Yeesh, what a weekend. Three day/nights of drinking. I don’t really overdo it anymore – a simple hangover, these days, feels like it requires hospitalization – but even a night of two, three, four drinks leaves me a little spongey the next day, and this weekend it was Friday/Saturday/Sunday, due to various social events.

The last was a fundraiser, held outdoors on a mid-80s day, in blazing sun. Started at one venue, a microbrewery, and moved to a second, a beer bar. Both great places, and one cold beer is great on a hot day, but if the taco truck is late arriving and you don’t get any food in your stomach before the second one, oy. I finally got some chow, chugged two tall soda waters, considered sitting and letting the magic of nutrition and hydration work, but ultimately made a quiet French exit, got on the bike and rode home. Weekend is over, dude, and I’m glad of it.

With all this partying, it was difficult to keep up with the news this weekend. I understand Trump did an appearance somewhere, and it was the usual. Also, Clarence Williams III left us. I was shocked that he was 81, which means he was about 30 when he started playing Linc Hayes in “The Mod Squad.” Michael Cole is a year younger, and Peggy Lipton, who died a couple years ago, was the closest to the age the three characters were supposed to be in the show, which I always figured was early 20s. According to Wikipedia:

Each of these characters represented mainstream culture’s principal fears regarding youth in the era: long-haired rebel Pete Cochran was evicted from his wealthy parents’ Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes, who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the Watts riots, one of the longest and most violent riots in Los Angeles history; flower child Julie Barnes, the “canary with a broken wing, “was arrested for vagrancy after running away from her prostitute mother’s San Francisco home.”

All three a little long in the tooth to be in a mod squad, but then, that’s why they call it acting.

Just one bit of bloggage today, as I’m still rehydrating: You know this is what’s going to happen, right? We know this. So what are we going to do about it?

On Monday, I took a bike ride with a friend on Belle Isle, the former city park, now a state park, negotiated as part of the city’s financial distress a while back. It being a holiday, it was a busy day, but not crazy-busy. Most of the bottleneck was at the gate, but there were fewer parking places, too, because of the Detroit Grand Prix in two weeks — they’ve been setting up the concrete barriers, barbed-wire fences and sponsor banners for a while now.

By the time we came off the island, the road coming in was blocked. Park’s full, find something else to do. But walk- and bike-ons are not limited, so people were parking on the road outside and walking half a mile or so across the bridge, then wherever the party they were seeking was.

I watched them walk by, overwhelmingly young black women dressed in the current style – waist-length braid extensions and those insane false eyelashes that look like fuzzy caterpillars. I thought about how much I despise that stupid grand prix, which squats on the island like an unwanted guest not just for three days in June, but for weeks before and after, uglying the place up and constricting park capacity. We give up so much in the name of tourism dollars, I wonder why we bother.

It was an OK after-ride, though – we got a couple beers each from the party store and sat by the sidewalk and drank them. The lady at the party store put four brown paper bags into the six-pack carton without even being asked. This town cracks me up.

And so the summer begins.

Hope your weekend was good. We cooked a little. Alan is painting the dining room, and it looks great. Let’s see what the season holds, for all of us.

Well, this isn’t great news:

…in a striking intervention, more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement of principles that seeks to make the stakes unambiguously, jarringly clear: On the line is nothing less than the future of our democracy itself.

“Our entire democracy is now at risk,” the scholars write in the statement, which I obtained before its release. “History will judge what we do at this moment.”

And these scholars underscore the crucial point: Our democracy’s long-term viability might depend on whether Democrats reform or kill the filibuster to pass sweeping voting rights protections.

The “I” here is Greg Sargent. I have no faith we can fix this.

In other news, you might recall a story I posted last spring, by a contributor to Deadline Detroit, about a cafe owner in a little town in Myanmar who is obsessed with Eminem. It’s a great story, but bad news: The writer, Danny Fenster, was arrested by government troops last week in Yangon, on his way out of the country to visit his family in Detroit. He hasn’t been heard from since. His family is very worried, obviously. If this sort of thing concerns you, you’re welcome to call your representatives. The hashtag is #BringDannyHome.

OK, then. Into the rest of the week.

