I wish I could afford/had time to travel more, but it’s almost always good to be home. I’m glad that at this late point in life, I finally got a chance to see Las Vegas. It was as advertised, and not, although complaining about false advertising in a city where everything is fake, from the smiles to the boobs to the hospitality — that’s like complaining about the weather. It’s just the way it is. Deal.

What I liked: The glorious absurdity of the place. That you could get a drink anywhere, at any time of day. The look of the MGM Grand lion at sunset:

Fremont Street. Hoover Dam. The dancing waters at the Bellagio:

Watching Kate play “Anarchy in the U.K.” to an audience of prisoners on Guitar Hero in the arcade at Bally’s:

Among other things. What I didn’t like: The way the maps lie. (“Across the street” means “half a mile away.”) The way the old business model — everything’s cheap as long as you don’t mind seedy — has given way to one in which nothing is cheap, but it’s still most of the way to seedy, just the high-gloss, breast-implant variety of seedy. Great restaurants, but frightfully expensive. Fancy hotels, crammed with people gawking at the fanciness. Like the Bellagio lobby ceiling:

Finally, I grew weary of being nickel-and-dimed. It’s true you can do anything in Vegas, at any hour of the day or night, but it’ll cost you. Everyone has a hand in your pocket, and every inch of the place is designed to empty them as quickly and efficiently as possible. For instance: Someone told me I wouldn’t be able to take Kate into a casino, and so I’d be doing a lot of detouring. Scoff. You can take kids into casinos all you want. (According to law, they can’t “loiter” there.) We walked past more slot machine and blackjack tables than we did fat people. You have to walk through the casino to get anywhere. (They have slot machines in daycare centers, I am certain.) Add-on fees are everywhere; our friends Clark and Aimee were charged a daily fee at their hotel for, no kidding, electricity. A simple ATM withdrawal — from a bank’s machine, not one of those private things — costs $5. I know that staff works for tips, but by the third day, all the forelock-tugging grew wearisome. My last act of defiance was to stiff the valet at our hotel as we were checking out; I had no small bills, and damn if I was going to give him a tenner for putting my suitcase into a taxi. Sorry, bub.

Filmapalooza was OK, a little thin, but the talk by Jason Reitman was quite enjoyable:

I asked him about shooting in Detroit. He said if Detroit could do for the city what it did for its airport, it would have no problems whatsoever. From a visual perspective, he’s right. He talked a little about subject and theme, although he called it “location and the deeper thing.” “Thank You for Smoking” was about a lobbyist for a vile industry, but the deeper thing was freedom of choice. “Juno” was about teen pregnancy, but it was really about innocence and growing up.

Everything I need to know about writing I already learned in the newspaper business.

And the NAB show, the National Association of Broadcasters, the show to which Filmapalooza adhered, was a wonder. Acres and acres and acres of whiz-bang doo-dads, lights and cameras and action and software. Everyone’s showing a 3D television rig — no thanks, anyway — but the thing I found most interesting was the big thing in budget filmmaking: Shooting on a single-lens reflex still camera. This guy showed this film, shot entirely on a Canon 5D. You need a lot of SD cards, but who cares when you can carry your whole rig in one hard-side suitcase?

(They’re shooting the final episode of “House” this way.)

I almost bought one of these at a 30 percent discount, and still might. I have until tomorrow to decide. It all depends on how my tax refund shakes out.

And now we are home. Green and cool and blessed humidity. What did I miss when I was gone?

She-Who wants a bendy straw. And you’d better provide one. No, two.

Gene Weingarten won a second Pulitzer? His long-time editor explains how it happened.

The cilantro/soap thing, explained.

On to taxes.

Folks, I slept extra-late this morning. Then I read the paper extra-long. I made an extra-good breakfast (eggs scrambled with fresh spinach, garlic and cheese, Trader Joe’s heat-n-serve naan and the last grapefruit of the season, improbably sweet in its parting gesture). I do this because yesterday I started coming down with ANOTHER GODDAMN COLD, and I am bound and determined to kill this one in the cradle.

