Enotes

Traditions are terrific things. Whether they run in families, bring together communities or even entire nations, there is no mistaking the notion that honoring tradition is a noble and cozy thing to do, when not misguided. But let's do away with the funeral procession, shall we? In simpler, less crowded, less rude times, the funeral procession, particularly when done using the horse and carriage, was a fine way of respecting the newly-deceased. Today, it's more along the lines of a nuisance and, frankly, it can be dangerous. The journey from church (or other nonsecular place) to the cemetery or mausoleum can certainly be a somber one. There isn't a limousine leading the way with cans and string attached, with a hand-painted sign that says "Just Died." So I get it that commuting during an occasion of burial isn't the most pleasant thing in the world. And I have nothing against respecting and honoring the dead. But the funeral procession has worn out...

My bar-hopping days are long gone, so maybe I know not of what I type. So call me naive, but do we need bars to be open until 4 a.m.? A hurried-through bill by the Michigan State Legislature would allow some bars to stay open until 4 in the morning on weekends. According to the bill's sponsors, it's a matter of competition. Senator Virgil Smith (D-Detroit), the bill's sponsor, says the measure is needed so Detroit can compete with other big cities, like New York. Come again? We are going after the lush crowd? Tourists will decide their destination based on bars being open further into the wee hours? Another legislator said that the bill merely gives businesses that serve alcohol the option to stay open later. "Who are we to tell bars how late they can stay open?" was the quote. OK. That seems to be a shocking display of being short-sighted. I mean, we are talking about alcohol consumption here. There figures to be some degree of consequence to ...

In a perfect world, Derek Flemming would have been able to march up to the driver of a car that cut him off, express some anger, and get back into his own vehicle---without fear of losing his life. The 43 year-old husband and father of two young children would have vented his anger and frustration and still lived to re-tell the story to friends, co-workers and family at every opportunity. We do that a lot, you know---turn storyteller when we are wronged, whether it's from poor service at a restaurant to being incredulous at a retailer's return policy, among other things. But then we get it out of our system and we move on, until someone else relates a story that fires your mental file cabinet into gear and your story gets retold yet again. But Flemming paid the ultimate price in an act that unfortunately will have people---like yours truly---getting into "blame the victim" mode. Flemming was gunned down at a traffic light near Howell after he allegedly comp...

Maybe Howard Schultz figures that the only thing worse than a person with a gun in his stores is a person with a gun who is heavily caffeinated. Schultz is the founder and CEO of Starbucks, birthplace of the $5 cup of coffee. And he's making a polite request. Please, no guns in Starbucks. Whatever happened to "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? I long for those days. Now we have CEOs of national chains asking their customers to check the firearms at the door. Or, preferably, much further away than that. It could be that Schultz thinks that someone might finally be driven over the edge for paying $5 for a cup of coffee, and that person is best when he/she is unarmed. But seriously, folks... Schultz made what I thought was an impassioned yet reasonable plea to his customers via open letter to very kindly leave their legal, registered weapons out of his Starbucks stores, in states that have "open carry" laws. "Few topics in America generate a mo...

Sex, lies and...e-mail? Videotapes are so passe. And who has a VCR player anymore, anyway? E-mail (and its evil spawn, texting) is the smoking gun of the 21st century, when it comes to catching those engaging in extramarital affairs. And it seems no matter how powerful and how high up the food chain you are, you're not impervious to its tentacles. Witness what's happening at the CIA and the Pentagon these days. First, General David Petraeus (rhymes with Betray Us) was busted, and subsequently resigned his post as Director of the CIA, for engaging in hanky panky with a mistress, much of it via e-mail. Now the military's top man in Afghanistan, General John Allen, might be in the same kind of mess. E-mails, once again, are being scrutinized. It's a sort of love triangle, with Petraeus's mistress allegedly sending threatening e-mails to the woman who Allen has been allegedly fooling around with. As The Pentagon Turns. Gen. David Petraeus This, of co...

I don't ride a motorcycle, but if I did, and decided that I wanted the "freedom" to go sans helmet, I think I'd be cursing that freedom as I was hurdling mid-air after being thrown from my bike. But that's just me. And that's the point, I suppose, of Governor Rick Snyder's signing off on a change in the state law that now makes the wearing of a motorcycle helmet optional. Read: to each his (or her) own. Personal freedom is a great thing, but you know how that goes: as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others. That's why I applaud the removal of virtually all cigarette smoke in public places. And that's why I'm, ultimately, OK with the new motorcycle helmet thing. If some nut cares not to wear protective head gear that can save his life, then who am I to tell him he can't? More importantly, who is the state to tell him? Because, you see, a biker going bare-headed doesn't impact me, really. I venture onto the roads in my ...

