Thanks, Buddey. A grateful nation thanks you!

Look, I get why people who live in desperately poor regions would eat bushmeat to augment their meagre diets. If your children are swollen-belly starving, if they don't get enough protein, enough iron, I get that you'd provide them with every source of nourishment you could get your hunter-gatherer hands on. And you wouldn't give a rat's ass whether the meat that you're hunter-gathering - salting, drying, stewing, frying - came from a bat, an impala, a pangolin, or even a primate of the non-human variety.

But eating locally is one thing. Black market trading, smuggling possibly infected bushmeat into another country, is quite another. After all, bushmeat could be a carrier of the Ebola virus. So say no more.

There is, however, more to say. Even if it weren't for Ebola, the bushmeat trade - which is valued at billions of dollars annually - is destroying species and wreaking havoc with biodiversity. 

Plus - and apologies for any cultural insensitivity - I'm no Anthony Bourdain, willing to try anything once. The idea of munching on fried pangolin or monkey burger makes my stomach churn. I guess it's what you're used to, and I'm used to eating meat that comes swaddled in Saran Wrap and purchased at the grocery store. The Beverly Hillbillies may have relished Granny's possum stew, but as a meat eater, I pretty much stick to the basics: chicken, beef, pork, lamb - meat that comes from animals raised for human consumption. No, I don't eat a ton of meat. And if I thought about it, I'd eat even less. But when I do eat meat, it's going to be one of the Big Four.

Years ago, there was a restaurant in Boston's Quincy Market that served "normal" (i.e., Big Four meat and fish), but specialized in wild game, including lion and bear. I can't recall the restaurant's name - Wild Something-or-Other? - but my husband and I went there once. We ate normal, but the meaty smell of cooking lion, tiger, and bear - oh, my! - was overpowering, and Wild Something-or-Other never became one of our go-to's. 

So, I'm not the target audience for bushmeat.

But there are a lot of immigrants who, for reason of nostalgia, for longing for home, consider bushmeat comfort food. And the only way to get it is to have someone smuggle it in, or buy it on the blackmarket. I'm sure there are also those whose desire for bushmeat has nothing to do with nostalgia, but is a "just because" item of their desire "just because" it is rare, illegal, and risky to consume. But I'm guessing most of the consumers are from immigrant communities.

And I do get comfort food. A couple of times a year (including for my birthday), my sister Trish makes a family chicken goulash dish that I adore. And what I wouldn't give for a grinder from the now-closed Maury's Delicatessen in Worcester's Webster Square. (Unlike the Wild-Something-or-Other, the Maury's smell was divine.)

But I really don't like the idea of someone bringing bushmeat into the US, especially if they're bringing it in to Boston.

As recently happened, and which we know about because a suitcase containing dehydrated monkey remains was found at Logan Airport, sniffed out by an alert Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) pooch named Buddey. 

The bushmeat traveler flew into Logan from the Democratic Republic of Congo in early January.

During a preliminary baggage screening, Buddey drew attention to a particular bag.

When questioned by CBP, the traveler said it was "dried fish," and that's how it looked on the X-ray screen, the agency said in a press release. (Source: Boston Globe)

Dried fish? Hmmmm. CBP decided not to take the traveler's word for it. 

...when agents opened the bag, they found the "dead and dehydrated bodies" of four monkeys -- referred to as "bushmeat," which is raw or minimally processed wild animal meat. It comes from a variety of wild animals, including bats and primates.

It is often smoked, dried or salted, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that treatment doesn't render it noninfectious.

Following CDC guidelines, CBP destroyed the piece of luggage, and, presumably, the dried monkey remains.  

Ebola or some other ghastly disease averted! How often do we find ourselves cheering on the CBP, but Go Customs and Border Patrol!

While there is a $250,000 penalty for smuggling bushmeat into the US, the person bringing the dried monkey into Boston wasn't charged with anything - even though they lied about the monkey meat being fish. All they lost was their suitcase, and the opportunity for sharing a downhome meal with friends and family who hadn't been back home in a while. Maybe they weren't charged because the small amount - only four dried monkeys - was clearly for personal use, and the traveler was likely not part of some big profit-making bushmeat cartel.

Anyway, I'm happy that Buddey was on duty at Logan and able to ferret out the bushmeat. 

Thanks, Buddey. A grateful nation thanks you!

Remember when "million dollar smile" was a figure of speech?

I volunteer in a homeless shelter, and plenty of the folks I see there have lousy teeth. It's no surprise. They're poor. Many live on the streets. They haven't always led the healthiest of lives. They've abused drugs. They've abused alcohol. Their diets may not be the greatest. They've been in prison. They've been in fights.

Some have no teeth at all.

One fellow - an older guy - has a terrible underbite, and, while most of his lower teeth are missing, he does have a set of protruding lower fangs. His condition can only be described as disfiguring, and I'm sure it has impacted every aspect of his life. On top of that, I suspect he's in pain. Having that degree of underbite can throw your entire body off.

I've never spoken with him. I've only seen him come through the foodline, where there's no time to chat with anyone. I suspect he grew up in a rural area (I'm thinking in the South), where there likely would have been poor or no access to dental care. I may be wrong (and I may be being judge-y) here. If he comes into the Resource Center, where there's often an opportnity for a convo, I might find out where he's from. (A lot of our guests like to chat.)

I thought of this fellow when I read about Thomas Connolly, DDS, who, from his offices in NYC (SoHo: think edgy) and Beverly Hills (think buckets o' money), outfits

his patients with "million dollar smiles." Literally.

Dubbed the "Father of Diamond Dentistry" by Rolling Stone - perhaps the only dentist to be dubbed anything by Rolling Stone - Connolly has a lot of well-known patients. 

[He] reconstructed Post Malone’s smile with 18 porcelain veneers, eight platinum crowns and two six-carat diamonds replacing the singer-songwriter’s upper canines. Just diamonds.

The total cost: $1.6 million. (Source: NY Times)

That was back in 2021, when diamond dentures weren't so much of a thing. Fast forward, and Connolly and his team "now perform diamond dentistry almost daily."

Post Malone is by no means the only big name patient Connolly's worked with. 

[He] has reconstructed the mouths of the rappers Gunna and Lil Yachty, the professional boxer Devin Haney, the baseball pitcher Marcus Stroman, the Hall of Fame basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, the Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and others.

Admittedly, I've never heard of Gunna or Devin Haney. But those other Connolly patients are big names. (Amazingly, I have heard of Lil Yachty.)

And then there's the biggest of the big names, even if the biggest of the big names is only a two-letter word.

Yes, Ye - once known as Kanye West - hired Connolly to create the "six-figure titanium structure" that Ye began showing off a short while back.

You don't have to pay a milion dollars to get in a Connolly chair:

Full diamond teeth range from $100,000 to $2 million, and porcelain veneers with diamond insets from $10,000 to $75,000.

I'm guessing those $100K diamond choppers aren't much higher in quality than cubic zirconium. But $100K is still a lot to pay for a set of teeth. 

And I'm not going to criticize veneers. A while back - a long while: maybe 20 years, maybe more - I got veneers for my front teeth, which were chipped so badly that the bonding my dentist kept trying never held. I can't recall what I paid, but it was a lot. ($7K for four sticks in my mind.) So $10K in 2024 for a veneer with a diamond inset doesn't sound outrageous pricewise.

