Don't let the door hit ya

Who among us hasn't, at one point or another, had at least a flash fantasy of upping stakes and becoming an ex-pat. 

I mean, if things get bad enough here - and who's to say they won't - I can imagine throwing myself on the mercy of the Irish government and seeking asylum. 

This fear factor works both ways, of course. 

My idea of nirvana - separation of church and state, reproductive rights for women, common sense gun laws, unbanned books, respect for science, letting schoolkids learn why it was a big deal that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community - might well be someone else's hellscape. 

And while I might want to immigrate to the relatively progressive Erin Isle (Ireland! Progressive! Imagine that!), or to relatively progressive Germany (Germany! Progressive! Imagine that!), where I can also make an ancestral claim (which would likely not mean anything, given that I don't speak German), someone on the other side of the political spectrum might want to land in Orban's Hungary, or Erdogan's Turkey. Or even Putin's Russia.

Who'd want to go to Russia? 

No free press. Regular defenestration of political "enemies." A poor, sanctioned economy. Insane war with Ukraine. Twenty-percent of the population lacks indoor plumbing. Worse weather than New England.

While Russia may not seem all that inviting a place, I guess it's all a matter of perspective, and Russia may be preparing the way for some disgruntled North Americans.

Plans are underway in Russia to build a settlement for conservative American and Canadian immigrants seeking to leave the West “for ideological reasons,” at least according to a Moscow-based immigration lawyer.

Timur Beslangurov, a partner in the law firm VISTA Immigration, claimed that construction would begin next year on a village in the Moscow region for about 200 families from North America, financed by the immigrants themselves.

“The reason is propaganda of radical values: Today they have 70 genders, and who knows what will come next,” he said in comments at a legal forum in St Petersburg, which were reported by Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. No evidence has been provided publicly for the claims, and it’s not 100 percent clear what Beslangurov’s role in the reported project is. (Source: Vice)

First off, I find it amazing that Russia has immigration lawyers. 

But I suppose there are worse places to live, direly impoverished, violent, war torn countries, like Yemen and Sudan. Or Haiti and Venezuela, sources of so many of the refugees knocking a our door. 

It's just that I don't imagine there are a ton of Americans or Canadians who'd be happy in Russia. 

Sure, there's Edward Snowden, but other than that... Aren't so many of the best and brightest Russia has to offer trying to get to the West? But I suppose if you're all caught up in the culture wars, and truly worried about the possibility of 70 genders, Russia might look like a good deal.

But how reliable is this Timur Beslangurov? Sounds like he might be cooking up this scheme - to be financed by the immigrants themselves who, presumably, would at least be able to afford indoor plumbing - so that he can make a few bucks. (As in: "it’s not 100 percent clear what Beslangurov’s role in the reported project is." Hmmmmm. This sounds pretty darned American to me.) 

Vice News tried to get Beslangurov to pony up some of the hundreds of potential immigrants he claims are other there, but he brushed them off. The time to reveal these would-be Russians is not quite ripe. 

But it's certainly no secret that the Russians are pro-right wing, stirring up crap in Western democracies by promoting misinformation. 

They certainly tried to help get Trump elected, and they go all out promoting their devotion to Christian European identity - the Russian version of white nationalism. 

And the Russians love, love, love them some Tucker Carlson. Perhaps Tucker could be the pioneer immigrant, the vanguard of the waves of prospective Americans who're mad as hell and who aren't going to take it anymore. 

Sure, I piss and moan, but I don't imagine that I'll be fleeing the US anytime soon. Warts and all, it's my country and I don't want to give "them" the satisfaction of driving me out. Not yet, anyway.

And I suspect that most of the disgruntled folks eying Russia feel the same way.

But if they do decide to leave, well, don't let the door hit ya on the way out. And please do take Tucker Carlson with you. 

Nothing succeeds like "Succession"

Like a lot of folks out there in TV land, on Sunday evening, I was glued to the final episode of Succession, a brilliant series about an enormously wealthy family all jockeying to take the reins of their mega right-wing media empire from the hands of the empire's founder, leader and paterfamilias. 

I haven't enjoyed any series as much since The Sopranos faded to black in 2007.

If you know anything about Succession, it's likely that Logan Roy - founder, leader, paterfamilias - is brilliant, cruel, and ruthless. And that Logan Roy's offspring - Connor, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan - are mostly incompetent, cruel, and ruthless. And generally, although they all talk a good game, clueless.

Although there are occasional - make that rare - glimmers of decency, empathy, and integrity, pretty much all of the main characters are god-awful: immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral. You have to go down a few tiers to find a character who's even vaguely sympathetic or likable. (This is so unlike The Sopranos, where most of the characters were immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, but somehow sympathetic and likable.)

For the final season, the creators took Logan Roy out early - he died of a stroke, on his private (of course) jet while heading to do the big deal. Thus the season was given over to the siblings (minus Connor, who's cluelessly focused on his weird non-starter of a political career) conniving near and far to seize control of waystar/ROYCO, the family biz.

Let the schemers scheme; let the games begin.

We knew all along that Kendall, who wanted it so badly it was palpable, wouldn't succeed, yeah? 

And it really wasn't all that much of a surprise that in the end Shiv betrayed Kendall, and threw in with her husband Tom who, like his wife and in-laws, is thoroughly immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, incompetent, cruel, and ruthless - although, because Tom wasn't raised by wolves and has more of a sense of what work means, and has an occasional glimmer of competence, he's marginally (slimly marginally) less all of the above than the Roy sibs. (Not that I'm any good at predicting this stuff, but my sister Trish and I had figured Tom for the win.)

All in all, I found Succession brilliantly written and acted. The locations were fabulous. (Who doesn't want to spend time on a mega yacht off the coast of Croatia, even if it's only vicariously?) And in its portrayal of such dreadful 0.0001 percenters, Succession was often downright funny. 

I enjoyed watching this series, but I can't say I'll miss it - or any of the characters. Just such awful-awfuls. Meanwhile, Tony Soprano, and Carm, and Meadow, and Sal, and Ginny Sac, and Janice. Big Pussy, Little Pussy, Olivia, Uncle Junior. Dr. Melfi. Christopher and Ade. Them I still miss.

On a more positive note, Trish and I had also figured that they weren't going to leave us thinking that Mencken, the fascist candidate for president that waystar/ROYCO was trying to tilt the scales for was going to win. Looks like, once they count the mail-in ballots, Jiminez will snag Wisconsin and will be the next president. Phew.

My bottom line: nothing succeeds like Succession. Unless it's The Sopranos.

Bad-a-bing!

Memorial Day: Broken Record Time

Here's a total cut and paste of last year's Memorial Day post. Not that I've run out of things to say - what? me? - but, when it comes to holidays, it's kinda/sorta plus ça change.

