Bibi's dirty laundry

I'm a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at MIT. A lesser graduate, to be sure, but a graduate nonetheless. Our most famous alum is probably Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. 

It's probably no surprise to anyone when I say that, despite having some business school rah-rah in common, I'm not a big fan of Bibi's. Way too righty for me!

While I haven't followed his political care all that closely, I am aware that there's an aura of personal corruption around him - including hiding/disguising items so that they can be covered as expenses, and receiving $200K worth of cigars and champagne in exchange for whatever. Which seems like an awful lot of cigars and champagne, but I guess when you're Bibi, nothing but the best. Anyway, in general, he's regarded as something of a grifter. (In that, Bibi has something in common with his bestie in the Oval Office.)

But I wasn't aware that his grift extended to bringing "bags and suitcases full of dirty laundry" when he's making official visits to the US, toting it along with the expectation that his hosts will take care of it for him.

The clothes are cleaned for the prime minister free of charge by the U.S. staff, a perk that is available to all foreign leaders but sparingly taken advantage of given the short stays of busy heads of state.

“The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of a foreign leader’s visits. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional." (Source: WaPo)

These allegations are being denied by Israeli officialdom, who are labeling the charges "absurd." Well, they are absurd. And the U.S. Embassy has stated that, at least for this most recent trip, Bibi's laundry needs were minimal. A couple of shirts laundered. Bibi's suit, his wife's dress ironed. And,

"Oh yes, a pair of pajamas that the Prime Minister wore on the 12 hour flight from Israel to Washington was also laundered,” the embassy statement said.

Hmmm.  He probably wasn't wearing those PJ's for 12 hours, but for a normal night's sleep of 7-8 hours - and those 7-8 hours weren't spent sitting slightly reclined in the economy cabin with a flimsy pillow and staticky blanket. So were they getting any more wrinkled and uggy than they would in a regular bed? Probably not. And how many of us - other than the very nice but OCD woman upstairs who washes her flannel Lanz pajamas daily - wash their PJ's after one wearing? No one I know. 

Anyway, other officials have confirmed that, for years, Bibi's been channeling his inner college student bringing home duffels full o' laundry for mom by bringing suitcases full of dirty laundry along with him when he comes to call. 

And not just when he comes to call in the US. Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu reportedly:

...took 11 suitcases on a one-day trip to Portugal in December. Netanyahu’s office denied speculation that the suitcases were filled with dirty laundry, saying they included items he needed for his office work.

What kind of dirty work, I mean office work, takes up 11 suitcases for a one-day trip? 

But why pack light if you don't need to pay for checked baggage - and if your hosts are willing to play laundromat for you?

Pretty grifty behavior, that's for sure. And nothing that they taught us at Sloan. At least not in any of the courses I took!

Coffin ships take to the skies

I've flown Lufthansa a couple of times, and it's mostly been a great experience. It helped that, thanks to the frequent flyer miles my husband so insanely collected, most of the times I've been on Lufthansa for overseas flights, it's been in business class. 

Oh, it wasn't all perfect. One time, a flight attendant decided I must be German, and got a bit annoyed when I told her I was a non-sprecher. 

And on one short-hop intra-Europe flight - when we were flying steerage - there was a weird little occurrence when they boarded everyone at once without going by row assignment or boarding group. It was completely inefficient - so non-German.

But mostly it's one of the best airlines I've ever flown. Maybe even the best. (I haven't been on a primo like Emirates, but I've flown plenty of the European carriers over the years, and most of the domestic ones that aren't total puddle jumpers. And I've even traveled on a few of those puddle jumpers. Ask me about Bar (Barf) Harbor, why don't you?)

Anyway, I'd be more than happy to fly Lufthansa again, once the COVID seatbelt light is turned off and we're free to walk around the cabin, metaphorically speaking. 

Not that I'm going anywhere soon, but I was delighted to see that Lufthansa is about:

...to start making rapid COVID-19 antigen tests available to passengers in October and is weighing the option of opening test centers at airports in the United States and Canada, a company executive said on Tuesday.

The move comes as airlines and airports globally have urged countries to accept a passenger’s negative COVID-19 test as an alternative to travel restrictions and quarantines that have battered demand for travel. (Source: Reuters)

The airline will be looking into rapid - 15 minute - results tests, as this is really the only way it will work out. Who wants to make an extra trip to the airport, a few days in advance of a trip, to have a COVID test when they can get one closer to home. 

There's just one little fly in this ointment:

[Senior Director Bjoern] Becker said Lufthansa is considering making the new antigen tests initially available to its first-class and business class passengers, given limited supply.

Having enjoyed the benefits of traveling first and business class, I'm fine with rewarding the big spenders (or frequent flyer miles accumulators) with well-appointed lounges to hang out in. Earlier boarding. More comfortable seats. Better food. Served on china. With cloth napkins. A little travel gift. Preferred luggage treatment. More toilets per capita. Nicer service.

And these are all easier to give to the haves, while not giving them to the have-nots. It is, as they say, what it is. Sure, we're left there, like the Poor Little Match Girl, with our noses pressed up against the curtain that separates first and business from "economy" (a.k.a., steerage). The truth is that everyone can't be a one-percenter.

But I've got a frage for Lufthansa. (Frage, that's German for question. See, after that flight attendant threw down the gauntlet, I took it upon myself to Duolingo my way into learning a word or two of my mama's mamaloshen. (Okay, that's Yiddish, but close enough.))

So here's meine frage for Lufthansa:

If the first and business class passengers are all COVID free at the moment of departure, how are you going to protect travelers from steerage class folks who might have had their COVID test a few days before? Sure, there's that curtain between us and them. (Or is it them and us?) But that curtain's not exactly air tight, and sometimes it's even beaded. And I believe that while the upper classes get free champagne while the rest of us get a half pour of apple juice, the same air circulates throughout the plane. Not just in each cabin separately.

I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, so it's not my worry. Sure, I can see why the first and business class travelers would be happy to get a near real-time test in hand to provide to officials at whatever border they're crossing that they're not a 21st century Typhoid Mary. But what's going to keep some steerage classer, having passed whatever screening the airline requires for boarding - sweeping a thermometer across someone's forehead - from coughing their head off and turning the plane into a coffin ship?

Lord & Taylor may soon be history, but there's life (cough, cough) in retail yet

There are a growing number of empty storefronts in Boston. Lots of smaller places - bars, restaurants, and stores - are goners. Lord & Taylor is still open, but barely. It'll be closing soon. I'm doing my bit for the neighborhood shops, but it's just a bit. There are only so many greeting cards I can buy at my favorite gift shop. 

I'm doing some online shopping - with all the walking I do, I manage to go through a couple of pairs of sneaks every few months. And new undies, well, they're a perpetual must. 

There's just not that much I want or need to buy.

Other than COVID-related stuff. Most of that - masks, gloves, hand sanitizer - I purchased early on. I'm guessing that when this all ends, I'll have enough neoprene gloves to hack up a raw chicken pretty much every day for the rest of my life. And the masks? I'll hang on to those just in case Mother Nature or the wet market pangolins have another pandemic up their sleeves.

