Un-fill 'er up!

When I was in high school, I remember two girls in my school having "nose jobs." Both of them did have rather large noses, and both were from "monied" families. Or at least my definition of being "monied," which basically meant you lived in a parish with colonial and tudor homes, and no mingy little ranch or puny Cape Cod homes, let alone three deckers.

They had their surgeries during school vacation weeks, and came back with large bandages across their noses and the remnants of black eyes.

At the time, I thought the idea of having a nose job was weird. Sure, both S and P had large noses (what would have been referred to as "schnozzes," but I never could understand why it mattered all that much. Their noses weren't disfiguring. They were just, well, large.

But I always was slow on the uptake when it came to understanding all the judgement calls about certain physical attributes (mostly of women).

Having big feet? Huh? A big knock on Jackie Kennedy was that she wore a size 10 shoe. Sure, the fact that her foot was narrow - 2A  -  somewhat mitigated the insult to mankind that was a size 10. But big feet: heavens forbid! (By the time I was in eighth grade, I also wore a size 10. 4A. Even narrower than Jackie's! Even harder to find shoes that fit. Still: big feet! What a terrible curse, even if cool shoes were available in your size. 

But big feet were the least of my sins against beauty.

It was bad to be short-waisted. And I was short-waisted. I was an adult before I realized that short-waisted pretty much equalled long-legged, which was a good thing. (Cue up the wolf-whistles.) And even though this revelation got me off the hook as far as beeing a lesser woman because I was short-waisted, I never truly got what the big deal was.

Wearing glasses? Men seldom make passes, etc. Glasses were for the best friend of the pretty girl, not for the pretty girl who was going to get the cute fella. (Needless to say, I wore glasses, and did so until I was 17 and spent a lot of my summer earnings from the shoe factory on contact lenses.) 

And thin lips? Forget about it? You are just so not invited to the beauty club! I've never been all that much of a makeup wearer, but - other when it was required when I was a Big Boy waitress, I've never worn lipstick. Spend time trying to draw an upper lip? What a waste of time!

At least I didn't wear braces which, in my circle were only for those who had some sort of dental deformity that was going to impede you from eating normally My brother Tom had a front tooth that came in almost perpendicular to the rest of his teeth. He was the only one in our family who wore braces. Today, we all would have been likely candidates due to crowded lower teeth and oddly spaced top front teeth. 

Anyway, when I was growing up, it almost seemed as if not being conventionally pretty (and petite, and dainty, and had perfect eyesight and perfect lips, and average sized feet) was an offense against nature. Or at least the swath of nature that men comprised.

To be considered the perfect embodiment of womenhood you had to be pretty. Even as a kid, I thought it was dumb that pretty always seemed to trump intelligence, kindness, and good humor when women were beeing weighe and found wanting.

Then there was plastic surgery, which was something you heard about occasionally. Something rich folk. Something Hollywood. Mostly it meant a face lift, something that aging actresses had when they got a bit jowly and/or wrinkly. 

Who could blame movie stars for wanting to stay pretty? But normal, everyday people didn't get any plastic surgery beyond a nose job. 

Then fast forward a few decades and all sorts of people were having all sorts of work done. Sometimes a face lift to get rid of the saggy-baggy look, sometimes a boob job in which sacks of goop that turned out to be not so great for you were inserted in your breats to augment them.

A lot what was going on, cosmetic enhancment-wise, didn't mean going under the knife. It meant getting jabbed by a needle and having something that wasn't there before get stuff injected in. 

Botox freezes your skin so that your frown lines and crows' feet don't show. 

And then fillers became the thing. Lips, cheeks, hands, noses...Whever it looked like you could use some sculpting, some plumper-upping, some boost. Fillers have been around for quite a while. In the late 1800's there were paraffin was injected. (Didn't work very well.) And each decade seemed to bring with it a new advance. But it was when hyaluronic acid became the filler around the turn of this century, fillers really took off. And took off among the younger set who wanted the sort of facial perfection they saw from beauty influencers online.

So the fill 'er up culture took off.

But now what's increasingly in demand are filler rerversals. 

Seems that while fillers were supposed to disolve, they didn't always do so, or did so only partially. After years of getting fillers, and having them repeatedly topped off, folks were noticing that they had all that gel-like crud accumulating in their noses, lips, chins, or wherevers. And it didn't look all that good.

Ashely Stobart is a beauty influence. (Sorry, Ashley, but it's absurd enough typing the words beauty influcence, let alone actually being one.) After years of fillers, her face was looking puffy and "off." 

She decided to get her fillers reversed, but dissolving more than a decade's worth of substances she had in her face left her with sagging skin. So she opted to get a face-lift at age 34.

She's not alone. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said that while the overwhelming majority of facelifts are still among people over 50, their members have observed an increase among people in their 40s and younger. (Source: ABC News)

Here was someone who started playing around with getting injected with foreign substances in her 20's - when she probably looked perfectly fine, or imperfectly fine anyway -  looking for a reversal in her 30's. Which turned out to be something of a nightmare.

Even though Stobart had some of her fillers removed already, she said the face-lift surgery was grueling.

"They found a lot of hyaluronic acid, or remnants of some injectable at some point that I had had. They were pushing it out for hours," she told ABC News. "I was in surgery for 9.5 hours in total. That wasn't anticipated because when he opened everything up, it turned out there was still a lot left in there."

But, just like fillers turned out to be, facelifts are there own sort of slippery slope. They only last about 7-10 years or so, 15 years max, and you need to keep having them to keep natural aging at bay. And so you can end up with a frozen face where you don't have any normal expression, and can't even crack a smile. Or, worse, end up like the "Catwoman" Jocelyn Wildenstein (shown in the pictures above) who went from a beautiful young woman to a creature from the beyond who looked god-awful.

I feel bad for these young women who feel like they have to be perpetually pursuing some (false) notion of beauty perfection. Maybe there'll be all sorts of "new and improved" by the time they get older, so they won't end up looking like the Catwoman.

What's wrong with a big nose? Thin lips? Laugh lines? 

Is it such a crime to not be beautiful? (Is it such a crime to just let yourself get old?)

Ever more walkable cities? I'm there for it!

O.

When I travel, my favorite trips are always to cities that are walkable.

In the states, New York, Washington DC, and Chicago are all great walking cities. As is my hometown of Boston. In Europe, Dublin is surprisingly good for walking. Berlin is another walkable city. As is Paris, which combines walkability with what to me is just breathtaking beauty. (Come to think of it, all of these walkable cities are pretty damned attractive, at least if you're in the center-city parts.)

Anyway, it's been a while since I've been to Paris, but on my trips there, I've easily logged 10 miles a day just strolling around soaking it all in.

And now Paris is becoming even more walkable.
On March 23rd, the good citoyens of the City of Light voted to "pedestrianize" 500 city streets, which will greatly increase the Parisian total - from 200 to 700.

Only 4% of voters turned out, but the results were pretty clear: 66% for, 34% against. (Data source: Reuters)

I love this idea, as do the Paris voters - at least the ones who voted. Only one out of three city center Parisians owns a car. In the outer regions, it's two out of three, and they and the suburbanites aren't quite so enthused about the pedestrianization of Paris.

Public transpo doesn't well-serve a lot of those suburban commuters, and the referendum's passage will result in 10,000 fewer inner-city parking places. This is on top of an other 10,000 that have already been removed over the last five years.
But Paris just plain wants to become more pedestrian (and non-car) friendly.

"For the past 25 years we've gradually been reclaiming public space for pedestrian traffic, for gentle traffic, and with 'garden streets', to create lungs within neighbourhoods, the places where we live," Deputy Mayor Patrick Bloche told Reuters ahead of [the March 23rd] vote.

