Today’s Tao will make you stark raving nuts if you think about it too much. Which is pretty much what it’s saying:

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.

So does John Prine. Did you know the first three songs he ever sang in public were “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There” and “Paradise?” This is what he says:

“If you’re looking for the big picture, sometimes you’ve got to get a really small frame.” John Prine drinks from the Great Mother’s breasts.

Because I seemingly want to make sure I never work in newspapers again, I wrote a letter to Romenesko about that Milwaukee story. Find it here.

I read Kate’s report card when she got home today, teasing her by humming the “Jaws” theme before I opened it. It was fine. I declared the afternoon A Salute to Kate Day, and said we could do anything she wanted.

First, lunch at the Original Pancake House. She had chocolate-chip pancakes. (I didn’t.)

Then, a long-promised, good-report-card trip to Build-a-Bear Workshop, where she chose Mocha Bunny. Then it was off to Nordstrom’s, for a bathing suit that won’t crawl up her butt (half off!). Then we went to Restoration Hardware, because if we’re going to drive clear to Troy for shopping amusement, mommy deserves a little, too. Then home.

It was a good day.

Earlier, when I was waiting to meet her at our usual corner, one of our little neighbors passed by. She’s a year ahead of Kate, and was on the verge of tears. Why?

“I’m a little emotional about school being over,” she said, before hurrying on. Kate said she stopped at the end of the driveway later and outlined her anxieties: “I’m not big enough to be a fourth-grader. I’m only 8. That’s not old enough.” Then she hurried home to be emotional.

“How do you feel about school being over?” I asked Kate.

“Not like that,” she said.

Yes, it was a good day.

So let’s have a quick transition to bloggage then, shall we?

When I’m not enjoying my local a.m. newspaper — which I do very often — I am flinging sections to the floor. I can accept that Detroit is sports-mad. I can accept that the NBA championship finals are a big deal. I don’t mind seeing Pistons coverage on Page One. I don’t mind copious Pistons coverage elsewhere in the paper. And then I just…snap.

Take today: What’s on the front page? Pistons. It’s a warm, fuzzy feature about the pre-game prayer circle held by the team chaplain. (Look, more mocking of religion by the atheist, godless MSM!) At the bottom of the page, a huge teaser to the features front, which reveals the winners of the Pistons Fantasy Sneaker contest, one of those reader-participation features editors are so big on these days. So the Pistons are on the features front, too.

Needless to say, they’re all over the sports front. One column, two columns, another story, more. Big pictures, of course. I turn to the auto section. At first glance it seems it’s a story on which cars the Pistons drive, but no, it’s a column! If the Pistons were autos, what would they be?

Ben Wallace, I learn, would be a Ford F-150 — Powerful and durable, Ben’s not afraid to shoulder the dirty work. He digs into the unglamorous jobs and carries the load for the Pistons.

I’m developing a facial tic.

It might not be so bad if the week hadn’t begun with this, which included that photo played huge on Page One. This kid has been the key art — the little picture at the top of the page — every postgame day since, hiding her face in grief for the losses and exulting for the win. She’s four. I ask you.

OK, enough of that. I don’t know how I missed this Gene Weingarten column last month, about an online poll to pick the 100 greatest Americans, ever, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it this month. He’s interviewing a spokesman for the Discovery Channel, which will cover the runoff:

Me: I see Oprah is on the list, and Ellen DeGeneres, and Martha Stewart and Dr. Phil McGraw. They are apparently taking the place of people such as Whitman, Poe, Hopper, Gershwin and Melville, who many believe wrote the greatest American novel. So basically — referencing the McGraw-Melville calculus — Americans have picked The Ultimate Weight Solution over Moby Dick. Do you feel they are showing discerning literary judgment?

Elizabeth: Well, yes.

Finally, this last link is only going to be of interest to journalists or those few masochists in the room who lie awake wondering why newspapers suck so bad. A long, long story from a magazine writer who did a three-year hitch reporting for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, it has a number of simple insights into why that might be. How about this?

