Gather ye pellets while ye may

Pretty much every day on my walk, I see evidence of ruin: businesses that are out of business thanks to the pandemic.  The fancy nut and chocolate shop on Charles Street. The tea store on Washington. I pass vacant store fronts, restaurants shut tight, and, if there are no tell-tale signs, I try to remember what was in there just six months ago. 

While some businesses are booming - think telehealth tech, think Zoom, think all those Etsy crafters sewing up face masks - many operations are shit out of business. And some of these are not that obvious. Mostly because you wouldn't have imagined there was such a business to begin with. 

One such business: owl pellet sales.

Owl pellets, you may well be asking yourself? 

Yes, indeedy. Owl pellets.

When I first read the term, when it came to owl pellets, I didn't even know which end was up. But as it turns out, owl pellets aren't like rabbit pellets. They're puked up, and here's what that's all about:

Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, a barn owl has just eaten a mouse.

Twelve hours from now, give or take, it will regurgitate a compact mass of fur and bones known as an owl pellet. The pellet will contain a near-perfect skeleton of the devoured rodent and a treasure trove of data for researchers, providing insights on the owl, its prey and the environment in which it lives. (Source: WaPo)

I'm quite sure that if I were to eat a mouse, I'd be vomiting it up, too. But perhaps not so intact. So props to the owls out there. 

Owl pellets have quite a few uses:

Grade-school teachers use them to teach basic biological concepts. College students might be assigned to reassemble entire skeletons. Scientists use them to track prey animal populations and monitor pollutant levels.

Then there's witchcraft rituals.

And jewelry:

On Etsy, for instance, there are numerous vendors who make earrings, pendants and other trinkets from the tiny bones contained in the pellets.

Next time I'm face mask-hunting on Etsy, I'll have to look around for tiny bone trinkets...

Anyway, there is a small but up now vibrant owl pellet industry in the U.S. - "at least" 6 companies selling millions of owl pellets each year - not to mention a cadre of hunter-gatherers who make up the first node in the owl pellet supply chain. At the other end, there are pellet retailers. At least one, anyway. And that one promotes deploying pellets as "an ethical way to teach science." No frog, no fetal pig was killed and dipped in formaldehyde in the making of this experiment. 

We didn't have much by way of science in grammar school. It just wasn't a parochial school thing. The only science instruction I recall was in 7th and 8th grade, where one period a week was devoted to reading chapters in a text book that was used, on full repeat, both years. Mostly, we sat there looking at the page on the reproductive organs which had an illustration of a uterus but nothing - unless I've repressed the memory - that showed the boy thang.

But in high school bio, we dissected a frog. I remember snipping the spinal cord, and identifying ovaries. (Thanks to that 7th grade science learning!) We buried our frogs under a tree on the edge of school property. This was not a sanctioned activity, so I don't know how we got away with it. Maybe Sister Maura didn't want to dispose of all those dissected frog bodies. Sacrilegeously, we sang "Froghead Here in Hiding" to the tune of the hymn "Godhead Here in Hiding."

In college, I didn't take any lab science, but fast forward a few years and my husband and I got to witness the autopsy of a baby elephant at the San Diego Zoo. 

No experience whatsoever with owl pellets, I'm afraid.

And now, with so many schools going virtual, the demand for owl pellets has plummeted. Schools aren't ordering, and the number of parents ordering pellets for home schooling, while on the increase, isn't making up for the shortfall in school orders. 

I'm guessing that for every shop and restaurant that's been cold-cocked by COVID, there's a quirky little industry like owl pellets. 

Where's it all going to end?

Screw with elections? Kill little critters? Lots can happen when you trash the postal system.

In Massachusetts, we have an important primary coming up on September 1st. I was planning on in-person voting, but to be on the belt-and-suspender side of things - what if I was indisposed on September 1st? - I requested a mail-in ballot. Just so I'd have the option.

At a rally in support and defense of the US Postal Service, I attended last Saturday at the Massachusetts State House, a woman said that she had mailed her ballot in on August 13th and it hadn't arrived at City Hall until the August 20th. This was a distance of a couple of miles. (There's an app for checking, and that's going to come in handy.)

So I figured that, once I got my mail-in ballot, I'd walk it in to City Hall. Then, when the mail-in ballot didn't show up, I decided to just go and do early voting at Boston City Hall. 

When I got there to check in, the officials were well aware that I had requested to vote-by-mail, and I had to sign some sort of affidavit waiving my write to mail it in. I was then able to early vote.

Phew. As I mentioned, this is an important election, in that we have a hotly contested race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. My vote counts for something, in a way that my vote for Biden in November really won't, given that there is zero possibility that Trump would carry this state. (For the record, now that Pink Slip has taken something of a political turn in the Time of Drumpf, I'm voting for Ed Markey over Joe Kennedy. There was no reason - other than pure, unadulterated entitlement - for Kennedy to jump in here and challenge a progressive incumbent, in a safe Dem seat, with the result that millions of dollars in campaign dollars are being squandered on this election when it could have been better spent trying to elect more swing-state Democrats to the Senate.)

Other than my mini-scare over voting, I haven't experienced much by way of problems with the Post Office. Oh, my mail comes a bit later in the day most of the time. And sometimes my New Yorker shows up on Friday rather than Thursday. But my mailman remains just wonderful. Folks have received the cards I've sent them. The packages I've mailed in the past month have arrived safely.

But, other than voting - and I always have the in person option - nothing I'm doing with the mail is "mission critical." My bills are emailed to me. Whatever income I have coming in is directly deposited. I get a couple of magazines, more than a couple catalogs, political flyers, an occasional thank you note, and - of course - Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons. Sometimes packages from Etsy or Amazon (last mile). Nothing that can't wait.

Unlike those who rely on timely mail delivery for medications, for money, for the operation of their business. 

Let alone for those who ship and receive "live animals, including chicks, crickets, lizards, frogs and even scorpions."

The Postal Service has over 100 years of experience shipping live animals, starting in 1918 when it began allowing live day-old chicks to be mailed. Newly hatched chicks are uniquely amenable to mailing as they can survive without food or water for 72 hours after hatching, according to a bulletin by the Poultry Welfare Extension, a project of several public universities. For those businesses, a shipping delay is often a literal matter of life and death. (Source: Washington Post)

Pretty much the definition of "mission critical," I'd say.

I hadn't thought much (in fact, I hadn't thought anything) about critters being shipped via the US Mail until I read about thousands of baby chicks sent to poultry operations in Maine that were Dead on Arrival. 

And now I've learned that there are all sorts of sometimes quite specific rules and regs around shipping live animals:

Bees, for instance, may not be shipped via air, with the exception of queen bees, who may travel by air “accompanied by up to eight attendant honeybees.”

Poultry can be shipped, as long as they're no more than a day old. All sorts of poultry, including emus. As for other birds, adults can be mailed, as long as they don't weigh more than 25 pounds, "which is enormous for a bird — approximately the size of an adult pelican." Just in case someone has reason to ship an adult pelican.

