Cassowary for sale

There’s something to be said for dying while doing something you love, and that’s what happened a few weeks ago to a Florida fellow.

Marvin Hajos was a 75-year-ld Bronx native who became bird breeder.

To each his own, and bird breeding was Hajos’. Make that exotic bird breeding.Make that ratite breeding, a group that includes ems, ostriches and cassowaries.

A cassowary is a large flightless bird, a close relative of the emu – the bird currently starring in the Liberty Mutual ads – Liberty Mutual. Emu. Get it? Yes and no.

Cassowaries can’t fly, but they can run 30 mph and leap almost 7 feet into the air. And they’re big: 5 feet fall, maybe even 6 fett tall, and well over 100 pounds.

"The cassowary is rightfully considered the most dangerous bird in the world!" the [San Diego] zoo says. "Each 3-toed foot has a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long! The cassowary can slice open any predator or potential threat with a single swift kick.” (Source: CNN)

Hajos was on the receiving end of a swift cassowary kick when he fell and one of hisbirds attacked him.

Cassowaries aren’t for the faint of heart pet owner.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considers cassowaries Class II wildlife, meaning they pose a danger to humans and are subject to specific cage requirements. Owners must also have “substantial experience with the animals, the commission says.

Class II is the same category as alligators, honey badgers and clouded leopards, while Class I includes more traditional predators such as a lions, tigers and bears.

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. (Honey badger don’t care.)

Well, with Mr. Hajos no longer on the scene, his survivors needed to see to what would become of his “animal estate,” and estate that includes macaws and kookaburras. And a few cassowaries. Including his killer.

The auction was held last weekend, but as of this writing, I’m not sure what became of the cassowary with blood on its claw.

Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Mr. Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”

“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” [Bill Grotjahn, an investigator with the Florida Medical Examiner’s Office] said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.” (Source: NY Times)

Personally, while I’d prefer to have a pet with a sense of humor, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me. But that “extremely, extremely dangerous” would give me pause. Especially a known killer.

Not that murder-by-cassowary is all that common. The last known killing was nearly 100 years ago in Australia (their native turf).

It was not clear why the bird that killed Mr. Hajos was not put down after the attack.

Certainly the question that inquiring minds are asking themselves.

Mr. Hajos, by the way:

…did not need a permit for his cassowaries because he “employed an agricultural exemption for his possession of cassowaries for agricultural use.”

That would be “meat, eggs and live animal sales.”

Inquiring minds might be asking a few more questions. Like who eats cassowary meat? Does it taste like chicken? And who eats cassowary eggs? What size omelet do they make?

I did find someone out there in Internet world who does raise cassowary because the chicks are, ahem, “adorable.”

“Adorable”?

Maybe as a chick. But once it grows into a six-footer with a dagger claw and no sense of humor. Plus a nasty disposition to boot.

I think I’d be a bit wary of a cassowary.

Not to mention that the cost could be as high as $10K.

As for Mr. Hajos, may he rest in peace.

Imaging surviving a Bronx childhood to get ripped apart by a cassowary.

I know he wasn’t singing about cassowaries, but John Prine was sure onto something when he wrote “It’s a big old goofy world.”

Make new colleagues but keep the old

I had lunch last week with four former colleagues. We had last worked together more than twenty years ago, but had all stayed in light contact over the years. The last time we were all together was at my husband’s memorial service, five years back. When someone or something came up, there might be an email or LinkedIn exchange. I’d seen most of them once or twice since Jim’s service. But that was about it.

Our shared experience was at a wacky little company where I spent nearly 10 years.

I’d been there for quite a few years before any of these fellows joined. I’m not sure what our joint tenure was: three years? five years?

In any case, we were all pretty tight when we worked together. It was a small company, so you knew everyone, but some colleagues became better buds than others. These guys were all on the better buds list – some better than others.

One of the guys, George (who remains just about the funniest, laugh-out-loud person I’ve ever known) had been my “work husband”, the man at work I was tightest with. We had lunch pretty much every day. And over the years, we got in the habit of George calling me while he was commuting in to work. (I was an earlier arrival than he was.) We’d chew over what was up – we were both on the management team, which doesn’t take much to achieve in a small company. We’d trade speculation, indulge in a bit of gossip. He called me once from the hospital where his wife was in labor. He assured me that she was dozing, but I refused to talk to him. Enough was enough!

On occasion, we went on business trips. The most memorable was a trip to central Illinois, where, among other things, we called on a client – we ate in the company caf, where they served several jello mold options. My mother would have loved it. 

But the jello wasn’t what made the trip so memorable.

The trip was winding down on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, and as we drove through the soybean fields on our way back to O’Hare, we tried to tune in AM stations along the way to get the news. We caught snatches, and just didn’t know what to make of it. Someone had blown up a pre-school? What???

Andy was the boss man – the president of the company. I left the company when he fired me. We were planning a dire-necessity layoff, and Andy and I were having a disagreement on how we were going to position the layoff to the survivors. Our disagreement ended with me telling him “you say what you’re going to say, I’ll say what I’m going to say, and we’ll see who they believe.” Oops. Not the wisest thing to say if I wanted to keep my job.

I didn’t speak to him for a while, but about a year after he fired me – and he was tossed by the company that had acquired our little outfit about a month after he riffed me – someone put together an alumni dinner and we did the work equivalent of kiss and make up.

The other two guys – Rob and Brian – were both salesmen, and I’d worked with them on deals, staffed trade shows, gone on calls, etc.. I can count on one hand – maybe a hand plus a couple of fingers - the number of sales folks I actually enjoyed working with over the years – and yes, dear V, you are one of them! – and both Rob and Brian (another person with an excellent sense of humor) are on the short list.

During my full-time career, I specialized in crazy, generally dysfunctional companies. Maybe every company is, but the places I worked all had an special edge. I was obviously drawn to the intrigue and the meshugas.

This particular company was dysfunction off the charts. We’d blown $40M in investment – this in an era when $40M sunk into a pokey software company (however brilliant the techies, and ours were plenty brilliant) was a huge amount of money.

When our lunch gang of five was all there together, the spigot had pretty much been shut off. Occasional we got a trickle of cash, but mostly we were on our own.

Our function was survival, and, dammit, we were pretty good at it. Until we weren’t.

Thanks to Andy, we’d been acquired, but the acquiring firm wasn’t interested in investing in us. A hardware company that was eager to get into the software biz, they wanted us to merge our technology with that of some skunkworks they had going.

Our principal product was what we termed “robust”, “industrial strength”. Just another way of saying it was brutal to use, and there were only about three people in the world who could actually succeed with it without a brain transplant and/or our services team doing all the work for them.

As it turned out, the skunkworks technology the acquiring company tried to foist onto us was – quite unimaginably – even uglier and harder to use than our baby. The merger of these two products never occurred.

But even though we disappointed our new owners by not consummating the technology marriage, we were survivors. And we survived by getting enough companies to buy our software. Until we weren’t able to get enough companies to buy our software.

Ah, the good old days…

At lunch, we shared war stories – and we all had plenty of them.

I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so long and so hard.

Sometimes, we didn’t even need to tell the stories.

All someone had to do was say the “magic word” – Zamboni, R2D2, Roll Tide, drooping fudgsicle, The Decordova, mullet; mention a name - and we’d all just burst out laughing.

Some of the stories were of the ‘had to be there’ variety. But some were just good stories.

Here’s one of mine:

Our VP of development was a very nice guy who hated to make presentations – way out of his comfort zone. But for our user group, he really needed to get up there and talk about ‘what next’ for our product. I.e., what we were going to do to it that would somewhat improve it, at least to the level where someone would choose our product over getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

Anyway, I helped Marty pull together his preso, coached him, rehearsed him, etc.

At the management meeting after the user group, Marty thanked me for being “such a good wet nurse.” (You need to know two things: I was the only woman on the management team; and during our meetings, Marty was almost always doodling nose cones and other breast-like images.)

Wetnurse! Wetnurse? My response: “If I were going to pick a wetnurse, it wouldn’t be someone over 40 who’d never had a kid.”

“Help me out here,” Marty said (whined, actually), “What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Nursemaid, Marty.”

As you get older, the conversations often take a  backward look. You’re with family, old friends, old colleagues, and you just start in on the reminiscence.

We left agreeing that we wouldn’t wait so long to do it again.

It was a total hoot, and we just tapped a few of the stories.

Looking forward to the next meetup.

Make new colleagues, but keep the old. One is silver, but the other gold.

These guys are definitely gold…

According to Webster…

I enjoy seeing the words that Merriam-Webster adds to the dictionary each year. While I’m not exactly a stan - “an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan” -  I do like seeing what they come up with. The list is always a pretty good finger on the cultural pulse.

