Worst doggone dogfood name in the world

For Baby Boomers, Disney entertainment was full of all sorts of traumatic little bits.

Those cartoons? Absentee fathers, and mothers who are gone, baby, gone. 

There was Bambi's mother, shot and killed by a hunter. Run, Bambi, run. I don't think we're ever told where Bambi's father, the Great Prince of the Forest is off to, but he was pretty much absent from Bambi's childhood.

Even though she's called Mrs. Jumbo, there's no Mr. Jumbo around, so Dumbo's mother is pretty much a single mom. And although she ends up reunited with her little guy, she spends much of the film in a cage. 

To make up for their missing parents, Bambi had cool friends in the forest, like Thumper and Flower. And Dumbo had Timothy, a mouse. So these cartoons, I guess, got us used to the idea of being away from our parents. Which, as Baby Boomers, we were most of the time. (If there's one thing you can say for the Greatest Generation, they preferred hanging out with their friends to playing with their kids. And we preferred being with our friends, too. As a child, I rarely had a conversation with an adult other than my parents, and those conversations were seldom actual convos. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents of friends, neighbors: an adult might ask you a question, and you'd be required to provide a polite but brief response. But we mostly ran in packs of our fellow kids.)

Still, it wasn't easy watching Bambi's mother get gunned down. 

The live Disney movies were more traumatic, as they portrayed real live actual children being traumatized.

How old was Johnny Tremain when he poured molten silver over his hand? Fourteen? I watched that movie over sixty years ago and that scene where Johnny's hand is disfigured still makes me wince. (Johnny had a dead father, by the way.)

And how old was Travis when he had to man up and shoot Old Yeller once the "best doggone dog in the West" was bitten by a rabid wolf? How old was he? Early teens. 

What a terrible plot: Boy meets dog. Boy loves dog. Boy kills dog.

The only saving grace was that they didn't make the adorable kid actor Kevin Corcoran, who actually was my age (7 or 8) when this movie was made, be the one to put Old Yeller down.

All I can say is that any kid who didn't end up a weepy after poor Travis had to do away with his beloved doggo was stonehearted and/or a sadist. That or they left the movie early.

By the way, this kid "becomes a man" by shooting your sick dog was a well-used trope of films and TV shows of my childhood. And we wonder where toxic masculinity comes from.

Anyway, while Travis did have a father - he was just off somewhere being Western and manly when Travis had to take care of the home front - and while Travis did have a living  mother, Old Yeller was a trauma two-fer for us Boomers. This glorious dog that we were all in love with dies, and the one who has to put him out of his misery is a kid not much older than us.

I'm betting that if you asked 100 first-wave Baby Boomers what the most traumatic movie they ever watched as a kid, 95 of them would name Old Yeller.

And yet somehow - almost in time for the 50th anniversary of the movie's release - Kroger decided in 2005 to introduce a dog food named Disney Old Yeller.

I'd never heard of this dog food - I don't live in Kroger territory - but it made the rounds for some reason on Twitter today, where my sister Trish spotted it. 

So of course I had to find out more.

"This movie is a timeless classic that transcends generations, and we believe this brand will appeal not only to original fans, but to the millions of Americans who share the same kind of special bond with their beloved dogs," said Barry Vance, Kroger's senior corporate category manager. (Source: BizJournals)

Because ain't nothing says "special bond" like putting a bullet in your beloved dog's skull.

Disney, ever on the lookout to capitalize on its brand, was very keen on lending their name to the product. 

“This program with Kroger is especially exciting because it combines the leading grocer in the country with the world’s most-popular family entertainment brand to bring an affordable product line to market that kids will enjoy and parents will trust, ” said Harry Dolman, executive vice president of Disney Consumer Products for food, health and beauty. (Source: Chief Marketer)

"Kids will enjoy" dog food. Hmmmm.

Maybe they didn't. Maybe the dogs didn't either. It appears that Old Yeller dog food may not have been such a brilliantly winning idea, as it appears that it's no longer on the market.

No surprise there. In 2010, there was a recalled for being tainted with aflatoxin. And a one-star review on dogfoodadvisor noted that one of the product's main ingredients:

...could come from almost anywhere: spoiled supermarket meat, roadkill, dead, diseased or dying livestock — even euthanized farm animals.

If I get this straight, this means that Old Yeller, the dog food, could have contained Old Yeller, the dog. Which I guess takes us full circle to a more recent Disney thang: the circle of life in their Lion King. 

Hakuna matata!

As for naming a dog food after a dog that its human (kid) owner had to shoot? Old Yeller may have been as its theme song told us, the best doggone dog in the West, but the worst doggone dogfood name in the world. I'm relieved it's no longer with us.

Audibles

I don't know about other places in the country, but in Massachusetts, high school football season, having been postponed due to covid, is on.

Normally, I don't pay much - make that any - attention to football, especially of the high school variety. This is Massachusetts. Sure, high school football is a thing, but it's not exactly Friday Night Lights around here. 

But a local football game incident has been attracting a good deal of attention - attention that has (so far) resulted in a high school football coach being fired and some games being canceled.

The reason? The team had been using a number of Jewish-related terms to call their plays. Their audibles included dreidel, rabbi, and - WAIT FOR IT - Auschwitz.

Unless it was somehow being used to demean Jews, I'm guessing that dreidel alone would have probably been given a pass. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. I made it out of clay. Kind of fun, even. 

Even rabbi I can see. Snarky, maybe. But also maybe they were using other religious figure terms: bishop, reverend, nun. High school kids poking a bit of fun at religion? Meh.

But Auschwitz? AUSCHWITZ?

I what way can that ever be construed as appropriate? It's not exactly like Peyton Manning hollering "Omaha."

The opposing team reported it and things took off from there.

Now high school kids can be thoughtless and truly and utterly a-holey. And a lot of them like to push buttons - and boundaries, to do things a bit edgy and transgressive. When they start edging towards the border of decency, that's when the adults in the room (or on the field) need to step in.

The coach was aware of the audibles the team was using. He may have thought they were "only" using them during practice. But he admits that he knew. And did nothing until it was reported.  

Anyway, the opposing team's athletic director let the town's school superintendent know about it. And the next thing you know, that little dreidel was spinning out of control. Everyone from state legislators to sports columnists to the Anti Defamation League were weighing in. 

There was a lot of yack about anti-Semitic language. I don't know but "dreidel" and "rabbi", unless used with bad intent or fake old-school Brooklyn accents or coupled with truly anti-Semitic words, would be considered anti-Semitic. But there's really no getting around Auschwitz.

The news perhaps got bigger play because the town involved was Duxbury (a.k.a., Deluxebury) an affluent oceanside community south of Boston known for, among other things, the excellence of its high school football team and the snotty, preppy blue-eyed douchebaggery of a lot of the kids in town. 

The coach, Dave Maimaron, issued the usual after the fact (i.e., got caught) apology:

“I want to extend my apology for the insensitive, crass, and inappropriate language used in the game on March 12,” Maimaron said in a Monday statement to the Globe. “The use of this language was careless, unnecessary and most importantly hurtful on its face — inexcusable … We have taken responsibility for the incident.” (Source: Boston Globe)

And now he's no longer the coach, fired even though he'd amassed quite a winning record, and, since taking over as coach in 2005, had lead his teams to five Super Bowl (state championships) in their division. 

