Landlines

I’m one of those old-fashioned types who still has a landline.

I can’t remember when the last time I made an outgoing call on it. (Actually, that’s not quite true. On the day of the Marathon bombings, when there was no mobile service for a while, I used it to call the landlines of my local sister and local brother to make sure that they were okay, so I could email by traveling sister and non-local brother and let them know we were all safe.)

Once in a blue moon, I’ll use it my landline to dial into a conference call. Sometimes it’s just easier to be on speaker, and the landline is better than a smartphone for that. But an outgoing personal call?

Pretty much the only time I use it for one of those is when I’ve misplaced my Blackberry and want to track it down.

Mostly the landline is used incoming by a) good causes looking for money, even though I tell them time and again that I DO NOT give to anyone (other than one of my schools) that solicits me over the phone; b) political surveys and/or get out and vote calls; c) bad people trying to get me to give them my credit card information; and d) my dentist calling to tell me that I have an appointment the next day.

I hang on to it mostly for the fear factor of not having a landline to call 911 or whatever.  There’s also a sentimental attachment to the number, I suppose, which I believe I’ve had for nearly forty years now.  But I’ve had my cell phone number for nearly twenty years, so sentimental/schmentimental.

My “real” phone is my cell. On my landline, I have the most minimal plan allowable, and augment the local coverage with a two-buck a month long distance service from some little phone company in Maine. On my cell phone, I have the mega-minutes plan, plus texting, and, of course, Internet access.

My husband, the last person in America to not have a cell phone, has a VoIP-based Magic Jack number, which mostly works, if you don’t mind terrible reception. But if the phone call matters, he uses the landline.

While those of us of a certain age keep the home-phones going, many of us are at least quasi-ambivalent – how’s that for an expression of ambivalence -  about keeping a landline home phone. But for the “young folks”, it’s a no-brainer. They just use their cell phones.

This, of course, means that, just as young folks won’t know what it’s like to dial, use a pay phone, call collect, or memorize their friends’ numbers, they won’t know what it’s like to pick up the family’s general phone and holler, “Hey, it’s for you.” Nor will they ever have to remember to tell a parent or sibling that they got a call, let alone actually take down a message.

All this reminds me of an experience my sister Trish had answering the family phone – PL-35811 – a few years after my father had died.

The caller was none other than a childhood friend of my father’s, one “Moko” Doyle, a fellow who had figured largely in tales of my father’s youth. Moko had been something of goof-ball, a not especially bright guy who was a trouble magnet. When my father was evaluating the friends of my brothers, it was not an entirely good thing if my father characterized any of them as a “Moko Doyle.” (There were worse designations, I must say. A “Moko Doyle” was at least likable. A bum, a louse, a crook, a complete POS, was a Vincent P. Egan, but that’s a story for another day.)

Anyway, Trish was home alone when she answered a call from Florida, Moko checking in with his old pals after many decades away.

My sister, still just a kid of 14 or 15 at the time, had to tell Moko that my father was dead.

He then asked about my Uncle Charlie.

No, Trish was sorry to report, Charlie had recently passed away.

Spike? Moko asked hopefully.

Alas, Spike was gone as well.

Poor Moko, reciting the litany of his boyhood friends, only to find them all gone. (Poo Trish, having to give Moko the news.)

Finally, Moko asked about Nemo, who, Trish was happily able to report, was still among the living.

With no landlines in the house, calls from the likes of Moko Doyle will be a thing of the past. Exchanges like this will all happen on Facebook or LinkedIn.

It’s not just homes, of course, that are getting rid of landlines. Businesses are hanging up on them, as well. (Hanging up: another thing that doesn’t happen much anymore, either.)

Of the nearly 300 employees at Evernote, only a handful – those in customer support, for the most part – have a landlines.

At Facebook, it’s the same deal for their 5,000 employees. Ditto for the 53,000 workers at Google.

Silicon Valley companies big and small are pulling the plug on desk phones in favor of mobile devices. While consumers have been cutting the cord for years, businesses are joining the trend at an accelerating rate thanks to the increasing capabilities of mobile devices, which make it easier for workers to be productive and stay connected from any location at all hours. (Source: Bloomberg.)

Which, of course, means that there’s no cutting the cord between work life and personal life, a condition that has been in the making for a number of years – and is not an unalloyed good.

That aside, the trend really spells trouble for the landline equipment and networking providers like Alcatel and Avaya. Business spending on landlines fell by one-third between 2008 and 2012, and is expected to plummet by the same amount between now and 2016.

And for the telecom providers like AT&T and Verizon, it means figuring out to squeeze more revenues out of wireless as the cash cow of landlines dries up. I’m sure that they’ll figure it out. After all, they have plenty of experience with the decline of Yellow Pages and the end of personal “rental” of phones, which was what the model was in the good old days. (A few years ago, we were visiting my husband’s elderly aunt and realized that, although she had, maybe a decade or so earlier, replaced her old black rotary dial phone with a jazzier number, she had been paying $9 a month fee for that old Bakelite number month in, month out.  We called “wrong number” and returned it for her, although, as I recall, there was some super hassle about sending it back.)

As one guy interviewed for the Bloomberg article – the head of a start up where everyone uses their personal mobile phones for work (and gets reimbursed for overages) – said:

"You just don’t need desk phones. We talk over e-mail, text message, chat clients, social networks. "

This is, of course, true.

I do a lot of my client communicating via e-mail. When I was still working full time, I hung out with remote colleagues on IM. But there are plenty of times where you really do need to get on the horn and actually talk-talk with someone: not over e-mail, not over text, not via FB.

Sometimes you really do need to pick up the phone and call.

At which point, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using a landline, a cell phone, or Skype.

As the AT&T ad used to say, back in the day when Bell ruled:

Reach out and just say ‘hi’…

Hey, they’re waiting to hear from you.

Come on, admit it. Don’t you like to get a call once and a while from someone – business or personal -  who just wants to yack for a while?

A dream is a wish your pocketbook makes

A dream may have been a wish that Cinderella’s heart made, but, Jiminy Cricket, if you’re a well-heeled NYC parent and not a hearth-sweeping skivvy, a dream is a wish that your pocketbook makes come true.

Or so it seem, based on an article in the NY Post – and when are they ever wrong?  -  on hush-hush, word of mouth service that, for about $1K a day, is (make that was) helping folks who had better things to do than wait on line tapping their Tod’s in the broiling Florida sun. Hel-lo-o!

The workaround is hiring a disabled person to become an ad hoc member of your family, letting you cut ahead of the common folks and whisk yourself right into a ride.

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida. (Source: NY Post, by way of boston.com)

This came to light, by the way, because of social anthropologist Wednesday Martin’s research for a book entitled Primates of Park Avenue. That sounds like a good one. Can’t wait.

As for giving those with disabilities a break, believe me, I am in complete sympathy with those who need to use handicap parking, etc.

I have an old and dear friend with crippling rheumatoid arthritis. Forty years (and twenty operations) into dealing with it, she can’t walk all that fast or all that far, and has no use of her fingers. She has handicapped parking tag and, believe me, she needs (and deserves) to use it.

I have another old and dear friend who after surviving ghastly treatment for malignant mesothelioma – no, it doesn’t just happen to asbestos miners; it happens to librarians who work in asbestos-ridden old libraries – has to use one of those motorized scooters to get around in.

However, I do believe that plenty of those folks buzzing around in motorized scooters have a problem getting around because they’re obese, not because they have a disability. So, right off the bat, it doesn’t seem fair that just because you’ve signed up with The Scooter Store, you get to cut line with your posse.

