the voice that launched a thousand ‘whys?’

Helen Thomas was in Ann Arbor this evening for a brief reading. (One man at the post-reading Q & A reported that he’d seen her at a restaurant earlier in the day, the exact location lost under Thomas’s quizzical gaze and his growing embarrassment. “Maybe it was someone else,” he mumbled, although with a profile as distinct as Thomas’s, this is hard to imagine.) Southeast Michigan, going through a bit of a Nazareth complex these days, is happy to claim her—the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she was raised in Detroit, and proof that, although the Detroit Free Press no longer lands on stoops seven days a week, and the Ann Arbor newspaper does not come at all, yes, good journalists can come out of the Motor City.

Thomas, born shortly after the conclusion of the War to End All Wars, began reporting from the White House on Kennedy’s first day in office, and, not coincidentally, on each and every war that followed. Of today’s, she unequivocally condones withdrawal. “George W. Bush wanted to be a war president,” she said, pausing for a very trenchant silence. “And he was.” As for President Obama, she wishes him to have more courage—an improvement we might wish upon all our psyches, although certainly one most critical in a man about to send 36,000 more troops into a land war in Asia.

[title removed because it most likely involved a fish-related pun]

It takes us roughly 20 minutes to unload 80 boxes of frozen fish from the back of the refrigerated semi-truck parked in front of Kmart.  The floor of the truck is slick with condensation, and I concentrate on not falling by imagining the spectacle: two boxes worth of sockeye salmon scattering into the air, a pause, then 35 pounds of solidly frozen seafood raining down at 9.81 m/s².

The fish fills two station wagons, one S.U.V., one pickup truck.  Yes, it smells a bit fishy.  The recipes, however, are mouthwatering: dill and sour cream and coconut milk and fennel pollen, the latter of which sounds as if it belongs in a magician's incantation.

The fish is bound for residential freezers throughout Ann Arbor; local orders and delivery are coordinated by members of the informally-organized Ann Arbor Wild Salmon Minyan. We shall save the wit and why of their acronym for another day.

persephone, on the road

The eighty-year-old woman I work with has a small dog who has been her near-constant companion since her husband's death early this year.  He follows her everywhere, nearly dissolves when she is gone, and defends her against friend and foe with every fiber of his vocal chords. 

It is a symbiotic relationship.

On a semi-weekly basis, I drive to the grocery store, where they have the long plastic vegetable bags and twisty ties best suited for picking up and securing fresh feces.  I walk nonchalantly past the tomatoes and the pomegranates and the sweet potatoes, scan the room, and pull as many bags off the roll as I can before I start to feel sheepish.  The twisty ties come off in a clump. 

My traveling companion is waiting for me in the car, with the doors locked.  (Years ago, in California, a man climbed into the driver's seat while she was waiting for a friend in the store, and he drove off, despite her protestations, and would have proceeded to kidnap her had she not jumped out of the vehicle when it slowed for an intersection.) 

My purse bulges.  I unlock the doors and start the car.  "Forget about the seat belt!" cries Thelma to my Louise.  "Just drive!"