Good Cheap Food (Goodbye, old friend)

I'm going through some things.

No, not in the sense that I'm going through some things, in a bad things happenin' kind of way. 

I'm going through stuff. As in tossing things in the trash, recycling, shredding, donating things that I no longer want and/or need.

In the last few weeks, I've brought 20 pounds+ worth of paper to the UPS Store, where Iron Mountain picks up stuff that needs to get shredded. Oh, I have a home shredder, but it's never been industrial strength, and of late it overheats and stops shredding after a page and a half. So I gave up and brought those old tax returns (hello, 2000!) and other items that had some personal info on them. Or my mother's personal info on it.

My mother died in 2001, and in opening file drawers that never get opened, I found all the checks she wrote the last year of her life. I had needed them when I filed her posthumous task return, and there were plenty of them. My mother didn't have a ton of money, but she was very generous with what she did have. 

She also believed in donating regularly. 

Instead of writing an annual $120 to a charity, she sent them $10 a month. Some of her charities got $5 a month. There was also a random check for $3. I suspect this charity had sent her address labels or a pencil, and said that they needed at least three bucks to cover the cost. Knowing my mother, she would have felt guilty using the pencil to do her crossword puzzle, and sent them the money. (Me? I use those address labels, whether I donate anything or not. As long as my name is spelled correctly. I toss the ones that say "Mureen.")

Then there were five official, embossed copies of my mother's death certificate. Stocking stuffers for each of her children? It felt weird tossing them, but out they went. (I did hang on to her last driver's license. Why? God knows.)

In addition to the important paper stuff I shred, I donated a number of items to the Art Room at St. Francis House, where the artists can use old typewriter pads (Eaton's Corrasable Bond!) and Crane's résumé bond (cream and pale gray), construction paper (likely left over from craft projects done with my nieces when they were little), and an unopened package of Sharpies that I opened to make sure they weren't dried up. I also Uber'd four bags full of kitchen-ish stuff to Goodwill.

One item that I figured was unusable was an ancient cook book, the paperback edition of Good Cheap Food, by Miriam Ungerer, vintage 1974, price $1.50, which my mother gave me nearly 50 years ago. 

The pages are moldering, the spine broken. When you open it, the pages fall out.

But I sure got my mother's money's worth out of it over the years. 

That's where I got the quiche recipe that I must have made dozens of times. The cookbook, in fact, falls open to it.

I made a variation of it a few weeks ago when I had a friend over to lunch. (My variation: add roasted cherry tomatoes and shallots.)

It's also where I found my tried and true spaghetti carbonara recipe, which I've made so often I don't even need the recipe.

Another tried and true no-need-for-the-recipe recipe I found there: cannelini with tuna. 

I don't recall making many other things out of this cookbook. For the basics, I turn to The Joy of Cooking. (I used to also rely on a paperback edition of the Fannie Farmer Cook Book, but that one moldered into oblivion a few years ago. 

One thing I have made from Good Cheap is stone-broke hash, which uses canned corned beef. I hadn't made it in decades, but during the covid shutdown, I bought a can and made a desperation meal (or two) out of it. I had remembered it as pretty tasty. Not as good as my mother's scratch hash, made with the leftover corned beef from St. Patrick's Day, ground in the meat grinder that clamped on to the kitchen counter. Now that was delicious. The Good Cheap Food, version, not so much. I doubt I'll be making that one again.

As I was going through my things, Good Cheap Food fell apart in my hands, and out fell the page with a recipe for colcannon, which I had never made. 

The colcannon recipe I follow - which, in fact, I followed on St. Patrick's Day - is from a pub food cookbook my cousin MB gave me, and uses cabbage, which strikes me as more authentic than Ungerer's recipe, which uses spinach. I won't be needed it. I love the real deal, which is yummy. (Ample cream and butter help.)

The Good Cheap Food cookbook is so old and in such bad shape, that to open it is to invite an asthma attack. So I wasn't able to spend much time reading Miriam Ungerer's enjoyable, clear, and witty writing. 

Anyway, I won't say that I'll miss this cookbook. I pulled out the quiche recipe, so I've got what I need. (In truth, I know that recipe by heart, too. It's pretty simple - as are all the recipes for the wonderful, good, simple little meals in this book.) It was definitely time for it to go. Still, it was with a tiny bit of a pang that I tossed the book in my recycle bin.

Goodbye, old friend. You done me good.

This Stash guy is SUCH bad news

A while back, my local pizza spot got in trouble for cheating its workers out of overtime. I can't recall all the details, but it was along the lines of promoting workers - often undocumented immigrants - to fake management positions so that they didn't need to pay them overtime. 

Anyway, for a short while, I didn't have a local pizza spot, but the place got new owners and it's all good. (Pizza included.) 

But there's a new pizza scandal brewing in Boston, and it makes the Upper Crust issues of yesteryear look like big nothing. 

Once again, the case involves exploiting undocumented immigrants, but the owner of Stash's Pizza - Stavros “Steve”

Papantoniadis - didn't stop at screwing workers out of wages.

Sure, there was plenty of that. 

In court filings, it's alleged that "Victim 1", a fellow from North Africa, worked as many as 119 hours a week for straight-time pay. He also had to endure Papantoniadis insulting him for his Muslim religion. And then: 

Papantoniadis “in or around” 2007 allegedly kicked the man in his genitals with such force that he needed surgery, according to the affidavit, which said the man had a catheter implanted and that the pain continued to bother him until at least 2021.

At other times, the man alleged, Papantoniadis struck him in the face, choked him, broke his glasses, and “broke his upper and lower teeth,” forcing the man to get dentures, the affidavit said. Records indicate the man “lost or had all of his teeth extracted” in 2008, according to the filing. (Source: Boston Globe)

(Medical records verify that this man's teeth were removed, but don't tie the extraction to the abuse.)

Other victims were similarly deprived of overtime, had to put up with plenty of insults, and had to endure threats around their immigration status. There were sexual harassment, death threats.

One of the other victims:

...told investigators Papantoniadis would mention the immigration status of undocumented workers whenever they requested time off and would end such talks by saying, “[Expletive] immigrants, I’m not here for you.”

Another victim worked 365 days without a day off.

This isn't Papantoniadis's first run-in with respect to wage violations. 

He and Polyxeny “Paulina” Papantoniadis [in 2019] agreed to pay $330,000 in back wages and other damages to 150 current and former employees, DOL said at the time.

But wait, there's more. (There's always more.)

(Separate court filings in Suffolk Superior Court indicate that Papantoniadis pleaded guilty in 1998 to motor vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury or death. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail with one year to serve and the balance suspended, records show.)

And he supposedly his having served time to add street-cred oomph to the threats he made to his workers.  

