Charlie LeDuff

newsman

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

RIP Canada.
Its wildfires are so bad I can't see the freighters along Lake Huron. I can barely make out the horizon from the shores of Michigan. I can't breathe.
Has the Land of the Maple burned to the ground?
Who's managing the joint, Karen Bass?
This is four summers in a row.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

NEWS -- The more the FBI digs into the mass poisoning of metro Detroit, the more it's looking like an organized racket.
It's Flint without the water.

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Is Northland Selling Poisoned Dirt as Topsoil?
The feds are digging in, and one of the companies that dumped contaminated dirt into the city is now responsible for part of the cleanup

By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff

There are so many scoundrels involved in the potential mass poisoning of Metro Detroit that it was right for the Detroit Police to turn their case over to the FBI.

The conflicts of interest are obvious. The tendrils of this scandal reach to the highest levels of Detroit and Southfield city halls, where the leaders continue to claim they know nothing.

And the feds are digging. The case is widening, according to sources. And the case is starting reveal the tell-tale signs of an organized racket.

In the meantime, the ding-dongs of the public bureaucracy bury their heads and hide behind rule books and claims of jurisdiction.

All the while, tests have shown that the dirt in hundreds of holes contains toxins and heavy metals so pernicious they can permeate cell walls and lead to cancer and cognitive impairment.

The Michigan Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy will not involve itself, preferring to pass jurisdiction to city leaders who are subjects of the federal investigation themselves.

The Center for Disease Control told me two weeks ago that the data the city of Detroit collected on 77 poisoned holes last year is useless because the city did not test the topsoil—an industry standard.

Moreover, no new results have been publicly posted since last November.

The Michigan Department of Transportation does not sufficiently track where its highway slag is being dumped (hint: in Detroit's demolition holes).

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation doles out graft to pay for $4,500 coffee makers but can’t supply soil analytics for brownfield redevelopment projects.

The City of Detroit itself has handpicked 650 sites for testing. How? By what criteria? Why so few? To date, just 175 of those 650 have been tested. About 145 have come back hot. That’s more than 80%.

Back in 2019, Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield wrote to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib asking for a federal investigation into the poisoned dirt. A couple months later, Sheffield flew off to Miami for an Easter weekend with Brian McKinney, the founder of Gayanga Co. who is now in the federal crosshairs for dumping the poisoned dirt.

In turn, Tlaib called for a federal investigation. Nothing came of it then. And today Tlaib stands mute while running for re-election as a protector of the people and the environment.

Meanwhile, a company named SC Environmental won contracts from the City of Detroit to clean up some of Gayanga’s poisoned holes. But SC Environmental has been found to have been involved in at least 25 poisoned holes itself. Gayanga was suspended from the demolition program. SC Environmental continues to work.

Why was Gayanga suspended and SC Environmental wasn’t? Further adding to the plot is that SC Environmental was kicked out of the program back in 2022 for using unsourced dirt, leaving demo holes open, and not abating asbestos. Calls to the company were not returned.

Then there’s this: Dirt at the old Northland Mall redevelopment site is being sifted and sold for top soil, sources say. Northland is the very place the Detroit Office of Inspector General believes to be the source for at least some of Gayanga’s killer dirt.

Southfield Mayor Ken Siver and his bureaucrats promised interviews, and then canceled.

Health bureaucracies refuse to step in. I leave it to you to suppose why.

But the question remains: How big is this? Hundreds of holes. Thousands? Tens of thousands? We may never know. And that’s precisely the game being played here by the government. Collective stupidity and amnesia. Bury your head and hope it all goes away.

The old saying goes you can’t fight city hall. But the FBI can. I wish Johnny Fed all the luck. He’s the only hope we have.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

No BS Newshour Episode #426
Joke’s on You

(0:09) Poison Dirt- The Feds are here.

(16:57) Who’s cooking scandal better in Detroit? Loverboy & Lovertoy

True Detroit comedians: (33:03) Abdul El-Sayed, (38:51) Haley Stevens and (42:46) Shri Thanedar

Does our guest Dave Landau make the AI list of the Greatest Detroit Comedians? (48:49)

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

Here's another dope from Michigan.
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D) doesn't know which communities he represents, or what bridge he's standing in front of.
As I pointed out yesterday:
Our political class is at the bottom of the class.
https://t.co/6rHsNiSit2

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Bright Ideas From the Dimmest Bulbs Will Ruin Us
Everyday Michiganders go without power despite all the talk about "infrastructure modernization"

By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff

When the power goes out, the light bulb goes on and the political candidates scramble to make dumb videos. This proves, once again, that a fool and her money are soon elected.