But dental diamonds? 

Sorry, but that does strike me as outrageous. As does having a multi-million dollar mouth. 

I guess it's a logical extension of the gold grills that rappers started sporting nearly twenty years ago. And even variations on the gold grills theme have been around for, like, forever. Archaeologists have discovered Etruscan "golden dental appliances" from the seventh century BC. 

And those modern grills have been sporting diamond inlays for a while now. Full diamond teeth though, that's something new. 

I don't get it. But I'm not supposed to.

Connolly insists that:

“This is not a gimmick...We changed the profession a little bit and pioneered something that was catching on and made it a little more mainstream.”

I guess "a litle more mainstream" doesn't mean full-blown mainstream...And, of course, it will never become mainstream among us old fuddy-duddies, just happy to be hanging on to our own teeth.

But spending more than a million dollars on your mouth does seem cra.

Much as I'd like to, I'm not going to engage in the sophistry of arguing that the money could be better spent on, say, dental work for the fellow with the underbite and fangs. Rich folks, celebreties, can do whatever they want with their money. And if they want to keep Dr. Connolly and the engineers and jewelers he works with employed, so be it.

Still, I can't help but think of the guys I see day in, day out, who'd like to have a few good teeth in their heads.

Just sayin'...

The Art of Bankruptcy

Louise Blouin and her then-husband John MacBain made a fortune in the rather unglamorous classified ad biz. They started out in Montreal with a car listing publication, and took it from there. 

Where they took it to was New York City, where they decided that they wanted to get beyond the lucrative but pedestrian and rather déclassé world of selling classified ads. They wanted to run with the big dogs, the rich dogs, the art world dogs. 

So the couple invested $13.5 million in La Dune, a splosh place on Long Island, and started getting serious about the game of lifestyles of the rich and famous. This was back in the late 90's, when $13.5 million still seemed like a lot to pay for property, apparently enough to get you in with the rich and famous.

Soon enough, the MacBains were sending invitations to prominent figures, including the financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, the diplomat Henry Kissinger, [painter Ross] Bleckner and the fashion designer Calvin Klein.  (Source: NY Times)

And who doesn't like a free meal served up at a splosh house on Long Island? Thanks to their largesse, the MacBains became salon-istas.

But snobs are snobs, and Ross Bleckner - and I'm betting some of the illustrious others they tried swanning around with - were a bit snarky about the parvenu MacBains.

Mr. Bleckner noted that it was hard to say no to these luncheons and dinners, because Ms. Blouin would provide a list of five available dates.

"Me and Calvin would be hysterical, laughing about it,” Mr. Bleckner said. “How do you get out of five dates? What were we  to say — ‘I’m going away for the whole summer’?” 

Note to Mr. Bleckner (who claims to be a friend of long-standing to Ms. Blouin): look down your nose all you want at Louise Blouins unsophisticated, perhaps even crass, beginner's invites, but "me and Calvin?" Seriously, "me and Calvin?" Tsk, tsk.

The MacBains ended up splitting, but Louise Blouin went deep into the art world, getting involved with art aucitons, art consulting, art publications. She set up the Louise Blouin Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to creativity and the arts. 

Post divorce, Blouin became romantically and professionally involved with one Simon dePury, a Sotheby's alum setting up an art consultancy+. He admits he was enamored in part by her moola, but, like Mr. Bleckner, Mr. DePury had a bit of the snide in him.

“Her power and success, not to mention the Marie Antoinette splendor of her lifestyle, were aphrodisiacal,” he wrote

With friends like this...

Anyway, it was pretty heady stuff. All this hobnobbing - artists! machers! oligarchs! - and a "net worth [which] was once estimated by The Times of London to fall between those of Madonna and the Queen of England."

And then, all of a sudden, it was all arse over teakettle, and Louise Blouin found herself tumbled into bankruptcy court, ordered to get rid of her Long Island manor, site of so many of those Marie Antoinette-y parties.

La Dune, which sits on four acres along Gin Lane in Southampton, N.Y., comprises two grand houses, a sunken tennis court and two swimming pools. It has a combined 22,000 square feet of interior space, with 19 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a home cinema and two gyms.

The property had grown in value over the years, and Blouin had added to it, tearing down a modest guest cottage and building a new one that gave the main manse a run for its money.

Blouin was hoping La Dune would go for a figure well in excess of $100M. (A comparable property had just sold for $112M). You might be asking yourself why a property that was purchased in the lates 1990's for $13.5M would need to sell for an order of magnitude greater, but there was the tab for the guest cottage and other property improvements. 

Alas,Blouin had taken out mortgages on it to fund her art world ventures. So she owed a ton o' money.

The judge order her to take an offer of $89M - buyers sure can smell desperation - and she's now underwater on the property.

Given the opportunity to continue to dish, Bleckner had more to say about Louise Blouin:

 “She was fun, she was beautiful, she was a great hostess,” he said. “Of course, I never really understood where the money was coming from.”

Meow! 

 “I haven’t made many mistakes,” Louise Blouin said soon after her compound in the Hamptons was sold out from under her in a bankruptcy auction. “You can’t judge someone because they have an issue once in their life. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t have a perfect track record.”

Well, it doesn't sound like her issues were all of the "once in a lifetime" variety. A decade ago, an art publication she helmed was failing and she was sued by a couple of employees she stiffed. She lost the suit, but has only paid them ten percent of what they're entitled to. Blouin also lost a suit brought by a printing company she failed to pay. And the there's a teensy problem with the IRS.

Given her general attitude towards business, it's not all that surprising that Blouin has gone bankrupt:

“The arts, for me, is philanthropy,” Ms. Blouin continued. “It’s not a business. So that’s how I perceive it. It’s helping others. It’s philanthropy, helping others through the arts. How do you use the arts for the creative process? How you use the arts for neurology and the development of your senses and all these things? It was never a business.”

"It was never a business?" Tell that to your creditors and the IRS. 

We hear yet again from the talented Mr. Blackner, this time about Blouin's attitude towards money.  

“She never seemed to be stressed. There are people who can live with a crushing level of debt and it doesn’t seem to bother them, because they just keep borrowing other people’s money to make more money. But in this case, that didn’t happen.”

For her part, Blouin claims that she's been victimized by predatory lenders, et al.

“This story actually needs to be told,” she said, “not for me, but for others, because it’s becoming more of a sport involving people that make money and work hard for it and others that steal money and work less hard for it.”

I suppose you have to have (metaphorical) brass balls to forge your way to the upper echelons of the cut-throat NYC art world, not to mention the cut-throat social world of the Hamptons. And Louise Blouin seems to be endowed with quite a set of (metaphorical) brass balls. 

To hell with bankruptcy, her failed businesses, the IRS. 

“I am one of the most successful women in the world,” Ms. Blouin said. 

Is it me or does she sound like the Trump on the art world? 

When the rains come

Visiting Dubai is not on my bucket list. 

Too hot. Too politically repressive. Sure, women can vote and drive, but...You can go to jail for throwing an F-bomb. (WTF?) I believe that poppyseed bagels are outlawed. There's the weird indoor skiing thing. And what's with those artificial, palmtree-shaped islands in the harbor? 

So, I was never going to go to Dubai anyway.

Still, I occasionally cast an eye on what up in the Emirates, and was, thus, fascinated by the recent floods there. Talk about what up. 

