The workplace isn't really going to get back to the way we were

Step by step, discarded mask by discarded mask, people are starting to come back to the office. Or starting to think about starting to come back to the office. Most of the people I know will be heading in after Labor Day, and most of them don't yet know exactly what it all means.

Sample of four (all scheduled for some type of September
return):

• Small tech consulting company: work from home (WFH) policy is up to individual managers. If you've got a manager who wants to be in the office 5 days a week, and wants you to be in the office 5 days a week - and you don't - you're in a tough spot. Negotiations ongoing with face-to-face craving manager about doing at least some WFH days. 
• Mid-sized law firm: lawyers can work from home - yay! support staff needs to start coming back in - boo! Support staff are trying to negotiate some flexibility. There may be some give in the system, at least for those who demonstrated that they were productive WFH. 
• Larger tech firm: Still working out what the model will be. People hoping for either 2 in/3 home or 3 in/2 home. It will likely be one or the other. Many employees are high-level, highly-experienced professionals, and had already been working virtually with colleagues in other locations.
• Corporate training firm: Generally looking at a flexible schedule, with 2 days of WFH. Maybe more, depending. Global organization, with employees/offices - not to mention clients - all over the place. 

In each of these situations, WFH seems to work out just fine, so no real reason to insist that everyone come in full-time. 

But the stories are all over the map.

I saw an article on folks who are now living and working out of vans. Not souped up RV's, mind you, that are as large as my condo and come with splosh kitchens and king-sized beds. Nope. We're talking regular old mini-ish vans that have been tricked out so you can Eat-Pray-Love, and get your work done, while driving around. Many of these workplace vans even have toilets and showers. But others are more like the go-in-a-bucket van Frances McDormand lived in in Nomadland. 

Most of those quoted in the article were freelancers, doing project-based work, rather than traditional 9-to-5ers. For those who need to keep regular hours, the need to stay in one place with good Internet access for 8 hours a day removes some of the romance of the road. And whether you have a "real" toilet in your van or not, maintenance is not trivial. 

Then there's the Boston-based tech startup that's giving up on a having office space entirely. But, knowing that people actually do benefit from seeing each other up close and personal on occasion, they've been renting space in a nightclub every few weeks. Obviously, the space is available during the day - they don't call them nightclubs for nothing - but I can't imagine the lighting is great, even if we're not talking strobe or disco ball. Plus I'm trying to picture a nightclub with windows... And working at high tops or banquettes doesn't seem all that conducive to productivity, either. But, hey, if you find yourself in need of mouthwash or a condom during the workday, you'll find what you need in the rest room. So I guess that's a perk. Plus just rolling right from work to a drink after work...

I did freelance work for many years for a tech outfit that specialized in software that enabled folks to WFH. Despite this, the company was very down on their employees telecommuting. They thought everyone should be around. And to make the place more hip and happening for everyone to be around in, they moved a while back from the boring old standard cubicle environment suburban office park thang to open floor plan, standing desks, etc. in the Seaport District of Boston.

Since the pandemic forced their workforce into WFH mode, they've embraced it. They're setting up for a post-pandemic world in which employees can pretty much work things out on an individual basis with respect to how often they'll come into a central office, starting with the CEO (an excellent one, by the way) who says he only plans to be in the office once or twice a week. They're not sure how much office space they'll be hanging on to, but it will be retrofitted to have minimal personal space and more places to collaborate and hang out.

It'll be interesting to see what things look like a year from now. 

I'm betting that most folks who've been working from home will be coming into the office 2-3 days a week, which seems like the most common number I'm hearing. Companies that force people back in full time, or let each manager decide for their team (which will raise all sorts of internal equity issues) will lose employees. 

I'm all for it. 

Cuts down on commuting wear-and-tear. Makes it a lot easier to take care of "stuff." Just in general contributes to a better work-life-balance and quality o' life. While also recognizing that facetime is important - for everyone, but especially for newer employees, especially for more junior new employees. 

For those who want to work remotely 100%, there'll be tradeoffs, and a lot of those tradeoffs will be climb-the-ladder ones. I'm guessing that, when it comes to promotions, workers will be better off if they're spending time in the office, managing up by walking around as it were. But, hey, there's nothing grand and glorious about being a "people manager." (And, yes, this is the voice of experience talking.) Individual contributors who could give a damn about clawing their way to C-level positions, or even jobs well below C-level, will be just as happy making the tradeoff. 

As for working from a nightclub, this is truly a case of glad I'm not young anymore. Or working. 

Whatever ends up happening, I really don't foresee most professionals who spend the bulk of their workday sitting in front of a screen and/or on the phone happily rat-racing back to five days a week in the office. People are going be demanding/expecting flexibility, and until "they" figure out how to replace everyone with AI and/or a robot - including those who write AI code and build robots - businesses are just going to have to accommodate these demands and expectations.

Anyway, it'll be interesting!

Easy non-rider?

I'm not much of a motorcycle aficionado, but on behalf of a client, I do pay a fair amount of attention to what's happening with autonomous vehicles. (Every two weeks, I get to pretend I'm an electrical engineer and blog about something embedded systems- related. Because my client is both a geek and a car buff, one of my fallback topics is self-driving cars and trucks.) So I'm surprised I missed the story from a while back about BMW's forays into self-driving motorcycles.

Autonomous cars and trucks I get. It may still take a while before they work well enough to put them on the road at any scale - there are still problems dealing with unpredictable behaviors and left-hand turns (which, admittedly, humans have a hard time navigating as well) - but come they will. And it's easy for me to imagine that at some point in my life, I'll schedule an Uber that doesn't have a driver. Don't know if I'd be comfortable driving riding on a long-haul turnpike trek, but to buzz around time. Sure. 

Trucks I can envision barreling down the highway. Wasn't there a made-for-TV movie back in the wayback in which a driver-less semi torments poor Dennis Weaver, chugging along in his tiny little car? Yes! It was Duel, and, okay, the sitch was that the driver wasn't seen, not entirely absent. Still, the menacing truck seemed driverless, and surely this film was something of a precursor of the truckerless trucks, no? 10-4, good buddy. 

But a riderless motorcycle? Huh?

At present, this vehicle is just for research purpose, I guess to refine the assistive technology that they'll put in bikes to do what assistive technology does in cars: maintain speed, automatically brake when there's a hazard ahead, straighten out drift. 

A totally self-driving motorcycle? I just don't get it. 

If part of the American Myth takes place behind the wheel, an equal part of the American Myth takes place astride a Triumph, an Indian, a Harley.

I mean, how threatening would it be if they had to remake a Wild One in which a flock of empty bikes went roaring into town? Would they still be capable of scaring the bejesus out of the good, conservative townspeople? 