But, sure, for folks in wheelchairs and those who really do need help walking, life is crappy enough as it is, why not give them a break. (Disney, by the way, doesn’t guarantee preferred ride boarding. They just promise a “more convenient entrance.” But those discerning NYC mothers swear by it.)

Hiring someone in a wheelchair or scooter to play ‘poor Aunt Hephzibah’ so you and your precious little ones can scoot to the head of the line: just despicable. (Gives new meaning to ‘hire the handicapped’, that’s for sure.)

Dream Tours, the group that was the supposed go-to for the NYC elite, is a Florida non-profit that is:

Dedicated to providing quality based, memorable, and affordable vacations, to people with special needs.

Well, I suppose you could argue that Rollo the Rich Dude and his brood have special needs, if you consider not feeling like standing in line to get into “It’s a Small World” a special need. (Personally, I’d pay a thousand dollars a day not to get into “Small World” but that’s, after all, just me.)

Dream Tours is focused primarily on adults with special needs. In the words of their home page: We specialize in accessible travel. The company takes individuals and groups on tours of Disneyland, and runs other tours – a cruise, trip to the Smokey Mountains – as well. Their web site is full of heart-warming pictures of families having fun.  Their web site also makes frequent use of Disney characters. Wonder if that’s Disney-approved, given that at one point a few years ago, Disney went after a family that carved Winnie the Pooh on their child’s gravestone. And their logo incorporates the cap of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. If they don’t have Disney permission, I suspect that they’ll be hearing from old Walt’s legal team any day now.

Dream Tours’ program goals include:

• To emphasize community inclusion for individuals with disabilities, fostering partnerships to provide access to the same social, cultural and recreational facilities and activities enjoyed by all citizens
• To provide enriching activities that are meant to challenge everyone’s own personal physical abilities and at the same time allow them to socialize with their peers in a safe environment
• To create a mechanism for sustainability, businesses, partnerships and grants, successfully continuing the program

Theirs is, at least nominally, a very laudable mission. But it may have been that “create a mechanism” goal that tripped them up.  After all, if you can rake in a thousand bucks taking a group of non-disabled POS’s around, and it helps support their efforts to work with those who are both in need and deserving of help, then their thinking may be ‘why not?’.  Maybe the secret handshake is that the New Yorkers know that they have to say that Little Lord Fauntleroy has ADHD, and Dream Tours doesn’t dig too deep. Is this maybe a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reason?

Ryan Clement, who founded and runs Dream Tours, is denying any malfeasance.  It was supposedly his assistant, Jacie Christiano, who was the tour guide on what it appears to have been one of their VIP Tours. 

Due to inaccurate press and slander, Dream Tours is not offering VIP tours at this time. Our focus has primarily always been providing magical vacations for adults with special needs and helping their dreams to come true.

As I learned time and again in small companies that were, as often as not, unintentional non-profits, when you move away from what your “focus has primarily always been” you tend to get in trouble.

Guess that’s what happened here.

And when that happens, donations – in the case of the small companies of my experience, these were donations masked as investments (or vise versa) – tend to dry up.

If they really were legitimate do-gooders, here’s hoping that Ryan and Jacie can get back on track. As it says under Jacie’s bio:

“Around here, however, we do not look back for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things…” Walt Disney

As for those queue-jumping NYC a-holes: shame on you for your cavalier behavior, and for what you’re teaching your children. (Just one of many dreadful things they’re teaching their kids, I’m certain.)

As for Disney, you may want to keep a closer eye on how many families “poor Aunt Hephzibah” rolls in with. You really don’t want to be encouraging liars and cheats. How un-Disney like. Sure, Disney is pretty expensive, and beyond the reach of many families. Nonetheless, doesn’t Disney still believe that “when you wish upon a star, makes no difference who your are”?

Is it just me????? Or are the Quabbin Seven the complete idiots they appear to be?

The other day, a group of UMass and Smith College students were found meandering around Quabbin Reservoir a bit after midnight.

The UMass students were chemical engineers, just graduating with masters degrees. No word on what the Smith-ies were studying.

Apparently none of the brigade were long on common sense.

Quabbin Reservoir, for those not from around here, is a quite beautiful place in the western part of Massachusetts. In my guidebook,it’s one of the prettiest places in the state. Quabbin was created in the late 1930’s to provide drinking water for Greater Boston and, interestingly, required several small towns to be disappeared. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe that from the air, you can see the ghost outlines of the foundations from those towns of yore.

Anyway, given that it provides water to an awful lot of folks in Massachusetts, it’s a very important part of our infrastructure. One that we want to keep safe, secure, and sippy-cup delicious. (We do, by the way, enjoy really wonderful water in our fair state. When we were kids and visited our relatives in Chicago, we were all gacked-out by the taste of that city’s water, which was sweet water compared to the well water we drank once when we visited some friends of the family who lived on a farm in Wisconsin. I remember the Rogers kids struggling mightily not to do a spit-take on the lemonade that we were served.)

Anyhow, the students who were apprehended poking around Quabbin in the dark happened to be from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Singapore.

Now, if you were a student from a country that was either the home country of the 9/11 bombers or had housed Osama Bin Laden.

And if you knew that people in the US in general, and – these days – in Massachusetts in particular, were (fairly or unfairly) fairly suspicious of people from those countries.

And if you were studying in a state that had just been whip-sawed by a couple of miserable jihadists who’d hijacked our very own, very best holiday, Patriots Day, and killed four innocent people, including a sweet and adorable 8-year old boy, and maimed hundreds of others.

Would you go in the dead of night to a somewhat secured reservoir to poke around because, as chemical engineers, you had a ‘career interest’ in it?

Anyhow, the Quabbin Seven are facing trespassing charges. And while they may very well be completely innocent of any malfeasance past, present, or future; any terrorist intent; or even any evil thoughts, they will now surely be facing some scrutiny by the FBI, will they not? And surely the INS will be taking a look and seeing whether any of these students may be outstaying their welcome.

I know that young folks can be foolish and impulsive. That sometimes it just seems like a good thing to hop in the car and head to the Res to look around on a nice spring night when school’s out.

But unless you wanted to be deliberately provocative, or are up to no good, would you do this?

What a bunch of nimrods.

And people call us Massholes?

Seriously, folks.

Torts ‘R Us. (And the workplace lawsuit of the week award goes to…)

When I looked through my (virtual) clippings file to see what I might be interested in blogging about this week, I had three – count ‘em, three – possibilities that involved work-related law suits.

What’s a blogger to do?

I suppose if I were the mono-focus, monetizing, let’s really get a book out of this type, I could spend all of my blogging time on work-related law suits.

But that wouldn’t be all that interesting.

And it would probably be pretty darned repetitive, too.

Easy to imagine having to alternate between “this is the worst place in the world to work” screeds and “can you believe that someone’s suing over this?” posts.

So I thought I’d eliminate two of the possibilities, and focus on just one of the sue-the-bastards du jour.

The first one I got rid of involved the family of a 42-year old deckhand on The Bounty who was swept overboard and died when the ship was caught up in Hurricane Sandy. (The Bounty was used for the early 1960’s movie of Mutiny on the Bounty, and has since been a tourist attraction.)  Yes, it was the captain’s decision to head out in the middle of a hurricane. But all the crew members were given the option of abandoning ship before it left port. Idiotic as that captain was – and he, too, died – surely, a 42 year-old is capable of heeding the warnings about the danger of one of the fiercest hurricanes on record, which were well known before The Bounty lifted anchor…

The second potential topic that got the heave-ho was one about a fellow in Upstate NY who’s suing McDonald’s for screwing with his hours to deprive him of overtime pay. Certainly, this practice is behavior most foul. But then I got all weirded out by the guy’s claim that he was making $13/hour at McDonald’s, which got me off the tort track and on to just what is an unskilled, minimum wage job worth.

