Pink Slip

Kodachrome: True colors are fading (or maybe just showing).

2012-01-27T03:56:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was in the car with my niece Molly, driving near her old grammar school.

“Oh, no,” she gasped.

The ice cream shop where she and her friends had hung out after school during seventh and eighth grade had shuttered.

Molly’s in ninth grade, so this hanging out was just last year.

Welcome to the wonderful world of grown ups, honey, where the places, things, and - oh, yeah – people we remember are so often, as we get older, gone, baby, gone. Alive only in our memories, or in snapshots, if we’d bothered to take them.

At my age, there’s no end to objects in the rear view mirror, often farther away than they appear. My childhood Friendly’s has closed. Don’t even ask about the stores of my childhood – I’m even (almost) capable of nostalgia for Zayre’s tawdry merchandise and garish red and yellow bags. Filene’s Basement breathed its last right around Christmas. And let’s not get started on the products of the past – although many of them seem to take on new lives in the pages of the Vermont Country Store catalog. (I believe you can still set your hair with Spoolies and Dippity Do, if you so desire. And dry it with a bouffant-bubble hair dryer.)

And now, it seems, a brand far more ubiquitous and venerable than Dippity Do may have breathed its last.

Eastman Kodak – which once held a near monopoly on the US amateur photography business - has filed for bankruptcy.

Although I am not one myself, I come from a family (at least on my mother’s side) of picture-takers. And until my father came home one Christmas with a Polaroid, like everyone else’s, ours was a Kodak family.

At first, my mother’s family had pictures taken: stiff family portraits to send back to the Old Country.

Then my grandfather made a wonderful Amerikan purchase which, I would bet anything, was an early version of a Kodak Brownie.

The Wolfs took pictures of everything and everyone.

My sister Trish may still have the carton full of 1930's and 40’s black and white snapshots of my grandparents and their friends (unrecognizable to us), and of my mother and her sibs.

And so, we get to see my mother grow from the stiff immigrant in the studio portrait, to the skinny big sis, to the bookish high school nerd with glasses, to the (almost glamour puss) young woman in her twenties who fell hard for the Irischer sailor boy from Worcester, Mass.

We have far fewer pictures of my father to trace his progression – until he met the Wolfs and became a regular photographic subject and picture taker, himself.

There is the large-group family picture of the children and grandchildren on Matthew and Bridget Trainor, my father an infant in my grandmother’s lap, face blurred because he turned his head. Then there’s nothing until his high school graduation picture.

Or so we thought until my cousin Barbara unearthed a picture of my father, age 14 or so, the shortest and scrawniest member of the South High football team of 1926.

At first, I couldn’t find him in the picture. And then, there he was.

How could I not recognize him?

Although they don’t look at all like each other, each of my brothers is the spit and image of my father.

(Perhaps because he so seldom posed for pictures as a child, my father never got into the habit of looking into the camera and saying “cheese.” In most of the pictures we have of him, if my father is pictured with someone else – my mother, one of us kids – he is, quite winningly, looking (and smiling) at us.)

As for the Rogers’ family, the camera that recorded our mostly informal goings and comings was a Kodak Brownie, a little bakelite camera that took black and white pictures, only.

Yes, there were pictures taken of Baptisms and Holy Communions, but most were us just hanging around, Kodak moments waiting to happen. The neighbor kids standing around a tree that Hurricane Irene toppled in 1959. Or the Rogers and Dineen kids, along with our kid Aunt Kay, posed in front of the stone wishing well at my grandmother Wolf’s lake house. My friend Susan and I – age 7 – horsing around in the backyard in diapers, sucking our thumbs, pretending we were babies.

Pictures came back from the drugstore in envelopes emblazoned with the yellow and red Kodak logo – a far more famous use of this color scheme than the Zayre’s bags. The pictures often had scalloped edges, and most had a date stamp on the bottom (May 55). You also got back a set of negatives, which came in strips, that you used if you wanted to make copies.

For occasions that warranted color film, we borrowed the McGinns’ more updated Kodak camera.

And, although my mother hung on to that Brownie, some where along the line, the family broke down and bought a Kodak Instamatic, which took pictures in color.

But our big switch was to the Polaroid, which captured the family’s imagination for a couple of years, even though no one ever figured out how to consistently take pictures that weren’t blurry around the edges.

Polaroid. Another great brand of my childhood.

Perhaps, like Polaroid, Kodak will emerge from bankruptcy with something (their name, at minimum) intact. Perhaps, like Polaroid, Kodak will name someone like Lady Gaga as their creative director.

Perhaps the brand will just fade away entirely, a victim of its own failure to embrace the wave of technology that turned into a tsunami.

Kodak won’t be the first – hey, I worked for Wang Labs when they were still clinging to the mini-computer – and they won’t be the last. All part of the creative destruction of capitalism. And isn’t it better to be able to take a picture, anytime/anywhere, on your smartphone? And just get Snapfish to print them off for you? No muss, no fuss, no negatives.

So why is the Kodak bankruptcy such a bummer?

De(bed)bugging: help is on the way.

2012-01-26T03:28:00.000-04:00

Long time Pink Slip readers know that I have been on the bed bug case for a good long while. My first post was way back in 2008, and I’ve been at it since, with subsequent posts on bed bug tracking dogs, and even a public service announcement penned after my husband and I got nipped by the pesky pests on a September 2010 trip to NYC. For months, we lived in a State of Fear that we had brought one back with us – a pregnant one, of course – and infested our condo. Hundreds of dollars (and a full two months) later – new pillows, bedbug proof pillow cases and mattress cover, a bed bug detector, cedar spray – we finally got a good night’s sleep.

Still, I know that some in my family persist in their belief that I remain obsessed with bed bugs.

Thus, my Christmas gift this year from my wonderfully good-humored niece Molly was a stuffed bed bug, pictured here, posed on my otherwise bed bug free duvet cover.

While I wholeheartedly deny that I am obsessed with bed bugs - absurd, that – I will concede that I keep up with the latest bb news with admittedly keen interest. Recognizing this, my brother-in-law Rick e-mailed me when he saw an article in a recent Economist that help may be on its long overdue way.

At first, the article painted a grim picture about the “vampiric” little buggers that can “drink seven times their own weight in blood in a night”, that continue to plague hoteliers (and flat-dwellers) in New York City, and that are growing concern to hotel staff (and guests) elsewhere. But while everyone is looking for bed bugs – and I can sympathize and empathize with those on the hunt – they’re difficult to find:

Even trained pest-control inspectors can miss them. What is needed is a way to flush them into the open. And James Logan, Emma Weeks and their colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Rothamsted Research think they have one: a bed-bug trap baited with something the bugs find irresistible—the smell of their own droppings.

I’ll all for whatever works, and:

The reason the bugs are attracted to this smell is that they use it to navigate back to their hidey-holes after a night of feeding.

Having discovered that shit happens to be a good way to woo bed bugs, Dr. Logan has designed a trap. Since the team is understandably hoping to cash in on their idea, the details are scant. But it sounds like it might be like those mouse-traps with the glue pan. I once trapped a kitchen mouse with one of these, and I have to say that, once I found the little critter squirming around trying to free itself, I wish I’d chosen the trickier but quicker old-fashion spring the trap and break its neck approach. I assure you that one does not feel good putting a glue-stuck mouse in a couple of plastic bags and crushing it underfoot.

Trapping bed bugs in glue I would feel less guilty about. They’re only around today because we had to protect the environment by banning DDT. They’re the collateral damage of this ban. To hell with them.

I hope I never need to use one of their traps, but I am thrilled that the London researchers are doing something to de-bug the world.

‘Til death do us party-hearty!

2012-01-25T04:22:00.000-04:00

It’s easy to think that the funeral business will always be with us.

After all, everyone dies. And those left behind, if nothing else, have to figure out what to do with the body. What with the Baby Boomers about to start their stroll through the lonely valley, you’d think that the demand forecast would be pretty darned good. Especially when you consider that the first of what promises to be many Me Generations won’t want to go out in a boring pine box while the organist plays the impersonal Ave Maria, I would assume that there’d be a lot of lucrative customization work out there.

Still, with folks ordering bargain-price casket from Walmart, funeral directors are on the lookout for new ways to make a buck. Last year, here in the Commonwealth, they were looking to serve food at funeral parlors. (See Wake Me When The Coffee’s Perking.)

And for a lot of funeral homes – 8.3% of the National Funeral Directors Association respondents in a 2010 survey – non-funeral events are now part of their suite of offerings, with funeral parlors sometimes capitalizing on the impact that the down economy has had on function halls that don’t serve an “anchor function,” such as funerals. So they’re now offering a venue for birthday parties. Graduations. Weddings.

Why not?

Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery in Memphis is one of those that does weddings. You can’t find the info directly on the home page, competing side-by-side with cremation info. But it can be found under About, where you learn that:

Weddings play an integral part in the life of Memorial Park. Each year, couples take advantage of our picturesque grounds and exchange their vows here.

I like that “life of the Memorial Park.”

Ceremonies are permitted (free of charge) at the Crystal Shrine Grotto, Rose Garden, God's Garden, Cave of Machpelah, or Front Fountain. Memorial Park is glad to provide couples a beautiful setting to tie the knot and wishes them well!

I’m glad that the folks at Memorial wish the newlyweds well. Wonder how the bereaved feel about seeing folks posing for wedding party pictures at the Cave of Machpelah while they’re grieving at the Crystal Shrine Grotto. Ah, well. Life belongs to the living. Or so I’ve heard.

For me, I wouldn’t want to, say, attend a wedding at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Leicester, Mass. It’s not all that picturesque. Plus it was built on top of an underground spring, and it’s pretty darned soggy.

But Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge? The grand-daddy of all cemeteries as park? It’s pretty darned beautiful there.

Mt. Auburn, of course, would just be the venue for the wedding ceremony. And they’re just a cemetery, not a funeral home. But some funeral parlors do offer the full package – reception and all.

Across the USA, funeral homes are building and marketing such centers as not just a place to mourn the dead but as sites for events celebrating the living, including weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, holiday parties and proms.

The lure? It is often less expensive; there is greater availability; and the settings — inside and outside — can be nothing short of wedding-picture perfect. (Source: USA Today.)

In a circle of life kind of way, this all makes perfect sense.

Your funeral may be the big kahuna, but it’s just one event in the entire passel of events that make up a life. And if you lived your life in the same place, it’d be easy to see how a lot of important events could end up taking place under the same roof, which would make a funeral even more of the stroll down memory lane than it’s going to be anyway.

There’s where we posed for prom pictures, the night we first did “it.”

I’m so glad that we had our wedding next to the family plot. It really made me feel like Grandma and Grandpa were with us.

Here’s where we had little Billy’s fifth birthday party, the one where the pony nipped that obnoxious Carlson kid in the butt.

I never liked your mother, and I’ll be dipped if I clean that bird crap off her headstone.

Ah, our 25th anniversary “do”, when you wrenched your back doing the limbo.

Yep, expanding the functions that a funeral parlor can host makes perfect sense. I guess all you need is separate entrances so that the puking prom kids don’t run into the mourners. And that the Chucky Cheese attractions that will draw in the kiddo birthday parties are out of the sightlines of the wake attenders. Other than that, why not offer cradle, or at least marital bed, to grave services?

It does seem to give new meaning to ‘til death do us part,’ though, doesn’t it?

And speaking of which, in some jurisdictions it’s apparently possible to combine the wedding and the funeral.

In Thailand, as the Huffington Post reports, a man “married” his girl friend of 10 years, during her funeral. She was killed in an accident, and he felt guilty about having put off the wedding she so wanted.

Maybe the Dixie Cups will release Going to the Chapel:

Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married.
Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get buried,
Going to the chapel to get married and buried,
Going to the chapel of love.

Oh, what a world we live in.

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You really start to feel old when your much younger sister hands you a copy of her AARP Bulletin with an article of interest in it. Yikes. A tip of the bridal veil – or a lift of the shroud - to my sister Trish.

Meanwhile, by some macabre – given today’s topic - coincidence, today is the 41st anniversary of my father’s death. Still miss you, Dad. Wish you were here…

O Captain, my Captain. “Get back on board, for [expletive] sake!”

2012-01-24T04:21:00.000-04:00

Along with the “routine” plane crash and the terrorist on board, the sinking ship has got to be one of the top travel fears. Lusitania. Titanic. Poseidon Adventure. Andrea Doria. And all those crowded ferries that seem to meet with mishap with some regularity. Fact or fiction, we’ve seen the movie, read the book, caught it on the evening news often enough to suspect it could happen.

Still, cruising in calm waters off the Italian coast, just off shore, doesn’t sound like the recipe for disaster. But for those on the Costa Concordia, it proved just that.

If not for the horrors the survivors experienced; the grief of those who lost friends and family; the rising death toll (including, heartbreakingly, the death of a 5 year old girl whose father was also killed), and the presumed terror-filled last moments the victims had; and the potential for environmental havoc if the fuel leaks out – and those are some pretty big “if nots” – this event would seem almost ludicrous: the foundering ship in what looked to be within dog-paddling distance of safety.

And, of course, there’s the hapless and feckless captain, Francesco Schettino, allegedly running the ship aground while attempting to “buzz” a friend on shore; wining and dining at the time of the crash with a comely blonde less than half his age; claiming that he hadn’t abandoned his ship but had, rather, fallen into a lifeboat while supervising the rescue of his passengers. Not to mention his man-tan and aging Lothario looks. Straight out of a casting call for opera buffa, with Schettino counterbalanced by the far nobler coast guard captain who ordered him back on his ship, telling him “Vada a bordo, cazzo”. (Which I’ve seen variously translated as “get back on board, for fuck’s sake,” and “get back on board, you prick.”)

Francesco Schettino is being justifiably vilified – what was he thinking heading off course in rocky waters, endangering his ship and all those lives on it? – and may well face criminal charges for negligent manslaughter.

His decision to play fast and loose, his irresponsible ac,t was a terrible dereliction of his duty. But abandoning ship, trying to save his own skin, is not a criminal act, as far as I know. Sure, it’s pretty heinous and cowardly, but if lack of courage, failure of nerve, and disgrace under pressure were crimes, the prison population would be orders of magnitude greater than it is now.

No. What Schettino’s “slip” into the lifeboat tells me is that he was in a job that he had no business being in. Bad career choice, wrong horse for the course.

Because some jobs do require physical courage, calm in the face of danger, clear thinking amid chaos. And captaining a ship has got to be one of them.

I know. You may think you’ve got “it”, but you never get to find out, because nothing bad ever happens. You get through your career with no opportunity to show your mettle.

Still, you would think that before choosing a career in which you might find yourself in life and death situations, in which you would have responsibility for the survival of others, you might do a bit of “know thyself'”-ing and figure out if you were up to it.

If you’re not, there are plenty of other careers open to you.

Most of us, of course, don’t have to make life and death decisions at work. Our challenges are more pedestrian: who to put on the lay-off list, what projects to cancel, putting an under-performer on notice, standing up to a bullying boss, owning up to a mistake you’ve made, pointing out a problem that everyone else seems to be ignoring. Sure, if takes courage, but it’s different when it’s livelihoods, not lives at risk. And when my life’s on the line, I want the person in charge to be Sully Sullenberger (to change transportation modes), rather than Francesco Schettino.

Maybe Schettino never thought things through. Maybe he decided to become a cruise ship captain after watching dubbed episodes of The Love Boat. Maybe he thought that it would be all Captain Stubing conferring with Gopher about whether Julie was falling too hard for the dashing young man in cabin 12C. Maybe he really didn’t get what he was signing up for.

Yes, you get the snappy white uniform, and a pretty good salary. You get to give the orders, and have people defer to you. And in return you get to be the one responsible, the one in charge of the tough choices, when things go awry.

However Schettino chose his path, it doesn’t appear that he had much self-awareness, leading him to make a pretty darned poor career choice. One that has had dire implications for many, many people.

Although I did read that Italian law does require a captain to stay with his ship*, in most jurisdictions jumping ship doesn’t make Francisco Schettino a criminal. It just makes him a person who was in the wrong job. That poor career choice has now been rectified: it’s doubtful he’ll be commanding anything more than a personal floatation device anytime soon.

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* Huffington Post:

Maritime experts said the tradition of a captain standing by his ship isn't established in international maritime law. Some countries, like Italy, have included it in national laws.

Others respect it as "an unwritten rule or law of the sea," said Capt. Bill Wright, senior vice president of Marine Operations for the Royal Caribbean International cruise line.

Surrendering your hamsters

2012-01-23T03:02:00.000-04:00

I was going to start the week with a post about hedge fund managers. Or more dubious technology from CES. Or a possible cure for the bedbug epidemic. A new theme park in France. But then I saw the article about the poor man in Lawrence, Massachusetts who:

…turned over 94 hamsters to a local animal shelter, telling officials he was running out of room in his apartment. (Source: Boston.com.)

The man had been keeping hamsters for pets for about 5 years, so my first thought was, only94? Surely, with sexual maturity reached at a couple of months, a gestation period of a few weeks, and litter sizes that can run up to 18, a number in the billions might not have been unimaginable over the course of 5 years.

But what do I know from hamsters?

The answer: nothing, other than having vivid and fond childhood memories of the book , Hamid of Aleppo. I was so taken with Hamid that I copied most of the illustrations using tracing paper and had a collection – with some sort of feeble story line - that I called “My Hamid.”

Fortunately,when I wanted to know more about hamsters, there was Jimmy Wales to the rescue! From Wikipedia, I learned that hamsters are solitary little folks, and when housed with a fellow hamster often fight to the death. Plus hamster mothers have been known to cannibalize a few tasty morsels from their large litters. So this would keep something of a lid on exponential rodent begatting.

While I have no hamster experience, I have some second-hand gerbil history. (No, not that.)

For a number of years, my husband and I lived in an apartment in the home of a family that had two small kids, with whom we became very close. This was quite some time ago – those two small kids are now 34 and 30 – but I remember how excited Soph and Sam were when their father brought home what he was told were two male gerbils. The kids named them David and Scamp.

It is, apparently, not all that easy to tell the difference between a boy gerbil and a girl gerbil. No blue for boys, no pink for girls. Within a few days, when a dozen or so little hairless thing-ies appeared in the cage, it was clear that either David or Scamp was a female of the species.

We paid a call on the new parents, and I asked which one was David and which one was Scamp.

Before the words were out of my mouth, gerbil number one – paying no attention to the nicety of a bit of a post-partum lay-off – was mounting gerbil number two’s back.

Never mind, I told the kids. I think I figured it out.

Anyway, whether through gerbil parent intervention of the cannibalistic order, or through human parent intervention of the flush it down the toilet variety, the baby gerbils were soon gone from the cage. As I recall, Scamp and David didn’t last much longer, either.

They were, however, quite cute.

They were also the first in a string of pet mishaps in this family: Persephone, the dog who died; Chico Marx, the bird who died.

Definitely bad pet karma going on downstairs.

As for the Lawrence hamsters, they were:

… well cared for kept in aquariums, buckets and Tupperware containers (Source: Lawrence Eagle Tribune.)

The hamster-meister just got overwhelmed, and went to a local MSPCA shelter for small animals and asked it they could take his furry friends out of their Tupperware containers and off of his hands. The surrendered hamsters will be put up for adoption. Originally, the man was going to keep a couple, then decided to let the entire lot go.

In addition to reclaiming his home, I’m guessing he’ll be in the money now. Even though they’re little mouths to feed, it can’t be cheap when there are 94 of them. And I’m guessing the house will smell a bit better, once the weather gets warm enough to crack open a few windows.

Despite the benefits of de-hamstering your life, I can’t help but thinking: this poor man!

All he wanted 5 years back was a little something to keep him company, a little someone to care for. The solitary hamster that he adopted turned out to be, as the Irish might have it, up the pole. So one hamster just naturally led to another.

I kind of wish he’d kept a few, but it might have been just too hard to pick his favorites. Or maybe he just needed to make a clean break.

Whatever the case, let’s hear it for a man who knew his limits, and let’s hope all those hamsters find good new homes.

Wi.Spi. Who do you spy?

2012-01-20T04:06:00.000-04:00

I’m not a gadget-y type of person. I don’t have to possess the leading edge on anything. I would get bored with Siri after asking the second question. I don’t lull myself to sleep counting small electronic devices. I am not, in short, consumed by electronics.

Nonetheless, I am always somewhat intrigued by what happens in Vegas during the annual Consumer Electronics Show, held last week.

Most of it, of course, I would be just as happy if it stayed in Vegas. (Don’t like it. Don’t love it. Get way too much of it.)

Still, I did glance through a report on some of the goodies from this year’s show on Boston.com, and for me the biggest oh-no is the Wi.Spi helicopter, a remote-controlled toy that one can operate with their iPhone or Android device. Us Blackberry bores have to be content with checking e-mail and looking at tiny versions of PowerPoint slides. We don’t get to do cool stuff like spy on our neighbors with a remote-controlled helicopter that also does video surveillance. (Wi.Spi will be commercially available in time for next Christmas, at the low-low price of $120.)

Not that I am completely averse to spying. I enjoy a good eavesdrop now and then. We used to have neighbors who got into tremendously colorful, high decibel verbal spats that carried right through their doors. I will confess that a couple of times I stood in the hall, spending a few seconds more than was absolutely necessary to lock the door behind me so that I could catch a few segments of their squabbles. This duo – who presented themselves as ultra-proper preppy (him) and sweetness and light (her) – went at it about her ignorance about things financial; his Internet porn habit; her useless, lay-about son. (Before this couple had moved into our building, my husband and I had actually overheard them viciously (but in a conversational tone) bickering about money in our favorite neighborhood restaurant. They were at the next table, and when they had their public face on while talking to their waiter, we learned a bit about where they were moving from, what he did for a living, etc. A few weeks later, they showed up in our building, and I recognized them from the restaurant.)

Not that I seek out opportunities, but an occasional good ED* – which is what I say, sotto voce, when I want my husband to clam up when we’re out – is enjoyable, and, in retrospect, is something I’ve always done. Which is how I got the nickname, from my father, of “radar-ears.”

Hey, I couldn’t help it if, in our pokey little house, my bedroom was right next to the living room.

It’s not that my parents had all that many interesting conversations, but the odd tid-bit would come up every once in a while.

Hell, it’s one of the best ways for kids to start piecing together the Mysterious and Remote World of Adults. If you don’t want your kids to listen in on you, don’t have kids.

But overhearing is one thing; out-and-out spying is another.

A toy that does video surveillance?

What a terrible (albeit inevitable) idea.

One thing to catch someone with their voice raised. If you don’t want to be overheard, speak softly. Close the door, shut the windows. Learn Ameslan. Caveat speaker.

Quite another thing to catch someone, metaphorically or otherwise, with their pants down when they could and should have the expectation of privacy.

I found a bit more about the Wi.Spi on Mother Nature Network, where I read that,

Virtual pilots and drivers [there’s also a video surveillance car] can watch the video streaming live and also record it for upload to YouTube and other sites.

Such fun…

One of the first commandments of marketing is Know Thy Customer, and Ian Chisholm, marketing director of Interactive Toy (makers of Wi.Spi), characterizes his as “mature wallet, immature mentality.”

Chisholm believes that “people might use them to spy on people in the neighboring cubicles at work.”

One more reason to be happy-dappy that I know longer work full-time. (Hey, I saw your grouchy boss on YouTube trying to swat a helicopter out of her office with a silk scarf.)

But it does give me a swell product idea.

How about making something for those of us who value our privacy and don’t want to be surveilled by folks with “mature wallet; immature mentality.” I’m thinking a toy RPG so we can shoot the toy video surveillance helicopter down.

Are you listening, Interactive Toy?

Next year in Las Vegas!

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*That’s eavesdrop – not the other ED.

Serfin’ USA

2012-01-19T03:25:00.000-04:00

A couple of months back, there was an interesting article in The New Yorker on a growing industry: temporary personal assistants. (Not sure, but access to this content may require a subscription.)

One of the companies specializing in this is Boston’s own TaskRabbit – since expanded to cities on both coasts, as well as Chicago, and coming soon to South/Southwest – which has as its motto Do more. Live more. Be more. Not sure if that motto is for the taskers or the taskees, but I guess it works both ways.

Folks in need of jobs done – organizing their closets, prepping for a dinner party, getting their laundry done, dropping off donations – post their tasks, and TaskRabbits bid on the jobs. Once their bid is accepted, they’re off. All the grubby payment details are managed on line. No cash changes hands. Those “friendly TaskRabbits” are background checked, so it’s unlikely that, say, an ax murderer will show up to take down your Christmas tree. (Not apparent whether those who sign up to have tasks performed for them are similarly vetted, but I would hope so. Way too many Craig’s List killers out there…TaskPosters do have to use real, verified identities, but I guess there’s no way to weed out the Ted Bundy’s until they make their first strike.)

The New Yorker article didn’t focus on the boring, pedestrian requests that the task-masters set.

No “organize my closets” there.

One couple wanted their compost bucket cleaned out. (Which got done for $31. If I’ve got it right, TaskRabbit adds an approximate 15% service fee, paid by the poster.) Someone needed help retrieving a set of keys he’d dropped down a sewer. ($80) One TaskRabbit made $100 driving a truckload of burning necessities from San Bruno to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. I would have driven off the road laughing if I knew I was transporting “A big silver tricycle, a batch of Jester clothes and a large, tent-like dwelling called a yurt.”

One big baby TaskPoster stepped in dog crap and immediately smart-phoned a TaskRabbit request to have someone fetch a “new pair of navy blue Toms shoes from Nordstrom’s.” ($17.) Okay, I get that Toms are soft shoes, so it’s not as easy as cleaning off leather. Still, you’d think a grownup could cope with a little bit of dog crap, wouldn’t you?

Thousands of unemployed or underemployed workers have parlayed one-off job requests into part- or full-time work. The gigs are especially popular with stay-at-home moms, retirees and students. Workers choose their jobs and negotiate their own rates.

Here’s what the friendly TaskRabbits demo looks like:

The sewer-fisher wasn’t a TaskRabbit, by the way. She was a “fulfiller” for Zaarly, “an online marketplace for micro-labor and goods based in San Francisco”, which has among its investors both Kleiner Perkins and Ashton Kutcher. (Another of the Zaarly projects: someone “who hired someone to buy a Michael Jackson-themed dog costume for a puppy.” Now there is a niche request.)

TaskRabbit and Zaarly are, I guess, the face of the new economy, in which “micro-laborers” make or augment their living doing the little things that someone else can afford to have done for them. The work world is starkly breaking down to TaskRabbits and TaskPosters.

Which did get me thinking about what tasks I would be willing to take care of as a TaskRabbit. Which didn’t last long: I quickly reached the conclusion that, in the grand scheme of things, I would much prefer being a doee to a doer. (We already have a couple who comes in every two weeks and does cleaning for us, so I’ve already pretty much declared where I fall.)

As for tasks I would absolutely consider having a TaskRabbit take care of for me:

Help me get the Christmas tree in the stand. An annual moment of tension, although somewhat diminished once I started getting the more manageable 6’ tree, as opposed to one that was 7’-plus.
Run bags of clothing over to St. Francis House. Mostly I’m pretty good about this, but sometimes I have a lot of stuff from my sisters, and it can just sit there while I figure out whether I can stuff it all in my shopping cart and get it over there in one trip. (Confession: this happens only after I have gone through the bags and removed the stuff that was obviously meant for me.)
Install new drapes in the bedroom and the den. Which I will get around to once I get around to having the bedroom and den painted. Which may or may not be this year, even though it is on my New Year’s resolution list for the nth time. Anyway, I so do not want to break my neck trying to get this job done. Whenever I get around to ~~doing it~~ getting it done.
Get rid of the ancient and colossal air conditioner that’s been sitting in the den closet, taking up precious storage space, since we moved into our condo over 20 years ago. Where we have central air, and where we have never used, and will never use, this behemoth.

Ah, yes, I do see TaskRabbit-ry in my future.

But I am a bit unsettled by the thought that, increasingly, these are what the jobs “out there” are going to be like: menial things – like taking care of someone who stepped in dog crap – that just cannot be outsourced to India or the Philippines. And the TaskRabbits won’t all be stay-at-home moms and male retirees.

It’ll be just like the good old days: you’ve got your lords; you’ve got your vassals; and you’ve got your serfs.

I guess I’m a vassal, but I can’t shake the notion that Serfin’ USA is not going to be such a great place to live.

Worst. Excuse. Ever.

2012-01-18T03:15:00.000-04:00

I was never one for mental health days. Or physical health days. Extraordinarily fortunate – knock on wood and formica – when it comes to health, I had few sick days during my full-time career. I did take one mental health day when I worked at Wang – if ever there were an organization that could drive the most mental-health-day-averse employee to call in sick – I ended up feeling so guilty about it that I spent the day in bed feeling miserable.

I did work with some who on occasion abused the system – the every-other-Monday brigade; the Opening Day crew; the I’m sulking about something that happened at work folks. But nothing that can quite compare with the New York City school employee – “a parent coordinator at the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management” – who scammed an extra week off for her vacation to Costa Rica by submitting a fake death certificate for one of her children. (Source: The New York Daily News)

[As an aside here, what are the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management’s sports teams called? The concierges? The bell captains? The wait-persons? No use asking what the school colors are. Gotta be tuxedo black and linen white.]

Needless to say, that parent coordinator, one Joan Bartlett, is no longer doing any $37K/year parent coordinating.

Her con was fairly elaborate and involved one daughter calling the school to report that her sister had had a heart attack in Costa Rica, and another one making a later call to say that her sister had died, and that the grieving mommy dearest was part of a delegation heading to Costa Rica for the funeral. The capper was sending in a forged death certificate, a “document [which] is required if a city school employee asks for bereavement days.”

Unfortunately for Barnett, the death certificate was done pretty sloppily. A school official followed up with the Costa Rican government, which reported that the number on the death certificate corresponded to that of a long-dead man. Further investigation unearthed (exhumed?) the fact that Barnett had gotten her tickets well before her poor, dear daughter was supposed to have slipped the surly bonds of earth.

Barnett tried to tough it out by sending in another, slightly less shoddy, fake death certificate, but ended up pleading guilty “to a misdemeanor over the forgery.”

Maybe it’s just me, but faking up a story about your own kid’s death seems about as low as you can go. (I guess it could have been worse: she could have claimed that the dog ate her daughter’s death certificate.)

Now that Barnett’s lost her job – and, thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, is no longer all that employable – wonder if those piña coladas, palm trees, and lolling on the beach were worth it.

Yes, ICANN invent some new gTLDs.

2012-01-17T03:40:00.000-04:00

When I saw the ad in The Economist for a new president/CEO, the organization’s deliciously Huxley-ian name - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – just struck a big, fat chord in me. I can almost here the robotic voice – like the one that tells you to stand to the right on an airport moving sidewalk – welcoming you as you enter the lobby.

Of course, this job would be much more fun in if you actually got to assign names to people. (Numbers, I wouldn’t be so keen on assigning. Way too impersonal.) But this is actually about taking care of the Internet’s addressing system, so that everything can point us information seekers to the right places in a nice and orderly fashion. Which, believe it or not, is no small potatoes, or, in domainish-speak: nosmall.pot.

Or it would be if there actually were a generic Top-Level Domain .pot.

Which I suppose there could be, if the Aroostook County Potato Growers, or the folks a NORML, wanted to pay the $185K evaluation fee to ICANN to see if .pot will fly. And if that was a bit steep, there are grants available for poor and worthy entities that want to add to the list as part of ICANN’s new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) program.

As of now, there are only a couple dozen of them: .com, .net, .biz, .edu, .gov, .mil, .xxx…

But that will change, as ICANN is introducing a New gTLD program to open up the world of, well, generic top-level domains. This is a big deal, given that “TLDs can now, for the first time, include non-Latin languages, such as Cyrillic, Chinese, or Arabic.” (Source: PCMag.)

Although they don’t have to be three-characters long, I personally like this convention, so I stuck with it when I came up with my list:

.wot – Not that we all don’t know intuitively that, say, rummaging around The New York Post or The Daily Mail isn’t going to be a colossal waste of time. Still, if time-wasting domains were so registered, at least we would be completely forewarned. And someone would come up with a clever little app to block them out.
.duh – While this sounds like it might be negative, I actually see this domain being reserved for fact-checking sites like Snopes, which I immediately hop on to whenever I get a crazy mass e-mail containing something that is so duh-obviously not the truth.
.lol – Used for web sites containing clips from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
.lie – Websites belonging to politicians, pundits, and truth-stretching members of the media would be required to use this top level domain until they had six-months worth of postings cleared by a .duh site. Backsliders would be permanently assigned a .lie extension, or perhaps even a longer one: .llpof. (That would be liar, liar, pants on fire.)
.wtf – To be used by tabloids that specialize in real fake stories, such as “Famed Psychic’s Head Explodes”, and real, should be fake stores about the likes of OctoMom and the Kardashians. (Alternative designation for the Kardashians: .tmi .)
.kkk – Perhaps the KKK would object, but this would actually make a nifty TLD for extremist organizations, wouldn’t it?
.doh – For sites devoted to all things Simpson.
.moe – For use by anyone named Maureen and, I guess, for aficionados of Moe Howard and The Three Stooges. Although there would likely be enough demand for them to have their own: .nnn (nyuck, nyuck, nyuck).
.dog – Years ago, when the Internet was a pup, New Yorker cartoonist Peter Steiner came up with the now-classic “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” With the explosion of social media and TMI, this truism has arguably been reversed, and, these days, everybody does know if you’re a dog. Whether you are or not. Still, I don’t see why pooches can’t have their own New gTLD. I suppose that would open us up to .cat, as well. But, fair is fair. On the Internet, no one knows whether you’re a cat, either.

