Rehabbing Michael Vick's pit bulls

One of the most reprehensible hot-button news stories my former profession likes to publish is the one headlined "Pit Bull Attacks (Child) (Old Woman) (Old Man) (Owner) (Cop)" -- you fill in the victim.

If a cocker spaniel -- the breed vets will tell you bites the most -- does a number on a neighbor child, do you ever read or hear about it? Of course not. The magic words "pit bull" just aren't there to rile up the readers, the way "communist" used to and "illegal alien" does now.

There is considerable evidence that the breed has been unfairly maligned, and now and again a newspaper does the right thing and illuminates the underlying issues. The Washington Post did so yesterday in an article about the rehabilitation of Michael Vick's fighting pit bulls.

Bravo.

Dawn on Lake Superior

Sunrises are as glorious as sunsets on Lake Superior, especially near Ontonagon in upper Michigan, one of the few places in the world where for a few short weeks the sun both rises and sets in the same body of water. An hour ago, at 6 a.m., I arose, immediately grabbed a Pentax, and stepped out onto the beach 20 feet away to capture this sunup. Mornings don't get much better than this.

Good riddance, Jesse Helms

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" still is the watchword in the conventional press whenever any loathsome historical figure kicks the bucket. When Jerry Falwell died last year, most newspapers treated his departure objectively if not respectfully, and it took the blogging corps to bury him with the truth about his nasty career.

The same thing seems to have happened with the death last Friday of Jesse Helms, the North Carolina senator whose antediluvian ideas about African Americans translated into some of the nastiest political race-baiting ever seen in American elections.

But today the Washington Post dusted off a stern 2001 column by David Broder, hardly a rabble-rousing leftist, written on the occasion of Helms's retirement from the Senate. It's not quite the same as having the courage to publish a new story with the truth, but at least it bears witness.

Ironically, Broder's piece appears along with a fawning one by Marc Thiessen, the White House speechwriter (and former Helms aide) calling the senator "a great man."

For the Post this is piously "pissing down both legs," as "presenting both sides of an issue" (as if there were only two!) used to be called in the newspaper racket.

Is this the next iteration of the E-book?

Now comes the Readius, a new e-book and e-mail reader whose flexible screen enables the device to be folded up and slipped into a shirt pocket. Interesting . . . but its maker says it's going to be more expensive than the bigger, rigid $359 Amazon Kindle, and it apparently won't surf the Net. That's not a step forward.

Still, the flexscreen technology seems to have a lot of promise.

Sunset on the Fourth of July

Habitues of this blog know of my fondness for photographs of Lake Superior sunsets. Like snowflakes, sunsets in this part of the world are never the same, and they are always spectacular. This pair was shot two days ago.

The one above was taken with a 17-70mm zoom lens pulled all the way back to 17mm, the widest possible angle.

The one below, shot a few minutes later, used a 135-400mm zoom extended to the full 400mm.

Tough times in a tough place

Homely details gleaned for an upcoming novel on a July Fourth in Porcupine County, upper Michigan, by a mystery writer seeking evidence that economic times, fueled in part by skyrocketing gasoline prices, are growing worse in his bailiwick:

1. Only two massive motorhomes were to be seen in the Wolverine Mountains Wilderness State Park campground. There were quite a few travel trailers, but most campers hauled pop-up trailers or tents.

2. At least a dozen sites at the campground were still available. In previous years reservations for the weekend of the Fourth were full by the beginning of June.

3. Almost all the license plates were from Michigan and Wisconsin, with a smattering of Illinois and Minnesota. Those who aren't staying home aren't traveling far to camp.

4. Far fewer swimmers and agate hunters waded and walked the beaches than in previous years.

5. Another big motel at the entrance to the park has gone out of business -- that's two in two years - - and so has the little general store in Silverton. Now, to buy a quart of milk, campers have to drive to Porcupine City 14 miles east or Lone Pine 7 miles south.

6. A couple of cabin resorts at the entrance to the park are on the block, and their "For Sale" signs are faded and tattered.

7. The gravel shoulders of M-107, the state road into the Wolverines, have become overgrown with a waist-high riot of wildflowers -- daisies, buttercups, Indian paintbrush, Queen Anne's lace. It's beautiful, but hikers have to walk on the pavement and step aside for oncoming cars, another potential headache for a county sheriff and his deputies. The economically pinched state of Michigan hasn't the budget for maintaining these seasonal roads.

But the Wolverines are still gorgeous. No amount of privation is going to change that.

(For those who haven't read my Steve Martinez novels: The real-life counterpart of the Wolverines is the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in western Ontonagon County, on which Porcupine County is based.)

The first Lake Superior sunset of 2008

Yesterday we arrived in Porcupine County -- fictional site of my Upper Michigan mystery novels -- then opened up the Writer's Lair and settled in well enough for me to snap the sun descending into an oncoming storm from the northwest that rattled us most of the night with thunder and lightning.

The drive up from Chicago took nearly nine hours instead of the usual eight, thanks to keeping at 63 mph on the four-lanes and 55 mph on the two-lanes to save gas. The old Odyssey, as thirsty a beast in the city as there is, actually achieved 28 miles per gallon with the light-on-the-throttle touch that the auto experts advise.

There was nearly no northbound traffic on US 45 north of Antigo, Wis., and the motel where we stayed in Antigo was barely 20 per cent full. When we arrived in Porcupine City, the town seemed almost empty. Looks like the gas crisis is severely crimping tourism, one of the few ways Porkies are able to make money, and somehow I will have to work this unhappy development into Hang Fire, the novel-in-progress.

Desperation can drive people to murder.