Polly want a crackhead?

This story is something straight out of an old Perry Mason episode - "The Case of the Squawking Parrot." Or maybe a Columbo, where Inspector Columbo, on his way out the door, turns to the perp and says, "I just noticed that you've got a new cover over your birdcage. Now, Mrs. Columbo is thinking of getting a parakeet, so if you wouldn't mind if I took a peek under the cover of your cage...." Inspector Columbo gestures towards the birdcage with his unlit cigar, and then walks over to lift a corner of the cover... 

But it wasn't an old American TV rerun that involved a talkative bird. It it was an actual English crack and heroin drug bust, case solved thanks to a parrot who knew too much:

A drug ring of 15 people in Blackpool was taken down by the tiny yellow bird — who was also seen in videos playing with drug money — after police seized gang leader Adam Garnett’s cellphones, according to the Lancashire Constabulary.

Videos allegedly show [Garnett's GF/partner Shannon] Hilton teaching her less-than-cagey critter to say “two for 25” — apparent payment for bags of the dope — “in front of a child” and “the parrot playing with money, which was gained through their illegal activities,” police said. (Source: NY Post)

It's interesting to note that Garnett was conducting business with his human and avian gang members while he was in a cage of his own. He was already serving a sentence for his prior criming, and he's now got another 19 years tacked on. Hilton's going away for 12 years, and other members of the gang have also been given hefty sentences. 

Much of the evidence in the case was collected from the cellphones of the gang members. There were those incriminating videos of the stool pigeon parrot, singing like a bird; and Hilton's phone had "a clip of what appeared to be bricks of cocaine with music with the lyric “cocaine” playing over it."

In addition, police found that one gang member: 

...kept a record in notes of his dealings, including price lists and transactions, Lancashire Police said. He was also found to have researched and sent links to stories discussing county lines to his contacts. (Source: BBC)

Another member, a fellow who lived in the wonderfully named town of Leighton Buzzard, had videos that:

...showed him walking through [Blackpool], carrying a significant amount of cash, and rapping about his criminality. 

What a bunch of birdbrains! 

I always have to laugh when criminal enterprises are brought down by incriminating messages, searches, and videos found on cellphones. Tell me again why they're called smartphones?

This case, of course, has the added factor of the parrot - an innocent drawn into cahoots with the criminals solely for his excellent ability to parrot what his owner was saying. No word on who's taken custody of the unnamed parrot. Maybe someone who'll help him clean up his language. At minimum he should be squawking about wanting a cracker, not yacking about the price of crack.

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Image Source: BBC

This shirt

There's a wonderful song by the wonderful Mary Chapin Carpenter called This Shirt. The song chronicles Mary's shirt on its journey from attending "every boring high school dance," through lovers, travels, travels with lovers, the birth and death of kittens, and raking the lawn.

I don't have anything like a "this shirt." I do have a couple of sweaters, still in service, that I've had since the late 1980's. The closest I come to a "this shirt" is a denim shirt from the mid-to-late 1990's that sports the new company logo for the place I worked throughout the 90's. 

Most of my logoware went to late husband, who wore polo shirts, a rain jacket, a fleece from companies I worked for, including my consulting clients. When Jim died, he was wearing a very soft and comfy, navy blue logo shirt from my then client LogMeIn, which supplied me (that is to say, Jim) with several of their soft and comfy polo shirt over the years. 

Jim wasn't exactly a clothes horse, and he also wore things to death. (By this I mean the ragged death of the clothing item, not Jim's death.) But he did have a good suit, a couple of nice sports jackets, a top coat, a parka, Brooks Brothers khakis,  jeans, and a couple of belts that I donated after he died. I think I ragged the polo shirts, which were pretty much worn to death. Some of his long sleeved shirts I gave away (for symbolic reasons) to friends and family who wanted a memento. (These are what in Catholic parlance are second class relics. A first class relic would be a bone fragment or, I guess, Jim's ashes. Which I still have some of.)

For some reason, I hung onto a number of Jim's long sleeved shirts. These came in two categories: LL Bean solid color

This Shirt

cotton or flannel - a new plaid flannel LL Bean shirt was, for years, my mother's Christmas gift to Jim - and Brooks Brothers in some variation of blue (solid, striped, plaid, checked).

The other day, I came across a handful of them, hanging to the side of my closet. They were mostly Brooks Brothers, mostly on hangers from the dry cleaners, still with the little clear plastic gizmo at the neck closure, and the little blue paper tag attached to the lower part of the shirt.

One of the shirts - and LL Bean-er - was pretty worn, so it'll go in the cloth recycle bag. The others are going to St. Francis House, where there will be some guests who will enjoy having a high quality Brooks Brothers shirt, even one that's been hanging in my closet for over 11 years now.

They're going to St. Francis House with the exception of the one I'm wearing as I write this post. It's a blue and white small windowpane Brooks Brothers, and I'm loving having it on. There is no scent of Jim on it. It's been laundered; it's been 11+ years. But still...

This shirt. I'll be hanging on to it for a while.

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Here's link to Mary Chapin Carpenter's This Shirt. Just lovely.

WeStillWork

Last December I turned 75 and finally decided to pack it in, workwise. 

For the prior few years, I hadn't been doing all that much work, and was down to just one client that I wrote a bi-weekly blogpost for. Not exactly heavy lifting. I loved the client. I'd been working with this small electronics engineering outfit for years, and had always said that, if I were ever going to return to work full time, it would have been for them.

Still, I was done with coming up with embedded systems topics and pretending I was an EE. (I wrote the posts in the name of one of the company's founders.) So I quit.

It's not as if I don't work at all.

I volunteer Monday, Thursday, and every other Friday at a homeless shelter, and on any given day, depending on what the needs are, I'm there for four to six hours. Although I do occasionally have to schlepp boxes full of shampoo or razors for short distances, this job doesn't require a lot of heavy lifting either. What I'm doing is handing out shampoo, razors, and other stuff, or serving lunch. 

But it's tiring being on my feet for four to six hours at a whack, and it can be emotionally exhausting, as well. 

The people we serve have had hard lives. Bad childhoods, bad educations, bad health, bad marriages, bad choices, and - and this is the universal - bad luck. It's not an official part of my volunteer work, but a lot of the guests talk to me. Sometimes the talk is just baseball or 'hey, you sound like you're from Chicago." Sometimes it's hearing their stories. Gulp.

Plus, there's often a level of tension. Folks complain. They yell. They blow off steam. They fight. They OD. (Blessedly, that's rare.) 