The end result is an often strained newsroom where top editors drive the agenda, middle editors worry about their dictates and reporters take turns being confused and demoralized. Against all odds, good stories � and an occasional great one � get written, but you can�t help but wonder why the paper can�t be better. The answer begins in the chaotic mess of the newsroom.

A case in point was the �Blue Shirt,� the airport artwork that was rejected by county government, raising a host of fascinating artistic and political issues. But the public appeared to be anti-Blue Shirt and the newspaper was wary of looking elitist, so reporters weren�t allowed to dig too deeply.

I don’t know a reporter who wouldn’t nod like a marionette throughout this piece. If you are, well, “enjoy” isn’t really the word, is it?

The editors needed to grab readers� attention without getting some so mad they cancelled their subscriptions. How about some more Pistons stories?

I really love my Daily Tao widget. I don’t go to church, but that doesn’t mean I’m a howling void of spiritual emptiness. I will admit how shallow and trendy it is to have your day’s sole religious moment when you’re checking the forecast and morning traffic, but hey — deal.

It can drive me insane, however. So many chapters seem to instruct us to lie there like a lump and lo, wisdom will descend like the gentle rain that droppeth from heaven. This is a difficult lesson for your average Type-A American to learn. Take today:

When the great Tao is forgotten,
goodness and piety appear.
When the body’s intelligence declines,
cleverness and knowledge step forth.
When there is no peace in the family,
filial piety begins.
When the country falls into chaos,
patriotism is born.

When I was in high school, all the cool kids were into “Kung Fu,” a show I found preposterous. My sole attempt to catch the magic included the wise master telling Keith Carradine, “When you can walk on the rice paper without ripping it, grasshopper, then you will have learned.” Duuuude.

Still, I like that last line. In today’s Tao, that is. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born. Dude. Word.

Today’s the last day of school. Obviously, I have mixed feelings. My life gets more complicated, Kate’s gets less. Her Indiana classmates were out two weeks ago, so I told her that by starting early in Indiana and ending late in Michigan, she had already stacked up two weeks of extra-credit learning karma, and that this is a good thing. But lately I don’t know. When I was a kid, we attended school for 170 days, which meant we started the day after Labor Day — the date God Himself intended children to return to school — and finished around the first week of June. When state legislatures became convinced 170 days wasn’t enough for the Three Rs, plus social studies, AIDS awareness and self-esteem calisthenics, school years lengthened to 180 days, pushing start dates into August and dismissals past the first week of June.

And what happens in those last weeks of school? Plenty, and nothing. I don’t think Kate’s done actual schoolwork since the heat wave started more than a week ago. It’s all parties and popsicles and picnics and farewell-to-the-fifth-graders assemblies. Several of her classmates have already left on family vacations, and I can hardly blame them for cutting this silliness short. When we left this morning, Kate reminded me this is the day they receive their “end-of-year gifts.”

“You get an end-of-year gift?” I’m still adjusting to the concept of a lavish end-of-year gift for the teacher. Yes, the kids get an end-of-year gift, too. The next time you see kindergarten graduations that steadily amp up into the lavish, weeks-long prom/high-school graduation festivities of recent years, you know where the idea came from.

Anyway, I have three hours remaining of freedom. I plan to spend it cleaning. Best get to the bloggage:

Terri Schiavo’s autopsy was released yesterday. Her husband could not have ordered a more complete vindication for his position, not that it matters to anyone from the nuttier end of the spectrum. This liar pushed the husband-abused-her-into-a-heart-attack line relentlessly, and if you click through and notice that he’s a Catholic-freakin’-priest, well, draw your own conclusions. He hasn’t reacted yet, but as the report’s release was approaching, this is what he had to say:

I am not terribly optimistic that the autopsy will provide evidence of either the cause of Terri’s cardiac arrest or any abuse. I think there was simply too much time between Terri’s injury(ies) and her death for any such evidence to still be detectable.

