Trick or Treat? Grateful for the neighbors who are getting into the spirit.

I always enjoy Halloween, but this year it's looking like another 2020 Bah Humbug. Can kids even got out trick or treating?

Usually, especially when it's on a Saturday, it's a mob scene in both of the places I traditionally spend Halloween: Beacon Hill and Salem, Massachusetts.

This year, I'll be in Boston, and once it gets dark, I'll probably take a little stroll around to see the houses with their candles lit, their lights on, their jack o'lanterns grinning. 'Cause this is a neighborhood where a lot of people get into the spooky spirt and decorate. 

Last Saturday, I strolled around the 'hood to see what was up and took pics of some of the better in-the-spirit houses I passed.

Thank you, neighbors for making spirits bright.

Now, I just need to figure out what size bag of Butterfingers I need to pick up at CVS, because it's just not Halloween without some Butterfingers.

Happy Halloween, you guys. Let's hope that next year won't be such a boo-fest. Can't wait to see my first kid going at as Donald J. Trump in an orange jumpsuit. 

"Quibi. I think that will be a fun name for us."

When I first heard of Quibi last spring, my initial thought was "not interested." Which translates into "not buying." And it turns out I wasn't the only one.

Quibi - from "quick bite" - was a content service focused on delivering short burst videos to smartphones. (They recently made a last ditch effort to provide their videos on other devices as well.)

There is, of course, no lack of content you can get on your smartphone, since pretty much everything you can watch on your television set or your computer is also available on the really small screen. And that means everything from a full-length movie to a short burst Tik Tok video. 

So who needs another service, even if it comes with original content like Murder House Flip (which I wrote about last spring)? Make that especially if it comes with original content like Murder House Flip. 

Quibi launched last spring, and six months later, it's out of business. It was able to attract plenty of glam funding - $1.75 billion worth - but failed to woo enough subscribers to keep it going. 

You'd think that, what with the pandemic gluing people to their devices for longer periods of time, they might have had a shot, but there are just too many sources of content out there that subscribers are already paying for or that's just plain free.

$1.75 billion sure sounds like a lot of dough for an outfit that only managed to last six months, but what do I know. I mean, I went to business school and all, but it's not like I'm some kind of Meg Whitman or something.

If her name rings a bell, it's because for over 20 years, she's been one of the most prominent women CEOs. She headed up eBay. She headed up Hewlitt-Packard. And she headed up Quibi. Prior to becoming CEOs, she worked, among other places, at Hasbro, where she headed up the division that owns Mr. Potato Head, and where she was responsible for bringing the Teletubbies to the U.S. (Teletubbies say 'eh oh'.) 

She also spent $150 million of the billions she's made over the years trying to get herself elected governor of California, losing to Jerry Brown, who is pretty much the antithesis of Meg Whitman. So it's not like she has an impeccable record when it comes to bad ideas. 

Quibi's cofounder is Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose name might not be as household-wordish as Whitman's, but who has quite a background himself: Disney, Dreamworks (which he co-founded with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen)...

The duo managed to attract some heavy-hitting investors: Disney, NBCUniversal, and WarnerMedia. They had advertising commitments from blue chippers like Google, P&G, and Pepsi. And some big name content providers as well. It wasn't all Murder House Flip:

Quibi had about 50 original titles at launch, including shows featuring originals with Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigen, Chance the Rapper, Liam Hemsworth, Sophie Turner, Lena Waithe, Nicole Richie and Reese Witherspoon. It also greenlit pricey projects with Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi, Antoine Fuqua, Anna Kendrick, Rachel Brosnahan, Issa Rae, Kevin Hart, Steven Soderbergh and the Kardashians, among others. (Source: Yahoo Finance)

One of the sweeteners for the content providers - who were paid up to $100K per minute for their offerings - was that the content producers got to keep ownership of their content. And, while they had seven-year licenses "after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere." So what was appearing on your smartphone wasn't all that exclusive, unless you're the type of content consumer who needs to see what's new with Nicole Richie and Chance the Rapper right away, and just can't wait for it to become non-exclusive. 

This part of their structure turned out to be a problem when  Quibi went shopping around for someone to save them. Turns out, since the content wasn't Quibi's own, possible buyers of the company weren't that interested. And with just 500,000 subscribers... (Some/most of who probably came from Quibi's deal with T-Mobile to offer a free Quibi subscription to their customers.) Well, yawn.  (In comparison, Hulu has 28 million paying customers.)

And now Quibi is winding down. They're laying off their 200 employees and looking to sell off whatever they actually do own. And they're probably looking for someone to take their 10 year lease for 49,000 square feet worth of office space off their hands, too. 

Investors are hoping they'll be able to claw back 50% of what they put in, but that's probably optimistic. But it's likely not that big a deal for most of them. (To quote Ralph Kramden of The Honeymooners: "It came easy, and it went easy.")

When Whitman and Katzenberg announced Quibi in October 2018, they were having fun with it, as one does, Whitman noting that:

“Jeffrey can't stop saying the name Quibi. I think that will be a fun name for us.”

As it turns out, maybe not all that much fun, unless you count the fun the people making fun of their downfall are having. And probably not as much fun as managing Mr. Potato head, let alone getting Tinky-Winky, La-La, Dipsy and Po to cross the pond.

Absence of color, Peruvian Connection style

 'Tis the season when the catalogues start rolling in. And I get a ton of catalogues rolling in, both from companies that I regularly purchase from (L.L. Bean) to those I've never bought a thing from (Hammacher-Schlemmer). 

Years ago, I wrote to dozens of catalogues asking to be taken off their mailing list. I still get an awful lot, but the catalogue tsunami did abate somewhat. (For all I know - and I would have absolutely no reason to know for most of them - most of the ones who stopped sending catalogues are out of business.)

My latest haul (received over the last week) includes Garnet Hill, Hammacher-Schlemmer, Jockey, Maryland Square, L.L. Bean, Land's End, Artful Home, Soft Surroundings, and the Vermont Country Store. Oh, yes, and the Peruvian Connection.

I really like beautiful and interesting sweaters, and Peruvian Connection carries a lot of beautiful and interesting sweaters. And once in a while, I put away whatever misgivings I may have about some poor woman in Peru making seventeen cents and hour to knit one up, and buy one. 

They're expensive. 

But when I have a beautiful and interesting sweater, I hang on to it. Forever.

I still have the first Peruvian Connection sweater I bought in 1989. I can't remember what I paid. A lot. But, hey, I'm still wearing it, patched elbows and frayed button holes and all. And when I put it on, it brings back wonderful memories of the trip my husband and I took to Berlin over New Year's 1989-1990 to celebrate the Fall of the Wall. That sweater, black with a multi-colored vertical striped pattern, was my wardrobe mainstay for the entire trip. I wore it pretty much every day with a different colored turtle neck.

So what if I paid a lot? Amortized over 41 years, it was nothing.

It's been a couple of years since I bought a Peruvian Collection sweater, so I'm due. And if there was anything in the right color - blues, purples, pinks - I might be interested. So I thumbed through the latest catalogue. 

