Late news tonight: Rosa Parks has died, proof that big things frequently start small. RIP.

One of my old N-S sources/connections/lunch dates checked in via the comments on the N-S piece, below. Hey, Pete! Good to see you here. I haven’t seen him in years, and he brought up one of the single most amusing stories that either of us lived through. He was an actual participant; I just read about it in the paper and laughed my butt off.

Pete was an officer in a service club that planned to bring a circus to Fort Wayne in 1986 — the Toby Tyler Circus. Their posters said, “a tradition since 1881,” which, I contend, might lead a reasonable person to believe the Toby Tyler Circus had been in more or less continuous operation for a century. In fact, the Toby Tyler Circus had been around for about five minutes, and laid claim to “since 1881” on this basis: The book “Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Circus,” about a little boy who runs away to join one, had been published in 1881.

This was a sure sign of trouble. Unfortunately, it’s one nobody saw until it was too late.

The Toby Tyler Circus was traveling east, and leaving a trail of unfortunate incidents in its wake, stories our very bright and enterprising police reporter, David Allen, noticed on the wire when it was still near the Illinois line. There was a bleachers collapse, show cancellations, the sorts of things that, if they involved more bare breasts, might have made a halfway decent episode of “Carnivale.” Unfortunately, they just made hay for David, who started writing stories taking note of the approaching, delaminating circus, which was scheduled to play in Fort Wayne in just a few days.

These stories, as you might imagine, didn’t please the service club or the people who were in charge of making sure the show went on safely — police and fire officials, who began telling David they were sure interested in inspecting the circus’ equipment and permits and all that stuff. Meanwhile, the venue that was supposed to host this affair decided you know, we don’t need this trouble and cancelled their reservation. This was, like, the day before the show.

The circus arrived in town, trailed by David, the fire marshal, various other authorities and, of course, Pete. The road manager/ringmaster kept saying, “Don’t worry, the show will go on! We’re a circus, we make people happy! It’s our tradition!” Which I think is when the “since 1881” business was revealed, but I’m not sure. (I’m relying on my memory, and my 20-year-old impression was, the whole business played out like farce.)

The circus spent the morning shuttling around town, authorities in tow, getting booted from this place and that, increasingly desperate, until finally they were knocking on doors out in the country saying, “Can we borrow this field?” (David was actually filing updates on this breaking story; we were an afternoon paper, after all, and the show was supposed to be that night.)

At one point someone said yes, which led to perhaps the best single quote of the story, the year, and maybe ever:

“I got a call from my tenants this morning and they said there were a couple of midgets in the back yard putting up a big tent.”

I think it was then — when the landlord came over and evicted the midgets, when the ringmaster finally faced the truth, when Pete and his service club finally grasped just how bad a horse they had bet on — that the circus was finally shut down, although all they did was move on to the east and the next gig.

I think David wrote at least one more story, quoting a couple of homeless guys who were hired to do setup in the next town down the road and never got paid. He kept a Toby Tyler Circus poster up next to his desk until he left the paper five years later. I met Pete shortly thereafter; he mentioned his work with the service club. “You mean the ones who had the fiasco with the circus?” I asked. He was not amused. Over time, I got him to admit it was at least a legitimate story, although it took forever.

And just to show you how years can pass and nothing changes, there’s this: In 2004, when the Fellows visited Toronto, Alan and Kate and I made a side trip to Niagara Falls. (I’d never been there, and the Turks in the group were all going, in part to see a great North American natural wonder and in part to see the site of the Marilyn Monroe movie “Niagara.”) While there I picked up a $3 booklet in the gift shop, about people who’ve gone over the falls in barrels and other conveyances. I became convinced — still am — that there’s a great, great movie to be made about these people, and remembered that a Detroit-area man had been the last one to go over the falls. In fact, he’d been the only person to survive a falls plunge with no protective equipment. He later more or less admitted he was trying to commit suicide, but in the immediate aftermath acted like he’d planned the whole thing.