When I get home, I'm exhausted. On many days, I take an official nap. On many other days, I drift off for mini-cat-naps with a book in my hand. 

I'm a healthy and vigorous 75. I'm no exercise queen, but I average 5 miles a day walking. (Used to do 7 miles, but I have way too many joints where the arthritis started kicking in.) If I had to, I could keep working. I'm just happy I don't have to.

Still, there are many folks my age who do remain happily working. And many more who are working because they unhappily have to. 

McSweeney's, the humor site, recently had a little satirical piece by Emily Kapp and Daniel Stillman on the mythical WeStillWork, the Nursing Home for People Who Can’t Afford to Retire.

Painfully funny, painfully true. Or at least painfully true-ish. 

Looking forward to your golden years, but afraid you’ll never be able to afford it? Our state-of-the-art facility offers elderly corporate drones the comfort of a living space with the same lack of character as an office cubicle. Be surrounded by like-minded residents like yourself, who will be working on their laptops to pay off their bills until the day they die.

Lots of amenities at WeStillWork. Like day-to-day leases in case you get fired or die. (These are for touch-and-go members. You can opt for a longer lease if you like.) A play area so you can take your grandkids to work with you. The Fun Room features "wooden blocks, one singular Barbie with its head ripped off, and a TV from 2002 that doesn’t work." IT support provided by techies in hospice. (Now that's grim.)

And:

On-the-Clock Job Coaches for When You’re Fired for Being Too Old. At WeStillWork, we know ageism is real. But as we say here, “You still gotta pay the bills.” That’s why we have on-site job coaches to help you find your next gig when you get canned from your current one for hugging the vice president of HR uncomfortably long.

There are testimonials from "happy" westillworkers. A terminally ill ninety-six year old graphic designer. An eighty-five year old digital marketing manager who always loved working six days a week because he hated his wife and kids. 

Then there's Gus, an eighty-one year old social media influencer:

“WeStillWork makes it easy to both live and work. I just got off my yearly performance review call, while Stephanie, my night nurse, bathed me. Flexibility at its finest.”

I know plenty of people who are working at volunteer or work-work well into their 70's and 80's. Most of the work-workers who come to mind are people who worked for themselves in some capacity. If I didn't have my volunteer work, I might have hung on to my work-work for a little longer, as it was completely flexible in terms of  where, when, and for whom I worked. My fellow volunteers - roughly my age, mid to late 70's - include a retired Delta pilot and a retired judge. 

I also know plenty of people who are completely retired and enjoy having time to do whatever they damned well please: golf, travel, hang with the grandkids, join a book club, take courses.

Whether we're working as volunteers, work-working at something we enjoy, or just plain kicking it, we are the lucky ones. 

The ones working at crappy jobs they hate are the elders I feel bad for.

WeStillWork may be satirical, but like all good satire, there's a goodly element of truth in there. 

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Image Source: Carrier Chronicles

Oh, by all means, let's rewrite/whitewash our history

In grammar school, I learned a rather skewed version of American history.

Forget the Founding Fathers, or most of them, anyway. Other than Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

No, the real founding fathers were Catholic explorers, like Pere Marquette, the Jesuit missionary who paddled his canoe around the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, discovering all sorts of discoveries. And don't get me started on Junipero Serra, the great Franciscan missionary who when he wasn't fulfilling his personal quest to take part in the Inquisition, was plodding along the Camino Real establishing Catholic mission churches. (Not that we learned anything about the Inquisition thang.)

As an unenlightened public school learner, you may have been led to believe that John Paul Jones was the Father of the United States Navy. Tut, tut, tuttedy-tut tut. The one true founder was Ireland's own John Barry.

And whoever it is from the American Expeditionary Forces that you think won the First World War, we all know it was Fighting Father Duffy and the Fighting 69th, a NYC regimen made up largely of first and second-gen Irishmen. Faugh a Ballagh!

Anyway, I know all about learning a somewhat off version of American history, and it seems like the current regime is hell bent on rewriting our history so that it tells a pretty whitewashed version.

It was during Trump I that the witchhunts began, with a fatwa on any history that shone an even slightly unfavorable light on our past. In Florida, there was an especially stupid manifestation when a book on Rosa Parks was proposed that didn't mention why it was the Rosa Parks wanted to take a seat on the front of the bus. Wouldn't want innocent little white kiddos to know that there was a time when Black folks had to move to the rear of the bus, let alone try to take a drink from the whites-only water fountain or pee in a whites-only urinal. Fortunately, the fractured version of the Rosa Parks' story turned out to be too far gone for even Florida to accept.

But, increasingly, any mentions of things in our history that ain't so grand and glorious are being excised. Can't say we treated Indigenous peoples ruthlessly. Our destiny was manifest, baby.

Can't say slavery was all bad. After all, there were kind, benevolent massas who considered Black folks part of the family, teaching them useful skills.

Can't say that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Nope: states rights, with those poor, pure, noble Southern states so put upon and trampled. No asking just why the Lost Cause shouldn't have been a lost cause.

No Tulsa. No Jim Crow. No lynchings. 

No racial immigration quotas. No imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. 

Recently, the Smithsonian removed the parts of an exhibit on impeachment that mentioned Trump. (Last I read, the mentions had been restored.) But for how long? 

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that: 

The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history. (Source: WSJ)

Given that Trump believes that he should be on Mount Rushmore and win the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the treatment he has received is even worse than what Abraham Lincoln suffered, one can only imagine just what might "align with President Trump's interpretation of American history."

Trump wants to "restore truth and sanity to American history," but given his squishy relationship with both truth and sanity, it's hard to see how that's going to happen.

The White House claims it wants to make sure that the Smithsonian museums reflect the "unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story."

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter [from the WH to the Smithsonian] states. (Source: NY Times)

Somehow, I don't think this is going to restore much of my "confidence in our shared cultural institutions." (I was going to write au contraire, but that sure wouldn't be patriotic, so on the contrary.)

“This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” [Trump Special Assistant Lindsey] Halligan said in a statement. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic, and enlightening—ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder, and national pride for generations to come.”

There is, of course, more. Because with the current regime, there is always more.

In July, the Trump administration sent a directive to the National Park Service asking the parks to submit for review anything that might not jibe with what Trump thinks Trump's impulses dictate. 

So the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is asking whether it's okay to talk about "how climate change is causing sea levels to rise." 

The Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida wonders whether they can retain an informational panel that has:

...language referring referring to tribes having choice of extinction or assimilation. Language of U.S. Government giving the ‘choice’ of extinction could be considered negative towards the United States. (Source: NY Times)

For the Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee it's a question of whether "text [that] addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War" should stand. 

Can the Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana keep up signage in an exhibit on slaves who were unsuccessful in their attempts to escape that "identified the enslavers by name and mentioned that returned slaves were publicly whipped."

“The national parks were established to tell the American story, and we shouldn’t just tell all the things that make us look wonderful,” said Dan Wenk, a former superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. “We have things in our history that we are not proud of anymore.”

I'm with Dan Wenk. But there is a counterpoint from Trump-landia: 

Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Park Service, said the Trump administration’s move “is not about rewriting the past.”

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Ms. Peace said in a statement. “Our goal is to foster honest, respectful storytelling that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our nation’s shared journey.”

Somehow, I'm thinking that if Ms. Peace truly wants "to foster honest, respectful storytelling that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our nation’s shared journey," she won't be long for the Trump administration.  

We'll see where this purge review of National Parks Service information ends up. I'm not optimistic.

Especially after the August situation with respect to tinkering with the government website on the Constitution.  

Over the past month, portions of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10 were removed from Article I of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website. The changes to sections addressing congressional powers, states’ rights, and due process sparked concern amid threats from the Trump administration to suspend habeas corpus. (Source: ComicSands)

The Library of Congress said that it was a coding error, and restored the missing pieces. "Coding error" or trial balloon to see what they could get away with? Hmmmmm.

I am a big believer that there is an awful lot of American history to be proud of. 

However flawed they may have been as people - and aren't we all - the Founding Fathers were in many ways exceptionally brilliant to base a country on fundamental rights, not royal inheritance or religious decree. (Sure wish they could have done a better job on the Electoral College business. Was it worth it to keep the slave states part of the package?)

The assimilation of so many immigrants fleeing poverty and/or war, and/or persectuion into this country - back in the day when we believed that immigrants were worthy - was a tremendous achievement. Didn't matter where you came from, you could come here and become an American. As did my Irish great-grandparents, and my German grandparents. (And my German mother who came through Ellis Island as a toddler.) Sure, welcoming immigrants largely applied to yesteryear's largely white European stock. Still, the Statue of Liberty never fails to make me tear up.

We have been an exceptional country in terms of innovation, scientific achievement, arts and culture...The list is long and admirable.

We are a country of immense (and immensely diverse) beauty.

We have a lot of hokey myths, andI'm fine with believing (or not) that George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and could not tell a lie. 

But we can have all of the above and still acknowledge our flaws. 

We'll see if Trump lets us.

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Image Source: Upstate American

Tech work just ain't what it used to be

I never worked for one of those perk-laden tech companies. Oh, some of them were perky enough to have video games in the kitchen and beer bash Fridays, but none of the goodies that today's tech behemoths offered when they were in their early years. 

Rachel Grey joined Google in 2007:

At a two-week orientation at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Ms. Grey discovered a utopia of perks. The company’s cafeterias served steak and shrimp, kitchens were stocked with fresh juices and gyms offered free workout classes. Workers received stock grants on top of their salaries, a 50 percent match on their retirement contributions and a Christmas bonus that came in the form of $1,000 tucked in an envelope. (Source: NY Times)

Google was also pretty transparent about sharing information with employees. 

Over time, the benefits and transparency dwindled.

For years, Google famously went by an informal motto: Don't be evil. But not being evil can sometimes be at odds with a corporate desire to make profits, whatever the cost to lives, limbs, hearts, and souls. And, thus, Google did what companies do and:

.. abandoned a pledge that its artificial intelligence would not be used for weapons. 

Employees at Google and the other mega techs that have defined the 21st century tech-dominated era - Apple, Meta, Twitter - were once encouraged to speak up. Not so much these days, when it's more speak up? get out!

It’s the shut up and grind era, workers said.

Many tech companies still provide free lunch. But there's really no such thing as a free lunch:

“Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

“I suppose it’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death, but I don’t know if it’s good for you to be there,” she added.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Grey is no longer a Googler. And tens of thousands of others have lost their jobs at the behemoths, in the name of greater efficiency (and the greater desire of the already unfathomably rich to get even more unfathomably richer). But also due to shifts in corporate policies that are increasingly aligned with Trump-era dictates to end anything that smacks of DEI and to promote "free speech" (especially as it applies to white nationalism and anti-science) by curtailing fact checking. Not to mention decency checking. (Racist? Sexist? Homophobic? Come on down!)

But the shift in tech was compounded by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, which executives say has already made some jobs redundant. In January, Mr. [Mark] Zuckerberg said he believed A.I. would replace some midlevel engineers this year. Mr. [Elon] Musk went further, predicting last year that A.I. would eventually eliminate all jobs.

“The tide has definitely turned against tech workers,” said Catherine Bracy, the founder and chief executive of TechEquity, a nonprofit that pushes for economic inclusion in the industry. “Companies have even more leverage to use against workers, and A.I. is supercharging that.”

From what I've seen from AI search results, AI is not yet ready for primetime. Which is not to say that it won't be at some point. Which is not to say that the Musks, Bezoses, and Zuckerbergs of the world could give two shits if AI ends up replacing 99% of tech and other white-collar workers - as long as they can become unfathomably richer and can fully protect themselves from the pitchfork-wielding masses who might well rise up if we reach Depression-era and beyond levels of unemployment. 

Even though we didn't get free lunches and swank offices, I mostly enjoyed working in the tech industry of yore. There were always layoffs, so tech of my era was never about lifetime tenure. We all knew that we were replaceable and/or expendable. But we never had to worry about being replaced by an AI.

I just hate to see the balance shift so rapidly against the workers, and in favor of the upper-ups who revel in having the upperhand. Tech workers may not be risking their lives shoveling coal into a blast furnace for twenty cents an hour, and no one's guaranteed a free lunch, but what's happening in tech (and elsewhere) is not good at all for the common good. 

Sigh...

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Image Source: PBS

Those lousy things we said about Galileo? Didn't mean a word of it!

Summers can be hot in Rome, at the Vatican. Fortunately, the popes can escape the heat by grabbing the popemobile and bopping down to Castel Gandolfo, a nice little spot fifteen or so miles south of Rome. There they can get some R&R in, enjoying a mansion "which overlooks a volcanic lake and is surrounded by spectacular terraced gardens." And if the pope is scientifically inclined he can meander on over to the Vatican Observatory "which since its founding, in 1891, has been dedicated to the scientific study of the heavens."