I think not.

It just wouldn't pack much of a punch.

And could Mildred ask Johnny's bike "what are you rebelling against?" And would Johnny's bike mumble its answer: "Whadda you got?"

How does it work? Not well, I'm afraid.

And how does "Born to Be Wild" square with a bike that doesn't have a human attached to it? What's so born to be wild-like about a robot-controlled motorcycle? No true nature's child onboard.

Easy Rider, that gem of a period piece, wouldn't have had quite the same impact if, rather than have outlaws Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda getting their motors runnin', headin' out on the highway, it was just the bikes. Maybe Jack Nicholson would've been along for the ride, maybe not. Probably not. And would it have been as dramatic if the violent, anti-hippie RWNJs who killed Dennis, Peter, and Jack were just gunning for the tires, or bashing in the gas tanks of some empty bikes, rather than shooting Dennis and Peter to kill and bludgeoning Jack to death?

No, no, a thousand times no.

Autonomous motorcycles 

I don't think so.

 

Grand Enfant Terrible

You may have seen the picture of the young woman. She's wearing jeans. A stupid khaki cap that looks like it was last seen on the head of Bowery Boy Huntz Hall. And a bright yellow rain jacket, pretty much the same color of le maillot jaune, the yellow jersey that's worn by the winner of the previous day's leg of the Tour de France. Of course, since this was Day One, there was no one wearing the yellow jersey. Just a bunch of cyclists, a peloton, about two-thirds of the way through the roughly 100 miles they cover each day during this 21-day, 2100+ mile bike race - a race that wends its way through French hills and mountains, ending in Paris on the Champs-Élysées.

She's wearing a stupid grin, mugging for the camera, holding a crudely lettered cardboard sign - Allez Opi - Omi - Go (in French) Grandpa - Grandma (German). And leaning into the race course, her crudely lettered sign directly in the path of the cyclists.

With 45 kilometres to go, a fan holding a sign for the TV cameras (not watching the race) clipped Tony Martin (Team Jumbo-Visma) on the right-hand side of the road and caused a massive crash.

Almost the entire peloton went down in the chaotic pileup at the top of Saint-Rivoal. As bikes and bodies flew across the road, many cyclists and spectators were injured. As of Sunday, Team DSM rider Jasha Sutterlin had to pull out of the Tour after just one stage and other riders, such as Marc Hirschi, are being monitored for their injuries. (Source: Cycling Magazine)

I'm not a cycling fan, and most of what I know about the Tour de France comes from the doping scandals. But I know that the cyclists are serious, top-drawer athletes. This is not me on my trusty Schwinn, or trying to figure out the gears on an English racer three-speed.

Years ago, my husband and I were in Galway when some professional race blew through. This was in the era when Irishman Stephen Roche was one of the premier cyclists in the world. He had won the Triple Crown of cycling a few years earlier: Tour de France, similar prestige race in Italy, and the world championship. A very big deal.  

Like everyone else in Galway that day - a dreary, rainy day, as I recall - we lined up on a hill heading down into the city center.

Did we see Stephen Roche? I think we did, but those guys went by in a blur. 

Anyway, the feckless jerk in the Huntz Hall cap and yellow slicker (still unidentified as of this Sunday writing) is now on the radar of the French national police. She's facing a possible/probable prison sentence. And she's going to be sued by the Tour de France and, I suspect, the cyclists she decked.

Tony Martin, despite his American radio singer of the thirties and forties name, is not an American professional cyclist. He's a German professional cyclist, whose fall set off the domino cascade of falls. Quite the pileup.

He took to Instagram to plea with all the fans who line the route to stop acting like imbeciles. 

To all fans that come to the #tourdefrance to celebrate our beautiful sport, to give us motivation and to help us through the hardest moments: thanks for your support today!!! I'm fine after the bad crash yesterday and I'm happy to continue 👊🏻

To all the people next to the road who think that the #tourdefrance is a circus, to people who risc everything for a selfie with a 50 km/h fast peloton, to people who think it's nice to show their naked butt, to drunken people who push us sideways on the climbs, to people who think that it is a good idea to hold a sign into the road while the peloton is passing. I want to ask this people forcefully: please respect the riders and the #tourdefrance ! Use your head or stay home! We don't want you here. You risk our life and our dreams for that we work so hard!

Because of the Opi-Omi wording on her sign, there's speculation that the stunting narcissist who caused the pileup is German, which won't help her win any popularity contests in that country, given that she took down one of their bests.  

Whether she's German, French, or anything else, she will more than likely be outed. An awful lot of people follow the Tour de France. An awful lot of people saw that video. An awful lot of people are pissed. And at some point, if the woman in the video doesn't turn herself in, someone else will.

What is it with so many people that they have to make everything about themselves.

We are all, of course, the centers of our own universes. And it does make a major event - a great concert, a political demonstration, a thrilling ballgame - a bigger deal if you're there in person. But that doesn't mean you have to insert yourself into it in such an aggressive way. A selfie is one thing. Grandstanding to get on TV is quite another. Especially if you're endangering others in the process.

Maybe she doesn't need to do hard time, but Ms. Huntz-hall-cap-yellow-jacket-wearing-Opi-and-Omi-greeting should be identified. And she should be good and embarrassed. And do a groveling apology to Tony Martin and the rest of that peloton.

What was she thinking? Probably nothing, other than it's all about me.

You wanted to get on TV? Congratulations! Job well done. 

I know this isn't French for grandchild, but what a grand enfant terrible.

Extraordinary popular delusions, NFT fashion edition

Maybe it's because I'm not a digital native - someone born with a silver smartphone in their mouth - or maybe it's because the digital divide in some respects is as much generational as it is economic, but I really don't get NFTs. And would be just as happy if I'd never heard of them. Better yet, if they didn't exist to begin with.

In case you've been sheltering in place under a rock, or a digital version of a rock, an NFT is a non-fungible token. That clear enough for you? If you're me, or like me, or an NFT version of me, probably not.

NFTs are digital representations of something. That something may be physical - a work of art - or digital to begin with - the first tweet Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ever sent. An NFT can be traded, and if you own one, it's all yours (although for artistic works, the original artist may get a cut on each sale/trade) of the NFT. The content's authenticity isn't protected by a flimsy copyright, or a certified provenance; it's protected by blockchain technology. But here's the rub: the original owner of the NFT - their artwork, their tweet - may be able to make as many NFTs as they'd like. Thus your NFT may be unique to you, but not unique as a representation. There may be a lot of them out there. But that, of course, would render each one less valuable. The originator needs to figure out what quantities to gamble with.

I realize that this explanation is not all that clear. Then, again, it's not yet clear whether NFTs will have staying power, or whether they'll be looked back upon as one more example of tulip mania and the madness of crowds.