Paris town hall data shows car traffic in the city has more than halved since the Socialists assumed power at the turn of the century.

Mayor Anne-Hidalgo, in office since 2014, has overseen significant transformation in the city's streets. Since 2020, 84 km (52 miles) of cycle lanes have been created and bicycle usage jumped 71% between the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns and 2023, the data shows. (Source: Reuters)

I do have some sympathy for the car commuters, especially those who don't live convenient to public transportation. But car-enablement is not an unalloyed good (think pollution, congestion, etc.). And the world would be better off investing in public transportation than in more highways and parking lots.

The only pedestrianized street in Boston that comes to mind is Newbury Street on spring-summer-fall Sundays when this lively street - lots of shops and restaurants - is closed to car traffic. And the bleek Downtown Crossing district is quasi car free. Boston has also done a lot of experimenting - not always successful and not always popular - with bike lanes. (Seriously, even a non-car person like me knows that, given bike ridership, all the bike lanes they've put in seem like overkill, and some are being discontinued. While a lot folks do seem to use the Bluebikes for short hops and touring, there doesn't seem to have been any great uptick in commuters using bikes. Boston isn't exactly Amsterdam or Stockholm. There isn't a huge bike culture here, and it hasn't been a case of 'if they build it [bike lanes], they [bike commuters] will come.'

If I had a bucket list, getting back to Paris for one last time would be on it. Think I'll wait a few years and see how pedestrianized this beautiful city has become.

Event-not-so-brite. (That AI chat is quite a killer app!)

I've used the Eventbrite app plenty of times in the past to attend events, mostly fundraisers. Once or twice, I couldn't access the ticket I paid for, and I either showed up and they let me in anyway. Or I took the introvert's way out and didn't show up at all. 

But the other night, I really, really, really wanted the ticket, as it was a wonderful gift from my wonderful friend Joyce.

Joyce has always been a terrific cook, and a cooking hobbyist - following certain favorites, buying new cook books, subscribing to food mags, trying new recipes online. Me, less so. A lot less so. I've always been a pretty good baker, but just an OK cook. I'm good at what I do, but haven't tended to venture very far beyond the good at what I do.  But I've gotten more into cooking over the last couple years, becoming more adventurous, often trying out recipes that Joyce has recommended and adding them to my growing repertoire. 

Anyway, the other day, I got an email telling me that Joyce, for a belated Christmas gift, had gifted me with a cooking class this May. An Italian cooking class that sounds quite wonderful. Una classe perfetta, in fact. 

The platform used to sign people up for the class is Eventbrite. 

As I said, I've used Eventbrite plenty of times in the past.

When I got the email about the class, I immediately clicked through to "claim" my gift.

And then the trouble started.

The event, with details, showed up on the Eventbrite app, but when I clicked through to get the ticket itself, which I assumed would show the barcode or QRS needed for admission, this space mushroom was what I saw.

Eventbrite "help" is provided via AI chat. Which might have been fine it it actually was smart enough to provide help. But no...

Instead, I went through an endless doom loop of do-this-do-that chat that took me nowhere.

I reclaimed the gift again. I downloaded an updated version of the phone app. Twice. 

No dice.

I'd click on some link provided - you can access your ticket here, you can contact the organizer (the cooking school) here - and nothing happened. At least nothing helpful happened. I'd end up on a screen and the only recourse was to hit the Ask a Question button, which got me back to the AI bot. Sometimes, the bot had told me that if I clicked on a link it sent me, there'd be a form that I could fill out that would, say, go to a human. Hah, I say hah, hah. Form? What form? A little AI prank, perhaps?

At one point, when asked to repeat some details for the nth time, I asked why they couldn't just refer to the most recent chat. But, no. Each chat was its own little useless monster.

Ingest this, you little $%@!##@&! (At least now I know what the use of symbols in place of an obsenity is called. It's grawlix or an obscenicon. Good to know!)

Anyway, I kept asking whether it was necessary to even have a ticket for such a small event, whether the listing of the event was enough. 

But AI kept insisting that I needed a ticket. 

Via text, I roped Joyce, who lives in Dallas, to step into the support hell fray. She tried a few things to help out, but none of that was working either. (Little did I know until I spoke with her the next day that she had had difficulty signing up and buying the class as a gift, and had spent an hour on her own with AI chat to try to figure out if they had charged her four times for the ticket. It finally suggested that she call her credit card company. A very nice human support rep in India helped her out. Ah, for the sweet, sweet sound of the voice of an actual flesh and blood customer service rep.)

Finally - maybe this was after I asked whether their engine was one of Elon Musk's products - AI told me that some events don't actually issue a ticket. Info which it seems to me it could have conveyed in the early stages of our encounter, not when I'd been on the phone - make that the smartphone, via text - chatting away and getting more an more annoyed.

AI engines can, of course, respond to what I was typing in, doing sentiment analysis, checking my language to determine my emotional tone.

"We know you're frustrated..."

No shit, Sherlock. Was it bringing up Elon Musk's name that did it? I swear to god, I didn't swear once when "communicating" with the AI. Not once. But I'm sure there were plenty of annoyeds and frustrateds in that natural language they could process. Clever of AI to pick up on my temperature - but not so bright to do nothing about it. Save your sympathy, I wanted to type in. Just give me an email or phone number, or even a form, that will put me in touch with a human.

Well, that never happened.

Meanwhile, Joyce, as the buyer, did have an email for the cooking school, so she wrote to them about the issue, copying me. I quickly followed up with an email describing my experience with Eventbrite non-support. The cooking school person got back within minutes, assuring me I was all set (and noting that she had also had negative experiences with what she called Eventbrite's "phony" support. She assured me that my name was on the list. I was good to go. No ticket necessary. Which is kind of what I thought it might be, given that there are only about a dozen folks in the class. But if this had been a large scale event, attended by thousands? What's the recourse then?

It is no exaggeration to say that by the end of my hour+ with Event-not-so-brite's support system, I was having heart palpatations. I almost texted my sister to let her know that if I died that night, Eventbrite's AI chat was responsible.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the class. A new pasta. A new chicken dish. A new veggie dish. A new dessert. 

Mangia!

Book of the Year - Part 3

The last couple of days, I've been making my way through a list of the most popular books, by year from 1945 on. Here's the final decades on the list. (And if you're wondering why I chose to illustrate this post with the cover of a book by Heinrich Böll, from 1949, which was not the most popular book of the year, the reasons are a) year of my birth; b) my favorite writer of all the authors on the list for those 80 years worth of most popular books. Just so you know...)

In 1995, the "It" bok was Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Never read, and no desire to. But Gregory Maguire is a local guy - lives in Concord, Mass - and has a incredibly interesting life story. So good for him! (Did enjoy the 2024 movie.) I did read Jon Krakauer's 1996 book Into the Wild. Talk about a wild story..."Enjoy" might not be the right world, but I always find the subjects that Krakauer takes on to be fascinating. 

This type of work is not usually my reading jam, but in 1997, I gobbled up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And all the follow on Harry Potter's as well. Surprised myself, that's for sure. Until I read Demon Copperhead last year, I'd never read any Barbara Kingsolver. But her 1998 The Poisonwood Bible is definitely on my to-read list. 1999 was apparently the year of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book I wasn't familar with. But based on its description as a book about a high school introvert, I'd probably have enjoyed it. (Signed, a well-compensated introvert.)