Anyway, I won’t be applying for the job as President/CEO of ICANN. Or even submitting one of my cool ideas. There’s a lot of other things I could do with $185K. (Maybe I could apply for one of those grants?) Still, I think that some of these have legs.

Sorry, cupcake. You’re no longer the Hostess with the mostest.

2012-01-16T03:30:00.000-04:00

I saw an article in The NY Times Deal Book the other day on Hostess – the cupcake folks – filing for bankruptcy. Well, my first thought was ‘didn’t I blog about this one a while back?’ And, indeed, I did – in September 2008 (!) when I was bemoaning the possible loss of Devil Dogs, and memorializing my relationship with Wonder Bread, Sno-Balls, and Twinkies.

Well, Hostess – which, last bankruptcy around was called Interstate but has now reverted to the far more evocative name of Hostess – emerged from that September 2008 bankruptcy, only to be refiling now. Mostly, it seems, to shake off the dough they owe to the Bakery and Confectionary Union pension fund.

I’m sure that the machers advising the Hostess CEO here – Perella Weinberg (financial adviser) and Jones Day (legal) must be sleeping better at night knowing that they are helping show those greedy and rapacious union bakers a thing or two. Gee, just imagine what someone who worked, oh, 40 years on the line squirting goop into Twinkies must have been hauling down in pension payout. No wonder this great country is going down the (pastry) tubes, what with retired factory workers sucking us dry. Thugs! Weaklings! Chiselers! If they had any decency they’d be grateful to their betters – like the folks at Perella Weinberg and Jones Day – for the opportunity to work for below minimum wage and no benefits. And to do so for as long as they can frost the curlicue design on the patent-leather frosted top of a Hostess Cupcake. If they had one iota of patriotism, they’d be willing to die with their white cloth booties on.

In addition to untold pensioners, Hostess has 20,000 employees.

Maybe this new bankruptcy will bring them to their senses, to the realization that theirs is one cushy job.

I mean, standing around in a toasty warm baking facility that smells so marvelously sweet.

Now that I think of it, these bums should probably be paying Hostess for the privilege. Instead of a punch clock, each factory door could have a credit card swipe. I don’t think they should charge their workers all that much. And I do think they should occasionally give them a bag of rejects – bad curlicues on the cupcakes - to take home. Christmas bonus, nice treat for the kiddies, excellent gesture of managerial goodwill. Maybe even call it something like the “Let Them Eat Cupcake” program. Has a nice ring to it, no?

Wonder if they could get anything back from those retirees, no doubt sitting around in posh condos in Florida or Arizona. That’s when they’re not buzzing around in RV’s with a bumper-sticker that says “I’m spending my kids’ inheritance.” Not for much longer, Grandpop! Not if you worked for Hostess, cupcake!

Should I run this idea by the good folks at Perella Weinberg and Jones Day? Nah. They’re plenty smart. They’ve probably already thought of it.

Sure, I’m a bit tempted to feel bad for those 20,000 factory workers and those fat-cake union pension-eers.

But, when they chose a career in confectionary, they should have looked ahead and figured that this day would come.

Sheesh.

What was wrong with them?

Why didn’t they go out and get meaningful and real jobs like the ones at Perella Weinberg and Jones Day?

Personally, while the Devil Dog is, more or less, one of my remembrances of things past – so what if it’s not a madeleine? – I won’t miss those cupcakes.

If I want a cupcake, I’ll do what a real American does. I’ll stop at one of the fancy-dan cupcake stores that are sprouting up all over the place and get myself a $4 Red Velvet with buttercream frosting.

What’s wrong with people if they can’t see that this is a so, so, so much better way to live?

Sheesh.

Checking out the library

2012-01-13T03:49:00.000-04:00

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to start going to the library.

This resolution was prompted by the closing of the Border’s that I walked by each day, and stopped into each week.

The nearest bookstore is now a further walk than the library. So why not start using the BPL? It’s not as if I don’t have a long, library-loving history.

I grew up in a house of books, a house of voracious readers.

Now my parents weren’t sitting around reading Flaubert and Henry James. They read popular novels, historical novels, Ellery Queen mysteries. They subscribed over the years to the Literary Guild, the Book of the Month Club, and the Quality Paperback Club. (I still have those Quality Paperbacks, which I’m holding in reserve for some future book shortage and/or disablement. The only one that I can recall the title of off-hand is Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson.)

For a few short (and later deemed shameful) years, they subscribed to the Reader’s Digest condensed books, where I first started reading grown up books by sampling best sellers of the day. Most memorably, I read the condensed version of I Was Chaplain on the Franklin, a harrowing World War II story by a Jesuit from Holy Cross . (Father Joseph O’Callahan, who won a Medal of Honor for his heroics.)

Although they were less likely to be cracked open, we also had “The Classics,” leather bound editions of whatever – I actually don’t remember any of the titles, other than the Jane Austens, which my mother re-read every year, and I’m guessing some Alexander Dumas. Then there was the blue, cloth-bound complete Yale Shakespeare collection. These high end books were housed in the living room, along with the Collier’s Encyclopedia. The more pedestrian books were shelved in the family room and in our bedrooms.

Naturally, we kids had our own books, too. From the time we could grasp an object, there was likely a Golden Book in our hands.

Once we could read, we were also book club members: Children’s Classics, American Heritage, and Vision Books. Vision Books were for Catholics. My two favorites were More Champions in Sports and Spirit and Lydia Longley, First American Nun. My favorite chapter in More Champions, was about Herb Score, a gifted pitcher who was never the same after being hit in the eye with a ball off the bat of the Yankees’ (figures) Gil McDougald. (I just googled Gil, and found that he was a graduate of the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit school, so he was no doubt, like Herb, a Catholic, too.)

We saved up our allowances to buy The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys at Woolworth’s. We always got (and gave) books as gifts.

But there was no way we could afford to buy enough books to satisfy our collective and individual reading joneses. So each and every Friday evening, after supper, we went en famille, to the Main South Branch of the Worcester Public Library. (Or the Worcester Free Public Library, as it was then called.)

The en famille who went were my father, my sister Kath, and my brother Tom. My mother stayed home with the little guys, but my father took her library card so that he could check out twelve books, instead of the allotted six.

My cousin Ann Kelly worked at the library while she was in high school, and I remember how great it felt to walk in the door and see our ‘big girl’ cousin’s welcoming smile.

I checked out a lot of drivel – teen romances – but at the Main South Branch of the Worcester Public Library, I also discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, and the wondrous Betsy-Tacy-Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace.

Since then, my tastes in reading have been catholic, but have arced towards great writing of lasting quality.

Early on, the habit of reading was set for a lifetime. But when I began working full time, I bought more and checked out fewer books.

And now I’m back.

I had forgotten what a wonderful experience it is to graze the shelves, making a grab for anything that looks interesting. I had forgotten what a marvelous experience it is to see, all in a row, the complete works of a recent crush like Stewart O’Nan (which I am making my way through), rather than the couple of novels that even a good bookstore might have kept in stock. I had forgotten what it was like to pick up and enjoy a book by an old favorite, like John Le Carré, whose work I last read over 40 years ago. Or to finally read a book by a writer who’s been on my list for years – Pat Barker – and see what I’ve been missing up til now.

Dumping a tote back full of library books onto the bed and deciding which one to pick up first is every bit as satisfying as dumping the tote back full of Border’s books. Or opening the delivery from Daedalus or Kenny’s Book Store, two sources of bought books over the years.

Actually, it’s even better than bought books, as I no longer have to fret about where those bought books go next. The good ones I can always find a home for among my read-a-holic family. But the not-so-good ones, the buying mistakes… Fortunately, my sister Kath is always willing to take them to the Wellfleet Library book sale. Still. A checked out mistake is easier on the pocketbook and on the environment than is a bought mistake.

Some parts of the library have changed since I was last a regular.

You no longer search through card catalogs. And check out is automated – no more smiling cousin Ann at the checkout desk! Just a security guard who can also help you figure out how the bar code scanner works.

Still, browsing the stacks, sitting down to read a few pages to see whether a book by an unknown-to-you author is “it”, and heading to the check out with an armful of good reads…

There’s nothing like it!

So what if, six weeks after signing up, I’m still only 60th for a reserve copy In the Garden of Beasts. They have dozens of copies. I’ll get there soon enough.

Ah, the library.

I think I’m falling in love again.

Of Mice and Mountain Dew

2012-01-12T03:23:00.000-04:00

I’ve never been a Mountain Dew drinker. Actually I ~~dew~~ do not believe I’ve ever had one. Then again, I don’t believe I’m the object of their desire, either, demographic-wise, which I’m guessing skews young, male, Dukes of Hazard-ous.

So, no, the great bottled/canned mouse controversy will not stop me from buying me some MTN Dew. It will, however, give me pause when it comes to my soda habits, which is a once-a-day Diet Polar Orange Dry (oh, how fortunate to live in New England) and/or Diet Coke.

After reading about the latest, I will definitely be reading the fine ingredients print.

In case you haven’t heard about the Mountain Dew brouhaha, which I saw in The Huffington Post last week, one Ronald Ball of Wisconsin is suing PepsiCo (the bev-co behind Mountain Dew), claiming that he got a can from a vending machine, took a swig, tasted something ghastly, and spit out a mouse.

Not that it makes all that much difference, gastronomically or aesthetically, but that must have been some teensie-tiny little mouse for it to sluice out the not-so-large flip top hole in a soda can.

But, hey, mouse is mouse.

Ball, who is seeking damages in excess of $50,000, claims he then sent the mouse to Pepsi, which destroyed the mouse's body.

Well, I for one can’t wait until we all get replication technology in our homes, so that we can create a true, 3-D copy of something like this, and not just trust the gods that open Mason Jars containing Mountain Dew and mouse parts for Pepsi to hang on to it for future reference.

What’s interesting is not that Pepsi may have destroyed the evidence. It’s how they’re pushing to get rid of Ball’s case:

…Pepsi is now moving to dismiss the case, citing testimony from an expert who claims that acid used when the drink is bottled would have caused the rodent to transform into a "jelly-like' substance," according to LegalNewsline.com.

So, if I’ve got this straight, they’re saying that you wouldn’t have found a whole mouse, you would have gotten a mouthful of “jelly-like substance”, which most of us would likely chalk up to sediment or general flavor goop. Not reduction of rodent.

(Note to JK Rowling: if you ever do another Harry Potter, it looks like we’ve got a new flavor for Bertie Botts’ Jelly Beans. Yum!)

Anyway, it seems that Mountain Dew contains something called brominated vegetable oil (BVO), which is the not-so-secret ingredient that dissolved the mouse. That’s not what BVO was doing in there. It’s prime purpose is “more consistent flavoring.” Mouse-dissolving is, apparently, a side benefit.

BVO, by the way, is banned in nanny-state places like Europe, but in the US is allowed in “limited quantities”. (Just enough to even out the flavor and dissolve the occasional mouse.)

In addition to Mountain Dew, BVO is used Squirt and Fanta Orange, neither or which I would have thought was still on the market.

Anyway, I’ll be slowing down my soda consumption, even if my bevs of choice don’t contain BVO.

As always, be careful out there.

Guess I’ll never work at (Barney) Google

2012-01-11T04:08:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal, a few weeks back –Remember then? Last year? Whoa: talk about the way-back machine - had an article on the oh-so-clever questions that Google asks when it interviews folks for a coveted position there.

The first poser was how you would survive if you were shrunk to the size of a nickel and thrown in an about-to-start whirring (Wearing) blender.

I know that the Googs have to weed out a lot of folks – the odds of getting a job there are nearly an order of magnitude worse than the odds of getting into Harvard – so they have to start somewhere.

Presumably, they don’t jump this sort of question on, say, a prospective receptionist. Or marketer.

Most of the Google questions had a high mathy-physics-dweeb factor.

I guess they’re not that into wordplay, or anything that I’d be good at. (Like trivia.)

Maybe it’s just me who would find these questions off putting and just plain weird. Personally, I never needed anything beyond budget-managing math, and erect a portable trade-show booth physics, to do my job. (Okay, this is not quite true. I was once the product manager for software that did state-space modeling… But I would never have gotten that job if anyone had shrunk me to the size of a nickel and thrown me in a blender.)

Even non-tech companies are moving beyond the “where do you see yourself in five years” questions of yore. (Now that I think about it, I don’t imagine that anyone asks the five-year plan one these days.) I would sure do better on the more prosaic, less AP physics questions that the likes of AT&T, J&J, and BofA pose:

"If you could be any superhero, who would it be?"

"What color best represents your personality?"

"What animal are you?"

At least I think I would do better: Wonder Woman. (Boring, but is there anyone else?). Teal. (Or periwinkle. I’m such an equivocator, I’d never get the job.) Pygmy chimp. (Sorry, Jack. I did consider black lab.)

Although these are probably completely twentieth century, I can think of a few good interview questions – drawn from old-timey, real-life situations - that would pretty much work for any company. Here’s one for marketing:

Explain what Google (or company x) does in 25 words or less.

Better yet,:

Explain what Google (or company x) does in a tweet. (Hey, I can be hip and happenin’ too.)

This would gauge your ability to express yourself with clarity and brevity. I’m (obviously) in love with the long form, but I can do brevity, too. All marketing people need this skill.

Here’s one for figuring out how someone manages their manager.

It’s 3 p.m. on the afternoon before a long Fourth of July weekend. Your manager was in the presence of the CEO, when he said “Wouldn’t it be something if we said ‘to hell with the Internet’ and developed a whole set of printed marketing materials.” Rather than laugh in his face, your manager called you and told you that, by Tuesday, you and your team would have to create and produce a dozen data sheets, six case studies, and a white paper. Doing so will f up your weekend, as well as that of everyone under you. Plus you can’t believe the CEO really wants this. What is your response to your manager?

And how someone might manage their directs:

You’ve just learned that someone on your team has done something incredibly stupid to a very senior person in the company. What do you do?

These questions obviously come from someone who worked in the old, hierarchical world – not in the flat-earth, collaborative, shifting spheres workplace of today.

Good thing I’m not looking for a job at Google.

But I do have one question that Google might want to use to immediately weed folks out:

Fill in the rest of this line:

Barney Google….

Answer: with his goo-goo-googly eyes

If you know this answer, you are way-way-way too old (or too retro) for the likes of Google.

Learning from the failures of others

2012-01-10T03:26:00.000-04:00

As I wrote yesterday, The New York Times had a recent article on a handful of small businesses that didn’t quite make it over the line and into 2012. Just as each business succeeds in its own way, so do they fail. Which is not to say that there aren’t abundant lessons to learn from the failures of others. It’s just that so many of those lessons never really end up applying. We are, after all, as unique as snowflakes, are we not? As are our businesses.

And let’s face it, the only way to separate the winners from the losers is to look back after they’ve either succeeded or failed. Even the smartest of smarty-pants VC’s fail 90% of the time, don’t they?

As for The Times lineup:

Colorado’s Elizabeth Anne Bed & Breakfast lasted 8 years before getting tripped up in some equity financing to renovate their kitchen. Another case of maybe-we-should-have-stuck-with-the-1980’s-laminate-cabinets-and-formica-counters. But, hey, in 2007 it was still up, up, and away.

The kitchen reno larded an extra $1,700 per month onto their mortgage tab, and, once the recession set in and they had fewer visitors, the owners starting missing payments and got re-po’d.

They recognize that their refinancing decision did them in.

“Back then, we didn’t anticipate things slowing down.”

Bet they wished they’d stayed with their dumpy old kitchen but, of course, back in the day we were all brainwashed into thinking that if we didn’t want glam, we weren’t quite Americans. All well and good if you can afford it, but, wow! These folks went out and revved their mortgage payments up $20K per year on a business that, at its peak, brought in not much more than $100K.

Moral of this story: Don’t make investments that aren’t necessary and/or don’t directly contribute to the growth of your business. The fancy-schmancy kitchen was neither.

Just Moulding, a company in Maryland, also folded after seven years in business. First, I want to say how much I admire a company with a name that says it all. Although personally I would have used the spelling “molding,” I get it: they just do moulding. (Similarly, my favorite tagline ever was on a van I used to see on my 128 commute: We clean blinds. No question about what they did. None of this, ‘we help the enterprise achieve greater productivity and increased sales’ blah-di-blah.)

The fellows who owned JustMoulding thought they “did everything right.” Apparently not.

Here they were, stuck in a recession, selling a product – crown molding – that nobody actually needs. Which is not exactly recession-proof. But this is now, and that was then, when the owners decided that they were going to franchise their swell idea.

And then the recession hit. They were stuck with all the administrative costs associated with running an operation that franchised, but they had few takers.

Moral of this story: It’s a two-fer: If we you really have your heart set on selling something that people don’t need, get into the luxury space. Or balance things out by offering a complementary product or service that people do need. Or figure out how to position your product as a need. (“Houses with crown molding sell at a premium, and faster, than houses without it.”) The second moral is don’t get greedy. Selling franchises probably looked like free money. Not!

The third company was a Brooklyn-based commercial mortgage company “that specialized in finding loans for small businesses.” It only lasted a couple of years.

I’m sure it looked like a good idea to help small businesses navigate the tightened up credit markets, but, alas, P&H Capital was no better at prying open the purse strings than were small businesses going directly. And then there was the “dream deal” that got away: a $500 million factory in Asia. Mssrs. P&H would have gleaned $5M on the deal, had it gone through. Which it didn’t.

Moral of this story: Nothing’s easy, and never, ever, ever count on the one big deal that’s going to save you.

But, not to worry, Mr. Humet and Mr. Porat – the eponymous P&H of P&H Capital got some other hustles going – one that “promotes small businesses online using free giveaways, and “an online marketplace where monetary judgments can be bought, sold and traded.”

Gentlemen, place your bets. (Winner, winner, chicken dinner.)

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, ScooterFood, makers of all-natural dog food, lasted 5 years in real life, but 35 in dog years. Unfortunately, Michelle Lewis’s concept had a fatal flaw:.

Because her food was perishable, she sold it frozen — but did not realize that in 2006 few pet stores had freezer space. In part because frozen food was expensive to ship, ScooterFood was priced higher than other dog foods.

And unfortunately, Ms. Lewis didn’t keep that careful track of costs vs. revenue, either. She sunk in $60K to keep the business afloat before realizing that she was never going to make a go of it. Arf!

Moral of this story: When you come up with your business plan, have someone on the outside who knows your market scrutinize your assumptions and risks. They may have helped recognize that there was a real problem with the frozen food model. And, if you can’t keep your records straight enough for you to recognize that your money is going down the drain, get a bookkeeper. (Which Ms. Lewis is doing for her new business: caramel sauce.)

The final business, SmartyVA, should have bitten the dust on the name alone. The premise of Smarty VA – which buckled after less than two years – was creating a cadre of social media proficient “virtual assistants”.

The six-week training program cost $1,000 and was aimed at stay-at-home mothers and disenfranchised women, like victims of domestic violence. When graduates took jobs through leads on the site, SmartyVA received 10 percent of their earnings.

Well, I guess that social media management beats addressing envelopes, stringing jewelry, or selling Amway. But, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the virtual assistants trained never ended up working. Maybe it takes more than a six-week training program to make someone into a social media manager. Maybe those stay-at-home moms and disenfranchised women figured that after they paid their $1K for the course, they shouldn’t have to fork over another 10% of what they earned.

SmartyVA was the brainchild of Starr Hall.

“I didn’t anticipate how different the mindset of the women I was training was from my own,” she said.

Moral of this story: Naming a company Smarty Anything will come back to haunt you.

Not so epic fails

2012-01-09T03:05:00.000-04:00

The New York Times rung (wrung?) out the old year with an article that contained a set of thumbnail sketches on five small businesses that had failed in 2011.

Small business failures – hey, large business failures, for that matter – are nothing new. The fast fact, I believe, is 50% of new ones fail in the first five years.

Most of the small – and, hey, large - businesses I’ve been associated with, which would be most of the outfits I worked for when I worked full time, ended up failing in one way, shape, or form.

Let’s see, of the five places where I hung my hat during my 20+ years in corporate, the two small companies were acquired by (still-standing) larger companies. In both of those cases, most of us would have preferred to continue to operate as a stand-alone entity. But the companies were way too weak for that. And that swooshing sound we heard was our fun little workplaces being sucked out of our comfort zone – whee! - and into the maws of what we regarded as an evil empire.

The larger companies I worked at weren’t exactly models of stability, either.

Other than watching the few shares I held plummet to zero – gotta love those capital ~~gains~~ losses – I didn’t pay all that much attention to Wang once I breezed out the door, heading for one of those swooshees (which when I joined it was going to be the next billion dollar software company – this was 1989, when a billion was a BILLION; needless to say, LOL on that one). I vaguely remember that Wang filed for bankruptcy before being acquired by a Dutch company. Basically, it did a Douglas McArthur and just faded away.

As did Genuity, after it went bankrupt and bits and pieces were picked up by dumpster divers like Level 3.

Ah, the good old days.

The fifth company I worked for remains standing. Everyone I knew there is long gone, so I don’t really follow their fortunes. Its name comes up occasionally – it’s a partner of a company I’m doing some free-lance work for. But, mostly, yawn.

Anyway, the companies that were cited in The Times article were really small ones – far piddlier than even the piddliest of the piddles I worked for.

For the most part, their problems were “weak sales.”

On the surface, this is kind of duh obvious. But company can have decent sales but poor ability to deliver, or mispriced products, or insane cost structures, or whatever.

All of the long-gone joints where I worked had, to some extent, “weak sales,” but I wouldn’t say that any of this could be attributed to a weak economy. It was due in each case to some combination of weak strategy, weak discipline, weak resources, weak products, weak marketing…

These days, of course, weak sales can be a reason in itself, I guess.

Anyway, in tomorrow’s edition of Pink Slip, we’ll take take a look at the not-so-fab The New York Times Five.

Let me get this straight: someone actually thought the Verizon surcharge was a good idea?

2012-01-06T03:36:00.000-04:00

Seems like only yesterday we were in a pet about Bank of America’s having the nerve to impose a hefty tax on use of their debit card. It’s not like they weren’t already gouging consumers with their monthly checking account fee structure, only slightly offset by the trace element of interest you were accruing on your savings account. Oh, I know, I know. The poor old bank had to do something after those meanies in Congress told them they couldn’t be so darned usurious towards those who don’t quite manage to pay their credit card balances off monthly. So, who could they turn to other than those upright, non-charging, debit-using citizens.

Although I am, I’m somewhat embarrassed to reveal, a BofA customer, I was not one of those who joined in the hue and outcry against the rapacious megabank. I do use my debit card, but pretty much only when I buy groceries at Whole Food. Since there’s a BofA cash machine next door to Whole, my workaround was going to be making a stop at the ATM and taking out the cash – for free – and paying for my groceries with folding green. But enough BofA customers took up torch and pitchfork – or, rather, the 21st century social media equivalents – twittering and blogging – and forced them to back down.

Given all this, you’d have thought that Verizon might have thought twice, or even three times, before they decided to levy a $2 convenience fee on those who want to pay their bills on line.

As with BofA, while I am a VZ customer, I was not one of those who was going to be victimized by the $2 surcharge. I already use the automatic payment option – direct from my BofA account to VZ’s coffers - that they’re trying to drive people toward with the new $2 fee. At least I don’t think I was one of those targeted by the convenience fee. Now that I read the details, I’m not so sure. Maybe I was going to be gouged because BofA was turn-around-gouging VZ to get at my money.

And “convenience fee”? Talk about one of my all-time favorite euphemisms. I especially like it when it’s imposed by those who sell tickets for something or other, and who jack you for the privilege of printing the ticket on your home printer, rather than having a cardboard version sent to your home via US Mail – for free.

Anyway, Verizon went ahead with their bone-headed move by announcing the new surcharge, only to get torn to shreds by “the people.”

Once vox pop was heard loud and clear, VZ kind of started to reposition their announcement as the world’s largest unmanaged focus group. Once the people had dialed up and dialed in their fee-rage, VZ heard things loud and clear. Apparently there weren’t that many no-bars, dead zones out there.

The upshot is that Verizon looks rapacious and, on the heels of the BofA brouhaha, really and truly dumb.

Don’t these behemoth enterprises have all kinds of marketing folks to take the pulse of “the people” before they announce something like this, in the current economic, political, and social climate (Occupy Tea Party). Not to mention the no-going-back-to-the-good-old-days role that social media, in all its glorious ubiquity and immediacy, plays. Did the folks who do this kind of thing get laid off? Are they just plain dunderheads? Or is this yet another indicator that the world really has changed utterly.

I can forgive a stodgy old bank for not getting this. But shouldn’t Verizon have figured out that its customers were going to take to the wireless airwaves? What do they think folks are doing with all those smartphones, all that wifi, all that 24/7?

Drive with Care(y’s)

2012-01-05T05:05:00.000-04:00

There was a lovely article on Boston.com the other day about a local driving school, Cam’s Automobile School of Waltham, that has allegedly scammed $175,000 out of over 500 drivers’ ed students by taking their money, even as the owner – one Frederick Lovely – knew that the outfit was closing down.

Cam’s is now defuncto – it went out of business because it was financially ailing - so the likelihood that those students will get their “tuition fees” back is not good.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Maybe Lovely did know he was about to slam the trunk down on his operation, but still wanted to steer some more driving-around money his own may. Or maybe he honestly thought that by getting all these eager drivers in the making to pay upfront, he was hoping to stave off what it’s now clear was the inevitable demise of his outfit. In car talk, it could be that what Lovely thought was a slow leak turned out to be a loose tire that flew off the axle.

Time will tell.

One thing of note in the article was that drivers’ ed at Cam’s cost $575.

Yowza!

If it had cost that much in my day, I can pretty much guarantee that no one would have taken drivers’ ed.

I can’t remember what it cost to take it over 40 years ago at Carey’s in Worcester. “Drive with Care(y’s)” was their clever motto, and I believe that when you graduated, you got a small, navy blue plastic folder in which you could place your license so that it didn’t get all dog-eared. This was in the dark ages of cardboard, picture-less licenses, and dog-eared they did get.

My vague recollection is that it cost $30 to take the course, of which I had to pay half.

The classroom instructor was a young man named Terrance O’Hara, who was either a real school teacher, or a fireman, or a policeman. I forget which, but the drivers’ ed gig I do know was a moonlighting extra.

Drivers’ ed was held after school, in a classroom in the Care(y’s) office on Main Street.

I took the course in November of 1965. One evening, after class, I had just gotten off the bus and was walking home when I turned back to see that all of the lights in the city of Worcester, except for some emergency lights at St. Vincent’s Hospital, had gone out. It was the night of the great Northeast Blackout of 1965. For years afterward, people would ask “Where were you when the lights went out?” an altogether cheerier question than “Where were you when Kennedy got shot?”

Well, when the lights went out, I had just gotten off the 19 Cherry Valley bus, right after the Sunoco Station on the corner of Winchester and Main, and was heading up the rise next to the Clark Manor Nursing Home to take the shortcut home.

As if learning to drive wasn’t excitement enough.

After the classroom instruction, you got your learner’s permit – I aced the easy-peasy test – and hit the road.

My road instructor was an older fellow named Francis I. Linehan.

As I recall, Mr. Linehan wore bow ties, took his students up the steepest hills in the rattiest sections of Worcester, and spent the entire session yelling 10-2 – the positions on which you kept your hands on the steering wheel. For some reason, I think he was a teacher at Classical High School.

Until I got in the car with Mr. Linehan, I had never been behind the wheel of any vehicle that wasn’t a bicycle, and Mr. L. spent much of each lesson hour berating me for my lack of driving skill. Brutally so.

“You’ll never pass the road test” were his parting words after each excursion.

I finished up the classes with him – you had to in order for your parents’ to get the new-driver discount - but dropped out of the wonderful world of driver’s license pursuit for six months.

While I was getting my license, my mother was, too.

She had quasi-learned to drive in her late teens, but when she asked her father if she’d ever be able to use the car, his answer was, ‘of course not.’ He wanted his oldest child to get her license so that she could move his car from the street to the garage in the alley out in back of the house.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I, on the other hand, was going to be able to get frequent use of the car, competing for it with my mother – who never learned to like to drive – and my sister Kath when she was home on vacation from college.

Just as I had dropped out of driving after my awful experience on the road driving with Care(y’s), my mother dropped out of learning to drive after her awful experience on the road with my father.

In contrast, my experience learning to drive with my father beside me was quite wonderful. I loved logging road time with him. And he sure knew better than to take a new driver up steep hills in the worst sections of Worcester. Most of my early outings with my father were to St. Joseph’s Cemetery, where there were neither cars nor people to hit. A few years later, it was where my father was buried. Anyway, my father was quite patient, and an excellent teacher. With me, that is.

My mother claimed that he yelled at her all the time when she was trying to learn to drive. Come to think of it, given how my mother drove, this is not surprising in the least.

Anyway, my mother decided to go with professional instruction. Probably at Care(y’s). But probably not with Mr. Linehan.

I, on the other hand, managed to master the art of driving at my father’s side.

In May of 1966, I got my license on the first try, nimbly executing a Y-turn and coming to a complete cessation of all forward movement at each stop sign.

I never did develop much of a sense of direction, however.

Before I drove to school for the first time, I made a weekend trial run, and got lost making my way to the school I had attended for nearly 3 years. Yes, I could have taken the longer way and not gotten lost, but that would have been no fun. I tried the short cut, and got bollixed up on Flagg Street or thereabouts.

I note that Care(y’s) is still in business, although it’s now in cahoots with LaPorte’s, which was the other big driving school of my era.

Their motto is:

We were here yesterday, we are here today and will be here tomorrow.

Unlike Cam’s of Waltham, which will likely not be back.

As motto’s go, LaPorte’s is fine, but I do prefer Drive with Care(y’s).

I got shoes. You got shoes. All Trump’s children got shoes.

2012-01-04T03:28:00.000-04:00

It may be the Ivanka Trump, daughter of The Donald and his gloriously flamboyant ex Ivana, is every bit as self-promoting, self-absorbed, and self-aggrandizing as her old man. Which would explain why and how it got to be that one of her shoe designs is a near-clone of one from Derek Lam.

In the parallel universe of Trump World, Ivanka’s design would, of course, be: a) 100% different from that of Lam’s – look at the different strap colors; b) 1000% better than Lam’s; and c) obviously invented first, since, in Trump World, everything is bigger, better, and entirely original. Accept no substitutes!

Derek Lam thinks otherwise.

He’s slapped Ivanka’s shoe biz with a cease-and-desist note alleging that his $780 shoe was ripped off for her $150 version.

"We have seen very similar copies before but we have never seen a shoe that perfectly copied," said Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann, chief executive officer of Derek Lam. "It's such an investment to make a shoe... we had to protest this." (Source: Huffington Post, citing Women’s Wear Daily. Picture above comes from HuffPo, as well.)

Trump’s folks, of course, have a counterpoint:

A statement from the firm reads, "The Lam wedge sandals are of a popular design type that has been used by numerous manufacturers for many decades. There is nothing iconic about the appearance of the Lam sandal. The Ivanka Trump sandals prominently display the Ivanka Trump name, and there can be no confusion as to the source of the Ivanka Trump sandals." (Source: Artist Direct.)

To my naïve fashion eye, the sandals appear suspiciously alike. Then, again, so do most saddle shoes and penny loafers. So, perhaps, as the Trump-ers suggest, this concept is not “iconic” but is, rather, in the public domain.

In any case, I’d like to give Ivanka the benefit of the doubt here. It’s certainly entirely within the realm of possibility that, in the reality show called life:

“Designer Ivanka” saw – or was even wearing, since it’s unlikely that her tootsies are shod in $150 shoes, the footwear world’s equivalent of Two Buck Chuck – these Derek Lam-mies, pointed them out to a minion, and said “how about something like this.” Which, as the message descended through the ranks, became “replicate this.”
That someone in her shoe firm – “Designer Ivanka” or some unnamed designer – saw these shoes somewhere, but, when they starting designing, had no recall that someone else had actually gotten their first, design-wise. You know, you start sketching something out. Now, if you’d only seen the Mona Lisa once, and that was in passing – a greeting card with a mustachioed Mona or somesuch – it’s possible, if not probable, that you could doodle yourself a near copy that was so like the lady with the mystic smile. (See, I just did the written-word equivalent, thinking for a mo’ that I had come up with the words “so like the lady with the mystic smile,” when, in fact, they were written over 60 years ago by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans* , and drilled into my beebee brain through Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa. See how easily this ‘I thought it up’ can happen?)
Ivanka is not really “Designer Ivanka”, she’s “Approver Ivanka”, and, when she saw the concepts for the Cadie sample, she assumed they were original, as she’d never actually seen the Derek Lam Ayami wedge.
Ivanka is neither “Designer Ivanka” nor “Approver Ivanka”, she’s merely “Borrow My Name and Pay Me Ivanka” who has nothing whatsoever to do with what gets flogged in that name, as long as she’s compensated for its use. I suspect that this is unlikely, as I’m quite sure that Ivanka wouldn’t want her brand tarnished by something really tawdry and unstylin’, and, thus, is – at minimum – “Approver Ivanka.” (And I must say that while I appreciate that “Borrow My Name and Pay Me Ivanka” is a stlyin’ kind of gal, I have no idea why anyone would be drawn to something with her name on it. But that, as I always say, may be just me.)

Thus, there are any number of completely innocent ways in which something that sure does look like a Derk Lam sandal ends up on the rack bearing Ivanka Trump’s name.

