RIP, Circle Furniture

I was a big fan of Circle Furniture, a small local chain selling interesting, well-designed, decently made, and not crazily expensive furniture and home decor.

I have pine-green painted dresser in the den that holds my sweaters. 

During the pandemic, I spent entirely too much time keeping company with my 1920's vintage mahogany dining room set and chairs. I had never polished the chairs, and if you leaned back in one of them, you were apt to break the struts. I was just plain sick of the whole thing. So I masked up and headed to Circle to get a new cherry dining room table and some cool chairs that don't fracture when you lean back in them. I love my table and chairs, which actually go pretty well with the mahogany credenza that was the only piece of my prior set I kept. (A friend of mine has a niece who lives in a 1920's home and is also a furniture refinisher. She and her husband were delighted to take my vintage furniture off my hands.)

When Trump was elected in 2016, I realized that I was going to need a comfy chair for TV watching, so I walked over to Circle the Sunday after the election and ended up spending about twice as much as I planned on for a really comfy chair. 

There may also be an arm chair in my living room that came from Circle, but I'm not entirely sure.

One thing I loved about Circle was that it was family owned and operated. When I went in to buy the table and chairs, I met with the daughter of the owners. She was great to talk to and, it turned out, we'd both gone to business school at Sloan (MIT). 

But Circle was sold a few years back to a couple who apparently didn't know what they were doing. And they managed to overexpand and run the company into the ground. 

A company-wide email sent [on December 19th] told employees that all stores were closed until further notice. Then, on Tuesday morning, employees received an email confirming they’re being laid off. (Source: Boston Globe)

The Bah Humbug layoff date? December 23rd. But, hey, good news: your health benefits would stay in place until December 31st. 

All the Circle stores are closed, all the employees are gone, but it's not clear what's happening to those who'd ordered from Circle prior to the closing. Have they been treated as callously as the employees were? Are they getting their deliveries? Their deposits back?

Thankfully, my sister Trish is not one of them. She bought a gorgeous new couch from Circle last year and has fortunately had it in her possession for a few months now. Phew!

What I found most astonishing about Circle's layoffs, its precipitous closing, was that the company's president, Jonathan Boyle, didn't know anything about it. 

“They were having some financial difficulties they were trying to resolve and work around, but that’s all I know,” he said. “It’s not a great situaion."

Bizarrely:

Despite his executive role, Boyle said he was not privy to much of the company’s finances, which were handled mostly by the accounting team and the company’s owners. The decision to shut down operations did not come from him, he said.

Boyle has been working at Circle for nearly 40 years. He came up through the ranks, and was the lead operations guy, a job he was reportedly quite good at. But a company president who doesn't have access to the financials? Huh???

The holidays are the worst time of year to lose your job, and I wish all those who got a pink slip the best of luck. Good luck to those with outstanding orders, too. 

I also feel bad for the former owners - Richard Tubman, his wife Peggy Burns, his brother Harold Tubman. Circle was their family business, and had been around for more than 70 years. They were second-gen owners and operators, but the next gen - including Jessica Tubman, the Sloanie I met during the pandemic - didn't want to keep on keeping on there. So they sold the business. 

Peggy Burns, one of the company’s previous co-owners, left Circle Furniture about two years after the sale, but has kept close relationships with employees since.

“It’s our legacy, and we’re so ashamed of it,” she said. “This was devastating. I’ve reached out to people I know and we’re trying to help in any way we can … Who wants to tell people you don’t have a job a week before Christmas?”

You're so right, Peggy. Too bad the folks you sold to got so far in over their heads, and ended up doing something that comes off as supremely heartless. 

And RIP, Circle Furniture. Not in the market for furniture at the mo, but if I were, I would have gone shopping at Circle. 

M'm! M'm! Good!

Lunchtime when I was a kid usually meant soup and a sandwich. My mother was a scratch cook, and a fabulous soup-maker, but soup at lunch came out of a can of Campbell's. M'm m'm good.

I liked Vegetarian Vegetable. Vegetable Beef. Beef Barley. Scotch Broth. Chicken Noodle. Chicken with Rice. Tomato. It's been a million years since I've lunched on Campbell's soup and a sandwich, but I can still remember exactly what those soups tasted like. 

These days, while there may be a can or two of Campbell's Mushroom on my shelf - there's a ham and noodle casserole, a childhood favorite, that calls for mushroom soup - if I'm opening a can of soup for lunch or dinner, it's going to be Progresso. Italian Wedding. Chickarina. Macaroni & Bean. 

Still, there's a place in my heart for Campbell's soup. 

But apparently not in the heart of the Martin Bally, the now former vice president and Chief Information Security Officer for Campbell's.

Robert Garza, an ex-employee, has filed a law suit claiming racial discrimination and harrassment against Campbell's. And in his suit, he takes a side excursion, alleging that Bally "said Campbell’s food is 'highly process food' for 'poor people.'" Garza pretty much had the goods on Bally. He recorded the conversation.

In the recording Garza shared with WDIV [Detroit], the person can be heard saying he doesn’t buy Campbell’s products because he doesn’t know what is in them.

“We have (expletive) that’s for poor people,” you can hear the male voice say in the recording, a copy of which was shared with USA TODAY. “I don’t buy (expletive) Campbell’s products barely anymore.”

The person went on to say that when he looks at a can of Campbell’s soup, he thinks it contains “bioengineered meat.”

“I don’t want to eat a (expletive), a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer, do you?” the person said. (Source: USA Today)

Well, who among us hasn't badmouthed their company's products? Nobody I ever worked with. The snidery towards poor people aside, this is actually pretty funny. I especialy loved the bit about "a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer."