Today is Memorial Day. Start of summer, etc. Maybe/maybe not think about those who've served. I've had plenty to say about Memorial Day over the years, and here's snippet from each of those posts. 

Decoration Day (2007)

Today I will think of those who were not as lucky as Jake Wolf [my grandfather; saw combat on the other side in WWI] and Al Rogers [my father, four years in the Navy during WWII; never saw combat], those who did not make it home to build their lives.

Six Degrees of Separation from the Military (2008)

How much easier it is to "live" with a war that doesn't have any direct impact on you or anyone you know, or even know of, except remotely.

Just something to think about on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2009

I've always loved Memorial Day, one of those pleasant but low-craziness holidays that we just don't get enough of.

Memorial Day 2010

After we had finished planting, we strolled around the graveyard, which is small (it’s a parish, not a diocesan, cemetery) and, in our case, quite family oriented. We walked by the graves of lots of friends and relatives – close cousins we knew, distance relations we knew of, the family who lived in my grandmother’s decker – and noted how many of the graves were – this being Decoration Day – decorated with flags, put out by the American Legion or the VFW, in holders that indicate the war that someone served in.

Memorial Day 2011

This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2012: "It's Not About the Barbecue" (2012)

There are so many things that are bad for a country’s soul, and I’ve got to believe that having an all-volunteer military has got to be one of them – too much opportunity for sunshine patriots and chicken hawks to call the shots knowing they have no skin/no kin in the game.

Memorial Day 2013

It promises to be a brilliant spring day here in Boston, but as I write this it’s cold, dreary, drizzling – not atypical spring weather in these parts, and actually pretty fitting, when you think of it.

Sure, war is sometimes conducted on delightfully balmy days. But as often as not, those in battle are coping with terrible physical conditions.

It’s frostbitten feet at Valley Forge. It’s contending with the heat at the Battle of the Wilderness.  Muck in the trenches of Château-Thierry. Rappelling up the cliff at Pointe du Hoc during a pelting rainstorm. The cold and ice at Choisin Reservoir. Monsoon season in Vietnam. Sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day 2014

This Memorial Day, I’m mostly thinking about the two dear ones I have lost since last Memorial Day: my husband Jim and my golden (50 years!) friend Marie.

Neither was a veteran.

Jim spent what would have been his soldiering years working as a chemist for a series of government agencies, including the CIA, in order to get draft deferments. (Hard to think of anyone less suited to the soldier’s life than my singular and peculiar husband. I always told him he would have been Section-Eighted out in the time it took his drill sergeant to yell “ten-hut”, or whatever it is that drill sergeants yell.) Like my father, Marie’s served in World War II, Bob as a Marine MP in the South Pacific (a precursor to his job as a Worcester cop).

Up the Republic! (2015) 

This year, while I will keep up the tradition of thinking about veterans in general, and my dead loved ones in particular, my shout out this Memorial Day goes to The Republic of Ireland, which last Friday became the first country to approve gay marriage by popular vote. And that popular vote wasn’t close at all: 62.1% voted a resounding YES!

Memorial Day 2016 

Tough to think of all those lives – mostly young men – lost to war. And I guess it doesn’t much matter whether it was a good war or a not so good war. (“My war’s better than your war!”) And it doesn’t much matter, either, whether you were a gung-ho patriot or a reluctant recruit, grousing all the way. At the end of the day, you didn’t get to live the full life you would have had if not for that good or not so good war. Sigh…

Broken Record and Then Some (2017) 

Back in Boston, the flags are up on the Common,

commemorating all of those from Massachusetts who
died in the service of our country, from the Revolutionary War on. A stirring sight, for sure. But I like this shot because it shows the carousel. Life goes on!

Memorial Day 2018

On this Memorial Day, here’s hoping that no one as crazy and amped up as the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now amps us into yet another war.

Memorial Day 2019

...unlike 45% of Americans, at least I know that today is a holiday to commemorate our war dead. I don’t actually find that figure all that shocking. There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about, awareness of the purpose of Memorial Day is the least of it.

Memorial Day 2020

This year, there's another kind of war on. Maybe next year, we'll have flags for the coronavirus deaths.

Memorial Day 2021 

I don't know that the words of the Roman poet Horace are necessarily always true. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.) There are plenty of bad causes that soldiers have died for. But the Civil War - so bloody, so ghastly - was, for the Union soldiers, a righteous one. The cynical may discount the role it played, but ending slavery was a noble purpose. And if we're still fighting that war today - and regrettably we are - then shame on us.

Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.

To quote the blogger: Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.  

Too Bad, TB12, Too Bad

While acknowledging that Tom Brady is without a doubt the GOAT - Greatest of All Time - when it comes to quarterbacks, I am not a fan. I didn't particularly like him when he was doing great, glorious, and GOAT-y things for the local football franchise. And I sure as hell didn't like him once he took his ball and jockstrap and decamped to Tampa Bay.

What's not to like? Just that I found him banal and boring, which admittedly may have had plenty to do with his being guarded about revealing the real person inside when living in the eye of the celebrity hurricane, with millions of strangers wanting a piece of him. And then there was the weird: his personal fatwa on consuming white foods and nightshades.

Despite not particularly liking the guy, I nonetheless have mixed feelings abut the closing of the local outpost of TB12 "the star quarterback's sleek sports therapy facility."

The 699 Boylston St. location opened in August 2019, billing itself as a “performance and recovery center” complete with merchandise, training facilities and a “turf area,” and a smoothie bar...

“Everything that we do at TB12 is inspired by Tom and how he lives his life,” John Burns, the former chief executive of TB12, said in a 2019 interview with the Globe, “and how he prepares and gets himself ready to perform every day in football, but then, I think, also importantly, how he focuses on his recovery, so he can get back and do it again the next day.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Rather than gloat about the failure of the Back Bay TB12 and/or feel bad for the folks who were employed there who have lost their jobs, I thought I'd take a look at some of the business issues that may or may not have contributed to this outfit folding.

Location, location, location: If I were going to open a facility like this, i.e., one tied to a local sports hero that, presumably, catered to his fans, i.e., Brady Bros, I don't know that I'd have set up shop in Back Bay. I'm sure they did location analysis, and the area does have other successfulsports-related stores - largely those dedicated to runners, given the Back Bay's association with the Boston Marathon. (Boylston Street has a looser tie to the Patriots: the duck boat parades celebrating each Super Bowl win did got down Boylston.) And yet, one would think that there might have been a more natural audience in the Financial District. Not that there aren't a lot of young, male employees in Back Bay. There's insurance, consulting, and financial services aplenty. But I'm guessing that there are more of them in the Financial District.

It also may have made more sense to locate somewhere where there's parking. Just saying.