So, late start and empty head today. Glad I have Eric Zorn, who posted this clip from the White Sox’ opening day:

“Best play I’ve ever seen,” said Eric, and while I don’t have the wisdom to second it, it is pretty remarkable. The Sox obviously have the Obama mojo going for them. Back later, or maybe not. You folks talk amongst yourselves, like you always do.

One of the things that makes life interesting are the unforeseen consequences of great events. There’s an earthquake; buildings fall down; things fall down in the buildings. The journalism about the event will concentrate on things like the Richter scale, deaths, damage and recovery. It won’t talk about your grandma’s china that fell out of the breakfront and smashed to bits, and how losing it that way was, in the end, sort of a relief, because you’re really a more modern person, and a casual entertainer, and dragging that century-old Havilland around was sort of weighing you down, but what can you do? It was your grandmother’s china. But in a small way your life was changed. It didn’t make the news.

I think of this often these days. The Grosse Pointes, like all communities in southeast Michigan and many elsewhere, are finally starting to deal with the consequences of the real-estate collapse. Doing our taxes this weekend, I noticed that once again, our property taxes have fallen, which means receipts at city hall have fallen, which means finally, finally, the Pointes are being forced to do what they should have done years ago — consolidate services across the five municipalities.

And then today brings a Wall Street Journal story, which you may not be able to read if you’re a non-subscriber, so I’ll summarize. The headline sort of says it all: Bank of Mom and Dad Shuts Amid White-Collar Struggle. It’s about the increasing inability of middle- and especially upper-middle-class parents to pay their adult children’s bills. It starts with college tuition, which I think any parent can understand, but it ventures into areas of “support” I thought were limited to trust-fund brats:

Angelica Hoyos, a 26-year-old living in Los Angeles, has put her photography and sculpture career on hold since her parents pulled the financial plug earlier this year after the family’s granite-countertop business suffered. Ms. Hoyos has moved in with her boyfriend, cut spending and earns about $1,000 a month doing free-lance design work and baby-sitting.

“My artistic career is put on the side because I have to make a living,” she says.

We also meet the Johnsons of Fairfield, Conn., whose two older kids are in college and whose youngest is just starting her search for one, but who are also suffering, even though they had considerable college savings. The older kids are plucky, saying they’re willing to take out loans to finish school at Johns Hopkins (at $50K each per year), and the youngest isn’t even thinking about the pricey diplomas. Mr. Johnson feels bad, however:

Further expenses such as first homes and weddings are out of the question. “They’re going to have to elope,” he says.

Take heart, Mr. Johnson. Not having a $150,000 wedding never hurt anyone.

Everything is relative. The Johnsons, we’re told, are living on one-fifth of their pre-crash compensation, and while the story goes on to say Mr. J. made “up to $550,000 a year,” and one-fifth of that is still $100K, anyone can understand how they feel blind-sided. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe the Johnsons, and the Hoyos, just lost grandmother’s china. In the end, they might be freed by it. Certainly Angelica will be, who will learn sooner rather than later that when you have “a photography and sculpture career” that requires a parental subsidy, it’s not a career at all.

I’ve read stories like this before. A while back, the New York Times noted the reduction in the number of hipsters lounging around the hot areas of Brooklyn, now that mom and dad were no longer able to front their kids a New York City living stipend. Many of them were, like Angelica, nominally artists who had chosen to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, doubtless for the community of fellow artists and all the sidewalk cafes. I suspect by now many of them have faced the truth: They weren’t really artists but layabouts who know how to stretch a canvas. Now they know the truth. I hope it set them free.

(Artists: If you’re serious, try Detroit. Thriving arts community, tons of fun, and so cheap your parents won’t have to contribute a dime. Srsly.)

My parents helped me here and there when I was young and struggling, although the sums were vastly different. They paid for my college, but it was a hell of a lot less money for four years of state school back then. My mom bought me a $150 carpet remnant for my first apartment, and contributed $1,000 to both my wedding and my first house purchase, both of which I objected to, but they said they did it for my older siblings, and so they were doing it for me. Everything is relative. My wedding cost about $5,000 all-in, which was at the time one-third the national average. Who’s to say, though, that the ridiculous excess we’ve seen in recent years in just that area, weddings, isn’t due to nice people like the Johnsons, who just wanted to help their kids have a swell party, and ended up helping inflate the whole business? Would college tuition be as overpriced as it is if more kids had to work their way through, and couldn’t absorb the twice-inflation rate tuition hikes that have been normal now for, what, 30 years?