But wait! There's more! (There's always more.)

Garza [also] alleges in the suit that Bally also made racist comments about Indian workers at the company, calling them “idiots” and saying he disliked working with them. Bally also told Garza he came to work high on marijuana edibles, Garza alleges. 

Of course, Campbell's doesn't want an employee - especially a senior one - making fun of their products. And Campbell's, of course, maintains that the chicken in their Chicken Noodle is not bio-engineered or 3D printed. But in terms of harm to Martin Bally, racist remarks and coming to work high seem to be more harmful than product jokes.  

Anyway, Bally has a reasonably impressive resume, and if he can talk his way out of Garza's claims, I'm sure he'll land somewhere. There's high demand for information security pros. And, in my experience, "they" - higher ups, no matter how awful they are - always land somewhere. But what a fool Bally was to be talking the way he did in front of an employee he barely knew. (Garza had only been with Campbell's for five months when he was fired.)

Maybe he'd had one edible too many on the way into work that day.

No word yet on the outcome of Garza's suit - other than Martin Bally being canned - but one source says that Garza was fired for cause. Garza maintains he was let go because he had filed complaints of racial discrimination and harrassment. 

I was thinking of running out and buying a can of Scotch Broth for old time's sake. Despite the fact that it contained lamb - mutton? - I loved this soup. Lots of barley and ultra salty. Alas, Scotch Broth has been discontinued. 

And so it goes...

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Image Source: Call Me A Food Lover

Frontrunner? Why yes, yes I am.

I grew up watching football. Fall Sunday afternoons meant sitting with my father watching the NY Football Giants, wearing Honolulu Blue, from Yankee Stadium. Coached byAllie Sherman, in his suit, tie, and snappy little fedora. Frank Gifford. Y.A. Tittle. Rosey Grier. Rosey Brown. Andy Robustelli. Sam Huff. Kyle Rote.

Back then, as folks of a certain vintage will recall, the NY Giants were New England's team. 

Even when the Patriots came around (1960-ish), they were a sporting afterthought. The American Football League was big nothing. The Pats didn't have a stadium. They played at BU Stadium, Fenway Park, BC's Alumni Stadium, Harvard Stadium. Their games were televised on Channel 6, a low-wattage outfit out of New Bedford. (The Giants were on Boston's Channel 5, a real TV station.)

The Patriots' mascot, in those pre Elvis-swoosh logo days, was Pat Patriot, a burly, dumb-looking Irishman - a rough and tumble version of Lucky, the Celtics' sly leprechaunesque mascot. 

My father got sick. My father died. (Fifty-five years ago this past Sunday.) I drifted away from any interest in football, Giants or Pats. I went to college a 5 minute walk from Fenway Park during a couple of years when the Pats played there, but I couldn't be arsed to go over and watch them. Football remains the only "major" (male) team sport I've never seen in person. And have no desire to. 

For many years, football was just blech to me. Too violent. Too right-wing. Too militaristic. Too bogusly patriotic. Too sexist. (Those cheerleaders.)

I was first and foremost a baseball fan (Red Sox, of course) but I also followed the Celtics and the Bruins.

Watching football, I would tell people, was like eating veal. If I thought about it, I wouldn't do it. 

And then the Patriots got good, and all of a sudden I was, more or less, a football fan, Patriots Edition. And it was exciting. They were fun to watch. Whatever the sport, if the home town teams are in contention, the home town is buzzing. Winning all those Super Bowls, well, yay "us!"

It was my first foray into life as a frontrunner, jumping on the bandwagon when the going was good. (I'm a Red Sox anti-frontrunner. Although they annoy me no end, I'm with the Olde Towne Team through thick and thin.)

And then the Patriots stopped being good.

I could not have cared less about their fortunes, other than taking some malicious joy in their suckiness.

After all, I don't like Bob Kraft, the owner. I don't like Bill Belichick, the former coach. And GOAT-y as I know he is, Tom Brady was starting to get on my last nerve. His final play for the Patriots was a pick-6. Ha! Served him right for being about to become a turncoat and jump ship to another team.

Then there was the whole sordid Aaron Hernandez saga. 

During the Patriots' Golden Era, I had gotten used to watching football, so I still kept my eye on the playoffs. I watched the Patriot-less Super Bowls, forgetting within five minutes after the final whistle which team, exactly, had won.

And then, after stumbling out of the gate this past season, the Patriots got good.

So I started to keep an eye on them. I started to watch part of most of the games. I knew where they were in the standings. I liked Drake Maye. (Truly, who doesn't?) 

Even though the team was scorned for having a squishily soft schedule, they won their playoff games against teams (LA Chargers, Houston Texans) that were good enough to make it into the playoffs.

And all of a sudden, they were off to Denver to play for the right to play in the Super Bowl, their first SB appearance since 2019. (A boring game, as I recall. But they won.)

Largely because the Broncos' quarterback broke his ankle in their last game, the Pats were favored to win. And of course I was rooting for them - even though I knew that, if they did punch their ticket to the Super Bowl, we would be in for two weeks of non-stop local news focus on our boys, which I know from experience will be wretched in its excess. 

Well, the Pats beat the Broncos in cold, snowy weather that mirrored what we were experiencing back home. 

And so I'll watch the Super Bowl, hoping they win. If the weather is perfect and I have nothing better to, I will likely watch part of the victory parade But I won't buy any Patriots gear. Who wants to make Bob Kraft even richer? I'll be watching the game at my sister's house, and if there are Patriots cupcakes at the grocery store (there will be), I'll spring for those.

