Kate’s school had a walkathon over the weekend, to feed dollars to the hungry PTO. Of course we participated; we are, if nothing else, good school citizens. Kate walked 15 laps, about two and a half miles, and one over the number she needed to get the gold award for participation above and beyond the call, etc.

It was a festive event, with lots of kids and parents and teachers and even a DJ, who played walking music — uptempo early-to-mid-career Beatles, the Backstreet Boys, Abba, etc., and songs with “walk” in the title — “Walk This Way” being the one that played while we were doing our part. We were done halfway through the event’s four-hour length, and headed off to Target. By the time we got back, it was 3:55 and presumably the only people left were the parents and other adult volunteers, because by then the DJ was playing “Walk on the Wild Side.” While it has the word “walk” in the title, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone was actually listening to the lyrics.

Of course, in a world where Iggy Pop tunes can be used by a damn cruise line for its commercials, is anything off limits? Don’t think so.

A lazy weekend, but not really. We closed up the lake cottage Saturday, which consisted of pulling the boat and its stakes out of the water, raking and burning all extant leaves, turning off the water and blowing all moisture out of the pipes, and (Alan’s favorite part), unbolting the toilet so that it can rise and fall on the frost-heaving floor all winter long. Doing jobs like this reminds me of why so many people are razing their summer cottages and putting up year-round homes they can retire to — sitting vacant and cold all winter long is hard on a house, particularly a flimsy little summer cottage, and for what the land they’re sitting on is worth, you might as well.

Saying goodbye to the cottage for another year is a little sad, but I cannot tell a lie: It’s always a bit of a relief. No more decisions on our weekend plans — share the child with her relatives at the lake or be selfish and stay home? Over the years I’ve gotten to where I like our long stays up there in August much better than our random weekends. With no full bathroom in our cottage, we have to bathe in the lake, and after about three days of this I stop bothering with hairstyling and, most days, makeup. In the lake mirror, I look at myself and think, you look kissed by the sun. Then I get home, look into my unforgiving bathroom mirror and say, fix your damn hair. Also, your feet are dirty.

Now I have to get to work on my pathetic excuse for a screenplay — five pages due by Wednesday — and, of course, watch “Carnevale.”

In the meantime, bloggage:

Funny story in Slate about America’s butt-crack epidemic, which is particularly acute in A2, where you have dense concentrations of young women and their peculiar fashion sense. The opening anecdote happened to me in almost every detail last spring in NYC; I love when I see my boring self reflected in the chronicles of popular culture, at least other than Country Woman: America is in the throes of a crack epidemic. Sitting in a booth with a friend at an excruciatingly hip restaurant in downtown Manhattan a few weeks ago, I glanced up to see a fleshy forest of crevices and multiple folds of skin and G-strings that three women in their late 20s were displaying for the world. It was then that I knew: This low-rider style has gone too far.

Also, if you’re not equal to the Album Cover Challenge — 60 albums stripped of their artist-and-title details, and you try to recall whose is whose — well, join the club. I got about five of them. Pathetic. I’m so old.

Finally, you always wanted the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” in Latin, didn’t you? Thought so.

More later and/or tomorrow.

My Russian class has some writing assignments coming up. Nothing major, but a few short paragraphs, and I thought it might be fun to write them on the computer. I figured finding Cyrillic fonts online would be a snap, but I wasn’t sure about keyboard maps, so I asked my teacher. He explained that the Russian keyboard is oh so different, and implied it wasn’t worth the trouble for all that hunting and pecking.

They are none so blind as they who will not buy a Mac. In 45 seconds of Googling, I had found and downloaded not only Cyrillic fonts, but a keyboard map that roughly corresponds to the Qwerty consonant/vowel array. What’s more, switching back and forth between the two is one click away, thanks to the international standards installed in my lovely laptop.

Oh, and if you want the traditional Russian layout, that’s in there too.

Seeing the link to this year’s marching band tab at my alma mater reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to do for a while — check out IndianaMarching.com and see what’s what in this year’s moving-music season. I will not admit to an interest in the “sport,” per se, but after being sentenced to helping produce last year’s band tab, I will admit to being kinda-sorta interested in the mad spectacle of it all. And after seeing IU’s pathetic performance at the football game a few weeks ago, I can’t help but wonder: How can a state so marching-band-crazy filter down into a Big 10 band that still plays “Eye of the Tiger”?

