Book of the Year - Part 1

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

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

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

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

Forever Amber you say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With $75K you get Egg Roll

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

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

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

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

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

One of the benefits that Harbinger touts: 

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

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

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

The Egg Roll:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Easter, anyway.

That's the Woody Woodpecker Song

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ha-ha-ha heh heh, ha-ha-ha heh heh. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The view from China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the states are obvious:

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

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

But why is Kansas a "ghost town?"

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

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

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

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

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

Happy National Whatever Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those hills are still alive for the Trapp family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope Pat McAfee gets exactly what he deserves

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

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

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

Apparently that didn't happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the worst part of the story may be this: 

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

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

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

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

Hands Off!

Was I there on Saturday?

Of course I was there!

In the cold, in the rain, I was there for two reasons. 

1. Showing up, making my voice heard, being around thousands of others who are willing to come out in the cold, in the rain, with their homemade signs and full-throated chanting makes me feel a tiny bit better about the dire situation our country is in. Just knowing that there are a lot of other people who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore is comforting.
2. I really do believe that if we continue to stand up and fight back when Trump, Vance, Musk, Rubio, Hegseth, Bondi, et al. do things that are amoral, immoral, illegal, dishonest, corrupt, harmful, and as often as not just plain moronic, it will eventually get through to them that we, the people, demand that they cease and desist - or at least slow down and act more rationally. And that they actually do cease and desist, etc.

After all, those mass protests against the Vietnam War were instrumental in ending that travesty of a war. 

And, of course, I was there for those protests, too. 

I'm not sure whether my first war protest was in 1967 or 1968, but I've been at it a long time.

Sure, it hasn't been continuuous. After Vietnam ended, there was some women's rights protesting to do. I think there was a gay rights protest in there, too. But after that...

I did hit the streets to protest against the Gulf War back in 1990. And there was some other war after that. I've forgotten which one.

Then along came Trump.

My first protest was the glorious Women's March in January 2017. Glorious only in that it made me and millions of others feel we had some control, some voice, some purpose, some company. Not so glorious (yet not inglorious) in that it ended up doing no damned good. There went Roe.

I stopped counting at 17 during Trump One, but I marched for better treatment for immigrants. I marched for the DACA kids. I marched for reproductive rights. I marched for the environment. I marched for science. I marched because Black Lives Matter (or should). 

Sometimes, I couldn't help but think of the lines from The Wild One, the 1950's film about a motorcycle gang. 

Someone asks the leader of the Black Rebels Motorcyle Club, "Johnny, what are you rebeling against?" And Johnny (Marlon Brando) answers "What have you got?" (Note that the Black Rebels were all white.)

But there was just so much that I opposed during Trump One...

And while it did give me Reason 1 - it made me feel better. It probably didn't do much for Reason 2. All those protests didn't really seem to matter, other than that they maybe energized voters to vote Trump out.

And then, in his full awfulness - now unleashed, now unconstrained, now even more unhinged, vicious, cruel, and stupid (Tariff's on penguins? Seriously?) - he's back. And hell bent on destroying the country, maybe even the world. (Donny, what are you destroying? What have you got?)

So in hopes that protests will make some sort of difference, I take my homemade sign, I put on my cap with the American flag on it, and head for the protest. (And I put that cap on with no little trepidation. Will someone think I'm a jingoistic, far-right crazy?)

We marched to City Hall from the Boston Common. I'm in this crowd, somewhere, holding my little whiteboard which, fortunately, didn't run in the rain.

My hope is that somehow SCOTUS stands up and Trump and his minions back down. I mean, John Roberts doesn't really want to replace Roger ("Dred Scott") Taney as the worst Chief Justice ever, does he?

I get that, unlike during Trump One, no one in the administration is going to do anything to calm the Trump and the Project 25 maniacs down. Given that the only test of fitness is loyalty to Trump, we're not going to see any truth-telling Rex Tillersons, Mark Milleys, or Dan Coats in the current gang of unqualified asslicking toadies - some of them true believers, others just do-anything for personal gain types. (Let me make that mostly unqualified. Marco Rubio is actually qualified to be Secretary of State. Boy, has he swallowed whatever integrity and spine he had to get in/stay in this adminstration. He knows better. You can see it on his face.)

But I hold a tiny bit of hope that there may be a few Republican Senators, a few Republican members of Congress, who will decide to stand up/fight back. Because that's what we're supposed to do when there's a clear and present danger. I realize that these fervently wished-for Republicans probably aren't familiar with protest chants. But surely they've heard this one, at least in passing:

Democracy is under attack! What do we do? Stand up! Fight back!

A girl can hope, can't she? 