After we got back to Ann Arbor I looked up the stories about him, then did further Googling. When the spotlight shifted away he was still an unemployed metro Detroiter, but like so many falls daredevils before him, he was able to trade his foolhardiness for a little lasting notoriety and a job.

As “world’s greatest stunt man.” With the Toby Tyler Circus.

Which is still having PR problems. Although only God knows if it’s even the same one.

Sorry it’s been a little spotty around here. Much work. I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about work here — one of the things I’m being paid for is not to scoop my own employers — but it’s fair to say this: I’m doing lots of work for magazines, and with their long lead times, this means it’s Christmas in my head. Talk about rushing the season. I’ve been thinking of chestnuts roasting on an open fire for days and days, and we haven’t even carved the pumpkins yet.

Things will ease up soon. In the meantime, tell us a circus story.

Sorry for no new entry today. On Thursday, I shoved a 2,200-word bolus of type into the outbox, so as to clear my desk for the weekend’s work of preparing a 3,500-word bolus of type to be delivered Tuesday latest. Honestly, I just wasn’t in the mood to spend another minute staring at a screen.

(Again, do not construe any part of this as a complaint. I’m billing more in six weeks than I did all year. I might have to pay quarterly income taxes.)

Instead of staring at a screen, I stared at “The Wheelman,” which I picked up on the recommendation of Ms. Lippman and am thoroughly enjoying, even though the author appears, from his photo, to be about 12 years old.

The precipitating event of the book is a bank robbery. I love bank robberies, at least fictional ones. There’s something about a stick-up that just makes sense — you have the money, I need money, give me your money. The FBI is always issuing press releases whenever there’s a string of bank robberies in any given neighborhood, telling the public what a terrible idea it is. If their statistics tell the truth, it is — the average amount taken in most bank heists is shockingly low. On the other hand, the risk is pretty low, too. You’ve got security cameras, sure, and the prospect of Leavenworth in your future, but tellers don’t resist the way, say, liquor-store owners do. If it weren’t for the dye packs, everybody’d be in the business.

Anyway, “The Wheelman” is worth your time. I’m also reading Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down,” which is light as a feather, but in a good way.

Last night’s dinner was a rare failure. I had a hankering for a simple, cool-weather repast of beans and rice. Normally I reach for the ever-popular frijoles negro, but I had a bunch of dried cranberry beans and thought, what the hell. I started cooking with visions of a sort of chuck-wagon cowboy bean throwdown, and instead ended up with something that had way too many hot peppers and was otherwise oddly underflavored. It tasted like so many tailgate-party-style chilis I’ve tried, where in lieu of thoughtful tasting and season correction, the cook just tries to make the top of your skull lift off.

But the beer was cold and afterward I sat there, mouth aflame, hands on fire, and thought about hot peppers.

I thought about how careful you have to be when you’re working with them. I never scrape the seeds out with my fingernails, lest some of that capsaicin stuff get in my nail beds. If I throw the leavings down the disposal, I always step back when I turn it on, having gotten a faceful of low-grade pepper spray more than once.

But mostly, if you don’t wear gloves — and I never wear gloves, I never remember to buy them — you have to be careful what you touch afterward. Here’s a short list of things you shouldn’t touch after handling hot peppers, without at least one and preferably several sudsy hand-washings in between:

1) Your eyes;
2) Your nose;
3) Definitely your genitals;
4) Your lips;
5) and anywhere else the skin is a bit on the thin or membranous side.

I was discussing this with another hot-pepper lover. I told him about an embarrassing event involving contact lenses which left me writhing on the floor and red-eyed for days. He told me about going to the bathroom, taking out his unit and screaming in pain. But the best story was the time his wife turned from dinner preparations to nurse the baby, reached down to help the child latch on, and touched both her own areola and, of course, the infant’s mouth.

“That was a very noisy half-hour,” he said.

Hot peppers — all peppers, really — are otherwise a superfood. Oprah says so.

I said I thought the workload would ease up by Friday. News flash: It won’t. The momentum will carry me through next week, but that’s good. Work = money (eventually…theoretically) = a merry Christmas, a warm house, spring property taxes and a wolf kept from the door. As a character in a novel I can’t remember said, if you think a belching smokestack is ugly, try one with nothing coming out at all.