Overall, W-M added 640 words. I haven’t seen the full list, but the ones I’ve seen plucked out are pretty good.

There are original ones – like stan – and old words with new definitions.

Remember when we used to say that no too snowflakes are alike? When we used to stick out our tongues to catch one? When a highlight of the Christmas pageant was the Grade 3 girls rendition (with dance) of “Here Comes Susie Snowflake?” These days, a snowflake is someone who thinks they’re special. Or for “someone who is overly sensitive.” Widely used as a diss on Twitter.

Other repurposed words include purple. Given the shorthand references we make to blue states and red states, I guess it was inevitable that swing states would become purple.

Tailwind and headwind made it onto the list because they’re “now often used figuratively to refer to a force or influence that either helps or hinders progress.” Seems to me that this figurative usage has been in use for quite a while. Guess it just never made it definitionally up until now.

I like peak - something that’s at the “height of its popularity, use, or attention.” But I do believe there may be another meaning, and that’s quintessence. As a 3 a.m. spittle-flying (metaphorically speaking) rage tweet in which Trump goes after traitorous Democrats and fake news would be peak Trump. Maybe I’m misusing peak. Or maybe I’m on to something. Listen up, Merriam-Webster.

Some of the newbies are words I was vaguely familiar with. I’d heard swole, a description of someone who’s muscle bound. Not anything I’m personally familiar with, but I have heard it in passing.

And although I don’t watch the awards shows, I do know the word EGOT, which stands (stans?) for someone who’s won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.

But bottle episode? It’s not like I never watch television, but I guess the series I watch – like Bosch, and Shameless – don’t tend to do any purely talking head episodes in which there’s only one setting for the entire show.

There are other compound words.

Compound terms are those made up of two or more words that have become lexicalized and are no longer self-explanatory—so they need their own definitions.

Maybe I’m tired, but I feel that this paragraph could easily have been found in the Collected Works of Jacques Derrida. If someone wants to ‘splain it to me, have at it.

Anyway, the compound words that have been lexicalized (and, to me, do seem self-explanatory…) are page view, on-brand, garbage time, go-cup, and screen-time. As I noted, these all seem pretty self-explanatory to me. Maybe I’m must a natural born lexicalizer.

There are a few science words. For some reason, the one I like most from that subset is traumatology: the study, diagnosis, and treatment severe, acute physical injuries sustained by individuals requiring immediate medical attention. But please let me extend that definition a bit to include the study of blue and purple staters who do not understand for a New York (blue state) minute how anyone can approve of DJT.

Fitbit and all the other health and fitness monitoring devices appear to be having an impact on the words of the world. I give you salutogenesis which asks us to think about our health in terms of “promoting well-being rather than measuring disease.” (Averaging 11.5 steps+ per day, baby. I’m just a living, breathing salutogenesis kind of gal.)

There are a couple of goodies from the business world.

As much as folks try to convince themselves that working freelance is a far better way to live than wage slavery (yes and no: good for me at this point in my life, but I’m happy I had real work for real companies), we may live to regret that the gig economy became a thing.

And it’s about time that vulture capitalism has gotten the recognition it deserves.

In addition to EGOT and bottle episode – (bottle episode? really?) – entertainment brought us the word buzzy. While buzzy is a perfectly good word for something that generates buzz, I can guarantee you that no Bostonian of a certain age will ever hear the word buzzy and not immediate think of Buzzy’s Roast Beef, a crummy looking late-night sandwich joint that stood for years right next door to Mass General Hospital and right next to the Charles Street Jail. Even though at one point I lived less than a 2 minute walk away, I could never bring myself to eat there. But I do know a few folks who did and lived to tell the tale. One of those is my old friend Tommy, husband to my even older friend Joyce. They’re coming to Boston in September and I think they’ll be staying at the Liberty Hotel, the fancy boutique hotel that occupies the old Charles Street Jail and uses the Buzzy’s site as its entryway.

One of the wonderful things about words is word association. Thank you snowflake, thank you buzzy for sending me on a couple of strolls down memory lane.

Meanwhile, I have a suggestion for next year: fren, which is doggo-speak for friend.

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Source throughout: Merriam-Webster

Why buy the suit when the body’s free?

I saw my doctor the other day. As I expected, other than for a few mechanical difficulties – one quasi-frozen shoulder, two creaky knees, an occasional hip twinge, tingling in the balls of my feet, and ankles that swell when I stand too long in one place (good thing I don’t need to work retail!) – I’m in good shape.

I’m doing my best to make sure that the aging process stays in a holding pattern for as long as possible. Or even – tingling toes crossed – getting some slight improvements. But mostly, things are going in one direction. Seventy might be the next fifty – come December, I’ll let you know – but, darling, you are growing old.

Other than those mechanical difficulties, I don’t feel all that old. But old age depends on where you’re sitting on the age continuum:

On average, adults between the ages of 30 and 49 think old age begins at 69. People who are currently 50-64 believe old age starts at 72. Responders who are 65 and older say old age begins at 74. (Source: LiveAbout)

They didn’t ask me, but I think I’d have said that old age begins at 80. Just sayin’.

Whenever old age starts, I’m delighted that there are researchers out there trying to make things better for us geezers as we advance further and further into geezerhood.

Corgan is an architecture firm working to make travel a more pleasant experience for the elderly.

So they have created an “age simulation suit” that lets designers experience what it’s like for older folks to get around a busy airport. For Samantha Flores, donning 30 pounds worth of gear did the trick:

Goggles and headphones “impaired” her sight and hearing. Gloves reduced feeling and simulated hand tremors. Weighted shoes, along with neck, elbow and knee movement restrictors, approximated mobility limitation. (Source: NY Times)

Remind me not to get old.

Once she’d put the suit on, Flores found:

The signs were hard to see, the announcements were hard to hear and the people rushing by made her feel unsteady on her stiffened knees.

Remind me not to get old. (Sorry, us old folks tend to be repetitive.)

Using the suits is one way designers who work with airports and the travel industry in general are starting to look at creating spaces for different groups of people. And older people are one group whose numbers are growing.

Yep. There are a lot of us and, even though it all ends up with the inevitable, there are going to be a lot more of us. By 2035, the 65+ set “will outnumber children for the first time.” I know that this is primarily because we’re living longer, and not just because some of us never got around to replacing ourselves, but I still find it pretty depressing.

But here we are and here we come.

Airports are adapting to us geezers on the go by putting more benches along the way so we can’t rest up more frequently. I haven’t noticed any of these. What I do increasingly see is those speeding golf-carts barreling around terminal corridors, laden with old people in Hawaiian shirts and shit-tons of luggage. (Remind me not to get old.)

Then there’s this:

Research conducted by Corgan found that elderly people were more likely to look down while they were walking, which means they could miss directional signs above their heads. So the company suggested that its airport clients place more information closer to the ground.

Now we’ll have the choice between craning our necks and stooping to read ankle-level signage. Swell. What’s wrong with eye level?

Another finding is that older travelers are so anxious to get to their gates that they take a pass on the main concession areas. The recommendation: make sure there’s more places to grab food near the boarding gates.

This seems to be happening, and I’m all for it. I’m someone who likes to get to the gate and settle in without having to backtrack for a shrink wrapped sandwich, bottle of water, or bag of M&M’s.

The firm also found that shiny floors should be avoided because they could appear wet and cause people to worry about falling.

Even when I was a lot younger, I came to the realization that shiny floors should be avoided everywhere. I’ve never understood marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Forget that they “appear wet”, they’re actually slippery.

There are some technical changes that are being deployed for the old folks on the go – gate announcements beamed directly to someone’s hearing aide, for one instance – and there are some human factors, too. Seems that older people like to interact with fellow human beings. Who knew? Other than Walmart, with all those folks in the vests…

Hotels are getting in on the act, too. Some are getting rid of bathtubs and swapping in walk-in showers. Yes! I’ve never understood why hotels want their guests risking life and limb to step in and out of tubs in order to take a shower (especially in a bathroom with highly polished marble floors). Sure it’s fun to luxuriate in a tub once in a while, but safety first.

My favorite accommodation was one that a “travel expedition company” came up with:

On one family’s trip to Costa Rica…a grandmother traveled along in a submersible vehicle with a pilot while her grandchildren snorkeled around her.

Now this sounds like fun. Too bad I forgot to have kids (and, thus, grandkids).

As for that “age simulation suit,” don’t think I’ll be needing one anytime soon.

Why buy the suit when the body’s free?

Hey, Culligan! A dog in your ad named Maureen????

I was only half paying attention to the Culligan ad. That is until I heard my name.

I looked up.