The Catholic Church's interest in star gazing goes back to the papacy of Gregory XIII, who wanted to make sure that the Church could figure out, astronomically speaking, when Easter and other holy days that didn't have a permanent designation (as Christmas does) should be observed. On Gregory's watch, and observation tower was built and:

...a meridian line was installed in the Vatican to illustrate the need to reform the Julian calendar. A Jesuit, Christopher Clavius, helped propose that the Vatican adopt the Gregorian calendar, which it did in 1582. According to the historian Jonathan Wright’s book “The Jesuits,” when the realignment caused ten days to be subtracted from the year, mobs across Europe attacked Jesuit houses to protest the time stolen from them. (Source: The New Yorker)

Those were the days! Today, people piss and moan about Daylight Saving Time and a one-hour adjustment. Can you imagine if we had to whack 10 days off the calendar? It might work if they were all workdays, but, knowing how things work, it would be all weekends and holidays.

Rigorous science wasn't always the Church's thang, of course. Fast forward a few decades from the building of the Gregorian Tower, and there's the Church inquisitioning all over Galileo, who spent the last years of his life under house arrest. Slow forward a few centuries to 1992, when on Halloween, Pope Jonh Paul II admitted that the Inquisition had been wrong to condemn Galileo for having boldly asserted that the earth revolves around the sun. 

But during those in between centuries, the Vatican set up a number of observatories and became one of the top astronomical institutions in the world. In the 1930s, due to smoke and light pollution in Rome, the Observatory was relocated from Rome to Castel Gandolfo.

Keeping up with the times - and with the light pollution that the times brought with - the Vatican Observatory developed a relationship in Tucson with the University of Arizona, locating a research group there to use their observatory. 

Today, half of the Vatican Observatory's team (all Jesuits, all scientists) works out of Arizona, where: 

In the early nineties, at the Mt. Graham International Observatory, near Tucson, the Vatican installed a powerful four-million-dollar telescope and an astrophysics facility, together known as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, or VATT. 

The current director of the Vatican Observatory is an American Jesuit Brother, Guy Consolmagno. (But not for long. He's retiring this coming Friday.) 

Brother Guy is a serious scientist, with a PhD from the University of Arizona and post-doc work at Harvard and MIT. And the Observatory is a serious scientific outfit. I mean, they didn't invest $4M (30+ years ago) in a telescope so they could watch the man in the moon. Or the man on the moon. Pope Paul VI did watch the 1969 moon landing through a telescope at the Observatory. 

[The organizations they've collaborated with] have included, in recent years, NASA, whose OSIRIS-REx mission (2016-23) collected samples from the Bennu asteroid, which measures a third of a mile across and has been calculated to have a not infinitesimal chance of colliding with Earth in the twenty-second century. Bob Macke, another Jesuit brother in Castel Gandolfo, has developed a specialty in documenting the properties of meteorites, and several years ago he was invited to join an international team analyzing the Bennu samples; in 2023, he built a device specifically adapted for carrying out these delicate measurements. “NASA needed help with a mission. The Vatican came to the rescue,” read one headline about the collaboration.

Glad that the Vatican Observatory is doing serious science. Not that putting a nuclear facility on the moon isn't serious. No siree, Bob. And it may well make sense. But I really don't trust this administration, which is better known for its pseudo science, witch-doctoring, and general scorn for and ignorance of the scientific method to be able to pull something off that doesn't end up, say, destroying the moon. Which would not be a particularly good thing, were it to happen. 

Meanwhile, it's too bad that the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope wasn't around in the first century A.D./Common Era. They might have been able to observe Christ ascending into heaven, and Mary his mother being assumed into heaven. After all, Holy Seeing is believing!

Kidding/not kidding...

Anyway, I'm just as happy that the Church finally came around to exonerating Galileo.

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Image Source: Clerical Whispers

Americans are looking to find sus sonrisas bonitas en Mexico

Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to enjoy excellent dental care.

My childhood dentist was Dr. Leo Wigdor, who having acquired the practice of Dr. Simpson, my father's childhood dentist, moved to Worcester after the war. Dr. Wigdor was a terrific dentist and real character. As I recall, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, he had grown up in Missouri - on a mule farm? can that be right? During the war, he was stationed at Fort Monmouth, NJ where at some point he made the acquaintance of Julius Rosenberg. A patient, maybe? In any case, according to Dr. Wigdor, "Julius Rosenberg was as guilty as sin."

After I moved to Boston, I still went back to Worcester for a few years, then switched to a dentist in Boston on the recommendation of some folks I worked with. He was fine, but retired soon after I began seeing him. On the recommendation of some other folk I worked with - the man I eventually married - I started seeing Dr. Edwin Riley III, a most excellent dentist. His son Dr. Edwin IV is my current dentist. Another excellent dentist, and chip off the old block.

Whenever I've seen a dentist or endodontist (I've had a few root canals along the way), they have told me that it's obvious that I had very good dental care as a kid. (It helped that I inherited my mother's high quality teeth.) I may still have a filling or two that's been in my mouth for over 60 years. This reaction is different than that experienced by my husband. He had grown up poor in a small town in Vermont. When he got to college, he fell and broke a tooth. When the dentist looked in Jim's mouth, his first words were "country boy, eh?"

So lucky me. Good teeth. Good dentists. And able to afford good dentists, even when I didn't have dental insurance. Which has been most of the time.

Other than routine care, I've had a couple of root canals and a couple of crowns. And, thanks to my using my teeth as implements for tasks other than chomping over the years - e.g., using my teeth to open a tiny hotel bottle of shampoo - I do have a couple of veneers on front teeth that became way, way, way too chipped. 

As I said, lucky me.

Dental care, of course, can be expensive. Oh, sure, there's dental insurance. But most people don't have it, and it tends to cover preventive and routine care, rather than bigger deal procedures like root canals, which under most policies is partially covered, if at all.

So some people are finding their way to Mexico, to the town of Los Algodones, just across the Arizona border which has pretty much become La Cuidad Dentistas. Or, as it's come to be more popularly known, Molar City, the place where dental tourists can come to save a lot of money. 