Big relief here: No need to worry about poisonous animals. Only scorpions used for medical research or antivenom. Scorpions can't fly, so there'll never be a "snakes on a plane" sitch. 

Baby alligators, as anyone who ever read the ads in the back of a comic book is aware, can be sent via mail. But they have to be less than 20 inches long. I suppose that a 20 incher could break free and bite the mailman, but that shorty probably couldn't take a limb off. 

All kidding aside, the deliberate Postal Office slowdowns are hurting a lot of folks. And they're killing live animals. Chick hatcheries are being impacted, and frog and gecko vendors, as is "a business that produces live roaches that are fed to bearded dragons, hedgehogs and other insectivorous animals."

Chalk it up to unintended consequences when all you really want to do is suppress the vote (oh, and, along the way, mention privatize the mail system). I suppose if that's your game, you really don't give a damn if a bunch of chicks, queen bees, and live roaches have to sacrifice their little lives.

Once again, American Exceptionalism in action.

Ya got ya lemon, ya make ya lemonade.

MassChallenge is an accelerator, helping startups get off the ground by providing expert advice, co-working space, access to a primo network of investors and execs, workshops - all the good stuff that can help an early-stage little company grow. A lot of what they've done since they were founded (i.e., started up) ten years ago has been hands on, face to face. But this is the summer of virtual, when ain't no one's all that eager to jump into co-working space. 

That's not the only thing that's been changing for the companies that had been selected to participate in this year's MassChallenge. For some of them, the pandemic has caused a rethink in their overall business strategy, starting with the basics like what they do and what they are.

Many of these startups were created around one idea, but have quickly adapted their business plans to solve problems created by the coronavirus pandemic. (Source: Scott Kirsner in the Boston Globe)

One of this year's participants, one with a name that's either brilliant or dreadful - Nuture Pods - 

...was originally focused on matching single parents who live together in homes with other single parents — a “co-living” arrangement that would help address the high costs of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the two working parents who started the company, Deborah Tu and Joey Jelenik, saw that the spring’s sudden shift to remote learning created a more urgent problem.

So they figured that they could jigger their software so that parents could use it to create learning pods. It matches families based on how old their kids are, where they're located, and - perhaps most critically - what their appetite for risk is. Does everyone have to be 100% committed to social distancing? Are you okay if someone in your kid's learning pod gets on an airplane on occasion?

The company is also creating a database of those looking to work as a "pod leader" if the families decide that they want to reduce the burden on themselves by hiring an outsider to supervise or even teach the kids. 

I think this is a great idea. Some of my clients are juggling full-time work from home with the new responsibility to keep their kids learning. I'm sure many of them would benefit from a mutual aid society. They get more time to focus on work, and the kids get more of a semblance of a "real" school experience. 

But while it's a great idea, it will kinda-sorta be out of business once in-person school is back, no? I guess once that happens that they'll revert to their initial concept, which sounds good in theory. But in practice? Are there all that many single parents who want to share space with another single parent? Seems like this could be fraught with problems - like what happens when Single Parent A finds a real partner, and leaves Single Parent B (and child) in a financial and emotional lurch. But I guess these problems are no different than any other 21st century social and economic dilemmas. Things will work out. Somehow. Still don't think this is much of a business but, hey, when Twitter first came out I thought it would be used primarily by entertainers who wanted to connect with their fans. So what do I know?

TravelEZ started out life as a way to rate restaurants on how accessible they are to those with impaired mobility. Sounds reasonable, if not especially lucrative. Anyway, they've decided to shift gears and are offering info on how safe a dining experience a restaurant is offering. Are those tables really six feet apart? Etc. 

Whether focused on accessibility or COVID safety, I don't see this app providing much more value than what a restaurant can put of their web site - or what you can find out through a Yelp review. 

Once again, what do I know?

Then there's NextBurb. Their first idea was helping "workers moving to new cities find their ideal neighborhood to live in." Their target clients were the relo and recruiting departments of big tech companies. This doesn't seem all that winning and original an idea to me. Can't you find plenty of information online already? Another case of what do I know.

In any event, COVID pretty much put an end to relo-ing, other than relo-ing from your bedroom to your den. So now NextBurb is focusing on folks who want to become a permanent work from homer and are looking for a new place to live. NextBurb:

...can calculate a commute distance, if you need to get in to an office — or it can give you information about the quality of schools, the closest dog park, or the crime rate. The startup plans to make money by connecting people with real estate agents who can help them purchase or rent a home.

Again, this all sounds good, but it also sounds like things you can pretty much find out with a Google search. Maybe NextBurb's value-add will be that they're an info aggregator. I apparently know nothing, however.

I do know that, if the fear-mongers speaking at this week's RNC are right (and not just rightwing), if Joe Biden's elected, there'll be no more suburbs, because low income POC will be swarming in. So just to be on the safe side, while they're virtually hanging around the virtual accelerator, they might want to rethink their company's name.

Then there's Generus, an idea that I actually think has legs. Their premise is helping:

...companies arrange volunteer events for employees — things like helping to support 5K charity races, making sleeping mats for refugees, or preparing meals for community supper programs. By late spring, chief executive Jamie Larsen was noticing that companies were looking for ways to keep their work-from-home employees connected to one another.

So they've made their COVID lemon into lemonade by figuring out virtual volunteering opportunities. 

What do participants in a virtual volunteering event actually do? They might read letters from prisoners and collect books to donate to the Quincy-based Prison Book Program, say, or take a painting lesson and donate the resulting artwork to Household Goods, an Acton nonprofit that helps people furnish their homes.

When I worked full time, companies weren't into volunteering. I can't think of one thing that any place I worked organized any charitable/social contribution activities. It just wasn't a thing. But it is now, and I've seen a lot of it when it comes to the non-profits I'm involved with. While the pandemic has cut into things, St. Francis House has a number of companies that regularly or sporadically send teams in to serve in the clothing department and kitchen.  And Christmas in the City relies on businesses to buy gifts for the kiddos we help, and to staff events. It'll be different this year: no big event. But local businesses will be helping us out with all the toys we need. 

And now, as more and more people are working from home - something that's likely to outlast the pandemic - I think there'll be ongoing interest in virtual volunteering opportunities. So this one may be a keeper. But what do I know?

Well, what I do know is that all these little startups are trying to make lemonade out of the COVID lemon. And I do know that, if I were handed a lemon, I'd probably just stare at it. So while I may think most of these ideas are no great shakes, it's more than I've got!

Gray Hair: The Coolest Trend in 2020. (I am SO on trend.)

For Baby Boomers who grew up glued to the tube, there are plenty of ad campaigns we'll take to the grave. 

We grew up knowing that if you took a puff of a Salem, "it's springtime." That someone, somewhere would "walk a mile for a Camel." That if you wanted a lighter smoke, you could "switch from hots to Kools." (I once entertained the baby sitter - who had one of her high school pals hanging with her - by appearing at the den door in a flannel nightgown, shouting "switch from hots", then scurrying to my bedroom to quick change into a pair of summer seersucker PJ's and racing back to announce "to Kools." If you're out there, Gail O'Connor and/or Judy Lavin, I certainly hope you remember this bit of brilliance.)