But enough!

I. Really. Don't. Get. It.

But some folks apparently do get it. Or want to get it. Or just want in on something new, shiny and non-fungible. Thus, someone paid nearly $3 million for that first Jack Dorsey tweet. The proceeds of that sale went to charity, but others are getting rich and there have been many works of art - make that works by artists - that have sold for a lot more than $3 million. Nothing you can hang on your wall. Nothing you can donate to a museum so that they can hang it on their wall. Just something that lives "out there" that you can look at on your smartphone. 

(Here's my earlier post on art world NFTs.)

Anyway, because crowds are mad - certifiably bonkers, in fact - a lot of folks jumped in on the NFT craze. Including the sole surviving child of Ted Williams, who had an artist create some baseball cards that she sold as NFTs. She wasn't having a ton of luck, which is no surprise, given that the average Ted Williams fan is likely about my age and would rather have an actual dog-eared cardboard card than a digital representation of one. (Did I blog about the Ted Williams NFTs? Is that even a question?)

Not surprisingly, since it's art-adjacent, the fashion industry got moving on NFTs. 

One of the first movers, "virtual fashion brand RTFKT sold a digital jacket for over $125,000."

Well, I can certainly understand not wanting to actually wear that jacket. But an NFT of it being worth $125K? Yikes!

RTFKT also sells digital sneakers used by gamers, and something to do with pigeons. Or meta pigeons. Or something. 

Whatever it is, it's working. In March, it took just 6 minutes to "earn" $3M selling 608 pairs of NFT sneakers. That's a cool $5K a pair. 

By the way, RTFKT is pronounced ARTEFACT, not, as first came to my mind, ratfuckert. 

Another crypto-first brand - as opposed to a fashion brand that sells physical items that are wearable - is the aptly named Overpriced.™. The company:

...was able to sell an NFT hoodie for $26,000 through connecting with the meme-centric, self-referential nature of crypto culture...the first collection consists of 25 black hoodies featuring large QR codes and their slogan, “Fuck you(r) money”, in neon graffiti. The slogan is a blunt comment on how fashion is about showing off how much money you have, while also acknowledging that their hoodies are indeed overpriced, the Overpriced.™ founders say. (Source: Vogue Business)

As the acronym goes: FFS.

Other fashion brands haven't been as shrewd and fortunate as RTFKT and Overpriced.™ with their NFT forays.

Now, the smoke is beginning to clear on the initial hype cycle as NFT price tags level out, and fashion brands are having a harder time making a big splash on existing NFT exchanges. Any brand or person can “mint” an NFT, which has led to a flood of NFTs for sale, and often brands lack familiarity with the crypto audience that form the core base of NFT buyers, experts say. And NFT sellers often don’t understand just how small the NFT buyer base is: blockchain analytics company Covalent found that fewer than 2,000 buyers accounted for 80 per cent of total purchase volume on Rarible, the second-largest NFT exchange. Even widely known celebrities are struggling to sell NFTs: only one of supermodel Kate Moss’s NFTs has sold, while another remains unbid on. 

With its focus on NFTs, Overpriced.™ believes that they're solving one of the problems with luxury fashion. Even physical items are often treated more as collectibles than they are as wearables. 

...buyers want to show off their purchase, but they don’t want it to get damaged, so they refrain from wearing it.

So why not eliminate the hassle of acquiring fabric and hiring a bunch of Vietnamese folks making less than a buck an hour hunching over their whirring sewing machines 12 hours a day?  

Another digital fashion branch, DressX, has customers send in a picture of themselves when they buy an item. DressX send them back a digital photo of them wearing said item that they can then go and post on social media. 

Are we heading for a world in which work-from-home digital natives sit around naked posting digital photos of themselves wearing virtual clothing on Instagram? 

What next? Food NFTs? No more messy pots and pans. No empty calories. Guess that's what the robots will consume once the singularity arrives, and technology takes over the world.

Thanks, but no thanks. 

Boiling Point! Desperate Hampton Diners...

I like to go out to eat as much as the next guy. Maybe even more so. When I was working full-time, my husband and I used to have dinner out 5-6 times a week. That tapered off a bit over the years, especially after I started freelancing and was no longer dragging home after a lousy commute, and especially-especially after Jim became ill. We still managed to eat out regularly - the first day of chemo, when you're pumped up on steroids, is a surprisingly good day for having a nice meal in a restaurant - just not as often. 

Since Jim's death - at least up until COVID - I probably ate out once or twice a week, lunch or dinner. With COVID, dining out screeched to a halt. When I really didn't want to cook or otherwise throw something together for a meal, I did take-out. 

I'm now happy to be doing a bit more eating out/dining in. So far, I've been back to a few old favorites, and on last weekend's jaunt to Vermont, explored some surprisingly good spots. Had my first ever Roman-Jewish fried artichokes - to die for - at a sploshy resort spot, and an excellent veggie burger with yummy fries at a farm-to-table hamburger stand in a converted gas station. 

The eating situation in Vermont was tight. We were in a resort area (Stratton) where many places were still not opened back up. (A number had been open during the high skiing season, but hadn't re-opened for the summer yet.) We had a couple of long-ish waits at places that were having a hard time finding staff. Which I guess is what happens when a kabillion restaurants try to restart all at once and a lot of their potential hires found other (better) jobs while they were on hiatus.

Back in Boston, I tried to make a Saturday night rez at a local neighborhood favorite and couldn't get one until mid-August.

So I know the disappointment of not being able to get fully back into the dining out swing.

But I guess it's worse if you're in The Hamptons and you're used to seeing, being seen, and getting whatever your little heart desires. Or so I saw in a recent story in the Daily Mail with the headline that irresistibly began Boiling Point! Desperate Hampton Diners...

Now, I've never been to The Hamptons, and a visit there is not on my bucket list. (Good thing.) But I've read plenty of articles about goings on there, and seen plenty of movies and TV shows set there. Plus I have been to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. So I think I get the zeitgeist. Lots of celebrities and other uber-rich folks in mansion-level "beach houses". Lots of ye olde quaint towns with pricey shops and restaurants. 

Who are the celebs? I did a quick google, and the roster includes Alec Baldwin, Anderson Cooper, Robert De Niro, 
Beyoncé & Jay Z, Julianna Moore, Anthony Scaramucci (hah!), Kelly Ripa, Louis CK (ugh!), Calvin Klein, and Ina Garten. Colson Whitehead lives there; Truman Capote used to. As did Bernie Madoff.

So: gallery of the rich, famous, and infamous. (C.f., BernieMadoff. And wondering what his abode looked like? That's the LR. Beachie enough for you?)

