Holographic circus animals? I'd say that's a big improvement.

As a child, I was an avid Mickey Mouse Club fan. Each afternoon, I watched the show, crushing on cutie pie Mouseketeer Cubbie O'Brien and Tim Considine of "Spin and Marty" fame. When I grew up, I wanted to be as perky and glamorous as Annette Funicello. 

The Mickey Mouse Club show was on daily, and each day had a theme - and a song to go with it. "Today is Tuesday, you know what that means? There's going to be a special guest." Friday was the Talent Rodeo, which was introduced by the lilting tune:

Saddle your pony, here we go

Down to the Talent Rodeo

Bring along Susie, Jack and Joe

Join the Talent Roundup

Round 'em up. Bring 'em in.
Everybody's sure to win.
Step right up, here we go.
Oh, what a rodeo!

(Sadly, my only talent is the ability to recall lyrics and tune I last heard in 1959.)

Thursday was Circus Day, and the song included the lines: 

Here comes the circus
Everyone loves the circus

Emphasis mine!

Even at the age of five, when I first began watching the Mickey Mouse Club, I knew that I was always going to be an oddball, an outsider. Everyone loves the circus? Not I! I'd never been to one, yet still I knew that the circus was not for me. I'd seen Toby Tyler on Disney. I'd watched Circus Boy. I was a regular viewer of Bozo, even though I despised clowns. But the circus? Hella no!

In the early 1960's, there was a show on Friday nights, International Showtime, that each week featured highlights from a different European circus. I watched it with my father, the two of us sitting there making fun of it. How, my father would ask, does someone learn that they have a talent for spinning plates? Why, he would ask, are they forcing those poor animals to act so unnaturally?

I finally saw a circus in person when I was a senior in high school.

During April vacation that year, my friend Kathy and I took the bus to NYC and spent the week on the pullout couch in the Queens living room of her career gal Aunt Mary, who worked for PanAm. Mary took us to the circus at Madison Square Garden. Between fear that the clown marauding around the stands was going to approach me, and loathing of the sideshow (still a thing, back in the day - this was 1967) which showcased "freaks", I did not enjoy myself in the least. The folks on exhibit - bearded fat lady, giant - all seemed so depressed and miserable. And the animal acts? Those poor, beautiful creatures. I pretty much vowed then and there that this would be my first, last, and one and only trip to the circus.

And it was, until I took my nieces to the Big Apple Circus when they were little. The Big Apple was quite a nice little circus. The aerialists were amazing, and Bello Nock, who was a highwire performer, was the only clown I have ever enjoyed. He was brilliant. The Big Apple didn't have any traditional circus animals. No lions, no tigers, no bears. Oh my! No elephants. Just rescue dogs, horses and ponies. The circus was actually lovely. 

We did make the mistake of taking the girls to the big kahuna, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. Too loud! Too much going on! Too many clowns. (Since one is one too many clowns, I was really out of my element.) Lots of wild animals that didn't look like they were loving the circus, that's for sure. 

The circuses have a controversial history due to circus animals being one of the most abused and mistreated animals in the world. Many circuses have had to shut down their operations in these last decades after rising voices of the animal activists brought the reality of circus life for animals into the spotlight. (Source: Interesting Engineering)

Well, there's some good news here, and technology's bringing it.

Circus Roncalli, a Germany-based circus troupe, became the first in the world to replace circus animals with holograms when it announced the change in 2019, becoming the pioneer of the futuristic hologram approach.

Circus Roncalli - wonder if they're any relation to Pope John XXIII, who's "civilian name" was Angelo Roncalli - stopped putting real live animals out there, and instead installed laser projectors. 

The high-tech projectors are circularly arranged around the ring and produce life-sized, partly oversized animal holograms on a specially developed, transparent, and circular projection surface.

Thanks to the 360° 3D stunning holographic images of the animals such as horses, elephants, and fish, the Circus has not had live animals in its ring for years.

Bravo, Circus Roncalli!

Not only are they not putting poor wild animals through cruel and unusual paces, they're also helping the environment by not lugging the animals around, feeding them, etc. 

And the audiences are loving it. 

I'm not the world's foremost virtual reality enthusiast, but I might even go to a circus that had holographic animal acts. And it'd be even better if the clowns were holographic, too!

Screen door slammed. Then I found a way to get it open.

Unlike my younger sister, I'm something of a latter day Bruce Springsteen fan.

Trish? She's been a fan since high school, when Bruce was just getting started. In 1976 or 1977, Trish and a couple of her friends took the bus into Boston from Worcester for a concert. They slept on my floor. The next morning, my BF and I took them to breakfast at the Parker House. They were still all jazzed about the concert they'd scene the night before. 

Me? I'd vaguely heard of Bruce Springsteen. Maybe I'd heard "Born to Run" on the radio. Maybe not.

Time went on. Trish stayed a fan. Not a rabid one, not a camp follower, traipsing from city to city for concerts. But a solid fan. A regular concert goer.

Me? Weirdly, I had a (vaguely erotic) dream that Bruce Springsteen featured in. Maybe I'd heard "Born in the USA" on the radio.

Then, in 2007, Trish got me a ticket for Springsteen at the Boston Garden.

Unlike everyone else in the audience, I didn't know all the words. I didn't know any of them. I'd never even heard "Thunder Road" - the iconic piece sung at nearly every concert - so I faked singing along. But that concert made me a fan. I bought, and listened to, most of his CD's. 

The next time Springsteen came to Boston, I was in. I've seen him at the Garden twice. At Gillette once. At Fenway once. When I go to concerts, I know most of the words. 

He's a phenomenal performer, and the shows are magnificent.

I read his autobiography, which was quite good. I watched his Broadway show when it came on Netflix. 

I'm a fan. Not a rabid one, but a fan nonetheless. 

When his post-covid 2023 tour was announced, with the European tickets to be sold first, I got up at 4 a.m. to try to get tickets for Dublin. I was actually able to get online and put tickets in my cart. Alas, there was some peculiarity on Ticketmaster.ie and I wasn't able to change my country to US and, without being able to give an Irish address, I wasn't able to actually buy the tickets. Pogue mahone, Ticketmaster.ie.

Then the US 2023 tour dates were announced.

Trish and I both registered to be "verified fans," which meant that we'd be able to vie for tickets on Ticketmaster before they were made generally available.

You could select 5 shows to get verified for. We both picked Boston as our first choice, on down through Connecticut (Mohegan Sun), NYC, Brooklyn, Albany.

I lucked out and got Boston verification; Trish got Albany.

I logged on with my verification code the split second the gates were opened. After spending nearly an hour in the queue, I was in the ticket sale zone.

Every time I clicked on a pair of tickets, a message popped up telling me that another fan had beat me to the purchase. So I'd try again. Again. Again. And again. And before my very eyes, the tickets that I had clicked on were showing up again, only for $100 more. Or more. Tickets went from $200, to $300, to $500, to $600. Then tickets priced at $1K, $2K, $4K, $5K began cropping up. 