What's wrong with this guy - also a teacher in the Duxbury schools - that he wouldn't have told these kids to knock it off? And I'm not letting these kids off the hook, either. What's wrong with them?

Although I did read that about one-third of Massachusetts residents under the age of 40 weren't quite sure what Auschwitz is, it's hard to believe that students at Duxbury High School aren't aware of the Holocaust. Surely they read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl somewhere along the way. Anne was just 15 when she died. High school age. Maybe a little younger than whoever was calling the audibles for the Duxbury Green Dragons. Kid sister age. JV player age.

And it's hard to believe that students at Duxbury High School don't know the meaning of Auschwitz. If they don't, maybe they should take a look around the Auschwitz Museum's website. It's closed to visitors due to covid, but they might want to consider a visit someday. (I've been.) Or, closer to home, go to the Holocaust Museum in DC. (I haven't been. Yet.)

It's interesting (but not surprising, of course) that the survivors of the death camps, including Auschwitz, skewed young and male. Often the age of the kids on a high school football team. They were younger, fitter, more resilient than others - fit enough to be set to hideous and unimaginable tasks that let them live, at least for a while . In reading survivor accounts, I've been struck by the fact that when a father and son both survived the camps, the father often died shortly after liberation. After all, he'd done what he could to make sure his son made it to safety, but hadn't been able to save the rest of his family. The fathers could let go, give up, now that they knew their sons had survived. Maybe the team would find this interesting?

I do wonder whether there's any way to reach these football kids. (And I believe that most of them are probably reachable, if only someone can figure out how.)

A few weeks ago, NBA player Meyers Leonard uttered an anti-Semitic slur. Julian Edelman, a star for the New England Patriots who's Jewish, sent him an open letter:

I get the sense that you didn't use that word out of hate, more out of ignorance. Most likely, you weren't trying to hurt anyone or even profile Jews in your comment. That's what makes it so destructive. When someone intends to be hateful, it's usually met with great resistance. Casual ignorance is harder to combat and has greater reach, especially when you command great influence. Hate is like a virus. Even accidentally, it can rapidly spread.

Edelman's probably giving Leonard too much of the benefit of the doubt. More than I would, anyway. But "casual ignorance" is a good way to look at it. Edelman offered to meet with Leonard. Maybe he could meet with the Duxbury High football team, too. Maybe someone they hero-worshipped, which is probably the case when it comes to Edelman - rich, handsome, jock, those three Super Bowl rings from real Super Bowls -  could get through to them in a way that others cannot. What Edelman has to say might be pretty damned audible. 

As for their coach: I bet he's learned a lesson. But I'd also bet that he won't be coaching another high school football team any time soon. 

The Peepsi Generation, or a taste marriage made in hell

Easter's approaching and, of course, pretty much that means that everyone's fancy is turning to Peeps, doesn't it? At least mine does.

Thanks to my sister Trish, who always provides my annual fix, I've had a seasonal Peep already. And if I'm passing a CVS in the next few days, I might just pop in and pick up a pack for another go-round. After all, biting the head off of a fresh Peep is as much a harbinger of spring as spotting the first robin going after a worm, or the first crocus peeping its head up.

Anyway, I'm a long time fan of Peeps and have much enjoyed Peep-related thangs like the Peep Shows/Peeps Diorama Contests that have sprung up over the years. (I've written about them a few times: We the Peeple, Happy Peepster, Peep O the Morning to You.) Sadly, the Washington Post no longer does its contest. More serious matters to focus on, I guess. But there are still a few going on out there, providing opportunities for makers to showcase their creative skills by creating or replicating works of art using Peeps. 

But the Peep Shows aren't the only Peep stuff I've posted about. And when Peeps does something wrong, I have no problem calling them out. As I did two years ago when I blasted them in Pancake & Syrup Peeps? That’s just plain WRONG! Because when necessary, Pink Slip can and does take the moral high ground. Which I'm again taking today to declare that Peeps-flavored Pepsi is an ABOMINATION.

In the most unlikely collaboration since Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli, Peeps has partnered with Pepsi to create Marshmallow Cola, which comes in a three-pack of cute little 7.5-oz. cans. (Source: People, via my sister
Trish)

Personally, I don't see Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli as being all that unlikely a collaboration. They both sing, don't they?

But Peeps and Pepsi?

Ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh.

Not that I'm much of a Pepsi fan to begin with. On the occasions when I do drink a cola, I prefer Coke and will find myself disappointed when I'm in a restaurant where there's a Pepsi monopoly and that's all that's on tap. 

But combining Peeps and Pepsi is just plain wrong. 

Personally, I don't think that anything other than marshmallows should be marshmallow flavored. No cake mix, no alcohol, no water. And nothing should be marshmallow-scented, either. Marshmallow candles? Marshmallow moisturizer? There are certain things that should not be done. Marshmallowing is one of them.

Plain marshmallows are wonderful when they're toasted (preferably blackened) or when floating in a cup of cocoa. And what would a Fluffernutter be without Marshmallow Fluff in it? Let's just leave it at that.

Of course, Peeps are marshmallows of a different color entirely, but unless they're adulterated - as in pancake and syrup flavored - they'll always be welcome in my house. Especially the original little yellow guys. 

But Peeps-flavored Pepsi? Yuck. 

I was wondering what it would taste like, and the people at People had the answer:

The cans come in blue, pink, and yellow, although there is no difference in flavor. We got a first taste of the drink and can confirm that it does, in fact, taste like marshmallows—with a flavor that's vaguely reminiscent of Lucky Charms.

"Reminiscent of Lucky Charms"? Hardly a ringing endorsement. Lucky Charms are about as nightmare a cereal as you can get. (Okay, Fruit Loops are plenty nasty, too.) Nothing should be reminiscent of them. 

Of course, it is all meant as good - albeit nauseating - fun.

"After what has been a very difficult year, many consumers are looking for new things to smile about," said Todd Kaplan, Pepsi's VP of Marketing. "So, to celebrate the start of springtime, Pepsi collaborated with PEEPS to develop a limited batch of its first-ever marshmallow cola."

Make that smile about and/or gag over. At least they only brewed up a "limited batch." Which, blessedly, will not be available wherever Peeps and Pepsi are sold. Instead, those desiring a taste "can enter the sweepstakes to win some by hashtagging "#HangingWithMyPEEPS" on their social media photos." There will be ten "grand prize winners" who'll get a package containing some combo of Pepsi and Peeps stuff, including the drink. 

I will not be entering.

Instead, I will be ruing the passing of the WaPo Peeps Diorama Contest, and drowning my sorrows by biting off a Peep head, swallowing hard, and washing it down with water.

Yes, we have blue bananas! We have blue bananas today!

When I was a kid, one of the things I wanted most in the world was a birthday cake with blue frosting. My mother wouldn't give: blue was not an appropriate color for food other than blueberries. Even for birthday cakes. One of the highlights of my childhood - although one that made me a bit jealous and sad knowing that I would never, ever, ever in the whole wide world enjoy such an experience - was attending birthday parties for the Shepherd sisters - Maggie and Susie. I'm not sure which one had which colored party, but one of the girls had a pink frosted cake and pink dyed ginger ale; the other had a blue frosted cake and blue dyed ginger ale. I was completely in awe! Just insane!