And so, I get out there. One out of many. And when we all get together, out of many, one. E pluribus unum.

Embezzlers: good people. Until they're not.

When it comes to criminal categories, I don't find thievery particularly interesting. Cat burglar. Stick-up artist. Bank robber. Pickpocket. Somewhere along the line those cat burglars, stick-up artists, bank robbers, and pickpockets made a decision (conscious or not) to become criminals, to participate in what can be a very risky business. That homeowner whose house you just broke into may be armed. That bank guard may be trigger happy. 

Basically, I'm happy when thieves go to jail, go directly to jail. But mostly I find them a pretty boring lot. For every Willie Sutton, who may or may not have said that he robbed banks "because that's where the money is," there are probably a million garden variety dullards who decided that being a thief beats working.

Embezzlement, on the other hand, I find infinitely fascinating. 

Unlike thieves, who likely don't up close and personally know they folks they're robbing, embezzlers steal from their workplaces - their employers, their clients - so they know exactly who their victims are. It takes a special someone to rip off the outfit that pays their salary, the client who's entrusted them with their business. 

I'm of the belief - based on zero actual evidence - that most embezzlers don't set out to become embezzlers. Embezzlement is a crime of convenience, something that a person just falls into. Maybe they started out thinking they're just borrowing the money. They're short this month, there's an emergency. Sure, they've stuck their hand in the till, but in their mind, they're planning on paying it back. Until they figure out that nobody's noticed, so why not keep it up? 

Other embezzlers may be envious or resentful of their clients, especially if their clients are well to do. They want a bit of the lifestyle they're adjacent to. 

This seems to be the case of Lisa Schiff, who was a well-known adviser to high-rollers (on was Leonardo DiCaprio) looking to invest in and/or collect art. Schiff had no desire to go through life like the poor little match girl, nose pressed up to the window of the brightly lit mansion. 

She was living the glam life: a TriBeCa loft that rented for $25K a month. Buzzing around in helicopters, because who wants to wait in Manhattan traffic in a cab - or even a black car. Spree shopping in Paris for items like jeans that cost nearly $1K. Being able to keep up with her clients - flying first class, staying in luxe hotels, dressing for success - gave Schiff "more mojo and confidence." Until it didn't.

While her clients and friends saw a successful woman at the top of her career, she hid a secret. She was stealing from them. To conceal her theft, she would do things like pay one client with another’s money, or leverage their friendships to keep them believing that late payments were always almost on their way.

By the time it all came crashing down in 2023, she had stolen some $6.4 million, from at least a dozen people. (Source: NY Times)

Today Schiff is broke, bankrupt. Seven of her former clients are suing her. She's living in much more modest digs - an apartment her parents are paying the rent on. She's hoping to stay out of prison. (Last fall, she pleaded guilty to defrauding her customers. She's been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.) At 55 - a single mother with a 12-year-old son - the life she's living is anything but charmed. 

Instead of jet-setting around and looking for and at works of art by emerging artists she deems bound for greatness, she's playing with Legos (building a replica of Hogwarts), feeling guilty about fleecing her clients, attending AA and Debtors Anonymous meetings, and worrying about what's going to happen to her kid. (The plan was that if she went to prison, her son will go live with Schiff's brother.)

But back in the day...

Schmoozing at cocktail parties and lecturing clients as an ethics authority, she seemed like the ideal art guru: getting access to hot artists before their paintings jumped in value; discreetly brokering sales with the major auction houses; and warding off predatory dealers looking to upsell and overcharge novice collectors.

Ethics authority? Hmmm.....

She was everywhere, quoted in newspaper pages and speaking at museums. But all last year, she was missing from the cocktail circuit, and absent from the auction floors, except in the fine print: Listed atop three lots in a November auction at Phillips were the words, “Property [including her own extensive art collection] to be sold to benefit the creditors of Lisa Schiff.”

After it's over and done with - prison sentence, probation, whatever - Schiff is not likely to ever be able to work as an art adviser. Most people, I believe, would give a murderer, or even a thief, a second chance before they'd hire an embezzler. She's only 55, so she's got a lot of years ahead of her. 

Ms. Schiff continues to believe that in some ways she was a good art adviser. She listed her tireless efforts to help her clients amass their collections, and claimed she often eschewed making money to steer clients toward art in which she truly believed.

Then she caught herself.

“I am the worst kind of perpetrator, because I seem so good,” Ms. Schiff said. “I’m a good person, I’m a good friend, I am loving and generous, I work hard — and I stole your money.”

Maybe this is why I'm drawn to embezzlers. Most of them probably are good people. Until they're not.

Most likely to...