It rained a little bit last week, and more than a million Michiganders found themselves in the dark.

What does Jocelyn Benson do? She makes a freakish selfie from a bluff at a lake house somewhere, commiserating with the hoi polloi who—yet again—were baking in the darkened streets of Detroit.

“I have a plan to change these unfair profit driven rate hikes,” she said dressed in a black blazer in 95 degree heat accessorized with a splendid view of a lake and beach behind her. “But also ensuring we’re investing and modernizing our energy grid.”

She said that last week, too, in different lame video about high-speed trains.

Her buzzwords seem to be: “modernizing infrastructure.” But that’s exactly how DTE and Consumers make their profits. Investing in “modern infrastructure.”

What the monopolies do not do is upkeep the current infrastructure. There’s no profit in it. What we really need is for the power companies to cut the trees and maintain the existing grid.

Benson instructs us to go to her website to see the plan. Go to the website. There’s no plan at all. Dumb.

Then there’s Perry Johnson. He’s got a video. He’s got lots of videos. One of my favorites is him standing in an open collar, remembering how a hundred years ago his parents used to be poor.

That’s why the mega-millionaire wants to return $4,747 to our pockets. Nice number. Johnson says he’s going to do a mega-audit and find the waste to give us the money.

But how do you settle on a dollar amount before you do an audit to find the money? Dumb.

Haley Stevens wants to be your senator. So there she stands on the Detroit River, claiming that the Gordie Howe Bridge is being shanghaied by Matty Moroun, a corrupt billionaire crony of Donald J. Trump.

Moroun, who owns the rival Ambassador Bridge, is Trump’s biggest contributor, she says in a cringy voice. Trouble is, Matty Moroun died six years ago. This proves once again that Stevens knows little about international affairs or Michigan. Again, dumb.

“Doctor” Abdul El-Sayed—he of little professional accomplishment—can be found on Instagram, prancing about in a suburban cowboy costume. He wants to expand Obamacare into Medicare for All.

The problem there is that Obamacare exploded medical costs and now there are more uninsured people than ever before. They’re not the poor. They’re the middle class. And the country is broke. Dumb.

I like social media as much as the next guy. I can’t afford cable. Or health insurance. Or air-conditioning at peak hours. But it’s going to take more than some yard signs and lame videos to convince me they know what’s going on out here.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

@MIMOM33011462 @mich_enjoyer He was on my podcast today.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

A man who's been dead six years can't be both a corrupt crony and the largest donor to Donald J. Trump.
In fact, he can't be anything. He's dead.
But that's the quality of our political candidates here in Michigan.
Listen closely. You'll hear nothing.
Meanwhile, DTE runs wild.

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Bright Ideas From the Dimmest Bulbs Will Ruin Us
Everyday Michiganders go without power despite all the talk about "infrastructure modernization"

By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff

When the power goes out, the light bulb goes on and the political candidates scramble to make dumb videos. This proves, once again, that a fool and her money are soon elected.

It rained a little bit last week, and more than a million Michiganders found themselves in the dark.

What does Jocelyn Benson do? She makes a freakish selfie from a bluff at a lake house somewhere, commiserating with the hoi polloi who—yet again—were baking in the darkened streets of Detroit.

“I have a plan to change these unfair profit driven rate hikes,” she said dressed in a black blazer in 95 degree heat accessorized with a splendid view of a lake and beach behind her. “But also ensuring we’re investing and modernizing our energy grid.”

She said that last week, too, in different lame video about high-speed trains.

Her buzzwords seem to be: “modernizing infrastructure.” But that’s exactly how DTE and Consumers make their profits. Investing in “modern infrastructure.”

What the monopolies do not do is upkeep the current infrastructure. There’s no profit in it. What we really need is for the power companies to cut the trees and maintain the existing grid.

Benson instructs us to go to her website to see the plan. Go to the website. There’s no plan at all. Dumb.

Then there’s Perry Johnson. He’s got a video. He’s got lots of videos. One of my favorites is him standing in an open collar, remembering how a hundred years ago his parents used to be poor.

That’s why the mega-millionaire wants to return $4,747 to our pockets. Nice number. Johnson says he’s going to do a mega-audit and find the waste to give us the money.