We're used to flooding stories in the news in the US, in the news locally. Just last summer there were dire floods in Vermont, and in Leominster in Central Massachusetts. When we have major storms, especially in the winter, spots along the shore are frequently flooded. Waterfront Boston gets flooded, too.

But Dubai is in the desert.

Yes, I know that it does rain in the desert. After all, my sister Kath spends half the year in Tucson. (Just not the months when they get torrential rains.) But this rain in Dubai, well, was of stunningly biblical proportions. Seeing all those snorkeling cars, all those highways turned to rivers. Just plain weird. 

While meteorologists had, a few days earlier, predicted the heavy rains, and they do get some crazy storms, the magnitude was somewhat unusual. 

On average, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few of inches of rain a year, although scientists have found that a sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in infrequent but severe bursts, not as periodic showers.

U.A.E. officials said the 24-hour rain total on Tuesday was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949. But parts of the nation had experienced an earlier round of thunderstorms just last month. (Source: NY Times)

So why now?

Initial speculation was the cloud seeding - goosing the atmosphere to get a bit of rain to increase the water supply - had run amok. But that was quickly discounted. (Sort of discounted. But, anyway, seeding is not likely to have caused the big kahuna of a storm Dubai experienced last week.)

Then there's global warming, which is a maybe yes/maybe not so fast proposition:

In their latest assessment of climate research, scientists convened by the United Nations found there wasn’t enough data to have firm conclusions about rainfall trends in the Arabian Peninsula and how climate change was affecting them. The researchers said, however, that if global warming were to be allowed to continue worsening in the coming decades, extreme downpours in the region would quite likely become more intense and more frequent.

Then there's the fact that even though modern Dubai is a relatively recently designed and manufactured city, it wasn't built for floods. 

Cities in arid regions often aren’t designed to drain very effectively. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth below, forcing it into drainage systems that can easily become overwhelmed.

I'm about 100% unlikely to ever experience flooding in Dubai.

Still sort of fascinating to know that if I were planning a visit, I might want pack as if I were going to Venice in the rainy season, bringing along a raincoat that actually repels water (not all do) and a pair of rubber boots.

Who knew? 

How sweet is this or what?

Okay. I wouldn't want to live next door to or across from Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor, let alone live there. Frankly, it's an eyesore.

My house color palette is more subdued. I spent my early years in my grandmother's chocolate brown with yellowy-cream trim decker, and the rest of my childhood in a house that was charcoal gray with a yellow, and later red front door. My adult life has been spent in red brick buildings and, for the last 3+ decades, granite with (at present) a battle ship gray door.

I can't imagine living in a house painted a crazy (IMHO) color. 

I like a lot of stuff inside the house, but outside? I'm a keep it simple, keep it flora, kind of gal. The houses I've lived in all had grass, trees, bushes, and flowers. At Nanny's, we had a birdbath in the back yard; when we moved to our own house, we had a swingset, sandbox, and clothesline out back.

There was nothing in either frontyard other than grass, trees, bushes, and flowers.

My small condo building has a tiny "frontyard," with a Chinese dogwood, a bunch of plants, and a small bird bath/fountain. There's no backyard to speak of, but what's there, on the concrete slab, are plants, an outdoor settee and chairs, and a large bird bath/fountain.

I've never lived with statuary, objets - stuff - in the yard.

Of course, as a child, I wanted statuary, objets - stuff - in the yard. 

My favorite yard in the world was a couple of blocks away from the house of my Chicago grandmother's house. On our bi-ennial trips to Chicago, the first item on the agendance once we got settled in at Grandma's was to get my father to take us to the "Elf House." Its yard was full of elves/gnomes: sitting on swings in the trees, playing card games on toadstool tables, standing there smiling at us. Now this was a yard to die for!

But once I hit the age of aesthetic reason, my preference turned to nothing much in the frontyard, and what's there can be a riot of color if it's flowers, and subdued palette for anything else.

Which is not to say I'm not plenty enamored with Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor.

First off, there's the color scheme, which looks like it should be located next door to or across the street from Barbie's Dreamhouse. Then there's all that glorious junk: "buoys, lobster traps, and nautical curios."

If this had been anywhere near me when I was a kid, I would have been perpetually pestering my father to walk or drive by so I could ogle it. 

But beyond the eye-popping color, beyond the frontyard riot, Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor is "a nonprofit pig rescue dedicated to improving the lives of pigs and other farm animals in Rhode Island."

Owners Audrey Agli and Liz Smith put it plainly: They simply love pot-bellied pigs.

“They’re the smartest, most lovable animals,” Smith said.

“They really aim to please you,” Agli added. (Source:  Boston Globe)

While they're only housing a couple of them at the moment, over the years, Agli and Smith have cared for hundreds of potbellied pigs. Turns out that these porcine cuties "are the most throwaway animals."

One problem is their size. People buy them thinking that they're little cuties, - hypoallergenic! affectionate! litte guys! And then those potbelly pigs grow to somewhere between 50 o 150 pounds. 

Keeping the resident two potbelly pigs company are a couple of steers, a few goats, a llama, a bunch of pigeons, a dozen rabbits, ducks, and chickens, and eight cats. (No dogs? What are they thinking? I don't care how cute and affectionate those potbelly pigs are, they're not doggos! Sure, one of Smith and Agli's piggos is a therapy animal, but, let's face it, most dogs are therapy animals.)

But doggo quibble aside, how sweet is this story, how sweet is this house?

Agli and Smith are a couple of women of a certain age (my age or thereabouts, I suspect) who've spent the past 40 years together, and who are spending their golden, retirement years giving shelter to unwanted animals. (One of their steers was found wandering around Providence.)

Running Potbelly Manor isn't easy. It's pretty much a 24/7 operation that stays afloat with the help of donors and volunteers. You can virtually tour the place, meet the animals, and make a tax deductible donation here. 

What a sweet little story, what a sweet little purple house. When I was a kid, this would have been a house and yard to die for - especially if they'd added in a couple of card-playing gnomes.

Fake obituary pirates? These guys ought to be walking the plank

I am a long-time reader of obituaries. 

It's genetic.

I believe I inherited the obituary-reading gene from my father, an avid reader of  the "Irish sports pages," and I've taken up the cause. (Unlike my father, who was a regular wake and funeral goer, I don't attend one unless I knew the person or someone in their family really well. Other than the four years he spent in the Navy during WWII, my father's entire life happened in same neighborhood, and he knew a lot of people. Plus back in the day, wakes and funerals were more of a thing. I went to more as a kid than I do now, that's for sure.)

But I do read obituaries, and every once in a while I look in on the family undertaker, O'Connor Brothers in Worcester, which is located in the parish I grew up in, and where most parishioners "went out from." Over the years, O'Connor's remit has expanded beyond the mostly Irish-Americans they once took care of. (When we shopped for my mother's casket 20+ years ago now, there was an emerald green one on offer, with a shamrock emblazoned on the satin insert). Now I notice a lot of Vietnamese names, Greeks, Albanians, Hispanics. They take care of a lot of African-Americans, too. But they still do plenty of locals, so I've been able to inform my sibs when a neighbor has died. Of course, most of that generation is gone, so now it's us.

Thus, I was recently able to let my sister Trish know that one of her high school classmates had died at the age of 65.