In 1969, Dr. Bernardo Magaña, newly graduated from dental college at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, set up shop directly across the street from border control. Within a year, he was treating dozens of patients a day, most of them Americans. It would be more than a decade before many other dentists joined him. The town was just too rough, Magaña’s son, Bernardo, who now runs the practice with his brother and his mother, told me. “So my dad took it upon himself to clean it up.” In the early eighties, Magaña was elected mayor of Los Algodones. Backed by the state government in nearby Mexicali, he cracked down on vice and shuttered the most notorious establishments in town. Year by year, the bars gave way to dental clinics, the partygoers to patients. According to Roberto Díaz and Paula Hahn, who run a website about medical tourism called Border CRxing, Los Algodones now has the highest per-capita concentration of dentists in the world: well over a thousand in a population of fifty-five hundred. (Source: The New Yorker)

That is an awful lot of dentists. Massachusetts has about 5,600 dentists for a population of a bit over 7 million. Or, one dentist for every 1,250 people. Far better than the national average, which is about one dentist for roughly 1,800 folks. Which is a very far cry from one dentist for five-and-a-half mouths.

But mostly the Algodones dentists are caring for Americans, not locals.

“My family dentist when I was a kid, there was something wrong with the guy,” James Murphy, a retired bookstore clerk from Rhode Island, told me, between spins on a Dragon Link slot machine. “He drilled every tooth in my head. That’s what made my teeth rotten. But he was Irish, and you got to go with the Irish guy.” Murphy was due to fly home the following day with a full set of implants in his upper jaw, and he’d be back in three months to do the bottom teeth. The total cost would be seventeen thousand dollars. “I’ve never smiled so much,” he said. “Back home, it would have been thirty-nine thousand just for the top. And they wonder why people are coming here."

Oh, Jimbo. Your family should have scooted up Route 146 to see Dr. Leo B. Wigdor (who, I will note, replaced the Irish-American dentist of my father's childhood).

People flock to Molar City from all over. Many are snowbirds who flee the winters in the North to spend the winter in Arizona. Others, like James Murphy, find it's worthwhile to travel because dental care there is so cheap. 

There are other medical reasons to cross the border:

Cut-rate pharmacies, opticians, dermatologists, massage therapists, hair-transplant specialists, and exotic medical practitioners line the streets around the dental clinics, promising deals unheard of back in the U.S.

What, pray tell - or is it prey tell - is an exotic medical practitioner? Need to know basis, I guess, and I don't need to know.  

Anyway, there are plenty of reasons to want to have a good set of choppers. You look better. You feel better. And, let's face it, your job and social prospects are a lot better if you have all your teeth and they're some shade of white. 

But there can be at least a little something to say for not having teeth that are too perfect.

When I was a kid, the only kids I knew who wore braces had something seriously wrong with their teeth. I had crooked, crowded lower teeth, as did my sister Kath. But my brother Tom had some kind of weird tooth that grew like a rhino horn out of his upper gum. He got braces. As did my friend Susan, who had a very large gap between her front teeth. Only ritzy people had orthodontia for reasons like crooked teeth. 

My friend Peter grew up in a working class family in Philadelphia. Thanks to his brains and the Jesuits' largesse, Peter got out of Philly and got a great education. But he still had crooked teeth, and as an adult, decided to get braces. One of his friends cautioned against it, warning him that if he straightened his teeth he "risked losing his working class charm."

Peter could afford Boston orthodontia. His teeth look great. He's still charming. 

But for plenty of people, the road to dental happiness runs across the US-Mexican border to Los Algodones.

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Image Source: Dreamstime

And for those who don't speak DuoLingo Spanish, sonrisas bonitas are pretty smiles.

FORE!

Well, today's an anniversary that we'd all just as soon forget. Such a terrible, terrible, day...

Sure, we have a lot of terrible, terrible days, and they seem to be coming faster and furious-er as time goes by. And an unsettling feeling settles over many of us that, while no one terrible day in the current string will ever surpass September 11, 2001 in terms of terrible-ness, in the aggregate the non-stop procession of terrible days may add up to something far worse.

So on occasion, we all need a vacation from the relentness awfulness. And today's mini-vacation is brought to you by the golf caddies of New Hampshire's Mountain View Grand Resort and Spa. 

These are not just any old caddies. No, at Mountain View, you can use a llama.

Llama caddies are nothing new. There are a couple of courses in North Carolina that have used them off and on for decades. But, in terms of resorting, the Carolina llama courses are johnny-come-latelies. One that I came across was founded in 1968. Another is an upstart dating from the early 1990's. You'd expect llamas or the like to draw attention to the flashy and nouveau. But Mountain View? It's one of those ancient (1860's, not 1960's) grande dame White Mountain getaways that has hosted all sorts of grandees:

Many former U.S. presidents have enjoyed the beauty and the hospitality of the resort, including Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. Writers were often guests at the Mountain View House as well; the guest register has included Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Stephen King. Hollywood celebrities Betty Grable, Bette Davis, and all four Marx Brothers stayed here, as did luminaries such as Norman Rockwell, Babe Ruth, John D. Rockefeller and family, Lady Astor, and even the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. (Source: Mountain View Grand)

Maybe the Marx Brothers should have been a dead giveaway that Mountain View may not take itself all that seriously, but seriously, one does not expect a gimmick like llama caddies at an august spot like this one. 

But here we are. 

Lloyd VanHorn, Mountain View's GM felt things needed a bit of shaking up.

“Golf can be mistaken as being somewhat arrogant and unapproachable,” said Van Horn, who used to run a resort near Augusta National before trekking north a few years ago. (Source: Boston Globe)

Aha! I just knew this cockamamie idea was imported from someplace other than New England. That said, I cannot in a million, trillion years imagine a llama on the grounds of the august holy-of-holies that is Georgia's Augusta National, home to the Masters, which can out priss and out tradition anyplace in these parts. (VanHorn is a hospitality pro with quite a resume. Most of his work has been in the south, but he's also worked in NJ, NY, and VT.) 

Why llamas? There are pros and cons. 

Llamas cannot swing a club, so they can’t play with you. They don’t speak — they’ll grunt, bray, or cry — so they offer no course knowledge. But they are pack animals, American descendants of those who hauled gear and people through the Andes, so toting clubs is no sweat.

Not that I ever golfed or caddied, but I had close second hand knowledge of the caddie life, as my brothers both caddied at Tatnuck Country Club in Worcester, and my cousins both caddied at Woodland in Newton.