Dynamic pricing in action. 

Apparently, Ticketmaster and/or Bruce Springsteen didn't want to leave any money in the hands of scalpers. If there were any demand dollars out there, they wanted them.

I accidentally hit on tickets for $1,250. A piece. I don't know whether someone else beat me to them, as I was busily hitting the Exit key. 

When a message popped up saying there were no tickets available for under $800, I texted Trish. "Screen door slams." The opening words to "Thunder Road." (Yeah. Now I know all the words.)

I was out. It looked like tramps like us, baby we were born to run to the concert in Albany. If Trish could score a pair. 

This was on a Wednesday. Trish's chance was coming up on Friday.

On Thursday night, we conferred on our ticket strategy. 

I decided to see what was available on the Ticketmaster secondary market, where people who had extra tickets could sell them at a premium. Obviously a lot of the folks who made it through the queue and were able to buy tickets before dynamic pricing set in bought four (the limit), even if they only needed two. That or Ticketmaster had set some aside. Most of the tickets available were in the rafters, behind the stage.

Anyway, there were plenty of tickets available. Yes, the prices were inflated and crazy, but once we factored in what we were willing to pay for a ticket + a hotel in Albany + gas, tolls, and mileage, the prices didn't seem quite so crazy. I got us two tickets. And, while they were in the rafters, they weren't in back of the stage. (Not that we wouldn't be watching on monitors, wherever we ended up.)

It was a lot of money, but not completely crazy. And, personally, I was happier that the scalping premium went to a civilian scalper, rather than to Ticketmaster or to Bruce.

I know, I know. Bruce has told us for years:

Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything
I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got

Well, based on the take from the dynamic pricing, you're gonna find out that you're getting plenty out of this tour. 

Still, the crazy dynamic pricing process, that revved tickets up to sky-high prices - and priced out a lot of fans - leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths. Especially given that the Springsteen brand revolves quite a bit around "man of the people." He's a guy with blue collar roots, who writes and sings from the heart of those roots. 

Fans, predictably, hit the 'net to complain. Twitter was,  on fire, as those who'd been priced out vented their spleens, while showcasing their bona fides as Springsteen fans who've been to dozens, even hundreds of shows over the years. It's been quite something. Talk about the dogs on Main Street howling.

Me? I'm just happy that, come next March 20th, Trish and I will be in the nosebleeds of Boston's TD Garden. We believe in the promised land. 

And, oh, I still haven't given up on Dublin. 

Child labor in the midst of plenty: Shameful!

A while back, I had a long conversation with a guest at St. Francis House, the Boston shelter I've been involved with for years. (Last fall, after over two decades, I left the board. I remain an active volunteer.)

The fellow was in his late thirties, an African-American who had grown up, poor, in South Carolina. He told me that he could barely read or write; that he, his siblings, and cousins were regularly taken out of school to work in the fields. He was obviously very bright. But mortified that he was illiterate.

How could this be, I asked myself.

Something like this might still have been happening during the Depression, even during the Jim Crow 1950's and 1960's. But this would have been the 1980's. 

A crew of little children, needed by their families to help scratch out a living, so able to have only sporadic schooling.

In the midst of plenty. 

How could this be?

Well, things like this are still going on. Las week, I read about a Hyundai Motor subsidiary, a parts maker, that has been using underage workers - as young as 12 years old - in its Alabama metal-stamping plant. 

Hyundai put out a statement that it "does not tolerate illegal employment practices at any Hyundai entity."

Yah, well, except when they do by going the "see no evil" route.

SMART, the subsidiary, claims to be equally committed and compliant. It "denies any allegation that it knowingly employed anyone who is ineligible for employment." 

The company said it relies on temporary work agencies to fill jobs and expects "these agencies to follow the law in recruiting, hiring, and placing workers on its premises." (Source: Reuters)

The specific children that were focused on in the Reuters story - a girl who's just turning 14 this month, and her brothers, who are 12 and 15 - are from a Guatemalan migrant family and, early this year, were working in the factory and not going to school. 

Pedro Tzi's children, who have now enrolled for the upcoming school term, were among a larger cohort of underage workers who found jobs at the Hyundai-owned supplier over the past few years, according to interviews with a dozen former and current plant employees and labor recruiters.

Several of these minors, they said, have foregone schooling in order to work long shifts at the plant, a sprawling facility with a documented history of health and safety violations, including amputation hazards.

We've become inured to hearing about child labor overseas: young children laboring in clothing factories, gleaning metals from discarded electronics, searching for anything salvageable in slag heaps all over the world, mining diamonds in South Africa. 

One thing for kids to help around the house. To have kiddo jobs like raking leaves, shoveling walks, babysitting. Even working a bit in a family business. 

But children shouldn't be working in factories when they should be in school. 

At the age of 12, my father had an after school job in a knitting mill. He worked as a "candy butcher," selling candy bars and sandwiches to the "girls" (largely Irish immigrants) working at their looms. The girls didn't want to lose any time, so they grabbed a ham sandwich or Hershey bar from my father. He got the job through "pull" - his Uncle Joe was a foreman - and my father was happy for the work. His father had died that year, and what he made after school helped his family out and gave him a bit of spending money.

He would entertain us with his spiel - "Sangwiches! Get your sangwiches!" - and he wasn't any worse for the experience. He still went to school. He still played sports. He still enjoyed his childhood. 

And he was good at his work, earning a promotion to "bobbin boy," bringing spools of thread to the girls at their looms. He learned to figure out what the best bobbins were - the ones with the fewest knots; the knots slowed down the weaving work - and bring them to the girls who tipped. 

I have no idea how many days a week he worked. Maybe it was a day or two. Saturday mornings. Summers. But work he did.

I don't know what my mother was doing at the age of 12, but it was likely some combo of doing a bit of work at my grandfather's grocery store, and keeping an eye on her younger sibs while my grandmother worked at the store.

My parents' experiences were ages ago. 

As were my early jobs - babysitting, and opening the envelopes and counting the collection money at church each Sunday - but, while I don't think kids should overdo it, or be forced into it,  I think it's still okay for kids (even as young as junior high) to have a tiny bit of work. But it should NEVER be at the cost of schooling, or of having time for rest and play. 

Naturally, the children of migrants are at particular risk of having their childhoods stolen, and for danger to life and limb while they're at it. Yet still it happens, especially when labor shortages are putting nodes all along the supply change under pressure. 

Alabama and federal laws limit minors under age 18 from working in metal stamping and pressing operations such as SMART, where proximity to dangerous machinery can put them at risk. Alabama law also requires children 17 and under to be enrolled in school.

Hyundai and SMART, of course, are smart enough to use outsource staffing agencies, giving them plausible deniability when it comes to awareness that laws are being violated and kids illegally made to work. 

One former worker at SMART, an adult migrant who left for another auto industry job last year, said there were around 50 underage workers between the different plant shifts, adding that he knew some of them personally. 

The spotlight was trained on SMART when the little girl disappeared. (She was found, safe and sound. She'd taken off with another young worker, looking for a "better" job in Georgia.) 

