My visit to Columbus was everything I wanted it to be. Warm, fun, a million laughs.

That’s me with Jeff Borden and Dave Jones, two very funny people. We met early before the whole group arrived:

Extras included Jim, Karen, Kirk and Gary, all former Dispatch people. The bar in German Village was one of our old haunts, and looks like it hasn’t changed a thing in 40 years. So it was perfect, really. I didn’t want the night to end (especially since I went home in a driving rain). But I got back to Westerville in one piece, and the following day went out with Julia Keller, another ex-Dispatcher who now writes and teaches. It struck me, going home, that going to see old friends is the best kind of travel. After Western Europe, of course. But way less walking.

So it was a restorative kind of weekend, except I had one glass of wine too many Saturday night with the fam, slept badly and now feel like crap. I’ll be better tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we had a minor media story break over the weekend in Detroit, in which Charlie LeDuff, a downward-spiraling journalist who fancies himself a Jon Stewart/Hunter Thompson mashup and desperate to “go national” tweeted something about the Michigan attorney general:

You see the problem? “See you next Tuesday.” As long as I’ve been a grown-up, I’ve understood that phrase to be another way to say “cunt.” Like “you go to h-e-hockey sticks, you scoundrel!” Even Charlotte York understands what it means.

He was called out by a number of female journalists, then some male ones, and by Saturday night he’d lost his contributing-columnist gig at The Detroit News. His fans, who are disproportionately right wingers because that’s the niche he’s going for in his quest to get his career back on track (Fox News, maybe CNN), keep insisting he never called Dana Nessel a cunt, and Charlie himself actually tried to claim he was only referring to when his next column would post. I call bullshit. Funny how it’s women who understand when they’re being insulted, isn’t it? And how often men try to gaslight us?

Finally, I could build up a big head of steam over this rather startling survey from the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, but I’d rather let you guys take a look at it and tell me what you think. Briefly, it reflects a jarring disconnect between what parents say they want for their children’s independence and what they’re willing to do to further it:

Among parents of a child 9-11 years, 84% agree that children benefit from having free time without adult supervision. Fewer parents report their child does things without an adult present, including staying home for 30-60 minutes (58%), finding an item at the store while the parent is in another aisle (50%), staying in the car while the parent runs a quick errand (44%), walking/biking to a friend’s house (33%) or playing at the park with a friend (29%), or trick-or-treating with friends (15%). The top reason parents cite as preventing them from letting their child 9-11 years have time without adult supervision is worry that someone might scare or follow their child (54%); however, only 17% say their neighborhood is not safe for children to be alone. Some parents think their child isn’t ready (32%) or doesn’t want (28%) to do these things. Some parents believe state or local laws don’t allow children that age to be alone (17%), that someone might call the police (14%), or that others will think they are a bad parent (11%) if their child is not in direct adult supervision.

Note well: Only 15 percent would let their child trick-or-treat with friends, but almost the same percentage thinks their neighborhood isn’t safe to trick-or-treat in. We’re paralyzed by fear.

OK, let’s start the week.

A nondescript building was torn down on our commercial strip here in Grosse Pointe Woods, to expand parking for an adjacent business I’m told. Look what was revealed:

Looks like it was painted yesterday. Without going to a library and doing serious research, I’d estimate its provenance as: Likely late ’50s/early ’60s, maybe? Our house was built in 1947. The “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot” slogan goes back as far as the ’20s, but it lasted years. Dossin’s was a local bottler, and a prosperous one — they commissioned the Miss Pepsi hydroplane. And there’s the phone number, with the old TUxedo exchange for this area. The Oxford Beer Store is still around, although it’s moved one door west and is now Oxford Beverage; it’s where Kate would ride her bike for frozen Cokes when that was her pleasure. This building is now a dry cleaner.

I mention this for two reasons: One, because one thing I noticed when we moved here was the abundance of wall-painted signage, just way more than you saw in Fort Wayne or Columbus, and lots of them are pretty great. So let’s celebrate the good ones. And the other? I’m sure some dipshit property owner or city father will order it covered with white paint before too much longer. So let’s at least say it was here for a while, and we all got to enjoy it.