Note that reasoning — there won’t be evidence of abuse, because too much time passed “between Terri’s injury(ies) and her death.” Because of course there were injuries. Of which there is no evidence.

Thanks, Father. Keep doing the work of Christ!

As a glimpse into the heart of the right-to-life movement, you could hardly ask for a better case. If your brain has withered to half its normal size, if you’re blind, if you’re in no way conscious of anything in the greater world, as long as you’re still breathing and peeing, you need to be kept alive, even if you could reasonably be expected to live another 30 years.

Sorry, no, no, no, a thousand times no. I’m not interested in being anyone’s cross to bear. I don’t want Alan or Kate coming to visit me in a nursing home, keeping watch over my insensate body. I want them out in the world. Because I love them both, I want Alan shopping for another wife and mother for Kate. I’d want to be dead, all the way dead, cremated and up the chimney and my ashes scattered to the wind and waves. Because that’s what I’d be — dead.

I guess now I’m a card-carrying member of the Culture of Death. Well, sing hallelujah and pass the nightshade, because living like Terri is no way to live at all. And people know this. Which is why this issue is going to be a net loser for Wingnuttia.

Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric et al really get on my nerves. Wolcott’s, too: This morning Sawyer was interviewing the mother of missing teen Natalee Holloway, last seen in Aruba on May 30th. Interviewing isn’t the right word. The questions were more like opportunities for Sawyer to become the golden chalice into which the mother — Beth — poured her hopes and memories as Sawyer nodded with an understanding too deep for words, though she kept using them.

What JC Burns would be doing if he’d been born 30 years later, seen here. OK, let’s amend that to what he would have been doing in junior-high school. Still, amusing.

Better go run that vacuum. In two (!!!) hours I become a full-timer again.

Project Ice Cream has its first unqualified success: Mango. Mmmmango, I should say. It’s a real Homer Simpson flavor. Marge, more mmmmmmango. And it’s the easiest one so far, if you don’t mind peeling ripe mangos, which are slippery buggers. And oh my, it was the perfect ending to dinner, which was a rather fiery Thai curry thing.

So, make a note: Mango ice cream will send your guests home happy. (And Maureen, thanks for the Tolstini recipe! We’ll be making a date for that one, surely.)

Eeeek! Stop the presses. The 10 o’clock news just brought word of a homicide in Grosse Pointe. The city of just-plain Grosse Pointe, aka “the city,” one of the five municipalities that make up our little Eden. It looks like some sort of domestic, but the standout detail for me was this: This is the first homicide in GP city in, ahem, over 30 years.

Because homicide is so rude. It’s also tacky, and shows a lack of breeding. And it makes a mess. So we don’t do that here.

So with that, let’s start with the bloggage, which is rather D-centric today:

Meet the young mayor of a dynamic city overlooking the Detroit River — Windsor, Ont. Does this story sound familiar? When he was born in May 1974, his family had just arrived from Lebanon, and his father, a jeweler in the old country, started a business selling pita bread, primarily to the city�s Arab immigrants. (The mayor speaks fluent English, French and Arabic.) Later, when his father retired, Eddie and his brothers took the business over and expanded it across Ontario and into a dozen states. Meanwhile, he earned an honors degree in chemistry and biochemistry, and started law school. When he was 24, he was chosen young entrepreneur of the year. I think I buy this family’s pita bread, but I’m not sure; I’ll have to check the label.

When baby wolverines were born at the Detroit Zoo, and were given the names Sparty and Bucky, I wondered what was going on. So did lots of UM alumni, who called up and waved their wallets around. Never fear, though; the names have been changed. And yes, the story contains the phrase “deeply offended.”

Moving out of Michigan, the NYT looks at the embryonic Al Franken for Senator campaign. A Marge Gunderson moment within: “I jumped ya twice in Thief River Falls,” said a middle-age woman in greeting at the pre-speech party in a tent next to the Ted Mann Concert Hall at the University of Minnesota here. The seeming inference of long-ago sexual congress would cause deep blushing elsewhere, but it actually meant that Faith Rud and Mr. Franken had bonded in a far more profoundly Minnesotan way: she had used jumper cables to revive his Volkswagen bus on a cold night long ago after a college gig.