Back to that alleged “[Expletive] immigrants, I’m not here for you” comment.

Want to bet that if Stavros/Steve and Polyxeny/Paulina aren't themselves immigrant, then their parents were. Just bettin'...

But wait, there's more. (There's always more.)

A tenant who rented a flat in a three-decker owned by Papantoniadis claims that he was wrongly evicted because of making complaints about leaks and a broken toilet. 

That may not be illegal in any criminal sense, but it helps paint the picture of what a colossal POS this Stash guy is. 

When last I saw, Papantoniadis was in custody, and, if found guilty, looking at up to 20 years in prison and a hefty fine. 

Even if only half of these allegations are true, it'll serve him right.  

 

Yeez Louise, that's a lot of ugly sneakers

I'm the first to admit that, when it comes to popular music, I'm something of a fuddy duddy. 

Oh, I'm not a complete and utter fuddy duddy, but a minor league one nonetheless.

I'm not sitting around mooning over why Pat Boone and Johnny Mathis aren't more popular. I don't sing Patti Page tunes in the shower. (Okay. Once in a while, I may break out into Old Cape Cod. But I promise you I have never, ever, ever in a million years performed a shower warble of How Much Is That Doggy in the Window.)

I can make fun of Lawrence Welk and his full cast, from Myron Floren to the Luffly Lennon Sisters. 

And while I still enjoy many of the performers I loved 50+ years ago - Tom Rush, Judy Collins, James Taylor, Elton John - I like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles just fine. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to see Lewis Capaldi. 

But.....

But....

Not that an old white woman is the audience, but I don't care for/appreciate/get rap. And while I understand that a lot of folks consider him a genius, I don't care for/appreciate/get Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West; latterly known as Yeezy - I think). 

And if I don't enjoy his music, I really don't think much of his fashion. 

I don't know if he still has his clothing line, but my reaction when I first saw it was something along the lines of this is some fugly stuff. (Insider info: One of my closest friends was a lead buyer for a very high end retail firm. I won't name names, but think Dallas. The store did business with Kanye - they were somewhat forced into it [I can't remember the deets] - and he was difficult to work with. And not many of the dedicated followers of fashion who dropped tens of thousands of dollars a month at the store would have been caught dead wearing anything "designed" by Kanye.)

If his clothing line was fugly, well, bring on Yeezy footwear, the latest of which looks like an unhappy meeting of Crocs and Edvard Munch's The Scream. And they certainly don't look like they'd offer the kind of support this old lady needs. Talk about ankle-breakers!

But Yeezy sneakers are popular. If no one wears them, collectors collect them and scalpers scalp them. And they cost a ton more than Crocs.

A few years ago, I was walking up Newbury Street and passed a large crowd gathering in front of a store. I asked one of the waiters what he was waiting for. I thought at first that he told me that Kanye West was coming, but then I figured out that it was some new edition of Yeezys that were hitting the shelves. 

Yeezys have helped make Ye richie rich. And they helped swell the coffers at Adidas, which had a deal with Ye that went south when Ye started spewing crackpot antisemitism, Adidas - a German company - was pushed to drop their arrangement. Which stuck the company with a Yeezy inventory worth $1.3B.

Stored in warehouses around the world, the sneakers are a reminder of the once-fruitful tie between Adidas and Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye. Since the first Yeezy Boost 750 shoe dropped in February 2015, his Yeezy brand became a defining force in the sportswear industry and an incredibly lucrative cornerstone for Adidas. (Source: NY Times)

Since January, Adidas has been headed by CEO Bjorn Gulden, who's been spending some of his get-acquainted time trying to figure out what to do with all those Yeezys. 

Mr. Gulden said he and his team were still weighing their options, including the idea of potentially selling the inventory and donating the profits “to do something good.” He said the shoes most likely wouldn’t be destroyed.

Getting rid of the Yeezys is complicated.

Selling the inventory puts the coveted sneakers into the market, and Ye is contractually entitled to his share of the profits. Giving the inventory away puts it to "good use," and there goes Ye's share (yay!), but there goes any profits that would go to do-gooding. 

Destroying the sneakers seems totally wrong-headed. Surely, there are direly poor folks throughout the world - some of them perhaps (blessedly) completely unaware of who Ye is and what cra stuff he stands for - who could use a pair of colorful Scream-Crocs. Not to mention the toxic sludge that would be produced by shredding/burning/whatevering those puppies. 

While Adidas is grappling with plenty of other issues, the Yeezy line was a "cornerstone" of their business, contributing as much as half-a-billion to their bottom line. 

“Losing the Yeezy business is so hard,” [Fulden] told reporters on Wednesday, praising the creativity of the collaboration on multiple levels, including the design, marketing and its use of social media and apps.

“There is no other Yeezy business in the market,” he said. “The people who think you can just replace this with something else — you can’t.”

I'll take Gulden's word that you can't just slot in another big name for Ye and get the same results. But maybe the next time around, they can come up with something that isn't quite as ugly. 

Where the wild things are

There are plenty of wild things on the move, making their way into places like, say, New England. Even alligators are on heading north. Fortunately, by the time they arrive, I'll likely be gone, so I really don't need to worry about the alligator jaws of death snapping at my ankles and dragging me into the Charles River.

Urban and close-in suburban areas in Massachusetts are increasingly where the wild things are. Hostile and aggressive wild turkeys are attacking people all over Boston and its environs. Coyotes have been spotted in my neighborhood. Black bears are becoming commonplace in suburban backyards. Moose lumber down the streets. 

Joro spiders the size of your palm! Colorful spotted lanternflies! Here. They. Come.

Nobody actually saw the deed, but one theory on how the dead rat ended up in the second floor balcony is that a hawk spied a tastier option and dropped it there. 

Thanks to global warming, Canada geese are, unfortunately, not on the move. Why fly south for the season when you can spend a pleasant enough winter in Boston without having to bother to get into a V formation and exert yourself to fly south? They're here, they're everywhere, get used to it. And they're crapping everywhere. It seems to me that they manage to crap their weight each and every day, covering my preferred walking routes along the Esplanade and in the Public Garden.

While they're not the nasty aggressors that wild turkeys are,  last summer one hissed at me as I walked by. 

I will say that I felt a little foolish telling a goose to fuck the fuck off. Nevertheless, I persisted. 

And now this:

A special breed of hybrid super pigs from Canada have started to travel south into the northern United States.

The pigs pose a threat to native wildlife and may prove tough to eradicate. (Source: Prevention)

These super pigs are a human creation. Farmers crossbred domestic pigs with wild boars in order to develop a breed that would be better able to withstand Canada's winter cold. Then the market price dropped, and some farmers decided to let their super pigs go free. 

And now they're heading south, invading the US through our northern border. So far, New England is blessedly not in their sights. But they're on their way to Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan. 