Oh, the young woman in the ad is named Maureen. Odd, that. A name that was wildly popular when I was a girl – at least in precincts that were loaded with Irish Catholics – has gone the way of Bertha and Ethel. Not to mention less fogeyish but nonetheless obsolete names like Karen, Nancy, Linda, and Sandy. Even at the height of its popularity, Maureen as a name occurred more in real life than in books, movies, songs, ads.

There was a Maureen character in one of Joyce Carol Oates earlier novels. And Maureen was, as I recall, the bad cousin in a novel by priest-potboiler-writer Andrew Greeley. (The good cousin was Ellen, I believe. Art imitating life??? I’ll have to ask Ellen.)

Maureen is a character in Rent.

I’ve never heard my name in a song, although I could have sworn that in “Look at Killer Joe Go” (1963), Killer Joe was dancing with Maureen. Nope: Marie.

Sigh. No one wants to “Take You Home Again, Maureen.”

A meh name.

That has now made it into an ad for Culligan Water.

But it’s not the young woman in the ad who’s named Maureen. It’s her pug. In case you missed it, here’s the copy:

You didn't choose just any dog, you chose Maureen. Don't give her water smelling of chlorine! Your family of all shapes, sizes, and breeds deserves filtered Culligan water, so why wait? Ask your Culligan Water Expert for more information at heyculligan.com.

Hey, Culligan. You didn’t just choose any name for that dog. You chose Maureen. Huh?

Although it’s something of an insult to dogs, I have no problem with humans giving dogs human names. After all, there are so many ways in which dogs are better than humans. They have exceptional EQ. They’re honest, unpretentious, and  know themselves.  I realize this argument could go either way, but I’ll come down on the side of it being okay to give a dog a name generally associated with humans.

Even in my childhood, when dogs had dog names, there were dogs with “real” names.

Sure, my neighborhood had Shep, Blackie, Dapper, Clipper, and Queenie. Then there were Brian Boru (a Kerry blue) and Rasputin (a German shepherd), which are human names. But there were also a couple of doggos with more pedestrian human names: Cindy the beagle, Sid the mutt.

My grandmother had a string of black Labs: Midnight, Thunder, and Lightning. But my Uncle Jack had a mutt called Luke.

In books and on TV, dogs were mostly doggily named: Lassie, Old Yeller, Rin Tin Tin. One of my favorite books featured Pantaloon, a black poodle.

But there was also Harry the Dirty Dog.

My bottom line: I’m fine with dogs with human names. (Although on the day my niece Molly was born, I was somewhat taken aback as I walked down Charles Street and passed a woman talking to her yellow lab, Molly.)

In my building there’s a yellow lab named George, a Frenchie named Henry. Someone with a mutt named Rosco is a frequent visitor. As is a Chihuahua called Frito. A friend recently lost his Dalmatian Lily.

A cousin of my husband had Jack Russells named Jackie and Russ. And a German shepherd named Britta. My sister-in-law had bichons called Addie and Coco.

My friend Marie had a mutt named Hazel, followed by a chocolate called Boomer, and a yellow lab named Wilbur. Wilbur died a couple of years after Marie did. The new dog in her house is called Rufus. (Marie’s family dog when we were in high school was Sam.)

My family had a German shepherd named Grimbald, a mighty German name. But mostly it came from Miss Grimble Cheesecake.

My sister had a beloved black lab called Jack.

When I’m out and about, I run into a lot of Charlies. Maggies. Maxes. Sams.

But a dog named Maureen? And a pug at that.

If you’re going to name a dog Maureen, could it at least be a charming, adorable lab of any color. Or a smarty pants pupper – say a border collie, a poodle.

But a pug?

It’s not their fault, they were bred that way. But that pushed in face, the snuffling because they can’t breathe all that well? I’m sure they’re sweet and all that.

But thanks but no thanks.

In any case, Maureen is just not a particular good dog name. Some names just aren’t.

Pete is a decent dog name; Paul isn’t, for some reason.

Maggie works. But who’d call a dog Margaret?

In general, nicknames work better than proper names. Jack vs. John. Charlie vs. Charles.

So why not call the Culligan dog Mo(e)?

Moe makes a quite good dog name. I believe that Subaru uses it for a labby in one of their ads.

But Maureen as a dog name? Just plain weird. Not insulting, mind you. Just weird.

I will note that Culligan is an Irish last name. Perhaps there’s a Maureen Culligan out there, and naming the pug Maureen is an in joke.

I am thinking (seriously) about getting a dog. I have shortlisted some names. I’m leaning girl, and am leaning Miss Pym, after the writer Barbara Pym. Her nickname would be Pymmie. I like Maisie, but I believe my niece Molly has dibs on that.

For a boy, I like Roscommon, after an ancestral county in Ireland. Rosco for short.

I’d also consider Diggy or Diggs, nicknames that my husband went by. (Jim’s last name was Diggins.) It would make an excellent dog name, and I know that Diggy would get a kick out of it.

But a dog named Maureen? What was Culligan thinking?

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In case you’re interested, here’s a link to the ad. Arf!

I’m gonna get on my pony and ride

My sister Kath, who has a keen eye for the cultural oddity (both home and abroad) pointed me towards a fairly peculiar Finnish subculture that was chronicled in the NY Times on Sunday. Her comment was “and you thought the Japanese are bizarre.”

Not that we find all the Japanese bizarre. Kath’s reference, of course, was to idiosyncrasies like the young men who date stuffed pillowcases with the image of a video game or anime girl. The fellow last fall who married a hologram. (Congratulations and best wishes with that one.) And then there’s the fetishization of school girls, and the worship by young women of all things Hello Kitty.

It’s not, of course, that Americans aren’t bizarre. But the bizarrities of our culture – like gun worship and conspiracy theories, Nazis and incels – tend to run along the axis of evil, not the axis of weird.

And I’ve got to admit that Finland’s hobbyhorse girls are somewhat weird.

But the more I think about them, the more good weird this group is.

The hobbyhorse girls, like many of their adolescent and pre-adolescent counterparts, are into horses. At recent event:

A dozen girls waited in line in a Helsinki arena for the dressage competition, ready to show off their riding skills, their faces masks of concentration.

The judge put them through their paces — walk, trot, canter — and then asked them for a three-step rein-back, that classic test of a dressage horse’s training and obedience. The judge looked on gravely, occasionally taking notes. (Source: NY Times)

But instead of real flesh-and-blood, nostril-flaring, carrot-munching steeds, these girls are “riding” hobbyhorses. I.e., a stuffed-animal horse head on a pole. The kind of toy that most kids outgrow by the time they’re four or five. Except in Finland.

Admittedly, it’s a bit oddball. Especially considering that they’ve got vets advising the girls on their horses’ vaccinations and nasal discharge. And the girls compare “hobbyhorse bloodlines and hobbyhorse temperaments, hobbyhorse training routines and hobbyhorse diets.”

But the dressage parody? The hurdle jumping? The galloping around the woods? Why not?

Whether they’re intentionally parodying dressage or not, if ever a “sport” called for parody, there it be. And here are the hobbyhorse girls sending them up and, unlike dressage, which is rich girl and snobby, anyone can get in on the act. All they need is a horse head on a stick.

It looks like fun.

Fanny [Oikarinen] and her friend, Maisa Wallius, are training for summertime competitions. They have choreographed a two-part dressage routine to a song by Nelly, the rapper.

And running around for an hour pretending you’re riding a horse is pretty good exercise.

Of course, part of the appeal is being whatever the female equivalent of Peter Pan is. Riding around on your hobbyhorse is sure a way of telling the world “I won’t grow up.” At least not for now.

Not growing up has much to recommend it, especially in the world where terrorists blow up churches and hotels, the polar bears are trying to survive on incredibly shrinking ice floes, adolescence as ever is a hormonal minefield, and teens get totally clobbered by social media.

When the hobbyhorse subculture started forming, maybe a decade ago, the girls who participated had – kids being kids – fun poked at them. But then hobbyhorsing around took off and now, in Finland, it’s a thing. An official thing. There’s a national championship, and it’s also a Finnish export. It’s taking off in Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands.

And it’s not just the oddballs who are into it.

Asked which types of girls are drawn to hobbyhorses, [Nelly choreographer] Maisa [Wallius] thinks for a while before answering.

“Some are sports girls,” she said. “Some are really lonely girls. And some can be the coolest girl at school.”

Selma Vilhunen is a filmmaker who focuses on the lives of adolescent girls. She came across hobbyhorse aficionados on the Internet, and made a documentary – Hobbyhorse Revolution – about it. Here film (2017):

…captured its subjects in long spells of raucous joy…

“Little girls are allowed to be strong and wild,” she said. “I think the society starts to shape them into a certain kind of quietness when they reach puberty.”

Every childhood should contain plenty of those “long spells of raucous joy.” Plenty of time to sit around mooning about boys and worrying about your unibrow.