Caddying was hard and sweaty work, back when my relatives were doing it. (My brothers in the 60's and 70's, by cousins in the 50's and 60's.) Most golfers back in the day didn't use pull carts (kind of like a luggage carrier for a golfbag), let around sit on their arses and ride around in a gas-powered golf cart. No, they had caddies who carried the golfers' bags on their shoulders. A good day was when you got to caddie doubles - carrying two bags at once - and if you had a really good day, you got to go out twice (morning and afternoon) carrying doubles. Oh, sometimes the golfers were cheapskates and didn't tip. But it was a way to make money before you got old enough to work in real job say, loading stuff at a warehouse (one of my brother Rich's summer jobs) or riding on the back of a garbage truck, picking up trash (one of my cousin Bob's summer gigs).

A price that sticks in my mind is $3.50 for carrying doubles. This I recall from my brother Tom, which would place it in the late 1960's. I can't remember if that was per bag or for both.

Whatever it was, it was for 18 holes. And it was sweaty, tiring, and often aggravating work. (Some of the golfers were really pricks to the boys who caddied for them.)

Llama caddies cost just a tad bit more. 

$3.50 in the late 1960's is about $35 today. Mountain View llamas fetch $150 per round. And that may not even be for carrying doubles.

Anyway, thought we could all use a bit of cheer on this terrible day. Sounds like almost as much fun as goat yoga.

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I've written about 9/11 in the past. Here's my post from 2009, which is still, IMHO, worth a read. 

Farewell to Tuvalu

Halfway between Hawaii and Australia, Tuvalu looks like pretty much anyone's definition of paradise. Even my definition of paradise, which typically doesn't revolve around turquoise waters and palm trees, but skews more towards snowbound in a cabin in the woods with plenty of books, tea bags, and cookies. 

Tuvalu may look like paradise, and even has a capital city with the whimsical name of Funafuti, but the weather doesn't always cooperate. Weatherspark describes "the climate in Tuvalu [as] hot, oppressive, windy, and overcast." (Despite Tuvalu's appearance, I just knew that it wouldn't be the sort of place I'd actually enjoy.)

But for Tuvaluans, it's home.

Not much goes on in Tuvalu. During World War II, it was a staging area for the Battle of Tarawa. This gave Tuvalu, postwar, its airport. But tourism isn't much of an economic driver. It's so remote, there are only a couple of thousand tourists each year. The economy is pretty low key: fishing and remittances from those who work as seafarers in the merchant marine industry.

As I noted, for Tuvaluans, it's home for the 11,000 or so folks who manage to put up with the weather.

But probably not for all that much longer. 

If the weather is lousy, rising seas caused by climate change are making matters a lot worse. 

By 2050, NASA scientists project daily tides will submerge half the main atoll of Funafuti, home to 60% of Tuvalu’s residents, where villagers cling to a strip of land as narrow as 65 feet. That forecast assumes a 1-metre rise in sea levels, while the worst case, double that, would put 90% of Funafuti under water. (Source: NBC News) 

I will note that 65 feet is less than the distance between the front and the back of the building where I live. I don't think I could sleep at night...

Fortunately, Australia is offering climate visas that will enable Tuvaluans to migrate there, and over one-third of the people of Tuvalu have applied. 

The visa will allow Tuvalu residents to live, work and study in Australia, accessing health benefits and education on the same basis as Australian citizens.

And provide income to the island, as once they settle in, the migrants will send remittances back.

Unfortunately, there are only 280 visas to be issued at this point.

Tuvalu is trying to hold back the tides:

It has built 17 acres of artificial land, and is planning more, which it hopes will stay above the tides until 2100.

But holding back the tides is a pretty futile indeavor, especially in the era of climate change. And 2100 ain't all that far in the future. Still, it will give Tuvaluans more time to get out of Funafuti. 

All pretty awful, of course. 

Only 11,000 people, but that's home we're talking about. 

Farewell to Tuvalu. 

As time goes on, I'm sure we'll be hearing about a lot more climate refugees who are going to be needing a lot more than 280 visas to somewhere.

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Image Source: BBC

Airport Lounging

Back in the day, when I traveled more, when my husband the frequent flyer savant was still with us here on earth, I spent a bit of time in airport lounges. I don't remember all that much about the experience. Yes, it was nice to be able to escape madding crowds at the gates. Yes, it was nice to be able to grab a handful of M&Ms. Yes, it was nice to have access to a marginally cleaner toilet. But mostly it was outright meh, or meh adjacent.

Oh, there were a couple of rememorable times.

On a trip to someplace in Eastern Europe, we had a multi-hour layover in Frankfurt, and having access to the lounge was a true blessing. I've flown into and through there more than a few times, and the sound and light show that is Frankfurt Airport always gave me the heebie-jeebies. Way too much going on! Thank you, my beloved frequent flyer savant, for making sure we had enough miles to check into the respite that was the airport lounge.

My only other memorable airport lounge experience was seeing David Powers, JFK's aide and wingman, in the Aer Lingus lounge at Logan. That was a way in the way back, as Powers (I had to check) has been dead since 1998.)

These days, I barely travel. And when I do, I'm stuck at the gate with the rest of the great unwashed. 

I haven't felt I was missing much. It's not as if the lounges were like this snazzy, mid-century modern PanAm lounge of yore, with a solicitous bartender in a dinner jacket mixing drinks for at the side of a little cocktail table. 

But for some folks, lounges are a big deal. The airport lounge industry - who knew there even was one? - is estimated to be worth $4.21 billion, and forecast to more than double by 2029. 

Lounge visits were up by 31 percent in 2024 over 2023. So someone's checking in hoping to rub elbows with whoever today's Dave Powers might be. 

What's fueling growth?

According to writer David Mack, it's:

...millennials who balk at the cost of a first-class ticket but can afford an annual credit card fee. Even though demand for travel appears to be waning amid an uncertain economy, what hasn’t changed is the extent to which social media and influencer culture peddle these lounges as a key ingredient of the good life. (Source: NY Times)

Chase offers a premium credit card - the Chase Sapphire Reserve - that opens the door to lounges worldwide. Their annual fee is "jumping from $550 to an eye-popping $795." In addition to a lot of other lounges of mixed quality and pizzazz, Chase has opened some fancy lounges of its own, and has plans for more. 

Capital One also has a lounge access card, and some lounges of its own. Alas, while Capital One is in my wallet, it's not one of the premium cards. So I'll just have to be thankful that I accumulate points, and continue to cool my heels at the gate. 

There's also something called Priority Pass that lets you into a ton of lounges. You can pay a minimum annual fee and then pay a per use fee every time you use a lounge, or pay for premium membership.