My sisters have, over the years, made up for the lack of a blue frosting birthday cake, but it's not quite the same. 

I could never get enough blue. And, when it came to food, there just wasn't enough of it (other than those blueberries, which actually turned purple in a pie or muffin).

Oh, on our biannual trips to Chicago, my mother might buy a box of blue-glass hard candies, Michigan Mints, that were pretty good. But how long was a box of candy going to last in our house? Not long. 

And those gross sugar button candies had blue buttons.

Once in a blue moon, my mother would bring back a wedding favor: a mesh bag full of Jordan almonds, and there might be a blue one or two in the mix.

But where were the blue M&M's? Nowhere, at that time. Somewhere along the line, when I was an adult, Mars got rid of tan M&M's and brought in blue. Same goes for JELLO. There was no blue JELLO when I was a kid. There is now. Too little, too late. 

It wasn't just food, of course. I only wanted to wear blue clothing. This hasn't changed much: the majority of my clothing is probably some variant of blue. But I remember being heartbroken when McEachern's the Cobbler, where we got our annual pair of sneakers, didn't have blue PF Flyers in my size, so I had to settle for red. 

Having grown up in the era of hand me downs, I didn't have a lot of voice when it came to clothing color. Sure, I got some new outfits, but I also got a lot of what I got. And ain't no one who was buying blue for my older sister with the dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Who cared that I was a blue eyed towhead? 

One summer, we got really cute short sets: solid shorts and a red-yellow-blue-white large checked shirt. For some reason - probably size availability - Kath got the blue shorts, I got the red. Even though I was stuck with red shorts, I loved that outfit - which we called our "firecracker outfits" for some reason. Maybe we got them around the Fourth of July? And I knew that if I just hung on for a couple of years, those blue shorts would be mine!

My favorite songs on the radio were "I'm Mr. Blue" and "I Love You, I Love You, Said the Little Blue Man."

And at least there were blue flowers.

Ah, blue.

When my Uncle Jack got married, we trekked out to Chicago for the wedding. My very first. There, I was thrilled to find out that his bride, my soon-to-be Aunt Donna, was wearing a wedding gown that wasn't white, but was something called "ice blue." It - and she - were fairy-princess gorgeous. To be in the presence of such awesomeness was, well, awesome. 

But my desire for blue was often thwarted. It figures that the color jumper I wore throughout grammar school and high school was dark green, not the navy blue I longed for.

I was happy that my father had been in the Navy, which wore blue, and not the Army or the Marines with their gacky khaki.

When we moved around the corner from my grandmother's three-decker to a single family house of our own, I was hoping for blue wallpaper in the bedroom I'd be sharing with Kath. Nope: pink. My parents bedroom featured the same patterns: one wall in a quilted design, the others in floral. Only in blue. This was a mistake. I don't know what color she wanted - I'm guessing yellow, cream, or pale green - but she hated blue, announcing that "blue rooms are depressing." (No comment.) But she didn't have the builders change it out, and lived with that blue wallpaper for a good long time. I'm guessing that she was so eager to get out of my grandmother's and into digs of her own, that she would have been happy with bare walls.

But if blue rooms were depressing, why did this seem to also mean that there would be no blue foods? Just another example of life being unfair. 

And then the other day, I saw a reference to blue bananas that taste like ice cream.

Blue bananas that taste like ice cream? Now we're talking!

What I wouldn't have given for one of these as a kid. But maybe, just maybe, I could find them sometime, somewhere, at the grocery store. If they can carry starfruit and mangoes... 

My dreams were, of course, dashed when I found out that this picture has been somewhat colorized. That blue bananas are pale blue, and that, while they may taste like ice cream (or custard: opinions vary), when they ripen they turn - get this! - yellow.

Still, I will be on the lookout for them, and hope someday soon to hear the produce guy at Roche Brothers warbling "Yes, we have blue bananas. We have blue bananas today!"

And I will warble back, at least in my mind, "I love you, I love you, said the little blue man."

You'd think SOMEONE at Apple should be offering Katrina Parrott a job

Maybe Katrina Parrott shouldn't have invested all that money - $200K - in her emoji startup. After all, her big idea was making emojis in different skin tones, which, while they weren't really available before she started making them, wasn't going to be that difficult for big emoji-providers like Apple e to replicate once they figured out that "human" emojis should come in more colors than Caucasian. 

But she had some pretty good reasons to believe that with her new company, iDiversicons, she had a business there.

Her idea came about when her college-age daughter mentioned that she'd like to have an emoji that "looked" like her. (I've put "looked" in quotes, because emojis don't exactly look like anyone.) At that point in time, Parrott didn't even know what an emoji was. Her career was in logistics. No need to know what an emoji was. Plus this was way back in 2013, well before the biggest Luddites in the world were throwing emojis into their text messages.

Anyway, Parrott thought her daughter might we onto something. She hired someone to code some diverse emojis for her and began selling them on the Apple App Store. She had

300 emojis in her app, and they were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Sales weren't all that stellar, but she was selling over 1,000 a month. At $.99 a pop, she wasn't going to get rich. But it was something.

Plus Parrott was getting some traction in the online press. So she figured the success was just around the corner.

What she didn’t account for was that the App Store doesn’t operate like most marketplaces. Apple restricts the kinds of things applications can do on the App Store, reserving many functions for software it develops in house. At the time, Apple’s default keyboard, which included 846 emoji, could not be modified or replaced. Apple did not allow apps such as iDiversicons to create alternative keyboards with different emoji, so iPhone users who wanted other emoji could download apps and cut and paste the icons into text messages like an image — a clunky process.

(Tell me again why, for so many people, Apple where a halo???)

Meanwhile, Parrott pitched the Unicode Consortium on the idea of standardizing on more diverse emojis. (The Unicode Consortium is a group of major tech companies that sets the standards for how text characters and emojis are encoded. It makes it possible for me to create an emoji-laden text on my Android phone and send it to the people I know - every last one of them on an iPhone - and have them be able to read it.) She sent a proposal into Unicode, and was asked to come in and meet with them.

One of those attending the 2014 meeting where Parrott presented her ideas was from Apple. Now Apple is not always on the up and up when it comes to dealing with apps and app makers. 

Apple has a long history of incorporating features first found on the App Store or elsewhere and turning them into features built into its operating system. Companies such as Spotify have accused Apple of creating competing services and using its power over its iOS mobile software system to gain a competitive advantage. Companies such as Blix, the maker of email software, have taken Apple to court over similar allegations. (Source: Washington Post)

Nonetheless, Parrott was buoyed by the warm reception she received at Unicode, and especially hyped over an invitation to come meet with Apple. 

Her meeting with Apple went nowhere. Unless you call Apple's finally getting around to incorporating diversity into their emoji catalogue, rendering the iDiversicon app obsolete, somewhere. Parrott is now suing Apple for copyright infringement. Her battle is widely seen as an uphill one. Apple didn't copy her emojis; it just started making their own emojis available in different skin colors. Still, it's hard not to believe that Apple could have treated Katrina Parrott a lot better

It’s surprising that Parrott’s role in the widespread adoption of skin tones for emoji isn’t more well known, said Jennifer 8. Lee, a vice chairman of the emoji subcommittee of Unicode Consortium, the body that approves and standardizes emoji so they can be sent among users with any device or operating system, and in any language. “If she had been a White male from Stanford or MIT in her mid 20s, it’s more likely her company would have been acquired by Apple,” said Lee, who featured Parrott in her documentary, “The Emoji Story.”