The Tzi kids are now in school. I'm hoping the other kiddos who've been laboring in the SMART plant are, as well.

Next time you hear calls for rolling back all sorts of regulations, and start to think that it's not a bad idea, think about the 12-year-olds working at a metal-stamping plant in Alabama. Capitalism unfettered = capitalism at its worst. 

Women's work?

Recently, the Boston Globe ran an article entitled "At the office, unrewarded work often falls to women."

Based on the title alone, I had a few immediate reactions:

• No shit, Sherlock
• Been there, done that
• Guess nothing ever changes
• It isn't all that terrible 

The point of the article was that all the "service-oriented tasks" that women see to - making sure there's a sheet cake ordered for someone's birthday, taking meeting notes, etc. - "usually come with little benefit to their careers." The article cited a book, "The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work," which is backed by research that finds that women get stuck with:

...non-promotable work...because they're expected to. For women, being helpful is a cultural norm. They feel guilty saying no, and there are repercussions when they do, such as not being seen as a team player.

“We’ve internalized those expectations that everybody holds,” said coauthor Lise Vesterlund, an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s very easy for men to say no, because there are no consequences.”

For women, there are consequences either way. Performing these often invisible roles can take time away from core duties, meaning they could risk getting passed over for promotions, leading to fewer women in leadership positions and less money in their pockets. And if women offer assistance on top of all their other work, it can lead to long hours and added stress. 

At one company the researchers looked at, the amount of time that women spent on "non-promotable tasks" was 200 hours more than the average man spent on them.

Where to begin? Perhaps if I'd spent less of my time as a career woman on non-promotable tasks, I'd know where.

First, I'll start by admitting that I'm old. And out of the game. Things are different for women now, and they have different expectations, different things that they'll accept as a given. For starters, they just don't put up with the crude sexist BS that were pretty much grinned through and borne by women of my effort. Good for them! 

But what's wrong with following the cultural norm of being helpful?

I guess I was just plain naive to think that a workplace that had more women in it would come around to becoming more supportive, inclusive, humane, collaborative, and empathetic. That the cultural norm would become universal and not (just) women's work. Sigh.

I didn't have a blazingly successful career. I didn't really aspire to one. I had a reasonable degree of success - I got to be a boss, I got to help run things - but I never wanted to be the president of GM or a partner at Bain. Good thing. 

But I did generally get ahead at the places I worked, and I always thought that one of the reasons I did was that I always tried to make wherever I worked more supportive, inclusive, humane, collaborative, and empathetic.

Which meant sometimes I was the one who ordered the sheet cake. And a lot of the time, I was on the one who took the notes at meetings - a task that I never resented. 

Working in tech, I was often the only woman at "the table." Maybe I fell into being the note taker because I was a "gal," just a half-generation removed from perching on a stool with my steno pad. But because it involved writing (i.e., summarizing what happened at the meeting), I enjoyed it. I also liked the

fact that it let me shape the narrative of what had happened at the meeting. E.g., I realized early on that a woman's voice is like a dog whistle: only certain ears are tuned to hear it. Thus, I would make a point or suggestion, only to find it ignored until it was made by one of my (male) colleagues a few minutes later. Hmmmm. In the minutes, I got to be the author of the original point, and Joe Blow got to be my supporter. I could also leave out some of the dumber ideas put forth at the meetings in hopes that they would not be acted on. Sometimes it actually worked.

And, apparently, note-taking is still not considered all that bad:

Susan Loconto Penta, co-founder of MIDIOR Consulting in Cambridge, has noticed that in client meetings, the employees taking the notes are usually women. And then they get stuck. “Once taking the note, always taking the note,” she said. This doesn’t have to be purely a secretarial role, though, said Penta, 57, who counsels women to take ownership of the notes by advancing projects and allocating tasks.

Yes!

Meanwhile, I'm wracking my brain trying to remember where I met Susan Penta. Pretty sure she pitched a consulting job - and I'm pretty sure got it - at one company or another that I worked at. 

I don't remember disliking her. I don't remember liking her. I just remember her being around trying to do something to help whatever dysfunctional outfit I was with out. 

Penta also cringes when a woman at a client company brings sweets to board meetings. This well-intentioned gesture could cause younger colleagues who aren’t aware of her skills to have less respect for her, she said.

Well, yes to this.

If someone's toting food to board meetings, it ought to be on a take turns basis. 

This brings to mind an incident from somewhere in the middle of my illustrious corporate career.

My boss was one of the two female VP's at the company. 

The executive committee was conducting day-long meetings covering plans for each of the company's products. For some daft reason, product managers (that would be me) weren't invited, even though they knew more about the products, markets, competition, etc. than anyone else. Bizarrely, the tech counterpart to each product manager was invited.

Anyway, I made my case that product managers should be there and was shot down.

And then, right before noon, my boss had a slight change of heart.

She came into my office and told me, "I think I found a way for you to come into the meeting."

Say what?

Anyway, the way she found was that I would go out and pick up some pizzas, bring them in, and then sit down and stay a while.

I told her that there was no way I was going in delivering pizzas. Furthermore, I told her that she shouldn't be the one who was always jumping up to order food whenever a senior team meeting ran through lunch. (She was, of course, the one who always jumped up. Kudos to the other female VP, who I also reported to at another point, for never being the helpmeet.)

Anyway, women's work as an issue has apparently become a thing. "No Clubs" are supposedly springing up around the country. 

A good thing? Yes/No/Maybe.

I certainly don't want to see women dead-ended by letting themselves get swamped with spending so much time on tasks that just aren't valued. 

Still, I hate to think of a workplace where there's no such thing as a sheet cake...

The downside of a chatbot...

How many times have I bellowed "Human! Human! Human!" when I'm caught in some convoluted customer "service" phone hellscape?

Given how often this scenario has played out over the years, is it any wonder that sometimes, when I need customer "service," I'm willing to give chat a whirl. (Sometimes via Twitter; sometimes directly.) Even when I know that the first line of defense in chat is likely to be a bot that'll direct me to the "knowledge base" I've already exhausted.

Once I get over the chatbot hurdle and get to actually start texting with an honest-to-goodness human person type, I've found that chat support tends to be pretty good. But those bots? I don't know if I've ever gotten anything useful out of them.

Fortunately, I never expect to. And, fortunately, I've never actually had to communicate with a chatbot about the whereabouts of a dead body. 

Equally fortunately, the bot encounter where that was the situation wasn't with the family of the person who was remaindered, but with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which was trying to help a family in distress.

Here's what happened.

Three years ago, in June 2019, Atlantan Jeffrey Merriweather, 32, was last seen riding in an SUV when gunfire was heard. Ten days later, his remains were found, the body already nearly "skeletonized" - extraordinary in itself after such a short time. Anyway, the body - what was left of it - was brought to the Fulton County Georgia medical examiner's office so that they could sort out the cause of death. (The belief is that Merriweather was shot.) Since the Fulton Co. pathologists were unable to make a determination, and were trying to figure out why the Merriweather's body was so skeletonized, they arranged to ship it to a lab in Saint Louis that has greater expertise in handling partial remains. 

