On the behavior of Michigan assistant attorney general Shervill: This one really is a no-brainer

 

This column was first printed in the Traverse City Record-Eagle on Oct. 10, 2010:

In the case of the assistant Michigan attorney general on a personal and vitriolic crusade against Chris Armstrong, the openly gay president of the University of Michigan student body, for the very fact that he is gay and supposedly promoting “a radical homosexual agenda” on campus, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with the whole picture.

The state attorney general – his boss, remember – and even the ACLU were saying that he had a right to free speech.

And then it hit me.

Common sense. That’s what was wrong, or actually, missing.

A purse is a purse is a purse: Not

Originally printed in the Traverse City Record-Eagle Sept. 26, 2010
A few years ago, I asked a friend who is older than me and a widow if she might consider remarrying someday.
Her response was a firm negative. “It’s like a friend of mine told me,” she said, “at my age, all they want is a nurse or a purse.”

For the living, it’s never really over

A woman I didn’t know very well but hit it off with immediately and I got to talking.

She’d devoted the previous weekend to cleaning out her recently deceased mother-in-law’s condo. Rather than sell it, she and her husband were having their newly graduated from college daughter move in. Before she could, grandma’s personal effects needed to be removed.

Furniture warehouse shuts down

Driving downtown on my way to the farmers market on a recent Saturday morning, I spotted someone I knew.

It was the photographer who took my kids’ senior pictures. He was walking with a woman and a pretty blond teenager. The mom was carrying hangers with several changes of clothing. They were, obviously, taking senior pictures.

Some things aren’t meant to be shared

Maybe it’s because I was born the oldest of five.

As the oldest of five, you learn to protect your stuff – at least, the stuff you really care about.

And it’s not that I’m selfish. About most things, I can share with the best of them.

But some things are mine and mine alone. One is my toothbrush.

A true sense of ownership

The Traverse City Film Festival lasts about a week.

The State Theatre is ours all year long.

The family is alive and well — just different

Note: While I continue to write a freelance column every other week for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, where my column has appeared for about 17 years, it will no longer be posted online there, at my request, to avoid a possible conflict with my regular job. While the topics often don’t have anything to do with the theme of this blog, I thought I would post them here to make them available online (I know, for all two people who were following it online).

 “La famiglia e finita.”

I understand enough to know what she’s said, but she translates, “The family is dead.” I’m talking with an older woman, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin who descended from the same town in Italy where my grandma was born. I’m calling her because I am interested in information on places to stay there.

The best interview question

When I go for a job interview, I try and anticipate what they’ll ask. Then I not only think about the answers, but rehearse if I can, usually in the car. With speaker phones, who’s to know you’re talking to yourself?

Not your grandparents’ middle age

     “I never imagined that our life would be like this in our 50s.”

     A friend makes that observation. Her husband can’t find work here and so is traveling to other states, going where the work is, for weeks at a time.

Starting over beats the alternative

As a newlywed, one of the first things I remember tackling was budgeting. Not sure where to start, I voiced that to our good friend Rhonda.

She and her husband had been married two years by then and she showed me the system their parents had taught them: a ledger book and envelopes. In the book you write your list of monthly expenses, she said. You label the envelopes — electric, phone, rent, etc. Each time you get paid, you put money in the envelopes so that by the end of the month, you have enough for the bills.