Earlier this year, Apple -"which remains overwhelmingly White and Asian" - announced:

...a $100 million racial justice and equity initiative that aims in part to help Black entrepreneurs with start-up boot camps and other opportunities. As part of the initiative, which costs one one-thousandth of what Apple earned in revenue last quarter, the company says it is funding schools such as one in Detroit’s urban center that offers free iPhone coding classes.

The effort is aimed at stopping the “gross injustices and institutional barriers” preventing communities of color from pursuing the “American Dream,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, said in a news release announcing the initiative.

Hmmmm. And there they had Katrina Parrott right there for the asking. 

Parrott is not a technologist. But she's sharp, smart, entrepreneurial and knows how to work and communicate with techies. Surely, Apple could have found a role for this woman. Maybe it's not too late. First, they ought to settle with her. Even if she doesn't have a strong copyright infringement case, she should receive some compensation for bringing forth her idea - only to see Apple grab and run with it. Sure, they would likely have eventually come around to the idea of diverse emojis, but you'd think they would have been more welcoming and less exploitive of Parrott. Just plain blind business stupidity, I guess.

But what they really ought to do is hire her to help with their new diversity initiative. She sounds perfect for the job!

Shoppers' Worlds

I didn't grow up in the Great Mall Era. 

When I was a kid, going shopping meant getting on the bus and going "down city" (which is what we called downtown in Worcester) and shopping at Denholm's, Barnard's, Filene's, and Marcus (for shoes). Worcester's downtown in that era was lively and full of stores, everything from S.S. Kresge's (where, when my father took us to the dentist - always on a Saturday - we stopped to pick up a bog of Scotch Jam cookies) - to department stores like Denholm's, to nice men's shops, to jewelers, to Ephraim's bookstore, to fancy women's stores like Richard Healy's, where my father one year got my mother a mink pillbox hat for Christmas. (The Kennedy era, of course!) 
Worcester's downtown also had coffee shops, restaurants, and movie theaters. It was absolutely the sort of downtown that people of a certain age look back on so fondly, and which was ripped to shreds by malls.

There were no malls in Worcester when I was a kid.

We had a few of what were called shopping centers or plazas. (I don't know whether shopping plaza is/was universal coinage, or local to New England. It seems about right to be a New England-ism. New England, after all, being a place where a corner market is called a "spa" and the porch hanging off of a three decker is a "piazza.")

Anyway, there was Lincoln Plaza, on the other side of the city from where we lived, where we occasionally trekked to for R.H. White's. And a few little clusters of stores in what would now be called a strip mall. One that we frequented had Mr. B's Shoes and a Hit or Miss. 

And then, of course, the Webster Square Plaza in my neighborhood. Walking distance! How exciting when it opened. Just to give you a sense of its grandeur, the anchor store was a Zayre's, a cheapo, now defunct discount store which my parents considered junk, except for things like beachballs and hula hoops. There was also a Woolworth's where we could buy Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twin books for fifty cents, and five-and-dime Christmas gifts for the family. And Woolworth's had a soda fountain where you could enjoy your vanilla coke and the ten-cent bag of greasy red-skinned peanuts you'd gotten at the candy counter, which is something that I did on splosh occasions with my friends Bernadette and Susan when we were in fifth and sixth grade.

But no malls, so hanging around the mall (or even shopping at one) wasn't a thing.

The first malls in Worcester - The Galleria Mall (downtown) and the eponymous Auburn Mall (not surprisingly, in the suburban town of Auburn) - opened in 1971, the year I graduated from college and had a foot and the very long leg attached to it already out the door.
I was, of course, aware of malls, as on our rare excursions into Boston, we would pass Shoppers' World on Route 9 in Framingham on our way home. 

From the outside, Shoppers' World looked nothing like this garden of earthly delights. I suspect it really didn't look like this idealized version from the inside either. I had no way of knowing. The one and only time I went there I was well into adulthood and was surprised to find that the brick façade on Jordan Marsh was just that: a façade. A peeling façade of cheesy brickface.
But when I was a kid zipping by, that Jordan Marsh, which looked like a flying saucer, was completely enticing, and I longed to see what was inside.

But somewhere between my childhood and "real" adulthood,  malls were everywhere. High end malls. Low end malls. In between malls. And crazy-arse malls like the Mall of America in Minnesota, which features an indoor amusement park. (On a business trip, I once got to ride on the Ferris wheel, in full business drag and carrying a briefcase.)

And then, having killed off downtowns everywhere, malls themselves started dying, leaving behind depressing and blighted hellscapes where kids hung around eating Auntie Anne's Pretzels and gloomy old folks wearing white orthopedic walking shoes trudged around in circles. And apparently the mall scene is getting even worse:

Quintessential mall stores from Macy’s to Kay Jewelers to Gap are plotting out a post-Covid future — and traditional shopping centers won’t play as much of a role in it.

Signet Jewelers Ltd., which owns chains such as Kay and Zales, said this past week it will expand in off-mall locations while continuing to pull back from the old-school gallerias where it has long had a major presence. The company also plans to add more kiosks in underserved markets.

The move brings “an opportunity for a better economic model,” Joan Hilson, Signet’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “The foot traffic for off-mall locations is better than what we’re seeing in the mall, certainly in this time. It’s really important, and we see that shift continuing.”

Retailers are abandoning enclosed malls in growing numbers as the rise of online shopping transforms the industry — a trend that has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Almost a third of retail CFOs are planning to scale back their mall presence, according to a recent survey from consulting firm BDO USA. (Source: Boston Globe)

Some of the malls are being replaced by "so-called lifestyle centers — open-air markets with dining and other activities." Even if they're not "so-called lifestyle centers" - and I refuse to believe that anything containing a Walmart is a "lifestyle center," "so-called" or not - shopping centers now more typically include a bunch of sprawling big box stores surrounded by parking lots studded with a bunch of other stuff. Like, I guess, Zale's.

"Lifestyle centers" also may include residential and business as well, trying to mimic that small town feel. Or whatever. 

Anyway, I guess I'm living in a "lifestyle center" of my own. People live here. People work here. I can walk to Macy's, Old Navy, Stonewall Kitchen, L.L. Bean, Bed-Bath-and-Beyond, and Target. Not to mention my doctors and dentist. My grocery store(s).  The drugstore, the hardware store, all sorts of card and gift stores. And my wonderful indie bookstore (Trident Booksellers).

So dying malls don't really have any personal impact. And they're not anything that I'm nostalgic for, as I didn't grow up with them and have never been all that much of a user - or a fan. 

And yet, I find all this dying retail, even the dying malls, just so dispiriting for some reason. 

Sigh.

Good to see jewelry making's still a thing in Rhode Island

Having grown up when there was still a lot of manufacturing going on in New England, I'm a pure sucker for stories about manufacturing that's still going on in here. 