On the other hand, she could, in fact, be a self-promoting, self-absorbed, and self-aggrandizing blowhard who’s a chip off the old bad-hair block.

Come to think of it, both could be true: she could be both 100% innocent of design rip off, and a 100% Trump-ster.

There’s noo business like shoe business…

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*Who also wrote “Que Sera, Sera”, “Silver Bells,” and the theme songs for both Bonanza and Mr. Ed.

Daniel A. Deadbeat

2012-01-03T03:27:00.000-04:00

Like every other red-blooded American, I like to see films that are filmed in my state. And I’m one of those whose motto is “accept no substitutes.”

Just the other day, my husband I watched Conviction, starring the marvelous Hillary Swank in the true story of a blue-collar single mom from Massachusetts who put herself through college and law school so she could get her unjustly convicted brother out of prison. After nearly twenty years, she succeeded.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the movie – it had among the best local accents I’ve ever heard faked – I kept looking at the country-side (much of the film took place in rural-ish Ayer, Mass., and there was even a scene set in Worcester) and saying, “something doesn’t look quite right.”

As indeed it didn’t, as I learned when I watched the credits. The film was made in Michigan, which looks kinda-sorta like New England, and kinda-sorta doesn’t. (I’ll have to pay more attention to the clues if I ever see the film again. Were there no stone walls? Were the farms set just a tad too far apart? Was it not hilly enough? At least they got the accents right…)

But while I like to see films making it in Massachusetts, I’m less enamored of the tax credits that are used to woo them here. As with hosting the Olympics or some other grand event, the net result of having a film made in your state is as often as not a negative number, with the tax credits outbalancing the use of the local catering companies and local actors with speaking parts.

And I’m especially less enamored of those tax credits when they’re part of a scam. As was apparently the case of a Cape Cod-based filmmaker named Daniel Adams. (Source for this info: Boston.com)

Adams, a Massachusetts native, managed to suck $4.7M out of the state coffers by jacking up his expense tally.

Prosecutors allege that Adams overstated expenses on “The Golden Boys,’’ a romantic comedy about retired sea captains vying for a wife, and “The Lightkeepers,’’ a 2009 romance starring Richard Dreyfuss.

Under the law, filmmakers can apply for a credit of 25 percent of their production expenses. But prosecutors said Adams overstated those expenses, in one instance claiming to have paid Dreyfuss $2.5 million, when he paid him $400,000.

Not that I’m the world’s foremost movie buff, but I’ve never heard of these gems, so I’m guessing if they made general distribution, they weren’t very well advertised or received. But, hell, not being Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg is totally forgivable.

What’s less forgivable is scamming the Commonwealth’s tax payers.

And what’s even less forgivable than that is ripping off the local merchants on the Cape, which is also on his list of offenses:

[Adam] has left a trail of unpaid bills and anger in his wake, according to interviews and court records. From failing to return valuables to antique dealers to stiffing landlords and limousine drivers, Adams has earned a reputation as a deadbeat from Barnstable to Martha’s Vineyard.

In the charming town of Barnstable – where Adams hung his own, personal hat – he took the owners of a three-bedroom house he rented for a film’s producers and managers for nearly $8K – this after they had given him a colossal discount to begin with.

He also screwed a limo-service owner for the fees racked up shuttling the likes of David Carradine and Mariel Hemingway around. (Did I mention that Adams is no Martin Scorsese. Not that I’m holding that against him.) Fortunately, the limo guy was able to get most of his money back in small claims court.

Speaking of luminaries like Carradine and Hemingway, Adams had initially had his eye on a roster of what was described as A-list actors. The list included Burt Reynolds. Is there a parallel universe in which, just a few short years ago, Smokey and the Bandit’s Burt Reynolds was considered an “A-list actor”?

Meanwhile, Adams has a few other items on his sketchy résumé that won’t help anyone trying to defend his truthiness.

Both wikipedia and IMDB list him as having matriculated at Fair Harvard. Now, Adams doesn’t necessarily have control over what gets out there in the old public domain, but someone started this one going. (And the wikipedia article sounds like Adams or someone in his family or employ wrote it.)

In real life, having dropped out of the University of Vermont, Adams had taken some courses at Harvard Extension. But saying that he matriculated at Harvard is like saying that I studied economics at Harvard because I took Ec 10, Ec 1010A, and Ec 1010B at their night school (i.e., Harvard Extension).

Sorry, neither Adams nor myself is one of the vaunted “10,000 Men of Harvard.”

A scan of wikipedia provided a few further Adams tidbits, including a note that he is working on a bio of James Otis (of “taxation without representation fame”). Then there’s the mention that he’s making a big screen version of Big Valley, with Jessica Lange starring as Victoria Barkley, Barbara Stanwyck’s signature role. (LOL on a Big Valley remake. No word on who will pay the “impetuous Audra,” temperamental Nick, brooding Heath, stalwart Jarrod, or the short-lived Eugene, the kid brother who went MIA after the first year of the show.)

Then we read that “as a novelist, he conceived, edited and contributed to the serial novel, Out Of The Fog, working with a dozen of the nation's best-selling authors.” I did find a couple of Out of the Fogs: a novel that doesn’t appear to have been serially written by a dozen of the nation’s best-selling authors. And a web-site for those with family members suffering from personality disorders. This Out of the Fog does have a multi-author e-book out. If Adams is involved here, it may suggest an element of his defense.

Meanwhile, his lawyer, Douglas Brooks, has stated:

“The case is far more complicated than it appears on the surface.’’

I’ll bet it is.

Resolute. This time I mean it.

2012-01-02T03:38:00.000-04:00

I never actually make New Year’s Resolutions.

Or, rather, I never actually keep New Year’s Resolutions.

So I’m sure as hell not going back to the first blog post of 2011 to see if I had been foolish enough to make a few and put them down in writing.

But this year I thought I’d make a modest number of resolutions, print them out, and actually post them somewhere where they can haunt me night and day. That would be directly over my desk.

Anyway, here goes:

Get the door to the upstairs bathroom fixed. I know, I know. If I did make resolutions in the past, this one was definitely on the list. Multiple times. On multiple occasions. But, hey, it’s not like you can’t close the door and have some privacy. Of even lock it once you get inside. It’s just that it’s missing the door knob. (Don’t ask.) Anyway, this year I mean it.
Get the downstairs rooms painted. I know, I know. If I did make resolutions in the past, this one was definitely on it. Multiple times – although not quite as multiple as the bathroom door one. But it’s been 12 years now, and they really need a do-over, and I never liked the colors to begin with, so… I actually like to paint, but, other than the hall area, this job would be too much for me to tackle. I have done the bathroom and my 5’ x 8’ office in the past, but they have awkward angles, and I almost broke my neck balancing on the tub because I couldn’t get the ladder in there. As for the den and the bedroom, the ceilings are too damn high for me to get the job done comfortably. I have the color book that my sister Kath leant me, oh, last year about this time. What’s holding me back? Let’s go! And this year I mean it. (And if you’re wondering what the bedroom is doing downstairs, well, welcome to life in the city, where odd living arrangements can happen.)
Get our wills updated. I realize that this one sort of dropped in morbid urgency once my husband’s health scare passed. Still, we have ancient wills that still mention our mothers (mine’s been dead for 10 years), so it’s really time to get cutting on this. This year I really mean it, and I’m made a good first step, and in December called and made an appointment with our lawyer. And away we go!
Use the library more often. I’m already off to a reasonably good start on this, having paid two visits to the BPL last month. With the Borders that I passed every day (and where I stopped in at least once a week) having regrettably closed, the nearest bookstore is in the Prudential Center. This is not far from where I live, but I have to pass the BPL on my way to the B&N, so I might as well check the books out that I would otherwise have purchased. Sometimes this means waiting. In the old days, I would have bought In The Garden of Beasts without batting an eyelash. Now I am on the waiting list for it and, even though I am 147th, they have a ton of copies, and the need to read is not yet urgent enough for me to race over to B&N or order it from Amazon. At present, I’m reading my way through everything the marvelous Stewart O’Nan has written, and am revisiting John Le Carré. Oh, what fun it is to read a real good book tonight, even if I do have to dash through the snow to check it out.
Ration time spent on Huffington Post, etc. This being an election year, I will no doubt be tempted to start driving myself crazy come, say, February, and start haunting the HuffPo. By September, I’ll be tempted to check Nate Silver’s state-by-state polls on an hourly basis. But I’m not giving in! No sirree bob! No way in hell. I need to stay way away, or I’ll be gaga and in a straight jacket by November – and how am I going to cast my ballot if I can’t get my arms out of that straightjacket. So, this election year, no HuffPo meshugas. And this year I mean it.
Lose five pounds. The old weight-losing chestnut? Well, this time I mean it.

You say you want a resolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. Or at least our little piece of it.

This year I mean it.

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My original title for this post was going to be “You Say You Want a Resolution”, which, as it turns out was the snappy title I used in last year’s first-up post. I wasn’t actually going to look to see which resolutions I didn’t keep, but I couldn’t help myself. Surprisingly, the fix the bathroom door and paint the bedroom one weren’t on it. But use the library and lose five pounds were. So, late in the year, I actually made good on the use it, if not on the lose it. I was going to stop reading online comments – that lasted about two days – and start writing fiction again, which has only happened in my head.

Sigh!

Christmas 2011

2011-12-23T04:54:00.000-04:00

And so this is is Christmas. (Or close enough, at any rate.)

And so this was going to be a picture of my Christmas tree.

But the tree doesn’t vary much from one year to the next. Some years it’s taller. Some years it’s fatter. Some years it’s to the left of the fire place. Some years it’s to the right. Although each year there’s an addition or two, and a subtraction through breakage, the ornaments themselves don’t change. And I’ve had the same tree topper and skirt forever.

So this year Pink Slip is featuring a smaller piece of holiday decor: a picture of my husband with our sweetie-pie nieces, many long years ago. (They are still sweetie-pies, but, as teenagers, perhaps not quite the sweetie-pies they were when they were little ones.)

Anyway, if my tree and my other decorations don’t vary much from year to year, neither do my wishes.

Peace on earth, good will to men, women, and children.

Prosperity for not just the 1%, but for the 99%, too. (With special care paid to the needs of the bottom 1% who are there for a lot of good reasons, the foremost of which seems to be bad luck.)

Good health – physical, mental, financial, personal, professional - for my family and friends.

A political process that’s conducted with more civility, honor, dignity, common sense, and truth than we’ve seen so far in the current cycle. (Is some straight talk about globalization, the future, our headlong return to the America of the 1890’s, and the state of the environment too much to ask? And how about some straight talk about what being an American can and should mean?)

And, to get a little personal and selfish here: a respectable showing by the Boston Red Sox, and decent weather for our (me, my husband, and those almost grown up sweetie-pies) trip to Rome in April.

I’m also going to put in a bit of an appeal.

Oh, I’ve had my hand stretched out before, and no doubt will in the future. But here I am, at it again, doing it for yet another worthy cause.

If you’re reading Pink Slip, you’re probably a reader. And if there’s one thing that readers need, it’s writers.

For ten years now, I’ve been a member of The Writers’ Room of Boston, a 24/7 writers’ workspace that one of our members calls his haven. Our writers are young, middle aged, and some of us getting on old. Some are widely published, some not so. Some you may have heard of, some you never will. What we have in common is the desire for and need to have a place of our own, where our work and our lives as writers are taken seriously, even if all we do is blog…

Every year, The Writers’ Room struggles to keep our rates affordable, so that young poets trying to piece together a living through adjunct teaching don’t have to give up eating to have a workspace. So that those working full-time have a place to do their heart’s work when they have an evening or weekend to spare.

We do get small grants – bless you, Mass Cultural Council and NEA – but it’s tough. We’re always looking for donations. (And that’s a somewhat “royal we”, as this year I was elected our organization’s president.)

So, if you’re reading Pink Slip, and are inclined to make a tax-deductible gift to keep The Writers’ Room going – as it has been for over twenty years – here’s the link. (Thus ends my one and only attempt to monetize Pink Slip.)

As has become Pink Slip’s end of year tradition, we – that’s Pink Slip and I - are taking the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for commenting.

See you on January 2nd.

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Can’t get a Pink Slip enough Christmas? Here are links to some posts of Christmas past.

How I manage to get my tree decorated without professional design help (2010)

Why I like decorating the Christmas Tree (2009)

Santa Claus is coming to Town (2008)

Oh, Tannenbaum! (2007)

All I Want For Christmas (2006)

(Hey, these are pretty good.)

Feliz Navidad from the Mayor of San Juan

2011-12-22T03:23:00.000-04:00

After my mother died, we went through her cartons of pictures and tossed out a) pictures in which we couldn’t identify anyone; b) those in which we could identify someone we didn’t’ care to keep a picture of; c) snapshots of rooms (which we might have kept if they were Martha Stewart-esque House Beautiful rooms; mostly they were pictures of a twin bed with a chenille bedspread and a side table next to it, with maybe a crucifix on the wall over it) that family members sent from Chicago when they got a new place; and d) Christmas photo cards.

We got hundreds of Christmas cards each year, but back in the day not all that many people sent photo cards.

I don’t know if they were more expensive, or whether it seemed too personal and pushy, or whether, since everyone had a passel of kids there was not much desire to look at a picture of someone else’s passel of kids. Especially if they were a passel of kids you saw everyday. (For some reason – possibly because one of their girls was named Maureen – I remember that one year we got a photo card from the Dailey family.)

My mother hung on to these Christmas photo cards long after she had recycled the non-photo cards. (My mother was the original recycler. Who needed to spend 59 cents on an assortment of gift tags when you could use the front of last year’s Christmas cards? And, of course, you could hardly use a photo card as a gift tag.)

Actually, I can understand why my mother was reluctant to give those photo cards the toss: it almost seems like a statement that the card sender is expendable, doesn’t it? And, so, I find myself hanging on to the Christmas card photos that I get each year, even if they’re not among the ones that make it onto the fridge. (Aside to RK: your kids are on the fridge.)

In any case, I have never seen a Christmas photo card as dramatic, weird, and outright daffy as the one that was hung with care by the Huffington Post chimney last week.

Nothing says Christmas quite like a stuffed leopard murdering a fear-stricken antelope. Err... wait, how did we miss that part of the Bible?…The caption under the astoundingly strange photo is equally as puzzling:

“That you may illuminate your dream this Christmas,” it reads in Spanish.

Well, Feliz Navidad to you and yours, too, Mayor Santini.

Is this some kind of a play on the lion shall lie down with the lamb?

I know it’s not supposed to be reindeer. No sleigh, no Rudolph the Red Nose.

I suppose the one they used was better than the out-takes:

Although the one with the penguins is a tad more topical, what with the snow and the cold and the North Pole – South Pole, what’s the big diff?

Anyway, hizzoner was promoting the San Juan Wildlife Museum, and he’s out there on a talk show defending his decision to celebrate the season in what some might consider a rather silly fashion. In fact, he claims it’s becoming something of a meme. (Yay, Internet!)

"Some might think the card is absurd but others -- thousands of people -- have sent us superimposed images of themselves and their family on the card. Kids, adults, elders -- everybody! Boricua [Puerto Rican] folklore is unlimited, just like people's imagination."

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to Puerto Rico, but I doubt the Wildlife Museum would be on my list of must-sees. Who wants to go someplace else to look at stuffed animals that aren’t native to that someplace else? Not me.

But, hey, I give Mayor Santini props for trying to promo the local cultural institutions. And I’ve got to say that there are a lot more people who’ve heard of the Museo De Vida Silvestre than there were a month or so ago. Not to mention that there are a lot more people who’ve heard of The Great (Mayor) Santini.

Feliz Navidad to that.

Santa Claus ain’t comin’ to this town. (Santa Land has closed.)

2011-12-21T04:05:00.000-04:00

As a baby boomer, I grew up in the Golden Age of kiddie attractions. In addition to all the hold-over amusement parks from the pre-war era, there were any number of hastily thrown up miniature golf course, drive-in theaters, and “Something-or-other” Lands. (Of course, Disney Land also opened when I was a kid, but that was in another whole category by itself. We mere mortal children could only aspire to a trip there.)

Crummy amusement parks were everywhere. The big two in the Worcester area were White City in Shrewsbury and Whalom Park in Fitchburg. Our family’s big annual thrill was our day-trip to Nantasket Beach, where you got not only the ocean, but also LeHage’s salt-water taffy (“Oh, so good!”) and Paragon Park. These places are long-gone. All that’s left is Paragon Park’s carousel. (At least it was still there last time I looked.) Even the beach at Nantasket is eroding into nothingness.

(The first time I went to Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire, I was amazed by how clean it was. Nothing like the amusement parks I grew up with.)

In addition to amusement parks, there were tatty mini-golf places.

We had one within walking distance of our house. It was altogether unimaginative and, as we used to say, crum-bum. Still, it was great fun to aim that colored ball at the mouth of the whale, and tote up your score with the little golf pencil. Nothing like the fancy-arse mini-golfs we “play” every summer on the Cape. (My favorite is the one with the koi pond.)

Last summer, while visiting my brother and his wife, we went to a retro mini-golf course in Long Beach, Washington. Talk about the way-back machine! Here’s one of the swell holes. Yabba-dabba-doo!

And then there were the other types of attractions which were, for want of a better term, “theme parks” called Story Land, or Dry Gulch Ghost Town, or Fairy Tale Land. That most of these attractions were tawdry, rundown, and seedy mattered not. Just because someone had found themselves in possession of a dusty one-acre lot and five-hundred bucks and decided to throw up a bunch of painted plywood something-or-others and charge admission didn’t mean it wouldn’t have incredible appeal to kids.

Sure, we also went to “real” places like Old Sturbridge Village, and The Old Manse, and The Old Grist Mill – ah, the benefits of living in Ye Olde New England – but, while interesting, these places were just a tad too educational. One of the best places we ever went was on a trip to Chicago. While staying at my grandmother’s house on a lake (i.e., glorified muck pond) about 50 miles out of the city, we (the combined Rogers and Dineen tribes) went to some run down Western ghost town attraction which I don’t recall was much more than a single dusty street with a bunch of abandoned “buildings” – e.g., the saloon with the swinging doors – some of which were just facades. We did not question for one ~~New York~~ Chicago minute what a Western ghost town might be doing outside of Waukegan, Illinois. All we knew was that, like Rin-Tin-Tin, The Lone Ranger, and Range Rider, it was made for kids. We loved it.

With fond memories of these sorts of places, I was saddened to read that Santa’s Land of Putney, Vermont, had shuttered its doors last Saturday, after 54 years in business.

Talk about a lump of coal in the stocking of life!

I had never been to Santa’s Land (which, amusingly – to me at least, as my husband was born in Bellows Falls – is located on the Bellows Falls Road).

The one and only family day trip we ever made to Vermont we did something edifying and Ethan Allen-ish around Bennington. (Other than our semi-annual trips to Chicago, we seldom ventured out of state. Taking a ride that strayed into Connecticut or Rhode Island was a big thrill, with all of us back-seaters thrusting our feet under the front seat to be able to “call” that we were the first one who’d crossed the state line.)

It’s certainly no wonder why today’s kids turn up their noses at the simple things that so delighted us in yesteryear.

They’ve all been to Disney World, Busch Gardens, Universal Studios.

They’ve seen Toy Story 1. And 2. And 3.

They’ve played with Wii’s and read Harry Potter on their Kindles.

And they’re going to be interested in something like Santa’s Land?

Fraid not.

As one employee explained it:

Chris Harlow used to work here as a boy in the early 1970s and later operated the train, Santa’s Land Express.

“I came here for the nostalgia,” he said. “Kids have other ways to entertain themselves these days.”

No matter that they lowered their admissions price to $10. No matter that they had a Facebook presence. No matter that this looked a lot nicer and cleaner (albeit more commercial, i.e., some junk for sale in most of the attractions) than the lands of my youth. (We never saw anything as sturdy and cool as Santa’s igloo.)

Santa Claus will not be coming to this town anymore.

Talk about a Grinch story.

Robo Restaurants? Wasabi with that?

2011-12-20T02:30:00.000-04:00

I’m not opposed to an occasional gulp-and-go fast food spree. In fact, when I get finished with this post, I’m heading across the street to Big Al’s to grab lunch.

But when I go out to eat, I like to get waited on, and I don’t like to get rushed out the door while the fork – or the chopsticks – are still in my hand. For this reason, I don’t like restaurant buffets. And, while I must confess that the Automat has always held a cheesy romantic appeal for me (even though I never ate at one), I don’t like the idea of eating off a conveyor belt.

So I don’t think I’ll be running out to Wasabi in the Natick Mall anytime soon.

Boston.com had a bit on Wasabi a few weeks ago, and I’ll run their bit in full:

It takes a while to make sense of what’s going on at Wasabi. Most of the normal restaurant conventions - ordering, pricing, courses, menus - have been turned upside-down in a robotized space with no walls and no right angles. Snaking through the dining area, a divided stainless steel conveyor belt curves like a surreal bi-directional river. Along its banks, diners in plush, wedge-shaped booths are encouraged to grab brightly patterned plates of sushi that float along on the belt’s 300 elevated white discs. There’s seating for 100 here, in a perpetually balmy skylight expanse of the upscale Natick Mall. A grove of stylized faux-willow trees rustle in a ventilator breeze nearby, and Christmas shoppers stroll by with curious glances at the odd robo-restaurant, now in its fourth month of operation.

There are waiters – or, possibly, waitrons – to take your drink order. But for the sushi, you’re on the own, grabbing plates that are color-coded by price, so that you can keep track of how much the meal is costing you. I learned about the color coding from a late summer article in the Natick Patch. For all its cool graphics, the site for Wasabi itself conveys nothing that I could find about how the meal is actually conveyed. All their FB page has to say about it is that the food is “uniquely crafted and delivered.”

“Crafted.”

The big restaurant lie used to be “home made”, which somehow snootily morphed into “house made”. From whence there was nary a pause before we got “house crafted” and “hand crafted.”

I walked by a lunch place the other day, and they had a sign for “hand-crafted soups.”

Personally, when I read “hand-crafted soup” I think of someone running it through his fingers. Yuck! Use a ladle, please.

And don’t get me started on “artisanal” which, to its credit, is a word that Wasabi doesn’t seem to be using. Yet. (Maybe they have an artisanal conveyor belt.)

“Uniquely crafted” is odd enough for me, thank you, given what it does to the imagination. There is so much that “uniquely crafted” can mean, isn’t there?

It could mean that it’s ABC. (Remember that from when you were a kid talking about ABC gum. As in Already Been Chewed.)

It could mean that the chef “crafts” only while wearing a clown nose, or an angel gown, or nothing at all.

It could mean that they use only day-old fish to capture a certain pungency for the experience.

No, “uniquely crafted” I could do with out.

The most “uniquely crafted” food I ever saw was a billion years ago, when I waitressed at the Union Oyster House.

One lunch, a waitress (completely stoned, I believe) dropped a large platter of steamed quahogs on the sawdust (and whatever else) covered floor. The clams went rolling out of their shells and, given the rubbery consistency of mega-quahogs to begin with, they really had a bounce. During that bounce, they picked up all sorts of sawdust (and whatever).

Well, that waitress wasn’t going to be waiting around for no replacement order. Do you know how long it takes to steam a quahog?

So, with the help of the rest of “the girls”, she picked them up and stuffed them back in their shelves.

Now that, I’ll give you, was “uniquely crafted.”

If I can do do without “uniquely crafted,”I can also do without “uniquely delivered.”

Bad enough when you find out that the party ahead of you got the last order of sea bass. Do I really want to be in open competition with the folks at the next table for the edamame and California roll that are about to float by? (Whispered aside to eating companion: It looks like some veggie tempura just came on the line. Now go and distract the couple in the next booth. Pretend you know him from work or something.) Chopsticks at ten paces!

It seems like Wasabi is one of those “fun concept” kind of places that folks might try once for the thrill element of hunter-gatherer, for the sheer novelty. (Think Rainforest Café: is there anyone on the face of the earth who has eaten their more than once (or, more than once per child or grandchild)?)

All I can say is, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory, have some new company.

It’s all in the context

2011-12-19T03:57:00.000-04:00

Oh, I admit it.

If I had the money, I’d be out there buying Cole-Haan boots rather than stalking Zappo’s trying to find a replacement for my go-to, 12-year-old Hush Puppy moccasins that are finally showing their age. (And after six years, I’ve finally had it with the bleach stain on one of them.)

But, ‘tis the season for class warfare – bring it on – so I’ll do my bit by playing along and dishing on an article that appeared on boston.com’s business page last week. High end, you’ll be delighted to know, is back in high demand.

Even as unemployment remains high and job growth is anemic, luxury spending is up, with some retailers reporting business booming at prerecession levels.

While at Kohl’s, sales are below the doldrums, at Saks – I almost typed Sears there for a moment; hah! – things are looking pretty dern good:

“Some of our best sellers are the most expensive items – the exotic handbags, the high-end diamonds.

And don’t let those class-baiters tell you that this doesn’t trickle down:

Revenues are up more than 30 percent at the Seaport Candle Co., which makes custom handmade candles and light fixtures... The small factory in South Boston is running seven days a week and took on two more workers to keep up with the demand, according to Carole Lucas, the company owner. The most expensive luminaires cost $95 each and some orders can easily reach $1,000.

Working in a candle factory in South Boston! How positively, how Dickensian-ly, romantic. I hope their logo is the poor little match girl. (No, wait, she froze to death on Christmas Eve. She won’t do.)

But the point so clearly demonstrated here is that the big spenders are job creators. Yea, us! I mean, Yea, them!

Ah, but this so so arid. Someone needs to put a face on high demand for high end, and boston.com has kindly obliged, providing us a character for a best of time/worst of time that Deloitte & Touche’s Tom McCrorey has dubbed “the tale of two consumers.”

At Neiman Marcus,

…Debbie Lurie tried on designer dresses and sweaters. Lurie said her outlook on the economy has improved this year, so she’s spending more freely. Already that day, she had purchased a pair of Cole Haan boots and an Alice + Olivia winter coat.

“Our portfolio is doing better this year, my husband tells me,’’ said Lurie, who was visiting from Baltimore.

Must be a lot more fun at her house than in the ones where the husband is telling his wife that he just got laid off.

Lurie estimates that she will spend a few thousand dollars this holiday season, partly because “the kids need ski clothes.’’

And partly because Alice & Olivia winter coats aren’t cheap - low-end’s about $500 a shot; and Cole Haan boots aren’t leaping off the shelves at PayLess, either.

But poor Debbie Lurie. Here I am excoriating her when, for all I know, the bit on her was taken completely out of context.

So, Deb, honey. I’m going to give you not one, but two contexts because my context portfolio is doing better this year. (And, frankly, my husband didn’t need to tell me. I figured it out for myself.)

Full Context #1:

At Neiman Marcus,

Lurie said her outlook on the economy has improved this year, so she’s spending more freely. Already that day, she had purchased a pair of Cole Haan boots and an Alice + Olivia winter coat, which she was donating to an online auction to benefit the scholarship fund at her kids’ school.

“Sometimes the bidding just gets carried away, especially at this time of year, which really brings out the generous in people,” Lurie said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone ends up paying $2, 000 for that striped pea-coat I got for $500.”

Lurie noted that she and her family are quite blessed.

“Our portfolio is doing better this year, my husband tells me,’’ said Lurie, who was visiting from Baltimore.

Because of this, the family anticipates doubling, perhaps even tripling their annual charitable donations.

“We’re focusing this year on places where the need is greatest,” Lurie added. “For us, that means underfunded social services, and small non-profits in the arts. Sure, it may be more prestigious and glamorous to write a big check to MOMA, but the shelter that feeds out-of-work vets, and the group that teaches puppetry to deaf kids, well, let’s just say that, in this climate, some charities are more worthy than others.

Lurie estimates that she will spend a few thousand dollars this holiday season, partly because “the kids need ski clothes, which we’re not going to go hog wild on. The younger one will be wearing some hand-me-downs. But mostly we’ll be spending that much because we’ve adopted a family and we’ll be doing a lot for them this year. We’re all about teaching our kids that just because they were born lucky, doesn’t mean they were born deserving.”

See what I mean about context? For all we know, the reporter missed the real Debbie.

Of course, there’s that other possibility…

Full Context #2:

At Neiman Marcus,

…Debbie Lurie tried on designer dresses and sweaters. Lurie said her outlook on the economy has improved this year, so she’s spending more freely. Already that day, she had purchased a pair of Cole Haan boots and an Alice + Olivia winter coat.

“The funny thing about Christmas shopping is that I always manage to get a few purchases in pour moi. I suppose I should be a bit embarrassed, but the truth is that I’m the designated shopper for the whole kit and kaboodle, and they’re just a big bunch of ingrates.

“Our portfolio is doing better this year, my husband tells me,’’ said Lurie, who was visiting from Baltimore. “And I’m taking him at his word. Let the bucks stop here,” she smiled.

Lurie estimates that she will spend a few thousand dollars this holiday season, partly because “the kids need ski clothes,’’ but mostly because - ha-ha - I deserve that $500 striped pea-coat from Alice and Olivia, and those Cole Haan boots. Not that I want my kids to look like ragamuffins, especially since we’ll be spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Gstaad. We were thinking about Park City or Vail, but, quite frankly, Americans are such a bunch of negative, gloomy guses. You’d think they’d be happy for those of us who make the wealth, like my husband, and those of us who spread the wealth, like me. And did I say a ‘few thousand dollars’. Who am I kidding? You did say our portfolio is doing better this year, didn’t you honey?

Context #1 vs. Context #2: Admit you can see that wrapping a little context around some quotes can make all the difference in the world.

So will the real Debbie Lurie please stand up?

Condo mondo.

2011-12-16T03:21:00.000-04:00

We live in a small, quasi-self-managed condo building. About a year ago, I wrote about the joys of living in a small, quasi-self-managed condo building.

Well, I’m not here to tell you that things have gotten all that much better. Sure, we’ve had yet another condo meeting at which we all pinky-swore to get some things done. But it’s still the same old nada.

But, having read The King of All Vegas Real Estate Scams in a recent Business Week, I can only say that it could be worse. It could be a whole lot worse.

First off, we’re not in Las Vegas.

When there’s no boom, you don’t tend to get a bust, so property in our neck of the woods is pretty much holding its own. It sure helps that there’s not a lot of room for expansion in our neighborhood, which is well-placed, attractively quaint, and has quite a lot going for it, if you overlook the fact for that you don’t get a all that much, square-footage wise, for the money. On the upside, having no room in your particular inn really does hold the lid down on acquiring things you don’t need.

Second, our building went up when things were built to last, in 1860 or so. It’s made of granite, not stucco’d sheetrock, and it wasn’t slapped up. Sure, it could use some help. And anyone who’s owned an old building knows that they require more care and feeding than newer construction. Except when newer construction is really slap-up lousy. Which is, apparently, the case with a lot of what got glued together during the Las Vegas R.E. Boom.

And because so much of what got built during the Las Vegas R.E. Boom was built to POS standards, not built to last, many of the condo developments started falling apart immediately. And we’re not talking a few stray punch-list items here – it’s pretty much systemic.

So, to keep up with all these post-construction traumas, there emerged a:

…growing market for the contractors who fixed the construction problems, such as leaky roofs or faulty electrical outlets, that emerged at the hastily built developments.

And where there’s a growing market for post-construction contractors, there’s a growing market for lawyers specializing in post-construction “construction-defect” lawsuits to go after those shoddy developers.

Here’s where it gets interesting, i.e., down-right criminal, as one particularly cagey group came up with an idea for cashing in on the post-construction problem market.

When a new development was nearing completion, the group would buy a couple of units in the community and then transfer partial ownership of the condos to individuals secretly on its payroll, according to court documents. While pretending to be residents of the communities, these “straw buyers” would run for leadership positions on boards of the new homeowner associations. By paying off community managers, hiring private investigators to find dirt on legitimate candidates, and rigging elections, the documents allege, the straw buyers were able to infiltrate boards at several new developments in Las Vegas from 2003 to 2008. Once in control of the boards, the straw buyers would then use their governing positions to steer millions of dollars in construction and legal fees back to their co-conspirators.

Among other tricks of this new-found trade, the conspirators sometimes helped rig election by casting absentee-ballots in the name of out of state folks who had purchased condos as investment and/or vacation properties. The thinking was that out-of-staters would have a tendency to not bother to vote for board members, not wanting to get embroiled in issues on whether it was okay to plunk a pink flamingo on your square of zoysia grass, and the like. The conspirators even made trips to remote zip codes to make sure that the ballots had the correct postmark, so that no one official would suspect anything.

Some of the real-fake board members owned as little as 0.5 percent of the condo they were representing.

A number of the schemes involved a firm called Silver Lining Construction, which managed to get some of its employees on boards as 0.5 percent owners. (When it came to naming, they sure didn’t lack for a certain brazen imagination, that’s for sure.)

Lurking in the murky background here were shady political operatives, and a lawyer whose uncle was portrayed in the movie Casino. He was the guy (played by Joe Pesci) buried alive in the Indiana cornfield. And for a sunnier element of the story, a group of retirees in one of the condo complexes getting screwed starting acting as amateur detectives, and sleuthed their way into finding out all kinds of stuff (like Silver Lining’s board-packing). They then went with their findings to the police, and to the Nevada state agency that regulates real estate, and the conspiracy gradually started to unravel.

But by that point, the sleuth’s condo association had reached a hefty settlement – $19.1M – with its developers.

Sounds like enough money to fix a few leaky roofs and cracked sidewalks.

