I had my first runaround this past week with Independence Township, regarding a request for a document.
The document in question was a report by McLaren Health Corporation about projected tax revenues generated by their Sashabaw Road project.
The Clarkston News and other newspapers wrote about it last month. McLaren has always said their project, with its mix of retail and medical uses, would produce more than enough tax revenue.
In December, Kevin Tompkins, vice president of marketing for McLaren, said he expected the report to confirm that. The Planning Commission requested the report so that they would have independent confirmation of their position.
McLaren checked with their legal department before telling me that they couldn’t send me a copy of the report. I didn’t get even that far with the Township.
The Clerk’s office referred me to the Supervisor’s office which referred me to the Building and Finance departments, which didn’t know anything about it and couldn’t talk about it if they did.
The mystery will hopefully be solved at tomorrow’s Planning Commission meeting.
***
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The schools do a good job explaining the meaning of our holidays to students, so hopefully they took Monday’s day off to reflect on whatever racial issues exist in the Clarkston area, state, nation, and world.
It’s odd how things have worked out.
Segregation is supposed to have been outlawed for decades, but the population seems to be segregated anyway. I live in Flint and work in Clarkston. According to the 2000 Census, Flint’s ZIP code, 48532, had a population that was 18.4 percent African-American, compared to a national average of 12.3. Clarkston’s ZIP code, 48346, listed an African-American population of 1.1 percent.
This is not a criticism. There’s certainly nothing the government can or should do about it. Some would consider me to be bi-racial, although I nor my family didn’t, and I haven’t noticed any racial problems here.
I’ve worked in a variety of racial settings, in the Army, as a substitute teacher, and as a security guard in downtown Flint, and based on those experiences, it’s clear that differences are individual and cultural, not racial.
Most people, I think, believe that.
But how does it happen that I can look in one classroom and see all white faces and another and see all black faces?
How does it happen that I can drive down one street and see a white neighborhood and another and see a black neighborhood?
How does it happen that I can look in one church and see a white congregation and another and see a black congregation?
This isn’t quite the dream Dr. King had.
Should I be noticing these things?
Does it matter?

It’s the summer movie season, and I am a willing participant.
I’ve been racking up quite a few hours in the theater: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
That wasn’t the only thing new with Harry Potter, of course.
I fell for that, too.
My brother and his family were visiting from Virginia this weekend. Friday night (Saturday morning?) at midnight, I was at Border’s bookstore in Flint with a nephew and two nieces, and about a thousand other Harry Potter fans, many dressed up in various robes, hats, scarves, glasses, and lots of magic-marker applied scars, to get their two reserved copies of the seventh and final Potter book.
On the way there, they shared theories about HPatDH: Voldemort is really dead; Dumbledore is really alive; Voldemort is really Harry’s father.
On the way back, I left the car interior lights on and my niece Helen read out loud. Back home, we read until about 2 a.m. ? I might have borrowed a copy and made them share the other ? then I confiscated them both so we could all get some sleep.
I went to Target the next morning to get my own copy ? no lines or costumes there. The magic was gone.
We’re all done reading it, of course. Now I can check things on TV, newspapers, and the internet ? my spoiler-prevention embargo is over.
People love to spoil things like this. The Flint Journal printed a story Sunday promised to be free of spoilers, but included a paragraph describing in detail the last chapter of the book. They caught my wife with that one.
The New York Times published a book review before it even went on sale. The review is a synopsis of the entire book, carelessly summarizing and commenting on the story from beginning to end.
One guy on the internet posted what he called was the ending of the book. The writing was very poor, laughably absurd dialogue, things the characters would never say or do.
That, at least, shows how talented the actual author, J.K. Rowling, really is.