There's an insatiable demand for content. There's an insatiable demand for info on celebrities. There's an awful lot of content about celebrities floating around out there. The maw of the people must be kept fed!

As it happens, growing up, I didn't know anyone who turned into a celebrity. But just think, if Michael C. had become someone that people wanted to know about, I could report that, in first grade, on the day when the boys all got their pants wet sliding in the slush, and Sister Marie Leo made them take their pants off to dry on the radiators, and had them put on girls' coats - which were longer than boys' jackets - so that they could sit there with their underpants covered while the radiators did their thing, Michael C wore my red and green plaid coat. A coat that I loved. In his underpants. Ewwww. 

This is certainly the sort of tidbit that someone obsessed with a celebrity would have loved learn. Maybe it would show up in a profile of Michael C describing how parochial school shaped his future life as a celeb. Or, if I'd become the celeb, maybe someone else in my 1st grade class - who? Paul M? Ginny B? - would have provided fodder content for a profile on me, noting that I seemed to have been more icked out than the other little girls whose coats were worn by boys that infamous day. And what was wrong with me that this little incident turned into such a trauma that, nearly 70 years later, I was still icked out by it. (Note to self: it's pretty late in the game, so it's not gonna happen, but DON'T BECOME A CELEBRITY.)

And if someone in my high school class had become a celebrity - maybe one of the other Maureens: Maureen D, Maureen O, Maureen Q - I could have sold my yearbook to Seth Poppel. 

The first floor of Poppel’s house, in Seattle, is home to some eighteen thousand yearbooks; he and his wife, Danine, advertise their holdings as “the original and largest library of high school yearbooks of the stars.” (Source: The New Yorker)

And not just the stars. Sure, they've got the yearbooks of Patti Smith and Leo DeCaprio, of Marlon Brando and Sharon Stone. But they've also got Ruth Bader Ginsburg's. Which is how I now know that Ginsburg was a high school "twirler." (Sure wish she'd twirled out of the Supreme Court at the right time.) And Harry Truman's - Independence (MO) High School, Class of 1901.

And it's not just the yearbooks of celebrities - be they stars, pols, athletes - but also the yearbooks of those who manage to grab their 15 minutes in the limelight for their infamy:

In September, it took Poppel and his son Jared only a few hours to locate Ryan Wesley Routh’s—Routh is the alleged foiled golf-course assassin of Donald Trump—and sell his adolescent portrait to the Daily Mail for about a hundred bucks. 

Seth Popell, who's now 80, has always been a collector. As a toddler in Brooklyn, he collected bottle caps. Once he could read, it was baseball cards.

Then, nearly 50 years ago, at a baseball card show, he came across a copy of Mickey Mantle's yearbook, and found that, although there were only 41 kids in The Mick's class, Mickey Mantle wasn't chosen as the "Best Athlete." Who could have been better than a future Hall of Famer? I guess he could take solace by having been voted "Most Popular."

My high school class didn't have superlatives. We were woke before there was woke, and didn't want anyone to get left out or have their feelings hurt. We also didn't list activities under the picture, as was generally done back then. Again, those of us on the yearbook staff didn't want anyone with no activities to list, or just one pathetic activity, e.g., Intramural Basketball, 1, look like a null. 

This was, of course, noblesse oblige on the part of the yearbook staff, largely composed of my friends. (I'm still friends with the editor.) We were the girls who would have had a ton of activities. As in Glee Club 1,2,3,4; Student Council 2,3,4; Student Council President, 4; Academy Star (newspaper) 1,2,3,4; features editor, 4; Everyman (yearbook) staff; National Honor Society, 3,4; Literary Society, 1,2,3,4; Latin Club 1,2...I may have been a class officer freshman year, and I played intramural basketball for a couple of years.

We did have pages at the end of the yearbook - called Everyman, a story worthy of its very own post - with chirpy little words and phrases. "Notes to Remember." Mine were Tinkerbell...lines ahead in Latin!...12-year product...merit charts..."great stuff"...SIC VITA...sincere leader. 

Most I remember. I played Tinkerbell in some class skit. My costume included black tights, saddle shoes, and bright green pettipants with silver kangaroos on them...I did my Latin translations (without a trot, so they were tortured and nonsensical) but I liked to get those lines translated well in advance)...By the end of my senior year, I was a 12-year product of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Four years later, I was a 16-year product...I have no idea what merit charts means, although I believe that when I was on Student Council we were instrumental in getting rid of demerit charts. (Demerits were "awarded" for things like talking between classes. If you "earned" enough of them, you had to stay after school.)..."great stuff" and SIC VITA were words I used ALL the time...sincere leader. Well, yes. Yes I was.