Anyway, I looked up Homestead High, a reliable artistic and performance leader in northeast Indiana, to see if they’re still doing an out-there show. In previous years, their musical salute to Lizzie Borden was a big scorer, but last fall, “Sybill: The Art of Insanity” was a disappointment in state finals. I thought the show was way cool, but maybe the judges thought it was time for the drill teams to go back to smiling and twirling flags and knock off with pretending to be all crazy ‘n’ stuff.

But no. Steve Barber is still the Timbaland of marching; the show is “Gravity,” and features the drill team jumping around on trampolines and flags that don’t droop.

I still think this is a Sports Illustrated story, but what do I know?

Tonight’s seminar was a tour of the Clements Library, which, in true U of M style, is the (insert assorted superlatives) of North American colonial and pre-colonial history. Many, many rare books. We viewed Christopher Columbus’ newsletter on that famous trip he took in 1492; an account of the Roanoke colony, by one of its residents; something called a Hacke Atlas, which is basically a 17th century TripTik of the South American coast, and oh, but there was so much. We viewed books that were one of only one or three or a dozen in the world. We learned the secret trick to finding Thomas Jefferson’s ex-libris mark from his personal collection. For one who loves libraries the way I do, it was 90 minutes that passed too quickly.

The director said something that stuck with me. The key to building a great collection, he said, is a) to have one smart person at the top and b) be prepared to act swiftly and decisively when items come on the market. It resonated because it’s the back story to the Allen County Public Library’s rare book room, the envy of libraries many times its size — the bulk of the collection was built by two former directors, who spent their vacation time traveling the country, combing used bookstores in search of unique volumes and slowly filling the U-Haul they were towing.

The Clements director said, “You can’t do these things by committee. If you wait, it’s gone.” It made me wonder if you can do anything worthwhile by committee. I guess boards of directors are committees, but I can’t say that I’ve ever been on a committee that got much of anything done other than busy work and that great committee favorite, advising. Love those advisory committees. Sit around, spout your opinion, have a lunch paid for by someone else and then go home content that you have done work.

Of course you haven’t. But you did have lunch.

Anyway, even for someone like me, who’s not particuarly wowed by relics, it was a great visit. There’s something about a 400-year-old book, isn’t there? (By the way, Amy : Someone asked who sells rare books these days, if they come from other collectors, or libraries, or what, and the director said that most come from individuals, but a few are sold by libraries trying to maintain a little cash flow — monasteries and religious orders, for instance. Sigh.)

Sorry for not much blogging today; my brain seems to be a little empty — or busy — these past few hours. Most of my blogging is meta now, so thanks to The Minor Fall, The Major Lift for finding Alcohoroscopes. I gotta say, it was like looking in a mirror:

In vino veritas — and, for Sagittarius, in booze blurtiness: When buttered, they’ll spill all your secrets and many of their own. Tactlessness aside, Sagittarius is just plain fun to drink with. This is a sign of serious partying (what else would you expect from the sign of Sinatra, Keith Richards, the Bush twins and Anna Nicole Smith?).

Have a swell weekend.

I’m still available via e-mail. I haven’t put a link up because…I haven’t put a link up. But nancy -at- nancynall.com still rings in this office. Please write, if you feel like it.

Tonight, in screenwriting, we gave our five-minute presentations: Synopsis, major conflict, what’s at stake, theme. About half the class went this week, and the rest will go next. Several of tonight’s presenters were people in my study group, and having heard their stories for the last month, I was struck by how these stories are evolving. The ecoterrorist class-warfare story of September is now a black romantic comedy. The teen drama, conceived as Woody Allen for the high school crowd, became a gritty “Kids” with maybe a little less nihilism. It leaves me amazed and amused by how much fun this is, a grown-up version of Barbies: “You’re an anthropologist. No, you’re a veterinarian. No, you’re … a man! A gay man? No, an old man! That’s it.”

I was also struck by how, once you tell a story, you’ve given it away. It’s no longer yours, because it belongs to the audience now, too. The ecoterrorist class-warfare writer thought he was making sharp observations about the divide between our good intentions and our final outcomes, but we laughed at his premise, so now…hey, maybe it’s a comedy! It is! Now it’s about the ultimate absurdity of love, plus maybe a dead body.

Moral: If all those kids waving flags in Bruce Springsteen’s audience thought “Born in the USA” was an anthem and not an anguished howl of post-Vietnam pain, well, dammit, it’s an anthem. Deal, Bruce. This is why they pay you the big bucks.