Rain is lashing at the windows as I write this. I love that image – lashing rain – even though it’s not pleasant weather to be outdoors in. (Not that I’m planning to go out.) It’s a last gasp of chill before the warm weather settles in. I think we set a new personal record today in the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere, i.e. air conditioning to heat in…four days? Five? As we say around here: Pure Michigan.

Imagine being a Native American, or early settler, enduring weather like this in a badly chinked log cabin. It’s late May, and you’re probably low on firewood, and what’s outside is wet. Do you dip into the stove wood, or just ride it out? Ride it out in your smelly, filthy clothing, I expect.

And so the unofficial opening of summer dawns with lashing rain. I hope it’s not an omen. Because I have plans to be out socializing for much of the warm season. I need to make up for lost time.

And speaking of time, I don’t have much of it this morning, so I leave you with this, which should demonstrate to everyone that Detroit is still Detroit, god love it. See you next week:

Niggas in Detroit just don’t give af 😭😂✋🏻 pic.twitter.com/58LaGZWiNs

— paris (@prettigirlp) May 28, 2021

Current temperature: 88 degrees. Tomorrow’s high: 81. Thursday will be 64, and on Friday? A high temperature of 54. Maybe some storms along the way, maybe not – the all-purpose forecast of widely scattered showers seems to be the go-to. Well, it’s May. No guarantees. And it’ll be nice to take a bike ride in the cool, as opposed to the heat.

Having fulfilled my Midwestern Oath to Open Every Conversation With a Note About the Weather, how’re things?

I headed back to the gym this week. It’s masks-optional for vaccinated patrons, but there’s no verification. I decided to let go, let god, and go when very few others are there. Also, I opened the back door for a breeze whenever possible. And turned on the fan. And got in and out in 40 minutes. And I crossed my fingers and spit.

I thought I’d been keeping up with my basement workouts, but I am good and sore, although not cripplingly so.

It so happens the owner of my gym had a heart attack during the pandemic. Not a serious one, but he’s been taken by the spirit, and has become a prophet of Vegan. He says it’s making a difference, and I’m sure it is, but honestly, every time I even consider it, my head starts to hurt. I’ve probably said it before, but it strikes me as similar to staying kosher; you always have to be thinking, where is my next meal coming from, who will prepare it, and how can I be sure it’s up to my standards? You have to familiarize yourself with fake meat, tofu and other unfamiliar offerings. We’ve been experimenting with Beyond and Impossible meats, and found they work best in stuff like chili or tacos, because a burger is a burger is a burger. But you look at the nutritional information on the package and think, this is healthy? Who knows what’s in that stuff?

Ever since the Great Fat-Free Panic of the ’80s/’90s, I’ve been suspicious of any food masquerading as another food. Artificial sweeteners, Olean fake fat and now, faux-meat. Grinding nuts and loading them with spices to make…something. Vegetarian I can handle, but take away my eggs and cheese and you’ve got a fight on your hands. So while I don’t judge if this is your thing, it ain’t my thing.

Jeff, you just discovered Lord Huron? I too am a fairly recent fan. And what’s more, I learned that for a couple of years, I edited the front man’s father, who contributed to Bridge. And yes, they’re named for the lake the family has a cottage on.

What else? I’m weary of outrage, but man, it sure is plentiful these days. Between MTG and LB, I’m just about exhausted. But we can’t let down.

OK, I’m about out of anything to say, and Wednesday work awaits.

People always speak of the suburbs as being quiet. Ha ha ha ha ha. I bet if I walked around my neighborhood with a decibel meter, I’d easily come away with higher numbers than I would in downtown Detroit. There, you have traffic and occasional honking, but overall, it’s far less jarring than a typical day around here.

(You’ve heard these beefs before, yes. Feel free to check out if you like.)

After a week of the usual clamor — lawn services, some heavy equipment from a digging job in the next block — Saturday began with one of our adjacent neighbors turning on his gas blower at 7:50 a.m. He ran it for about five minutes, then shut it down before getting in his car and blasting out the driveway. I’d love to know what bugged him so much that he had to clean it up before leaving. But really, I don’t.