So, with two tort candidates eliminated, I settled on the New Mexico worker who’s suing Intel because some fellow employees planted (and acted on) a “Kick Me” sign on his back.

The Intel employee, Harvey Palacio, said in the complaint recently filed in Albuquerque that once he suspected something was taped on his back during the August prank, he went to senior staffer Randy Lehman to ask if something was there.

"Lehman said turn around and as Palacio did he saw and heard (another employee) yell out `Don't read it, just do it'," the lawsuit said.

Lehman then kicked Palacio three times in his buttocks, according court documents. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Another colleague gave him another two kicks for good measure.

"Palacio decided that this could not continue and walked back in front of the group to ask someone else to remove it," the lawsuit said. "Palacio felt demoralized and assaulted and he began to cry during the drive home. He could not tell his wife because he was so embarrassed and ashamed."

Lehman and the other kicker were convicted of petty misdemeanor assault, sentenced to some community service, and  fired by Intel (Lehman after 19 years).

But apparently the criminal charges, and getting the work-jerks fired, wasn’t enough for Palacio. So now he’s suing Intel.

There are a couple of ways that this saga can be interpreted.

1. Worker preyed upon by vicious a-hole workplace bullies. Certainly a possibility. There are some real thugs out there, and maybe the Intel Two are a couple of them. Palacio also claims that there were a couple of other incidents: his uniform hidden, his work bag filled with trash. Palacio, a Filipino, also believes that racism was involved. So maybe these brutes maliciously hid Palacio’s uniform so he actually couldn’t get his work done. Maybe they put really awful offal in his work bag. Maybe these guys were complete bigots trying to drive the “foreigner” out.

On the other hand, this could be a case of:

2. Thin-skinned guy with no sense of humor meets clumsy goof-ball pranksters with no common sense. No one’s going to argue that it’s a good idea to put a kick-me sign on someone’s back. (Ho, ho!) Let alone to actually kick him. But what if this was just how the gang of ‘merry pranksters’ at Intel rolled? Stupid “hijinks”: kicks the equivalent of love pats, trash in the bag that’s nothing more than an empty coffee cup and a Twinkie wrapper. Maybe that’s how all the newbies at Intel in Albuquerque were treated. Maybe they just wanted to get a reaction. Maybe they all had mild Asperger’s and couldn’t interpret Palacio’s discomfort as such.

Maybe because Intel’s a tech company, it’s a lot easier for me to imagine the second scenario than the first.

Palacio is seeking “unspecified damages” plus legal fees (naturally).

But before taking criminal and civil action, wouldn’t you think that Palacio would have complained to HR?

Maybe he did, but they didn’t do anything. Which doesn’t sound like something that would happen at any large company, given that, in today’s see-you-in-court climate, they need to tread very carefully.

And I do feel bad that this guy was so humiliated that he cried on his way home. (As someone who cried on the way home from work on occasion – though never due to a kick-me sign on my back – I know that feeling.)

Still, if – as I suspect – scenario two is closer to the truth, all this lawyering-up seems like overkill.

I could, of course, be dead wrong, and it was all scenario one, only worse.

And I do hope I remember to follow up on this one and see what happens.

For now, all I have to say is that, if Harvey Palacio wasn’t quick enough on the uptake to get the crude, indeed unpleasant frat-boy humor that still exists in the American workplace, he sure was quick enough to pick up on American suit happiness.

Medical tourism, hair restoration edition

While I would not want to be a bald woman, I’m pretty darned fond of bald men.

Not only am I married to one, I am also the daughter of a bald man. And the sister of two more.

I like bald guys.

I think they’re pretty darned cute.

But I understand that there are men for whom bald is not beautiful. And plenty of women who feel the same way.

And given how gruesome comb-overs are, especially if they get caught in a windstorm and go spiraling out of control, and how dead-muskrat so many male hairpieces are, I can understand why some men might get drawn into the pursuit of the hirsute.

Certainly, all the ads for baldness treatment on TV (which are second only in persistence to those for male, ah, enhancements, including the newer one I’ve been seeing for the underarm roll-on testosterone booster) indicate that there’s plenty of interest in mo’ better hair out there. (For all the hair restoration ads that there are out there, I will say that I miss the Hair Club for Men ads of yore, especially given that, years ago, I actually sat in the table next to the one where Sy Sperling – “I’m not just the president, I’m also a client” of Hair Club for men was dining. Sy, by the way, was a  model of restraint, He resisted the urge to lean over and hand my husband one of his cards.)

Still, I hadn’t thought of hair restoration as part of the medical tourism industry.

Apparently in Turkey it is.

In 2012, roughly 270,000 of the 31.7 million tourists who visited Turkey came for medical treatment, pumping $1 billion into the economy. Many come for cosmetic therapies, including rhinoplasty, liposuction, and thermal spas, but according to those in the medical tourism industry, the real money is in hair…

The Istanbul Hair Center reports they treat 70 to 80 medical tourists every month—nearly twice as many patients as they saw last summer. (Source: Business Week.)

Admittedly, 270,000 medical out of 31.7 million overall tourists does not set off big flashing GET YOUR TREATMENT HERE signs in my mind’s eye. And I wouldn’t lump thermal spas in to the medical tourism mix, either. (Mud baths? Seriously, folks.) Still, I wouldn’t have imagined that Turkey would be a medical tourism destination at all. (Personally, I can’t imagine any country, other than the good old U.S. of A. as a mecca for medical tourists, but that’s just my inner jingoist USA! USA! chanter coming out.)  Customers are drawn to Turkey  from Europe and the Middle East, and tourism is largely boosted by word of mouth – one satisfied customers/patient at a time.

Hair restoration, by the way, is quite a big deal: a lot more complex, painful, and dangerous than any comb-over, hair weave, or scalp-painting job.

Typically, men come for four days to one week. The first day their scalp is analyzed and a graft spot is chosen, usually from the back of the head, where many balding men retain hair. Other options include chest and shoulder hair. The next day they head to the operating room—the procedure can last eight to 10 hours, with about 7,500 root implants. After that comes postoperative care. The following day, patients can fly home. Full results are expected six months after the operation.

And it’s not just the hair on your head that they’ll do for you. They’ll also give a man hair on his chinny-chin-chin.

The Istanbul Hair Center was one of the outfits mentioned in the BW article.

Fortunately, their website (partially)  translates into English (and Arabic, if you’re a bit more adventurous). Thus we learn that they are an “expert institution,” providing “treatment in fully equipped hospitals with expert staff under sterilized and safe conditions” using “scientific methods.”

Somehow, this doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, but maybe something is lost in translation.

They use something called the “FUE method” which, again, would not raise my comfort level to that which be achieved by a method that didn’t start with the letters “FU”.

FUE method which can not be fully applied in many countries around the world, is applied by us perfectly through our own experience.

FUE stands for “Follicular Unit Extraction,” and, despite that “can not be fully applied” warning, has been around for a while and is the “industry standard.”

So, unless you’ve always wanted to see the Blue Mosque, there’s no reason to trek to Turkey for it.

Anyway, hair restoration tourism in Turkey: it’s amazing what you find in the news when you’re just grazing around.

Philistine? Pea brain? Just plain jealous? (Art sure makes me ask the big questions about just who I am…)

I never actually wish I were a genius, but some days I do wish I had more of an appreciation for them.

Not that I don’t appreciate genius.

Take James Joyce.

I could re-read his early works over and over again. Will anyone ever write a short story that’s as brilliant as The Dead?