Above is my yearbook picture. If you're wondering what those artful lines are, I just blocked off my part of the page so you wouldn't run into Mary Jane R's section above me, and Joan S's space beneath mine.

Back to the Popells. 

Over the years, the yearbook info business grew. Even pre-Internet, magazines wanted celeb content. Then the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain decided to feature celebs' yearbook photos on their placemats. Gold for the Popells' business! And there was enough business that the Popells' son Jared could join it, and by the mid-1990's, things were booming enough that Seth Popell could quit his day job. 

The Popells finds their yearbooks - the latest demand is for Trump cabinet picks (those ought to be good: White Nationalist Club, 1,2,3,4) - through Internet search and through a freelance network they've built up that scouts antique stores and other sources of old junk.

It may not be the business that's Most Likely to Succeed, but it's got to be in contention for Most Niche.

Me? I've picked up a few old yearbooks that have nothing to do with celebs, and I find them fascinating. Maybe I'll dig up a few more. And who knows? I might run into someone interesting.

Guess there's no such thing as a free cruise

To begin with, I have no - make that less than no - desire to get on a cruise. Among other things, I'd be nervous about floating on the ocean blue in a giant Petri dish. All that covid! All that norovirus! Blech. If I'm going to spend all my time at sea sitting around my cabin wearing a mask and occsaionally gulping a breath of fresh air through my porthole, I might as well stay home.

No, I don't think I'd go on a cruise, even if one were offered to me for free. 

As happened to Minnesotan Mike Cameron, who, while at a casino, won a free Caribbean cruise on Norwegian. Oh, lucky day! Whose dream wouldn't it be to escape a Minnesota winter for a week in sun and warmth?

Alas, Cameron's luck soon ran out. 

He came down with the flu and went to the ship's medical center for treatment. He recovered in three days, only to be stuck with a bill for $47K that he may well never recover from. 

“I was just flabbergasted by the whole thing. I guess I am just used to the medical system in the United States. I can’t believe it happened,” he said.

The bill came as a shock as crew members assured him not to worry as he received treatment. (Source: NY Post)

Cameron had taken out traveler's ensurance, which should have covered the bill. Little did he know that $20K worth of coverage wouldn't have covered even half of the bill. Nor would his personal health incurance. 

To pay the bill - I was going to say "cover the costs," but $47K worth of charges in no way reflects the true costs of Cameron's treatment; he had the flu, not a lung transplant - "the cruise line maxed out two credit cards Cameron had on file and he still owes $21,000, he added."

“The traveler’s insurance doesn’t want to pay it until we run it by our health insurance. The health insurance doesn’t want to pay it because it’s abroad,” [Cameron's girlfriend Tamra] Masterman explained.

Norwegian sent Cameron a letter that stated "that its pricing was 'closely comparable to other cruise lines and is what we believe to be fair and reasonable.'"

'Closely comparable,' maybe. 'Fair and reasonable? NFW. Even if Norwegian claims that its ships all have "a state-of-the-art onboard medical center, staffed with highly qualified physicians and nurses, to provide care for both guests and crew while at sea.” 

No wonder I have no desire to go on a cruise.

Even if Pierce Brosnan or George Clooney crooned "won't you let me take you on a sea cruise" in my ear, my answer would be no, no, 47 thousand times no.

"Three Stars Will Shine Tonight."

One of the crappier aspects of getting older are that people start to die. Not just the people you know and love, but the people who were part of your life because you watched them run for office, or play ball, or on TV or in the movies. It's obviously not the same as someone you know IRL passing away. There are degrees of awfulness and grief there, or course. Your loved ones. Your liked ones. Distant connections who may have played a major role in your life at some point. Colleagues you were friendly with. The neighbors you chatted with but didn't actually know know. There's a continuum, but the grief, whether fleeting or permanent, is real.

And then there are the celebrities - especially those who were characters in your life's play. Here, it's not actually anything on the grief continuum. Are you really going to miss someone you a) never knew; and b) haven't thought of in years. But if they were somehow, someway, part of your growing up, their deaths are going to give you a bit of a pause - and you're probably going to take a bit of a nostalgic little stroll down memory lane.

On Saturday, the actor Richard Chamberlain died. Two days short of his 91st birthday, which would have been today.

Richard Chamberlain wasn't my first heartthrob. That would have been Dick Jones, who played Dick West, the All American Boy, on the cheesy b&w 1950's Western, The Range Rider, and later starred in the equally cheesy b&w 1950's Western, Buffalo Bill, Jr. ("He's a son, a son of a gun. Buffalo Bill, Jr.")