In 2000, Dave Eggers was being a genius without me. Never read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But it does sound interesting. The plot, anyway. And I may check out a later Eggers work: a satirical novel about Donald Trump. Maybe. In 2001, I did try reading Life of Pi.  But years ago, when sitting in bed reading Ciderhouse Rules, I gave myself permission for the first time to stop reading a book I reallly, really, really wasn't enjoying. So much for Life of Pi. At one point, I was a Jeffrey Eugenides fan, so I remember liking his 2002 novel Middlesex. And I'll admit that, while Dan Brown's no one's definition of a good writer, in 2003, along with everyone else in the world, I was reading and enjoying The Da Vinci Code.

I think I read 2004's Gilead. If not, it is near the top of a book pile in my bedroom, and once I start in on it, I should be able to figure out whether I've already read it. And I know that, in 2005, I read The Year of Magical Thinking. But I don't remember whether I liked it or not. (A little Joan Didion, IMHO as a reader, goes a long way.) 2006: The Emperor's Children. Check! 

The next couple of years were YA ones. In 2007, it was Thirteen Reasons Why, which I've never heard of, and, thus never read. But in 2008, just as I'd gobbled up the Harry Potter series, I gobbled up The Hunger Games books, which I actually liked better than the Potters. 

I didn't quite buy it, but I definitely got a kick out of 2009's The Help. In 2010, I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in The New Yorker. But I never read the book. And I am a bit embarrassed to admit that, in 2011, I read the spectacularly cheesy and awful Fifty Shades of Grey. Once again, proof that you don't need to be a good writer to be popular. (I was visiting a friend and she handed it to me. And, yes, I did read it. But, no, I haven't seen the movie.) 

It was a corny tear-jerker, but in 2012, I liked The Fault in Our Stars. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Hand me a Kleenex, please. Higher up the literary food chain, in 2013, I was reading (and enjoying) the way overly-complex The Goldfinch. I know that in 2014, everyone was raving about All the Light We Cannot See. As someone who has been reading an awful lot of books, since I was in grammar school, about World War II, you'd think this one would have been right up my alley. But I didn't buy it for a New York, let alone a Paris, minute. 2015's most popular read, The Girl on the Train, was a book I did enjoy. Right about the time Trump was first elected in 2016, I found The Underground Railroad way too harrowing to deal with. Post the first Trump era, I picked it up again and - although I usually don't do magical realism - I LOVED IT. 

And while, in 2017, I may not have loved Little Fires Everywhere, I really liked it. 2018's An American Marriage - an Oprah Book - is a novel I've never heard of. But it sounds good and I'll put it on my look out for list. I will admit that the 2019 thriller, The Silent Patient, has an interesting premise - a woman shoots her husband in the face and her therapist tries unsuccessfully to figure out what motivated her to do the deed. But not enough that I want to read it. 

Somehow, in 2020, while every other person I know was reading, it, I somehow missed Where the Crawdads Sing. I'd watch the movie, but I think it's on Hulu, which I don't subscribe to. 2021 brought us The Four Winds, but I'm not a big Kristin Hannah fan, so I took a pass on that one. The list ends with 2022's pick, It Ends With Us, which I didn't read. I didn't read It Starts With Us, either.  

There were plenty of popular books in 2023 and 2024. Here are some of the ones I read.

2023: Tom Lake, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, So Late in the Day. 

2024: Tell Me Everything, James, The Woman Behind the Door.

My vote for 2003 would be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. As I've mentioned, I'm usually not a magical realism kind of reader, but I loved this. For 2024, I've got a tie between James, the reimagined telling of Huck Finn, and The Woman Behind the Door (part of Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer trilogy, which I thought was fabulous; or, as he Irish might say, fecking brilliant).  

That's it for my three part books report.

Book of the Year - Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about a list of the most popular books, by year from 1945 on, and got through the first couple of decades. 

Moving right along, we find that 1965's most popular book was Dune. I tried to read this. I can even picture the cover from the dog-eared paperback I borrowed from someone. But no could do. The closest I've come to anyting Dune-ish, was watching the movie this year, only because I decided to see every Academy Award nominated film. And some Dune thang was on it. But watching the movie only counts if you ignore the fact that I slept through a lot of it.

I pride myself on not reading a ton of trash, but how could I have avoided the 1966 trasher extraordinaire, Valley of the Dolls. And how could I have avoided the trasher extraordinaire movie a couple of years later. Bonus points, because the theme song was performed by the incredible Dionne Warwick, who, as far as I'm concerned, has never, over her long career, sung a wrong note. 

I loved 1967's The Outsiders. When I read it, I wasn't aware there was such a thing as the Young Adult Category, but I'm all for it. I also loved the movie, which came out in 1983. I haven't seen it in decades, but it was one of Patrick Swayze's first films, as well as an early outing for a bunch of the Brat Packers: Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez. 

I enjoy dystopia, so I probably would enjoy Philip K. Dick. But I've never read him. And I've never heard of 1968's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Certainly a great title, and a more pressing question now in the age of AI, so I might just pick up a copy. Plus it was the book that inspired Blade Runner. So there's that. 

1969: Slaughterhouse Five. Now we're talking. Haven't read Vonnegut in many, many years, so don't know how this has stood the test of time. But back in the day, I was a huge Vonnegut fan. 

I've never read 1970's most popular, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. But I'm sure familiar with Judy Blume and, without having read her work, am an admirer of the career she forged for herself - and for being the first to address some previously ignored topics for her young readers. She very much helped make things real. 

I remember absolutely nothing about 1971's Angle of Repose, other than that it was long, and that it was one of the paperbacks I took with me on my first trip to Europe in 1973, when my friend Joyce and I spent four months hitching, camping, hosteling all over the place. Not much time spent on that trip reading, but I always have to have a book going. (Another book I brought along was some James Mitchener tome. Maybe Hawaii, maybe The Source. Or was it a Leon Uris tome? Maybe Mila 18.)

I'm familiar with 1972 book of the year Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, if only because I've used The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day words to describe something plenty of times in my writing. Thank you, Judith Viorst. 

For 1973, we're back to Vonnegut with Breakfast of Champions. Been there, read that. In 1974, did I read Carrie? Wasn't that much of a Stephen King (or thriller in general) fan back then, but I may have read this. Over the years, I have very much grown to like and admire his writing. I'm pretty sure I spent part of 1975 slogging through Humboldt's Gift, but Saul Bellow was never my favorite "big serious" writer. I probably read an excerpt of 1976's The Selfish Gene somewhere along the way. It's by Richard Dawkins, and as an atheist...

1977 - Song of Solomon. Of course I read Toni Morrison. The genre listed is African-American Literature. Seriously, this is great American Literature. Never read the 1978 book, which was Stephen King's The Stand. But dystopian fiction, so probably would have liked it. In 1979, I was definitely reading Sophie's Choice. And in 1980, I was definitely reading A Confderacy of Dunces. Published posthumously, so there's hope. But I really don't want to get a novel published after my death, let alone after suicide. 

I read all of John Updike's Rabbit novels, so I read 1981's Rabbit Is Rich. Next up,1982 was the year of The Color Purple. Enjoyed the book. The movie, not so much. Whatever else I was doing in 1983, I wasn't reading The Color of Magic, which I've never heard of. But in 1984, I did read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Ditto in 1985 for White Noise. DeLillo is an acquired taste, but I acquired it. Unditto in 1986, when the most popular book was Love You Forever, a book I never heard of. Maybe if I'd had kids...