When I was a kid, my hometown of Worcester was a manufacturing hub. Having come up through the ranks on the shop floor, my father was a salesman for the Thompson Wire Company, which made wire for the automotive and other heavy duty industries. The factory was not far from where we lived, and quite close to Hadwen Park where we went blueberrying in the summer. We'd walk by the factory on the way home, looking in through the windows watching the men at work on the bottom floor coiling the big rolls of wire for shipment. I can still remember the hum of the machines, the faint vibrations we could feel through the soles of our sneakers.

Worcester had a lot of heavy industry: abrasives, boilers, steel, aircraft engine parts, rifles. (A lot of the M16's that "our boys" used in Vietnam were made in Worcester.) Space suits were manufactured in Worcester. Consumer goods, too: pocketbooks, plastic toys, shoes. (I worked one summer in a shoe factory.) Winchendon and Gardner, towns in Worcester County, were full of furniture factories. 

Once a year, my family took a tee-shirt buying trip to a mill outlet store in Ware, Massachusetts or Fall River. 

And everyone knew that jewelry was made in the factories of Attleboro, Massachusetts. And in Rhode Island.

By the 1970s, the state produced 80 percent of the fashion jewelry made in America. Nearly 900 jewelry firms employed almost 25,000 Rhode Islanders at the time, mostly in Providence and its surrounding suburbs, churning out products such as earrings, rings, cuff links, tie tacks, pendants, and bracelets. (Source: Boston Globe)

Somewhere along the line, most costumer jewelry wearers who shopped at department stores like Filene's and Jordan Marsh owned something from Monet or Trifari, which used to be produced in Rhode Island. My mother was a big Monet fan. Should have hung on to some of her treasures. Apparently they're now a big vintage find. 

The jewelry industry still has a toehold in the Ocean State. Alex and Ani, a "billion-dollar jewelry empire" which had a real moment a few years ago is located there. The founder of that company, Carolyn Rafaelian, is a second-generation jewelry maker. 

Her late father Ralph Rafaelian had owned Cinerama Jewelry. And thanks to his granddaughter Rachel Ajaj and her husband Omar, jewelry is still being produced in the Cinerama factory. 

For a while, Alex and Ani was occupying the space, but when they expanded and needed a larger facilities, the Ajas took the shop over. 

Rachel has been at the jewelry game for most of her still young life. She began hanging around her grandfather's factory as a youngster, and began noodling around with jewelry design. While still in her early teens, 

...in the late 1990s, [she would be in the factory] hunched over a long table like her grandfather had been, looking over vintage finds, chains, and bundles of rhinestones. She learned how to solder different materials together, coming up with her own color combinations to make unique pieces, and ended up helping her grandfather with private label designs for clients such as fashion retailers Express and Bebe.

And now, with her husband, she's got her own going/growing concern:

Air & Anchor opened right as the pandemic hit Rhode Island’s shores, but has quickly turned into a local lifestyle and jewelry brand. Their mission is to remind people to make time for the small moments, so wearable products have symbols and sayings on them that represent daily reminders to “enjoy the life in between.”

So far, Air & Anchor are still in startup mode. The shop floor is mostly empty. There are only 8 employees (full- and part-time). 

Her grandfather was determined to keep production local, and Ajaj does the same, collaborating with local vendors and artisans and using recycled materials whenever possible, including in their packaging. 

And, oh yeah, Rachel and Omar bring there kids into the factory.

The New England economy hasn't been manufacturing based in a long time. And we're never again going to be the shoe, tee-shirt, furniture, or fine industrial wire capital of the world. But manufacturing is important. Most of that manufacturing will be technology-driven. (Massachusetts is big in robotics, by the way.) But it's still nice to see a story about an outfit like Air & Anchor. 

Personally, I don't need any lifestyle jewelry. And most of what I do own is pretty close to the legacy category by now. I should comb through it to see if I have anything that's worth anything. Probably not, other than sentimental value. Which I guess is the category my girlhood charm bracelet falls into.

It's 60 years old now. Wowie. 

Some of the charms make sense to me: the zodiac charm, the tiny doctor (I had a big crush on Dr. Kildare), the see-hear-speak no evil monkeys (I've always been drawn to primates for some reason). 

The little piggy bank? What did that mean to me? And why the umbrella? I probably liked the scissors because it actually (or at least theoretically) did something. The tambourine? I was a bit of a folky, even in junior high. And, like the scissors, it was actually (at least theoretically) usable. The little spinning disk has I L V Y U on one side, O E O n the other. If you spin it fast enough, it spells out I LOVE YOU. For some reason, I think this was a Christmas gift from my Uncle Jack. I'll have to check with the other near-aged nieces (Kath? Ellen? Mary Pat?) to see if that was the gift of the year in the early 1960's. 

Anyway, good luck to Air & Anchor. And to Alex and Ani, for that matter. Good to see that jewelry making is still a thing in Rhode Island.

Now here's a useful app

A few times a week, I find myself on a Zoom call. Sometimes it's with friends or family, sometimes my writers' group, sometimes a client, sometimes a volunteer something-or-other. Other than the fact that I haven't been able to figure out how to make my face appear in a color other than bubble-gum pink, I'm fine with Zoom and prefer seeing people's faces to a purely audio gathering. 

But I really feel for the Zoom fatigue that a lot of folks who work fulltime are experiencing.

Admittedly, for some of them, all the pandemic has done is shift meetings from in-person to online. So Zooming may not be all that much more exhausting than business as usual. 

I worked for several years in a company that had an incredibly intense meeting culture, where director level employees and above just went non-stop. (I was a director.) Some days, you could be in meetings from 7:30 in the morning until 7:30 in the evening - non-stop. Bathroom breaks had to be tucked in between meetings. And if you're wondering about a break for lunch, wonder no more. Most meetings at this company included food. 

A 7:30 a.m. meeting - admittedly rare, but they did occasionally happen - would include a full breakfast (as in bacon and eggs, pancakes, or the like) "catered" by the cafeteria. At any meeting held between 8 and 10, you were pretty much guaranteed coffee/tea, juice, muffins and/or bagels. Later morning meetings were pretty much food free: coffee and tea only.

Noon meetings were feasts: salads, sandwiches, chips, cookies, brownies, sodas... The admins, who ordered the food, figured out pretty pretty quickly that leftover food was put out for all to share. Thus, if a meeting had 6 attendees, they'd order for 10 - just to make sure there was something to go around.

Mid-afternoon meetings all came with cookies, brownies, candy bars, sodas and water. Our offices were in spread out over three buildings, and I remember going to one meeting where most of the attendees ended up calling in. So a meeting for 12 had only 4 in person attendees. 

To make sure we didn't starve to death, the admin had ordered two ginormous pastry trays, including a raft of petit fours. Plus 2 candy bars for attendees. And waters and sodas to wash it all down with. Truly, what was set out would have catered a small wedding.

Somewhere along the line, a new president blew into town, started attending a few food-clogged meetings and called an end to the food fest. 

Just as well. We often talked about The Genuity 15: the 15 pounds you gained the first year you worked there.

I had worked in other meeting cultures before, but nothing quite like Genuity.

