Ice Ice, Baby!

It's highly unlikely that I'll ever own another car in my life. And there's a non-zero probability that I'll never even get behind the wheel again. The only time I've driven since before covid was taking my sister Trish back home from her colonoscopy. 

It's not as if I don't like to drive. I actually love to get in the car and go. It's just that having a car I don't need is a big PITA - a big costly PITA. Sure, there's non-ownership opportunities to drive, but since no two rent-a or Zip cars are the same, hopping into temporary wheels has such an upfront learning curve - where are the wipers? the lights and the gas tank? does that icon mean open the tank, the trunk, the hood? why can't I adjust these mirrors manually? - that I dread hopping into one. 

None of this prevents me from fantasizing about driving cross-country, replicating the trip my friend Joyce and I made in 1972 in her little green Karmann Ghia. 

But, no.

The truth is, there's scant chance that I'll ever own another car. But if I did, I would have to put my money where my mouth w.r.t. environmental concerns is and get me a hybrid, maybe even an EV, even though I know that having an EV without owning a home where you can plug it in and charge it would be a tremendous PITA.

Since this probably isn't going to happen, I hadn't put a lot of thought into just how tremendous a PITA having a car where you couldn't just roll into a gas station and fill 'er up would be. Which is plenty enough challenging if you live, where I do, in what is something of a gas station desert. When I was a car owner, there were a couple of gas station's in my 'hood. All of them long gone. When I've had to fill up a rent-a or top off a Zipcar tank, I've had to do so near Fenway Park or in Charlestown.

A recent article in The Boston Globe brought the EV challenge home.

It seems that there are too many EVs chasing too few charging stations. 

While 80% of EV owners (like my friend Peter) juice up at home, that leaves 20% of EV owners crawling around looking for a charger. What happens if you can't find one? Does your car just stop dead the minute the battery zeroes out? It's not like the old days when you could glide your car to the side of the road, trudge to the nearest gas station, and trudge back with a gallon or two in your handy-dandy (and suddenly heavy-heavy) bright red gas can.

The scarcity of public charging stations leads to the inevitable: human behavior, which, as we all well know, isn't always all that noble and giving. 

There are intra-EV drivers who violate EV etiquette, leaving their cars connected for hours after they've completely recharged their batteries. And there are those who plunk there for a complete recharge, even when there's a queue of cars who just need a little boost.

It probably should come as no surprise that a significant strain of tension isn’t EV driver vs. EV driver at all. Rather, it pits EV drivers against those driving Internal Combustion Engine cars. It happens when a motorist driving a gas-powered car parks in a spot reserved for EV charging — either because he wants the spot or as an act of rebellion. The acronym is ICE and the act is called ICING. (Source: Boston Globe)

I know up close and personal how god-awful it is to hunt for a parking place. Sometimes, after driving around for half an hour or so, you think you've spotted a space, only to find out that there's a hydrant there, or a loading zone sign. 

If it's after a snowstorm, and you live (and park) in South Boston, you may find that the space you're eying has an old kitchen chair or old toilet occupying it, a sure sign that the person who shoveled it out expects it to be ready for them when they return. The price of ignoring the kitchen chair or old toilet could be slashed tires, a smashed window, a keyed door, a beatdown. Those, of course, don't seem like the sort of deeds an EV driver who finds the charging station occupied by a gas guzzler would resort to, but desperate times/desperate measures.

Boston is in the process of making "it a ticketable offense for a non-EV to be parked in an EV charging space." So there's that. But that won't solve the problem of lack of infrastructure. And that problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. 

The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030, and an analysis by PwC, the global accounting firm, found that the charging market needs to grow nearly tenfold to satisfy the needs of the estimated 27 million EVs that will be on the road by then.

A tenfold increase, you say? 

Think I'll stick with Uber and public transpo.

Talk about monofocus

I know next to nothing about them, other than to say that when it comes to nature, butterflies are right up there when it comes to beauty. I don't see butterflies that often - sadly, I'm more likely to come across a moth (after it's taken a nibble out of my favorite wool sweater, of course) - but when I do spot one, I'm always in awe of its fragility and brilliance. 

When I think of (or see) a butterfly, it's likely to be a monarch, big and bold, a brilliant orange. 

And seeing that butterfly always makes my day, even though it's always a random event and nothing I plan (or hunt) for.

If seeing a run-of-the-mill monarch makes my day, imagine what spotting a bog elfin meant to Bryan Pfeiffer. He's been on the hunt for one for 21 years. 

I had never heard of the bog elfin. It's tiny and a rather dull brown, and I'm sure if I'd come across one, I would have thought it was a moth. 

But for Pfeiffer, finding a bog elfin was a mission. 

The bog elfin had never been confirmed in Vermont, but Pfeiffer’s gut told him it was there. So the entomologist logged countless miles through isolated terrain swarming with mosquitos and black flies, armed with binoculars and a butterfly net and a determination his friends and colleagues marveled at. He was 44 when his search began; a heart attack and a knee replacement later, he found himself at age 65, wondering the sort of things people wonder as the years race by. “Every year I felt like my window was closing,” he said. (Source: Boston Globe)

Finding the holy grail after 21 years is personally satisfying for Pfeiffer, but it also means that the state of Vermont is charged with preserving this little guy.

“In our safeguarding little brown butterflies, like protecting speech, we show reverence not only for the popular and charismatic and profitable, but for the obscure and the vulnerable as well,” he wrote. “Vermont is now a better place for having bog elfins — up there in the spruce where they belong, overseeing the orchids and songbirds and blackflies, even aging biologists like me. Protecting little brown butterflies is good for the integrity of nature — as it is for integrity of humans.” 

I can only begin to imagine being so monofocused, having such a quest. Would that I had been as determined to pursue anything with that zeal and determination in my life. (Sigh.) At my age, is it too late to begin a 21 year quest? And what would that quest be? The Great American Novel? The not-so-great-self-published-American novel? (The latter would sure be more achievable, and probably wouldn't take 21 years which I may or may not have. Can I be monofocused for 21 months? I suspect I have at least that much more time.)

Bryan Pfeiffer, out there in the Vermont bogs, fighting off mosquitoes and black flies, armed only with binoculars, camera, and butterfly net, looking for a tiny, obscure little brown butterfly is nothing if not an inspiration. To me, at least.

Onward!

Will capitalism save us? Here's hoping!

Doom and gloomer that I am, I worry incessantly about a) the prospect of fascism taking hold in the US; and b) climate change making large swaths of earth unlivable. 

Capitalism isn't all that likely to do much about the former. After all, if you look at, say, fascist Nazi Germany, businesses did pretty well - I.G. Farben, come on down! - until the not quite so gemütlichkeit aspects of fascism, like militarism and nationalism, came to the fore, resulting in the nearly total destruction of Germany. 

But since we can't seem to get out of our way politically  to address the climate crisis (although the Biden administration is gamely trying), it looks like it might be up to capitalism to save us.