But, stunningly, $11M of that went for legal fees and expenses with a couple of law firms in cahoots on the scheme.

The money got spent down pretty rapidly, and the real-fake board members pulled a disappearing act. Their job done, they stopped showing up at board meetings.

The plot thickens – there’s definitely a book in here – with the FBI, botched suicide, arson, insurance fraud, busted kneecaps…

These days, conspirators are starting to cop pleas. One highly placed political operative – he had been the chairman of the Nevada GOP – has pled out and could be facing 30 long-ones in the state pen.

In the meantime, thousands of people who bought condos during the boom are still coping with their own financial hardship. Two-bedroom, two-bath condos at the Vistana were going for $200,000 in 2007. In November a 929-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath unit sold for $59,000.

That can’t feel very good.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unless the story gets told in Business Week.

This one’s a lulu. Can’t wait for the book.

Ah, to be young and in Paris

2011-12-15T04:55:00.000-04:00

Even at my advanced age, I continue to look for ways in which I can live my life better. Unfortunately, the operative word her is “look”, as I must confess that, while I’m always on the lookout, I seldom if ever put any of the swell new ideas into action. Hell, after five years, I can’t even manage to get my blog to look better.

Still, I read with interest a recent article on CNN about a young American woman who, while she didn’t quite manage to learn everything that matters in life in kindergarten, was able to figure out a few things during the six months in college she spent living with a family in Paris.

Jennifer Scott – lucky girl! – didn’t just get to live with any old family in Paris.

No, she wasn’t stuck in a boring, sterile suburb, let alone in a banlieue teeming with malcontents and rioters.

No, Scott was fortunate enough to live in a swank arrondissement, where she got to live with the French equivalent of the 1 percent, “an elegant couple she dubbed Madame and Monsieur Chic.”

Not that French 1 percenters would ever use a term as vulgar as 1 percenter.

Besides, in France, as I understand things, the 1 percent is more like 0.1 percent, and it has as much to do with pedigree as money.

Not that there aren’t things to be learned from other folks, and I certainly don’t want to hold pedigree and/or money against Madame et Monsieur Chic, let alone their chic. So I approached the article in a spirit of openness. After all, for Scott,

"Paris taught me not how to just exist, but to thrive and make every small moment meaningful."

It also gave her enough ammo for a book, now out, in which she catalogs the twenty things she learned from Les Chics. The CNN story listed five of them.

As noted, I’m always on the lookout for life enhancing ideas. And, despite what I wrote above, I do occasionally embrace them. Why, just two years ago, I took the advice of my sisters and started buying really good bras. So I thought I’d look through Scott’s list to see if there were any game-changers for me.

First up:

Live a passionate life

Now, I’ve noticed in the last few years that the word “passion” has really crept into the vocabulary of the younger set. It is no longer enough to love one’s family and friends, like one’s work, enjoy one’s hobbies, or enthuse about one’s cultural interests, political party, or sports teams. One must embrace everything with a passion that, in the drab and staid time of my youth, was reserved for the likes of Madame Bovary, or for those who followed big college football in the South.

Nowadays, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing of passion.

Oh, passion used to creep in the conversation occasionally in the old days. I once had a manager who told me that I would not be able to have a truly great career at the XYZ company unless I developed a “passion for securities.” Alas, I had to confess to her that, while it was possible for me (despite the passion-negating twin heritage of being Irish and German) to at least entertain the idea of being passionate about people and causes, securities – I believe the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation was just coming into play – was way, way, way down on my list. Besides, even at the time, I figured that if I were to develop a passion for securities, I would no doubt want to make money shorting and longing them, rather than helping manage products that analyzed them. So I ended up with a middling career, and some fond memories of this manager. (Among other things she told me was that she only wanted to have good looking guys in her group, and, thus, felt that she was somewhat stuck with me reporting to her.)

I find Scott’s example of passion to be even more modest than a zest for securities:

…every night after dinner we would have a cheese course and every night we would have Camembert because it was Monsieur Chic's favorite cheese. And every night without exception, before we cut a slice of Camembert for everyone, he would proclaim it to be the 'Roi du fromage' -- or the king of all cheeses," Scott recalled.

"He did it with passion. They turn the smallest things, the smallest rituals and they make them passionate events."

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

First, I must have different definition of “passionate events” than does Scott.

Second, if you turn the smallest ritual into a passionate event, then it seems that the largest rituals – you know, the ones that revolve around man-woman-birth-death-infinity – diminish in importance.

Maybe it’s the Irish-German thing, but cutting the Camembert just doesn’t seem to belong on the same plateau as, say, falling head over heels with the love of your life, getting into your heart’s desire college, or even seeing your team win the World Series for the first time in 86 years.

The Camembert passion, by the way, was prelude to an evening spent listening to classical music.

"They never sat in front of the television with a box of pizza and zoned out, never," Scott said.

Well, as someone who’s tried to watch French television, Les Chics have a point. But didn’t they ever want to throw on a little Charles Aznavour or Johnny Hallyday and shake their booties? Or watch a movie by that genius, M. Jerry Lewis, who is held in such high esteem by the French?

Cultivate an air of mystery

The French reticence when it comes to personal revelation is lesson number two. (Sounds plenty Irish-German to me, folks.) But part of what Les Chics and their friends kept mum on was revealing what it was that they did for work.

No, they were happy to discuss books and film, but they didn’t go in for the old confessional “overshare [of] details about their personal lives."

In fact, according to Scott, when in France, it’s rude to ask someone what they do for a living.

Now, I’m cool with not oversharing, especially as we get deeper and deeper into a world of TMI. But isn’t inquiring about what someone does a pretty fundamental question to ask of a new acquaintance? I mean, it’s not like asking them how much is in their 401K, or what their sexual fantasies are.

But, I guess, French of the chic class have a different relationship to work than us grubby, ugly Americans. If tout le monde attended the same posh schools, live in the same posh arrondissements, and have the same passionate relationships with Camembert, that’s all you need to know.

Look presentable always

I will say that, in the nicer ‘hoods in Paris, where I will confess to staying when I’m there, the people do look pretty darn chic. So maybe I’ll take this life lesson up, and, next trip to Paris, pack only chic navy and black clothing, and Hermes scarves. (Note to self: find knock-off Hermes scarf.)

Then again, in the lesser areas, where I have been known to wander on occasion, the French look just like a) French working stiffs, or b) Americans.

But that would not be Madame Chic, for whom:

…looking presentable was a way of honoring the people she came in contact with everyday.

Personally, I was not thrilled when the guy who grew up next door showed up at my mother’s wake in grubby cut offs and a tee-shirt. Nice he came on his way home from work, but…

So I do get that looking presentable can be a mark of respect. And self-respect.

But I actually see plenty of women like Madame Chic in my neighborhood. And my mental reaction is always the same: don’t you have anything better to do with your time than get dressed up like that to run your errands? Is it really a mark of respect for the guys at the hardware store or the PO, or is just sort of showing off that you have the money for fab clothing, and – I guess thanks to that husband who makes oodles at what, to the French, would be an unmentionable job – you don’t have to work.

Admittedly, we’d all no doubt be better off if, like Madame Chic, we had “10-item wardrobes” made up of really, really, really nice things.

So, second note to self: buy really good black suit (on sale, after first of year).

But, no, unlike Scott, I’m not going to wear my best clothes on a daily basis.

Honey, I’ve seen how those snobby French-sters can cut you down with a look if you’re not chic enough for them, even if you are wearing perfectly presentable clothing – I’m not talking Mr. and Mrs. matching khakis, windbreakers, sneakers, and fanny packs here. I’ve caught that looking down the Gallic nose with a superior sneer when they overhear that strangled French coming from the mouth of a clearly non-chic American. (If I were the nasty type, I would have muttered something like, ‘Thanks for the Statue of Liberty, but who bailed you out, Monsieur et Madame Collaborateur?’)

Don't forget the simple pleasures (and do not deprive yourself)

For Madame Chic, this was baking a strawberry tart. For Monsieur Chic, it was that Camembert. Oo-la-la. (Is the French text OLL?)

Another example Scott cited was someone taking great pleasure from cleaning out her pocketbook. Well, I like cleaning out a junk drawer, so same-same.

But I don’t think there’s anything special about the French savoring the simple pleasures. Even though I’ll give you that they don’t do a gulp and go when it comes to having a meal.

Make life a formal affair

Scott was impressed by the formal manner in which her host family lived. They were always elegantly dressed, their apartment was beautifully furnished and they maintained graceful rituals.

Hmmmmm.

Nothing about whether anyone ever cracked a joke about, say, Monsieur Chic cutting the cheese. Or whether Madame Chic ever came back home from her baguette run and realized that she’d stepped her elegantly-shod foot in dog merde. Nothing about whether anyone in this family actually enjoyed day to day, formal, ritual life with each other.

Maybe you have to read the book, but Madame and Monsieur Chic sure sound bloodless, emotionless, humorless, and, quite frankly, passionless to me.

There’s something to be said for being self-contained, but I think these two ought to get outside that box now and again.

Meanwhile, Scott, on her very chic-looking, very well put together blog, reveals what rings her pasionaria chimes:

She lives passionately in Santa Monica

Where she shampoos her makeup brushes once a week, and where:

A good nail polish evokes passion in me...

Well, I’m pretty fond of OPI’s Mrs. O’Leary’s BBQ, but I can’t say that it exactly evokes passion in me.

No can do.

Must be the Irish-German blood.

You will know them by the catalogs they keep

2011-12-14T03:57:00.000-04:00

Whatever else ‘tis the season for, it sure is the season for catalogs.

I live in a six-unit condo building, and every year the combined units receive buckets of catalogs. And I do mean buckets. As almost everyone abandons their catalogs, leaving them on the hall mail table or tossing them into the basket next to it, I have the pleasure and honor of recycling most of them. So, when I say buckets of catalogs, I know whereof I speak.

Since this is New England, everyone gets L.L. Bean.

But beyond that, while there are sub-groupings, we get an awful lot of disparate catalogs coming in.

My take is relatively modest, and reveals me to be the never-in-style, never-out-of-style clothing wearer that I am. In addition to L.L. Bean, I get Eddie Bauer and Land’s End. But I am a New England loyalist to the core, so the only one of those three I regularly buy from is the great L.L. And I would expect that those in the Midwest would show similar loyalty to Land’s End, while West Coasters would buy their flannel shirts and turtlenecks from Eddie Bauer.

I also get a lot of shoe catalogs. For those who believe that, prior to Zappo’s, one could and would not order shoes sight-unseen and fit-unfelt, I assure you that us foot-size oddities have been ordering from catalogs for years. From eighth grade on, I wore a 10AAAA, and if you think your local carries that size, you’ve got another think coming. (I maintain that if the rest of my body fit my long and skinny shoe size, I would be three inches taller and thirty pounds lighter.) Just recently, my foot expanded to a 10 1/2 AAA. This turns out to be an even odder size, since many shoes, for some reason, don’t come in 10 1/2 anything, skipping from a size 10 to a size 11. Size 11! I do NOT want to go there.

My most precious catalog is from the Vermont Country Store, the most delightful catalog on the face of the earth. While I rarely order anything from it, I order enough to get regular copies, and I read through it with the level of glee and zest that I imagine those living in sod huts in Nebraska in 1899 experienced as they thumbed through their Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. (I adore VCS, but please put me out of my misery if I begin buying any clothing other than socks from them.)

This year, I did order a few things from VCS, mostly old-timey toys for a couple of the little ones on the list. The kids will probably look at me like I have two heads, but – jeez Louise – who wouldn’t want a baking-powder powered submarine?

Anyway, my catalogs are pretty much all of a piece: durable, timeless, practical, sensible. Which is not unlike how one might describe certain characteristics of my character.

You will know me from the catalogs I keep.

I noticed, however, that not everyone sticks to a theme. And the family upstairs is definitely one of them.

These folks get more catalogs than anyone in the building combined, possibly because they’re the only ones in the building with small children. But the assortment that they tossed in to the basket the other day really got me head-scratching. Sure, there were the predictable Brookstone, Levenger, and Pottery Barn Kids catalogs. The L.L. Bean, the Crate and Barrel, the Hannah Andersson.

And then I saw, nestled snug in the trash basket, right next to each other, catalogs from Vineyard Vines and NASCAR.

Now there’s a combo!

For those who don’t know Vineyard Vines, think prepster on steroids. As in these natty holiday pants. Forget you ever heard of Nantucket Reds. Get ur freak on with these puppies.

Which I personally think would look even better with a whale belt.

No, it’s not ‘to the hounds’ fakery – we’ll leave that to Ralph Lauren. But it sure is ‘to the cocktail shaker’, isn’t it?

Not that the folks upstairs are buying. Vineyard Vines went tout de suite into recycle. Maybe it’s because, as Holy Cross grads, they can only aspire to second-order preppiness to begin with.

The NASCAR catalog was actually far more perplexing.

NASCAR? NASCAR!

Not exactly something I associate with the urban lifestyle, and the folks upstairs – other than for those four years in exile in Worcester at The Cross – are bona fide city folks. She’s from NYC; he’s from Boston. City-city; not suburbia.

Not surprisingly, the NASCAR catalog has a different look and feel.

Unlike the polished prepsters in the Vineyard Vines wishbook, the NASCAR models have shaved heads (males) and big hair and lots of makeup (females). Which is not to say that we can’t all be friends. In fact, I think that the VV holiday pants would look might fine when worn with this jacket, although it would be better it came in Sam Adams, rather than Bud. Small cultural thing. Just saying.

NASCAR and Vineyard Vines: when worlds – and cultures – collide.

Mostly, you will know them by the catalogs they ~~keep~~ throwaway. But apparently not always.

Fatwa on e-mail? Not so quick!

2011-12-13T03:22:00.000-04:00

I once worked with a very wise man who had this to say about e-mail:

People are always coming up to me in the halls and asking whether I got the e-mail they sent me, and why I hadn’t responded. I always tell them, I get hundreds of e-mails each day, and it takes me a while to sift through them. If something requires my attention, call me: I listen to voice-mail before I read through e-mails. If it’s really, really, really that all-fired important, come to my office. If I’m not there, leave me a note. Trust me, I’ll get back to you.

He was right, and I always remembered that, as a business rule of thumb, sending an e-mail does not convey urgency.

Another colleague at the same company told me that she had attended a seminar on time management, and the big take-away piece of advice was to check e-mail at regularly scheduled times during the day. Not every couple of minutes, which was way too distracting.

This was a decade ago, when we were already becoming slaves to our cell phones, our Palm Pilots, and our e-mails. Some folks wore pagers, but I always maintained that the only people who should be using pagers were guys whose wives were 9 month pregnant, folks who needed to know when the heart they were in the transplant line for became available, and the doctor who was going to perform the transplant.

Other than the “I’m important” guys who wore the pagers, we were not completely on. We were absolutely getting there, but we were not yet imprisoned by the real-time culture of IM, or the 24/7 demands of smartphones.

Still, it was easy enough to wake up to make a bathroom run at 4 a.m. and remotely access your office e-mail account via VPN to see who was looking for you. (And, oh, the brownie points and one-ups-man-ship of those 4 a.m. e-mail exchanges.)

Now, employees in professional occupations are generally expected to stay at least loosely tethered to work around the clock, even when they’re on vacation. In return, employees can at least theoretically expect to have some scheduling flexibility. So maybe the tradeoff’s worth it.

While everyone these days is way too harried by way too many e-mails – I’ve been to one of the Meadows and Byrne stores in Ireland, but I don’t remember buying anything there; so why are they sending me e-mails a couple of times a week, and do they really think I’m going to buy a turkey platter in Clonakilty and have it drop shipped to Boston? – e-mail’s just a part of the everything-overload problem.

Still, it’s a pretty big part of that problem, and some businesses are making efforts to minimize the use of in-house e-mails, or eliminate it altogether.

One such company is Atos Origin, a French IT services firm that “plans to ban internal e-mail form company communications within two years.” (Source: CNN.)

Instead, employees will communicate mostly through instant-messaging tools or wiki-like documents that can be edited by multiple users online.

"We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives," said Atos CEO Thierry Breton in a statement earlier this year. "At Atos Origin we are taking action now to reverse this trend."

M. Breton walks the walk, and claims not to have sent a work e-mail in the past three years:

"If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message," he told the newspaper. "Emails cannot replace the spoken word."

I agree, but neither can the text message.

Nor can a text message – or the spoken word – replace a well-wrought, well-thought-out e-mail, of the sort that we used to put on paper and call a memorandum.

I agree that most e-mails sent, received, and read (or, more likely, deleted unread) are less than useful. And for exchanges in which you need to relay or find some piece of info a.s.a.p., the text message, phone call, or personal appearance works best.

But sometimes you do have to communicate something to multiple people. And sometimes what you need to communicate just won’t fit in a tweet-sized message wrttn n txt.

The fact that e-mail usage is declining among the young folks

….who prefer faster, less formal means of communication such as texting or instant messaging on Facebook or Twitter

…doesn’t mean that there’s no room for the memo style e-mail. (Or the e-mail with memo.docx attached.)

IMHO, not to mention IMHE(experience), memos provide a means for the sender to organize their ideas and findings, and present them in a thorough, coherent format. For the receiver, they’re the means to read and evaluate a body of information without springing immediately into what their response is to some point raised on the third line.

As you may have surmised from this, when I worked full time, I was past master of the long, ultra-analytical memo in which I would hold forth on company culture, senior management’s lacking, process improvements, product ideas, etc. I remember one boss – the president of a small company I spent a lot of years with – stopping me in the hall and saying ‘I received your screed’, and letting me know that he was going to read it through again and get back to me to discuss it. This same guy had also told me that in many ways I was his ideal direct-report, in that I communicated my thoughts in writing and didn’t demand or expect much face time.

Things sure have changed if the Mr. Bigs of the world only want to hear from you in a txt msg or a hall chat.

And not necessarily for the better.

I, for one, don’t really want to live in a world where all that matters is what’s happening in the mo’, and where it’s no ‘think’ and all ‘do’.

If only I had someone to e-mail and tell them…

$800K from the Saugus Library? It’ll be hard to make that up from overdue book fines.

2011-12-12T04:01:00.000-04:00

I have to say that the one crime that never ceases to amaze me is embezzlement.

Truly, you’re more apt to be hired somewhere if you murdered someone than if you have a history of embezzlement from the workplace. Murder could have been a one-shot event, a crime of passion, an accident… (We’re not talking first degree murder here, of course.) Unless you killed your former boss or fellow employees – in whatever degree – I think that most employers would rather take a chance on a murderer than a thief.

Don’t these folks with their hand in the till think they’re going to get caught?

Maybe most of them don’t. Maybe we only hear about the few and far between.

But there does seem to be an awful lot of them – like the construction firm secretary who stole money to pay for things like hiring Burt Bacharach to sing at her brother’s wedding. (This gal got a mention in a way-back Pink Slip.)

Maybe it’s the times. Maybe it’s the technology that’s getting better at catching those with a yen for the company’s yen.

The latest local story is about a former Saugus (Massachusetts) Public Library employee who’s been indicted by a federal grand jury, charged with ripping the library off to the tune of $800K:

…money she allegedly used to pay bills, to fund work on her home, and to splurge on jewelry, flowers, and hotel stays.

Linda Duffy was only on the staff, as an administrative assistant, for 7 years. That’s an awful lot of bill paying. I suppose the work on her house and her “splurge” items all added up.

Duffy allegedly set up a “decoy bank account”, in which she deposited donations, as well as library fines. She then moved the money along to her own account, conveniently in the same bank.

The majority of the money came from donations: $143K from a family estate, and $450K from the GE Foundation in matched donations from employees and retirees. (Saugus is the town next to Lynn, where GE – which now has a small presence – was once a mega-deal. Lots of ex-GE-ers on the North Shore of Boston, from whence Jack Welch also hails.)

The matched GE donations included non-donations that she faked up to get the match. (Clever girl, that Linda Duffy.)

Among the bogus donations she reported: $50,000 from people she personally knew and two $50,000 donations from her mother-in-law, the widow of a former GE employee, who is more than 100 years old.

And she thought she had mother-in-law problems before?

Sheesh!

Although I’m sure there are some circumstances under which embezzling from your employer may be morally okey-dokey, the only such scenario I can come up with would be ripping off I.G. Farben to save people from concentration camps during WWII.

So stealing from “the man” is very rarely a good thing to be doing.

But stealing from a library seems especially heinous.

Saugus is not poor, but it is by no means a swank community. $800K is a lot of books that don’t get put on the shelf, programs that don’t get run, employees that don’t get hired. Public libraries are one of the few institutions that can actually level the playing field. They’re free. They’re open to all. They can be a great and potent equalizer. Libraries should be supported, protected, defended, not ripped off.

For shame, Linda Duffy!

You weren’t stealing from GE, lady. You were stealing from every kid in Saugus. Every out-of-work resident who queued for the libary computer for their job search. Every old geezer who uses the library as a reason to get out of the house every day. Every high-schooler who didn’t get the afternoon job they wanted.

In general, I am slack-jawed when I hear stories about embezzlement.

I know it’s a slippery slope, that most embezzlers don’t set out to steal $800K, that their first “success” makes the subsequent grabs easier and easier, that the act – not to mention the extra “splurge” money – is no doubt addictive. But what are you thinking when you make that first transfer to the “me account”?

And from a library, no less.

Linda Duffy is 65.

I would suspect that, for embezzlement of this magnitude, she may well do time.

So when she gets out she may be too old to work.

But she sure wouldn’t be especially employable, anyway.

Sheesh!

What was she thinking

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

You know what job I would have liked? Forensic accountant.

By the seastead, by the seastead, by the beautiful seastead

2011-12-09T03:03:00.000-04:00

That Peter Thiel!

Every time I pick up a mag, there he – cofounder of PayPal, co-funder of Facebook - be.

First, it was The New Yorker profile. Then it was an article in The Economist on “seasteading”, of which Thiel is a big proponent. As are many libertarians.

Where next? People?

Well, enough about Peter Thiel.

The post operative word for today is seasteading.

Forget ‘Go west, young man, go west.’ We’re talking ‘Go wet, rich libertarian. Go wet.’

Seasteaders want to establish brave new sovereign worlds at sea, where meddling, greedy, nosey-parker governments can’t have at them.

Seasteaders face a number of challenges – technical (got to watch out for that ‘huff, and puff, and blow your house down’ kind of weather); political (unless you can figure out a way to be 100% self-sufficient, you’re going to have to have some congress with those meddling, greedy, nosey-parker governments, no matter how far offshore you get); and practical (whose really going to want to live in a no-exit environment without much by way of creature comfort, varied scenery, cultural amenities, fine dining…).

I’m not denying that the idea of living in an enclave of like-minded doesn’t have some appeal. Personally, I would prefer not to live in a mullah-run theocracy, thank you very much. But for those that want to live that way, well, have at it. Unfortunately, there will typically be some type of captive audience who are not all that happy with the status quo, whatever status that quo is.

So it’s hard for me to imagine this working out, other than on the most minute and granular scale.

Look where like-with-like has gotten us.

Partition in India, the Balkans, Israel? I really can’t come up with any examples of where the creation of uniform societies has been an unalloyed success.

Of course, this is different. I guess. A bunch of libertarians aren’t going to get their shorts all in a knot about the types of differences that cause run-of-the-mill cultures to get their shorts in a knot. But how do you protect against those who just can’t stand the thought of a group whose way of life, ideology, modus vivendi, whatever is different than theirs? Who feel so threatened by the “other”, who are so convinced that theirs is the only way one can possibly conduct their affairs, that they have to convert the “other” or wipe them off the face of the earth. (Hmmmm. Where have we seen this before?) Seasteaders beware! For some group, the very existence of a seastead that allows decadent westerners to sit around pot-smoking and attending gay weddings, when they’re not rapaciously chasing wealth, will no doubt be a war cry.

So methinks that the seasteaders better be prepared to arm up.

The Seasteading Institute – founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson, co-founded by (ta-da) Peter Thiel - has thought through a lot of the attending issues, and it’s an interesting read. They have thought things through in furtherance of their mission:

…the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems.

…We're opening this new frontier because humanity needs better ways to live together to unlock our full potential.

They’re all for a post-nationalism-as-we-know-it-now world. Forget countries. It’s the economy now, stupid.

With seasteading, they envision “a vibrant startup sector for government”, where different ideas compete for citizens. And speaking of post-nationalism. Since, in the beginning, the seasteaders will have to be citizens of somewhere, they suggest shopping around for getting citizenship – buying it if you have to – in the countries with the best tax advantages. No flag-waving Americans, they!

I’ll have to give them credit for anticipating, in their FAQ, the first question that came to my mind:

Are seasteading enthusiasts just a bunch of rich guys wanting even more freedom?

The seasteading community is broad and will only become broader over time. We don’t believe that wealth accumulation is the primary motive for seasteading, although we do recognize viable trade will be a key ingredient to seasteading’s success.

Well, it may not be their primary motive, but it sure does seem to be a motive. C.f., shopping around for tax-free citizenship.

People who venture off to seasteads will do so for a variety of reasons, and for many it will be to find more freedom. They may be desperately poor people searching for opportunities and escape from oppression. Or they may be entrepreneurs with valuable ideas. We’re eager to see over time what kind of new innovative governments arise from the experiment on seasteads.

Hmmmmm. “Desperately poor people searching for opportunities and escape from oppression….Entrepreneurs with valuable ideas.”

I know we’ve got our problems, but doesn’t this sound like the good old U. S. of A.? Or at least what it used to be, before we noticed that a disturbing proportion of those desperately poor people and entrepreneurs with valuable ideas were brown-skinned.

And, while I think of it, where are those “desperately poor people” going to get the scratch to buy-in to a seastead?

Nope, sounds to me like a bunch of rich guys looking for more freedom and more money.

There are worse things to spend your time and money on.

Like buying someone a Lexus for Christmas. (I do so despise those ads…)

Anyway, I wish the seasteaders success. Come the melting of the perma-ice, we’ll probably all be living in seasteads. Better a seastead thought up by Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman than a Waterworld raft with Kevin Costner.

We’ll remember Pearl Harbor

2011-12-08T03:33:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know: the 70th anniversary of “a day that will live in infamy” was yesterday, not today.

But 70 years ago today, Franklin Roosevelt declared war, and we, as they say, were in it to win it.

I don’t know when, exactly, my father decided to enlist, and it’s over 40 years too late to ask him, but at some point, my father decided to sign up. And in 1942, he did.

He was nearly thirty at the time, and his life had not yet taken off. A true child of the Depression – he graduated from high school in 1929 – on Pearl Harbor Day, he was working as a wire-drawer at Thompson Wire in Worcester, and taking night school courses towards a bachelor’s degree at Northeastern University Extension, which held its classes, I believe, at the Worcester Y. As far as I know, he didn’t have a girlfriend – serious or otherwise – at this point in his life. And I hope that he was no longer sharing a bed with his brother Charlie in the cold and dismal back room of the first floor apartment they occupied in the three-flat my grandmother owned. That he had decamped to the bedroom long-vacated by his sister Peg when she had married a decade earlier. But you never know. He and Charlie may still have been sharing a bed; that is when Charlie, something of the Wild Rover of Main South Worcester.,wasn’t sharing a bed, or the backseat of a Buick with some lovely. (Charlie had at least one child out of wedlock, possible two. He was definitely before his time in the baby daddy department.)

Anyway, my father could have used an adventure, and he loved his country. So why wait around to be drafted? He didn’t have a wife. He didn’t have a family. Let’s go!

He tried first to get into the Army, but was rejected because of his flat feet. It was felt that he couldn’t march in the infantry and was, thus, of no use to them. But my father – a tremendously gifted athlete – was not going to let Uncle Sam call 4-F on him, so he tried the Navy, which apparently didn’t mind my father’s flat foot floogie (without the floy-floy).*

Based on the results of his intelligence test, the Navy offered my father the opportunity to go to into officers’ training, but he turned them down. He didn’t want to be one of those stuck up, rich-boy, snot-nosed officers. So he joined as an enlisted man, and made his way up to the highest level non-com, Chief Petty Officer (a rank similar to Master Sergeant.)

He never saw any action. You went, as he would say, where Uncle Sam sent you. And Uncle Sam sent him to Norfolk, Virginia; Trinidad; and Chicago.

At one point, early on, the FBI showed up at wherever my father was stationed to ask him why he had lied on his enlistment form.

He had claimed to have never been arrested, but the FBI had proof positive he had been.

It seems that, at the age of 15, my father had been busted for crashing a dance with some friends. They didn’t have the dime or quarter admissions fee.

Anyway, they were hauled off to the police station on Waldo Street, where my father’s uncle, who was a policeman, came and got him and brought him home. My father could not recall having been booked, and he never had to go before a judge or “do time”. So he didn’t realize he even had an arrest record.

One would think that, especially in time of war, the FBI would have better things to do – like look for spies – than to hound someone who’d been arrested at age 15 for trying to crash a school dance.

But, ah, the long arm of the law…

The closest my father came to action was on the ship to Trinidad, which went through waters full of U-boats on the prowl. And, while in Trinidad, he saw a captured German submarine brought in. But that was about it.

With an Irishman’s healthy skepticism towards authority, my father liked to tell stories about the idiocy, the arbitrariness, the pettiness of the military.

One time Eleanor Roosevelt was visiting Trinidad, and there was some command-performance review of the troops. My father and the men under him were supposed to be there – well in advance of Eleanor, by the way – at 09.00 hours. My father had given his Catholic men permission to attend Mass, and they showed up a minute or two late. As punishment, my father had to haul – in the broiling tropical sun – heavy wooden boards (I always pictured railroad ties) from one end of an area to the other. Then back. Then forth. Then back.

He understood that the military needed to maintain discipline, but he found this entire incident ridiculous. Especially the harsh and inhumane punishment. (And you wonder why he didn’t want to be an officer…)

He always said that he would do it again – i.e., give his men permission to go to Mass, even if it meant being a minute late – because church was more important than an extra minute standing in the sun waiting for Eleanor to arrive, which wasn’t going to happen for a couple of hours, anyway. (He didn’t hold it against Eleanor, by the way.)

Mostly he was a supply guy, a paper pusher. (At the end of the war, he was a paper flusher, as he and his boss – one of those officers he hadn’t wanted to be – flushed some of their paper work down the toilet to get thing over and done with.)

In January 1945, while stationed in Chicago, he met my mother on a blind date. They became engaged seven months later, when the first atom bomb was dropped and my father realized that the war would soon be over, and that he wouldn’t be shipped off to the Pacific.

So, yes, we’ll remember Pearl Harbor.

Mostly for the poor boys blown to bits on the Arizona and the other ships that were harbored at Pearl. And for the fact that it ushered us into a war we had been tippy-toeing towards for a couple of years, which took the lives of four hundred thousand American young men and untold millions of soldiers, sailors, and civilians across the globe. (Hard to imagine those numbers now, isn’t it?) But also because it indirectly brought about my existence.

So, yes. Yesterday, we remembered Pearl Harbor.

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

*Allusion to a WWII-era jazz song, “Flat Foot Floogie (with a floy-floy)”.

Comment moderator. (Now here’s something I could do.)

2011-12-07T03:53:00.000-04:00

Since I so don’t want to go back to waitressing, I sometimes think about what I might do next. If, at my advanced age, there is in fact a next that I get paid to do. As opposed to a likely unpaid next that entails lobbying Washington not to rescind Social Security the day I become eligible, and/or waiting around at Mass Eye and Ear for someone to show me how glaucoma eye-drops work. (Can you tell I just had a birthday? Sigh…)

So I was intrigued when I read a recent article in Business Week on paid online comment moderators.

As I find myself mentally moderating – not to mention mentally rebutting – half the comments I masochistically subject myself to reading, I think that this is a job that I might enjoy.

The article profiled Chuck Dueck, a professional online moderator who works for ICUC Moderation, a Canadian firm that monitors content and comments.

ICUC:

…is the global leader in online content and community moderation services. Our team of multi-lingual content and community specialists manage, moderate and monitor millions of social media conversations, comments, photographs and videos and work inside some of the largest online communities in the world.

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that ICUC hails from Canada, as I would imagine that the worst sling and arrow on a Canadian site would be a Molson drinker humorously sniping at a Labatt’s quaffer. Or someone ending a comment on whether real Hudson Bay blankets have three colored stripes or four by saying, “Not that it matters. We’re all Canadians, eh?”

I know, I know.

It ain’t all tea-cozies and rose petals north of the border.

They have their contentious politics. Doesn’t Quebec still want to secede?

And God knows that anyone who watched the Boston Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks at their own game to win last year’s Stanley Cup completely understands that young Canadians are as perfectly capable of taking part in drunken, frenzied, destructive mayhem as the next guys.

Still, I can’t imagine that Canadian commenters are as imbecilic, rude, and nasty as many of those whose comments I see on my news haunts: Huffington Post, boston.com, and – I’ll admit it – bostonherald.com . Not to mention occasional forays onto sports blogs. And these are the comments that get through!

When I find myself being agitated by the venom, silliness, mean-spiritedness, stupidity, and slime that comes across – more often than not in anonymous comments - I take a deep breath and remind myself that this provides folks with an immediate outlet for their roiling emotions. Unlike the old, takes three days, polite, must-make-sense, must-be-signed (if name not withheld on request), letters to the editor that were often thought-provoking, reasoned, and intelligent mini-essays in their own right. Yes, I do miss those staid old days. But I also acknowledge that today’s in-the-moment commenting may, in fact, let enough steam out of the old tea-kettle to prevent a few rocks being hurled through a politician’s office window, stop a few fender-benders for occurring, save a few dogs from being kicked.