On occasion, I graze through the obits on Athy's website, as well. I went to high school with one of the Athy's, and they seem to have cornered the market for the order of nuns I had throughout my schooling. Most of the retired nuns in "my" order live in a retirement community in Worcester, and once in a while I come upon some nun I had back in the day.S

Sometimes I google an obituary for someone I see mentioned on the news or on Twitter. And, of course, I read plenty of obituaries of prominent people in The Globe, The Times, The Washington Post. 

I'm the curious type. (Or it is nosy? Or is it morbid?)

Most obituaries, whether they were published in the local newspaper or on a funeral parlor's website, end up on Legacy.com, a long-time obituary aggregator. 

But of late I've noticed that there are a whole raft of sites that come up, rando sites that aren't the usual obit sources: funeral parlor, local newspaper, and Legacy.com. 

The one I've encountered most frequently is echovita, which is always "sad to announce" that someone has died. Sometimes they publish parts of the public obituary verbatim, but sometimes they freelance a bit. I read that they've listed someone's pets as "close friends" without bothering to say that they were her dogs. Another obituary claimed that a young person who died in an accident had been murdered. Spin off versions of that obituary embroidered the story, making the young person (a Georgetown undergrad) a famous actor or singer. There've also been obituaries written for folks who are still live.

Sometimes the click-bate obituaries overdramatize a situation - everything's a tragedy, whether there is anything tragic beyond the sadness of loved ones - and use quite florid language. Some of the ones I've seen sound like they're written by someone who's not fluent in English; some of the ones I've seen sound like they were written by a poorly skilled bot. Some are, in fact, written by AI. (Bad AI, not good AI.)

Families aren't happy when the obituaries they've lovingly crafted get bowlderized. Friends stumble across the crazy obits and end up confused. They may leave a condolcence note that the loved ones never end up seeing. 

Echovita and other online obit companies make money off of the sales of memorial trees, flowers, or candles. And by running ads on the obituary pages, whether the ads are something the decedent's family approves of or not.

The memorial trees, i.e., seedlings, do get planted, but I don't know how flowers or candles work. Maybe they just show a bouquet - kind of like an NFT - or a lit candle, to show that someone cares. The seedlings get planted mostly. Less scrupulous companies just pocket the cash.

One of the problems is that, when people opt to plant a tree, they're cannibalizing donations to a charity that the family has listed.

Anyway, it turns out the "obituary pirating" has become quite a thing:

Obituary pirating, where people scrape and republish obituaries from funeral homes and websites like Legacy.com, has been an ethically dubious business for years. Piracy websites are often skilled enough at search engine optimization to rise to the top of search results, and they use the resulting traffic to charge a premium for digital ads that appear next to text lifted wholesale from funeral homes, local newspapers, and other authorized obituary publishers. Occasionally, these pirate sites go a step further, manipulating bereaved people into buying sympathy gifts like candles or flowers and pocketing the money. (Source: Wired)

Some of the crazily concocted obituaries - they're "shoddy," they're "janky" - have begun showing up on YouTube, narrated by English speakers, Urdu speakers, other language speakers. Far afield from the territory beyond which anyone would be interested in the obituary of, say, someone who had grown up in the Main South neighborhood of Worcester.

And, in fact, there aren't a ton of viewers looking at any one of these "shoddy," "janky" video obituaries - often showing a narrator sitting in his home, showing "corny slideshows or candles and photos of the deceased surced from social media."

But it's a numbers game. It can be lucrative if there are enough views in the aggregate.

Despite their shoddiness, the obituary YouTube channels are sometimes amassing enough followers and views to meet YouTube’s Partner Program requirements and start making money off advertisements. 

These bogus obituaries are plenty distaseful and insensitive - I'd like to see these pirates walk the plank - but they're probably not illegal. 

They used to say "sex sells," but I guess "death sells," too.  

Me? My reading will stick to checking out O'Connor Brothers and Athy's to see who's checked out, and reading an occasional newspaper obit. 

Guess I'm just old fashioned that way. 

Ohtani's misinterpreter

Like every other baseball fan in America, I was hoping against hope tha phenom Shohei Ohtani, the 21st century's answer to Babe Ruth (Ohtani's a slugger who also pitches), would sign with my team. Alas, and not surprisingly, in December Ohtani inked a 10-year, $700M deal with the Dodgers. It makes sense. They're West Coast, closer to Ohtani's native Japan and in an area with richer Japanese culture than you'll find in Boston. And, unlike the Red Sox, the Dodgers are willing to spend the big bucks to get the players they want. (C.f., Mookie Betts. Sigh.)

I dislike the Dodgers almost as much as I despise the Yankees, so I'm hoping they never win a World Series. Still, you have to admire their desire to shoot for that particular moon - especially if you're a fan of the sort of team that refuses to play the money game. (C.f., Mookie Betts. Sigh.) The sort of team that refuses to play the money game, other than when it comes to raising ticket prices, which they've done the past couple of years despite last place finishes. 

But. I. Digress.

Ohtani has been much in the news of late.  There was the pre-signing speculation. The big buck contract. The first games of the season, featuring the Ohtani Dodgers, which were played in South Korea. (There's growing interest in baseball in both Asia and Europe, and MLB markets mightily in both regions to boost brand awareness and sell stuff. A lot of stuff. Ohtani, of course, tells a great story in Asia.)

But there's also a not so great story involving Ohtani.

In late March, word began drifting out that Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani's trusted interpreter and all-round sidekick, was involved in some major league improprieties of the gambling variety. While the Dodgers were off in Seoul playing the San Diego Padres:

...reporters began asking about suspicious wire transfers from Ohtani’s account that had surfaced in a federal investigation of an alleged bookmaker. Mizuhara never informed Ohtani what was happening, Ohtani later told reporters. (Source: NY Times)

Originally, there was great concern that Ohtani himself might have been involved in the gambling. Despite the fact that Major League Baseball seems just fine with gambling now that sports betting is legal - the betting sites do all sorts of advertising during games, and MLB makes oodles of money selling their data to the the tech outfits that work hand in glove with the online betting parlors (as do the other professional sports leagues) - athletes betting on games is strictly verboten. 

Over 100 years ago, the Chicago White Sox turned into the Chicago Black Sox when players were found to have thrown the 1919 World Series. And players aren't allowed to bet on games even if they're not playing in. Pete Rose, a Hall of Fame caliber player of near-yore, was banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame for betting on games he wasn't involved in. 

MLB so didn't want any whiff of gambling, any taint around showpiece player Shohei Ohtani, who the League (and the Dodgers) are banking on.

Fortunately, as it turns out, Ohtani had nothing to do with any gambling. All he's guilty of is getting duped by someone who was his main man, his go-to, his friend. And Ippei Mizuhara has, not surprisingly, been fired by the Dodgers (and likely unfriended by Ohtani on any social media). And (as of April 11th), Mizuhara has begun negotiating a plea deal.

Mizuhara was plenty slick and able to pretty easily take advantage of Ohtani's lack of English, lack of famliarity with America, and supreme focus on playing baseball. Mizuhara was allegedly "able to change the settings on Ohtani’s bank account so Ohtani would not receive alerts and confirmations about transactions."

And Mizuhara, as it turns out, is an all purpose liar, and not just a thief who siphoned $16M out of Ohtani's bank account to cover his gambling debts

While the team was still in Seoul, and just before the Dodgers dumped him, the Dodger brass had Mizuhara speak to the team.  

