots — UVA, Kenyon, Wash U., Vanderbilt — and went to the presentation by Michigan, everybody’s first choice. Today the potential student’s major of choice is music production; at Tulane it was astronomy. In other words, pretty typical 17-year-old and that? IS FINE. There are kids who know who they are from toddlerhood, but not in this house. And that’s good.

Which is why I’m advising a big school with a comprehensive menu of course offerings. It’s nice to be able to change your major without having to change your school.

My orthopedist and his son were sitting in the Michigan presentation. The man who spent parts of not one but two office visits complaining about Obamacare. To me. Yeah, that guy — my former orthopedist. For the record, I didn’t decide not to go back simply because he harangued me twice about Obamacare, nor because his head physical therapist had Fox News blaring in the therapy room, where he and some old fart were loudly discussing the shortcomings of the Kenyan BENGHAZI pretender BENGHAZI in front of several other patients, all African-American. No, it was because he suggested that we could lower health-care costs with tort reform. I replied that I thought that question had been settled by medical economists years ago, and that all the fuss over medical malpractice is really over, what? One percent a year? Maybe? At least some of which is caused by truly incompetent doctors?

That earned me a mini-speech about the artificial-joint companies being sued unjustly, and I thought, man, life is too damn short for this. No wonder this guy wants to replace my knees.

And then we went out to dinner. Nothing like contemplating college to raise a powerful thirst for chianti.

So once again I have little to report. My mind is taken with local matters. Except for Dogeweather, of course, which makes me feel equal parts delighted and a moron. Today I was working with Wendy sitting next to me, and she became bothered by something outside. She stood up and looked out the window for a while, hackles raised. All I could think was so hackles and much fierce, in Comic Sans, in color. Yes, I spend too much time online.

Happy Wednesday, all.

Sunday was the St. Patrick’s Day parade here in Detroit. It would have been nice to go. but parades have to have at least a minimal festive atmosphere, and it was 9 degrees when I got up and barely nudged above 20 the rest of the day. So much for the parade, then. Maybe next year.

Kate and I went bike-shopping for her; my favorite used-bike shop had a lovely aluminum-frame Trek road bike, like new, on sale for a killer price, and I wanted her to check it out sooner rather than later. She took it around the block and said, upon returning, that it was a nice bike and also that she couldn’t feel her ears: “Not the outside part, the inside.”

We bought the bike. I asked them to install a second set of brake levers on it, and the guy said it might take a few days. Take your time, son; this spring is still a ways down the road.

And that was about as exciting as the weekend got, although it was lovely and restful and included dinner with friends and a trip to the market and the usual activities. The week ahead will be busy and, if all goes well, should fly. I could use a flying week. Also a warm one.

A few bits of bloggage today, starting with the obvious troll bait: The impending death of Fred Phelps. He may well be gone by the time you read this, and I hope it’s a reflection of my state of mind regarding the relative importance of Fred Phelps that I seriously couldn’t care less. I guess the Westboro Baptist Church was remarkable at one point, but they managed to alienate pretty much the entire world, both right-wing warmongers and left-wing gay sympathizers (and left-wing warmongers and right-wing gay sympathizers), and everyone in between. In the end, the Westboro Baptist Church consisted of Phelps and his extended family, and not even that — the news of his health problems was communicated by one estranged son and confirmed by a second estranged son, with the added detail that Phelps himself had been kicked out of his own tiny church sometime last year. So, mission accomplished! You went looking for rancor and found it, and will now die alone with only hospice nurses attending. May this be the last bit of attention paid to them.

More interesting, in terms of high-profile deaths, is Gene Weingarten’s brief appreciation of Joe McGinniss. It is lean and honest and absolutely correct that McGinniss was unfairly maligned by Janet Malcolm in a lengthy New Yorker profile. It also gives credit where it is due, for “Fatal Vision,” McGinniss’ famous, and infamous, examination of the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. I’ve always said that a writer’s first duty is to tell the truth, and sometime during what was supposed to be a sympathetic examination of the wrongly convicted MacDonald, the writer became convinced otherwise. And so, as Weingarten writes, what was he to do?

What was McGinniss supposed to have done when he realized, midway through the reporting, that the man he was writing about had lied to everyone? That he had killed his wife and older daughter in a rage — and then calmly, methodically hacked to death his sleeping two-year old, stabbing her 33 times with a knife and ice pick, just to strengthen his alibi? Was McGinniss required to dutifully inform the murderer that he now believed him guilty, and invite him to withdraw his cooperation if he wished, possibly killing the book outright, but certainly killing it as a meaningful, enlightening, powerful examination of the mind of a monster?

There is an implicit covenant between a writer and a subject; in return for whatever agreement you might make for the telling of the story, the subject must tell you the truth. If he lies, all deals are off. It is impossible for a subject to be less truthful than Jeffrey MacDonald was with Joe McGinniss: he misrepresented the central fact of his story, his own guilt.

Exactly.

And while we’re tangentially on the subject of God’s feelings about fags, I also recommend this piece about Scott Lively, the American evangelical minister behind Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws:

Lively is not the only US evangelical who has fanned the flames of anti-gay sentiment in Uganda. As they lose ground at home, where public opinion and law are rapidly shifting in favor of gay equality, religious conservatives have increasingly turned their attention to Africa. And Uganda, with its large Christian population, has been particularly fertile ground for their crusade.

His influence in Uganda is bad enough, but this is the clown behind this charming bit of amateur historical research:

Opponents likened Lively and his colleagues to Nazis and lobbed bricks wrapped in swastika flags through the windows of businesses supporting the measure. OCA’s aggressive campaign, likening gays to pedophiles, was also blamed for a steep uptick in gay hate crimes. In the end, Measure 9 was defeated by a 13-point margin. Undeterred, OCA began promoting measures barring special protections for homosexuals on the city and county levels. Lively, who bristled at the Nazi comparisons, also threw himself into studying the Third Reich and eventually grew convinced that gay men—some of whom occupied senior posts in the Nazi regime—were the driving force behind the Holocaust. “Everything that we think about when we think about Nazis actually comes from the minds and perverted ideas of homosexuals,” he told an Oregon public access television station in 1994.

Surely a closet case himself.

Finally, where is the plane? Where is the plane? And happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hope it’s a little warmer where you are.

Not much tonight, I fear. Everything got pushed back today because of the snow — Kate’s bass lesson, dinner, the usual. So I don’t have much time tonight before bed will beckon.

Tonight’s low? 1 degree. Fuck me running, as Ashley Morris liked to say. But I’m still swimming tomorrow morning if it kills me. And it may well.

So, linkage:

The economics of the sex industry. Shame on you, Atlanta! You too, Dallas.

Here’s a picture of Kate in New Orleans that I just found on my phone. The ghost of the record store:

And that’s it. Back tomorrow.