The Daily Mail item was scooped up from The New York Post, so I decided to go to the ur-source. And what an ur-source it was. Lots of delicious little bits in there. 

One regular told The Post she was at Le Bilboquet in Sag Harbor last weekend and overheard a manager discussing how he had taken a mini-voyage on a customer’s yacht and spent an afternoon at the man’s golf club.

“Suddenly the $100 tip we gave him didn’t seem very impressive,” the regular admitted. (Source: NY Post)

Hundred dollar tip, huh? Chump change!

Especially when you have 1,200 names on the list to get on the reservation list - none of which were going to make it off the reservation-to-get-a-reservation list and onto the actual Bilboquet reservation list. 

Desperate Hampton diners are offering NASCAR tickets, helicopter rides, concert tickets, envelopes stuffed with cash.

Andrew Tobin is the GM of Tutto Il Giorno, another popular Southampton boîte. 

“The calls usually start with, ‘We’d like to invite you to something’ — and then it’s, ‘Oh, by the way, can we get a table?’ ” he said with a laugh. “The [diners’] assistants who call have become very aggressive.”

In real life, in the before times, I doubt these rich folks would be inviting restaurant managers to anything. Chef owners maybe. The help? Nah! Yet desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Prospective diners are offering thousands of dollars in, well, is there any other word for it other than "bribes"? Not that I've never tipped a maitre d'. (Actually I haven't, but I've been in the company of my husband when he has. Lemme tell you, twenty bucks used to be worth something.)

Sometimes you don't need to bribe. You just need to be a good customer. 

How good? 

One guy spent $25K - yes, you read that correctly: twenty-five thousand dollars - at Southampton's 75 Main the other weekend. That enabled him to secure a table for the Glorious Fourth. Another fellow bought "his" table for the season, with a five-figure down payment that "doesn't even go toward food credit."

There are still folks who are worming their way into tables the old-fashioned way.

Mitch Modell is the former CEO of Modell Sporting Goods. Even after pressing $100 bills into the hands of everyone who looked like an employee of 75 Main, he wasn't able to secure a table. He saw two women finishing up their meal at a table for two. He asked them if, in return for picking up their tab, he and his friends - all five of them - could join them. Why not? Modell and Company squeezed in over dessert. No table problem solved! Except for the waiter who'd have to serve six folks at a table built for two. And the hapless yokel who had been waiting for that table to free up:

“We all crowded in to their little table and one guy [who was waiting] started flipping out, yelling that it was supposed to be his,” Modell recalled. “It was a little cramped and the tables around us were staring, but you have to do what you have to do and we were hungry.”

Money talks, alright. So do yacht rides and NASCAR tickets, envelopes full of loot and a $25K tab that the restaurant hopes gets repeated. But sometimes, you do need to resort to good old fashioned d-baggery to get what you want and feel you're entitled to.

The Hamptons? Not on my bucket list to begin with. Not going on there now. 

I did see that Ina Garten has a place in the Hamptons. Maybe for $25K you could get her to come over to your place and whip up a meal. Not a see and be seen kind of thing, but certainly some bragging rights involved. Might be worth giving Ina a ring. (Does she make Roman-Jewish artichokes? If so, please invite me along. Or maybe I could put on some black pants and a white shirt and wait on you while Ina cooked...)

Oh, to be in England, now that there's weeding to be done

Admittedly, she's not the wealthiest woman in the world. That would be French L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, followed by the Widow Koch, Julia, an Iowa farm-gal who caught the eye of David of Koch Brothers fame. As he was 22 years her senior, it's no wonder she outlived him and has plenty of good years left to enjoy her windfall. Then there's heiress Alice Walmart, errrr, Walton. MacKenzie Scott, divorced from Jeff Bezos, is right up there, but at the rate she's giving her money away - yay, MacKenzie! - she won't be up there for long. Rounding out the Top Five is Jacqueline Mars, who was smart enough to be born into the Mars candy fortune. Sweet!

No, Queen Elizabeth isn't even a billionaire. Estimates are that she's only worth a paltry $500 million. This, of course, doesn't account for the family fortune. The Royals, with all their landholdings and whatnots, are estimated to be worth about $88B.

Still, Queen E is a recent widow, and may be trying to conserve funds until she gets all the widow's mite stuff squared away. Plus she's well in her 90's - 96! - and no matter how spry she is, it's probably not that easy to get down on her knees and weed the gardens at Sandringham.

While these are legit excuses, surely the Queen could afford to pay gardeners to keep up appearances, rather than ask for volunteers to yank weeds out for her. Nonetheless, she's put out the call for volunteers - 20, in all - who later this week will be working the gardens on her 20,000 acre estate. 

The invitees will be chosen from those who are already members of Sandringham, who pay £45 a year to get unlimited access to roaming around the grounds, on those days when commoners are allowed to roam around the grounds, and to receive a discount on many of the items in the estate gift shop. And I'll guess that there'll be plenty of folks vying for the honor of working - for free - for the Queen. 

Volunteers will work from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and are asked to bring their own gloves, sunscreen, and water bottles. 

The email "invite" offered this in return:

“You’ll learn a little bit about weed identification, followed by methods to use for the management of plants growing in the wrong place.

“The day is designed to be interactive with a chance for you to help and be involved in vital work that’s needed to care for the spectacular landscape at Sandringham.” (Source: Joe.ie)

Well, sure, I guess weed identification is a good thing to know about. And, sure, the work is vital. But part of what makes it vital is that the Royals make some coin off of the entrance fees, and from goods sold in the Sandringham gift shop

From preserves and chutneys to boxes of confectionery, ports and liqueurs, many of our products are proudly made using ingredients from the wider Estate.

Or tasty items served up for afternoon tea:

Enjoy a luxurious afternoon tea experience served with Sandringham teas and coffees using the finest local ingredients, traditional recipes from the Royal archives and many products grown here on the Estate.

I see. You come and weed for free, then get to use your 10% discount for chutney and/or afternoon tea. Cool! 

Not sure if the discount applies, but one item you can find in the gift shop is Sandringham Gin. This was introduced late last fall and among its ingredients - many taken from plants on the estates - is the myrtle that:

"...originated from a cutting taken from Princess Alexandra’s wedding bouquet on her marriage to Prince Albert Edward, who later became King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra." (Source: Bustle)

Surely, there's a drinking game in there somewhere. For $67 a bottle, there ought be. Drink!

Anyway, while there are plenty of Brits who'd like to see the Royal Family jettisoned, especially after the Queen passes away (as surely she will at some point), I'm sure there will be plenty of royal-loving, gardenering volunteers looking to help the Queen out here, even if there's no promise that she'll show up to look in on their work. She probably won't be there, anyway. Sandringham's more the Christmas Estate. Balmoral in Scotland's where the Royals summer. Because who wouldn't want to summer in cool, gloomy, dank old Scotland.