A little bit o’ bloggage: In the course of Googling something, by way of looking for something else entirely, I stumbled across a blog of someone’s fabulous Knight-Wallace Fellowship year. Not mine, silly, but Julia’s, who’s not a fellow but a spouse. It’s amusing to read, as I recall every emotion. And it’s good to see they’re keeping the standards high, as when Paul Rusesabagina stopped by Wallace House for lunch and a little chat. (The Flickr photos suggest Charles is holding everyone to a higher dress-code standard this year.)

Rusesabagina no doubt came because the fellowship includes a Rwandan journalist, Thomas Kamilindi, whom I was privileged to meet late in the summer. He told his story to the group earlier this month. A wrenching one, as you might imagine:

But there was a lot Thomas didn�t tell us that I later discovered on my own. A liberal Hutu married to a Tutsi, Thomas had been forced � during his time at the radio station � to broadcast the very hate messages he abhorred, the messages that incited hate and violence against the �cockroaches,� as the Tutsis were called. He didn�t mention that he narrowly escaped death on more than one occasion, that he has had a loaded pistol held to his temple and was saved when an officer who recognized him happened by. He didn�t mention that while he was at the Hotel, he actively tried to get word of the massacre out to the White House, the Elysees Palace and human rights organizations. He didn�t mention that he gave an interview to French radio from the hotel, an act which resulted in the government sending a soldier with the express mission to kill Thomas. (He was spared when, by happenstance, the soldier turned out to be a childhood friend.) And he didn�t mention that while he and his wife and younger daughter survived the massacre, their five-year-old daughter � who was visiting with her Tutsi grandparents at the time � did not. In a BBC interview, he says:

“It is very difficult to put my life experiences behind me and to forget. I and my wife live with it all the time. It is part of me. Sometimes I shut myself in a room and cry when I think about my first born, my little girl Mamee. It’s difficult when you know you were about to be killed and you survived but your child was killed”.

You maybe see why this year is a hard one to recover from. For just about everyone.

Not much tonight. I have a long slog at the keys tonight, part of tomorrow and maybe into Thursday, but after that, sunshine should break over the land and all will be good once again.

“It’s all good.” There’s an expression that would sound stupid coming from my mouth. Yours too, prolly.

I have a blanket policy toward all telemarketers — please put us on your no-call list — but I make an occasional exception for market researchers, if I have time. How can I complain about the market if I don’t make myself part of the solution, I figure. Just enough time passes between market-research surveys that I forget how horrible the last one was. Tonight they were seeking my thoughts on food shopping, something I am well-stocked with. And so it began, after a promise it would take no longer than 8-12 minutes:

First, there were some who’s-on-first moments when I tried to explain that I didn’t patronize one store exclusively: “I go to Costco for non-perishable staples, Nino Salvaggio for specialty meats, cheeses and vegetables and Meijer for everything else.”

“That’s Cosso, C-O-S-O?” he asked. Hoo-boy. I should have just hung up. After I finally hung up, having rated all three stores in approximately 2,936 different areas (and yes, “deli prices” and “deli service” were two different ones, and “friendly checkout experience” was included), I checked the timer on the phone: 13 minutes, 5 seconds. Liar!

Once one of these clowns asked me if a particular brand of cheese led to good feelings in general or good feelings about my family. I asked if I could choose “give me a break, it’s Monterey jack, not single-malt Scotch” as a response. Alas, no.

Then, as if to mock me, came the robot call for Deadbeat Michelle, who used to have my phone number. It comes at least twice a week. It is entirely automated, and appears as “out of area” on the caller ID. I cannot ignore it because a) the editors at my best-paying client and b) my dear friend John, also have “out of area” displays (it seems to be related to VOIP). There is no key to press for “you have the wrong number.” And so we endure.

A bit of bloggage: When I was an adult who worked in an office with smart, witty people, I loved going to lunch with them. Joel Achenbach says lunch ain’t what it used to be. Noted.