The financial crisis over the last two years smashed a lot of china. If it breaks the trend of extended adolescence, in which adults stay children well into their 20s and even beyond, thanks to the helping hand of mom and dad, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Everyone has to grow up sometime.

Bloggage? Some:

A pretty good column by David Carr on She-Who’s bootstraps, you betcha.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the California governor’s race, although it’s certainly interesting. Sez one voter in this story: “I prefer Meg Whitman because she has corporate experience and expertise to create jobs.” How many times do we have to learn the lesson that business experience =/= equal political savvy?

If you can stand to read one more thing about the iPad, our very own webmaster got his over the weekend. I won’t be buying until the second generation, if then.

And speaking of which, here’s his latest web-infant: Trowel Tart. The Tart is one of our very own, who is remaining anonymous for now because of her employer’s problems with outside work. The Trowel Tart’s her name and gardening’s her game. Drop by.

Yeesh! So late! Must start work. Have a great day.

Until I read the obits/appreciations yesterday, I had forgotten about David Mills’ Misidentified Black Person series. In a 2007 letter to Romenesko, the bible of media news, Mills pointed out the problem:

In the late 1980s, as a feature writer for the Washington Times, I wrote a piece about a cable-TV movie, and I’d interviewed its star, Avery Brooks. Insight magazine reprinted the story, and ran a photo of co-star Samuel L. Jackson over the caption “Avery Brooks.” Imagine my embarrassment.

I confronted an editor about this, and she kind of laughed it off. I don’t think Insight even bothered to run a correction. At that point, Sam Jackson wasn’t the movie star he is today. But black folks in D.C. were seriously digging Avery Brooks as Hawk on “Spenser: For Hire.” So any black person who picked up that magazine and saw that error probably felt a little pinprick of insult. “Guess they think we all look alike.”

He further announced he’d be tracking the problem. Three months later, he had enough, just in the athletes category, to fill another column.

Some were funny, and some were pathetic. In 2005, he pointed out, the Washington Times confused Robert Bobb, then a Washington D.C. city official, now financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, with Marvin Gaye. Here’s Marvin Gaye. Here’s Robert Bobb. You tell me. Leontyne Price is an operatic soprano fond of turbans. Lena Horne is a cabaret singer. Price is darker-skinned, with a broad nose and full lips. Horne has a narrow nose and thinner lips — in fact, Horne was sometimes advised to “pass” as white to increase her earning power. The AP confused them in a photo caption. Well, they are both singers whose names begin with L.

You can see all of Mills’ blog posts on MBPs, as he called them, here. Hat tip to TV writer Alan Sepinwall for remembering how they were tagged; further hat tips for naming his blog What’s Alan Watching?, an acknowledgment of a brilliant one-off by Eddie Murphy that sank under the waves so fast I thought I had hallucinated it. Sepinwall explains here; it was a pilot that never got picked up, but aired in 1989. Once.

One more great Mills post: Attack of the Giant Negroes.

Too soon.

Well, it’s spring fer shure here in Michigan; by the forecast, it’s nearly summer — 70s today, nudging 80 tomorrow. And I have found an outdoor exercise pen for Ruby Rabbit in the classifieds, so I must away to pick it up soon. But before I go, a short story my brother-in-law Bill told a few years ago (which my search engine says I haven’t told before, and I hope it’s telling me the truth), which relates to the warning we always hear at this time of year: Please, don’t buy your children chicks, ducks or rabbits as Easter pets.

Years ago, it was commonplace for children to receive poultry or lagomorphs for Easter presents, sometimes dyed Easter colors. I never got one, but I knew many kids who did, and the story was always the same — the chicks were either stressed or squeezed to death, and the bunny ditto, if it wasn’t “released into the wild” by Dad within three days.