What struck me was not the absence of sweaters in any colors I wanted. But the absence of color among the models. 

The cover featured a stunning red head, freckles and all. And she appeared up until page 10, when things switched over to a stunning blonde. (Blondes, amazingly, seem to continue to represent the beau idéal of beauty, definitely punching above their skimpy weight in terms of working as catalogue models.) 

I'm not sure whether it was the same blonde, but blondes held the fort until page 24, when red returned. Back to blondes on page 30. Back to red, page 50.

On page 54, I spotted my first brunette. But on closer examination, she actually had auburn hair, and she had to share her two-page spread with blondie, who maintained control until red grabbed the back cover.

Seriously, I don't believe you have to make sure that catalogue models appear in exact proportion to the numbers they hold in society. If there are a hundred photos, thirteen of them don't need to be Black.

But we are an increasingly diverse country, so the absence of people of color, of people who appeared Asian, or Mid-Eastern, or even of Italian or Greek origin, seems weird. And what are we to make of a catalogue called Peruvian Connection that doesn't feature any Hispanic or indigenous peoples models? Is it deliberate? Have they done the market research that shows that their audience is entirely made up of blondes and red-heads, who need to see beautiful versions of themselves in order to buy something? Or was it an aesthetic choice? Maybe next time the catalogue could use only Black models as a purely aesthetic choice.

All I can say is that L.L. Bean has non-white models. Say, is that Mt. Katahdin that gorgeous young African-American couple is climbing? The cartoon characters on Land's End's cover are mixed race, and the first human you see is an adorable young Black woman modeling a turtleneck. Land's End even shows folks with grey hair. (Include me in!)

Artful Home - source of the one funky, artsy item of clothing I buy each year, and an occasional gift - is a glorious mix of races and ages. Garnet Hill is, too. And I've got my eye on that gorgeous cardigan modeled by a gorgeous brown-eyed, dark haired woman who might be Hispanic. Or Mid-Eastern. Or Italian. Or Greek. All I know is, she's not a blonde.

Hammacher-Schlemmer. Jockey. Soft Surroundings. Their models represent! Especially Soft Surroundings. I didn't do a nose count, but their models appear to be majority-minority. I've never ordered from them, but their clothing sure looks ultra-comfy.  "Effortless style." Who cares about style, as long as it's effortless!

Maryland Square is a shoe catalogue, so it's hard to tell, as their catalogue just shows shod feet.

But even the Vermont Country Store catalogue has plenty of models with dark hair, and a handful of dark faces. And if there's any catalogue that gives off more of a "white people like" vibe than the Vermont Country Store, I don't know what it would be. (Seriously, muu-muus?)

The United States is on it's way to becoming a "majority minority" country, in which those of us of white European origin no longer make up more than half our population. You'd think that retailers would want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, other than the ones who specialize in Ku Klux Klan apparel, Nazi paraphernalia or other niche markets (one-armed paper hangers). It helps everyone to see themselves represented, i.e., wanted as a customer. 

And it helps us all to see that there's plenty of everyone else out there. 

After all, everyone else: They're just like us!

Blacks, Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics - they wear flannel PJs! They buy toys for their kids! They buy goofy electronics!

Maybe they even like muu-muus!

But maybe what they don't like is expensive, interesting sweaters from the Peruvian Connection. 

To tell you the truth, I really hadn't noticed that Catalogue America, for the most part, represents our diversity fairly well if the absence of color, Peruvian Connection style, sent me looking.

Let's just say that absence of color struck me as odd. 

Fun with pork-scented technology!

Somewhere along the line, I read that the thing that vegetarians missed the most about meat was bacon.

I don't eat a ton of meat, but I'm not a vegetarian. So I don't have to actually think about it. But I get it.

As much as anything, if I stopped eating meat entirely, I'd miss bacon. I'd miss BLTs, scallops wrapped in bacon, and "American Chop Suey" (hamburg and macaroni, greatly improved by the presence of bacon). I don't eat a ton of bacon-and-egg breakfasts, but there really is nothing like a little bakey sandwich on buttered toast. 

And, ah, the smell of bacon.

Doggos are right here: it's wonderfully alluring. 

But would I want to be breathing it in while out there walking around with my mask on?

Well, no.

And I suspect most people feel the same way. 

That, of course, hasn't stopped the folks in Hormel's Black Label Bacon group from "inventing" a face masks redolent of bacon. They've just launched:

"Breathable Bacon," what it calls "a revolutionary face mask featuring the latest in pork-scented technology." (Source: USA Today)

Pork-scented technology? Who knew there even was such a thing? And why would someone have invented it in the first place?

Come to think of it, I probably know the answer.

When I was in business school, some folks from the research firm Arthur D. Little spoke to a marketing class. Which is where I learned that dogfood makers add special chemicals to make the dogfood smell like something humans might want to eat. Dogs don't need the additive. They already have a good sense of scent. But us humans like to think that Fido is fine dining on beef stew.

So I guess there is sort of a need for pork-scented technology. And I also guess it will help improve the palatability of vegetarian and vegan food alternatives - like fake bacon.

Anyway, from a marketing point of view, this is a fun idea. Especially given that a) Hormel is giving the masks away for free (while supplies last), and b) they'll also be donating as many as 10,000 meals to Feeding America. Which tells me they've made 10,000 of the masks, which I'm absolutely sure will sell out. Or whatever the free giveaway version of sell out is.

Also getting in on the food-smelling mask concept is Jack-in-the-Box, which is coming out with a mask that smells like chicken. It will be used to promote the fake chicken product (UnChicken) that they've recently debuted. (But does it taste like chicken?)

Meanwhile, the bacon-ish face mask is nothing compared with some of the other ideas that Hormel has come up with:

Hormel said its recent innovations include The Black Market, a multisensory virtual reality experience, the development of a musical experience using the sounds of bacon and the world's first bacon-fueled motorcycle.

Want to bet that this will also be the world's only bacon-fueled motorcycle? I mean, I've heard of alternative energy sources, but to quote Joe Biden, 'Come on, man.'

Back to the face masks.

They're going to be our companions for many months to come, and I'm all in favor of having a bit of fun with them. 

This week, I'll be wearing my Halloween-themed face masks. One is orange with black dots, the other is a candy corn print. (I'm hoping breathing through that one will be a reasonable substitute for eating candy corn, which I adore, but which is absolutely worthless as a food stuff. Plus it's addictive.)

Come December, I have a line up of holiday masks. And I've got one ready for St. Patrick's Day.

But a scented mask? I don't know about that.

Why breathe in chemicals when you don't have to? I'll stick with my own fumes. 

Still, Hormel seems to be having fun. Marketing-fun wise, I'd say they're on the pig's back. In this grim world, I almost envy them. 

Here comes Santa Claus, and, say, is he moving to the head of the vaccination line?

I'm all for public service announcements (PSAs).

