Portrait of the President as an Old Ahole

In truth, it's not a great likeness. The artist got the mouth wrong, and it actually makes the subject more normal looking than he is IRL. It doesn't have the orange-tinged makeup, the white circles around they eyes where the subject was wearing eye protectors while on his tanning bed, the crazy comb-over hair pelt. 

So I don't blame him for not liking it. 

And, frankly, if he spent more time on petty matters like the portrait of himself that has hung in the Colorado state capitol building for six years now, maybe he would spend less time destroying democracy, violating due process, trashing the economy with his irrational stupidity (or is it stupid irrationality?), hiring incompetents, sucking up to autocrats, grifting with his meme coin, and shaking down law firms, universities, and corporations. 

Still, it's pretty horrifying that Trump is such a thin-skinned a-hole that he gives such a big damn about this particular portrait, let alone that he's petty and nasty enough to categorize it as "truly the worst" and imply that portraitist Sarah A. Boardman had "purposefully distorted" his image. Distorted it so that he actually looks like a more normal person than he does IRL? Or distorted in that it doesn't look like those fake MAGA renderings of Trump that show him idolized, fit, fierce.

The portrait has been there for six years now, but Trump just got wind of it, and decided to have a hissy fit over it, lashing out on social media. He claimed that the Democratic governor of Colorado deliberately put it up there to make him look bad. He said that many people from Colorado are very angry about it. (Sure many, but how many. Hmmm. Harris bested Trump in the state by more than 10%.)

And, of course, he had to attack the artist, to the extent that she believes he's hurting her business, and has issued her own statement:

“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering,” she wrote in the statement. (Source: NY Times)

Boardman, who is originally from England but who lives in Colorado, had more to say to defend her work:

“I completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion,’ political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied,” Ms. Boardman said. “I fulfilled the task per my contract.” 

She also did the Colorado portrait of President Obama, btw. It's not the best one I've ever seen, but it's okay. The best presidential portrait she's done, IMHO, is that of W. 

Anyway, the offending portrait has been taken down, with a spokesman for that Democratic making a pretty gracious statement:

“We are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience and hope all the attention successfully attracts even more tourists to the Denver area,” he said.

Trump isn't the first president to dislike a portrait of himself. The NYT article mentioned Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ. But, naturally, Trump had to go out of his way to belittle the artist as losing her talent as she's gotten older - for the record, she's in her early 60's - and accuse her of bias.

He is such a colossally petty ahole.

Musk threatening to deport employees? Surprise, surprise.

It's kinda-sorta old news - from way back in the way back of 2014 (when the precipitating incident occurred). But interesting nonetheless. And definitely no surprise. 

The story is that one Cristina Balan - a Romanian-born engineer - was fired from Tesla in 2014 because, she claimed in a recent interview, she reported a brake safety issue, and Elon Musk didn't much like it.

She thought that the Model S’ floor mats could cause a brake safety issue, similar to a situation that Toyota had recently gone through (though that also led to a media firestorm that blew the issue out of proportion). She said that Tesla had chosen suppliers based on friendships, not quality. (Source: Electrek)

She had brought her issue directly to Musk because, the year before, he had sent an all-hands' email out telling employees that, if they had a problem, they "should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company." Talk to anyone. Including "me." Where "me" - Elon Musk. And, while you're at it, "you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens."

Balan took Musk at his word - her first mistake? - and went directly to the man himself.

Turns out, the brake issue Balan may not have been that big a deal, but nontheless, she felt she was doing the right thing by going to the top. And it's not as if she were a little nobody who didn't know what she was talking about. She'd worked on the Tesla Model S.

Her contributions were significant enough that her initials appeared on the Model S’ battery pack.

Anyway, shortly after Balan hit "send" on her email to Musk, but:

...when she showed up to the meeting, it was instead attended by a lawyer and some large men in uniforms, and with Tesla forcing her to resign her position.

Okay. And bad enough that Tesla wanting to shove Balan out, there was this:

During that meeting, Balan says that Tesla’s lawyer threatened to deport many members of her team, who were currently waiting on green card applications, if she didn’t sign the resignation, seemingly in response to her team backing her up in raising these concerns. She ended up signing the resignation in protest, writing on it that “I’m resigning for the position that I was put in a month ago bc I dare to speak up to the Sr management, also bc people that had the chance to speak up were threatened…

The story took a while to get out there, but the Huff Po wrote about it in 2017, at which time: 

...Tesla sent a statement that Balan had stolen company resources to work on a “secret” personal project (Tesla emails show that Balan was told to work on this project by leadership). After this, Balan says she faced difficulty in finding work as companies feared ending up on Musk’s blacklist.

Since the Tesla statement impugned Balan's character, she sued the company for defamation. Tesla "forced her case into arbitration," and the suit got tossed. 

I don't know how this "forced arbitration" works, but it's a tactic that's pro-corporate, not pro-little guy. In any case, Blana pushed back. For a number of reasons (including treatment for breast cancer), Balan's appeal was delayed. But in April, the arbitration agreement was thrown out. 

Balan wants to square off in court over this, and is also going more public with the story, "which she says Musk has tried to stop her from doing, despite his claims of being a “free speech absolutist.”"

Oh, we know from Twitter just what a "free speech absolutist" Musk is. Free to be Elon Musk and those who foolishly worship at his altar. 

In a recent interview, Balan went way out there on Musk, characterizing him as a vindictive little shit who gets off on hurting people. No wonder he gets along so famously with Trump. 