We recently had a case here that may have gotten some national attention, a suburban man who put out a social-media call for others to go “hunting Palestinians.” He was arrested in fairly short order, by the police in Dearborn. I googled his name, and whaddaya know, he’s a troublemaker of long standing:

Carl David Mintz, 41, was charged Monday in connection with the alleged threat posted last week to social media in a case that heightened fears of fallout from the Israel-Hamas war in a region with a sizable Arab American population.

Mintz is a former school board candidate who ran on “ending critical race theory,” and was previously reported to have posted Islamophobic YouTube videos. He’s a also a licensed Realtor whose firm tells the Free Press it “released” him Monday after he was charged.

…In a 2010 road rage incident that grabbed headlines, Mintz shot 20-year-old Faith Said in the arm in Oakland County.

After an initial trial that tested the limits of self defense and ended in a mistrial, Mintz ultimately pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon, according to Free Press archives.

Another story said Mintz repeatedly tapped his brakes until Said got out of his car and approached, after which Mintz shot…him, I presume. Although the name is given in two places as “Faith,” I’d be willing to bet it’s really Fatih, which goes better with the surname.

Anyway, Mintz is your garden variety Islamophobe shithead, and we’ve all heard of the Palestinian mother and son wounded/killed by another Mintz in Chicago, so let’s worry about what some college students said about Israel.

OK, this will be it for the week for me. Heading to Columbus tomorrow for a long weekend, mostly reconnecting with old friends and family. So it’ll be great, I know it will.

You all have a great weekend.

Yeesh, what a day. When fair September debuted, I told Alan, “one of these days it’ll be cold and rainy, and on that day I intend to give the kitchen a deep, deep cleaning. It’ll take the better part of a day.” Then this happened and that happened, and it became October, but finally, the cold and rainy day dawned and to be sure, it took the better part of Sunday.

But goddamn, that room is clean. I could have served dinner off the floor if I felt like cleaning it again, but plates will do. We cooked eye-talion sausages on the grill, and the stove still looks like it just came out of the showroom.

Our trip up north was lovely. Alan got to go fishing, I got to do some reading and Wendy fully became a woods dog. It’s funny: When we go for walks around here, she won’t even walk through a puddle and get her paws wet, but put her in the drippy, rainy woods and she’s bolting through the ferns and sniffing the ground like a bloodhound. She loved the woodpile outside the cabin, because periodically there’d be a squeak coming from it, and she’d shove her nose in every crevice and wag her tail enthusiastically. Never caught anything, but she certainly got in touch with her inner terrier.

And now we’re home. But it’s lovely up there:

I know some people look at that and see gray skies and bare pine boughs and a lot of mess on the ground, but to me, it’s paradise. Except during bug season.

Now, the usual nonfunctional government and Middle East turmoil and all the rest of it. As I said a couple hundred words back: Yeesh. Let’s all have a week.

Well, I was going to include a photo of the view out my current window, but the internet up here in North Woods, Michigan, doesn’t appear to be up to the task of uploading a 2 MB photo. EDIT: Success!

So take my word for it: It’s lovely. That’s the Au Sable River flowing by.

Watching bluejays dart about right now. There were half a dozen deer in the yard last evening. And it’s so dark, and so quiet, here at night that truth be told, I’m a little nervous. In the woods, no one can hear you scream.

But we’re away for a few days. I wanted to start a fresh thread to discuss the various ongoing global calamities. Which are…calamitous.

Think I’ll take Wendy for an off-leash walk. That’s what we’re paying for, after all.

For most of my life I’ve had a hard and fast rule: No television during the day. Obviously we made accommodations for Kate’s childhood, but once she was off to school, I went back to my old habits. No talk shows, no cooking shows, no Oprah. Needless to say, no soaps, either. But I usually spend at least an hour, hour-and-a-half watching nighttime TV, and man this is the long way around to admitting that yesterday I found myself watching the first 20 minutes or so of “The Golden Bachelor,” and boy oh boy do I regret it.

“The Golden Bachelor” represents network television basically giving up. No one under 50 watches it anymore, so they might as well lean into who’s left before they all die off. The show is an elderly twist on the successful franchise, and what I watched was…horrifying. I’ve only watched snippets of the original Bachelor, but you’d have to be dead not to know the gimmick: One man (or woman) is allegedly looking for love, and a dozen or so potential candidates for loving are presented to him or her, reality TV-style, with one eliminated every week in a cornball “rose ceremony” until only two or three are left, and they scratch each other’s eyes out until s/he chooses one.