We "brusha, brusha, brusha'd with the new Ipana." 

We "flew down the street, 'cuz look at their feet" - we wore PF canvas shoes. A.k.a., sneakers. 

And although our mother used Zarex to make a summer drink for us, we knew in our hearts that it was Kool-Aid that actually tasted great.

Then there were all the great old regional ads: "Hi, neighbor, Have a 'Gansett." Christmas meant Whiting's eggnog time. ("Cheer, cheer, cheer, the holidays are here.") 

Embedded deep within the recesses of our BB Baby Boomer brains there are no doubt thousands of taglines and jingles. 

Among the most indelible were the ads for hair coloring. 

I learned early on that, ''If I've Only One Life to Live, Let Me Live It as a Blonde,'' And make sure that's a Lady Clairol Blonde, a silky-shiny blonde. 

Well, as a natural born towhead, I didn't need no Lady Clairol to be a silky-shiny blonde. At least when I was a kid.  Behold my kindergarten picture proof statement. (Uneven bangs, courtesy of Vic the Blind Barber, in case you're wondering. And those aren't dark roots, just the lighting.)

Alas, by high school and college, I was a dark blonde, a dirty blonde (ugh: who came up with that term?). But that's how it went. When I was out in the sun, my hair lightened up, but mostly it was darkening up. One college summer, I decided to ad a blonde streak. I didn't want to pay for any Lady Clairol, so I just swabbed a hank of my hair with hydrogen peroxide. The orange only lasted a few weeks before toning down to an okay goldeny blonde. 

For years, that was it. But somewhere along the line - in my forties? early fifties? - I decided to start having highlights done, which gave my by then light-turning-to-medium brown hair a bit of oomph. Highlighting is, of course, a slippery slope, and somewhere further along that line, when the grays started popping up here and there, I went with the full dye job, with a two-color process that involved foils and the color genius of my hairdresser Rita. 

Here, I was following another advertising edict of my childhood: "Hate that gray? Wash it away."

People would compliment me on my hair color, and seemed surprised (at least some of them) when I confessed that I no longer had any idea what the true color of my hair was. But I do believe that my dye job looked pretty natural because it actually bore a very strong resemblance to what my hair once looked like in nature.

Over the last few years, I considered transitioning to whatever the new normal color. It could, I told myself, turn out okay. My mother had very pretty silver gray hair once she gave up on dying it. But was I ready to devote all that time to looking like Cruella DeVille while it grew out?

Rita assured me that she could help with the transition, but if I wasn't exactly hating that gray, I was still going to keep up with washing it away.

And then...

Six month ago this week, I had my last cut and color. I've had one cut since then, but no color. So I'm now officially letting it go gray. Sort of. (It's a COVID thing.)

Not 100% sure what to make of it, but I'm kind of liking it. I just wish my hair would grow faster so I could see what it's going to look like.

Meanwhile, a Twitter ad popped up on my feed for a dye that promises an "Icy Silver Gray Hair Transformation." It's the "coolest trend in 2020," don't you know. When I clicked on the link there were all sorts of pictures of young woman who were apparently saying "goodbye to boring hair color" by going gray. To me, their hair didn't look icy silver. It looked gunmetal, battleship gray. So not for me! I'm going to let myself go gray the old fashioned way, one strand of hair at a time.

Jailhouse Rock!

One of the things I most enjoy about watching house hunting and reno shows on HGTV is seeing how little you get for your real estate buck in anyplace I'd want to live, and how much you can get in places I wouldn't be caught dead in. 

You can get a fixer upper for $80K in Waco, Texas, and for another $70K - your "all in" - you can turn it into your dream house. Your buck stretches even further in lil' ol' Laurel, Mississippi, where Erin and Ben - the cutest couple on real estate television - buy these adorable little houses for $48K and turn them into comfy-cozy, darling wonder-homes anyone would be proud to own. If they wanted to live in Laurel, Mississippi. Which, personally, is not on my list of possibilities. 

And that fabulous Victorian on House Hunters? The one going for $350K? Well, you have to be ready, willing, and able to live in Columbus, Ohio. Or some truly godforsaken place.

While in Boston, that $350K might get you a studio apartment. Somewhere.

Still, I much enjoy real estate shows, and the occasional article that floats by on a fun house for sale.

Thus, the two-bed, two-bath home in Fayette, Missouri, managed to catch my eye. Although I think they could have done a better job with the landscaping so that the house doesn't appear to be a leaning tower of Pisa wannabe, it's a charmer. 

Anyway, I'd never heard of Fayette, which is in the middle of nowhere - i.e., nowhere near Kansas City or St. Louis, but only 30 or so miles from Columbia, where the University of Missouri is. Even with Mizzou not that far away, $350K seemed a bit pricey for the neighborhood, even if this 1894 beauty had been fully reno'd. Sure, there were lots of nice features like hardwood floors and updated everything. Not to mention fabulous details like this brass keyhole in what appears to be one of the housing objects of my desire: pocket doors. 

 

Still, $350K seemed a bit steep.

Then, on the real estate listing I saw (now taken down - apparently social media went wildly viral, or virally wild, about this offering - there's a mention that the 2005 reno of the place cost $1.5M. Now I am neither an economist nor a real estate guru, but it seems to me that, unless you plan to live someplace the rest of your life and don't care what happens to that someplace after you die, it's not that financially sound a decision to sink over a million bucks into something that turns out to be worth - reconsults notes - $350K a few years later. 

Oh, maybe the bottom fell out of the Fayette, Missouri real estate market. Still, that seems like a mighty big loss to swallow.

I'm not from Missouri, but still I have a bit of Show Me in me, so I wanted to see just how it was that a 2 bed, 2 bath home in Fayette, Missouri might command a sale price of $350K - even after undergoing a $1.5M reno.

What makes it worth it is that the house is attached to what once was the county jail. There are nine cells in there, which are, of course, in addition to the "normal" two bedrooms. And "the cell door lock throws appear to be operational." (Source: USA Today)

How's this for a guest room, with an en suite half bath?

You get to these spare rooms through the kitchen. (Note to self: kitchen requires a near gut job.)

But it looks like there could be a lot of possibilities.

A family with a lot of kids could just toss the kiddos into their very own wing each night and just throw the bolt. And talk about in-law space. 

With so many working from home now, owners could set up Zoom rooms for the job holders. And personal school-away-from-school classrooms for the kids.

For a while - I believe it was in the 1980's - there was a fad for hotels with "themed" rooms. Well, here's a B&B with the themes all ready to go. The owners could even slide breakfast into each guest room through a slot. 

