Have yourself a merry little Samhain

Well, I'm in Ireland, which is definitely appropriate, since this is where Halloween was invented. Other than knowing that the Irish pretty much came up with Halloween, and that the holiday's roots were in pagan Celtic festivals, I wasn't all that up on the subject. 

Fortunately, I found a handy-dandy 2021 blog post from Heather Thomas at the Library of Congress that pretty much filled in all the gaps in my knowledge.

First off, what became Halloween started out as Samhain (that's saw-win to yez), "a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts."

In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III landed on November 1 as a day to honor saints. Not sure whether Pope G was aware of Samhain, but, thanks to St. Patrick et al., Christianity had long since come to Ireland. And, of course, the Church always liked to established holy days to coincide with pagan-based celebrations. And, of course, some of the traditions of those pagan-based celebrations were incorporated into the religious holy days. (Christmas trees, Easter eggs). 

With All Saints' Day observed on November 1, it was just natural to get something going on it's eve. That would be All Hallows Eve, which over time saw its pronunciation mushed into Halloween. 

And naturally some pagan-based traditions made their way in.

Carving Jack-o-Lanterns came from Ireland, but originally what was carved was a turnip, not a pumpkin. I'm all for carving turnips and taking them out of the food chain, but pumpkins actually look better. Anyway, the tradition:

...is allegedly based on a legend about a man named Stingy Jack who repeatedly trapped the Devil and only let him go on the condition that Jack would never go to Hell. But when Jack died, he learned that Heaven did not want his soul either, so he was forced to wander the Earth as a ghost for eternity. The Devil gave Jack a burning lump of coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way. Locals eventually began carving scary faces into their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits.

Ghosts are associated Samhain, as the "Celtic people believed that during the festival, spirits walked the Earth." Eventually, the Christian holiday expanded into All Souls' Day on November 2nd. All Souls' Day - unlike All Saints' Day - never turned into a holy day of obligation. So it wasn't a day off for parochial schools. We did, blessedly, have November 1st off, giving us plenty of time - after we hit an early Mass - to loll around sorting through our trick or treat candy troves.

Costume-wearing began as scary costumes, as, during Samhain, folks wanted to disguise themselves so they wouldn't be taken for ghosts. Scary costumes are still donned, but so are non-scary costumes like Elsa and Elmo. 

There are competing versions of how trick-or-treating came about. It may have come from Samhain, when the Celts "would leave food out to appease the spirits traveling the Earth at night," which morphed into people who decided that it wasn't all that bad to get themselves dressed up as a spirit if they could get some of that food (or drink). 

Another theory of the case is that trick-or-treating came from the Scottish tradition of souling, which had kids and poor adults going from home to home asking for food and money in exchange for praying for departed souls on All Souls' Day. This was eventually replaced by guising, with prayers dropped out and "tricks" (including songs and jokes) dropped in.

A third theory takes us from Ireland and Scotland to America, where some argue that trick-or-treating was brought to us by German-Americans, via their "belsnickeling" practice, a "Christmas tradition where children would dress in costume and then call on their neighbors to see if the adults could guess the identities of the disguised." The kiddos who fooled the grown ups were given a treat. 

I'm a bit skeptical here. As a half-German-American, I've never heard of "belsnickeling," and I'm pretty sure that if this had been a real thing, my German-American mother (who knew everything about everything) would have mentioned it when we were telling her that the Irish invented Halloween.

Thanks to the Celts, black and orange are Halloween's signature colors because "black represented the 'death' of summer while the orange symbolized the autumn harvest season." Makes sense to me. 

Unlike bobbing for apples, which never made much sense to me. Too high a degree of difficulty for too little a payoff. Turns out the bobbing for apples comes from an old Roman courting ritual associated with a festival in honor of Pomona. The timing for the Pomona celebration roughly coincided with Samhain, so when the Romans showed up in ancient times, bobbing for apples became a thing. 

Beggars' Eve (October 30th), which I guess is known in most places as Mischief or Devil's Night, is when - back in my day - boys who thought they were too old for Halloween went out and soaped car windows and TP'd trees. This tradition came to America with Irish and Scottish immigrants. 

Giving out candy on Halloween is mostly a product of post-war candy companies encouraging the practice. Prior to that, "fruit, nuts, coins, and toys were just as likely to be given out."  

Most houses of my childhood were definitely on the candy end of the give outs - thankfully. But one couple ("old folks", Irish immigrants) gave out apples. (Yawn! I could get an apple by opening the fridge.) One family gave out popcorn balls wrapped in orange or black cellophane, another - the father had a Continental Baking route - gave out Hostess Snowballs. And two families where the fathers worked for pharma gave out little plastic ball-bearing puzzles that were giveaways for some company they repped for.)

When I think Halloween, I, of course, think candy corn, which was invented in the US of A. I know it's terrible, but I really do have to have some. I couldn't count on it being available in Dublin, so I smuggled some in.

Happy Samhain! (And thank you, Heather Thomas.)

Rent a mom??? O tempora, o mores...

I didn't have kids, and, although I once was one, that was a very, very, very long time ago. And, as I learned in Latin III, which I took a very, very, very long time ago - when I was, in fact, a kid - O tempora! O mores! Which is Cicero for the times and the customs, they are always a-changing. 

We observe them a-changing is many different ways, including the emergence of new businesses that didn't exist when I was young. Influencer, anyone?

One of them new businesses is actually not that new.

In fact, Tammy Kumin founded her rent-a-mom company, Concierge Services for Students, in 1993. Which is snack dab in the middle of the era when, if I had had kids, I would have had kids. Of course, if I had had kids, I like to think that they wouldn't have needed a rent-a-mom: they would have had me. And I like to think that my kids, by the time they were old enough to be away at school, would have been skilled enough to make their own damned haircut appointments and done their own damned grocery shopping. 

But, since she's been in business now for 30 years, Tammy Kumin obviously identified a need and has been successfully fulfilling it for a good long time. 

When Kumin's business got off the ground, it was focused primarily on international students, where having someone in loco parentis for their kiddo - especially if they're away for pre-college, does make sense. (In loco parentis? Between this and a bit of Cicero, that high school Latin is sure coming in handy!) 

And, of course, if you're not handy, it might be worth it to have someone available to jump "on a plane in the wee hours to bail" your kiddo "out of a Miami jail," or hold your kid's hand in the ER. Even at the cost of $10K a year. 

But most of what Kumin and her staff of four rent-a-moms do is a bit more pedestrian than posting bail or helping a kid with an ER visit. 