When I was a kid, people littered. You would routinely see folks tossing bottles, cans, kleenex, whatever out their car windows. Not in my family, thank you. We were in the vanguard. The only thing we were allowed to pitch out the window was an apple core, and that was because the birds would eat it.

Despite our efforts, there was always a ton of the trash on the side of roads and highways. And on sidewalks in my neighborhood, you could always find empty cigarette packs and candy wrappers. (If you saw a discarded Lucky Strikes pack, you could step on it and whack the kid you were with on the arm and shout "Lucky strike!")

There's a classic scene on Mad Men that shows the Draper family getting up from their picnic blanket, shaking it - and all the trash on it - out on the grass, and taking off.

Then came the Don't Be a Litter Bug campaign. And, while there's still plenty of trash to be found - and a lot more trash possibilities, given fast food which wasn't a factor in my childhood -  you really don't see people littering like they used to.

Smoky the Bear, unfortunately, has not been able to keep up with the fires out West (thanks, climate change!), but we all do know that if we carelessly discard a cigarette butt, things might well go up in frames.

And speaking of cigarette butts, PSAs about quitting or just not starting smoking helped decrease the number of smokers.

So PSAs. Yeah, I'm all for them.

In fact, I'd love see more PSAs about mask wearing, social distancing, handwashing, and crowd avoidance. 

But given that the Federal government (at least as far as the White House is concerned) has pretty much surrendered on the idea of containing COVID-19 - as Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stated on the Sunday morning talking heads shows yesterday - I wouldn't expect them to get behind a decent, thoughtful, publicly spirited, public health campaign.

After all, they're counting on therapeutics to keep the sick from dying, and the on-the-horizon (somewhere, somehow) vaccine to keep us from getting sick to begin with.

Still, it's a bit of a surprise that a good part of the $250M advertising campaign that the Department of Health and Human Services was cooking up was focused on getting Santa Claus performers to promote vaccination in return for early access to said vaccine. 

Well, bah humbug to that, even though Mrs. Claus and the elves - also deemed essential workers by HHS - were going to get to jump to the head of the line, too.

This was all premised on the Trumpian emptier-than-empty promise that we were going to have a vaccine by election day. 

Alas, the Santa-vaccine plan has been trashed - probably via littering, knowing these guys - and Michael Caputo, the HHS assistant secretary who came up with the idea is on medical leave. (He went on leave after becoming embroiled in some brouhaha that's long since forgotten.)

The Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas aren't thrilled to hear that the vaccine won't be available in time for them to get those kiddos on their laps, and that they won't be able to jump the line to get it. (Not that seasonal workers shouldn't have priority over some categories. I just can't figure out just what categories a seasonal Santa should have priority over.)

Rick Erwin, who heads up the Real Beardeds, recorded the calls he had with Caputo to discuss this initiative.

Caputo seemed really excited about the prospect of making the president happy with his plan. “I cannot wait to tell the president,” Caputo said. “He’s going to love this.” (Source: Slate)

Well, that's true. It does seem like the sort of thing Trump would love. Showy and attention grabbing. (Santa!) Lacking in true substance. (Santa!) Skirting the real issue. (No national co-ordinated plan on anything -> people dying.) Based on wishful thinking. (Vaccine by November!) Science-denying. (Vaccine by November!)

Like I said, I'm all for a good PSA. I'm guessing that there are plenty of agencies that would be delighted to do one for free, and plenty of outlets willing to run them gratis. But why would the Trump administration start doing something rational and sensible now?

Welcome to the holiday season! Looks like it's gonna be a fun one. 

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Meanwhile, Pink Slip has a small history with professional Santas. Many years ago, I wrote about some feuding in their ranks. The post got a number of comments, and I had to remove a few because they were libelous. A few years later, the Santas were at it again. And I hate to say it, but I'm guessing most Santas are Trump supporters...

Good. Just not good enough.

It looks like Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin pushers who pretty much single-handedly created the opioid crisis, has gotten its comeuppance. At least somewhat.

Earlier this week, they agreed to a settlement (worth $8.3 billion) with the Justice Department.

As part of the deal — the largest such settlement ever reached with a pharmaceutical company, officials said — Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to three felonies. (Source: WaPo)

That's the good news. Sort of. Purdue, which has filed for bankruptcy, may not have the scratch to pay their fine. 

...[and] state authorities and families who have lost loved ones to their products said the Justice Department’s terms go easy on the Sacklers, the billionaire family that once ran the firm.

Massachusetts is one of the states that's none too happy with the settlement. Maura Healey, our AG, ain't having any. She had this to say:

"I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long.”

Massachusetts is not alone.

About 2,800 cities, counties, Native American tribes and other groups have sued drug retailers, distributors and manufacturers, including Purdue, in a mammoth case that has been consolidated before a federal court judge in Cleveland. Separately, most states have sued the company in their own courts, believing those venues give them a legal advantage. Those matters are distinct from the federal settlement announced Wednesday and remain ongoing.

Hopefully, the bankruptcy doesn't fully shield Purdue. Or the Sacklers, for that matter.

Just what did Purdue Pharma do? Why, they were front and center when it came to creating:

...the widespread problem of overprescribing, diverting, and abusing pain pills [which] raged across America while drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacists, and doctors profited from the problem and largely deflected responsibility.

The Sacklers benefited quite nicely from Oxy-Contin. The family is worth $13B. And while they weren't going door-to-door to push pills to physicians, or hiding information about just how addictive OxyContin is, they were plenty involved. Now, from their lofty perch as rich folks/philanthropists, they're pointing their fingers down the food chain at Purdue Pharma lower echelon employees, back in the day they were exerting plenty of pressure from their board-level positions as directors to rev up financial results. Among other things, a bunch of the Sacklers:

...approved a new marketing plan called “Evolve to Excellence” in which “Purdue sales representatives intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers who were already writing ’25 times as many OxyContin scripts’ as their peers,” the Justice Department said.

Those efforts directly led to uses of the addictive tablets that were “unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion,’’ the government said.

Throughout, Purdue Pharma marketing downplayed the addictive properties of Oxy. Which worked out fine for them, but not so fine for those taking their pills.

And, of course, those with sports injuries, accidents, chronic pain, were a more lucrative (i.e., far larger) market than those taking strong drugs to cope with cancer-related pain. 

So far, the family has contributed $3B towards a settlement, and they're hoping that will do it. 

Not good enough.

I can't imagine what families go through when someone they love - their child, their brother, their aunt, their parent - is hooked on opioids. For a lot of them, the addiction started out innocently enough. A sports industry. An accident. A little something for the pain. OxyContin is addictive, a gateway drug to heroin, fentanyl. 

I think it's good that Purdue has at least agreed that, at least on a few counts, they're guilty as charged. Just not good enough.

As for the Sacklers, they're probably shaking in their designer boots. For years, they no doubt congratulated themselves that because the company that made them rich didn't have the Sackler name in it, no one would associate their family with the death and destruction of so many other families. They don't need to be stripped of every last penny. Still, they need to 'fess up and pony up.