This place could also be turned into an escape room game place, if escape rooms are still a thing. (A few years ago, one of my clients had the holiday party for the marketing team at an escape room, and I went along. We were split up into four teams and, unfortunately, I was teamed with the two other most analytical folks in the marketing department. While the crew in the next cell were rampaging around, disposed to try-everything action, we sat on the metal bench trying to analyze our way out. To our chagrin, the action-eers made their escape a couple of seconds ahead of us. We still maintain that our approach was the sounder one, despite the results.)

Anyway, just as it is, this real estate listing has provided this house-bound covidian with an escape of sorts. Not that I'd want anything to do with it, but it's sure fun to rubberneck, isn't it? In the right hands, this jailhouse could surely rock.

Mourning in a time of pandemic

Last Friday, I "attended" a live-streamed funeral, that of my cousin's daughter, who died at age 46 (tragically leaving two small daughters) of breast cancer. Bob is the son of my father's sister, my Aunt Margaret.

Although I'm close to this cousin's sister, I'm not close to him. 

But he's very much part of my family.

My father's family was relatively small - he had just one brother and one sister - and throughout my childhood and well beyond, we pretty much had all our holidays together with Margaret's family. (While they were still living, my grandmother and my father's brother were always with us, as well, but my Uncle Charlie kinda-sorta didn't have a family. A story for another day.) With the death of my aunt and my mother, these joint holidays pretty much petered out. For a long while, we continued to have a big family gathering each summer, but we haven't done that for a few years. Mainly, with this cousin whose daughter has just died, our relationship was a Christmas card, funerals, and weddings.

But there were enough of those family events over the years, that I feel that I watched Bob's girls grow up. I even remember the baby gift I made for Diana: a baby-sized crocheted afghan in pale coral, pale yellow, baby blue.

In before times, I would probably have gone down to Connecticut for Diana's funeral, but the post-COVID Funeral Mass was limited to the closest of relations and friends.

At first, I was reluctant to watch the funeral. Would it be voyeuristic, weird? But I am e-mail friendly with one of Bob's other daughters, and once in a while, when West Coast Julie is in Boston, she’s come over for lunch. After I learned of Diana's death, I had a small e-mail exchange with Julie. I assumed without her saying anything that she would be giving her sister's eulogy, and I wanted to be "there" for her. 

So I “went” to the funeral.

Mourning in the time of pandemic is so devoid of the rituals and gestures that get us through. So many of the little things - the hugs and back pats, the story shared in the moment, touching the casket as it rolls by - are no longer there for us. But we all still need something.

No one I know has died of COVID. I know several people who've had it. And have several friends who've lost friends to it. But that's it. And no one in my immediate circle, that precious group of family members and friends whose death would bring me to great grief, has died or suffered a grievous loss of their own since the pandemic began.

But in my wider circle, a few orbits out, there have been several terrible deaths this year.

In April, the 32 year old son of friends died of complications of Type 1 diabetes. In before times, would I have gone up to Maine for his memorial service - which has yet to be announced? I might have, as these friends had come down from Maine for my husband's memorial service six years ago. But I might not have. In any case, I wrote a letter Sam and Jane and made a donation in John's name to the charity they had chosen.

In June, my brother Rick called me. The son of one of his closest friends from childhood had died. A sweet but troubled kid, Jack was only 30. I've known Jack's father since he was in kindergarten; his mother was also a "kid" from the neighborhood. I hadn't seen Jack since he was a little kid. The picture that accompanied the obituary. Sigh. Jack was the spit and image of his father. Ceremony, burial were private. I wrote notes to both of Bill and Anne, and made a donation in Jack's name to the charity they had chosen.

Diana. John. Jack.

Children outliving their parents. 

Although I have no children of my own, I am possessed of a good imagination, and I can think of no greater grief than the death of a child. Trying to even imagine it is nearly impossible. It's sort of like imagining nothingness. It is not something you can even begin to wrap your head around.

Hovering over my childhood was the specter of my sister Margaret. My parents' first child, she had died in infancy. My mother never fully recovered. Although she was blameless, I think my mother blamed herself for the baby's death. Margaret was a perfectly healthy full-term baby. The doctor was late in getting to the hospital. The baby had crowned, she was coming fast. My mother called for the nurses to help her deliver her baby. (This was well before fathers were in the delivery room.) Instead of helping her, they told her she had to hang on. And when she went to deliver the baby on her own, they knocked her out. 

My sister, deprived of oxygen in the birth canal, lived a few days. If she had survived, she would likely have been severely brain damaged. My father saw the baby, but they never let my mother see her. 

Today, this wouldn't happen - or there would be a multi-million dollar settlement. But in 1946, they just told my parents to get back on the metaphorical bicycle and start peddling. Eleven months later, my sister Kathleen was born.

Having grown up around my mother's pain - I'm sure my father suffered plenty as well, but unlike my mother, he didn't have a depressive bone in his body - I can only begin to imagine how painful it must be to lose a child you've not just brought into this world, but brought up in it. Safely seen into adulthood. But not able to protect, to save...

July brought another outer circles death. Again, a call from my brother Rick. The brother of another of his closest childhood friends had been hit by a truck. Jack was a couple of years younger than my brother, but all the kids palled around together. They all played sports together. Jack and Rick went to the same high school. 

I babysat for this family. They were lovely. Five kids, all with "J" names. Their parents were the nicest and most fun parents on our street. (Not that it took much to be the most fun parents on our street. After Nancy and Denny, I'd have to say my father would have been next. My mother was plenty nice; she was just no one's idea of fun.) Jack, dead at 63. So much pain for his wife and kids. I'm happy that Nancy and Denny didn't live to endure this.

I made a donation to the GoFundMe page set up when they thought Jack would survive, and wrote a comment, scrolling through the list of donors, recognizing names of the long ago past. Mike S lives in Texas. Betty H - one of the neighborhood moms - is still alive. I wonder if Richie G is still as cute as he was when he was a little kid running around with my brother's pack.

*****

If my cousin's daughter was not in my inner circle, she wasn't far removed. Certainly, this was a closer death than that of John, Jack, or Jack. This is family, and Diana's death hits home. It filled me not so much with grief as with sorrow, sorrow for those that she leaves behind.

Although her funeral was live-streamed, not Zoomed, I got a bit dressed up for it. I swapped out the too-jaunty striped tee-shirt I'd worn on my walk for a nice sweater. I ran a comb through my hair, slapped on a bit of makeup, put on good earrings.

As so often is the case, there was a note of levity at even this most somber of occasions. The priest, who I believe is a native of Vietnam, said that Diana was leaving an "inedible" mark on the world, rather than "indelible."

Diana was a possessor of a wicked, and often inappropriate, sense of humor. Both of her sisters are her equals here. If I know my family, "inedible" will become a thing. 

Julie's eulogy was beautiful. Funny, touching. She spoke of Diana's love for dancing around, putting on tunes and having an impromptu (and sometimes solo) dance party whenever the spirit moved her. The night before the funeral, Julie and her sister Ellie had held a dance party for Diana's little girls. They're nine and six. (My sister was only 11 when my father died after a long illness, so I've seen this one before. How terrible for those two little ones...)