For their money, parents can depend on their away-from-home offspring receiving regular food deliveries, academic assistance, beauty and spa appointments bookings, aid in making dinner reservations and signing up for gym memberships, apartment hunting, furniture building, party planning, doctor referrals, summer storage, as well as banking and bill payment support — just to name a few. (Source: NY Post)

Food deliveries? Spa appointments? Dinner rezzies? Party planning? 

FFS. I don't care whether these kids are high school or college age, shouldn't they be able to make their own dinner reservations?

“There are all kinds of things that come up for kids who are studying away from home,” said Kumin. “We’re there for them and they know it. They’re totally comfortable to let us know what they need — all five of us — we all know exactly what’s going on with each kid, how they live, their families, everything.”

However, her job isn’t to replace a young adult’s mom. Instead, she says she’s merely an extension of their mother’s love.

My mother loved me. I loved my mother. But, once I left home for college, there was no way in hell that I would have expected her to run my errands for me. In fact, when I was a kid, it was the kids who ran errands for their parents. Which is how we learned how to do things. 

When I was in first grade, I remember being sent down the block to buy light bulbs at the electric repair shop. Two years later, when I was eight and old enough to cross Main Street, I was frequently dispatched to the grocery store to pick up an onion or whatever else my mother found herself in need of. At 10, I was going door-to-door on a snowy February afternoon, collecting money for the Heart Fund - which was something my mother had signed up for. And so on and so forth. 

Given my family circumstances - my father suffered from kidney disease throughout my high school and college years, and died during my senior year in college - I probably had more responsibility than a lot of other kids my age. But everyone I knew growing up learned how to do plenty of things on their own.

Childhood to adolescence includes - or should include - a progression of learning how to take care of tasks that, once you've mastered them, put you well on the way to responsible adulthood. 

I am literally chortling out loud at the thought of being away at college and asking my real mother, let alone a rent-a-mom, to run out to the grocery store for a can of soup because I hated what they'd served for dinner in the cafeteria.

I understand that Kumin's service provides more, and that she does provide comfort and joy - even home-cooked meals at Kumin's house - to kids away from home, especially international students.

But then there's the 18 year old kid from New York whose family paid for her services:

“If I was homesick or needed a haircut or a point of comfort, and my parents were four hours away in New York, Tammy was there in 15 minutes,” said the high school senior. 

"Needed a haircut." Res ipsa loquitur.

I guess the good news is that this kid has aged out of the services and is now able to take care of things like haircuts on his very own own.

I paid a visit to Kumin's website, and here's what they have to say for themselves:

Sending your child off to school in a different country or state is emotional along with stressful. CSS is here to take the burden of your worries off your shoulders by offering a comprehensive concierge service for students. From pre-prep to post graduates our experienced staff will handle all aspects of getting your student settled into their home-away from home. Our team will available to your student 24 hours a day 7 days a week in case of emergencies from medical appointments to trouble on campus. 

I get the "in case of emergencies," especially if parents are far away. But then there's the list of the services her company provides:

PERSONAL SERVICES
Laundry/Dry Cleaning
Grocery Shopping
Food Deliveries
Dinner Reservations
Beauty/Spa Appointments
Gym Memberships
Car Services
Doctor Referrals
Hospital Assistance
Party Planning
Package Services
Travel Arrangements
Summer Storage
Banking, Bill Payment, and Insurance
Legal
Transportation

I'll give them that Doctor Referrals, Hospital Assistance, Summer Storage, and Legal. Even Banking, Bill Payment, and Insurance. These are things that parents might want the rent-a-moms to assist with, especially for high school and "pre-prep" kids, even college and older if the families are overseas, although in the digital age, most of these transactions can be handled remotely. 

But I really draw the line at items like Party Planning and Grocery Shopping. 

These aren't rent-a-mom tasks. I can't think of one mother I know who'd be doing this for their college-aged kids. (Okay, if your child is sick, you might hop on line and order groceries for them. Wait. I take that back. If your kid's too sick to place an online grocery order, they probably should be in the infirmary or at home.)

No, most of these don't require a mom's involvement - rent-a-mom or real mom. They're tasks that someone who's rich and spoiled would have someone else take care of for them.

There are no Latin words that come to me now. Just oy!

Oh, dear. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

When I first read this story, a month or so ago, my first reaction was Dr. Yuck. 

Sure, Scott Burke is a retired physician, but who wants to find out they'd ever had anything to do with a doctor who was involved in a sordid sex, drugs, and rock and roll guns situation on his par-tay boat, which was docked in Nantucket Harbor. (Not that  amything unusual about sex and drugs on Nantucket. But I'm guessing that the sex doesn't usually include making porn films. And guns? Definitely not what I imagine would be the jam of the toffs on Nantucket.)

In early September, Nantucket police got a call from a guy saying that he believed a friend of his (a 33-year-old woman) had OD'd on the good ship JessConn (a yacht out of the

Caymans, by way of Key Largo). The fellow had been FaceTiming with his friend, who told him that she was on a boat where they were shooting porn videos and doing drugs a-plenty. Then the FaceTime session - or maybe it was the young woman - blacked out. 

So, a call to the cops. 

They found the woman "awake but extremely lethargic" and took her to the hospital. They also found a handgun, a bag full of cocaine, and "two clear packages containing 'multiple blue pills." Multiple blue pills? Well, those could have been entirely innocent. Or not.

Overall:

After receiving a search warrant, investigators seized a number of items from the yacht, including more than 43 grams of cocaine and 14 grams of ketamine, $2,300 in cash, two guns and ammunition, and a pair of priority overnight FedEx envelopes, according to court papers. (Source: Boston Globe)

As far as I know, there's nothing illegal about being in possession of FedEx envies. For all we know it contained nothing more than those little blue pills. The innocent ones.

Burke was arrested.

At the police station, he told investigators the woman “was an employee of the boat” who was hired three to four weeks earlier, the affidavit said. He said a second woman had been staying on the vessel and that she had been drinking and taking Adderall.

“Burke also denied any knowledge of any illegal narcotics on the yacht,” police said.

At a hearing, Burke's attorney said that, just prior to his arrest, Burke had entertained more than a dozen guests on his boat, some of them who were guests of crew members. The crew members had taken off to go to the wedding, and the lethargic woman - a friend of a crew member - wasn't heading to the wedding, so asked to stay on board.  

It was a "'disgruntled ex-boyfriend'" who called the police and triggered the search. 

Anyway, the charges against the good doctor are pretty harsh:

Burke is charged with cocaine trafficking, possession to distribute ketamine, illegal gun possession, and possession of a large capacity feeding device, records show. (Source: Boston Globe)

Oh, and woman on board - and a couple others - may have been working girls, and may or may not have been involved in the porn video making.