If I ran the world, or at least its newspapers, I’d do this more often — use a well-written essay on the features front, rather than yet another story reminding readers to apply sunscreen liberally. Here’s a nice one, on celebrity, photography’s pitiless gaze and the picture of Dorian MJ.

The heat has broken! Humidity, outta here! Think I’ll go celebrate.

I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about Michael Jackson. Honestly, in a perfect world? He would have been convicted side-by-side with the kid’s mother. They’d have to share a cell.

Now that would be justice.

That said, I watched a little of the post-verdict blah-blah on CNN. They held and held and held on a tight shot of people celebrating. These were Jackson fans, or “supporters” as they’re called in CNN-speak, and they were exultant, oh yes they were. All I could this was: Does he actually still have fans? I mean, even if he’d never been accused of anything worse than failing to clean the chimp cages on a regular basis, are we to believe the guy’s work is worthy of fans and fandom? NPR just called him the “king of pop.” By my reckoning, that makes Aretha Franklin the Grand Priestess and Philosopher-Queen of Pop. That touches off a whole episode of tltle inflation. Please.

Miles Davis beat his wife. But he made great music. Ray Charles was a heroin addict. But he made great music. Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy. But he remade “My Way” in a way that wasn’t great, but was different and audacious enough to qualify as real creativity, even if it was heroin creativity. Michael Jackson sleeps with boys, and his music sucks. People, grow up.

Oy, a busy one behind me and another one ahead, made oddly unsettling by the great, pregnant clouds that waddled over the area all day, refusing to rain — on our house, at least. There were squalls and showers here and there, but mostly just oppressive humidity. Today, more of the same. Think I’ll work out early, then stay inside, dusting things.

Also, writing. I think I have a new gig, which won’t make me famous but will put me in a very nice place, byline-wise, on a regular basis. More as it unfolds. And last night was the inaugural meeting of a long-delayed impulse my local friend John and I had a while back — a writer’s group that meets regularly to exchange, critique and workshop one another’s work. The first meeting was small, but heartening. Only we need a new venue. Coffee houses seem like such a wonderful solution, until you confront their noise level. One of our members has a hearing loss in one ear, and do you have any idea how loud a commercial coffee grinder is, not to mention those industrial steamers? Good lord, but it’s like a factory in there. Next time: The library.

No bloggage today, because it’s all about the king of you-know-what. Maybe later. Until then, ta.

On Saturday Kate and I rode our bikes to a nearby garage sale, lured by the promise in the classified ad of American Girl swag. (Yes, we’ve arrived at American Girls. Don’t ask me what I think about it. Yet.) We found what I’d feared — some woman had arrived a full hour before the opening bell and bought it all — but as usually happens at garage sales, we found something else: A stack of Nancy Drew mysteries, including several of the older titles. “The Secret of the Old Clock,” “The Bungalow Mystery,” etc.

Just opening a Nancy Drew title stored in someone’s basement for a few years brings not the whiff of mildew but of chlorine, so embedded is Nancy with my memories of summer, when I went through them like popcorn. My first experience with librarian disapproval came when I asked where I could find her in the school library. “We don’t have any,” she all but hissed. “Those are junky books. They’re written in about half an hour, and they don’t have anything to offer.”

I was shocked. Nancy Drew had nothing to offer? The girl with the titian hair, the snappy blue roadster, the accessory boyfriend? I couldn’t imagine how anyone could arrive at such a conclusion.

The librarian was right — the books are junky. They probably were written in half an hour. But they were wonderful dashed-off junk, and I plan to spend a chunk of this summer with my stash (of course I bought them all), getting reacquainted.

You can read any number of fond appreciations of Nancy Drew by baby-boom women elsewhere. I’m cutting this one short. If the books are, indeed, junkier than I remembered, I will report this fearlessly.