But how do you settle on a dollar amount before you do an audit to find the money? Dumb.

Haley Stevens wants to be your senator. So there she stands on the Detroit River, claiming that the Gordie Howe Bridge is being shanghaied by Matty Moroun, a corrupt billionaire crony of Donald J. Trump.

Moroun, who owns the rival Ambassador Bridge, is Trump’s biggest contributor, she says in a cringy voice. Trouble is, Matty Moroun died six years ago. This proves once again that Stevens knows little about international affairs or Michigan. Again, dumb.

“Doctor” Abdul El-Sayed—he of little professional accomplishment—can be found on Instagram, prancing about in a suburban cowboy costume. He wants to expand Obamacare into Medicare for All.

The problem there is that Obamacare exploded medical costs and now there are more uninsured people than ever before. They’re not the poor. They’re the middle class. And the country is broke. Dumb.

I like social media as much as the next guy. I can’t afford cable. Or health insurance. Or air-conditioning at peak hours. But it’s going to take more than some yard signs and lame videos to convince me they know what’s going on out here.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

No BS Newshour Episode #425
DTE SUX

As you’re sitting in the dark, sweating your ass off, you can blame DTE and you should.
There is a ray of light in all this, you don’t have to watch our horrible candidates' empty campaign videos.

And what do those videos say? Absolutely nothing.
No real answers, no mastery of the facts, and no issues that concern us.
Buy hey! He looks good in a cowboy hat and she wears a black blazer to the beach. (4:51)

Not to worry- we’ve got your answers.

PLUS- Red ain’t dead. (31:23)
And Mike Cox has a funny name. (50:35)

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

Gavin Newsom claims he's got serious trouble reading, writing and mathing.
He attributes his unlikely rise to an overcompensating oratory.
It appears he may have talked too much.
The FBI had a mole in his inner-circle wearing a wire.
I've been to the Victorville Federal pen in the Mojave Desert.
Not a nice place. Very hot.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

When your ideas are ass, you gotta show 'em your ass.
Here's the words -->

When you’re a candidate in an election year and have no real ideas, you throw a turd in the water to see if it floats.

And so it went with gubernatorial hopeful Jocelyn Benson last week when she floated a 47-second Instagram clip promising the people of Michigan high-speed trains. Predictably, partisans snapped at this turd as if it were a chocolate eclair.

But high-speed trains will never come. We don’t need them. And we can’t afford them.

First, let’s do math.

Not counting California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s boondoggle lying on the floor of the San Joaquin Desert, there are no high-speed rail lines in the U.S., except for the Acela that connects New York to Washington, D.C. The price of tickets for the Acela is four times greater than a standard snail train.

Man in bright blue blazer and sunglasses holds up both hands in defensive gesture while standing on wooden dock near river and bridge
Apply that multiplier to a Detroit-Chicago roundtrip "low-speed" train, where the average price today is around $200. That would mean that an imagined high-speed train ticket would cost about $800.

Now consider that the same car trip to the Windy City and back currently costs $100 with gas at $4 a gallon.

So, two couples taking a weekend trip to Chicago by car would cost $100. The same couple taking the imaginary high-speed rail would pay $3,200, not including parking and taxis. That math don’t math.

Now, some accounting. For decades, Michigan has been stripped by giant corporations, big unions, pinheaded politicos, and dipsticks of the technical class. In short, we don’t have the bread for an imaginary train. And even if we did, there are a mountain of other priorities that need addressing.

Consider in Whitmer’s eight years:

Our Roads Aren’t Fixed

Our roads, electric grid, sewers, and drinking water are graded among the worst and most expensive infrastructure systems in the country. Meanwhile, Canada continues to dump its industrial garbage in our landfills at the cheapest rates in America. And don’t forget, Detroit will need upward of $100 million to clean up its poisoned demolition holes.

Our Adults Can’t Count

The federal government is demanding to see our records for Medicaid, food stamps, and Unemployment Insurance reimbursements. The state, naturally, is resisting an actuarial assessment of its potential fraud and incompetence.

Our Kids Can’t Read

Michigan’s children have fallen near the bottom nationwide in reading and math proficiency. Detroit’s school system is ranked the worst of any urban district in America.

No Good Jobs

Whitmer has doled out billions in corporate welfare in exchange for the “good paying jobs” of the future. But those promised jobs have not materialized. Worse, Michigan has lost nearly 10% of its auto-related jobs since Whitmer took office. The unemployment rate in the Great Lakes State is in the top 10 nationally while our economic growth is in the bottom 10.