Those neighbors who don’t have lawn services handle their own yard work on the weekends (which includes us), so there were more mowers, more power edgers — which are almost put-a-pillow-over-your-head-and-scream, nails-on-a-blackboard irritating all weekend long. More gas blowers, too, as this is late spring and trees are shedding things like oak flowers and maple whirligigs and other seeds. All of this must be banished from walks and driveways, loudly.

The bluetooth speaker era is upon us, and we are treated, sometimes, to competing soundtracks. We have neighbors who are very nice, but the husband likes to sit in his driveway and play the same record over and over. They seem to change with the year; for a couple summers it was Mumford & Sons, then Dire Straits, and he’s been on a country kick this year. Short playlist, the same five songs or so over and over and over. And over. And over. He’s had it on for a half hour just now, and we’ve heard Aaron Lewis’ “Story of My Life” twice.

The gas blower guy behind us does the same thing, only with head banging stuff Kate refers to as “butt rock,” although he went on a summer-long Wu-Tang Clan kick. “Enter the Wu-Tang,” specifically, which is not an album I’d turn off if it came on the radio (I own it, in fact), but after a few weeks of hearing it at cocktail hour? Not so much.

In short, in the suburbs, every tool is loud, no one listens to jazz and honestly, just hearing some children play would be a treat. There’s a block nearby full of kids who all seem around the same age and play outdoors the way I remember playing with my friends as a child. The other day they’d duct-taped a lawn chair to two skateboard and were pushing one another up and down the sidewalk. It was great.

And that was the weekend, such as it was. Had an outdoor get-together with my colleagues Friday, did the usual stuff Saturday, and spent Sunday laying in groceries and reading a few more Hemingway short stories. Yes, yes, I picked the book off the basement shelf after the PBS thing, obviously. I’ve read a few, but not all. I don’t know how “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” evaded me until now, however. Short review: I’m enjoying them, although there is some very un-P.C. racial language in a few, and as always, his attitude toward many of his female characters is…not good.

And now, Monday is so, so close. I hope it’s quiet at midnight.

Following up on comments yesterday:

I know “gypped” is considered a slur, but I didn’t know “gypsy” was, too. I know it’s a casual term for Romany people, but getting back to first principles, i.e. clarity, I’ll continue to use it as a synonym for “nomadic,” in various forms. But as I rarely write about Romany people, I doubt it’ll come up there.

Speaking of nomadic populations that are often associated with grifting, what about Irish travelers? Every summer in Fort Wayne there’d be a warning story from the police about traveler scams, usually involving home repairs; a couple of men would find a house in need of painting, quote an insanely low price, and the paint would come off the first time it rained. Or, in measuring the house for another job, one would gain entry somehow — “we need inside measurements as well” was usually the excuse offered — and then “head to Lowe’s to pick up supplies.” They’d never return, and the homeowner would find one or more small valuables missing.

I think the women busied themselves with shoplifting and returning goods for cash.

Haven’t heard much about those folks since we moved to Michigan. Must not be on the route.

Here’s an interesting story about the traveler community in South Carolina. As so often is the case, the members of the group claim it comes down to discrimination. And some other factors:

History teaches us that to survive all cultures must evolve with an ever-changing world. For some, change comes slowly and often at great sacrifice requiring the loss of old-world traditions in favor of acceptance. Irish-American Travellers because of their reluctance to change have become people at odds with society. We are a people that belong more in the past than in the present. Arranged marriages, the need to find safety within our small community, and refusal to accept change all bring into question our longevity.

Wise words, those.

OK then. We’re sliding into the weekend, again, and I’m thinking about devoting at least some time this weekend to serious meal prep for the week ahead. I was down to having only four pandemic pounds to lose and am now back to 10, and it’s going to be in the high 80s today. This can’t go on, so I’m gonna stop it. Or at least try.

Enjoy your own, wherever it may be.

I was thinking the other day about some new language we’re all suddenly using. Not new words, but particular phrases. Make space for. And sit with that. And do better. There are a few others that will come to me later, but I ran across a couple of them in a single short piece the other day, and it reminded me how much they bug me.

There’s an undertone of nursey preschool teacher to do better, scolding mommy to sit with that (in your timeout chair), and while I despise the term “virtue signaling,” there’s an undeniable tone of it in make space for. Here’s a wonderful thing that a person who is better than you has made space for. Sit with that a minute (along with your lazy badness). See if you can’t do better, going forward.