I had already written my notes to my cousin and his wife, to Diana's husband, to her sisters, to my cousin (Diana's aunt). And made a donation to the charity they'd chosen.

But there was still something left to do.

After the funeral ended, I YouTubed up a dance party of my own. "Twisting the Night Away." "Sweet Caroline." "Down at the Twist and Shout." "All the Single Ladies." "Shake It Off." "Margaritaville" (my cousin and his family are Parrotheads). And, although it's not really, dance-able, "Friends in Low Places," because it seemed like a Diana sort of thing.

Odd thing, this mourning in the time of pandemic.

The most Worcester thing ever?

The other day, the Worcester Red Sox - a.k.a. the Woo Sox - unveiled the jerseys and caps that the players will wear when the team (fingers and toes crossed) takes to the field for the first time in the Heart of the Commonwealth (following a move from Pawtucket, RI, where the team was known as the Paw Sox). They've had gear for sale before this. Take it from me. Since last winter, I've purchased nine - count 'em, nine - ball caps for friends and family, including a couple for myself. 

This one incorporates the smiley face which, as everyone knows, was invented in Worcester. 

The team will not be wearing the smiley face for formal play, however. They'll be sporting more serious caps, and traditional baseball player player shirts. Which were what was revealed last Monday. 

Shortly after the unveiling, the jerseys and caps went on sale in the Table Talk Pie store, which is near the under-construction Polar Park where the Woo Sox will play.

Ah, Table Talk Pie...

There are few things more iconic in Worcester than a Table Talk Pie.

My mother was an excellent baker - apple, blueberry, lemon meringue (leaving pecan and mince to my Aunt Margaret) - so there wasn't much call for a Table Talk Pie to cross our threshold. But one summer, my sister Kath had a job near the Table Talk Pie factory, and sometimes she'd bring a bunch of day-olds home for us. We fell on those suckers. 

As an adult, I bought them on occasion, preferably cherry, second place lemon. (Couldn't find a pic of cherry. Alas.)

Since my mother made the best apple and blueberry pies in the world, there was absolutely no need (nor desire) to have one from Table Talk. But their cherry pie... What I wouldn't give for one at this very moment! 

Anyway, selling Woo Sox gear at the Table Talk Pie store strikes me as THE most Worcester thing ever. Could anything top this for peak Worcester? Maybe selling them at Coney Island Hot Dogs? Nah! This is it. Woo Sox jerseys at Table Talk. Wish I'd been there for it. 

Angels we have heard on high,

Like everyone else, there's a lot I miss about the before times. Seeing friends and family beyond my small-ish bubble. Eating out. Hugging. Volunteering at St. Francis House. Smiling at babies. And dogs. Bustling shopping areas. Store fronts that aren't empty. Store browsing and occasional impulse buying. Fenway Park (even if the team is a complete and utter suckfest). The library. Not expending any energy whatsoever worrying about where my next roll of toilet paper is going to come from. Not having to wash my hands with the attention and fervor that would in the old days be expected only from a surgeon prepping for a 10-hour operation. 

And events. I miss events.

Not that I'd be caught dead at it, but I missed the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The Patriots Day buzz around the Marathon. The Pops and the fireworks on the Fourth of July (traditionally observed from the comfort of my home, but an event nonetheless).

And I missed the Italian saints festivals down in Boston's North End.

Some are just processions, in which members of a society rooted in some region of Italy parade around carrying a statue of their patron saint, accompanied by the Roma Band. The society members are typically descendants of immigrants from the whatever region, carrying on a tradition that came over on the boat with their grandparents or great-grandparents.

Some are just processions, in which members of a society rooted in some region of Italy parade around carrying a statue of their patron saint, accompanied by the Roma Band. The members are typically descendants of immigrants from the whatever region.

Here's a before times shot of the Madonna delle Grazie, Our Lady of Graces. Or, as I like to think of her, The Curly-Haired Madonna. With Curly-Haired Child. 

The bills and checks are pinned on, and they fund the society (many still have club houses) for the coming year. 

Other North End happenings are bigger deals, full blown festivals running multiple nights and featuring concerts, food (calamari, fried dough, cannoli...), carnival rides, carnival games, trinket sales, processions, and - in the case of the Fisherman's Feast - a flying angel. 

The tradition of a young girl flying over the crowds at the Fisherman’s Feast is so entrenched in the North End that the apartment she flies from has a special provision in the lease to allow it. The building even has a permanent hook used to hoist the angel above the noisy, packed streets. (Source: Boston Globe)

Festivals ain't flying this year, so the Madonna del Soccoroso Society, which runs the Fisherman's Feast, went virtual. One of the Society's leaders, Dom Strazzullo:

...developed a virtual feast with videos of the festival’s traditional activities, which he called a “three-part documentary series,” to keep the streak alive. The series culminated Saturday night with the flying angel ceremony.

If you've got 20 minutes, the video they pulled together is definitely worth watching for a little slice of Italian-American life, North End of Boston style - accents and all! 

I usually get to one or two festas/processions a year. Last year, it was the Feast of St. Joseph, which I went to with my sister Trish and our niece Caroline. As is my long standing tradition, we first ate Chinese on the outskirts of the North End, then dove in and waded through the crowd, saw part of the procession, then hung in for part of the concert - long enough to hear them play "Eh, Cumpari", to which Trish and I happily sung along. (We may not have been Italian, but we had that Julius LaRosa 78 at our house.)

My husband and I always hit a couple of festivals, often with kids in tow, and Jim would get to show off his sharpshooting skills on the game where you use a tethered squirt gun to stream water into the mouth of a clown. First one to explode the balloon growing out of the clown's head wins a swell prize. We never came away empty.

We'd often hit a concert, and one evening even heard Al Martino sing.

And I'd always get a ten-second catch-up with a former colleague who played the drum in the Roma Band, as Steve from Wang and his band mates marched along behind whatever statue was being carried through the streets. 

Like everything else in the world (at least in Boston: c.f., the Marathon, the Pops on the Fourth), over the years, the Italian festivals have become too much of a thing. The crowds are crazy and it's just not as enjoyable as it was when you could more casually stroll around.

Still, the North End crowds were never so awful that I stayed entirely away. The Italian Festivals are, of course, yet another reason why it's wonderful to live in a city. 

Just not this year.

I will note that this year's virtual angel has been promised the slot as flying angel next year. I plan on being there for her flight. It'll have been way too long since there was an angel to hear on high.

I say GUN! You say NUT. GUN! NUT! GUN! NUT!

Apparently, there's a new genre on social media, Facebook edition. It's the gathering place for a stellar group of brilliant, thoughtful and ever-so-careful gun enthusiasts whose special interest is sharing pictures and videos of themselves pointing their weapon of choice at their private parts.

First off, who thinks this stuff up? 