My my, but when that Katha Pollitt gets wound up, she is a treasure, isn’t she?

What’s the matter with conservatives? Why can’t they relax and be happy? They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. Even the National Endowment for the Arts, that direct-mail bonanza of yore, is headed by a Republican now. Never mind whether conservatives deserve to run the country and dominate the discourse; the fact is, for the moment, they do.

It gets better from there. Enjoy every word.

For those of you who wonder why — why on earth — the idea of returning to the Fort next spring fills me with dread and woe, look no further than a tiny little story swirling around the city like one of those dust tornadoes you see in urine-scented alleyways. It’s so depressing, from every possible angle, that you just want to smash your head against he wall out of sheer joy.

Yesterday: Democrats’ jokes called crass, caroled the Journal Gazette: Allen County Democratic Party Chairman Randy Schmidt said he will investigate questions of inappropriate content on the party’s Web site, but he said the humor on the site is similar to that of late-night talk shows. The party’s site contains links to sites that sell buttons with slogans such as “Hi, My Name’s Dubya, and I’m an Idiot” and “Ask Me About Bush’s Lobotomy.”

Of course, no story that pokes Democrats with a blunt stick would be complete without a quote from Steve Shine, chairman of the Soviet-style Allen County GOP organization. You have to know Comrade Shine to fully appreciate the way he talks; pompousness is such an ingrained part of his DNA that he makes Rush Limbaugh look like Mother Theresa. Plus, he had a career in radio for a while, and has a deep, resonant AM-radio-guy voice. When it delivers comments like this, it threatens to reduce my molars to powder: Allen County Republican Party Chairman Steve Shine called the content “totally inappropriate” and crass. “I’m rather appalled at the inappropriate sexually oriented comments, which appear to be extremely demeaning to women,” Shine said. “I don’t think that will set well in the City of Churches.”

But you don’t get feel the enormous depressing weight of it all until you actually go to the Democrats’ site, which looks as though it was designed by a blind man with a Geocities account. The only amateurish, annoying, ugly-ass detail it lacks is flashing type, although it has everything else — pointless highlighting, clip art, grammatical errors, the works. It’s no wonder the GOP stays cemented in virtually every county office when this is the best website the other side can come up with, not that theirs is much better, but at least it looks like someone read the manual first.

The second-day story is everything you’d expect: The “crude humor” — which remember, consists of material that displeased the head of the GOP — has been “cleansed” from the site. Huzzah. The world will sleep a little sounder tonight.

Remember: It’s the liberal media. And this is in the Democratic newspaper. I give up.

I don’t know how many of you are following the comments, but my ex-Columbus Dispatch colleague Bob Sohovich left one below that needs greater distribution:

Bernie Karsko, 65, died this afternoon of an apparent heart attack while driving to have lunch with fotog Charlie Hays. I talked to Bernie yesterday and we were discussing the obit of Harry Franken, who died two weeks ago. Bernie remarked that you had written his obit in 1983 and he would like it published, tho he doubted today’s staid editors would value it as he did. I understand the reporter working on his obit has your copy. Bernie admired your writing ability and keen wit.

Oh, my. The death of my first city editor (never “metro” editor) leaves me with mixed feelings. At times, I adored Bernie; other times, well, I didn’t. The passage of 20 years tells me I wasted too much time on the latter. Bernie was the sort of character it’s increasingly hard to find in our business — the proverbial gruff eccentric, an oddball that once flourished in newsrooms all over the country. He was renowned for taking greenhorns under his wing on the night shift and making them into real reporters. I don’t know if the process worked with me, but we got along. Soho’s right — he did admire my writing ability and keen wit, and to the extent that I disappointed him in my reporting, I know I pleased him in the little jobs he threw my way as sort of his personal court jester.

If he wanted a funny caption for a wire photo, I wrote it. If he wanted a fake memo to leave for someone he was playing a prank on, I could mimic memo style. If he wanted me to chase some preposterous angle that probably wouldn’t make it past the copy desk — does the Memorial Tournament lead to increased business for local strip clubs? — I was his go-to gal. We had fun.

He was renowned for his fashion sense, or lack of it. He wore the same outfit every day — Sansabelt slacks (he had them in all colors and sizes), short-sleeved polyester dress shirt and nondescript tie. He wore a flattop haircut before, during and after its time in the sun. One of the sports writers called him “Nimitz.” If he liked you, and if you were female, he’d let you rub your palm over its bristly surface. He owned a Jaguar XKE, which he only drove in the summer, and only if the streets were dry and the forecast fair. Legend had it he left it in his will to Jeff Borden, who also worked for him; I guess we’ll find out now.