The story about the deportation threats may end up a he-say-she-say situation. But I'm Team Balan. 

Musk has been all-in on Trump's illegal deporation scheme. And Musk has certainly not given us any reason not to believe that he's not a vindictive little shit who gets off on hurting people. 

Anyway, as I saw someone comment, despite Musk's pro-deportation position, which is focused (so far) primarily on sending brown-skinned men with tattoos to a concentration camp in El Salvador, he likes him some H1-B visas, which enable him to hire highly-educated techies to work at his companies. After all, if he can dangle deportation over their heads, what better way to keep them in line? 

Surprise, surprise. 

Sandbox Memories

A while back, a small, no-big-deal "news" item caught my eye.

Massachusetts will soon be home to a children’s activity center featuring the largest sandbox in New England. (Source: MassLive)

Sandmagination is set to open at the Northshore Mall in Peabody in late spring, according to a press release.

Designed for kids aged 10 and under, the facility will feature interactive exhibits, play stations as well as STEAM and STEM activities. The space will be fully accessible and designed for children of all abilities.

The goal of Sandmagination is for children to learn and explore through hands-on play in a sensory-rich environment.

Sandmagination is the brain child of a local STEAM-y STEM-y couple  -  she's a biotech PhD, he's an IT guy/writer - who created the space with their own kids in mind. 

“At Sandmagination, we are building a space where kids can unleash their creativity, explore, and learn in ways that are both fun and meaningful,” the couple said in the press release. “As parents, we know how important it is to provide a safe learning environment, and we cannot wait to open doors here in Peabody.”

It all sounds wonderful, and I love the idea of kiddos having the opportunity to have a sandbox experience, where they get to enjoy - as the Sandmagination website states - an "experience that combines STEAM-based learning, sensory exploration, and hands-on creativity. Our interactive exhibits inspire children to experiment, build, and discover through open-ended, imaginative play."

Yes indeedy. Get the kids away from the screens and into a place where they can just dig in. It all sounds great, but it did make me a bit wistful for the the days of yore when kids got to create, explore, experiment, learn, whatever - in a space that may not have been an intentional STEAM-designed, "safe learning environment" but was a fabulous, unsupervised, kids-only, outdoor place where you could have - dare I say it - just plain fun.

The sandbox of my childhood was pretty good sized - in my memory, it was huge, but I'm guessing it was only about 36 square feet. It was made up of four knocked-together boards with triangular watch-out-for-slivers seats at each corner. There was no foundation, no floor. The boards were just pushed into the ground a bit - no doubt by my father hammering or stomping on them - and the whole shebang all held together by those corner seats. It was located in a shady spot in the yard, right next to the wooded ravine that was part of our property.

My father was no carpenter, but he was handy enough to build for us what was, in those simpler times, a fantastic place for "sensory exploration," etc. 

I can't remember what the original color of the sandbox was -  green, I think - but at some point it was repainted in an ugly orchid. (For some reason, I think we used to call this color pistachio.) There was nothing in our house of that color, so it wasn't leftover from anyting. And I can't imagine that my father deliberately chose it. My guess is that he went to the hardware store and they had a quart of a color that someone had buyer's remorse about after it had been mixed. So it was available for near-free. Sold!

Color aside, our sandbox was wonderful, and I spent many hours there - with my sibs, with my friends, on my own. 

I/we made sand castles, shoveling dampish sand into buckets, pounding it down, unmolding it, and decorating the ramparts with sticks, leaves, pebbles, and scraps of paper (those were the flags). 

We made tracks through the sand and raced the boys metal Tonka trucks, and the cheesy green/silver and red/silver rubber cars with yellow wheels you could get at Woolworth's for a dime. (These days, you can get one on eBay for $12.95.) I may be crazy, but I think the heads of driver and passenger were often decapitated, bitten off by someone unleashing their inner Ozzy Osbourne, before we knew that Ozzy Osbourne even existed. 

We also brought our dolls out to the dandbox beach. And we played restaurant and picnic, making "food" out of patties of sand, twigs, weeds, leaves, pebbles, berries, acorns and pignuts. (I don't know where those red berries came from, but we knew/thought they were poisonous, so didn't eat them. We did occasionally dig the meat out of pignuts and take a bit of a taste, but that meat, while it may have been harmless, was bitter.

We celebrated spring by heading to the sand-and-gravel pit to buy a couple of bushel baskets of clean sand to restore the sandbox for the coming season.

I'm not sure when I outgrew our sandbox. Maybe age 10, the upper edge of the Sandmagination age range. But I hung on for a while, playing there with my sister Trish (a decade my junior) when she didn't have any of her buddies around. 

Anyway, our sandbox was nothing fancy, but it was just plain magnificent. All it was lacking was the ability to fly - unlike the flying sandbox chronicled in one of my favorite early-childhood books, the eponymous Flying Sandbox. Or course, since our sandbox was bottomless - and completely destroyed the grass under it; it took decades after the sandbox was decommissioned for the grass to grow back in as anything other than dead yellow - if our sandbox took flight, we would have been hanging on to those corner seats for dear life.

Good luck to the Sandmagination. However brainy and planned out it is, I'm sure the kids will have fun. And I hope that some of them imagine taking off and flying around the neighborhood in it. 

Memorial Day, 2025

And another Memorial Day rolls around. The only thing special about this one is that it's the first in my long lifetime when we have to worry about whether we'll live to see another without the country having sunk into full authoritarian madness. 

As I write this, in late April, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll was showing that:

• 23% of Republican voters said the president should defy court orders he disagrees with.
  