Alas, all these premiums may not be premium enough to get you into the lounge at your moment of need. So many people want in that there are physical and digital waiting lines. All for what is often a pretty mediocre, worn-out lounge that's closer to the breakfast room at a Motel6 than it is to a swank hotel lobby.

But as demand for lounge access revs up, so does the supply of upscale lounges that appeal to those who can afford more than costly (to me) yet pedestrian credit card access that's one step above the hoi polloi gate experience, but may not own or rent a private jet.

International airlines are going further and further to attract those truly wealthy customers willing to fork over thousands for top-class travel. In Helsinki, Finland, you can take a sauna before consuming a reindeer burger. In Doha, Qatar, you can relax in a Jacuzzi, drive in an F1 racing simulator or take a nap in a private bedroom. In Paris, you can dine in a private suite on food prepared by the renowned chef Alain Ducasse, then be driven in a luxury sedan on a tarmac to your plane. 

Saunas? Jacuzzis? F1 simulator? And here I was, back when I was part of the airport lounging class, grateful for a handful of M&Ms.

 

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Image Source: Airport History.org

Sorry I missed this concert!

Sometimes there's a party on the street behind me that has loud music blasting after I've gone beddy-bye. Very annoying.

The house next door has a temporary rental on its bottom two floors. There's never been a blasting party there. The temporary renters tend to be business people, or quiet families, or middle-aged-girl getaways. This is not an unfettered Airbnb part-ay spot we're talking about. But there is outdoor space, and sometimes the folks are up late with a bottle of wine. Or, if it's business guys, with cigars. And the outdoor space is about 10 feet from my bedroom window. People can get a bit loud. Fortunately, they're not usually louding after midnight. So while it may be annoying, the annoyance is, like the rentals, temporary.

Still, I have on the rare occasion hollered out the window- very nicely and genteelly hollered - asking when the gathering will end, or requesting that folks use their indoor voices, even if they are technically outdoors. 

So I do understand that sleep interruptus can make one cranky.

As it did the Anglican Bishop of Fulham, when a concert in his church went a bit overlong and disturbed his peace.

Perhaps he would have more forgiving if the choir had been performing music that was sacred rather than profane, but the City Academy Voices choir had just finished up a rousing rendition of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me." Which did anything but get the good bishop to love them. 

As they were about to perform their last song, a man appeared on stage wearing a blue dressing gown with no shoes. He took the mic, described their singing as a “terrible racket” and told them to get out, leaving the 360-odd people in the room shocked and dumbfounded. 

“You are in my house, can you leave it now please,” he said. The man, it appears, was Jonathan Baker, the bishop of Fulham. In a video posted on social media, the bishop can be seen telling the choir it’s past 10pm and calls for the night to be “over." (Source: The Guardian)

Perhaps Bishop Baker didn't want to hear the final number, which was scheduled to be Abba's "Dancing Queen." Which I imagine could have gotten plenty raucus.

The choir isn't associated with the church, but the church does hire itself out as a concert venue, and City Academy Voices has performed there in the past. One choir member thought the bishop in the bathrobe was a Monty Pythonesque part of the show:

She said: “At first, I thought it was a comedy act or some actor doing a scene. But when we realised, oh no, this isn’t an act, this is real, it was just a bit surreal.”

 ...Describing the sequence of events, the choir member said: “We were singing away. This was our penultimate song. Then, we were going to do one final number and get everybody out of the aisles and dance.

“Then, all of a sudden, the lights went out. At first I thought there may have been a power cut. But then the instruments were still playing.

“We were picking back up to sing when all of a sudden everything went quiet. I could see this guy in what looked like a dressing gown talking to the audience on the mic.”

After the Bishop's appearance, a church worker came out asking everyone to leave quietly, telling choir and audience that "this is a residential home." (Well, actually it is a church. But the Bishop of Fulham may well think of the church as his home-away.)

But the choir and audience had other ideas. Racket-smacket. They started booing. And shouting. They were anticipating that dancing queen in the aisles ending, and they were annoyed and cranky that they were being denied. As they made their way off the stage, the choir decided to perform a capella, much to the enjoyment of the crowd.

If the Bishop had just waited another few minutes, the show would have been over. The reaction to his entrance prolonged the show beyond those five minutes. 

The next day, the Bishop contacted the show's organizers to apologize for his be-robed (just not bishop's robe) appearance. Seems the show started a bit late due to technical issues, and had run a bit over. 

But it was only a bit after 10 p.m.

Guess the Bishop of Fulham is an early to bed, early to riser. 

Those in attendance will likely be talking and laughing about this ending for a good long while.

Sure am sorry I missed the concert. 

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Image Source: Sky News

Mindfully made? Good to know! Mindfully use? I'm on it!

The other day, I was opening up a package of quart-size Ziploc bags, when I happened to read some messaging on the packaging. And so I learned that this product was "Mindfully made so you can use and reuse." No BPA and phthalates. And I can safely reuse, "again and again." There was an invitation to scan a barcode to "Learn More," but I wasn't that interested.

I am quite happy that these useful little baggies are made without BPA and phthalates, as these chemicals - however useful they are in making plastics more pliable and stronger - are terrible for things like your health.

I haven't given much thought to plastic wrap and baggies, but I've been trying to cut back on my use of plastic storage  containers for a while now. I first began switching to glass for storage years ago when I opened a single use plastic container I was storing croutons in and noticed a terrible odor. Of course, I noticed the terrible odor after I'd popped one of the croutons into my mouth, but I immediately spit it out and tossed all those croutons - which I really and truly wanted to add to my salad - into the trash.

It was there and then that it struck me that these items decay. And as they decay, they give off all sorts of chemical yuck.

So I pretty much stopped using those one-use plastics for storage. I use glass. And, when something comes in a plastic container, I switch it to glass as well. I will use the one-use containers for non-food items like screws and nails. And I'll use them to send leftovers home with someone. But mostly I'm avoiding them. 

But what about Ziploc baggies? Are they really okie-dokie to reuse?

I certainly do still use them. 

Cook up a couple of slices of bacon and, of course, the package doesn't reseal? Put the package in a Ziploc bag.

Unwind the six-miles of plastic wrap on the mozzarella to get at a piece of it? Into the Ziploc it goes.

Rye-crisp package open? Ziploc!

Leftover piece of halibut? Wrap it in plastic wrap or foil and bag it into the freezer!

