Enotes

Timberlake Christian School (TCS) in western Virginia buried the lead in their letter to the guardian of eight-year-old Sunnie Kahle. The last sentence was the most true and the most telling. "We believe that unless Sunnie as well as her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained indentity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education." No kidding, it's not the best place for Sunnie's future education. Like, I'd pull that child out of there yesterday. Sunnie is an eight-year-old girl, but by her own admission and her grandmother's (Sunnie's legal guardian) own acknowledgement, Sunnie likes a lot of "boy stuff"---such as autographed baseballs and hunting knives, according to CBS-TV affiliate WDBJ. But Sunnie also digs jewelry and stuffed animals, too. "It's fun," Sunnie says of her varied interests ---some of which don't seem ...

I admit it. I love Taco Bell. There are so many reasons. I have mocked it before , but I have been secretly in admiration of how the fast food entrant can make so much with such few ingredients. Give the folks at Taco Bell a tortilla, some sort of meat, refried beans, rice and cheese, and stand back. And they do it all without breaking the bank. I can walk into a Taco Bell, order food for our family of four and still get a few bucks' worth of change from a $20 bill. Try that at McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's. I like a good old-fashioned taco for 99 cents. A bean burrito (with extra onions) for $1.49. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to find anything on the menu for more than four bucks. And the quality? It's not a matter of "you get what you pay for." For the price, I think the food is pretty damned good. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. I don 't pretend that Taco Bell is Mexican "cuisine." But I also don't expe...

It's been a long winter, yet it's already mid-March. Such a dichotomy. It's been a winter that most of us would like to forget in Michigan, but it will likely be among the most memorable. And the calendar keeps flipping. It didn't always feel that way. Back in mid-January, which both feels like an eon ago and like yesterday, with Arctic temps and snow slamming us alternately, there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Depression began to set in at the thought of a bad winter merely getting started. As the pounding continued, with precious few moments of respite, as January turned to February, you felt like a hamster on a wheel---running but getting nowhere. The only objective at that point was survival. Just getting through it. Then, just like that, it's mid-March. Baseball season is just around the corner, which ought to provide hope and a feeling of spring's renewal. But it's hard to feel that with temps in the 20s and the sidewalk...

Tonight we're having hot dogs. This is a good thing. My mom used to call it tube steak. Funny. I love a good hot dog now and again. There's so much you can do with one. Before I married my bride, we took a trip to Chicago for a long weekend. That's when I rediscovered my love for the Chicago Style Hot Dog. Wendy's sold the specialty dogs in the summer of 1988, and I scarfed them up often. I was mesmerized by the combination of celery salt, mustard, pickled hot pepper, dill pickle relish and tomato that was globbed onto the tube steak, which was nestled in a poppy seed, thick bun. Then the Wendy's promotion ended and it wasn't until our 1991 trip to the Windy City that I found a place that sold them. Chicago Style Dogs weren't plentiful on Metro Detroit menus, I came to find out. You know---our love affair with the Coney Dog and all. The place in Chicago was called Madison Avenue Dogs, and they used their acronym to name their Chicago Style Dogs. ...

The distinctly debonair, razor-thin, legendary British actor was in the middle of his scripted bit of monologue when suddenly the crowd was in an uproar. It was 1974, in the middle of an American craze that inexplicably had caught on ever-so-briefly, as so many other American crazes seem to do----inexplicably. This particular craze was called "streaking," or running naked through a very public place. The nation's ballparks and football stadiums, to name just a couple venues, were being overrun by those sans clothing, making their mad dashes. And now the Academy Awards show was being interrupted by a streaker. He was male, even if just barely. David Niven, startled by the sudden burst of hoots and howls from the audience, turned and looked to see what the commotion was all about. A streaker was moving behind him, across the stage, flashing the "peace" sign with his fingers. Straying off script, Niven commented with spot-on---as they say in his country--...

There's a certain delicate symmetry when a person's birth city and death city are the same. Harold Ramis has such a line on his biography. Born: November 21, 1944; Chicago, IL. Died: February 24, 2014; Chicago, IL. Ramis, the comedic actor/director who passed away Monday from a rare and painful vascular disease, was as Chicago as wind, deep dish pizza and crooked elections. If you cracked him open you'd have found a Cubs cap and a megaphone. Ramis was always smirking. He had that twinkle in his eye, as if he knew something you didn't. When it came to movie making and laugh making, he did. Ramis was one of the leaders of a band of merry men and women who yukked it up at the original Second City improvisational theater group in Chicago, starting in the late-1960s. He was hardly alone when it came to finding fame later, but his imprint on American filmmaking puts him near the head of the class. Ramis's first role on the big screen saw him smirking all the...

A few weeks ago, hurried and on my lunch break, I stepped into the Barnes and Noble bookstore in downtown Royal Oak. My goal was simple: purchase a newspaper. Every Friday I cash my paycheck in Royal Oak and then take in lunch somewhere in town. But I'm one of these people who can't eat alone if I don't have something to read. Hence the newspaper. My usual provider, the gas station by the bank, was out of papers, so I remembered B&N. The bank took longer than usual, so the sands in the hourglass were dwindling. But hey, it's only a newspaper, right? The newspapers at B&N are located behind the cashier's counter. They're not self-serve. So first I had to wait for a cashier, which knocked off precious seconds from my meal time. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part came when I voiced my request. "Detroit News," please, I said to the college-aged cashier. He retrieved it. I had my dollar ready, eager to pay, leave, and l...