And it's hard to get rid of these suckers.

“That they can survive in such a cold climate is one of the big surprises of this issue,” Ryan Brook, leader of the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, tells Field and Stream.

The cold-hardiness of the hybrid pigs means they survive well. That means other native species don’t. Brook elaborates:

“Wild hogs feed on anything. They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring."

They can "gobble up tons and tons of goslings" you say? Make way for super pigs. 

Unfortunately, super pigs also wreak havoc on crops. And they're wily enough to avoid hunters. They adjust to the presence of hunters by switching to a nocturnal lifestyle. The groups they travel in break up, and/or they change the patterns of where they hang out, so hunters have a more difficult time locating them. 

The best strategy at reigning in the super pigs has been employing the Judas Pig concept, which straps a GPS collar onto a pig to lead game officials to other pigs. Deception may be our only hope.

Pigs are plenty smart. Maybe even super smart. So maybe they'll figure out the Judas Pig thing. 

Anyway, since I don't need to worry about their destroying any crops, I'd be fine if they came to Boston and took on the Canada geese. I'm guessing they'd be smart enough not to crap on my sidewalks. 

A not so lovely bunch of coconuts, Part II

Way back in 2020, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) - a group which, as often as not, I find a bit on the extreme side - revealed that monkeys (pig-tailed macaques) in Thailand were being forced into labor picking coconuts. 

Animal lover that I am, I didn't like this one little bit. 

Jeez, it's bad enough worrying about whether human laborers - including children - in many of the Asian countries that produce so much of what we eat, wear, and use are treated terribly: paid a pittance, working under unsafe conditions, living in squalor. Now we have to worry about whether monkeys are being used as slaves?

Most animals (pretty much any and all other than sponges and coral) are to some extent sentient. They feel pain, they experience emotion. But there's sentience and then there's sentience. So, no, I don't think a chicken's life is as valuable as that of a human. But as you climb up the evolutionary chain and get closer to homo sapiens, the sentience gets more sentient.

Monkeys? Okay, they're not as close as our great ape brothers and sisters - common chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans - but they're right up there. In terms of sentience, in terms of intelligence, they're head and shoulders above chickens. Which is why they're being dragooned into picking coconuts when they should be gamboling around in treetops. (Source: Pink Slip)

Based on PETA's investigatory work, Costco, Target, Wegman's, and Walmart (among others) agreed to stop stocking the monkey-picked coconut milk brand. 

Despite the success of the PETA boycott, it looks like there are still monkeys out there laboring in the Thai coconut fields, rather than swinging in trees, grooming each other, hurling feces at each other, and whatever else monkeys get up to in the wild. 

And now HelloFresh - providers of meal kits - "has said it will no longer sell coconut milk sourced from Thailand." 

PETA maintains that the use of forced monkey labor in Thailand is widespread. The Thai government counters that "the traditional practice of using monkeys to harvest coconuts is almost nonexistent in industry."

Looks like the truth may be in the middle. 

Vincent Nijman, anthropology professor and head of the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group at Oxford Brookes University, who has researched the welfare of coconut-harvesting macaques in Thailand, said the practice is largely confined to the southernmost part of Thailand...

It is probably the case that such monkeys are based on small farms catering to local consumption, he said, rather than farms that produce coconuts for exports.

“The total volume that potentially could be picked by macaques is small, certainly in light of the total number of coconuts that are being picked,” said Nijman. “The vast majority of coconut and coconut products do not come from farms where pig-tailed macaques are employed.” (Source: The Guardian)

Nijman has found that the monkeys who are still working aren't well treated. He also researched what kind of "employees" the pig-tailed macaques (all 3,000 that he estimates are involved) make. What he found is pretty interesting.

Not surprisingly, young macaques aren't the ideal coconut picker. They want to swing in trees, get groomed, snuggle with mom macaque, and hurl feces. (Apologies if I'm defaming macaques. I have no idea whatsoever whether they're feces-hurling primates or not.)

Mature macaques aren't ideal, either. 

"...once [they], especially the males, become fully grown they become more difficult to work with, there is only a few years’ window during which you can work with the macaques,” 

The males are "more difficult to work with," you say? Whouda thunk it?

Anyway, there's lots of turnover in the macaque labor ranks, which means that there's a continual need for pig-tailed macaques to be kidnapped from their lives in the wild. With a "workforce" of only 3,000, we're just talking about several hundred macaques a year. Still, the trauma and terror inflicted on these poor little guys is pretty darned awful. Of course, the trauma and terror experienced by human coconut pickers is likely very real as well. But at least they - presumably - have some agency (however minimal) and aren't chained, whipped, and caged, as the monkeys are. 

Me? I'm just happy that I don't drink coconut milk to begin with, so I'm freed from having t worry about whether the coconuts were picked by a pig-tailed macaque who'd prefer to be somewhere else, doing something they want to do.

Sort of like human workers, no?

St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

One of the most odious characters (non-political variety) on the American stage at present has got to be Elon Musk. Egomaniac. Narcissist. Creep. Conspiracy theorist. Manipulator. Weirdo. Putz. 

He may be the Richest Man in the World (for the moment, anyway). 

But, yuck.

He's doing his best to wreck Twitter - and the country, while he's at it. The reliability of Tesla cars is suspect. 

Okay, between it's spaceships and its satellite business, SpaceX is quite an operation. But does the world really need a company that indulges the urge of rich dweebs who want to play astronaut? On the other hand, if Elon Musk wants to be the first pioneer to plant his freak flag on Mars, well, be my guest. 

Anyway, Musk is clearly wealthy enough to turn pretty much any dream into a reality. And his latest dream is apparently creating a company town.

Ah, the company town. Utopian. Paternalistic. Exploitive. 

Company towns "offered" employees a place to live in. You lived in a company-owned house, shopped for whatever the company wanted to stock at company-owned stores, worshipped at company-set up churches, played in company-owned parks, and sent your kids to company-run schools.

What could possibly go wrong?

When I think "company town," I go right to the coal towns of yore - and of Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1950's hit, "Sixteen Tons."

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Of course, I'm sure that Elon Musk has something cooler and more elegant in mind that a rundown mining town where workers die young of black lung disease. That is, if they aren't killed in some sort of gruesome cave in. 

For one thing, his town won't have the Kentucky holler company store:

The workers also didn’t receive adequate compensation and were paid in scrip rather than regular money. Scrip was a currency that workers could only use at the company store which often drastically increased its prices by about 20% more than other establishments outside the compound. (Source: Gizmodo)

No, Musk's Snailbrook, Texas, will be a swell place to live. 