Overall, the story was so sordid, so yucky, that I got the creeps at the thought of Scott Anthony Burke as someone's doctor, even if he had retired from practice. (Not that I harbor any fantasy that having MD after your name confers goodness or nobility on anyone. I've read plenty about doctors who are also criminals. Just recently, there was news about a local rheumatologist who'd been giving female patients uncalled for pelvic and breast exams for years. And the last time I hero-worshipped a doctor was at age 12, when I was in love with Dr. Kildare.)

Still, the thought of such a louche character being a doctor. Well, yuck.

But Burke - who last I looked was out on bail - has a highly-regarded past at odds with any current debauchery.

In court, [attorney Hank] Brennan said Burke was a successful surgeon for 35 years and described him as a “humanitarian” who has traveled to Haiti and Rwanda to provide medical services to people in need. Brennan said his client has given “an enormous portion” of his wealth away through donations to colleges and scholarship programs.

“There is a lifetime history of a humanitarian nature that shows the character of this man,” Brennan said.

Well, what's a defense attorney going to say? So there's that.

But there's nothing in Burke's past to suggest that he'd end up a drug-running, gun-toting, porn-maker. And it's hard to think of someone traveling to hellholes like Haiti and Rwanda to help out people who are profoundly suffering being a total scumbag. (Am I being naive here? It just seems so at odds.)

Oh, he did move out of direct humanitarian work to go into business, having founded an insurance company that's involved with helping the un- and underinsured pay for healthcare if they've been injured in a car accident. Admittedly, this sounds a bit ambulance chasing, but it's not illegal. (Burke is no longer involved in the company, but both of his children - the Jessica and Connor of JessConn name/fame - do work there. Both of them seem entirely reputable, at least according to LinkedIn.)

But wait, there's more.

[Attorney Hank] Brennan said Burke, a divorced father of two adult children, is suffering from late-stage cancer and likely won’t live long enough to see the case resolved.

Burke takes medication and meets regularly with a Miami doctor, but “it is conceded that he will not survive,” Brennan said. (Source: Yet another Boston Globe story)

Yesterday, I wrote about mega-billionaires who want to live for ever.

Maybe only-a-millionaire Dr. Burke just wants to play out his string by indulging in carnality. 

People react to their impending death in different ways. 

A few days before he died, I overhead my husband on the phone canceling a credit card. He was explaining why he was canceling the card: "I'm going to be dead pretty soon, and I don't want my wife to have to deal with this." (Of course, Jim didn't have access to a yacht...)

Maybe Burke has always been a creep. But maybe he's just mad as hell that he's dying at the age of 69 and is all about the last ditch fantasies. 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

Fame! I gonna live forever! Baby, remember my name!

Ask me when the time comes, but I really have no desire to live forever.

Sure, I'd like to be around long enough to see how a few things turn out (including, I must admit, my own life). And I'm not in any hurry to exit stage left, thank you. 

But I'm pretty sure there'll come a point when I'm worn out, slowed down, and fed up. And when that time comes, I hope that I'll bow out gracefully - or with as much grace as someone who's worn out, slowed down, and fed up can muster. 

This is, of course, just me, and I'm sure there are many folks out there who'll be fighting loose and wobbly tooth, and split and pitted nail, to stay above ground.

Not surprisingly, some of them are billionaires.

After all, you can't take it with you, and if you have a lot of "it" burning a hole in your pocket, I can see how you might want to hang around and keep spending. Imagine how immense your bucket list would be if you had near-infinite money?

Why wouldn't one of those bucket list items be "live forever?" Why wouldn't you want to spend some of your near-infinite money on the secret sauce, the magic elixir, the DNA manipulation that would help you stay alive?

Not surprisingly, some of these billionaires are investing some of their loot piles in biotechs looking for a science-based version of the Fountain of Youth. 

Jeff Bezos put some of his enormous stack o' chips on Altos Lab, "an anti-aging startup," where he's in the excellent company of fellow multi-multi-multi-billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. 

Altos, of course, is not explicitly focused on keeping Bezos and Ellison alive so they can compare loot piles. (Bezos has a few more bucks than Ellison, but they both have well over $100 billion. Remember when we used to think that being a billionaire put you in the wealthy category? Good times!)

They are looking for ways to improve cellular health and resilience through a process called cellular rejuvenation. The group's goals are to reverse the occurrence of injury, disabilities and age-related diseases so people can live longer and healthier lives. (Source: Yahoo)

Yay to reversing the ravages of injury, disabilities, and age, but the suspicion is that Ellison and Bezos are laser-beaming on the age-related end of things, especially for Ellison, who's 79. (Comparatively, at 59, Bezos is a fine broth of a lad.)

Bezos is hedging his live-forever investments by joining Peter Thiel in betting on Unity Biotechnology. 

The company's mission is to create "transformative medicines to slow, halt or reverse diseases of aging," according to the company's website. The company's initial focus is on therapeutic remedies for age-related neurological conditions and various ophthalmologic diseases.

As billionaires go, Thiel is pretty meh, estimated to be worth a paltry $10-ish B. Still, he's made some smart money plays, so his money sense is pretty good.

Ellison also has a couple of side bets.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman has put some money in Retro Biosciences, which is mucking around with rejuvenating T cells. (An aside: I misread Sam Altman as Sam Bankman Fried.)

There are also opportunities for OpenAI's ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to find novel ways to combat aging, such as discovering new drug combinations or exciting therapies that can prevent age-related diseases.

No one with be shocked to find that Mark Zuckerberg is also in the hunt. Alongside Priscilla Chan (Zuck's wife) and Sergey Brin, he helps fund the Breakthrough Prize which awards "scientific advances, including anti-aging developments.

Bezos and Zuckerberg aren't waiting for some breakthrough to keep them going. Both of them are avid fitness buffs, and Zuckerberg was in some recent back-and-forth with Elon Musk that at one point looked like it was going result in a cage match between the two guys.

Curiously, Musk - who's worth almost as much as these other guys combined - isn't investing in anti-aging companies:

Musk, an outlier in the billionaires-funding-aging club, has said in interviews on the subject, "I certainly would like to maintain health for a longer period of time. But I am not afraid of dying. I think it would come as a relief."

I can assure Elon Musk that it would come as a relief to many of us. 

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.

A nightmare at the opera

I must admit, I'm not a big opera buff. 

Oh, when I do happen to hear opera, I like it just fine. It's just that I rarely if ever seek it out.

I think I've only seen an opera once. I was in high school, and we bussed into Boston one afternoon for either La Bohème or La Traviata. One of those operas where the woman dies of consumption. I just can't recall whether it was Mimi or Violetta. 

Most of what I recall of that day is that we were one of the few high school groups there, and that the grammar school kids in the audience were completely running amok, screaming up and down the aisles and blowing on their Good 'n Plenty boxes as if they were horns. 