I've long maintained that insurance companies may lead the way, since they'll be the ones that weather-wrought destruction will cost bigtime. We're seeing insurers pull out of the homeowners business in Florida. Maybe that'll nudge things along a bit. (A girl can hope, can't she?)

I'm also guessing that the airlines - dealing with increasing (and increasingly costly) delays and cancellations caused by unprecedented weather incidents - are going to be putting some energy behind climate change initiatives. 

And - assuming the money going in is smart money - there's this bit of good news:

Investors are spending big on climate projects. Global warming helps make periods of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense, and it will continue

getting worse unless humans essentially stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, scientists say. Venture investing in climate tech has boomed since the post-Covid recovery began (though it fell, along with venture funding overall, in the first half of the year). And global public and private investment in climate finance, on projects ranging from decarbonizing architecture and transport to developing renewable energy initiatives, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021, to an estimated $850 billion, according to the Climate Policy Initiative, a nonprofit climate advocacy group. (It will top $1 trillion with the passage of the Biden administration’s sweeping climate bills, the European Union’s Green Deal and China’s low-carbon development initiatives announced in its latest five-year plan.)

“There’s been huge, huge progress” in developing green technologies and bringing down their costs, said Bella Tonkonogy, the U.S. director of Climate Policy Initiative whose funders include the Bloomberg Foundation and the German government. (Source: NY Times)

Then there's investment in solutions that will help us adapt to the damage that's already been done - and can't be undone.

While this type of investment is a relatively small proportion of overall "climate finance" - roughly 7 percent - it's growing. 

I'm sure we'd all like to see the majority of investment going into long term "stop the problem" solutions that, e.g., wean us off fossil fuels, but it's reassuring to learn that some money will be going into projects that will help us withstand the heat, the water, the storms. 

The downside of investing in adaptation projects is that it may lull us into taking our eye off the prize of trying to make sure that atmospheric conditions don't get any worse. Still, investing in adaptation strategies is, I'm hoping, mostly for the good. 

Will capitalism save us? Here's hoping!

As for fascism, don't get me started. 

Tahoe's overtourism challenge

Most of what I know about Lake Tahoe comes from early 1960's hipster Rat Pack-ian references to "Tahoe" made by Frank and Sammy, often using the same sly, knowing, winking way they referred to "Vegas." 

I know Lake Tahoe from watching all those years of Bonanza, on which show the Ponderosa, the Cartwrights' sprawling ranch, bordered on the lake. Or did the Cartwrights own it? 

I also know Lake Tahoe from The Godfather because that's where the Corleone family decamped to from Queens in Godfather II after Vito, the godfather himself, died. The (gorgeous) house that Michael and his family lived in was shot up by enemies on the night of his son Anthony's Holy Communion. And it was on Lake Tahoe that hapless, gormless Fredo Corleone made his final, fatal fishing trip, condemned to a watery grave by his brother Michael for being in unwitting cahoots with the enemies who shot up Casa Corleone. 

I know Lake Tahoe because have been there once in person, when a years-ago visit to a friend in Reno included lunch at a hamburger joint somewhere on the lake. (Good burgers; excellent view.)

Finally, I know it from its occasional appearance on House Hunters or some other show on HGTV.

So I know by reputation, by TV and movies, and by personal appearance that the area is just gorgeous. 

I'm an Easterner by baptism and by desire, and, to me, New England is beautiful. But the West, well, it's just breathtaking. 

That the Lake Tahoe area is beautiful isn't exactly a secret. Plenty of tourists know that, too. So many tourists that, last November, Fodor's noted that Lake Tahoe has a "people problem" - as in too many - and recommended that tourists stay away. They added Lake Tahoe to "Fodor's No List 2023," where it keeps company with the cliffs of Normandy, and with Antarctica, on the list of areas where "nature needs a break." 

(Fodor's also warned tourists off of "suffering cultural hotspots" like Venice, Cornwall, Amsterdam, and Thailand; 

and "destinations suffering from water crises" (among them Maui and the American Southwest).

Tourism can just be too much of a good thing, sayeth Fodor. And, as someone who has tourists clomping by my front door pretty much every day during the high season, I can sayeth it as welleth. 

When the Fodor warning came out, Tahoe tourism officials were surprised, "miffed," even. (As an aside: is "miffed" a great word or what?) Some found it "a little bit shocking." But they also recognized that landing on the "no list" was well-founded. And that they needed to do something about it. 

Since Fodor’s declared last November that “Lake Tahoe has a people problem,” some unlikely voices have expressed a new willingness to consider taxes or fees on motorists, a nonstarter not long ago.

Meanwhile local business and tourism officials are lining up behind a new effort to persuade people to check out less trafficked parts of the lake and to visit outside of high season.

The idea is to preserve a $5 billion local economy built around the tourists who come to hike, camp, boat, bike, ski and gamble, while also easing their impact on the environment and communities. Roughly one-third the size of the Sierra Nevada’s also-crowded Yosemite National Park, the Lake Tahoe Basin gets about three times as many visitors — around 15 million each year.

“We know that we really need to get out of the tourism marketing business and get into the tourism management business,” said Carol Cha plin, CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitor’s Authority. (Source: Fortune)

Recently, a plan for "sustainably preserving" the gold mine that is Lake Tahoe tourism - a plan backed by a group of "conservation, business, governmental, and private entities" - was released. Some of the ideas in the plan call for encouraging midweek and off-peak visits. Other ideas address traffic and parking "nightmares", and promoting public transportation to ease those nightmares. The idea of charging a fee to drive through town is also being batted around. (If you've driven through Carmel in California, you'll remember paying a fee to get onto the Monterrey Peninsula.)

Solving the overtourism problem won't be easy. 

...especially because of the multiple jurisdictions involved, including five counties in two states, individual towns, regulators, the Coast Guard and the U.S. Forest Service.

But here's hoping.

Meanwhile, getting on the Fodor No List hasn't exactly put a crimp in Tahoe tourism. 

Hotel occupancy between December and April, the height of the ski season, was up 12% from last year, Chaplin said, and that included a stretch when visitation fell off or was flat as one of the wettest winters on record snowed in neighborhoods and businesses and buried roads and highways.

Tourists want to go where tourists want to go... 

All Aboard, Amtrak

I'm a train fan, but that's train fan with a small t and a small f.

Mostly, when I'm on a train it's the commuter train to see my sister in Salem or my cousin outside Worcester. When I travel to NYC, which I don't do near as often as I used to, I like to take the Amtrak Acela. Sometimes, anyway.

My longest train journey was from Orlando to Boston, when a colleague and I managed to hop on Amtrak after we were stranded at a business conference on 9/11 in 2001. That was a pretty scary trip. There wasn't a lot of information to be had, and we weren't sure when we left Orlando whether we were going to get home - the promise was that we'd get as far as Richmond, Virginia - and whether the US was somehow at war (which it was and wasn't). That was one long trip.

I've taken trains on occasion in Europe, most recently to get from one side of Ireland to the other. 

As a kid, my family sometimes took the train from Worcester - the Lake Shore Limited - when we visited my mother's family in Chicago. 

And I always liked my train trips in a way that I never actually liked an airplane flight. 