According to the Journal, Musk’s plans include building a place for his employees to live and charging them roughly $800 per month for one and two-bedroom homes, with the caveat that they would have 30 days to vacate the premises if they were laid off or quit. Although the plans are still in the works, it seems like a good time to ask: Is this even a good idea? 

Yes, indeed, this is a good time to ask whether this is a good idea. And for me, the answer is a big, loud NO. (Two little characters, with a lot of room left in a Tweet to expand on things.)

For months, we've seen how Musk runs things at Twitter. Firing people cruelly and often arbitrarily. So, bad enough you lose your job when Musk thinks you looked cross-eyed at him, so you have to go. You not only lose your job, you've got a month - a month during which you're likely unemployed, and thus not such a desirable renter prospect - to get out of town. 

And just think of Elon Musk's being in charge of the school curriculum. (History: In 2020, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, but rabid leftists engaged in rampant voter fraud, denying Trump his win and America the privilege of having DJT in charge for another four years.)

Would he dictate what plays and concerts could be held in the Snailbrook theater? Would he want to control what books were on the library shelves. Or would there even be books. How old school. Would he dictate what goods are on the supermarket shelves, perhaps only stocking those that turned the greatest profit? 

Maybe all he wants to do is subsidize rent. But when it's an autocratic, despotic ahole doing the subsidizing, you'd have to be worried about getting evicted if he turned on you.

Admittedly, there's precious little that Elon Musk could do that would turn my opinion of him from negative to positive. Even positive-light.

Maybe if he gave away 99.9999% of his fortune to provide universal healthcare, or affordable housing, or work on environmental issues, or gun violence.

Setting up a company town ain't one of them, whether it's in Texas or on Mars.

Ain't no one should have to sell their soul to the Musk company store.

Good Will Hunting slept here.

Maybe if I watched it now, it would seem dated. And/or silly.

But 25+ years ago, when it was first released, Good Will Hunting was fresh and interesting. Poor boy from the underclass of the Boston underclass turns out to be a math genius, sticks it to the Harvard bros, and gets the girl. Plus a local setting. (Plus, of course, it was our introduction to a couple of local fellows - Matt Damon and Ben Affleck - who ended up making pretty good.)

The plot has Will commuting on the Red Line to his work as a janitor at MIT, where he spends his workday swabbing floors and sneaking into classrooms to solve insolvable equations left on the board in Building 5. (Not surprisingly, buildings at MIT have numbers, as do the majors/courses. I was in course 15 - the Sloan School of Management - and our HQ was Building 52. I also had classes in Building 6 and Building 54, among others.) Will's day of swabbing and solving over, Will returned - after a bit of time knocking back a few boilermakers in some South Boston dive bar - to his apartment in a dump of Southie triple decker.

When my brother Rick was a very young man, he lived for a while in a dump of a double-triple-decker in Southie. How big of a dump was it? For a housewarming gift, my sister Kath and I bought him a toilet seat. 

That would have been in the late 1970's. Good Will Hunting takes place in 1997, and Southie's fern bars and Catholic churches converted to condos gentrification was still more than a decade away.

In 1997, Southie had some nice residential sections, mostly those down by the water, but it was largely a working class enclave, full of three deckers, modest single family homes, ramshackle apartment buildings, and projects. And largely Irish Catholic.

But location, location, location. And like Boston's Italian North End, the "natives" were pushed out by gentrifiers: young singles working in finance and tech who wanted to be close to the action, and empty nesters leaving the 'burbs so they could be in on the action, too. 

Old buildings were torn down or converted to condos, bars, coffee shops, and restaurants. One of my friends graduated from Cardinal Cushing High School in South Boston. Her school building has long gone the way of an upscale condo building. It's just across the street from what used to be Saints Peter and Paul Church. They kept the building, but it's now condos, too. (Because who wouldn't want to live in a converted Catholic church?)

Another friend was an empty nester who sold up and out of the suburbs and bought a condo in South Boston in a converted two family. After a few years in their very charming condo, she and her husband decamped to DC to be closer to their grandkids. And they sold their very charming condo for more than twice what they paid for it, and without ever having to put it on the market. (The realtor they contacted had a buyer ready, willing, and able to get into Southie. The buyer was willing to avoid a bidding war, so opened LARGE. My friends were delighted to get well above what they anticipated asking.)

Since my friend moved to DC, I haven't been over to South Boston - need to go basis, only, and I have little by way of need to go. (Although I used to attend pretty regularly, I no longer go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade, which marches through Southie.) But I do walk over there every once in a while and I'm always astounded by the new construction, new shops, new restaurants, new etc. 

It is inevitable that Will Hunting's home would be gentrified. 

A two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Will's building is now renting for $4,500 a month. 

The home’s dilapidated vibe in the film (recall the stacked tires and broken furniture strewn across the yard) is no longer. Now it’s considerably more upscale — and so unrecognizable that it took an eagle-eyed podcast host to point it out on Twitter.

“It’s just amazing. I didn’t realize it. I don’t think the owner realized it,” said Frank Celeste of Gibson Sotheby’s, who shares the listing with Ash Williams. “It’s gone crazy with everybody’s interest.” (Source: Boston Globe)

The apartment has only 1,000 square feet of very nice reno that includes the coveted in-flat laundry. And it even comes with a parking place, which means that you don't have to leave a kitchen chair, orange traffic cone, or statue of the Sacred Heart as a space-claimer when you shoveled your street parking out after a storm. (The city finally cracked down on this practice of long-standing. Now, I think you get 48 hours to claim your space, after which DPW comes around and trashes your space-saver.)

It's pretty amazing to me that rents have gotten so high in South Boston, but such is the gentrifying march of time.

The Globe article beat me to the obvious punchline:

How do you like them apples?

What. Was. This. Girl. Thinking?????

Year: Freshman. Hometown: Dorchester, Mass. High School: Boston Arts Academy. Major: Criminal Justice.

This was what was on Ariel F's profile on the Lasell University athletic website. Before the school took it down.

Ariel F.

I'm not going to use her full name.

She's going to have enough trouble trying to rebuild her life without having yet another rando blogger yacking about her. 

But Ariel F is a local (Dorchester) girl making good.

A graduate of Boston Arts Academy, Foster is/was a student athlete at Lasell University, where she was majoring in Criminal Justice. Of all things. 

Now she's facing charges that she stole over half a million dollars from the mall jewelry store where she was clerking - money she spent on trip to Hawaii, Louis Vuitton merch, and a Tesla.

Just a few weeks ago, Ariel was the subject of a profile in her neighborhood newspaper. The article focused on her athletic prowess. And her new Tesla. 