Sure, it’s bizarre, but it kind of makes me wish I were 11 again and could take off with my friends Bernadette and Susan, tearing around the woods that bordered our neighborhood, riding our hobbyhorses and screaming our heads off.

Giddyap, go!

Cycling back into jeans? Guess I’m fashion forward for a change

In high school, I wore denim Bermuda-length shorts and wheat jeans. In college, I wore bell bottom hip huggers – sometimes hemmed with a fancy patterned trim – and cut offs.

When I was skinny in my twenties, I wore boy jeans.

I always had jeans for casual, weekend wear when I was working full time. But since I made my way out of corporate, jeans have been my uniform.

Somewhere along the line, I started getting all my jeans from LL Bean. They fit well, wore well, and they come in medium tall length, which used to be a bigger deal before I shrunk an inch, but which is still nice.

I wear a lot of jeans.

In the winter, I pretty much wear jeans or jean-style cords every day.

In the summer, I wear lightweight jeans on occasion, but it’s mostly linen pants or some sort of khaki.

But spring and fall, it’s all jeans, all the time.

I probably have 10 pairs of jeans, a combo of dark blue, washed blue, and black. A combo of straight leg and boot cut. I like the ones with a bit of stretch something-or-other in them. (Just, as the old-time Modess ads used to say…Because.)

The worn out-ish jeans, I wear when I’m working in the kitchen at St. Francis House.

The really worn out-ish jeans – and there’s a few pairs of them in the mix – are going into the recycle bag. (Note: you can bring clean used clothing that’s not good enough to donate into an H&M and they’ll take care of recycling.)

The others I just plain wear.

Day in, day out, I just plain wear jeans.

I will give LL Bean one more try, but I may be in the market for a new provider.

I recently ordered two pairs – same style, different colors. The dark blues were baggy in the thighs, and the material was stiff and scratchy. I wrote to LL Bean, and they said the material hadn’t changed. Maybe the material didn’t, but the finish sure did. After a couple of washings, back they went.

The black pair fit well, and while the material was a tiny bit stiff and scratchy, they’re softening up after a couple of washings.

I’m in no dire need for more jeans at the mo’, but when I am I may be looking for a new provider. Recommendations welcome.

Anyway, because I am such a jeans aficionado, I never noticed that jeans had gone a bit out of fashion, replaced, apparently by yoga pants.

Hmmmmm.

But they’re making a comeback.

In all, shoppers bought 364 million pairs of women’s jeans last year, a 5 percent increase from the year before, according to newly released data from market research firm NPD Group, which analyzed jeans sales between February 2018 and February 2019.

“Consumers are finally starting to show interest in jeans again,” said Marshal Cohen, an adviser for NPD. “The fact that we’re seeing more relaxed fits, more comfortable styles, is what’s getting people to say, ‘Okay, I have a reason to buy jeans again.’"

After four straight years of decline, the U.S. denim market grew 2.2 percent to $16.7 billion last year, according to Euromonitor. (Source: Washington Post)

According to the article, mom jeans are leading the comeback. Talk about back to the future.

Anyway, I’m not now, never have been, and never will be a mom, so, no thanks. (And I trust my sisters to let me know if I slip up and slip into something a bit mom-ish.)

This reminds me of some non-jeans I bought years ago: a pair of blue and white striped summer pants from Land’s End.

I went back and forth in my mind whether they were stylin’, or completely fuddy duddy. Then I wore them out to Worcester, where my Aunt Margaret was visiting my mother. This was quite a ways back. I’m guessing that, at that point, my aunt would have been 70ish (i.e., my current age) and my mother would have been 60ish.

When I walked in the door, Peg and Liz couldn’t get over how much they loved those pants. They were sharp, smart, really attractive, I’d wear those.

Well, once the old gals weighed in on them, I was no longer so interested in wearing those. Into the donation bag those went.

Definitely the pants equivalent of mom jeans…

There’s another reason for the resurgence in jeans, one I find more plausible.

Jeans are becoming more comfortable, too, as companies use elastic and materials with stretch to win over legging-loving shoppers.

I also learned that the high-priced jeans are no longer as popular as they once were, other than with me. Those who monitor the markets aren’t “seeing $300-plus denim selling the way it used to.”

I recently saw a pair of $300-plus jeans come into the clothing room at St. Francis House.

I can’t remember the brand name – something Japanese - but someone donated them and I pulled them out of the sorting bin.

They were a very small man’s size, and had a strip of red material with gold dragons crawling up the back legs. We laughed about them, but when I got home, I looked them up and saw that they retailed for about $300. And the next time I was in the clothing room, they were gone.

Anyway, the world is apparently “starting to cycle back into jeans.”

Mom jeans aside, I’m pretty fashion forward here. “Starting to cycle back into jeans”? Harrumph! I never left.

Let them eat vegan cake, while sitting in a terrarium next to a former homeless encampment

My friend John, who keeps his eyes and ears on the zeitgeist, blogged the other day on a new restaurant in Toronto. The title of his post – More signs of the age of guillotines – gives a bit of his thinking away.

Dinner With A View:

…just wanted a pop-up restaurant that was highly Instagrammable, because why do anything that doesn’t generate some good Instagram? But they didn’t think about the optics of taking a site where a homeless encampment was just swept away and serving $150 dinners in little terrariums.

That’s right.

The City of Toronto, citing public safety, recently swept away the non-homes of the homeless, who were living in their tarp shelters, sheltered from the elements by a highway overpass.

With John, I’m not anti-expensive dinners. I’ve been known to eat out at really nice places. With John, I’m not someone who needs to make every experience Instagrammable. (Au contraire…) With John, if someone wants to eat in a terrarium, have at it. And with John I feel that:

Doing it in a place where until recently the most marginalized people in your community were trying to find a place to sleep without freezing to death is a bit clueless, though.

As it happens, through my volunteer work, I’m acquainted with a number of homeless folks.

They come into St. Francis House for a shower, for breakfast or lunch, for some clean clothing. Some of them come in for more: help finding housing, help getting back on track with their lives, legal assistance, medical care, mental health counseling, a spiritual lift, the chance to be a bit creative in the art room.

We do have some units of permanent housing, and on an emergency basis, we have had folks stay overnight, but St. Francis House is primarily a day shelter for the homeless and for the just plain poor. People sleep overnight somewhere else (including some in their own homes), and hang with us during the day.

Many of our guests who are homeless spend the night in a shelter like the Pine Street Inn. Others opt to sleep rough. Sometimes it’s because shelters make them crazy. Sometimes it’s because you can’t drink or do drugs in a shelter. Sometimes it’s because they want to stay with a mate, and the shelters don’t offer co-ed sleeping arrangements. Sometimes it’s just because. And sometimes it’s because they’ve built up a community in a homeless encampment.

I have no doubt that the Toronto homeless encampment closed do to make way for Instagram terrarium dining was a dangerous and nasty place.

The reasons why people find themselves experiencing homelessness are varied, but the prime ones are mental illness, substance abuse, criminal past, and living on the economic margins where it’s pretty difficult to recover from an unfortunate event like losing your job or getting hit with a rent increase. (The one thing that every homeless person I’ve ever met has in common, by the way, is bad luck.)

Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a fellow who works as a sausage vendor at Fenway Park, and at Bruins and Celtics games. He spends part of the days he’s not working at St. Francis House, but he sleeps at the Pine Street Inn. Unless he’s working a night game – and most games are. Pine Street closes its gates at 7 p.m. So, on game nights, this fellow sleeps on a couch in the warehouse where the sausage carts are stored. He’s trying to save up enough to get a place of his own, but, as you can imagine, this is pretty hard to do. But he lives like homeless people live: on the edge. For some, the edge is under a highway overpass.

Anyway, I’ve seen encampments from a distance, and I have no fantasies about them being swell places. Still, for some in Toronto, it was home, and the juxtaposition (time- and location-wise) of shutting down an encampment and in short order and nearby, opening up a precious little “concept dining” spot, well…

Dinner with a View had nothing to do with rousting out the homeless. And they were working with a non-profit that does arty multi-culti things in the under the highway space. But they might have thought this through a bit better.

They were, however, thinking loftier thoughts, like wanting to offer:

A completely luxurious dining experience in a highly unexpected setting. The adventure begins as guests are ushered into a unique outdoor space - a wondrous environment perfect for sharing via social.

Our domes are transformed into terrariums with distinct terrains. A terrarium is an elegant encapsulation of an ecosystem; a living biosphere captured in time. Here, we bring that notion to life inside our domes, each corresponding to a different region of the earth’s terroir: tundra, tropical, grasslands, arid and boreal forest. These extraordinary spaces are designed using resplendent materials such as live flora, luxurious textiles and elegant illumination…

Artistic spectaculars will frame the stage which will offer opportunities to capture that perfect photograph against an iconic urban background. Source: Dinner with a View).