I also recall that Mimi and Rodolfo - or was it Violetta and Alfredo - were cracking up on stage at the mayhem in the audience.

And that was my one and only in person opera experience, unless one of the handful of performances I remember as ballet was actually an opera. 

But I know enough about opera to know that the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts are a Saturday staple on NPR. This year's season is kicking off soon. 

The Met's Saturday afternoon broadcasts are slated to begin on Dec. 9 and run through June 2024. The Met has been broadcasting productions from its house since 1931; currently, the broadcasts are heard in 35 countries worldwide, including via 600 stations in the U.S. (Source: NPR)

But one North Carolina radio station, WCPE, doesn't approve of much of what's on the agenda. The show might go on in NYC, but in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, station management won't be broadcasting six operas because of their content. 

WCPE's protest comes at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men. Three of the operas that WCPE plans to reject in the 2023-24 season were written by Black or Mexican composers. This past April, WCPE also refused to broadcast another Met-produced opera written by a Black composer that included LGBTQ themes....Most of WCPE's objections relate to depictions of violence or the presence of LGBTQ subject material; in another instance, [founder and general manager Deborah[ Proctor objects to a composer's "non-biblical" meditation on the birth of Jesus.

While it's somewhat surprising that an NPR station, especially one in a pocket of liberalism like Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, would object to edgy content, it turns out that this NPR station hasn't used any NPR news for a decade, presumably because it's a bit too liberal to their taste. So there's that.

One of the operas that Proctor objects to is Dead Man Walking, which is based on Sister Helen Prejean's book about Louisiana's death row. First performed in the year 2000, Dead Man the opera is "reportedly the most performed opera written in the 21st century."

Proctor terms it a "shock opera" that may not stand "the test of time."

In its current Met production, Dead Man Walking opens with a graphic depiction of rape and the murders of two teenagers and concludes with another vividly depicted death; as with some of its other offerings, the Met uses a content warning about the work.

Hmmm. I'm no opera expert, but isn't there a lot of violence (often against women) in a lot of operas.

Ah, but that's different. I guess.

In her conversation with NPR, Proctor contrasted Dead Man Walking with other, much older operas in which sexual violence, rape, suicide and murder are major plot points. Dead Man Walking, she argued, is based on a true story, while other operas that are canonical repertoire but violent as well, are fictional and therefore less potentially traumatizing. Such operas — all scheduled as part of the Met's 2023-24 broadcast season, and all of which Proctor still plans to broadcast — include Bizet's Carmen and Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, as well as Puccini's Turandot and Madama Butterfly.

Oh, I see. Violence that's canonical and fictional isn't traumatizing, but violence that's current and real-life isn't.

Proctor also objects to The Hours because there's a suicide in it. (C.f., Madama Butterfly. But I guess that's canonical and fictional, while The Hours is fictional and noncanonical. I guess The Hours is a baddy because it's based on the life of Virginia Woolf, a real person, and thus traumatizing. Not to mention the Woolf was bi.)

Another problem she has is with vulgar language, which is not only present, but in English. (Fainting couch, please.) Please note that the Met blanks out the vulgar language in its broadcasts.

There's some pretty contorted reasoning going on there. 

In an interview with NPR:

Repeatedly, Proctor also appealed to the sensibilities of any children who might tune into her station or come across it online and said that her personal values were integral to her decision-making. Breaking into tears on the phone, Proctor said: "I have a moral decision to make here. What if one child hears this? When I stand before Jesus Christ on Judgement Day, what am I going to say?"

Children tuning into their local NPR station on a Saturday afternoon to listen to opera? Maybe the kids in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill are different than the kids in any other American area, in that they're sitting in their house listening to the radio As opposed to running around a soccer pitch. Or sitting in their bedroom playing something on their tablets. As we used to say in the early days of texting, ROFLMAO.

And, if I'm not an expert on opera, I'm not an expert on Judgement Day, either. But while I may be proven wrong, I don't believe that Jesus Christ is going to be all that judgey about Deborah Proctor enabling an opera-listening child to hear something more appropriate for a mature audience. 

But if he were going to go full bore judgmental, why wouldn't that apply to a child's witnessing Jose killing Carmen, or Butterfly killing herself?

And every day there are roughly 150,000 deaths worldwide. Won't Jesus Christ be too busy to focus on the minutia of Met broadcasts?

Maybe Deborah Proctor knows her audience. She claims they support her decision, and they may well. But objecting to operas for their adult themes and violence, their blanked out strong language, is pretty hypocritical. Why not just say that her supporters don't want to listen to anything modern, anything challenging, anything new, anything not written by a long-dead Italian, German, or Frenchman. 

Who knew that the opera was going to be yet another focus of the culture war? What a ridiculous nightmare.

Toxic person selling toxic salt

I'm a big believer in the right to die.

If someone's dying of something terrible - ALS, cancer - and all that's between the person is and death is misery, loss of agency, and profound suffering (physical and existential), and they'd like to cut to the chase, I'm all for it.

When my husband was dying of something terrible - that would be cancer - we did a low-key look at whether Jim, as a Vermont native, would be eligible for a physician-assisted death in his home state, which is a right to die state. 

Turned out he wasn't eligible, and I don't know whether we would have pursued the option even if he had been. 

When Jim began home hospice, they delivered - among other drugs - a supply of morphine, which we never touched. Jim was adamant that he would never ask me to help him die by giving him an overdose. He didn't want me living with any guilt, and he most definitely didn't want me getting into any sort of legal entanglement.

As it turned out, Jim spent his last week or so in the hospital, in an ad hoc hospice arrangement that his wonderful doctors arranged for him. And his last 45 minutes on earth were spent in an official hospice facility. (The agreement with MGH was that Jim could stay there, as long as he was on a wait-list for a real hospice.) For that last week or so, Jim was given morphine as needed, but was never - except for a couple of weird moments - out of it.

Anyway, we didn't need physician-assisted death, but I'm all for it.

But that's for people who are dying of something terrible. Not for a 17 year-old kid who thinks he wants to end it all.

And a 17 year-old kid in Michigan was one of the 100 or so suicides linked to Kenneth Law, a Canadian chef (former) who was running some e-commerce sites selling lethal doses of sodium nitrite, a toxic salt. Law was also selling "suicide kits," and allegedly provided coaching to those who intended to take their own lives. 

Law has been charged with aiding 14 suicides. Many more deaths in the UK are under review to see if Law should be charged there as well. (Officials in the US, New Zealand, Italy, and Ireland are also looking into connections between Law and suicides in their country.)

Overall, Law's businesses "shipped about 1,200 packages of toxic salt to people in 40 countries." 