Rule Britannia, and all that, but does the Queen really need volunteers to help with the gardening? Couldn't they pay gardeners to to the work? Or at least give the volunteers something more than "tuition" in weed identification?

Guess there's always this truism:

One thing we're sure of,

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got volunteers to weed the Queen's myrtle plants.

Only the lonely

I'm a BIG fan of assistive technology that will assistive us old geezers into being able to stay happily and contentedly in our very own homes. Some sort of kitchen doodad that can open a jar of Talenti pistachio ice cream? Bring it! A drone robot that can fly up to the top of the staircase ceiling and change a lightbulb? Absolutely. Telemedicine? I'm so there, holding my arm up to the camera: Doctor, does this bull's eye booboo look like something that will give me Lyme disease?

But a robotic pet - or just a robotic gizmo that looks like a nightlight - to keep me company and fulfill my emotional needs? Hmmmm. Gotta think about this for a sec. Thought about it. And it's a hard 'no.' At least for now.

Ask me again in another decade or so.

Maybe I'll be lonely then. 

Knock on quartzite countertops, but I'm good for now.

That's me. 

If you get comfort from a robotic cat or dog, it beats sitting around being lonely.

And the robotic cat does sound pretty cat-like, without having to put up with the smell of cat food and raking out the kitty litter box. For 92-year-old Virginia Kellner, who was given a "pet" by the department of aging in her rural upstate New York county, Jennie gives her a big lift.

Virginia likes the pet’s green eyes. She likes that it’s there in the morning, when she wakes up. Sometimes, on days when she feels sad, she sits in her soft armchair and rests the cat on her soft stomach and just lets it do its thing. Nuzzle. Stretch. Vibrate. Virginia knows that the cat is programmed to move this way; there is a motor somewhere, controlling things. Still, she can almost forget. “It makes you feel like it’s real,” Virginia told me, the first time we spoke. “I mean, mentally, I know it’s not. But—oh, it meowed again”(Source: The New Yorker )

Virginia has all her marbles, and she has family nearby who are attentive and caring. Still, she lives by herself, and it's nice having Jennie around. (Virginia had sweetly named her pet after a woman from the county department of aging. Another woman mentioned in the article named her cat "Sylvia Plath." I hope someone is keeping an eye on her - the woman, not the feline robot. I guess it'll be okay if all she does is stick the robot cat's head in the oven...)

Back to Virginia:

... “I can’t believe that this has meant as much as it has to me.” 

Good that having a fake pet around helps with isolation and loneliness.

Both are thought to prompt a heightened inflammatory response, which can increase a person’s risk for a vast range of pathologies, including dementia, depression, high blood pressure, and stroke.

A research study found that medical problems stemming from "social isolation adds nearly seven billion dollars a year to the total cost of Medicare, in part because isolated people show up to the hospital sicker and stay longer." 

Note to self: don't let yourself get isolated and/or lonely.

But if I do. there'll be plenty of assistive stuff available.

Eldertech. The isolation economy. Emancipatory technology. 

There's a lot going on out there with respect to elder care. Good thing, since the Boomer cohort is geezering up before our very (dimming) eyes.

On the companion end of things, the cats like Jennie and Sylvia Plath from Joy for All (which makes robot doggos, too) compete with devices that look more like a nightlight. 

Why, here's Gramps hanging out with one from ElliQ.

Unlike the cats and dogs, ElliQ isn't cuddly. It looks like a nightlight, or a good-for-nothing table lamp that's doesn't emit enough light for you to read by. 

Although owners have been know to draw faces on to ElliQ, 

The robot’s designers had decided not to give it humanoid facial features, so that it would “stay on the right side of the uncanny valley.”

Uncanny valley, you ask? That's the relationship between a robot who looks sort of human (or feline, or canine) and the emotional response someone has to it.

Anyway, it looks to me as if Gramps - a.k.a., A Study in Brown - has crossed that uncanny valley. He sure seems to be smiling benevolently on ElliQ when he could just as easily have been smiling on the old baseball mitt - brown, naturally - resting on his late wife's (brown) Lane hope chest.

Unlike the robot cats and dogs, which fake purr and fake bark, ElliQ is a talker. It greets its owner, and (like Alexis) can answer questions. And thanks to machine learning, ElliQ gets to know the human being it's moved in with.

The robot determines how “adventurous” a person is, then adjusts how often it suggests new activities. It learns whether its user is more inclined to exercise in the morning or the afternoon; whether she is more motivated by encouragement, or by a joke, or by a list of the benefits of vigorous movement...With new developments the company is working on, ElliQ will one day be able to remind users about a broader array of health-care tasks: taking meds, reporting side effects, describing symptoms.

I guess getting attached to your ElliQ beats getting attached to a Roomba vac, which one study found was happening.

Still, there's something a bit troubling about swapping out authentic human interaction with inauthentic interaction with a robot. 

The article mentioned several times that a lot of old folks try to hang on to extend telephone conversations with support people they don't even know. They invite the person who's dropping off their Meals on Wheels chow to sit down and visit for a while. 

Robots  to the loneliness rescue are well and good, but maybe the should be augmented with real human contact. It seems more than fair. After all, robotics/AI/machine learning are going to do away with millions of jobs over the next few decades. Maybe we need a new job category: visitor, conversationalist, human being. 

I'll all for it, and I bet the cat ladies and A Study in Brown would be, too. 

Nothing wrong with relying on the comfort of robots to save us from loneliness. We just might need to add in a bit more human-based TLC. Even if it is the comfort of strangers, there's no real substitute for the human touch.

A continuum of miscreants

Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd, is lookin at upwards of 30 years in prison when he's sentenced later this week. His attorneys are asking for something a little lighter. They're hoping for probation/time served in consideration of the fact that this is Chauvin's first offense, that he's served the community as a policeman, that he's got health issues and cops have shorter life expectancy to begin with, that he behaved himself in court, and that he fears for his life in prison. 

First offense? Hah to that. It may be his first criminal offense, but it's a doozy. Plus, during his vaunted service years he had a raft of complaints filed against him, a number for using excessive force in restraining people he was arresting. So thanks for you service, Officer Chauvin, but nah. Health issues? Life expectancy? Not the State of Minnesota's problem, mon. As for not acting like a raging lunatic in court, he would have been better off not acting like a raging lunatic when he had his knee on George Floyd's neck.