  28% of Republican voters said the president should withhold funding from universities he disagrees with.
  
  
  26% of Republican voters said the president should control national museums and theaters.
• 
  

As if one-quarter of Republicans welcoming this level of authoritarianism is not enough, there's the:

CBS News/YouGov poll that found 44% of Republican voters said federal judges should not be allowed to review Trump’s policies.

The article where I found this data was from MSNBC/Rachel Maddow , which also cited a YouGov poll that found that "nearly half of GOP voters said that a strongman government without a Congress was at least a 'fairly” good system of government." According to an earlier Pew Research Poll included in Maddow's roundup, "59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say many of the country’s problems could be addressed more effectively if Trump 'didn’t need to worry so much about Congress or the courts.'"

Is this what the thousands of Massachusetts soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died while in the service of our country, the thousands who are memorialized each Memorial Day with flags set out on the Boston Common, died for? 

Maybe these numbers have changed for the better since the true nature of Trump & Co. has become increasingly revealed to us. Or maybe they've gotten worse, as people become more frightened of the future and don't give a damn about what Trump does as long as it hits those they despise, and not them and theirs. (Just you wait, oh non-students of history...)

There's always a lot to thinkg about on Memorial Day. Some years more than others.

But here's what I've written on Memorial Days past, when I typically focused on the those who served the country - the true meaning of the holiday - and didn't feel the need to focus on the colossal jeopardy that the country is in today.

Decoration Day (2007)

Today I will think of those who were not as lucky as Jake Wolf [my grandfather; saw combat on the other side in WWI] and Al Rogers [my father, four years in the Navy during WWII; never saw combat], those who did not make it home to build their lives.

Six Degrees of Separation from the Military (2008)

How much easier it is to "live" with a war that doesn't have any direct impact on you or anyone you know, or even know of, except remotely.

Just something to think about on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2009

I've always loved Memorial Day, one of those pleasant but low-craziness holidays that we just don't get enough of.

Memorial Day 2010

After we had finished planting, we strolled around the graveyard, which is small (it’s a parish, not a diocesan, cemetery) and, in our case, quite family oriented. We walked by the graves of lots of friends and relatives – close cousins we knew, distance relations we knew of, the family who lived in my grandmother’s decker – and noted how many of the graves were – this being Decoration Day – decorated with flags, put out by the American Legion or the VFW, in holders that indicate the war that someone served in.

Memorial Day 2011

This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2012: "It's Not About the Barbecue" (2012)

There are so many things that are bad for a country’s soul, and I’ve got to believe that having an all-volunteer military has got to be one of them – too much opportunity for sunshine patriots and chicken hawks to call the shots knowing they have no skin/no kin in the game.

Memorial Day 2013

It promises to be a brilliant spring day here in Boston, but as I write this it’s cold, dreary, drizzling – not atypical spring weather in these parts, and actually pretty fitting, when you think of it.

Sure, war is sometimes conducted on delightfully balmy days. But as often as not, those in battle are coping with terrible physical conditions.

It’s frostbitten feet at Valley Forge. It’s contending with the heat at the Battle of the Wilderness.  Muck in the trenches of Château-Thierry. Rappelling up the cliff at Pointe du Hoc during a pelting rainstorm. The cold and ice at Choisin Reservoir. Monsoon season in Vietnam. Sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day 2014

This Memorial Day, I’m mostly thinking about the two dear ones I have lost since last Memorial Day: my husband Jim and my golden (50 years!) friend Marie.

Neither was a veteran.

Jim spent what would have been his soldiering years working as a chemist for a series of government agencies, including the CIA, in order to get draft deferments. (Hard to think of anyone less suited to the soldier’s life than my singular and peculiar husband. I always told him he would have been Section-Eighted out in the time it took his drill sergeant to yell “ten-hut”, or whatever it is that drill sergeants yell.) Like my father, Marie’s served in World War II, Bob as a Marine MP in the South Pacific (a precursor to his job as a Worcester cop).

Up the Republic! (2015) 

This year, while I will keep up the tradition of thinking about veterans in general, and my dead loved ones in particular, my shout out this Memorial Day goes to The Republic of Ireland, which last Friday became the first country to approve gay marriage by popular vote. And that popular vote wasn’t close at all: 62.1% voted a resounding YES!

Memorial Day 2016 

Tough to think of all those lives – mostly young men – lost to war. And I guess it doesn’t much matter whether it was a good war or a not so good war. (“My war’s better than your war!”) And it doesn’t much matter, either, whether you were a gung-ho patriot or a reluctant recruit, grousing all the way. At the end of the day, you didn’t get to live the full life you would have had if not for that good or not so good war. Sigh…

Broken Record and Then Some (2017) 

Back in Boston, the flags are up on the Common,

commemorating all of those from Massachusetts who
died in the service of our country, from the Revolutionary War on. A stirring sight, for sure. But I like this shot because it shows the carousel. Life goes on!

Memorial Day 2018

On this Memorial Day, here’s hoping that no one as crazy and amped up as the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now amps us into yet another war.

Memorial Day 2019

...unlike 45% of Americans, at least I know that today is a holiday to commemorate our war dead. I don’t actually find that figure all that shocking. There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about, awareness of the purpose of Memorial Day is the least of it.

Memorial Day 2020

This year, there's another kind of war on. Maybe next year, we'll have flags for the coronavirus deaths.