I have done some recent mask shopping, however. I've gotten a couple of Halloween-ish masks, a few that I'll wear over Christmas, and something that will work for St. Patrick's Day. Which I hope takes me through COVID season. All of them.

Anyway, my masks, gloves, and hand sanitizers have come from local stores, Etsy and other online sources.

But I've yet to see a store devoted to COVID gear. That's apparently because I'm not in King of Prussia, PA. If I were there, I could bop on over to King of Prussia Mall and do my spending at COVID-19 Essentials.

I guess that it's not surprising that some enterprising retailer came up with the idea. Pop up stores are popping up everywhere, so why not one designed to see us through the pandemic?

Masks make up most of the merchandise, including real-fake designer masks (Hermes, Louis Vuitton) - one-tenth the cost of a true designer mask. There are masks with mouth zippers so you can eat, drink, and smoke more easily - and give a full tongue-out raspberry to someone who's not wearing a mask. There are masks that are built in to a hoodie, which might come in pretty handy this winter. (If my mother were alive, I would have gotten her one of these for her upcoming birthday.)

And then there gems like this somewhat kinky one:

For those who want everything to be bespoke, you can customize masks.

Hand sanitizers are on sale, of course. As are touchless thermometers. 

And for those who are concerned about the mask equivalent of bad breath, the store sells lavender and mint mask spray. 

They also sell COVID-related paraphernalia, like a device that lets you grasp a door handle without having to touch it with your bare-naked hand. Useful if you run short on neoprene gloves, I guess.

COVID-19 is a small chain, with a couple of other outlets in NJ and one in Miami. 

The owner, Erik Markowitz, recognizes (and, in fact, hopes) that his business will be a short-term one.

“Buy a mask and put me out of business. The sooner I go out of business, the better.” (Source: Philly Mag)

Couldn't agree more.  

I'm just happy to see that, at least in King of Prussia, there's life (cough, cough) in retail yet. 

What a way to go

I like licorice as much as the next guy. When they're part of the mix, I like licorice jelly beans. It's not my favorite, but the licorice Chuckle isn't the one I eat first to get it over with. (That would be the mint green one.) I like Good 'n Plenty, and have since Choo-Choo Charlie was telling us kids how much he loved them. And licorice All Sorts? Yummers.

I also like Twizzler red licorice. And, yes, I do know that it's not really licorice. Which is a good thing.

And there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. As one fellow in Massachusetts found that out the hard way.

As was just reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, a 54-year-old Massachusetts construction worker collapsed (at a fast food joint, no less) after:

...eating one or two large bags a day for three weeks threw his nutrients out of whack and caused his heart to stop. (Source: Boston Globe) 

One or two large bags a day? I've been known to binge on Twizzlers. Or Oreos. Or a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies (chocolate mints, of course). These binges have resulted in mild gastro discomfort, and a deep feeling of shame, but I never felt I was in a near-death experience. That I did feel, years ago, when I guzzled down a few Diet Cokes in rapid order while in the office on a Saturday working on some do-or-die deliverable. My heart started to race, and that was it for my ever guzzling down multiple Diet Cokes in rapid order.

Anyway, the culprit in licorice is something called:

...glycyrrhizic acid, found in black licorice and in many other foods and dietary supplements containing licorice root extract. It can cause dangerously low potassium and imbalances in other minerals called electrolytes.

The family of the construction worker reported that, prior to switching over to licorice, he'd been eating multiple bags of soft, fruit-flavored candies every day. Bad move. In any case, I'm guessing that the poor bastard was just trying to stop smoking.

As it turns out:

The US Food and Drug Administration warned on its website in 2017, “If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia.”

The FDA advises that no matter what your age, you should not eat large quantities of black licorice; if you have muscle weakness or an irregular heartbeat, you should stop eating it and call your doctor; and you should consult with your doctor about interactions it may have with your other medications.

Consider yourselves warned.

And speaking of warned, how long do you think it'll be before bags of licorice, boxes of Good 'n Plenty, tins of All Sorts, start coming with some sort of Surgeon General's warning. I don't know about you, but seeing a skull and crossbones on a package of candy would give me pause. 

Still, considering all the god-awful ways to die there are out there, dropping dead from eating too much licorice doesn't seem like that bad a way to go.

Puzzling

I come from a family of jigsaw puzzlers, at least on the distaff side. My mother was famous for doing puzzles, and if we were hard up for a gift idea, there was always a puzzle or two to be had from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When any of us were in Worcester visiting, as often as not we spent some time doing a puzzle. (That or playing no-holds-barred Canasta.) My mother built up quite a collection over the years. Regretfully, after she died, we donated them to the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop. 

I say regretfully because her daughters and granddaughters have all become puzzlers, and at my sister Kath's on the Cape, there is always a puzzle going.

Not that we ever stopped being puzzlers. 

In my first post-college apartment, I had a couple of glued puzzles (Saturday Evening Post or Collier's covers from the 1930's) framed as "art work." 

And at one point in the way back, we all rented a house on a lake outside Worcester. One day, when only Trish and I were there, we began doing one of my mother's arty puzzles. Renoir's Dance at Bougival, I believe. 

The house was in a lovely spot, but very isolated. Nothing around but trees and ominous noises. So Trish and I found ourselves, in the middle of a dark and stormy (and totes scary) night, working that puzzle. Fortunately, we had some spotlights that Kath - wise to the ways of rental cottages - had brought along. 

Anyway, there's always a puzzle going at the Cape. Kath and Trish are both very good at jigsaw puzzles. Trish's daughter Molly always throws in and does some of the puzzling, but she's not as dogged and fanatic as her mother or aunt. Let alone her cousin Caroline, who is the family champeen.

I'm not as good (or as dogged and fanatic) as I used to be. I need a TON of light, and my eyes get tired pretty easily. My back stiffens up from all that leaning over. Still, I enjoy spending a few minutes, letting out a yelp of triumph every time a piece or two fits in.

We all still like fine art puzzles. New Yorker covers. Flowers. Landscapes. Animals.

Every once in a while, someone picks up a puzzle at the puzzle store in P'town - hope it's still there - and these are often "collection" puzzles, like this Santa one.

The worst one in that genre was a collage of desserts, each one more nauseating than the other. Even those of us with a sweet tooth were hard put to pick one out that we'd actually eat. There was one sickly green confection that looked straight out of Peter Pan. You know, when Captain Hook plotted to get rid of Peter and the lost boys by poisoning a cake.

 

To cook a cake quite large

And fill each layer in between

With icing mixed with poison

Til it turns a tempting green

We'll place it near the house

Just where the boys are sure to come

And being greedy they won't care to

Question such a plum

The boys who have no mother sweet

No one to show them their mistake

Won't know it's dangerous to eat

So damp and rich a cake-

And so before the winking of an eye

Those boys will eat that poison cake

And one by one they'll die-

I can't call Kath and check on what exactly the puzzle confection was, because that puzzle is long gone. After we've done them a couple of times - and for some puzzles, it's not even a couple of times: it's one-and-done - Kath donates them to a thrift store in Wellfleet. Or one of us takes it home.