Then there's Derek Chauvin's fearing for his life in prison, and there I have some sympathy for the man. Certainly, there's a big element of 'so what' here, but when Chauvin enters the slammer to serve out his time, he'll probably have to be put in solitary to protect him from the general population, some of who will no doubt be gunning for him as a cop and/or as a white cop who murdered a black guy. Solitary confinement (and total deprivation sentences served in supermax prisons) strike me as 'cruel and unusual,' as torture. And while Derek Chauvin is a bad guy, no one deserves to be tortured, or fear for their life every waking and sleeping moment while imprisoned. 

Probation/time served would be a farce, but maybe he should be shipped out of state, where the temperature might not be so high. Or placed in a lower-level facility where the prison population is less violent. This should probably be done for any offender who's at risk in the general population and who's unlikely to offend again. I'm no criminal psychologist, but at least we know that Derek Chauvin will never again be in a position to abuse his authority and kill a person guilty only of using drugs and maybe/maybe not passing a phony twenty-dollar bill.

Maybe I've got this all wrong. Maybe Chauvin's such a tough guy he'll thrive in the joint. Become a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood - he's probably already their hero. 

But if the only way the prison system can protect someone in the prison system is by torturing them with continuous solitary - or letting them take their chances in one big game of Fear Factor - then the system needs to find a new way of handling people like Chauvin.

Bad guy? Certainly? But I for one don't want to read that he's been shivved on day two in the big house. 

You've probably never heard of Jennifer Woodley. But you're likely familiar with the Make-a-Wish Foundation. They're a non-profit that grants wishes to kids who are critically ill. A kid wants to go somewhere, meet someone, do something, and the organization tries to make it happen. There are chapters throughout the country, and Jennifer Woodley was the CEO of Make-a-Wish Iowa. That was until she was found to have embezzled over $40K from the organization.

Embezzlers never fail to amaze me. Yes, I know that most of them are probably decent enough folks, who may not actually have all that much larceny in their hearts. But then there's the day when they're a little short of dough, or are feeling a little bad for themselves, and it's easy enough to convince yourself that it's just this one time, and you're only borrowing it, or whatever you do to justify the theft. 

Here, for some, starts the slippery slope. That first time was so easy, it's turns out not to be a one-off. Wheeeee....

Stealing from a business is bad enough. Stealing from a charity that puts a smile on the face of a sick kid? That's really pretty bad.

Jennifer Woodley isn't going to jail. Her crimes were felonies, but she's got a plea deal in place under which the prosecutors are recommending five-years probation, fines, and restitution. Which seems appropriate. Woodley isn't a danger to society, her reputation and career are destroyed, and ain't no one going to let her get anywhere near the cashbox ever again. She'll be sentenced next month. And her attorney, like Chauvin's, is pushing for some special consideration.

Woodley’s attorney, Nicholas Sarcone, said that he would ask for a deferred judgment at sentencing. If granted, that means the case would be expunged from her record, as long as Woodley completes her probation and the other parts of her sentence.

My first thought is, why?

She's not a dumb teenager or stupid kid in her twenties. She's a grown-arse professional woman. 

Then I read that she has a child who was the recipient of a Make-a-Wish wish, which was why she was drawn to this charity in the first place. I cannot begin to imagine the stress she was under, having a seriously ill child. Maybe Woodley just flipped under the stress and started doing crazy things. Like embezzling.

I don't know what expunging a record actually means. Back in the old days, it likely meant that no employer could find your criminal history. Those were the days. Woodley is going to have to live with the consequences of her actions for as long as there's Google, and one big consequence is that prospective employers, new friends and neighbors, and her kids when they grow up will learn about her crime. (Her Make-a-Wish child has fortunately survived.) But if it makes her feel better to have her record expunged, why not?

Then there's the local knucklehead, Cole Buckley. He's in deep trouble for tossing a plastic water bottle at the departing back of Nets star Kyrie Irving. If there were an organization that certified a-holes, I'm sure that one of the first people they'd certify would be Kyrie Irving. He played for the Celtics for a while, leaving ungracefully after everyone in town thought that he'd let the team down. Plus he's an agent provocateur, making stupid statements, e.g., that the earth is flat. And, more recently, making claims that hit a local sore point: that Boston fans are racists, etc. 

I'm sure some fans are. Why would Boston be any different than every place else in the United States? We may be something of a progressive nirvana - we vote blue! we get vaccinated! - but there are racists among us. And some of them attend basketball games.

Irving's comments were no doubt mostly to rile up the Boston fans, hoping he could provoke at least one dope into using the n-word. He got plenty booed, but didn't get what he wanted in terms of fan goading. 

His new team, the Nets, is a far more talented outfit than the current edition of the Boston Celtics, and were more or less destined to beat them in their playoff series. Which they did. Handily. 

But in his last game at the Boston Garden, after a decisive Nets victory (during which Irving was roundly and deservedly booed), Irving decided to go to midcourt and pretend that he was wiping shit off of his shoe on the face of Lucky, the Celtics mascot, whose image is painted on the Garden floor. Prime, juvenile, a-hole move, Kyrie.

And gauntlet thrown!

One jerk fan - a 21-year old frat boy named Cole Buckley - took it up, hurling the bottle (empty? full? no mention) at Irving as he walked off the floor. And missed. No harm, no foul?

Now, it goes without saying that no spectator should throw anything at an athlete, however big and provocative an a-hole they are. Lustily booing only. Especially in a sport where the fans are close to the athletes, and where the athletes do not wear any protective gear. A sport like basketball.

I would be all in favor of Buckley's being banned forever from events at the Garden. And maybe a slap on the wrist misdemeanor charge for unruly behavior. Hours of community service time. But the powers that be have charged Buckley with felony assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Which could land him in prison for 12 years. Which is pretty much what Derek Chauvin was initially faced with for the murder of George Floyd. (The judge decided that the crime was too heinous to be deserving of such a lenient sentence, thus Chauvin is facing 30+ years.) There's just no way that what Cole Buckley did was anywhere near what Derek Chauvin did. (I recall a friend saying that a generation tuned out the Catholic Church when we were told that French kissing, like murder, was a mortal sin, and if you died with it unconfessed, you were going to hell. Sure, whatever you say, Sister.)

Buckley is being charged because Rachel Rollins, our grandstanding, publicity-loving DA, wants to make an example out of him. She's also pretty much stated that she believes the act is a civil rights violation - i.e., done with racist intent - because Buckley is white and Irving is black. But that she, quite generously, won't bring those charges.

I don't believe that Buckley will go to prison. He probably won't even go to jail. He's no doubt a lout, a jerk, an a-hole college kid. And he'd probably had one beer too many. (Not that that's an excuse.) But he's not a hard core criminal, and I'd hate to see him have to do serious time so that D.A. Rollins can prove a point. He doesn't need to have his life destroyed by a felony conviction to make up for the fact that our history is littered with racists getting away with murder. (Buckley's father died suddenly this winter, so that will no doubt come into play when it comes to making a deal.)