I loved looking out the windows, watching the country roll by, wondering who lived in those towns, on those farms. Who was driving on those roads that were running parallel to the tracks, and where were they going in such an all-fired hurry?

I sometimes fantasize about taking the train cross country, or at least as far as Chicago. Or the train that runs through the Canadian Rockies. (Which better have that glass-topped observation car if I ever do get on it.)

I don't really have a bucket list, but, if I had one, some train travel would be on it.

Nat Read is 84 years old, and he's a Train Fan with a capital T and a capital F. His bucket list - or maybe it was his life's quest - was traveling Amtrak in the entirety of its route. All glorious (and not so glorious) 21,400 miles of it.

In July, he came to Boston to board the Downeaster to

Brunswick, Maine, so he could finish (in his own words) "the last thread of passenger rail on Amtrak's spiderweb map."

“I feel fulfilled, this has been over 80 years it’s taken me, and to be in Brunswick after all of this, it’s an elated feeling,” Read said from Maine on Friday. “It was a day I will remember forever.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Amtrak hasn't been around for 80 years - it was founded in 1971 - but 80 years back, when Nat Read was just a little guy,h he took his first train ride. On a steam engine. This was during World War II, when he traveled with his mother and brother from Kentucky to visit his father, a serviceman who was stationed in Texas. 

A few years later, he traveled to a Boy Scout Jamboree via railroad. 

By then, he was solidly in love with rail travel.

“I have a fascination with watching America go by,” he said in an interview earlier in the week. “Sitting up high in a rail car and looking at the deserts of the West, the farmlands of the Midwest, the small communities of the Northeast, and being on a magic carpet to watch America unfold. I’ve never grown tired of that.”

Those trips in the 40's and 50's were, of course, made in the heyday of rail travel - before plane travel became affordable to the masses, before the interstate highway system was built. Train travel was actually pretty glamorous. (So was airplane travel before they made it affordable enough so us great unwashed could fly.) But through the thick and thin of rail travel, it's been part of who Nat Read is. 

Read’s love of railroads and thirst for adventure permeated into every aspect of his life. In addition to being a lifelong train rider, he served as vice president of public relations for the US High Speed Rail Corporation. He was part of an effort to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Diego in 1983 — an “exciting idea” that, he said, failed to get the population’s consensus and ultimately failed.

Being into train travel may seem a bit old school, fuddy-duddy. But Nat Read has had adventures that go way beyond riding the rails. He's been to 100 countries, and all seven continents. He's "stood on both the North and South poles." He made it to the South Pole while in the Navy, and made it to the North Pole on a nuclear icebreaker. A Russian nuclear icebreaker.

Read has had a lot of jobs in his life. In addition to his years in the service and with the High Speed Rail Corporation, he's been a writer and a cop. He's also done stand-up comedy.

A few years back, when looking over the Amtrak route map, he realized he didn't have all that many legs to ride complete the entire shebang. So he decided to check them all off of his list. He was interrupted by covid, but hopped back on as soon as he could. 

Which brought him to the end of the line: the Amtrak Downeaster to Brunswick, Maine. 

“I’ve set different goals and satisfied them one at a time. I’m 84 years old now and kind of coming to the end of the list,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

I'm quite sure that Nat Read will find something to occupy his time before he waves to the little red caboose. 

Anyway, my hat's off to him for finishing his incredible journey. Make that a conductor's hat. Or an engineer's cap.

All aboard, Amtrak!

Going to extremes

As long as there's been tourism, there's been tourism for the rich. 

In fact, when tourism was first a thing, it was pretty much exclusively for the rich. If you were a peasant hard-scrabbling a living on your piece of dirt, you probably never took a day off (other than Sunday, when you were stuck in church) or traveled more than a mile or two from where you were born. 

But nobles? They got to sail off to parts unknown to the peasants. 

The only non-rich adventure travel was done by explorers and missionaries. 

In the mid-19th century, with the rise of a middle class, vacation travel became popular, but the best of it was, of course, reserved for the well to do. They got to pack their trunks and take the Grand Tour of Europe. 

Late twentieth century tourism went mass market. People started taking vacations; they started going places. Many of us reversed the travel of our grandparents and great-grandparents. They emigrated from Europe for economic opportunity; we went back, guidebooks in hand, to look around. The more adventurous among us - which would not include me - went on African safaris, toured Angor Wat, flew to Rio by the Sea-o, soaked it up in Bali. 

But for the wealthy, none of this pedestrian middle-class tourism was enough to satisfy the travel bug. After all, what's the big thrill of seeing the Cliffs of Moher or lighting a candle in Notre Dame if Maureen Rogers can afford to do it.

Thus the rise of extreme tourism, which the recent implosion of the OceanGate Titan submarine shone a glaring spotlight on.

And if you thought that travel agents had gone the way of switchboard operators, you've got another think coming. 

Kristin Chambers is a Boston-based extreme-travel agent, or as they're better known, travel consultants. Because when someone's big-spending, you're not agenting, you're consulting.

“There’s always those that are really looking to up-level and go where almost no one on Earth can go,” said Chambers, who runs the Newbury Street firms D.A. Luxury Travel and TRAVELLUSTRE. “They’ve been super successful in their careers. They’ve accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. So, what’s next?” (Source: Boston Globe)

Extreme tourists are paying what is to me an extreme amount of money to up-level. The Titan tourists sprung for $250K per for their rendezvous with destiny. 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin routinely brings paying customers to near-space for a rumored $1 million. Climbers are flocking to Mount Everest in record numbers, with some paying six figures for “fully custom” experiences. And amateur adventurers can now get to the North and South poles in just days — a trip that would take months a few decades ago.

A plunge to rubberneck at the Titanic's remains will probably be off-limits for a while, but if abyss-level deep sea is your thing, there are tours to the Mariana Trench for $750K.

Extreme tourists tend to be male, aged 40-60, and as Chambers noted, they're accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. And competitive, competitive, competitive. 

Modern adventurers don’t just want to scale Everest anymore. They also tackle the “Seven Summits,” a series of trips to the tallest peaks on every continent. Then both poles. And then the “Second Seven,” the world’s next-highest peaks, just to be in even more exclusive company.

Eric Larsen runs tours to the North and South Poles.  

“There’s a desire to be unique and distinctive from everyone else. That’s where you get into this race to do all these things,” Larsen said. “They’ve got something they’re trying to prove.”

But Larsen worries that something is lost when modern navigation and aviation make visiting the Earth’s farthest reaches as convenient as booking a dinner reservation — albeit a very expensive one.

At the highest tiers, he said, adventures just aren’t what they used to be.

“If you go to space, are you an adventurer because you sit in a rocket and get flown there?” he said. 

But some extreme tourists don't want to just sit on their arse and get space shot. They want to really court danger.  

Shannon Stowell runs the Adventure Travel Trade Association, which had among its members the ill-fated OceanGate Expeditions. He's heard some pretty strange requests:

One client said she wanted to travel to Mexico, then link up with a smuggler and illegally cross the US border, just for the thrill.