He told the team that he had a gambling addiction and was deep in debt, and that Ohtani, his close friend for years, had paid the debts.

While Ohtani doesn't speak (much) English, he understands enough to recognize that Mizuhara wasn't telling the truth. He confronted his interpreter, who confessed that he'd stolen the money. Mizuhara now been charged with bank fraud, and has a mighty combo of Feds -  the IRS criminal division, DHS, a California-basedUS Attorney - crawling up his ass. 

Thus the plea negotation.

The good news is that Shohei Ohtania was not involved and has not been gambling. And some quasi good news in that it doesn't appear that Mizuhara bet on baseball. 

Still, $16M is an awful lot of gambling debt.

And $16M is an awful lot of money not to notice seeping out of your bank account. I'm pretty sure that moving forward, given that Shohei Ohtani is worth an awful lot more money than he was when Ippei Mizuhara began robbing him blind, there will be a few new safeguards put in place to keep something like this from happening. 

As it happens, there's an interesting local side note. Mizuhara was originally brought into the big leagues by the Boston Red Sox who hired him to translate for Hideki Okajima, who pitched for the Sox and was a member of the 2007 team that won the World Series. (Ah, those were the days.) Mizuhara later returned to Japan, which is where he met up with Ohtani.

Meanwhile, I'm rooting for Ohtani to have a fine year, up until the post-season, when I hope the Dodgers do a playoff nosedive. I hope he doesn't let the crimes of his misinterpreter impact his game. 

Patriots' Day 2024

I have always loved Patriots' Day, and I can't say why any better than I did ten years ago when I wrote this post. 

A big part of my affection for Patriots' Day is that the Red Sox always play at home, and have an early (11 a.m.) start time. One of my favorite things to do is get tickets for that game, make my way out to Fenway - threading my way through growing Boston Marathon crowds and the security checkpoint (instituted post the 2013 terrorist bombing), seeing the wheelchair race leaders speeding through Kenore Square - and then making my way back home, fingers crossed after a good game.

Alas, good games have been in short supply of late in Red Sox Nation, and ownership is increasingly and royally pissing me and a whole raft of other lifers off. The final straw came when, after yet another sub .500, last place season, they had the colossal nerve to raise prices.

So getting Patriots' Day tickets this year was a big NFW. And I'm mad at the Red Sox for making this the case. (Thanks for nothing, Red Sox owner John Henry.)

Nonetheless, I hope it's a beautiful day for a ball game and the Marathon.

I'll work my shift at St. Francis House, then - as long as the weather is reasonably good - I'll wander around taking in the sights: the runners, the Swan Boats, the tourists, the buds on the trees. Maybe I'll even make myself a sausage-and-peppers sub to make up for not getting one at Fenway. Maybe I'll top it off with some Cracker Jack, maybe even a Sports Bar. (Sports Bars are a not particularly good waxy chocolate covered slab of vanilla ice cream. I'll indulge if I can find somewhere to buy a single bar. They're definitely not worth buying an entire boxfull, unless I can find someone to unload them off on.)

And somewhere along the line, I will celebrate by reciting one of the few poems I know by heart, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn, which commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which ignited the American Revolution. 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.*

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Happy Patriots' Day to all who celebrate. (And my sympathies to those who don't.)

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

*Obviously, the current bridge is a replica.

So much for the five-dollar foot long

When it comes to looking at the receipt to make sure I wasn't overcharged, I'm not the most rigorous Sherlock Holmes-ian consumer. But I do tend to give it a recipt a glance, run the numbers in my head to see if they make sense, make sure I'm not paying for anything I didn't get. The most recent thing I caught was being charged for two dozen egs when I bought one. (And, yes, I'm scrupulous enough to report if I'm not charged for something. I may not notice a grocery store mistake, but I'm likely to spot one in a restaurant, and I never want the server to get into trouble. ) 

But sometimes shit happens, and shit happened to Letitia Bishop of Columbus, Ohio. 

In early January, she bought some Subway store subs for her family at a Thornton Oil gas station. One of the subs was rung up as $1,010, bringing her bill to $1.021.50, which was charged to her debit card. I'm pretty sure the Five Dollar Foot Long is no longer a thing. And I know that there's been plenty of food inflation, fast and other. But $1,010 for one of their subs? 

Oh, baby.

This overcharge would have through anyone for a loop, but for the cash-strapped Bishop, the episode turned into a horror show that

...left her feeling "stressed, overwhelmed." At one point, she couldn't even afford groceries because her "account was negative," she added. (Source: Yahoo)

Bishop went back to the store and tried to straighten things out, but they just told her that she needed to work it out with Subway corporate. Which turned out not to be all that helpful, as Bishop found when she tried to get through to corporate.

She then returned to the Subway store, "only to find it had closed" for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, Bishop contacted her bank, where the answer was "tough luck."

Turns out that using a debit card, rather than a credit card, was a bad idea. Canceling a credit card transaction is quicker and easier than reversing a debit card payment. 

Here's this poor woman, trying to do the right thing financial by using her debit card, rather than rolling up credit card charges, and Bang! Zoom! 

Fortunately, Thornton, the gas station chain where the Subway store was located, stepped in and came through with a $1,000 for Bishop. 

I don't blame the Subway store folks for the way they tried to handle the situation. Someone working in a gas station Subway is not all that far up the corporate ladder to know what to do here. It migh have been a high school kid. It might have been an older worker without a super skill set. Sure, they could have tried to provide Letitia Bishop with a number at Subway that a helpful human would have answered. But I'm sure that the Subway workers didn't exactly have that info at their fingertips. 

But shame on Subway for having a convoluted phone system that gatekeeps anyone with a complaint from getting through to a helpful human. Not that this makes Subway any difference from most organizations out there. How many times have I screamed "Human! Human! Human!" into a voice system? Amazingly, not one of those calls has been to Subway HQ. 

And shame on the bank for not being more helpful to Letitia Bishop, who was clearly stressed out and broke through no fault of her own.

But kudos to Thornton Oil for stepping up.

Oh, they're no aw shucks Midwest regional gas station chain. That may have been their profile in the past, but now they're owned by the deep profits of BP. Still, they took care of a problem that was a couple of degrees separation from being theirs. Good for them.

Why is it so damned hard for people who get screwed by some stupid little mistake to get unscrewed? 

When dumb things happen to (supposedly) smart people

Just in case you were wondering whether NY AG Letitia James was focusing too much of her time on Trump's crimes and not enough on every other criminal person and enterprise in her state, there's the heartening news that Vladimir Artamonov, a gradutate of both Wharton (undergrad) and Harvard Business School (MBA) had conned fellow HBS grads out of nearly $3M by getting them to invest with him in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

James’ office said it had secured a court order  blocking the grad, Vladimir Artamonov, “from harming investors through his fraudulent scheme.” Artamonov allegedly projected returns of 500% to 1,000% by claiming to learn which investments Berkshire Hathaway planned to make. (Source: CNBC)

Having been suckered in by a phone scam spoofing the support number of my bank, I know that (supposedly) smart people can get conned. Fortunately in my case, I smartened up from my fugue state dumbness and didn't lose a penny of the thousand bucks I could have been out. 

But even though I don't have the supremo credentials of an MBA from Harvard and an undergrad degree from Wharton, I think I would have smelled something of a rat if someone promised returns of 500% to 1000%.