The so-called golden bachelor is a Hoosier dork named Gerry, previously an Iowan who, in the intro, tearfully tells how the love of his life, Toni, his wife of many years, died after a sudden illness five years ago, and now he’s ready to love again. He’s 72, looks very good for his age, and if the dizzying array of elderly women presented to him are any indication, he’s not going to find it on this show.

Not that they were all horrible. Some seemed more or less normal, but a fair number were the usual reality-TV narcissists. One arrived disguised as Estelle Getty hunched over a walker, then flung it and her dowdy housecoat aside to reveal her gym-toned body in a short lace dress. Others made quips about “being able to take six inches” and how much they wanted to find someone to have sexytime with. And there were more than a few that I could tell were absolutely not going to enjoy life in LaGrange County.

Yep, this Hoosier is a northeast Indiana Hoosier. After he and Toni retired to their dream house on Big Long Lake and she died, he was left to rattle around in it alone. Maybe he’ll want to sell, depending on who he chooses. But he should choose wisely, because the sunbelt bachelorettes in particular are going to throw in the towel after one wonderful summer (the Amish! so quaint!) and one enchanting fall (the colors! the sweaters!) bleeds into the gray, overcast, unending Hoosier winter. A few long weekends in Chicago (similarly gray/overcast/unending, but with theater and restaurants) aren’t going to do it.

You know, if I were inclined to watch this show, I’d like to see evidence of a few lives well-lived. If you’re going to marry in your life’s final chapter(s), you’re going to bring enough baggage with you to fill a 747 cargo bay. Best find out early if your suitcases and garment bags match. But truth be told, I’m not going to watch it to find out. That Estelle Getty act scarred my brain.

Meet the bachelorettes, and shudder.

Every day I’m reminded of how old I am. I get up after half an hour in a chair, and it’s not uncommon to stagger a step or two, as my legs relearn how to move in bipedal motion. I scan Twitter for five minutes and stumble across Americans so stupid I can’t believe they are able to themselves move in bipedal motion, let alone make it to a Trump rally and speak into a microphone. Or I’m sitting in a bar in St. Louis, and ask the bartender, no spring chicken herself, if the Schlafly craft brews on the beer menu are in any way related to Phyllis, or rather Phyllis’ family.

“Who?”

“Phyllis. Phyllis Schlafly.”

“Who’s that?” she asked. She looked at a younger guy sitting a few stools away, evidently a regular. “Do you know?” He shrugged.

Well, that says everything about our brief time on this blue marble, doesn’t it? One day you’re a nationally known helmet-haired antifeminist, founder of the Eagle Forum, the next you’re forgotten in your more-or-less hometown (Phyllis hailed from Alton, Ill., across the river, but part of the metropolitan area).

For the record, Schlafly brewing is related to Phyllis’ family-by-marriage, but she had nothing to do with it, as this story from 2014 details:

Phyllis Schlafly is opposing a federal trademark for the name “Schlafly” for beer made by a St. Louis craft brewery co-founded by her nephew, Tom Schlafly.

The Schlafly beer maker applied for the trademark on the use of the brand name in 2011; Phyllis Schlafly filed a notice of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in September 2012. Settlement talks have failed to produce a resolution, and neither side appears ready to back down.

… Tom Schlafly is a nephew to Phyllis Schlafly by marriage — she married his uncle, the late John Fred Schlafly — but she has no connection to the brewery and never has. The question of whether Phyllis Schlafly has ties to the brewery comes up, however, especially in new markets outside of St. Louis.

Phyllis argued in her case that the name means one thing, and one thing only: Phyllis. And hence:

…“In connection with its usage as a surname, it has the connotation of conservative values, which to millions of Americans (such as Baptists and Mormons) means abstinence from alcohol,” her filing with the trademark office states. “An average consumer in St. Louis and elsewhere would think ‘Schlafly’ is a surname associated with me, and thus the registration of this name as a trademark by applicant should be denied.”

I guess she lost that one, because the name is all over St. Louis, and appears to be more connected to beer, and the branch of the public library near our hotel in the Central West End, than ol’ Phyllis, who croaked in 2016, at age 92. I think there’s a lesson here.