I’ve been reading some of the postings under ‘Kids, teachers, parents? on ClarkstonNews.com. Posted by Don Rush, readers have been sharing opinions and experiences about local schools.
Many are disappoint-ing. Some are shocking. Comments about in-competent, lazy teachers are hopefully exag-geration. There would be no excuse.
Each public school teacher is selected out of hundreds of applicants for the job. In a district like Clarkston, thousands would apply if asked.
I was among many unsuccessful teacher applicants a few years ago, up in Genesee County. Michigan was awash in teacher applicants. My job search had expanded down to North Carolina before I wised up and went back to my original calling in community journalism ? the commute is shorter.
As for comments about obnoxious behavior in students, I’ve seen those my-self, while substitute and student teaching, mostly in classrooms using traditional, textbook-based, desks-lined-up-facing-front format.
I was expected to keep students under control. Sit still. Raise your hand. Don’t move or talk without permission. Use the bathroom only when allowed. Do what you’re told, when you’re told. No fidgeting.
But this traditional environment used to be backed up by traditional discipline, with corporal punishment as a last resort.
That sort of thing is history.
Teachers learn many theories to compensate. Differentiation. Inquiry. Cooperative learning. Constructivism. Student-centered instruction. Whole Language. Learning modalities, learning styles, multiple intelligences.
They’re jargony and high-minded, but basically make sense. If students don’t learn from lectures and you can’t make them listen, try something else. Learn by doing. Move around to help you think.
Chances of implementing these changes: slim to none. Parents and kids would resist. ‘How would teacher keep control of the classroom,? they would ask.
But most adults prefer to live and work this way. If you throw away the instructions and just get your hands on whatever it is and figure it out yourself, that includes you.

E-mails are starting to come in about readers? disappointment with our recent sports coverage.
I’m not satisfied, either. We lost our sportswriter, who worked very hard to cover all kinds of sports in the area.
We’re interviewing for a replacement, but that takes time ? we want the right person for the job.
Until then, I’m the one in charge of putting together the sports pages, even though I’m not a particularly avid sports fan.
I played soccer and baseball through elementary school, but played in the marching band in high school (eye rolling among sports fans may commence).
Readers deserve more in-depth, serious sports coverage, especially with a varsity football team running undefeated this season.
I understand how seriously people take sports.
My wife and I were at a friend’s house Sept. 1 in Ann Arbor. His parents? house is so close to University of Michigan stadium that people pay a lot to park on the lawn.
Thousands of fans in blue and yellow marched past that morning, heading to the Big House. They were happy, optimistic, eager to see the Wolverines pound their lower-ranked opponents in their opening game.
When they came out a few hours later, not so much.
People were as somber, angry, and upset as the families involved in a murder case I covered earlier that week. I could never get myself so involved in a sporting event.
But if you’re that passionate about Clarkston sports, and can tell us a thing or two about how to cover sports, I need your help.
Good at sports analysis, predictions, weekend picks, handy with a camera, itching to use that new zoom lens on something? Looking to go into sports journalism and could use some clips to go with your resume?
Cover your favorite game and send copy and pictures to ClarkstonNews@ gmail.com, and I’ll credit you with it.
There are dozens of games every week, all worthy of a story and pictures. Even when we do get a sportswriter, he or she won’t be able to cover everything.

Read the news, then check out what editor Phil Custodio has to say about it, at Phil in the Blank!
Find it at ClarkstonTV.com, or
http://www.shermanpublications.org/phil/index.html.

The mournful moan of the infected, stumbling toward the living en masse with no desire except to ease their pain and spread their infection.

Zombies. Lots of them. They walk the earth at Haunted Fountains, Terror in Townsend Forest, and local haunted houses, and fill movie and television screens this Halloween season.

I like the zombie genre, snapping up various “Resident Evil” video games and movies. I even rented “Dawn of the Dead,” the 1978 version, this past weekend. Being 9 years old at the time, there was no way I was going to see it when it came out. The special effects seem primitive now, but man, certain scenes stick with you.

More recent films like “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland” play the whole walking-dead thing for laughs, but they’re still post-apocalyptic tales of humanity being driven to extinction by zombie hordes.

The whole swine flu, H1N1 story brings all this to mind, not the tragic cases where it leads to pnemonia and death, but the millions of cases where people suffer with the flu for a few days and recover.

Here in Clarkston, dozens of sixth graders are coming down with the flu, infected at a camping trip last week. Most will probably turn out to be seasonal flu, but at least some are H1N1 ? none are serious cases so far.

I wasn’t there, but it sounds like one of those horror movies, infection spreading unrelentingly without mercy from camper to camper. Then they come home and spread it amongst their family and friends.

The way it spreads is certainly horror-movie gross ? an infected person coughs or sneezes, releasing a small cloud of virus-laden droplets to be inhaled by new, healthy victims.

Yuck.

Even seasonal flu leaves its victim feeling like a George-Romero zombie, oozing, poorly dressed, shambling about, moaning with pain, vaguely remembering a time when life was happy, spreading infection amongst the healthy.

Zombie costumes for Halloween aren’t difficult. Some old clothes and stage makeup would do it.

Flu zombie is even easier ? bathrobe and a box of tissue.

Ooh, scary.