Ariel is a sprinter, and she recently set some school records. And in February "she received her third Rookie of the Week recognition from the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC)." The same week, she went to class and worked at her two jobs, but - according to the story - these jobs did not include the one at Lovisa, the mall jewelry store. Maybe she'd already moved on from that gig. The same week:

...she bought herself a Tesla with plans on how she’ll spec it out: “Right now, it’s red, but I’m going to wrap it pink—like a soft pink, nothing too bright—and the

interior’s white and will be pink and then I’m actually getting it tinted tomorrow,” she said. (Source: Dorchester Reporter)

The Tesla was Ariel' dream ride, all part of her overall heart's desire, and a big part of her motivation for exceling at track. 

It’s “just knowing what type of life I want to live,” she explained. “I have a really specific lifestyle I want to live. I do not want to stay in Dorchester, and definitely don’t want to stay in Massachusetts.”

Her track coach, poor gullible fellow, had high praise for his star athlete. 

"She’s just very a go-getter and takes the initiative. So, it’s definitely something that’s great about her and it’s very evident in all aspects of her life and work in the sport.”

He also praised Ariel's work ethic - and the fact that she was working multiple jobs:

“She was saying she works a lot because she was determined to have a Tesla before she’s 20 years old,” he said. “She’s focused on her goals, whatever they may be—sport related or not. And she just achieved that goal the other day and was able to purchase it. We’re a program that prioritizes personal, academic, career development, and sport development in unison.”

It was a lot easier to achieve that Tesla goal by stealing the money from her employer.

Police said she refunded a total of $547,187 in eight transactions at her job at Lovisa, a jewelry store in the Burlington Mall.

"An investigation determined that on three dates in February, items scanned at the register had their price increased, and the cost of the item was then allegedly refunded to a credit card belonging to Foster," Burlington Police said in a statement Thursday...

When they checked her bank account they said she bought a Tesla for more than $35,000, spent more than $20,000 on a hotel in Maui, Hawaii, almost $6,000 on Delta Air Lines tickets and nearly $5,000 on Louis Vuitton items. (Source: CBS News)

Well, she did say she had a very specific lifestyle in mind. 

But WHAT. WAS. SHE. THINKING?????

Clearly not about her future as an athlete, or her career in criminal justice. 

I wasn't familiar with Lovisa, but when I looked at their website, the most expensive item I could find cost less than $25. I don't care how terrible Ariel is at math, it never occurred to her that someone would notice transactions at the level where eight of them could mount up to more than a half-mill? (As an aside, why were there no controls in place at Lovisa that would have prevented a transaction at this level from going through? Bet they've got them in place now. Meanwhile, the store understandably thought at first that their systems had been hacked.)

This isn't like swiping ten bucks from the register, or pocketing a twelve-dollar necklace. This is grand larceny. This is a major felony. Ariel, if found guilty, she could spend years in prison. 

She's 19. 

Maybe she can make restitution. Maybe she can get a minimal sentence. Maybe she can plead stupidity. 

She's 19. Surely, she can rebuild her life. But it probably won't be as the famous athlete she hoped to be. Or whatever she had in mind for her criminal justice degree. 

In addition to having her eye on a specific lifestyle, Ariel also wanted out.

"I do not want to stay in Dorchester, and definitely don’t want to stay in Massachusetts.”

Chances are, she won't be staying in Dorchester for much longer.

As for Massachusetts, if she ends up doing time, it will probably be at MCI Framingham, which is the state's women's prison.

And there'll be no Louis Vuitton and no Tesla there

What a little fool... 

 

May all my ignorance be this blissful

I don't remember exactly when I read that mayonnaise does not need to be refrigerated. 

Huh? 

Didn't everyone grow up learning that potato salad or cole slaw left out turned to ptomaine within an hour after the picnic basket was opened? 

Turns out that, if we're talking commercial mayo vs. homemade, the only reason to refrigerate is to extend the shelf life. 

That's not the reason I refrigerate my mayo. I just do it because the thought of unrefrigerated mayo makes my stomach roil. So my jar of Hellman's shelf life, once the jar is opened, happens on a shelf in the fridge, next to the ketchup and the mustard(s). The last thing I want sitting around in my cabinets - let alone on my counters - are a jar of French's Mustard, a jar of Gulden's, a jar of Maille Grainy Mustard (the best kind), and a squeeze bottle of Heinz Ketchup. (At least the squeeze bottle doesn't get grotty and crusty like the long-necked glass bottles of your.)

So, I will continue to happily keep my mayo in the fridge.

Tomatoes, too. Mostly.

Summer tomatoes from the farmer's market. Hydroponic tomatoes that smell like summer tomatoes from the farmer's market. Sometimes, I leave them on a counter in a hammered aluminum bowl that I inherited from my mother. I think it was a shower or wedding gift (1945). Retro. Coolly retro.

But the cherry tomatoes I always have on hand to throw into salads?

I've been buying Cherubs for years. How is it that I just this very week noticed the little plea on the lid: Please don't refrigerate. It's too cold in there! I'm doing a bit of experiment here. I've left them out on the counter. But I'm not noticing that they taste any different, one way or the other. 

So, meh on that bit of advice.

And besides, the Cherubs' container is nowhere near as charming as the vintage hammered aluminum bowl holding normal, not midget, tomatoes. So they're going back in the fridge. Where they will keep company in the veggie bin with peppers, cukes, scallions, and (once they soften up after their stint in the vintage hammered aluminum bowl) avocados. 

And then I saw that nuts are supposed to be refrigerated. 

Well, I never...

But "it" says that nuts that aren't refrigerated are prone to going rancid.

At this very moment, I have in a kitchen cabinet, glass jars holding walnuts, almonds, pecans, and pistachios. 

I love nuts. I snack on 'em. Throw them in salads (next to those mini, refrigerated tomatoes). Bake occasionally using them. (Last week I made barmbrack with walnuts.) 

Maybe I go through them too rapidly, but I am racking my brain trying to come up with any instance where one of my nutty buddies has gone rancid on me. (Which is not to say that I haven't once in a while bitten into a rotten peanut. But I rarely buy peanuts, other than at the ballpark.)

Anyway, I'm not about to start refrigerating my nuts. (Nuts to that, as they say.)

And don't get me going on the recommendation that your refrigerate your flour.

I'm just going to keep on keeping on what's been working for me throughout a long and, when it comes to food storage, an uneventful life in terms of mayo, tomatoes, nuts or flour betraying my trust and going bad on me.

May all my ignorance be this blissful.

Spring(steen) has sprung(steen)

Well, today is the first day of spring.

I'm always happy when spring gets sprung, but this winter has been such a meh, all the way around, it's not the big deal it usually is. A couple of super cold days. Virtually no snow - our one "major" snowstorm measured 3.5 inches. A lot of gray and overcast. A lot of rain. 

Even so, with Daylight Saving Time starting up, I'm enjoying having more light at the end of the day. And spotting the first crocus: priceless.

