We Gather Together

Well, if it ain't turkey day.

It's a holiday I've always loved, and this year, for the first time, hosting dinner has fallen to me. So, I'll be roasting a turkey, mashing potatoes, broiling up those fab lemon-parm Brussels sprouts I discovered last winter, and tossing just enough Bell's Seasoning in to the bowl to make the stuffing - from scratch, of course: no boxed stuffing for me -  taste like my mother's. And I'll be making apple crisp and cranberry sauce. As I write this post, that's the plan. I'll def be doing the apple crisp, but I bought a can of cranberry sauce in case I decide to bag the homemade. As for gravy, that's coming from the Roche Bros. My sisters and nieces will be providing all the anything else. (Let's hear it for sisters and nieces!)

Last year, for my Thanksgiving post - which haphazardly, I had titled Thanksgiving 2024 - I counted my blessings, itemizing everything I was thankful for. The list still holds. Mostly. I'm not feeling all that thankful about my country just about now. And sorely wish it had been my Irish grandparents who'd emigrated, not my great-grandparents, which would have entitled me to apply for Irish citizenship.

Nonetheless, this is a holiday I still like. A lot.

So Happy Thanksgiving!

Jeepers creepers, this is sure something to look forward to. (NOT!)

Hey, I didn't like Mark Zuckerberg to begin with, and now he's giving me yet another WTF moment with his musings on what will soon replace the smartphone as the it device:

Zuckerberg has talked about the element that will change the technological landscape. It is smart glasses. "They will become the next big computing platform," says Mark.

This will be the change.

According to him, this is what will happen with glasses: "There will come a point where your smartphone will be in your pocket more than out of it, I think that will happen during the 2030s and although you may be able to perform the task in a more complete or better way with your phone, users will opt for the convenience of glasses to do so." Source: Marca)

I'm not a member of the "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" brigade - although, come to think of it, in the 2030s I may well have cold, dead hands to pry something out of. I hope it's a home made chocolate chip cookie - but do I really want to replace my phone and my laptop with a pair of smart glasses?

Quick answer: no. 

But, hey, I'm not a billionaire boy genius, and MZ, boy-to-man genius, thinks that, as an eyeglass wearer, I'll be an early adopter:

I think that it’s pretty easy to wrap your head around [the idea that] there are already 1 to 2 billion people who wear glasses on a daily basis. Just like everyone who upgraded to smartphones, I think everyone who has glasses is pretty quickly going to upgrade to smart glasses over the next decade. And then I think it’s going to start being really valuable, and a lot of other people who aren’t wearing glasses today are going to end up wearing them, too. (Source: Forbes)

Zuck isn't the only one, of course. All the cool tech futurists are saying that AI, AR (Augmented Reality), and VR (Virtual Reality) are going to make glasses so damned smart that we'll look back at the days whe we actually carried the universe of knowledge and connectivity in the palm of our hands as something nearly as old school as Little House on the Prairie. Smartphones? How dumb were they? One step up from a stereopticon.

How is having always on glasses - where always on means always connected to the 'net, and not always on, as in once I get out of bed in the morning, my glasses are always on - going to be less distracting, less distancing from others, than smartphones.

The Forbes writer is all in, by the way, even though they admit:

It’s potentially disconcerting that the glasses might detach us even further from being present in real life.

Oh, that.

The same writer also gives us a nifty use case, in which a salesperson can spot a client or prospect, and his glasses will whisper in their ear what they do, where they're from, when you last saw them, how many kids they have, what teams they root for, and - of course - how much they spend (or could spend) with your company.

All I can say is that if your average salesperson is all in on smart glasses, include me out. 

And what about your smart glasses being able to tell you everything about everybody you're just walking by on the street, not just the sales-targeted schlubbs you meet at conferences? I guess this is already possible with facial recognition enabled by AI on a smartphone. But with a smartphone, it would be a bit more obvious that someone was checking you out and checking up on you. With smart glasses, well, how you going to know that the guy passing by now knows everything he needs to know about everybody. Talk about invasion of the privacy snatchers.

I'm not a Luddite. Not entirely, anyway. But I really don't want this to be the change. To harken back to a radio hit of my childhood, "I got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now."

And to harken even further back: Jeepers creepers! 

Location, location, location

 A few weeks ago this FILMING NOTICE appeared in the vestibule of my building. A Very Philly Christmas was shooting some scenes across the street in the Boston Public Garden, and on the corner at Charles Street.

A bit of googling yielded the info that the A Very Philly Christmas was the working title for a film called The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattison, which was shooting in Boston. (It's about a young couple who, on the eve of their engagement, have a worst-thing-I-ever-did moment of truth, which I guess triggers The Drama. 

Anyway, seeing that title A Very Philly Christmas, of course, gave me a very WTF moment. As in WTF is a film called A Very Philly Christmas doing being filmed in Boston?

Who knows? And as far as I'm concerned - other than being perplexed by the oddity of the title - who cares? Because when this film is released it's unlikely I'll be racing out to see it. Oh, I'd watch it for free on Prime or Netflix, just to see the locations. But, well, I'm too old for this stuff. So, yawn.

But if a moment of truth triggers great drama, this did trigger a minor flurry of WTF thoughts about the times I've seen movies where the locations just don't work.

Oh, it's not that in The Departed, my dry cleaners was supposed to be a French restaurant. I can live with that. And I did get to see Martin Scorsese on the day they were filming there. 

And I could get a chuckle out of an old Spenser for Hire episode that showed Spenser and Susan dining al fresco in an outdoor restaurant in the Public Garden that does not now, nor did it ever, exist. I was just happy with all the glorious Boston scenes, including the one where Spenser and Susan dined at Toscano on Charles Street - still one of my favorite restaurants. 

And I can forgive the stupid scene in Moonstruck, when Cher parks her car in Brooklyn Heights - I think on Cranberry or Pineapple Street - and walks around the corner to find herself in Little Italy. Which is in Manhattan.

And The Holdovers pretending Worcester City Hall was something else. Who cares? This was Worcester! My Worcester! In an Academy Award nominated movie! 

No, the ones that bother me are the ones where it's completely obvious that the location is wrong.

I've forgotten its name, but I was watching a movie - something crimish -  supposedly set in Worcester and its environs. I kept looking at it, asking myself where's that? And there were some scenes supposedly set in the farmish country outside Worcester. Sure, it was hilly, as Worcester County is. But there was something off. The barns weren't the beaten up New England barns built in the 1800's and attached to the houses. Not to mention that there was something really off about the light. It just didn't look like Worcester light.

Which it wasn't. The location for the filming was in Michigan.

Harrumph!