Memorial Day 2021 

I don't know that the words of the Roman poet Horace are necessarily always true. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.) There are plenty of bad causes that soldiers have died for. But the Civil War - so bloody, so ghastly - was, for the Union soldiers, a righteous one. The cynical may discount the role it played, but ending slavery was a noble purpose. And if we're still fighting that war today - and regrettably we are - then shame on us.

Happy Memorial Day, anyway. 

"The world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players." Talk about a niche profession.

As AI takes over more and more jobs, people are going to have to get more and more creative when it comes to making a living. 

And it looks like one Maxim Peranidze - "who may be the world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players " -  has gotten a jump on the game. Or is it a jump ball?

Whatever. Peranidze, an LA guy originally from Moldova, has certainly carved out an interesting professional niche for himself. And I guess it's working out for him, as his Insta account has one million followers, a cadre that I've read he has figured out how to monetize quite nicely.

Who does he "do?"

The greats. The near greats. The current. The former.

Peranidze impersonates Larry Bird. Shaquille O'Neil. LeBron James. He's gotten a request from Dennis Rodman to do him. (No surprise that showboater would want in on this.)

The New Yorker reporter caught up with Peranidze when he was praciticing his Ivica Zubac moves. 

“Zubac easy,” Peranidze said, referring to Ivica Zubac, the seven-foot Croatian center. “I’m good with slow white guys.” He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. Peranidze pulled on his Zubac jersey and a white sleeve. (Source: The New Yorker)

He'd also been working on his James Harden. (That's who's in the picture.) 

For one thing, Harden is left-handed and Peranidze is better with his right. For another, it’s difficult to grow a beard like Harden’s, which overtakes the face. Peranidze had ordered a fake one from Amazon. “Like, nine dollars,” he said. Soon, he’d put up a new post on his Instagram account, @MaxIsNicee (a million followers), captioned “Harden Floaters Be Like.” Peranidze nailed Harden’s loping and off-kilter lethality, which he described as “He nice.”

As an aside: Peranidze may be good with slow white guys, but Harden is not exactly a speed demon but, rather, a slow Black guy. Having successfully captured Harden in motion, he can add that to his repertoire. 

He also remembers the ladies, and has done impersonations of some WNBA superstars. Chicago Sky's Angel Reese was apparently not amused - wearing a wig, he had her in heels and a skirt - but Breanna Stewart of the NY Liberty got a kick out of his impersonation of her. 

For the NBAers, he buys knockoff jerseys:

....which he alters with scissors and safety pins if needed. “When guys are traded, I arts-and-crafts their names onto the new team’s jersey,” he said. 

Enterpising young man, that's for sure.  

I'm quite sure that as long as there have been celebrities, there have been impersonators. Elvis has been dead nearly 50 years and from AI-generated Google I saw that, worldwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Elvis impersonators. (They can't all be making a living, can they?)

Years ago, my husband and I were having a drink in a hotel bar when a whole slew of Chers came in. Turns out we had crashed a convention of Cher impersonators.

What Max Peranidze does is, of course, more complex in that he doesn't specialize in just one person to impersonate. And he has to rely on his movements, rather than just doing a look-and-sound alike (even if he does wear those knockoff shirts and don wigs and beards as needed).

Anyway, whenever I read about someone like Peranidze, I'm reminded of something my father would always say when there was some circus act on Ed Sullivan. A plate spinner. A guy who juggles bowling balls. A fire eater. "How does someone figure out that they have that particular talent?" Good question then, good question now.

And a question for Max Peranidze: can you do old-school Celtics like Bill Russell and Bob Cousy?

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And speaking of my father, today is his 113th birthday. (He only made it to 58...) Still miss you, Al!

Shocking, but not surprising

The housing crisis in this country is bad and getting worse. I see it up close and personal every day I'm at my volunteer job in a day shelter, where those without permanent housing can come, get basic services (food, clothing, shower, medical) and just hang out.  

Whatever the reason behind it - mental illness, substance abuse, bad choices, bad luck, or just plain poverty - homelessness is terrible. If I ever fell into this circumstance, I think I'd have a nervous breakdown on Day One. 

But I find homelessness especially disheartening when those without a place to call home do have a place to call work. Sure, they're working, but they don't make enough to find a place to call home. And there are plenty of them. (In an expensive old city like Boston, it's not just the working poor who can't find affordable housing. There are plenty of folks - young, college-educated people in their twenties and early thirties - making salaries that, in a lot of other places, could pay for very nice homes. Not here. They just don't tend to be homeless. They're living with their parents, or sharing with roommates when they'd rather be on their own.)

Back to the working homeless, I can't tell you how many times a client of St. Francis House has excitedly told me that they got the job. Or that they can't sign up for a clothing appointment that day because they have to get to work. Just hearing the pride in their voices, I can't tell you how happy it makes me. Unless they tell me where they're living, I never have the heart to ask where they're staying these days. Because I know the answer, as often as not, is going to be a shelter. 

A recent article on a type of homeless shelter (a.k.a. an employment shelter) dedicated to those with jobs in The New York Times brought the situation of the working homeless into relief. It chronicled the lives of those with the sorts of non-glamorous jobs held by people with few other options. For whatever reason - mostly being mired in poverty from the jump - many of these folks are just trying to eke out a living, not pursue some high-end professional career. But plenty are in jobs that one would consider solid middle class, you-should-be-able-to-afford-a-place to live jobs. 

They are line cooks, librarians, home health aides, bartenders, truck drivers, janitors and nurses. They drive ambulances and Ubers and work in construction and in concessions at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. They wheel teetering piles of Amazon packages into apartment buildings.