Covid, covid, covid: The timing couldn't have been worse. TB12 opened their doors in August 2019. Six months later, covid shut the city down. Whether the TB12 audience members were working in the Back Bay or the Financial District mattered not. For over a year, there was nobody working there. They were all working from home.

Back Bay is one of my walking paths and, believe me, during the height of covid, I could walk down Boylston Street, passing by TB12, and not see a living soul out and about anywhere.

So unfortunate timing.

(I will also add that, pre- and post-covid, I rarely saw anyone in TB12, and I walk by there once or twice a week, nosy enough to peek in.)

Don't let the door hit ya...Sure, there was covid, which ended up drop kicking many local businesses. But covid also coincided with Tom Brady's departure from the local scene. Many fans, grateful for Brady's greatness, and all those Super Bowls, continued to root for him. Others haven't been so forgiving, carrying on like jilted lovers.

So even if covid hadn't struck - and that's very big IF - the colossal Brady lovefest was dented big time once he left town. Did half the potential audience for TB12 turn on him when he turned on "us?" Could be.

The standalone business model: I noticed that, with the exception of flagship locations in Tampa and Foxboro, MA (home of the New England Patriots), I noted that all the TB12 locations are "partnerships." Which sounds like you're co-locating in other facilities and, thus, presumably, have lower costs. 

Anyway, the TB12 store in Boston is no longer. Too bad, TB12, too bad. It'll be interesting to see whether the company survives. 

"Ah, look at all the lonely people"

Caryn Marjorie is an influencer, with millions of followers across her social platforms. She's only 23, and has been pulling in about $1M a year. But she figured that, given the primarily male audience she influences, she was leaving money on the table. 

So she decided to take advantage of AI technology and turn her persona in CarynAI

...a voice-based chatbot that bills itself as a virtual girlfriend, with a voice and personality close enough to that of human Marjorie that people are willing to pay $1 per minute for a relationship with the bot. (Source: Yahoo (originally from Fortune)

To create this "virtual girlfriend," AI technology at Forever Voices ingested thousands of hours of the "real" Caryn Marjorie, culled from her old YouTube videos. 

In the first week of a paid beta, CarynAI brought in over $70K in revenue. They anticipate that CarynAI could be worth about $5M per month, spending:

...anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours every day in individual conversations, discussing plans for the future, sharing intimate feelings and even engaging in sexually charged chats.

The real Caryn sees something more than dollar signs. 

...she believes the company has the potential to “cure loneliness.”

Up until now, Forever Voices as produced chatbot versions of celebs like Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, and Donald Trump.

Unlike those bots, which are in some ways high-tech parlor tricks, CarynAI goes a step further by promising to create a real emotional bond with users, bringing to mind the 2013 movie Her and raising all sorts of ethical questions.

Ya think?

How healthy is it to have men developing relationships with a call girl - or is it a call bot? - rather than developing relationships with a real, live woman. The sort of relationships in which there's always the possibility that there'll be real, live sex, rather than jerking off while a call bot talks dirty to you - you and thousands of other guys, because AI-bots can wildly scale. 

At least in the good old phone sex days, you were talking to a human being. (Or so I gather. Phone sex is beyond my experiential sphere.)

I find the entire thing incredibly sad. Right down to the founding story of Forever Voices.

CEO and Founder John Meyer feels that his tech is important for young people who are, like himself (Asperger's, I take it) neuro-atypical, and who may have a hard time making connections. Some believe it may actually help users become more socially adept, able to transfer the skills they're building conversing with a bot to real life. 

Meyer created his first AI bot so that he could replicate his father, who committed suicide in 2017. 

“It’s this magical experience,” he says, speaking to the AI simulation of his father. “And it’s incredible to apply to other forms.”

Trust me when I say that I still miss my father, who died in 1971. If there's an afterlife, I'll be delighted to catch up with him. But I can't imagine how creepy, depressing, and weird it would be to have a convo with his AI doppelganger. Instead, I'll just keep settling for sharing "Dad memories" with my sibs.

As for those who get addicted to hanging with Caryn AI

...Meyer says that at two hours per day of use, they “might” start “in very subtle ways” training the AI to “slow down a little bit.”

Operative word here: "might." 

When there's big bucks at stake... 

In addition to the romantic/sexual bots out there, some developers are creating chat therapists. Sort of.

DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman recently unveiled an A.I. chatbot called Pi that’s designed to listen to the daily stresses in people’s lives and offer a “supportive line”—though it makes clear to users that it is not meant to be a substitute for a real life therapist. 

Oh, not at all... 

There's a lot of cautionary talk emerging about putting the brakes on chat AI until the ethical issues are better thought through. But methinks the genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

Scary. Scary and sad.

So I'll leave you with a bit of the Beatles, Eleanor Rigby from way back in 1966, when all we needed to worry about was real relationships, not artificial ones. 

All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)

Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)
Where do they all belong?

Another reason I'm just as happy to be from then, not now... 

Killing your husband so you'll have something to write about? Bold move, that.

In March 2022, Kouri Richins suddenly lost her husband, the father of her three boys. 

She channeled her grief into writing a book for those little guys. Are You With Me is blurbed thus on Google books:

Wherever you go, whoever you become, their love remains with you.

A heartwarming and reassuring book that gently guides children through the difficult experience of losing a loved one. Written by a loving mother who personally

faced this challenge, this book is designed to offer comfort and solace to young minds in a way that is both accessible and engaging.

With vivid and colorful illustrations, "Are You With Me" follows the story of a child who has lost their father, but who is reminded that his presence still exists all around them, just like an angel watching over them. Whether it's playing at the park or simply enjoying a quiet moment at home, the child is comforted by the knowledge that their father is always by their side.

As a book that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, "Are You With Me" is a must-read for any child who has experienced the pain of loss, and for parents who want to provide their children with the emotional support they need to heal and grow.

A story of hope, healing, and the unbreakable bond between parent and child... (Source: Google Books)

Heartwarming...reassuring..."written by a loving mother who personally faced this challenge..."

The book was published on the first anniversary of Eric Richins' death. Kouri Richins capped the book's rollout with an appearance on a Utah news segment. The anchors congratulated her "for being an amazing mother."

But that was then, and this news is now. Kouri Richins has been arrested, charged with killing her husband with fentanyl.

Wow! They say to write what you know, and Kouri Richins sure knew what it was like to explain their father's death to her children. (Kind of like writers who go to war so that they'll have something to write about.) But killing your husband so you'll have something to write about? Bold move, that.

From the get go, Eric Richins' family suspected that his death wasn't quite the weird accident/bad luck/one-drink-and-a-gummy/maybe-he-was-hooked-on-painkillers passing the Kouri Richins claimed. 