Christmas cookies that I'd like to hold onto until July? Half-eaten sleeve of Girl Scout thin mints? Ziploc and leave in the upper reaches of my freezer, where hopefully I'll forget those cookies exist until July when I really need one. 

Heading on a trip and not sure whether TSA does or does not require you to put your liquid toiletries in a one-quart bag? Bag away! (This was a worry back in the day when I used to travel. Now I'm worried that airport security will demand my phone, find a JD Vance meme on it, and wrestle and zip-tie me into custody.)

So I use plenty of Ziploc bags.

But reuse them?

Those one-use plastic containers? No way! But are baggies okay?

Turns out they are safe for reuse.

There are caveats. If the baggie held raw meat or the like, no.

But apparently if the baggie was used for something less microbe-y and you handwash it - inside and out - that baggie  can be used up to 10 times before you need to discard it.

Good to know, given that I do have ample time to wash and rewash baggies. 

But back to what got me going, which was the use of the word "mindfully."

Are Ziploc bags really mindfully made? Am I really going to mindfully use them?

Mindful is one of those words that you never hear, and all of a sudden it's everywhere. It's a perfectly a good word. I do try to be mindful about a lot of things. Like trying not to hurt anyone's feelings, and trying to not trip on a loose brick on the sidewalk. But I kind of got turned off to it a few years back when I was doing writing for a company that did corporate leardership training.

Now I really enjoyed working for these folks. The work was interesting, and the people I met there were great. I spent a fair amount of time talking to their clients, too, and much enjoyed them as well. But all of a sudden, there was all sorts of messaging around the courses centering on mindfulness.

As I said, nothing wrong with being mindful, but I became extremely mindful of how over-used the word mindfulness was becoming. 

It's been a few years since I did any work for them. I'm sure they're on to some new buzzword. But for some reason, I really despised the word mindfulness. Not as much, mind you, as I disliked other corporate speak. Like the word passion, which I loathed with a white hot passion. But mindfulness was right up there.

So even if I'm not certain that my Ziplocs are being mindfully made - I mean, do the folks on the production line practice mindfulness? - I'm happy that SC Johnson, with its Ziploc bags, is mindful of my health. And I'm now going to be mindful about reusing them. 

You never know what you'll learn if you're mindful about reading what's on your packaging! Not that reading the packaging is going to turn into a passion. But if I start saving big bucks on Ziploc reuse, it will be well worth it.

A couple degrees of separation

It's been over a month now, and the NYC shooting that took the lives of a police officer, a security guard, a young woman working for the building's realty company, and a Blackstone executive, has already faded from the news, if not from our memories. Sure, it was New York City. Sure, there was the NFL-CTE angle. Sure, there was a cop killed.

But, hey, only four people were massacred. And there's so much more happening to command our attention. The Whack-a-Mole outrages of the Trump regime, the miniscule day-to-days of our little personal lives.

But these killings in New York got me thinking about what a crazily small world it is, and how few degrees of separation there are between ourselves and national-newsmaking tragedies. 

In December, 1999, there was a terrible fire in my hometown of Worcester that took the lives of six firemen. Because this was my hometown. Because I grew up in the sort of blue collar neighborhood where firemen tended to live. (One of my best friends in grammar school was the daughter of a WFD fire lieutenant. They lived in the house behind ours.) Because Worcester, while it may be the second largest city in New England, has a lot of small-town about it, it didn't take long for me to thread a connection to all the fellows who were killed. My friend Michele's cousin Joe. One of my sister Trish's high school classmates. The brother of another classmate. Etc. I was missing one connection, when my brother Rich let me know that his friend Bill had been in AA with the missing piece. 

Tangential "connections" to be sure, but close-ish to home.

Fast forward a couple of years to September 11th. 

No connection to any of the 343 firemen who lost their lives. But I knew people who knew people.

A colleague of my cousin's husband who was on one of those hijacked planes from Boston. 

Three guys from my company who were manning our network operations center, on an upper, upper floor of one of the towers. I didn't know any of them, but I knew their boss. We were by no means work buddies, but we were in plenty of meetings together, and we would always chat when we ran into each other on the elevator or in line in the caf. When the building pancaked, Mike was on the phone with the guys in the NOC. They had been told that they were going to be evacuated to the roof and rescued by helicopter. So they died hoping. Did Mike hear tremendous noise when the building collapsed or did the phone just go dead? I no longer remember.

There were plenty of near miss stories, too. That day, a work friend was on business in an adjacent building. That day, my sister-in-law's brother was just heading into one of the towers to start a new job when the first plane hit. 

So, not all that many degrees of separation.

When something big and important happens, I guess it's human nature to think about what sorts of personal connections we have.

The big tragedy this summer was, of course, the flooding Guadalupe River that wiped out so many lives, especially tragic when it came to the loss of so many littles at the Camp Mystic. So heartbreaking to see their waterlogged stuffed animals, their pink and turquoise trunks. To imagine them making friendship bracelets for each other, dancing along to Taylor Swift. Heartbreaking. 

I don't know anyone whose girls were campers. Neither does any one I know. Not that I know of. But my brother-in-law in Dallas plays bridge with someone with family members who were camping along the river and were swept away. 

When I heard that there was a shooting in the building that housed Blackstone, my first thought was that one of my cousin Bob's sons-in-law works there. I'm not going to pretend in any way, shape, or form, that I know this man. The only time I recall meeting him was at his wedding. (2015?) Unless he was with my cousin's daughter, I doubt I would recognize him if I passed him on the street. 

And I probably wouldn't have been aware that he worked at Blackstone, if a few days before the shooting I hadn't seen my cousin Bob for the first time since that wedding. He was up for the summer and visiting his sister, my cousin Barbara, in her rehab facility. And Blackstone came up in the convo. 

Since they both held senior positions at Blackstone, I'm guessing that the son-in-law knew the Blackstone exec who was slaughtered. How terrible for her family, her parents, her kids, her husband. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't relieved tha it wasn't my cousin's son-in-law. 

As it turns out, my cousin's son in law had a nodding acquaintance with the woman killed. They weren't buddies or direct colleagues, but knew each other.

But there is a there-but-for-fortune element here. My cousin's son-in-law had left work about 10 minutes before the gunman showed up. Pretty close for comfort, that's for sure. 

I have no idea how I'm connected to Kevin Bacon, but I'm guessing he's less than six degrees away.

One of the worst rides at Disney has got to be "It's a Small World," but, man, it sure is a small world after all, isn't it.

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Image Source: Enlightened PM