And tonight, if all goes well, I'll be at the Boston Garden - just can't get used to TD Garden - rocking out with my sister Trish, and Bruce Springsteen and the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, testifying, death-defying, legendary E Street Band. 

I am a Springsteen fan, but a latter-day one.

In November 2007, my sister Trish took me to the Magic Tour concert at the Garden.

Of course, I knew who Springsteen was. 

In 1975, he'd been on the cover of both Time and Newsweek. In the same week. 

By 1975, Trish - 10 years my junior - was an ardent fan. 

In the spring of 1977, she and two of her friends took the bus from Worcester into Boston for a Springsteen concert at the Boston Music Hall (now the Orpheum).* They stayed at my apartment. I stayed at my boyfriend's. 

The big excitement: one of the girls had forgotten her ticket. I asked if they wanted me to go over to the venue with them to explain the situation. Why yes, yes, they would.

It was a kinder, gentler time, and the guy at the door let me talk their way in. It probably helped that Mary's seat was between Trish and Grace, but they got in. 

The girls probably didn't pay more than ten bucks for a ticket. And the Music Hall's capacity was less than 3,000. 

The show, we were told when we took the girls out to breakfast at the Parker House the next morning, was fabulous. 

By 1977, Trish was on her way to being a life fan. Not a crazy, follow-to-the-ends-of-the-earth fan. But a solid, buy all the albums, go the concerts when they come around, fan.

And 30+ years into her fandom, she decided I should become a fan, too.

Thus, the ticket to the Magic Tour concert.

At that point, I was familiar with only a couple of Springsteen songs: Born in the USA, Glory Days, I'm on Fire. Numbers that were unavoidable even if you didn't listen to any radio beyond Boston's all-folk WUMB and the NPR stations. 

And although Springsteen occupied exactly 0% of my conscious, awake time, I'd had an extremely vivid dream in which I was some sort of combo roadie-groupie for his band. 

But what a show! (Magic Tour, not the dream.)

I was hooked, and went out and bought a bunch o' CD's. I totally enjoyed the music, and there was no way I was going to go to another Springsteen concert and be the only one in the audience who didn't know the words to Thunder Road. 

Since then, I've been to a few concerts. The River anniversary at the Garden. Something at Gillette. And the magnificent Wrecking Ball concert at Fenway Park in August 2012. 

Thirty-five years after the ticket-left-in-Worcester incident, Fenway 2012 was another lost ticket escapade. 

I had ordered the tickets through Fenway/Ticketmaster, and they were mailed to me, as tickets were back in the day, in a plain grey envelope. Which was so plain I apparently threw it out without opening it. 

But back then - the good old days - you could actually get someone on the phone, and when I got that someone on the phone and told them I hadn't gotten the tickets yet (neglecting to mention that I'd probably given them the toss), I was told I could come out to Fenway the day before the concert and pick them up.

Tickets to Springsteen concerts have, over the years, become a lot more of a scramble than in 1977 when my sister and her buddies probably bought them at a record store in Worcester. 

Procuring tickets (which happened last summer) for tonight's concert was an incredibly tense hassle, reminiscent in a PTSD way of signing up for the covid vaccine in 2021. 

I preregistered to get "verified fan" access, which just entitles you to sit in a virtual line for hours - but to do so before the tickets are generally made available to the hordes. The "verified fan" nonsense is pretty rando. Trish didn't make the cut for tickets in Boston (March 20, 2023), but got on the the list for Albany (March 14, 2023). 

On the day when Boston tickets went on sale, I sat in the queue for a couple of hours. I then got into the actual ticket-purchasing section, where, every time I clicked on a pair, I learned that another fan had beat me to it. Meanwhile, Ticketmaster uses something called dynamic pricing, in which the ticket prices go up before your very eyes. In very eye-popping fashion. (Dynamic pricing is done with the permission of the artist. While you can't blame Springsteen for wanting his cut of the proceeds, rather than let it fall into the pocket of scalpers, it's pretty controversial - and has soured a lot of fans on The Boss.)

After another hour or so, I gave up.

Onto Albany.

But then Trish and I factored in the cost of driving and a hotel, and decided to see what was available on Ticketmaster's secondary market. (Ticketmaster doesn't want to leave the spoils of war to the likes of StubHub and Ace Ticket. They - and, presumably Bruce, get to wet their beak on sales of tickets that someone managed to nab and then decided to resell. The per person limit was four tickets, but I'm suspicious about that.)

I was able to get us tickets on that secondary market for well above face value. 

But, hey, it's only money.

And it's a good thing we didn't try for Albany as a) there was a big storm on March 14th, and b) the concert was canceled postponed because of an unspecified, mysterious something or other. Concerts in Columbus and Mohegan Sun (CT) were also postponed.

As of this writing, the something or other remains unspecified and mysterious, but given that the show went on even when key band members like Steven VanZandt were down with covid, I'm guessing that this was Springsteen's turn.

The postponements weren't announced until a couple of days before each concert, so I was sweating it as we got closer to Boston's date. To borrow a bit (altering it just a smidge) from Thunder Road, was the screen door going to slam on us???

But then unofficial news apeared that the Philadelphia tour stop (March 16) was on! And it was. So was March 18 at State College PA. So unless there's a relapse, Boston should be good to go.

Meanwhile, just to make extra sure that Trish and I were going to get to see Springsteen this year, I managed to secure face value tickets for August at Gillette Stadium - part of a tour extension that was announced last month.

Gillette is a drag to get in and out of, but Trish knows where to park.  

First day of spring. Springsteen concert. What better way to get sprung from winter?

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

* The 1977 concert Trish saw was one of a Springsteen string that week. The Boston Globe just ran an article on what a great and foundational tour that was. Anyway, I was talking to my brother Tom the other day, and mentioned that Trish and I were going to see Springsteen, and he told me that he had also gone to one of those spring 1977 Springsteen concerts in Boston.

Plenty to say, over the years, about St. Patrick's Day

It's St. Patrick's Day, and I'll be observing it, if not actually going out and doing any celebrating.

As I do throughout the year, but especially come March, I'll be listening to Irish music. 

During our first snowstorm, I usually re-read "The Dead," the most brilliant of James Joyce's stories. This winter's been pretty much a no-show when it comes to snow, so I haven't yet sat down with a cup of Barry's tea and The Dubliners. I'll probably do so this afternoon.

When I sit down with my cupán tae, I'll also be enjoying a slice of soda bread (Aunt Margaret's brilliant recipe) and/or a piece of barmbrack (my mother's recipe, likely by way of my Irish grandmother, who likely got it from her immigrant mother or immigrant mother-in-law).

Irish identity has been central to my life, and I've had plenty to say about St. Patrick's Day over the years. And here it is:

2022: Trunk - What I know (damn little) about my Irish great-grandparents.