...Eric’s family members told investigators shortly after his death they suspected Kouri killed him. According to warrants, “he warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame.” (Source: KPCW)

One of Eric's sisters alleges that on a trip to Greece a couple of years back, he believed his wife had tried to poison him. 

The suspicions of your sister-in-law wouldn't actually make for much of a case, but there's plenty more, including Kouri's having fiddled around with her husband's insurance policy. (Seriously, how dumb are people that they don't realize that this information would come out. Cherchez l'insurance policy is pretty automatic, no?)

Then there's some suspicion that, a month before his death - on Valentine's Day 2022, of all sweet and sentimental things - Eric nearly died from an allergic reaction after a romantic dinner.

Court filings say Kouri had purchased $900 of fentanyl pills from an acquaintance a few days before their dinner. Two weeks later, she asked for $900 more, and shortly after that, Eric had died of an overdose.

Eric definitely smelled a rat: 

Before his death, Eric changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney, replacing Kouri with his sister.

His sisters claim that Eric "believed Kouri might 'kill him for the money.'" It's alleged in the warrant that Eric was planning on filing for divorce. Etc. 

Anyway, the bereft (merry?) widow decided to write about 'grieving for kids.' In her TV appearance touting her book:

...she disclosed plans to publish sequels. The next title in the works was “Mom, how far away is heaven?” as well as a book for young girls struggling with grief and husbands who lost their wives.

Maybe that sequel should be "Mom, how far away is prison?" 

Old fogey here, weighing in on cursive, etc.

My grammar school education included a lot of ratcheting back and forth between boredom and fear. 

The boredom was inevitable, I suppose, given that there were always around 50 kids in the classroom, and the nuns had to teach right down the middle, ignoring the needs of those who struggled and those who could have done with a bit more enrichment in the curriculum. (When I was in seventh grade, our nun took suddenly ill. [As we learned later, she had a nervous breakdown.] It took them a couple of months to find a substitute, and during that time, they doubled us up with the eighth grade. We sat two to a desk, chairs blocking every spare inch of aisle space. One hundred - plus or minus - children in one classroom.)

Talk about boredom. When we were given tests, we were required to spend whatever the allotted time was for taking them, even if you finished in, say, five or ten minutes. And during that allotted time, you weren't allowed to read. You just had to sit there. After one test, I remember sitting there scribbling the words to the Quick Draw McGraw theme song. Which, lo these many years later, I still have rolling around my brain. 

Yipee yi-o ki-ay,

Galloping all the way

Here comes Quick Draw McGraw.

Yipee yi-o ki-ay,

Galloping all the way

Great big star on his chest.

Outdraws all of the rest.

Fastest gun in the west.

The terror was equally memorable. At any time, the nun could turn on you, and no one wanted to be the victim of the wrath of nun. They weren't physically violent, but, man, could they lay the verbal abuse on thick. And even if you weren't the butt of the fury, it was still scary to see insults, belittling words, humiliation, raining down on the head of a classmate. 

What the nuns did do well, however, was teach the fundamentals - at least if you were the style of learner that I was; kids who learned in different modes were left behind. 

I learned to read and spell the old fashioned way: using phonics. 

I learned to write with a presentable hand via the old practice-practice-practice push-pull Palmer Penmanship method.

I learned to do arithmetic in my head. 

And having these skills have held me in good stead over the long arc of my life. Thus I think they're important skills to acquire.

So I was heartened to see that cursive handwriting and the multiplication tables "will become mandatory subjects taught in New Hampshire schools." (The law doesn't cover reading, but two out of three ain't bad.)

Sure, probably 99.99% of written communication these days is electronic. Thus all anyone has to know how to do is type. They don't even need to know how to print, let alone write in cursive. And, given voice recognition technology, learning how to type may be on its way to obsolescence. (Alas, reading is probably on its way out as well. TikTok, TikTok.)

Still, everyone should learn how to read cursive, if only so they can understand what their grandmother's writing in their birthday card. I fear the day when the Post Office rules that people need to print - not write out - an address on that birthday card so that scanners and letter carriers can understand who the addressee is. 

And everyone should learn how to write cursive, too. What if, what if, what if? What if you find yourself without electronics and actually have to write a note. It may not be as dramatic a situation as JFK, marooned on a Pacific Island with his PT 109 squad during World War II, having to carve a HELP message on a coconut. But someday you may need to communicate in a format other than text. And while you could, of course, print that note, it's a whole lot quicker to write cursive than it is to print. 

My writing has deteriorated over the years. Sometimes I can't read a hastily scrawled note to self. But if I put my mind to it, I am capable of writing out a nice, legible note. And I'm pretty sure my fellow old fogeys are happy to get those nice, legible notes. And quite able to read them.

As for mental math: a couple of times a week, we went around the classroom, from kid to kid, put on the spot to solve a simple arithmetic problem in our heads. In retrospect, of course, this must have been humiliating for the kids who didn't have good skills in this arena, but it worked for me. 

I can calculate the tip, and I can do quick estimates so that I know whether something on a bill - or in a business case - is way off.

The multiplication tables, up to 12x, were drilled into us as well. So I can quickly figure out things like whether something is going to fit in the place I want it to fit in. How much fabric I need to cover that chair seat. Etc.

I don't recall ever being called upon IRL to use algebra, let alone trig and calculus. But simple arithmetic: I use it all the time. And it's useful to be able to at least make rough cuts in your mind, even if you don't have access to a pencil and paper to do your calculations on.

When my niece Molly was in grammar school, the multiplication tables weren't taught. That didn't fly with my sister! One summer, she and a fellow multiplication mom decided that their girls were going to learn their tables. And they did, and were rewarded with a trip to the ice cream parlor.

“I see these really as fundamental skills that we are bringing to our students,” said Frank Edelblut, Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education.

“People are saying, ‘Students now have calculators,’” he added. “But what happens is when you have that mental math, it allows you to be more successful because you can, as you’re working through more complex problems, really understand the reasonableness that you’re getting.”

Edelblut said cursive is fundamental as well because the act of writing each letter also helps students with learning disabilities by building neural pathways in their brains. (Source: Boston Globe)

So, yay, neural pathways. And yay, New Hampshire, for bringing back the fundamentals.  

Those nuns were on to something. Who knew?

Disneybounding

I've been to Disneyland twice. In 1972 and 1985.

Although I would have been more enthralled if I'd been, say, ten years old, I liked it just fine. Flying Dumbo. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The Mad Tea Party. The Matterhorn. Etc. 

On one of those visits, I bought some Mickey Mouse earrings, which are still around here somewhere.  

And that's about the extent of my Disney costuming.

Just as well, because as it turns out, adult visitors to Disney aren't allowed to wear costumes because it would confuse the kiddos if there were a whole bunch of Snow Whites or Goofys roaming around. Only the paid employee cosplayers get to be Olaf and Elsa.