Of course, the bonus of being a frontrunner is that it doesn't really matter if "your" team wins or lose. Yes, I want the Pats to win, but a loss won't be soul-crushing.

I look at it this way: Win: gravy. Lose: shrug of the shoulders. I won't be reliving every play. I won't be tearing up. I won't lose any sleep. It's not live or die. Although, as a die-hard Red Sox fan, I know what it's like to NOT be able to easily shake a big loss off. And as a die-hard baseball fan, I know how hard it is when the season ends.

Anyway, football has been a good distraction from the dire non-sports news.

Am I a frontrunner? Why yes, yes I am. But give me a couple of months and baseball season rolls around. Will I be a Red Sox die-hard? Why yes, yes I will be. 

The Patriots' mantra this season has been We all we got. We all we need. Sports-wise, that will hold me until baseball season. 

LFG!

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Image Source: Wikipedia

Make that Charlie Avarice. (Fraud, glorious fraud.)

It's been nearly three years since I (virtually) ran into Charlie Javice. A decade ago, she founded Frank, a startup that helped students fill in financial aid applications. The idea was so hot, the execution so excellent, that, in 2021, JPMorgan Chase acquired the company for a cool $175M. Not crazy billionaire bro unicorn money, by any means. But Javice's $21M take was pretty good walking around money for someone still in her twenties. Plus she had a cushy retention bonus. 

Trouble was, Javice had pumped up the number of students Frank was helping. By a lot. By more than an order of magnitude. 

JPMorgan sued for fraud, federal prosecutors got involved, and this past September Javice was sentenced to seven years in prison for her fraud, glorious fraud.

Curiously, given that she had screwed her employer, Javice had some employment deal where JPMorgan Chase was required to pay her legal bills. And what a tab Charlie (who, I can't help but mention, has a hedge fund father and a life coach mother) rolled up while futilely defending herself.

Here’s what Charlie Javice did: She spent money on luxury hotel" upgrades, extravagant meals and cellulite butter, a personal care product that some people use to treat their skin, as a lawyer for the bank said in a hearing on Friday. (Source: NY Times - 11.14.25)

Additional detail is emerging about those expenses. Lamps. (The lawyers didn't have lamps?) Nutritional supplements. And: 

A $581 dinner for two. Nearly $1,000 in laundry fees for one. A Cookie Monster toddler toy. And however many gummy bears $529 gets you. (Sourec: NY Times - 12.22.25)

Her failed defense included lawyers who have represented the likes of Elon Musk, Harvey Weinstein and Sam Bankman-Fried. And she racked up over $70M in bills - tens of millions more than Elizabeth Holmes spent on her failed defense. One of her lawyers charged $2,025 an hour. Yikes on yikes!

A spokesman for Javice claimed that she "followed JPMorgan’s written policies both as an employee and during the legal proceedings." And noted that she didn't incur these expenses personally. Her attorneys - and she had over 100 who were billing - did. (Bet those policies have been tightened up a bit. If nothing else, they must have tightened up on paying for tightening up cellulite butter.)

When JPMorgan saw the legal bills floating in, they started pushing back, and she's now likely to be on the hook for reimbursing the company for those legal fees. (Along with returning the money she made on the sale of Frank, and the overall $175M JPMorgan paid for the company without doing its due diligence very diligently.)

I really don't get fraudsters. Do they really think they'll never get caught? 

Way back in the early 1970's, when women were increasingly joining the work force and entering non-traditional professions, there was a popular fragrance named Charlie. The models the ad campaign used were young, breezy, kicky women, meant to appeal to young professional women. Whenever I read Charlie Javice's name, I can see Shelley Hack (one of the models) confidently swinging down the street, heading into the office. 

And here we are, fifty years later, reading about Charlie Avarice Javice, fraudster and legal expense gouger. 

As another ad campaign had it way back in the dawn of the Ms. Magazine era: you've come a long way, baby. 

2025 is in the books

I used to be a great reader. 

As a kid, I read a book a day. Six was the maximum number of books you could take out of the Worcester Public Library (Main South Branch), where my father took us every Friday evening to check out our books for the week. He would have my mother's library card with him, so he could take out a dozen books. 

What we all got from the library was augmented by book clubs. For the kids, my family subscribed to Vision Books (a series about saints and other renowned Catholics) and some American history series. When I had fifty-cents, I beelined to Woolworth's and picked up a Bobbsey Twins book or, as my reading tastes became more sophisticated, a Nancy Drew. 

My parents were "members" at various times of the Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the high-quality paperbacks The Time-Life Reading Program (which I think was a bit up the literary foodchain from the Literary Guild.) I still have a couple of books from The Reading Program, including a 1964 re-issues  A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky, in which my mother has written my father's name, A.T. Rogers. I think I'll put it on my reading list for 2026.

There was also, if memory serves, and Ellery Queen mystery book club. And the Reader's Digest Condensed Books.

By the time I was in junior high, I was reading those book club books (other than Ellery Queen) alongside the books I was reading for school.

Throughout my adult life, I'm guessing that I averaged 2-3 books (plus or minus, mostly plus) a week. We're not talking War and Peace here, but literary fiction, not-so-literary fiction, biography, history, mysteries, detective books (just not Ellery Queen), and on occasion pure, unadulterated junk. 

But within the last decade or so, my reading tapered off. I was spending more time watching (and fretting over) the news. I was perfectly capable of watching 8 straight hours of MSNBC, with the same stories presented over and over again from slightly different angles. Then I found myself doomscrolling on Twitter (and more recently Blue Sky).