As for our weekend, it was pretty great. We had plenty of time to ourselves, plenty of time with friends, didn’t drink too-too much and all in all was well worth the time and travel investment. Beyond that, here’s some pix. Day one we strolled down to the Cathedral Basilica to see its famous mosaics. Which are…amazing. It’s an overused word, but it’s the only one that really applies. This church is the equal of any we saw in Europe over the last few years.

But that’s not all there is to see in the CWE. There’s also the World Chess Hall of Fame, and its attendant, the World’s Largest Chess Piece, as designated by the Guinness folks:

We didn’t go in – neither of us play – but I visited the gift shop. The HOF exerts a certain cultural influence over the crossroads where it’s located; the Kingside Diner’s children’s menu is designated “for little pawns.”

We found bike rentals nearby and toured Forest Park. It was blazingly hot. Saint Louis’ horse would have fainted, but fortunately he’s bronze:

Friday night, the welcome party, at a beer garden, of course:

The wedding couple are both genetic researchers, a theme reflected in the desserts:

The wedding day was even hotter, so we tried to go from one air-conditioned space to another until it was time to go to the venue, a secular space for a Jewish wedding. The yarmulkes matched the groom’s footwear:

Here I am with my godson, Patrick, as the killer sun retreated for the evening and the outdoors grew pleasantly habitable again:

Blue dresses go well with red shoes:

Of course there was a hora. The groom looks like he’s considering what could happen to all that science in his brain if he happens to be dropped on it.

But no one was hurt, the night went swimmingly and everyone danced to Motown tunes, proof that Detroit’s contributions to the world do not begin and end with cars.

I hope I didn’t slow anyone’s download with all the pix, but right now I’d much rather take a bike ride than sit at a keyboard. Catch you later, all.

I didn’t watch the GOP “debate” last night. If I wanted to torture myself, I’d do one-legged squats or something that might have a net benefit in the end. Whereas listening to this year’s crop of pathetic pick-me-oh-pick-me veep candidates just makes you, in what might have been the only decent line all night from what I’ve read, dumber. (That’s Nikki Haley to Vivek Ramaswamy. BURN.)

Also, wasn’t it on cable? I don’t have cable anymore. And the series finale to “Reservation Dogs” was on last night. And I was packing — we’re headed to St. Louis for a weekend wedding. It will be very hot, as is St. Louis’ way. But the event will be indoors and “cocktail attire” is the dress suggestion, so I’m very excited to be getting out all my auto-prom finery, including this Whiting & Davis bag that I scored via a Facebook mom-swap group for something like $20:

The bride and groom are both scientists. Seriously. I’m looking forward to seeing what their friends turn out in. As well as talking to them at the reception, because scientists are awesome.

I baked in an extra day, and I’m not sure why. I was born in St. Louis, but I know it not at all, having moved away in infancy and only returned for brief visits over the years. We’ll be staying in the Central West End, so I have the mosaics at the Basilica on our punch list, as well as Forest Park. I’m hoping to find a bike share. I’m expecting to have a good time.

I spent some time on Google Maps, trying to locate our old apartment in the city. My relatives all moved to “the county” years ago, and spoke of “south St. Louis” as their former stomping ground. G-Maps informs me the neighborhood is Dutchtown. The school across the street, its playground among my earliest memories, is now a Buddhist temple or cultural center of some sort.

Anyway, I have about two hours to shower, stuff my poofy dress into a suitcase and get on outta here. You all have a great weekend, and I’ll take a lot of pictures.

P.S. Trump was in town last night, trying to get UAW votes by visiting a non-union shop that, its owner contends, would be put out of business by EVs. The usual people turned out for this. Right now, The Detroit News doesn’t even have it as the top story on their home page — that would be given to the ongoing Mel Tucker saga. As the kids say, lol:

One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said “union members for Trump,” acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.

There are people in your life who are entirely happy with things as they are, and bless ’em, that’s great. There are others who are happy but are still restless, still looking for the next thing, still focused on moving forward.