Don't know why I've been thinking about justice, and just how blind it is or isn't, but there you have it. 

The quality of my mercy wants to fall a little on all three of these miscreants. 

Why not just show "Birth of a Nation" instead?

I have very little recall of what I actually read in history books about the Civil War. North vs. South. Gettysburg Address. Emancipation Proclamation. Draft riots. Sherman's March to the Sea. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. John Wilkes Booth. 

And, oh, yeah, the War was fought over slavery. And the good guys won. 

I certainly didn't come away from high school history with any romantic notions about the noble Lost Cause. Then again, I went to school in the North.

I will admit that the first time I saw Gone with the Wind, I loved it. Rhett Butler was just so very dashing. But by the second time, well, fiddle-dee-dee, I thought it was rather ludicrous. And by the third time, well, as God is my witness, there was no third time.

I've also seen Birth of a Nation. Once. During a film course in college. I probably wouldn't have used the term racist back then, but I knew it was dreadful. And I knew it was hogwash. Afterwards, there was one line in it that my friends used to mock when something or someone got a bit overdramatic. "Loves hymn still echoes over the land's miserere." Not sure what it was supposed to mean, but we used it a lot.

Anyway, history teaching could sure do with some quality mercy these days. 

Mostly there's the brouhaha over Critical Race Theory, a legal argument that the right has taking over to use as a proxy for teaching anything about racism. Because, hey, wherever you can latch on to a divisive issue to stir things up, grab on with gusto. 

And, of course, there's the NY Times 1619 Project, which centers American history around slavery and racism. Admittedly, I haven't read much of this work, but my gut reaction is that, while our history may not be totally centered around slavery and racism, we sure need to focus more attention on how slavery and racism have impacted our history. And we won't be able to get off the dime we're stuck on until we're ready, willing, and able to do so.

Anyway, in a number of states - and I really don't need to name names - the brouhaha-ers call for schools to double down on a romanticized version of our history, choosing to focus on the noble and the glorious - and, as the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of immigrants, I can attest to plenty of that - to the exclusion, and even denial, of anything that detracts from the noble and glorious accounting.

So I wasn't surprised to read that one of the state-approved history texts for eighth graders in Louisiana tells a rather one-sided (wrong-sided) version of the Civil War. 

The textbook in question focuses one chapter on the diary of Kate Stone, a wealthy young woman living a life of privilege on a plantation. That is, until the Civil War came and took it all away from her. Kate Stone's diary is important, as it does give us an insider's view on what it was like to live on the advantaged side of the plantation. Stone also wrote about the Scarlett O'Hara level excitement about handsome boys heading off to war, and about the deaths of two of her brothers. (Neither died on the battlefield, but did die during the War.) This is valuable and important material. But Kate Stone's perspective is provided uncritically. 

"With more than 1,000 acres and 150 slaves, the family's future seemed secure." Until that nasty old Civil War took all that away. As Kate wrote, "'Our cause is just and must prevail.'" With not so much as a mention that "our cause" might not have been all that "just." Instead, we're told she was a patriot, that "the war's hardships were difficult to take," and that, once the Yankee soldiers showed up on their doorstep, the family had a "justified fear that their slaves would abandon the plantation for the freedom they believed the Union Army would provide."

So in 1863, the Stone family sent 120 of their slaves to Texas and "were forced to follow the slaves to Texas in the same year. In the family's absence, the few remaining slaves took over the plantation and moved into the family's home, dividing the rooms and the Stones' personal property among themselves."

No mention, of course, of how the resilient slaves, looking to survive, moved out of their dirt floor hovels and into a home where they had an actual non-leaking roof over their heads. And an actual bed that wasn't a sack stuffed with corn-cobs on the floor.

Instead, we learn that Kate Stone and her mother - her father was dead, her five brothers off to war - were refugees. And that after the war, they got their plantation back, but "lost all their property in slaves. The family had to face the new reality of planting and harvesting their fields with freed people who, Kate regretted, now demanded 'high wages.'"

I.e., wages. (Pretty preposterous to imagine they were high.)

Talk about uncritical race theory!

I've seen a few other sections in this text book - enough to know it's complete and utter pap - pap that feeds into the Lost Cause narrative big time. 

If this is what they're teaching in Louisiana public schools, all I can say is cry, the beloved country...

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

Sources: Daily Kos, and Joshua Benton on Twitter

Why can't everyone be like these guys? (#iammichellefruitzey)

LeeMichael McLean and Bryan Furze are a forty-something couple who live in Milton, Massachusetts, an upscale Boston suburb. I was going to say that they're typical, and in some ways they are. They're both accomplished professionals, they've got a kid, they've got a lovely home. (I'm nosy: I zillowed. Vintage, charming, no doubt full-of-the-character you don't get in new builds, and valued at well above the already hefty median price for a house in Milton.) But they're a bit atypical in that they are seem to me to be above-average involved in their community - town meeting, town boards, charitable organizations, etc. They're also gay, but that's not quite as atypical as it once was.

Anyway, they seem like the sort of folks that anyone would want as their neighbor.

But five years ago, they started getting unsolicited magazine subscriptions sent to their home under fake names like Dick Likker and Michelle Fruitzey, names that might seem absolutely HI-larious to a voice-cracking, insecure, jerk of a thirteen year old. Except that the term "fruit" for someone who's gay is so old school - I hadn't heard it in decades - the jerk was not likely to be a kid. Plus a kid would have probably outgrown the behavior and not kept it up over five years.

In all, the couple had been signed up for about 30 different magazine subscriptions, as well as one for life insurance, and have had to go to the bother of canceling them when they've received a bill.

Not to mention that the harassment was unnerving; Bryan and LeeMichael were frightened. It wasn't just the two of them. They had a son to protect.

They reported the harassment to the police, but there wasn't much they could do. Until the harasser outsmarted himself and signed the couple up for a subscription to the Boston Globe. Which they already subscribed to. So the Globe sent them a copy of the order form for what would be a duplicate subscription going to their address. This turned out to be, metaphorically, the smoking gun. They didn't have any fingerprints, but they did have a handwriting sample. LeeMichael posted a copy on a town bulletin board.

“Thanks for taking a look, neighbors,” McLean said in the posting. He also wrote, in a broad facetious barb, that the “joke is on them. What gay guy doesn’t want free issues of Vogue and Cosmopolitan?”

One neighbor, bothered by the harassment, felt compelled to file a request for town election records under the Freedom of Information Act. The neighbor used nomination papers to compare voter signatures, one by one, with the way “Michelle Fruitzey” was written on the subscription card.