They work with children and adults with disabilities and often conceal their housing situation from their co-workers and clients.

Some work for the city or state: as cleaners and fare evasion beaters on the subways and buses, mental health counselors, exterminators in public housing, school teachers and police officers. (Source: NY Times)

And they're living in shelters that aren't like the shelters where you have to exit with your possessions in the morning, and queue up to get back in come evening. You can leave your stuff behind, and lock the door to your room. But they aren't exactly like home, either. 

On such shelter is the Blue Sky Residence in Queens. 

Who lives there?

A woman who works at LaGuardia, "directing travelers to their gates." She makes $22 an hour, but because of her work schedule and bus schedules, she has to walk part of the way along the side of a highway in order to get to work. She leaves for work at 4 a.m.

Another woman living there works the overnight shift at a Target for $19 an hour, with a buck extra for hours worked after midnight. 

Then there's the cab driver who picks up fares at Kennedy Airport. He's the son of immigrants - his father was a cabbie as well - who dropped out of college when his parents became ill and he became their caretaker, and the sole family breadwinner. Things fell apart, as they do, especially when you're living on the edge. His father died, covid crushed the taxi business, the family lost their home - the sort of modest home that working-class families used to be able to afford. 

About a third of the families living in New York City’s homeless shelters, not including migrants, have at least one adult who gets up and goes to work. But their salaries — some as high as $40,000 or $50,000 or more — are outmatched by the depth of the city’s affordability crisis and the severity of its housing crunch.

And, the system being the system, those salaries often mean that people make to much to be eligible for any sort of assistance: housing vouchers, public housing, food stamps. So they find themselves figuring out how to play the game. Don't take that overtime shift, don't take that promotion, because you'll lose whateer help you're getting and fall off the cliff. But you're trapped, big time. You have a couple of kids, so you need a two bedroom. But you take home $3K a month and the two BR's rent for $3K a month. You do the math. 

A no-win situation, that's for sure. 

Boston, like NY, also has a housing crisis, a shocking but not surprising situation when the working- and middle-class people who make the cities run can't afford to live there. The cities are hollowed out: the totally impoverished, through subsidies, can still hang in. And the rich, well, they'll survive. 

One thing we're sure of,
The rich gets richer and the poor get poorer.
In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun!

Well, true dat about the rich and the poor. But 'ain't we got fun?' Not really. 

Just depressing. 

How low can they go? How about Hunger Games for citizenship?

The only season of Survivor that I watched was the first one. 

Just wasn't that interested in watching a bunch of sun-drenched, buff connivers compete against each other by winning studip manufactured competitions, and figuring out how to backstab and manipulate their fellow contestants. Sure, it was a certain "reality" of the kill-or-be-killed, when you come down to it everyone's pretty much a POS, variety. But, essentially, yawn. And yuck.

If I'm going to watch a competition that pits non-athletes against each other, I'd rather see three nerdy know-it-alls - my kind of peeps - go at it on Jeopardy. Give me the librarian from Tucson who knows that Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer for Beloved in 1988; the accountant from Providence who knows that the real Tesla - Nikola - helped figure out the AC electrical system.

But people do seem enamored of the reality and faux reality show world, to the extent that Donald Trump, that hyped up fake business sucess, that creature of faux reality, was elected president by a populace who apparently would rather be entertained (and dictated to) than be governed (and actually know what things like due process are). Sigh.

Anyway, it's no surprise that in today's world o' Trump, there's a pitch circulating in the Department of Homeland Security - the organization headed by the brazen Kristi Noem, cos-player extraordinaire - that would have would-be citizens compete for the privilege of becoming an American citizen. And no surprise that Rob Worsoff, the producer who's promoting this idea, is the fellow who was behind Duck Dynasty, a show that followed the day to day antics and dramas of a bunch of good ol' Lousiana boys who ran a company that made duck calls. Or something. 

The Department of Homeland Security is considering taking part in a television show that would have immigrants go through a series of challenges to get American citizenship, officials said on Friday.

The challenges would be based on various American traditions and customs, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the agency. She said the department was still reviewing the idea...

“The pitch generally was a celebration of being an American and what a privilege it is to be able to be a citizen of the United States of America,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “It’s important to revive civic duty.” (Source: NY Times)

Contestants would be chosen from those already vetted for starting along the path to citizenship. Each episode would feature a Heritage Challenge, an Elimination Challenge, a Town Hall Meeting, and a Final Vote. 

One of the challenges suggested would take place at NASA and would involve assembling and launching a rocket. Another would have the contestants heading to Wisconsin for log rolling. In Detroit, would-be citizens would work on an assembly line, putting together a 1914 Model-T chassis. They'd be clam-digging in Maine. Panning for gold in San Francisco. Delivering mail by horseback - a la the Pony Express - in Missouri. (Details on the challenges come from an article in the Daily Mail.)

So many skills that would help our country! And no Heritage Challenges like avoiding a lynching while registering Black votes in Mississippi? Or walking along the Trail of Tears with the indigenous people forcibly removed from their homes and dispatched to what's now Oklahoma? 

Give me your tired and poor, alrighty.

I've read contradictory statements on whether Kristi Noem has approved the idea, but this bit of nonsense seems right up her little cosplaying alley. Imagine Kristi in a Pony Express uniform? As a 49-er? A clam digger? 

And I can't think of anyone who'd love this more than President Reality Show himself, who would no doubt be the pol enlisted to swear the winner in as an American on the steps of the Capitol Building. (This show was proposed during the Obama Administration but was, no surprise here, turned down.)