After a while, I started to send delegates to some of the meetings rather than go myself. This was considered a major insult, but sometimes I just needed a break. Of course, I was cagey enough to only send a delegate to a meeting conducted by a peer director, or an adjacent VP level person who I had no direct or dotted-line relationship with. SVP, EVP, President: I was going to be there. 

It was monumentally exhausting, as a meeting wound down, to check your Palm Pilot to see where your next meeting was going to be held. On the hour, you'd see dozens of my fellow meeting weary colleagues clogging the corridors, hustling to whatever was next up. Like high school, only with no books to carry, no lockers to stop at.

Would this be any more exhausting on Zoom? Probably not, but still terrible.

For others, working remotely has meant more meetings. Things that used to get taken care of on a chance encounter by the coffee machine or a just-sticking-my-head-in-to-ask now mean a meeting. Management by walking around, when managers could just roam around for informal check-ins, doesn't work when the walking round could be across many miles and end up with the manager standing 6 feet away from their employee's front door, communicating through masks. 

Now informal meetings are Zoomed.

And Zoom meetings can bring on anxiety that's absent from in-person ones. At work-work, everyone's more or less dressed up to begin with. On Zoom, if you have a work-appropriate top on, you have to worry about getting up and revealing that you're still in your PJ bottoms.

Then there are the unscheduled guest appearances by kids, spouses, and pets to worry about.

Not to mention worrying about your messy home "office." Or whether you want your colleagues seeing where and how you live to begin with. Who wants everyone rating your room? Oh, you can always swap in a better background, but if you don't know what you're doing with green screens or whatever, you can end up looking like your head is detached from your bodies. Or waving your hands that are no longer connected to your arms. 

Layer on the colossal stress we've all been under for the past year, and no wonder people are Zoomed out.

Enter Zoom Escaper, the brainchild/labor of love of artist Sam Lavigne. It's a free app that let's you add sound effects to your calls that can give you an excuse to exit the meeting room - all under the guise of not wanting to annoy the other attendees. 

Construction sounds. Bad connection. Echo. Wind. Man weeping. Urination. Barking dog. Upset baby.

Construction noise can be overwhelming. I know this up close and personal, having lived through major reno in the buildings on either side of me. Drilling and hammering seem like a reasonably good excuse for leaving a meeting, putting your drown-out-the-noise earbuds in and getting back to working from home.

Bad connection and echo are excellent excuses, but you can't use them all that often before someone who's running these meetings is going to expect you to do something about it.

Wind would, I guess, work. When there's window rattling, it can be annoying, that's for sure. Just beware that your colleagues, not to mention your boss, can easily pull up a weather app and see whether there's actually anything windy happening in your zip code.

Not that there's anything funny about a man weeping, but man weeping is, I'm guessing, just there for the laugh. Maybe it's a good excuse to leave a meeting, but who wants anyone nosing around trying to figure out why you're dealing with a weeping man. Sure, it could be a neighbor in need, but, seriously, who wants anyone up in their personal business?

And speaking of personal business, I do not see how the sound of urination does anything but suggest that you're either a crass pig who's carried their laptop or phone into the bathroom with them, or someone too careless or dense to put their microphone on mute before they head off to pee. (Pro tip: if you close the bathroom door, unless you have the world's thinnest walls and/or pee like a racehorse, no one's going to hear you going. Wait to flush until the meeting's over.)

Barking dog seems like a good and evergreen excuse. It doesn't have to be your barking dog. It can be the barking dog upstairs. Or outside your window. But unfortunately barking dog, unless you're going to do something about it, just calls for you to put your mic on mute, not bolt the meeting entirely. 

Crying baby only works if you actually have a crying baby to attend to.

And none of this really works if you're the one running the endless meetings. (Or does it??? No one will complain if once in a while you end a meeting early. Game called on account of man weeping. Or urination.)

Anyway, not that there are many/any folks who are actually going to use this app. But what a fun distraction in these Zoomed up times. Thank you, Sam Lavigne, for giving the over-meetinged masses an LOL moment.

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

Source of info: The Verge

Talk about dark humor

I've got nothing against dark humor. It can help get us through our darkest hours.

Some of those darkest hours are spent at work. At one always-failing yet battily resilient tech company I worked at, a bunch of us came to a Halloween gathering dressed as dead products. (You had to be there.)

At the same company - where we had a long tradition of "Friday Party", a Friday afternoon beer, wine, and junk food blast - our Cambridge division, where I worked, was being closed down and swept up into the boring maws of the suburban branch of our company. For one of our last Friday Parties, which, as it happened was also our St. Patrick's Day celebration, we invited the suburbanites to risk a trip into town to join us at the Leprechaulony. (I know my notations off here, but leprechaun: leper :: colony: colony -> leprechalony. Okay, once again, you had to be there.)

Earlier, at the Cambridge outpost, there'd been a layoff on Valentine's Day which we immediately dubbed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. This was on a Friday. Perfect timing for this outfit, Friday being - of course - considered the absolute worst day to lay anyone off. (At least in those pre-Internet days, you  couldn't do anything about signing up for unemployment or starting much of a job search over the weekend. So there was nothing to do other than sit around licking your wounds and being depressed. That is, until the Sunday papers came out, which back in the day published something called Help Wanted ads.) Anyway, for Friday Party, we scored a giant heart-shaped cake that we slashed down the middle with a big old knife.

Our biggest satisfaction was that a blizzard had begun, and the home office evildoers who'd flown in from Philadelphia to conduct the layoff were stranded in Boston over the weekend. Hah!

Dark humor, of course, also attends death.

My mother, who did not have much of a sense of humor, talked about how she and her sisters were in gales of laughter about whether my grandmother should be laid out wearing a corset, as she was never without one. 

The funeral parlor where my Aunt Margaret was waked quite peculiarly had baskets of souvenir day-glow whistles in the ladies room. If you don't think that Margaret's daughter, granddaughters, and nieces (completely and utterly devastated by the death of our beloved Margaret, by the way) loaded up on souvenir day-glow whistles, you don't know our family. We still laugh about them. (And I still have mine.)

It's no surprise that those who deal with life and death use black humor to cope with the stress. M*A*S*H was a fictionalized/theatricalized case in point. 

But some of the OB-GYN residents at a hospital n Michigan took it just a bit too far.

Last week, they posted a few rather unsavory pics on Instagram:

One showed a doctor posing with a large human tissue in his hand while the patient lay on the operating table.

In another, a physician holds an organ that was surgically removed. (Source: WaPo)

They then:

...asked the public to guess how much an unidentified organ weighed in a game they equated to ‘Price is Right.’

“The other game we play in the OR is guess that weight,” read the Instagram post that showed the organ. “It applies to much more than just babies. As always, ‘Price is Right’ rules apply so if you go over then you’re out!”

How'd you like to find out that was your surgically removed organ that the residents were yucking it up about? On Insta, for all the world to see. Ho, ho!

And not that all the world follows these residents, but apparently it was possible to actually see the patient whose fibroid tumor had just been removed via the morcellation procedure, which is used to extract tumors laparoscopically. Apparently the attending physician had challenged the residents to compete with each other for the longest strand removed. Ho, extra-big ho? I guess you had to be there.