Eventually, he found what appeared to be a match. Milton police were contacted, and the man was confronted by a detective. Furze said police told the couple that the suspect confessed, but that he linked the harassment to differences over local government.

“He told the officer that he was motivated by our outspokenness and our opinions about Milton’s politics and Milton’s future,” Furze said. “I have some doubts about that.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Well, I'm with Bryan Furze here as to having some doubts. Oh, no anti-gay animus at play here at all, at all. Just having a little fun with names like Dick Likker and MichelleFruitzey. 

Not incidentally, the jerk doing all this "harmless pranking" isn't just any old jerk doing "harmless pranking."

The news was startling, particularly because the alleged perpetrator had seemed to be a good neighbor, as well as serving with the couple as Town Meeting members.

“There was never any outward hostility,” Furze said...

“We did not realize the full effect it has had on us until after there was some resolution,” McLean said. “Prior to that, we had tried not to worry about it too much. At first, it was scary because we weren’t sure how many we would get or if it would advance to violence.

“After we identified who it was, we were both very anxious and depressed, and I was very upset,” McLean said. “I didn’t realize at first that it had been bothering me for the last five years. I didn’t have any place to put it, and I was ignoring it.”

Anyway, LeeMichael and Bryan made a couple of decisions.

One, although they shared the name of the person who'd been harassing them with the Globe, they asked that his name not be published. (The name will become public if the Quincy District Court - which serves Milton - decides to press charges.)

I suspect that there are plenty of folks in Milton who already know who this fellow is, who've put the two and two together of shared membership on town committees with living in the same neighborhood. So whether his name becomes public or not, there will be people in the know, and he'll have to live with shame that he's brought on himself and his family. 

The other thing that LeeMichael and Bryan decided to do was lean into the name MichelleFruitzey. They created a hashtag "iammichellefruitzey" and are putting it on tee-shirts (rainbow colored, of course!). And they're selling those tee-shirts to benefit the Gender and Sexuality Alliance in the Milton public schools. Much as I love the tee-shirt, I don't need another one, so I just made a donation. (If you're so inclined, here's the link.)

And it's Pride month, so, hey #iammichellefruitzey .

Their kindness to their harasser, their wit and creativity in turning this negative into a positive. Why can't everyone be like LeeMichael McLean and Bryan Furze? (And let's give it up for the sleuth who nabbed the perp by going through those town voting records. Talk about community activism.)

Want a ride into space with Jeff Bezos? Me neither.

Jeff Bezos was just a little bit of a kid - 8 years old - when Harry Nilsson's song "Spaceman" was released. So you can't blame him if he got the lyrics a bit mixed up. If you don't listen too carefully, you might think that Nilsson's singing "I want to be a spaceman, " not "I wanted to be a spaceman." And if you're only a kiddo, this rueful bit may well have gone in one little kiddo ear and out the other:

I wanted to be a spaceman
I wanted to be it so bad
But now that I am a spaceman
I'd rather be back on the pad

In any event, Mr. Amazon will be back on the pad soon enough. His upcoming space shot, courtesy of Bezos's space flight outfit Blue Origin, will only be in the heavens (or thereabout) for about 10 minutes after it blasts off on July 20th.

Anyway, if Jeff Bezos wants to play astronaut, let him have at it. I just wished he a) treated his employees better; and b) paid something more than zero in personal and/or corporate taxes. Other than that, even though I like to think of some of it as my money, it really is Jeff Bezos's money.

But I guess it's lonely at the top, because it looks like there's a spare spot available on the Good Ship Bezos - one that's not being filled by a friend or family member. Bezos will be accompanied by his brother and someone as-yet-to-be-named. That still leaves one seat free.  So Blue Origin asked RR Auction (a Boston auction house, by the way) to take it off of their hands.

RR Auction has sold plenty of interesting items over the years.  And interesting items can go for plenty. They once got half-a-million for a couple of guns that had belonged to a couple of pretty well-known Depression era gunsels named Bonnie and Clyde. Switching gears, they also sold a handwritten letter that Albert Einstein had sent to a fellow physicist for $1.2 million.

But space-related memorabilia has become something of a niche for the auction house, and they've sold everything from a dime that ill-fated spaceman Gus Grissom had smuggled into space, to a watch worn by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott that went for $1.6 million, even though no one other than the buffest of space buffs has ever heard of David Scott. And up until last Saturday, that watch was the most pricey item RR Auction had ever gaveled sold.

That's when the ticket to ride with Jeff Bezos received its final bid. And that was a bid for the astonishing - one might even say astronomical - amount of $28M. (The winning bidder is at present anonymous.)

You may be pleased to know that that money won't be finding its way into the deep and cash-lined pockets of Jeff Bezos. (No Gus Grissom dimes squirreled away in those pockets!) Instead,

...the bulk of the proceeds will go to Club for the Future, a foundation designed to encourage young people to get into science, technology, engineering, and math. (Source: Boston Globe)

I hope the winning bidder gets the tax deduction. But, hey, if he's got $28M to spend on a space flight, he probably doesn't pay any taxes anyway. As for RR Auction, they'll be pocketing $1.68M - a 6 percent cut. Not bad, considering it's more than the price of any item they've ever auctioned off in the past. Nice payday, fellows!

Here are the deets on the flight:

The spaceflight on July 20 will be the first time Blue Origin sends humans into space, though it has had several uncrewed flights of its rockets over the past few years. The company plans to offer regular tourist flights, which are suborbital, taking passengers up to the Kármán Line, which is generally accepted as the boundary of space, about 62 miles above the Earth’s surface. 

Tourists will spend about 10 minutes weightless during their flights, and the New Shepard spacecraft that takes them can seat six, each of which features a window view of space and Earth. Blue Origin has not yet said when tourist flights will begin or what pricing for the tickets will be, though that price is generally expected to be around $500,000. The winning $28 million bid, which was really for the chance to be on the first flight, is only a little less than the $35 million billionaire Guy Laliberté paid in 2009 to go to the space station. (Source: Forbes)

Blue Origin won't be the only game in town. There are also Elon Musk's Space X and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. In terms of who I'd rather lift off with, I'd have to go with Richard Branson. After all, having passed him walking down Beacon Street a few years ago - we exchanged a nod and a smile - I practically know the guy. But having Bezos as a captive audience for 10 minutes - 10 minutes when I could harangue him just a bit about what to do with his money - has some appeal. As I've said - and I would never, ever, even in a kabillion light years contradict myself in a blog post - it's his money. Still, I might provide a modest harangue about paying his employees better, and paying taxes.

Alas, even if I had half a million to spend on taking a shot - let alone $28 million - analysts expect demand to exceed supply.

Oh, what a world we live in - and blast off from.