I have one such puzzle sitting here,  a New Yorker cover, "Summer Vacation" (August 18, 1934). Any day now, I'll get moving on it.

. 

We buy decent quality puzzles: the pictures are clear, the pieces don't get spongy, the picture doesn't peel off the cardboard backing. But we don't go in for investment puzzles either.

I had actually not heard of such a thing until the other day, when I saw an article in the Boston Globe on a Vermont company called Stave Puzzles, which "specializes in bespoke cherry-backed wooden puzzles priced from $150 to a cool $6,000 or more."

Not that I'd pay that much anyway, but I went over to take a look at Stave, and I didn't find anything for $150. They may well have some cheap-o puzzles for sale, but the cheapest one I came across cost - gulp - a whopping $295.

What I did find was a lot of beautiful puzzles, and plenty that I found sort of 'meh'. And most of the ones I liked cost over $1K.

For Stave, the pandemic has been very good for business. 

Folks are closed in, bored, looking for something to do. They're making sourdough bread. They're zooming. And they're doing puzzles. Including expensive ones. 

What are they paying for?

Stave Puzzles are handmade and made-to-order. Each one is hand-drawn by one of the many artists Stave works with from around the world. Some are based on photos supplied by customers — representing, say, a pet or the family home. Hundreds of others feature images in dozens of categories — including animals, architecture, people, seasons, magazine covers, and museum art...

Each puzzle is meticulously hand-cut, one piece at a time, by a blade no wider than an eyelash. The pieces are then sanded, polished to shine, and placed inside a thick signature blue-and-green golden-embossed box.

Puzzles are available at different degrees of difficulty: traditional, trick, teaser, tormentor. And - get this - there's no picture of what the end result is on that blue-and-green golden-embossed box. Which is, I understand, how puzzles used to roll when they were first invented. People had to figure out the puzzle with little more than a clue, like "mountain scene." Which would make puzzling life pretty difficult for those of us who pick up a piece and try to figure out where it goes by scrutinizing the picture on the cover of the box.

Of course, puzzlers have the recourse of printing off a nice color version of the puzzle picture. Which I'm guessing 99.99% of Stave's customers do. But if you got one as a gift from a meanie, I suppose they could hold back the critical information like what's it a puzzle of. 

Stave puzzles, even when I don't like the art work, are, indeed, things of beauty. I wouldn't pay $1,046 for this one of old Fenway. 

But I wouldn't say 'no' if someone gave it to me. 

Custom puzzles, by the way, can set you back $10K. 

The story of how Stave came into business is interesting. 

Back in 1970, Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbets were laid off from the computer company where they worked. They wanted to remake themselves and their careers and started a cardboard game and puzzle company.  A couple of years later, Richardson ran into a wooden puzzle fan who told him that he paid $300 for a puzzle. 

“I sat up and saluted!” Richardson recalled. “We were getting $3 for our cardboard puzzles.”

Back in Vermont, Richardson’s father-in-law gave him an old scroll saw. Tibbetts and Richardson set out to see “if we could make these fancy puzzles” and cater “to the Rolls-Royce crowd.”

They eventually took out six ads in The New Yorker. The week after the first ad ran, they received a check for $2,400 from a customer buying all eight of their $300 puzzles, Richardson said.

With the New Yorker ad, they found their market. And the number of New Yorker covers in their catalog pretty much confirms things. 

Anyway, nice to learn about this little piece of interesting business, even if it's a puzzle to me that someone would spend $1,046 for a puzzle. 

Fish story

Other than blogging, and my newfound zest for commenting on Twitter (biggest thrill to date: 600+ likes on a comment I made about Bill Barr), I don't have any hobbies. I don't collect stamps. Or retro salt & pepper shakers. Although I know how, I don't needlepoint. Or garden. Or golf.

But since COVID, a lot of folks have adopted new hobbies. And one of those new hobbies is magnet fishing.

No, you're not fishing for fish with magnets. You're fishing with magnets for junk. And the practice brings out the inner environmentalist and the inner treasurer hunter in its adherents. Environmentalist, because the magnet fishers are cleaning a lot of detritus out of rivers and lakes. And treasure hunter because you never know what you'll find.

Most of the stuff that gets found is along the lines of discarded hammers and discarded nails. Keys. Old signposts. Railroad spikes. Shopping carts. Bikes. Old appliances. And plenty of things that you wouldn't be able to easily haul in by yourself: abandoned vehicles, fridges. (More serious magnet fishers invest in large magnets and grappling gear that let them drag out some pretty heavy things, though.) Safes are popular quarry, with the eternal optimists among magnet fishers hoping that they'll find a jackpot: diamonds, rubies, pearls. Too bad most of the safes that get jettisoned were from robberies, and they've been looted of any loot.

A frequent find - one which adds detective to the environmentalist-treasure hunter mix - is weaponry.

Just recently, a Massachusetts magnet angler plying his hobby near the now-decommissioned Fort Devens found a mortar shell and a "pineapple" grenade. Arthur Flynn's catch of the day brought forth cops and the bomb squad:

“The subject in question was advised to discontinue his endeavors,” a trooper wrote in a police report, noting that the weapons had been “severely corroded." (Source: Boston Globe)

Flynn's discovery triggered some alarms with both state and federal officials. Also environmentalists concerned about some dormant hazards being dredged up from the sediment. They're calling for this emergent hobby to be regulated. And the Army's taking some heat.

The discovery of the unexploded munitions led officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to chastise the Army, which still oversees the shuttered military base, for not alerting the public more widely to the discovery of the old weapons. A few weeks after the grenade and mortar shell were pulled to the surface, the EPA noted, someone else magnet fishing near the base pulled up what appeared to be another explosive device.

The EPA, concerned both the environmental impact of all this unexploded ordnance floating around, not to mention the potential loss of life and limb, started to put some pressure on the Army. And when they didn't budge, the EPA "invoked a rarely used dispute-resolution process between government agencies to press the Army to take action." 

The Army finally got off its duff, and they've begun figuring out what to do with all the other dangerous items hanging around the Devens area. And there's probably plenty, as Devens was an active base from World War I through the Iraq War. (In fact, my Uncle Charlie - among the last men to be drafted towards the tail end of WWII - was briefly stationed at Devens in 1945. They had run out of uniforms, so Charlie drilled wearing his civilian overcoat. And they were short on weaponry, too. When they were marching around, Charlie shouldered a fake wooden rifle.Talk about toy soldiers. Anyway, I'm pretty confident that any errant grenade Charlie might have tossed was unarmed. Probably just a baseball) 

“The Army reminds the public that keeping munitions, even Civil War cannonballs, as souvenirs is dangerous,” said Robert J. Simeone, an environmental coordinator for the Army overseeing Fort Devens.