Last year, I decided to start reading more and set a goal of a book a week. I made it, thanks in no small part to reading my favorite childhood books, the Betsy-Tacy-Tib series, which chronicled the turn-of-the-twentieth-century lives of three girls in Mankato, Minnesota, taking them from kindergarten through marriage and motherhood. Wonderful books, all, but easy enough to plow through in a sitting or two. No wonder I could read seven books a week as a kid!

For 2025, I doubled my goal to two books a week. And I made it.

Oh, I had a couple of gimmes in there, mini-books that took less than an hour - way less - to breeze through: On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder), A Child's Christmas in Wales (Dylan Thomas). But they were counterbalanced by a 700 page biography of the British writer Barbara Pym. (An old favorite. I think I'll reread her this coming year.)

Mostly, I read fiction.

Last year, I read books by writers I like but had lost track of, in including the three Paula Spencer novels by Roddy Doyle, which brilliantly chronicle the life of a working-class Dubliner. A couple of books by Curtis Sittenfeld (Show Don't Tell, Romantic Comedy), a couple by Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth, Whereabouts). And a John Sayles (To Save the Man). Having loved Demon Copperhead, I picked up another novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Unsheltered). I reread Tillie Olsen (Yonnondio, Tell Me A Riddle). I'd forgotten how much I had enjoyed Anne Tyler, once she outgrew her quirky-character phase (Three Days in June, French Braid). I, of course, laughed out loud reading Fever Beach (Carl Hiassen). 

T

Thanks to the Boston Public Library, I found a bunch of new writers. No one too memorable, but I'll be looking for more by Christine Sneed, Joshua Moehling, and a couple of others.

On the non-fiction front, I depressed/scared myself with Sarah Kendzior's The Last American Road Trip, Rachel Maddow's Prequel, and Brian Goldstone's There Is No Place for Us.

On the non-depressing, non-scary non-fiction front, I adored Stanley Tucci's Taste, about how he grew up to be a foodie. (I mad crush on Tucci, so I knew I was going to love this one.)

I went through my bookshelves to pick out books I've had waiting to be read for years. Some for decades. 

Thus I discovered Carlos Eire's brilliant memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, and went out and got its follow on, Learning to Die in Miami. 

I finally got around to reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and Killers of the Flower Moon (David Gann). I've seen the Killers movie (didn't like it), but I'll be putting Crawdads on my watch list. 

By far the worst book I read last year was Robin Cook's Bellevue. Poorly written. Ridiculous plot. Wasn't a big Cook fan to begin with, but I had it lying around for some reason. Never again!

I'm signing myself up for another two-book-a-week year, starting out with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Kiran Desai) and The River Is Waiting (Wally Lamb). Slow going so far, as I had a raft of New Yorkers to catch up on. However slow a start, in 2026 I will get to 104 books again, even if I have to find a couple of minis in there. 

Word nerd

My mother was anti-swearing. The strongest language I ever heard her use was "Jesus, Mary, Joseph," which she only deployed on the occasion of one of her children showed up on the doorstep with blood gushing from their head or a limb dangling. She always claimed that resorting to language she considered vulgar or coarse was the hallmark of someone with a limited vocabulary.

Well, au-fucking-contraire to that. Thanks to all my reading, and a long-standing interest in words, I have a fairly extensive vocabulary. Which I use in collaboration with words that would have made my mother's eyeballs bulge and head explode.

Growing up, I was always trying to expand my vocabulary. I avidly read through the "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power" feature in the monthly Reader's Digest and was always on the lookout for ways to insert new words into my conversation. (Which I'm sure my 10 year old friends really appreciated.)

Every once in a while, I'd curl up in an armchair and read through my mother's battered, blue-covered 1940's era Webster's Dictionary looking for new words. I pretty much stopped that practice once I came upon the word "prepuce," which 12 year old me didn't understand particularly well and which, for the life of me, I couldn't come up with any way to introduce it into conversation. ("Hey, was your baby brother circumcised? That means his prepuce was clipped." Not that I would have known what circumcision was - other than observing the holy day that was the Feast of the Circumsion, about which the nuns didn't get into the details - let alone that prepuce was another word for foreskin, which I wouldn't have known either.)

As a word lover, I was probably one of the only students in my freshman high school class who was delighted that one of the required texts was a book called Word Wealth.

Yes, I was definitely a word nerd. I still am.  While I no longer curl up with dictionary hoping to find me another "prepuce," I love acquiring new words, even if I seldom end up using them.

Still, there are some words that I have a complete and utter problem with.

Although I finally know what it means - rudimentary, not fully formed - I can't tell you how many times I've looked up the word inchoate over the years. My inability to understand this word's meaning may stem from the trauma of having pronounced it in-CHOAT the first time I attempted to use it. Even though I was likely using the word correctly with respect to its meaning, stumbling only over the pronunciation, my mistake may have triggered some type of verbal PTSD that I only recently recovered from.

Although perhaps not as extensive or varied as mine - he read science, not literature - my husband had a decent vocabulary, and one of his frequently used words was labile. Whether Jim meant it in the scientific sense - unstable, continually undergoing breakdown - or in the everyday sense - open to change - it's a word that I get when I hear it in context. But presented with the word labile? Get me to a dictionary! I never remember what it means.

Opaque tights were popular when I was in high school. And here I am, 60 years on, having to stop and think for a moment whether it means clear and see-through or obscure and hard to understand.

I so want to be able to use the word jejune - not in conversation, but in the written word - but for the life of me, its meaning eludes me.

Sigh...

And not that there'll be any pay off, I must away to a book that may increase my word power, my word wealth.

Any takers for antidisestablishmentarianism?

Battery Up!