Our People Are Leaving

Politicians and their press poodles bark about Michigan’s sudden population growth. But that’s just a statistical mirage. The U.S Census Bureau simply changed the way it estimates population back in 2024. If we calculate population today with the old pre-2024 method, Michigan actually lost 2,000 residents last year.

Our Cities Are Dangerous

In some surveys, Michigan has seven of the most violent and dangerous cities in America: Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Jackson, and Battle Creek. You know we’ve got problems when Cleveland becomes a preferred destination.

I could go on, but it doesn’t take an engineer.

If we’re going to dream for the impossible, my daughter suggests a herd of KittyKat-Unicorns. After all, Kitty-Corns can fly. They’re really cute. And they fart stardust and rainbows.

Remember my fellow Michiganders: Vote early and vote often.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

No BS Newshour Episode #424
Benson’s Trainwreck Fantasy

Rolls Royce Joyce is pitching high-speed rail for Michigan.

Our roads are broken. Our kids can't read. Auto jobs are vanishing, and our cities are among the most violent in America.

If we’re going to dream about impossible things that will never happen, we might as well wish for flying unicorns that fart rainbows.
At least they’re cute.

PLUS- The United Gates of America.
Happy Independence Day.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

When your ideas are ass, you gotta show 'em your ass.
Here's the words -->

When you’re a candidate in an election year and have no real ideas, you throw a turd in the water to see if it floats.

And so it went with gubernatorial hopeful Jocelyn Benson last week when she floated a 47-second Instagram clip promising the people of Michigan high-speed trains. Predictably, partisans snapped at this turd as if it were a chocolate eclair.

But high-speed trains will never come. We don’t need them. And we can’t afford them.

First, let’s do math.

Not counting California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s boondoggle lying on the floor of the San Joaquin Desert, there are no high-speed rail lines in the U.S., except for the Acela that connects New York to Washington, D.C. The price of tickets for the Acela is four times greater than a standard snail train.

Man in bright blue blazer and sunglasses holds up both hands in defensive gesture while standing on wooden dock near river and bridge
Apply that multiplier to a Detroit-Chicago roundtrip "low-speed" train, where the average price today is around $200. That would mean that an imagined high-speed train ticket would cost about $800.

Now consider that the same car trip to the Windy City and back currently costs $100 with gas at $4 a gallon.

So, two couples taking a weekend trip to Chicago by car would cost $100. The same couple taking the imaginary high-speed rail would pay $3,200, not including parking and taxis. That math don’t math.

Now, some accounting. For decades, Michigan has been stripped by giant corporations, big unions, pinheaded politicos, and dipsticks of the technical class. In short, we don’t have the bread for an imaginary train. And even if we did, there are a mountain of other priorities that need addressing.

Consider in Whitmer’s eight years:

Our Roads Aren’t Fixed

Our roads, electric grid, sewers, and drinking water are graded among the worst and most expensive infrastructure systems in the country. Meanwhile, Canada continues to dump its industrial garbage in our landfills at the cheapest rates in America. And don’t forget, Detroit will need upward of $100 million to clean up its poisoned demolition holes.

Our Adults Can’t Count

The federal government is demanding to see our records for Medicaid, food stamps, and Unemployment Insurance reimbursements. The state, naturally, is resisting an actuarial assessment of its potential fraud and incompetence.

Our Kids Can’t Read

Michigan’s children have fallen near the bottom nationwide in reading and math proficiency. Detroit’s school system is ranked the worst of any urban district in America.

No Good Jobs

Whitmer has doled out billions in corporate welfare in exchange for the “good paying jobs” of the future. But those promised jobs have not materialized. Worse, Michigan has lost nearly 10% of its auto-related jobs since Whitmer took office. The unemployment rate in the Great Lakes State is in the top 10 nationally while our economic growth is in the bottom 10.

Our People Are Leaving

Politicians and their press poodles bark about Michigan’s sudden population growth. But that’s just a statistical mirage. The U.S Census Bureau simply changed the way it estimates population back in 2024. If we calculate population today with the old pre-2024 method, Michigan actually lost 2,000 residents last year.

Our Cities Are Dangerous

In some surveys, Michigan has seven of the most violent and dangerous cities in America: Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Jackson, and Battle Creek. You know we’ve got problems when Cleveland becomes a preferred destination.