$8.3 billion is something. But over the last 20 years, over 700,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. No, not all of them died because of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin. Even if it's "only" 222,000 folks - the number who've died due to COVD - that $8.3 billion is less than $40K per capita. 

Just not good enough.

Twin Peaks

There's no doubt in my mind of minds that Twin Peaks, a "breastaurant" - twin peaks? get it? get it? - is a terrible place to work. Like Hooters, like the Tilted Kilts, members of the wait staff - comely young women, all - are hired for their looks and for how good they look wearing revealing outfits. 

In presumable return, they can make good tip money from the leering men who like to be waited on by cute young things in tight tops and short skirts. 

In my younger days, I was a waitress - both during summers while I was in a school, and full-time when I was out of college and casting around for something to do. It pretty much goes without saying that I didn't work in any place that required racy garb.

For one thing, they didn't exist back in the day. Sure, there were strip joints, but there weren't "family restaurants" (burgers and wings) where the "girls" dolled up. For another thing, if there had been such restaurants, they wouldn't have hired me even if I wanted a job there. Which I most decidedly would not have.

My first waitress job, age 18, at a Big Boy's, had a really alluring uniform, which looked like it had been designed by a nun, in consultation with my mother. We wore knee length brown skirts, white cotton blouses with round collars and pin-tuck pleats, and brown clip-on bow ties. White waitress oxfords, of course. For accent color: orange aprons that matched the leatherette banquettes. We were also required to wear "lunch lady" hairnets. 

We were issued nametags, and were warned to wear them up high enough so that no one would get fresh and ask what the other one was named. Ho, ho!

When I worked at the Union Oyster House and Durgin Park, our uniform was a white nylon dress purchased at a cut-rate nurses' uniform store. Knee length. White waitress oxfords, natch. Waitresses at both of these places ranged in age from twenty-something (that would include me) on up to women in their seventies. We were working girls. Just not that kind of working girl. 

(I really can't count the one shift I worked at Valle's Stakehouse in October 1972. The uniform was standard white nurse's dress.)

My final waitressing gig was at a basement pub beneath the long-defunct Admiralty Room, which was considered a relatively swank dining establishment at the time. Unionized men worked in the fine dining room. Un-unionized women worked below ground in a casual pub atmosphere. In keeping with the nautical theme, the uniform was a bright blue polyester sailor dress (with kippy white with red trim sailor collar) - so rigidly non-natural in fabric that, when you took it off, you could almost stand it up. The dress was pretty short, but this was in keeping with the times, and I had great legs. 

I didn't work there long. Terrible food. Not great money. And mostly boring (although I did see a woman give a guy a hand job at the bar one time). I can still remember what the guy looked like. He was a regular, and we referred to him as HJ.

But I never worked a house where the point was to look and act sexy. (Good thing.)

Anyway, on the current restaurant front:

A group of 34 former employees of Twin Peaks, a restaurant chain featuring scantily clad waitstaff, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday alleging their uniforms and a system for grading their bodies amounted to sex discrimination and harassment.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Northern District of Illinois, alleges Twin Peaks “preys on vulnerable young women” and is “run very much like a commercial sex ring.”

Central to the allegations are claims that managers at the start of every shift assess the tautness of female servers’ arms, stomachs, legs and backs and assign them “tone grades” that are used to determine who gets to serve the best sections of the restaurant. Those with low scores are told they are fat, and some have been threatened with termination unless they lose weight, the suit alleges.

The suit alleges staff must work in lingerie or bikinis during special costume weeks, and if they refuse, they don’t work.

The environment resulted in “rampant sexual harassment,” with other employees catcalling and customers able to touch and say things to the female staff without consequence, the suit alleges. (Source: Yahoo)

I believe each and every word of this. No doubt in my mind that management was disgusting, the customers crude. As for other employees "catcalling", well, has anyone ever been in a restaurant kitchen? 

At Union Oyster House, the fellow who put together the salads and shrimp cocktails was a heavyset fellow with a cigar stub perpetually in his mouth. Each time I came over to his station to get a salad and/or a shrimp cocktail, which was multiple times per shift, he'd mutter, "I had a dream about you last night, Marlene [as he called me]. We was making love."

Did it occur to me to complain to management. Or even tell him to shut up. Hell no. This was 1970. This was a restaurant. Trash talk was as much a part of the scene as the numbers runner. (Do numbers runners still exist?) All it merited was an occasional eye roll. And, yes, I'm delighted that women no longer put up with shit like this.

And I really do have sympathy for the women who've experienced the lousy Twin Peaks work environment. The managers should be better behaved instead of disgusting sexist louts. But I do have to ask what employees expected when they went to work at a restaurant called Twin Peaks, which had its waitstaff wearing "sexy" uniforms. It's kind of like working at the Bada Bing on The Sopranos and becoming incensed if Silvio Dante asked you to pole dance. 

It's a terrible time to be a restaurant worker, and I wish all the litigants here well. But, seriously, when the restaurant biz comes back from the dead, I hope they find new places to work. No one wears a white dress to wait any more. But there are plenty of places where the wait staff wears black pants and a white shirt. Or a polo shirt. And you can probably make decent money without subjecting yourself to the grossity of a restaurant like Twin Peaks.

Bet there's a couple of Staties with a some new assignments

Massachusetts doesn't have a governor's mansion. The state's not the big. With the exception of Jane Swift, acting governor for a couple of years, who was from western Mass, none of our governors during my lifetime have lived so far away that they couldn't easily commute into the State House in Boston.

So we don't have a fenced fortress set up for our governors and their families to live in.

What they do get is protection in the form of a detail of state troopers parked in front of their residence, protecting the occupants. 

With the foiled plot to attack Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and Virginia's Ralph Northam, these are scary times. Our governor, Charlie Baker, is a Republican, so is less likely to have the right-wing militias after him, but he's a pretty liberal R - a RINO to many - and he's kept a pretty tight lid on the state during the COVID crisis, so he could well become a target of domestic terrorists. Any political figure, of any prominence, is at risk. 

Anyway, before he became one of America's Most Popular Governors, Charlie was a successful businessman. And he lives in a lovely, successful businessman house in the lovely, successful businessman North Shore suburb of Swampscott. 

An parked in front of his lovely, successful businessman house is a SUV with a couple of Staties in it.

Our State Police force is nothing to write home about. Instead, it's something to write exposé articles about, as this charming organization seems to be perpetually scandal-plagued: overtime scams, procurements scams, scam scams. 

But you'd think they could manage to keep an eye on the governor's home.

Not so. 

While a couple of these guys were sitting there protecting and defending, some lunatic with a violent criminal past managed to walk in through the unlocked kitchen door and leave a pile of papers for Charlie. While Charlie's wife and daughter were in there.

Now, it's a large house and all, but you'd think these dudes would have noticed a strange ve-HICK-el (that's cop speak for vehicle, yes?) pull into the driveway. And a strange perp (ditto) step out and head for the house.

But no.

Probably too busy sitting there looking at their phones. Or listening to Rush Limbaugh. Or calling into sports radio. Or counting the minutes until their next run to Dunks. 