I could even, I suppose, re-read Ulysses if I had to.  (Maybe someday I’ll even want to.)

As for Finnegan’s Wake. On my bucket list, for sure. Once I get past the fact that it makes no sense and ends with the word “the”.

Then there’s music.

Of course I can distinguish between music and musack.  But do I embarrass myself that I’d rather listen to show tunes – even Ethel Merman belting ‘em out in Annie Get Your Gun – than put on Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?

And then there’s art.

I’m not someone who thinks that great art ends with Rembrandt. Honestly, I like a lot of the modern stuff. I was a sophisticated and savvy enough kid to fall in love with Miró at the age of 10, and I still have the postcards from the Chicago Art Institute to prove it. Okay, so maybe I thought Joan Miró was a girl painter. So shoot me.

But there are some things I just plain do not get.

Some of which were on sale at the Frieze Art Fair last week in NYC.

Now, Balloon Dog.

I’ll give you that it’s witty enough.

But $25K? For one of 40? Admittedly in unique colors. Still... (At least it won’t deflate like a real balloon dog would.)

And I’d much rather a Paul McCarthy “Balloon Dog” than the Paul McCarthy “Gold Butter Dog 1, Guggenheim Crown” staring at me, whatever the price. Even if it’s silicone and not really butter, which would turn rancid, and I do find that Guggenheim Crown pretty darned drôle.

As for that “You Look Good” (by Barbara Kruger) lurking in the background: at $250K, you can probably forget about it.

That is, after all, quite a bit to pay for an affirmation, when you can create one on your own using a Sharpie and a Post-it note. Which I’m going to do the minute I get off this blog.

After all, if you DIY-it, you can change them up every day, pretty much for free:

You’re a really swell person.

You ARE funny.

Not bad, for someone your age.

So easy to make fun, isn’t it.

But the truth is that I didn’t think of “You Look Nice,” which is worth $250K. All I came up with is the derivative “Not bad for someone your age,” which is worth bupkis.

Bad enough I’m a philistine, but a jealous one…. I should be hanging my head, not blogging.

I will, however, forge on, mostly because us non-genius types have to make up for our non-genius by being balloon-dogged and determined.

Which takes me to the works of Tom Friednman.

The booth of Luhring Augustine gallery was devoted to Tom Friedman, whose five food sculptures -- made with Styrofoam and paint -- looked quite appetizing. All sold within the first 90 minutes.

A large pizza pie and a slice of white bread hung on the walls; a group of sweet treats, including a Twinkie and a Snowball, sat on the floor. The tiny green pea could have been easily missed on the white wall where it resided -- were it not for the hefty price of $35,000.

“That’s classic for Tom,” said co-owner Lawrence Luhring. “There’s always something in his work that’s minuscule.” (Source: Bloomberg.)

A $35K Styrofoam pea? Why didn’t I think of that.

I guess it’s because, not only am I a jealous Philistine, I’m a pea brain as well.

Needless to say, I wanted to learn more about Tom Friedman, and came across some info on an earlier exhibit. Friedman’s genius, I assure you, does not end with the Styrofoam pea.

He made a “perfect sphere” out of 1,500 pieces of chewed bubble gum.  (“it is the knowledge of his quasi medieval investment of time that gives the piece its power”).

Let me tell you, I can identify with that “quasi medieval investment of time,” but has mine given Pink Slip any power?

He also created “a sculpture made from a box of cooked spaghetti that have been attached end to end to form a single, loopy spiral, the process that friedman undertakes is both intricate and fraught with the possibility of a messy and frustrating failure.”

Messy and frustrating failure! I may not be a genius, but Tom Friedman and I have something in common. (Although my failures have probably only appeared messy and frustrating to me.)

Then there’s this:

hair
everyone knows, rather intimately, what a bar of soap is,
or at least we think we do, until friedman shows up with his
sculpture that changes the whole concept of soap into an object with a--sticky-when-wet--surface that holds spiralling pubic hairs perfectly in place. ultra-thin, circular lines expanding concentrically outwards from the center.

he must have labored over this little enigmatic thing for hours. 'initially I was drawn towards materials that had to do with personal hygiene. cleaning materials...I drew a connection between mundane rituals for keeping ourselves clean, and rituals for spiritual purification.' friedman said. (Source for this, plus chewing gum and spaghetti: Designboom.)

I’ve finally found it, that chasm that separates genius from pedestrian intellect, that je ne sais quoi which je ne have pas.

Sure, I’ve labored over this little enigmatic thing of a blog for hours, but when I find a spiraling pubic hair on a piece of soap, I pick it off with a square of toilet paper and throw it out.

No wonder I’m where I am today.

The.

Day of the Dead™

Growing up, Halloween was an altogether wonderful day.

It’s general wonderfulness was compounded by the fact that, as parochial-schoolers, we got the next day off to celebrate All Saints Day. As the Baltimore II Catechism informed, this was a “Holy Day of Obligation in the United States”. Which meant we had to go to Mass in the morning. Oh, yawn… But after that, you were free for the day.

Having a day off of school was excellent enough to begin with, but to be able to lord it over public school students…Bonus points.

However much my culture relished death and dying, and as exceedingly thorough as our nuns and priests were in impressing upon the young that our mortal lives were short, finite, expendable, and nothing but a prelude to immortality in The Great Beyond,’ there was never a lot of hoo-hah around All Saints Day. Nor for the runner-up day after (and non-Holy Day of Obligation), All Souls Day, which was dedicated to the masses who would never make sainthood. Just a couple of reminders that we should “think of the dead”. (As if we needed any reminders, given that death was pretty much incessantly harped on as a matter of course.)

But it wasn’t a big cemetery visiting day, perhaps because the early November weather in New England (or in Ireland, from whence our death-reveling antecedents came) was not conducive to a cemetery jaunt.

In any case, unlike the Mexicans, we did not do All Saints and All Souls Days up big.

But for the Mexicans, Dia de los Muertos has always been a pretty big deal.

The Day of the Dead honors departed souls of loved ones who are welcomed back for a few intimate hours. At burial sites or intricately built altars, photos of loved ones are centered on skeleton figurines, bright decorations, candles, candy and other offerings such as the favorite foods of the departed. Pre-Columbian in origin, many of the themes and rituals are mixtures of indigenous practices and Roman Catholicism. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Somewhere along the folk-arty line, Day of the Dead became, if not widely celebrated outside of Mexico, then at least widely known. I mean, who doesn’t have at least one bit of Day of the Dead kitsch in their possession?

Personally, I am the owner of a tiny little skeleton wonking away at a computer, a set of colorful plaster Day of the Dead band members that are on a shelf in the downstairs bathroom, and Christmas ornament of a skeleton angel in a bright blue angel gown.

Anyway, Disney-Pixar recently caused a bit of a ruckus when, in anticipation of a movie of the same name, they tried to trademark “Dia de los Muertos.”

A blogger at OC Weekly, dug into Disney’s application and found that they wanted to make sure that nothing escaped their grasp. Their mark was:

*For "Fruit preserves; fruit-based snack foods; eggs; jams; jellies; potato chips; nuts; dairy products; meat; poultry; fruits; vegetables; prepared or packaged meals consisting primarily of meat, fish, poultry or vegetables"

In the world of greed and branding, much of this makes sense (potato chips), but Day of the Dead fruits? Vegetables? Day of the Dead eggs? This seems a bit Day of the Dead nuts, but I don’t have the world’s most refined branding sense, that’s for sure:

*For "Toys, games and playthings; gymnastic and sporting articles (except clothing); hand-held units for playing electronic games for use with or without an external display screen or monitor; Christmas stockings; Christmas tree ornaments and decorations; snow globes"

*For "Clothing, footwear and headwear"

*For "Bags; backpacks; calling card cases; coin purses; fanny packs; key cases; key chains; luggage; luggage tags; purses; umbrellas; wallets"

Calling card cases? How quaint. How ever did they leave out snuff pouches and reticules.