I could go on, but it doesn’t take an engineer.

If we’re going to dream for the impossible, my daughter suggests a herd of KittyKat-Unicorns. After all, Kitty-Corns can fly. They’re really cute. And they fart stardust and rainbows.

Remember my fellow Michiganders: Vote early and vote often.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

Who wore it better?

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Some more shitty ideas from Jocelyn… let’s figure out the more pressing matters in Michigan before building a railroad. @Charlieleduff

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

@DavidMacM31 People in Windsor live about 10 years longer than people in Detroit, and yet, people in Windsor come to Detroit for healthcare. So you tell me.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

No BS Newshour Episode #423
Beat It

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running for US Senate.

He claims he’s a doctor, but he can’t prescribe aspirin.

He claims he turned around the Detroit Health Department, but babies keep dying.

He claims he has the answer to health care, but Detroiters die younger.

He calls Latino immigration officials a white supremacist.

The TRUTH behind the TV ads.

Speaking of jokes… Michael Jackson.
I’ve got a dozen of them.

I covered Jacko’s pedo trial.
The truth behind the documentary.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

Phony El-Baloney

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

Abdul El-Sayed Is a Paper Doctor With an Empty Résumé
The people's champ has never treated a patient, and the little work he has done hasn't improved health in Detroit

By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff

A cop told me recently that he got a call from a rich white man complaining about a suspicious black man roaming his neighborhood.

Cops hate those kinds of calls. It puts them in a bad spot. But cops have to respond to calls. So he did. Turned out, the black man was an Amazon driver. And naturally, the white man had a sign in his yard that read “Black Lives Matter.”

Now, there’s a new sign on the white man’s lawn: “Abdul for U.S. Senate.”

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running on a platform of good union jobs, money out of politics, and Medicare for All. I don’t understand the attraction. It’s doubtful the rich white man ever worked in a factory or has to worry about medical bills.

Let’s call it virtue signaling for virtue’s sake. It takes the sting out of white privilege.

For you workday humps who’d like to know something about the candidate beyond slick 30-second commercials, it’s worth noting that El-Sayed never worked in a factory, and aside from some part-time gigs at various colleges, his resume is thin. Very thin.

The first thing you need to know is that El-Sayed is a paper doctor. He’s never treated a patient, is not licensed in Michigan, and never passed the board examinations. He can’t so much as dispense aspirin from an ambulance.

The second thing you need to know is that El-Sayed, 41, has worked just two real jobs in his adult life, totaling less than four years, according to his resume. This from a guy who wants to be senator for life.

What’s troubling is where he worked and what he actually accomplished: He was appointed as the top public health official in Detroit and then Wayne County. Both departments are an historical quagmire of corruption and incompetence. Believe me, I know, I helped put one director behind bars for, among other things, embezzling public health dollars to pay for hair plugs.

For his part, El-Sayed was appointed as Detroit’s health director in 2015 by then-Mayor Mike Duggan. At that time, as the city was emerging from its historic bankruptcy, El-Sayed’s health department was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into a pet program run by Duggan’s mistress. The program was supposed to lower infant mortality rates in the city.

After just 17 months on the job, El-Sayed resigned to run for governor. Then Mistress-gate scandal exploded and infant mortality skyrocketed. Nothing changed.

To El-Sayed’s credit, before resigning as health director, he commissioned a report that showed Duggan’s demolition blitz was poisoning the city’s children. That program is now the subject of a sprawling FBI investigation. However, El-Sayed the candidate has said little about it.

A couple years and cups of coffee later, El-Sayed was appointed in 2023 as the medical chief of Wayne County. According to his own campaign commercial, El-Sayed’s biggest accomplishment was a partnership with a nonprofit that supplied 16,000 eye glasses to needy children. What the commercial does not tell you is that the nonprofit existed for a decade beforehand and the county’s portion was funded primarily by Biden’s Covid bucks. One-time inflationary federal dollars is no solution to a health crisis.

All the while, life expectancy in Detroit continues to crater from pre-pandemic levels, hovering around 70 years old. That’s hardly an effective record.

There are also serious questions about El-Sayed’s campaigns finance problems, including indications of straw donors, actual contributors blowing past legal limits, and a Super PAC committed to spending millions of dollars on his behalf.