It's not that funny to begin with, but it sure doesn't help that morcellation is a somewhat discredited technique. When it works, it's great, as it's a non-invasive procedure used on fibroids, most of which are non-cancerous. But if that tumor turns out to be cancerous, morcellation just waves the red flag and spreads cancer cells all over everywhere. (And you thought it was all about first, do no harm...)

Spectrum Health, which runs the hospital where the Instagramming residents worked, is tut-tutting away and will be taking "corrective action."

Social media being what it is, was, and ever will be, some commenters are demanding that the posters get fired.

Pardon the use of the term, but this strikes me like overkill.

Yes, posting those pictures was stupid and thoughtless, but who among us hasn't done something stupid and/or thoughtless somewhere along the line. And this, to me, doesn't rise to the level of firing offense.

But while it really doesn't speak to their skill level, or even where their hearts truly lie - you really had to be there - it does speak to a god-awful lack of judgement. And, I'm guessing some sort of HIPAA violation. Not to mention that there are no doubt ambulance chasers chasing after the patients who unwittingly starred in this production. Spectrum might have to settle a few bucks to make this problem go away.

These folks have a really tough job, and if humor gets them through it, fine by me. Even if they're making fun of my tumors. Have at it! Just make sure you pay attention and don't leave any sponges in my gut, okay?

But these doctors just didn't need to go public with it. And Instagram is about as public as it gets. (I guess we should be grateful that they didn't post a dance video of the episode on TikTok. ) 

But dark humor is mostly a private thing. It really only works if you're there. (Unless you're the patient, in which case it doesn't work at all.) And even though, these days, nothing seems to exist unless it's shared on line, some things are private. And we need to keep it that way.

Swoosh goes Ann Hebert's career

Since I average 5+ miles a day walking, and pretty much have sneakers on my feet from the time I get up in the morning until I call it a day and get into bed with a book, I go through a number of pairs of sneakers a year (five or six pairs, anyway). New Balance. Brooke's. Asics. But never Nike. 

Nothing against Nike, but they don't make narrow width sneaks, and the only narrow part of me is my foot. That said, somewhere along the recent line, I decided that I could go without narrows if there was a color I liked better that only came in M. (My selection is already limited, since my foot has grown its way from a 10 to an 11.) Anyway, the shoes are tied and I wear socks, so N vs. M is not that big a deal. 

So maybe I'll give Nike another look at some point, even though I associated them more with basketball. Which I most decidedly do not play or have much interest in. (Other than hoping to live long enough to see LeBron James elected President.)

In any case, I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be paying above retail to get my hands on - or, rather, my feet into - a pair of Nikes.

After all, I may be a sneakerfoot, but I'm not a sneakerhead and have no interest in shopping the sneaker resale market looking for the latest Air Jordan or Air LeBron or whatever it is that's in demand these days.

But that's just me. The sneaker resale market is big. Billions big. 

“Flipping” sneakers—buying them at retail prices, or below retail prices in some cases, and reselling them at a higher price—has been big business for years. Those willing to put in the time, research, and legwork can see large profits quickly thanks to social media and growing digital marketplaces like StockX and GOAT, which are tailored specifically to the trade. (Source: Slate)

A lot of those who've got game in the sneaker trade are young, entrepreneurs in the making. Folks like 19-year-old Joe Hebert, who's been raking in hundreds of thousands of bucks a month. 

“Anything that’s releasing that I know I can make a guaranteed buck on, I’m gonna go full into,” he told (Bloomberg) writer Joshua Hunt. “That’s just my style.”

Young Mr. Hebert also likes to show off his wares on his Instagram page, where he posts pics of mounds of sneakers that he's scored. And which, on resale - and they're all new, not used - can bring in a hefty profit - more than $100 a pair. People are that desperate to have the latest kicks. 

Now Joe Hebert does know a bit about discretion. On Insta, he obscures his face. But he let his guard down just a bit when talking to the Bloomberg reporter. 

“If you know the right people here, this is the city to sell shoes,” he told Bloomberg. “Plugs,” or connections who can assist you in obtaining hard-to-find inventory, are key when it comes to this game. And most savvy, seasoned resellers don’t reveal those sources—ever.

Turns out, Hebert was really plugged in. The reporter figured this out when he got a phone call from Hebert that came up as "Ann Hebert." Hmmm. Hunt, as a reporter, is an inquiring mind and when he googled Ann Hebert, he found that she was a VP and GM for Nike North America. Young Hebert also showed the reporter his Amex card statement. Curiously, that was in Ann Hebert's name, too. And why not? A lot of teenagers have accounts in Mommy's name. 

Hunt called young Hebert on it, and he did admit that his mother was an inspiration, but told the reporter "she was so high up at Nike as to be removed from what he does, and that he’d never received inside information such as discount codes from her. He insisted, though, that she not be mentioned in the article and cut off contact not long after our conversation."

Joe Hebert was apparently focusing too much on showing off and raking in a lot of dough at his age - the kind of money that usually only goes to athletes at that young age - and somehow missed the part where you have to be really, really careful with the publicity you bring down on your head. And that you have to be really, really careful when you're talking to a reporter, that off the record needs to be claimed in advance. 

Next thing the sneaker world knew, Ann Hebert, after 25 years there, had exited Nike.

Turns out that Joe Hebert also had some side-action going through his aptly named Discord group:

...in which he charged $250 a month for information on “what sneakers would be discounted, when and where the sale would begin, and how many the retailer would have”

Ann Hebert had disclosed to Nike that her son was involved in the sneaker biz, but perhaps not to the extent that it was. Once Nike started looking into things - prompted by the Bloomberg story - the company realized that they needed to part ways with Ann Hebert, and she was allowed to resign. 

So far, there's no smoking shoe lace pointing to her directly providing top secret, inside sneaker world info to her son. But it sure looks bad. 

Who knows? As we've seen from the college admissions scandal, some parents will do just about anything to give their kids an advantage. And maybe the kid snooped through his mother's briefcase and laptop. He had her phone. He sure could see emails and who knows what else.

It'll be interesting to see how Joe Hebert's lucrative business fares once his mother is no longer a Nike big wig. 

Me? I'm going to head on over to Zappo's and see what color Asics I can get for spring. 

Yes, I will be wearing green.

It's Saint Patrick's Day. 

So yes, as I have done on St. Patrick's Day since I was a little girl, I will be wearing green.

It was easy enough in grammar school and high school: I wore a green jumper.

But my mother would by packets of flimsy Erin Go Bragh flags and pin them on us to augment the green uniforms. My father would wear one in his lapel and head off to work in an office where, other than for his friend George (who was a Polish-American), he was pretty much the only non-Yankee in the upper ranks of his company. So wearing his green was a bold move. It didn't take any bravery to wear the green to a school with majority Irish-American students, and first gen South Boston Irish nuns.

A note on my father: He'd started off working on the shop floor of the factory, which produced industrial wires. My father operated the wire drawer, a winch which coiled the wire, which is what he was doing for a living when he joined the Navy shortly after Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he was promoted to foreman, and then to a job in sales and sales management. Not that there's anything wrong with wire sales, but my father's been dead for 50 years, and it still upsets me that, thanks to his father's early death, the Depression, and a lot of other things, including on occasion a ration of anti-Irish Catholicism, my father didn't have the sort of career his brilliance, personality, and work ethic should have merited. Admittedly, some of this was of his own making. During the war, he was invited to go to Navy Officers Candidate School. He refused because he had an Irishman's natural lack of respect for authority, and because the officers he knew he perceived a-holes and anti-Catholic bigots. Guess he never met JFK while he was in the service. Anyway, he did become a Chief Petty Office, which was the highest enlisted man's rank. 