I used the word “crazy” in a headline and got a finger in my face about it from a reader, who included a link on why no one is supposed to say crazy anymore, but honestly, “mentally ill idea” doesn’t really express what I was trying to say. Also, “slaves” has been replaced by “enslaved people,” which comes from the same idea that changed “schizophrenic” to “person with schizophrenia” and “manic-depressive” to “person with bipolar disorder.” It emphasizes humanity, but honestly, if it makes that big of a difference to you, maybe your problem was you not fully understanding slavery to begin with. I’m informed that “slave” is a nonhuman noun, but I never saw it that way, except when a photographer showed me his lighting system, which uses the term to describe a particular type of flash.

Twelve Years an Enslaved Person. Person Enslaved to the Rhythm. Doesn’t quite work.

Don’t get me started on the linguistic minefields around transgenderism. I keep my mouth shut. I check my privilege. I sit with that. I make space for the idea that it is better to confuse readers by saying, for instance, “actor Elliot Page has come out as transgender” than to spend even a single phrase explaining that Elliot was once known as E****, because one must never, ever use a deadname. You have to figure it out from the paragraph that says Elliot starred in “Juno” and a couple other films you may or may not have seen. Kate effortlessly uses “they” and “them” to describe nonbinary folks, and I’m never not confused by this, and asking “who else are we talking about?”

I try to have empathy for every member of the human family, but as a writer, my aim is clarity. This doesn’t help.

When Ross Perot was running for president, he addressed an NAACP chapter. He was talking about why NAFTA was bad for working-class people, who are disproportionately not-white, and he said, “Who gets hurt by these trade agreements? You people!” This led to a blizzard of think pieces about the term “you people,” how condescending it is, etc. etc. A colleague said, “He should have said ‘people of you,'” and I cannot deny it: I laughed, even though I fully understand why colored people is bad, and people of color is not. If Perot had said “you guys” or “you folks,” no one would have said a word, but oh my — you people. Very bad.

I read something yesterday that announced, in an editor’s note at the top, that a particular racial slur used by the subject of the story (describing an incident where the slur had been used to attack her, not by her) had been excised. I got to the part with the slur, and it had been asterisk’d out. So…OK, I get it, that was a good call. But why announce it first? Just do it. It’s talking down to readers, which is a reflection of so much of what we do with each other these days. It’s a writer announcing “I heard the bad word, but I am sparing you, because I’m trying to do better,” even though everybody probably knows the word in question.

Anyway, welcome seems to do the work of make space for. Think about it works for sit with that. Do better is probably something we have to live with, until it’s replaced by something worse. I leave you with this, which I found in the NYT’s Social Q’s column:

Weekends are too damn short, I must say. One minute it’s Friday afternoon and wooooo it’s time to shut the laptop and have some fun, baby, and the next it’s Sunday night and the sun is setting and all you have to show for it is…a long bike ride, a shorter bike ride, dinner out with friends, dinner in on your anniversary and a very clean kitchen. So I guess it’s better than nothing. I just hate to have to cram all my me-life into two days and work gets the remaining five.

I guess it doesn’t have to. That’s why after-work socializing was invented, but who has the energy for that anymore? On the other hand, it’s amazing anyone has the energy for anything, these days.

I did go shopping Saturday, too. Wore a mask. I will continue to do so, for all the reasons you’ve already heard. I may return to the gym, though, at extreme off-peak hours and preferably with the doors cracked open. I’ve kept my membership going, to support the place — might as well get something for it.

Something else I did this weekend: Caught the first couple episodes of “Halston.” I am in full agreement with Tom & Lorenzo in their essential disappointment. I actually went to a fashion show in his famous Fifth Avenue “aerie,” as it was inevitably called. Liza was there. The clothes were great, but he was past his prime a bit by then. I was enough of a hippie that I found Ultrasuede kinda gross; it violated my principles that clothing materials should be natural, dammit, and I never understood the appeal of the famous Ultrasuede coat dress, although I don’t have much of an eye, admittedly. The ’70s are, in my mind, a pastiche of polyester and Pucci and knock-offs of Pucci and, yes, Halston.