2021: Yes, I Will Be Wearing Green. Remembering what my father wore to his office (where he was one of the only non-Yankees) on St. Patrick's Day. 

2020: St. Paddy's Day No More We'll Keep, at least for this year. This is a pretty downbeat pandemic post...

2019: It's the Eve of the Eve of St. Patrick's Day  which includes my barmbrack recipe. 

2018: A Little Bit of Heaven. Don't bother with this one, but later in the month of March I did a series on being a tourist in Ireland, which included a visit to manor house (now a hotel) where my great-grandfather Matthew Trainor worked as a stable boy. 

2017: Faith & Begorrah. Did I really go to two Irish music concerts in the course of a week's time? Jaysus, I did. 

2016: Kiss Me, I'm Half Irish But, let's face it, that's the half that really counts. (Sorry, Ma.)

2015: The Wearing O' The Green. I guess 2015 was the first year I heard tell of the execrable Blarney Blowout at UMass, in which students get stupid drunk. (In 2023, 28 kids were ambulanced to the ER with alcohol poisoning.)

2014: St. Patrick's Day 2014. The month's mind of my husband's death, so I posted the lyrics to The Parting Glass (which was played at Jim's memorial service.)

2013: The Ides of St. Patrick's Day. I was even lazier than I am now. This is just an uncommented list of links to earlier posts. 

2012: Answering Ireland's Call A bit of a meander on Ireland over the years I've been going there.

2011: St. Patrick's Day 2011 - Move along, nothing much to see here.

2010: St. Paddy's Day No More We'll Keep in which I lament the young drunks marauding around downtown Boston, puking their way from Irish pub to Irish pub. 

2009: Irish Eyes Not So Smiling. My take on the not-so-stellar - and outright depressing - state of the Irish economy during the not-so-great recession. 

2008: You Say Po-tay-to. Recounting my courageous admission that I was half-German, when the nun was clearly looking for - make that demanding - everyone in the class to claim some Irish heritage. Seriously, what Boomer kid in their right mind would claim to be German, when all German meant in the immediate postwar years was Nazi? And yet, there I was, a Nazi-hating kid, summoning up my courage to say "Ich bin Deutsche." Bonus: this one includes the recipe for Aunt Margaret's soda bread. Best if slathered with Kerry Gold butter. 

2007: Kiss Me, I'm Irish Blogger's first St. Patrick's Day post. (Awwww....)

And now I have finally realized that it's actually simpler and quicker to write entirely new content than it is to do a roundup. Who knew?

Happy St. Patrick's Day. 

Get a load of this

Basketball was my husband's #1 sport, so when Jim was still alive, I watched a lot of roundball. 

Not as much as Jim, of course. Once in a while, I'd walk in on him watching a game and realize the guys on the floor were wearing old school short shorts, not the long shorts currently worn. (Is there a name for these oxymoronic shorts other than 'long shorts'?) That was Jim, watching a game that had been played years before, where he likely knew the outcome, and enjoying it all the way. (Truly, I get it. Although I pick my spots, I can watch and enjoy a rerun of a baseball game. Just not the Bucky F-in' Dent game. Or the Bill Buckner ball between the legs game. Etc.)

Anyway, during the 1980's, one of the great NBA matchups was the Celtics Larry Bird vs. the Atlanta Hawks Dominique Wilkins. And the Hawks were coming to Boston right around Jim's January birthday.

So for Jim's birthday, we decided we'd see if we could get scalps for the game.

I had $300 in my pocket - the limit we'd decided on - and walked over to the Garden. Now $300 is still a lot of money, but back then it was A LOT of money. (I can't recall exactly what year it was, but today's equivalent of the $300 in my pocket is somewhere in the $800 range, plus or minus.)

Dealing with a scalper was actually fun. The scalper wanted the full $300 for two excellent seats on the floor, under one of the baskets. I bargained him down to $290, poor-mouthing that I needed the $10 to buy my husband a birthday hot dog and a beer. 

The game was ultra-exciting. The tickets were great - we were up close and personal with Dominique and Larry when they were at our end of the court. 

I have no idea who won, but it was a fun and exciting game, and watching these two future Hall of Famers go at it was worth the scalp price. 

How disappointing it would have been if either Wilkins or Bird had chosen to take the night off.

Back in the day, athletes didn't tend to take time off unless they were injured. So, if you went to a Milwaukee Bucks-Celtics game when Kareem Abdul Jabbar played for the Bucks, you were pretty much guaranteed seeing Jabbar. (Which I was fortunate enough to experience sometime in the mid-1970s, with a $3 obstructed-view ticket. Watching him play was worth the obstructed view, and back in the old Garden obstructed view meant that there was support girder that blocked you from folding down your seat.) During the Bill Russell era, if you went to a Celtics-Philly game, you were going to see Wilt Chamberlain. 

Now, you buy your ticket and you take your chances. 

The major issue in negotiations between the NBA’s players and owners over a new collective bargaining agreement is load management.

Owners are unhappy over the number of games missed by star players with no significant injuries. The designation “DNP-rest” was popularized by Spurs coach Gregg Popovich more than a decade ago and has become widespread. (Source: Boston Globe)

It's unlikely that the big stars would choose to sit out big games against big rivals. Would either Larry Bird or Dominique Wilkins taken a pass on going at it back in the day? NFW. 

I suspect that today's big guns are no different. 

Two days after the Lakers lost an overtime game to the Celtics in Boston in January, LeBron James and Anthony Davis were held out of the next game against the Nets. A night later, the two were fresh and ready for a game against the Knicks.

Now the Lakers aren't having a banner year. But the Celtics are. And Celtics vs. Lakers has historically been to basketball what Red Sox vs. Yankees is to baseball. So James and Davis weren't going to be on the sidelines. 

But tough luck to the Brooklyn Nets fans who wanted to see LeBron play before he hangs up his sneakers.  

There actually is reasonable reasoning behind players taking time off. 

Players logging 75-plus games has become a rarity because sports science shows that occasional rest is beneficial for those logging major minutes, especially players relied upon to help make deep playoff runs.

So, even though my first inclination is to think that superbly conditioned athletes making a kabillion dollars a year to play 82 games a year should be ready, willing, and able to play those 82 games (plus playoff games, of course) - and that opting to sit on the bench is a wuss move - I'll bow to the science and say, okay. These fellows need a break.

But load management has gone too far for some observers.

The NBA acknowledges that fans pay a lot of money for tickets and that sometimes they're stuck "paying to watch their favorite stars rock sweat suits on the bench." This is especially tough on fans who may only get to an occasional game in person, who may be taking a child who follows a particular player - and doesn't get to see that particular player play. Crushing, just crushing. 