I’m happy to see that fanny packs did make the list, since they are, more or less, the reticule of the sort of middle-aged women prone to sporting oversized Tigger sweatshirts. (All Disney, all the time.)

*For "Paper and paper articles; cardboard and cardboard articles; printed matter; publications; books; photographs; portraits; paintings; stationery; office and school supplies"

*For "Clocks; jewelry; jewelry boxes; jewelry cases; key rings of precious metal; coins; watches; watch bands"

*For "Apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images; audio books; audio recordings; audio and visual recordings; video game software; computer programs and software; consumer electronics and accessories therefor; eyeglasses and sunglasses and accessories therefor; binoculars; decorative magnets; graduated rulers"

*For "Cosmetics; dentifrices; non-medicated toiletries; fragrances; perfumes"

Dentifrices? Why am I channeling the Pepsodent parody of my childhood:

You’ll wonder where your teeth have gone, when you brush your teeth with an atom bomb?*

And nothing says ‘come ona my house’ like Day of the Dead perfume, no? A delicate mixture of humus and rotted cloth, enhancing the underlying scent of decayed flesh…

*Confectionery and chewing gum; breakfast cereals and preparations made from cereals; cereal bars; bread; muffins; muffin bars; pastry; waffles; pancakes; cookies; crackers; biscuits; popcorn; corn chips; pretzels; puddings; coffee; tea; cocoa; sugar; rice; flour; ices; ice; honey; condiments; sauces; spices; pizza; pasta and noodles; macaroni and cheese; frozen meals consisting primarily of pasta or rice; staple foods

Ice! Ice? Who brands ice? Other than Brookline Ice and Coal Company, I mean.

One has to admire Disney’s (over) reach, that’s for sure.

But in this case, their reach exceeded their grasp, and the Disney backlash painted the company as not just greedy, but as insensitive culture vultures, preying on both cultures and, potentially, on crafts-people who make things like skeleton Christmas ornaments. Not to mention the small businesses that are no doubt out there already selling Day of the Dead dentifrices, poultry, and ice.

After a social media protest, Disney backed down and indicated that they would be renaming their Pixar adventure, which will no doubt have plenty of cute and cuddly lil’ skeleton characters every bit as lovable and merchandisable – one and the same in Disney-Land, of course – as Woody, Nemo, and Shrek.

The online protest was led by Latinos, including Mexican-American cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, who wrote:

"On the offensiveness scale, it seems awful and crass, as the words 'Dia de Los Muertos' aren't just some brand name but a holiday."  (Source: Guardian-UK.)

But Alcaraz did more than write, he cartooned, and Disney backed off.

Disney later issued a statement suggesting it had been decided to change the title of the film, and would therefore no longer be pursuing efforts to trademark the term. (Source: Guardian-UK.)

Anyway, we have been spared. We will not have to worry about whether we’re buying authentic Dias de los Muertos merch: frozen foods, watches, or fanny packs. We will not have to worry about Dias de los Muertos vendors having to lawyer up to defend their hand-crafted Christmas ornaments against the suits from Disney.

Viva la Social Media!

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

*The original jingle:

You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

Let us begin the Beguine…

Like most good little parochial school girls, at one point in time I thought I would enter the convent. My piety peaked in third  grade, when we had a nun who was both pretty and nice. That year, on Halloween, as was often the case, we were allowed to wear costumes to school – as long as we came dressed as a saint or other holy personage.

This was relatively easy. All the altar boys had to do was wear their cassocks and surplices and they could be Francis Xavier or Isaac Jogues (who was wildly popular with the boys because of the viciousness of his demise: clubbed to death by the Indians he was trying to convert, his fingers gnawed to the bone by those heathen Mohawks).

All girls needed was an “angel gown” – a pastel, long-sleeved shift – and some sort of plain head scarf. Easily accessorized, you could turn this into just about anything: Blue angel gown, carry a baby doll – you’re the Blessed Virgin. Baby carriage wheel? That would be St. Catherine, tortured on the wheel. (No, not a baby carriage wheel.) My sister Kath did this one year.  Basket of plastic roses and a crown: St. Elizabeth of Hungary (my choice on one occasion).

When I was in third grade, I decided to go as a nun (what? not a holy enough personage for you???).  The core part of my outfit was a shapeless black dress that, over the years, served as a witch costume, a professor, a priest, and a nun. This was augmented by some sort of bib, wimple and veil that I rigged up. Apparently not all that successfully. At the end of the day, as we were heading out the door, Sister Marie Therese asked me whether I was supposed to be a nun. Sigh!

I had another little romantic vision of myself as a nun when, a couple of years later, I read the Vision Book Lydia Longley, First American Nun. Lydia was a Massachusetts girl, kidnapped from the farmstead by Indians during the King Phillip War of the late 17th century. Somehow, she ended up in Montreal, converted from Puritanism to Catholicism, and became a nun.

That was pretty much it.

By the time I was in high school, urged to pray for a vacation, my friends and I were facetiously claiming that we were praying against having a vocation. The nuns would often say things like “it’s the ones you least expect” – i.e., well-rounded girls with personality – but, in truth, the girls who “went in” were usually a combination of the ones you least expected (who seldom stayed for long) and the ones you most expected (quiet, pious girls who lasted). 

My senior year, I was invited, along with the other student council presidents of the all-girls schools in New England that were run by “our” order, to a couple of day long student council retreat. It was held at the same place where the order’s postulants were in training. In between praying and trying to solve thorny student council issues like trying to improve school spirit, we socialized with those newbies. At some point during the retreat, we all figured out that this was a recruitment event, at which point we all turned off whatever it was that those wholesome, jolly postulants were telling us about how swell it was to be there. Phew…

So while I was familiar with nuns, orders, vocations, postulants, novices, professed nuns, etc., I have to admit that, until I saw the obit in The Economist on the last of the Beguines, I had never heard of them. Assuming that you weren’t aware of them either, let us – ahem – begin the beguine.

AT THE heart of several cities in Belgium lies an unexpected treasure. A gate in a high brick wall creaks open, to reveal a cluster of small, whitewashed, steep-roofed houses round a church. Cobbled alleyways run between them and tiny lawns, thickly planted with flowers, grow in front of them. The coziness, the neatness and the quiet suggest a hortus conclusus, a medieval metaphor both for virginal women and the walled garden of paradise.

…These places were not convents, but beguinages, and the women in them were not nuns, but Beguines. In these communities, which sprang up spontaneously in and around the cities of the Low Countries from the early 13th century, women led lives of prayer, chastity and service, but were not bound by vows. They could leave; they made their own rules, without male guidance; they were encouraged to study and read, and they were expected to earn their keep by working, especially in the booming cloth trade. (Source: The Economist)

And a few weeks ago, the last Beguine, Marcella Pattyn, died.

Unlike me, Marcella had wanted to be a nun, but she was near-blind, and no order would let her in. On second thought, she also wanted to work at something, which wasn’t always a possibility in the convent. (There are/were working orders – teachers, nurses – and contemplative orders, who pretty much prayed the day away.)

But Marcella had one thing going for her:

A rich aunt intervened with a donation to keep her there, and from the age of 21 she was a Beguine.

Marcella’s work was knitting baby clothing, and weaving cloth on a hand loom. She also played the organ, and “cheered up the sick, as she nursed them, by serenading them on banjo and accordion.” (Okay. I’ll admit it. I’m just as happy never to have taken ill in Belgium and being serenaded on banjo and accordion by a blind Beguine.)