Come on!

Returns of 500% to 1000%? Even Bernie Madoff was "only" promising returns of 20%, which was crazy enough - yet reasonable enough sounding to have people thinking it was within the realm of possibility.

So if you had an MBA from HBS, wouldn't your first response to an order-of-magnitude more than general crazy outlandish offer be a) this is true good to be true, and/or b) just how is Artamonov learning about those Berkshire Hathaway investments, other than through insider info, which would have been a big NO NO.

Of course, Artamonov claimed he was just being really smart.

The [AG]s] office said “Artamonov lured clients by claiming that he could learn which investments Berkshire Hathaway would make ahead of the market by examining public state insurance filings.”

And no one had figured this out earlier? Big 'duh' here.

“Artamonov boasted to his investors that it is like ‘having a private time machine’ and ‘getting tomorrow’s newspaper today,‘” as he projected massive investment returns, James’ office said.

Private time machine? Sure, back to the days of Bernie Madoff, only with better returns. 

Anyway, there were a couple of red flags waving right there in front of their faces, yet some pretty smart people - or at least well-educated people - gave Artamonov $100K to buy in to his crazy fund? (Artamonov conned $2.9M out of 29 investors, most of them from people in his wide friend-of-a-friend HBS network.)

It's no surprise that Artmonov did more than just Ponzi it up with investor money, more than just pay off those who had gotten in on the groundfloor with the investment money of those who came in later. 

“Artamonov also used his investors’ money to fund unauthorized personal expenses for vacations, shopping, and dining,” the office said.

Of course! Why run a Ponzi scheme if you can't get in on the spoils.   

Hopefully, since Vlad the Alumni Impaler was screwing over fellow HBS grads, most of them had enough wealth to withstand the loss of $100K. Sure, they lost face, but at least they could afford the out of pocket. But sadly:

James’ office said it learned of the fraud when it was told about an investor who ended his own life after discovering he had lost $100,000 in Artamonov’s alleged scheme.

But suicide schmuicide: 

Even after the man’s suicide, Artamonov continued soliciting new investors, lying to them about the fund’s strategy and performance, James’ office said in a statement.

Even after the man's suicide... 

Vladimir Artamonov. What. A. Bum. 

He sure outsmarted himself, though, and is going to be finding himself in a pretty big FAFO situation.

Eclipse!

Yesterday was Eclipse Day in Boston. Or 93% Eclipse Day, anyway.

The only other eclipse I remember occurred sometime during the 1990's. I know the decade because it happened when I was working at a company called Softbridge, in Cambridge, and I remember going out with colleagues to take it all in. I don't remember having special glasses. I'm pretty sure that my colleagues and I rigged up some sort of pinhole viewer using cardstock.

Anyway, I remember that we mostly kept or back to the eclipse - partial, not the totality - and that the sky became hazy-ish, and colors that were normally bright (or at least brightish) were muted. 

I have no recall of what the eclipse itself looked like.

Yesterday, since this will be my last chance to see an eclipse  without traveling a far piece, I wanted to be prepared.

Oh, I wasn't interested in running up to Vermont or Maine to view the totality with the hordes. But I did want to see what a 93% eclipse looks like.

So I ordered the special glasses on Amazon, making sure to get the ones that are blessed by whoever it is who blesses eclipse glasses. And, not trusting that some fraudsters weren't faking up ISO okays and other info claiming the glasses were blessed, once they arrived, I checked them to make sure that they "worked." It was a pretty simple test. Turn on a bright light. If it's totally black or extremely dim, you're in business.

I was in business.

I had ordered a 10 pack, so on Easter, I put a pair at all the placesettings. (Didn't want any loved ones to scorch their retinas.) And I gave a pair to my friend K, so that we could venture out together to watch after working the lunch shift at St. Francis House.

We decided to watch from the Boston Public Garden. It was getting pretty crowded by the time we arrived around 2 p.m.  - showtime began around 2:15 - but we found a good bench to plunk down on - one where tree branches wouldn't get in the way.

We first started looking up - making sure we had on the special eclipse glasses - when the moon was covering just a sliver of a sliver, and then kept checking in every few months to gauge the progress.

One-eighth. One sixth. One quarter. Three quarters. 

I was surprised how interesting it was to see the eclipse build. And how exciting it was when we reached the near totality figure of 93%.

It never got dark. And it didn't seem like being out on a cloudy day. The light had a eerieness about it, the hazy-ish but not quite hazy sky I remembered from my eclipse outing in the 1990's. The muted colors - hard to describe, maybe as if there were a brownish wash over everything.

Pretty much everyone was using special eclipse glasses, but one woman had rigged a viewer up using a box of Special K. 

The Public Garden was fairly crowded, but the west-facing hillock in the Boston Common (which is right across the way from the Public Garden) was packed. 

It was a gorgeous day: balmy (low 60's, it did get a bit cooler as the moon began covering more of the sun), blue sky (until it faded), and sunny (until it became eclipse-y). 

There won't be another solar eclipse in Boston for another 55 years. Chances are supremely good that I won't be around on May 1, 2079.

So I'm glad I got my special glasses and went out and did some eclipse spotting when I had the opportunity yesterday.

Highly recommend!

Moola moola!

A few weeks back, I saw a pretty crazy headline in Fortune:

NCAA head warns that 95% of student athletes face extinction if colleges actually have to pay them as employees

Extinction, you say?

Well, not quite. 

What NCAA President Charlie Baker [former governor of Massachusetts, who - for all his vaunted business genius - left behind a transportation system in shambles] had said that the ability of most (that's the 95%) to play sports at a college level would be endangered. Which is not quite same as saying that the athletes themselves will no longer be around to roam their campue gyms, fields, and pools, no longer here on earth to grab a brew and a slice at their favorite college town beer joint.  

Even if college athletes will not exactly be disappearing, the current state of play in the NCAA is pretty interesting.

There are about 1,100 colleges and universities that are member of the NCAA, the governing body for college sports. These schools are split into three divisions (D1 - 350 schools, D2 - 310 schools, and D3 - 438 schools). D1 schools, of course, get most of the attention, as it's D1 teams that play in the big football bowl games and March Madness. Most professional football and basketball players played at D1 schools, and a growing proportion of hockey and baseball players as well. For the NFL and the NBA, the big D1 schools pretty much provide the minor leagues. Hockey and baseball have long histories of bringing players up through their own minor leagues.

D1 schools tend to be large - Rah! Rah! State U! - but there are also smaller schools in the D1, including Holy Cross and the Ivies.

An interesting stat from the NCAA: the proportion of students who are athletes in D1 is 1 in 23; for D2, it's 1 in 10 for D2; and it's 1 in 6 for D3. It's the kids at the D2 and D3 schools - like the cross country team at MIT (D3) - who we tend to think of as "student-athletes," even though there are plenty of kids playing sports at D1 schools - especially the kids involved in sports where there doesn't tend to be a lucrative sports after-life - who are more student than athlete. 

The NCAA has made plenty of headlines over the past few years with respect to their decision to allow student athletes to be compensated for the use of their Name, Image, and License (NIL). The NCAA had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the NIL era, and the drag-in occurred only after a lot of the states that have powerhouse D1 schools started enacting laws okaying it.