Richard Chamberlain wasn't my second heartthrob. That would have been Tim Considine, who played Spin on Disney's Spin & Marty and, a few years later, the oldest boy, Mike, on My Three Sons. Now there was a dreamboat and, yes, and when he died a few years ago, I did a bit of a nostalgia binge.

But as Dr. Jim Kildare, Richard Chamberlain was perhaps my first near-grown up, "mature" heartthrob.  (I was almost 12 when Dr. Kildare first came on.) And the first time I was part of a group crush.

I was probably 4 or 5 when I crushed on Dick Jones. Did I talk with my friends about how he was so cute? It may have come up in passing. When we were playing dolls, we may have pretended his was our doll's BF or something.

Ditto for Tim Considine. I was six when I fell for him. No doubt my friends fell for him, too. There were only 3 TV networks, so we all watched the same shows. And no one ever missed the daily Mickey Mouse Club (the Mouseketeers show) or Sunday Evening's Walt Disney Wonderful World of Color. Spin & Marty ran on the Mickey Mouse Club. Not that there was anything wrong with Marty - other than the fact that he was s rich snob - but Spin was the dreamboat. Still, I wasn't conscious of everyone being part of an informal Spin Fan Club.

And then, when I was in seventh grade, nearing the age of 12, Dr. Kildare first aired. And my friends were all pretty much smitten. Thursday was show night, and on Friday, before school and during recess, we stood around gabbing about the show, especially if a possible love interest was introduced. (Yvette Mimieux, come on down.)

We collected Dr. Kildare trading cards from Topps. And, unlike the boys (and some of us girls) with baseball cards, we neither flipped them nor attached them to our bicycle spokes to make that wonderful rackety-rack sound when you pedaled. On the other hand, I suspect the Richard Chamberlain cards won't ever have the value of a Honus Wagner.

White long-sleeved cotton shirts, with three buttons at the neck, were the rage. You couldn't wear them to school - we wore short sleeved white cotton blouses with rick-rack trimmed collars - but you could wear them outside of school. I didn't have one of those shirts, but I did have a pair of cotton Dr. Kildare PJ's. The pants were chartreuse. Sometimes, I'd stand in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, swooping my hair up into some sort of French twist, sucking in my cheeks and pretending I was a "lady doctor" colleague having a convo with Jim, who was, of course, my BF.

One of my friends, using her family's little Brownie camera, took a picture of Richard Chamberlain off of the TV. She brought the developed picture to school, and we pretended that she'd seen him in person, passing it around to each other, swooning.

Not all the girls were Jim Kildare fans. The same year we met Jim Kildare, the doctor show Ben Casey also came on the air. The glowering, dark-haired, dark-eyed Vince Edwards played Ben Casey (as opposed to the smiling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jim Kildare). The tougher girls - the ones who were considered sexier by the boys: they smoked, they told off-color jokes - went for Ben Casey. The tough girls and the odd rebel also liked Ben Casey. But the nice girls, the good(y) girls, crushed on Jim Kildare. 

Funny the things you remember. One time, I asked my mother whether she thought Richard Chamberlain was handsome. She told me she thought he had "bland good looks." I was outraged. Someone whose teenage heartthrobs were Nelson Eddy and Leslie Howard thought Richard Chamberlain was bland? 

Yesterday, when I had my weekly chat with my old friend Joyce, we talked about how we had both had crushes on Richrd Chamberlain. Later in the morning, I got a text from my friend Michele - who's five years younger, and thus too young for a Kildare crush - saying "I see your boyfriend Richard Chamberlain has died. He really was handsome." And I heard from my cousin Mary Beth, who's my age, who texted me a collage of Richard Chamberlan pictures, which shse captioned "My first heartthrob!!"

By eighth grade, the group ardor for Dick Chamberlain was starting to cool. Our crushes were more apt to be classmates. (What were we thinking?) Nonetheless, for Christmas that year, I got the Richard Chamberlain Sings album. If I had that album, if I had a turntable I could play a 33 rpm record on, I bet I could put it on and sing along without missing a word of the lyrics. 

The first song on the album was "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo," but the album also included "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight," the theme from Dr. Kildare.

Three stars will shine tonight
One for the lonely
That star will shine it's light
Each time that someone sighs

Three stars for all to see
One for young lovers
That star was made to be
The sparkle in their eyes

And for the third star
Only one reason
A star you can wish on
To make dreams come true

High in the sky above
Three stars are shining
I hope that star of love
Will shine down on you

And for the third star
Only one reason
A star you can wish on
To make dreams come true

High in the sky above
Three stars are shining
I hope that star of love
Will shine down on you

Maybe there's a fourth star for old crushes. 

RIP, Richard Chamberlain.