But one of my least favorite mis-locations was in some sci-fi series that ran on TNT a decade or so ago. I turned it on because of the Boston setting - a post-apocalyptic Boston, which was invaded by aliens of the non-human variety - and the fact that it starred Noah Wyle, who I always found to be a cutie. Anyway, there's a scene where the troops are walking through a cemetery supposedly in Lexington or Concord, Massachusetts. Now, there are plenty of cemeteries in Lexington and Concord, but this wasn't one of them.

The [dead] giveaway was a World War II monument that had the dates of the war carved into it as 1939-1945. Hmmmm. There isn't a WWII monument in the United States that lists the war's starting date as 1939. As even an utterly failed history student could tell you that Pearl Harbor was in 1941. Sheesh.

And now we have the potential abomination of Boston masquerading as Philadelphia. 

Maybe there's a reason. Maybe the couple lives in Boston, but the really bad true thing that happened was in Philly. Or vice versa.

But even though they're both cities of a certain age, it doesn't make any sense for Boston to pretend to be Philly.

We'll see. Or not see. By the time the movie's out I'll no doubt have moved on to an different crank.

Meanwhile, location, location, location. 

Presidential Hobbies

A month or so ago, something fluttering in front of me caught my eye and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be fun to do a post on presidential hobbies.

That was, of course, BTU - before the unthinkable - back in the good old days when I thought I'd be cherrily writing about President Kamala Harris and her cooking - and not grinding my teeth over the idea of the malign and terrifying, manifestly unfit creature that is DJT once more occupying the White House. Where - when he's not out golfing so he can overcharge the Secret Service for their rooms in his mildewy hotels - he'll, no doubt, be indulging in his favorite indoor pasttimes: rage tweeting, retribution, watching Fox News and Newsmax suck up to him, and buttering up to (and sharing state secrets with) his autocratic buddies. And doing so with a vengeance. A literal vengeance.

Anyway, I ended up reading a short piece on (some) presidential hobbies on a site called History Facts, and found a couple of little gems:

John Quincy Adams was a skinny dipper. Sure, he had other more cerebral pursuits, like reading and writing, but Massachusetts' own liked to start out each morning with a walk and a dip in the Potomac. 

Abe Lincoln had given up the sport before he began his presidency, but he had apparently been quite the wrestler in his day and was, in fact, posthumously inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, OK. There he's enshrined with fellow presidents George Washington, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. And a bunch of wrestlers I've never heard of. 

If you're looking for wrestlers you've actually heard of - like Andre the Giant and Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Kowalski and Lou Albano - you're talking the WWE HofF, which is virtual.

Although he'd given up wrestling, Lincoln had other distractions to keep his mind off of, say, the Civil War. According to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe's hobby was cats.

Lots of presidents like to ride horseback - think of Ronald Reagan handsomely and presidentially astride some handsome and presidential steed - but Calvin Coolidge may have been the only president to ride a mechanical horse. 

The electric horse — a barrel-shaped contraption made of wood, metal, and leather — was installed in the White House for the president’s exercise. Coolidge, who loved riding actual horses, became rather fond of the mechanical version. He rode it three times a day both for exercise and as a stress reliever (and, one might assume, for pleasure). The mechanical horse even had two variable gaits: “trot” and “gallop.”

Well, ride 'em, Cowboy Coolidge! 

But back to Ronald Reagan for a sec. Years ago, I read a book in which a young American recounted the time she spent in Ireland. I believe the book was Whoredome in Kimmage by Rosemary Mahoney. There's one wonderful scene in which an Irishman is talking about Reagan, but he can't quite come up with his name. "You know," he tells Mahoney, "the cowboy married to the voodoo doll."

Indeed.

According to History Facts, JFK collected model ships and scrimshaw. These, I guess, were his public, scrubbed down hobbies, given that his real hobby (kept hidden by a press who no doubt admired his prowess) was womanizing. Estimates I've seen of his White House trysts run from dozens to hundreds to 1,000's during his mythic Thousand Days. 

Yet he still found time to manage the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

As Marilyn Monroe said - or sang - it best, "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

Fast forward a bit, and there was no womanizing in the Nixon White House. None of that sort of hanky panky. Just avid bowling when Tricky Dick needed a break from paranoia and going after his enemies, as well as from doing some actually decent presidenting. Like opening up China and starting the EPA. 

When he wasn't skirt chasing and having completely inappropriate sex with an intern, Bill Clinton wasn't just playing the saxophone. He was a crossword puzzle wiz. 

I love doing crossword puzzles. So, note to self, get some NY Times crossword puzzle books so I can hunker down and avoid the news.

Sure wish that news was going to include some cooking tips and recipes from Kamala.

Sigh...

Demon Copperhead. Such Kindness.

I used to read a lot. Through much of my adult life, I'd guess I averaged 2-3 books a week. Although I did plow through many tomes - lookin' at you, Joyce Carol Oates - I wasn't exactly curling up with War and Peace. But I read a lot. Literary fiction. Beach reads. History. Essays. Biography. Police procedurals, detective fiction. Best sellers. Political stuff.

But then politics via social media became more absorbing. This was during Trump I. Since then, if I'm in bed reading, I'm as apt to be scrolling through Twitter as I am to be reading the latest from Elizabeth Strout. 

This year, I committed to doing a book a week, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it, even if I find myself on New Year's Eve racing through the collected Betsy, Tacy, Tib novels of Maud Hart Lovelace, the favorite author of my childhood.

Two of the books I read this year were novels focused on the lives - the pretty crummy lives - of a couple of white working class guys who had fallen off the cliff and into the underbelly of society.

I'd never read anything by Barbara Kingsolver, but my brother had Demon Copperhead. So why not. Heartbreaking but great. (I will definitely pick up her other works.)

Demon Copperhead (Damon Fields) is pretty much doomed from the start. He's born in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Virginia coal country, an area that had already, for a couple of generations, been hollowed out by the decline of the coal industry. Sure, coal mining black-lunged you into an early grave, but it was good, hard, honest, purposeful work. And then it was gone.

So Damon was born into a not so good, definitely hard, not always honest, and seldom purposeful life. A young, reckless father, dead before Damon was born. (I think: I'm going from sketchy memory. Anyway, Damon never knew his father.) A decent and loving but weak (and drug addicted) mother who died when he was 11, pushing him into a beyond gruesome foster care system. 

The book follows Damon from a while before the death of his mother until young adulthood. 

There were a few redeeming features to his life. The kind and caring Peggotts provide him with family and stability, up to the point where they can no longer offer him that, given that their lives are challenged by the fact that the elder Peggotts and their one child who "made it" as a nurse are constantly having to take people in (children and adults) who've been victimized by the often inescapable forces of their home town's downward spiral. They're there for Damon - and all the alcoholic, drug abusing, violent members of their extended family - until they can't be. 

In his early teens, Damon takes off from a wildly miserable foster home and finds/discovers his paternal grandmother and his great uncle, odd but decent people who manage to get him on his feet until they can set him up with a permanent home. 