Wonder if they removed all traces of the encampment detritus: blue tarp, grocery carts, torn sleeping bags with the stuffing falling out, or let them stay to create some atmosphere. After all, homelessness is another iconic urban background, isn’t it?

Dear John Henry: A Modest Proposal

It’s Thursday evening, and I’m doing what any Boston sports fan would be doing on a night when she wanted to avoid the talking political heads: I’m toggling back and forth between the Bruins – who just won 6-4, and the Red Sox, who’ve blown a 3-1 lead and ended up losing 5-3. (A grand slam’ll do that to ya.)

Ah, the Red Sox…

I am a sports fan in general, but a baseball fan in particular. And a Red Sox fan in particular particular.

As far as the Red Sox go, I’m a lifer.

How long have I been a Red Sox?

Well, I was a Red Sox fan when Ted Williams cryogenically preserved head was still attached to his body. And, in my first game ever (July 1960), I even got to see Teddy Ballgame hit a homer.

I was a Red Sox fan even before then. Back when this was the Red Sox logo. It was retired in 1959, so if you run the numbers, I’ve been a fan for at least 60 years.

The main reason I became a Red Sox fan was that my father was one, and we listened to games on the radio together, and watched the televised weekend games. But this logo didn’t hurt any. So cute!

Fans didn’t have as much team-related gear back in those days, so I didn’t have anything bearing this logo until a couple of years ago, when they offered caps with the retro logo. So I got me one. (I have been asked man times what team it represents. Pretty obvious to me that this is a Red Sock…)

Anyway, through thick and thin, and in there has been plenty of thin, especially back in days of yore, I’ve root, root, rooted for the home team.

I watch a bit of most games, and get to a few games each year.

My first game of the season was last Monday, Patriots’ Day, when the Red Sox were trounced by the Orioles 8-1.

As my sister Trish said after we’d watched a few lackluster innings, “This is a really lackluster team.”

Last year, the Sox were anti-lackluster. Their record was 108-54, and they won the World Series.

I don’t expect the Red Sox to have a record like that, let alone win the World Series, every season.

But given that they consistently have one of the highest payrolls ($224 million this year!), highest ticket prices, and highest concession prices in the major leagues, I don’t expect lackluster.

And game in, game out, that’s mostly what the Red Sox have been this season.

If they’d pull out a win tonight – which they didn’t -  our cellar-dwellers would have been 7-12 on the season. With a loss, they’re 6-13. At the rate they’re going, their record will be the observe of their 2018 outing. Ouchie…

How bad was Monday’s game? Well, there were four middle-aged guys sitting in the row in front of us. At the end of the 7th, when they stopped selling beer – by the by, a can of Bud Lite was going for $10.25 – one of the guys stood up and announced, “If I can’t get another beer, what’s the point of staying for this game?” His buddies agreed, and they all headed off to the Boston Beer Works.

Everyone in the vicinity made light fun of them. What kind of fans…

But it got me thinking.

Here we were, soaking in the lackluster and hunting for the peanuts in the pack of Cracker Jack. I turned to Trish and said, “I feel like I’m owed something. I’m thinking they should give us all a bobble-head doll or something on the way out the door.”

Those tickets were $129 per. Crazy money, I know, but I don’t go that often. And I really love going to a game.

But when you’re putting such a cruddy product out there – and it wasn’t just the game I was at; tonight’s 5-3 loss, while respectable, followed an 8-0 blowout at the hands of the Yankees the night before – I really do feel that I’m owed something.

Especially when us fans are the ones paying that bloated payroll with our subscriptions to NESN (for the televised games), more for tickets, more for concessions, and a ton for gear. (My estimate is that at least two-thirds of the fans at any game are wearing a Red sox and/or a shirt and/or a jacket. Or in the case of my sister Trish and myself, Red Sox earrings.).

So a modest proposal for owner John Henry.

How about this:

If the Red Sox are playing less than .500 ball, and they lose a game by four runs or more, we get a little something or other.

Hand every fan a coupon for five dollars at the concession stand for their next game. It wouldn’t get you much: a bag of Cracker Jack, a Sports Bar. But, as the saying goes, “The gift is small, good will is all.”

Give us all a pennant to wave A coupon for a free tour. A bobble head doll. (I’m sure you’ve still got a closet full of Manny Ramirezes somewhere in the bowels of Fenway.)

For the 50-50 raffle, if the Sox are down by four in the seventh, when the winning number is drawn, give away the ENTIRE amount, and make up the amount that would have gone to the Red Sox Foundation out of your own pocket. You can afford it. Better yet, spread the wealth. Give the winning number half the amount collected – which is what they bought the tickets thinking was the prize – but pick two more numbers and give them 30 percent and 20 percent. At least three people will walk away happy. (Or if they left  the game early in disgust, three fans who’ll be pleasantly surprised when they get home and check the winning number on line.)

 I will continue to root for the Red Sox.

They can’t win ‘em all.

But this bunch better pull their sox up.

I’m scheduled for three more games this year. And I may do an impromptu, game-of walk out to Fenway to take in a game by myself.

I’m really hoping that the high point of all those games won’t be singing “Sweet Caroline” in the eighth inning. That or booing the lackluster performance of an overpaid, under-lustered team.

The Internet goes black hole on Katie Bouman

I’m by no means a science buff. I keep a vague eye on breakthrough news, but I don’t live for it, and seldom get too excited about it. But it was hard last week not to get at least a tiny bit caught up in the first photograph of a black hole.

Not that I know all that much about black holes. If I thought about them, I’d probably be a little scaredy. (As a metaphor, however, it’s hard to come up with anything better, that’s for sure. So I use the term frequently.)

The best aspect of the photograph – other than the image itself – was that a woman scientist played a key role in making it possible.

There aren’t a lot of women scientists at Katie Bouman’s level. She got her PhD from MIT, has been doing a post-doc with the Event Horizon Telescope (which was set up 25 years ago to capture a picture of the black hole), and is about to start teaching at Cal Tech. So she’s got great credentials.

It was Bouman who was instrumental in creating the algorithm that let the Event Horizon Telescope to at long last capture the first image of black hole.

There is another iconic picture associated with this event, and that’s the picture of Katie Bouman’s reaction when she realized what had happened.

Who could resist?

Sweet-looking young nerd girl. MIT-CalTech wonk. STEM hero in the making.

As excitedly as the geek-Internet went gaga over the first photograph of the black hole, it began going nuts about Katie Bouman. The Internet being the Internet, all of a sudden, Twitter was full of effusive tweets that might lead one to believe that Bouman (who for the most part isn’t on social media) had sole responsibility for this breakthrough, rather than playing a critical role as one of many equally brilliant scientists associated with the project. Bouman herself immediately jumped in on Facebook and acknowledged this.

“No one algorithm or person made this image,” she wrote. “It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.” (Source: The Atlantic)

There had been a bit of lightish pushback from Bouman’s colleagues on the project, pointing out that this was a joint effort. But the Internet being the Internet (and incels being incels), Katie Bouman just had to be smacked down. So:

…within hours, another strain of interpretation started metastasizing. Memes and videos across Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms called Bouman a fraud and “debunked” her contributions to the discovery.

These were not “shared success” interpretations. They were “Katie Bouman had nothing to do with it” stories. Instead, “they” (“it”?) were claiming that one of her collaborators had written the algorithm.

The colleague, Andrew Chael, defended Bouman. None of the claims was true, he tweeted. “If you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away,” he added. It’s difficult to imagine internet sleuths digging for proof of dishonesty if the poster child of the black-hole discovery had looked like Chael. (Chael, in an interview with The Washington Post, called it “ironic” that his new fans chose him, a gay astronomer, as their hero.)

Well, good for Andrew Chael.

But the Internet being the Internet, things got even worse:

Dozens of accounts (some now deleted) appeared on Instagram and Twitter bearing Bouman’s name and picture. None of them, her colleagues said, was real.

These were, of course, take down accounts, promoting the take that Bouman was part of a politically correct, diversity conspiracy to deprive a (white) man of his rightful place.

Saying that she was part of a larger team doesn’t diminish her work, or minimize her involvement in what is already a history-making project. Highlighting the achievements of a brilliant, enthusiastic scientist does not diminish the contributions of the other 214 people who worked on the project, either. But what it is doing is showing a different model for a scientist than the one most of us grew up with. That might mean a lot to some kids — maybe kids who look like her — making them excited about studying the wonders of the Universe. (Source: The Verge)

Amen to that!

During my many years in the tech world, I worked with many brilliant software engineers. Most of them were men. The few female core systems software engineers were equally brilliant, but there weren’t all that many of them. (The two I can think of were both MIT grads. Yay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology!)