I would guess that protecting the governor is a pretty plum assignment. Sure, there are plenty of evil doers or just plain nuts who might want to take a swipe at him, but this isn't gunville. It's not RWNJ (right wing nut job, to you) territory. And the governor of Massachusetts isn't the president of the United States. I'm sure there are occasional threats, but I would guess that guarding Charlie Baker's house isn't all that dangerous a job.

Plus Charlie seems like an affable enough guy. I'm sure he's demanding - he didn't get to be a successful businessman or the governor by being a totally chill slacker - but I'm pretty sure he's not an irrational tyrant, a Captain Queeg. And protecting The Guv, one would think, would be a more interesting assignment than parking on the median strip on the Mass Pike with a speed gun.

Anyway, they caught the guy who broke into Baker's house, and no one was harmed. But while Baker has said little about the incident, you have to believe that - especially given that his family was there - he's mightily pissed. And that mightily pissing off the governmor may well have translated into a couple of reassignments, a couple of downgrades, to the feckless Staties that let this happen on their watch.

Maybe they're out in Lee, patrolling the state forests. Or in Belchertown. Nah. How could they be trusted to guard the Quabbin Reservoir? 

It'll be interesting the hear what the excuse is on this one. Folks can get arrested for texting while driving. Wonder if these jamokes were texting while supposedly guarding the governor's house?

All I can say is, bad career move

Sorry, Jeffrey Toobin. But now everyone knows you're a dog...

I'm sure you've all seen it going around. That thing about so many people not wearing pants while they're participating in a Zoom or Webex meeting. I wouldn't have thought that it was actually a thing, except that Fishbowl did a survey last spring asking professionals about their video conferencing attire. They found that:

• 1 out of 10 people (9.6%) wear only underwear below the belt during video conference calls. The gender breakdown probably won't surprise you — men answered that they video conference in their underwear at more than three times a higher rate than women at 14.27% vs 4.72%. (Source: Bizjournals)

The M-F differential doesn't surprise me. Still, I found it a bit disturbing that anyone - let alone 14.27% of men - sits around during a business meeting in their undies. The rest of the findings made more sense.

• Only 3% of professionals wear professional attire in video meetings

I assume by "professional attire" they mean what someone would wear to the office, or in a client meeting. So I guess there are still circumstances in which full business drag remains appropriate. In a serious meeting, a lawyer might want to lawyer up. A telehealth doctor might want to don their white coat.

I met with my financial advisor via Zoom last week. I don't recall what he was wearing. A dress shirt maybe? I don't think he had on a tie, which is fine by me. I know he wasn't wearing a ratty t-shirt. And I'm guessing he had pants on.

And some people are just very formal, stiff, even.

I have absolutely no cause to get dressed up for any of the meetings I have. No way I'd be zooming in something I would have worn to an in person client meeting back in the day before COVID. That would have been a nice pair of pants or a skirt, a jacket or nice sweater. Earlier on, I would wear a suit, but that's been a while. The tech industry tends toward casual, and I'm right there with them.

But 3% sounds about right.

• 12.50% answered with jeans

That would be me. Although I do wear linen pants or khakis during the summer, my uniform is mostly jeans. Others, however, are attired in something they wouldn't wear into the office even on the most casual of Casual Fridays:

• 75.20% answered with pajamas, sweats, shorts, or leggings

I just bought a pair of sweatpants, so I might be switching to sweats from the waist down.

I just really can't imagine sitting around in my underwear. And I really don't want to imagine anyone I'm Zooming with sitting around in their underwear, either. And it matters not whether it's boxers or briefs. (Although, admittedly, boxers seem more like real clothing to me.) There's really something not right about going to work in your underwear.

But high praise to those Jockey short wearers compared to the non-zero number of Zoom call participants who don't even bother with underpants. A roster that includes Jeffrey Toobin.

I like(d) Jeffrey Toobin. He's a legal commentator who writes wonderful articles for The New Yorker, and appears as a talking head on CNN. He's smart, clear, interesting. And liberal-leaning. So I enjoy his writing and his appearances.

During a recent meeting with New Yorker colleagues in which they were doing an "election simulation", gaming out different scenarios, Toobin apparently forgot that the least he could do was wear underpants:

The New Yorker magazine has suspended longtime staff writer Jeffrey Toobin after he inadvertently exposed himself during a virtual staff call last week over the messaging platform Zoom.

“Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” a spokesperson told The Washington Post. Vice.com first reported the suspension Monday afternoon. (Source: Wapo)

"Inadvertently exposed himself"? Huh? How does that happen? 

One of the reason you can get away with undies is that, on Zoom, you're pretty much seen from the waist up. I suppose you could accidentally stand up and show the world that you wear "fun" boxers or dowdy white cotton grandma undies.

But to be naked? Huh? A thousand times huh.

He's also been suspended by CNN.

“Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted,” a CNN spokesperson said."

Personal issue"? I'll say. Is Jeffrey Toobin another Anthony Weiner? 

Toobin, who could not immediately be reached for comment, told Vice.com in a statement that he “made an embarrassingly stupid mistake” during the Zoom call. “I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” he said. “I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”

How completely embarrassing, how colossally humiliating, to give away your dirty little secret: that you get your jollies sitting there with your privates in the altogether while you and your colleagues are taking care of business.

So what if he believed he was not visible on Zoom. This is still incredibly skeevy behavior.

What an idiot.

And to compound his idiocy, he thinks that you mute video. Hah!

In the early days of the Internet, there was an iconic New Yorker cartoon:

If you can't read the caption, it's "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

But that was in a long ago time, when we didn't have cameras and video conferences. Now, I'm afraid, our canine friends would be outed. As was Jeffrey Toobin, behaving like the ultimate louche, unsavory, pervy dog.

I take that back. Dog's too good a word for Toobin. No one would expect dogs to be clothed from the waist down. Let's just leave it at perv.

It'll be a long time before anyone can look at Toobin's talking head talking without thinking about what he's wearing. Or not. It'll be easier to read his articles, once he gets back. Although even there I'll be thinking "was he naked while writing this?"

This is assuming that all Toobin was doing was letting it all hang out. Not that he was, ah, enjoying himself. Ugh! Ick! ("Look, Ma, no hands!")

What an a-hole Jeffrey Toobin is!

Yes, Virginia, there IS a caterpillar with vomit-inducing poisonous fur

The feral hogs are rampaging around the South. Millions of them. Trampling crops and scaring the bejesus out of small children just trying to play in their backyards. And they're heading North. The feral hogs, not the small children. As far as I know. 

Murder hornets are only in the state of Washington. So far. But they're apparently about to enter into slaughter mode. Good thing they'll be decapitating all the bees in the hives they're attacking, rather than decapitating humans. Still, the bees are our friends. Pollination and all that. Plus, if they do turn on humans - and, seriously, who could blame them - I have a brother and sister in law in Washington. Duck and cover, kids!