Back to Paddy's Day.

Today, I will probably wear a sweater I got in Ireland a few years back. And a little pin I have of a thatched cottage if I can find it. So I'll be showing my colors for my two Zoom meetings - one for a client, the other with my writing group where, as luck o' the Irish would have it, we're doing one of my stories, and the other writer who's up is my old friend Kathleen. A doubly-whammy of American Irishness for our other writing colleagues who are all Jewish. 

And oddly enough, my client meeting is with the client of a client. As it turns out, many years ago this client-of-a-client (the company, not any individual) was a client of my company, and I was on a call at that client on St. Patrick's Day. The person I was meeting with was named, of all things, Kelly Green.)

Today, I will listen to Irish music, which I do plenty of times, so that's no big deal.

Today, I will eat soda bread slathered with Kerry Gold butter. And make myself a nice cup of Barry's tea. For dinner tonight, I'm making myself a big old pot of colcannon. (Mashed praties with scallions and cabbage. Beyond gorgeous.)

Today, I'll think of my Irish great-grandparents: Matthew Trainor and Bridget Trainor from Co. Louth. John Rogers from Co. Roscommon. Margaret Joyce from Co. Mayo. They were brave young things when they left their families behind and got on the boat to Amerikay. Thanks, lads!

Today, I will think about when I'm next going to Ireland. (I'm not quite sure how many times I've been there. Somewhere between 15 and 20. Anyway, it is one of my favorite places on earth and has been since I stepped my first toe in way back in 1973.)

So Erin Go Bragh and all that. 

It's a great day for the Irish, but it will be an even better one when the COVID is in the rear view mirror.

Meanwhile, last year I compiled a list of the St. Patrick's Day posts I've done over the years. (I've been at it since 2007!) The ones that I think are particularly good are highlighted. 

Slan for now! And remember: it's St. Paddy's Day - NOT St. Patty's Day. Not to mention that the symbol of Ireland is the shamrock ☘, which has three leaves. It is NOT the four-leaf-clover.

And you thought pressing D4 could only get you a package of Chuckles

Two vending machines rise to prominence among my childhood memories.

My father had taken us to see the Disney cartoon Cinderella, and had given us (my sister Kath, my brother Tom, and myself) a dime each to get a soft drink from the lobby vending machines. Kath, as the oldest, was running the show, so she got Tom's first, and we watched, fascinated, as the machine dispensed a sicky-sweet purple ("grape") liquid into a white paper conical cone. 

Kath then got hers. 

Me next.

Alas, by the time my turn came, there were no more paper cups, and we stared - our fascination now turned to horror - as the machine dispensed a sicky-sweet orange ("orange") liquid right down the little vending machine drain.

This was an era when kids were expected to take their lumps and just suck it up. So we did. Kath and Tom drank their little drinks and, knowing my sister, she probably gave me a sip from hers. But once we returned to our seats, we didn't bother to mention anything to my father. My father would certainly have gotten his dime back and/or a drink for me, but it wasn't worth mentioning. We were all pretty little. I'm guessing 6-4-2 at the time. But we'd already absorbed Lesson Number One of Irish Catholic life: “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” (And thank you, Daniel Patrick Moynihan for articulating this idea so well.)

We did get something out of this trip to the movies: Kath and I gave Tom the nickname Gus, after the Cinderella mouse. And it stuck. Childhood friends still call him Gus. (Boys of my childhood all seemed to have nicknames. Worcester boys still call my other brother (Rick) Stick.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself with a quarter in my pocket and an hour to kill at the YWCA between swimming and craft class. From a young age, I was a chocoholic. And here I was with access to five nickel candy bars from the not-so-vast array on offer from the Y's vending machine. 

I don't remember everything I bought with that quarter, other than a really nasty tasting Howard Johnson's candy bar that in no way resembled real chocolate.

Q. Why wasn't I sharing this wealth of candy? After all, kids all went sharsies on everything back then. If you had a nickel for a popsicle, you learned early on how to rap it on the edge of the drugstore soda fountain, splitting the two halves perfectly in two so you could hand one to your friend. 

A. None of my friends went to the Y, and I guess I hadn't made any new friends yet. Kath was my Y companion, and she was off with older girls. Going to the Y was pretty much a sin. The nuns had told us that the Y was a big anti-Catholic Protestant conversion racket and that Catholics should avoid it under pain of sin. So most parochial kids didn't go there. For whatever reason, that one year, we were enrolled for Saturday swim lessons. So, with no one to share with, I glutted my way through all five candy bars.

Anyway, I ended up with both a stomach ache and hives. 

So much for vending machines.

But my experience in the years since has pretty much come down to vending machines for candy/snacks, something to drink (bad coffee, when I drank coffee), stuff in the ladies room (tampons, not condoms - I was never that kind of girl.) Oh, yeah, cigarettes came from vending machines, too. (For a while there, I was an occasional smoker.)

Little did I know that there'd be a new category - "unattended retail" - that is putting all sorts of goodies at our fingertips. As long as those fingertips are near a vending machine. And that the pandemic is speeding up their use.

“It’s touchless, it’s considered safe and it’s prepackaged so products haven’t been fondled and breathed on,” [Carla Balakgie, chief executive of the National Automatic Merchandising Association] said. “And technology has made it even safer: Some machines have a hover feature so you don’t have to touch the buttons and you can use an app on your phone or use mobile ordering.”

She said adoption in the past year has been swiftest by first responders needing sustenance on the go, but what might have previously been novelty “stunt” vending machines at trade shows are becoming normalized as regular avenues of commerce: bread-baking machines, customize-your-yogurt machines, even machines that dispense slippers, mascara and sundries at airports. (Source: Washington Post)

What else can you get beyond candy bars and mascara?

Why, gourmet pizza, for one thing, which Basil Street is focusing on the college and military base market. Now I really doubt that the pizza coming out of a vending machine is any nearer to gourmet than that Ho-Jo candy bar was to chocolate. But who knows?

Stellina Pizzeria is taking it a step further. They're selling  - for $25, so I'm guessing they don't require coins - "pasta kits that feed three or four — Bolognese and cacio e pepe sauce have been top sellers so far. There are also cannoli-making kits and jars of tiramisu."

Cacio e pepe out of a vending machine? I'd rather try to replicate the recipe I saw on Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy. And jarred tiramisu just sounds, well, jarring.

Then there are "cupcake ATMs". (Wouldn't mind one around the corner.) Airport kiosks that dispense "healthy bowls and salads in jars." And how about vacuum-packed "artisanal butchery."

Don't know quite why it's any easier to buy a rib eye out of a vending machine than it is to go to the grocery store, but I guess if you get a hankering for rib eye at 2 a.m., when the supermarket is closed...

Bottom line: looks like the brave new world is going to include a lot more vending machines. 

Guess we've come along way since I lost out on that ten-cent orange drink.