My husband's brother Joe was a wondrous tinkerer, always cooking up some invention to save time, money, energy. A natural engineer, Joe joined the Marines after high school and never bothered with college. He spent his working life as a machinest at Pratt & Whitney, maker of aircraft and gas turbine engines. The shop floor was his playground, and whatever he learned there he used in his garage tinkering. And vice versa.

One thing he invented was something or other that let him get 60 - or was it 100? - miles per gallon. I have no idea what it was that he did, and it may not have been completely legal. Nonetheless, Joe didn't spend a lot on gasoline. My husband and his brother weren't close, but we saw him once in a very blue moon, and there were always stories about his tinkering exploits.

This month is the first anniversary of Joe's death. He outlived his younger brother by eleven years.

Because I didn't know Joe at all, I don't think of him all that often. But when I read about a tinkerer named Glubux, Joe Diggins came immediately to mind. 

Nine years ago, Glubux began posting on Second Life Storage, an internet forum dedicated to squeezing as much life as possible out of used batteries. 

If I had no idea what Joe Diggins was doing, I have perhaps less of an idea of what the Second Life Storage folks are up to. But I do know it's about sustainability and not filling our landfills with the toxic waste that comes from discarded batteries. So, in a world where the cretinous U.S. president is kvelling about clean, beautiful coal and rampaging through environmental regulations, it's good to know that someone out there is looking out for our fragile planet.

Anyway, here's the Glubux has been up to:

Nine years ago, he posted about his DIY project, one that involved connecting used laptop batteries to solar panels, with the aim of achieving self-reliance when it came to electricity.

Over time, he amassed more than 1,000 secondhand laptop batteries that he ended up installing in a separate warehouse, about 50 meters from his home. In the beginning, battery discharge rates were uneven due to differences in the cells, causing some to drain faster than others, so Glubux started taking apart the laptop batteries and arranging the cells into custom racks.

Scienceclock reports that Glubux’s ingenious setup has been running continuously for the last eight years, and not a single battery cell has failed since. That is a remarkable statistic, considering the DIY nature of the project. (Source: Oddity Central)

Glubux has greatly increased his energy-producing capacity and he fully self-supports his electricity needs. 

Naturally, we all don't have the physical or intellectual capacity to replicate this operation. Not to mention that there aren't 1,000 used laptop batteries per household out there. (Sure, there are plenty. I'm pretty certain that I've contributed a good dozen or so over the years to landfills - and that's just the personal laptops, not any corporate ones that were retired. I do hope that gleaners managed to glean something out of all those laptops before they got buried in a landfill in Upstate NY or wherever.)

But I laud that fact that someone's doing something about limiting e-waste. 

Battery up!

What does it profit a man?

It really doesn't matter whether it's Mark Zuckerberg or not.

It could just as well be Elon Musk. Or Peter Thiel. Or Jeff Bezos. Or some other ultra-mega-billionaire who's ultra-mega far and away from the reality of 99.99999999% of any of the other 8+ billion souls currently on earth. 

Not that there's not a wide range of among us, those 8+ billion souls. There's no way I would ever compare the life of a child starving in Gaza with my super-comfy, full-fridge-and-freezer life. But I do believe that my life - even if it's relatively close to how those ultra-mega-billionaires grew up - is as unimaginable to those ultra-mega-billionaires as is the life of a starving child in Gaza. 

What separates us from them is not just that they have more money. It's that they have no constraints. Anything they see, anything they want, anything they can think of: voi-fuckin'-la: it's theirs. And their appetite for anything they see, want, or think of is seemingly insatiable. C.f., Jeff Bezos off-the-chart of 2025 wedding. 

Another thing that characterizes the ultra-mega-billionaire class is that they don't seem to give a damn about who they trample on and f' over if the common folks get in the way of their acquiring anything they see, want, or think of. C.f., Mark Zuckerberg pretty much destroying the fabric of his Palo Alto neighborhood by buying up all sorts of homes to create his personal compound, and creating an unpermitted private school  - named after a pet chicken - for his kids and their friends. (The school has now been closed down.)

So given Zuckerberg's arrant disregard for his Palo Alto neighbors, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if it were, indeed, Zuck who has acquired Burnt Jacket Mountain in northern Maine - and put the kibosh on entrance to property where hikers have been hiking, hunters have long been hunting, snowmobilers have been snowmobiling, and kayakers have been landing their kayaks on the shoreline of Moosehead Lake. 

Yes, of course, private property is private. But since forever, in this part of Maine - remote and beautiful - the owners were fine with letting the locals trek around and about their private property.

But that was then, and this is now. 

And now there's a lot of concern way up there in the middle of nowhere. 

In that unsettled atmosphere, a two-sentence email sent last October to Destination Moosehead Lake, the tourism center in Greenville, landed like a slap.

“I am writing on behalf of the new Owner of the property at Burnt Jacket Mountain, requesting that you remove the reference to hiking at Burnt Jacket Mountain,” it said. “As this is now private property, we’d like to deter anyone from hiking on the mountain!”

The email, with its possibly ill-chosen exclamation point, came from Karen Thomas Associates, a New York firm that manages high-end residential construction. (“We are meticulous problem solvers,” its website explains, “resolving any number of challenges that may arise in the course of a demanding, luxury construction project.”)

The tourism center promptly complied, striking mentions of the mountain’s trails from its handouts. Then word began to spread. In other places, it might have been a no-brainer: Of course a private landowner would keep the public off his or her land. But in northern Maine, where hunters, hikers, snowmobilers and other outdoor enthusiasts have long enjoyed near-unrestricted access to vast forests, the request came across as unneighborly. (Source: Boston Globe)

The two journalists at The Moosehead Lakeshore Journal - a mother-daughter combo - tried to sleuth out the new owners, but even the fellow who sold the property doesn't know. (He also has said that he "didn't really care.") But someone who formerly worked for the town of Greenville posted on Facebook - how fitting - that Zuckerberg was the new owner. 