The permanent home is with the town's high school football coach and his daughter, the quirky high school smart-girl weirdo, who brings out the okay to be a smart boy weirdo - he's a cartoonist - in Damon. But it's the coach who really provides Damon with his identity: home town hero football star. Until a hideous injury during a game puts the end to Damon's football career and sets him on the path to oxy addiction and a downward life spiral. (How the Sacklers sold their ways into millions by promoting their wares and setting up the pillmill doctors that fecklessly provided the prescriptions that ended up addicting half the young folks in town is a harrowing subtext of a good swath of the book.)

Demon Copperhead is engrossing, terrifying, maddening. But toward the end we know that Damon will find redemption, as there are glimmers of good work, good friends, a good woman. 

The other book that centered on the life of a working-class white guy was Such Kindness by Andre Dubus III, an author I had long liked, admired, and read. (I also liked, admired, and read his father, Andre Dubus II.) Unlike Damon/Demon, Tom Lowe is a grownup. And he didn't live in Godknowswhere, Virginia but in the suburbs of Boston.

We meet Tom in middle age, but we learn that his early life wasn't anywhere near as Dickensian as Damon's was. But it was difficult. Tom managed to find a way out: a couple of years at UMass, the love of a great woman, a son, an interesting and lucrative career as a contractor - work that defined him and which he loved - and a home that he'd built by hand for his family.

But Tom was one fall of the roof away from losing everything that mattered to him in his life, as once he's been dreadfully injured and loses his ability to work, he's spiraling into drug and alcohol addiction. And life without the wife, the son, the house, the job.

Damon's life is lived in a poor, remote, completely beleaguered community. Tom's is on the fringes of a prosperous, educated community, a  world full of struggling single mothers on welfare, of cruddy Section 8 housing, of petty (and not so petty) criminals, of the daily humiliations that come with poverty (crummy clothing, crummy teeth), of the daily temptations: drugs, alcohol, petty criminality.

The novel ends on a minor note of optimism. We do get the sense that Tom will be okay. Or okay enough. 

What was most interesting about these novels was that they focus on the blue collar, working class. (It could be argued that Damon's world wasn't even that.) So many novels and short stories chronicle the lives of middle and upper-middle class people. Those people aren't working in Walmart, a prison, landfill. They're doctors/lawyers/professors/techies/ad-men/clergy. Given all the MFA's out there, lead characters are often writers. The kind of liberal elites who live in blue states (or blue dots in red states) and vote Democrat. Certainly not the flyover state working stiffs who have delivered us into the maws of Trump II. 

But the last couple weeks have, naturally, got me thinking of WHAT JUST HAPPENED and how, to its shame and the detriment of the country, the Democratic party stopped trying to talk to working class folks even though its Democratic policies (as half-baked as they might be) actually deliver whatever material support and comfort those working class folks get out of government. 

Not going to get any further into that now, but the election did get me thinking about the forgotten man and woman whose votes have put us on the eve of what could well end up being destruction of so much that I/we value. And brings nothing other than some emotional relief, some grim satisfaction, to the voters. 

Sigh.

I don't think that either Damon or Tom would have voted for Trump. Damon might not have voted at all. He might have been a Bernie bro who voted for Jill Stein. Maybe his girlfriend, who I'm sure by now he's married to and has had kids (and grandkids) with  - the book takes place in the late 1980's-early 1990's - would have gotten him to vote for Kamala Harris. Tom would have been a diehard Democrat.

Maybe I'm just fan-fictioning here. Because I liked both of these characters, I don't want them to be Trumpers. But it seems to me we'd be better off if we paid more attention - in both our fiction and in real life - to people who don't shop at Trader Joe's, listen to NPR, or live in communities that aren't stricken by drugs, lack of opportunity, and other terrible things.

Just sayin'.

Horseracing around in California

I'm not all that big on horseracing, but I have been to the track a couple of times. To (the long closed) Suffolk Downs outside Boston. To (the long closed) Naragansett Race Track in Rhode Island. And when I was at the track, I did place a few $2 bets, my horses chosen based on a combination of the horse's name and the color of the jockey's silks. 

Other equine engagement: I did enjoy the Seabiscuit movie. And, of course, I was a fan of Mr. Ed. 

Other than that, I may or may not pay any attention to the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, the Belmont Space. Maybe I'll pick up on it if the horse has the possibility of sweeping through the Triple Crown races. But if I were a betting woman, I'd bet the (horse) farm that never will I ever step hoof in Churchill Downs, Pimlico, or the Belmont Race Track. Or even Saratoga, even though I've been to the town of Saratoga Springs. 

Let alone to one of the big glam California tracks at Del Mar or Santa Anita, which were often the location used in movies of yore that involved horseracing movies like the Marx Brothers A Day at the Races or Sea Biscuit. 

And if horseracing was the Sport of Kings, in its heyday it was also the Sport of Celebrities, and news reels and pop magazines like Photoplay often showed actors, athletes, mobsters, and J. Edgar Hoover enjoying the sun and the ponies at Del Mar and Santa Anita. 

Del Mar, in fact, was built in the 1930s by Bing Crosby, and he used to hang around there with his Hollywood pals. There's still some Hurray for Hollywood attached to the Breeders' Cup, which runs at Del Mar. This year's edition attracted Elizabeth Banks and Bo Derek, among others. And offered $34M, which seems to me like a pretty fat purse. 

But all isn't well with horseracing in California. 

The state that has given one of America’s oldest sports iconic horses like Seabiscuit, Swaps and American Pharoah is rapidly falling behind Kentucky, New York and even Arkansas in purse money, which is vital to attract owners and trainers to race in California.

Last year, the state offered $165 million in purse money, for an average of more than $418,000 per racing day, according to Equibase, which keeps information and statistics for American racing. The available daily purse is more than $972,000 in Kentucky and $648,000 in New York, but those states’ purses are supplemented by money that each collects from legalized gaming. California has nothing comparable. (Source: NY Times)

Seems as if, rather than going for broke, Califorania horse racing is going broke.  

One reason is that, unlike some racetracks elsewhere, California's tracks aren't able to offer most other forms of gambling, which are the exclusive property of Native American tribes. California may be introducing a variant of the slot machine that combines a sort of slot-ish gambling tied to the results of historic races. This, the California race folks believe, will provide the tracks the means to up their purses and compete with Kentucky and New York and (huh?) Arkansas. 

Will the increase in purses halt or even reverse the downward spiral that California reacing has been on? 

Who knows?

And that downward spiral has been pretty downward spiral-ly. One example: between 2002 to 2022, breeding radically decreased. In 2002, over 400 stallions sired nearly 4,000 foals. In 2022, the studs were more productive on a per capita - or whatever you call it - basis, with a bit over 100 stallions producing 1,315 foals. (Way to go, fellas. I guess.) But do the math: one quarter the number of stallions, one third the number of foals.