Back to Toni Morrison in 1987, with Beloved which is just listed as Fiction, as opposed to African-American Literature. Works for me. As did reading it. Hard 1988 NO to The Alchemist (which actually wasn't published in the US until the early 1990's, but for some reason lands in on the list for 1988. Was there an English-version published in Brazil available in the States that year? I don't think there were enough Portuguese speakers in the US who were interested in reading about a mystical journey to make this one a bit hit.) But the list ends the decade on a 1989 high note for me with The Joy Luck Club,

And the 1990's began on a high note with The Things They Carried. I don't think Tim O'Brien ever fully lived up to the early promise of his Vietnam works - Carried and Going After Cacciato - but those were both great books. And I believe that for some reason - he's not from New England - he's a Red Sox fan. In 1991, the book of the year was A Thousand Acres, which I liked. A little less literarily, in 1992 I read The Pelican Brief. John Grisham could always tell a good story. Lois Lowry is another children's/YA author I've never read, but have, of course, heard of. In 1993, her The Giver was el libro mas popular. (If I haven't read the book, I can at least practice my Duolingo Spanish.)

For a while, I was a Janet Evanovich fan, looking forward to each new numbered Stephanie Plum mystery. But she eventually ran out of steam (even though she kept churning Stephanie Plum tales out). But in 1994, I was enjoying One for the Money. 

And with that, all for now. We'll finish up the list tomorrow...

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

I couldn't decide on a favorite that I'd actually read to illustrate this post with, so I went with Judith Viorst.  

Book of the Year - Part 1

Now, I love lists. And I love books. So how fortuitous to stumble on a list of the most popular books, by year, from 1945 on. And, naturally, I wanted to see just how many of them I've read. (Turns out, once I started looking through, I also found myself checking out how many I'd never heard of.)

Before launching in, I must note that there was little info given on how these books were chosen. 

1945 Well, at least I'd heard of the steamy bodice ripper, Forever Amber, but I never read it. I probably saw the movie - starring Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde - on Boston Movietime, our local B&W afternoon movie program, at some point. But I also wondered what other books were published in 1945 that Forever Amber edged out. A little google got me to this much more impressive list - all of which I've read - and all of which people are still reading. Unlike, I'm guessing, Forever Amber.

So, who'd I find out there? Animal Farm, Pippi Longstocking, Brideshead Revisited, The Glass Menagerie. Stuart Little...

Forever Amber you say?

Moving on, 1946 brought us The King's General. At least I've heard of the author, Daphne du Maurier. (I have read her Rebecca.) 1947's biggie was the unknown to me The Miracle of the Bells. Ditto for 1948's The Big Fisherman, a novel by the author of The Robe, which I did read at some point. Or saw the movie. Victor Mature, not Cornell Wilde this time, but they're kinda-sorta interchangable. And how was Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. NOT the book of the year in 1948?

I was hoping that my year of birthday, 1949, would have something good to say. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. Huh? There had to be something better. There was. And plenty of them. 1949 was the year of The Naked and The Dead, 1984, Death of a Salesman, The Lottery and Other Stories, The Third Man, The Train Was on Time, Death be Not Proud, The Story of the Trapp Family, The Color Kittens. All of which I read. The Color Kittens was one of my favorite Golden Books. I can still picture the charming illustrations, maybe because I have a copy around here somewhere. And The Train Was on Time was the first novel written by the brilliant German author, Heinrich Böll. (One of my all time faves; the only Nobel winner I've read on full.) So 1949 was pretty darned OK.

1950 marked the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' by C.S. Lewis. Not 100% sure I read it, but I've sure heard of it. 1951? Why come on down, The Catcher in the Rye. Been there, read that, as did pretty much everyone my age when we were in high school. Back to children's fare in 1952, with the lovely Charlotte's Web, which would have been even better if Stuart Little had driven his little roadster into it.

Overall, I was more familiar with the 1950's winners than I was with some of those 1940's oddity. (C.f., The Egyptian.) In 1953, the book of the year was a play: The Crucible. Salem witch trials, so close to home. 1954 was Lord of the Flies, another high school classic of my era. (The Lord of the Rings was also published in 1954. 1955:  Lolita. (No comment, other than, yeah, I read it.) 1956's book was The Fall, which I read during my Camus period. On the lighter side of 1957: The Cat in the Hat. The year after, 1958, the book was Breakfast at Tiffany's. He may have been a jerk, but Truman Capote sure could write. 1959's book was another high school classic: A Separate Peace. (Do kids still read books like this?)

Enter the 1960's with To Kill a Mockinbird. Oddly enough, I was allowed to read this (probably a couple of years late), but was not allowed to go to the movie when it came out in 1962. The Legion of Decency rated the movie a B.Reason enough for my mother's fatwa. Ah, 1961. Ah, Catch-22, which I read a few years later. And loved. Ah, 1962, Ah, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I read a few years later. And loved. 1963 brought Where the Wild Things Are. What's not to like love? Another kiddo - slightly older - book for 1964. I'm not sure I ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But I sure know Willie Wonka. 

More of the list over the next couple of days...

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One source for alternative best books was Good Housekeeping. That and random googles. 

This Patriots' Day, feeling the red, white, and blues

Today is Patriots' Day, a holiday that I have always loved.

This year should have been a big one, especially in these parts. It's Bisesquicentennial! The 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride (April 18th). The 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19th). And the day when the holiday is observed here in Massachusetts - third Monday in April - when the flags and tricorn hats come out, the Boston Marathon is run, and the Sox are home for an early start (11 a.m.) game.

I've never been a big flag waver, but this year I'm feeling a definite deficit of patriotism - at least of the fervid, jingoistic, blinders-on variety that for a good long time has defined the term. But if the definition of patriotism can accommodate someone who appreciates the country for its good, wants to acknowledge the not-so-good (and the out-and-out bad), and tries to make things better by voting for good candidates, donating to good causes (increasingly of the pro-democracy kind), and showing up for demonstrations to demonstrate to the powers that regrettably be (as if they give damn) that not everyone in America welcomes the slide into autocracy/kleptocracy.

Sigh.

So if I'm feeling anything today, it's the red, white, and blues.

I'll put in a couple of hours for my regular shift in the Resource Center at St. Francis House, and then head out to Fenway for the game. (This is weather dependent, of course, Patriots' Day seems to ping-pong back and forth between absolutely rotten and absolutely spectacular. As I'm writing this in advance, the weather remains a big unknown.)

I will have deliberately ignored the happenings in the North End (one if by land, two if by sea). In Lexington. In Concord. Especially if the nightmare that currently occupies the Oval Office has the bad taste to "grace" Massachusetts with his malign presence, thereby ruining the celebrations for a lot of people - which would of course be his point. (In 2024, Lexington 2024: Harris 77%, Trump 18%; Concord: Harris 80%, Trump 16%; the North End of Boston split would have been closer, but I didn't want to spend all that time trying to figure out what precincts are where; the overall Boston split was Harris 76%, Trump 22%.)

I won't be around for the Tricentennial, of course - if there is one. 

I don't have the heart to wish anyone a Happy Patriots' Day. As I see it, the good has mostly outweighed the bad, but whether that can hold, well...

But the best I can muster up is good luck. And God, if there is a God, save our country. 

With $75K you get Egg Roll

The news that the White House is soliciting corporate sponsors for the annual Easter Egg Roll should come as no surprise. Surely by now we must all be shockproof. Yet there'sstill something disturbing and nauseating, about selling out what has been a nearly 150 year old tradition - the oldest annual WH tradition. And event that is supposed to be such a (theoretically, at least) joyous, politics-aside occasion.  

The White House is working with an event production company named Harbinger (BOLO: some connection to Trump cronies) to run the event and flog sponsorships. 