I will note that comments tend to be less vile and nutty when people use their own names. Thus, The NY Times comments are generally pretty thoughtful, unlike those of, say, The New York Post.

In any case, I suspect that most of ICUC’s business is south of the border, down our way. (NAFTA, anyone?)

Dueck doesn’t just get to delete the nasties, he also:

…scolds the people behind them (either on the forum or over e-mail), and, if things really get out of hand—say, in the case of repeat offenders—bans their accounts. Over the course of each day he chips away at the cussing and swearing, the spammers, haters, and trolls, temporarily restoring civility to his corner of the Internet. (Source for quoted material here on out: back to the Business Week article linked above.)

ICUC’s work comes from a combination of corporation and news sites.

The company claims $10 million in revenue last year, cleaning up the comments on the websites, Twitter feeds, and Facebook pages of blue-chip brands such as Chevron, Starbucks, and the Boston Globe. “Some Fridays you feel like you need to spend two hours in the shower because it’s so disgusting,” says [founder Ken] Bilous.

(Aside to the ICUC moderators who work on the Boston Globe: would you mind informing some of the broken-record commenting cretins who seem to think that Massachusetts is the worst place to live in the world, that our dear commonwealth ranks consistently high in factors like health, wealth, quality of life, and education.)

ICUC is just one of several large comment moderation firms. Others cited in the article were eModeration and LiveWorld.

Moderators are largely middle-aged and well educated. Most work remotely, on flexible schedules. “Ours tend to be women over the age of 35 working from home, sometimes in addition to other jobs,” says Peter Friedman…CEO of LiveWorld.

Middle-aged. Well educated. Work remotely. Flex time.

C’est moi!

You won’t get rich as a moderator, but you could make between $40K and $80K. Sounds reasonably reasonable,

…but need to be prepared for daily exposure to humanity at its vilest. Extreme racism and bigotry, images of pedophilia, and even personal threats are all too common.

So’s burnout. Many new ICUC hires don’t even last two weeks.

To cope, moderators work on sites in short shifts, flipping between forums prone to maliciousness (news stories about Israel, say) and something more joyful (LEGO fan pages).

The article noted that sometimes the law has to get whistled in, as “when threats against President Obama appeared on a website discussing Home Improvement reruns.”

Say what?

How did jawing about Home Improvement reruns prompt someone to make a death threat? How did Barack Obama’s name even come up? Someone speculating about whether he or Michelle’s the go-to when a lamp needs re-wiring? (Actually, it’s probably Michelle’s mother. She seems like the can-do, practical type.)

Occasionally, I have to do my own little bit o’ comment moderation on Pink Slip.

The other day, a post on a fellow who sent a bad-mouthing e-mail about a Congressional Medal of Honor winner that allegedly lost the CMH holder a job, managed to attract a few comments. When you googled the name of the bad-mouther, Pink Slip came to the fore, which brought in any number of new, ad hoc readers. I had to remove a couple of slanderous comments made by someone claiming to be a former colleague and another claiming to be an ex-girlfriend. Opinions, fine: have at it. Statements of “fact” that may just as easily be “fiction,” get off my blog: if I can’t prove something with a 15-second google, the comment’s gone. But mostly comments, even when they – sniff, sniff – criticize me, get to stay.

Comment moderation outsourcing is, not surprisingly, a growth industry. Which we are all for. Except for the fact that this means that folks in India and the Philippines will be drastically undercutting the rates the North American moderators charge. And they won’t even have to pretend to be “Brian” and “Peggy”, anymore, either.

But, of course, you get what you pay for, and – at least for a while – there’ll still be plenty of room for those who understand the culture and all its wondrous nuances to provide moderating services.

Anyway, sounds like an interesting business.

Maybe even my next?

Probably not: I’d probably find it too hard not to get into debates with the jerks.

Bring out your dead in style

2011-12-06T03:19:00.000-04:00

I recently received a free come-on issue of The Week. I already read The New Yorker and The Economist, plus a couple of monthlies. And I do feel obligated to keep my oar in the water of haute-culture by ~~voraciously consuming~~ casually browsing People when I’m at my sister Trish’s. So I won’t be subscribing to The Week, although it was interesting enough and was just the sort of rag I grabbed off the US Airways free-mag rack when I was a frequent flyer back in the day.

The most interesting article – an extract from her new book, Making an Exit - was one by Sarah Murray, on the fantasy caskets that are popular in Ghana. Airplanes, coke bottles, elephant, fish, flashy cars, keys, bananas. Let your imagination run wild, and get your concept into the able hands of a skilled Ghanaian casket-craftsman.

In the U.S., of course, you can get coffins with the official logo and color scheme of your favorite major league sports team, and over the years I’ve heard of more than one person buried in his Cadillac or astride his Harley. (Ah, there are no helmet laws in heaven.) And when my sibs and I were in the market, as it were, for a coffin when my mother died ten years ago, we found that you can get a very nice shiny emerald green one with a big shamrock on the inside, or glam up a regular, plain old coffin with lighthouses, golf clubs, baskets of flowers corner pieces.

Although we didn’t do quite what my mother had wanted – the cheapest coffin on offer; which her parish priest reminded us when we went to the rectory to plan her funeral – we didn’t go crazy, either. Bypassing the lower end possibilities, which would have been perfectly fitting had my mother died in the shootout at the OK Corral, and was going to be buried on Boot Hill, we got a very nice one in the lower end of the middle range, with a sort of art-deco design that reminded us of Chicago, where my mother was from.

If we could have gotten a fantasy coffin for my mother, I think we’d have gone with a book. Something by Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility, maybe. A book would have worked for my father, too – it’s no accident that those two spawned five complete bookworms – but I think my father would have preferred something with more of a sportive motif. Maybe a baseball glove.

The more I think about it, the more I’m down with the idea of fantasy coffins.

There’s something oddly comforting about knowing that you’ll go to your eternal – well, a couple of hundred years, anyway – rest in something that’s personal to you. (And could there be anything more personal than your barque on the River Styx?) Which is why I, while opting for the quicker and cleaner ashes to ashes route offered by cremation, like the idea of having my ashes strewn in a few places hither and yon. My ultimate bucket list includes somewhere-in-the-west-of-Ireland; Fenway Park (I promise: just a teensy-weensy particle on the warning track); and the cemetery where my parents et many al. in my family are buried.

If I were going the fantasy coffin route, I guess I’d have to go with a book, myself. (I know: BOR-ING. Guess I’m just singularly lacking in imagination, but I really can’t see wanting to be buried in a replica Coke bottle. Maybe a replica carton of Cherry Garcia fro-yo. On second thought, some anthropologist/archeologist in 2525 might exhume me and think I was a Dead-Head. No way!)

Murray, before leaving Ghana, ordered herself up a coffin that’s a replica of the Empire State Building, which she keeps in her NYC home.

That’s a nice idea, although I would have chosen the Chrysler Building, instead.

It does get me thinking building-wise, however. For my mother, either the Wrigley Building or the Statue of Liberty. For my father, maybe Worcester City Hall.

In addition to talking about the fantasy coffins of Ghana, Murray also mentioned the growing market for doublewide coffins in the US:

Rising obesity has prompted the arrival of new supersize coffins. In Indiana, one company has made a business "serving the oversize needs of the funeral industry." With coffins named Harvest, Heartland, and Homestead, the Goliath Casket company offers a variety of sizes — ranging in width from 29 inches to a massive 52 inches (the standard is 24 inches).

Quite naturally, I had to pay a visit to Goliath, which has quite a winning little “about us” tale:

THE BEGINNING

Back in the 70’s and 80’s oversize caskets were hard to get and poorly made.

Special size caskets were made by hand, and without much regard to quality or integrity.

In 1985, Keith's father [Keith is the current proprietor], Forrest Davis, (Pee Wee) quit his job as a welder in a casket factory and said, ‘Boys, I’m gonna go home and build oversize caskets that you would be proud to put your mother in.’

Say what you will, but I’ve seen worse tag-lines that “oversize caskets that you would be proud to put your mother in.”

Are there that many individuals in Lynn, Indiana, burying obese mothers?

Fortunately, my mother didn’t need an oversize casket. Plain vanilla 24” did her just fine.

Fittingly, Goliath began its life in “an old converted hog barn”. Its initial offerings were limited, but now you can get them in a number of different styles, with bespoke ones available. (The site features a nifty bright orange one for University of Tennessee die-hards. Dead-hards?)

Goliath caskets range up to 52” wide, and up to 8 feet long.

Woah, baby!

I wouldn’t want to be a pallbearer on that one.

But I guess it’s good to know that, if you do die obese, you don’t have to be crammed into a tiny-little casket.

Bring out your dead in comfort and style.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s a question: do these mega-caskets fit in a standard hearse, or do you have to go with a stretch limo?

Nothing’s ever easy, is it?

Greetings from Happyville

2011-12-05T02:26:00.000-04:00

I am a complete and utter sucker for city rankings, however bogus (not to mention inconsequential) they are. The zanier the better: bring ‘em on!

So I was deliriously, well, happy, to learn that my very own Boston was ranked fifth happiest town in the whole USA.

What crazed survey came up with this result, I had to ask myself.

I get why Honolulu would rank #1 here, but, let’s face it, Boston ain’t no one’s idea of tropical paradise. And surely no city dominated by ethnic pillars – the dour Yankee and the sardonic Irishman – not exactly bursting with happiness; that’s populated, thanks to a all those local halls of ivy, with folks who are too smart not to be neurotic; and that suffers from a lot of crappy weather, can make it to #5. Not to mention that we have the Red Sox driving us baseball-bat-shit crazy.

What? Us happy?

Talk about counter-intuitive!

Naturally, I had to move it on over to Men’s Health to find out how this old town got to be a bridesmaid on the happy-dappy list, while sun-dappled St. Petersburg, Florida got to be the old maid: ranking dead last out of 100 cities rated.

Here’s how Boston clawed it’s way near the top:

We calculated suicide rates (CDC) and unemployment rates (Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of June 2011). Then we tapped SimplyMap for the percentage of households that use antidepressants as well as the number of people who report feeling the blues all or most of the time.

Now it starts to make some sense. Sort of.

We’ve been pretty fortunate, this recession around. Sure, there are some empty store fronts – Borders and soon, alas, Filene’s Basement – but mostly you’d never know there was a bad economy on.

As for suicide, Catholics (even ex-Catholics) may not be as likely to kill themselves as those from more enlightened backgrounds for whom suicide might seem to make some sense as a way out. No, us Catholics (even ex-Catholics) know that we’re here on earth to be miserable – what else is new? – and that killing yourself buys you nothing more than a one-way ticket to hell, which is forever. Nope, we’ll take our hell on earth, thank you, where at least it has an ending.

And there’s the Irish in us: kill ourselves and give the Red Sox the satisfaction? That’d be the day!

Anti-depressants aren’t us, either. We prefer alcohol.

And we’re just too darned pissed off most of the time (c.f., the Boston Red Sox) to have any time for the blues.

So I guess maybe we are happy. Even though you’d never know if to look at us.

We’re in interesting company in the top ten, that’s for sure:

1. Honolulu, HI A+
2. Manchester, NH A
3. Fargo, ND A
4. Omaha, NE A
5. Boston, MA A-
6. Madison, WI A-
7. Sioux Falls, SD A-
8. St. Paul, MN A-
9. Burlington, VT A
10. Plano, TX A-

New England grabs three places in the money! Four of the top twenty, when you add in Portland, ME. Although I must ask how Manchester, NH scored better than Burlington, VT or Portland, ME or Boston, MA.

And odd, isn’t it, that eight out of ten are places where it snows?Take that, sunbelt, where everyone supposedly wants to live.

The big surprise, for those of us who’ve seen the movie, has to be Fargo…As mentioned, the saddest city is St. Petersburg, followed by the completely understandable Detroit. Which is the only city in the north that ranks in the bottom decile, which is dominated by Florida (St. Pete, Tampa, Miami) and Nevada (Reno and Las Vegas).

Boston as happyville! Hap, hap, happedy, hap, hap!

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s the entire list, in the reverse order it was published in. Absurd as it is, this is a fun read. (No wonder I’m happy.)

100. St. Petersburg, FL F
99. Detroit, MI F
98. Memphis, TN F
97. Tampa, FL F
96. Louisville, KY F
95. St. Louis, MO F
94. Birmingham, AL F
93. Miami, FL F
92. Reno, NV F
91. Las Vegas, NV F

90. Toledo, OH F
89. Bakersfield, CA F
88. Jacksonville, FL F
87. Atlanta, GA F
86. Winston-Salem, NC F
85. Sacramento, CA F
84. Cincinnati, OH D-
83. Phoenix, AZ D-
82. Orlando, FL D-
81. Washington, DC D-

80. Wilmington, DE D-
79. Greensboro, NC D-
78. Jackson, MS D-
77. Columbia, SC D
76. Newark, NJ D
75. Fresno, CA D
74. Cleveland, OH D
73. Kansas City, MO D
72. Chicago, IL D
71. Riverside, CA D

70. Albuquerque, NM D
69. Portland, OR D
68. Richmond, VA D
67. Tucson, AZ D
66. Milwaukee, WI D
65. Los Angeles, CA D+
64. Denver, CO D+
63. Colorado Springs, CO D+
62. Providence, RI D+
61. Oakland, CA D+

60. Philadelphia, PA D+
59. Nashville, TN D+
58. El Paso, TX D+
57. Charlotte, NC D+
56. Aurora, CO D+
55. Little Rock, AR D+
54. Charleston, WV D+
53. Stockton, CA C-
52. Baltimore, MD C-
51. Baton Rouge, LA C-

50. Indianapolis, IN C-
49. Houston, TX C-
48. Dallas, TX C-
47. Seattle, WA C-
46. Fort Wayne, IN C-
45. Boise City, ID C-
44. New Orleans, LA C-
43. Fort Worth, TX C-
42. Norfolk, VA C
41. Tulsa, OK C

40. Pittsburgh, PA C
39. New York, NY C
38. Bridgeport, CT C
37. Buffalo, NY C
36. Columbus, OH C
35. Corpus Christi, TX C
34. San Diego, CA C
33. San Antonio, TX C+
32. Wichita, KS C+
31. Santa Ana, CA C+

30. Cheyenne, WY C+
29. Lubbock, TX C+
28. Billings, MT C+
27. Oklahoma City, OK B-
26. Anchorage, AK B-
25. Laredo, TX B-
24. Durham, NC B-
23. Salt Lake City, UT B-
22. Lexington, KY B-
21. Raleigh, NC B-

20. San Francisco, CA B
19. Austin, TX B
18. Jersey City, NJ B
17. Des Moines, IA B
16. Portland, ME B
15. San Jose, CA B
14. Minneapolis, MN B+
13. Chesapeake, VA B+
12. Virginia Beach, VA A-
11. Lincoln, NE A-

Blues-proof towns

10. Plano, TX A-
9. Burlington, VT A-
8. St. Paul, MN A-
7. Sioux Falls, SD A-
6. Madison, WI A-
5. Boston, MA A-
4. Omaha, NE A
3. Fargo, ND A
2. Manchester, NH A
1. Honolulu, HI A+

It really is the 1%’s world, isn’t it?

2011-12-02T03:57:00.000-04:00

I truly believe that there are only a couple of things holding the lid on a society in which the majority of people have made little economic headway in, say, the last three decades.

Sure, we’ve all got more plastic-fantastic, electronic crap. But we have less financial security, less confidence in what tomorrow’s going to bring, and less of a clue where the jobs in our hollowed-out economy are going to come from.

So we should be thankful for the things that keep the whole shebang from boiling over.

First, there’s the prison-industrial complex, that a) gets to remove millions out of potential workers from the workforce (or unemployed-force) by keeping them behind bars, while at the same time b) provides millions of folks with prison guard jobs that are the only things available in their communities now that so many manufacturing jobs have gone south (figuratively; east literally). Can you say win-win?

Then there’s reality TV, that manages to offer some hope that folks with little by way of talent, intelligence, and capability - beyond a finely-honed skill at naked and shameless self-promotion - can become millionaires. Say, if Snooki and The Situation can strike it rich, our society (at least at its most paltry and cretinous level) remains the Land of Opportunity, if not exactly a meritocracy.

But most of all, there’s the lottery, where rich and poor alike, the pauper and the king, are all theoretically equal under the bouncing ball.

Of course, the rich man and the king don’t play the lottery, do they? After all, they’re too smart. They know the odds.

No, the lottery is for us poor folk in the 99%.

You pays your money and you takes your chances.

So what if the odds are kazillion to one?

Somebody’s got to win, and as often as not it seems to be the little guy: the cleaning later, the mail sorters at the Post Office, the fellow who just got laid off at the meat packing plant.

So what if we know deep down that that Powerball take is going to wreck their lives, that everyone’s going to hate them, that there’s never going to be enough to make everyone in their circle of greed happy. And that they’ll end up alone and miserable in their 20-room hacienda on the Inland Waterway, knowing that everyone that they didn’t count in on the winnings hopes they get eaten alive by an alligator.

Unlike moi…

If I won, happiness would reign supreme and the world would be a better place. After I accounted for my own modest share – just enough to keep me out of the poorhouse, or perhaps give me time off to channel one of the novels ratcheting around in my brain –and set up my own not-so-modest foundation, so I could be like John Beresford Tipton, merrily dispensing million dollar checks around the land.

But while I am not a toothless lunk-head Beverly Hillbilly who’s going to squander the cash on Ferraris and 20-room haciendas on the Inland Waterway, I do have to admit that I – like the toothless lunk-head – am a part of the 99.

Not so the posse who, a couple of days ago, came out from the woodwork – make that the highly polished, mahogany woodwork – to claim $254 million, the largest lottery jackpot in Connecticut state history.

The nouveau lottery winners – but hardly nouveau riche – are hedge fund managers.

I repeat: they’re hedge fund managers.

As if we need any more proof that the world is rigged….

The winners are with Belpointe Capital which, admittedly, is a pretty modest outfit by hedgie standards. With $82 million in assets, it’s actually well under the $104 million after-tax proceeds from the big lottery win.

The three winners, Belpointe co-founder Brandon Lacoff, Tim Davidson and Gregory Skidmore, bought a single $1 ticket at a Stamford gas station. They actually won in the Nov. 2 drawing but didn't come forward until yesterday. Skidmore is president and chief investment officer of the firm and Davidson a senior portfolio manager. (Source: FinAlternatives.)

Where is Ripley’s Believe It of Not when you need ‘em?

One thing we’re sure of, the rich get richer (and the poor get poorer).

Well, at least they’ll know what to do with it.

In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?

Whatever happened to Rita Jenrette?

2011-12-01T03:56:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that, even in days of yore – that misty time when we didn’t have 24/7 blare-a-thon news; numb-skulling reality shows; and real-time dissemination of “information” (about which half of the disseminators and two-thirds of the disseminatees can’t discern the difference between fact, fiction, and opinion) – we still had celebrities-for-the-day, an appetite for the weird and salacious tidbit, and sordid gossip.

Those of a certain age may recall Debbie “Tammy’s in Love” Reynolds’ break up with Eddie “Oh, My Papa” Fisher. Tiny Tim’s tiptoe through the tulips with Miss Vicky. And Rita Jenrette.

What I recalled about Rita Jenrette was: Married to disgraced (Abscam scandal) Congressman John Jenrette. Posing nude in Playboy. And something to do with sex on the Capitol steps.

Beyond that, I can honestly say that her name hasn’t passed through my mind until I saw her profiled in The New Yorker.

Where I was not only reminded of the things I’d remembered: Abscam, Playboy, sex on the steps. But of things that I had forgotten – if indeed I’d ever known: that she appeared in an episode of “Fantasy Island”, had a role in the film “Zombie Island Massacre”, and was the broker on the sale of New York’s GM Building to Donald Trump. (Wonder if they ever sat in a flivver in the Auto Pub and threw back a cold one while talking deal?)

But now, it seems, lovely Rita has come up in the world.

No meter maid, she, Rita is now Her Serene Highness Principessa Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, consort of Prince Nicolo Bomcompagni Ludovisi.

Well, I’d be plenty serene, too, if I lived in a forty-thousand square foot palazzo in Rome.

Hell, I’d be plenty serene if we had 200 more square feet of living space in our condo.

For Rita, serenity means speculating about whether Caravaggio – who painted a ceiling at her Villa Aurora – knew Galileo, sitting in her garden where there’s a Michelangelo statue of Pan rather than a garden gnome, an hypothesizing that a tunnel beneath the kitchen connects the Villa Aurora with what was once the Medici palace. Oh, yes, and thumbing through the treasure trove of historical documents that Rita and Nicolo came upon, including letters from Marie Antoinette and Louis the XV.

A far cry from her 1981 memoir, “My Capitol Secrets” – a best-seller that I guess I missed – that revealed Beltway sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

And then, in 2003, when Rita was in her mid-fifties, she was asked to be Nicolo’s broker.

At first, she thought it was BS – in her words “Everybody in New York calls themselves count or prince or whatever – they’re not.”

Well, you can’t be any too careful when it comes to deciding whether those counts and princes or whatevers are real or not. After all, parvenus have been known to buy a title.

And then there’s Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, who at the age of 37 got himself adopted by Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt (1898–1983), daughter-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Not to mention all those pretenders to thrones that don’t even exist anymore.

Fortunately for Rita, Nicolo turned out to be the real-io deal-io.

Whatever things like “royalty” and “royal blood” actually mean, given that we all harken back to that first brave fish who got curious and stepped toe on land.

As an American of distinctly non-royal heritage – there’s no question what side of the moat my ancestors were on – I don’t have much truck with royalty: Euro-royalty, the royals on the walls of Thai restaurants, or American faux royalty who inherited wealth and fame.

Obviously, the guy in the way-back who got the throne the hard way, by sticking his rival’s head on a pike, deserved to be king – at least until someone could figure out how to get his head on a pike. But passing “it” down, ad infinitum, ad nauseam? Hiss boo!

Really, how can anyone in their right mind believe that what “royals” are is anything more than a) an accident of birth; b) the result of the ongoing credulity of those who buy into it.

Just because they’re entitled, doesn’t mean that they’re, well, entitled. (In the words of one Stanley Kowalski, a decidedly non-royal character: “Do you know what I say? Ha ha! Do you hear me? Ha ha ha!”)

Oh, maybe this is just sour grapes because I wasn’t born royal, I haven’t achieved royal stature, and I haven’t as yet had royal-ness thrust upon me.

Unlike ~~Rita Jenrette~~ Her Serene Highness Principessa Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi

What was Scott Fitzgerald thinking when he wrote that “there are no second acts in American lives”?

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

Here’s the link to The New Yorker article summary. You need to be a subscriber to get the full story.

And, having just googled the “second acts” quote to make sure I got it right, I found it on this site, which listed, next to Fitzgerald’s name, a group of “Related Authors” (their words, not mine):

Mark Twain
Henry David Thoreau
Zig Ziglar
Tony Robbins
Helen Keller
Joseph Campbell
Anais Nin
Thomas Merton

I get the paring of Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, but what do these folks have in common with each other, let alone with F. Scott Fitzgerald? Anais Nin and Thomas Merton? Anais Nin and Helen Keller? Zig Ziglar and Joseph Campbell?

I will definitely be wending my way back to this site to see what other curious combinations they’ve come up with.

Who wants to be in Bobby McCreight’s shoes? Show of hands, please.

2011-11-30T03:39:00.000-04:00

Anything’s possible, I suppose.

Congressional Medal of Honor winner, and ex-U.S. Marine, Dakota Meyer could conceivably be "mentally unstable" and have “a problem related to drinking in a social setting”. Which is what Meyer’s former supervisor, Bobby McCreight, is alleged to have said about him.

There just doesn’t seem to a whole lot of evidence that would suggest that this is so.

But the allegation was, Meyer believes, enough to put the kibosh on a job with a defense contractor that he had been verbally assured was his.

So, Meyer is suing his former employer BAE Systems, and McCreight, his former supervisor.

In legal papers filed Monday, the Marine claims that BAE Systems, where he worked earlier this year, retaliated against him after he raised objections about BAE's alleged decision to sell high-tech sniper scopes to the Pakistani military. He says his supervisor at BAE effectively blocked his hiring by another defense contractor by making the claims about drinking and his mental condition. (Source: WSJ.)

Meyer was (understandably) angered about the arms sale, given that he’d been there/done that on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Which is where he earned his Congressional Medal of Honor by risking life and limb to rescue a bunch of his comrades – 36 of them, in fact - from Taliban fire. So, yeah, arms sales to our “friends” the Pakistanis is a personal thing.

"We are taking the best gear, the best technology on the market to date and giving it to guys known to stab us in the back," Sgt. Meyer wrote to Mr. McCreight, according to the lawsuit. "These are the same people killing our guys."

Because of this prospective sale, Meyer quit BAE. He thought he would be able to get his old job back at Ausgur Technologies, another defense contractor. That was until McCreight got out his weapon of choice, in this case, the e-mail which resulted in the DoD liaison passing the comments about the “mental instability” and “drinking” on to Ausgur.

McCreight had, according to Meyer, not taken too kindly to Meyer’s being up for the Congressional Medal of Honor:

In the suit, Sgt. Meyer said that after he voiced his criticism, Mr. McCreight began "berating and belittling" him. The supervisor criticized Sgt. Meyer for making a trip with their BAE division president and made sarcastic remarks about Sgt. Meyer's nomination for the Medal of Honor, allegedly ridiculing his "pending star status," the suit says.

McCreight is himself, I believe, a former Marine. So much for the deathless Marine Corps bond. Maybe he thought Meyer was just grandstanding when he went back five times to rescue more of his bros.

So, how’d you like to be in McCreight’s old combat boots right about now?

Whatever his motivations were in fingering Meyer – petulance, retribution, jealousy, sarcasm, or – let’s give him the benefit of the pre-court-of-law doubt – patriotism and sincerity (maybe he really believed that Meyer was a crazy drinker; maybe he believed that any one who would drink a can of Bud is nuts), McCreight’s name at this point is Mudd.

I have no idea how old McCreight is, but he’s taken on a young man – Meyer is just 23 years old – who has achieved iconic and revered status, at a time and in a place where it is nigh unto impossible to criticize a member of the military. Let alone one who’s just been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Think Sgt. Alvin York, who hailed from the neighboring state of Tennessee. If Gary Cooper were still alive, he’d be playing Meyer, who’s from Kentucky.

McCreight’s in the suit, in the news, and in the blogs, where I’m sure he has his apologists and defenders. Just not that many of them.

His reputation’s obviously at stake (if not altogether shattered), and his job’s likely at stake. Who knows for how long old BAE Systems will be on his side.

And as much as the average American is willing to call BS on most of the “wrongful whatever” suits filed in this oh-so-litigious nation of ours, no one will be calling BS here unless and until someone proves that Meyer is a mentally unstable drinker, and/or until someone disproves that the McCreight e-mail was, indeed, the reason Meyer didn’t get the job he was looking for.

Gosh, what was Bobby McCreight thinking when he fired off this e-mail? The spoken word becomes he-say, he-say in court. The e-mailed word lives on forever.

I’ve had a couple of people under me whom I had personally (but obviously not professionally) diagnosed as “mentally unstable,” but damned if I ever would have told that to a prospective hirer, let alone put it in an e-mail. If someone I knew had asked me off the record about one of these folks, I would likely have been somewhat forthcoming and warned them off. Mostly, when providing a reference, I used to wait for someone to ask me the $64,000 question: would I hire this person again. And I would have answered truthfully, yea or nay. But no one ever asked. (When I was especially enthusiastic about someone, I would volunteer that I would hire them again in a minute.)

I’m not a big one for knee-jerk glorifying everyone who dons a military uniform as a hero. But sometimes men in war do extraordinarily brave, courageous, and bold things, seemingly without regard for their own (leather)necks. And Meyer is apparently one of them. You might get a Purple Heart for a nick, but I do not believe that you get the Congressional Medal of Honor for being a wuss.

Semper fi!

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

Could it possibly get any worse for Bobby McCreight? I just ran the spell-checker, and the correction suggested for McCreight is McVeigh. You CANNOT make this stuff up.

Steven J. Baum P.C.: What goes around do come around…

2011-11-29T02:37:00.000-04:00

Karma, as they say, can be one big, ugly, hellacious bitch.

Or so the law firm of Steven J. Baum P.C. is learning the big, ugly, hellacious hard way.

Steven Baum is was a NY-based foreclosure ~~law firm~~ mill famously outed by The NY Times Joe Nocera in a recent op-ed piece in which he reported on the firm’s 2010 Halloween party. At that now-infamous event, a number of employees dressed as foreclosed upon homeowners, and the overall office was done up with a homeless-squatter theme. My first superficial thought was there’s no such thing as a par-tay without pictures anymore. No more the days when Ray-with-the-lampshade-on-his-head and Dora-peeing-in-her-manager’s-wastebasket were just office lore, oral tradition handed down from one company party to the next. These days, if you do something foolish-heartless-thoughtless-craven-embarrassing-etc., and you do it in front of another human being, IT’S ALIVE! And IT’S ALIVE FOREVER!

My first real thought is that this is certainly a show of inordinately bad taste, and a stunning lack of empathy. And that the individuals shown will –one might hope – have the decency to some day rue the day and feel just a tiny bit ashamed by such a ghastly lack of feeling. A billion years ago, a bunch of us came to a company Halloween party dressed as dead products. I believe I went as an XSIM manual. Did I hurt the dead product manager’s feelings? Or the feelings of the techies that wrote XSIM? If so, I’m sorry. It did seem funny at the time. And it really annoyed a couple of folks in senior management – a true plus! But it’s one thing to make fun of a dead product, quite another to make fun of the poor and downtrodden, especially when it’s their backs that you’re making your living off of.

Still, perhaps because of my sordid dead-product-scorning past, I do want to give at least some Baum employees the benefit of the doubt – even those in the pictures. Maybe they were just whistling past the grave. Nonetheless, it does sound as if the overall tenor of the place was disdain for the poor souls who got in over their head with under the water mortgages. As the ex-Baum employee who supplied Nocera with the incriminating snapshots told him:

… the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set. “There is this really cavalier attitude,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.” Nor does the firm try to help people get mortgage modifications; the pressure, always, is to foreclose.

In the wake of Nocera’s column, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae blacklisted the firm.

And now the firm is closing and laying off all its employees.

This is not necessarily a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, where Nocera’s column is the hoc. (Notwithstanding that Steven Baum himself is apparently fingering Nocera as the cause of his firm’s demise.)

The authorities have been on to Baum for a while. They’re under investigation by the NY State A.G., and the firm:

…recently agreed to pay $2 million to resolve an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether the firm had “filed misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts in New York.” (In the press release announcing the settlement, Baum acknowledged only that “it occasionally made inadvertent errors.”)

And now they’re completely out of business. And that sounds like it’s about right. (Not that I wish that these newly unemployed will lose their homes just because they lose their jobs. There’s plenty enough misery going around already without adding to it, even if there is that delicious possible connection between punishment and crime.)

Anyway, it’s pretty disgusting that those who profit from the necessary evil of foreclosure law aren’t capable of showing some compassion for those kicked to the curb.

Sure, a lot of those foreclosed upon were just plain dumb. Although maybe ignorant is a better term. If some bucket-shop mortgage company is telling you that your $40K salary can buy you a $400K house – and that $400K house is the American dream, baby - it’s pretty easy to convince yourself that you’re good to go. “They” wouldn’t give you the mortgage if “they” didn’t think you could pay it back, would “they”?

In fact, a lot of those “theys” didn’t give a rat’s ass if you were ever going to be able to pay it back. “They” just wanted to pass go, collect their fee, and flip that flimsy piece of paper to someone else who didn’t give a rat’s ass if you were ever going to be to pay it back. And so on.

Over the years, I’ve met quite a few folks who are homeless. And you know what? Most of them aren’t all that different from the rest of us. (If I weren’t an atheist, here’s where I’d say “there but for the grace of God go I.”)

Yes, many of the ones I’ve known have made some bad choices. No one made them rob a bank, sell dope, get drunk. But they’ve also had more than their ration of bad luck: dysfunctional families, mental health problems, extreme poverty. (I met one fellow – a man in his thirties – who was barely literate. He’d grown up in South Carolina and, as a child, had been kept out of school for months at a time – beginning at age seven – to pick cotton. This would have been in the 1980’s, not the 1920’s.)

And now to the ranks of the chronic homeless are added millions of people who’d been living at the edge but who are now living out of their cars. And for them, the bad luck they’ve had far outweighs the bad choices.

Sure, a lot of the folks who’ve lost their home to foreclosure likely made some bad choices along the way – they didn’t think ahead, they didn’t ask the right questions, they didn’t plan for a rainy day, they grabbed for a brass ring thinking it was gold and finding out it was plastic, they figured that the housing prices just move in one direction – so why not take a second mortgage to buy that boat.

But with the collapse of the economy, with its disproportionate impact on blue collar families for whom jobs have just disappeared – gone, poof! – bad luck becomes more of a determinant of who ends up living out of their car and eating overcooked pasta in church basements.

And for someone to glory in (after rapaciously profiting from) that bad luck is just plain shameful.

So good luck to the Baum alumni who find themselves so newly unemployed.

There may be a few scum-bucket foreclosure mills that would be happy to scoop up folks with Baum experience on their c.v.’s. Other employees will no doubt plead the good German defense. But the days when the ability to churn out hundreds of robo-signed foreclosure notices a week is not really going to look like a good thing on anyone’s résumé, is it?

What goes around does tend to come around.