The National Transportation Safety Board has spoken, and there are two ways that you can look at it. First, here's what they said, according to a story in today's Free Press : "The National Transportation Safety Board says distracted driving has claimed too many lives and made a sweeping recommendation today calling on states to ban the use of portable electronic devices for everyone behind the wheel – even if they have a hands-free device." In other words, no talking on a cell phone, period. Even if both hands are on the steering wheel. As promised, here are the two ways to look at this recommendation---which is all it really is, because the states pretty much write their own traffic laws. First, seems that we all got along just fine for decades without talking to people on phones inside our cars. It's not so much that we have to talk---but that we can. So, we do. Second, I think the NTSB should extend their recommendation to other distractions that I have see...

Don't the Livonia police have better things to do than enforce the law? Yeah, I wrote that. But only because that's what people seem to be saying. Certain lead-foots, that is. Livonia was recently tagged as the city with the worst "speed traps" in the State of Michigan. It's not exactly clear how this designation was arrived at, but with its announcement last week, there was some scuttlebutt, as you can imagine. The lead-foots contend that this surely means that motorists are being ticketed with glee by overzealous Livonia police officers, who should be doing things like "going after the REAL criminals." Livonia's police chief, of course, shrugs it off. "That (designation) doesn't bother me a bit," said chief Robert Stevenson. "We don't have speed traps. We just enforce the law." The designation was announced by the National Motorists Association. According to a story in the Free Press, the organization said they identifie...

If you want a dog for protection, get a German Shepherd. Or a doberman. Or a rottweiler. Owning a pit bull is like walking around with a cocked gun that has a hair trigger. The aforementioned dogs in the opening sentence provide security without attacking out of the blue (for the most part). The pit bull clearly has some issues. They come in waves, these pit bull attacks. And when a wave comes, it's of the tidal variety. We're on the crest of one now. Pit bulls are running amok in Metro Detroit these days. Yesterday, a four-month old baby's scalp was bloodied. The other day, a family's five-month old puppy was mauled to death and its teenaged owner was badly injured by a pit bull gone mad. Those are just two of the recent pit bull incidents reported over the past several weeks. It's not just the dog itself---the owners of these violent animals are culpable. For example, it's amazing how many pit bull owners don't keep their dogs chained, tied, or otherwise u...

So that kid from "The Sixth Sense" thinks he sees dead people? HA! He's got nothing on Jean Stevens. Stevens is a 91-year-old widow from Wyalusing, Pennsylvania with skeletons in her closet---and corpses on her furniture. No typo there. No misprint, no hyperbole. I'll say it again: Corpses. On. Her. Furniture. Jean Stevens, holding a 1940s photo of her and husband James Stevens is a sweet old lady who just couldn't bear the idea of her husband and twin sister dying. So when they actually did, Stevens took denial to a whole new level. The lady had the bodies of her husband, James---who died in 1999---and her twin sister June, who passed away last October, exhumed. Not only that, she propped them up on different sofas in her home---June in a spare room off the bedroom, James on a couch in the detached garage. "Death is very hard for me to take," Stevens told the Associated Press in an utterance that is my nomination for Understatement of the Year, 2010. W...

I'm not sure where I sit on the fence of gun control, but the next time you see one of them fire by itself, let me know. I'm all for folks being able to defend themselves, lawfully -- even if the notion of having a firearm in the house scares the bejeebers out of me. But the Constitution says we can possess them. Only 200 years later and some change did we add some things about needing to prove that you weren't insane, etc. before you were allowed to purchase one. Somehow a whole bunch of crazies, though, seem to have guns these days. A family gunned down by an estranged husband of one of the victims. A quartet of Oakland police officers, two of them SWAT, riddled with bullets by an ex-con with an assault weapon. Three of them dead, a fourth feared brain dead. Another family wiped out by its patriarch, despondent over finances. And that was just last week. What in the name of Chuck Heston is going on around here? Not that it would be more tolerable if these shooters were ar...