There are packages running from $75K to $200K that let sponsors do stuff like put up a trade show booth (at least that's what I think a 10x10, 20x20, or 30x30 "branded activation" is), distribute branded swag, get a WH tour, rub shoulders with the WH press corps (maybe you get to meet a right-wing podcaster!), and brunch with FLOTUS.

Brunch with FLOTUS? What a treat! In the kinder, gentler Trump I era, Melania was complaining about Xmas-related tasks and famously asked "who gives a fuck about the Christmas-related stuff?" Maybe she feels differently about the Easter-related stuff. Or maybe this is one of the appearances that's part of her Trump II contract.

Sponsors also get some tickets. While my understanding is that pols and staff traditionally get tickets for their kiddos, tickets are also available via lottery for free. Wonder if the sponsorship tickets cut into the pol supply or the general public lottery allocation. What do you think?

One of the benefits that Harbinger touts: 

By partnering with this historic tradition, sponsors can engagewith diverse audiences,showcase their commitment to community and education, and align with a beloved American event. (Source: Event brochure linked to the NY Times article.)

Diverse audience? But but, but...isn't diversity way, way, way out? Hasn't anything and everything with the D-word in it (or words that are DEI-adjacent) been purged from all government documents and operations? And purged from the vocabulary and way-of-doing-business of any and all organizations (corporations, law firms, universities, museums...) that Trump can manage to bully and frighten into compliance with his whims.

By the way, the Easter Egg Roll is run by the White House Historical Association, a private non-profit org started by Jackie Kennedy. You remember Jackie Kennedy. She's the one who redesigned and spruced up the Rose Garden, which Trump is planning on paving over so it looks like Mar A Lago. Or something. 

The Egg Roll:

...is largely held without taxpayer dollars, with the American Egg Board, a marketing group for the egg industry, sponsoring thousands of eggs for the event — but without the kind of visibility laid out by Harbinger’s guide. (Source: NY Times)

So the good news is that the money will not be going directly into lining the pockets of the Grifter in Chief. Not that GiC would ever line his own linty pockets.

Federal regulations prohibit government employees from using their public office for private gain. Richard W. Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush, said that the White House was clearly breaking that code by allowing private enterprises to use an official event to showcase their brands and letting the proceeds flow into a private nonprofit.

Phew. So glad there are Federal regulations in place. If not, there'd be tawdry things like turning the White House into a Tesla dealdership. Or selling their own cryptocurrency (POTUS) or memecoins (FLOTUS). Imagine if any of that had happened. 

Mr. Painter said that some in Mr. Trump’s White House have argued that the ethics laws technically do not apply to the president, but most presidents have complied with some sort of ethical guidelines since President Richard M. Nixon resigned in 1974.

I realize that, given all the depraved, moronic, corrupt, and frightening things Trump's been up to since noon on January 20, 2025, selling corporate sponsorships to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll is the least of it. Yet it's so emblematic of this malign administration. I'm not all that big on the sacred, but lordy-lord, this is so colossally profane. 

If Trump had any shame (hah!), there'd be egg on his face. Instead, he's just once more demonstrating what a rotten egg he is. 

Happy Easter, anyway.

That's the Woody Woodpecker Song

I don't imagine there are many Baby Boomers who didn't, at some point in their childhoods, use the Woody Woodpecker laugh. The online version of that laugh - which was the vamp to The Woody Woodpecker song - says that the laugh sounded like: Ho-ho-ho ho ho, ho-ho-ho ho ho.

But Woody's "ho" was not a hardy Santa Clausian "ho." It was more of a dirty laugh "ho", more like a "ha-ha-ha heh heh ha-ha-ha heh heh" kinda "ho." (Judge for yourself: Woody Woodpecker laugh.)

Imitating the Woody Woodpecker laugh served a dual purpose: it was just plain fun; and, as if just plain fun weren't enough, it was something that adults found ultra annoying. And Woody himself was a pretty annoying, abrasive character to begin with, so extra points for that.

Everyone loved Woody Woodpecker, and my sibs and I had a special fondness for him because there were woodpeckers in the woods next to our house, with plenty of wood to peck on. 

It's been a while since I gave woodpeckers in general, or Woody Woodpecker in particular, much thought. But then I saw a wonderful article in The Boston Globe that reported on a pileated woodpecker - the kind of woodpecker that Woody is - that's up to no good in the town of Rockport. 

Day after day, a pileated woodpecker has been smashing the side view mirrors on cars throughout the [Squam Hill] neighborhood. A rough count is about 20 mirrors, based on interviews with neighbors, but it’s hard to keep up because it’s still happening.

In one instance, the woodpecker cracked the windshield of a pickup truck while the driver was sitting inside. (Source: Boston Globe)

Residents are pushing their side mirrors in. They're swaddlng those mirrors in plastic bags and towels. This is no sweet little birdie they're dealing with. And there may be more than one of the avian miscreants out there. 

“This thing is huge, and it doesn’t sound like a normal bird, it sounds like a monkey in a tree,” said Devin Mock, who said he came out of his Squam Road house recently to find four of them on the windshield of his brother’s truck. “I’ve seen little woodpeckers before, but these suckers are gigantic.”

They may not exactly be gigantic, but pileated woodpeckers can run up to 19" long. (Tall?) Other types of woodpeckers, which are more common in Massachusetts than our feathered pileated friends, tend to be a lot smaller. (The pileated ones are roughly the size of crows while the other guys are closer in size to robins.)

Anyway, here's what/why is happening up in the quiet seaside town of Rockport, which is perhaps best known for being the location of Motif Number 1, a fishing shack that's been called the most often-painted building in America. As in painted by art students and amateur painters, not as in the walls are painted to keep the shack standing. 

...it is well-known that songbirds will mistake a reflection for a rival and attack, especially during spring mating season. And this is a bird-friendly neighborhood, with feeders everywhere and abutting the massive Dogtown Commons, a five-square-mile wooded conservation area that covers much of Rockport and Gloucester.

“It’s likely a single male bird, establishing territory, perhaps for the first time, and when they see a reflection in the mirror, they view it as a competitive male,” said John Herbert, the director of bird conservation at Mass Audubon. “And this is the time of the year when their hormones and testosterone are at peak levels for aggression.”

Turns out, most birds peck at windows. It's that the pileated woodpecker is big and macho enough to break glass. (Wild turkeys have been known to do the same in many Boston and suburban neighborhoods.) Unfortunately, there are still a few more weeks left to mating season. The upside, say the neighbors, is that they're all talking to each other about it.

Me? I'm just wondering whether the pileated woodpecker has a Woody Woodpecker laugh.

Ha-ha-ha heh heh, ha-ha-ha heh heh. 

Yesterday's space shot? Yep, amid the celeb nonsense, there's some inspiration in there

My husband had an abiding interest in physics in general and space exploration in particular. A few weeks before he died, he told me that he'd "pay a million bucks to have my ashes flown into space." Well, I loved my husband, but my response to that - which, by the way, he did agree with - was that "this is the brain tumor talking." But I did hop online and found an outfit that rocketed cremains into space. I told Jim that there was an orbital flight that would be heading out in a couple of years, but a straight up and down shot taking off in the fall. We dubbed the orbital flight the John Glenn, since he was the first American astronaut to circumnavigate earth from space. The straight shot we named the Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to take flight, which just went up and down.

Jim chose the Alan Shepard, as it was sooner and cheaper. 

So the fall after he died, Jim got his space shot. I have the little metal "space capsule" they returned his bit of ashes in. It sits on my mantel in a tiny Connemara marble urn, which fittingly unites two of Jim's great loves: space and Ireland.