Once more into the breach, then.

Quite an amusing story in the News today, a variation on a timeless theme in suburbia: There goes the neighborhood:

GROSSE POINTE — When Joe Rippolone parked the lime-yellow fire truck on the cobblestones in front of his century-old carriage house on Washington Road, his well-heeled neighbors did not know quite what to make of it.

“Well, I’m from the Bronx,” Rippolone says in his own defense. “I guess I’m used to doing things a little bit different.”

I encourage you to click through to the picture. The Clydesdale is hilarious. I guess I’m going to have to put Washington Road on my bike-riding route and see this for myself.

Now, there are two schools of thought on the neighbors’ decor: My Property, My Rules vs. Keep Up Your Lawn. The MPMR folks, when not filing fevered blog posts about “post-Kelo America,” are busy defending their right to paint their goddamn houses purple, and if you don’t like it, well, don’t look at it. Sometimes they do.

The KUYL types worry about every little detail of your property. (They don’t worry about their own; that’s your job.) Sometimes they live in communities where a committee led by bitchy queens decides what sort of window treatment you can use, because while they may not come into your house, they can see the backside of your drapes from the sidewalk, and they don’t like them.

I sit between the camps. If I were renting, I’d probably be happy to live in the MPMR neighborhood, on the very real chance the neighbors would be more fun, or at least interesting. If I were buying, I’d go with KUYL and turn the basement into a freak pad. The latter would be a better investment.

MPMR people like to think of themselves as proud individualists, flinty libertarians, the sort of people who made America great. Frequently this is a self-delusion covering for the fact they’re really too lazy to cut the grass more than once every six weeks, move the moldy couch off the porch and the auto parts off the front steps.

KUYL are incredibly sensitive to perceived changes in property values. They’re like a herd of nervous gazelles, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, in this case, the dandelions on your lawn. They like to “encourage neighborhood pride” by giving out monthly awards for Best Use of Geraniums (Window Box Division).

Oh, well. I could go on all day. I think the best single comment, though, was on the DetNews comment boards, and it captured a certain GP je nais sais quoi perfectly: It’s in bad taste. Period. And it would be in bad taste in any neighborhood in any city, except maybe Warren.

Also, that “the plumber husband of Henry Ford’s great-great-grandaughter” would be a great name for a band.

Share your tales of MPMR/KUYL types in the comments, if you wish.

A fine day out it was, when we decided on the spur of a chilly Sunday moment to visit the Detroit Zoo. We’d been meaning to go since the baby wolverines were wee, but with the hot summer, this, that and the other thing, we didn’t get there until today. The verdict: Down at the heels, but still salvageable. Kate was at her absolute mommy-pleasing best, which is to say, she said things like this, in the snake house:

“That gaboon viper is really well-camouflaged. And look — his head looks just like a leaf.”

It did. I was impressed.

And then we reached the lions, who looked like they were posing for a calendar — resting on their rock ledges in the sunshine, male on the higher one, female below, both looking off into the distance with that king-of-beasts attitude. Very impressive. But the highlight of the day was the “rescue story” on a sign outside the exhibit, on how one of the females got there:

What a magnificent, only-in-Detroit detail. You see now why “Animal Cops” does its best work here.

Doesn’t that bear’s expression say it all? Winter’s coming. Think I’ll take a little nap.

So, the bloggage:

The older I get, the less interested I am in celebrity gossip. This is a sign of maturity, I suppose, but also of exhaustion. I just don’t have time to develop an opinion on the quality of Jessica Simpson’s marriage, particularly since I would have problem identifying her in a police lineup with five other pretty blondes. A few weeks ago I was at a party where one of the guests was revealed to be a stringer for People magazine. The conversation instantly turned to Brad v. Jen.

“Are you on Team Anniston or Team Pitt?” someone asked. Thank God this is a decision I will not be making anytime soon.