Note to self: check tchotchkes to make sure I don't have a Civil War cannonball sitting around. 

Because of environmental and just plain danger issues, magnet fishing has already been banned on certain spots along the Nashua River near Devens, and a broader ban is under consideration. The state is also concerned that:

...the hobby could also threaten archeological sites and removing certain artifacts from such areas may be illegal.

Like those Civil War cannonballs, although Massachusetts wasn't exactly a battleground state then. (I guess some things never change. We're still not a battleground state.)

One local magnet fisher took up the hobby after a particularly aggressive seagull made off with a mackerel he'd caught while fish-fishing. No seagulls have gone after this fellow's magnetic catches of the day, which include a washing machine, a stop sign, and a Ducati motorcycle. 

He called police, believing it was stolen, and they called in heavier equipment to remove it from the Taunton River.

No final word on that Ducati, but it's a pretty safe bet that a Ducati found in the drink was, indeed, stolen.  

While I won't be taking up magnet fishing, but I have to say, it does sound kind of fun. And you don't have to bait a hook to make something happen. 

Animal Farm

It's been quite the year. As we whack-a-mole our way from one shocker-oo to another, it's just about impossible to sustain more than a 30-second focus on any one outrage, fear factor, surprise, craziness. Whatever it is, there's another one around the corner. 

That said, it's almost a relief when one of the 30-second whatevers is something other than Trump, the pandemic, another black man shot by the police...

Murder hornets? A pleasant interlude! The pre-election asteroid? Hey, cool! 

And now I've got the wild hog sitch to grab my nano-attention. Bring it!

There are about nine million feral hogs in the U.S. And those numbers are ballooning and increasing the estimated $2.5 billion in damage they already cost in the U.S. each year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.

That’s according to Dale Nolte, manager of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program at the Department of Agriculture, who tells The Atlantic that the increasing numbers of feral hogs in the U.S. is sometimes referred to as a “feral swine bomb.” (Source: WSAV)

"Feral swine bomb"? You don't say. How great would it be if they showed up for one of the Trump rallies? They might be interested to learn that America is going to put an astronaut on Nars, wherever that is. Any of them recalling their pre-wild days might wince, but be amused, by Trump's speculation projection that Joe Biden is getting booster shots in the ass to help him perform better. Those descended from domestic hogs that made a derring-do escape from the slurry-filled pig farm might like being told - as POTUS happily congratulated his all-white crowd of followers in Minnesota - that they have very good genes. 

And some of those feral hog genes may be every bit as fine, in their own way, as those of the cheering Magasotans. Nolte says that the hogs that are a hybrid between domestic hogs and wild boars with European roots are what Dale Nolte is calling "super pigs."

According to Nolte, they’re highly intelligent, have very good senses of smell and have physical attributes, like heavy fur, which increase their ability to survive in the wild. This is what they inherit from boars.

Equally problematic is the qualities they get from domestic pigs, which have been bred to be fertile at all times and to have large litters, more than 10 piglets in each litter, on average.

Plus those super pigs can grow to be 500 pounds and 3 feet tall. And they can power along at a speed of 30 m.p.h. And as they scoot along their merry way, they destroy everything in their path. They especially go for "sugar cane, corn, wheat, oats, rice and peanuts." (Same!) They like fruit, too. (Same!) They also like to chunk around on golf courses, snouting up big divots. (Not same!)

And they're kind of our own home grown version of the pangolin, transmitting all sorts of viruses, bacterial diseases, and parasites. 

Oh, yes, and they've been known to attack humans. In Texas, where a lot of the feral hogs hang out, they even killed a woman in her own front yard.

Fortunately, there are no feral hogs reported in Massachusetts. But they have been working their way north and east, and they've been spotted in NH and VT.

This winter's promising to be both scary (civil war, anyone?) and depressing (masks, everyone?). The last thing I want to see when I walk out my front door is a rampaging feral hog channeling its inner pangolin. 

Or are they more like the revolutionary pigs in Animal Farm?

In either case, what a year!

So what exactly do people learn in school

Because I don't have kids/grandkids, I really don't have a clue what they teach in schools these days. Do kids memorize the multiplication tables? Learn to sound out words? Explain things they've read to demonstrate comprehension? Write out their spelling homework? 

But I do remember pretty clearly what I learned in school, back in the good old days that were only a step or two removed from Laura Ingalls Wilder and her one room schoolhouse.

Quite a bit of what I learned turned out to be stuff and nonsense that has had limited (i.e., no) application in my actual real life. 

I went to parochial school, and we were required to learn by heart the answers to all kabillion (400-plus, anyway) questions contained in the Baltimore 2 catechism, beginning with the relatively easy ones like "Who made us?" up to the more abstract and complex questions around what happens to the bodies of the just (good things) vs. the bodies of the unjust (hellishly bad things). 

But, who knows. It may come in handy yet that I know the difference between a plenary and partial indulgence. 

And, even in grammar school, where days were a combination of abject boredom and abject terror, I did learn some things that proved to be valuable.

I can do arithmetic in my head. I can locate Egypt on the map. (I put Egypt in here because a lot of the countries I learned about in grammar school, e.g., the Belgian Congo, no longer exist.) I can sound out a big, unfamiliar word with some likelihood that I'll pronounce it correctly. Even if I will have forgotten the title and author of a book I finished a few hours ago, I'm a really good reader, with excellent reading comprehension. I know my state capitals. 

Plus I can still get a few stanzas into Paul Revere's Ride and recite O Captain, My Captain in its entirety. Maybe not much more useful than being able to explain a plenary indulgence. But it's something.

In high school, the learning got more sophisticated. There, I learned how to write a compelling essay, to think through an argument, to research a topic, to take a long complex article and pare it down to its essential meaning. I learned what good literature is, and the difference between poetry and doggerel. I learned how to stand up in front of a group and speak. Etc.

I also learned some practical skills that proved useful during my business career. Learning how to sit there while someone goes off on an irrational rant - as happened on occasion throughout my grammar and high school days, when a nun went into high gear - stood me in excellent stead in business.

And although I don't actually remember it being taught, somewhere along the way, I learned about the Holocaust. 

Maybe it was reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Or watching old World War II movies on Boston movie time - which wouldn't have covered the Holocaust, but which got me wanting to learn more about the war.

Anyway, by the time I was a young adult, I knew plenty about the Holocaust. On my first trip to Europe, when I was 23, one of the stops was Dachau. 

Today, knowledge of the Holocaust is apparently not all that widespread among younger Americans. 

Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure. One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

More than half (56%) said they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms and/or in their communities, and almost half (49%) had seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online. (Source: The Guardian)

I guess shouldn't come as a surprise. There's a regular drumbeat of survey results that reveal that plenty of Americans (and not just the young folks) can't locate their state on a map, don't know how our government works (or is supposed to), and can't calculate a tip without using a calculator. They don't know what the Civil War was fought over (or they get it wrong!) - and those are the ones who've at least heard of it, even if they can't place the century it took place in. There are people who aren't sure which came first, World War I or World War II. And there's ample evidence that a significant proportion of our population doesn't have a clue how science works, let alone tariffs. 