It's not like trying to convene online with your high school classmates, or fans of The Bobbsey Twins, or slow cooker addicts. I mean, who wakes up one morning and decides to do a bit of thrill seeking by pointing a gun at their man thang? Let alone take a picture of it. Let alone go trawling out there to see if there are any other folks who enjoy the same sort of perverto hobby. Which apparently there are.

Second of all, isn't the inevitable going to happen to one member of the gang? I guess the thinking (or non-thinking) is hey, that would never happen to me. 

Of course, it didn't happen to most of the "mes". But it did happen to someone.

A member of a Facebook group dedicated to taking pictures of loaded weapons pointed at dicks finally shot himself in the balls, according to bloody pictures and video he posted on social media and the Imperial County [San Diego] Sheriff's Office, which confirmed the incident to Motherboard. Rather than step back and start questioning whether the practice is wise, the group made him an administrator and are now celebrating him as their king.  (Source: Matthew Gault in Vice)

The member who'd shot his member kept posting in real time, and offered a bit of a confession:

"...I might have fucked up,” the man who shot himself in the balls wrote above a picture of his naked legs and splattered blood on the carpet of his floor. A towel is stuffed between his legs and a printed out copy of the constitution is crumpled on the edge of the photo.

Um, might have fucked up? I guess that depends on the definition of "might". Or of "fucked up." 

Maybe, I thought, it was a prank. After all, the copy of the constitution seems a bit much, even by gun nut standards.

But, no.

The guy kept posting about the incident, including a pic of himself in the hospital, in his green hospital gown, laid out on a gurney, and telling his little corner of crazy world that the "round went right the fuck through me." Or his scrotum, but they may well be one and the same.

The fellow was discharged and was able to go to work the next day. Good thing, I suppose. Imagine having to bring in a doctor's note explaining this one.

This group - and others like it, and there are, indeed, others like it - actually doesn't think this is behavior is all that good of an idea. They just want to "irritate responsible gun owners." I.e., the softies who care about things like gun safety. And to cock a snook at those who consider folks like this well, gun nuts. 

In response to all the hoopla, the site has posted a statement that includes this:

"...we are sick of being told that just because we like guns It means we have to be anti woman, pro life and pro trump.”

Maybe not, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, whether they like it or not, this group is pro stupidity.

Imagine the self-own that goes along with shooting yourself anyplace, let alone in your private parts. Good luck when a girlfriend - or, I suppose, boyfriend, although this sounds pretty hetero -  gets curious and asks you what happened here.

For workers, it's not so super at the supermarket

In terms of the number of different crummy jobs I worked in my youth, I almost ran the table. Factory worker. Waitress. Grill cook. Ice cream scooper. Office temp. Admitting clerk in a hospital. Department store clerk. Admin. I'm sure I'm missing something here, but one commonplace job missing from my grunt work portfolio is grocery store cashier or bagger. Despite the fact that it was in my blood, kind of - my Grandfather Wolf had a grocery store and all his kids worked there at one point or another - I never worked as a bagger at Stop & Shop, a cashier at A&P.

While I do enough grocery shopping to realize that a lot of high school and college kids still work in grocery stores, for more and more folks, it's their real job. And they're considered essential workers, out there on the front lines, making sure we all have access to all the food we want and need. 

When the pandemic shutdown started going into effect here, once I did my panic sweep through the Roche Brothers, I stayed out of stores entirely for a few weeks. Then I started going back, making sure to exchange pleasantries with and thank the stockers, the cashiers, the guys who slice the Cabot's cheddar and weigh out the fresh but deveined shrimp for me. And I'm always, always, always conscious that, for a lot of workers, these aren't the crumb-bum summer and after-school jobs of the teenage years, but their real jobs. 

And they're jobs that, despite all the hand-washing, plexiglass barriers, and one way signs on the aisles, put workers at greater risk than the shopping risks faced by stay-at-home professionals who - if they actually go into a grocery store, vs. taking advantage of home delivery or curbside pickup  - sweep pell-mell through a store every couple of weeks. 

For the first few months of the pandemic, grocery workers were hailed as heroes, right up there with healthcare workers. Many got a hazard pay boost to their hourly wage. And then pandemic fatigue, our sheer boredom with "it", set in. So now:

Grocery workers across the country say morale is crushingly low as the pandemic wears on with no end in sight. Overwhelmed employees are quitting mid-shift. Those who remain say they are overworked, taking on extra hours, enforcing mask requirements and dealing with hostile customers. Most retailers have done away with hazard pay even as workers remain vulnerable to infection, or worse. Employees who took sick leave at the beginning of the pandemic say they cannot afford to take unpaid time off now, even if they feel unwell.

The mounting despair is heightened by the lack of other job options: Supermarkets are among the few bright spots in an industry that has been ravaged by covid-related store closures and a sharp drop-off in consumer spending. The retail sector has shed 913,000 jobs and chalked up more than a dozen bankruptcies during the pandemic.

“At the beginning they valorized what was deemed a dead-end job, but four months later they don’t even treat us like humans anymore,” said Fox Wingate, 24, who works at a Safeway in Maryland. (Source: WaPo)

Okay. I have to get it out there. I'm gonna say that I'm not all that worried about a 24-year-old named Fox Wingate who uses words like "valorized" and "deemed." I suspect that Fox will have other career options to explore. Still, I have plenty of sympathy for grocery workers, many of them women and people of color, who make, on average, $27K a year. There's making a living and there's not making a living and, unless you live in the backwoods, $27K a year ain't a living. And if you live in the backwoods a) there are probably no grocery stores; b) you're probably being paid well below the national average. 

And for that $27K, you're in a risky business - 130 grocery store workers have been killed by COVID - and you have to put up with nasty customers.

Thankfully, on my treks to Roche Brothers or, on rare occasion, Whole Foods, I haven't seen anyone ill-treating a grocery store worker. I did, however, see a set-to at the Copley Square Farmers Market last Friday.

During the over-60 hour, I was in a short, spaced waiting line for one of the farm stands. I was behind a guy who appeared to be older then me. In front of him, and next in line to get waited on and buy some corn and blueberries, was a woman who I judged to be younger: early 60's. 

Anyway, the woman felt that the older guy was standing a bit too close for her liking, so she started to tell him off - and rail on him because his mask had slipped down under his nose. They went back and forth for the few minutes we were waiting for our little line to move, and it was all pretty entertaining. I learned that she has a compromised immune system, and he's had prostate cancer. They went back and forth, but it was only with slightly raised voices - this was, after all, the oldie hour in front of Trinity Church in Boston's Back Bay, where you can easily imagine that most of the shoppers still have a McGovern button somewhere in their possession. Insults hurled, but no punches thrown. 

I passed her a few minutes later and she was bitching to two friends about the older guy.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, grocery workers are trying to figure out how they're going to survive, both physically and economically. 

They've had new tasks added to the roles - like disinfecting the card machine after each transaction, and the dreadful enforcing of the face mask requirement - and they've often had their hours cut, as more shoppers opt for home delivering and more former shoppers are standing in breadlines, not checking to see whether there's any TP on the shelves and whether they have their coupon for Skippy Peanut Butter. Many grocery workers don't have any paid sick leave, and when you're only making $27K a year, the idea of taking unpaid time off is not all that attractive. 