The Beguine were independent sorts, by the way:

…the male clergy, unable to control them, attacked them as heretics and burned some alive.

(Except for the burning alive, substitute nuns for Beguines, and some things never change.)

When the world became aware that it was down to end of the Beguines, the local government came a calling, bearing champagne and “beguine-shaped chocolates.” (Beguine comes from the French word béguin, which means both hood (as in the headdress worn by the Beguines) and flirtation (as in Begin the Beguine).)

Not that I would have had any more of a flirtation with going “in” if the beguinage and not just the regular old take-a-vow convent was on offer, but it is interesting to learn about them at this late stage of my life.

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?

Conor Murphy’s well placed bet

The Kentucky Derby was last Saturday.

I didn’t put on a big flowered hat and sip on a mint julep, but I did give a bit of thought to the ponies, thanks to an article that caught my eye in The New York Times.

The article told of one Conor Murphy -  County Cork’s own - and, until fairly recently, a stable hand in England who spent his days exercising racehorses, curry-combing their manes, and mucking out their stalls. (And you think your job entails shoveling shit…)

One day, about a year and a half ago, Murphy decided the place a bet,. He put $75 down online with Bet365.com, on the five horses from the stable where he was working. The bet he placed was an accumulator, which strings a number of bets together. If they all work out, you win. And big.

Anyway, yer man put his money down in December 2011 for a race that was going to be run in March. It was pretty much a house-loyalty, sentimental betting strategy, given that all the horses he bet on had pretty long odds on them.  But he went ahead and made his wager.

Then he forgot about it.

The odds at the time of the bet were long on each horse: Sprinter Sacre (10-1), Simonsig (14-1), Bobs Worth (10-1), Finian’s Rainbow (8-1) and Riverside Theatre (9-1). That all five would win was, well, nearly impossible — about “163,350-to-1,” said a spokesman for Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaking firm. (Source: NY Times.)

That $75 bet paid out over $1.5 million.

Maybe not rags to riches, or even nags to riches, but enough to take Conor Murphy out of his job as stable hand for someone else. And into a new life running his own horse training business, which is in Louisville, Kentucky.

What he did with his money is just great

He bought a few horses.  Paid cash for a house in Louisville, Kentucky – which was where he really wanted to be, rather than in England, and where he had a girlfriend – and started up a business as a horse trainer. He now has a couple of dozen in his training fold.

A horse he trains (not one of his own, but one belonging to a client), Lines of Battle, ran in the Kentucky Derby.

It would, of course, have been a really great story it Lines of Battle had won, but he didn’t. He did finish a respectable seventh out of twenty.

Respectable to me, maybe, but what I know about horse racing is limited to being able to name the three events that comprise the Triple Crown: Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont. Recognizing Man o’ War, Secretariat, Fury and My Friend Flicka as horse names.  And remembering when Ruffian broke her leg.

I did go to the track on a few occasions, when I was in my twenties. I’d go with a couple of friends to Suffolk Downs or Narragansett, and we’d each bring $20 so that we could place ten two-dollar bets in the course of the evening. Our betting strategies were brilliant: a combination of liking the horse’s name and the color the silks the jockey was wearing. Needless to say, we rarely won.

My only other brush with racing had come a bit earlier, when my college roommate and I were hitchhiking and were picked up by a jockey and his girlfriend. The jockey was driving a big honking Cadillac pretty much the length of the house I grew up in. His girlfriend was about six feet tall and looked like Barbie doll. It would have been an excellent lift if they hadn’t been squabbling with each other the whole time.

Speaking of jockeys, as a lad growing up in Ireland, Conor Murphy had hoped to be a jockey, but once he became a six footer, he had to forge a new path so he could stay around horses.

He wisely attributes his winning to “pure luck,” and while plenty has changed for him, some things have stayed the same:

He still rises before dawn, still mucks stalls and still walks his horses for hours on end. He also bathes them himself.

(When I first read that last line, I thought it was “He also bathes himself.” So I was thinking, come on, $1.5M is way not enough to be able to afford to hire someone to bathe you, unless you’re on your last legs and it’s a home health care attendant doing the bathing…)

“Someday,” Mr. Murphy said, “I’ll saddle my own Kentucky Derby winner.”

Good on ye, lad. I hope you do.

And when that day comes, please pick a name (and jockey colors) that I might be interested in putting two-bucks down on.

The names in this year’s Derby were pretty lame (sorry). The one I would have bet on was Overanalyze. (Story of my life.) Overanalyze finished 11th. Figures…

Meanwhile, belated congratulations to Conor Murphy.

Lunchbox

Growing up, I felt extraordinarily deprived because I never had a lunchbox. (And, no, having a pencil box didn’t make up for this supreme and utter loss.)

Kids of TV had lunchboxes. Kids in books had lunchboxes. Kids in suburbs had lunchboxes. But only a few lucky-ducks at OLA had lunchboxes.

At that time, unless your mother worked (huh?) or you lived too far to walk home, have a cup of vegetable beef soup and a ham sandwich, catch a few minutes of Big Brother Bob Emery on Channel 4, and walk back to school in time to have at least 15 minutes screaming around the school yard, you ate lunch at home.

What I wouldn’t have given for a lunchbox, with or without a thermos – Cinderella, maybe, to match the watch I also didn’t have but craved, or even a unthemed tartan one.  Ah, to eat lunch in the OLA school auditorium, on those cool lunch tables that folded down from the walls. (Murphy tables?)

Alas, by the time I was bringing my lunch to school, I was too old to carry a lunch box. I brown-bagged it.

That was in seventh grade, our grammar school having put the seventh and eighth graders on a different schedule and regime so we didn’t feel envy for the pubs (public school students) who got to go to ultra-sophisticated junior high school. Under the fake junior high plan, we got out at two p.m. rather than three, which meant we had to sacrifice an hour’s bite out of our lunch break. No more legging up the hill for lunch with mom and the kiddies! (The new junior high arrangement also involved shifting classes between the seventh and eighth grade nuns. At the end of every period, we gathered our books and walked into the classroom next door, passing the kids in the other grade walking in the opposite direction. As with eating lunch at school, this was supposed to replicate the experience we saw Wally and the Beav, and Donna Reed’s kids, having on TV every week. Minus the lockers. And minus much teacher variation: there were only two nuns. Enough was enough!)

Although I was now bringing my lunch to school, I still didn’t get to eat in the school hall. Because our lunch break was shorter, and there were too many of us – 100 more kids between seventh and eighth grade would have overwhelmed the “lunch room” – we ate at our desks. We all had to keep plastic covers in our desks, which we whipped out to cover those precious desks during the lunch period. Imagine what those plastic covers – untouched by a sponge for 10 months -  looked and smelled like come the end of the year.

Even if I’d eaten in the school hall/fake cafeteria, it wasn’t as if they served food there.

When it came to meals, everyone was on their own. (Enough was enough.)

High school was a marginal improvement, in that we actually did have a lunch room. And they did offer some sort of food, which I don’t recall ever eating – let alone what it was that they served, other than cheese pizza on Fridays.

No, for the six years I took my lunch, I “prepared” and ate – every single day – a baloney sandwich on white bread, accompanied by a Saran-wrapped Dailey’s kosher dill pickle and, some days, a nickel bag of Wachusetts potato chips, the only food I ever purchased in “the caf’. And the only switch in my daily fare was on Fridays, when I changed things up with PBJ or cheese (American, on white bread, again with the Dailey’s pickle on the side).

So I never ate a school lunch.