NIL recognizes the fact that some schools are largely minor league/stepping stone home for their athletes, and that these schools make a ton of money off the backs of the kids who play on their teams. Only fair to let those kids in on the goldmine that is big-time college athletics. NILdoes allow students even at lowly D3 schools to wet their beaks. But, let's face it, the real lucre is in the schools with the Heisman Trophy players, the teams that go to the Final Four. While it is theoretically possible for, say, an MIT water polo player to make NIL money, there probably aren't that many folks who'd pay for the autograph of the MIT water polo player or use their likeness in an ad campaign. Water polo is, after all, a lesser sport, and D3 is a lesser division. Not to mention that water polo players look plenty dorky in those caps, so there may not be all that many opportunities to sell their NIL. 

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of back and forth, now led by Charlie Baker, about getting Congress to do something about giving the NCAA an antitrust exemption to do whatever it is that they want to do to regulate who's zooming who when it comes to paying student athletes. The NCAA, of course, positions itself as this lofty organization committed to safeguarding all those wholesome student athletes. That's the scrim it operates behind, of course, because IRL they're a cartel wetting their beak in lucrative broadcast contracts - and spending a lot of money lobbying to get Congress to let them do whatever it is that they want to do. 

I use the word "whatever" because I really can't be bothered to try to figure out all the ins and outs.

I'm sure that one of the "whatevers" the NCAA would like Congress' help with is squelching efforts to unionize athletes. 

Should the Dartmouth jocks trying to unionize be considered employees of the school? Oh, FFS, there are probably two Dartmouth athletes playing pro-anything, and while I'm sure that Dartmouth spends plenty of athletics for a variety of recruitment and alumni-jollying reasons, Darthmouth is not exactly rolling in big TV contract money. Not to mention that playing sports at an Ivy League school - even if it did help you get into the school over an applicant with better SATs and AP classes - isn't why most kids choose an Ivy. If you have an Ivy League education you've got yourself pretty much the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket of diplomas. 

But by all means let the Alabama football team pay for the services of their student athletes. 

My gut feeling is that, for decades, the semi-pro schools have been exploiting their semi-pro student athletes, most of who won't make it to the pros and get eye-bulging contracts, and most of who, sadly, won't have gotten much of an education, either.

So I'm fine if the NCAA decided to come up with a super-D1 set "that would allow the schools that make the most money from sports to pay their athletes." (Source: Fortune) Boola boola to that!

I'm also not worried about having to protect the sporting changes of the 95% of kids participating in "lesser" sports, at "lesser" schools like MIT, or the jocks at Darthmouth. Or even the members of the softball team at unheard of schools like Our Lady of the Bathtub.

Frankly, most of what the NCAA is worried about is protecting their moola moola!

When it comes to Christmas-tree-tossing contests, sometimes when you win, you lose

I'm always amazed for the ability of all sorts of folks - myself included, in a minor-league kinda-sorta way - to sabotage themselves.

Like the woman in Ireland who saw a hefty insurance claim tossed aside when a picure of her hurling  fairly hefty Christmas tree was introduced as evidence that she likely was not quite as  debilitated as she maintained.

Back in 2017, Kamila Grabska was in a car crash. 

The accident rendered her unable to work for more than five years, she said.

Grabska also said she could not carry her children, finish basic chores, or lift a heavy bag and that, at times, she needed her medication to be brought to her in bed due to the pain, the outlet reported. (Business Insider)

Then, darn the luck, some eagle-eyed legal eagle came across a picture of Grabska, in a January 2018 BBC article, launching a Christmas tree. 

Just days before the competition, Grabska had informed doctors of constant pains in her spine, back, and neck, the Irish Independent reported.

And yet here she was, not just entering the event but winning the women's division.

"It is a very large, natural Christmas tree, and it is being thrown by her in a very agile movement," the outlet quoted [Carmel] Stewart, the presiding judge, as saying. "I'm afraid I cannot but conclude the claims were entirely exaggerated."

Also admitted into evidence was a more recent video (from November 2023) that showed Grabska "playing wiht a dalmation in a park for about 90 minutes."

It's a miracle! And it's also a miracle that anyone stayed awake if they played the full 90 minutes in court.

Anyway, Grabska counter-argued that she was in pain for the tree tossed, and was just solidering on, "'trying to live a normal life.'"

Too bad the judge wasn't buying. 

Case dismissed!

Grabska's claim was for 760K Euros (roughy $823K US), so participation in the Christmas tree hurl cost her big time. Good thing the competition was for a good cause. (I believe it was a fundraiser for a Cystic Fibrosis charity.)

The November 2023 frolic with the dalmation may not have meant all that much. After all, that occurred a good six years after her accident, and she did only claim that she was out of commission for five years. Not to mention that running around with a dog, even if it is for 90 minutes, is a lot less onerous than throwing a Christmas tree a long way.

I wouldn't want to attempt to throw my old tree, that's for sure. I'm able to take it out of the stand and drag it out of the house to leave it on the curb for recycle. I'm sure I could maybe toss it a couple of feet, but nothing that involved using my punk shoulder for a major-league, airborne throw. 

There are a lot of Eastern European immigrants in Ireland, and from her Polish name, I'm guessing that Grabska is one of them. The average American would be going ballistic if their claim were to be denied, but the Irish tend to have a different attitude. So I hope Grabska's able to shrug off the loss, ignore the embarrassment, and tell herself and the world that sure, it was worth a try. 

If nothing else, she got an article in People. 

Still, she might have been smarter if she hadn' decided that entering a Christmas-tree-tossing conest when you claim you can barely lift your kid.

I understand that there are also wellie tosses, where contestants see how far they can throw a Wellingotn boot. Migh have been better to sign up for that one. Or just plain stay home.

Here's a WFH downside I hadn't thought of

Everyone has terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days at work, even when they're working from home.

You lose power. Your Internet connection goes dead. Your dog howls. Your kids are home for a snow day, they're antsy, and it's way too blizzardy to kick them out pf the house. You're on Zoom, thinking you're making a private snide side comment to a friend, when you realize that everyone in the Zoom meeting saw what you wrote. Oops. 

Then there's the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day that Emily Kraus, wife of Tyler Loudon of Houston, Texas, had. Make that Emily Kraus, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of Tyler Loudon of Houston, Texas.

Kraus was working for BP, in M&A, and was discussing BP's upcoming acquistion of TravelCenters of America. Loudon apparently overheard the conversation. And acted on it.

[He] bought 46,450 shares of the latter’s stocks ahead of the announcement on Feb. 16, 2023, the SEC said in a news release. Loudon’s wife wasn’t aware that her husband bought the stocks.

Loudon, 42, sold his shares following the announcement, which led to a nearly 71% rise in TravelCenters’ stock, making him a profit of $1.76 million. (Source: NBC News)

When Emily Kraus found out what her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad husband had done, she packed her bags, walked out of the house, and filed for divorce. She also immediately told her boss at BP. And was immediately fired for her troubles.

Losing your job is, of course, terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. But what happened to her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad soon-to-be-ex-husband was probably worse. For him, anyway.

Loudon pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to forfeit the $1.76 million to authorities, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

He will be sentenced on May 17 and faces up to five years in federal prison, as well as a $250,000 maximum fine.

Thankfully, as I saw on LinkedIn, Emily Kraus has landed on her feet. Fired in June 2023, by July she had a new job.