But real fans can still get into it by getting creative. This is called:

Disneybounding, a practice that allows Disney adults to channel their favorite characters, experiences or objects without running afoul of the company’s no-costume rules for grownups. Outfits are inspired by characters but use everyday clothes...

“It’s a fun way to, as an adult, have a similar interaction to what a kid would have when they’re in their costumes,” said Leslie Kay, who coined the DisneyBound term, runs sites devoted to the practice and wrote a book on the topic that was published by Disney in 2020. (Source: WaPo)

Lest you think Leslie Kay is some sort of weirdo sitting around in a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt, she's a social media and marketing consultant in her 30s, and has over a half a million followers across her platforms. She also has a clothing company, cakeworthy, where she sells themed gear for Disney, as well as for Star Wars, Barbie, Harry Potter et al. For Disneybounders, they can represent their affection for, say, the Little Mermaid without violating the Disney rules. 

Disney, of course, sells its own bounding merch, but they seem happy enough to share the wealth with bounders who come up with their own tribute gear. 

Bounders pay homage in a variety of ways.

A Snow White outfit might include a denim shirt, yellow shorts and apple-shaped purse, while Princess Tiana might wear a green romper with frog jewelry. 

Cakeworthy isn't the only "civilian" game in town. There are several retailers the offer "Disney-inspired merchandise." Not surprisingly, the princess characters account for a lot of the Disneybounding action, but the old standbys  - Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Daisy - are also popular, as are Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. 

“Millennials I find really like the ‘Never grow up’ themes of Alice and Peter,” [Kay] said in an email.

Can't say that I blame hose millennials. Grownup-ness can definitely be overrated.  

While I found a few of the costumes shown in the article to be a bit over-the-top and cringe, there were others that were relatively subtle and fun. Here's Tiara Henderson's shout out to the Sorcerer's Apprentice. I'm partial to this one because, while I'm not a huge Mickey fan, I do love me some Sorcerer's Apprentice. And I also like the fact that Tiara pulled this off without having to actually pay for any Disney-related gear. So she gets to have fun without giving it up to the kabillion dollar empire.  

Henderson, and some of the other bounders have hefty social media followings "and consider themselves Disney content creators."

I don't imagine I'll ever get to Disney again. And I'm not the Disneybounding type.

But I get it.

When I go to a Red Sox game, I'm likely to have on a Red Sox tee-shirt and/or fleece and/or cap and/or earrings. I'm a fan and, while it's plenty corny, it makes me happy to represent, and makes the game somehow a more enjoyable experience. I suspect the bounders feel the same. 

Good for them. 

The world can be so very, very grim. If something brings joy, if it taps creative juices, I say go for it. Bonus points if you make a few bucks that doesn't flow into Disney's already-groaning coffers. 

I don't imagine I'll ever get to Disney again. And I'm not the DisneyBounding type. But if I were, I'm not sure which direction I'd go in. I'm Team Donald vs. Team Mickey, so I'd be wearing blue vs. red. Maybe I'd figure out how to do a Cheshire cat grin. And my favorite dwarf is Dopey, so I guess I could sport a purple cap and call it a bounding day. 

You mean that what they were telling us was actually true?

I was in parochial school in the 1950's and 1960's, when Catholicism was riding high. All those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." All that "wretched refuse of [Europe'] teeming shore." All those "tempest-tost" Irish, Italians, Germans, and Poles who had washed up in America in the late 19th and early 20th century had made it. The second- and third-generations were fully assimilated. They owned things. They ran things. It was all pretty heady stuff, especially for Catholics. Especially when "one of our own" was elected president in 1960.

If all was hunky-dory for American Catholics, we worried about all those pagans out there in (non-European) foreign lands who really needed to be converted to Catholicism. We might not have thought of them as immigration material. But we sure did want more Catholics.

So we supported the missions, raising money to help orders of priests and nuns, like the Maryknolls, who labored overseas. 

Several times a year, a priest would blow in to our parish and speak at every Mass. There would be a second collection to support his work. 

We probably had more of this than other parishes because our pastor was the head of the Propagation of the Faith, a Catholic organization devoted to supporting the missions. Monsignor Lynch was very gung ho. Hoping that some of us would find our way to a vocation in the mission fields, he created an after-school Spanish language program for the schools "smart kids." As class nerd, I won my share of prizes. One was a statue of Our Lady. One was a Spanish-English dictionary. And one was the biography of Father James Walsh, a Maryknoll missionary to China. 

I got to meet Thomas Cardinal Sin - I even kissed his ring, bobbing up and down in the schoolyard when Msgr. Lynch showed Cardinal Sin around, making a joke about a cardinal named "sin." (Hoho!) 

And I got to kiss the glass case containing the mummified arm of St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary to Asia, who baptized - estimates vary wildly - anywhere from 30,000 to 700,000 pagans.

The nuns were perpetually collecting money for the missions. "Our" order of nuns had a missionary wing, with a presence in Africa and Japan. Plus the nuns wanted to earn heavenly brownie points for supporting the Propagation of the Faith.

Mission money was collected weekly, with classes competing to see who could raise the most. During Lent, we were issued mite boxes, cardboard banks with pictures of pagan babies on them. There was a calendar with the 40 days of Lent on it and you were supposed to check off every day you went to Mass, made some sort of sacrifice, or donated mission money. After Easter, the mite boxes were turned in, and Sister Saint Whatever would open them all in front of the class, exclaiming loudly over those who donated the most.

One year, the mite box of Gerald N - one of the wildest boys in a classroom chocked full of wild boys - held a five dollar bill, proving to Sister Whatever that Gerald N was the most exemplary Catholic in the class, unlike the rest of us poor specimens who had only manage to save fifty cents or so that actually came out of our pockets. Grrrrr.

But all was forgiven when, one year, on my birthday, my class hit the five dollar mark which entitled us to baptize a pagan baby. And name it. 

Plus the class also got a nifty Certificate of Adoption - just like the one shown here -  issued by the Pontifical Association of the Holy Childhood, a spinoff of the Propagation of the Faith aimed at Catholic children. These certificates were proudly displayed in the classroom. 

Because we scrounged the money on my birthday, it was decided that the baby would be baptized Maureen Elizabeth.

Over the years, I came to the realization that, although we got the certificate, it was highly unlikely that there'd been any pagan baby baptized Maureen.

But I may have been wrong. 

I volunteer in a day shelter, and one of my tasks is checking folks in who want to sign up to take a shower. The other day, a fellow came in but couldn't find his card, which I would have scanned to check him in. Not to worry! I knew his name, which I recognized as an African one (which I now realize is of Ugandan origin), so I typed the first six letters into the search bar.

His name popped up, and as I went to add him to the shower list, I saw that, just below his name was a guest with a similar last name, and the first name of Maureen.