But every so often some little worm of dirt works its way in, and so it is that I’ve started paying attention to the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise offspring-in-utero. I guess anyone who’s ever given birth has an opinion on how it should or shouldn’t go, opinions we develop over nine months of reading and thinking about birth non-stop, followed by another six months of regret, recriminations and rewinding of the delivery-room tape (which, for most of us, exists entirely in our minds). That’s probably why I’m reading in astonishment about Scientology birth practices, and the central question:

Will Katie have a silent birth?

I guess it’s a Scientology thing: In his book Preventive Dianetics, Hubbard elaborates on the goal of this practice: Apparently pretending to all concerned that pushing a human being out your coochie is not only painless, but downright relaxing, will “save both the sanity of the mother and the child and safeguard the home to which they will go.” Furthermore, L. Ron goes on to admonish, “the maintaining of silence does not mean a volley of ‘sh’s,’ for those make stammerers.” After a delivery that’s “as calm and no-talk as possible,” the baby should “be wrapped somewhat tightly in a warm blanket, very soft, and then left alone for a day or so.”

Not even a year ago, this girl was a strict Catholic. I ask you.

Busy busy busy day tomorrow starts a busy busy busier week. Into the starting blocks!

Everyone who works for an afternoon daily knows it’s doomed. Hell, everyone who works for a newspaper knows it’s doomed, or at least bound for the sort of profound change that will make it so different you can’t even remember why you chose journalism for a career.

Honestly, when I left The News-Sentinel early this year, I figured the place had, at the very outside, five years left. My last six months as a copy editor there were instructive — and, demotion and all, I can’t say I’d trade them. After the Fellowship, I needed a place to hunker down and think for a while. And there was the paper’s death spiral to consider, too; remember the scene in “Citizen Kane” when Susan Alexander has her opera debut? She’s awful, and the camera does that long, long tilt up to the stagehands in the rafters, who look at one another, and one holds his nose? I think: Would I rather be onstage, singing with Susan Alexander, or that stagehand?

That was the gift of the copy desk. You got to be backstage at a bad opera.

Anyway, when the paper finally folded, I figured I’d come back to the Fort, and I and my ex-colleagues would go next door to Henry’s, and we’d close the place down, cry, tell stories and spend a good chunk of everybody’s severance. (I would buy many rounds, to support the troops.) In other words, we’d have a goddamn proper newspaper wake. Any newspaper deserves a wake, and we would have that Pulitzer Prize (’83, local general or spot news reporting) to toast one last time.

Today, however, it looks like the last men and women standing won’t get even that:

Several staff members at the News-Sentinel said a plan has been discussed to turn the 172-year-old afternoon newspaper into a predominately online publication. However, the paper’s publisher and editor deny such a plan exists.

“I have meetings with my employees, but it has never been discussed,” Austin said. “There is no such plan. There has never been such a plan.”

Huh. So instead of shutting it down proper-like, they’re just going to squeeze it to death, until the last man standing is too tired and demoralized to go next door and lift a glass.

And what a crafty strategy! I deliver a hat tip to its Rovian genius. Everybody knows the future of the newspaper is online. Why not make a clumsy stab at doing it badly and then, when it fails, you can blame the staff! “YOU just weren’t down with the program, which is, after all, the FUTURE,” the brass can say. It’s the Harriet Miers nomination in newsprint.

But maybe they wouldn’t do it badly. Maybe they’d do what such a radical transition would need — a ground-up redesign of the site, intense staff training in new ways to tell stories and how to use the web’s possibilities, a virtual nuking of departmental walls and a reimagination of the product that really seeks to push the limits of what is possible. In other words, do more than give reporters video cameras and lay a whip to their backs.

Then I remember what it took to get the carpet cleaned in that place. How grudgingly every penny was spent, how ruthlessly the budget was hacked, and I figure: No.

Anyway, there is no plan. And there has never been such a plan.

Oy.

My sincere sympathies to all. You don’t deserve it.

A sphincter-tightening moment on I-94 today: Driving in the middle lane I had to swerve, at freeway speeds, to avoid being sideswiped by another driver, who was herself swerving to avoid someone entering the freeway under the apparent delusion she was the only car on the road.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Both drivers were chatting on cell phones.