Worsoff claims that this would be a massive commercial hit - he's probably right. That it would attract all sorts of commercial sponsors to donate prizes, like free gasoline for life - he's probably right. And that there wouldn't be a dry eye in the house at the finale. Nah. There'd be something dry in my house, and that would be the sound of me retching.

Just who would this jamboree privilege? Would all those robust South African Boers coming off the planes with their luggage carts overflowing be competing against starving Sudanese who showed up with (maybe) a change of clothing and a baby suffering from malnutrition?

Seriously, other than maybe the Boers, I can't see anyone wanting to take part in this other than a bunch of American knucklehead bros. 

It will come as no shock if this debased, Hunger Games-like spectacle were to be approved. Trump runs on attention, and loves his ratings. And focusing on this would be such a fine distraction from the current immigration/deporation debacle.

How low can this country go? Just when you think we've bottomed out, here's yet another thing that will only prove that things can always get worse. 

Chuck Barris was a game show producer (and star) in the 1960's and 1970's, known for such crowd-pleaser, cringe-inducing shows as The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show. I believe it was Barris who, somewhere along the line, said that if he proposed a show in which people could win money to do things like kick the cane out of the hand of an old lady, there'd be a staunch American audience for it. He was probably right. Too bad he's no longer around to let us know what he thinks about this shitshow.

The nap of luxury...

The most I ever paid for a mattress was for a king-sized Tempur-Pedic, purchased at Brookstone's maybe 30 years ago. I don't recall what we paid, but at the time it seemed like a lot. (Something comparable today is in the $3K or so range, so it probably cost us about $1.5K.) It was worth it. I know that some people can't stand Tempur-Pedics, but it worked for us. The one downside was that the mattress hardened up in the cold, so when you first got into bed on a cold night, it felt like a marble slab. Once your body heated it up, it was perfecto. When we first got the mattress, I had sciatica and the Tempur-Pedic was good for what ailed me.

I now have a queen-size bed, a handmedown from my sister - it came with the wonderful cherry wood Crate & Barrel sleigh bed she was offloading - and I have no idea what kind of mattress is on it. I know I'll need to replace it at some point, but it's fine for now. And I'll be willing to pay a few thousand bucks for the right stuffed. 

But my price point will be well below the entry point ($14K) for a Hästens, which can run you up to $600K for the top of the line. (And, yes, you read that correctly: six-hundred thousand dollars. FOR A DAMNED MATTRESS. Apparently the rapper Drake owns one, so he can lie in comfort while licking the wounds that his arch-rival Kendrick Lamar's been inflicting on him.)

I likely would never have heard of Hästens had not an article on their dream mattresses popped up in the NY Time's Wirecutter, where "resident sleep expert" Caira Blackwell wrote about her opportunity to test drive sleep one of them for six months. 

Over the years Blackwell's been testing out mattresses, she's slept on everything from those beds-in-boxes that cost next to nothing, to high end mattresses that go for $10K. And her verdict on the Hästens 2000T: while some of the mattresses she's checked out have been just fine, when it comes to the Hästens 2000T: nothing compares to you. 

For $56K,it had better be good. But nothing prepared me for learning about Hästens.

I was expecting the handcrafted-ness, but this goes way beyond handcraft. 

Horsehair is the star of the show in every Hästens mattress. The horse mane and tail strands are heat-treated, braided, and steamed to create a permanent curl—an expensive process, according to Hästens and a Chinese-based supplier, Tallie. The curls are dense enough to create a loose, springy structure that feels airy yet supportive. The fibers are hollow, and this helps the mattress feel breathable by wicking away moisture and excess heat. (Source: NYT Wirecutter)

Personally, I don't associate horsehair with comfort. My only experience sleeping on a horsehair mattress was at the summer home of a college friend, where the mattress in my room was some sort of ugly blue leatherette stuffed with horsehair. It was as hard as a rock, and each time I turned over, it felt like I was going to fracture a hip. Not so Blackwell's experience with her horsehair mattress (which, by the way, has 2,340 individual springs in it - most box springs, which aren't so much in use anymore, had maybe one-fifth that amount). 

I know from years of mattress testing that comfort is subjective, and no single mattress will work for everyone. That being said, sleeping on the 2000T feels like nothing I’ve ever felt before. When I settle in, the mattress conforms just enough for my whole body to sink into it, while what feels like a thousand little hands support me from below. The closest comparison I can think of is floating in a sensory-deprivation chamber. When I lie on the Hästens, I feel weightless, like I’m bobbing in a pool of water calibrated to my exact body temperature. I can barely tell where the mattress ends and my body begins, regardless of what position I’m in.

Well, if that doesn't sound sweet... 

Despite the near-perfection that is the Hästens, after a few weeks using it, Blackwell felt that all that all those carefully handcrafted materials were starting to clump together. She reported the issue to the company and was told that this was to be expected:

...because the mattress requires regular, complimentary massaging. Yes, every mattress sold by Hästens comes with a “recalibration program,” in which Hästens employees visit your home to loosen up the materials and redistribute them, to prevent the mattress from settling into a you-shaped valley. Each Hästens owner is entitled to this service for a decade or more.

They remove the topper, flip the mattress, and then systematically tread across the surface in weighted steps, like they’re marching. Then they knead it with their fists, before reapplying the topper and systematically rolling the edges in to redistribute the materials in an even layer. After each 20-minute “massage,” I could feel the difference. The mattress again felt like it did on the first day it was delivered to my home.