Maureen from Uganda?

Were they really baptizing the names we requested???

This Maureen is 76, so too old to have been the pagan baby my class "adopted" when I was in grammar school.

Still, it's gotten me thinking that somewhere in the African continent - or perhaps even an immigrant to the U.S. - there's a woman, somewhere in her sixties, who was our pagan baby. 

How about that!

I'm in Ireland

I'm in Ireland, mostly Dublin, for a week.

I don't know how many times I've been to Ireland. Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty?

I suppose I could look through my old passports and figure things out, but I'm guessing the Magic Number is between 15 and 20.

My first visit here was in 1973, and I immediately felt right at home. Which is not surprising, given that I grew up in an Irish-American family in a neighborhood largely peopled by Irish-Americans. I went to Catholic schools, where the nuns were Irish-Americans, as were most of the students. When I was in college, we were told that ours was the only school that our food service worked with where students drank more tea than coffee, testimony to the Irish-American roots of the majority of the student body.

So it was no surprise that Ireland seemed like home.

But there was more to it than the familiarity factor.

Despite the fact that Ireland in 1973 was cold and damp, and you couldn't get ice for your soda - if you could even find a soda that wasn't Schweppes Lemon - I found Ireland beautiful, the people friendly and interesting.

I was one of three places I hit during my first European adventure - months spent hitchhiking around, hitting a lot of countries - that I said I would get back to. The others were Paris and Yugoslavia. I have been back to Paris a handful of times. I have yet to return to Yugoslavia, which, of course, no longer exists. 

But Ireland? Yeh. I've been back. The last time was last September. 

So, yeh.

I do Ireland.

I'm here with my sister Trish, come to pick up her daughter Molly, who's finishing up a year in grad school. My principal role is to tote a mostly empty large suitcase in which to cram some of Molly's clothing to bring home, but we will be doing a few touristy things while I'm here.

Despite all my times over, I've never been to Glasnevin Cemetery. I've never taken a boat tour of the Liffey or Dublin Bay. 

We'll hang out, hit pubs/restaurants/theaters Molly has discovered, and generally have a good low-key kind of time. 

Not that there are no worries.

The weather in Ireland is always chancy. Dublin is a big city: the traffic is crazy and I may instinctively look the wrong way when stepping off the curb. Dublin is a big city: there is some level (minute compared to the States) of street crime - there are gangs, thugs, drug-related problems - and many pubs have signs warning patrons to watch their handbags. 

But one thing I won't worry about is getting mowed down by some maniac with an AR15. 

Ireland has relatively restrictive gun laws, and one of the lowest rates of gun possession in the EU. 

There are guns here.

People hunt. Farmers have shotguns. Thugs carry handguns.

And Ireland certainly has a near past history of political violence, largely bombing, largely in the North, but certainly some gunplay on the part of the IRA and the UVF and UDA on the other (Protestant) side.

But Ireland is just not a gun culture. A mass murder where people are mowed down at school, in church, at the theater, while shopping in the mall? This is pretty much unthinkable.

Unthinkable throughout most of Europe.

Not that it doesn't happen.

A few weeks ago, there were two mass killings in Serbia over a 48 hour period, something very rare anywhere in Europe (other than during times of war). Eight children and a school security guard were murdered by a gun-toting 13-year old. Two days later, a 20-year old random shooter killed 13 people in a small town.

Serbia actually has a pretty strong gun culture (and a recent violent history). While its gun regulations are strict, the country is full of unregistered, uncontrolled weapons left over from the ethnic conflicts, insurgencies and warfare of the 1990's.  But the sorts of mass killings (unrelated to those 1990's ethnic conflicts, etc.) that are fairly common in the US tend not to exist in Serbia, or elsewhere in Europe.

In response to the mass killings, the Serbian government is putting strict regulations in place, and has proposed a moratorium on gun sales (other than hunting rifles). 

Because normal countries don't want to live with mass murders, with gun violence. They want to do something about it, and not just make mealy-mouthed pronouncements about thoughts and prayers, give lame kudos to first responders, tsk-tsk some lip service to mental health. 

Anyway, I'm in Dublin, and one thing I'm not going to be worrying about is whether there's going to be some mad man on the loose, armed with a weapon of mass destruction, intent on mayhem. 

In truth, when I'm in Boston, I don't worry about it all that often, either. 

Not that it couldn't happen in my home state.

There's plenty of gun ownership in Massachusetts, but we do have one of the lowest rates of gun ownership among all states. Most of the gun violence  that takes place in Boston occurs (regrettably) in the poor minority neighborhoods. And our state, which has comparatively decent gun regulation, is second from the bottom when it comes to the rate of gun deaths relative to population. Only Hawaii has fewer.

Not that it couldn't happen in Massachusetts. It's just less likely to.

And in Ireland? The likelihood of getting killed in a mass shooting incident is infinitesimally small.

Because they don't worship at the gun altar. Because the average person in Ireland thinks it's crazy to give the average person in Ireland easy access to the sorts of guns that are built for military purposes. 

What in God's name is wrong with America?

Send the clowns into Nipton, California

There's never been much to Nipton, California, an erstwhile little mining town with a couple of dozen residents plunk dab in the Mojave Desert:

A five-room adobe hotel was built in the Mexican Territorial style in 1910. The town also has a general store, a trading post, the Whistle Stop Cafe, an RV park, five eco-cabins, and ten sites with teepees on them. There is also a historic schoolhouse and art exhibits connected to the Burning Man event. (Source: Wikipedia)

I'm guessing that eco-cabins means no plumbing and heat.* And Burning Man? That just layers weird onto bleak. 

Not much to commend this tumbleweedy ghost town to this ardent urbanite. 

Over the years, there have been a couple of attempts to turn the town into something or other. One buyer - and, yes, you can buy little unincorporated no service towns like this - had plans to make Nipton a solar energy testing ground. Another hoped to built it into a "weed-themed resort." Too bad marijuana sales weren't allowed there. 

Enter Ross Mollison, an Australian impresario whose company,  Spiegelworld, runs flash shows in Las Vegas - Absinthe at Caesar's Palace (which I take is a raunchy Cirque de Soleil) and the Atomic Saloon (featuring sexy acrobats) at The Venetian. Plus Superfrico, which bills itself as a psychedelic Italian American restaurant. Funny mushroom stuffed raviolis?

I'm exhausted at the idea of these shows. And Superfrico? Mamma Mia! 

Despite the lack of patronage from those of my ilk, I guess Spiegelworld does okay for itself, because last year Mollison went ahead and bought Nipton for $2.5 million. 

His intention? Make Nipton:

...a retreat for circus performers to workshop new acts and a luxury attraction for tourists who could stop there on the way to Las Vegas.

