John Schneider

Selective enforcement

We can all agree that pedophilia is among the most heinous of crimes and that anyone convicted of it deserves severe punishment.

In fact, if you believe in hell - the literal one, or the metaphorical one here on earth - you could argue convincingly that there's a special unit in either of those hells for adults who prey on children.

Obviously the owner of the pick-up truck bearing this decal is a proponent of vigilantism. I would welcome the chance to ask him it he espouses the same treatment for those who use their wealth and power to protect the non-local pedophiles who happen to have the right connections.

Shades of gray

Famous for its bluebird skies, with matching lakes and streams, northern Michigan has been cast in shades of gray for the past week or so.

A combination of clouds and wildfire smoke has stripped the region of its color, turning everything into paler shades of gray.

That background made the colors in this sailboat I encountered while fishing one recent day seem all the more vibrant.

Missing in action

Gazing out our kitchen window at the Lake Huron shoreline one recent smoky morning, I saw something strange. Rather, it was what I didn’t see that was strange:

No seagulls. No loons. No geese. The usual shorebirds that patrol the beach and feed in the shallows were nowhere in sight.

Highly unusual. It dawned on me that there might be a connection between the smoke and the missing birds.

I looked into it and found that, indeed, there was. Birds have highly sensitive respiratory systems. Their lungs process air more efficiently than mammals, making them especially vulnerable to the toxic particulates and low oxygen levels found in wildfire smoke.

The smoke also interferes with their navigation.

When there’s smoke in the air, birds hunker down in deep cover and move as little as possible to minimize inhaling polluted air.

Just another superhero movie

"The Odyssey" lasts just short of 3 hours. To me, it felt more like four.

How, you might ask, can a film filled with fabulous monsters, unrelenting action, buckets of blood and continuous peril come close to putting me to sleep ...?

Well, that may be the problem. Ironically, for all the spectacular special effects, Christopher Nolan's summer blockbuster just isn't very imaginative. It lets the razzle-dazzle do all the work and largely ignores character development. It turns the poetic mythology of Homer's epic into a standard Superhero movie.

I felt no emotional connections. I knew Odysseus would prevail, but didn't care.

Unholy smokes

As you can see, the smoky air in northern Michigan is too much even for Uncle Wiggly, the mascot at a Cheboygan party store

We hoped that a heavy rain late Friday night might cleanse the air, but on Saturday morning it seemed more acrid than ever. The "hazardous air" alert remained in effect and the scent of a smoldering bonfire hung in the sky.

A stiff northwest wind blew all day Saturday, but it was impossible to predict whether it would push the smoke away, or bring more in.

Trump's twinkle-toed supplicants

Behold the conga line of Trump nominees doing the Election-Denier Shuffle, twisting themselves into knots to avoid contradicting the delusional sputtering of the tyrant they serve.

Asked during congressional hearings about the 2020 Presidential election, they just can’t muster the courage to utter two words of obvious and indisputable fact: “Biden won.”

Instead, they tremble and squirm and parrot the blatant falsehoods of their narcissist-daddy, rather than risk incurring his wrath.

The two hoofers pictured above - Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche and would-be DNI Jay Clayton - are only the most recent supplicants in a long and dishonorable line.

Smoked!

To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, I woke up Thursday morning to a yellow sky, hazardous air and instructions to stay indoors.

What I thought was pollen on the windshield of our Impala was actually ash.

It’s the heart of Michigan’s short summer and we’re eager for some fun on the lake. But to paraphrase Lord Huron, the 800-plus wildfires currently burning in Canada don’t care, nor does the wind that's carrying the smoke and ash to the northern U.S.

I heard a business man in Cheboygan ask, while glancing in the general direction of Canada: "Why can't they keep their damn smoke to themselves ...?'

Not suitable for all audiences

During my days as the daily columnist for the Lansing State Journal, the local library sponsored a kind of “literature hotline”; kids could dial a number and hear “celebrities” read passages from books that influenced them as they were growing up.

I was one of the recruits. Not paying close enough attention, I suppose, to the demographics of their target audience, I immediately turned to “Catcher in the Rye,” which, as I wrote in Tuesday’s blog, nudged me toward my chosen career. I recorded and posted.

As it turned out, I should have gone with my second choice, Dr. Seuss’s “McElligot's Pool” - the angler’s ode to optimism - because “Catcher” went over like a firecracker in a library. I don’t recall which part of the book I read, but it must have had a touch of salt on it.

A librarian phoned me to say that my selection was, well … inappropriate and that it had been banished from the hotline.