Anyway, I guess the upshot of the weekend was, I’m glad to be less-masked, for now. Don’t have much more to offer, other than this photo of the weekend:

And this is why more women should be in charge of things.

📸 Mark Gormus, @AP pic.twitter.com/JvCE3M4NoM

— Lisa Kirbie (@lisakirbie) May 15, 2021

Week ahead, let’s get to it.

The boat launch went fine, thanks for asking. It was freezing — mid-40s — but ah well. The marina is under new ownership, and have deprived the main guy who handles this, Pete, of his assistant, so I had to be there. But no major mishaps.

While Pete and I were pulling the mast this way and that so Alan could attach the shrouds, we talked a little bit about this phase of life. (We’re all the same age, give or take.) He said he and his wife had unloaded a big house on a very nice street, and were now living aboard their boat at the same marina, and liking it more than they ever thought they would.

A big part of it, he emphasized, was “getting rid of all our shit.”

I thought of this while some of you were talking in comments about your own shit, or your parental shit, or all the other shit that gets dumped on you as you age. Pete said nothing felt as good as personal shit-liquidation, selling all the furniture and gewgaws and collectibles and other stuff that once seemed so important. Watching it go out of the house during the estate sale, he said, was liberating. “You don’t know how tied down you are until you get rid of it,” he said.

Caitlin Flanagan, a writer I often find myself at odds with, watched “Nomadland” recently and came up with this observation:

The make-or-break moment for the viewer is right at the top; if you’re the kind of brute who doesn’t enjoy watching a woman in late middle age poke around her storage unit, you should take your leave. Personally, I could have watched an entire movie on that subject alone. You spend your whole life accumulating things, and then they end up in a storage unit, slowly losing their charge of sentiment and memory and transforming into a bunch of junk. Fern is there to pick out what she will bring with her on the journey. In the end, she chooses the least practical thing of all: a box of china, white with a pattern of red leaves on the rim. That’s not the last of that china I’ll be seeing, I thought to myself, and I was spot-on.

Since Alan stopped working, I’ve been on my own smaller-scale shit-liquidation purge, and I’m making progress. Last week I dragged pretty much all my Fort Wayne ephemera to the curb, including all my newspaper clips and, comically, my journalism awards. I saved some photographs, but will probably go through those and pitch a lot of them, too.

But some things cry not yet. The doll bed I played with as a child and Kate, not so much — I can’t get rid of it yet. Some of her crib bedding, ditto. A couple of her favorite stuffed animals.

And god, so many books. Books are one of those things you’re supposed to be happy to purge, but after I cleaned up the basement enough to make it my pandemic gym, I shelved and dusted all the books down there and thought: Can’t get rid of these. I love many of them too much. But on the same shelf are many 78 RPM records from Alan’s dad’s collection, and god knows why we still have those.

For the next move, I guess we’ll grapple with all of this. For now, I’ll settle for slimming down.

Speaking of female writers I often find myself at odds with, do you know how much it pains me to say, “Mona Charen is right?” A lot. And yet:

Today, we stand on the precipice of the House Republican conference ratifying this attempt to subvert American democracy. They are poised to punish Liz Cheney for saying this simple truth: “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.” In her place, they will elevate Iago in heels, Elise Stefanik, whose claim to leadership consists entirely of her operatic Trump followership.

Let’s be clear: The substitution of Stefanik for Cheney is a tocsin, signaling that the Republican party will no longer be bound by law or custom. In 2020, many Republican office holders, including the otherwise invertebrate Pence, held the line. They did not submit false slates of electors. They did not decertify votes. They did not “find” phantom fraud. But the party has been schooled since then. It has learned that the base—which is deluded by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin—believes the lies and demands that Republicans fight. As my colleague Amanda Carpenter put it, the 2024 mantra is going to be “Steal It Back.”

If Cheney must be axed because she will not lie, then what will happen if Republicans take control of Congress in 2022 and are called upon to certify the Electoral College in 2024? How many Raffenspergers will there be? How many will insist, as Pence did, that they must do what the Constitution demands? How many will preserve any semblance of the rule of law and the primacy of truth?

