The community’s response to the 5 S. Main St. mural has been heated at times, but was always civilized, until now.
I was impressed with mural opponents? ability to collect signatures, appeal to city leaders, call and write letters to the editor and others, but not take matters into their own hands and paint brushes.
Apparently, some were strongly tempted, and perhaps seeing news the mural was due to be painted over, let loose their inner vandalizing demons.
What could it hurt, they may have thought ? it’s all going to be erased anyway.
They apparently forgot human beings have the ability to change their minds. Now instead of a harmless prank, they’re guilty of defacing private property.
Graffiti covers more than the mural, extending to neighboring properties, so maybe something else is in play. Letting loose on the mural, perhaps the vandal spirit could not be contained to their original target.
Anyway, this could have been local police’s chance to shine, stopping an attack on the decency of downtown Clarkston the likes of which it hasn’t seen in years, if not decades.
Maybe next time.
***
Henry Woloson and his merry band of civil insurgents are onto something, with their call for a Michigan Constitutional Convention, among other things.
Covering the Clarkston Board of Education, trustees and administrators are constantly complaining about the budget calendar. Schools must submit their budgets by July 1, but the state doesn’t turn in their budget until Oct. 1 (at least they’re supposed to).
That means districts run the first three months of the school year using the previous year’s numbers, resulting in budget discussions and revisions all year long.
We have a chance to change that, an opportunity that comes along every 16 years ? crack open the state constitution and fix it. I see no good reason why the calendars of state government and school districts, which are pretty much run by the state nowadays, aren’t in sync.

One of the most common questions I get when I’m out and about: how’s the paper doing?
Seeing newspapers far and wide going bankrupt, scaling back, or just shutting down, people are concerned The Clarkston News could be next.
I tell them it’s tough for everyone, us included. We’re short a sports reporter until August ? she’s helping out at our sister paper, The Oxford Leader through summer.
Still, we have a few advantages.
The strongest: The Clarkston News is family owned. We’re not just another asset in a multi-state newspaper chain to be written off at the first, or second or third, sign of trouble.
For another, we’re burrowed into a nice deep niche. We cover the Clarkston area’s news, and that’s it. No one else does what we do, and we’re proud of that. We break Clarkston’s news. We’re proud of that, too.
Not that we can’t use some help.
Those who read, enjoy, and find value in what we do but don’t pay for it ? I’m looking at you, web browsers ? please consider a subscription.
Just $30 a year for Oakland County residents for 52 issues of stories and photographs of your friends and neighbors. See what the kids are up to in our schools. See what government’s up to in city or township hall.
For me, the Public Safety page, 9A, would be worth the 50 cents a week by itself. We also have lively dialogue on our opinion pages about everything from national politics to what’s on the side of our building in downtown Clarkston.
Consider this my public television appeal, although the company isn’t public and we’re not television. You get the idea.
Plus, with subscription comes the customer trump card ? cancellation of said subscription. If anything we do annoys you too much, you get to fire us, give us the boot.
It’s something you can only do once though.
Or you can give us a call, send an email, stop in for coffee, pull us aside when we’re out and about, and talk to us.
You don’t have to be a subscriber to do that. Couldn’t hurt, though.

This is the time of year when grass starts growing again, leaves bud, and the air warms. A time to warm a Michigander’s heart after a long, cold winter.
For many teachers, however, the end of April brings another sign ? the less-than-cheerful arrival of the pink slip.
Due to state law and employee contracts, school districts must issue all lay-off notices for the upcoming school year by the end of April. If they don’t, your job is safe. So they issue a lot of pink slips, several times what might be needed, just in case.
It reminds of a line from the movie ‘The Princess Bride,? as Westley recounts his time with the Dread Pirate Roberts to his girlfriend, Buttercup.
‘Good night, Westley,? the pirate was said to say every night for two years. ‘Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.?
The pirate never killed Westley, just as most teachers will not actually by laid off ? most are recalled during the summer as enrollment and staff numbers come in.
But I wouldn’t want to work that way.
School officials consider many factors, but, as in most cases like this, the newest teachers step up to the chopping block first. What a fine reward for them, fresh out of school, having survived Clarkston’s rigorous hiring process, a full year of teaching finally under their belts.
Solutions? Besides reversing Michigan’s economic fortunes and suddenly becoming a boom town again, there don’t seem to be many.
I’m sure the measure was implemented as a way to protect teachers ? if you get through April without a pink slip, you’re home free. Pesky unintended consequence: school districts compensate by spread pink slips far and wide.
The one thing with which everyone agrees is it’s a lousy way to treat hard-working teachers
I’m curious about how teachers view the process. Is it a rite of passage? Is it considered just park of the job? Do teachers frame their first pink slip? Do they keep collections? Does time and tenure provide relief?
I’ll be asking, and I’ll let you know what I find out.