Anyway, if he were alive, I can absolutely see Jim being interested in taking a Blue Origin flight. (And I can absolutely see myself talking him out of it.)

Blue Origin is the Jeff Bezos' space tourism outfit that sends civilians on paid journeys into the wild blue yonder.

And yesterday, Blue Origin sent the first all female "crew" on a ten minute trip into space. I put "crew" in quotes because I think they didn't actually have to do much, like flip switches and conduct experiments, which is what actual astronauts do. I'm pretty sure their role was strictly passenger. Still, they took what I'm sure was a trip of a lifetime.

It's interesting, but not surprising, that the overwhelming percent of those who are doing space travel are men. On my husband's trip, I don't remember that there were any women among his fellow travelers. 

So a key part of the "positioning" of yesterday's Blue Origin flight was that it would inspire young women and girls to become more interested in matters space-related. 

But I don't think this quite squares with the "crew" they chose.

Why, there's Katy Perry in her cute little electric-blue spacesuit. There's Gayle King, the Good Morning, America host and BFF of Oprah Winfrey. And Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sanchez. (At least Sanchez had the decency to keep her cute little electric-blue spacesuit zipped up. In her last high-visibility public appearance, she was at Trump's inauguration with her boobs hanging out.)

Yes, I realize that Katy Perry will attract a lot of attention because she's, well, Katy Perry. But will that attention inspire interest in becoming a STEM girl, or will it inspire trying to become a singer-celeb who can afford to take a Blue Origin flight?

Although I did see her once in a restaurant in Charleston, SC, I don't know a lot about Gayle King. But my impression is that she is intelligent, pleasant, and good at her jobs as news/entertainment show host and Oprah BFF. Her wikipedia bio now states that she's a "commercial astronaut." Huh? She got shot into space, just like my husband's ashes. Does this make Jim a "commercial astronaut" of the posthumous variety?

Pre-Bezos, Lauren Sanchez was a reporter, but now she's a philanthropist who's helping spend Jeff Bezo's money. (Admittedly, his foundations appear to support organizations dedicated to causes like the greening of poor communities, fighting climate change, and trying to solve homelessness. Wonder if Trump knows about that climate change thang?) And, yes, she was a pilot. And she's written a kids' book called "The Fly Who Flew Into Space." But, frankly, I think she'd be more of an inspiration if she wasn't so frequently pictured with her boobs hanging out. The inauguration wasn't a one-off. And why did this perfectly pretty woman fall into the Mar-a-Lago puffy lip enhancement trap???

The other "crew" members included Kerianne Flynn, a film producer who makes indie films that are socially-conscious. She has one coming out about Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who fought the good fight for equal pay for equal work. And she's had a long standing interest in space, so there's that. So, certainly an accomplished person - as, of course, are Perry, King, and Sanchez. But STEM-inspiring?

Then we get down to the two space tourists who actually would be the ones to inspire young woman and girls to pursue space/science/tech careers. Of course, neither Amanda Nguyen nor Aisha Bowe is a celebrity, so they're not getting the play that the others (at least Perry, King, and Sanchez) are.

Amanda Nguyen is a civil rights activist who focuses on the rights of rape and sexual assault survivors. While she was an undergrad at Harvard, studying astrophysics, she interned at NASA and conducted research on exoplanets. (Yeah, I had to look it up: planets outside of the solar system.) She's a bioastronautics researcher - yeah, another one I had to look up: a study of the physical impact of space travel on living organisms - who also spent some time as a fellow at MIT's Media Lab. So, bona fide STEM girl, and someone who's definitely got inspiration written all over her.

But the truly inspiring crew member has got to be Aisha Bowe. She's a former NASA engineer, who had this to say about her journey, and the criticism it has received from those (like me, I guess) who considered yesterday's flight a bit stuntlike, a bit frivolous:

When I decided that I was going to pursue aerospace engineering, it was after my high school guidance counselor told me that I should pursue cosmetology because she did not think that I would be suited for this field. I went from pre-algebra and community college to do two degrees in aerospace engineering, to working for NASA, to being able to sit on the stage and say: ‘It is bigger than the criticism.’ (Source: CNN)

Someone who was advised to become a hairdresser who went on to get bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan? An entrepreneur and STEM-activist who once mentored a 13-year-old girl who grew up to be an aerospace engineer working at Blue Origin? A Black woman, the daughter of a Bahamian immigrant? 

Now THIS is someone who's worthy of the being described as an inspiration! I just love Aisha Bowe's story!

But I'm ending with a shoutout to the original women-in-space inspiration, the estimable Sally Ride!

Wish Sally Ride were still with us. They could have sent her on this all-female Blue Origin trip and left one of the celebrities home.

The view from China

I'm not much for social media. No Twitter X. (God, no.) No FB. (God, no.) No Truth Social. (What? Are you crazy?) No Insta. No Snapchat. No TikTok.

But I am on BlueSky - the non-Nazified version of Twitter X - so that I can keep up with breaking news, look at pics of cute doggos, and occasionally scroll-stumble onto something like a post that showed a map of the United States with a word or two description for each state. Those coupla words were translated from the Chinese, and I believe are supposed to be what came to mind when people in China were asked for their thoughts on each state.

It was very difficult to read the wording, and I wasn't able to see how each state was characterized. Plus there was very scant info associated with the brief post I saw. And I haven't been able to track own the ur source - where did this come from? who was asked? what was asked? what is it supposed to mean? None of this, of course, stopped me from enjoying the hell out of it.

Naturally, the first thing I did was look to see what our Chinese friends thought about Massachusetts.

We're "a gathering place for the rich." Yes, we are the state with the highest per capita income, but our dear Commonwealth is hardly the first state that comes to mind when I think about where rich people gather. Maybe New York (City or Long Island, anyway). Or Florida (Palm Beach anyone? No one?). California, maybe (LaLa Land). Perhaps Montana where I understand billionaires are flocking to buy up land, thinking that they're going to somehow escape reality, civil war, climate change, etc. 

But Massachusetts? Not a place I associate with super-wealth. Most of our billionaires are members of the supremely unflashy Johnson family, which owns Fidelity. The Johnsons and Herb Chambers, the big-time car dealer.

Maybe the Chinese were thinking of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, which are summer playgrounds - gathering places - for the rich. But Musk and Bezos, as far as I know, don't hang here.

Of the other New England states, I could only see Rhode Island (Catholic Church) and Connecticut (new Italy). 

Catholic Church for RI makes sense, as they have the largest proportion of Catholics (42%). NJ is second (41%). Massachusets is third (34%). And Connecticut does have a ton of Italian Americans. But I would have thought there were more Italians in NJ.

Apparently, the Chinese know more than I do. With 16.1% of its population claiming Italian heritage, CT ranks number one, followed by RI (15.5%) and NJ (14.6%). Well, bada-bing to that!

In the minds of the Chinese, NJ is just "canned sardines." Not gabagool?

Some of the states are obvious:

New York, after all, is the Big Apple. Michigan is an automaker. Nebraska is a corn state. Wisconsin is cheese country.

I get that Oprah is associated with Illinois; that there are tech nerds in the state of Washington; that Oklahoma is associated with tornados. There are Mormons aplenty in Utah. And it's undeniable that Colorado is a rectangle.

But why is Kansas a "ghost town?"

Some of the descriptors are insulting. Is North Carolina really a "cancer factory?" Is South Carolina all that racist? And why are Missourians born to be liars? Show Me, huh? Mississippi is "love to eat lard." What does that mean? And how would the Chinese know?

Some of the descriptors are pretty funny. California is described as "fake breasts and oranges." And Nevada? "Has been stars." Wayne Newton - if you're still alive - come on down).