God, am I tired. It’s been trying to rain here for weeks, and never quite getting around to it. When it does, it’s like angry tears — given grudgingly and stopped as soon as possible. We need a night and a day of gentle soaking, but it’s not in the forecast. But last night we had a mini-thunderstorm, which barely made a noise but for the SPLAT SPLAT SPLATTING of rain on the bathroom skylight at 4:18 a.m. Nothing like being awakened at 4:18. You know first light is coming in 40 minutes, so the chance of another REM cycle is scant. The brain fills with Monday thoughts — What do I have to do today? Did I make a list? Are my good jeans clean? Should I work out first thing, or after lunch? Is George Bush still president? What do we have for lunch? Will Ohio ever find that missing $215 million? — and ohhhh, but the next thing you know the birds are tweeting and you have to get up in 90 minutes and it’s stopped raining and might as well go make some coffee but no! Sleep is coming! And then it comes, and the alarm rings 30 seconds later.

So, let’s cut right to the bloggage:

Shakeups, reinventions, hurt feelings, secret memos left on the copier — boy, do I not miss the newspaper business. That said, it would be interesting to work for Michael Kinsley, because at least when he shakes things up, you get the feeling there’s a functioning brain behind it. What he’s planning for the LAT editorial page sounds long overdue, and I hope it works.

The Poor Man — snicker: June 11 (Bloomberg) � In a surprise move expected to send shockwaves through the world of TV journalism, CNN, the orginal cable news network, and NBC, which owns cable channels MSNBC and CNBC, announced a deal to consolidate their news organizations into a single giant news network. By pooling their journalistic resources, the organizations will be able to offer deeper coverage of the most important stories of the day, and will be better equipped to compete with current cable news champion FOX News. The new network — to be called Where the White Women At?, or WWWA — is set to debut this week.

I was a little bleah on “The Comeback” when it debuted last week on HBO, but I needn’t have been. After last night, I think it’s going to be great. Lisa Kudrow is a talented, talented actress.

Ya bum! Buy a cup of coffee or get off that wi-fi!

Lately I’ve been fairly successful at weaning myself off reading the Fort Wayne papers. I still check them daily, but don’t often click past the main page. There’s increasingly less there there, I regret to say. And, as always, they’re showing their provincialism — I think there’s been a story about the IPFW mastodon public-art project most days since it opened in May.

You want to know if a trend is over? I thought to myself. Check if it’s gotten to Fort Wayne yet.

No sooner were the thoughts out of my head than I passed a gaily painted frog in a Grosse Pointe commercial strip. Then another. And another. And oh my, but we’re off to the races again.

I guess this trend started with the Chicago Cows on Parade, followed by Cows on Vacation in South Carolina, Cincinnati’s pigs, San Francisco’s hearts, Buffalo’s buffalo and Toronto’s moose and, oh, here’s a list. Go look up your own links.

I don’t know why frogs for Grosse Pointe. Maybe Toledo had some leftovers. Maybe because we were settled by the French. The fundraiser is called Frogs*Fur*Friends and has something to do with the twin beneficiaries — the Children’s Home of Detroit and the G.P. Animal Adoption Society — but beyond that, I don’t really know why frogs.

As for the photo above, this being Michigan, someone felt they had to honor the long-running Michigan-Michigan State football rivalry. I’ll leave it to Eric to explain, with that exquisite Ann Arbor condescension, why it’s not really that big of a rivalry. At least for Michigan.

And now for the bloggage:

Lance and Nance hit the American Street. An imperfect entry, but a start. I think he’s too mean to Amy, but then, he’s recovering from a virus.

Someone really hates Mitch Albom.

Remember the good ol’ days, when people had good values and respected human life from the moment of conception to natural death, and displayed living premature babies as a carnival attraction?

Another hot Sunday lolls outside the windows. Have a good’un.