Anyway, one year Bill’s younger brother, Dickie, got a duckling. And the duckling did not die. Despite being played with by several children, the duck not only survived Easter, it grew to maturity, shedding its pastel-dyed feathers for adult plumage and becoming a literal pain in the ass in the bargain. It lived outside and, perhaps brain-damaged by life away from its flock and lots of hand-feeding, became a butt-nipper, chasing the kids around the yard to pinch with its powerful beak. It finally became intolerable, and the duck was taken to grandma and grandpa’s farm for a more natural life. Grandma and grandpa lived in the country near Circleville, Ohio, and the duck was released into their flock with the usual fanfare.

On subsequent trips to visit the grandparents, Dickie would sometimes ask where the duck was. It was “down by the pond,” or “roosting under the porch,” but never where he could see it, and in time, he stopped asking. Of course, you all know what happened to the duck: It nipped grandma’s butt not long after arrival, and she, a country woman who did not tolerate insolent waterfowl , snatched it up, swiftly dispatched it and served it for dinner. Everyone but Dickie seemed to realize this.

Flash forward many, many years later — like, five years ago. Bill and Dickie are now about to collect Social Security. One day they’re sitting around talking, and Dickie wonders aloud, “I wonder whatever happened to that duck.” Bill said, “Grandma killed it. She was always a mean woman.” And Dickie was astounded. This had never occurred to him in the half-century or so since that long-ago spring, and for a moment he was eight years old again: Grandma…ate my duck? Sometimes our childhood illusions should be left intact.

So don’t buy your kid a live chick, duck or bunny for Easter. Although, if you do, it’s always possible you’ll get a good family story out of it.

If it’s Tuesday morning, it must be time for trash-picking. Starting in the wee hours, a person who — to use a hypothetical — absorbs her morning coffee and warms up for her day by writing on her stupid new-media weblog while looking out the front window, could expect to see a series of trash-pickers examining the neighborhood’s garbage for items of value. They arrive in beat-up vans and Sanford & Son pickups, occasionally on a bicycle, and they seem to be in the market for just about anything. Old baby toys, furniture that hasn’t been rained on too much, metal — this is the currency of the new economy.

Every few days someone discovers that Onion video on how the death of print journalism will affect old loons who hoard newspapers, but I think I have the answer: Old loons will hoard broken Little Tikes plastic toys. They will gather them from my street.

In general, I’m not one of those people who frets over the steadily filling landfills and the sustainability of our plastics obsession, but two things make me nuts — bottled water and Little Tikes toddler-size picnic tables at the curb. Get a Brita pitcher and put the kiddie goods in your garage sale. They have the half-life of plutonium, and trash-pickers can’t get them all, people.

And if you’re looking for a fresh Onion video to send around, I suggest this one: Stouffer’s to include suicide prevention tips on single-serve microwavable meals.

Last night’s big story on the drug-news beat was this AP piece about Michael Jackson’s doctor, and his curious behavior during and after the singer’s death last year. He allegedly stopped CPR on the cooling corpse so he could start collecting all the drug vials lying around the room, a spectacular, cinematic image, in my opinion. If I were staging it, I’d set up one of those arm-sweeps-across-the-table-into-a-trash-bag shots. He is also said to have done this under the eyes of two of Jackson’s children, who cried until a nanny was summoned to hustle them away. (That’s the fate of wealthy children everywhere, isn’t it? Someone is always shooing them out of the room, another stock shot from the movie playbook.) I wonder what they thought all those times when they wandered in to see their father laid out like a corpse, catching up on his beauty sleep with the help of IV anesthetic. Poor little Paris at the funeral, sobbing, “Ever since I was born, my daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine and I just want to say I love him so much.” Here’s the thing, though: All daddies are the best daddy you could ever imagine to their 11-year-olds. It’s when the kids grow up a little more and realize there are daddies who don’t need medicine to get a little shuteye that the problems start. In that sense, MJ had excellent timing.

But that was nothing, the story continues:

The documents also detail an odd encounter with Murray after Jackson was declared dead at a nearby hospital. Murray insisted he needed to return to the mansion to get cream that Jackson had “so the world wouldn’t find out about it,” according to the statements, which provide no elaboration.