Although they're in Atlanta - HQ of UPS - the medical examiner's office decided to use FedEx for the shipment. 

The package never got there.

When I think about it, I'm always amazed by how few packages - USPS, UPS, FedEx - do get lost. Given tracking and logistics technology, most things do arrive at the right place, generally at the right time. 

I once had a pair of sneakers from Amazon/Zappo's show up a year late, after they'd already been replaced. 

But mostly things get there.

So it's surprising that this package didn't. And it's pretty ghastly, considering what the shipment contained. A pair of Asics is one thing; a human body, quite another. 

Anyway, the Journal-Constitution has been looking into the case, and they put out a tweet about their investigation, mentioning FedEx.

...FedEx was swift to respond. But instead of getting answers, the newspaper and those following the case got an impersonal response from what appeared to be a Twitter bot, an automated account that publishes lots of content.

“Hello there. My name is Gaby,” FedEx Help, the company’s customer service account, replied in a tweet that has since been deleted. “This is not the experience we want to provide. I am very sorry for the pending delivery. Please send a direct message, I would be happy to assist.” (Source: Washington Post)

"Pending delivery?" Twitter was, not surprisingly, quick - and ruthless - to respond:

“This entire thread is a tour de force in the absolute uselessness of using AI instead of employing people to deal with customers,” one critic wrote. Jennifer Brett, a senior editor at the Journal-Constitution, agreed: “AI is not always the answer.”

Couldn't agree more. Those chatbots like "Gaby" manage time and again to flunk the Turing Test. When we're "chatting" with a chatbot, we definitely know we're not communicating with anyone real. 

After the requisite mealy-mouthed "concerns," FedEx is focusing most of its energy on pointing out that the remains shouldn't have been sent via FedEx to begin with. 

“Our thoughts and concerns remain with the family of Mr. Merriweather, however, we request that further questions be directed to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office,” the statement read. “Shipments of this nature are prohibited within the FedEx network.”

Meanwhile, it turns out that the FedEx facility in Austell, Georgia - the last location where Jeffrey Merriweather's remains were tracked - is considered something of a blackhole, a Bermuda Triangle where packages routinely perform disappearing acts.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, the Merriweather family is left wondering if and when they'll be able to bury their loved one. 

"It’s a nightmare you can’t wake up from,” Kathleen Merriweather, Jeffrey’s mother, told the Journal-Constitution of the situation.

That poor woman.

AI is perpetually learning, getting smarter and smarter as time goes on. Maybe someday the bots will smarten up enough to recognize that some things really do call for a human (and humane) touch.

Hot town, summer in the city

We've had a pretty beautiful summer so far. Most days balmy - 70's and 80's - and sunny. (Actually, too sunny: we're experiencing a moderate drought.) Yes, it's been pretty beautiful. UP UNTIL THIS PAST WEEK. Now, we're having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave. And it's too darn hot.

Some like it hot, but I've never been one of them. As a kid, my parents had to stop me from running around so I wouldn't get overheated. And I was the girl in the third pew who regularly had to stumble out of Mass on a hot summer Sunday when I felt I was going to pass out.

Give me cool, lotsa cool, any old time. 

So this last week, when the temperature's climbed to 90+ every day, just hasn't been my cup of (iced) tea.

Oh, I've been able to get my walks in: morning strolls through the Public Garden, which is right outside my front door.

There are plenty of shaded areas and there always seems to be a cool breeze. Plus there's even a bubbler, which is good for those times when I've forgotten to take my HydroFlask with me. When the sprinklers are sprinkling, I like to walk by, hoping that the cool breeze blows a bit of water onto the walkway. A nice little cooldown. 

There are also benches to park on for a few minutes, when I'm feeling a bit droopy. Of course, by a certain point in time, the ones in the shade are all taken. And when I do score a shaded bench for a few languid moments, I always feel guilty about depriving some tourist family of a rest, given that, wherever I am in the Public Garden, I'm only a few minutes from my AC'd home.

I generally amble from the Public Garden to the Esplanade, along the Charles River. Some shade, plenty of benches (some in the shade), a nice breeze and - yes! - even bubblers. (And some of them are actually in operation.)

The drought is more apparent on the Esplanade, where there are large patches of browned grass. But mostly it's a pleasant place to walk.

Generally, the only unpleasant part is the Canada geese wandering all over the places, crapping as they waddle. The paths are minefields. Why don't they just crap in the water? It's not as if anyone's swimming in it.

The other day, there was a different sort of unpleasantness: a homeless fellow, pushing his cart, and screaming unpleasant, nasty, threatening things at people. I heard him from a distance and crossed one of the bridges to get out of his path. Mental illness? Substance abuse? Both? 

A young man who he was verbally attacking called 9-1-1, and the Staties swung in, but I wasn't there to see whether they took the fellow away. 

I don't blame the person who called the cops. Someone suffering from mental illness and/or substance abuse can pretty easily turn violent. 

I never got close enough to the homeless fellow to get a good look at him, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had recognized him from my volunteer work at St. Francis House. Hope he's okay. (Hope he didn't harm anyone. Hope he was just all talk/shout.)

It's never a good time of year to be unhoused, but summer can be especially cruel.

Imagine being outside when it's so sweltering. Places like St. Francis House (and the heat-escape centers the city opens) help. Still...

And it's not exactly a trip to the beech if you're housed, but don't live in a neighborhood that's shaded, a neighborhood where there's a beautiful park in your front yard, and a gorgeous walk along the river just out back. And where you have central AC and don't need to worry about your electric bill.

Not to mention how awful it must be for those who work outside: painters, roofers, gardeners, construction workers, road crews, trash collectors...

Ugh!

Fortunately, we're only having a week of this. (The weather's supposed to break by Monday.) And it's only in the 90's. 

Imagine Arizona. Imagine Texas.

I have close friends in Dallas. I was suppose to visit them in mid-June, but that game was called on account of weather already in the 100's. They've now gone weeks with daily temps over 100, and there's no end in sight.

I talk with Joyce every Sunday, and we text all the time.

Life (outside) is unbearable. She and her husband are pretty much sheltering in place. It's even too hot to go in their pool or turn on the grill. 

Joyce takes her walks early in the morning, when it's just in the 80's. 

Other than that, they're pretty much prisoners, sitting there worrying about whether there's going to be a blackout. And they're among the lucky ones. They're prisoners in a beautiful home, fully air-conditioned. And they can afford the sky-high electric bill that's heading their way.

Summer's hot. We all get that. But most of us also get that climate change, global warming, is making things worse. That one-hundred year events will be occurring annually. That Lake Mead is becoming a mud puddle. That earlier this week it was over 100 degrees in London, of all places. That many places are burning up to the point of uninhabitability. And most of the places that will be hit worst and first are poor. (Why do you think all those immigrants from Central America are heading are way? Sure, there are plenty of reasons, but one of them is that their environment is no longer sustainable.)