Not to mention that, in 2019, Santa Anita had a really bad six month stretch in which 30 horses died. 

In response, state regulators and racing officials strengthened rules regarding the use of riding crops, medications for horses, education for trainers and jockeys, track safety and recuperation policies for injured horses.

These changes have resulted in a considerable reduction in the fatality rate. (And Del Mar has the best fatlity metric in the country.)

Horseracing may not be what it once was there, but it remains a big business in California. Betting, horse sales. 

Still, it's not clear that California horse racing will ever return to its glory days when Bing sported a boater and hung out at his track with Dorothy Lamour. 

Those were the days!

Latter day speakeasy

Given that yesterday's post was about a couple of numbskull/miscreant Boston Public School principals who scarfed up some Hamilton tickets donated to their school so that they and their kids (not Boston Publich School students, by the way) could attend, it may be that there is no dearth of numbskulls/miscreants among our fair city's public servants.

Today's proof point? A BPD officer and a fellow who works for the Boston Public Health Commission are up on charges that they were running "an illegal nightclub in a Jamaica Plain basement that offered bottle service, hookahs, and a DJ, according to court records and officials."

Bottles, and DJ's, and hookahs, oh my. Surprised that there weren't a few hookers on scene as well.

Anyway, a few years back, Richard McDermott (BPD) and Luigi D'Addieco (BPHC) rented out some space in JP, planning to run an HVAC company out of it. Now cops and other public servants moonlighting is nothing new, although in Boston it's hard to believe that a police officer with any werewithal at all couldn't pad his salary by taking advantage of the opportunities available to cops to "manage the traffic" at construction sites. (Based on my observations, these assignments involve cops standing around talking with construction guys or looking at their phones.) But maybe these guys just had the entrepreneurial urge and wanted to run their very own business. 

Anyway, the HVAC business was apparently a non-starter, so the enterprising duo set up an after-hours joint.

“The club had bouncers with magnetometers to screen patrons for weapons, a cover charge, bottle service where patrons paid over $100 for full bottles of liquor, Hookah service, a DJ to provide music and promoters who advertised the club on social media,” prosecutors wrote. Authorities said McDermott and D’Addieco were not licensed to serve alcohol. (Source: Boston Globe)

The illegal scheme was uncovered after a July 2021 shooting - outside the "club," where the magnetometers could do no good - a shooting which injured a bouncer. And here Mc Dermott and D'Addieco are, three years after the fact, at last being indicted. Justice delayed is, I guess, better than no  justice at all. And while I don't know a whole hell of a lot about criming, the charges they face seem at least a step or two up from trivial. 

McDermott was charged with witness intimidation, maintaining a gambling nuisance, and using criminal record information under false pretenses. D’Addieco was charged with withholding evidence from a criminal proceeding and maintaining a gambling nuisance, according to the district attorney’s office.

These charges don't seem to account for the fact that they were operating with a liquor license. Given how much liquor licenses cost, this has got to be a big no-no, but maybe it's "just" a civil deal and not criminal. As noted, I have blessedly limited knowledge of criming. Most of what I know I learned from watching Law and Order, Perry Mason, and Car 54, Where Are You. And reading Michael Connolly novels.

Anyway, after the 2021 shooting, when actual on-duty BPD officers showed up, they encountered McDermott - who was armed - who told the cops - who recognized him - that he had stopped into his brother-in-law's party and hadn't a clue what was going on. Which was misleading to say the least. During the investigation, D'Addieco is also alleged to have made false statements to detectives.

McDermott's certification to act as a police office was suspended once the indictment came down; the Health Commission has put D'Addieco on paid leave. 

The court date for the two is January 7th. 

Enjoy your holidays! 

Shouldn't principals have a few principles?

I may be the only person in America who hasn't seen Hamilton, but I know it's supposed to be a wonderful experience. And I'm sure I would enjoy seeing it. I like history. I like musicals. Especially if someone gave me a free ticket. 

So who could blame those two Boston Public Schools principals for grabbing a few when someone donated 14 tickets (12 for students, 2 for chaperones) to the Tobin School?

Actually, much as I might have liked being given a freebie to Hamilton, I'm going to put it right out there and say I blame then.

Here's what happened:

Back in 2023, the assistant principal at the Maurice Tobin School in Roxbury got an email from the Boston Education Development Fund, a non-profit that works doing good things for the Boston Public Schools, informing her that some group had donated the tickets. Would the Tobin like them? Why yes, yes, they would.

The assistant principal couldn't hit the send button fast enough before she was letting her boss, the school's principal (and the assistant principal's after-work buddy), know that she was appointing herself chaperone, and taking two of the tickets for her own kids. Would the principal like to be a co-chaperone. Why yes, yes she would.

And more the luck, when showtime rolled around and one of the Tobin students who'd been handpicked for the honor wasn't able to go, that "extra" ticket went to the principal's son.

Now, by 2023, Hamilton was no longer the "it" show it had been in 2015 when it opened, when Lin Manuel Miranda was strutting his stuff on stage, and when tickets were impossible to get and wicked pricey. (The seats donated to the Tobin were face-valued at $149.) But I suspect it still would have been a treat for some lucky kiddos at the Tobin School, and for a couple of teachers who would have leapt at the chance to chaperone.

I don't know much about the Boston Public Schools, other than knowing that the system is majorly majority minority. While the white population of Boston is in the low 40%'s, the school system is about 80% minority. And Roxbury, where the Tobin school is located, is not exactly an affluent part of the city. 

I'm sure there were plenty of kiddos in the Tobin school whose parents don't pull down the salary of the principal ($165+) or assistant principal ($140-ish). I realize that those salaries aren't astronomical, especially if you live in a high-cost city like Boston. It's still more than the average parent of a Tobin school student earns. 

A couple of things are really galling about this, and one is that none of the three children of the principal and assistant principal goes to the Tobin School. Hell, the three of them aren't students in the Boston Public Schools at all. Sheesh! (I also saw that a couple of these kids had already seen Hamilton a few weeks before and were thrilled to go again. The reason I'm not using names in this post is that I couldn't find the article that said these kids had seen the show.) 

Another weirdly galling thing is that the assistant principal apparently asked a senior person in the Boston Education Development Fund whether it was okey-dokey for her to take a couple of tickets for her sons and was told sure, no problem. So, she had some sense that taking the tickets might be a problem, and the numbskill at the Fund shrugged it off.

Not to mention that the principal, who maybe should have steered their colleague in a direction away from self-dealing, had no issue taking tickets. 

A real leader would have made sure those chaperone tickets went to teachers, and that those student tickets went to Tobin students.  

I get that you'd do anything for your children, and that charity begins at home, but this seems pretty shoddy, pretty unprincipled. 