It's really not such a super world out there, is it?

When you're not even safe from anti-maskers on Sesame Street..

How much do you suppose a 17 year old kid working at a Sesame Street theme park in Pennsylvania makes an hour?

Minimum wage - which hasn't budged since 2009 - is $7.25 an hour in Pennsylvania. So maybe a kid working at Sesame Place makes a bit more. But probably not much. 

I'm a big believer that everyone should have at least one or two really crappy jobs in their younger days - jobs that are low-skill, boring, aggravating, bottom of the work heap. Sure, fancy internships where you get to sit around pretending you're working, but are really just sitting there all day trying to figure out how you're going to position the internship on your resume - are all swell and good. But there's really nothing like a crummy job where you actually work.  

And you know what? I've never met anyone who regrets for a moment that, along the way, they had those rudimentary punch-clock jobs. (Of course, most of the people I know are cranky oldsters who'd give anything to peel back a few decades or more to be working one of those jobs again.)

But if you're a 17 year old kid working at Sesame Place who got punched in the face for asking some aholes to put on a face mask, you might be wishing you had lined up something a bit cushier for the summer. (Hope their face mask provided a bit of protection.)

Anyway, this kid was "aggressively punched", and it was a twofer: punched by a female and by a male. Who threw the haymaker? The left uppercut? Nice to see some equality of asshole-ishness, isn't it? I'm sure proud!

There was no push back when the teen first approached the guests to remind them to wear their masks, according to CNN affiliate WPVI. But later, when the employee reminded them a second time, the guests turned violent. It's unclear where in the park these encounters took place...

After punching the employee, both guests left, along with their party, accordintg to WPVI. It's unclear if they were asked to leave or left on their own account. (Source: CNN)

No one's been arrested yet, but there are surveillance videos and reservation forms that have let the police make a tentative ID.

Seriously, what is wrong with people? 

You take your kids to Sesame Place, it's supposed to be a happy time. You get to see Bert & Ernie, and Big Bird. It's all about acceptance, inclusiveness, kindness, being good to people. I've never been, but I imagine that, alongside the "let's get you to spend money on crap" vibe, there's also a channeling of Mr. Rogers. 

But these creeps aren't vibing Fred Rogers. Instead, they're showing their kids how to be belligerent, violent, no-nothing jerks. While, of course, interpreting their behavior as standing up for their rights, not getting pushed around by a punk kid, etc. Sheesh. Even Oscar the Grouch would be perplexed by this. 

And Elmo? Poor little Elmo? What must he be thinking? 

I hope they catch the jerks who disturbed the Sesame Street peace. I hope the kid who got punched is okay. At least they'll have a good story to tell when they're an old geezer reminiscing about the crappy jobs they had when they were a kid. 

Kermit the Frog taught us that it's not easy being green. This episode teaches us that, in a time of COVID, it's not easy working at Sesame Place.

The fussy parent variation on the fussy eater theme

Growing up, I was as fussy an eater as one was allowed to be in a large family where you ate what was put in front of you.

I recall only two incidents where I had to sit there after everyone else had left the table to finish my meal up.

One was a breakfast, where my mother was forcing me to finish a fried egg that was not fried to my liking. I.e., it was not completely unrunny, as firm as leather. When her back was turned, I managed to get rid of that oogy egg by shoving it down the broken eye socket of my baby doll. That showed her! (My mother, not the baby doll.) I suppose that she eventually discovered my ploy. Surely the remains of a fried egg entombed in a plastic baby doll would smell at some point. But there were no repercussions. Generally, my mother accommodated my requirement for a tough fried egg. 

I outgrew this requirement, of course, and an egg over-easy, with plenty of yolk to sop up with toast, is today a real treat.

The other mother vs. child food incident I remember was sitting there until I finished my creamed corn. Now who in their right mind would make a child eat something with the look and feel of vomit? The inevitable happened, and I don't remember ever again being forced to eat creamed corn.

I did not outgrow this one. The very thought of creamed corn can summon up a bit of a gag reflex.

But mostly my mother went with the flow. She mostly made things we liked, and if once a year I had to gag down creamed chipped beef - a favorite of my father and my sister Kath - or a bit of liver (yuck!), it was fine.

There was no choice when it came to the meat and the potato. But my mother was somewhat flexible when it came to veggies. When there was something nasty on the menu - like cooked spinach (which at the time I despised) - there was always another vegetable on offer (liked can peas), and all you had to do was eat one vegetable and be done with it. 

Then there were the items that were completely optional. Although we always had tomatoes around - those pink pulpy winter ones, the gorgeous farm stand summer natives - I never ate a tomato until I was in my teens.

For anything I found objectionable - I was never a roast beef/roast veal/roast lamb fan - I developed a knack for filling my mouth with milk and sluicing down something whatever it was I didn't like. This came in especially handy when we were at my Grandmother Wolf's lake house, and every meal seemed to feature the tough and fibrous waxed ("vaxed") beans she grew in her sadismo garden. 

While my mother wanted peace in her time, she would never have done separate menus. I know people whose kids, well into their teens, only eat "white foods" - chicken, pasta with butter, etc. That would not have flown in our house, that's for sure.

But my mother wasn't an especially adventurous cook. My father was a meat and potatoes man, and while she ventured out a bit - she made great spaghetti sauce, for one thing - she mostly stuck to the basics. (One time, for her birthday - yes, you read that right, her birthday - she made chicken jumbalaya with rice and okra. We refused to eat it, and my father jumped to our defense. He was suspicious of it, as well. My parents got over this little set-to - they adored each other - but after that my mother stayed completely on the straight and narrow, cooking-wise.)

Somehow, through all this, I grew up to be a fairly adventurous eater. Not Anthony Bourdain adventurous, mind you, but Main South Worcester adventurous for sure. While there are foods I prefer over others, I'm mostly okay with anything. 

As a kid though...

Once in a while, someone's birthday party would be a lunch. We all went home for lunch anyway, so no big deal to go to another kid's house. Ellen Walsh's lunch party fell on a Friday, and her mother served us tuna sandwiches. Which would have been fine by me, but Mrs. Walsh put green pepper in her tuna salad. The horror. Milk sluice to the rescue. 

Years later, at age 14, I was given a BLT - now one of my favorite sandwiches - and had a moment of crisis when I had to decide whether to take the tomato out or just go with it. By that point, I was too embarrassed to admit I didn't eat tomatoes, so I took the plunge. 