So why should we expect them to know anything about the Holocaust, one of the defining events of the 20th century - an event that one would suppose might be elevated in our collective consciousness, given that the perpetrators and victims were pretty much like "us" -  or at least the "us" made up of white folks with European roots. 

Anyway, the results of this survey are pretty shocking and disheartening. 

Even in a highly educated and enlightened state like Massachusetts, only 35% of millennial and Gen Z-ers had heard of the Holocaust, knew that 6 million Jews were slaughtered during it, and could name a concentration/death camp or ghetto. (We came in third, behind Wisconsin (42%) and Minnesota (37%). Interestingly, unlike Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Minnesota both have very high German-American populations. And if there's one thing the German education system does well is educate its students on the Holocaust. Maybe it's catchy.)

Not surprisingly, the states the fared poorly are states that don't tend to do well by any measure of academic success. Mississippi (18%) and Arkansas (17%) are the bottom dwellers. 

Whatever the colossal level of ignorance:

Seven out of 10 said it was not acceptable for an individual to hold neo-Nazi views.

Well, that's good. But I'm still left asking the question what exactly do people learn in school?

Look, up in the sky!

My brother Tom and his wife, Betsey, live in Washington State, on the coast, not far from Oregon. So I've been getting regular reports on the West Coast fires. Although they have friends in the Portland area who've been impacted, Tom and Bets are well away from the fire. But their cars are covered with a scrim of ash, and they've had some days when breathing outdoors has been a challenge. 

Before leaf-burning was outlawed, when I was growing up autumn  meant the pleasant smell of burning leaves, as most folks raked their leaves into the gutter and threw a match on them. We had a field near us, and sometimes there were brush fires, most notably the annual fire set by an elderly neighbor. Mr. L was well in his nineties and suffering from dementia. He'd think he was a back in the old country, and would torch the field as had been the practice back on the farm. The Worcester Fire Department would show up, dowse the flames, and that would be that. 

So my association with the burning-leaf smell is a positive one. 

You are getting sleepy

I read the other day that dentists are seeing a lot more patients with cracked teeth. Even though I'm not aware of any nocturnal gnashing of teeth, this isn't surprising. And this news did get me to dig out my night guard and start using it. 

The other bit of health news was that doctors are reporting more instances of insomnia. No surprise here, either. 

Of late, I haven't been sleeping as well as I had been, but I'm not sure how much is pandemic-related vs. how much is just that I've got a schedule that enables me to nap in the afternoon, get up in the middle of the night to read for a while, and to lay-in bed in the morning scrolling through Twitter. 

But I don't take anything to improve my sleep. My experience has pretty much been that if I have a toss and turn night, the next night is just a perfect ZZZZZZZZ-fest. So I've never taken a sleeping pill. Or melatonin (other than for a European night flight). Or a mug of warm milk. 

And I do know what to avoid. One of my major drinking mistakes back in the day - and I will admit to have made more than a few of those sorts of mistakes - was to have a couple of Irish Coffees late in the evening. Yowza. The combo of the whiskey downer and the coffee upper kept me up half the night, completely exhausted. 

Anyway, I'm probably not the target market for Pepsi's new Driftwell, which is supposed to "help consumers relax and unwind before bed."

The enhanced water drink contains 200 miligrams of L-theanine and 10% of the daily value of magnesium.

Driftwell will be available nationwide starting in December. (Source: CNBC)

Driftwell, huh? A fine name, indeed. It's just that, to me, it doesn't sound like a drink. It sounds more like something one might toke. 

Then there's the notion of water. I don't know about anyone else, but water before beddy-bye - enhanced or not - is not the recipe for a restful night's sleep. It's a guaranteed invitation to wake-up-to-pee.

But Pepsi claims that the mini-can is the "perfect size for hydrating before bedtime without requiring another trip to the bathroom." And they also cite some studies that suggest that L-theanine is a de-stresser and sleep enhancer. 

Okay.

Anyway,

Pepsi employees came up with an idea for a beverage to help consumers de-stress and relax before bed as part of an internal competition started last year by CEO Ramon Laguarta. The concept won, and the food and beverage giant went to work to make it a reality. 

Well, I do like the idea that employees came up with the idea. And I hope they got a nice little bonus out of it.  

Driftwell only comes in one flavor: blackberry lavender, which sounds to me like they're aiming Driftwell at the distaff side of the bedstead. Unless Pepsi's done some research that's found that somewhere along the line lavender has become manly.

Driftwell is part of something called the "functional water" market. Which is basically just water that's been duded up a bit with a flavor or an herb. Driftwell is a subset: a relaxation drink. (A "'nascent category.'")

Into that category go waters with CBD added in. This is the province of smaller companies, who are playing around with cannabis:

...despite the Food and Drug Administration prohibiting adding the cannabis compound to food and drinks, and large corporations like Pepsi have avoided any potential regulatory snafus by sidestepping the ingredient for now.

Forget the H2O thing here. Might be time to explore the world of edibles. Just to take the pandemic edge off...And if it gets me to drift well, all the better. 

No holiday Peeps? Yet another COVID casualty

I heard from a friend in Dallas the other day. They're back in paper towel shortage mode there. They appear to be in decent supply here in Boston, but if you're committed to only using Bounty, the quicker picker-upper, you may be out of luck. I have a couple dozen rolls on hand, and I'd be happy to share with Joyce. But mailing off a bulky package of paper towels, sending them 1,761 miles cross-country, doesn't seem to make all that much sense. I may let her know that I will consider a trade if she can find me a package of Halloween Oreos - the ones with the orange filling and the jack-o'-lantern stamp on them. I've been on the lookout, but haven't found any around. Maybe I'll try the Shaw's in Copley. That's one place I haven't looked yet.

Halloween Oreos and candy corn (preferably when mixed in with pumpkins, even more preferably when mixed in with the full panoply of "Harvest Mix": bats, cats, moons, witches, ears of corn: all that sweet and waxy goodness!) are the two seasonal items I look for. (I don't have to look for Butterfingers. My sister Trish always gives those out. Of course, this year there probably won't be any trick-or-treating out her way, so I may need to buy my own bag, rather than cadge from her supply.)

While I am all about the Peeps when it comes to Easter, I'm not that into Peeps for other occasions.

Sure, I've picked up a package of snowmen or Christmas tree Peeps, or the Halloween Peeps. But they're not really my jam. 

Good thing, because this year, there won't be any Halloween-themed Peeps. Nor Christmas ones. No Valentine's Day Peeps, either. And I suppose this means that Just Born (makers of Peeps) won't be gearing up to make sure that we have classic Peeps chicks in green for St. Patrick's Day.

The Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based company in April temporarily suspended the production of its candy brands. The suspension was done to protect the health and safety of their employees during the coronavirus pandemic, Just Born said in a statement to CNN.