The Monday after the Friday before

2011-11-28T02:06:00.000-04:00

By now, everyone not fortunate enough to be out of the country on Black Friday – and you know who you are! – will have read about, heard about, or watched a video about the craziness, the over-the-top-iness, the consumer run amuck-iness, that prevailed in many parts of this great land o’ ours last Friday.

Oh, there was the “competitive shopper” at a California Walmart who pepper sprayed her rivals to keep them away from the X-Box and Wii games stash. (Technically, this incident occurred on Black Friday Eve, the holiday that once upon a time, in olden days, we called “Thanksgiving”.) She surrendered on Friday, and likely faces charges of assault. (Not assault to kill. Assault to shop, maybe? Assault with intent to purchase?)

The burning questions, of course: Did she get the discounted X-Box she was after? And does she get to keep her loot?

As for the particular games she that were on her list. Dance-Dance? Grand Theft Auto? Call of Duty?

My humble prediction: within the next year we’ll see one called Competitive Shopper. (If there isn’t one already….)

And forget about “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”. This years novelty Christmas tune will likely be “Grandpa Got a Leg Sweep from the Po-po.”

Once again, it was video games what really done it. As with the pepper spraying “competitive shopper”, video games were at the root of the case of the roughed-up Phoenix-area grandpa. He claimed he was just trying to save his grandson from being trampled by the mob, and tucked the video game under his shirt so he would be hands free. The cops claim shoplifting and resisting arrest. Unfortunately, the locals that an oh-so-alert Walmart employee whistled in tried to take grandpa down with a “leg sweep”. Alas, he landed on his head and wound up with a few stitches. Gosh, when I worked retail, shoplifters were just grabbed by the elbow and marched out. The world sure is going to hell in a Walmart shopping basket, ain’t it?

And, while we’re playing out the Walmart theme here, who didn’t love that YouTube of the Arkansas Walmart melee over the $2 waffle irons? Some people no doubt watched the film and thought, oh, how awful. (Oh-how-waffle! Get it?) But I thought it was a riot. Come on, what better way to cap of a holiday celebration than a bit of a revel in my Northeast, urban, latte-sucking, NPR-supporting, superiority-oozing, look-down-the-nose at, elitist snobbism? Admittedly, it would have looked like just any other garden-variety, $2 waffle iron, Walmart riot if it hadn’t been for the zaftig blonde sporting the twelve-inch plumber’s smile.

Of course, the Walmart Consumer Riots have become as much a kick-off of the holiday season as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Salvation Army bell-ringers.

What put a little twist into this year’s Black Friday meshugas was the stampede at a California Urban Outfitters.

We know it’s bad out there when cool urban hipsters (and their wannabes) start going nuts.

I mean flat-screen TV, X-Box, Wii. Bad behavior over the electronic goods of the hour are to be somewhat expected.

But what is it that would inspire mob behavior at an Urban Outfitters?

I saw those sock-monkey slippers first, d-bag?

You’re not getting away with the last Angry Birds key caps, you rat bastard!

My BFF won’t make it through the winter without this über cool hat. Don’t make me video you and post it to YouTube! Just stand back and let me get through to the register!

Ah, the madness of crowds!

I’ll have a Black Friday, without you

2011-11-25T03:05:00.000-04:00

Today I’m planting tulip bulbs.

Today I’m addressing my Christmas cards. (I know, I’m a rate-busting bitch.)

Today I’m taking a walk.

Today I’m reading a book.

Or maybe today I’m just chil-laxing.

But today I’m not joining the mad hordes, streaming pell-mell into Target and Walmart and Best Buy at midnight to grab up bargain flat-screen TVs, iPads, and whatever this year’s Tickle Me Elmo is.

Which is not to say that I won’t be root, root, rooting for the mad hordes to spend up a storm so that the we don’t have to spend the next month or so listening to the 24/7 pundits tell us that, because of lax consumer spending, we’re heading into a double-dip recession.

I’ll be having my personal Black Friday without you. But shop on, oh citizen consumers!

Thanksgiving Broken Record

2011-11-24T06:55:00.000-04:00

Come Thanksgiving, my thoughts – and I know I’m being wholly and stunningly original here – tend to drift towards that things that are worth being thankful for.

And unlike the more pedestrian thinkers out there, I am wholly and stunningly original when it comes to the things I am thankful for.

Family, friends, health, home, work, and the fact that, last time I looked, books were still being printed on paper.

While I recognize that, when it comes to Thanksgiving, I am a wholly and stunningly original thinker, I also recognize that I’ve done this wholly and stunningly original thinking at other points in time. Like last Thanksgiving.

Still, at the risk of sounding like a broken record – a concept that I suspect is wholly and stunningly lost on those who don’t know what a broken record sounds like, sounds like, sounds like – I am wholly and stunningly thankful for family, friends, health, home, work, and the fact that, last time I looked, books were still being printed on paper.

Meanwhile, broken record-wise, it’s important to remember that not everyone has family, friends, health, home, and work to be thankful for.

In Boston, hundreds of those folks will, nonetheless, be able to gather at St. Francis House, which has been helping Boston’s poor and homeless rebuild their lives for over 25 years.

In the past year, St. Francis House has:

Served more than 295,440 meals
Provided 6,996 showers
Distributed 6,891 changes of clothes
Provided more than 15,000 counseling sessions on mental health issues, substance abuse, housing, employment, legal matters, and other issues
Partnered with Boston Health Care for the Homeless to provide 9,416 medical appointments
Trained 156 people in our First Step Employment Program
Graduated the 107th class from the Moving Ahead Program (MAP), our vocational rehabilitation program, whose alumni now number more than 1,100
Housed 56 men and women in our Next Step Housing Program

If you’ve got something to be thankful for, please consider a donation to St. Francis House.

Now I must away to the groaning board that awaits at my cousin Barbara’s, for what I calculate to be the 66th time that our combined families have celebrated this holiday together.

Forty years ago, the Thanksgiving after my father died, Barbara and Dick, two small kids in tow, made it from Lexington to Worcester during a freak November blizzard so that my mother wouldn’t be disappointed. And, thus, our gathering record remained unbroken.

Thank you, Barbara, for that.

And to all, a very Happy Thanksgiving.

A pox on your party

2011-11-23T03:30:00.000-04:00

I came of age when children still got childhood diseases.

Hand in hand with my sister Kath – we shared a bed until we were 6 and 8 years old – I had measles and German measles.

Measles really sucked, because we had it in the summer, when it was still light out in the evening, and we had to stay in our darkened bedroom with the blinds closed. Something about measles-related light exposure that could make you go blind. We could hear the loud-mouth Brennan boys marauding around next door, in their grandmother’s yard. No fairsy!

German measles wasn’t a trip to the beach, either.

Then we all – there were four of us at the time – got chicken pox. Our house was quarantined, and Kath had one of the worst cases the doctor had ever seen, with blisters on the insides of her mouth. Kath, I think, was 10 at the time. This was relatively old to have chicken pox, which may have accounted for the severity of her case.

None of us had official mumps, but those bouts of swollen glands may well have been mild mumps.

When I was in second grade, pretty much every one in my class came down with severe tonsillitis. This was a couple of weeks before our First Holy Communion was scheduled, and there was some fear that we would have to pick a new date. During the tonsillitis outbreak, there were some days when only 5 or 6 kids (out of 40+) were in class. Because of tonsillitis, I missed my grandmother’s 75th birthday party, but could hear it going on. (You can’t miss much in a small house with a lot of people in it.) My father’s cousin Matt stuck his head in the room to say hello to me; someone brought me a piece of cake, which was fruity and whipped creamy, and which came from a bakery. And which, despite the exotica of it being store-bought, I didn’t like very much. How can a birthday cake be anything other than chocolate?

In fifth grade, I came down with scarlet fever, which was kind of a scary thing, as it could damage your heart. No one else in the family got it, but I had to get a special note from the doctor before they’d let me back in school. The note came through in the middle of the morning, and I made my way in the cold and wind to school, thinking how odd it was to be out and about at 10:30 a.m. I felt pretty brave cutting through Bennett Field by myself – there were always rumors about creepy men in the wooded part of the cut-through at the back of the Field. (One time in Hixon’s Hollow, which bordered Bennett Field, and sounds like something out of Appalachia, not Worcester Mass, a creepy old man did throw burrs at me and my friend Bernadette. We just ran away and didn’t tell anyone.) I did make it safely to Our Lady of the Angels, where, for the remainder of the day, everyone looked at me like I was a cootie-carrying freak.

And then there was the scourge of polio, which hovered over my early childhood.

The vaccine became available in the mid-fifties, and when I was in first grade everyone got their polio shots at school. You had to bring in a signed permission card to give to Mrs. Haggerty, the school nurse, but I don’t remember anyone’s parents refusing to get their kids inoculated.

Polio was just too terrible.

It was not uncommon to see kids limping around wearing leg braces, sometimes with arm-brace canes, as well. One girl in my class, Patty G, wore a leg brace, I believe up until junior high. We all heard about cases where kids lived in iron lungs.

The man across the street – a young father of two small boys – survived Korea but died from polio.

Who would refuse having their kid immunized?

Fast forward a lightning quick half-century or so, and kids don’t so much get childhood diseases anymore, thanks to immunizations against a lot more than polio.

But getting vaccinated is not without controversy.

Some people believe that the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (German Measles) – MMR vaccination is linked to autism.

Others believe that having the MMR or the more recent chickenpox vaccination will produce weaker children/adults, and want their kids to be exposed to these diseases so that they become hardier.

Indeed, I remember people (pre-vaccine) deliberately exposing their kids to chickenpox so they’d get it over with at a younger/safer age.

And now, as I read in Anahad O’Connor’s blog on The New York Times, some parents are moving beyond Pox Parties, and are selling poxy lollipops and:

…a variety of chickenpox-infected items – towels, children’s clothes, rags. By getting their children to touch the contaminated items or suck on tainted candy, they believe their children will get the stronger immunity that surviving a full-blown natural infection of chickenpox affords, without the hazards they say come with vaccines.

Yowza!

If this doesn’t sound like blue-eyed devils giving Native Americans small-pox infected blankets, I don’t know what does.

In my mind, letting your three year old hang out with a chickenpoxy buddy is one thing. FedEx-ing germy kids clothing is quite another. Sounds positively medieval – the infected rags, not the FedEx-ing.

Needless to say, public health officials aren’t enamored of this idea:

“I think it’s an incredibly bad idea, whether you’re getting it from a lollipop or somewhere else,” said Dr. Rafael Harpaz, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Chickenpox can cause severe disease and death. Before the vaccine was available, we were approaching 100 children who died every year in the United States. You’re basically playing a game of Russian roulette.”

This month, law enforcement officials began clamping down. Jerry E. Martin, the United States attorney in Nashville, where the tainted lollipops were advertised at $50 for overnight delivery, issued a warning last week that sending infected items “through the flow of commerce” was a federal crime, punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

I wouldn’t want to be the mail carrier, UPS guy, or FedEx driver delivering the goods if the box ripped open.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their appointed rounds, but who wants to end up with shingles because some Concerned Mom ordered a chicken pox lollipop that they got stuck delivering.

And if public health officials, and delivery folks, aren’t enamored of interstate commerce in infected lollipops, neither are those (majority of) parents who want to get their kids immunized, and resent the fact that the non-immunized kids may spread disease to their little ones before their kids reach the recommended immunization age. Not everyone is going to appreciate it if you send your little Typhoid Mary off to day care

Information on infection-related goods (pox-pops) and services (par-tay!) spread, quite naturally, through social media. And, like any infection worth its salt, there’s no way to stop it.

Meanwhile, the controversy rages on.

Not everyone out there thinks pox pop is the same as vox dei.

When Bad Toys Happen to Good Children. The 2011 W.A.T.C.H. List

2011-11-22T03:13:00.000-04:00

That darned Santa. He apparently doesn’t know his Donner from his Blitzen when it comes to toy safety. You’d think he would have learned something from all the casualties that must have been incurred on the playing fields of Baby Boomer-ville, where we all grew up with toys that were absolutely designed to maim (you), kill (your brother or sister), and otherwise poke your eye out.

Truly, there were so many dangerous toys in the 1950’s and 1960’s – and these are just the ones that I remember – it’s amazing that so many of us are walking around whole.

But, no, Santa must be taking advice from bad elves. Or taking a bit of payola from unscrupulous sales people to make sure that their wares come down the chimney.

Seriously, folks, I do find it shocking that in this era of consumer awareness, and intense caution – perhaps, in some instances, too much – about everything that kids do, see, touch, ingest, read, or play with, it never fails to amaze me that so many out-and-out dangerous toys still seem to make it into the market.

Where they are purchased by harried and distracted toy-givers who may, in fact, have read what is often times an insufficient or misleading warning label.

So it’s good to have an outfit like W.A.T.C.H. (World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc.) which each year chooses their “10 Worst Toys” in Toyland. Evenif some of the picks don’t seem all that horrible and dangerous. And, in fact, seem a tad bit namby-pamby. Anyway, This years “winners” are:

TWIST ‘N SORT Forget the choking hazard potential of those small wood pegs. I call BS on this toy’s providing “years of development fun” with “problem solving challenges”. Months maybe, but “years of development fun:? Unless you count learning to apply the Heimlich Maneuver. I say bring on the wooden blocks! Or dust off that Fisher Price rainbow ring toy: nothing detaches. Which I guess you’ll have to, given that this one has been recalled.

Then there’s the POWER RANGERS SAMURAI MEGA BLADE, which contains these instructions:

CAUTION: PLEASE READ BEFORE PLAYING WITH TOY. Do not: (1) aim toy at anyone, (2) hit anyone with toy, (3) poke anyone with toy, (4) swing toy at anyone….”

Let me hazard a guess here. The average 4 year old who finds this under the tree is not, I repeat not, going to follow these instructions. First off, he probably can’t read; and two, he probably wouldn’t follow them even if he could.

And this isn’t just some boring, standard plastic sword. It’s part of an elaborate weapon that has a 2 foot switch blade, which does seem to compound the potential for mayhem.

Buying for that special four year old someone? I’d recommend taking the $27 and buying a drum set.

Then there’s the $99.99 FOLD & GO TRAMPOLINE which comes with the warning:

“Misuse and abuse of this trampoline is dangerous and can cause injuries.”

Which, frankly, seems like the sort of CYA warning that could apply to any object – animal, vegetable, mineral, or plastic – that you can put in the hands of a kid. “Misuse and abuse of this Raggedy Annie doll is dangerous and can cause injuries.”

Then trampolines does have additional warning language about using this only for “controlled bounce” and not for any of the sorts of fun stunts that kids would naturally think of when you put kid and trampoline in the same room. Because, let’s face it, “controlled bounce” sounds pretty darned boring.

I don’t’ know. Once you get past the ‘who wants to spend a hundred bucks on this when a kid can just jump on his bed’ it’s hard for me to see why this toy is so awful. The W.A.T.C.H. folks maintain that no manufacturer shouldn’t make it. Maybe it should be that no parent (grandparent, aunt, uncle, doting friend) should buy it.

PULLING ANIMAL DUCK
Thirty bucks seems like a (duck) boat load to pay for a pull toy, even one as cute as this one. And it sure does look plenty innocuous, no? The problem is that the pull string is about 2 feet longer than it should be, which poses a strangulation hazard. Seems like the designer maybe should have thought of this. And it seems like anyone whose bought one may just want to get the scissors out. Problem is, the instructions say not to knot the string, which I guess would mean that cut string could fray, potentially causing a kid to ingest fine string strands. Sounds like this toy is far better suited to adults. (Wonder how my dog nephew Jack would like chasing around after this.)

There’s also the nifty Z-CURVE BOW

This “high-performance” bow and arrow set is sold with three “long-range” foam arrows, which are marketed as being able to fly “over 125 FEET!” Remarkably, among the many “warnings” for children is an instruction that arrows not be pulled back “more than half strength”, and that people nearby “should be alerted” prior to firing.

This “toy” is just asking for trouble. If your kid is interested in archery, that’s a sport, and the ~~weapons~~ implements used in conjunction with this sport are sporting goods, not toys. And a sport like this – one with projectiles that can zip 125 feet plus – should come with instructors, not just instructions. (Sure hope no kid in my neighborhood gets one of these. “What say, Trip, let’s see if we can wing that old lady in the green parka.”)

On the other hand, going after the STEPPER “LOW RISE” STILTS seems a bit nanny-statish. The “stilts” appear to be maybe 9” high, and you hang on to them with ropes. Looks like fun and a good balancing act for kids. W.A.T.C.H.’s problem with this toy is that it doesn’t come with any warnings that your kid could fall off them. Well, duh!

Sorry, if you’re not bright enough to figure this out for yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be having kids to begin with?

W.A.T.C.H. doesn’t like the SWORD FIGHTING JACK SPARROW because the sword can be activated by pressing a button. Which, in truth, doesn’t seem like a particularly grand idea for something that a 4-year old is playing with. Then there’s the TOY SCHOOL BUS with the peel-off choking hazard label. (Why not just print the warning on the toy?) Plus the “GIGAN” GODZILLA FIGURE with those pointy wings that could cause a puncture wound.

And W.A.T.C.H. no like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKY DINKS MAKER. As kids, we had a precursor to this one – a Creeple-Peeple maker which, I suspect, came with nary a warning. But unless I had a couple of siblings that I’ve forgotten about, I don’t recall any of us, say, taking this electric, “shock hazard” toy into the bathtub with us. (“Please, Mommy, just this once. I’ll be super careful.”) But, according to W.A.T.C.H.:

A product with so many inherent hazards does not lend itself to use in a home environment with children.

So just what environment might an Incredible Shrinky Dinks Maker lend itself to?

Maybe it’s just me throwing caution to the wind in my old age – next thing you know, I’ll be going over Niagara Falls in a barrel – but this year’s crop of “10 Worst Toys” doesn’t seem all that awful to me. Sure, toys with spikey-pointy-puncturing parts should be called out; and you’d think that toy manufacturers would have figured out chocking hazard by now. But a lot of the toys on the list just seem like toys that should be governed by common (adult) sense. The W.A.T.C.H. list, then, should stand as a reminder that bad toys can happen to good kids if those kids aren’t supervised, or if older-kid toys are put in the hands (and mouths) of younger kids.

My bottom line guess is that W.A.T.C.H. is doing a reasonably good job, and manufacturers are being more careful about the sorts of toys they’re bringing to market.

Which is a good thing. (As long as they never get rid of the Easy Bake Oven.)

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Here’s a link to last year’s W.A.T.C.H. list: Misfit Toys? No Just Plain Dangerous.

And it you can’t get enough of bad toy stories, here’s 2009 and 2008 for you.

Don’aska Donatella about real women

2011-11-21T03:00:00.000-04:00

Real women, in appears, do not wear Versace.

Or at least they don’t model Versace.

Or so the The New York Daily News found out when they lined up a trio of hip young New Yorkers to model the new Versace line that’s being introduced for H&M, the high-fashion/low-cost chain that specializes in the democratization of design fashion. Haute couture for the 1% becomes bas couture for the 99.

But while Donatella Versace, who replaced her slain brother as head designer for the house that Gianni built, may want the ka-ching associated with peddling her wares through H&M – why else head down-market? - she didn’t quite go for the the idea of real women – even if they wore size 0 through size 6 (the reputed range of the three non-pro models; that size 6 is probably a real porker) modeling her clothing. Even if – or perhaps because – the fashion spread was appearing in the low-brow Daily News.

When The News sent over pics of two of the three women they’d lined up, one was rejected because she “doesn’t fit [Versace’s] branding.”

If Donatella herself is the epitome of Versace branding, then I’m guessing there aren’t too many real women who would fit the brand. I suspect that those twenty somethings hadn’t yet invested in the botox, cheek implants, and boob jobs that seemed to have turned Donatella into something of a living, breathing (but perhaps not eating) 56-year-old Bratz doll.

Actually, I take that back. The Bratz doll actually looks more human. But perhaps that’s because she’s (it’s?) a lot younger than Donatella. Plus she’s made of real plastic.

And I don’t want to be a looks-ist here, but doesn’t Donatella lbear some resemblance to rocker Steven Tyler, yet another one of those celebs – male and female alike – who think they can defy nature with the aid of a plastic surgeon and a couple of rounds of limp plumping. Call me crazy, but I think that Meryl Streep looks a whole hell of a lot better than Joan Rivers, and that Paul McCartney might be better off if he let himself go Paul Newman gray.

The fatwa issued on use of real live girls, as opposed to Versace approved models, The Daily News observed,

…might make sense if the clothes involved were from Versace’s full-priced designer collections, where a metallic brushed-leather biker jacket goes for $5,825 and a wool crepe cut-out dress fetches $2,425.

But one reason designers work with H&M is to make their designs accessible — and affordable — to a less-exclusive crowd...

“The H&M customer is anyone interested in fashion,” the company’s U.S. public relations manager, Jennifer Ward, told the retail-shopping website Westfield.com this fall. “There is something for every age and personality.”

Just not on the Verscae runway.

When Donatella debuted her H&M line earlier this month, the models used didn’t quite look like the shoppers who flock into H&M (which in Boston is located in the building that once housed Woolworth’s – say no more). Instead, the parade-o’-models was the usual bevvy of fat-free, vacant-eyed anorexics we’ve come to associate with the world of fashion.

As far as Donatella Versace is concerned, it’s apparently a case of having an eye on the plump wallet of the average H&M consumer, but not wanting to let them eat cake. At least not if they want to model her wares in the pages of The New York Daily News.

And sometimes the good guys win

2011-11-18T03:37:00.000-04:00

Several months ago, an old and very close friend – let’s just say her name is Annie - had some bad news on the business front. After twenty years with her company, during which she had forged a very successful career for herself, Annie was being let go.

The issue wasn’t performance. It was bean counting.

There was a relatively new CEO in her division – let’s call him Mr. Big - who came from a numbers background (nothing to do with the division he was brought in to run) decided that the only way to make his numbers in the coming year was to roll a few heads.

Fair enough: nothing that hasn’t been done before.

Mr. Big decided to roll most of those heads from the ranks of those with management titles, figuring that he could both save on those big, fat management salaries while also flattening the organization and thus, I suppose that he supposed, winning him the admiration and affection of the masses who’d been held down, oppressed even, by having to report to managements with big, fat management salaries.

Fair enough: nothing that hasn’t been done before.

What Mr. Big didn’t do was a) ask for advice from folks who’d been around a lot longer than he’d been, and who actually knew something about the business; or b) take into account the actual role played/value brought to the organization by the rolling heads that he apparently assumed were “just” managers. And what, after all, do managers do? (Other than men of action, like Mr. Big.)

My friend Annie, as I’ve said, has had a very successful career. While she has never quite made it to the EVP level, she has been an SVP, and was someone who’s always had the ear of the upper-upper echelons in her company.

I’m of the belief that Annie never got to be an EVP because she’s perceived as a bit too much of a straight-shooter, and has never been one who holds back from speaking truth to power. She’s plenty tough, and I’ve always guessed that, while they value her candid advice – she is, after all, one smart cookie - Annie scares the bejesus out of a lot of the men in charge. Especially, I’m guessing, Mr. Big.

Am I making Annie sound like a barracuda, a bull in the china shop?

Hope not.

She’s an extremely nice, warm, kind, generous, thoughtful person who is on the short “go-to” list for a long roster of friends and family when they need help of some kind, a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on, someone to unload on. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want Annie around in their time of need. A friend indeed.

And if you’re not in need, she’s someone you want to have around then, too, as she’s a lot of fun.

Annie’s also someone who’s more than just a manager pulling down a big, fat management salary.

She’s always been hands-on, and very closely involved in the inner-workings of whatever it is she’s working on.

And over the many years that Annie’s worked at her company, she’s been exposed to – make that performed – just about every business function there is: business development, product design, sales, service delivery, contract negotiations, pricing, personnel development, client relations, management of a business unit (P&L). You name it, if it’s really important, Annie’s probably done it. And done it well.

So what had happened over the years was that, even when she had moved on to a new function, people continued to ask Annie’s advice.

Annie developed a particular gift as a fixer, with an uncanny ability to un-f-up client engagements and customer relationships that had gotten f’ed up. She had a reputation internally as the Red Adair of the company, able to parachute into the forest fire, put the fire out, and save all the fire fighters in the process.

As I mentioned, Mr. Big didn’t ask anyone’s advice or permission when he decided how he wanted to count his beans, and laying off Annie turned out not to be his wisest move.

He realized this in near real-time when – so Annie was told – he got a cheerful earful about what a bad decision it was to get rid of Annie. Shortly after he told her she was out, Mr. Big ran into her in the hall and said, “Oh, by the way, you’re the only one we’re letting go who’s on the approved consulting list.”

Gee, thanks.

A few weeks later – she was still around, as she had been given a few weeks to clean up some loose ends and take care of her“transition” – Mr. Big asked her if she could stay on for a few more weeks.

Perhaps he expected eternal gratitude, but Annie (after speeding her way through the initial Kübler-Ross stages of lay-off grieving) was already lining up consulting and permanent opportunities in the outside world. The news traveled fast in her network, and she was hearing from both clients and competitors about doing work for them. Actually, as he phrased it, “If you need more time.”

In fact, Annie wasn’t the one who needed more time; Mr. Big was the one who needed more of her time.

Meanwhile, a couple of key employees interpreted the recent lay-offs as a signal that the company was on the downward slide. Or just not the kind of place where they wanted to be. A couple of folks called Annie and told her that, given all the help she’d been to them, they just couldn’t imagine doing their jobs without her. So they left.

One of the folks leaving decided to let Mr. Big’s boss – Mr. Bigger – know what she thought of the decision to get rid of Annie. So she shot him off an e-mail.

Mr. Bigger followed up asking that woman if she’d mind doing her exit interview with him.

Which, of course, she didn’t.

The next thing we knew, Mr. Bigger – who’d apparently made a few more inquiries – called Mr. Big on the carpet. And fired him.

Mr. Bigger then called Annie and asked her to stay on on a part- time consulting basis for the next couple of months, and that they’d figure it out from there.

And the best part?

Annie’s severance pay was paid out in a lump sum. And, what with her earning a big, fat management salary, and what with those twenty years at the company, and what with what was probably a bit of concern about laying off une femme d’un certain age. Well, let’s just say that the lump sum was not exactly an early lump of coal in her stocking.

I have had a big, fat old grin on my face since I heard Annie’s news.

Needless to say, she has, as well.

Annie hasn’t quite decided what she’s going to do with all this, but she’s sitting these days in one mighty comfy catbird seat.

Turns out that “no one is indispensible” may be a bunch of malarkey.

Nice to know that sometimes the good guy does win.

Black Umbrella: be prepared for a disaster worse than the Madoff Ponzi scheme

2011-11-17T03:45:00.000-04:00

I couldn’t resist watching the recent interview with Ruth Madoff and her son. In fact, I may have actually watched two: one on 60 Minutes and one somewhere else. There were some unintentionally hilarious parts. My favorite was when Madoff mère et fils noted that they would not be profiting from sales of the book, "Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family,” which is based on interviews with them. Catherine Hooper, however, does stand to profit.

She’s not the author, by the way. She’s the idea gal behind the book. And she’s Andrew Madoff’s fiancé. (As long as no ill-gotten gains are gotten by the Madoffs….)

Hooper’s also the founder and CEO of Black Umbrella, which sells emergency prepared-ness services and goods. Having an Emergency/Safety Plan – your own personal ESP – is “an umbrella for a different kind of bad day.” Different, I guess, from it raining cats and dogs. Or for the day you wake up and realize that you got swindled out of all of your retirement money by a Ponzi schemer.

Now, I’m not putting down the idea of being prepared. (I was, after all, a Girl Scout at one point in time.) I keep batteries around. When we’re having a hurricane, I fill the bath tub and the soup pot with water so we can, in worst case, keep flushing the toilets. I have candles. And matches. Peanut butter and crackers.

I back up my files on Carbonite. I have thumb drives.

I should probably have a printed list of the phone numbers that are on my BlackBerry.

I have a list of “25 documents everyone needs to have”, which I really should act on one of these days.

I do recognize the need.

When, a couple of years ago, there was some panic in Boston over what some folks thought were bombs under bridges – they were just an attention getting device for some hipster cartoon show – I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how I was going to get to my niece’s grammar school in Charlestown to rescue her if someone blew up the bridge between Charlestown and Boston.

At that point, I began thinking that it might not be a bad idea if everyone in the family had a plan if SOMETHING REALLY BAD happened in Boston. But I never got around to putting anything together, other than to go through the brief mental exercise of deciding that the best thing to do – assuming that there were phones anywhere – would be to call my brother Tom, the only sib who’s not in this area. If Flagstaff, Arizona is destroyed, too, well, I guess the problems of a few of us in Boston won’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Still, pulling together an emergency preparedness plan does seem like something that most of us could handle on our own, without the help of professional services like Black Umbrella.

How many people are there out there who are going to pay$750 for a “Level One Plan” that includes a waterproof hard copy of phone numbers, and a plan (with maps) to meet up if you can’t go home again?

Or $1,450 for Level Two, which includes document organization and storage, a preparedness drill, and a Go Pack.

Wait! I just looked at the small print. Those Go Pack’s are priced separately.

So, for $250 you can get a Seed Pack containing:

11" x 20" 600 Denier Nylon Round Duffel
Etón FR160 Radio
Gerber Suspension Multitool
Inova X5 Flashlight
Potable Aqua Chlorine Dioxide tablets, 20-pack
Reliance Fold-A-Jug 1 gal.
Uvex Fury Goggles
AMK First Aid 2.0
Paracord - Black 100 yd.
Write-in-the-Rain Notebook
CLC Rain Poncho
Heatsheets Survival Blanket 2-person
2 x Surefire CR123A Lithium Batteries
Bic Lighter
Candle
3M N95 Face Mask
Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap
Latex Dipped String Work Gloves
AMK Foam Hand Sanitizer
Sharpie Magnum
2 x AMK Mini Duct Tape Rolls
Pen
Pencil

Interestingly, there are no seeds in the Seed Pack.

How about a change of undies? A change of socks?

But I guess we’re not talking long term survival here. There’s just one candle, and one bar of Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap. If things get really bad, that and the hand sanitizer won’t keep you clean for all that long. It’ll be back to nature for all of us. And one candle? We’d all be cursing the dark soon enough.

At any rate, you can easily add-on to the Seed Pack. You’d no doubt want to upgrade from the cheapo-depot comes-with radio to the Etón Raptor for an extra $119 (well worth getting it from Black Umbrella, despite the twenty bucks you’d save if you bought it for yourself on Amazon). And while the Seed Pack does include a duffle bag, you’d probably want to trade up to the 50-liter Simms Guide Backpack (apparently not marked-up at $189).

There are a number of other reasons to go with Guide Backpack, since you’d probably want to carry a lot more than the 11” x 20” duffle bag holds.

For starters, the larger bag can easily hold a couple of real knives. Crocodile Dundee sorts of knives - not just the poor-man’s multi-tool that comes with the Seed Pack. (Am I the only one imagining Master of the Universe Wall Streets hunting squirrel in Central Park, and trying to bag pigeons in Columbus Circle?)

Plus your thumb drive, radiation ward-off tablets, and Rad(iation)Stickers, for those too cheap to spring for the NukAlert:

More than just a radiation detector, the NukAlert™ is a patented personal radiation meter, monitor and alarm. Small enough to attach to a key chain, the device operates non-stop, 24/7 and will promptly warn you of the presence of unseen, but acutely dangerous levels of radiation….It will be very reassuring to know, with confidence, when you and your family are out of the worst danger.

But in order for you to get your bang for the buck here, don’t you have to been exposed to an “acutely dangerous level of radiation”? (We’re in the clear, now, kids. What? You say you’re melting?)

In truth, there are all kinds of bad things that could happen.

As the weather patterns change, we’re more likely to be hit with “100 Year Storms.” (And I live on reclaimed ocean.)

Some cyber terrorist could figure out a way to shut the whole shebang down – not just our iTunes and YouTube, but the financial system and everything else that uses computers. (Think lights out.)

An asteroid could hit the Atlantic and set off a colossal tsunami.

Someone could set off a dirty bomb – or light up an LNG tanker - in a big city. In a big city with a port. (Gulp.)

The nihilist crazies in Iran may decide to wage nuclear war on the Western world.

So it’s good to do a bit of “what if” thinking.

Bad storms I do believe I could weather. After all, I do have Blizzard of ‘78 experience under my belt.

Cyber terrorism that shut down the net? If I survived the follow-on panic and riots in the streets – admittedly a whopping big if – I’m a pre-digital native, and actually remember how things were done in the olden days (e.g., reading a paper-based book).

But if what’s going to happen is so terrible that the only ones who stand a chance of making it are survivalists, cops, criminals and hedge fund managers who get the upgraded real knife in their Go Packs this Christmas. If marauders are abroad in the land, and –once the super markets are all pillaged – we’re living off the land… Well, I’d just as soon be gone in the first puff.

Bad as it is, I rather like civilization as we know it.

For those who feel otherwise, plan on!

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P.S, My read on the Madoffs:

Personally, I don’t believe that Ruthie knew for a New York minute what Bernie was up to. She certainly comes across as a not-bad person who’s life, she now realizes, was a big, fat sham, and is now a big, fat shambles. And I wouldn’t wish the death of a child on the worst person in the world, which this woman is clearly not.

I don’t think the sons knew-knew, either. But it’s hard to get by the probabililty (somewhere north of zero) that they had an inkling that something was a bit off about their father’s business. Come on, they were in the biz. Didn’t they ever look at those returns and speculate just a teeny-tiny bit about how good old dad did it? But there’s knowing, and then there’s KNOWING (c.f., Joe Paterno). And I bet these guys didn’t really know the full truth about what Bernie was up to. We’re all capable of denial, some more capable than others.