In Canada, where investigators said Mr. Law shipped 160 packages, he has been charged by multiple police agencies in Ontario with counseling or aiding suicide. The victims were between 16 and 36 years old. (Source: NY Times)

Law has yet to be arraigned. That's coming next week. But he is being held in jail. Law intends to plead not-guilty, his attorney asserting that nothing that Law has done rises to the level of criminality. (Canada does have assisted death. Physicians and NP's "are exempted from criminal charges of counseling or aiding suicide, which have a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison." Law is not a medical professional...)

The toxic salts that Law was selling have many other uses, most notably as a food preservative. But Law's website was apparently all about the suicide use case.  And death-by-toxic-salt has becoming something of the "it" method, and is trending in Canada and elsewhere as a suicide means. 

One of the American kids who died after consuming sodium nitrite from Law was Anthony Jones. 

Tonia Jones, from the Detroit area, remembers her son Anthony as a "good kid" who loved sweets, devoured books and enjoyed anime. Since his death in February 2022, Tonia has tried to warn other parents to "watch for warning signs" of loved ones in distress.

After Anthony ingested a substance purchased online, he ran to his mother and screamed, "I want to live, I want to live," Tonia said. He was rushed to hospital, but it was too late.

A torn-up paper invoice was later found nearby, showing Anthony's address and a company name associated with Law. (Source: CBC)

Rushing to his mother screaming "I want to live..." How unimaginably awful for this mother, for this child.

The last thing an immature, impulsive child of 17 needs is some goon on the Internet telling him how to kill himself, and providing the means. 

What kind of a ghoul thinks this is a good business?

How was your meal at Mehran's?

It started as a joke. And lasted as a joke for a good long time. Before it ended as a magnificent performance art hack of a joke.

A group of 20-something techies were bunking together in a NY Upper East Side (UES) brownstone - sixteen Gen-Z-ers sharing  4BR digs. If my arithmetic holds, that's four occupants per bedroom, which means these kiddos were literally bunking on bunkbeds. Some were event sleeping in closets.

Sixteen folks sharing four bedrooms? Sounds god-awful, but this is something of the norm for young folks in Manhattan, especially those on temporary gigs.

A friend has a niece who's been working in NYC since she graduated from Tufts a year ago. She's only there for a couple of years, doing some lab thing as she applies to med school. But while she's there, she's in a one bedroom flat, sleeping in half of the living room, with some sort of curtain rigged up to separate her space from that of one of her roommates. The roomie whose name is on the lease gets the bedroom.

Anyway, one of the UES Brownstone Sixteen, Danielle Egan, decided to rename their address on Google Maps. She did so in honor of her housemate Mehran Jalali, who regularly cooked steaks for communal dinners, naming their place Mehran's Steak House.

A week after the listing was posted in March 2022, Mr. Jalali, now 21, said, “A couple walked in like, ‘We’re here for the steak.’” The roommates turned them away, but their listed phone number rang off the hook. The friends toyed with the idea of opening a real restaurant, and Mr. [Riley] Walz, also 21, built a website with a waiting list. (Source: NY Times)

And then it was just a matter of a few clicks to compose some joke reviews. One joke review led to another, and before you knew it, Mehran's was the highest rated steakhouse on the UES, with:

...a near-perfect Google rating, with 91 glowing reviews: “Best steak I have ever had in NY,” “Words cannot explain how phenomenal the steak was” and “Chef Mehran is a genius-god among men.”

One reviewer claimed that, thanks to Mehran's, he'd converted from veganism.  

With those glowing reviews, folks start signing up to get on the waiting list for reservations. 

Yet few diners have been lucky enough to land a reservation. Mehran’s website and voice mail state that the restaurant, on East 83rd Street in Manhattan, is fully booked for months, an irresistible challenge for New Yorkers who treat reservation-hunting like a professional sport.

Pretty soon, Mehran's had a waiting list with over 2,000 experience-seeking carnivores on it, waiting for the Godot of a table to open up. 

Meanwhile, there were some suspicious minds starting to poke around looking for the mysterious steakhouse. Figuring that the jig would soon be up, the housemates - most of them having decamped to the other Coast - "decided it was time to give the restaurant a go."

They booked an event space in the East Village, contacted people from the online waiting list of more than 900, and did some market research.

“We put our money together to go to two steakhouses, one big and one small, to see what they were like.” At STK and &Son, the friends quizzed waiters about restaurant and server logistics.

They developed a four-course menu ($114 before tax, tip and wine), and asked the chef Elias Bikahi of Le Sandwich to taste and critique their dishes.

Late this summer, staffed by 60 friends of Jalali, Walz, and Egan, Mehran's had a one night stand. 

It wasn't all that high end a staff. 

Almost none of the volunteers had any cooking experience, and were randomly assigned prep work by Mr. Walz and Mr. Jalali. As Anson Yu, a pescatarian, patted dry 114 pounds of rib-eyes, Mr. Jalali asked the team, “Do the steaks get seasoned before or after the sear?”

But this was such a great Gen-Z opportunity.

Ms. Yu, an engineering intern, flew from Montreal just for the occasion. “People are terminally online and constantly watching other people live lives,” she said, and “when people, like Riley and Mehran, are high-agency, it attracts people like moths.”

And, in a true case of "if they build it, they will come" it wasn't just fake staff who showed up. So did diners. Some had been on the waiting list for nearly a year, and when they got the call that there was a table, they grabbed it.

The menu purported to follow the life cycle of a cow. As diners at the pop-up’s 35 tables tucked into courses like Meadows Bring Life (a mixed green salad), Youth: Ever Precious, Ever Fleeting (veal meatballs) and Agrarian Synergies (bruschetta with mozzarella), some diners became suspicious.

“We were laughing because it was like, ‘Do you think we’re being punked?’” said Leigh Wade, an OB-GYN who was there with her husband, Richard Iuorio, an emergency room doctor who’d waited for a reservation since February.

Milk was poured as if it were wine. After all, milk is, as a server explained, "part of the bovine life cycle."

Even if diners were being punked, they were also being fed. And entertained. Performance aspects included people standing outside trying to convince diners and passers-by that Drake was in the house. And there was a fake marriage proposal. 

One diner thought he was witnessing a "social experiment." Perhaps "an NYU production." Another figured out it was some sort of "shtick" being played out, a "punch line of some online joke between a bunch of friends."

Bingo!

The food got mixed reviews. One diner likened it to "wedding buffet." Some sent their plates back to the kitchen. Others found the steak was just fine. (One just shrugged: "I've spent more on less.") One couple, having found out that there really is no Mehran's, is supposedly threatening legal action. (FFS: what harm was done to them? Or maybe Mehran's is just being punked back...)

I got a real kick out of this story.

It was enough that Gen-Z is going to vote and great numbers and save the Republic. Mehran's is frosting on the cake.

