Enotes

I do believe that this country has gone out of its gourd with pumpkin. It's the biggest food takeover in America since the Italians introduced pizza to an unsuspecting public in the late-19th century. Pumpkin spiced coffee. Pumpkin scented candles. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cakes, pumpkin pies. OK, that last one doesn't count. Somewhere, in some board room in corporate America, it was determined that pumpkin spice should be sprinkled, mixed, folded, encased and saturated into every possible food stuff we consume. The ironic thing is that pumpkin, by itself, certainly must taste pretty nasty. It's only edible because of what is added to it. If you plan on buying a pumpkin for Halloween with the intent of carving it, scrape out a portion and eat it, raw with no helpers. I dare ya. Pumpkin isn't invading our food supply, it's the spices added to it that are working their way into our digestive tracts with virulent speed. Starbucks, for example, only

In another time, in another era, against another backdrop, a statue of Orville Hubbard outside of City Hall was a monument about which the good people of Dearborn didn't bat an eye. And not just Dearbornites. It wasn't just the people who lived in that city that knew what Hubbard, Dearborn's mayor from 1942-78, stood for. It was an ironic monument, really, because the statue of Hubbard, in an almost welcoming repose, belied the exclusiveness that pocked his reign over the city. Hubbard was an unapologetic segregationist . That's not opinion. But those ways were widely accepted by his citizenry, particularly in the first 25 years of his being mayor. To the people of Dearborn, Orville Hubbard represented the sheriff that kept their streets safe and the town prosperous, despite sharing multiple borders with the city of Detroit. Everyone knew what safe and prosperous was code for in Dearborn under Orville Hubbard. No blacks allowed. Hubbard made no bones a

"No news is good news." I always wondered about this oft-used phrase. Is it saying that there is no such thing as good news, or that when you find yourself without any news at all, that's a good thing? However you choose to decipher "No news is good news," I have one for you that is without ambiguity. "The news isn't convenient." There shouldn't be any confusion over that, but yet there is. In the whirlwind of social media sharing and updates in the wake of the horrific murders of two young television journalists---one a reporter, the other a photographer---in Roanoke, VA on Wednesday during a live interview, we had ourselves a genuine "made for TV" violent crime, and there was much pontificating about what to do with it. The alleged shooter of reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward, Vester Flanagan, aka Bryce Williams (on-air name), a reportedly disgruntled and frustrated TV reporter himself, crafted a highly

My memories of Lynn Anderson are rather sardonic, but that's not her fault, necessarily. Singer Anderson, 67, passed away the other day of a heart attack in a Nashville hospital while being treated for pneumonia. She was best known for her song, "Rose Garden," which peaked at no. 1 on the country charts and no. 3 on the Billboard charts in early-1971. But around the campus of Eastern Michigan University in the 1980s, Lynn Anderson became a notorious figure, forever linked to the school's outrageous efforts to keep its football program in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). Let me explain. By 1983, MAC officials were considering kicking EMU's football program out of the conference, because of poor performance on the field and more importantly, poor performance at the turnstiles. The latter was a direct effect of the former's cause. The conference pretty much gave the university an ultimatum: lift attendance to a minimum threshold (I can't recall

I know this: our hot pepper plants aren't enjoying the cool summer we're having in Metro Detroit. But fie on them. The mercury hasn't scraped much past the mid-80s so far, and we're in mid-July. I couldn't be happier. I don't do well with the heat. The pepper plants do, however, and ours have been struggling to bear fruit, but like I said, fie on them. I can buy hot peppers at the market, although there is a charm to growing your own. But if that's the trade off---store-bought hot peppers in exchange for summer days in which I can breathe without an oxygen mask, then I'll take it and run. Normally by now, we would have suffered through oppressive heat, with temps in the high-80s and low-90s, with enough humidity to curl you from hair to toe. But this year? So far, so good. Cool evenings, enabling you to sleep with the windows open, and is there anything better than breathing in fresh night air as you slumber? Pleasant daytime temps, w

Which Dick Van Patten would you like to remember and mourn today? Is it the actor Van Patten, who most famously seeped into our consciousness as Tom Bradford, the patriarch of the TV family on ABC's "Eight is Enough" from 1977-81? Is it the tennis player Van Patten, whose sons got some of the old man's genes and did pretty good on the court as well? Is it the animal activist Van Patten, who worked tirelessly for our furried and feathered friends, including founding National Guide Dog Month in 2008? Is it the entrepreneur Van Patten, who co-founded Natural Balance Pet Foods in 1989? Take your pick---or take them all, if you'd like. Van Patten passed away on Tuesday at age 86. Some reports blame the cause of death on complications related to diabetes. There was some juice to the Van Patten name in the entertainment industry. There was Dick, of course, and there was his younger sister Joyce, a fellow actor. There were the Van Patten boys---Vincent, Nels