Who knew that mattress fluffer was an actual profession? Of course, what they do is on beyond just casual fluffing, treading, kneading, and rotating. 

For Blackwell's second recalibration, she mentioned that the recalibrated mattress was feeling a bit too cushy. So they sent a squad in and they:

... re-tufted the entire thing by hand, functionally tightening each coil to adjust the bed to feel a little firmer than it was before. Again, I could really feel the difference, as if I’d swapped a soft mattress for a medium one—without the hassle. The team members explained that they can also do this procedure for half of the mattress, which is ideal for couples with different firmness preferences.

Nearly $60K for a mattress is way, way, way too rich for my blood. And I don't think I'd like having a recalibration team swing by every couple of months. Too much of a good thing, etc. 

And $600K for a mattress? That's just rich folks doing what rich folks do. Status-buying something insanely pricey just because they can afford to. Is there more value, more comfort, more more of more in a $600K mattress than in a $60K mattress? I suspect there's a marginal increase in value, comfort, and more more at best. 

$60K or $600K, this is just living in the nap of luxury. There's a Hästens store nearby, on Newbury Street. I haven't been in - and don't imagine I ever will. But if word gets out, come the revolution, someone may decide to roll the tumbrel up to their door. Liberté, égalité, sleep comfort!

The OTHER Hershey Green. (One crazy true crime...)

Don't know how they did it, but a while back, researchers proved the theory that everyone is within 6 degrees of separation from every other soul in the world. Actually, they came up with 6.6 degrees of separation, which rounds up to 7, but 6 sounds better so...

Anyway, it means that we're all within 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. And we're all within 6 degrees of separation from someone who has committed a crime. I won't get into the details now, but I know I'm within a lot fewer degrees of separation from a couple of criminals. And, at the homeless shelter where I volunteer, I have a friend and colleague who has one hell of a good story to tell, degrees of separation-wise.

I don't know how the topic came up, but we were talking criming, and he told me that, back in the early 1930's, one of his great uncles was involved in a stunningly malevolent, and stunningly barmy, crime.

The uncle was one Herschel Green. AKA Heshy Green. And AKA in the press - and there's been a lot of it - Hershey Green. 

If you google Hershey Green, you come up with kelly-green wrapped Hershey's Kisses. But if you google Michael Malloy... Yowza!

Mike Malloy, AKA Mike the Durable, AKA Iron Mike, AKA the Rasputin of the Bronx, was an Irish immigrant who'd worked as a NYFD firefighter until he hit the bottle one too many times and ended up on skid row. While on the skids, he made acquaintance with five men who took a few policies out on Mike, while plotting to kill him for the payout.

The five members of the so-called "Murder Trust" were Tony Marino, Joseph "Red" Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kriesberg. This ragtag mix took out multiple life insurance policies under a fake name for a total payout of $3,500 (about $85K today, so $17K a piece).

The crew thought they could easily get Iron Mike Malloy to drink himself to death. Marino owned a bar and was more than happy to let Malloy run up an endless tab. But the man from Donegal was apparently of pretty sturdy stock. So Marino added antifreeze to the mix. Again, Malloy could handle it.

A possible explanation for the antifreeze not killing him is the fact that ethanol blocks absorption of ethylene glycol in the liver (and is used as one possible antidote for antifreeze poisoning). Antifreeze was replaced with turpentine, followed by horse liniment, and finally rat poison was mixed in. After these mixtures failed to kill Malloy, Marino mixed shots of wood alcohol (pure methanol) in with his normal shots of liquor. This did not kill Malloy, presumably because the normal liquor helped negate the methanol poisoning. (Source: Wikipedia)

And maybe back in Donegal Mike Malloy had taken an occasional drop of the poitin craythur (creature) - poitin being Irish moonshine -  and his liver was impervious to any assault. (I've never taste poitin, but I have smelled it, and I thought that one whiff was going to set me into acute liver failure.)

Anyway, the ever-resourceful, ever imaginative, mostly hapless wannabe murderers kept trying. The Plan Bs were feeding Malloy "raw oysters soaked in wood alcohol," a recipe that Pasqua thought was a killer mix. Then there was the rotten sardine, poison, and carpet tack sandwich. 

Malloy lived on. (Seriously, I know it was the Depression and all, but how much in the bag would you have to be to take a bite of a rotten sardine sandwich - let alone not notice that there were carpet tacks in there?) 

Plan C: Freeze the bastard to death. 

On an extremely cold night, after Malloy drank until passing out, he was carried to a park, dumped in the snow, and had 5 US gallons (19 L; 4.2 imp gal) of water poured on his bare chest. However, shortly thereafter, Malloy was rescued by police who took him to a homeless charity where he was re-clothed.

The crimers thought this would sure-fire work, because Marino had earlier gotten away with insuring an alcoholic woman, getting her drunk, stripping her clothing off, dousing her body and bedding with ice cold water, and leaving her in front of an open window on a frigid night. Death by bronchial pneumonia. Marino collected $2K. But Malloy was made of sterner stuff than that poor soul.  

So next up - Plan D - was using Great Uncle Hershey Green's taxi to run Malloy over. That attempt resulted in some broken bones and three weeks in the hospital. 

Plan E ended up sealing the deal.

This attempt succeded after the team took a passed-out Malloy to Murphy's room:

...put a hose in his mouth that was connected to the coal gas jet, and turned it on. This finally killed Malloy, with his death occurring within an hour. He was pronounced dead of lobar pneumonia and quickly buried, with Dr. Frank Manzella [who was bribed to do so] signing the death certificate.