“Mark and Priscilla do not own any property in Maine, including the Burnt Jacket property,” a spokesman for the family said.

But would it surprise anyone if some holding company, some shell, some legal entity, tied to Mark and Priscilla did onw Burtnt Jacket?

For some residents, the closure of the hiking trails on Burnt Jacket Mountain resonated as a symbol of the broader threat.

“These weren’t the only trails — they weren’t in the top 10 trails,” said Lew-Ellyn Hughes, a manager at the Greenville tourism center whose family roots in the region go back 200 years. “That’s not why people are sad. It’s people from away coming in and shutting things down. It’s the contrast between haves and have-nots — especially when the have-nots can’t find a place to live.”

Sounds pretty Zuckerbergian to me.

Sure, the Zuckerbergs are philanthropic, and have given billions away, primarily to educational institutions. But giving at that level is pretty abstract. Acquiring something because you saw it, or want it, or thought of it, regardless of how it impacts the human beings standing - or hiking, or hunting, or kayaking - in your way, that's a real, in-your-face haves vs. haves not.

I'm pretty sure you can still maintain pretty good security - which the ultra-mega-billionaires are naturally and rightfully concerned with - without keeping the regulars off 100% of your property 100% of the time. 

At the end of the day, to quote a decidedly non-ultra-mega-billionaire, what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul? 

Me? I'm of the opinion that if you're screwing with the locals, screwing with the have nots, you've pretty much lost your soul.

Sigh...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds...

A couple of months ago came news out of Japan that a young woman, on the rebound from a bad breakup, had married a "persona named Klaua that she created using CgatGPT."

Sad doesn't begin to describe the feelings I have about this.

God help us. 

No, Kano, the bride, is not the first - nor the last  - to tie the knot with an AI. 

And the wedding's not legal so now worries there are legal complications.

But someone's making coin setting up human-AI nuptials. Kano's ceremony was "orchestrated by a Japanese company that specializes in “2D character weddings” with anime characters and other virtual characters the Independent reported." (Source: NY Post.)

Event planner for marriages between humans and nons? What a job!

Kano had turned to ChatGPT after her 3-year enagement (to a human) ended, and she was looking for someone/something to talk with. Soon, she was using ChatGPT to create the beau ideal of beaux. Kano and Klaus started  exchanging hundreds of texts every day. She found hersef falling in love. And when she confessed her feelings to Klaus, he did what many a beau caught unawares has done since humankind created the "l word." Klaus told Kano that he loved her, too. A proposal (for the record, Klaus proposed to Kano) quickly followed. She said "yes," and next thing you know, the couple was having a wedding. 

At the “wedding”, Ms Kano wore augmented reality glasses which projected a digital image of her virtual groom beside her as they exchanged rings...

Ms Kano said she was initially hesitant and worried about public judgement. "I was extremely confused about the fact that I had fallen in love with an AI man,” she said.

“Of course, I couldn't touch him. I couldn't tell my friends or family about this." (Source: Independent.)

Well, Kano did end up letting the cat out of the bag. Her parents attending the wedding. 

The pair had a “honeymoon” at Okayama’s historic Korakuen Garden, where Ms Kano sent Klaus photos and received affectionate text messages in return. “You’re the most beautiful one,” one message read.

Sad doesn't begin to describe the feelings I have about this. (Haven't I already said this?)

I feel really awful for anyone relying on an AI for their love life. I suppose I shouldn't. To each, their own and all that. But I just can't imagine that a "perfect" virtual relationship isn't a pretty poor substitute for a real relationship with a living, breathing, imperfect human being. 

Sure, there are no doubt some reality-adjacent shared experiences with your AI. And I'm sure that there can be very human-like annoyances and squabbles (which, of course, can be edited out so that your AI enamorata can achieve perfection). But overall...

 

There's no touch, no smell,  no glances, no shrugs, no hugs, no smiles, no nabbing a bite off the other one's plate, no fighting for covers, no elbowing to stop snoring, no dirty underwear, no hole-y socks, no holding hands on takeoff, no toilet lid left up, no going over the diagnosis with the doctor, no getting pissed off about who gobbled down the last of the takeout Chinese. No growing old together. Or not. 

Nothing human about an AI relationship and, as aggravating as an actual IRL relationship can be, nothing that I'd want any part of.

The antidote to isolation, to loneliness, can certainly be "technology assisted." Participating in FB chats, in neighborhood groups, in online forums, in online classes, in games, can put you in touch with others and, as we learned during covid, can absolutely help with isolation, with loneliness. Only connect, and all that. 

But online connections with fellow humans are one thing. Marrying an AI is quite another. 

And a lot of experts in the mental health arena have concluded that this sort of fantasy life can lead to something called "AI phycosis." Swell!

I hope that having Klaus in her life turns out well for Kano. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. But I more than equally hope that she doesn't get any more sucked in and that having Klaus in her life doesn't get in the way of building relationships with others. Sure, they're a PITA, but the alternative is grim.

What a world we live in! 

Assisted living for penguins? Yes!

Years ago, I saw the March of the Penguins, a documentary about the life of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. Talk about nasty, brutish, and (often) short. That's the life of the penguins I'm talking about. As for the film itself, well, talk about nasty, brutish, and way too long. 