Happy birthday, ‘Catcher’

When, as a surly 16-year-old, I turned to the first page of “Catcher in the Rye” and started reading the opening sentence, something clicked.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

The first-person narration, the wise-guy attitude, the plain language, the thumb in the eye of authority … I devoured the book in a single sitting. I can’t say “Catcher” was the only factor in my career choice, but it was a big one.

This is on my mind because Tuesday’s New York Times included a story about J.D. Salinger’s tale of adolescent disillusionment turning 75 this week.

Obviously not every book gets that kind of treatment. Clearly I wasn’t the only one to fall under in its spell.

Kayaking craze

I looked out onto the lake recently and marveled at the sight of this 4-person kayak.

Then I took a closer look and realized it was actually a fleet of four singles - or possibly two singles and a double.

Kayaks are a common sight on the big lake - and just any other body of water deep enough to float one (and it doesn't take much).

The grandkid's all right

Even before I posted my blog about the mother-Lord Huron- Windsor connection, the front Bub texted me with some pointed questions about his grandmother's recreational habits.

I knew right away where it was going and that's exactly where it went - straight to the stage of the Colosseum, the concert venue at Caesar's casino in Windsor.

In between the songs he spun a loving little yarn about his grandmother's enthusiasm for video poker - and life in general.

The ultimate jackpot

It’s too bad my mother didn’t live to see this - her grandson and his band performing in one of her favorite places on earth: the Windsor Casino.

What a jackpot that would have been …

This evening the Bubs will play The Colosseum at Caesars in Windsor, a 5,000-seat venue that’s part of the casino/hotel complex in Windsor, Ontario.

Even after the Detroit casinos opened, my mother, a lifelong Detroiter, preferred to play her video poker in the smokeless atmosphere of the casino across the river. The air was fresher, she said; the machines, more generous.

She never got to see Lord Huron. However, she did witness the larval stage of her grandson’s music career on two different occasions …

The first time came at an Okemos High School Jazz Band concert, directed, I might add, by Jim Barry, father of LH drummer Mark Barry. Mark was in the band, too. Benjamin was on double bass.

The second time came in 1998, at a high school graduation party for Benjamin’s older brother, Justin. As I recall, Mark and Tom also played. I think they were calling themselves Razor Dave at the time, or possibly The Skatrats.

A good fit

As I previously mentioned, the exchange of trinkets among Lord Huron fans is a wildly popular tradition at the band's annual Red Rocks shows.

At the most recent concert last month, a woman named Darcy gave Sharon and me bracelets personalized with the name of our dearly departed daughter. They were adorned with tiny sunflowers, which hold a special meaning for us.

Not being a bling-wearing kind of guy, I considered what to do with mine. Surely I could give it a better life than it would have in a drawer.

Sharon suggested that the bracelet would look good at Leek Cemetery, on top of Jessica's headstone, among the "visitation stones."

Maritime graveyard

My fishing grounds - Hammond Bay, in northern Lake Huron - is known as “Shipwreck Alley." It's part or the 4,300-square-mile Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary, created to protect 200 shipwrecks from looters.

This summer I’ve seen charter dive boats heading out from from the launch, carrying customers eager to explore the wrecks. It occurred to me that, with the collapse of the salmon fishery, wreck-diving may become a new tourist attraction.

Treacherous shoals, shifting sands, dramatic variations in water depths and collisions doomed many a ship in the early days of maritime navigation. The oldest wrecks - largely preserved by Huron’s cold water - date back to the mid-19th century.

Like the old days

After catching nothing but lake trout in recent years, I knew immediately that the fish that took my spoon Tuesday evening was something different.

It stayed deep in the water. It peeled line off my reel, creating that joyful whine - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - I hadn't heard in years. The fish refused to give an inch, continuing to fight even after it was in the net. Just like the old days.

My initial conclusion, once the fish was in my cooler, was that it was an Atlantic salmon but the more I examined it, the more I saw Chinook characteristics; black gums, for example.

Puddling party

This is the time of the year butterflies - eastern yellow swallowtails, I believe - gather in clusters on our Lake Huron beach.

They don’t come for the the sun, or the surf; they come for the sand - specifically for the salt and other minerals therein.

According to the Internet, the behavior is called “puddling.” The moist sand along the Great Lakes is the ideal puddling-party venue.

MAGA boat

You can't escape it - not even when all you want to do is launch your boat for a peaceful, non-political evening of fishing and pleasant free-floating contemplation.

Instead, I was forced to spend too much time on the water puzzling over that infernal question: How can people continue to support Trump and the MAGA movement after all they've seen ... ?