The NBA also acknowledges that teams want to optimize "performance for the playoffs." If sitting the stars does that, so be it.

So the NBA looks at fixes like eliminating back-to-back (two days in a row) games; making the season longer; more days off during the All Star break for a mid-season vakay. 

From the players standpoint, they want to optimize their personal performance and the length of their career. If taking an occasional break improves their stats and extends their ability to make oodles of money for a few more years, well...

But the players themselves aren't uniform in wanting their loads managed. 

C.J. McCollum (New Orleans Pelicans) is the president of the Players Association. Here's what he has to say:

“An 82-game schedule is obviously difficult on the mind and the body,” he said. “But that is what we signed up for. That’s the way the game has always been, historically. The players that have come before us have obviously played under less-fortunate circumstances and situations and have been able to get through 82-game seasons. I’m not going to speak on behalf of the union in this sense, I enjoy playing 82 games because it’s a mental challenge, a physical challenge, when you get to the playoffs. You get to see the cream rise to the top and that’s the cool part of our journey. It’s about figuring out ways to take better care of your body, utilizing the resources that you have so that you can perform throughout the 82-game season.”

I find myself becoming a C.J. McCollum fan.  

I'm not in favor of players forging on with dangling limbs and brain-jarring injuries. And I recognize that mental health matters, too.

And yet, NBA players make a ton of money. The average salary is over $9M. This is, of course, skewed by the player who make $20M, $30M, $40M... But the median is still high: $4M+. And only 9 players (2 percent of the league) make the league minimum of $1M and change. 

And fans pay a lot of money to attend games. 

So I'm on the side of toughing it out. Or making sure that the superstars make play at least a few minutes during every game. (And, yes, I realize there are rhythms to a game, and rhythms to a player's game, that may not make this as easy as it seems.)

But I can't imagine how pissed Jim and I would have been if we'd gotten to the Garden and found that Larry or Dominique was sitting one out... 

Give this class action suit the boot

When I think LL Bean boots, this is what comes to mind:

LL Bean Duck Boots.

And this being New England, and Boston not exactly being the fashion capital of the world, I tend to see them around. Maybe not as often as I used to. But I still see them around.

I'm a big LL Bean fan. I wear their turtle necks. I wear their T's. I wear their khakis. I wear their sweats. I wear their parkas. I wear their PJs. I wear their rain jackets. I wear their jeans. Not that I work out, but I wear their workout pants. I wear their fleeces. I tote their tote bags.

What I don't wear is their boots.

Decades ago, I did have a pair of the low-cut version of the Duck Boots. Duck Shoes. I got them to wear on rainy days. Alas, I found them incredibly heavy on the foot, ill-fitting, and uncomfortable. I can't remember whether they were waterproof, because I didn't even get a good slosh in. Too painful - digging into my ankles and the tops of my feet, to even get out the door with them on. 

LL Bean has a pretty good return policy. Back in the day when I bought those Duck Shoes, you could return an item, any time after purchase - years, even. No reason required. Some unscrupulous folks used to take advantage of this, returning merchandise years after purchase for no reason, other than that their kids had outgrown it or something. This is one reason why LL Bean changed their FOREVER policy, but I think you still have a year to return something. 

Over the years, I only remember returning a few items. Some T's where the hems unraveled after a few washings. A turtleneck that shrunk into a belly shirt. A fleece that arrived in a ripped and repackaged packed A fleece that arrived damp and smelly; someone, somewhere along the way had spilled a hazelnut coffee on it. I really wanted that fleece when I wanted it, but after several washings, the fleece still smelled sicky sweet. Back it went.

But the Duck Shoes? I don't know why I didn't send them back. Probably because they weren't defective; just not for me. 

The went into the DONATE bag.

Linda Lenzi didn't buy Duck Boots. Or Duck Shoes.

She bought Storm Chasers.

And she didn't return hers, either. 

Instead, Linda Lenzi:

...filed a federal class action lawsuit against L.L. Bean, alleging the iconic outdoor apparel company based in Maine mislabeled the boots she purchased for more than $100 as waterproof, exposing her to “water leakage” that seeped into the footwear on an “inclement weather day,” legal filings show. (Source: Boston Globe)

I'm not against litigating in federal court. I'm all in favor of suing the bastards when they're taking away your voting rights, or killing your kids by lying about addictive painkillers. Etc. 

But getting exposed to "water leakage" on a nasty day?

Puh-leeze!

Attorneys for Linda Lenzi, a resident of Monroe County, N.Y., filed the suit Feb. 17 on behalf of her and “all others similarly situated,” a cohort that allegedly numbers more than 100 people with financial claims exceeding $5 million, the minimum threshold for federal class action eligibility, court papers show.

"More than 100 people." How many more than 100? Because if it's 101, even if the claims only exceed $5M by a penny, then each class action-er would collect $49, 504.95.

Not bad for a purchase of a bit over a hundred bucks.

Lenzi says that she bought the boots because of "labeling and advertising representing that the boots were 'waterproof.'" 

Turns out the uppers and soles may have been waterproof, the zipper enclosure wasn't. 

“L.L. Bean purchased cheaper non-waterproof zipper closures, put them on its Products without using a waterproof gusset, and then mislabeled, warranted and otherwise advertised the Products to consumers as ‘waterproof’ in a manner that ensured consumers would not miss the claim,” the complaint said.

Harrumph! 

The filing states that LL Bean no longer makes a full waterproof claim. True that. Here's what it now says:

• Easy on/off side zippers (not waterproof).
• Not designed to stay submerged in water.
• Best for snow, slush, rain and colder weather.

But this is too little, too late, for the foot-soaked, aggrieved Ms. Lenzi.

Sure, she's got a point about feeling hoodwinked by a claim of waterproofing.

But, curiously, I looked through the 1-star reviews of the Storm Chasers and no one seemed to be complaining about their lack of waterproof-ability. Nope. Most were complaining about zippers getting stuck and/or how uncomfortable the boots were. As in:

Like walking with your feet, ankles, and lower calves encased in blocks of concrete. These boots are very stiff and bulky. There is no "give" so you end up walking with your legs straight, like Herman Munster. I tried them on at home, was suspicious of the comfort, but gave them a go on a walk in the snow. Uncomfortable. When I got home the skin on the inside of my right ankle had wore off and I had red marks on my lower calves. You just can’t walk in these boots.

Kind of like my Duck Boots of yore...

Anyway, I really don't get why this issue merits a class action suit seeking extreme damages.

Wouldn't the sensible thing have been to a) return the boots for a refund; and b) write a scathing review on the LL Bean website. Or blast away on social media.

But tie up a federal court with this "problem?"

I don't know what stage this one is at, but I sure hope the courts give it the (duck) boot!