“We gave that a hard ‘No,’” Stowell said. “We said, there’s no way we’re going to be involved in anything, first of all, illegal, and second, insane.”

So much for the 40-60 male demographic. I guess illegal and insanity knows no gender bounds. Bet she could have found some cartel member who would have obliged her. Or at least taken the money off her and dumped her body in the Rio Grande. 

There's extreme tourism, then there's really going to extremes. 

Old McDonald had a farm? Nah? It's a place in the Hamptons.

When I read the brief piece on those summering in the Hamptons with a rent-a-chicken set up (coop and layers) in their backyard, I thought it was a parody.

Here's the scene when "Homestead Ida" and "Farmer Joe" DeFrancisco, farmers who own a Rent the Chicken business paid a call on one of their customers.

Alina, a leveraged-buyout attorney turned stay-at-

home mom, strode out in a tie-dyed caftan, with a stack of diamond bracelets. “If you want to know anything about the chickens, you’ll have to ask my four-year-old,” she said. The four-year old, Oliver, was clinging to his au pair in the pool. “Be Prepared,” the coup anthem from “The Lion King,” boomed through outdoor speakers. Rich, Alina’s husband, who runs a renewable-energy business, emerged from the kitchen in a bright-blue bathing suit, holding a tequila on the rocks.

“Hey, Ollie, can we put on something a little less ominous, please?” he said. He stretched out on an outdoor sofa and explained how he’d heard about Rent the Chicken: “I was at a polo match where a guy was telling me about leasing horses, which turned me on to his whole incredible world of renting animals.” The family will return their rental chickens in August, when their children, Oliver and Ellis (“like the island,” Alina said), go back to school in Houston. (Source: The New Yorker)

Where. To. Begin.  

There's the tie-dyed caftan paired with diamond bracelets. (Snob that I am, I wasn't surprised to learn that Alina was from Houston, and not the sort of ultra New Yorker who hits the Long Island Expressway helicopter pad every Thursday to buzz out to the Hamptons for the weekend. In my imagining, the Hamptons crowd wears linen, and rich person versions of Ralph Lauren. Understated. Or just slob out, fuck-it-all style. Tie-dyed caftan and diamond bracelets? I'm guessing the chickens they rented might well be the only friends they have out there. But what do I know? The people I know on Long Island live in the part of Long Island that's an extension of Queens.)

And while nice of them to bring the au pair with them on their vacay, but what does Alina do all day. I'm sure that tie-dying does eat up part of the time, but maybe Alina should be spending less time piling on those diamond bracelets and more time helping scared little Oliver get over his fear of being in the pool.

And Rich first hearing about the possibility of renting an animal when he was at a polo match!!!

What's polo speak for "to the hounds!"

And I don't like to think of myself as the kind of person who picks on kids, but I wouldn't bet against Oliver and Ellis being insufferable little brats. No fault of their own, of course. (C.f., diamond bracelets, polo match.)

I was, of course, aware of the growing interest in folks keeping chickens, which got a big boost during covid, when everyone was nesting and trying to avoid grocery stores. 

But I wasn't aware that you could actually rent a chicken, along with coop and chickenfeed, and - if your summering on Long Island or some other summering place - return the kit and kaboodle come September. 

I guess it's something of a vacation for the animals. They get to be in a presumably less chaotic situation: fewer chickens squawking, less commotion, a room coop of your own (almost), more attention from the little Olivers and Ellises of the world - and from the Alinas and Riches. 

Because this family was going all in on their chickens. 

They've been buying extras, like a small "picnic bench"  where the chickens sit and enjoy a special treat

...according to Rich, “Oliver likes to mix a special concoction of saliva and worms for the chickens.”

Rich and Alina aren't the only Hamptonians who rent from Homestead Ida and Farmer Joe, who do their homesteading and farming in Wallingford, Connecticut (a suburb of New Haven). 

After that stop, the couple moved on to visit the chickens rented by Ivy, a New Jersey anesthesiologist, who welcomed them "wearing a wide-brimmed green visor and bicycle shorts." Which sounds a lot more Hampton to me than the tie-dyed caftan. Ivy's got her brood with her - kids and grandkids - with her for the month of June.

 “The short-term chicken rental was just perfect for us!” Ivy said.

 What's all this go for?

For twelve hundred dollars, Rent the Chicken will deliver a chicken coop, two to four “egg-laying-ready” hens, more than a hundred pounds of feed, and instructions on “how to keep your chickens happy.”

On the sentience continuum, I don't think chickens are all that close to our end, but it's still rather kindly that there's a focus on keeping chickens happy. I'm sure happier chickens do more egg-laying. As for happiness, well, for starters, egg laying's got to be better than being turned into a broiler. So there's that.

Things can, of course, go a bit wrong. Chickens are living and breathing, so they can, like, die. I suspect that occasionally happens when a kiddo gives a chicken a little overenthusiastic attention. So, a good opportunity to explain life and death that's a little less fraught than the death of Grammy. 

But if the chicken buys the farm out of sight of the children, some parents opt to ask for an emergency delivery of a look-alike chicken so the kids never know. (A strategy that I believe is frequently deployed with the family fishbowl.)

But death isn't the biggest issue:

One of the biggest problems the chickens face: overindulgence. “We can always tell when spouses don’t talk,” Ida said. “A chicken will never turn down a second meal, so if families aren’t communicating the chickens come back to us heavy and waddling.”

Oliver may want to lay off those spit and worm feeds at the chicken picnic table. Just saying. 

Beach umbrella bingo

I don't know whether Andrew McClatchy is rich or not. He's the president/owner of a company that sells used printing equipment. So who knows. But he's rich enough to own beachfront property in North Kingstown, RI.

But in Rhode Island, owning beachfront property ain't what it used to be:

The state recently passed a law giving people the right to access the shore if they’re no more than 10 feet landward of the recognizable high tide line. (Source: Boston Globe)

And on Sunday, town resident Chris Brady - finding the abutting town beach overcrowded - decided to take advantage of the new law, so he took his wife, his 10-year-old daughter and her friend, along with their beach blanket, their snacks, their beach umbrella, a couple of beach chairs, and Brady's paddleboard, and they spread out - within the 10-foot line of demarcation in front of the McClatchy home. (I don't know whether Andrew McClatchy is rich of not, but Zillow's got that beach house at $1,365,000.)

Andrew McClatchy was not happy to have the Brady bunch in front of his house. So he came out and asked them to leave. 

Knowing his rights, Brady said 'thanks/no thanks' and stood his ground.

Things escalated from there, and - among his escalation tactics - McClatchy shoved his camera (he was filming the confrontation) in the face of Brady's child. At which point, Brady began pushing back using sharper language than he'd been using. Really, who stands by and lets someone get in his kid's face. WTF, Andrew McClatchy? And then:

At one point during the confrontation, witnesses say, McClatchy ripped the family’s umbrella out of the sand and threw it in the water. Brady’s daughter went to get it. McClatchy ripped it out again, witnesses said. McClatchy then took the umbrella and broke it, Brady and other witnesses told The Boston Globe and police.