I read that there have been other insider trading incidents enabled by couples working from home - and half of the couple using overheard scoop to try to make a fast buck. 

A downside of WFH I hadn't thought of.

But there is an upside. Emily Kraus has rid herself of this shitheel of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad husband. I suspect she won't be visiting her ex in jail...

Congratulations, graduates

I'm a long time volunteer in a homeless shelter, and many of our guests have cycled in and out of jail and/or prison. Sometimes, when we haven't seen someone in a while, we'll find out that they're in jail. One of my favorites spent Christmas in jail for assault and battery (brawling). 

From my many brief conversations with him, I know that he's highly intelligent, quick witted, and a hard luck "kid" who grew up in a colossally dysfunctional environment and who, familial dysfunction aside, had substantial health problems (the result of an accident in his teenage years) that has left him with major mental health and substance abuse issues. 

This guy, who turns 50 this year, has been in and out of jail (short term, not super violent crimes) for years. He's pretty much a favorite of most of the staff at St. Francis House, but he never seems to be able to make a step in the right direction and take part in any of the excellent programs we offer for those ready to take that first step back to rebuilding their lives.  

Other of our guests show up direct from prison. As a volunteer, I don't have access to any information about the guests other than name and date of birth, so I mostly know they came out of prison because they've told me (or - hey, I'm nosy - I googled their name).

Most of my volunteer work is in the Resource Center, where we sign folks up for showers and computer use, hand out socks and toothbrushes and toothpaste, give out tickets for appointments for clothing, do faxing and copying, and handle a bunch of other small things. The Resource Center is a hangout spot, and our hangout room is usually crowded with folks (mostly men, largely Black and Hispanic men, with a recent influx of young Haitians) who often sit there for hours watching TV.

When I look around the room, I often think of what a waste it is to have so many people whose lives have gone off a track they haven't been able to get back on. 

So I was delighted to read about a program that Tufts University runs at the state prison in Concord that lets inmates achieve their bachelor's degree while behind bars. Recently, 10 inmates graduated, the first class that took part in the Tufts University Prison Initiative. There are two other cohorts of 18 inmates each taking part in this program. (Inmates who are released before they graduate can take courses on the Tufts campus. There's also an ongoing support program for students and graduates who are back in the world. Even with a Tufts degree in hand, this is a difficult transition.)

The application process is rigorous. It included diagnostic exams in literary analysis and math, a letter of intention, and interviews with faculty. But it is open to all prospective students who have completed a high school education or equivalent, regardless of sentence length.

While applicants must meet a high bar to get in, program founder and executive director Hilary Binda said class discussions make room for students to discuss both the personal challenges and racial or socio-economic barriers they faced growing up, as well as how education can serve as a powerful tool for populations historically over-represented in the justice system. Of the 10 graduates at Tuesday’s ceremony, five were Black, three were Latino (including two Afro-Latino students), and one was Cambodian.

To complete their degree in civic studies, students had to take classes ranging from The Bible as Literature to gender studies, memoir writing, and biology and genetics courses. Classes, according to Binda, are taught in a circle, rather than with desks arranged in rows, to create a feeling of openness among students and facilitate group discussion. (Source: Boston Globe)

Not surprisingly, some of those who participate in the Tufts program are finding work in social services. Nothing like lived experience to help others in need of a lift!

Tufts isn't the only local school with a prison education program. Boston University also runs one. Over the past five years, they've awarded bachelor's degrees to well over 300 folks.  

I love that these programs exist. Not everyone will take advantage of them, of course. Not everyone will succeed everytime. But when I think of the guys hanging out in the Resource Center, I wish there had been opportunities like this for them.

Congratulations, graduates! Congratulations, Tufts!

Loner introvert passenger overboard!

I know, I know, whenever  I promise myself that I'm not going to do yet another post about cruises, and another post about how I can't bear the idea of going on one - other than, maybe, a river cruise, or a Baltics cruise, or a trip around some fiords somewhere. Those exceptions aside, the thought of taking a cruise gives me the willies. Big time. So when another opportunity to rag about cruises presented itself, I couldn't resist.

The opporunity is around and about the Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, the "world's largest cruise ship," which had its maiden voyage in late January.

With the capacity to carry nearly 8,000 people, the 20-deck, 1,198-foot-long vessel is the size of a small city. There are eight “neighborhoods” packed with amenities that include a 55-foot waterfall, six water slides and more than 40 restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. (Source: NY Times)

That 1,198 foot-longness doesn't sound all that big, given that the Titanic, at 882 feet and 9 inches, was also a long boy. But size matters in ways other than length. The Icon has 20 decks, the Titanic a paltry 10. So the Icon is truly titanic. Alas, the name is taken, so I guess Royal Carib had to settle for Icon. 

And a garish icon it is. That riot of colors!  Not this mess. It's nerve-wracking just to think about it, let alone step toe on one of the Icon's one score worth of decks. (If I were to take a cruise, it would be on a sophisticated, subtle looking vessel.)

Twenty decks! Is it just me, or is this interior shot of all those tiers decks reminiscent of a maximum security prison? Shudder, shudder. 

As for the neighborhoods, I just can't imagine feeling at home in one of them. AquaDome, Central Park, Chill Island, Thrill Island, Royal Promenade, The Hideaway, Surfside, and Suite.

I couldn't resist looking up a couple these neighborhoods to see what they might be about. For your edification, The Hideaway is adults only, and features the first suspended infinity pool at sea. Because, of course, the world needed a oceanic suspended infinity pool. 

And if I want Central Park, I'll take myself to NYC, thank you.

But there's more going on than taking a plunge in the infinity pool or one of the other seven pools, or just chillin' in your 'hood.

There are all sorts of shows that, according to the Washington Post reviewer, are the equivalent of Broadway and/or Las Vegas. And a waterpark that features, among other things, 
"the first open free-fall slide at sea" (whatever that is) and "the tallest drop slide at sea" (whatever that is). And the largest ice skating rink at sea. 

There are parades, snake charmers, Venetian gondoliers, and the Stay Puft Marshallow Man.

Hellzapoppin! 

And, of course, endless opportunities to gorge yourself and/or drink yourself under the table. 

This is the stuff (my) nightmares are made of.

The best description of tripping on the Icon that I came across was from Keith Austin writing in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, who found the cruise ship "bonkers." (Man after my own heart, he.) Austin wrote:

I am reminded of a friend who, after seeing one of the pre-cruise images put out by Royal Caribbean, commented: “That’s a cartoon, right?”

The Thrill Island waterpark on board is like some contraption Wile E. Coyote might create to capture the

Roadrunner.

Because that’s exactly what it feels like – a Looney Tunes cartoon come to life. The great, looping pipes and slides of the Thrill Island waterpark are like some contraption Wile E. Coyote might create to capture the Roadrunner. Or perhaps they’re the coloured intestines – all bright reds, yellows, blues, oranges and greens – of some cartoon monster that have erupted from the very top of the ship. 

Austin found the Good Ship Icon to be the "ocean-going lovechild of Looney Tunes and Las Vegas." He wrote that for the most part, the ship's color palette "sear(s) your eyeballs." Swell.

Much as I like Looney Tunes, the Icon of he Seas is no country for old loner introverts with an aversion to crowds and commotion.

I doubt that I would enjoy most "normal" cruises, but this one would definitely be a case of loner introvert passenger overboard! Right off the top deck and into the drink.