One more reason to love Gen-Z. 

This'll sure get the young folks to stay in Mississippi

By most measures, the state of Mississippi ranks at or near the bottom. Health. Wealth. Education. You name it...

Not surprisingly, they suffer from a brain drain, with many of their educated young fleeing the state to find better opportunities elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere. 

Sure, the state (like most states) enjoys a low unemployment rate. But the largest employer (among companies with their HQ in the state) is a poultry processor.

So, many young folks flee.

But some don't, even when they get the opportunity.

One such person is Shad(rack) White, who is the State Auditor. 

A graduate of the University of Mississippi, he's a Rhodes Scholar who earned a master's degree from Oxford, and a law degree from Harvard, where he headed up the HLS chapter of the Federalist Society. These are the sorts of credentials that provide a golden ticket to everywhere else. 

But Shad White wanted to come back home, where after some work on the political front and a stint in the private sector (law firm), he was appointed auditor, a position he was later elected to.

As auditor, I'm not saying White hasn't done some good.

He's gone after corruption/fraud in the program that was supposed to administer funds to needy families. (Among others swept up in this investigation: local hero and football great Brett Favre. He has not, as of now, been criminally charged.) 

White also went after corruption among pharmacy managers, netting a large settlement for the state.

So Shad White does some good things.

It would certainly be no surprise if he ends up in Congress, or in the Senate, if one of Mississippi's less than impressive senators decides to pack it in. 

But Shad White is also positioning himself on the frontlines of the culture wars with a recommendation that the state defund some degree programs that he dubs "indoctrination factories."

White said there should be no taxpayer funding for “useless degrees" in “garbage fields” like Urban Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, German Literature, African American Studies, Gender Studies and Women's Studies. (Source: ABC News)

As a Sociology major, I'm affronted that White considers this a "garbage field." I will note that his undergraduate degree was in Economics and Political Science, which was my minor. I suppose someone can argue that Economics, that dismal ol' science, is rigorous. But if Shad White wants to explain to me what's scientific about Political Science, I'm all ears. 

Anyway, he wants the state to focus its educational investment on what the Mississippi workforce needs.

Too many college graduates are leaving Mississippi, and aligning degree programs with labor market demand might stem the tide, White said.

...One way to stop the outmigration is to have the state increase funding in degree programs with higher earning potential right after graduating, such as in engineering or business management, according to White's report.

There's certainly nothing wrong with "aligning degree programs with labor market demand." Many states do this, particularly when it comes to the curricula in community colleges. I'm all for opening up economic opportunities.  

But I'd like to know what degrees were pursued by those graduates who fled the state? 

I'm sure that Sociology and Gender Studies majors may have decided to get the hell out of Mississippi. But I'm also pretty sure that graduates with more superbly aligned degrees like engineering and business aren't letting the door hit their asses on the way out, either. 

White's recent report somewhat acknowledges this:

"Some high-paying degree programs were not likely to produce graduates who work in Mississippi, and this represents a missed opportunity for the state’s taxpayers," the report said. “Producing more of these graduates and then retaining even a small number of them would inject millions of additional dollars into Mississippi’s economy.”

Looks like they're only expecting to retain a few of their "high-paying degree programs" grads. They really do get that a lot of those grads want out of Mississippi. Which is the real problem, not the fact that there are a couple of German Lit majors at at Ole Miss. 

So, what's the real point here, other than taking pot shots at degree programs Shad White doesn't like so he can polish his MAGA cred.

I know, I know. Many colleges and universities - both public and private - are evaluating their offerings, and coming down on the side of more practical courses of study. But I'm sure hoping that, even if you can't major in one of Shad White's "garbage fields," there are still plenty of liberal arts courses for all those accounting and computer science grads.

Why shouldn't a student be able to take a course where they read Heinrich Boll's brilliant fiction on war? Why shouldn't a student be able to study other cultures? 

Why shouldn't someone be able to learn about the Great Migration of Blacks from the Deep South to the North?

Those folks went North for economic opportunity and in hopes that life would be better elsewhere for their kids. 

Sure, it didn't always pan out. The North didn't prove to be any Nirvana for Black folks. (Plenty of racism, but far less likelihood of being lynched.) 

But the young folks leaving Mississippi - Black and white - are looking for the same thing those internal migrants of the Great Migration were. And getting rid Urban Studies isn't going to change that calculus any.

Maybe there's a better way to get Mississippi's college graduates to stay put. Better health. Better housing. Better education. 

Shad White's a pretty smart fellow. I'm sure he can think of something. It just might not garner the attention that taking a rabid bite out of the liberal arts does.

My love affair with tiny houses

Whenever I'm in a hotel room, my mind automatically goes to thinking about how I could configure the space to live in it. This sort of fantasizing is an extension of my childhood preoccupation with imagining, while I was lolling in the bathtub, how I could turn the bathroom into my home. (Fold-down bed over the tub, minifridge under the sink...) 

My fantasy vacation place is one of Brownie's Cabins on Route 6 in Wellfleet. (If anything's on my bucket list, it's a week or two in one of these little gems. The only downside: you really do need a car to get to and fro.)

Maybe I couldn't live in one of those 100 square foot NYC apartments, but I know I could go small. 

I lived for a number of years in a studio apartment (which quite nicely had a separate kitchen, a separate foyer, pretty good closet space, and an alcove that served as an office). And, although I would prefer something with a separate bedroom, I'm pretty sure I could do it again. Which is a good thing, given that - if I live long enough - I will need to be in a smaller space if I need assisted living.

Right now, I have 1,240 square feet. If and when I decide to up stakes here - which will likely come at some point, given that I have a narrow, winding interior stairway which, although I do have a railing, just ain't going to age well - I'm destined to live in smaller quarters at some point. 

Anyway, because of my lifelong love affair with tiny living, I have long been enamored of the tiny house movement. 

I avidly watched the tiny house show when it was on HGTV, and once went to a tiny house exhibit in Brattleboro, VT. 

So I was a bit dismayed to see a recent headline in Wired that read Whatever Happened to the Tiny House Movement?

Oh, no!

One of the first tiny-house folks - Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses - is sometimes credited as the father of the "minicottage aesthetic that launched the [tiny house] fantasy. He kicked things off in the late nineties/early oughts. 

The idea particularly seemed to enchant people who idealized a low-footprint, quality-over-quantity style of life—one in which they could awaken in a loft bed, wrap themselves in linen, brew a French press in a compact yet exquisitely designed kitchen, emerge onto the tiny dew-covered porch, and sip thoughtfully as sunlight filtered through pine needles.