“He just mauled it, tore it apart, broke it in half,” Brady said.

McClatchy also used words like, “Come at me!” and “Bring it!,” and used profane language in front of Brady’s daughter, according to a police report. 

Meanwhile, a bystander had called the police. The police came, spoke to the principals and a number of witnesses, and arrested and handcuffed McClatchy. He's been charged with vandalism and disorderly conduct. (Both are misdemeanor charges.)

McClatchy told the cops that he believed Brady was a "'Marxist antagonizer,'" who was deliberately provoking McClatchy into a confrontation. 

“There was nothing Marxist about it,” Brady said. “I was eating pretzels and drinking water on the beach.”

(Seriously, doesn't Brady realize that pretzels are the opiates of the masses?) 

I understand why McClatchy isn't enamored of the new law. He's used to the beach being his front yard, for the exclusive use of his friends and family. So it's probably a tough pill to swallow. Still, going on the attack against those who are in their rights...

For the McClatchy family, confrontation with beach front interlopers is nothing new.

The area is something of a local hotspot for shore confrontations; a witness said McClatchy’s wife, Debra, ripped a baby’s tent out of a family’s hands in a similar argument last year, before the new law went into effect.

Sometimes a trip to the beach is just a trip to the beach, no?

I'll give the last word to Chris Brady. 

“It was rage,” said beachgoer Chris Brady. “There’s road rage — but this was beach rage.”

Semi-last word, anyway.

Mine is: Swell! One more thing to worry about. 

Will the screen door slam? The Springsteen health watch...

I've got tickets for the August 24th Bruce Springsteen at Gillette Stadium, but there's a big question mark hovering over this event. 

Last week, the two Philadelphia concerts - scheduled for Wednesday the 16th and Friday the 18th - were called off, just a few hours before BRUUUUUUUCE and the E-Street Band were scheduled to blast things off with "No Surrender." 

This was the message posted on the official Bruce Springsteen Twitter/X account at around 2 in the afternoon of the 16th:

Due to Bruce Springsteen having been taken ill, his concerts with The E Street Band at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on August 16 and 18 have been postponed. We are working on rescheduling the dates so please hold on to your tickets as they will be valid for the rescheduled shows.

"Hold on to your tickets s they will be valid."  

First off, these tickets are virtual. They're on your Ticketmaster account and/or in your smartphone wallet. So there's nothing to hold onto. Second, one would hope they would be valid. That or full refund - and I mean FULL, with every surcharge and "convenience fee" paid back, not just the face value of the ticket. (Good luck to those who bought on the non-Ticketmaster secondary market.)

Fans with Philly tix were understandably upset. One fan immediately posted a comment, asking whether this message was for real, as he hadn't seen it elsewhere. Duh, bruh! I'm pretty sure that "elsewhere" would happen after the info was released on the Springsteen official site.

But I understand the fan being upset, both about the concert's being postponed and with general concern for what, exactly, the undisclosed illness might be. Something fleeting? Somethin serious? Bruce is no kid. In September, he'll be 74, a fellow 49er. Things - both trivial and dire - happen more frequently as you age. Sigh.

Springsteen is certainly entitled to his privacy, but since the first posting, nothing further has been said, leaving fans in a big old limbo full of fret, and those of us with tickets for one of this week's concerts in Foxborough, which were the next ones on the schedule, on pins and needles. Will there be any info forthcoming sooner than a couple of hours before showtime, when fans are already sitting in traffic as they make their way to Gillette?

Fans - and that would include yours truly - have been through this before.

Earlier in the year, the three concerts prior to the Boston Garden event in March were called off due to someone or other being sick. (I don't believe this information was ever revealed.) So my sister Trish and I, who had tickets for the show, had days worth of worrying about whether the show would go on.

It did, and was great. So when they announced that Bruce would be back in the area in the summer, we were all in. And fortunately, tickets for the Foxborough shows were easier to grab - and a TON cheaper than the panic-buy tickets we had for Boston.

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

I certainly knew of his existence, but other than a few obvious songs - "Born in the USA," "Born to Run," "Dancing in the Dark" - I wasn't especially familiar with his work.

Trish, on the other hand, had been a pretty hard core fan since she was in high school, when Springsteen first came on the scene in the mid-1970's. She and a couple of her friends came into Boston for a concert and stayed with me. I had no idea what the fuss was about.

Now I do.

I think it was the "Magic" tour in 2007 that Trish got me a ticket for, and all of a sudden, I was all in. Maybe I'm not a tried and true believer, but I'm a true believer of sorts.

I didn't know the words to anything. But now I do.

I'd never heard "Thunder Road." But now I can sing along with the best of them.

I can't debate deep cuts, or the respective talents of band members who have passed on vs. the current crew. (There hasn't been a ton of turnover. Most of the E-Street Band members have been around for 50 years or so.)

Since that first show, I've seen Springsteen a couple of more times at The Garden, once at Fenway - how great was that! - and at Foxborough (the world's worse venue to get in and out of). And he never disappoints.

So I will, of course, be disappointed if Thursday's concert is postponed. Who wants a reschedule in, say, October, when it's likely to be cold and rainy. (And, of course, I will feel awful if there's something really wrong with Springsteen.)

I hope that the screen door doesn't slam on Thursday, but if it's going to, I'd rather have it slam today than wait until, say, Thursday.

Saint Bruce of E-Street, pray for us!

Life at the philanthropic pinnacle

A seat on the board of NY's Metropolitan Museum of Art is considered the pinnacle of board memberships. 

I know enough about boards to know that members are  expected to financially support the organization. For the Met, financial support includes an upfront donation that's pretty steep: $10M. At minimum. Then there's the expectation of ongoing support.

Most nonprofits are not, of course, the Met. You don't have to pony up a min of $10M to get a seat on the board, that's for sure. But the Met's the Met. Most nonprofits don't have fundraising galas that cost $50K a head. Most don't make headline news based on the outrageous outfits that attendees wear.

No, the Met is pretty much sui generis. Which makes sense, since there can be only one pinnacle, no?

Shelby White and her late husband Leon Levy are/were big deal philanthropists. They are/were ultrawealthy, philanthropically minded, and lived in NYC. So of course they were interested in the Met. But the White and Levy are/were art collectors, so the Met made a lot of sense.

After the couple's $20M donation to the museum, Shelby White joined the board and became a member of "the committee that advises the museum on what pieces to acquire." So, Shelby White knew her stuff.

White and Levy collected antiquities - ancient Greek vases, Roman bronzes, Chinese funerary objects - and many of the antiquities they collected made their way into the Met, as gifts or on loan. 

Antiquities are tricky business. 

Increasingly, they're found to be treasures that were looted from their native lands. 

One of the most prominent examples are the Elgin Marbles, taken from Greece in the early 19th century and exhibited at the British Museum since. Fast forward, and it seems that an agreement is nearing on when the Elgin Marbles - now called the Parthenon Marbles - will be repatriated to Greece.

