On matters of my health check-up, the upcoming election campaign & the Detroit Lions and Michigan football fortunes

A few thoughts offered for consideration

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick…

A line from W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium.

This stanza comes to mind after my annual visit to the doctor’s office, which includes drawing a vial or two of blood from which a snapshot of my state of health is analyzed. I had bypass heart surgery 13 years ago (four nearly plugged arteries), so the cholesterol results are of interest. It appears I’m still borderline. Not horrible, but neither is it within the desirable range.

Lose weight, exercise more, watch the diet, and be moderate with the adult beverages is the usual advise. Well, I try. Look out New Year’s resolutions, here I come! Again.

Some good news. The medication I take each morning to juice up my low-performing thyroid, a condition discovered years ago, which brought on the annual testing of blood is working. The results fell within the normal range.

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Well, unless you’re blessed with an ability to ignore the news, the presidential campaign has been front-and-center for much of the past year. Along with one of the Republican candidate’s courtroom appearances and other legal problems.

Well, the best—or worse—is yet to come once the new year arrives. All those state and local races that have been on the back burner, simmering, are now going to gradually come to a boil.

In Michigan there’s the U.S. Senate race to replace the retiring Debbie Stabenow. Conventional wisdom would predict a race between Elissa Slotkin, the Democrat and current U.S. representative, and Mike Rogers, the former GOP Congressman. But Rogers has previously burnished his moderate credentials, so a hard-right challenger might cause problems in the Primary. The only one in the Republican field that might (and I say might) seem to fit that bill is former Detroit Police Chief James Craig.

Still, I think a well-funded campaign and the independent vote that leans towards the GOP will tilt the final result in Rogers’ favor. What’ll be of interest is whether he holds to that moderate stance or does some dog whistling to the Republican base.

The races to fill the Congressional seats being vacated by Slotkin in the 7th and the retiring Dan Kildee in the 8th will make them interesting as both are considered swing districts.

Which party controls the Michigan House, given the current (nearly) even divide, will be of major interest. Given that the Democrats, having gained control of both that chamber and the Senate in the last election two years, used their majority to enact a lot of their preferred legislation—abortion rights, clean energy standards, repeal of Right to Work being prime examples—the Republicans will target a few of those seats. Their hope will be to regain control and roadblock further progressive laws.

And then there’s all those local races—county, village, school board, and judicial—that can be heated. These contests are more and more becoming proxies in the larger partisan and cultural divisions that are seen at the national and state levels.

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But I realize that ruminations about my health and the upcoming political campaign are secondary for many Michiganders to the excitement of the Detroit Lions winning their first divisional title since 1993—30 long years ago.

Sports talk radio, which I listen to on Saturday mornings while delivering the newspaper, is abuzz with speculation of how far the Lions can go in the play-offs. Should they go all out in their last two regular-season games with the goal of being a Number one or two seed, with a bye week and home-field advantage? Or rest the starters with the idea of winning the first play-off game and then seeing what happens after that?

A lot of experts are calling in to the station with advise. The bandwagon is rolling. Let’s hope it rolls all the way, but it’s certainly been a better season than any in recent memory.

And of course there’s the Michigan football team, facing Alabama in the Rose Bowl this New Year’s Day—the game serving as a semi-final in the National College Championship. The winner then takes on either Texas or Washington.

But then, who knows, maybe a federal judge will step in to halt the games until the matter of Florida State being left out is resolved. Every other matter seems to end up in court, so you never know.

Still… whether you’re a Lions fan or Wolverine partisan, or both, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Steve Horton is mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the Fowlerville News & Views. And while he attended Michigan State University and is a Spartan loyalist—GO BLUE!