Girl Scout badge? What Girl Scout badge?

2011-11-16T03:45:00.000-04:00

When I was in fifth grade, I was a member of what may well have been the crappiest Girl Scout troop since 1912, when founder Juliette Gordon Low decided that boys weren’t the only ones who could have a swell time rubbing two sticks together and starting a fire.

For starters, we didn’t have a regular leader, since two of our parish’s GS leaders were at the moment dying of lung cancer. I’m sure my mother would have jumped in to lead our troop, but she’d just had a baby. Plus, while she would have been excellent at the craft and domestic arts end of Girl Scouting, and pretty good at the game-playing, she would have been a miserable and abject failure at anything to do with the outdoors. Not that there was going to be anything out-doorsy about a Girl Scout troop in Main South Worcester, but my mother (a Chicago girl) may well have been scared off by the nature aspects of the job. And then there was the just-had-a-baby excuse to fall back on. Come to think of it, the two Scout leaders who were dying of lung cancer were also having babies about the same time as my sister Trish appeared on our scene. No wonder we didn’t have a real leader. Instead, we had to make do with a revolving- door series of high school girls dragooned into running our troop on a one-and-done basis.

We met once a week after school and, basically, did nothing. (We didn’t even wear the uniform. We already had green jumpers on. Who needed official Girl Scout garb?)

We had put away the childish things we did in Brownies, so we couldn’t very well sing “Way Down Yonder in the Paw-Paw Patch” while pretending to be pickin’ up paw-paws – whatever they were – and put them in our pockets. (Paw-paws? Paw-paws! We would have gotten a lot more mileage out of the urban version, which would have featured picking up empty cigarette packets.) And a craft project that entailed Elmer’s Glue-ing cotton batting hair onto construction paper angels – a task that had enthralled us as Brownies – seemed just a tad too little kid.

Our meeting place was the Our Lady of the Angels “portable school”, a wooden building containing two classrooms that had been in use while they were building the real school. Once the permanent structure was finished, the portable became a meeting hall.

The most exciting part of our Girl Scout meetings occurred while we were just gathering. That’s when we would swoop into the boys’ room – something we never would have dared in our real school – to look at the urinals. Eek! Yuck! Ugh! Thinking about it was bad enough, but actually looking at them. Eek! Yuck! Ugh!

The other thing we did regularly was sit around and talk about boys – Eek! Yuck! Ugh! – and our sadistic and miserable teacher, Sister Saint Wilhelmina.

One other thing I recall from my year as a Girl Scout was personal, not communal. It was while sitting on a folding chair in the portable school that I realized I had body odor. I spent most of the meeting furtively dropping my head in the direction of my armpit so I could get a good whiff of whatever strange thing it was. Eke! Yuck! Ugh! After that, I started using my mother’s Mum, a cream deodorant that you slathered on with your fingertips.

At the end of the school year, our troop voted to disband and get our dues – which must have been all of a dime a month- refunded to us. The price of disbanding was being forced to buy a World Pin, which is the blue-and-gold enamel number shown to the right. At the time, I thought that this was some exit rule gotcha handed down by Girl Scout HQ, but now I think that someone must have already ordered and paid for those pins.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that no one in my Girl Scout troop ever earned a badge. What would we have gotten a badge for? Urinal Inspection? Gripe and Gossip? BO Discovery?

In contrast to my lame-o,dysfunctional, and faux troop, my sister Kathleen was part of a real Girl Scout troop, wearing real uniforms, going to real Girl Scout camp, and earning real badges like the ones shown on this authentic badge sash of our era. Even though I was the last one to lay eyes and hands on Kath’s Girl Scout badge sash, I don’t remember all the badges she earned. Reading, Housekeeping, Art, Cooking, Sewing, and something to do with plants – come to mind. Her badge sash, alas, disappeared during The Great Emmanuel College Strike of 1970, of which I was a leader and enough of a guerrilla theater-ista that I actually wore Kath’s badge sash during rallies. (To the Emma who swiped the sash: I’d still like it back.)

Despite my grim experience as a Girl Scout, I harbor no hard feelings toward them, and hold the organization in far higher esteem than I do the Boy Scouts. Unlike the Boy Scouts, it doesn’t seem to have that aura of creepy, rigid, authoritarian, militaristic, homophobia about it. And I don’t imagine that there have been many/any G.S. leaders associated with pedophilia, either. Plus there’s those wonderful cookies….

So, Girl Scouts Forever (that is our song).

Perhaps because of my still-rued badge-less state, I read a recent article about the updated, more relevant, 21st century Girl Scout badges with interest. (Source: Boston.com.)

…some of the 136 badges sound more like topics trending on Twitter than something a fresh-faced girl would pin on her sash.

There’s a Good Credit badge and a Money Manager badge, Locavore, Website Designer, and Netiquette badges, a Science of Happiness badge, and, as a component of a cookie-badge program that has been expanded, a Customer Loyalty badge.

Locavore. Got to love that one.

Even the old badges have been updated. The evergreen First Aid badge now entails learning “about sports-related head injuries and drug and alcohol abuse.”

Anyway, the article piqued my interest – is there a Curiosity badge? – so I went to the Girl Scout mother ship site to see what other skills they’re promoting these days.

Well, you can still be an Artist and a Cook, and learn First Aid. but you can also earn Financial Literacy Badges as a Philanthropist (????), a Savvy Shopper, a Comparison Shopper, and a Business Owner. You can take up Digital Photography and Digital Movie Making, Entertainment Technology, Product Design. Write a Business Plan, earn a Marketing badge. (If only I’d known, I might have been able to save a bundle on B-School.)

There’s a Social Butterfly badge – whatever that means – and one for Geocaching, which I had to look up. (GPS treasure hunt.) A badge for Night Owls, and one for Eating for Beauty.

No Blogging badge, and none (yet) for Facebook and Tweeting.

But there are badges for Truth Seeker, for Novelist, for the Science of Happiness, for Traveler. Damn! I wanna be a Girl Scout!

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This post is dedicated to my sister Kath. Sorry about that badge sash.

And by the way, while I never earned a badge, the year after the collapse of our Girl Scout troop, I helped cheat my brother Tom through his Cub Scout Webelo requirements by doing his leaf-identification project for him. So I did manage to get some of the nature stuff in.

Thank you, Robert Mueller for putting Mark Sam Ojo in touch with us. (We sure could use that $2.5 million.)

2011-11-15T03:38:00.000-04:00

You know, sometimes I’m just out and out humiliated that my husband and I are on the lagging edge of some mighty vital e-mails.

Sure, we get as many ED and super Louis Vuitton replica missives as the next guys, but the big pay-off ones, well, harrumph, I guess we’re just not early adopters. On the contrary, by the time they get to us, the senders seem to have crossed the chasm and are pawing around with the sendees of last resort.

So let’s just say that I’m getting more than a little miffed when I go to The Google and find that some marvelous deal that we’re just hearing about now has been dangling out there for a couple of years.

Damn! I remember when our demographic was much vaunted, the apple of the eye of everything with something to sell – even if it does turn out to be the Brooklyn Bridge.

But I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face here. No sir-ee Bob Mueller. Not when a mere pittance of an investment of $155 is going to yield a guaranteed return of $2,500,000.00. Why, I haven’t seen that type of return since Bernie Madoff was a lad. Try matching this riskless reward, you CDO-pushers!

To some extent, I can understand why so many folks have taken a pass on this offer.

The language and tone is curt and, frankly, pretty darned pissy and nasty. But it does garner your attention. Perhaps not to the extent it would have if the note had come hand-delivered by Clyde Tolson from J. Edgar Hoover. Still, it’s not every day that one gets a threatening email from the office of Robert Mueller, at the Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division of the FBI.

The nature of the threat is manifold:

Today if you fail to respond back to us with the payment, then, we would first send a letter to the mayor of the city where you reside and direct them to close your bank account until you have been jailed and all your properties will be confiscated by the FBI. We would also send a letter to the company/agency that you are working for so that they could get you fired until we are through with our investigations because a suspect is not supposed to be working for the government or any private organization…

…right now the warrant of arrest has been signed against you and it will be carried out in the next 48 hours as strictly signed by the FBI director…it will be a shame to you and your entire family because after then it will be announce in all the local channels that you are wanted by the FBI.

Gosh, this would be terrible – but at least it was sent to my husband, and not me. Phew!

There was one part I didn’t really get, however:

Your id which we have in our database been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to insert you in their website as an internet fraudster and to warn people from having any deals with you.

Oh, I get the “crimes agencies”, and “internet fraudster” stuff – better him than me – but it’s that id in the database thing that I don’t quite understand. Come on, I know that technology makes new strides everyday, but you can’t put id in a database any more than you can put ego and super-ego. Am I right or am I right?

Or has the FBI got some new crazy techno, mind-zapping thing going here?

Gosh, it’s a big old scary world out there, isn’t it?

Scary enough, at any rate, that it will be really good to have an extra $2.5M on hand, that’s for sure.

What’s with the $2.5M, you may well be asking yourself.

Here’s the deal:

Because the person writing from the office of Robert Mueller is “a good Christian and a honest man” he would “not be happy to see [us] end up in jail and all [our] properties confiscated because [our] information was used to carry out a fraudulent transaction.”

Well, I wouldn’t want to see our properties confiscated, either – other than those high-water black exercise pants my husband wears around the house with the stupid tee-shirt with Cher on it. (Don’t ask.)

And all because he, unbeknownst to me, “forwarded [his] identity to one imposter/fraudsters in Nigeria when he had a deal with [him] to about the transfer of some illegal funds into [his] bank account.”

Some Harvard PhD in economics he – my husband, not the imposter/fraudsters in Nigeria – turned out to be, huh?

Anyway, given the evident and ardent Christianity and honesty involved here, we can get Jim (and our properties) off the hook by sending a $155 to Mark Sam Ojo in Nigeria.

The best thing about this, though, it that once we’ve gotten that check off, $2,500,000.00 in “compensation funds” will be transferred to us.

I’m sure the cynics are calling BS, but just think: if everyone in the United States could get $2.5M in exchange for a measly $155, we’d be out of the financial doldrums in no time. Forget 9-9-9 and/or tax the rich. Truly, I don’t know why none of the presidential candidates have thought of this one. (Can’t wait to run this idea passed my own personal Harvard PhD economist for his blessing.)

Of course, if we “disregard this instructions”, the FBI “shall trace and arrest” us. Which should be a bit easier than finding Whitey Bulger, given that we use our real names and have lived in the same place for 20+ years.

I’d say “come and get me, G-Men” but, then again, the email was sent to my husband, not me. And, of course, I don’t want to do any sort of unseemly, unsportsmanlike taunting that “will attract maximum arrest” and end up with Jim in court “for act of terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking charges.”

Talk about trumped up charges!

Honestly, what with focusing on frequent flyer miles, watching re-runs of Bill Russell era Celtics basketball games, and scouring the ‘net for Boston restaurants that serve gluten-free, my husband just does NOT have time for any of this sort of tawdry, criminal behavior.

Do you think maybe Robert Mueller has the wrong guy?

Do you think maybe we should just take a risk and not send off that $155 to Mark Sam Ojo?

But what about that $2.5M…….

Lordy, lordy life is just one pain in the butt tough decision after another.

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Seriously folks, based on comments I’ve received when I’ve posted about other email scams, please note that this post is intended to be humorous. AND THE E-MAIL IT IS BASED ON IS A HOAX.

Either that, or it’s a brilliant parody of a Nigerian scam letter.

I know they must occasionally hit pay dirt. Why else would they keep doing it? But is there actually anyone out there who actually has $155 to his/her name who’s so gullible and naïve that they’d fall for it.

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NEBO, on the outskirts of Boston’s North End, serves excellent gluten-free food, by the way. I understand Oleana in Cambridge does as well, but we haven’t eaten there since my husband got the celiac disease diagnosis.

Perks at Work

2011-11-14T03:59:00.000-04:00

I saw a little throw-away article in The Boston Globe the other day on perks available in some local companies: beer in the fridge, ping pong table, cool employee lounge.

I guess you could say that my present work-life is chocked full of perks: snacks in the kitchen, flexible schedule, comfy bed where I can take a nap, flat-screen TV, casual dress everyday, shower and Jacuzzi, get to keep my laptop and smartphone.

But wait just a dern minute here.

Sure, I have a lot of perks, but they’re all bought and paid for by me, myself, and I.

No, pretty much the only true perky stuff I get is the occasional polo, tee-shirt, logo pen, or coffee mug I can scrounge off of client. And most of those polo and tee-shirts, in truth, go to replenish my husband’s rag-bag wardrobe which has just not been the same since I stopped working full time “in corporate.” But I guess not having to see him in a washed-out, threadbare polo shirt with the collar unmooring itself from the body of the shirt is perk enough.

Anyway, that little Globe article did get me thinking about the perks I have witnessed, and, to far lesser degree, experienced during my full-time work life.

I’ve been with the free-soda, video-game, and comfy employee lounge kind of companies. Somewhat standard fare for smaller high tech outfits.

But the all-time champeen work-perk place I logged time was Wang Labs. (Perks for the 1%; definitely not the 99.)

I joined Wang in 1986, after it had crested on its giddy ride on the roller coaster. When I walked in the doors, it had already started on its terrifying plummet, which gained a scary amount of momentum during the 2.5 years I spent there.

At Wang – if you don’t count having a Burger King on premise – there were no perks for those at my lowly, senior product manager level.

But for the big shot VPs there were perks a plenty.

For one thing, they had indoor parking, which was a pretty big deal given that peon parking was in poorly lit, massive acreage lots that could leave you with a quarter of a mile hike to your building. The real downside of the parking lot occurred during the winter months – and it wasn’t just the long, cold, windy walk. No, if you got to work early in the morning when there’d been a light snowfall, you couldn’t see where the parking lines were. So people would just start lining up, creating their own order. Fair enough. But if, a bit later, once the snow had melted, the latecomers had a nasty habit of parking where the true lines were – even if it meant that they blocked someone else in. Now, I can’t really hang this one on Wang. It wasn’t directly their fault that they had a lot of a-holes working there. But it sure does speak to the Wang mentality that employees would deliberately wedge someone’s car in in this way. Perhaps they were just ticked off that they weren’t VPs who got to park in sheltered, underground parking.

Wang VPs, it was rumored, also had a clothing allowance, granted to them when they were elevated to VP level. What for, I’ll never know. It’s not as if they were required to wear formal attire to work. Everyone in the professional workforce there pretty much wore suit and tie every day – and that, I’m afraid, included the women. So why would a new VP suddenly need mo’ better clothing? It’s not as if I ever noticed that senior management dressed especially sharp.

Then there was business travel, which for Wang was done on the cheap if you weren’t a high status executive. I stayed in one hotel that had mouse droppings on the floor. I know, I know, bad things can happen to good hotels. Many years ago, when the Pierre Hotel was the ne plus ultra of New York swank, I stayed there a couple of times. The first time, I pulled the drapes aside to catch the view and found a two inch cigar ash on the floor. Ewww! No Pierre for us Wang-oids, however. Way, way, way too rich for their blood. Even though the execs stayed at better joints than the commoners, I don’t suspect that anyone was putting them up at the Pierre.

On another Wang trip, I stayed at a Chicago hotel that consisted of two eight-story cement block buildings in a parking lot surrounded by a cyclone fence topped with coils of barbed wire. Which wouldn’t have been half bad if both of the buildings had someone on duty in them. But only the one with the reception desk did and I, alas, was in the building in the further, darker recess of the parking lot. All I can say is that, once you get to your room, a scary hotel is made less so by propping the desk chair up against the door.

The real us-vs.-them distinction at Wang came to the fore when Wang started cutting back on lighting and office cleaning.

Executives got light bulbs. Unlike the rest of us, once they took out every third ceiling light in the office area. Fortunately, they still let us keep our individual desk lighting. Who needs overhead lighting, anyway? (Other than VPs, that is.)

The removal of two out of three overhead fluorescent lights in the halls near the elevator banks did impact peon and VP alike. Solidarność! (That the walls were painted a deep chocolate brown didn’t help any.)

Then there was the cleaning thang…

Now, you may not think that having your cubicle waste basket – the one that might contain an apple core or a banana peel, if you’d had your lunch while working – emptied every evening is a perk. I can assure you that it is.

Once Wang stopped emptying our waste baskets, we had to carry our personal slop buckets to an enormous (and open) garbage can in the corner of the floor near the coffee machine. While performing the evening ritual of waste-basket emptying, we would walk by our VP’s office and see the cleaning folks madly trash-emptying and vacuuming – another nicety that had gone by the boards for the rank and file.

After a while, the common garbage pails weren’t emptied every night, either.

Some days, they were overflowing with coffee grounds, apple cores, and banana peels.

Just as the broken window theory has been proven elsewhere, so it was at Wang.

Once those mega-garbage pails started spilling over, folks really stopped giving a damn.

One day, I found a shriveled up tea bag in an aisle. Another time, I came across a massive hawked loogie on the staircase.

And don’t get me going on the condition of the bathrooms, which I believe were shared by overling and underling alike, unless you were with the real big wigs on Mahogany Row where, I presume, that had big wig toilets as part of their perk package.

One of my colleagues found a row of dried boogers on the stall wall in a men’s room. A couple of weeks later, they were still there.

And the water pressure was so poor that the toilets didn’t flush particularly well. Could it be that they decreased the water flow to save money?

By the time I left Wang, I feared that I would contract typhus. Forget beer in the fridge and a foosball machine as perks. Clean bathrooms would have been nice. And it’s definitely a perk you have if you’re working from home!

Veterans Day 2011

2011-11-11T04:10:00.000-04:00

When I think of a potently bad combination, I think of me being in the military. Way, way, way too much authoritarianism, hierarchy, and chicken-shit. Not that I didn’t encounter plenty of that in the business world, but at least I didn’t have to salute and no one was going to throw me in the brig if I went AWOL.

About all I can say for my being a good fit for the armed service is that, after all those years in parochial school, I wouldn’t have been bothered by wearing a uniform. I also like to think that, if there had been a national crisis, some national purpose (think World War II), when I was young enough to serve, I might have considered signing up and doing my bit. But it didn’t happen, so I didn’t have to make any decision one way or the other. The “national crisis” during my potentially military years was the Viet Nam War, which was not exactly something that was going to get this girl volunteering to work in the steno pool at Lackland AFB.

But I’m the daughter of a veteran, from whom I learned that, in the service, there is way, way, way too much authoritarianism, hierarchy, and chicken-shit. And from whom I also learned that it was a matter of duty, pride, and honor to serve when there was a national crisis, a national purpose, in which everyone had a bit to do. Which is why my father, although he was 29 at the time and quite a ways from any draft catching up with him, volunteered soon after Pearl Harbor. The Army rejected him: flat feet, he couldn’t march. But the Navy took him, and he spent four years there, “going where Uncle Sam sent you.” Which, for my father, was Newport Virginia, Trinidad, and downtown Chicago.

While stationed in Chicago, he met my mother. And the rest is (family) history.

So while I’m not myself a vet, I do want to wish a happy (and peaceful) Veterans’ Day to those who are (both those who served in time or war, and those who idled around in time of No Time for Sergeants, Sgt. Bilko, and Beetle Bailey). With a special shout-out to the veterans I do know, a roster which – off the top of my head – includes Dick, Bob, Joe D, Phil, Steve, Eddie, Paul and John. And with a special posthumous nod to Joe W, dead years too soon from Agent Orange and the terrible and dreadful war that Viet Nam was.

In the U.S., poppies are associated with Memorial Day, but in England, they’re the flower for Remembrance Day, which is what the Brits call November 11th. Wars are all hell, but World War I, which ended 90 years ago at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, was perhaps more hellish than most. More senseless. More insane.

Which is not to say that the men (and women) who fight them aren’t brave in a way I’ve never needed to be.

Happy Veterans’ Day to all.

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Here’s a link to an earlier Veterans’ Day post.

Graf Zeppelin and Charles Lindbergh ephemera. (My interest proves ephemeral.)

2011-11-10T03:32:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was gazing The New Yorker, when an auction house ad caught my eye.

Graf Zeppelin and Charles Lindbergh ephemera. Now there’s a nice market, I thought.

And then, of course, I started wondering about just what that ephemera might be.

First, were they talking about Graf Zeppelin, the German count who invented the eponymous dirigible, or Graf Zeppelin the dirigible. What with Charles Lindbergh being an actual human being, it could have meant ephemera associated with the Graf himself. What with Charles Lindbergh being associated with aviation, it could have meant the dirigible.

When I first looked, the Clars auction house site provided scant information, since they didn’t yet have the Graf Zeppelin and Charles Lindbergh ephemera online. The closest ephemera I could find was some “crash-damaged aviator goggles” that had belonged to Amelia Earhart, worn during her very first crash, while learning to fly under the guidance of one Neta Snook. (They don’t make names like they used to.) The goggles sold for $17,775, which sort of goggles the mind, doesn’t it.

Amelia’s goggles (and Neta’s name) aside, my appetite for ephemera – especially Graf Zeppelin ephemera – was whetted, so I began hunting around for more.

Harmerschau had a bit from the collection of “Clara Adams Famous First Flight Passenger.” And here we were thinking that the Kardashians were the first folks to be famous for being famous. Why, here was Clara Adams, famous for being a first flight passenger. Which, admittedly, is more fame-worthy than getting married for 72 days so you’d have a recurring topic for your “reality” show.

Anyway, among her “wonderful pieces of aviation history,” there was available for the bidding a “piece of Graf Zeppelin skin.” Given that other items in the collection included the Graf Zeppelin South America flight passenger handbook, I’m going with that “skin” being Graf Zeppelin the dirigible skin, not Graf Zeppelin the human skin. But, hey, you never know.

Then I found a Hermann Goering’s Zeppelin cigarette box, going for $6,500, “with enameled swastika tail fins” listed as an “attractive display item.”

Am I the only one who questions whether memorabilia associated with a Nazi leader can never really make an “attractive display item”?

By this point, I wasn’t even sure what auction house I was looking at, but there does seem to be quite a bit of Nazi-related junk out there for the asking/bidding. Including a double wine bottle holder from Goering’s private railway car with “plum darkened patina around the eagle/swastika/DR”, and a silverware place setting that belonged to von Ribbentrop.

Let me tell you, you can spend as much crazy-time wandering around auction sites as you can roaming around eBay trying to figure out what you could get for your vintage Tiny Tears doll if, alas, Tiny were still among the living.

But I hung tight, knowing that, eventually – since the auction is this coming weekend – Clars would have to open up about just what Graf Zeppelin and Charles Lindbergh ephemera they would have on offer.

For Lucky Lindy, it was mostly – yawn – some photographic plates. And a medal worn by someone in the Cleveland Committee that honored Lindbergh. (Wider yawn.) For the Graf Zeppelin, it was just a postcard of the Hindenburg and an original photo of the Hindenburg going up in flames. Oh, the humanity! Which, for crying out loud, you can get on Wikipedia for free. The picture, not the humanity. And, by the way, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg were two separate dirigibles, not one and the same. (Put that in your Hermann Goering cigarette case and smoke it.)

With so little Graf Zeppelin and Charles Lindbergh ephemera available, I decided to cancel my plan to spend Sunday bidding on the Clars auction. Not that there wasn’t plenty of other interesting stuff available. Would that I had the habitat or the pocketbook for this extraordinarily cool modern couch.

But honestly, drawn in as I was by that ad for Zepp and Lindy ephemera, I was hoping for more than a postcard of a blimp and a medal worn by someone who went to a dinner at which Lindbergh was honored. Maybe Lindy’s goggles. Or a medal awarded to him, perhaps by the Nazis, to mesh a couple of themes together.

Sometimes ephemera just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning. (This one just keeps getting better and better.)

2011-11-09T03:26:00.000-04:00

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the last few years have seen quite a spate of elected officials heading to the stir for corruption.

Let’s see, there’s the Boston City Council member who’s in the pokey for taking a chump-change bribe – $1K – to do a bit of light lifting to get someone a liquor license.

Then there’s the state senator convicted in the “Bra-gate” trial. She was caught on video tape shoving bribe money under her shirt. That she did so at a pricey restaurant in spitting distance of the State House just added to the furor.

Most recently, the illustrious Speaker of the Massachusetts House was sentenced to eight large in a Federal lockup for steering a software contract with the state towards a vendor willing to offer him some walking around money.

Apparently things haven’t changed all that much since Boston’s late 19th- early 20th century ward boss, Martin Lomasney coined this apparently timeless saying:

"Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink."

To which a coda should be added: never stuff an envelope full of cash into your bra while the camera’s rolling.

Of course, there’s no end to the codas that pols will keep writing.

Although this one does not (yet) have any criminal element associated with it, the latest local nest-feathering story involves quite a bit more moola than the paltry amounts that landed all of the above in jail. (The last guy is appealing, so he hasn’t actually landed behind bars quite yet.)

Our latest prince of the city is one Michael McLaughlin, a former state rep, who a decade ago got the post of head of the Chelsea Housing Authority. Chelsea is small, poor/working class city just outside of Boston. The Housing Authority manages 1,415 units of housing. When McLaughlin got the job in the year 2000, he was paid $77,500. By the time he resigned the other night, his compensation was $360K. (Source: Boston.com.)

While it’s comforting to know that at least there’s someone out there – other than hedge fund managers and CEOs – who hasn’t seen the value of their earnings eroded over the past decade, this does seem a bit extreme. Especially when you consider that it’s more than the combined salaries of the managers of the Boston and New York City housing authorities, who have a lot more than 1,415 units under their management. And especially when you consider that it’s roughly 18 times what the average family living in Chelsea public housing lives on.

It must be noted that McLaughlin didn’t embezzle the money. The knuckleheads on the Chelsea Housing Authority board approved it. But he may yet get nailed on something, given that he lied about the amount to the state.

The Globe reported Sunday that McLaughlin had told state housing officials he made only $160,000, less than half his true salary, something he chalked up to “the rebel in me.’’

I guess the Crystals were on to something when they sang, “He’s a rebel, and he’ll never be any good…”

McLaughlin maintains that he “’more than earned [his] salary:’”

… saying he is well paid because he turned around the troubled housing agency. He compared his performance running the housing agency to the achievements of his idol, Joe Montana, on the football field.

Ah, the old Joe Montana comparison.

That should work magic on public opinion.

Now that McLaughlin has resigned, he’ll be putting in for his pension.

Based on his total compensation and years of service, McLaughlin could qualify for a pension of $278,842 for life.

Which, as it happens, is nearly twelve times the pension of the average Massachusetts state worker – you know, the folks we’re currently accusing of ruining our way of life.

The story, of course, just gets better.

Rather than let the door hit him on his arse on his way out, McLaughlin had the Chelsea Housing Authority’s accountant write him a few checks to tide him over until that pension comes through. Checks to the tune of $200K. Written by a friend and fellow Providence College grad of McLaughlin’s sons. Who, before McLaughlin got him the job running the Chelsea Housing Authority’s finances, spent nine years as a night club bouncer. (Source: Boston.com) (Okay: maybe he was a business major.)

[James McNichols] cut three checks - one for $114,237 for more than 1,000 hours of unused sick leave, a second for $81,578.79 for 793 hours of unused vacation and a third for $5,133.82 for 47 hours of accrued personal time.

McLaughlin instructed McNichols to withhold roughly $22,000 - 135 hours of unused sick leave - “for any expenses that arise.’’

Let the claw back begin! McLaughlin managed to cash the $80K check, but the others have been canceled. And I suspect that his nibs won’t be getting the fully plush pension he thinks he’s earned. But talk about tone deaf. If you were being forced out of your quasi-public job because everyone in the world with half a brain believes you are egregiously overpaid and completely non-deserving, would you have your friendly accountant write you $200K worth of checks? Especially when there have been so many cutbacks in funding for things like public housing because the poor, don’t you know, are so shiftless, so undeserving.

Or might you not pause for a second and think, hmmmmm, I haven’t done anything all that bad – other than (the rebel in me!) tell a little white lie about my salary. So maybe I should just lay low until this blows over and see what I can salvage here.

Didn’t it occur to McLaughlin that a stunt like this will bring more scrutiny down on him, not to mention completely inflame everyone who reads about it? I wouldn’t expect him to think for a minute about how his behavior will bring out the pitchfork in those zealots who believe that everyone who works in the public sector is lazy, coddled, overpaid, and deserving of nothing other than our scorn (and the fork end of the pitchfork).

Nope, I wouldn’t expect that he’d think for a Chelsea minute about the other guys.

But you’d think that he might think for that Chelsea minute about how his behavior might reflect on himself?

Apparently not. (Guess it’s not just Wall Street financiers and CEOs who are tone deaf…)

"Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink."

And never palm the cash box while the whole world’s watching.

Professional Gambler

2011-11-08T02:52:00.000-04:00

I’m not much of a gambler. The handful of times I’ve been in a casino, it’s ten bucks worth of quarters in the slots and out. The few times I’ve gone to the track, it’s two-dollar bets based on the name of the horse or the color of the jockey’s silks. When I throw in with the NCAA basketball ladder at the gym, I do my pairwise picks based on whatever comes into my head: city preference, mascot. And for old time’s sake, I tend to bet on the Catholic schools. (Not such a bad strategy, given Georgetown, Villanova, and a couple of others.)

I play for the entertainment, with absolutely no expectation of winning.

The last place I figure I’ll ever end up is at a Gamblers’ Anonymous meeting.

But there is the lottery, which – despite my eyes-open understanding of the odds – I do play with semi-regularity.

As with other forms of gambling, I don’t really expect to win. (I do get the odds.) But I like the period between dollar purchase of a Power Ball quick pick, and the moment – typically a month or so later – when I bother to look up the winning number and realize that I don’t hold it. During that period, I get to play a mental game of Lady Bountiful, imagining just what I’d do with the loot if I did win. (Forget for a second that every hard luck story in the world would be standing on my doorstep, hat in hand. I was talking to the guy I usually buy my lottery tickets from, and he told me that a friend of his won a relatively modest amount – maybe a million or so – and he was overwhelmed with requests (mostly from complete strangers) for “help.” What must it be like to win the Big One?)

But like dropping those ten bucks worth of quarters on the slots, playing the lottery is entertainment.

For some folks, however, it’s apparently a way to make a living.

One such person is Clarance Jones:

Over the past decade, the 73-year-old from Lynn has redeemed more than 10,000 tickets from the state lottery - more than any other person - worth a total of more than $18 million. (Source: Boston.com)

Hmmmm. I estimate that over the same period, I’ve had a lottery take that’s closer to $18 – if that.

I must be doing something wrong.

And that something, apparently, is that I don’t approach gambling as a professional would.

The case of Clarance Jones has come to light because the state was going after him for taxes on his lottery winnings. They suspect that Jones is what is known a “10 per center” – i.e., someone who will cash in the lottery winnings of others so that they can avoid paying alimony, child support and other debts. The “10 per center” skims his portion off of the top.

By the way:

It is not illegal to cash in someone else’s winning ticket, but it is illegal to do so to help them evade taxes or other legal obligations.

I guess that this is a business like those ones I’ve seen advertised that offer to pay someone for the future proceeds of an insurance settlement that they haven’t yet received. (It’s YOUR money….)

In any case, the state was not able to prove that Jones is a tax-evading 10 per center, and, in fact, couldn’t prove that Jones was anything other than what he said he was, a professional gambler whose losses conveniently offset his wins, eliminating any tax liability on his part. The state failed, the court rules, to make the case they might have been able to make if they’d been willing to slog through the storage facility full of receipts, enumerating his losses, that Jones has kept. The state doesn’t believe those losses will add up, but hasn’t opened the cartons of losing scratch tickets etc. – some two hundred boxes - to prove their case.

Odds are that the state is right. Probabilistically speaking, Jones would have had to spend millions upon millions to end up with the $2.2 million worth of prizes he claimed last year. Baby needs a new pair of shoes, indeed.

For his part, Jones has claimed to spend between 60 to 80 hours betting each week. (Yikes!) And his lawyer suggests that Jones has a “formula”:

…including buying scratch tickets in the middle of a pack and visiting stores where patrons recently racked up wins, on the hunch that those outlets likely had other winning tickets to sell.

Formula? I’d like to see the proof behind this bit of “wisdom.” Sounds kind of lucky sock-ish to me.

Jones lives modestly, not large, in a small apartment in Lynn, which, while it does have some nice sections, is hardly the Gold Coast. Apparently, whether you’re a professional gambler, a 10 per center, or an out and out huckster, there may be better ways to make a living.

Filene’s Basement’s may be closing, but Bob Slate’s back in business

2011-11-07T02:30:00.000-04:00

It’s been dragging on for a while, but now it’s official: that sound we’ve been hearing out of Filene’s Basement for the past however many years has been its death rattle. One more Store of My Youth, come January, will be gone, baby, gone.

Even while it was still situated where it properly belonged, in the basement of the Filene’s building, I hadn’t done much shopping there in years. And I suspect I won’t be doing any more. It’s just too depressing to participate in the store-closing death watch, which I’ve done over the past few years with Filene’s (the mother ship), Borders (yes, some of us do lament the passing of mega-chains), and Copley Flair.

And I won’t be writing an elegy to Filene’s Basement, either. Been there, done that. (Twice in fact.)

No, I won’t be missing Filene’s Basement. I’ll be missing the idea of Filene’s Basement. I’ll be missing something that, at one point in time, was distinct about the local shopping milieu. And I’ll be missing the girl who shopped The B so hopefully, for, oh, so many years.