My friend Michael is one of those. And he’s had quite a journey so far. He attended a seminary high school, thinking he might become a priest, ended up a lawyer, married once, divorced, married again, worked with Coleman Young, served on the Wayne State Board of Governors, did this, did that, came out as gay, divorced again (but remained, and remains, BFFs with his ex-wife), etc. and added a lot more accomplishments and interesting turns to the journey. Let me put it this way: We met in a digital filmmaking class. That should tell you something.

And on Saturday, he did this:

Yep, Michael is now Father Michael, having prostrated himself before God and being ordained in the Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony, home of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, informally known as independent, not Roman, Catholics. (Here’s a story about the church from 2016, and it’s pretty good.)

I was raised Catholic, but this was the only Mass of Ordination I’ve attended. There was a small choir that sounded much bigger, thanks to the operatic voices within; the leader had a basso like Paul Robeson. The homilies were personal and casual; I learned that Michael had been the straw buyer when the archdiocese refused to sell the closed church to the ecumenical bishop, among other things. But it was a joyful, moving occasion, and I’m so glad I went. And now I have a new place to donate clothing, something I’m overdue to get moving on.

Sunday was lovely, sunny and warm, so my friend Bill and I made what will almost certainly be my last trip of the year to St. Clair for some river swimming. The water was about 67 degrees — bracing for a pool swimmer, but as we told everyone who gaped in astonishment from the boardwalk, not bad at all once you got used to it. The current seemed stronger than usual, and the autumn light on the water as a cold front rolled in was stirring. We watched the Lee A. Tregurtha pass, upbound, from the water, and when we signaled for a salute, the pilot gave us one! Just a short toot, but it counted. That is one big ship. I just checked its location on Boatnerd, and it’s closing in on Drummond Island, headed for Marquette.

“This is a very Great Lakes kind of experience,” Bill remarked, and it certainly was.

And that, friends, is one reason we’re putting off our European trip until March/April of next year. So much happens in the fall around here. You don’t want to miss it.

Some bloggage? A little:

Headline: Anti-abortion activists worry they’re on the wrong end of a Faustian bargain. Ha ha ha ha ha, she chortled bitterly. Fuck you.

Ron DeSantis is a horrible, horrible person, who has destroyed a quirky public college in Florida, trying to make it into a southern Hillsdale. However, even Hillsdale has higher standards:

Gone are gender-neutral bathrooms, hallway art that in some cases featured nudity and student murals that had been completed in February and were expected to remain for several years. Student orientation leaders had to remove Black Lives Matter and Pride pins from their polo shirts. A student government election this week pitted a returning student against a new student backed by a newly formed campus chapter of the conservative organization Turning Point USA.

Dan Duprez, a former New College admissions officer, said he was troubled by the tactics used to grow the incoming class, noting that the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of new students were lower than those of past freshman classes. He recalled a colleague showing him an admissions essay that was a screenshot of cellphone notes, “riddled with incorrect spelling and grammar, saying, basically, ‘I just want to play ball.’”

Finally, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the only presidential candidate the Michigan GOP was able to lure to its biannual leadership conference on Mackinac Island, promising the moon and stars:

“How are we going to find our way out of this, to win the war that we are losing? First step we have to take on the managerial class,” he said. “As your next U.S. president, if you all put me there, we will shut down the unconstitutional fourth branch, 75% headcount reduction in the administrative state in Washington, D.C. Rescind unconstitutional federal regulations. That’s a majority of federal regulations on day one that we are done with.”

Promising that those unprecedented cuts would “unlock the U.S. economy,” Ramaswamy said they would also clear the way to fully embrace fossil fuels, despite the impact on climate change.

“When you get the administrative state out of the way, we will drill, we will frack, we will burn coal. We will embrace nuclear again in this country without apology. That is how we grow our economy,” he said.

Yeah, sure, he can totally do that. What a winner! Snort.

OK, then, let’s have ourselves a good week, eh? I’ll do my best.

I haven’t been enrolled in Medicare for even a year, and I’ve already had my first fraudulent claim. I nearly pitched an EOB (explanation of benefits, for you healthy people) notice that arrived last week, sent by my gap-policy provider. Then I realized I hadn’t been to a doctor in months, so what could this be?