And yet, we cannot get out of our own way politically to acknowledge that pending crisis and start doing something about it. Honestly, I don't for the life of me understand how climate change has been so politicized. Don't Republicans (and Joe Manchin) realize it's going to impact their grandkids, too?

It's too darn hot.

And I hate it.

But I don't want to end on a low note, so I'll give you this link to Martha & the Vandella's singing and dancing to Heat Wave, way back in the 1960's, when we weren't quite so worried about the end of the world as we know it. Check it out! Those dresses, those hairdos, those dance moves! Martha Reeves' incredible voice. 

How cool is that?

Microtransactions? I call macroridiculousness.

It is unlikely that I will ever own another car in my life, but in 1999, when I purchased the last car I will ever own - a New Beetle - I was delighted to pay a few bucks extra for heated seats. 

Getting into my car after a long day at work, for a long cold winter's night drive home, there was nothing better than the comfort and joy that having a heated seat brought me. 

I can't remember what I paid for heated seats, but it was worth it.

BMW, of course, offers heated seats, and I'm pretty sure that all BMW owners opt for them. After all, if a lowly VW owner wants a little warmth on her back, I can only imagine what luxe cars owners expect and demand.

But in some countries - Germany, UK, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea - you can't just pay a one time charge for the privilege and pleasure of a heated seat. You need to pay for a monthly subscription, under a model called charging for microtransactions.

Say what?

A monthly subscription to heat your BMW’s front seats costs roughly $18, with options to subscribe for a year ($180), three years ($300), or pay for “unlimited” access for $415...

BMW has slowly been putting features behind subscriptions since 2020, and heated seats subs are now available in BMW’s digital stores in countries including the UK,  Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa. It doesn’t, however, seem to be an option in the US — yet.

Other features that BMW is locking behind subscriptions (as per the company’s digital UK store) include heated steering wheels, from $12 a month; the option to record footage from your car’s cameras, priced at $235 for “unlimited” use; and the “IconicSounds Sport package,” which lets you play engine sounds in your car for a one-time fee of $117. (Source: The Verge)

Did I already say 'say what'????

If it's uploaded, stored, and accessible in a BMW cloud, I can see charging for recorded footage. Sort of.

But for a feature that's part of the car that you've paid to have installed, and that has no ongoing service component that costs BMW anything, all I can say is SAY WHAT?

I understand that companies want recurring revenue. Who doesn't like a nice, predictable revenue stream?

But what's next? Charging for rolling down the windows? Beeping the horn? Opening the trunk?

Sure, BMW owners can afford to pay on an ongoing basis to have their tushes warmed. What's an extra $18 a month for that? Or an extra $12 a month to put your hands on a warmed steering wheel. But why should they? Paying on a regular basis for something you own that has NO ongoing costs makes no sense to me.

It reminds me of a model that one zany software company I spent many years at tried to institute at one point. It was something that I believe we called "value pricing."

The theory was that companies would pay us for app building software that we (geniuses all) built and, on top of that, pay us a cut of whatever money they made with the applications they built using our software. 

For a while at this company, my job was writing "stuff" - businesses plans, investor presos, internal whatevers - for the company's chair and vice-chair (a couple of eccentric geniuses if ever). 

I don't think we ever got around to actually building the app-building software, but as I recall it was going to be called the Experts Factory, and we were going to embed all sorts of vertical-specific features that would make it easy-peasy to build apps for specific verticals. (Got it?) We were going to have one for financial services and another for maritime logistics, two areas where we had in-house expert geniuses on our staff. 

This was 30-ish years ago, and that zany company was an agglomeration of tiny software companies that were focused on core technology and/or a vertical market. At some point, the investors decided that, despite our best attempts to explain how the concept made sense, it just plain didn't. And they broke us up into pieces. I stayed with the main event, but the other little companies broke back off. I just googled and that maritime logistics company is still around.

Every time I sat down with the chairman to cook up a business plan or preso, he would whip out a piece of paper and sketch out his value pyramid that "demonstrated" the value pricing model he was hell bent on selling - if not to actual customers, then to potential investors. "We need a slide in there that shows this." I would argue back that no one was going to pay us a cut of what they were creating with the tools we sold them, any more than a carpenter was going to give Sears a cut of the sale price of a house he built using a Craftsman hammer.

Sometimes I'd leave the slide out, and sometimes he didn't notice. Most of the times he did, but never seemed to remember that he'd already told me to put it in.

Maybe the world has changed since then. Maybe people will be all in on paying for microtransactions that cost the provider nothing. But I call macroridiculousness. (And once again, I say, SAY WHAT???)

Okay, Hermès. You got me. What IS it?

Once, briefly, I had a Hermès scarf in my possession.

Now, I'm a scarf person, and I have a ton of them. From dime store bandanas to Liberty of London shawls, from light summer scarves to heavy winter woolens, I love wearing scarves. While Dr. Deborah Birx of covid fame (infamy?) tried her darnedest to give scarves a bad name, I chose to ignore that bad name. Scarves 'r' us. Or me, at any rate.

Hermès scarves have not been part of my scarf repertoire, however. All those stirrup designs. Too horsy. 

And then a Hermès scarf fell into my hands.

A colleague returned from a business trip with a Hermès scarf that he'd found in his hotel room. 

Why in god's name he didn't just leave it there, or drop it off at the front desk, I'll never know. But he brought it home, and after his wife rejected it, he  - knowing that I wore scarves all the time - offered it to me. It was both hideous - blue, yellow, and brown stirrups (or something - it's been a good 25 years) - and gorgeous (the weight and quality of the silk). 

I took it home, but it just was so not me...(It didn't help that whoever the owner was wore a ton of very heavy parfum. Completely noxious.) So "my" Hermès scarf ended up in the Goodwill box.

Hermès isn't all horse-related. Some of their wares are actually quite beautiful. But so far out of the realm of purchase possibility. To put it mildly. 

You don't have to have your eye on the $525K crocodile Birkin bag to get priced out of the market. 

They sell a sofa for $123.5K. (Yes, you read that correctly. Ikea's founder is rolling over in his grave.) A very pretty folding screen for $40.1K. (Another roll.) A very pretty floral platter for $2,090.  For that price, you have gotten a Birkin bag charm. Or a beach towel and a couple of silk scarves. 

What got me thinking about Hermès - something I'm seldom getting to thinking about - was the ad I saw in a recent New Yorker touting the company's Objects for Interior Life. 

I'm old school enough to remember when having an interior life had less to do with objects than it did with heart, mind, and soul. Then again, I'm not the Hermès target consumer.

I get that the object for interior life to the left is a bowl. (Hey, I have wooden bowls.)

But what is the woman holding over her face?

I looked over on the Hermès interior life page, and it is pictured in their video. But I still can't tell what it is. It didn't help that the narration is en français.

The info provided doesn't offer much insight. I did learn that "designed with its use in mind, each object becomes part of everyday life."