At my age, I really couldn't do the sleep-in-the-loft thing, even if there were a staircase (vs. a rope ladder). No way this girl is going downstairs to pee in the middle of the night. And, no, emptying a chamber pot would NOT work. Plus I don't drink coffee, so I wouldn't be brewing with my French press. But "exquisitely designed...dew-covered porch..." Yeah, it does enter my mind. 

There's so much to like about tiny houses. Cheaper than a normal-sized home, let alone a super-sized McMansion. Smaller environmental footprint. Less storage, so it discourages mindless over consumption. Plus so damned cute...and oh so Instagrammable...

Alas, tiny houses never caught on in anything more than a tiny way. 

If you watch HGTV, most home buyers fall into the bigger = better category. They need a great room, two offices, guest quarters, an ensuite master, walk in closets. 

People may not want to live in a tiny house - and, admittedly, tiny house living is really not compatible with having kids, or even having a spouse; I definitely couldn't have done a tiny house with my husband; 1240 sq. ft. worked fine, mostly because it was on two floors - but apparently a lot of fantasizers wouldn't mind vacationing in one. These days:

You’re more likely to encounter one while scrolling through $300-a-night Airbnb listings than browsing Zillow.

The "movement," which started out as pro-sustainability, has shifted to pro-greed. And so we have vacationers playing at being weekend sustainabililty-ites, and landlords raking it in. In the same way, a ton of apartments and houses have been swept off the old-fashioned, once-normal real estate market. When once these apartments and houses would have been available to buy or rent, they're now in the short-term, more lucrative game. 

Some of the decline in the hottie rating of the tiny house movement is the inevitable petering out of (and backlash to) any fad. Let alone the reaction to one that was so virtue-signaling, as the tiny house movement was associated with holier than thou, anti-consumption snobbery. (No wonder I was drawn to it...)

But it turns out that it wasn't just greed-heads who were drawn to tiny housing. Sometimes it was outright fraudsters. 

As in Matthew Sowash, a Colorado (where else!) tiny house builder (as CEO of Holy Ground Tiny Homes), who cheated 189 tiny house buyers out of $6M, taking deposits but never delivering a finished product.

The nonprofit company spent more than $400,000 to buy and repair race cars and other vehicles in addition to $35,000 in real estate in Colorado and Alaska, according to an 81-page report filed Friday and obtained by the local Fox affiliate station. (Source: NY Post)

Doesn't sound like Sowash was much of a businessman from the jump.

The tiny home company was operating at a loss, according to the report. It spent $4.4 million on materials to construct homes it then sold for just $2.6 million in 2021 and did even worse the following year — spending $5.3 million on materials for homes sold for $2 million, the [company's bankruptcy] filing states. 

What an awful business model. Nonprofit, indeed. 

Despite the dimming of the movement, I'm still a tiny house fan girl. Maybe some day... (Brownie's Cabins or bust!)

Fly-by-night airplane parts providers? Oh, swell.

After a lot of hibernating during covid, I've done a fair number of plane trips this year. 

Long Island (JFK). Tucson. Ireland. Chicago. Long Island (JFK). Portland OR (trip to the state of Washington). NYC. Washington DC. 

Flying Jet Blue, American, and Aer Lingus.

And for all the time I've spent in he air, I can honestly say I didn't spend a nano-second worrying about whether the plane was going to fall apart. That's because, for all their flaws, airlines actually have pretty good safety records. Especially the airlines you've heard of - like Jet Blue, American, and (if you're me, and you've made quite a few trips to Ireland) Aer Lingus.

On a metaphorically fly-by-night airline I might think twice.

One of those fly-by-nighters was ValuJet, which, thanks to an appalling safety lapse, had a flight go down in the Evergladesback in 1996.

A week or so later I was on a red-eye from the West Coast back to Boston. A United flight. Somewhere along the line, the pilot got on to thank us for choosing United rather than a budget airline that pays less attention to safety issues, even though United may be more expensive. The inference was that, if you flew United, at least your body wouldn't have been scarfed down by an Everglades alligator. I was taken aback by his comments, but he did have a point.

Not that something bad can't happen on a major airline. 

Sometimes things do fall apart. Sometimes the center cannot hold. 

And the odds of things falling apart increase when the parts being used in planes are fake.

Somehow, it seems, a fake company, "with fake employees and an address that was a glorified PO box," managed to sell bogus parts to a number of airlines. Among the airlines that were suckered by AOG Technics were Southwest - to me a "must avoid" outfit, given their emphasis on pestering travelers with their idea of fun; United; and my old friend, my frequent flyer buddy, American.

The mysterious London-based firm stands accused of falsifying certain documents and shipping the suspect parts to airline repair shops around the world. Companies like AOG Technics are middlemen that supply parts to independent firms that airlines contract to do repairs on their planes. The parts in question were used to repair jet engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between GE and the French firm Safran, used in older models of Airbus and Boeing engines. CFM is now suing AOG Technics in London’s High Court to get access to documents that would illustrate the extent of its fraud, so that all the bogus parts can be tracked down. So far, CFM believes AOG Technics may have sold thousands of parts with fraudulent documentation. (Source: Fortune via Yahoo)

The fake parts have only been found in 100 planes, out of a worldwide fleet of over 25,000. Still, this isn't exactly swell news for flyers.

I would have thought that, when it comes to aviation, there would be a really rigorous and highly regulated supply chain, with super-tracking on every part that flows through it. And this is, in fact, the case.

But last spring a repair firm in Portugal found that its name was being used on forged documents. This led to an investigation that found AOG Technics as the ur-source for the suspected bad parts. 

...“While there have always been gray and black markets in aircraft parts, mostly purchased by questionable customers, this is a case of a “deep fake” company masquerading as a legitimate supplier that deceived many legitimate buyers,” [airline consultant Robert] Mann said. 

Such gray market companies tend to specialize in components that are supposed to be scrapped for some reason or other, but which are passed on to lower-end companies that operate on the cheap. (Like our old - now defunct - friend, ValuJet.)

Sounds like the buyers who got duped weren't doing any head's up vetting of AOG as a supplier. 

Maybe with a little sleuthing, they might have found that AOG Technics "created several fake LinkedIn profiles claiming to be company executives." One of the fake profiles was for a sales exec named Johnny Rico, a profile that "featured stock photos and employment histories that couldn’t be verified by any of their purported former employers."

On the other hand, maybe you can't blame those folks in procurement who didn't do a deeper dive than looking at LinkedIn and thinking that things checked out. How deep are you expected to go? Although a name like "Johnny Rico" might have raised some eyebrows. (This reminds me of a incident at a financial services company that my sister Kath worked for back in the 1980's. An internal audit discovered that a contract employee was funneling money to the Moonies. The contract employee had quite a name: Joseph Taco. Any relation to Johnny Rico?)