Then there are the disturbing questions regarding the mental fitness of those he surrounds himself with, including a former staffer charged with terrorism, a current staffer who says all white women are racist (ironically, that staffer herself is a white woman), and a prominent podcaster who once said America deserved 9/11. And can we get a timeline of when he actually lived in Michigan?

But those are stories for another day.

Go ahead and plant your yard signs rich white guy. That's your right. Just remember, you reap what you sow.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

@a2kathy594 Godspeed

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

No BS Newshour Episode #422
Goodbye Mom

The most beautiful sophisticated earthy woman I’ve ever known.

I don’t know if we’ll meet on the other side of life’s door.
But I do know I was blessed to know her on this side.

Remember to tell someone you love her.

All my relations.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

I don't know what's on the other side of death's door.
All I know is that I was blessed to spend this life with her.
In her final days, Ma gave us -- her people -- a last great lesson.

[Michigan Enjoyer @mich_enjoyer]

My Mother Will Live 100 Years More
People will continue to speak the name of a woman who gave kindness freely and inspired their strength

By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff

Mother's life was not one of accolades or prizes or financial riches. Mother was a handsome woman who lived a normal life.

But when cancer came to claim her face, it exposed a beauty previously unseen by me.

“That’s the thing about growing old,” she said of the affliction that had stolen her eyes and taken the bridge of her nose and left her in darkness. “Eventually God punishes every woman for her vanity.”

Even so, Mother continued to wear a wristwatch so she might document the hour when her eyesight would return. Of course, it never did. She was 81.

Evangeline Baldis (née Steele) was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the daughter of a truck driver and waitress. In her life, Mother was many things. A factory girl, a florist, a painter, a gourmet, a theologian. She was a wife to three men. Mother to five children. Grandmother of 10. Great-grandmother of three.

She also offered sanctuary to many children lost in the blizzard of drugs and divorce known as The Eighties. There was always a warm meal at her table.

At that time, men were packing their bags and walking out the door and women were left to go out to earn the bread. Naturally, children ran wild—including her own. On more than one occasion, Mother presented herself in an old fur coat at the threshold of a disreputable door demanding her child be returned to her.

“There is a word for that,” her sister Joann said at the hour of her death. “Flair. Your mother had flair.”

Weeks earlier, Mother asked: “Why does God keep me around? What does he want from me? I’m ready.”

“One last great lesson, Ma,” I supposed. “I think He wants you to teach us how to die with dignity. How not to be afraid.”

She nodded. And then she asked for a cigarette. And then she asked for a chocolate. And then she asked for a spritz of Oscar de la Renta.

At the foot of her bed, a great-grandchild clutched at the post attempting to right herself. Mother knew the baby by the sound of her gurglings. The baby carries her name. Evangeline. The bringer of good news. The scent of lilac and sage wafted in from the garden along with the dang-dong of the wind chime.

Mother had been floating in the morphine clouds for sometime. As the day grew nearer, and the dosage grew higher, I expected strange things to bubble from her haze. I did not know what exactly. Rantings perhaps. Bitterness maybe. Medicine is a truth serum, and cancer is a monster.

But strange words never came. She was the same woman in death’s shadow as she was in life’s light. She was more handsome than I had ever known.

One evening, in the darkened room, she asked, “Why me, Lord?

“What’s that, Ma?”

“Kris Kristofferson,” she said. “Why me, Lord?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a request.

“Why Me?” is Kristofferson’s gospel song of humility and grace; of feeling unworthy of God’s blessings. I remembered it from boyhood.

I played it for her.

Try me, Lord
If you think there's a way
I can try to repay
All I've taken from you

Maybe, Lord
I can show someone else
What I've been through myself
On my way back to you

She sang along in a rasping, labored voice. And then she went to sleep.

Mother died today, or yesterday. But not really.

It is said that a woman dies twice. Once when her heart stops. And once when her name is spoken for the last time. Considering the people she touched, the kindness she freely gave, the strength she offered, I am quite sure Mother will live 100 years more. At least.

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

See? I told you.
While the fake news has run with the fake Gordie Howe Bridge opening story for 3 full days, we were advocating for tariffs on Canadian industrial garbage being dumped in Michigan.
Want the news?
Subscribe to @mich_enjoyer
Still 100% free

[Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff]

🚨🚨🚨
Canada keeps dumping on us here in Michigan.
The Gordie Howe Bridge should not open until we reach a deal on Toronto's garbage.
And if we can't get a deal, then tariff the shit out of them.
Keep Michigan green.