Our perennial favorite in these parts, the mosquito carrying Eastern equine encephalitis, has been lurking around backyards all summer. Kind of makes me happy I don't have a backyard. But I am casting a cold eye on the water pooling in a corner of the storage shed that's out there were a backyard would be if my building had one. 

So why should we be surprised to learn about a new nasty-arse critter on the horizon, down in Old Virginny, making it about 600 miles too close for comfort. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the puss caterpillar:

Puss caterpillars’ fuzz hides spines filled with poison. It’s the most poisonous caterpillar found in the U.S., and its sting can cause nausea, vomiting, swelling and itching, and feelings of anxiety. Not pleasant, to say the least. In recent weeks, Virginia residents have unfortunately had a chance to experience this. A woman in the Richmond area touched one and said it felt like a “scorching-hot knife passing through the outside of my calf.” She was admitted to the emergency room to treat the sting. This is Virginia’s second outbreak of weird bugs this year. Cicadas overran the state this summer, buzzing up a storm.(Source: Gizmodo)

Cicadas are one thing. Puss caterpillars? Shudder, shudder. 

Cicadas don't make me puke, nor do they bring me "feelings of anxiety." On the other hand - or, given that they're caterpillars, maybe it's on the other foot - puss caterpillars. 

In the past, puss caterpillars have been in the Deep South, but with climate change, they're moving North. 

With luck, the feral hogs coming North will develop a liking for them.

Maureen Rogers, fellow American

Other than regularly hanging out on Act Blue to donate to Biden-Harris, and pretty much any Democrat with a chance of displacing a heinous Republican Senator or member of the House, I haven't exactly done a lot to help make sure that Biden et al. win and sweep the nightmare in the White House and his toadies into the ashbin of history. 

Part of this is the luxury of living in a safely blue state. It's not as if whatever-his-name-is who's running for the Senate here, or nutso Dr. Shiva who lost the Republican primary but insists he won and is asking voters to write him in, has any chance at all of beating Ed Markey. I don't know if my Congressman, Stephen Lynch, even has an opponent. And if Biden doesn't carry Massachusetts by at least 60-40, I'll eat styrofoam boater, even if it has Trump's name on it.

Plus I really do despise phone banking.

If someone asked me to do a visibility - something I actually don't mind doing - I'd go wherever and hold a sign. But no one's asked and there's really no point around here. 

But I did want to do something other than just kaching-ing on Act Blue.

So I settled on writing letters for Vote Forward, which reaches out to Democrats in swing states who are unlikely to vote. 

Their goal is to send out 15 million letters, and when I looked on Wednesday, they were almost there. If you're wondering whether it's worth it, studies suggest that 3.4% of voters contacted will vote. That translates into 500,000 voters in those swing states. When you consider the narrow margins that brought us to Trump, this can make a difference.

What you write is not entirely original. Vote Forward provides you a template that speaks a bit about the importance of voting, and gives voter information for each state. Volunteers personalize the letters by putting a name after the "dear" and adding a message about why you're voting. You then sign your name. I've been signing mine "Maureen R, fellow American." And have added in an extra little flourish on top of that: "Please vote. Your vote matters."

In total, I've done 300 letters. Forty to Pennsylvania. Twenty to Texas, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Ohio. And a whopping (at least in my opinion) 180 to voters in Michigan.

And here they are, all bundled up - those rubber bands that hold your asparagus together come in handy - and ready to drop tomorrow.

I varied the letters up a bit. If someone had an ethnic name, I sometimes wrote that I voted "to honor my grandparents who came here to find a better life. When I vote, I'm hoping to elect good people who'll make our country a better place for all." That's not really true, but I thought it had a nice ring to it.

If someone had an old-fashioned name - there was even a Gussie - I wrote about how much is at stake, leading with Social Security. If someone had a younger-sounding name - Rhianna - I wrote about how much is at stake, leading with the environment. For a middle-age name - Jasons and Jennifers are mostly 50-ish, right? - I led with healthcare.

Sometimes I wrote about wanting democracy to endure for generations to come. Other times, I wrote about how I never wanted a good candidate to lose by a couple of votes because I didn't vote.

I had a few other mini-spiels.

You're not allowed to make a partisan appeal, so I couldn't write what I really wanted to about the need to rid the body politic of the ticks that are Trump & Co. That I fear a slipslide into autocracy, into fascism. That we better choose wisely or we'll lose whatever fragile hold we have on our democracy.

It was interesting seeing the names - the broad sweep of the American population. The Diegos. The Abduls. The Shannons. The Shamekas. And the last names: all those Spanish-sounding surnames in Texas (and every where else). The Poles and Arab names from Michigan. Irish. Italian. Lithuanian. Thai. Chinese. Vietnamese. Swedish. French. Czech. 

Every once in a while, I googled a name. And thus came across the young marketer from Pennsylvania. The college wrestler. The woman in Michigan who's sister had been brutally murdered. But, of course, it would have been creepy to have a complete stranger ("Maureen R, fellow American") ask about how the marketing career or wrestling was going, or offer sympathy for a sister's death.

There's template for each state for the return address, so it looks like the letter is coming from the voter's state. But you're on your own for the voter's address.

I probably could have figured out how to convert the pdf's that contained the voter info into address labels, but I wrote out everyone's address in long hand. (Having been a marketer, I know that someone is more likely to open up something that's hand addressed.) I also got interesting stamps, and didn't go with the bland old flag. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Tomorrow's the official mailing date, so I'll be walking my letters to the post office.

Three-hundred letters, with a 3.4% response rate = 10 voters.

Not much in the grand scheme of thing, but every little bit counts.

So come on, Eleanor in Philadelphia! Bruce in NH, get moving! Kevin, Darius, Theodora in Michigan. Brandi in Ohio. Angel in Texas. Joseph in Minnesota. We're counting on you. VOTE, dammit, VOTE!

Somehow it all worked out

If I recall correctly, and - if I do say so myself, I have a pretty good reputation for correct recalls - life didn't used to be such a colossal hassle, such an unmitigated PITA. 

If you wanted to play with a friend, you went to their back door and hollered their name until they came out, or until their mother came to the door and told you they couldn't come out. Parents arranged nothing.

Somehow it all worked out.

If someone tried to call you on the phone and you were out, you were out. They'd call back. If someone in your home picked up the call, they might actually remember at some point - typically after the person who was trying to reach you called back - to tell you that so-and-so had called. 

Somehow it all worked out.

If you were meeting someone, you arranged the time and place to meet, and, ideally, both of your ended up there at the right time and the right place. If not, if you had picked the meeting spot well, there was a pay phone and you could try to call the person you were meeting to see what was up. If they were home to pick up the phone, you knew you'd gotten your signals crossed. If they didn't answer, you waited a while, shrugged, and got on with your life.

Somehow, it all worked out.

If you wanted a dinner reservation you called and made one. Or you stuck your head in when you were walking by to see if you could book something.

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted to buy a gift for someone, you went to the store and picked it out. Or you ordered it from a catalogue. If you wanted to buy flowers, you went to the florist. If you wanted to send flowers, you went to a florist that had FTD and ordered the carnations in the ceramic baby shoe.