Then there was AOG Technics address: a "virtual" address at a co-working space. Hmmmm.

Well, AOG Technics is no longer a worry. Their "website and LinkedIn profile are no longer active," and they show up on Google as "permanently closed."

Given the complexity of today's supply chains, and the fact that they're multinational, it's no surprise that there'd be fraudsters inserting themselves at various nodes in the chain. 

My next flight - Ireland again - is coming up next week.

Here's hoping that my Aer Lingus plane won't contain any sketchy parts. I'd hate to see that plane widening in the gyre and dunking into the drink. But, gee, thanks to this news, I probably will be spending at least a nano-second worry about it.

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

Meanwhile, there's a newish (2018) Nigerian airline called Value Jet. What's in a name?

Weather or not

In June, when I was having my teeth cleaned, my dental hygienist told me that, over the summer, she was going on a family vacation to Greece. Her daughters are growing up. One graduated from college a couple of years ago, the other is in a junior. And E was really looking forward to what might be the last family vacay of this sort. I've known E since she was pregnant with her first child, and have "watched" the girls grow up from afar and via twice a year updates. So I was very excited for the family and this major trip. E's husband is a police officer, so the family is not super wealthy, and the trip to Greece was, I suspect, a pretty big deal. 

All summer, whenever I saw the news on the crazy wildfires in Greece, I thought of E. I watched as vacationers and locals fled for their lives, some of them running into the ocean with whatever they had on their backs, hoping that there'd be a boat to save them, hoping that I wouldn't recognize E among the frantic crowds on the beach, or flopped on an airline terminal floor waiting for a flight out. 

I've only been to Greece once, and that was years ago, but I remember it as a magical place. Those Greek islands: so beautiful, with the whitewashed houses, the turquoise sea, the smell of eucalyptus. 

The Parthenon, which I walked up and around, and also viewed from a hill, watching a corny yet brilliant "sound and light show." Just spectacular. 

In Athens, there seemed to be a rizogalo (rice pudding) vendor on every corner. Glorious! 

And I have fond memories of the peasant shirt I bought at an open air market there. (A couple of months ago, I found a vaguely similar shirt at Nordstrom Rack, which probably cost 10 or 20 times what I paid for that piece in 1973.)

My friends and I camped for a couple of weeks on a small island off the beaten path. We slept in the front yard of a guy - Andreas - who had a modest house on the beach. For our plein-air toilet, we took care of business by sitting on the stone wall that bordered the donkey pasture next to Andreas' house. Sometimes, the donkey moseyed over to see what we were up to.

There was no store in the village we stayed in, but we could walk into the fields and, for about a quarter, would come away with a bag of peppers, tomatoes, and cukes - and a watermelon. Actually, two watermelons, as the fellow working the field would use his hand to karate chop a watermelon open to show us that it was ripe, and then hand up that watermelon and another one.

There was a taverna near where we were staying, and we'd go there for a beer and to buy a loaf of bread every other day. We bought fish off one of the boats that harbored near the taverna. Talk about day boat fish!

We were there in the summer, and the weather was fabulous. (It was June or July.) Sunny and cloudless. Warm during the day. Cool enough to sleep comfortably at night. 

The only sour note - which we saw in Athens, but not on our obscure island - was the fact that Greece was ruled by a military junta, and there signs similar to this posted all over the place. 

It's the flames I remember the most about those signs. (I believe the 1973 edition had more lurid orange flames.) And, after wondering whether E and her family were okay, it's what came to mind as I watched parts of Greek burning.

The weather may have been perfect when I was in Greece fifty years ago, but there've been awful fires in Greece for the last few years.

And there's been terrible heat in all parts of Europe, which is particularly awful because so few people/buildings have air conditioning. (Of course, the fact that most Americans have AC is good for our comfort, but not so great for the environment.)

We're none of us exempt from the horrors of climate change, and it's starting to wreak some havoc on tourist sites like the Greek islands where I spent time half a century ago, and where E and her family vacationed this summer.

These shifting — and worsening — weather patterns are also shifting tourists’ vacation habits, with more people looking for new summer escapes as they find old vacation haunts increasingly uncomfortable and northern locations more welcoming, travel industry experts say.

“We started to see a really large increase in demand for destinations like Norway and Denmark, which wouldn’t normally be destinations for summer,” said Rebecca Marsi, founder of the London-based private travel club Little Emperors. “People don’t want to travel with a young baby to a destination that’s 48 degrees [118 degrees Fahrenheit]. It’s just not pleasant.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Correction, Rebecca Marsi: ain't no one - with or without a baby - that wants to head to a destination where it's 118 in the shade. 

Travelers aren't abandoning Greece and other more southerly European climes entirely. They're shifting their trips there to September and October, and heading to the Scandinavian or Baltic countries during the summer months.

Overall, one study found the "62 percent of travelers... admitted that recent climate events have influenced their trip planning."

The US is not, of course, exempt. Lahaina on Maui is destroyed. Recent fires in the Lake Tahoe area sent tourists and locals fleeing.”

Climate change is also impacting the areas where winter tourism has been a big deal.

Ski resorts don't have as much snow as they used to, and while resorts can somewhat overcome this with snow-making machines, I don't imagine there are many folks in Switzerland or Vermont who'll be opening new ski resorts any time soon. Some are positioning themselves more as summer resorts, where people can escape the heat by doing a bit of mountain climbing. Which is, of course, what New England mountain resorts were before people had AC, and before the skiing industry really took off in the 1950's and 1960's 

Our area [New England] has been experiencing shorter winters, particularly since the 1980s. A study published in 2021 by researchers at Salem State University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that winter is warming faster than any other season in New England. January 2023 saw record warmth in much of the region, hitting ski areas in southern New England hard.

Tourists will no doubt adjust to new climate realities. Vacationers are going to vacation; travelers are going to travel.

But tourism disruptions aside, Gail Carlson, a professor of environmental studies at Colby hopes that this summer's weather is a wake up call.

“You could see it in the orange skies or chokingly high air pollution from the Canadian wildfires,” said Carlson, who also authored “Human Health and the Climate Crisis.” “When I put my toes in the ocean in Maine, they didn’t immediately curl up in shock from the water temperature. It was warmer.”

She hopes the silver lining of this summer’s very visible and highly publicized extreme weather is that it prompts action, or at least awareness, among those who never thought seriously about climate change.

“Many times, people don’t take action unless it’s something that affects them directly,” she said. “This summer, a lot of people were affected. Let’s hope something good and positive changes will come from that.”

I'm with Gail Carlson. Sure, given that the most heart-stopping water I've ever stepped toe in was in Maine, it's kind of too bad that the warming of Maine waters is so dire. But we really do have to wake up. All the way up.