Well, if we have to flee, I hope Canada will take us. If not, Mexico is warmer and has livelier food. And there’s always Europe, although I don’t think they can accommodate that many refugees. Maybe we’ll stay here and be the resistance. Works for me.

Happy Wednesday. A pic in parting, as another boating season begins:

When I was toiling for a Knight-Ridder newspaper, the executive editors of each paper wrote a monthly memo to HQ, bringing the boss and peers up to date about what they’d been up to for the last calendar page. Personnel changes, great moments, etc. Mild stuff that got passed around.

They varied in readability, but the best one by far was from the Philadelphia Daily News, i.e., the tabloid, i.e., the one that didn’t take itself as seriously as the other. That editor, Zack Stalberg, sprinkled his with short, blackly comic items from the police blotter, each one subtitled, “It’s a tough town.”

I thought of that when someone sent me the website for Philadelphia DA candidate Charles Peruto. The About Me page specifically, past the blather about his career bio and to the subheading “The girl in my bathtub.” The dead girl, specifically:

In 2013, I was dating a girl for about 6 weeks, and didn’t really know her. I learned more about her after she died by reading an investigative article done by Philadelphia Magazine, written by Lisa DePaulo, which opened my eyes.

In short, the best way to start with this is the Medical Examiner’s report. Her BAC was .45. The cause of death was alcohol intoxication, but because she was found in my tub, everyone, including myself, assumed she drowned. So many empty vodka bottles were found, it looked like there was a party in my house, but inspection of the security video of people entering and leaving showed only her.

Whoa, really? What a tough town. Of course, as in any story involving…anyone, really, it’s wise to seek out alternative versions, especially when the girl in the bathtub isn’t even named. In this case, the Daily Beast filled in some blanks. The girl in the bathtub was Julia Law, and:

The 26-year-old had been a paralegal in Peruto’s law office, where they struck up a romantic relationship. This was something of a pattern for the 66-year-old lawyer. As news of Law’s death broke, Peruto received a series of angry calls from a woman named Genna Squadroni. She was “his 25-year-old recent ex-girlfriend of three years,” Philadelphia Magazine reported, who had also worked in Peruto’s office—she had hired Law herself.

Also, the six weeks of dating and how he “didn’t really know her?” Hmm:

The description clashes somewhat with the message Peruto shared on Facebook shortly after Law’s death. “It’s very hard to find someone who really matches you on all eight cylinders,” he wrote at the time, in a post cited by NBC 10. “I found my soulmate hippy, and can never replace her. We worked and played, and never got enough life…Earth lost the best one ever. Happy birthday baby.”

Philadelphia isn’t my town, and I’m staying out of this one, but you know what I hear? That it’s a tough town.

So, a little more bloggage:

I don’t think Melinda Gates and I would ever be friends, but it’s refreshing to see one person immediately had the correct reaction to Jeffrey Epstein and acted on it, also immediately.

And how the second Civil War will start. With an election, of course:

The Big Lie that Trump really won the election is now canon among a majority of Republican voters. Any Republicans who refuses to toe the line is branded a heretic, and elections officials who dared to certify Biden’s win are being censured or stripped of their power. Arizona Republicans have sponsored a bogus “audit” of the election full of crackpot conspiracy theories, and Republican legislatures have been busy taking control of both running and certifying elections out of the hands of county official in Democratic-run cities and counties. The context of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol was the attempt by Congressional Republicans to refuse to certify the Electoral College tally, in the hopes of sending the election back to gerrymandered Republican state legislatures and handing Trump a win as part of a anti-democratic coup. It was a physical coup attempt designed to intimidate Congress into enforcing a legislative coup. Republicans who refused to back the latter are facing steep primary challenges.

It’s hard to overstate how dangerous this is, and what its consequences might entail in the very near future. As Greg Sargent notes, the “GOP appears to be plunging headlong into a level of full-blown hostility to democracy that has deeply unsettling future ramifications.”

Monday we put the boat into the water, an act that is rarely easy but hasn’t led to disaster so far. Of course Mother’s Day at our location was rainy and dreary and cold, and only the rain and dreary will be gone tomorrow. But we’ll see. Wish us luck.