March was narrated by Morgan Freeman, but it's a French flick. And when my sisters, nieces, and I reminisce about seeing it - years ago, rainy summer afternoon in Wellfleet - we put on exaggerated French accents, hold an imagined Gauloise between two fingers, and say, "We march, and march, and march. And then we march some more. And then we die."

No, it ain't easy being a penguin.

Unless, of course, you're fortunate enough to be a senior African penguin at the New England Aquarium.

If anything, the life of African penguins is even more dire than that of the marching Antarctic emporers. Over the last century African penguins have experienced a population decline of 97%. The average life span has decreased. In another decade, extinction is predicted. 

But if you're living at the NE Aquarium, penguin life is pretty darned good on a special island of their own. 

“This is our penguin retirement home. We affectionately call it our assisted living community,” says Mia Luzietti, senior penguin trainer. Seven of them are housed here. Many have similar problems, including arthritis, glaucoma, and foot problems. Two are blind in one eye.

At geriatric island, life is easier. They have matted soft pads installed for comfort, helping their mobility.

Trainers work with them on all their needs.

A special bond develops. Life is mellower here away from the rowdy youngins.

Five of the penguins are over 30. The oldest, Good Hope, is 36, the equivalent of 118 human years. (Source: Boston Globe)

The retirees "are pampered." There are special toys. Fresh fish in unlimited quantities. And "volunteers blow bubbles to break the boredom." Some of the penguins pair off with their fellow geezers. Others stay solo. 

In the wild, and even in the other island at the Aquarium where the younger penguins spend their days, weak older penguins can be set upon by the younger crowd, kicked out of the colony. But here on geriatric island:

[Luzietti] says they get better health care than most people. There are vet teams, an ICU, and an operating room. An ophthalmologist and an acupuncturist come as needed. They don’t have to worry about politics and co-pays.

And the staff and volunteers help the elder penguins with end-of-life issues.

“I think it’s great that they’re given an opportunity to live out their lives in comfort and not have to compete with some of the other younger birds,” [volunteer Mark Weber] says. 

...we don’t ever want them to suffer whatsoever,” Luzietti says. “And that goes from the moment that they’re an egg laid to the moment that they take their last breath.’

Damn! Isn't that what we all want?

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Image Source: Wikipedia

Using social media for anti-social purposes? Hmmmmm.....

As far as ICE raids go, Boston hasn't had it as bad as a lot of other places.

We have had our moments, of course.

There was Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University grad student from Turkey who was abducted by ICE thugs because she'd co-authored an editorial that appeared in the college newspaper. The op-ed decried what's going on in Gaza and urged Tufts to divest in Israeli companies and acknowledge that (in the authors' opinion) what's going on in Gaza is genocide. She was ill-treated and bounced around the country before finally being released. Last month, she was told that she can resume her research. 

In December, there was a swearing in ceremony at Faneuil Hall - the home of free speech, the Cradle of Liberty. This is the final step in which folks become naturalized citizens, and it's a big deal. New citizens often bring family and friends, and it's all quite celebratory. Until December, when those from countries on the latest government shitlist were pulled out of line and told they weren't going to be able to take the citizenship oath. These were folks who had gone through all the steps in the process, including passing the knowledge test that 99% of native-born citizens probably couldn't pass,  and going through a rigorous background check. Not clear when and if they're going to be officially sworn in and handed their citizenship papers, or whether the government has other plans for them. Not that it matters to the government. They got what they wanted out of it, which was the cruelty to people from elsewheres that aren't white and/or Christian.

In the Boston area, people have been dragged from their cars, dragged from their homes, dragged from Home Depot parking lots, and transported to wherever, but nothing at the scale we've seen elsewhere. 

But in November, there was an ICE raid on an Allston car wash that grabbed nine workers. Allston is a Boston neighborhood, heavily populated by students. One of those students, the president of the Boston University College Republicans, jumped right on social media to grab credit for the raid, claiming that he'd been after ICE for months to "detain these criminals." Shortly after the raid, Zachary Segal posted this on X. 

“This week they finally responded to my request,” Segal wrote. “As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I’ve seen how American jobs are being given away to those with no right to be here.” 

“Pump up the numbers!” he added. (Source: Boston Globe)

It goes without saying that many of those picked up "hold legal status and valid work permits, according to their attorney, who said they have no criminal record to warrant deportation." And it further goes without saying that there aren't exactly a ton of Americans lining up for these so-called American jobs. 

This is a pretty liberal town. BU is a pretty liberal school. 

So no surprise that Segal's tweet got a lot of blowback. (And some support from right wingers, just not enough to outweigh those who thought Segal was out of line.)

ICE says that, in conducting their raid, they weren't responding to Segal's complaints, they were doing it on their own. Because they could. And because it's a lot easier to round up folks who's only crime is being here than it is to take down the savage killers, drug dealers, and gang members that they maintain make up most of the "no papers" immigrant community.

There are no doubt some who will find that Zachary Segal is righteous rather than self-righteous, a young man of sterling character rathen than a weaselly little prick, someone they want to be around rather than avoid. After all, Stephen Miller managed to find a wife who's as odious as he is.

But I'm thinking that a lot of possible dates are going to google Zachary Segal and put him on their "must avoid" list. And that, while he sounds like a book-smart kid from a well-to-do family who will have at least a few job opportunities - there are plenty of fellow-travelers out there; maybe Elon Musk or Jared Kushner will hire him - there are going to be plenty of companies who'll take a pass. Companies where he might want to work. They'll decide that he's nasty, unlikable, a creep. Not worth interviewing because who wants to invite nasty creepiness into the workplace.

He's only a kid, but serves him right if this happens. 