The company said it resumed limited production in May after making changes in its plant to ensure employee safety.

"This situation resulted in us having to make the difficult decision to forego production of our seasonal candies for Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day in order to focus on meeting the expected overwhelming demand for Peeps for next Easter season, as well as our everyday candies," according to the company's statement. (Source: CNN)

When Just Born is running in full production mode, they produce 5.5 million Peeps every day. That's about 2 billion each year. Sure, that's only about six Peeps per American capita. But for those of us who do enjoy biting the occasional head off a marshmallow chick, a dent in their production hurts.

I am, of course, happy that the Peep-makers are back at work. And that things should be okay for next Easter. Because it's just not Easter for me personally until I have munched the head off of a Peep.

The deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The unknown long-run health implications for survivors. The economic devastation. The pathetic, inadequate, and lethal national response. The politicization of what should be a straightforward health issue. The lives disrupted. The plans squelched. The anxiety and depression so many are experiencing. The loneliness. The uncertainty. Etc.

There are so many ghastly aspects to the pandemic, it seems ridiculous to waste any (virtual) ink on worrying about holiday Peeps. Yet here we are, with yet another small and trivial way in which normal life is diminished. 

As if 2020 couldn't get any worse. 

Talk about all trick, no treat.

Fly me, I'm a perky young blond

Back in the day, when Madison Avenue was fully aware that sex sells - and not just when it comes to Viagra and Peyronie's Disease - there were any number of fairly salacious ads out there. One that stands out was National Airline's "Fly Me" campaign of the early 1970's. In National's TV ads, pretty, young (white, mostly blond) stewardesses introduced themselves  - I'm Diane, I'm Judy, I'm Terri - and then invited travelers to Fly Me.  

In the long run, their sexy ads didn't do National Airlines much good. They nosedived into becoming part of Pan Am, which eventually crashed and burned as well. 

And in the meantime, the stewardess profession is no longer the stewardess profession. They're flight attendants. They've gotten older. And they've gone co-ed. 

Which is not to say that, among certain categories of travelers, there's still not a preference for the sweet young things of yore. 

One of those categories is apparently - and not surprisingly - sports teams. 

And this isn't sitting all that well with flight attendants of the older and not-so-blond variety. So they're taking United Airlines to court. The women - one a Black woman with 28 years flying under her belt, the other a Jewish woman who's been in the sky for 34 years - maintain that:

Airlines Holdings Inc. packs its charter flights for sports teams with young, blond crews and bars older flight attendants from working the plum routes, according to a new lawsuit.

In so doing, the airline bases the value of workers “entirely on their racial and physical attributes, and stereotypical notions of sexual allure,” according to two veteran flight attendants who sued Friday in California. (Source: Bloomberg)

Racial and physical I might have included. But I don't know if I'd have rested my case on "stereotypical notions of sexual allure." Are these women arguing that they've still got it going in their 50's? I'm sure they're plenty fit and attractive. But let's face it, comparatively and perhaps stereotypically speaking, women and men in their 20's do tend to be sexier than those further on in life. (I am, of course, exempting Pierce Brosnan from this comparison.) 

I would think that a better leg to stand on would have been age discrimination, although maybe, legalese-wise, that's implied. 

Anyway, Sharon Tesler and Kim Guillory have been trying to get in on these flights for the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NCAA, because they're primo assignments.

Attendants who work those flights earn more and are provided with premium accommodations. They also sometimes get tickets to games, including playoff and Super Bowl tickets, and “extremely valuable” infield passes, according to the lawsuit.

Tesler and Guillory claim they were told they couldn't get to work those flights because the teams hadn't put them on their "preferred" lists. 

They said they later discovered that young, white blond attendants -- with less seniority -- were given the assignments.

“United has created a despicable situation,” the women said in the complaint. It’s “as if decades of laws and policies preventing discrimination based on age, race and ancestry, and gender simply do not exist.”

So far, United has little to say, other than the usual corporate-speak about equal opportunity...

Except that some opportunities are obviously more equal than other.

It's nonsense that Tesler and Guillory have been discriminated in when it comes to these jobs. Too bad if the "boys will be boys" and "jocks will be jocks" brigades don't get to ogle cuties when they're flying from one job site to another. 

Isn't it time to put an end to all the "coffee, tea, or me" crap in the workplace?

Fly me, indeed. 

Party Favors

I suspect, although I have no way of knowing by way of personal experience, that the Hampton's party season is winding down. After all, we're getting to that time of year when it's getting too chilly for the ankles of men who don't wear socks. Or whatever it is they do or don't wear in East Egg and or West Egg. (Tip of the boater to you, F. Scott Fitzgerald.)

So I'm guessing that the demand for Dr. Asma Rashid will be going down. She has had a nifty little practice going this summer giving rapid-results coronavirus tests to party guests. 

Such testing had: 

...become a common feature before guests can be allowed into parties at the affluent seaside communities -- and cost up to $500 per person, says Rashid, who runs a members-only medical concierge service. (Source: CNN)

Just another example - as if we needed one - of "the rich are different than you and me." (Thanks again, F. Scott.)

And as Hemingway famously (or apocryphally) replied: "Yes, they have more money." And I must admit, if you have more money, you do get to spend it on whatever you damned well please. 

It's all relative, of course. I don't go to parties to begin with, but if I did, they wouldn't be parties held by people spending $500 per guest to give them a speedily clean bill of COVID-free health. But it's not as if I don't fritter away plenty of money that someone staring down eviction would absolutely be rolling their eyes at. Just the other night, I sat here pondering whether to order two pairs of Allbirds I don't need, rather than one. (I went with one, by the way.)

But there is something a bit 'let them eat cake'-ish about grabbing up rapid tests that, presumably, could be used by front line medical personnel, or school teachers, or first responders, or grocery store employees, or workers in meat processing plants. Or those who want to go visit elderly relatives or meet the new baby in the family. Or any folks doing something more essential than partying on the lawn. 

"Instead of having hors d'oeuvres at the party, now the theme is let's do rapid testing," Rashid told CNN's Anderson Cooper this week.

Something tells me that those tests aren't a substitute for hors d'oeuvres, but in addition to. Pass the smoked salmon and caviar on cuke, the squash flower flatbread, the nasal swab. 

Of course, the tests do sometimes throw off false positives and false negatives. But mostly they're right. In any case, Dr. Rashid's tests - nasal swab or finger stick - come with a disclaimer. For Hampton's partiers, it's worth the risk. And at least they're trying to be cautious. 

Unlike a July gig:

Some parties have made headlines for defying social distancing rules. In July, state authorities said they're investigating a drive-in benefit concert in Southhampton that violated social distancing guidelines. The benefit was billed as a socially-distanced drive-in concert, headlined by The Chainsmokers.

But instead, it "involved thousands of people in close proximity, out of their vehicles ... and generally not adhering to social distancing guidance," New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said at the time.