So, what's the use that they had in mind? Fan? Shade? Leather ashtray?

I also learned that "it takes its place within the space and demarcates volumes."

I have no idee what that means. Perhaps it was lost in translation. 

The mind and the hand transform the material through the artisan’s unique and innovative know-how. Functional and vital furniture and objects adorn interiors with neutral or bright tones, permeate and structure the space and forge a strong bond with our interiors.

Unique and innovative know-how created that unknown object for interior life the woman in the ad is holding - whatever it is - I'll grant you. But, not knowing what it is, it's hard for me to appreciate what's so functional and vital about this object, and how it's going to forge a bond with its interior. It sure doesn't help that the model fanning/shading herself with it seems to be doing so in the great outdoors, not on the inside.

So, Hermès. You got me. What IS it?

This may not be cricket, but it's pretty funny

What I know about cricket is...not much.

Like baseball, cricket has innings and bats. And cricket may (or may not) be a baseball antecedent.

I've seen in played on Downton Abbey. 

And read about it in the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers, as Lord Peter was an excellent cricketeer. (And just learned that Jeeves, the butler in P.G. Wodehouse's brilliant

and hilarious Jeeves and Wooster stories, was named after British cricket great Percy Jeeves, who was killed in WWI. That's Percy to the right.)

Players wear white flannel. (Or they did on Downton Abbey. Or if they were Percy Jeeves.) And shin pads. 

I know there are cricket-related expressions. Like sticky wicket. And not being cricket. 

I know it's played in England, and in places that Britannia ruled when ruling Britannia was a thing. Places like Pakistan and India. 

And it was in India that a group ran a fake cricket tournament - and scammed some Russian punters into betting on the matches. 

A group of Indian farmers set up a fake Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament so convincing that they managed to trick a Russian audience into making real bets. According to a report from the Times of India, the fake games took place on a farm in the village of Gujarat, with 21 farm laborers and unemployed teens who were each paid 400 rupees (~$5 USD) and tasked with impersonating “pro” cricket players from well-known Indian teams. (Source: The Verge)

The fake matches were livestreamed on YouTube, and to make them more realistic, the scammers used sound effects and a commentator who sounded like a pro. (Reminds me of reading about the early days of radio broadcasts of baseball games, where the announcer - who was nowhere near the ballfield - would follow along with notes slipped to him by a telegrapher relaying the game action coming in via Morse Code. The games would include sound effects like the crack of the bat. One of these early announcers was none other than Ronald Reagan.)

The scam was pretty elaborate.

Shoeb Davda, one of the masterminds behind the phony tournament, fed instructions to the umpire based on the live bets they received from the Russians. The umpire would then make a signal to the batsman and bowler to steer bets in their favor.  

Shades of the Chicago White Sox! Shades of point-shaving scandal(s)!  

The scammers managed to collect 300,000 rupees before they were shutdown. That's a bit less than $4K in US dollars. Not a lot of money, until you consider that the average Indian farm laborer makes about 300 rupees a month, or about four bucks. So getting paid 400 rupees to pretend you're a player on the Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans for an hour or so is a pretty big deal.

Not quite sure from the write-ups I saw who was behind the scam. More likely a gang than a bunch of farmers; most likely the brainchild of a "Russia-based mastermind."

This may not be cricket - and I sure hope that the farm laborers and unemployed kids don't end up in some Indian hoosegow for the role they played (which I can only imagine would be a hellhole) - but the idea of a bunch of Russian bettors getting conned by a fake cricket scam is pretty funny. 

Caveat, bettors! Gotta watch out for sticky wickets. They're everywhere. 

Ah, baloney

Until I was in 7th grade, I went home from school for lunch. Most kids did. The handful of kids who lived to far to leg it home, or whose mothers worked (the horror!), brought their lunch to school. But most of us went home, where lunch at the Rogers house was generally a bit of Campbell's (or Lipton) soup and a sandwich. And - of course - a glass of milk, which - at the direction of local kiddie show "star" Big Brother Bob Emery -  we used to toast the President of the United States. (We ate our lunch at the kitchen table, but then got to watch a few minutes of Big Brother before tearing back down the hill to school.)

My parochial school was grades 1-8, but many kids who went to public school (i.e., "pubs") went to K-6 schools, followed by junior high. In order to keep us from exhibiting any "pub envy", longing to be cool junior high kids, and to prep us for the rigors of high school, Our Lady of the Angels instituted a sort of fake junior high experience for us.

We would periodically shift classrooms with the 8th graders, so we'd have one nun for religion and then pick up our books and walk next door for math. Then back to our original class for history. Then back next door for geography.

The system worked well enough until the 7th grade nun took ill (learned later: nervous breakdown) and they doubled us up with the 8th grade. Nearly 100 kids, two to a desk, crammed into a single classroom. This went on for a couple of months until they found a substitute nun. Then we were back to fake junior high. 

Anyway, during fake junior high, we brought our lunch to school and ate at our desks (which were covered with a small sheet of plastic, the same one we used to protect our desks on Friday, when we had our water color painting class).

Our school had a cafeteria of sorts in the auditorium, with long tables that folded out of the walls. For some reason, we weren't allowed to eat in there. 

The best aspect of our fake junior high was that we got out at 2 p.m., rather than 3 p.m. And bringing lunch to school was a close runner up. Much cooler than rushing home for lunch with Mom; much closer to what the kids we watched on TV (c.f., Beaver Cleaver) did.

Except that no one carried a lunch box. We were too grown up and sophisticated for that. We brought our lunch in brown paper bags, and washed lunch down with the half pint of milk we all paid a dime a week for.

To raise money for the missions, you could buy a nickel bag of Wachusett potato chips or a candy bar. Whenever I had five cents to spare, I got a bag of chips or a packet of Kraft caramels. My friend Kathy Shea was responsible for sales. 

What was in my paper bag lunch?

On Friday - no meat day - it was PBJ. But Monday through Thursday, it was a baloney sandwich on white bread, "dressed" with a sliced kosher dill pickle, wrapped separately in Saran Wrap to keep the sandwich from getting soggy.

Once in a while, I swapped the Friday PBJ for American cheese and dill pickle. But Monday through Thursday, it was baloney all the way. Sometimes on Saturdays, I'd have fried baloney for lunch. 

And my baloney had a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. My baloney had a last name, it's M-A-Y-E-R. 

I like to eat it everyday. 

And if you'd ask me why, I'd say,

That Oscar Mayer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A

Which was how fancy people spelled baloney. 

For Sunday suppers, my family had cold cut sandwiches - with cold cuts (ham, pepper loaf, salami) from Maury's Delicatessen - but are work-week cold cut of choice was Oscar Mayer baloney. We were also an Oscar Mayer house when it came to bacon, hot dogs, and liverwurst, which only my mother liked. 

Once in a while - very once in a while - I have an Italian cold cut sub. But, other than on Christmas Eve when I put our cold cuts (good cold cuts: pricey ham, pricey roast beef, pricey turkey), I'm not much of a cold cut kind of gal. 