I had a visitor in the office last week, someone planning something special for a local luminary.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll get a story in the paper about it.”
The visitor had other ideas. He didn’t want it in the paper. He wanted the plans to be a secret. Since I knew a lot of people, I could just pass along the word quietly, he said.
This also comes up occasionally with public officials, who want to talk “off the record.” Story tips are one thing, but sometimes it seems they want to say one thing in public and another in private. Keeping that kind of secret makes me feel dirty.
I’m not in the secrets business anyway. I used to be. I was cleared for top secret info by the FBI itself. Now I’m paid to get the word out.
I’ll keep that special event secret, though.
For now.
***
I went to see the ‘Watchmen? movie last weekend. My brother got a couple issues of the comic book on which it was based when they were released in the ?80s, but I didn’t remember much. I liked it so much, I shelled out $20 for the full comic book series, I mean “graphic novel.”
I loved Dr. Manhattan’s sense of time, in that he doesn’t have any. For him, a reality-bending superhero, present exists simultaneously with past and future, which makes talking to him a confusing experience.
My skin doesn’t glow and it’s not blue, and the future’s still as murky as always, but walls between past and present have been coming down lately.
All because of Facebook.
I joined the social networking website a couple weeks ago, and promptly reconnected with a group of high school classmates I haven’t heard from in 20 years. Then someone I went to kindergarten with. Then a bunch of people here at the paper and in Clarkston.
So now my nieces and nephews in Virginia share comments with Clarkston News reporters, people I went to high school with in Ohio, wife’s friends, in-laws’ relatives, and many, many others.
Very surreal.

We just finished hosting this year’s second-grade tours of The Clarkston News offices on Main Street. Every year, Clarkston Community Schools students tour downtown, to learn about its history and see what goes on behind the scenes.
I’m impressed ? the students seemed to appreciate what we have going on here, and they asked great questions.
‘How do you know what you put in the newspaper is true,? more than one asked.
‘Well, we were there,? I told them.
‘Do you know about Henry Ford and the bank robbery??
‘Just what I read in the paper.?
(The Clarkston News wrote about both in the 1930s, Henry building mills in Clarkston and gun-toting robbers holding up Clarkston State Bank like desperados from the Old West).
Brings to mind a thought: how about an open house for everyone else? I’m looking at 5-7 p.m., Friday, June 20, before the first Concert in the Park of the season.
Come on upstairs. I’ll put on some coffee and spring for some cookies or something. Check out our newsroom, on the second floor of 5 S. Main St., overlooking downtown Clarkston (‘a great location if you’re a newspaper,? I told the second graders).
Talk to me about what you want to see in The Clarkston News. What are we doing right? What are we missing? What do you want to see more of? What would you be happy never to see again?
Let me know.
Then we can go to Depot Park and listen to Rick and Dayna do their thing.
***
My Brooksie Way training continues.
Invitation to join me in my quest to complete the half marathon without the help of an ambulance still stands. I run after work on Thursdays, at about 5:15 p.m. I have been checking for anyone interested in running along, but only hastily on my way out. I apologize if I missed anybody. I can go a bit farther and a bit faster than last month, but still nothing to get too excited about.
I still have 128 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes, and 40 second from now to prepare.