The cream? Hmm. The story goes on to describe the death drug, propofol, as “a milky white liquid,” and — did I just write “death drug?” What is it about some stories that just bring out the tabloid reporter in us all, completely unbidden? — but provides no further explanation of what the shameful cream might be. Fortunately, Gawker is on the case with uninformed speculation, i.e., the best kind.

(Another trash-picker just blew through. Sanford & Son pickup this time, miscellaneous metal in the back. Someday the entirety of Detroit will consist of recycled metal elsewhere.)

I took the time this morning to read this local reaction to the health-care bill this morning. First quote of the piece:

“We all have been passive for a very long time and haven’t taken part in government and now it’s time. I don’t like the health care bill. I don’t like government intrusion. And I don’t like my loss of freedom.”

Follow-up question: Do you drive a car? Does the government requirement that you carry auto insurance restrict your freedom? No? Thanks very much. Next!

The Thomas More Law Center — a national public interest law firm in Ann Arbor — also plans to file a federal lawsuit challenging the bill, said Richard Thompson, the firm’s president.

Note the liberal-media bias in describing that outfit, which describes itself as “Christianity’s answer to the ACLU.” As they’re known more for their high-profile losses — the Dover, Pa., intelligent-design case, Terry Schiavo — than their wins, I wish them their customary luck.

OK, then. The clock in the steeple draws close to 10, and soon the trash men — the real ones — will be here. Time to put ours out.

Our census form arrived yesterday. Looking at the bar code made me feel all tingly. I said, “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” And then I filled it out. The government estimate was that it would take me 10 minutes. Took me about two, but then, I’m the designated filler-out-of-forms in the family, with everyone’s SSN memorized and all the birthdays, so I’m good at this. It’ll go back today.

Just for grins, though, I went out looking for the right-wing crazy census crowd. I stumbled, instead, on an eHow article, which the smart set says is my future as a freelance writer. eHow is fed by Demand Media, the freelance sweatshop that pays in the neighborhood of 3 cents a word for “articles.” Here’s one:

Every ten years, the United States Census Bureau conducts the U.S. Census. This census is important to the government because they are attempting to get an accurate count of the entire population. This includes every man, woman, and child residing in the United States — citizens, illegal immigrants, those here on visas, and non-citizen legal residents.

The census is considered by some citizens and illegal immigrants alike to be intrusive. Therefore, you may be asking if it is required that you participate.

“Therefore” — a word beloved by seventh-graders and word count-padders everywhere. In fact, it wasn’t until I stumbled across it that I could say, precisely, why eHow drives me insane. It’s not that the “articles” are useless, or that the pay would shame a sweatshop operator. It’s that it reminds me of how I wrote in junior-high school:

Some citizens and others residing in the United States find the Census to be intrusive. For example, in an interview done by National Public Radio in 2009, one U.S. citizen complained that the census required him to answer questions such as how many guns he kept in his home, and where they were kept. Obviously, to him, this information did not seem to be necessary for the government to know.

The only thing missing are little blue dots over each word, from my Bic laboriously counting each one. She missed an opportunity to add two: “United States” inserted before “government” in the last sentence would fit nicely.

But moronic as it is, it isn’t the dumbest thing I found. That would be this spicy right-wing paranoia roundup in Wired, focusing on the news that some census collection would include GPS coordinates:

A post on the widely read Infowars.com in June warned: “I will tell you plainly, the NWO [New World Order] controlled American military wants these GPS markers so they can launch Predator Drone missile attacks, the aptly named HELLFIRE missile I might add, against a long list of undesirables here in CONUS, continental United States.”

So when I drop that form in the mail, I’ve as much as called in a missile strike on my own house. MAY GOD FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I’VE DONE.

He won’t forgive me if I don’t get to work, however. Off to the library — I have microfilm to examine.

A few weeks ago, we bunnyproofed Kate’s room and started letting Ruby in. She immediately established the spare bed as her favorite chillin’ spot. At first I thought it was for the view from the window, but then it occurred to me: Camouflage.