I don’t know what keeps women from entering STEM professions in better numbers. I mean, it’s been a couple of decades since Mattel’s Talking Barbie was bitching about how tough math is.

But it sure is a shame when the forces of the dark can’t stand any attention being paid to an accomplished woman computer scientist. These trolls should just go back to whatever hole they emerged from.

I’m guessing that Katie Bouman is going to have a truly kick-arse career. Which is a lot more than you can say for those trolls.

Discount me, I’m a senior!

My husband would often mention the first time he was called “sir”. He was in his late twenties, a grad student, and a “kid” working in the text book session at the Harvard Coop came up to Jim to ask him if he needed any help. And in the process “sirred him.”

I don’t recall the first time I was “ma’am’d”, but I do remember the first time I was given a senior discount without even asking for it. I was buying a cup of tea at the Dunkin Donuts on State Street in downtown Boston and the kid behind the counter gave it to me for the senior price. I was in my early 60’s at the time. I was a bit miffed at the time. Just how old do you think I am, sonny-boy? But I decided to go with it.

I never remember to ask at Dunks, but I do when I eat at Friendly’s. Doesn’t happen that often – once or twice a year – but I like getting that mini-sundae for free.

I always ask at the movie theater. Again, I don’t go all that often, but if I can save a buck or two, why not?

I’m a subscriber to a local theater company – the Actors Shakespeare Project – and I happily take the small discount on my season’s tickets.

And one of these days, I’ll join the AARP. After all, I’ve been eligible for nearly 20 years, and I’m sure there are all sorts of little goodies that come with that membership card.

But I’m not crazily looking for discounts. In truth, I throw away my CVS “transcripts” rather than figure out what it all means. And if someone can explain to me how the frequent-yellow-pad-discounts at Staples work, I’d appreciate it, but I still probably wouldn’t act on the info.

Maybe once I stop working entirely, and I’m living on what’s coming from Social Security or in the bank – I’m one of those no-pension folks – I’ll be more likely to hunt for senior discounts. Til then, I’ll mostly stick to the two areas where I’ll all-in on senior discounts:

Medicare! It pays to be a senior! ((I realize that Medicare isn’t a discount, but having paid for individual insurance coverage for the decade before I turned 65, it’s hard not to think of the low rate I pay now between Medicare and my supplement anything other than a discount.)

And then there’s public transportation.

I take some form of public transpo (train or subway) once or twice a week, and, courtesy of my Senior Card, I get to ride for half-price.

I don’t travel any more frequently because I get a discount, but it’s sure nice to have. The question is, what – other than contributing to Medicare via the tax system - have I done to deserve any discount?

Others are also asking the same thing:

…some question whether senior discounts are warranted in an era when many of those enjoying them are relatively well off, while large numbers of younger folks strain under the weight of student debt and labor in a gig economy bereft of benefits.

David Wallis, who leads the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit that supports journalism focused on inequality, argues that the deals for seniors are a relic of an earlier time. He calls for replacing them with income-based discounts for people of all ages.

“The senior discount should be radically rethought,” Wallis said. “Let’s say you have a very comfortable lifestyle. Do you deserve cheap seats at the movie theater?” (Source: Boston Globe)

Frankly, no.

But does anyone actually “deserve” cheap theater seats, given that movies are a luxury item to begin with?

For public transportation, I can see discount based on need.

A number of years ago, there was a demonstration at the State House, with college students arguing that they should ride for free.

I got into a bit of a discussion with one of the demonstrators – a young man sporting a Patagonia jacket – and asked him why transportation should be subsidized. He didn’t have much of an answer other than “because”.

I’d be all in favor of providing free or discounted public transportation for, say, students at Bunker Hill Community College. And for other low-income folks. (E.g., those on Medicaid. Why not give those with such limited means a break on public transportation.). Less inclined to support it for a Patagonia-wearing Harvard student.

I suspect that the Patagonia-wearing Harvard student is now wearing a Canada Goose and taking Uber, so no longer in “need” of free rides on the T.

But, of course, there’s no reason to subsidize me, either.

When I was in college in Boston – late sixties-early seventies – there was a program called “dime time”. At a time when a ride on the T cost a quarter, students and senior riding during non-prime hours could ride for a dime.

That makes sense to me.

If stores and theaters and trolley cars want to encourage people to shop-view-ride during off-hours, why not offer a discount? And maybe not restrict it to the young and the old, but to any group you wanted to reach.

This is a reasonable argument (which was made not just by original-old-me, but in the Globe article), but I don’t know what to make of this:

…if discounts were extended more broadly, it might lessen the stigma for baby boomers who are reluctant to accept them because they don’t want to think of themselves as old.

Admittedly, I was a bit taken aback when that kid at Dunks automatically given a discount, but I have to say I do not know any boomers “who are reluctant to accept” discounts.

I obviously don’t know every baby boomer on the face of the earth, and there may be discounter-disdainers among us IRL. Just not in the real life I live in.

One of the problems with giving seniors discounts – which is the same problem that we have as an economy with Social Security and Medicare – is that people live a lot longer now as seniors.

When Social Security was first implemented in the late 1930’s, people cashed a couple of checks and quite magnanimously dropped dead.

When senior discounts were cooked up, there were fewer well-to-do retirees, and, again, the elders claiming their cut-rate cup of coffee were not, for the most part, living into great old age.

Perhaps my tune will change once I’m pushing 100, but I truly hope I’m not around to “achieve” 40 years worth of discounts on the T. Thanks but no thanks. In the meantime, I’m with Len Fishman.

Fishman, the 67-year-old [UMass Boston] Gerontology Institute director, somewhat sheepishly admits he carries a Senior Charlie Card — giving him half off on MBTA fares — though he could probably afford not to.

“Every time I swipe it,” he said, “I think the T shouldn’t be subsidizing me. But I still swipe it.”

Not that us boomers are swiping anything here. It’s just that we haven’t actually done anything to deserve this largesse.

Patriots Day, 2019

In most of America, today is Tax Day.

In Boston, it’s Patriots Day.

They don’t always coincide. But if Tax Day is a Monday, then it’s Patriots Day.

For a lot of reasons, this is one of my favorite holidays.

It’s mostly ours. Only a couple of other states observe it, but we’re the ones with Paul Revere, The Battle of Lexington Green, Concord Hymn. Wisconsin celebrates it, but, come on, Cheeseheads, whatcha got?

It’s somewhat springy. Kinda sorta. Sure, we could have a blizzard. And, like last year, we could have whipping winds, drenching rains, chilly temps.But the magnolias and forsythias are starting to bloom. Out front, there are a couple of daffs and grape hyacinths. The swan boats are back in operation. And there’s a tiny bit of hope in the air.

It’s Marathon Day. Folks are here from all over the world, and starting a few days before, you begin to see the runners and their families walking around. Even if they don’t have the latest Boston Marathon jacket on – each year’s a different color; this year it’s cyan with yellow piping – you can tell the runners. Lean, wearing trainers, checking out the finish line by the Boston Public Library. You can just tell. Last year, the weather was miserable. I have a friend who’s run Boston 37 times, and he said that last year’s weather was the worst he’d experienced.

It’s a morning home game for the Red Sox. Last year, the weather was sufficiently nasty that the game was postponed. (Make up played on a lovely evening in May.) This was disappointing, as I had tickets, and this is always a really fun game. Fenway Park is not far from the Marathon route, and on the way out, you see runners coming in. Not the potential winners. They’re long past. But good runners nonetheless. This year, the conditions are supposed to be poor, but so far (I’m writing this on Friday) it doesn’t look bad enough to call things off. Light rain, warmish (in the 60’s), maybe a mini-thunder storm in the late innings. Again, I have tickets. With luck, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., the thunder and rain will hold off. And the Red Sox, who are off to a rather abysmal start, will pull out a W.

It’s also the anniversary of the Marathon Bombing. This is, of course, not a reason to enjoy the day. But it’s absolutely worth remembering. Six years in the rearview mirror. Hard to believe. Here’s what I had to say about things last year.

And here’s what I had to say on my first Patriots Day as a blogger.

To those who celebrate this glorious, weird little holiday: Happy Patriots Day.

Where the WIld Things Are

The other day, I was talking to one of fellow condo-ers, and we were bemoaning the fact that, with two major gut renos going on on our block, there are a lot more trash-marauding rats skulking around at night. Not that they were living in the buildings, but the drilling and pounding has disturbed some rat burrows. Plus those dumpsters full of debris that don’t get dumped often enough seem to attract rats as well.

We were discussing a rat-related issue particular to our building. Namely, some of the folks who live here keep ignoring our “asks” that they take their garbagey trash out the morning of trash day, not the night before.