Stems and seeds today — but for a good reason. Lance and I have been asked to contribute to The American Street, and I spent much of today thinking about what we should write about. I want to do a point-counterpoint chit-chat post along the lines of Slate’s Breakfast Table (do they even still do that?), something that would capture the sparkling nature of our regular e-mail exchanges, because we’re so witty and smart ‘n’ stuff.

I sent Lance one draft of an opening volley, and an suggestion for next week, and he wrote back: “I’m sick. I think we got some bad stromboli.”

Well, OK. Sometimes you just can’t sparkle.

I think the Lance ‘n’ Nance pairup starts Sunday. When it’s up, I’ll link.

Also, I’m reading a new Fred Busch book, “North,” and I’d like to get back to it. I agreed to take Kate to the pool today precisely for the hour or so of reading time it offered. I’ve only been three times, but already I love the Grosse Pointe Woods pool and someday soon I’ll tell you why. But not yet.

Fortunately, bloggage:

Well, now we know why Evan Bayh has a Flickr account. He’s watering the ground for a 2008 presidential run. I hope he does better than poor Dick Lugar.

One of the most interesting things about technology is how regular folks adapt it to their own ends. The ChiTrib tells us how GoogleMaps is spawning its own cottage industries. (Although I couldn’t get housingmaps.com to load.)

You all have a good weekend.

Nance’s Chunky Monkey ice cream was a success, but not an unqualified one. It was basically a vanilla base with banana puree stirred in, and a handful of roughly chopped Hershey bars added at the end. Nothing like trying to re-create a product most people buy commercially to make you appreciate the problems of commercial food preparation. How do you make a chocolate bar that you can freeze for days and still won’t chip your teeth, for instance.

Alan: “They probably add a bunch of lard ‘n’ crap to it.”

Thanks. Way to put me off my feed. Of course, Alan, having worked at a Campbell’s soup plant, knows a thing or two about commercial food preparation. He won’t drink V8 juice, nor Campbell’s soup, but don’t let those prejudices put you off your feed.

My old boss Richard worked in a cottage-cheese plant. He doesn’t eat cottage cheese. My friend Jim went to boarding school downwind of a bourbon distillery, but he happily drinks bourbon — he didn’t start until long after graduation, though. And I think Mark worked in the Brach’s candy plant in Youngstown. He had an amusing observation: “Chocolate is the opposite of bourbon. You have to learn to dislike it.” He doesn’t like it.

But Project Ice Cream is an experiment, and you learn as you go. One thing I learned today: All hail vanilla beans. They are worth the money, at least if you’re making ice cream.

Kate wouldn’t touch it, by the way. She took the tiniest taste and turned up her nose. My little fern who lives on air and rain.

Bloggage aplenty today:

I learn some of the most interesting things at Amy’s. Did you know there’s a website devoted to cataloguing art that depicts the Virgin Mary as a breastfeeding mother? Now you do. Eat up, kid.

Last year, on our Fellowship, after we toured the Chicago Art Institute, one of our overseas members asked us Americans what the big deal was over “American Gothic” — he just didn’t get it. I wish I’d read this Slate piece beforehand: When the picture finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, real Iowa farmers and their wives were not amused. To them, the painting looked like a nasty caricature, portraying Midwestern farmers as pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers. One Iowa farmwife told Wood he should have his “head bashed in.”

Quote of the day, from a Freep story on a murder sentencing. This is the victim’s mother talking: When Ronald Brown busts hell wide open, I hope my angel flies through heaven and sheds tears for him to drink. Because he’s going to be a thirsty son of a gun. Hey it beats, “Now we can get some closure.”

The Poor Man is taking care of two adorable kittens. And you know what that means. No word on whether he’ll be using the Citikitty, a potty-training device. Question: Once your cat is using the toilet, do you have to compete for it in emergencies? And is s/he allowed to scratch?

Oh, and I guess I promised this. The new kitchen. Note: cool color, new light, green back yard and, especially, the small stained-glass rendering of Spriggy, center bottom. One of my stranger Christmas presents.