Happily chatting! Heedless of the near miss we’d all just escaped.

Why, I oughta…well, I oughta not let every little thing get my panties in a bunch, that’s what. Because if you do, you end up very much like, oh, me. On some days, anyway.

I chose not to let this one bother me. Spriggy was in the car with me and the air was redolent of dog biscuits. I bought him a big-boy box at Costco, which turned out to be even more densely packed than I’d anticipated. It could easily last a year, and since the dog is 14, it’s possible it could outlast him.

If that happened, and we still lived in Indiana, I would sell the unused portion via the Peddler’s Post, in honor of my all-time favorite classified ad. It was simple, and yet, ohhhh:

Three pair men’s white briefs. Size 38. Like new.

It’s the “like new” that really sells it, doesn’t it? I have no quarrel with aftermarket undies — have bought ’em myself, on eBay — but only if they’re obviously NWT, “new with tags.” (Besides, I only wanted the bra. The matching thong sits at the bottom of my u’trou drawer, still NWT. As if.) But “like” new?

I wanted to write a column about the Peddler’s Post — a poem in every column (wedding dress, size 16, never worn), a novel on every page (pit bull bitch, two years old, $200, not for home with children). My editor discouraged me, suggesting the brass wouldn’t think well of a column that cast the major competitor to our ever-dwindling classified business in a good light. He suggested drawing material from our own classifieds, but they didn’t have the same soul.

No one ever advertised like-new undies, for one thing.

The local radio talk show out of Ann Arbor today signed off with a Woody Guthrie song. The topic was whither-labor and the tune was “Union Maid,” sung by Pete Seeger. What a toe-tapper:

There once was a union maid
She never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks
And the deputy sheriffs who made the raid
She went to the union hall
When a meeting it was called
And when the company boys came round
She always stood her ground

Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union
I’m sticking to the union,I’m sticking to the union
Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union
I’m sticking to the union till the day I die

“Goons and ginks and company finks” — I’m going to file that one away. Does management have its own songs? Would anyone want to sing them? It’s like that scene before the big battle in “Glory,” where the black soldiers are singing their rowdy hymns, talking to God and preparing for a happy death around the fire, while the white officers are inside listening to somebody play the piano and looking so, so sad.

“Solidarity Forever,” there’s another good one. Order another pitcher and sing that one around the bar, boys. For the union makes us strong…

Even the Internationale, the notorious anthem of communism, makes you want to stand up and join in. I’d like to see Whitney Houston try to make that one her own, you know?

Bloggage? Maybe later.

Who says life in the suburbs is dull? The house was just disturbed by horror-movie sound effects (similar to screams, but not quite) coming from the back yard. It woke up Kate and drowned out “L.A. Confidential,” requiring an extra tuck-in, soothing and an investigation.

I watched from an open second-floor window, as the sound of claws scrabbling on bark came closer and closer and CLOSER and…

…a really, really fat raccoon waddled out of the hedge and disappeared into the neighbor’s yard.

Must have been what got into the garbage last night while it sat at the curb. Laid into a bag of stale hamburger buns and spread the mess across the park strip. It reminded me of the night two raccoons crashed through the ceiling during the dinner rush at the Mexican restaurant where I worked one summer. The owner, when I called him to report this news, insisted I was mistaken: “A raccoon is a wild animal. They don’t live in cities.”

Why should they, when they can eat your stale tortillas out of the dumpster?

Where did I read this — a Gretel Erlich story, or somewhere else? It was about researchers who conclusively proved some Alaska ravens were flying 30 miles or so from their night roost to a Juneau McDonald’s, to plunder french fries from the parking lot. They flew back to the roost at night and were, essentially, going to and from work.

I want a pet raven. Or a crow. I always have. I want to walk around with it on my shoulder and feed it the occasional grub. And I’d sic it on raccoons.

Can you tell I’m feeling a bit loopy? Long day, not much to report. We’ll try again tomorrow.

No, wait, there’s this: I was mostly right about the “terrorism” at Georgia Tech yesterday. Huh.