“I’m not approaching it like a developer. I want Nipton to look like it does now, but more beautified, with a globally significant, interesting restaurant that is somewhere between Francis Mallmann and the French Laundry,” [Mollison] said, referencing well-known restaurateurs as he described plans for multiple eateries, a hotel, solar panels and a runway for small planes, all with a big top twist. “Maybe we stick a trapeze in the middle, or a high wire that’s 1,000 feet off the ground. Or is that too P.T. Barnum?”(Source: NY Times)

Mollison intends to plow about $20 million into Nipton to make it look like it does now - keep the stars, the mountains, and the chollas - while also making it not look like it does now (rusty, rundown, dreary, bleak). 

Part of Mollison's reno work involves preserving that Burning Man art, including: 

Perpetual Consumption, a 26-foot-high sculpture by Clayton Blake in which stacked shopping carts form loop-the-loops meant to symbolize American consumerism. 

I'd say there'd have to be some pretty darned perpetual consumerism going on to transform Nipton into a tourist mecca with a French Laundry-style restaurant and luxury hotel, and not just another roadside attraction like the world's largest frying pan, or an alligator farm. 

I guess that's were diversification comes in. I.e., the circus performer retreat. In making Nipton into Circus Town Headquarters, Mollison invites folks to dream along with him, asking:

What if an audacious circus company purchased a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert? A living town where performers and artisans can retreat to dream and create? A place to tell stories around the campfire? A place to dine under the stars and wake up to a panoramic view of the mountains? (Source: Spiegelworld)

So, on the one hand, there's the globally significant restaurant. On the other hand, a simple campfire-y place where creatives can spin their yarns and get inspired by the stars and the mountain panorama.  

As new caretakers of this circus-oasis in the desert, Spiegelworld will be writing the next chapter of Nipton’s centuries-old story. Will you be in it? We can’t wait to see what happens next. 

I can't wait to see what happens next, too. 

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is where the water's going to come from. Maybe the circus performers will juggle in jugs-full, magicians will conjure up springs and wells.

But you never know. 

Didn't gangster Bugsy Siegel pretty much imagine Las Vegas into existence less than 100 years ago? And, baby, look at it now.

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*There is cabin heat: via pot-bellied stove.

Here she is, the almost Miss America, Taryn Delanie Smith.

When I was a kid, I regularly watched Miss America. (Remember, there wasn't all that much on TV.) I loved the talent part, especially when someone had a dopey (IMHO) "talent." (As I recall, dramatic readings were the go-to for those lacking in talent.) And the questions, especially when someone had a dopey answer. (If I could meet anyone in history, it would be Plato, so that we could discuss the philosophies of the ages.)

In 1966, the contest had a local tilt, as Carol Ann Kennedy, who lived in our parish, was Miss Massachusetts. I didn't know her. She lived in a different neighborhood. She hadn't gone to parochial school. (Imagine that.) But when I was in fifth grade, she choreographed the stepdance to Christmas in Killarney, which was the entry for our class in the school's annual Christmas pageant. I wasn't one of the dancers - Sister Saint Wilhelmina chose the cute, short girls to dance, and I was neither; besides, she hated me (the loathing was mutual) - but I had seen Carol Ann Kennedy, a very pretty blonde who actually had some talent. Despite that, she lost. (I later realized that the winners almost always came from pageant-crazy states in the South. The very traits that made East Coast girls hip to the Beach Boys made them anathema to Miss America judges.) 

It's been decades since I watched Miss America, and I haven't a clue whether it's still on TV even.

But I recently came across Taryn Delanie Smith, Miss New York for 2022. She's a pretty smart cookie, an advocate for homeless women, and works as a media consultant and social media/TikTok presence. (I have no idea what that means.) Her talent is being a comedian.

And I saw one of her very funny - and very sweet - comic bits via a link on TikTok. 

In the video, she plays Denise, a recurring character, who works as a receptionist and customer service rep in heaven. 

Denise answers both personal and professional calls while she’s at work but always does so with a take-no-BS attitude and her trademark New York accent.

“No, so she calls me, and she’s like, ‘I wanna speak to God,'” Denise says in one clip while clearly taking a personal call. “And I’m like, ‘Do you just call Walmart and just expect to speak with the CEO?’ No, you’re talkin’ to me. It’s ridiculous.”

Later on, she continues working, fielding calls from concerned people in limbo who want to know why they didn’t get into Heaven.

“Looks like you made 48 Starbucks baristas cry,” she tells one caller. “And that does ding your credit up here.”

In another video, Denise assists someone in Heaven who wants to know if their ex-husband made it in, too. When the woman finds out that he didn’t, she’s ecstatic.

“Oh, this is good news!” Denise replies with a laugh. “Omg yeah, he didn’t make the cut. Yeah, omg, congratulations!" (Source: Yahoo)

But the videos have taken on another life, or afterlife, of their own.

Fans text her letting her know that someone they loved has died. And Taryn incorporates this into her skits in an incredibly kind and moving way. 

The video I came across is here. (Hope you can see what I'm talking about. I don't know if TikTok via Twitter works if you're not on Twitter.)

On the video, she responds to someone who sends her this text:

If you don't mind, would you mind welcoming my friend Leah please. She's shy and probably scared because she was only 20 and it happened so fast.

So Denise welcomes Leah, tells her that heaven's great, that Leah will be okay, and will be able to keep tabs on everyone she cares about. Denise asks what Leah's favorite food is - everything's available in heaven (good to know) - and offers to shows her around. She makes Leah feel at home, which is a good thing, considering that Leah'll be there for infinity. 

Even to this ardent cynic, it was all so wonderfully sweet. 

The kindness, the warmth, the empathy. It all provides great comfort to the folks whose loved one has died. 

Maybe these texts are part of the comedic schtick. If so, it's brilliant, just brilliant. And I'm pretty sure Taryn's work provides immense comfort and joy to those who view her work.

I'm pretty much of a "this is it" kind of guy, a Big Sleeper. But I'll be pleasantly surprised if there is an afterlife, and if it's like the heaven where Denise works as a receptionist.

In December, Taryn Delanie Smith was first-runner up in the Miss America pageant. (Surprisingly, the winner wasn't a Southern Belle. It was Grace Starke from Wausau, Wisconsin.) But as far as I'm concerned, she's all the winner I need.

Punch clock

Early on in my work life, I had plenty of jobs where I got paid by the hour. Some were office temp jobs, where I kept my hours on a form signed each work week by the supervisor and submitted for payment. Others - jobs in retail, restaurants, and once in a factory - were punch clock jobs. You punch in, punched out for lunch, punched back in after lunch, punched out at end of day. 

You couldn't just punch in and say you were working and then go sit on your duff somewhere. Someone looked at those punch in times to make sure they were in sync with your actual shift. And at the end of the day, there were supervisors making sure that no one was hanging out by the punch clock waiting for quitting hour so they could punch out. 