There are plenty of mornings when I’ve taken my trash out at dawn, only to find that there are torn trash bags and banana peels, egg shells, and avocado peels and pits strewn about. Joe is no stranger to picking up OPG (Other People’s Garbage), either. But he told me that he’d been out back late one night and come across a couple of racoons going after avocado leavings. (Please don’t ask why we don’t have sturdy wheeled trash containers that close tight. Let’s leave it that there are a number of reasons why they just wouldn’t work in our building, unless we lined up a live-in super other than me or Joe.)

Anyway, here I was thinking that most of our downtown Boston wild things are of the rat variety. Or pigeons. Or squirrels. Or hawks (which are fun to see). Or the beast that, to me, is right up there with rats: the Canada goose, No, not those who were Canada Goose down jackets. They wearers are plenty annoying, but at least they don’t leave their scat on every single walkway along the Esplanade.

So, we now have racoon gangs to worry about.

I was so focused on the rat and racoon thing, I almost missed an article in The Boston Globe on the wild thing that has become the bane of everyone’s existence in these parts: the wild turkey.

Kenda Carlson feels a little ridiculous walking everywhere while clutching a large golf umbrella — especially when there’s no rain in sight and more sunny spring days on the horizon.

But after the 35-year-old was aggressively attacked by a group of wild turkeys in Cambridge recently, she knows it could be her best defense against the feathered animals.

“It’s the one thing I think I can do to make myself feel a bit more comfortable,” Carlson said. “I heard that the motion of opening up the umbrella in the face of a turkey might be enough to scare it away.” (Source: Boston Globe)

But wait, there’s more: poor Kenda is seven months pregnant. And she’s now had two way too close encounters with these turkey bad boys. In one of those incidents, a half dozen of these thugs nipped at her legs, causing bruising and welts.

Over the past several years, we’ve experienced a major invasion of the wild turkeys. They’re stalking folks, they’re stopping traffic, and sometimes they’re actually attacking folks like poor Kenda Carlson.

Oh, sometimes the situations are a bit amusing. Like last month’s episode in NH in which a big old Tom Turkey spread his tail feathers and stood in front of a line of cars until his entire coterie had crossed the road. (And don’t ask me why they crossed the road. You know yourself it’s to get to the other side.)

But mostly turkeys an un-fun nuisance.

On her day of turkey terror, Carlson was surrounded by a good-sized turkey gang. She tried “waving her arms, yelling, and kicking at the turkeys — anything to get them to leave her alone.”

She was rescued by several neighbors, one armed with a broom to whisk the turkeys away.

Based on her experience, Carlson came up with a piece of advice: don’t make eye contact with them.

As the number of incidents has grown, the state has responded by posting advice. It:

…offers tips online to prevent conflicts with turkeys,” including trying to scare or threaten them by making loud noises, swatting them with a broom, or spraying them with a hose.

Good to know, but if you’re out and about, you’re not likely to have a broom or a hose with you. You do have your lungs. And Carlson has that golf umbrella.

I’ve never been attacked, but I have been stalked when making my way to my sister’s in the suburb of Brookline.

A posse of turkeys have been plaguing her neighborhood for years, and a couple of them hang out at the nearest T-stop.

I’ve been followed by these bad boys, and looked up and down by their cronies when I walked by them while they were lurking about.

They are big. And they are creepy.

Even without getting the advice from anyone, I knew better than to make eye contact.

DMEC (Don’t Make Eye Contact) is something of a family motto. It’s mostly used with reference to people you see in public who might not be stable. Or who might be out and out hostile. DMEC. And now, it seems, we must apply this wisdom to turkeys.

Most of the turkeys I’ve seen have been in Brookline.

But last year, while taking an early evening stroll, a fellow I past on Chestnut Street gestured for me to look up. There, perched in a tree, was a wild turkey. Up to no good, I’m quite sure.

So if you want to know where the wild things are, they’re in downtown Boston, too. And they’re not just rats and pigeons.

What next?

“It’s a wonderful world, full of Friendly people”

I remember the first time I went to Friendly’s. It was a summer Friday night and after dinner, my father took us over to the new Friendly’s that was a five minute walk from our house. I was eight and “we” were may sister Kath, brother Tom, and cousin Rob.

We went to the walkup take-out window, and I ordered a chocolate cone. When the scooper handed it to me, the ball of ice cream promptly took a dive, leaping right off the cone and onto the pavement.

As a child, I definitely knew how to screw up an ice cream cone. What I liked to do was bite of the bottom tip of the cone – because the ONLY cone worth anything is the pointy-tipped sugar cone, not the flat-bottomed waffle cone – and stand their in wonder while the melting ice cream dribbled out the hole.

But the Flying Wallenda chocolate scoop was NOT my fault.

I actually don’t remember whether they replaced it or not, but I was not unused to treats that disappeared.

When my father took me, Kath and Tom to see Cinderella, he gave us three dimes to use in the soft drink machine. Kath took care of Tom, then got her own drink. My turn. Alas, when I pressed the button, no paper cup dropped down. The machine dispensed the orange drink – a nasty, uncarbonated sugary concoction: the stuff they use for snow cones – and I sadly watched it flow down the drain.

I didn’t bother to tell my father. At five, I had already incorporated the Daniel Patrick Moynihan world view - 'To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart’ – into my emotional repertoire. (Half German, to boot. Double whammy.)

Friendly’s was the first restaurant I went to with friends.

I was in fourth grade, and on a Sunday afternoon in February, I went with my friends Susan and Bernadette to that nearby Friendly’s for a sundae. I believe that a hot fudge sundae cost 35 cents. We were big shots, in our Sunday dresses and “good” coats, and we were even bigger shots because Susan’s high-school aged cousin Marcia was our waitress. I don’t remember if we tipped her, but my guess is ‘no’.

I grew up in an ice cream family. There was always ice cream in the freezer. But we didn’t go to Friendly’s all that often.

When we went out for a spin, we’d stop at the Cherry Bowl in Leicester, Verna’s in Charlton, or the Dairy Delite (soft serve) on Main Street.

And I don’t recall a repeat performance of me, Susan and Bernadette going out in our finery to Friendly’s. When we had a bit of change, we went to Carerra’s Market and bought penny candy.

But in high school, and in college during summers home, I frequented Friendly’s. It’s what kids in Worcester did. You drove around in someone’s father’s car until someone declared a stop and you went to Friendly’s and hung out for a while, nursing soft drinks..

There were Friendly’s all over the place, but for my friends, our watering hole was Tatnuck Friendly’s, or, on occasion, the more collegiate outpost on Highland Street near Worcester Tech.

In Boston, there were alternatives to Friendly’s: Brigham’s and Bailey’s, which were both pretty good, when – during my college years in Boston – I had an ice cream jones. Once, however, a bunch of us walked to the Friendly’s in Chestnut Hill, an eight mile-plus round trip. Well worth it.

When Boston became my permanent home, I was fortunate enough to live near a Friendly’s, which I ate at every once in a while. It was near a movie theater, and my husband and I would stop in for Big Beefs (hamburger on toast – completely superior to a hamburger bun) or a grilled cheese sandwich after a movie. On one such occasion – my sister Trish may have been with us – Jim broke a tooth on something or other.

That Friendly’s closed, but there was one near my brother’s in Charlestown, and I’d take my niece Caroline there.

Plus there was one just over the bridge coming off the Cape, which became the place to stop on the way home from my sister Kath’s.

Charlestown. Just over the bridge. Both are closed.

As is the original Friendly’s in my hood. And the one next to O’Connor Brothers Funeral Parlor (where my family, as we used to say, “went out of”). Tatnuck Friendly’s. Highland Street. All gone.

The only Friendly’s in Worcester is the one on Grafton Street. The only Friendly’s in Boston is at Logan Airport.

And the company has just announced that it’s closing 23 of its restaurants.

“After a months-long evaluation and careful consideration, we have decided to close 23 corporate-owned restaurants, effective immediately,” CEO George Michel said in the letter. “While this was a tough decision, we are confident it will best position the brand for a bright future.”

…Michel said in the letter that the company “has locations in geographic areas that have changed dramatically in some cases since those restaurants first opened.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Wonder what that “changed dramatically” is supposed to mean. I don’t like the sound of it.

Anyway, I’m sorry to see more Friendly’s going out of business.

For anyone who grew up in Massachusetts, it is such an iconic brand.

Those of us of a certain age grew up slurping down Awful Awful milkshakes, which later became Fribbles. Personally, I preferred Frappes, which had ice cream in them. Awful Awfuls/Fribbles were ice milk and syrup.

We at Big Beefs. And knew enough to order a “Friendly Cola” rather than a Coke.

We debated the merits of a hot fudge sundae vs. a Swiss chocolate almond, which came with a tiny little paper cup filled with roasted and heavily salted bits of almonds. Delish!