She spent the first week or so beating the crap out of all the stuffies, butting and nibbling and doing her bunny-punch (a surprisingly effective move, not to be confused with the rabbit punch). Now that she’s established herself as the dominant doe of the warren, she can rest in regal peace, which is what she does up there for hours on end. She will accept your tributes now. Make them leafy and green.

Overnight, my illness has taken a turn, and I’m off to find something called Buckley’s. It’s on the recommendation of one of our student journalists, who says, “You will curse me when you take it and bless me later.” Hmm. Well, I’m out of Nyquil and Dayquil now, anyway. I’ll try anything.

If I don’t find it in the first three U.S. pharmacies I try, I’ll head downtown and cross the border. (It’s Canadian, and you will not be surprised to learn that one of the first businesses you see when you emerge from the tunnel is a pharmacy. Gee, I wonder why?) If nothing else, adding eight bucks in tolls and an international excursion will guarantee that I feel better tomorrow, on the same theory that says the food comes right after you light a cigarette, the funny sound disappears when the mechanic is listening, etc.

A little bloggage to start the discussion:

The double-chinned doughboy behind this story — Marc Thiessen — was on the Daily Show last night. You know someone is a bastard when even my mild-mannered husband starts jeering at the TV.

While we’re on the subject, no doubt Jihad Jane will be today’s talking point at Fox News. She is said to have made her al-Q connections through that covert website, YouTube. I haven’t seen a mugshot that screams CRAZY this loud since, um, Amy Bishop.

(By the way, has “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!” become a catch phrase in your household, too? It just seems to work for so many domestic situations.)

OK, then. Exit, coughing weakly.

Ever since we lost our best buddy last summer, my sister-in-law has been sending us whatever shots of the dog she turns up in her vast files. (She’s a photographer.) This one came to Kate in her Valentine’s Day card. I think she’s trying to kill me:

Nineteen ninety-nine. What a year. Our girl was out of diapers, the economy was strong, a Democrat was president and hardly anyone had heard of al-Qaeda.

And look at that face. (Whichever face you like.)

Not much this morning, but maybe later. Talk amongst yourselves, eh?

I defy you to read the first three paragraphs of this Laura Berman column from the Detroit News and not read the rest:

The president of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation’s lowest-achieving big city district.

He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence. Here’s a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

The column goes on to describe Mathis’ epic battles with the written word, asking whether his ability to succeed in spite of it (he has a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State, but it took more than a decade to get, because he couldn’t pass the English proficiency exam) is good news or bad. There’s no clear answer, but it made me think about writing and what it takes to do it a) well and/or b) competently. You can imagine my feelings about it; looking back on my romantic history, I don’t think I ever had a serious relationship with a man who couldn’t turn a phrase. They varied widely in formal education, but they could all write a decent letter or inscribe a book with style. It’s not like I went looking for them; it just worked out that way. I doubt a math PhD would marry someone who couldn’t balance the family checkbook.

Over many years, I’ve managed to overcome my belief that bad spelling is a character flaw, and friends, that has taken some doing. I’ve known enough very smart people who could barely spell cat and dog that I’ve grown into the belief it’s a form of learning disorder. (First, I have to believe you actually tried to learn, however.) One of my college boyfriends handed me a grocery list once: chese, pasto (penny), letus. I still get an occasional e-mail from him — funny but atrociously spelled. I don’t think he even sees the mistakes, and has the sense to rely on proofreaders for his business correspondence.

Others would feel the same way about me, and my mathematic illiteracy. I can do the big four — add, subtract, multiply and divide — but Kate, in seventh grade, knows better than to ask me for help on her math homework; she outran me with numbers a year or two ago.

But at least I’m not in charge of anyone else’s money, or doing calculations of load-bearing pillars. Mathis is on a school board, its president. And he’s a living embodiment of that contemporary nightmare — the diploma-holding (degree-holding!) graduate who’s functionally illiterate.

Of course, Detroit is a special case:

“We picked him (to be president) because we thought he has the intelligence for it and the tolerance for disruptive behavior,” says Reverend David Murray. “He has that type of calm.”