And the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission agrees. Both the principal (who coincidentally/non-coincidentally is no longer at the Tobin School) and the assistant principal had to pay a $4,000 fine. Pretty hefty when held up besides a couple of $149 tickets. 

Hope they enjoyed the show!

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

Info source for this post: Boston Globe

People of the Stuff

My cousin Barbara and her husband have spent the last several months downsizing and preparing to move into senior living. Which has meant going through an awful lot of stuff: the accumulation of nearly sixty years of marriage, plus some of the accumulated stuff of her mother (my Aunt Margaret), our grandmother (Nanny), and our great-grandmother (Bridget Trainor). Then there's the extra-added attraction of the accumulated stuff of her mother-in-law (Eva).

Twenty years ago, when Barbara and Dick moved out of the the single-family home where they'd raised their kids and went into a townhouse community, we were all delighted that the storage space in their new digs was so capacious. I swear that the storage room off of the finished part of the townhouse basement is at least half the size of my full condo. So lots of room to hang on to all sorts of stuff.

And then, all of a sudden, the day of reckoning was nigh.

Their new place is lovely. But it's a lot smaller than what they're used to, and there's a lot less space for stuff.

So, along with their sons, daughters-in-law, eldest granddaughter, and another cousin, I've been helping them go through things to figure out what to take, what to give to someone in the family, what to donate, and what to trash. If it takes a village to raise a child, let me tell you it takes an equally sized village to help empty out a house - even if it's a townhouse.

When I say I have been helping "them," I really mean my cousin Barbara. Dick's aesthetic has always inclined more towards Zen monatery. He's been packing up and schlepping off to the Salvation Army with a vim and vigor that belies his age (87). But Barbara wants to go through her things - most of which, by the way, are lovely, interesting, and/or have sentimental meaning. Reverse curation, I guess. 

As I have explained to Dick (i.e., yelled at him) each time he's about to grab some teacups, vases, whatnots that Barbara hasn't yet gone through, so he can make yet another run to the Sally: Back off! This is in Barbara's DNA! She comes from a long line of People of the Stuff!

Nanny, our grandmother, was the OG stuff person in our family. 

Every available bit of space - tabletop, desktop, bookcase, dresser - was crammed with stuff: curios, knicknacks, whatnots. I have plenty of it, including Nanny's cookie jar, which takes center stage on my living room mantel. (Among the stuff flanking it, you can see one of my father's anchor bookends, a souvenir from his Navy days during WWII. And next to that, you can see a bit of a very pretty green and blue glass vase that Barbara gave me for my birthday a few years back - when we were still both in accumulation mode.)

Even before Barbara started adding to my Nanny mix, I already had acquired the steerhorns that hung over the bar in Rogers' Brothers Saloon; a mirror; two lamps; a clawfoot table; a rickety desk and chair; what had been my father's childhood dresser; and an ugly-ass grey and blue pitcher that had broken and been crudely patched together by Nanny. But now that Barbara is deaccessioning, I've acquired even more of Nanny's stuff. 

Like this hot chocolate set. From the vintage - early twentieth century - I'm guessing it was a wedding present. I'm sure Nanny got a ton of use out of it, given that within four years of her wedding day, she had three kiddos. Anyway, it's now in my downstairs' bathroom. (I'm not planning on hosting any more hot chocoloate parties than Nanny did.)

I took a few of the serving pieces from Nanny's very pretty China set - 1930-ish handpainted Noritake - but then my niece Molly decided she wanted Nanny's china. I may use that one covered bowl on Thanksgiving, but the full set - where full means that half the coffee cups are missing - is packed and ready for Molly. 

I took the two two-toned little brown vingegar jugs that had been Bridget Trainor's, and gave one each to my nieces Molly and Caroline. 

God help me, I'm eyeing that little ice chest of Nanny's - or maybe it was Bridget Trainors's - and the one side chair on wheels - items I most decidedly don't need and decidedly have no room for. But, hey, I'm a bona fide person of the stuff.

So was my Aunt Margaret. I already had one of her dining room chairs, a few paperweights (which she collected), a very nice tray and two sweet little dishes - one with lillies of the valley, the other with violets - that sit on what had been my father's dresser holding, well, small stuff. But I haven't left Barbara's empty handed of Peg's stuff: I've taken a few trinkets. 

My mother was also a colossal person of the stuff, and I've lost all track of how much of her stuff I have around here: vases, decorative plates, her mixing bowl, the aluminum pan she used for brownies and barmbrack, a side chair, and two lovely water colors her artist friend Ann Curtain gave her as a wedding gift. Her silver. The nice date book from some museum in which she kept track of birthdays. The entry for her birthday, November 8th, just says Me. (Tell me you could part with that.) Some  of her OG Christmas ornaments. (And a couple that were Nanny's. Because why not.)

Anyway, I've got People of the Stuff from both sides. My sisters are both the same way. 

My sister Kath is in the process of preparing to move out of their big place in Brookline, and find a place that's more manageable (i.e., isn't on four floors with steep staircases). Her place is packed with fabulosity - both her own and some family gems. (I am about the inherit the sweet little wood-framed Madonna and Child that was on the wall in our childhood bedroom.) Kath has not, of course, wanted to take anything from Barbara's downsizing, much as she might actually want it. But I did find the one thing I just knew she would cherish: a gold catechism medal that Nanny was awarded in 1894, when she was twelve years old. Kath is thrilled to have it. 

My sister Trish is also the beneficiary of some of Barbara's downsizing: table, chairs, some Roseville pottery.

Fortunately, although their new place will be far smaller than what they're used to, Barbara will be able to take enough of her stuff with her to make the new place feel like home. 

The process of going through all of Barbara's stuff with her has been bittersweet. Every item - and there are plenty of them - has a memory, some meaning, associated with it. We probably took longer to sort through her stuff than we technically needed to take, but there have been so many good stories. That Noritake china set that Molly's taking? (That creamer, btw, shows the pattern. This is the pic I texted to Molly to see if she wanted the set.) Apparently, when Aunt Margaret became engaged, Nanny wanted to invite Uncle Ralph's family over to dinner and didn't feel she had decent enough china. So off she went - I suspect to Coghlin's in downtown Worcester - to buy the Noritake. I don't know who Nanny was so all-fired in need of impressing. It's not like Uncle Ralph's family were some sort of grandees. His mother had died when he and his brothers were still pretty young, and his father was a Worcester cop. 

Anyway Nanny was a notoriously dreadful cook. Perhaps she felt that having nice, new china would detract from the awfulness of the meal. 

I am happy that I was able to go through all of Barbara's stuff with her. It was a way of remembering, a way of honoring her possessions, a way of recognizing our kinship as People of the Stuff. And of the joy we take in both acquiring new stuff, and hanging on to the stuff of our family members. (I could write another chapter on going through Barbara's wonderful - mostly very arty - costume jewelry, and collection of gorgeous scarves. But that's a story for another day.)