While my favorite remains the hot fudge on coffee ice cream, what I wouldn’t give for one of those Swiss chocolate almond sundaes, which I note is no longer on the menu.

I don’t know when I’ll get to a Friendly’s again, but it will be for a Big Beef and a Happy Ending (yes, that is indeed what they’re called) sundae.

Meanwhile, I can’t get the ear worm of the Friendly’s jingle – It’s a wonderful world, full of Friendly people – out of my head.

The only thing that would make it go away would be a chocolate Frappe.

What’s worth than cheating for your own kid? Sabotaging someone else’s kid.

Since the college admissions scandal broke a few weeks ago, there’ve been a number of follow on, variation-on-a-theme stories that chronicle activities that run the gamut from modestly sleazy to if-this-isn’t-criminal-what-is.

One of my favorites was a story that popped in the Boston Globe last week. If was about a wealthy Maryland businessman who purchased the home of the Harvard fencing coach for hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking and – mirabile dictu, as we used to say in Latin class – found his fencing son admitted to Harvard. Veritas!

The house was a good bones but run down colonial in a suburban Boston town that’s 12 miles from Cambridge – home of Harvard fencing.

Anyway, the purchaser claimed that he was willing to pay a premium because he knew the fellow, the poor Harvard fencing coach, and felt bad that he had such an onerous commute from Needham to Cambridge. Oh, those 12 miles. Boston traffic. Much better if you work in Cambridge if you can live in Cambridge.

Which Peter Brand, the fencing coach, was now able to do because he had so much excess cash stuffing his wallet.

When the town assessor saw the delta between the assessed value and the purchase price, he:

…was so dumbfounded that he wrote the following in his notes: “Makes no sense.” (Source: Boston Globe)

But, of course, it made sense if you had a fencer son who wanted to go to Harvard. Fight fiercely, and all that.

The father claims he was just being nice. After all, his brainy, high SAT, prestigious prep school, legacy, fencing son was obviously going to get accepted, anyway. His acceptance was, dad felt, a “no brainer.”

He was, of course, taking into account that there are plenty of brainy, high SAT, prestigious prep school, legacy and sporty kids who don’t get into Harvard.

Anyway, once sonny boy was safely admitted, dad decided to sell the house in Needham that he didn’t actually want or need. He sold it for $300K less than he overpaid for it.

Once again, the town assessor made a notation that selling at such a loss “made no sense.”

It’s only money.

The scheme was uncovered when the second-round purchasers looked at the history of purchase and sale, started reading about the college admissions scandal, put two and two and dimed the story to The Globe.

Harvard, which had up to this point escaped any mention in the scandal chronicles, has hired an outside entity to investigate.

“We are committed to ensuring the integrity of our recruitment practices,” Harvard College spokeswoman Rachael Dane said.

I’m guessing that the fencing coach isn’t long for the Harvard world. Touché!

At least the father didn’t have to photoshop his son’s head onto the body of a true fencer.

But there’s another story that introduces us to parents who I find even more odious than the home overpayers, the head photoshoppers, the SAT cheaters and their ilk. And these are the folks who have tried to increase their kids’ odds of getting into the school of their hearts’ desires by screwing over other kids 

The story broke about what was happening at the Sidwell Friends School, the fancy-dancy D.C. school where the Obama girls and Chelsea Clinton went. It seems that in December, the head of college counseling sent a pointed yet modulated letter to parents, noting informing them that:

“The College Counseling Office will not answer phone calls from blocked numbers.”

“The College Counseling Office will not open any mail without a recognizable return address.”

“If a parent ever feels the need to inform me or my colleagues regarding the actions of a child that is not their own — I will ask you to leave my office or end the phone conversation.”

The message seemed to confirm the vague rumors that had circulated for weeks — murmurs about parents behaving badly, even going so far as to disparage other students, presumably to give their own teens a leg up in the high-stakes college admissions competition. (Source: Washington Post)

Really, badmouthing – sometimes anonymously -  other people’s kids so that yours can get ahead? It almost makes pretending your kid is ADHD so they can take their SAT’s in a private setting over a 2-day period seem normal, almost righteous.

A communications made a month or so later said:

“The circulation of rumors about students and/or the verbal assault of employees are antithetical to the School’s values.”

Sidwell is a Quaker institution. Talk about behavior that’s antithetical to your values…

Sidwell is not, as you can imagine, the only school where this takes place. When a Long Island guidance counselor heard that a parent feared her child would be sabotaged by other parents, she was at first skeptical. So she put some feelers out:

There were accounts of parents who had called admissions offices to spread gossip about another child’s bad behavior, parents who reported long-ago run-ins with law enforcement, parents who sent anonymous tips about potentially compromising posts on students’ Facebook or Twitter pages.

I sent a link to the Wapo article to my cousin MB, who for many years worked as a guidance counselor in a public school in an upper-middle-class Connecticut suburb. Her response? “Sickening but real.”

Your kid not getting into the school of your dreams is not going to destroy their life. Unless they (or you) let it. Nor will it destroy your life. Unless you let it. Not that such toxic parents don’t deserve a bit of life destruction, given what they’re doing to their own kids and those of others.

A pox on all their nasty McMansions.

Where, pray tell, does all this insanity end?

I guess leaning in isn’t always a good thing

I live in an old building. An old building built on landfill on The Flat of the Hill, where Beacon Hill flattens out. So I know all about floors and doors that are a bit off-level, windows a bit off kilter. There’s a gut reno going on next door, and their gut-renoing jackhammering has caused a bit of a shift in the pop-up electric outlets in my kitchen. Two of the three no longer pop up. I don’t think that the adjustment will be that big a deal, but I’m waiting for the jackhammering to cease and desist before I get someone in here to take a look.

Anyway, I know that even if there are spots that list a bit left or right, buildings still manage to stand. Especially when they’re row houses propping each other up. And especially if their foundations are solid. Which buildings built in 1860 apparently have. Which is not to say that, every once in a while, some old building somewhere collapses. (What, me worry?)

But standalone skyscrapers? They can be a bit shaky. Consider Manhattan’s Seaport Residences, which is:

…leaning north by about three inches because the skyscraper’s foundation is defective, according to a March 22 lawsuit filed by the project’s contractor, Pizzarotti, in New York State Supreme Court. The suit was first reported by the Commercial Observer.

But a representative for Fortis Property Group, the project’s developer, points the finger at Pizzarotti for the leaning lower Manhattan tower, and says the contractor improperly poured a concrete slab and failed to account for the settling of the foundation. Pizzarotti is now in “panic mode” and filed the suit in a last-ditch effort to avoid damages, according to the Fortis spokesperson. (Source: Curbed)

This “they say/they say” should be good.

Fortis acknowledges that the building is “misaligned,” but claims that a) it’s not their fault; and b) that a couple of top-drawer engineering firm have certified that the building is okay. Nothing to see here folks. And I do know that skyscrapers are built to swing and sway a bit, so that they can withstand high winds. But I wouldn’t be too happy right about now if I were one of the 72 folks who had signed a contract on a unit. (There are 98 in the building.)

By the way, long-time “reality” real estate TV fans might be interested to know that real estate agent, Fredrik Eklund, a star of Million Dollar Listing, had signed up for a $4.6 million listing of his own in the building. (Units are going from $1.2 million to $7.5 million for the penthouse on the 58th floor. Long way down from that penthouse…And, of course, the fact that this is right near the site of the Twin Towers/World Trade Center makes thinking about an unstable building especially creepy.)

The claim made by Pizzarotti is that Fortis skimped on some foundation work, using a cheaper method than what had been recommended.

It’s always amazing to see construction that skimps out on safety rather than on finishing touches. Because you can bet that the showerheads weren’t picked up at Home Depot, and the fridges weren’t from the bargain aisle at Lowe’s. But, of course, the finishing touches are what the purchasers see. not the foundation, which someone would presume is okay.

I’m guessing that there’s a fix for whatever ails Seaport Residences. An expensive fix, I’m sure, but not likely one that’s going to require a complete dismantling and start-from-scratch. Serves whoever’s at fault right it they’re stuck with a kabillion dollar bill for this one. Not to mention the lawsuits from the folks who thought they’d be moving in anytime soon. (Many of whom are likely having second and third thoughts at this point.)

Anyway, I’m just as happy to be living in my low rise, oldie but goodie. Sure, we’ve had some issues, but the structural engineers have given us a clean bill of health. We’re in no danger of toppling over – at least until the Atlantic Ocean decides to reclaim Back Bay as its own.

With luck, some lucky buyer would have become enamored of my showerheads, my upscale appliances, and those soon-to-be-working pop-up outlets, long before Boston washes away.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, there are some law firms rubbing their hands in glee.

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Other info source: The Gothamist.