Somehow it all worked out.

If you needed a plumber, and you couldn't make the fix yourself, you called the plumber you always called. If you didn't have a plumber you always called, you found one in the Yellow Pages. 

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted to watch your show on TV, you stayed home. If you missed an episode, you missed it. It would be re-run during the summer and you could catch it then. Or you could wait a few years and see it on a crummy UHF station. 

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted concert or theater tickets, once the concert was announced, you went to the venue's box office and bought them there. For a movie, you went to the theater and stood in line. You figured out quickly that it wasn't worth trying to see a movie on the day it opened. 

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted tickets to a game, I really don't know how you got them. Most of the games I went to as a kid - Red Sox games, Holy Cross football games - you just walked up and got the ticket day of. There was such a thing as purchasing a ticket in advance. I know you could walk up to the box office, as I did to Boston Garden for a Celtics playoff game back in the early seventies. But I just have no experience with how it worked if you were from out of town. Did travel agents in Worcester sell Red Sox tickets? Sporting good stores? Or did you - get this - write away for them.

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted to fly somewhere, you used a travel agent. Or you went to the airline offices and got your tickets and boarding passes there. Most of the airlines that flew in and out of Boston had offices in the Statler Building. So there you'd go.

Somehow it all worked out.

If you wanted to drive somewhere, for local jaunts, you had an street atlas on the floor of the back seat. It you needed a map, you could pick up a map at the gas station.  If you were going on a long trip, AAA would map your route out for you and send you a TripTik with all the directions and maps you needed. When my friend Joyce and I drove cross country in 1972, we traveled with an AAA TripTik. (Wish I'd hung on to that one.)

Somehow it all worked out.

If you needed money, you went to the bank. Or cashed a check at the grocery store. If you were traveling and didn't want to carry a lot of cash, you used American Express Travelers Checks. ("Don't leave home without them!")

Somehow, it all worked out.

Now, thanks to technological advances, all of the above is handled using smartphones, going online, downloading apps. 

And yet, for all the conveniences of being able to take care of everything you could possible think thanks to better-living-through-technology, life today is somehow just a fourteen-karat gold, non-stop pain in the patootey. 

I'm 95% retired, with almost all the free time in the world, yet sometimes I find myself just overwhelmed with the time pressures. How am I going to be able to get to the hardware store for the recycle bags I'm about to run out of. In another month or so. There goes the day! And my niece's birthday is just three weeks away and I don't have a card yet! Oh, I suppose I could Amazon things, but that would mean waiting a day to receive them. Plus I like to patronize local stores. The pressure is killing me!

I can only imagine how super-charged and ultra-pressured life must be if you have a full-time job, a full-time spouse, a full-time kid. No time for anything!

Unto the breach, dear friends, have sprung apps and services do all the hassle stuff for you. 

One of them is Stuff. 

For $50 a month, its mobile app gives you instant access to a network of personal assistants around the United States. They handle tasks such as sending flowers, finding a plumber, or booking the perfect rental home for a family ski vacation. You communicate with them via Stuff’s app — which feels similar to text messaging.

...your request to find a guitar teacher for your daughter or the best beachfront hotel in Santa Monica is categorized and sent to an agent in the United States who is available to work on it right away. (Stuff focuses on personal tasks, as opposed to business-related ones.)

Some agents may specialize in finding great accommodations; others on recommending gifts, or helping you negotiate with the cable company to get lower pricing.

Agents are paid a minimum of $15 an hour, though Elhelo says there are ways to earn bonuses that add to that, based on customer ratings and how quickly an agent works. Because of the pandemic, there’s lots of interest in the freelance, home-based work that Stuff provides its agents, [CEO Ohad] Elhelo says.(Source: Boston Globe)

The company - Boston/Israeli - has attracted a goodly amount of funding. Hoping, no doubt, for the next Uber.

Is $50 a month worth it? I guess that depends on how many small tasks you have a month. 

Even though getting tickets and making reservations are mostly off the table for the near future at least, Stuff does promise that they can do a lot of stuff. (Along with the brand promise that, with Stuff, you can live like LeBron, Beyonce, Elon, Marissa* ("even if you're not a billionaire.")

Personal Stuff "...please find a moving company..."
Purchasing Stuff "...can you find this LEGO set..."
On the go Stuff "...I'll need two beds in the room..."
Bills and Stuff "...see if they owe me a deposit..."
Booking Stuff "...book a table for four..."
Finding Stuff "...someone who can mount a picture to my living room wall..."
Travel and Stuff "...need an airbnb in Boston..."
Fun and Stuff "...recommendation on the best dinner..."
Really Annoying Stuff "...schedule a blood test..."
Kind Stuff "...send a bottle of wine..."
Administrative Stuff "...any day but Friday..."
Random Stuff "...we have a mouse..."

All good stuff, and I suppose if you're really busy, $50 a month is nothing. But why are we all so damned busy that so much of the stuff of life is beyond our ability to handle?

You know, back BT (before [such pervasive] technology), we had stuff to do. We had blood tests. We had mice. We went out to eat.

Somehow it all worked out. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay. I'm officially stumped. LeBron, Beyonce, and Elon I know. Who's Marissa?

Farewell, my friend.

In 2007, I tripped on the edge of a rug, fell and broke my shoulder. Not a bad break, mind you, but once I was on the mend I needed PT. I tried PT at Mass General Hospital, but - as my husband had warned me - they were useless. After a couple of months, all I could do was raise my arm in what looked like a Nazi salute. Since I have no call at all to give a Nazi salute, I didn't feel healed in the least.

My sister Kath suggested I try Kennedy Brothers PT. She had been treated by Jake Kennedy for a running injury, and thought I would like Jake and his genius and eccentric PT practice. 

Of course I did.

Jake was a genius healer. After he examined me, I said "It sounds like I wasted three months at MGH." And he answered, "You did." But he assured me that he would take care of me. A man of his word!

After I recovered full range of motion (since lost, but that's another story...), I figured that, if I had all this time to hang around Kennedy Brothers PT getting healed, I had time to work out. So I joined the KBPT gym, which was basically the PT clinic. You paid a nominal amount and got to use the equipment - plus bug Jake and his assistants if you had a minor ailment you wanted advice on.

The first Christmas I was gymming at KBPT, Jake asked if I'd mind running some checks to the bank for his charity, Christmas in the City. Founded by Jake and his wife Sparky in 1989, CITC (among other things) runs a blowout holiday party for 6,000 Boston area folks living in shelter situations. And gives out toys to thousands of families in need but not experiencing homelessness.

I, of course, said 'yes'. How hard could it be to bring a couple of checks to the bank?

It, of course, got a lot more involved than that. And I got a lot more involved.

(Jake never said 'no' to anyone who asked him for help. It was the least we could all do to return the favor.)