A few years from now, I'll be doing the same thing here. Going through my stuff, reminiscing about where I got it, about whose it once was. I'll be hauling stuff to Goodwill, I'll be tossing stuff in the trash, but there's lot of stuff I'll want to find a good home for. 

There are plenty of People of the Stuff out there that might be delighted to have that hot chocolate set. 

Move over, Harvey Weinstein

In truth, I didn't pay a ton of attention to the Harvey Weinstein saga.

Of course, I knew the story at the highest level, and recognized some of the big names Weinstein, a major movie producer, exploited. And I'm glad he's met his comeuppance, and will likely spend the remainder of his loathsome life in prison. Good riddance!

I've also been aware since, like, forever, that there was such a thing as the casting room couch, and that many young aspiring actresses have slept their way, if not to the top, then at least into a role or two. (I can't be the only one who remembers the jokes about Nancy Reagan that included references to both Grade-B movies and blowjobs.) 

Not that Hollywood was the only industry where young women were pressured to provide sex in exchange for opportunity. I can't say it was exactly prevalent in the places I worked in the boring, unglamorous world of technology. Although I certainly had colleagues who were pressured by senior execs. One woman I was friendly with was hit on by the company president at the annual holiday party. N (very pretty and a fabulous dancer) was on the dance floor with C - widely regarded as a cad and an ahole - when C, presuming on his allure (not!) said to her "if I weren't the president of the company, you'd sleep with me." N reported back to me that her response was, "if you weren't the president of the company, I wouldn't be dancing with you." C was also rumored to have hired a woman who was selling office furniture for our new digs and given her what was a coveted position on the strategy team. Hmmmm.

And I do not know many/any woman who hasn't had a "Me, Too" moment - whether presonal or professional - in her life.

One of the things I admire about the younger women in the workforce is that they will not put up with the casual and not-so-casual sexism and harassment that my generation did. 

And overall, I've mostly thought about harassment and exploitation as being a women's issue. 

Apparently not, as I came to realize when I read about Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, a now 80-year-old scuzzbucket who was recently, alongside his partner Matthew Smith, arrested on sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges.

A federal indictment alleges Jeffries — along with Smith, his romantic partner, and [JamesJacobson], who was described as a recruiter — operated an "international sex trafficking and prostitution business” from 2008 to 2015.

It alleges that they organized “sex events” in England, France, Italy, Morocco, St. Barts and New York for Jeffries, Smith and “others.” They “employed coercive, fraudulent and deceptive tactics in connection with the recruitment, hiring, transportation, obtaining, maintaining, solicitation and payment of the men to engage in commercial sex.”

The men who attended the events allegedly were led to believe that it could lead to modeling opportunities or help their careers or “that not complying with requests for certain acts during the Sex Events could harm their careers.” (Source: NBC News)

Yuck. Ugh. Disgusting. All these poor young men, hoping to mae it in modeling or fashion, perhaps hoping to meet an older Mr. Right, maybe just hoping to go on a pricey trip to some splosh place, preyed upon by these bastards.

 The men had to sign NDA's. When they got to St. Bart's or wherever, they had to give over their wallets and phones, so they were pretty much trapped. The trio also had a number of staff members whose job was to make sure the sex events - build as "tryouts," by the way - went off without a hitch.

There were, of course, plenty of beautiful young men for Jeffries to pick and choose from. Male models? Young, beautiful, and often gay? Michael Jeffries, like Harvey Weinstein, was an aging, not particularly attractive creep. But an aging, not particularly attractive creep with access to all sorts of gorgeous young men." (Abercrombie's brand, in particular, was known for wanting beautiful people in their ads and working in their stores.)

The staff provided Jeffries, Smith and the men who attended alcohol, muscle relaxants known as "poppers," lubricant, Viagra, and condoms among other items. Either Jacobson or the staff paid the men for attending the sex events, the indictment said.

All very Jeffrey Epstein, that's for sure.

Look, I may think that modeling is a pretty dumb ass profession. And I may - at least on occasion - have asked myself what did these fellows expect when they jetted off to St. Bart's for a tryout? (As I asked the same question about the young women who willingingly knocked on Harvey Weinstein's door at some fancy Beverly Hills hotel.) 

Sure, maybe they should have known better. But they were all young, ambitious, and wanting to get ahead in an industry where sex sells - and buys. So they got on the plane, knocked on the door, hoping against hope that the guy making it possible was just trying to be a good guy. But ain't none of them signed up to be doped up and violently raped. 

Hope Jeffries and company get what they deserve. And that's not high end booze, poppers, and free-reign sex in luxury venues, with young guys who just wanted to impress the big guy and get a job.

And today's earworm is "Running Bear"

I'm always on the lookout for quirky little stories, and a few weeks ago, I happened upon a doozie.

Oh, the core story was interesting enough:

A woman from Hong Kong pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Vermont to a charge of smuggling for trying to illegally transfer more than two dozen protected turtles from the United States into Canada. (Source: Boston Globe)

But the real devilish details were what I found most intriguing. 

Wan Yee Ng was arrested June 26 at an Airbnb in Canaan, Vt., as she was about to get into a inflatable kayak on Lake Wallace with a duffle bag, which authorities later found contained 29 live eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks, according to court records.

Airbnb? Inflatable kayak? Duffle bag full of live box turtles - worth about $40K - wrapped in socks? 

What a story! 

Then it got even more interesting:

Ng was caught holding the goods just before she got into her inflatable kayak to ferry the turtles into Canada, from where they were destined to make their way to Hong Kong. And while US Boarder Patrol was taking Ng into custody, they heard from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - the Dudley Doright Mounties - that they'd stopped her co-conspirator (presumed to be her husband), who was madly "paddling toward the middle of the lake from the Canadian side." 

One of the reseasons that the co-conspirator is presumed to be Ng's husband is that at the time this was all going down, her husband wrote and posted a review of an Airbnb "directly across the lake from Ng's rental." (Here's hoping that at least he got a good reference from the Airbnb owner.)

Border Patrol and the Mounties keep a close eye on Lake Wallace because it's frequently used for human and narcotic trafficking. And now turtle smuggling. 

Darn the luck for Ng and her co-conspirator (husband), as she's looking at a long prison sentence (up to 10 years) and a steep fine (up to $250K).

But the image that sticks with me from this peculiar little episode is that of Running Bear and Little White Dove, the young lovers who, a la Romeo and Juliet, couldn't be with each other because their tribes were enemies. The saga of Running Bear (young Indian brave) and Little White Dove (his lovely Indian maid) was captured in a song, Running Bear, the Number One tune on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in January 1960, a time when my 10 year old ear was glued to WORC. So I heard a lot of Running Bear. (I can completely, with 100% accuracy, sing along with it to this day.) 