That benefit concert wasn't all EDM. It really was a benefit for some kiddo-supporting charities. But it wasn't organized by do-gooders, but rather by "a leading luxury travel & lifestyle agency." And I'm guessing that they made a bit off of the event. (As they say on The Sopranos, they wet their beak.)

But the Chainsmokers' concert, despite the performing presence of the Goldman Sachs CEO who doubles as a DJ, and despite the fact that tickets cost as much as $25K, wasn't a real Hampton-y type of par-tay. Seems a tad bit hoi-polloi-ish to me.

When it comes to COVIC, it's not that rich, white Hampton-y types have that much too worry about. It's not like they're working in a slaughterhouse or anything. (I should talk. The little local hand-out paper just published stats for COVID instances by neighborhood. My neighborhood, which is ultra white, and predominately upper middle class (me) and just plain ultra upper class (the people next door), has an instance that's about one third of that being experienced in minority areas.)

Throughout the pandemic, the heavily-populated, just outside NYC side of Long Island has had pretty high COVID instances and death rates. But:

"Luckily in the Hamptons we are not seeing a lot of positive results. There are not many cases," Rashid says.

Rashid admits that even she, with all the strings that she and her clients - or are they patients? - can pull, sometimes has a hard time getting her hands on the rapid tests. Which is not something that anyone - other than a Hampton's host - is going to lose much sleep over. 

But if the rich folks are gobbling up the rapid tests, can you imagine how ugly it's going to get when a working vaccine becomes available? 

Where were you when...

Each generation, I suppose, has at least one iconic "where were you when..." moment. 

For my parents, I'm guessing it was "...when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked." For us older Boomers, it's "...when Kennedy was shot." On the less gruesome side, if you lived on the East Coast, you've also got "...when the lights went out" in November 1965 when a big part of the electric grid went down. And, of course, "...when the planes struck the Twin Towers."

Me? I was away on business in Orlando, but was able to scramble back home via a slow-moving Amtrak overnighter to DC and the equally slow-moving Northeast Corridor Acela from Washington to Boston. I was back home by midnight on September 12th. My husband met me at Back Bay Station. The next day, I took a cab to a deserted Logan Airport to retrieve my car. I went to work, but nobody was getting any work done. 

Mostly we were tracking the whereabouts of colleagues who were on the road, or speculating about the last minutes in the lives of a couple of my company's employees who were working in one of our network communications centers (NOC) - the one located on a top floor of one of the Towers. When their Tower collapsed, they were on the phone with the folks at our main NOC, telling them that they had been told to get to the roof, where a helicopter would be picking them up. At least they died with hope. Our main NOC guys - one of whom I knew - heard the building go. 

It took me a long time to shake the images out of my head: the plane nosing into the buildings, the people jumping, the Towers collapsing, the survivors rushing away, the firefighters rushing in.

Although I walk by Boston's 9/11 memorial in the Public Garden several times a week, I don't spend a ton of time thinking about it any longer. So much water under all my bridges - personal, professional, political - in the past 19 years. And the current cataclysmic situations - the existential Twin Towers of the pandemic and the prospect of our country moving deeper and deeper into the hell of lawless authoritarianism, racism, science denial - have put 9/11 nearly out of my mind.

I've written about 9/11 a number of times during the years since, and here's one of my favorites: Just another day at the office.

But when I was grazing through prior 9/11 posts, I came across something I'd written in 2011, for the 10th anniversary.  

I’m naïve enough to have hoped that we’d have become better as a nation since then, and realistic enough to know that we’ve gotten worse. Unraveling, unraveled, divided, falling.

Yikes on yikes, when you think of how much further we've unraveled, how much more divided we are, how we are still falling and there doesn't seem to be any bottom. Apparently I knew things were bad in 2011, but compared to today's abyss...

All I can say is, I hope there are no more "where were you when..." days left in my life.

Presidential Chess Set. Too bad it costs too much for a Yankee Swap.

Oh, I know the rudiments of the game - or used to - but I'm not a chess player. Nor am I a collector of things commemorative. So, no, I'm not the target audience for the 2020 Presidential Chess Set. And I'm kinda/sorta wondering just who is. Maybe I've got a rather naive idea about who plays chess, but it doesn't seem to me that a real chess player would actually want a Republicans vs. Democrats chess set.

But you can get one for only $39.95 (marked down from $59.95)! Act now! (That's for the entry level edition. Deluxe is $59.98. And Presidential, with a "luxurious wooden chessboard" is $99.99.)

The pieces represent all three branches of government, but, given that it's a chess set, the branches, alas, aren't co-equal.

Trump is one of the kings, and an empty lectern is set up for Joe Biden (piece shipping later).

Kamala Harris is, of course, the queen. Also shipping later. And that makes Mike Pence a queen, too. Which is, all things considered, rather unfortunate. 

"Handsomely designed." "Incredible detail." Or, if you prefer, "impeccable detail."

"Limited edition." "Shop with confidence." "Numbered certificate of authenticity."

That "numbered certificate of authenticity" sure would help me "shop with confidence." After all, who'd want to get stuck with a Presidential Chess Set that wasn't authentic. 

Alas, the set does nothing to play down the partisan nature of the Supreme Court. Repping for the Repubs: John Roberts and Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh. And in the other corner, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor are bishops for the Democrats. 

Then there are the knights: Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. 

The rooks? Barack Obama and Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. So Joe Biden gets to be two pieces. Cool. 

Elephants and donkeys make up the pawns. When, in fact, the average citizen is the real pawn in this god-awful game.

Each piece was painstakingly designed for likability and accuracy to enhance your chess-playing experience. 

They ain't kidding about painstakingly designed. Just check out Bishop Kav:

Does that put the pain in painstaking or what? As for likability? Harrumph. 

The Presidential Chess Set is actually the perfect Yankee swapper. Too bad it costs so much. But I'll keep an eye on it. The price might go down on November 4th.

In the meantime, here's hoping that the empty podium checkmates King Trump into oblivion.

Location, location, location

On Friday, an message from Google Maps Timeline popped up in my gmail. Completely unsolicited. But apparently I had unwittingly opted into something called Location History.

This Timeline email is an automated summary of places you’ve been, which may be fewer this month due to the COVID-19 response in your area.

Ya think?

I really didn't need Google to let me know that, during the month of August, I spent every waking and sleeping hour in the friendly confines of the City of Boston. Which makes me wonder why they accompanied this tidbit with a street scene of Cambridge. Were they foreshadowing my September travels when I have, indeed, already walked over to Cambridge on one of my daily jaunts.

I really didn't need Google to let me know that I'd walked by the statue of the a 19th century Argentinian president - Domingo Faustino Sarmiento - on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. I walk by that statue a couple of times a week. 

And why'd they pick that particular statue? There are a lot of statues on the Comm Ave Mall. And if I were going to rank order those statues in terms of my personal interest, and relevance to someone from Massachusetts, I'd have put this one at the very bottom, behind Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, Patrick Collins, William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel Eliot Morrison, Abigail Adams, Phyllis Wheatley, Lucy Stone, and Leif Eriksson. (That's not my ranking, by the way. It's the order in which the statues appear, starting at Arlington on out.)