From what I understand – not to mention what I learned directly from a steady dose of institutional food during college, followed by years of frequent flyer dining – I didn’t miss much then. And with the move to MME’s – meals manufactured elsewhere and warmed up on site – things have gone from bad to worse, even if ketchup is no longer classified as a vegetable.

Enter Revolution Foods, which I read about in a recent Economist.

Kristin Groos Richmond, co-founder of Revolution Foods, says despite a $16 billion market for food in schools, she felt there was no good way of delivering healthy meals. Instead she created a school-dinners company that used healthy and locally produced food with an emphasis on using children to design, and test, the meals. Something seems to be working: the company recently won a contract to serve food to 114 schools in the San Francisco Unified School District, and subsequently the proportion of children who chose to eat the free meals jumped by 12%.

None of the fare offered by Revolution contains junk-food staples such as high-fructose corn syrup or transfats. It is hormone- and antibiotic- free, and sometimes organic. Avoiding use of the deep-fat fryer has been hard. When Ms Groos Richmond began working with Washington schools she was asked to provide a chicken wing. It took over 1,000 attempts (along with tastings and focus groups) to create a child-approved baked chicken wing infused with a spicy sauce.

The bad news is that this cost more than manufacturing a sloppy joe, flash freezing it, and trucking it to P.S. Whatever, where it gets zapped in the warm-up machine.  But Revolution does expect to eventually start turning a profit, and is doing so already in some of its regions.

Of course, given that the kids most in need of what Revolution has to offer tend to be in poor school districts - and we know how we feel about spending money on them, those rotten, selfish, seven-year-old takers – we can’t expect that most schools will throw out the cardboard pizza and fat fries and bring on the transfat free.

Still, the good news is that Revolution Foods exists, and is providing an alternative to high-calorie, low-nutrition glop.

You say you want a revolution in school foods program? Revolution Foods is giving you one.

Tulsa wants to put a ring on it? Five rings, to be exact…

Having grown up in a wannabe, second tier city – that would be Worcester, Massachusetts – I have some sympathy with Tulsa, Oklahoma’s decision to put their hat in the first ring and at least start to think about the 2024 Olympics.

Tulsa, you may ask.

Tulsa, indeed.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has recently sent Tulsa a letter “asking whether they might be interested in hosting the games.”

It’s not exactly an exclusive list. Here’s the full roster of those who got tapped on the shoulder:

Phoenix, Arizona
Los Angeles, California
Sacramento, California
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
San Jose, California
Denver, Colorado
Washington, D.C.
Jacksonville, Florida
Miami, Florida
Orlando, Florida
Atlanta, Georgia
Chicago, Illinois
Indianapolis, Indiana
Baltimore, Maryland
Boston, Massachusetts
Detroit, Michigan
Minneapolis, Minnesota
St. Louis, Missouri
Las Vegas, Nevada
New York, New York
Rochester, New York
Charlotte, North Carolina
Columbus, Ohio
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Portland, Oregon
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Memphis, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Austin, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Houston, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
Seattle, Washington

Source: Team USA.

Tulsa isn’t the only “as if” town on the list. It would be hard to imagine Rochester, NY or Columbus, Ohio as a destination that would make Olympics fans around the world pep up and say “I’m there!” Not exactly London or Beijing.

And laid back, alt hipster Portland, Oregon? LOL on that one. Could the appropriate level of USA! USA! USA! rah-rah come out of the laid back, ironic, pierced nose, coffee house, micro brewery and bicycle shop brigade?

Realistically, no one expects Tulsa to become the jewel in the U.S.O.C.’s 2024 bid crown. Can you imagine the reaction of the International Olympic Committee? If they crapped on Chicago’s bid, can you imagine what they’d make of Tulsa’s?

And it’s not as if the U.S.O.C. looked at the map and decided to luck Tulsa from obscurity. Surely if they were going to pick someplace in Oklahoma, where the wind comes rushing down the plain, it would have been the larger Oklahoma City. But Tulsa apparently expressed an interest and asked to be invited. So they were.

Buoyed by its success hosting a major fishing tournament this winter, Oklahoma's second-largest city is now dreaming of something faster, higher, stronger: the 2024 Summer Olympics. (Source: MSNBC.)

That wasn’t just any major fishing tournament, baby, that was the Bassmaster Classic, which was one by Cliff Pace of Petal, Mississippi. And lest you even think of sneering, Mr. Pace – or, rather, Bassmaster Pace - won $500K for reeling in nearly 55 pounds of bass during the tourney. And that $500K probably goes pretty durned far in Petal, Mississippi. Further, anyway, than any city on the U.S.O.C. invite list, including Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But as impressive as hosting the Bassmaster Classic is, of course, it does not attract the audience or world attention that the Olympics garners. I don’t think so, anyway. Or was I the only one who missed the opening and closing ceremonies, with the march of the world anglers and the baiting of the Bassmaster Hook, which I believe was the culmination of a 5,000 run with a bucket of worms.

As for the Olympic city bid, Tulsa is kinda-sorta in it to win it:

"I see this as a great opportunity, I really do," Mayor Dewey Bartlett said. "If we come off looking a little lighthearted on it, so much the better, but we are serious about putting our name out there."

While they may be at least quasi-serious, the city also faces serious problems in mounting their bid:

The Tulsa area has around 13,000 hotel rooms, far fewer than the 45,000 required, and [Neil] Mavis [a member of the Tulsa 2024 Olympic Exploratory Committee]  said the city would have to finance and build an Olympic stadium to host major events. Tulsa's largest facilities now are the 30,000-seat Skelly Field at H.A. Chapman Stadium on the University of Tulsa's midtown campus and the 19,000-seat indoor arena at the BOK Center downtown.

What, pray tell, would Tulsa do with those 32,000 new hotel rooms once the Olympics were over?

Plus it costs about $3.5 billion to host the Olympics, which works out to an awful lot of per capita for a city with only about 400,000 citizens.

As for the charms of Tulsa, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Woody Guthrie Center, if I were passing through, but I can’t imagine Tulsa becoming a destination city. Personally, of the list of cities on the U.S.O.C. list, Tulsa would, I’m afraid, place dead last if I had to prioritize. (Yes, I would rather go to Detroit.)

Clay Bird, the city's chief economic development officer, admired the groundwork laid by Mavis and others. But he cautioned that city officials were approaching the opportunity merely to "see what's out there" and not because they think Tulsa has a decent shot at landing the 2024 Olympics.

"I don't want people to think that we have such rose-colored glasses on that we're going to jump into this with everything we have and compete," Bird said. "We believe in our community, but we don't want to be a laughingstock. We don't want to lose credibility."

What this “opportunity” does give Tulsa, however, is a chance to think about what other types of major, but perhaps not colossal and global in nature, events they could host. 

Which is more of less that type of thing that Worcester boosters would do.

So good on ye, Tulsa.

I’m pretty sure that you won’t be hosting the 2024 Olympics, but I suspect there are an awful lot of Bassmaster Classics out there that would be de-lighted to hold their events in Tulsa. None come to immediate mind, of course, but you never know.

In the meantime, I’m hoping that with this post, “Take Me Back to Tulsa” stops rocketing around in my skull.

Take me back to Tulsa, I’m too young to marry…

You don’t know this tune? Bob Wills, by way of Asleep at the Wheel.

Bet they know it in Tulsa.

Worcester, alas, has nothing comparable.

Take me back to Worcester, I’m too young to marry….

Adios, Marco Dorfsman. Qué lástima! Qué pena!