Over the years, I've done a variety of volunteer things for Christmas in the City, both year-round (website content, FB) and holiday event related. I'm a relative newbie. Many of the volunteers - and CITC is a 100% volunteer organization (and there are thousands of them) - have been with Jake and Sparky since the first party they ran in 1989. That party was attended by 165 people. As I said, last year, we hosted around 6,000. (This year, we're not holding our events thanks to COVID, but we're doing a pared down version, bringing gifts and meals to a number of the smaller shelters.)

The party is a really big deal around here. The Mayor of Boston always comes. Elizabeth Warren didn't make it last year because she was on the campaign trail, but she's usually there. Charlie Baker, the governor, has come. It makes all the news - print and TV. Everyone drawn in by the cause - and by Jake's charisma.

It's hard to explain Jake Kennedy to someone who's never met him. A neighbor of his recently told Sparky that Jake is equal parts Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and Peter Pan. That's a great description, but there's something missing. Oh, yes, George Carlin.

Jake was very brilliant at his work. As a physical therapist he had a true genius as a healer. He was also a brilliant mentor to the many young PT professionals he worked with. He was just plain brilliant in general, with an encyclopedic mind for seemingly everything large and small. He was a serious student of politics and history, but he also knew that the Murmaids sang "Popsicles, Icicles." 

Jake was a tremendous athlete. In his younger days, a rugby player. Throughout his life, a runner. He had run 37 consecutive Boston Marathons. This year would have been his 38th.

He was an adventurer, who had traveled all over the place, enjoying every moment of his life.

He was colossally generous and kind. (C.f., Christmas in the City.) But he was also spectacularly funny. Spontaneous, irreverent, hilarious.

Oh, and he always managed to drive everyone around him absolutely stark-raving nuts half the time.

One of his things was giving people nicknames. Mine was Motorious, Moto for short. 

ALS runs in Jake's family. His father died of it, as did a younger brother at age 31. Another brother has it, but is doing pretty well with his treatment, and many years into his diagnosis is still mobile and able to speak. (He recently rode his bike 26.2 miles along the Boston Marathon route.) But Jake ended up with the "bad" version of ALS, bulbar ALS, and it moved in on him rapidly. He was diagnosed just a year ago. (Given how god-awful ALS is anyway, it's hard to believe there's actually a bad version of it.)

I've been fortunate to know a lot of good people in my life, but Jake's right up there.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to call him my friend.

My heart goes out to Sparky and their four kids. To his extended family. Such a profound loss...

And that heart, like the hearts of a lot of folks people who knew and loved Jake, are broken. 

The world is a lesser place without this great and good man in it - less joyful, less kind - but it's a more magnificent place because we had Jake in it for 65 years. His legacy goes on through his wonderful family and through Christmas in the City.

Farewell, my friend. We won't be seeing the likes of you again anytime soon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

And because I needed a good cry, here's the Chieftains doing the "Limerick Lament."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0iQunb9KBs

The organist played this at my husband's memorial service. Hauntingly beautiful...

Maybe the lack of talent is at the top of Wells Fargo? Just sayin'...

Last week, Wells Fargo announced a rolling layoff. They're not alone when it comes to pink slipping. A lot of financial services outfits are getting in on that act. But Wells Fargo has had more than its share of troubles, most of them of their own making. (Here's a post from January 2017 (Oh, oh, the Wells Fargo scandals keep a comin') that chronicles, among other things, their firing of whistleblowers.)

Of course, you can't blame CEO Charlie Scharf for those woes of yore. He's only been at Wells Fargo since last October. But he did make a bit of recent news when it was revealed that, back in June, he wrote a memo in which he blamed the bank's scarcity of Black employees on, well, potential Black employees. Here's what Charlie wrote:

“While it might sound like an excuse, the unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of black talent to recruit from.” (Source: WaPo)

Yes, indeed, it does sound kinda-sorta like an excuse.

Scharf has since apologized: 

On Wednesday, Scharf apologized in a memo to the entire company “for making an insensitive comment reflecting my own unconscious bias.”

“There are many talented diverse individuals working at Wells Fargo and throughout the financial services industry and I never meant to imply otherwise,” Scharf wrote. “It’s clear to me that, across the industry, we have not done enough to improve diversity, especially at senior leadership levels. And there is no question Wells Fargo has to make meaningful progress to increase diverse representation.”

AOC's response was, as usual, on point:

“Perhaps it’s the CEO of Wells Fargo who lacks the talent to recruit Black workers,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a tweet.

And that's exactly it.

I'm no HR expert, but I do know that people tend to hire in their own image and likeness - the "unconscious bias" Scharf admits to. He did his undergrad at Johns Hopkins. Anyone willing to bet against the up-and-coming young banksters he likes to see being lax bros? 

So, if your pool of hirees are people like you - coming from pedigreed colleges and universities - you may not find as many POC or even white folks from working class backgrounds to jump into your pool, and finding a place for themselves on any fast track. 

But I suspect that, if you asked, say, branch managers who their bright young things are, you might find plenty of talented, ambitious individuals who would just love to get on that management trainee track. Maybe they didn't go to Johns Hopkins. Maybe they went to some no-name community college, then finished up their BA online at the University of Phoenix. Maybe they didn't go to their state's flagship university, but rather to what my cousin calls a "directional school" - a state university with North-South-East-West in its name. (She and her husband are proud - and plenty accomplished - grads of directional schools.) Maybe they didn't go to Princeton or Stanford, but got a scholarship to Our Lady of the Tulips (the sort of school where I got my undergrad degree) and were happy to get a free ride.

There are plenty of good, smart people in lesser schools. I know this up close and personal.

Anyway, if you're only looking in certain places, you may not find what you're looking for. 

Obviously, with a quarter of a million employees - at least before the latest round of layoffs - Wells-Fargo is hiring from multiple sources and for positions at all levels. What I'm talking about in the above is who gets in on the fast track to promotion. The emerging leaders, the high potentials. But the problem and the solution are pretty much the same whether you're hiring for the most entry level position or someone who has potential to go far. If you want a diverse workforce, look for them where there's diversity.

This may mean reaching out beyond your own image-and-likeness network. It may mean taking more of a chance. It may mean trying to make your organization more attractive to a diverse population. And it might help if your organization did something about its rag-ass reputation, i.e., one that didn't have to settle:

...several discrimination cases in recent years. In 2012, the company agreed to pay more than $175 million to settle allegations from the Justice Department that it steered Black and Latino borrowers into expensive loans and charged them excessive fees... [and a] case directly related to its hiring practices. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $7.8 million to settle allegations by the Labor Department that it discriminated against more than 34,000 Black and more than 300 female applicants. 

No liability was admitted in either of these cases. But, ahem...

Wonder if some days the bit mahoffs like Charlie Scharf wake up wishing they were back in the simpler times, when Wells Fargo meant a wagon pulling into the streets of River City (setting for The Music Man) with a load of goodies. 

I got a box of maple sugar on my birthday.
In March I got a gray mackinaw.
And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa.
Montgom'ry Ward sent me a bathtub and a cross-cut saw.

Anyway, seems to me that some of Wells Fargo's problem with talent is a lack of it at the top.