Back to the White/Levy antiquities collection:

... recently the couple’s conduct as collectors has drawn heightened scrutiny. Investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office have carted away 71 looted artifacts from White’s home in the past two years, though they have not suggested that she or her husband knowingly bought stolen antiquities.

In fact, investigators would later thank White, 84, for her cooperation, as artifacts were returned to multiple countries, including Yemen, Turkey and Italy. But in June 2021 they showed up, unannounced, with a search warrant at her spacious Sutton Place apartment in Manhattan at 6 a.m. The rooms inside were filled with antiquities, some of which had been purchased from dealers who would later be accused of trafficking in illicit artifacts. Many were displayed in their own nooks or cabinets, and set off by lighting that enhanced their appeal. (Source: NY Times)

Rooms filled with price-is-no-object objects at a splosh Sutton Place address? Sounds ab-fab to me. It really does pay to be a billionaire.  

Meanwhile, over at the Met, "investigators seized another 17 antiquities on loan from White, asserting that they, too, had been stolen."

On the one hand, White's generosity to the Met has been spectacular. 

On the other hand, people are asking, how is it that such a knowledgeable, sophisticated collector, with considerable expertise in her field, didn't know that much of the White/Levy collection was looted. The couple's attorney released a statement saying that, as they built their collection, White and Levy purchased “in good faith, at public auction and from dealers they believed to be reputable," and that, whenever they found that they had a looted item in their collection, they voluntarily returned it. 

Still, there are some raised eyebrows. 

“There is no way,” said Elizabeth Marlowe, the director of the museum studies program at Colgate University, “that someone at her level of the market and her depth of collecting and her prominence at the Met, there is no way someone at that level did not know they should be asking for things like export licenses.”

Critics also say that, even if they purchased items in good faith, once the word got out that some of the dealers they worked with were on the shady side of the provenance continuum, White and Levy should have gone through their entire collection, rather than wait for the authorities to show up at Sutton Place at 6 a.m.  

Even in acknowledging the good White has done in terms of preserving antiquities and raising awareness of their importance and beauty, some are questioning whether the good outweighs the bad (i.e., given the market, there remains a powerful incentive to loot).

The Met isn't jettisoning Shelby White. At least not yet.

She sits on its acquisitions, buildings and finance committees where, as an emeritus trustee, she no longer votes but advises the panels. The museum’s collection is still filled with dozens of antiquities that she either donated or lent. And just weeks ago, when the Met announced its new, stricter initiative on antiquities, White was appointed to a 12-member task force of trustees that will offer “their experience and counsel” to help shape the museum’s collecting practices and other policies with regard to cultural property issues.

The situation is, to put it mildly, awkward. And it's a sad coda to a long and distinguished philanthropic and art collecting career that it should wind down on such a sour note. (White is 84.)

All part of life at the pinnacle, I guess. 

A day without ice cream

A day without ice cream is, well, there's no other way to put it, a day without ice cream. Because it's not akin to a day without sunshine.

After all, as any season-loving New Englander will tell you, a day without sunshine is just fine. Sometimes it's enjoyable to walk out on one of those gray fall days, when the leaves are mostly off the trees but there may still be a few yellow and orange leaves clinging to the branches. One of those days that makes me want to walk up to the closest door, ring the doorbell, and yell 'trick or treat.'

Then there are those snowbound winter days, when the very best thing in the world to do is sit around in a turtleneck and fleece, drinking tea, munching on cookies, and gazing out the window at the falling snow. Oh, and it's even better if you take the opportunity to reread "The Dead," the most brilliant of James Joyce's brilliant short stories. Don't even think about shoveling, which will probably happen on a sunshine-bright day.

April showers? They may bring rainouts of early season games. Last Patriots' Day at Fenway Park was a complete disaster. Cold. Rainy. As my sister Trish and I sat there, chilled and wet, debating whether to give up and go home and watch the game on TV, I could have gone for one of those days with sunshine. And, hey, April showers do bring May flowers. (As for the game: we gave up halfway through the second long rain delay, which took place during the second inning.)

And no-sun summer days can be fine, too. Sure, if it's a stormy day, you have to make sure you're not hit by lightning or deadheaded by a toppling tree. But there's nothing wrong with an occasional day without sunshine, even in summer.

But a day without ice cream?

I do occasionally slip up and go without a bit of ice cream (or even a sugar-free fudgsicle). But there's almost always ice cream (plus sugar-free fudgsicles) in my freezer. 

If it's available at the store, the ice cream will mostly be Brigham's Mocha Almond. But I haven't found any lately. And I'm not the type to accept no substitutes. So while Brigham Mocha Almond is my go-to, I'm fine with Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia or Gifford's Chocolate Raspberry, or, more recently, something from Tillamook. Yes, I like to stay brand-loyal to New England (Brigham's, B&J, and Gifford's of Maine). But Tillamook is pretty darned good. (So's Talenti, for that matter.) And good ice cream is good ice cream.

And good ice cream - or even mezza-mezz ice cream adjacent products like those sugar-free fudgsicles - is for me an essential part of my day, as it has been through much of my life. 

When my family lived in a flat in my grandmother's triple-decker, our fridge had a very tiny freezer. When we had ice cream, it was usually a small brick of Neapolitan (strips of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry), which - because of the freezer's size and limitations - had to be consumed immediately. During the summer, when my father took the family for a "spin" a couple of evenings a week, we'd stop at the Cherry Bowl, Dairy Queen, Smithfield's, or Verna's for ice cream.

When we moved to our own house and had a fridge with a normal freezer, there was always ice cream - vanilla, chocolate chip, cherry vanilla, fudge swirl or orange or lime sherbet. No one gorged on ice cream, but it was there for the asking. And when we took those summer spins, we always stopped for ice cream.

Fast forward, and I'm still a big fan of ice cream. While I haven't done it in a while, there have been times in my life when dinner has been the better part of a pint of ice cream. (Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. Nothing wrong with downing an occasional pint o' Talenti Pistachio, with or without some Stonewall Kitchen Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce.)

To me, a day without ice cream (or something cold that comes out of my freezer that's not an ice cube or a piece of swordfish) is like a day without sunshine ice cream. Or taking a shower. Or doing some reading. Or getting out for a walk. 

But when it comes to ice cream, I guess I'm something of a floating island. 

Consumption of regular dairy ice cream, which does not include frozen yogurt, sherbet or non- and low-fat ice creams, has been falling for years, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

In 1986, the average American ate 18 pounds of regular ice cream, according to the USDA. By 2021, the most recent year of the data, that was down a third to just 12 pounds per person. (Source: CNN)

If a pint of ice cream weighs roughly one pound, well, I'm above average. I don't keep track, but I probably consume 2-3 pints/pounds a month. (A couple of years ago, when my blood sugar was approaching Type 2 diabetes level, I cut most sugar out of my life, but kept an ice cream allowance in there. I have a very prominent sweet tooth - thanks, Dad! - and didn't want to completely deprive myself. By drastically cutting down on sweets, I lost 25 pounds, which is the good news. The less good news: my blood sugar level didn't drop. But my doctor's fine with it. One good thing about becoming a geezer, having a slightly elevated A1C level is okay.)