Then there's Texas. Naturally, they get the biggest desciption: "gun in hand, God in heart." Depends on whose God, I guess.

I have no idea whatsoever if this map is an authentic anything, or just something that something sitting in front of their computer with a bit of time on their hands dreamed up. Honest, I did try to track it down, with no luck. I'd love to see a full, readable (and explicable) version. 

Whatever, wherever, I very much got a good laugh out of it. And, these days, we could all use a good laugh.

Happy National Whatever Day

Well, I always like to know what I'm dealing with, so I thought I'd check out just what National Whatever Day we're celebrating on April 10th. 

Turns out it's National Alcohol Screening Day. There sure may have been days in my past when I could have used an alcohol screening, but today my consumption is pretty much limited to a couple of glasses of wine (mostly prosecco) a month. Unless I'm on vacation, when I'm likely to have a couple of glasses of wine (mostly prosecco) every day. In any case, I think I'd pass any alcohol screening test with flying, no problema colors. Now if it were National Chocolate Overdoing It Screening Day, that would be another story. But today I will be working a shift at the homeless shelter where I volunteer, and there are plenty of folks there who struggle with alcohol and other substance abuse issues. And I love it when someone tells me they're in recovery. Which I hope will happen today.

It's also National Erase Self-Negativity Day. Well, I've never heard of this day, and really don't know anything about it other than what seems like the obvious. I'm all for being honest with your self-appraisals - once a Catholic, you never, ever, ever lose that "examine your conscience" mentality - but never, ever, ever to the point of not keeping your honest self-positivity in mind. And pretty much every day should be one dedicated in at least some small art to erasing negative self-image. Life's too short to spend it wallowing in self-abasement.

One way to shake out of self-negativity would be celebrating National Farm Animals Day. Go cows! Go pigs! Go hens! Go roosters! Go goats! Go sheep! Go ducks! Thanks for all you give us. I'll celebrate you all without dwelling on the fact that a lot of what you give us leads to loss of life. Your life. I could never be a vegan, but I could be a vegetarian (or at least a pescatarian). So why aren't I? If only there were a reasonable substitute for bacon. 

Not that I indulge in bacon all that often. Just once in a while. But instead of bacon for breakfast today, which I wasn't going to have anyway, maybe I'll take advantage of National Cinnamon Crescent Day. Or maybe not. Because I really don't feel like baking cinnamon crescent rolls, even if they pop into the oven straight out of the shiny blue Pillsbury can. Is a chocolate honey dip donut an okay substitute?

And Happy National Siblings Day to Kath, Tom/Gus, Rich/Stick, and Trish/Po! (Kath and Moe didn't get cool nicknames like the others.) I can't say it's always been a 100% pleasure cruise, but I love you guys. That's us last fall at Kath's - the first time we'd all been together in years. A bit blurry, and not the best photo ever taken. I mean, why is Tom's head growing out of Kath's??? But thar be us! 

Finally, it's National Encourage a Young Writer Day. Not that I begrudge any young writers any encouragement, but where the hell was a day dedicated to encouraging young writers when I could have used it? Note to self: BOLO National Encourage an Old Writer Day.

Those hills are still alive for the Trapp family

I have long been a lover of the Great American Musical. Not anything even vaguely "current." Not a fan of Les Mis, not a fan of Miss Saigon. I may be the only person in America who hasn't seen Hamilton. The most recent musical I have any familiarity with is Rent, and that's been around for about 30 years. 

But give me one of the classics any old time. There's my all time favorite, West Side Story. And South Pacific, Kismet, Show Boat, The Music Man, Oklahoma, My Fair Lay, Pal Joey, Guys and Dolls, Carousel, Peter Pan, Pajama Game, Bye Bye Birdie, The King and I, My Fair Lady, Funny Girl, How to Succeed in Business, and - how could I forget? - The Sound of Music. 

Cue up pretty much any of these, and I can warble through the entire album.

Unless you count the Notre Dame Academy class play, I've never seen The Sound of Music live. Actually, other than The Music Man, which I saw as a kid in summer theater -  a thrilling excursion to the Carousel, a summer stock theater-in-the-round in Framingham - I've never seen any of those classics live. Mostly, I know them through the albums and/or the movies.

And that includes, of course, The Sound of Music. When it first came out in 1965, my friend Susan and I took our younger sibs - her brother Joe, who was five, and my sister Trish who was six - to see it in downtown Worcester, proudly taking the littles on the bus and treating them to the movie and popcorn. The movie hasn't aged all that well - to me, anyway, at nearly three hours it's way too long - but the music is still great. (The original Broadway show music was better. The movie left out "An Ordinary Couple", "How Can Love Survive?", and "No Way to Stop It," replacing them with "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good," which were far inferior.)

Anyway, the movie is ultra-loosely based on the life and times of the von Trapp family singers, who came to America in the late 1930's. Some of the elements are true: Captain von Trapp had been in the Austro-Hungarian navy. (If you're wondering why two landlocked countries needed a navy, the Austro Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire did include countries with coastlines.) Maria von Trapp had been in the convent before taking time out to be a governess. There were a lot of kids. They did sing.

However: there was no thrilling escape over the mountains to flee the Nazis. The family left by train. And there was no romance between sweet, naive Liesl and bad-boy Nazi Rolf. In fact, there was no Liesl. The names and ages of the kids were fictionalized. The family did perform throughout the 1940's and 1950's, but they sang Austrian folk and religious songs, not pop tunes from the musical. (And by the way, the family never made a penny off the Broadway show or the movie. Maria unfortunately sold the rights to their story away for near nichts.)

But there was a von Trapp Family, and they settled in Stowe, Vermont, where they bought a farm - the location reminded them of Austria - and eventually turned it into a lodge.

Remnants of the family still own and run the von Trapp Family Lodge, which is being swanked up and has now been rebranded as the von Trapp Family Lodge and Resort.

It’s currently undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation with refreshed guest rooms and common spaces. The lodge retains an old-world feel despite the new carpets, upholstery, and wall coverings. It’s still intended to evoke the feeling of staying at a classic chalet in Austria.

Adding “resort” to the name is fitting because the Lodge is more than a place to rest your head on a pillow and dream of Edelweiss. It has a fitness center, indoor pool, sauna, hot tub, disc golf course, tennis courts, pickleball courts, a climbing wall, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing. You can also tour the sugar house — the Lodge produces its own maple syrup — visit with the herd of Scottish Highland cattle, or meet the sheep. It sits on 2,600 acres, complete with a microbrewery and kaffeehaus. (Source: Boston Globe)

It's sounds all kinds of swell, other than that - or perhaps because - they're not playing "The Lonely Goatherd" and "Do-Re-Mi" on a perpetual loop so that fans of the musical can sing along while they're snow-shoeing or visiting the Scottish Highland cattle.

The place is still owned and operated by echt von Trapps. The manager is Kristina von Trapp Frame, one of Maria and Georg's grandchildren. And they do offer:

...a well-attended daily history tour, which includes an introduction with stories from a staff member who worked at the hotel when Maria von Trapp was still alive. That’s followed by a film featuring Maria returning to Salzburg. At the end of the program, von Trapp Frame comes in to answer any remaining questions.

And guests can collar family members for photo ops. So there's that bit of gemütlichkeit.

Other than the movie "featuring Maria returning to Salzburg" - yawn! - it all sounds very wonderful, and all looks very beautiful. 