Still, although the thought of actually eating baloney pretty much makes me gag, memories of my Oscar Mayer baloney days are generally fond. And I still get a kick out of spotting the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile trucking down the highway.

But I don't actually buy any Oscar Mayer products.

So I sure wasn't going to race out to buy Oscar Mayer Bologna Meat Seltzer. Hard seltzer because, of course, you'd have to be hell bent on getting a buzz on in order to down a can of meat seltzer. 

Just the other day, Pink Slip was gag-reflexing at the thought of crab-infused whiskey. But this brew just takes the cake.

My stomach is roiling.

Fortunately, Oscar Mayer hasn't lost its meaty mind, and there's no such thing as meat hard seltzers from them. (At least not yet.) Unfortunately, there is a brewery in Texas that's brought out a hot dog flavored hard seltzer called Bun Length. 

Roil on, oh stomach of mine. Granddaughter of a German butcher from Chicago here - who knows, Jake Wolf may even have rubbed shoulders with one of the Oscar Mayers; they were on different planes, financially, but Jake had a successful meat market, and he and the Mayers were contemporaries on the Chicago German butcher scene - and I really can't bear to think about this product, even if it's fake. (Makes me want to drop into my Irish grandfather's bar and gulp down a whiskey neat. Too bad Rogers Brothers Saloon went out with Prohibition.)

As for Oscar Mayer hard seltzer, I'm glad it doesn't exist. Talk about a hard pass.

Achtung, baby! I'll stick with Polar Raspberry Lime non-hard seltzer.(My seltzer has a first name, it's P-O-L-A-R...)

Guess there really wasn't enough to worry about

Until I read an article in the Boston Globe last week, I'd never even heard of PFAS, a.k.a. 'forever chemicals.' 'Forever chemicals,' eh. I don't know about you, but most of the time when I hear the word 'forever,' it's with a positive connotation: BFF, forever home, FOREVER in the Hallelujah Chorus. Given that there's not much positive about PFAS, I think I'll just stick with PFAS.

What might PFAS be?

The term PFAS refers to a class of man-made per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds that have been around since the 1940s. Since they resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water, manufacturers use them in everything from cosmetics and cookware to yoga pants and firefighting foam. They’re also found in construction materials and at airports and military installations. (Source: Boston Globe)

I don't think my cookware would have PFAS in it - it's Calphalon stainless - and there probably aren't PFAS in steel. But I do have one Le Creuset piece - an exceedingly loved and continually used Dutch oven - that has a plasticky knob on the lid, and is enameled. So, maybe...

Which means if I'm standing at my stove, wearing yoga pants, and whatever I'm stirring in my Dutch oven bursts into flames, and I have to douse it with my fire extinguisher, I may well be in PFAS city. Good think I'm unlikely to have any cosmetics on.

Anyway PFAS are pretty much ubiquitous and "highly toxic," even in small quantities. They've been linked to all kinds of fun stuff like high cholesterol and - no surprise here - to some forms of cancer. And they've totally earned their "forever" designation.

PFAS earned the alarming nickname “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. Because of their chemical makeup, they can stay intact for thousands of years.

“When it is dumped, it stays there,” said Kyla Bennett, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in New England.

PFAS can get to you and at you  in a number of ways - even airborne - but the most common way is through drinking water.

We are most fortunate in Boston, and in Massachusetts in general, to have very good drinking water.

These bottles contain the supply of straight (unfiltered) from the tap water I keep chilling in my fridge. And, if those bottles look like wine bottles, well, yes, they are. Handy storage and look fine plunked on the dinner table. 

I checked and, there's not much by way of PFAS in Boston's water supply. In any case, last fall we passed the Sierra Club's test and what we have flowing through our pipes doesn't exceed the standard allowed for PFAS by the state.  

Others in Massachusetts (indeed, throughout the US) haven't been so lucky. 

And out in rural Central Massachusetts - in Westminster, an outpost in Worcester County - they've traced one likely source for PFAS in their well water: seepage from a composting facility, of all things. 

Composting sounds so crunchy-granola, friend of the environment, doesn't it. Putting your eggshells and apple peels in a little bag and spreading it on your garden and all that. 

But MassNatural (the composting outfit) composts a lot of paper goods, and coated papers and inks contain plenty of PFAS. (If you're looking for where you might come across coated papers: fast food wrappers made with "grease-repelling paper.") 

PFAS aren't currently regulated by the EPA, and I don't suppose we can expect them to start getting serious about the problem now that SCOTUS has set us on the road to environmental ruin by not allowing the EPA to protect anything to do with the environment. 

PFAS. Ugh!

Did we really need something else to worry about.

An apple for the teacher

My cousin Ellen is a retired schoolteacher. I never sat in on her classroom, but I imagine she was a really, really good one. Intelligent. Funny. Kind. Understanding. She loved the work she did - teaching language arts to eighth grades - and she loved her students (even though they were eighth graders). She is an excellent reader and an excellent writer, qualities that I'm quite sure served her (and her students) well, as she could convey her love of books and the importance of being a good writer, to the kids in her classroom.

Ellen and I generally stay in touch via email and text, but last week we actually had a convo.

On July 4th, as we learned about the Highland Park killings, Ellen and I were texting when she decided to pick up the phone and give me a call.

In the course of our conversation, I asked Ellen about her oldest grandchild, who just finished up her first year of college.

When last we'd spoken, Maggie was planning on becoming a nurse. But plans have been changing, and Maggie's now considering becoming a teacher.

My reaction was that Ellen must be thrilled at the idea of Maggie's entering the profession that Ellen had so loved. But that wasn't quite the case.

No, Ellen told me, she doesn't think that, these days, going into teaching is such a great idea. 

We didn't get into the 'why's', but it isn't hard for me to imagine what they might be. 

I have a number of friends and family members who are  or were teachers. They taught in suburban schools in affluent communities. In inner city public schools. In elite private schools. In parochial schools. 

And while all of them loved their work - the ones who didn't bailed out after a couple of years and went into another profession - it's not an easy job, and it's a job that's getting more difficult.

There's 'teaching to the test,' with teachers spending half  their time making sure that their kids pass state tests that really don't reveal much that you don't already know, and really don't produce the results we need: a literate, numerate, knowledgeable, skilled, and critically thinking populace. With the teachers so focused on 'teaching to the (standardized) test,' there's little time for the creativity and exploration that my teacher friends had so enjoyed. Not to mention being judged and evaluated on whether or not their students achieve often arbitrary results. 

Then there are the parents who make life difficult. 

One teacher friend gave a student the grade he deserved. His parents went haywire. A B+ would keep him out of the Ivies. Their son needed an A. This was at an elite private school, and this wasn't the only time that parents had come after this teacher to put pressure on her to change a grade. 

Another teacher friend, who had a not-so-great student with influential parents, had given the not-so-great student a not-so-great grade - the grade that not-so-great had earned. The parents were ticked off, and pressed sonny-boy for something they could use against my friend. Aha! She had once said "BS" in class. Not directed at sonny-boy, just used in general. My friend ended up with a reprimand.