If Google knew me as well as they think they do, they'd have put up a picture of the Samuel Eliot Morrison statue. 

Morrison was an historian and Harvard professor. When I first moved to Beacon Hill in the 1970's, I lived in a studio apartment around the corner from his quite grand townhouse, and I used to see him walking around. 

President Sarmiento's connection to Boston (let alone to me) is a bit lighter. His claim to local fame is that he founded Argentina's school system and modeled it after the Boston school system set up by Horace Mann. A statue of Horace Mann would have made more sense, but the Argentinians gifted Boston with the statue, and you don't look a gift statue in the mouth. Which is about all you can see of Sarmiento's face in the photo that Google provided me with. 

My timeline also informed me that I'd been to a Panera and to Whole Foods. Well, yes and yes. I did get a takeout sandwich at Panera a couple of weeks ago. And I did make at least one trip to Whole Foods. (Just not the one whose picture Google gmailed me.) But why not Roche Brothers, the grocery store that I frequent. And I do mean frequent. I must be in there 3 or 4 time a week. 

What. Ever.

Anyway, it just seems like such useless non-information to have. Useless and incorrect.

According to my timeline, I spent 31 hours walking during August, and walked 91 miles. 

WRONG!

Thanks to Fitbit, I know that I averaged over 5 miles per day on foot during the month - those months calibrated to Google Maps info, so I know I'm not kidding myself. And those more than 5 miles per day took longer than an hour a day to walk.

Google also let me know that I traveled 5 miles in a car. That would be the day my brother took me and eight bags full of donated clothing over to Goodwill. And I am totes grateful to have those eight bags full of clothing out of my living room, where they have been languishing since right before the pandemic shutdown. I had them - mostly clothing from my sister Trish - poised and ready to go to St. Francis House when they stopped accepting clothing donations. So, there they sat. 

But I didn't need Google to let me know I'd been in a car - oooh, aaah - during August. 

Seriously, what sort of self-absorbed, compulsive person needs to know their travel timeline for a given month? Not that I'm not plenty self-absorbed and compulsive, but Jeez Louise. 

It's particularly depressing to get this missive when you're stuck sheltering in place.

Needless to say, I've turned off Location History, even though September promises to be a richer, more interesting month, location timeline-wise. I've already been to Cambridge. (Mary Chung's is open for takeout!) Down to Wellfleet on the Cape. And Truro. Plus there are still a few weeks left to go in the month. Maybe I'll step toe in Somerville. Or Brookline. Maybe I'll get in a car and go somewhere. Maybe I'll take a cruise of Boston Harbor. (Masked and outside, of course.) 

Oh, the places I'll go! I just won't be letting Google in on my whereabouts.

Well, at least it didn't happen in the USA.

Not that the US of A doesn't have it's own share of cray. We've got plenty, and a lot of it seems to be of the 'shoot-'em-up' and/or conspiracy theory variety. 

As in the Trumpian white geezers in Florida, owners of a two-bit strip mall, who did some shooting when two Black fellows (and the 10 year old son of one of them) were returning a U-Haul van. Seems that the wife of this glorious couple thought she heard these guys siphoning gas, which apparently warranted the death penalty - or at least a couple of warning shots. 

As in one of the latest theories old Trumpy's been floating: thugs on planes, dressed in black, flying into cities to cause chaos. Or take over the suburbs. (It's surprising that Trump didn't have Senator Cory Booker in there as leader of the traveling thug pack, since he's thrown Booker's name out there as someone who, under Biden, would be out there terrorizing the good white folks in suburbia.)

But. I. Digress.

The latest crazy story on the international front was about how the employees of one Carrefour grocery store in Brazil handled the at-work death of a colleague. 

When sales manager Manoel Cavalcante had a heart attack during his morning shift, his colleagues' immediate response to this variant on a theme of "shop 'til you drop" was just fine. They administered CPR and called an ambulance. They were unable to revive him. The paramedics weren't able to do so either, and they left the body there - with instructions to the employees not to move it. Presumably, until the coroner or the funeral parlor could get there to take possession.

But there was nothing in the company manual that told employees what to do next. So the employees improvised. They:

...surrounded Cavalcanate's body with boxes and umbrellas to hide it from view, and kept the store open. (Source: percolately)

Talk about pickup on aisle six.

Carrefour has apologized for this lapse of judgement, and updated their guidelines to cover this sort of situation, 

The story has - and why not? - gone viral, with lots of gab about the perils of capitalism, etc. But maybe it is really just a story about a bunch of grocery store workers, stuck in an unusual and weird situation, who just did the best they could without thinking things through.

Obviously, they were responding to the authorities who told them not to move the body. Maybe they should have ignored that and taken the body to a back room and covered it with shopping bags or something. But they didn't. They did what they were told by people (EMT's) who one would suppose knew what you were supposed to do in a sudden death situation. 

When I was in grammar school, most kids went home for lunch, and we walked home in patrol lines. Well, one day, when I was in third grade, the process got a bit screwed up and the third grade cohort of the "Gates Lane Plain"* patrol line ended up behind the second grade cohort. Which, as everyone knows, was unacceptable and something that just could not stand.

But while we were doing a bit of murmured balking about this total travesty and getting geared up to move en masse to secure our rightful position in front of the second graders, a nun swung by and hissed at us, "Stay where you are."

So, good little parochial dweebs that we were, we did. And didn't move one inch even when the rest of the patrol line marched off. And there we stood for a good long - there must have been 10 or 12 of us (here's who I recall would have been in the group of third graders who were part of "Gates Lane Plain": me, Susan, Kathy, Rosemary, Carol, Mary Agnes, Jimmy, Billy, Andy, Mike, Kevin) - until another nun swung by and started screaming at us to hurry on home. (I think she called us "fools.") We couldn't have stood there, frozen, for that long, because no one's mother called the school to see where her 8-year old was. And, in looking through that list, everyone of those kids, with the exception of Kevin, who was an only child, had at least one sibling in that patrol line. I would think that if we'd been missing for too long, one of them might have  noticed...

So I'm pretty sure that, as a third grader at least, I would have left the damned body in Carrefour where it was, just like the EMT told me.

But as an adult?

Who knows? Maybe most of the other employees were young kids, in their teens. Or minimum wage workers who figured that the bosses would have wanted the shopping show to go on. (I think that man that died might have been the person in charge.) So maybe they all just didn't know what to do with a dead body, other than cover it up. (At least there's that.)

Anyway, a crazy little story, and I'm just as happy that it didn't take place in the US for a change. We've already got too many "Florida Man" stories of our own.

So here's my final thought: wonder if they put those umbrellas on sale afterwards

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*Patrol lines were assembled by which direction they were heading in. "Gates Lane Plain" passed by Gates Lane School, and contained all the kids who lived on streets off of one side of Main Street. "Gates Lane that Crosses" headed in the same direction, but they crossed Main Street.