The young lovers were used to mooning at each other across the raging expanse of the river that separated them. Unlike Ng and her co-conspirator (husban), they didn't have access to an inflatable kayak. Or even a birch bark canoe. So: 

Running Bear dove in the water
Little White Dove did the same
And they swam out to each other
Through the swirling stream they came
As their hands touched and their lips met
The raging river pulled them down
Now they'll always be together
In that happy hunting ground

I don't imagine there's going to be any happy hunting ground on earth for Ng and her co-conspirator (husband). 

Meanwhile, Running Bear is my current earworm.

You're welcome!

At the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month

It's Veterans' Day, so I'll be thinking in general about those who have served our country by being in the military, and about the many veterans I have known and loved, foremost among them my father, who spent four years in the Navy during World War II.

This day used to be called Armistice Day, after the Armistice that ended the "war to end all wars." It was renamed once World War II made it clear that the bit about ending all wars didn't happen. So the world war that took place between 1914 and 1918 became known as World War I.

I think about both of those wars because they played an instrumental role in making me the me who I became.

My mother was born in 1919 in Romania, in a town called Neue Banat. She was an ethnic German. Everyone in Neue Banat was. My grandparents had also been born in Neue Banat, but the country wasn't Romania at that point. It was the Banat region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the war ended, the Banat region was declared part of Romania.

My grandfather had been a soldier during the war, fighting in the army of whoever it was who succeeded Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assissination triggered the war in 1914. A number of his brothers were also in the army. Jacob Wolf came from a large family - 9 or 10 children, almost all boys - and several of those brothers were killed in combat. My grandfather survived, but his war had been hell. To get home, he hitched part of the way riding on the undercarriage of a railroad car, strapped to the struts by the big leather belt that he wore over his greatcoat. I grew up believing that, to survive, at one point he'd eaten rats. My sister Kathleen claims cats. (I'll need to check with my Aunt Kay, the lone surviving Wolf child, but she was only seven when my grandfather died,  so she may not know the story, which I likely heard - or misheard - from my grandmother.)

Anyway, once Jake Wolf got home, he promptly went and married his fellow Neue Banater, Magdalena Folker, who promptly got pregnant with my mother.

The family decided to emigrate, as many members of the Wolf and Folker families chose to do before and after World War I, and after World War II, for that matter. There were relatives who were immigrants in both the US and Canada, but Jake and Lena decided on the US, on Chicago, where my grandfather had a brother. 

Why did they come? An economic decision, to be sure. Even with several brothers killed during the war, there were still plenty of Wolf brothers contending for the small farm. But I also think that they'd seen enough. At least my grandfather had. And he wanted his family to find prosperity and peace in the new world. So off they went. 

They came through Ellis Island, which my mother - then nearing the age of four - had vague memories of. They were there a while, as my grandparents had misunderstood the amount of money their sponsor - my great-uncle Joe Wolf - had to put up for them. They thought it was $25 a family. It was $25 a head. So they had to wait a while for the cash to be raised and wired from Chicago. The family was separated: Jake over to the men's dormitory, Lena and little Lizzie off to the family unit. My mother remembered my no-doubt bewildered grandmother crying. No surprise there. She was all of 23 years old, no English, and still grieving the two-year old who had died shortly before they got on the boat. 

All ended well enough, and they were off to Chicago on the train, where they built a good life. My grandfather was a butcher who ended up opening his own market, and also investing in rental property. The family owned a nice Chicago bungalow, and a summer house on a lake about 50 miles north of the city.

So when I think of World War I on Veterans' Day, I'm not thinking "Over There" or the Fighting 69th. I'm thinking about Jacob Wolf suffering through it and making the wise decision to get out of Europe while the gettin' was good.

The other part of my origin story involves World War II.

As my father always told us, if you were in the service, you went where Uncle Sam sent you. And Uncle Sam sent my father to Norfolk, Virginia. To Trinidad. And to Navy Pier in downtown Chicago.

My parents met on a blind date - one of his Navy friends conspiring with his girlfriend to find a nice Catholic girl for my father. And the rest became history. That first date was in early January, 1945. They became engaged while at a football game at Soldiers Field right after the atomic bombings, when my father figured he wouldn't be sent to the South Pacific - his likely next stop. They married in late November and my father moved into that bungalow on 4455 North Mozart, where my parents lived - along with Jake and Lena, my Aunt Mary (who was 20), Uncle Jack (15), Bob (5), and Kay (2) - until March 1946, when my father and his war bride moved back to my father's home town of Worcester. 

They had to leave Chicago because they couldn't find a place to live, even in one of my grandparents rental units, and there was only so long that my father and pregnant, as of early 1946, mother were going to be able to stay at 4455 North Mozart.

The rest is history...

Happy Veterans Day to all who served, with a special posthumous shout out to Jake Wolf and Al Rogers. Thanks, guys.

"You can make it, make it in Massachusetts"

Way back in the 1980's, the state's Department of Commerce ran a TV ad campaign touting all the businesses that "make it in Massachusetts." Most of the companies touted are defunct: Prime Computer, Polaroid...

But even in the 1980's, no one was really thinking of Massachusetts as a manufacturing hub - not like it was a few decades earlier, when I was growing up, and plenty of things were made here. Real things - shoes, clothing, industrial products. 

Worcester was a big manfacturing town. 

My father worked for Thomson Wire, a company that made fine wire which was sold to industries like automotive. It was fun to go visit Dad's office - walking distance from where we lived - and look in through the basement windows watching the wire-drawers coiling up the wire. You could hear the thrum of the coiling machines, and if you stood on the sidewalk, feel the machine vibrations. Thomson Wire was located right next to the train tracks so that the wire could be directly loaded onto boxcars. 

Spike, my father's closest friend worked for Norton, which made abrasive. My friends' fathers  - the ones who weren't cops or firemen - worked for Crompton and Knowles, Wyman-Gordon, Riley Stoker. 

The summer before college, I worked, alongside my friend Kim, at HH Brown Shoe - making, among other things, combat boots for the Vietnamese Air Force. While I was polishing combat boots, my friend Marie was working at Harrington-Richardson, which made M16's. I had other classmates who worked at Dapol Plastics, making cheap crappy toys. 

One of my prized possessions in late high school-early college was a large leather Davey's shoulder bag, which I bought in downtown Worcester at their factory store for a sharply discounted price.

And early each summer, our family made a trip to the knitting mills in Ware or Fall River to buy the year's supply of no-brand tee-shirts for the family at the factory outlet. (I still like striped tee-shirts.)

Some of the places mentioned here, companies that made things, are still around under different names, but with a much smaller or non-existent Massachusetts footprint.