In any case, I was completely cracked up by a question that was sent into the Dear Prudence column on Slate:

Q.  My son, “Chris,” is 9. A few weeks ago, we decided to open our bubble to include the family of “Neil,” Chris’s best friend. Both of Neil’s parents are doctors, so this seemed like a safe decision. Both parents were born and raised in India. We let Chris have dinner at their place the other night since both boys were having a great time together. When we came to pick up Chris, Neil’s mom recounted to me how much chicken curry and lentils and vegetables Chris ate. I couldn’t believe that they served my son spicy curries without even calling to ask us if that would be OK! I was taken aback and gently mentioned that spicy foods can be hard on small tummies, but it didn’t seem to register. Thankfully Chris didn’t get sick. My wife says to drop it because any conversation will look racial in nature and to only let the boys play at our place. Please help.

Please help, alright.

You're saying your kid ate Indian food for the first time, and apparently liked it enough to eat a lot of it, and you've got a problem with that? Huh?

You should be congratulating yourselves on having raised a kid who's a bit adventurous and plenty polite, rather than a sniveling, whiny boo-boo baby crying about how Neil's meanie parents made him eat nasty "foreign" food.

This reminds me of the night when my mother served spaghetti when my aunt and uncle and their kids were up for dinner. They usually came on Friday, which meant fish, but this must have been a mid-week special of some sort. Pretty bold of my mother to serve her (excellent) spaghetti to folks who were even blander food-wise than we were. 

Anyway, when he saw the spaghetti, my cousin Rob, who must have been 13 or 14 at the time, turned to his mother and asked her, "Do I eat this?" At age 7 or 8, I was a bit shocked by this question. How could you get to the advanced age of 13 or 14 and not know if you ate something?

Anyway, my Aunt Margaret's answer was pretty much "you do now."

Which was, of course, the right answer. 

And here's Prudie's right answer to the idiot-stick father who only wants the kids to play at his house where, presumably, he'll be spooning them pabulum for dinner.

A. At the risk of taking the bait, you must realize that millions of people (presumably both of Neil’s parents, not to mention Neil himself) regularly eat lentils and vegetables as children in perfect safety. There’s something so grotesque about the infantilizing language of “gently informing someone”—especially when that someone is “two doctors”—about “small tummies,” coupled with the racist horror that your 9-year-old ate and enjoyed a few servings of chicken curry, one of the world’s most popular and adaptable dishes. Not all curries are spicy, and not all spices pack heat; your son ate a meal he enjoyed (one you didn’t have to prepare or clean up after ) and continued to enjoy good health for the rest of the evening. Neil’s parents didn’t take him to a ghost pepper festival and turn him loose. Your kid was not endangered by chicken curry, and your problem is not one that Neil’s parents can fix for you. Take your wife’s advice and let this go.

I love that "your problem is not one that Neil's parents can fix for you."

This guy's got to get over being such a fussy parent.

"Pandemic triggers boom in plastic surgery"? But of course...

I must admit that I've been doing a bit of impulse buying of late. 

Sick of my boring (and non-washable) place mats, I ordered a new set (plus napkins) from Wayfair. 

Wayfair always has just what I need, so since I was even sicker of the chrome upstairs bathroom soap dispenser, which was oogily rusting,I ordered a new soap dispenser.

I'm seriously considering replacing the area rug in my den with something a little less cheapo. And I'm deciding whether my 100 year old mahogany dining set needs to go. Nothing against mahogany - I like this set just fine - but I've never been much for furniture polishing, and every time I lean back in one of the chairs, I hear a crack. So far, a jar of Gorilla Glue and a jar of Old English Lemon Oil have been my only recent dining room set related buys (other than the new place mats and napkins), but I've begun checking out tables and chairs and trying to justify this magnitude of purchase.

So I know that the stir-craziness of pandemic lock-down - however quasi that lock-down is in its present state - can give you the urge for doing a bit of shopping. And think of all that money we're not spending going out to eat. Burning virtual holes in our virtual pockets. Why not treat ourselves to a little something or other?

But treat myself to a bit of plastic surgery? 

Even though when I come in from my walk, I catch my reflection in the lobby mirror and note that I seem to be getting shorter and squatter by the day, and that all the pandemic-related snacking has certainly done wonders for expanding my muffin top, I hadn't really thought about spending any of my COVID savings on liposuction or frozen sculpting treatment.

And now that I've given it some thought, it's a hard - okay, make that flabby - "No."

But Jocelyn - not her real name - a 25-year old NYC actress came to a different conclusion when she found she'd packed on a few lbs:

‘‘I wasn’t able to spend as much money as I would have normally, on eating out or shopping excessively,’’ she says.

As a result of her unhealthy weight and healthier bank balance, Jocelyn splurged on cosmetic surgery; in her case, it was an AirSculpt treatment, a body-contouring alternative to liposuction.

‘‘I got it done on a Wednesday, filmed a commercial that same Friday, and right after, went on a date, because I looked freaking amazing and I darn sure wasn’t going to be the only person to see it,’’ she says. (Source: Bloomberg via the Boston Globe)

"Jocelyn" is not alone, which means that demand is up for Botox, butt lifts, and everything else a pandemic-weary nation wants and needs. 

Some of this is business spurt is due to pent up demand. After all, even in the most lax of states, Botox injectors couldn't have been considered essential workers. So they experienced a shutdown in those dark early days. But there's also new demand, as all the pandemic-inspired navel gazing is causing folks to look above and beyond their navel and take a closer look at their overall appearance. And apparently not liking what their seeing. Thus one NY surgeon is experiencing major growth in requests for breast reduction. (Could this be the result of so many work-at-homies unhooking their bras for the duration?)

The surgeons benefiting from all this have different explanations. 

One attributes it to the "quarantine 15", and the desire to shed those unwelcome pounds fast. Others say that all that Facetiming, all that Zooming, has made folks more conscious of defects like a double chin. According to one doc who does a lot of vanity surgery, "the double-chin business" - and who even knew there was such a thing - "has skyrocketed."

Then there's this, from Dr. Lara Devgan, a New York plastic surgeon who's business is booming:

‘‘There’s something inherently unflattering about a 30-degree, angled-upward, forward-facing camera on a laptop,’’ Devgan explains. ‘‘I had one patient, who was previously just happy with Botox and fillers, proceed with a face and neck lift as a result of being on endless streams of Zoom calls. She saw jowls and neck folds she’d never appreciated before quarantine.’’

Having the time and privacy to recover at home from cosmetic surgery is also a driver. There's something called the Plasma Pen.  

The procedure, often used to erase smoker’s lines around the mouth, results in scabbing that last 10 days or so. Amid widespread mask-wearing, the scabs need never be seen.

Same goes for those looking to plump their lips or resurface whatever plane of their body bothers them.

One person interviewed for the article had a number of small procedures, thanks to her stimulus check and unemployment compensation. 

I don't suppose tossing money at plastic surgery is all that much more ridiculous than my going all-in for a new veggie cutting board. But it does strike me that this sort of superficial appearance-focus when so many tens of thousands are dying, when millions more are ill, when there are so many unemployed, all those small businesses thrown for a loop, and a truly terrible person in the White House doing his damnedest to destroy the country, seems a bit misplaced. 

Guess we'll just have to chalk it up to one more example of American exceptionalism.