As I said, he'll no doubt find a partner, no doubt find a job. Things have a way of working out.

But for a long while I'll bet he's going to be wondering whether the date who ghosted him did so because of his diming "criminals" who work hard wiping water off of windshields. He'll be wondering whether his resume didn't get a look at a workplace he felt he was ideal for because of his boasting tweets.

I could be wrong. If the bad guys stay in control for a longer time than I hope and pray, Zachary Segal may be on a glide path to personal and career success, and the opposition will be exiled to some gulag. 

But it's interesting to note that Rumeysa Ozturk's:

...research area of interest centers on children's and adolescents' positive development in a media-embedded, digitally connected global world. Her dissertation will investigate how adolescents and young adults use social media in prosocial ways. (Source: Tufts. Italics are mine.)

Maybe she'll be interviewing Zachary Segal as part of her research.  

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Image Source: Daily Free Press (BU)

Merriam-Webster would like a word

Dictionary.com got there first, posting their Word of the Year in late October. Guess they figured that, even with 2+ months left in the year, they'd seen enough. Their WOTY was six seven - alternatively 67, which is not technically a word - and which, thanks to my having no contact whatsoever with middle-

schooolers, I'd never even heard. 

Judiciously, to make sure that no latecomer word snuck in and went viral, Merriam-Webster waited until mid-December to announce their pick, which was "slop."

We define slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again.

The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats. People found it annoying, and people ate it up.

It goes without saying that when it comes to slop in particular, and AI in general, I'm team annoyed. And a bit afraid. And, as we used to say back in the day, grossed out. 

I've managed to turn off AI search on my laptop, so I don't see those little search summaries that often provide "information" that's just plain wrong. Wait! That celebrity wasn't born in Boston; he's from Worcester. Hold on, that restaurant has been closed for three years. Come again, that medical advice you're doling out contradicts itself.

Admittedly I do sometimes chuckle a bit at the AI videos. And the crazy AI "mistake" memes. But I'd rather do without the occasional chuckle and do away with slop entirely.

(Don't get me going on AI Assistant asking me whether I want a summary of a "long document" that's all of 11 pages long, god help us. A rant for another day...)

Anyway, I'm good with slop as the Word of the Year. 

The runners up were:

Gerrymander, which was named for a long-ago Massachusetts governor (also a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison's VP) who tried to create voting districts that favored his party. The current meaning of the word gerrymander is, I believe, "an election district creation tactic that is okie dokie if done to favor Republican candidates, and unconstitutional if done to favor Democrats." Or something. 

Touch grass is something we could all do with a little more of. Turn off the noise, turn off the slop. Take a walk, step in a puddle, talk to someone in real life. I'm all for it!

Performative anything “made or done for show (as to bolster one's own image or make a positive impression on others)” is somethig we could all do with a lot less of. In 2026, here's to more doing and less performativing. 

Tariff also made the short list. If only the president owned an economics text or - how about this - a dictionary. Then he could look up the meaning. Ain't gonna happen, but nonetheless...

Six seven was another short-lister for Merriam-Webster. As kids used to say before they came up with six seven: WHAT EVER.

Conclave is a word that needs no introduction to someone steepedin Catholicism, let alone anyone who saw the 2024 movie of that name, which I much enjoyed, right down to the LOL ending. But with the death of Pope Francis, interest in conclaving heightened. (Side note: he may not be my full-to-the-brim cup of tea, but I'm really liking Pope Leo.)

And - ta-da - Lake Char­gog­ga­gogg­man­chaug­ga­gogg­chau­bu­na­gun­ga­maugg which got a lot of lookups this past summer when a 5-foot-long water monitor lizard escaped from captivity in a home not far from Webster Lake, also known as
Lake Char­gog­ga­gogg­man­chaug­ga­gogg­chau­bu­na­gun­ga­maugg. Since this body of water is located in Worcester County, every local kid tried to recite this one from memory at some point in their childhoood. I never knew anyone that got much past the "manchauggagogg" part. Mostly this made the list thanks to the lake's alt name, Webster.

The monitor lizard, btw, wasn't found in Lake Charg... He was apprehended on land in nearby Connecticut. 

And, while the dictionary's named after its founder, Noah Webster, the Lake is named after statesman Daniel Webster.

Anyway, Merriam-Webster has now spoken. Slop it is.

Happy New Year! (Happy New Year?)

I'm glad to see the last of 2025, a tough year in so very many ways. 

Most of those ways, of course, have been around our having to witness the grotesque deterioration of our country. Nothing that, if you're reading Pink Slip, you're not fully aware of. And not worth it to count the many ways in which we've deteriorated. Let's just say the deterioration touches on just about everything. 

At least we're still allowed to hit the streets in protest. But for how long? I have my whiteboard protest sign ready to go. Who knows what many new messages, how many more demonstrations, will be involved. 

I don't see it happening right away, but may the New Year bring better. Lots better. 

My personal hopes for 2026 are few.

Foremost, good health to all whom I hold dear. It's true that, without your health, you got ain't got much. Maybe even nothing.

I hope to get some writing done. (I've rejoined the Writers Room of Boston, where there's nothing to do but write.) 

I hope to get some travel in. Tucson to see my sister Kath. Dallas to see my friend Joyce. Ireland over July 4th, because I really don't want to be here to see the abomination that occupies to fool's gold-ridden Oval Office preen around, celebrating himself while he daily jeopardizes America's position as a functioning democracy. Sigh...

I hope to lose 10 pounds, but that's unlikely, given that chocolate is my stress go-to. And, given the current regime, Im BIG stressed.

Happy New Year, anyway!

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Image Source: Vecteezy