This is a district where board meetings often feature “disruptive behavior” — a citizen’s group organized a grape-throwing incident on one memorable occasion — so maybe this is a special case. But I doubt it. Grosse Pointe’s most recent board president has a blog that he not only writes himself, it contains his own complex but understandable analyses of financial documents. You could hardly pick a better example of how far apart two adjacent districts can be in this strange land of southeast Michigan.

OK, folks. Back to the grind. I’m a word-churning machine for the next fortnight, and the warmup has lasted long enough.

I saw this story yesterday on the Free Press’ most-popular list and — teachable moment! — asked Kate if she could tell my why it happened, how a man who had just hit a utility pole with no injury to himself could be found dead just moments later, with evidence suggesting he’d decided to pass the time by urinating into the ditch near where his car had crashed. She needed more information than that, so I told her there was a live electrical wire in the ditch. That closed the circuit, to to speak:

“Because of the water?” Ding ding ding ding ding. It’s not exactly an SAT essay-question answer, but she’s only in seventh grade. We’ll leave the appreciation of life’s cruel ironies and the question of the universe’s perverse sense of humor for senior year.

I needed that story yesterday, which was not a very good one. Nothing catastrophic happened, just one of those comedy-of-errors 24-hour periods you’re issued every so often. I’m working on a book project, a custom-publishing job, i.e., writer-for-hire work. It requires historical research downtown, at the Detroit Public Library. I found a parking place on Woodward Avenue, right in front of the place, which I chalked up to my prompt arrival in the first hour after opening. Win! Got out, paid in advance for two hours, went to the door — locked. Wouldn’t open for 90 more minutes. No catastrophe; I’d find a quiet place nearby to spread out my materials and get organized. That turned out to be an Einstein’s bagels on the Wayne State campus, which was not quiet, but did have a big overstuffed armchair free. Win! The armchair was free because it was right next to a malfunctioning door, which stayed wide open to the 35-degree elements if not pulled shut, something only every 10th customer realized.

After a few minutes of this, I moved to another overstuffed armchair, far enough from the draft that it wouldn’t bother me. Win! The one next to me was soon taken by a guy who was enjoying a hot sandwich and a conversation with his friend on the other side of me, which I normally don’t mind; I love to eavesdrop. Unfortunately, all they could talk about was how good their sandwiches were.

But I got a little done, and headed back to the library at 10 ’til noon. My paid-for parking place was full; at least someone was having a lucky day. I got another, paid for two hours. I had an OMG moment when I found a letter from 1938, the writer announcing he was coming to Detroit with “a moving-picture newsreel from the German Foreign Office…showing the ceremonies, indoors and outside, in connection with the National Socialist rally at Nuremberg last September. I do not believe anything of this kind has ever been shown in America.”

My heart soared, thinking I had found a contemporaneous description of what were perhaps “Triumph of the Will” outtakes when I thought to check the dates. Um, no. Leni Riefenstahl shot the 1934 Nazi party conference, not 1937.

Trudged out to the car and found a $20 parking ticket. It was that kind of day.

I wonder if I can deduct it.

Came home, and heard about the guy who died with his weenie out, which was a useful reminder that one’s own bad day is almost never the worst bad day anyone ever had.

I wish I could have seen that newsreel. I wish more I could have heard what people said about it.

This project has been a useful reminder that there are two kinds of history — the kind you live through day-by-day, and the kind you didn’t. Go through old newspapers on microfilm for a while, and before long I guarantee you’ll find someone is being accused of leading the youth of America down the path to ruin and socialism. Yesterday I saw a column from the last week of October 1963, by Max Freedman. Dateline Houston:

One of the most surprising discoveries of this visit to Texas is the depth of feeling against the so-called Kennedy dynasty.

In Washington this complaint has dwindled to a pleasant little joke. Out here men swear angrily and women edge their speech with hardness as they denounce “the Kennedys.”

Don’t worry, Mr. President. I hear Dallas loves you.

OK, back to work. Lord knows what will turn up today. And I’ll remember to feed the meter.

Oh! Another great Detroitblog.