But, much as I love Vermont, I won't be yodeling up there anytime soon. Even with the kitsch played down, it's a tiny bit too cornball for my tastes. And there's this:

At one point, my mother and her friend Ethel took a trip to Vermont to stay at the Trapp Family Lodge. This was when Maria was still alive. (She died in 1987.) They were both fans of the show and were thrilled when they had the opportunity to meet Maria up close and personal as she made the rounds in the dining room.

Ethel, who had grown up in New York (and was herself very musical), told Maria that she had seen the family perform at Town Hall in NYC shortly after they came to the States. And Maria von Trapp quite rudely cut Ethel dead, giving her a look that translated into something along the lines of I could give zwei scheisse. Sure, I'm sure it was nothing she hadn't heard a million times. And sure, I'm sure it was boring. But, but, but...This is not the way you treat your guests (i.e., your paying customers). My mother and Ethel were hurt by the cold, borderline nasty way that Maria treated them, and it pretty much ruined the trip. 

How do you solve a problem like that Maria von Trapp? Not that I was going anyway, and not that I think the sins of the grandmother should fall on the granddaughter, but if you're me, you solve it by not patronizing the von Trapp Family Lodge and Resort. 

And now, I must away to put on The Sound of Music (Broadway) CD...

Hope Pat McAfee gets exactly what he deserves

Close your eyes and imagine an Ole Miss freshman co-ed sorority girl, and you'd probably come up with a pretty, smiling, wholesome-looking young blonde. Someone who looks a lot like Mary Kate Cornett. 

You may not have heard of Mary Kate Cornett. Up until February, she was pretty much just a rando college kid. But late in February, one of her fellow students anonymously posted a salacious rumor about her on Yik Yak.

Yik Yak? I thought they had gone out of business for being yet another loathsome social media site known for its cyberbullying. Well, Yik Yak had closed its virtual doors in 2017, but it somehow re-emerged in 2022, with promises to be more vigilant about moderating its content.

Apparently that didn't happen.

What Mary Kate woke up to one fine Oxford, Mississippi morning, was a completely unfounded rumor, already going viral, that she was having an affair with her boyfriend's father.

This would have been horrifying enough if the rumor mill had been restricted to the Ole Miss knuckleheads and knuckledraggers who revel in Yik Yak. But the rumor, of course, took flight, amplified on X and often accompanied by pictures of her lifted from her Insta account.

Which would have been bad enough if some big mouth/big names in the sports talk bro-isphere hadn't jumped in on the fun.

The biggest of the big name big mouths to jump in was one Pat McAfee, a former NFL player who is an analyst on ESPN, pretty much the premier sports network. 

McAfee was broadcasting from the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine, where college players run around and jump around so pro scouts and coaches can determine whether they're worthy of getting chosen high up (or at all) in the NFL draft, which is held in late April. The subject of the day was supposedly the Combine, and sitting in as a McAfee guest was Adam Schefter, another ESPN-er who's an "NFL insider." He was supposedly going to be revealing the skinny on which teams were going to be interested in which jocks. But good old Pat had other things on his mind:

He teases the subject, asking Schefter: “Have you heard about Ole Miss?” One of his cohorts says, “There is a ménage à trois …” that, McAfee adds, “has really captivated the internet.” After some more buildup, McAfee dives in.

“Some Ole Miss frat bro, k? Had a K-D (Kappa Delta) girlfriend,” McAfee says, and then he stresses the word “allegedly.”

“At this exact moment, this is what is being reported by … everybody on the internet: Dad had sex with son’s girlfriend.” Another person on set chimes in – “Not great” – and then McAfee adds: “And then it was made public … that’s the absolute worst-case situation.” (Source: NY Times)

Schefter, who looked a bit taken aback, tried to reroute things, getting it back to football, by bringing up the name of Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart, who will be in play in the upcoming draft. But McAfee was not to be diverted. Instead of continuing down the 'let's talk about Jaxson Dart's arm' road, wanted to stay on his own personal topic of the day.

McAfee never names the 18-year-old college freshman at the center of the rumor, but he jokes about shoehorning Ole Miss fathers into NFL Draft analysis — “We’re just wondering. His dad … We’re just trying to combine evaluate …” Then another person on set interjects: “Ole Miss dads are slinging meat right now.”

The segment lasts roughly two minutes. McAfee worked an unsubstantiated internet rumor into his show, then transitioned to analyzing Dart’s draft stock and moved on.

McAfee was not alone among sports "names" who were getting their sports talk rocks off on this story. The memes were flying. Antonio Brown (a former bad-news NFL player who had a brief, inglorious stint with the Patriots) posted on X. A couple of guys from Barstool sports, infamous for its bad taste and sexism, got in on the act, one clown using X to promote a memecoin with Cornett's name on it. And ESPN radio aholes in St. Louis devoted time to the story, one:

...doing a dramatic reading of a purported Snapchat message that accompanied one of the original posts. The station then promoted the clip on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram as part of an “Infidelity Alley” segment.

The story no longer contained in the Ole Miss and adjacent small time universes, and seemingly legitimized by ESPN and Barstool-ers, things started to get even more terrible for Cornett.

After receiving all sorts of rancid notes slipped under her dorm room door, campus police told her she had become a target. She had to move out of her dorm and begin taking classes online. Cornett was doxxed, and her voicemail was bombarded with ugly messages. Ditto her phone, with texts using words like "whore" and "slut" and suggesting she kill herself. Her life was become a living hell. 

When she goes out - which isn't often - she says:

“I (can’t) even walk on campus without people taking pictures of me or screaming my name or saying super vulgar, disgusting things to me,” she said.

These are her fellow students? She really needs to consider transferring someplace else.

“The only way I could describe it is it’s like you’re walking with your daughter on the street, holding her hand, and a car mirror snags her shirt and starts dragging her down the road. And all you can do is watch,” Cornett’s father, Justin, said. “You can’t catch the car. You can’t stop it from happening. You just have to sit there and watch your kid be destroyed.”

And it's not just Mary Kate Cornett heself who's been a target. Her mother's house was swatted after Houston PD got a call about a possible homicide there. And her grandfather has received harrassing calls in the middle of the night.

Mary Kate Cornett plans on going after McAfee and ESPN. I hope she wins big against these outrageous bully boy aholes. Oxford, Mississippi, police are investigating, and hopefully they'll figure out the student jerk who started the Yik Yak rumor and make his/her weenie life at least a bit of the living hell (s)he's made of Mary Kate Cornett. (For her sake, I hope its not anyone she knows...)

McAfee et al. will likely hide behind the preposterous shields of we didn't use her name, it's all in fun, we're just a bunch of loud-mouth goof balls. Just a bunch of shock-jocks trying to provide content that's "comedic informative."

Of course, it goes nearly without saying - but I'll say it anyway - McAfee is a "friend" and mega-MAGA supporter of Donald Trump. Hope that Mary Kate Corbett takes him for every penny he's worth.

But the worst part of the story may be this: 

Before he broadcast the rumor about Cornett to his masses, McAfee opened his Feb. 26 show talking about his young daughter, how he took her to Disney World (Disney is ESPN’s parent company) and how witnessing his daughter’s “pure joy” brought tears to his eyes.

“Am I a big, sappy softy now that I have a daughter?” he asked his stooges [the guys who sit with him and yuck it up on his show]. “I think so.”

And he couldn't take a moment to think about how he'd feel if, when his little girl's a bit more grown up, someone came after her like that? Couldn't put himself in Justin Cornett's place for an NFL minute. No empathy, no imagination, nothing beyond complete and utter self-centeredness. (Friend of Trump, you say...)

Fast forward and the "big, sappy softy" may want to think about what he'll have to say to his daughter when she figures out what a nasty fool her old man is.