It turned out to be a claim for $4,500 worth of catheter supplies, made by a medical supply company in suburban Dallas. Sigh. Got on the phone, and ended up talking to someone in a call center that I suspect was on the other side of the Pacific. The woman, reading from a script, kept assuring me I wouldn’t be billed anything, and I kept telling her that wasn’t my concern, but rather that whether my Medicare account or identity or whatever had been compromised.

We ended it with her assuring me this was a glitch, a data-entry error, and it would be handled. Don’t worry.

Today I got another notice, this from Medicare itself, the great monolith, for the same claim, and this time, it indicated it had been paid. Another call, and I said the magic word to the phone tree: FRAUD. This time my call stayed stateside, and a report was made, and… I guess we’ll see what happens.

In other heart-stopping news at this hour, I took my old bike to a new shop for a top-to-bottom list of repairs, and had that great feeling walking out: This is the place I should have been going to all along. The guy not only knew my ancient Volkscycle, he used to sell them. He knew all about my Gatorskin tires, and why they might have failed me twice this summer. And best of all? “When do you think it’ll be ready?” “Eh, couple days.” Still plenty of time left in bike season.

And with that, I’ll cut the boring stuff and ask if you’ve ever seen anything quite as racist as Donald Trump’s new strategy to woo black voters, i.e. flaunting his arrests and mugshot and claiming a bond with them as a result:

Trump has latched on to a narrative promoted last month by Fox News commentators and others in conservative media — that his arrests could boost his standing among African Americans who believe the criminal justice system is unfair.

Trump claimed in a recent interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt that his poll numbers among Black voters “have gone up four and five times” since his mug shot was released.

That’s not true, as CNN reported.

Gotta give it to Axios, which drives me insane many days. “That’s not true” has a note of mordant humor I appreciated.

You watch: Next month he’ll be hanging with Yeezy again. Or maybe rapping, who knows.

Back to working my way through Michael Wolff’s latest book excerpt. (I wouldn’t be caught dead buying one of his books.) The good parts are always leaked to the media, and here’s a good one:

(Tucker) Carlson put (Ron) DeSantis’s fate to a focus group of one: his wife. When they lived in Washington, Susie Carlson wouldn’t even see politicians. Carlson himself may have known everyone, dirtied himself for a paycheck, but not his wife. In her heart, it was 1985 and still a Wasp world, absent people, in Susie Carlson’s description and worldview, who were “impolite, hyperambitious, fraudulent.” She had no idea what was happening in the news and no interest in it. Her world was her children, her dogs, and the books she was reading. So the DeSantises were put to the Susie Carlson test.

They failed it miserably. They had a total inability to read the room — one with a genteel, stay-at-home woman, here in her own house. For two hours, Ron DeSantis sat at her table talking in an outdoor voice indoors, failing to observe any basics of conversational ritual or propriety, reeling off an unself-conscious list of his programs and initiatives and political accomplishments. Impersonal, cold, uninterested in anything outside of himself. The Carlsons are dog people with four spaniels, the progeny of other spaniels they have had before, who sleep in their bed. DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: She did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a “fascist.” Forget Ron DeSantis.

Don’t really like Wolff and certainly dislike Carlson and DeSantis, but that’s pretty funny.

Ladies and gentlemen, teaching and learning in South Carolina:

Six months earlier, two of (English teacher Mary) Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race.

Reading Coates’s book felt like “reading hate propaganda towards white people,” one student wrote.

At least two parents complained, too. Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching “without discussing this issue with your students.”

Wood finished out the spring semester feeling defeated and betrayed — not only by her students, but by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended.

You know this story, right? A newly adopted law that protects white students from feeling squicky about what their ancestors did is starting to have an effect, even in AP classes. And teachers — good ones — are being targeted, and will be casualties. Which will discourage future teachers. And there’s already a shortage.

But this is also South Carolina, part of the ever-expanding Sunbelt, which would indicate that most Americans would rather pay fewer taxes than have their children attend decent schools where they’ll learn the entire point of education: To be challenged to examine your ideas, compare them with other ideas, decide which have merit. Consider that many ideas that contradict one another both have merit. Not be…what’s the word? A snowflake.

Or maybe we’ll have a situation, over time, like what happened after desegregation: Education academies, private schools where the CEOs and higher-level brains of any southern community send their children, away from the MAGA rabble. We don’t go forward in this country anymore, I swear.

Sorry for the short one today. Busy.