So why's ice cream consumption plummeting?

Yes, health is a concern. Other than the psychological benefits, and the cherries in Cherry Garcia, there's not a lot that's all that healthy in ice cream. But if ice cream consumption is down for health reasons, you'd think you'd see an accompanying decline in rates of obesity. But, nah.

Another theory is that there are too many other dessert choices out there, in the freezer and on the cookie shelf. Personally, if it's ice cream vs. something else that's sweet, most of the time I'll take the ice cream option.

Then there's the argument that ice cream consumers have become more discerning in their tastes, opting for more expensive premium ice cream. Just buying less of it.

I have no idea what I pay for a pint of ice cream. I tend to be fairly price insensitive. I'll notice if cherries cost $9.99 a pound. Or if avocados are five bucks a piece. Other than that, while - like everyone else - I sigh when I see how much I've spent on groceries, but that's at the aggregate level. I'm in the fortunate position that I don't have to scrutinize the price of every item I buy. Lucky me!

As for ice cream, I'll be putting a spoon in tonight.

Because a day without ice cream...

Knock Knock. Who's there? Never Back Down canvasser...

Dear Reader, 

It will come as no surprise that I really, really, really, really, really don't want to see Ron DeSantis elected president. 

I go back and forth between whether he'd be worse than Trump or not, and the answer to this question is usually: it's pretty much a tie. They're both existential threats to democracy, and I keep asking myself whether DeSantis is more dangerous because he's a bit smarter than Trump, or whether Trump is more dangerous because he's so profoundly damaged, or, in non-professional terms: he's completely unhinged, as in batshit crazy.

In any case, given how I feel about DeSantis, I was absolutely amused by the news that one of his canvassers got caught representing he campaign in a not-so-favorable light. 

DeSantis has a major door-knocking, bell-ringing effort going on in early primary states. He has a super PAC named Never Back Down that's putting hundreds paid canvassers out on the streets. (As an aside, I found the name Never Back Down pretty interesting. I'm guessing that DeSantis really, really, really, really, really wanted to call his super PAC Won't Back Down, and use Tom Petty's song as his walk on number. But he's smart enough to know that the ghost of Tom Petty - or the living, breathing individuals who govern Petty's estate - would come raring out of nowhere to run down that dream.)

About those canvassers:

Trained in Iowa during an eight-day class, some come out of the system with polished pitches, as true believers. Others are just there for a job. (Source: Washington Post)

I'm guessing the canvasser in Charleston, SC, was among the ranks of the latter. In it for the money. 

With his foot on a front porch of a stately home in Charleston, S.C., a canvasser for a $100 million field effort supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) vented on July 7 about a homeowner who he said had told him to get off his lawn.

Speaking on his phone while wearing a T-shirt with “DESANTIS” in big letters and a lanyard representing the Never Back Down super PAC, he used lewd remarks to describe what he would tell the homeowner to do to him. “And I’m a little stoned, so I don’t even care,” he added, holding materials and appearing to wait for another homeowner to come to the door.

Thanks to a handy-dandy Ring doorbell video, which caught this act, this stoner is now out of a job - a job that paid $20-$22 an hour.

LEWD REMARK WARNING: If you're wondering about those lewd remarks, the canvasser was not making them directly to a home owner. He was on the phone, venting to a buddy, saying that if the homeowner said to him "'fuck you, get off my property,' then I'd be like 'fuck you, eat my balls' honestly 'Eat my big, hairy sack.'"

I thought that young folks didn't ever speak on the phone, other than when they were imploring their parents for more money, and the parents made a convo the price they needed to pay. If this jamoke had just used text like all his age peers, he'd probably still have a job. Oh, wait, the person getting the text would probably have posted it somewhere in the social universe. So never mind.

“After learning of the incident, we investigated and terminated the individual,” said Kate Roberts, the national field director of Never Back Down, in a statement. “Our field program is having thousands and thousands of incredible conversations around the country every day. This individual’s behavior is counter to the standards taught in our training and is not tolerated.”

The not-to-be-tolerated behavior on the part of the stoned canvasser occurred against the background of the DeSantis' campaign imploding. 

DeSantis had such high hopes for himself. He was re-elected governor of Florida by an impressive margin. He's gotten a ton of coverage, and he was positioning himself (and the media was abetting him) as an intelligent, knowledgeable, and policy-wonky version of Trump. And he was positioning his wife (and the media was abetting him) as something of a latter-day Jackie Kennedy, right down to the empire-waist ballgowns and opera gloves she sometimes appears in. (Oddly, when it came to what she was wearing, Jackie never wrong-footed it. On the other hand, Casey DeSantis sometimes appears in a low-budget version of the Jackie Look when everyone else is in business casual.)

But Casey DeSantis isn't running for office. Her husband is. And Ron DeSantis is considered an ill-tempered, stiff, nasty and boring candidate. The polls show him with half the support of Trump. And while Trump is also an ill-tempered and nasty candidate, he's anything but stiff - I'm sure his lawyers wish he were a little more button-downed - and the supporters who continue attending his moronic lie-spewing rallies apparently don't find him boring. 

DeSantis has laid off staff, and early backers are said to be snapping their purses shut since they're not getting the poll results they hoped they were paying for. 

Lewd stoner caught on Ring aside, paid canvassing turns a lot of people off. They don't want to be bothered in their homes. They may not like the fact that the person canvassing isn't even from their state. And they really may not like it if they find out that the canvasser is being paid.

While I don't have much sympathy for anyone who supports DeSantis - and even less sympathy for someone who's faking support - I do understand that the canvasser was probably just bored, and showing off to a buddy pretending that he was mouthing off to a voter. 

I'm not big on canvassing, but I've done it a couple of times. 

My first canvassing was in 1968, when I rang doorbells in Jamaica Plain for Gene McCarthy. (At least he won the Massachusetts Democratic primary...)

I hated it.

I found it sufficiently awful that I didn't do it again until November 2004, when I knocked on doors in NH for John Kerry. (At least he won New Hampshire...)

I hated it.

I've also done phone-banking a few times. Which I also hated.

I hate people ringing my bell or my phone. So why would I think anyone else would welcome me ringing theirs? Anyway, I moved on to writing get-out-the-vote postcards. I don't know if these are effective at all, but it makes me feel better than doing nothing. 

But when I canvassed, I supported my candidate. I believed in them.

“They’re just hiring people who don’t even support the candidate. They don’t believe in the candidate,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Virginia Republican congresswoman, who has hired local paid field workers in her races. “Particularly when you’re in a competitive primary, you want someone who is local and knows the state and knows the politics of the state, knows the people, knows who is who. You want people who can speak credibly about a candidate.”

Never Back Down, however, is staying true to its name, and so far remains committed to canvassing, paid or otherwise.  They believe it will pay big dividends for them. 

“By the end of the month [of July] our canvassers will have knocked on more than 1 million doors,” Davison said in a statement. “Every day these canvassers have thousands of conversations, identifying supporters who we’ll later mobilize, as well as identifying undecided voters who get specific follow up based on the conversation at the door.”