Another local institution has bitten the retail dust as well. Last week, Daddy’s Junky Music shuttered its stores.

I never bought a darned thing at Daddy’s, but I’ll still miss something that was part of the local color for nearly 40 years. Musicians, I assume, will miss it mightily.

One thing that’s gotten them down is that so many folks come in to try out, say, a half-dozen guitars, spending time with salespeople and tapping their expertise. And then, before leaving the store, order the guitar-of-their-dreams online using their smartphone – finding it cheaper.

This practice, which plagues retailers like music stores and opticians (another one that comes to mind), strikes me as a bit unconscionable. I don’t suppose it actually bothers anyone’s conscience, as it’s the way the so much commerce is conducted these days. All that matters is me, personally, getting the best price. No matter that I’m sucking up the time of a store clerk, taking advantage of someone’s investment in bricks and mortar, and then buying elsewhere – from someone who doesn’t have to incur the costs of the clerk’s salary or the bricks and mortar. It seems to me that the shopping online trade-off is (and should be) that you might have to go back and forth a couple of times before the shoe fits. If you want to try it on for size, you should go to a real – not virtual – shoe store, metaphorically speaking, and do your trying and your buying there. Maybe the bricks and mortar folks can figure out a way to charge those who have no interest in buying from them. We’ll help you pick out your new Gibson or your cool new specs, but we’ll charge you for it, with the charge waived if you buy from them. Good luck with this, of course, but it’s a thought…

This too shall pass, but I’m just as glad that the majority of my life’s worth of shopping is behind me.

Meanwhile, on a positive note, Bob Slate Stationer, which opened for business in the throes of The Great Depression, and which closed last spring, has re-opened. This is a wonderful, old-timey stationery store that had a couple of Harvard Square locations, as well as one in Cambridge’s Porter Square. When I worked near Harvard Square, I popped into Bob Slate’s quite often.

It was there that I purchased a beautiful plum leather Filofax, when Filofax was the ne plus ultra of personal organizers. That was back in the pre-Palm Pilot days, let alone the age of the smartphone.

You used your Filofax for your address book, to keep your calendar, and to take notes. Each year, you replaced the calendar “guts”, but you kept the swanky leather binder forever.

I loved Bob Slate in the way that I always love stationery stores – even Staples, where I’m happy as a clam wandering around picking up pens, colored Post-Its, yellow pads, and thumb drives. No matter that I already have dozens of pens, Post-Its in every color in the rainbow (pastel and bold), stacks of yellow pads (small and large) still in their cellophane wrapping, and enough thumb drives to back up the Library of Congress. I do so love me a stationery store – second only to a bookstore on my must-have retail list. I.e., the stores I’ll still be shopping ‘til I’m dropping.

The other day, I stopped in a the new Bob Slate, located on Brattle Street in what I’m pretty sure was the site of the late and much lamented Wordsworth Bookstore – another marvelous indie bookseller that’s now out of business. (Honestly, I did not start shopping at Border’s while Wordsworth was still alive. Instead, I’d troop over the Harvard Square and hit Wordsworth and Harvard Book Store, yet another great indie – and still going strong. I note that, like Bob Slate, Harvard Book Store opened its doors in 1932, demonstrating that not even the most dire of economic times can keep the life of the mind and the written word down. So here’s hoping.)

Anyway, the new Bob Slate is still in stocking-up mode and hasn’t had their official grand opening as yet. But I was able to buy a couple of calendars, some wrapping paper, and a baby card. And I was just thrilled to be there.

On the same trip, I also managed a quick look in at the Harvard Book Store.

I keep meaning to stop buying books and go to the library, but I did need to buy a couple of baby books to go with that baby card. And while I was poking around, I remembered that I wanted to read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. And then there was the Best American Short Stories for 2011 staring me right in the face.

What’s a reader to do but make a couple of purchases?

Farewell, Filene’s Basement. So long, Daddy’s Junky Music. Fight fiercely, Harvard Book Store.

And – smiley face time – welcome back Bob Slate.

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What’s not to like about a stationer named Slate? Even better than a surgeon named Klutz.

Margin Call

2011-11-04T03:25:00.000-03:00

Given that the cast includes Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, and Stanley Tucci, there was almost no way I wasn’t going to enjoy Margin Call. I just didn’t realize just how much I was going to enjoy it.

The movie starts out with what is a familiar scene to anyone who worked in high-tech, as well, of course, as those who’ve labored in financial services. Even when it’s extras being paid Actors Equity no-lines minimum getting tapped on the shoulder and frog-marched out of the office with their carton of personal items, it’s still gut-wrenching. Stanley Tucci’s character, shown the door (and having his phone instantaneously turned off) after 19 years with “MBS” (More Bull Shit?), exemplifies the pain and anger that lay-offs engender. Never more so than in times of high unemployment and major economic uncertainty; never more so than when you’re getting older; never more so than when you’ve just bought a new house; etc., etc.

But the movie isn’t really about lay-offs. It’s about the machinations of a financial services industry that helped create a bubble that would put Don Ho and Lawrence Welk to shame.

Movies about financial maneuverings can be tricky business, as you need to simplify and dramatize something that’s intricate, complex, and a bit esoteric. CDO’s, anyone? It will be a lot easier to do the Bernie Madoff story: everyone understands a Ponzi Scheme. Except, apparently, Ruth Madoff who confessed to Morley Safer that she hadn’t known what one was. Her son Andrew had to explain it to her.

But, Margin Call, does, I think do a good job of explaining how the whole thing works, without getting in the way of a good story.

Without giving away the story, Stanley Tucci’s character was a risk manager for an investment banking firm. On his way out the door, he slips a thumb drive containing his research to a junior colleague. The junior colleague completes the model and realizes – unholy moley – that the firm is way in over its head with the junk it’s holding, and could well go under.

This precipitates an all-nighter on the part of the senior execs as they decide what to do, what to do.

I liked Too Big to Fail, the reality-based HBO film about engineering the bailout that “saved” capitalism, but I think that Margin Call does a better job of explaining to the non-insider but relatively aware viewer just how we got waist deep in the Big Muddy. Gordon Gekko aside, greed is not necessarily good, but it sure does seem to be the way the world works.

Speaking of Gordon Gekko, I saw Wall Street when I was working at Wang. One afternoon, during that lull week between Christmas and New Year, I tromped over to the nearest theater with a bunch of colleagues to watch a movie that had the product we worked on as an extra. For whatever reason, Wang had acquired the Shark system – near real-time stock market data – from Walsh Greenwood, and was running it on its mini-computers so that research analysts and portfolio managers could have access to information that, heretofore, was only available to brokers and traders. Shark – including the inflatable sharks that were the product giveaways, and product documentation – were pretty prominent in the background in a couple of the Wall Street trader scenes. We felt famous!

Ah, those quaint olden days, before you could turn on your TV and watch a real-time ticker run across the bottom, while some analyst or another makes us crazy about what’s happening in the market. Or just get a real-time quote on your smartphone.

I think life for us amateurs was actually easier when you had to look up where a stock closed in the financial pages of the morning paper.

But the Shark team at Wang, in our tiny and modest way, helped usher in the democratization of market data.

Naturally, Wang didn’t capitalize on the advantage we had with Shark in the portfolio management world.

The year after Wall Street came out, I was part of the vertical strategy team that was going to save Wang.

I was on the financial services team, and my tiny and modest suggestion was that we focus on the portfolio and money management markets, as we actually had a toe-hold in those communities to build on. A couple of the top portfolio management systems actually ran on the Wang minis. (Am I dating myself here, or what.)

But, alas, this market was too small to be of interest.

Why go after a $10M market you can own, when there’s a $100M market that you can’t even get a piece of?

Anyway, Wang’s not taking my brilliant suggestion had perhaps one iota over nada to do with Wang’s epic fail. Maybe those mini-computers with the 9” floppies had something to do with it. Not to mention Dr. Wang’s management style. (As I recall, he had to okay the type of paper that data sheets were printed on. An EVP had to okay your travel, and they waited until 5 p.m. the evening before to approve your trip.) Still, our vertical “strategy” spoke to at least a piece of the company’s mentality.

The next Christmas season, the Shark gang went to see Working Girl, still one of my favorite business movies. Gimme a working class hero (or heroine) any old day. Who says class warfare’s bad for the soul?

By the next holiday season, I had a foot out the door, and a lot of the folks on the Shark team had more than a foot out. They’d been tossed out on their ears in early December as part of one of the worst lay-offs I’ve ever experienced. It was, in fact, the lay-off that eerily came to mind when I saw the opening lay-off scene in Margin Call. The tap on the shoulder, the partially sympathetic but mostly brusque meeting with HR, the pathetic march to the elevator with that carton of personal effects. (We didn’t use security guards, as they did in the movie. We had human/humane buddies to help people out the door. I was one of the buddies in the great December of ‘89 Wang blood bath.)

But the look on the faces of those getting laid off – even if they’re paid actors – is always the same.

Why me? What next? Why me?

Boy, am I ever happy to be out of that fray.

Meanwhile, I give Margin Call two thumbs up. Loved Stanley Tucci. Loved Kevin Spacey as the sad and weary head of trading. Loved Jeremy Irons as the head guy. (Named John Tuld, in a presumed nod to Lehman Brother’s Dick Fuld. James Woods played Dick Fuld in Too Big to Fail, so Fuld is getting better looking.) I even enjoyed Demi Moore in her minor role as the head of risk management. She was far less wooden than I usually find her performances.

So if you’re in the market for a good movie, you could do worse than put Margin Call on your shopping list. And the best news is: you don’t have to go to the theater. At least on Comcast, it’s on demand. (No wonder I can go years between toe steps into a movie theater…)

What’s a girl to do?

2011-11-03T04:33:00.000-03:00

Technology is our friend. Until it becomes our unrelenting, implacable foe.

As it became last week when, in the course of 24 hours, my BlackBerry quasi-punked out on me and my e-mail was hacked. (Sorry about those ED ads, folks.)

The spammed-out e-mail will be resolved: password change, deletion or online contacts, and – if those “if it lasts more than 4 hours” messages keep going out, I’ll switch to another e-mail address.

But my BlackBerry…

I know, I know. Electronic devices tend to cough it up and die on or about their second anniversary, which I will hit with my BB in a couple weeks. Or at least mine do: my last four laptops all became nags headed for the glue factory as they approached the critical two year mark. And now it looks like my BlackBerry, trusted if not cherished companion of the past two years, is going the same route.

What is it?

Do they sense that they’ve been so technically outstripped that they become despondent and just give up?

My BlackBerry – despite being in what the Verizon tech calls “excellent condition” – doesn’t quite hold its battery life the way it used to.

Worse, the microphone no longer works, so I can only make calls using a headset or speakerphone.

Not that using the headset’s such a big deal – for calls over 30-seconds I tend to use it that way, anyway.

Still, I don’t want to have to fumble around with the earpiece every time I get a call. And I so do not want to want to walk around with a Bluetooth device clipped on my ear. No thanks. (Assuming it would work, anyway.)

I am not quite ready to make my move, but I am at the crossroads: stick with the BlackBerry herd, or follow one of the other herds to the iPhone or an Android device. The cattle are lowing… Decisions, decisions.

From all I’ve read, I’m your classic BlackBerry-er: my smartphone is my office on the go, and I use it primarily for e-mails and the phone. Yes, I text. Yes, I browse. But mostly I check my mail and make phone calls. But here’s the catch. I have a Storm, which has the touchscreen, rather than the QWERTY keyboard that the business BlackBerry pickers love. (When I went to get my first smartphone, that QWERTY keyboard reminded me of a 1940 Remington typewriter. I know, you can write the Great American Novel on either that 1940 Remington or a BlackBerry with QWERTY. But as – alas – I’m not about to do it one either, I just went with the moderne touchscreen.)

So, if I want to stick with my BlackBerry, it looks like the Torch is about to be passed my way. On the very plus side, it’s cheaper than the any of the alternatives I’ve looked at. And, since it’s a BlackBerry, it’s more or less a no-brainer, no?

But then there are my tech buddies, half of who seem to be Droid addicts, half of who seem to be Apple snobs.

Ah, the Droid… A dazzling array of brands to choose from. And 4G, so I can – what? – talk faster than I do already? And it’s not like I’m going to be downloading Gone with the Wind so I can watch it on a 3” screen. (Fiddle-dee-dee.)

Then there’s the iPhone, hallowed be Steve Jobs’ name.

I don’t really give a hoot about all those cool apps I’m missing out on. Angry Birds? Do I really need to add yet another pointless, mindless time-waster to my repertoire? I think not.

And do I wait a couple of weeks so that I can ask Siri questions when the 4S is available from Verizon? Unlike the kid in the ad, I do not need to ask what a weasel looks like. So I don’t know if I’d be barking questions at it. But surely someone who has no problem yelling at voice recognition support systems – “Just put me through to a *@(#*&)*&!@*(*# human being” – will have no problem talking at my smartphone.

And while I’m on the subject of having Siri, are we really approaching the time when no one will have to know how to read or write? Or will this be like the 18th century, when only the elite – those few, those precious few, those 1-per centers – will be literate. For the rest of mankind, it’ll be the spoken word and the video, only. So what happens if all this technology fails, on us, huh? Back to hieroglyphics and the Lascaux caves, I suppose. Maybe some cave dweller will recreate the alphabet.

Ah, well.

Sure was easier when the black, rotary dial phone came from Ma Bell and lasted a lifetime, wasn’t it?

Oh, what is a girl to do?

Something fishy going on here

2011-11-02T03:27:00.000-03:00

A week or so ago, The Boston Globe did a searing exposé of the nasty little habit some local restaurants have fallen into when it comes to labeling the fish they serve. Some very big names have been embroiled in Fishgate.

Skipjack’s was caught palming off something called escolar as white tuna. Bad enough that escolar is cheaper and not as good as white tuna; eating it can actually make people sick. Not blowfish sick (as in dead), but sick enough that Japan doesn’t allow it to be served. (Escolar sometimes goes by the nickname ex-lax. Which you won’t be seeing on any menus real soon.) Chau Chow was serving up “nutritionally inferior” (and cheaper) catfish as flounder. And David Ortiz’ now closed Big Papi’s restaurant was one of many that served fake red snapper.

Even Bertucci’s – one of my stand-bys – was palming hake off as cod.

None of these restaurants stands alone:

Recent studies indicate that between 20 percent and 70 percent or more of snapper, cod, grouper, and wild salmon are mislabeled at restaurants and stores.

Some of the restaurants were innocent of any direct malfeasance. They’d been duped by their distributors. Which may have been duped by their wholesalers. Which may have been duped by the fishermen. Fish renaming can occur anywhere along the food supply chain. One place thought they were serving fresh fish because it came from the distributor thawed. Others couldn’t tell the difference between one white fish fillet and the other.

Once you fillet a fish, it can be very difficult to tell what it is, if not impossible,’’ said John Sackton, publisher of Seafoodnews.com, an online industry newsletter based in Lexington. “Even the best chefs can have difficulty.’’

The Globe used DNA testing to figure out what was what.

Of course, some of the restaurants may have been witting not-so-dupish dupes – much to the annoyance and anger of local fishermen:

“Mislabeling fish is at a ridiculous level,’’ said Eric Hesse, a Cape Cod commercial fisherman. “The dealers and restaurants have a vested interest in keeping the illusion going. Every time they can say they are selling fresh local fish and get away with selling [Pacific] frozen, they don’t have to buy from us. It kills us.’’

I haven’t had it in years, but one of my favorite fish used to be scrod. (Is it even on menus anymore? I don’t think I’ve seen it in a dog’s age. Make that a dog-fish’ age.) There is not, actually, a fish called scrod. Scrod was cod. Or haddock. Or pollock. Or whatever flaky white fish was around. But everyone pretty much knew that, when you ordered scrod, you got whatever.

Fish mislabeling, when the restaurants do it knowingly, is intended to keep costs down and prices high, and works under the apparently well-founded assumption that – wink-wink, nudge-nudge – diners won’t know the difference.

A couple of the restaurants caught in The Globe article net used the “every body’s doing it, doing it, doing it” excuse, and noted that it was the “industry standard” to mislabel fish. (Remind me to stay out of Skipjack’s.)

Some restaurants are changing their ways (or their menus or their distributors). Bertucci’s has put some new processes in place to keep it on the up and up. One restaurant has revised its menu to say “ocean perch” instead of “red snapper.” The chef-owner admitted that he started using perch when red snapper got scarce and pricey.

“The flavor is pretty good,’’ [restaurateur Nobel Garcia] said. “I have never received any complaints about it in the last couple of years.’’

Much of the problem stems from our reliance on imported fish, which, given overfishing of fishing grounds, like the ones off of the New England coast, has grown radically over the last several decades. Today, we import 86 percent of the fish we eat, with a lot of steps along the way for mistakes to be made and for fraud to occur. And, by the way, most of our fish comes frozen. So a lot of what you see on menus as “fresh day boat” fish was in reality more likely to be “fresh many weeks ago fish.”

But sometimes you do get real fresh day boat fish, mostly when you go to a fish market that’s in a town on the ocean that has or is near a harbor with honest to goodness fishing boats in it. There’s nothing like it. Delish!

One of the freshest and best fish dinners I ever had was in Ireland, at a small restaurant (located in the family B&B) in Cong, County Mayo. My husband and I were spending a couple of nights at the posh, stuffy, and pretentious Ashford Castle. After one night of posh, stuffy, and pretentious dining, we wandered into town to see how we’re fare there. We stuck our heads into this one little restaurant, and while we were talking with the proprietor, her husband walked in with his waders on, and a brace of salmon slung over his shoulder. A few hours later, we supped on fresh salmon. Yummy yum yum. Too bad most salmon these days comes from fish farms (and gets mislabeled as “wild.”)

My favorite item in The Globe article involved Ming Tsai,

…celebrity chef and owner of Blue Ginger, said he understands the economic and environmental costs of mislabeling. But he said he used the name butterfish instead of sablefish simply because it sounds better.

“Butterfish rolls off the tongue,’’ said Tsai, who added that he thought the FDA allowed its use to describe sablefish in Massachusetts. It does not.

I admit, butterfish does sound awfully tasty. Far better than sable fish.Which sounds sort of furry, kind of rodent-y –not properties you’d want to associate with a fish.

But it sure does make Ming Tsai sound weasel-ly, doesn’t it?

Another use for a Band-Aid

2011-11-01T03:12:00.000-03:00

God know I’ll probably change my tune about this when I’m an even older geezerette than I am now, and want to visit my doctor through the miracle of telemedicine, rather than creep over to MGH on slippery bricks after an ice storm. But for now, I am so not liking the invasion of the webcam, as chronicled in a recent Economist article.

They may not be able to do any body snatching quite yet, but online ads that can catch your eye and “read your mood” are coming,

…thanks to the power of image-processing software and the ubiquity of tiny cameras in computers and mobile devices.

That means that an ad that you’re looking at can decide just how interested you are, and start (virtually) following you around with companion ads, special offers, etc. (And I find the ads that seem to pop up because of some search you’ve done were annoying. Can’t wait to see what’ll come from the Nazi memorabilia auction I stumbled across while looking for Graf Zeppelin ephemera. (Don’t ask. You’ll find out soon enough.) I do hope that nobody out there actually thinks I’d be interested in a Graf Zeppelin cigarette case that belonged to Herman Goring, or a swastika-engraved set of silverware that von Ribbentrop used. Seriously.)

Not all the uses of the new eyes-wide-open technology are soul-sucking advertising-related. In addition to health care, there are security, education, and other applications.

But admen are among the first to embrace the idea in earnest. That is because it helps answer, at least online, clients’ perennial carp: that they know half the money they spend on advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which half.

WWDDD?*

Today, this sort of ad-reaction emotion gauging is done in research settings, not in the natural, real-life world that’s just you, your computer, and its webcam. But it’s moving online.

Realeyes, which is in the UK, is one of the companies making this possible. Their technology is used to:

…gauge a person’s mood by plotting the position of facial features, such as eyebrows, mouth and nostrils, and employing clever algorithms to interpret changes in their alignment—as when eyebrows are raised in surprise, say. Add eye-movement tracking, hinting at which display ads were overlooked and which were studied for any period of time, and the approach offers precisely the sort of quantitative data brand managers yearn for.

Yes, and precisely the sort of information I really don’t want them to have.

I really, really, really don’t want anything to do with ads that interact with me. Let alone – and this is no doubt coming – ones that do a retinal scan, identify me, sort through data on every thing I’ve bought online from Peapod and L.L. Bean, every URL I’ve ever gone to, and decide that I’m the perfect candidate for a miniature harmonica or tax forgiveness. Let’s hope that those URLs are so diffuse and crazy that even the most powerful data-crunching engine won’t be able to categorize someone who, in a five minute period, searched for SMEG refrigerator, Rick Perry dye job, bad Boston accents, and Graf Zeppelin ephemera. (By the way, that last one yielded an auction item listed as a “piece of Graf Zeppelin skin”. I do hope that is a piece of the Graf Zeppelin airship’s skin, and not a piece of the eponymous Graf Ferdinand Zeppelin’s skin. Ewwww.)

I find the idea of these sorts of “I know what you’re thinking” ads an incredible invasion of my privacy. Sure, we’re assured, you’ll have to give consent to Walmart and P&G using your webcam to have their way. But I say, hah, hah, to that. I’m sure when this all gets revved up it will be you’re having to opt out, with implied permission given by your having a webcam sitting idly by. When it could be put to a more productive use by spying on your reactions to ads.

All I can say is that Post-it notes have a habit of falling off, so this presents a very good use for the common household Band-aid.

Here’s not looking at you, kid.

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*What would Don Draper do?

Job of the day: forensic entomologist

2011-10-31T03:19:00.000-03:00

The other day, just in time for Halloween, Boston.com ran a feature on 10 Scary and Creepy Jobs.

Not all of the scary/creepy jobs were directly death related. But a few of them were.

Like road kill removal specialist, which I personally do not believe is an actual job title. I personally believe this task is actually carried out by a DPW guy with a shovel. Then again, road kill’s not all the big a deal in cities, if you factor out squashed rats, squirrels, and pigeons.

Cryonics technician is admittedly rare, but as long as there are folks like Ted Williams who just can’t seem to let go, there will no doubt be some demand for professionals who’ll turn your corpus into a popsicle so that when “the cure” is found, you can be reanimated. (Actually, Ted’s a bad example, because it’s just his head that’s frozen, I guess so that the somewhat taciturn Teddy Ballgame can come back as a Talking Head.)

Then there are forensic entomologists, folks who “look for clues in murder victims by investigating what lives inside cadavers -- maggots, flies, and other creepy crawlers that have taken hold since the person's death.”

Now here was a job I wanted to learn a tad bit more about. And fortunately, I could do so at Forensic-Entomology.com. There I learned that they don’t call them carrion beetles for nothing.

Forensic entomologists are commonly called upon to determine the postmortem interval or "time since death" in homicide investigations. More specifically, the forensic entomologist estimates a portion of the postmortem interval based on the age of the insect present. This entomological based estimation is most commonly called the "Time Since Colonization".

They may also be able to unearth details about whether a body has been moved, based on whether the colonizing insects are shade lovers or sun worshipers, etc. Not to mention that they can extract human DNA from an insect that’s been supping at the human trough. The mosquito bite could turn out to more than an itchy welt – it just might place you a the quote unquote scene of the crime.

Forensic entomologists also help suss out “circumstances of abuse”. Who knew that some “parents intentionally use wasps and bees to sting their children as a form of punishment"? And, of course, abuse may mean that the victims are kept in squalor, attracting flies. While it wasn’t a case of abuse – other than self-abuse - I learned that this could occur the summer in college when I worked as an admitting clerk in the walk-in clinic at Worcester City Hospital. One day, a middle-aged woman came in with maggots infesting her head. It seems that she’d passed out drunk and whacked her head. When she finally made her way, more or less, out of her stupor, the flies had done their colonizing.

And did you know that bees and wasps are a major cause of single-occupant car crashes? You do now. (Pink Slip is such a font of eLearning, no?)

By the way, you don’t have to be board certified to be a card-carrying forensic entomologist. For $25, you can order a set of “Forensic Insect Field Identification Cards,” that can help investigators that lack specialized training pick up on crime scene clues they might otherwise miss.

By the way, those flecks of blood on the wall might not be blood spatter. They could very well be cockroach tracks.

If this has got you jones-ing for some CSI training, you’re in luck. There’s an Animal Crime Scene Workshop coming up at the University of Florida in a few weeks. For $375,

Students will get hands-on experience in the excavation of a gravesite and the exhumation of buried remains. Emphasis will be placed on the collection of associated physical evidence from the crime scene. The proper collection techniques will be demonstrated and students will be expected to implement those techniques throughout the excavation process.

Keep Calm. Carrion.

Happy Halloween!

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Since one thing inevitably leads to another, reading about forensic entomology quite naturally got me thinking about Barry and The Remains, a Boston rock band that was popular when I was in high school. What ever did we do before The Google? Sure, you could always – somewhere, somehow – “look it up.” But it’s highly unlikely that I would have been able to easily figure out that Barry of The Remains became Barry of Barry and Holly Tashian, the folk duo.

Come Thanksgiving, I’ll have to mosey around the ‘net and see if I can find out what happened to Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims…

“Students see red over T closures”? Oh, shut up, you boo-boo, baby whiners.

2011-10-28T03:51:00.000-03:00

I picked up a copy of Metro Boston the other day. You know, the free and easy newspaper for those with limited time/limited attention span. Out of sympathy for the news vendor hunkered down at the station, I almost bought a Boston Globe for my train trip back to Boston from Salem. But then I said, nah, just pick up a free Metro, and you’ll be able to read every word in it (including the ads looking for medical research subjects), complete both the easy and hard Sudokus, plus get a catnap in during that 25 minute train ride.

The front page headline screamed, Students see red over T closures, and the inside pages further picked up the story: Closures on the Red Line: ‘Tufts’ luck for students.

It seems that the transit authority is going to be doing some weekend track repairs, November through March, which will require them to run buses between Harvard Square and Alewife Station on Saturdays and Sundays.

From the reaction of Tufts students – who live near Davis Square, one of the impacted stops - you’d think they’d just learned that the Tran Siberian Railway was shutting down, and they were going to have to walk barefoot between Vladivostok and Lake Baikal.

“Shocked,” “frustrated”, “wicked annoying.”

Shocked? Shocked! Shocked,I’m shocked…

Up until they came to Tufts, it’s likely that 90% of these kids lived in suburbs with no public transportation whatsoever, and now they’re up in arms about having to take a shuttle bus to get from Davis Square to Harvard Square? (A distance, by the way, of all of two completely walkable miles.)

“That sucks,” said [name redacted to spare ninny further embarrassment], “I have friends [in the city], it’ll be almost impossible to get out there and see them.”

So true, [ninny with name redacted]. Getting into Boston from Medford if you have to take a shuttle bus for a couple of miles, rather than just hop on rapid transit, is nigh until impossible. Think scaling El Capitan blindfold.

Ah, yes, trapped on campus with no way out. Maybe you could just stay in Davis Square, where, last time I looked – which was in September – there was plenty to do. Maybe Mummy and Daddy can drive in every weekend and chauffer you to and fro. Maybe you can just stay home and txt your friends in faraway places.

[Ninny with name redacted] wasn’t the only Tufts Jumbo perturbed by the Red Line’s completely thoughtless and wretched decision to do this work on weekends, when it’s an inconvenience to students, vs. during the work week when it’s an inconvenience to people who work. (I was going to say ‘tax paying adults’ but that would sound just a tad too Tea Party-esque.)

There’s also a quote from [second ninny with name redacted].

While [second ninny with name redacted] will not let having to travel on a heinous shuttle bus keep him sequestered on the Tufts campus, he predicts that it will be “a huge pain.”

More ominously, he added:

“I can’t see this working out very well.”

I can see where you’re coming from, [second ninny with name redacted]. This temporary replacement of rapid transit with a shuttle bus does have all the hallmarks of a potential Hindenburg disaster, maybe even the Titanic. As I’ll find out for myself when I try to get to a play that I’m planning on seeing in Davis Square in December. Maybe I should leave now?

Anyway, I think that [ninny with name redacted] and [second ninny with name redacted] might be able to team up and have Mummy and Daddy come in every other week. It could be like the kindergarten car pool days. What fun!

At least [second ninny with name redacted] did indicate that he was willing to work through the “huge pain” and continue to make his way into Cambridge and Boston.

Unlike [third ninny with name redacted]:

“I doubt I’ll be taking public transportation anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to have to deal with crowded buses and traffic congestion. It’s too bad.”

Well, [third ninny with name redacted], I just want to point out to you that, on weekends, the subways can be very crowded, so the buses won’t be all that different. And there’s not a lot of traffic congestion between Davis and Harvard Squares on weekends, either. IMHO.

But if you want to punish public transportation by not taking it, well, knock yourself out!

To their credit, the Tufts student newspaper acknowledged that upgrading the tracks was not a bad thing, even though they decried that the announcement of the weekend T closures gave only two weeks notice. (Just how much advance notice does one need? Certainly, if you have a day or two in advance you can adjust your schedule so that you leave a few minutes early to account for the fact that the buses will go a bit slower, and take a bit more time, than the T would. Maybe Tufts kids these days are so tightly scheduled that we require this info months in advance. I see an iPhone app coming up…)

Meanwhile, assuming that they are able to come to closure with the closures, [ninny with name redacted], [second ninny with name redacted], and [third ninny with name redacted] will certainly have stories to tell their children and grandchildren. Tales of the Great Red Line Station Closures of The Winter of 2011-2112, when for five entire months they had to – get this – take a shuttle bus between Davis and Harvard Square.

Kids these days, I’m quite sure the ninnies will be telling their children and grandchildren, they have it so darned easy.

Oh, the humanity!

Awesome!

2011-10-27T03:56:00.000-03:00

Every once in a while, I come across something that leads me to believe that humankind is going to survive the current malaise and meshugas.

That most recent something was an article I saw a couple of weeks back on The Boston Globe web site, when it was still free. (This content is no longer available unless you’re a subscriber. Sigh!)

The article was about a group of Cambridge twenty-somethings who, a couple of years ago, established the Awesome Foundation, which is committed to “forwarding the interest of Awesome in the universe, $1,000 at a time.”

It’s not actually a foundation-foundation, like The Ford, or The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, or The Rockefeller. It’s not sitting on a big endowment, and passing out big checks. It doesn’t sponsor anything on NPR. What it does award is small amounts to help fund small ideas. Not so much a genius grant, as an ingenious grant.

It works like this: Ten trustees each kick in $100 a month, and together they review the submissions - the original chapter, now known as the Boston chapter, reviewed more than 130 for August - and the winner is given $1,000 for the project, with no strings attached.

As of this writing, they’re down to two awesome ideas for their latest grant, two finalists weeded out from 100+ submissions:

… a woman who wanted to buy a couple of goats to rent out as urban lawnmowers, and a sculptor who could “no longer make a case’’ for sculpture and instead wanted to buy a portable welder so he could go around and fix his city.

Goats are awesome, and all, but they do leave scat, however neat and pellet-y. So my vote goes to the guy who wants to weld his town. (And I do hope he doesn’t give up on his sculpting.)

Of course, my vote doesn’t count, because I’m not (yet) awesome.

Since the Cambridge/Boston chapter was founded in 2009, 22 other Awesome Foundation chapters have been formed throughout the US and Canada, as well as in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Zurich, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Grants are awarded ‘no strings’, and follow these rather loosey-goosey, yet awesome, guidelines:

Awesome projects are not strictly defined, but tend to challenge and expand our understanding of our individual and communal potentials. They bring communities together, casting aside social inhibitions and boundaries for a moment. They spark an instant of joy and delight and inspire a long-term hope for a more awesome future.

As I always say, some are born awesome, some achieve awesomeness, and some have awesomeness thrust upon ‘em.

Sure, I was born awesome – aren’t we all? But that was then and this is now.

What I wonder is whether it’s too late to achieve awesomeness or have it thrust upon me.

I don’t actually have any awesome ideas to offer.

But does anyone out there want to join forces, throw in a hundred bucks a month, and achieve us some awesomeness by throwing a bit of cash at some folks who do? We could call it the getting old geezers chapter.

Awesome, no?

I HATE when that happens

2011-10-26T03:21:00.000-03:00

Well, yesterday I managed to post not one, but two – count ‘em – two PinkSlip-pers, which is, quite honestly, one too many. This is true for my readers, I’m sure – only so much time over that morning coffee – but it’s also true for the writer. Especially when I am staring down more than a few writing projects that I’m actually being paid for. Unlike this labor of, ah, love.

Anyway, today’s post – which was really meant to be the one about cracking your teeth on nuts, which was erroneously released yesterday, right on top of the post on Dr Pepper’s hideous new marketing campaign – is going to be a pictorial celebration of the season.

Beacon Hill, where I live, is a lot of fun on Halloween.

There are quite a few people with small children in the neighborhood. The streets are dark and spookily lit with old fashioned (and just plain old-old) gas lamps. And lots of people get into the spirit by decorating their houses.

While walking down Mt. Vernon Street the other day, I passed a house that had these wonderful little sock monkeys in its windows.

Admittedly, these are a bit hard fully appreciate, but you will nonetheless get the picture, as I present to you, straight from my Blackberry to your eyeballs. I give you Sock Monkey 1, Sock Monkey 2, and Sock Monkey 3.

I so covet that Dracula…

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This post is dedicated to my sister Trish, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who knows her.