But some things are still made in Massachusetts, and manufacturing represents about 10% of our state's economy.

A recent Boston Globe article rounded up some of our home-grown products.

Leather jackets are made in Fall River at Vanson Leathers. Their focus has been on jackets for motorcycle racers (and racer wannabes), but they've branched out into making wares for the likes of Comme des Garçons. 

Aviator-style sunglasses - could these be the ones the Joe Biden sports? - are made by Randolph Engineering for both the military and for civilian markets. 

Cambridge used to be a big candy producing town, and Junior Mints are still made in Kendall Square. Alas, other Cambridge candies like Squirel Nuts, Charleston Chews, Candy Cupboard Chocolates, and NECCO wafers are now made elsewhere. But just thinking about Junior Mints makes me want to go to the movies and buy me a package. 

The other day, I ran into an old friend and asked after his kids. Well, one of this sons works in marketing for Achusnet, which is still churning out Titleist golf balls in New Bedford. 

Pricey linens are manufactured in Fall River at John Matouk & Co. How pricey? In one of their lines, a lone flat queen-sized sheet will run you $549. Cheaper to support Massachusetts manufacturing with the purchase of a box of Junior Mints or a couple of Titleists. 

Apparently, Masschusetts does quite a bit when it comes to musical instruments. I knew about Zildjian cymbals, but we also have two companies - Verne Q Powell and Burkart - that make flutes and piccolos, out in the territory once dominated by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) of computing fame. 

Not surprisingly, we have a couple of boat manufacturers. Boston Boat Works handcrafts luxury carbon fiber boats. Cape Cod Ship Building makes sailboats. 

The Electric Time Co. "makes and repairs ornate analog clocks...the company even has a wall clock at McMurdo Station in Antarctica."

Peculiarly, Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin, is home to GE Aerospace, which builds military jet engines, and to Durkee Mower, which makes Marshmallow Fluff.

Not to be outdone on the wacky manufacturing continuum, you can thank Worcester for the David Clark Company, which makes spacesuits and headsets for air traffic controllers, and for Polar Beverages, which bottles all sorts of sodas, including the sorts of sodas - like Orange Dry (always to be found in my fridge) - that used to be called tonic.

And while Worcester no longer makes shoes, Alden Shoes makes high end shoes and boots, and New Balance has two sneaker-making factories in the Commonwealth. Other footwear companies are HQ'd in this state - Reebok, Converse - but most of their sneaks are made overseas. (Reebok does make some stuff almost locally, in Rhode Island.) 

In keeping with their commitment to get rid of jobs, Amazon makes all of its warehouse robots in Massachusetts, so they're at least keeping some jobs locally.  (Boston Dynamics and Roomba build their robots elsewhere.)

Once in a while, I go to Boston's main Post Office - which has great hours (6 a.m. to midnights) and is open on weekends - where I can't help seeing its next door neighbor, Gillette "world shaving headquarters." And, yes, they still produce some razors here in Boston. 

Good to see that some things are still made in Massachusetts!

Don't feed the wildlife

When we were kids, while my mother was at Sunday Mass - her one respite of a week - my father would sometimes take us to feed the deer at Green Hill Park, or the ducks at Elm Park. At Green Hill Park, we'd take our large brown paper bag full of stale bread and head over to the cylcone fence the deer were behind Those critters would lope over and press their muzzles up against the chain links and we'd shove pieces of bread into their mouths, careful not to graze their big old teeth with our little young fingers. 

At Elm Park, there was no separation between kids and wildlife, but I don't remember ever feeding the ducks by hand. I think we just scattered stale bread around.

There were no signs warning us off feeding the animals. I'm sure at Green Hill Park, families feeding the deer was factored into their diet. Sure, they were wild animals, but they were in captivity, in a sort of pastoral mini-zoo (now replaced by a petting zoo) that also featured bison. The ducks at Elm Park weren't captive, but were left to their own devices, one of which was letting families toss bread at them.

In general, it's not a good idea to feed wild animals, as they grow accustomed to humans and human food when they should be consorting with each other and with their animal kingdom enemies, and eating whatever comes naturally: acorns, weeds, bugs, mice. The other day, someone posted a picture taken at the Boston Public Garden of a giant hawk, perched in a tree, with a giant rat in its talons. (Go, hawks!)

But despite the many signs telling folks not to feed the animals, I always see people (mostly tourists) feeding the geese, the ducks, and the squirrels. 

My favorite feeders were a pair of middle-aged women - locals, not tourists - who'd I see roaming around the Garden pulling a luggage carrier with a giant carton full of peanuts strapped to it. 

To me, all squirrels look alike, but these two clearly recognized the differences. "Mr. Bun-Bun!" they would call. "Benicio! Alice!" And any squirrel within earshot would beeline over to them for some peanuts. 

The downside of all this was that the squirrels became pretty darned agressive, and began coming right up to people expecting - nay, demanding - a handout. A friend of mine had a squirrel run up her leg. And the little bastards got big - some seemed to me the near-size of racoons. 

And, yes, there are racoons around here, but they mostly come out at night or in the early morning hours to maraud through garbage cans. (Let me tell you, those suckers can lick an avocado pit clean.) But nobody sets out to feed racoons. 

But way across the country, someone did. 

For more than 35 years, a woman in Washington State would leave some food in her yard for about a dozen resident raccoons. (Source: NY Times)

Then, all of the sudden, the news went viral in racoon-ville that there was chow to be had, and all of a sudden there was a horde of around 100 racoons nosing around the woman's house. 

All night, she had racooons scratching around while she sheltered in place. When she tried venturing out during the day, she was swarmed by racoons, and they'd back off only when she starting throwing them food. Unlike her regular racoons, which were nice, the new guys were aggressive, nasty, demanding, scary. And it kept getting worse. 

So she did what anyone would do, which was dial 911. With the sheriffs watching over her, she hopped in her car and fled the scene. 

The sheriff’s department said trappers had been asking a prohibitive $500 per raccoon to cart them away. So the woman was referred to the state’s department of fish and wildlife. Their expert advice was, well, to stop feeding the raccoons.

“The raccoons appear to have started dispersing now that they are no longer being fed, and we are glad for a positive outcome to this case,” Bridget Mire of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wrote in an email on Thursday.

...“We discourage people from feeding wildlife, as this causes them to lose their natural fear of people, which can lead to aggression,” Ms. Mire said. “It also draws animals together, possibly mixing healthy and sick animals and spreading diseases among them. Some wildlife, like raccoons, can carry diseases that may be transmissible to people and pets. Feeding wildlife also may attract predators, such as coyotes and bears.”

I haven't seen the Public Garden squirrel feeders in a few years.  Maybe they got the message that you're not supposed to feed the wildlife, even if they are "just" cute little squirrels like Mr. Bun-Bun and Benicio.