 Alas, for the Murder Trust, tongues started wagging:

Police heard rumors of "Mike the Durable" in speakeasies around the town, and upon learning that Michael Malloy had died that night, they had the body exhumed and forensically examined.

And that was it for the Murder Trust.

The not-so-good Doctor Manzella got off with a misdemeanor charge. But four of the fire were convicted and executed, at Sing Sing, in the electric chair. Hershey Green was smart enough to turn state's evidence - and he may have "just" been directly involved in the taxi rundown - and he was sentenced to 10 years in Sing Sing. (For the rundown attempt, the other four guys had bribed Hesh with $150.) Somehow, Hershey Green ended up doing some time in San Quentin, and my colleague's father, as a boy, was taken by his straight-arrow father on a cross country drive to visit Uncle Heshy there. 

My friend and colleague does remember meeting Uncle Hesh somewhere along the line, but can't recall when he died. 

But what a story. True crimes are often intriguing, more so when they're only a degree of separation or so away. But this one about the OTHER Hershey Green. Just plain crazy!

O, Buffy. All very sad, but I believe her.

I'm an old folkie. 

When everyone else my age was listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles, I was giving more than equal time to Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Tom Rush...And Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Her Many a Mile album was frequently spinning on the turntable throughout my high school and college years.

So many great songs: "Must I Go Round," "Maple Sugar Boy," "Piney Wood Hills," "Until It's Time For You To Go," and the still painfully relevant but no longer the reality "Welcome, Welcome, Emigrante." Her voice was so heartbreaking. I loved listening to her, and singing along with her - just without her pure, heartbreaking voice.

I liked Buffy, but didn't know all that much about her. She was local. A UMass grad. I knew that. At least I may have. And I definitely knew that she had Indigenous ancestry. Only we would have said Indian. And there was something Canadian floating around there. Canadian Indian?

Turns out, the Massachusetts part was right. But the Canadian and/or Indigenous. Maybe not so right.

It's all very murky. 

Sainte-Marie has certainly long been an outspoken advocate for Indigenous causes, and over the years, she has written a number of songs that focused on Indigenous peoples and issues - "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," "My Country Tis of Thy People Are Dying." 

She has long been associated with Canada. In the late 1970's, she was asked by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to sing for Queen Elizabeth when Queen E visited our neighbors to the North. At the time, she apparently told Canadian officials that she was an American, not a Canadian. But she was Canadian enough.

And when she was a young adult, Sainte-Marie was adopted by a Canadian Cree Piapot family, and began self-identifying as someone with Indigenous roots.

Anyway, it's not surprising that Canadians started thinking of Buffy Sainte-Marie as a Canadian, with bonus points for having Indigenous roots. More bonus points when, in 1983, she won an Oscar for co-writing the song "Up Where We Belong," from the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.

Along the line, she started to rack up Canadian awards. Junos, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammies. The Polaris music prize. Induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Membership in the Order of Canada. 

Then this winter, Canada's government stripped Sainte-Marie of her Order of Canada award. In the days that followed, her other Canadian awards were rescinded as well.  

O, Canada had come to the realization that Buffy Sainte-Marie wasn't a Canadian. 

O, Buffy.

The story had been buzzing around for a couple of years that Sainte-Marie wasn't Canadian (and probably not Indigenous either). A journalist had sleuthed out er birthcertificate: born in Massachusetts, to Americans of Italian (the father) and English (the mother) descent. (If you're wondering about the French last name, at some point during World War II the parents, sensing antipathy towards Italians, Franco-phoned their last name from Santamaria to Sainte-Marie.)

As I said, it's all very murky. 

When the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) "outed" her American roots in 2023, Buffy Sainte-Marie had this to say:

"My growing up mom, who was proud to be part Mi'kmaq, told me many things, including that I was adopted and that I was native," Sainte-Marie said. " And later in life, as an adult, she also told me some things that I've never shared out of respect for her. That I hate sharing now, including that I may have been born on the wrong side of the blanket."

The singer also said she'd always been honest about not knowing some details about her roots. "I don't know where I'm from, who my birth parents are, or how I ended up a misfit in a typical white, Christian, New England town," she said. (Source: NPR) 

I'm with Buffy here. 

It's entirely possible that her mother told her that she had some Mi'kmaq heritage. Lots of New Englanders do. 

It's entirely possible that, later in life, her mother told her that her father wasn't her biological father, a man who could, in fact, have been Indigenous.

It's entirely possible that Buffy Sainte-Marie was, in fact, born in Canada, to Indigenous parents, and taken from those parents and shipped off to a set of adoptive parents in America. And that her original birth records were destroyed, her adoption records falsified into an American birth certificate. (A lot of really terrible things happened to Native-born children in Canada and the US, with the government and religious organizations conspiring to seize children and place them with "civilized" families. This was going on as recently as the 1980's.)

It's sad that Buffy Sainte-Marie has had her honors rescinded. And it's understandable that Canada wants awards designed for Canadians go to Canadians - even if Sainte-Marie never explicitly presented herself as a Canadian citizen, and these organizations had just assumed that she was.  

But it's entirely plausible that Buffy Sainte-Marie is an Indigenous person by birth (and not just from her young-adult adoption). And it's also possible that she was born in Canada. 

If we wait long enough, maybe Massachusetts will become Canada's 11th province, mooting the entire argument.

Meanwhile, I believe in Buffy. And still love her voice.