And so one.

Teachers have also been under attack during the pandemic. For wanting to wear masks. For wanting their kids to wear masks. For wanting to keep kids safe. For wanting to teach remotely while the pandemic raged. Etc.

Then there are the right wingers getting involved in what's being taught. Maybe wokeness got a bit out of hand in some places, on some occasions. But now in Florida, you can't say gay. In Texas, a lunkhead politician has proposed that, in the history books, the word "slavery" be replaced with the term "involuntary relocation." And a lunkhead politician in Ohio wants to teach both sides of the Holocaust. In this corner, the SS. In the other corner, six million Jews. Got it.

I don't imagine teaching was ever all that easy, but these days, teachers - especially those who work in poorer schools - are also expected to be psychologists, doctors, social workers for kids who come from dysfunctional families, families in crisis, families with an absent or addicted parent. 

Hovering over it all is the mass murders in schools. Columbine. Parkland. Shady Hook. Uvalde. That any day, your classroom could be attacked by some psycho with an AR-15. 

Forget 'teaching to the test.' Imagine having to teach the kiddos in your charge what they need to do in an active shooter situation. (A couple of Highland Park survivors I saw interviewed mentioned that their children knew just what to do. A good thing, I guess. But how unspeakably awful.)

Then there are the insane suggestions that we arm teachers. Oh, that's a swell idea. Gunman at the door. Get the gun out of the locked gun safe. Get the bullets out of the other locked safe. And square off with a handgun against a guy with a semi-automatic. That'll work. 

In Boston this year, there've been a couple of instances this pas year of students attacking a teacher. So, active shooter with a weapon of mass destruction aside, add in teachers fearing for their personal safety.

And let's not forget teachers having to go out of pocket to buy school supplies. Teachers generally get a small stipend, but the average teacher spends $750 a year to augment it. Thus, a number of charities - Adopt a Classroom, Donors Choose - and teacher wishlists on Amazon have sprung up to help support teachers who want to make sure they have the equipment and supplies they need to teach.

Then there's all the bitching about how much teachers get paid, so big deal if they have to pay for colored paper and markers. Sure, the pay is for the most part decent, and the benefits are better than what's on offer in the private sector, but in some states teaching pay is truly abysmal, and teachers have to moonlight to make ends meet.

Sure, teachers get a lot of time off, but a lot of that time off is spent prepping and other teaching-related tasks. Not to mention that, in this day and age, many parents and students expect teachers to be perpetually on call, and answer any email that comes their way right away. 

And don't get me going on the pressures to privatize education which, I predict, will lead to students in poorer communities being educated largely through some type of remote (and largely rote) online for profit learning, while privileged students will get to enjoy the benefits of in person learning in well-funded schools. 

I'd say the teaching profession could definitely use an apple. And a lot more.

No wonder Ellen's not all that keen on Maggie becoming a teacher.

Whatever Maggie decides to do, she'll without a doubt do it well (what with chips of the old block, and grandchips off the old grandblock). But it's a truly profound loss to the children of the world when those with the potential to be teachers as great as my cousin Ellen are turned off to this critical profession.

Georgia Guidestones? They've been Talibanned.

Getting to all 50 states is sort of on my bucket list. Or would be there if I actually had a bucket list. I don't have many states left to go: Kentucky, Tennessee, North Dakota, Alaska. And I may actually be able to check Kentucky off, as I did fly into Cincinnati's airport, which is actually in Kentucky, so I've been on the ground there. (I can't count Tennessee, as my only time spent there was a plane change in Memphis.) North Dakota is probably the most problematic state on here, as there's really no reason to go there. Tennessee has Nashville; Alaska has Alaska. North Dakota? Bismarck? Fargo? But. I. Digress.

Because we're talking about Georgia here, and I've been. To Atlanta a few times, and through the state on the tale-end of a cross country road trip fifty years ago. 

Admittedly, I haven't seen everything there is to see in Georgia. I never got to Stone Mountain, where Confederacy heroes Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis are memorialized. Not much of an attraction for me. 

I'm sorry I've never been to Savannah. While I don't need it to check off a state I've already been to, if I did have a long bucket list, Savannah might be on it. 

Not a golfer, so Augusta National: meh.

And until some American Taliban blew it up last month, I'd never even heard of the Georgia Guidestones. (Not to be confused with the Righteous Gemstones.)

The Guidestones are a set of "granite monoliths inscribed with cryptic messages" that were erected in a rural area of Georgia in 1980, and became something of a tourist attraction.

The group that paid for the Guidestones' creation remains anonymous. 

The Guidestones’ funders wanted to make “a moralistic appeal” to humanity, according to the trade group, and etched 10 guiding principles onto the stones. The multilingual manual for humanity has been a popular spot for visitors over the past four decades. (Source: Washington Post)

Their "moralistic appeal" is/was a combination of anodyne and weird. (Source for this list: Wikipedia)

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature.

To cover at least some of the linguistic bases, the list is multi-lingual, with the guidelines repeated in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. 

Not much to argue with for most of the items on the list. What's not to like about fair laws and avoiding useless officials? Who'd be against prizing truth, beauty, and love? Be not a cancer on the Earth? Amen to that.

Others are on the weird side.

A living new language? Like Esperanto?

And what did the anonymous group - the Guidestoners -  intend to do to get to a balanced world population of 500,000,000, given that when the Guidestones were erected in 1980 the world pop was over 4 billion (and is now nearly double that)? Were they going to let not-so-petty laws and officials cull the global herd?

Whatever the Guidestones meant, they are no more.

Parties unknown set off an explosive device there, and the damage was so severe that they had to take the whole thing down.

The detonators may not (yet) be known, but the smart money's on "right-wing conspiracy theorists such as Infowars founder Alex Jones [who] have seized on the edicts as proof of a nefarious globalist scheme."

According to Jones, the Guidestones show that global elites are out there figuring out how to "enslave most of the world." Some "theorists" associate the Guideposts with the emergence of COVID. No surprise that Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has her own conspiracy theories about the Guideposts: population control brought about by lefty extremists. And general spew about the evils of globalism. 

Other righties have dubbed the Guidestones 'satanic', part of the "Luciferian Cabal" out to grip the world in its clutches. 

And the bombing? Forget bombers. It just might be an act of God.

Nah. I'm guessing right-wing crazies. The loss to the world of this monument is, of course, not as great as the loss of the ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan that the Taliban destroyed a couple of decades back. Still, if a monument's going to go, I'd put the carvings of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis ahead of the goofy Georgia Guideposts.

And as a right-wing nutter action, bombing the Guideposts sure beats the stochastic terrorism of someone mowing down innocent Fourth of July paradegoers in Highland Park, Illinois.

In any case, the Georgia Guideposts are no more. Not that I was ever going to pay a visit to Elberton, Georgia, to see them. So no skin off the nose of my imaginary bucket list. 

Still, the bombing was a stupid and disturbing event. 

We need less of this, not more.