And then there's the "frustrated door knocker" in Charleston who lost his cool and lost his job. Maybe he'll find a position that's more suited to his skillset, whatever that skillset may be. And maybe he'll have an awakening and realize that Ron DeSantis should never be president. 

One can only dream...

Well, that was the cruise from hell

Maybe a cruise around Alaska. Maybe a river cruise: Rhine, Moldau, Danube. Maybe something from Portland, Maine to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Maybe.

Mostly, I have zero desire - make that less than zero desire - to go on a cruise. 

So there's no way in hell or heaven that I would have been aboard the Ambassador Cruise Line's good ship Ambition tootled into Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, only to find that their port o' call “coincided with the culmination of a hunt of 40+ pilot whales in the port area."

Oopsa doopsa. 

Certainly nothing that would have been planned for by the Ambition's version of The Love Boat's Julie. (If everyone will gather on the Aloha deck at 0-14-hundred hours, you're in for a real surprise!)

Ambassador Cruise Lines was especially upset, given that they partner with ORCA (the Ocean Research and Conservation Association) to try to get whale hunts to cease and desist.

In their apology, Ambassador said that sustainability is one of the cruise line’s “core values” and that the company fully appreciates that “witnessing this local event would have been distressing for the majority of guests onboard. Accordingly, we would like to sincerely apologise to them for any undue upset.”

“We are dedicated to supporting ORCA in their endeavours to collect data and to monitor whales and dolphins and we are extremely disappointed that this has happened after weeks of trying to open constructive dialogue with the Faroese government and Visit Faroes on these issues,” Christian Verhounig, Ambassador’s CEO in their statement. “We continue to educate our guests and crew not to buy or eat any whale or dolphin meat and stand against any profiteering from commercial whaling and dolphin hunts.” (Source: ABC News)

For their part, the Faroe Islands is not offering any apologies. To the contrary, they gamely pointed out that the Faroese - there are about 53,000 of them living in what is a remote, self-governing archipelago - are whalers, and have been sustaining themselves on whale eat and blubber since the jump, which in their case was over 1,000 years ago when the islands were first settled by Irish monks. (The other dietary mainstays are mutton and potatoes, so the Islands aren't exactly a gourmet paradise. There is, however, a Burger King in Torshavn.)

In their statement, the government said:

"Today, as in times past, the whale drive is a community activity open to all, while also well organised on a community level and regulated by national laws.”

So, while I'm not in a lot of favor of the slaughter of pilot whale innocents, and while killing whales doesn't sound to me like all that swell a community activity, I understand that for the Faroese, pilot whales are their lifeblood. 

Anyway, pretty poor planning on Ambassador's part. Bet that on future runs to Torshavn, they'll call ahead and check whether there's a whale roundup scheduled. Which there well may be.

In 2023 alone, the Faroe Islands has registered 646 whale killings to date, including the 78 on Sunday when the Ambition arrived.

I wonder whether Ambassador Cruise Lines offered its passengers anything more than an apology. Free drinks maybe? Anything but a Bloody Mary...

Anyway, always good to have a reminder of why I have no intention of going on a cruise. On the other hand, if there's a way to actually get to Torshavn, I wouldn't mind spending a couple of days there. (Cuisine aside.) Looks beautiful and wildly interesting.

Whatever happened to "first, do no harm?"

My father had a colleague, Henry, who had his leg amputated. I don't think Henry was my father's boss, but he was higher up in the hierarchy of his company. (I did not, of course, call him Henry. To me, he was Mr. Mxxxxxx.)

I remember going over to Henry's house so my father could drop something off and seeing Henry in his wheelchair, with his stub, shortly after he lost his leg. 

It was not the nature of my parents to discuss personal matters - their own, or those of anyone in the family, among their friends, in the neighborhood, at work, or anywhere else in their acquaintanceship - in front of their children, but, as a child, I was an inveterate eavesdropper - my father nicknamed me Radar Ears - so I'm pretty sure that I somehow learned that Henry's amputation had something to do with his drinking. 

Now I'm guessing that Henry had peripheral artery disease (PAD) which can be associated with alcoholism. 

I didn't exactly know Henry. I was about ten when he lost his leg, and he died not that much longer afterwards. But I can't think of anyone else I've ever known who lost a limb. And I do know that, over the 6+ decades since Henry died, they've certainly made strides in treating those with PAD. 

But there are some folks for whom treatment hasn't done anything other than make matters worse.

Some of them were chronicled in a recent article in the NY Times (which is why Henry M came to mind) that focused on the use of a procedure called atherectomy - and what happens when an atherectomy goes awry. One of the physicians discussed in the article was Dr. Jihad Mustapha, whose patients have suffered an inordinate number of amputations.

Dr. Mustapha is no back-alley operator working in the shadows of the medical establishment, an investigation by The New York Times has found. With the financial backing of medical device manufacturers, he has become a leader of a booming cottage industry that peddles risky procedures to millions of Americans — enriching doctors and device companies and sometimes costing patients their limbs.

The industry targets the roughly 12 million Americans with peripheral artery disease, in which plaque, a sticky slurry of fat, calcium and other materials, accumulates in the arteries of the legs. For a tiny portion of patients, the plaque can choke off blood flow, leading to amputations or death.

But more than a decade of medical research has shown that the vast majority of people with peripheral artery disease have mild or no symptoms and don’t require treatment, aside from getting more exercise and taking medication. Experts said even those who do have severe symptoms, like Ms. [Kelly] Hanna [who lost her leg after multiple procedures] shouldn’t undergo repeated procedures in a short period of time.(Source: NY Times)

An atherectomy isn't the only procedure used to treat PAD, but it may be the riskiest. A disproportionate of patients who have one end up losing a leg. 

Atherectomies are also pretty lucrative. A doctor can make $10K per. And they can be performed assembly-line fashion.

The number of atherectomies performed is growing. In part because Medicare approved outpatient atherectomies, "transforming the  procedure into a surefire moneymaker." If a procedure is performed in the hospital, the doctor only gets a small cut of the action. In their own clinic, they get it all. And private insurers typically follow Medicare in terms of procedures they pay for. So the market isn't just old geezers (although old geezers are more likely to suffer from PAD, of course).

Not to mention that equipment manufacturers quickly figured out that it could be a "surefire moneymaker" for them, too. So big guns like Abbott Labs, Boston Scientific, and Philips jumped in to the atherectomy biz, promoting its use bigtime, even lending physicians money to open up clinics and rewarding "high-volume doctors" who run vascular clinics where there's a lot less regulation and oversight than there would be in hospitals. Like Dr. Mustapha. 

Meanwhile, the research suggests that there's better (and cheaper) treatment for PAD, including lifestyle changes. But atherectomies are lucrative. And they often require repeat procedures, so the lucre train chugs on. 

“There is a clear business motive for treating people with no symptoms,” said Dr. Caitlin Hicks, an associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who has studied the overuse of atherectomies.

Whatever happened to "first, do no harm?"