But, basically, if you were on the clock, you were paid for it.

Fortunately, most of my professional life was, well, professional. No punching in. No punching out. No such thing as overtime, but plenty of informal give and take around things like doctor's appointments. (I will say that, in my professional career, I never worked anything close to a 40 hour week, which was, of course, true for most of my colleagues. A professional week was at least 50-ish hours.)

My professional career was in the technology sector, so each day involved some booting up, logging in, logging out, starting apps (once there were apps to start), etc. I never considered this booting, logging, starting anything other than part of my work. Getting my cup of tea wasn't work. Chatting with a colleague wasn't either (unless it was work-related and not idle chatter or gossip). Nor was taking a bio break. But anything associated with the tasks at hand: THAT WAS WORK.

But at an American Airlines call center, workers on the clock were expected "to boot up their computers and be signed in and ready to start taking calls before their paid work day officially started."

Supervisors instructed employees at the Tempe call center to start this process 15 minutes before they would officially start to be paid, and if they managed to log in within that time frame, they would be required to start taking calls straight away. (Source: PaddleYourOwnKanoo)

But call center employees think there's something not quite right about this process, and they're bringing a class action suit against American.

There's apparently quite a bit of case law on the question of whether "employers can ask workers to boot up computers and sign into various IT systems before they start getting paid." Much of the case law pertains to call center employees. 

The results are mixed. A 2021 ruling by the 10th Circuit Appeals court supported employees, finding that booting and logging are work tasks and should, thus, be compensated for. 

Other courts have suggested that 10 minutes or more of pre-work system setup is the point at which employees should be paid for these activities.

Ten minutes or more? Seriously? So if it's only 9 1/2 minutes, you're not entitle do get paid. F that! If you work five days a week, that would be 47.5 minutes of unpaid work. Yikes! 

I hope that the workers prevail. 

Skylar Hartwig, the customer service rep leading the charge, kept a record of unpaid work time over a period of a couple of months. When he presented his self-kept "time card" to his management, American said it would pay him for the times that were recorded. But not for the years prior before Hartwig started keeping track. (It's not clear from the article whether that recorded time included the booting and app-starting, or just the time Hartwig was actually taking calls before his shift officially started.) 

So it does look like American recognizes that at least the period of time when the customer service representatives are representing should be compensated.

But I hope they have to go the whole way and pay for the start up time.

No one's logging on for fun or pleasure.

Work is work, and you really ought to get paid for it.

What? Me elderly?

A few weeks back, I visited my sister and brother-in-law in Tucson. I had a midmorning flight, so Uber'd my Uber at 7:30 a.m. or so. 

The Uber arrived and the guy at first didn't pop the trunk for me to stick my roller bag in. I was gesturing to him to open the trunk, he was gesturing to me that it wasn't automatic and I had to actually lift it myself, when out from nowhere a woman appeared to provide me with help.

Actually, she didn't at first appear appear, because her voice was what I encountered first, and that voice was shrieking at the driver: "This woman is elderly! You have to help her. You need to get out of the car and help her."

Who you calling elderly, toots?

I told her thanks, I was fine, but she grabbed the roller bag out of my hand and shoved it into the backseat of the car. Where I didn't want it, as it's easier to get something out of the back of an SUV than it is to get it out of the backseat. 

Anyway, while she was shoving the bag into the backseat, she said to me, "I'll be there soon enough. I'm 58 and was just diagnosed with osteoporosis."

Thanks for sharing, sistah. (Sorry for your troubles, by the way.)

She wasn't done quite yet.

Moving around to the drivers side, she resumed yelling at the driver. "When you get to the airport, you need to get out of the car and help her. This woman is elderly."

What? Me, elderly? ME???

My reaction was mixed: embarrassment, annoyance, sadness. I have to confess that I did tear up a bit. (Oh, woe is elderly me.)

At the airport, I found that my plane was delayed, which would tighten the already tight connection in Dallas. So I asked the gate attendant what her sense was of whether I'd make the connection. She didn't have the gate info, but told me that they thought everyone would make their connections just fine.

She then asked whether I would like her to request assistance for me when I got to Dallas.

No, I'm good.

But when I got to Dallas, I wasn't so good.

I couldn't get service to check the gate for my Tucson flight, and there was no flight info board around. And, naturally, all the gate attendants were engaged.

So I flagged a guy speeding by on one of those elder transporters, just to ask him what gate my next flight was at.

He gave me the gate info, then told me to hop on.

Thus, I became one of the old geezers careening through a crowded airport to get to my next gate. Or to get to the Skylink to catch the tram to my next gate, as that's where they fellow left me off.

Fortunately, I made my flight with a couple of minutes to spare Which was a good thing, as the next flight was hours away.

I forgot to mention that, when I rolled on board at Logan, the young man sitting opposite my seat offered to put my bag into the overhead bin for me.

I was delighted to have his help, as the bag was heavy and I knew I was going to struggle a bit to heft it up.

He also took it down for me when we arrived in Dallas, even though taking it down is (marginally) easier than getting it binned. 

(On my other flights, I was also helped by other passengers - very nice men, all - and I was very grateful for their assistance, especially on my flights home, as my sister Kath had loaded me up with books, and my roller bag - heavy to begin with - was anvil-weight.)

So I guess I need to embrace the suck of being elderly, and take the good - people volunteer to help a gray-haired-little-old-lady - with the bad - who wants to be old?

Especially, me.

I don't (mostly) feel old. 

Despite the gray hair, I don't think I look old. (Thanks, Ma: I don't have all that many wrinkles. My mother and her mother were pretty much wrinkle-free.)

It could, of course, be worse.

Year ago, for a brief while, I subscribed to Ancestry.com, and in an attempt to lure me back - which they will no doubt do some day - they send periodic little hints on information available that I might find tantalizing. Sometimes it's duh obvious stuff, like I'm related to my niece. Sometimes it's that there's a fourth cousin I've never heard of out there. 

And the other day, I got an email that I had a couple of hints about people named Kathleen, Maureen, and Patricia Rogers. That would be me and my sisters. 

The hint for Kath would come from the U.S. Marriage Index. The hint for Trish would come from U.S. Public Records.

My hint? Well, that would come form the U.S. Cemetery nd Funeral Home Collection, 1847-Current.

Huh?

I took a screenshot and texted my sisters, asking them whether I'm dead and no one told me. 

Kath's response: "We sere waiting for your birthday to let you know."

Well, I may be kidding myself about not being (that) elderly, but I'm pretty sure I'm not dead. Yet.

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This is the print that elder-me is aptly posed in front of:  Yeats' "A Lover Pleads with Friends for Old Friends."