But the biggest thing you needed to know about Bernie was this: He was a gambler. A happy, unapologetic, just-this-side-of-compulsive gambler. A lifelong bachelor, he had no wife or kids to answer to, and so he would bet on anything. I mean: Anything. Sports, the stock market, whether the next person to walk into the newsroom would be male or female. During the baseball strike, they said he would turn on the weather channel and offer over-and-under action on the wind velocity. He ran a pool on who would be named director of the Clinic, the newsroom’s annual year-in-review meeting/torture session/drunkfest. “I’ve got $5 that says…” was a phrase you would reliably hear from him several times a week. He dangled sawbucks under the noses of his staff, telling them he’d give it to the first one to get the word “panties” into a story and past the copy desk.

James Thurber, another Dispatch alum, wrote an essay about his first city editor at the paper, Gus Kuehner. It’s in a collection that’s now out of print, but I have a copy of it and I understand why a former Dispatch executive editor decided Bernie was Kuehner’s reincarnation. In the essay’s best passage, Kuehner gives his cub, Thurber, an assignment: The morning daily had been flogging a story on a “ghostly wreath” that was said to appear at a certain time in a window of a house on the east side, and cars were lining up to see it every day at nightfall. “Thurber,” he said, dropping the clipping on his desk, “Crack this miracle and bring me back the pieces.”

Thurber cracked the miracle in a day; the ghostly wreath was a byproduct of the glassmaking process, nothing more. Just a trick of the light. That was the sort of story Bernie loved, the kind of talker you could pitch for Page One to leaven the usual mix of legislative and courthouse news. He also loved hard news, stories about lawbreakers and sleazebags from the cop beat.

One year, the police finally caught up with a serial rapist who had been terrorizing women in two neighborhoods for years, breaking into apartments and assaulting them in their beds. Bombshell: It was a prominent doctor. Double bombshell: Another man was in prison for some of the rapes. Triple bombshell: When you laid their mugshots side-by-side, they could have been twin brothers, AND they had the same last name. Our court reporter cracked that miracle, and the story was so double-secret it was hidden in the computer system, so that no one on staff could blab about it. The story about the innocent man’s release ran through all the editors, the publisher and several lawyers, and it started like this:

“When Billy Jackson told his little girl he didn’t do the crimes he was going to jail for, she believed him. Now everyone else does, too.” A copy editor changed “didn’t” to “did not,” and then accidentally deleted the “not.” The paper was rolling off the press before the mistake was caught, and the Teamsters made lots of overtime rounding up all the incorrect copies for destruction. Karsko faced down the copy editor in the newsroom, demanding to know why she felt she had to monkey with a story that had already been read by every significant person in the building. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just liked it better that way.”

He made a sign: I JUST LIKED IT BETTER THAT WAY, and taped it to his desk, in her line of sight, where it stayed all day.

Today, he’d be the one in big trouble, not her. Management doesn’t work like that anymore. The changes were already coming even then; when he went to training or seminars with editors from other papers, he complained that he couldn’t get a card game going, but everyone got up early to go jogging together.

He wasn’t a perfect editor or teacher, but he was awfully damn good at what he did. I hope Borden gets the keys to the XKE from a probate lawyer some months down the road. I hope Bernie gets the send-off he deserves. And wherever he is now, I hope he’s dealing stud to a table full of people who appreciate everything about him.

UPDATE: The obit is up on the Dispatch site, but they have a pay-for-content site and you probably won’t be able to get it. Obsure reference to Yours Truly:

Former Dispatch assistant city editor Carolyn Focht, who knew Karsko for 40 years, said he particularly liked a line in a beforethe-fact obituary prepared by a Dispatch staffer in 1983: “Karsko�s iconoclastic haircut was not only his signature, but his symbol for the oddball life he led.”

Now that I’m learning a foreign language, I’m regaining my appreciation for how daunting grammar can be. Really. And I know that when you grow up hearing the language spoken one way, it’s sometimes difficult to understand that your dear old mama’s usage wouldn’t pass muster with William Safire. Nevertheless, there are editors in the world, and it really takes a harmonic convergence of tin ears to let this one get through:

Four times in the last 10 years, she and husband, Scott, have uprooted their family and set off for a new, unfamiliar city because on account of his job with Dana Corp.