I suppose that I shouldn’t be, but for some reason I find myself continually – perhaps even continuously – amazed by the capacity of individuals to engage in extremely career-limiting – perhaps even career-destroying – behavior. I’m especially astounded when the person doing so is not some 18 year old Generation Duh-ster sending out a completely egregious tweet, but, rather, someone more advanced in his or her career doing something profoundly WRONG.

Into this latter category, I’m afraid I have to place University of New Hampshire associate professor of Spanish Marco Dorfsman, who “has been fired for altering student evaluations of another faculty member.” (Source: AP, via boston.com).

“This serious breach of ethical standards constitutes moral turpitude that cannot be tolerated at UNH,” the school said in a statement.

Moral turpitude, eh?

Who’d want that albatross hanging around their professional neck?

This is apparently not just a matter of crapping on/undermining a colleague out for some vindictive sport  – bad enough, perhaps even turpitude, but maybe not moral turpitude – but, in the case of UNH, “administrators rely on student evaluations when deciding on continued employment for instructors.” Including tenure and salary. Thus, it’s an attack on a colleague’s professional reputation and livelihood.

I’m not going to get too far into the wisdom of relying on the anonymous comments of a bunch of 18 year olds trying to score points or settle scores or slackily show off. But let’s just say it’s fine if their fellow students want to look at the ratings before they decide to sign up for a course so that they can avoid the demanding instructors and seek out the guts. Isn’t that what these slam books were for originally? But relying all that heavily on the anonymous “judgment” of kids in actually making employment decisions? How about having peers sit in on classes? How about inviting students to send in signed evaluations that will not be made available to the professor?

However daft it is, IMHO, to place much weight on anonymous student evaluations, Professor Dorfsman was, of course, dead wrong to swoop in and tamper with those that involved a colleague.

Dorfsman (e-)mailed in an apology to colleagues and students:

“Last December I had what I can only say was an emotional breakdown and I did a terrible thing,” Dorfsman said in the email...“There were mitigating factors related to a personal tragedy in my family and other personal and professional pressures that created a perfect storm in which I acted out from a very dark and vulnerable place,” the email said. (Source: The New Hampshire.)

Well, I’m a big believer in second chances (within reason: none for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I’m afraid), and Dorfsman may well be a genuinely and generally great person, great teacher, etc., who just screwed up horribly “from a very dark and vulnerable place.” Still, it’s hard to see how his fellow colleagues, not to mention UNH students, could get past this breach of trust. (It’s also very sad to see that someone’s career/life ruined at the age of 50. But that’s what happens when you do something that’s really pretty awful.)

Dorfsman can appeal (“grieve”) his firing, in which case it will go to arbitration.

I can’t imagine that a personal tragedy could mitigate this sort of act, unless the colleague whose evals Dorfsman tampered with is somehow directly involved in it (which is leading my mind in all sorts of soap-opera-y directions).

Maybe Dorfsman can get his wronged colleague to go to bat for him here.

Then there’s also the possibility that Dorfsman had turned himself in – as opposed to confessing after he was found out – in which case he may have a case.

But he’s probably a goner…

Meanwhile, I thought I’d take a look at how Dorfsman fares in his own evaluations. Here are a few from RateMyProfessors, which I don’t suppose is the source UNH goes by for its tenure decisions:

Marco is fun and interesting. He incorporates a lot of things from outside of the curriculum - like vocab you wouldn't find in a textbook, and mannerisms of spanish cultures that are good to know. Disorganized, but it wont hurt you but rather help you- I didn't do my final paper and got a B.

Really enthusiastic about the subject matter and he made class enjoyable. He really wants his students to learn Spanish, not just do busy work. As long as you participate he'll like you, but he's really unclear with his grading and what he's actually assigning. He also never ever answers e-mails.

Professor Dorfsman was very enthusiastic about the subject manner, though I often found it hard to figure out what he actually wanted.

Sounds like a decent enough teacher, although something of a doofus.

But your average doofus doesn’t lower another colleague’s evaluations.

This situation is a pity. This situation is a shame. This situation is humiliating. But unfortunately it’s one that Marco Dorfsman brought on himself.

All made worse, of course, by the Internet age, which magnifies everything, and exposes everyone’s wrong-headed professional behavior for all the world – or at least all the bloggers – to see and weigh in on.

¡Buena suerte! Marco Dorfsman. I’m afraid you’re going to need it.

Found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut, last night.

I appreciate that there are plenty of kids out there with peanut allergies, and that while the odds of something dire happening to someone with a peanut allergy are slim – most reactions are mild – terrible things can and do happen to those with any food allergy.

A few months ago, a college kid in Massachusetts died when he ate a cookie that had some peanut trace in it. This was a bright kid, who’d always been very cautious, but he’d never had such an extreme reaction. Apparently, all he had to do was let his guard down for a second, and that was it for him.

And I know people who have had near-death reactions to citric acid, to shellfish.

Thank God for epi pens.

Because of all the allergies out there, because even a trace element can apparently kill someone, I’m all in favor of complete product labeling.

But to have to put a peanut warning on a bag of peanuts?

Is this not just a tiny bit over the top?

After all, wouldn’t one expect to find peanuts in a bag of peanuts. Even if they were labeled “monkey nuts".

Now, maybe in the U.S., a bag of monkey nuts would have to come with the peanut warning. After all, even though a monkey nut is nothing but a fully clothed peanut, the term monkey nut is a British-ism. One which I’d never heard.

So, if the monkey nuts were to have been sold in the States, it would have been, I guess, conceivable that someone might know that they have an allergy to a peanut that was out of the shell, yet might never have seen what a peanut in the shell looks like.  Thanks to Mr. Peanut and Skippy, you can go through a pretty peanut-filled life without ever encountering a peanut shell. (Although I will note that Mr. Peanut, himself, always appears in his birthday suit.)

But a monkey nut in the U.K. is a peanut.

And while, just as in the U.S., some Brit peanut-allergee may have never seen peanut avec shell, would it not be reasonable to expect that someone buying a bag of monkey nuts would understand that what’s inside that monkey nut just might be a peanut?

But the Booths supermarket chain recalled bags of monkey nuts “after failing to declare they may contain peanuts.”

The supermarket has removed 300 packets of 350g Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts from its shelves.

Booths has apologised and warned customers with a peanut allergy not to consume the product.

Booths technical manager Waheed Hassan said: "It is our responsibility as retailers to accurately record allergy advice.

"In this instance, we felt a responsibility to recall the product and issue a notice to our customers who might suffer from a specific peanut allergy." (Info source: BBC.)

I feel truly awful for those who have peanut allergies, or any other food allergy, for that matter. Life voluntarily without peanut butter would be bad enough, but to have to live with the risk that anything you could put in your mouth could kill you?  That would be just terrible. (Or worse, having to live with the risk that anything your child could put in his mouth could kill him.)

But having to label a bag of peanuts as a bag of peanuts?

On the one hand, it’s a bit consoling to know that the U.K. must be just as litigation-happy as the U.S., if Booths felt compelled to withdraw its monkey nuts, inform the authorities, etc. because they failed to state that a bag of monkey nuts contains peanuts.

Is it just me, or is this a little nutty?

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Thanks and a tip of the Mr. Peanut top hat to my sister Trish for sending me this article.

Oldies get goodies…(‘This could be kickbacks or this could be marketing.’)

I have no idea where – or if – I’ll be here in another twenty years, but, if I am, I hope I’m one of the kippy old ladies I see on Beacon Hill all the time, heading off to their book clubs or whatever.

And while I fully intend to be one of those fiercely independent oldsters, fully capable of opening my own can of soup and getting to my next doctor’s appointment, I certainly hope that there will be plenty of services available to the elderly who are not as fortunate as I hope (and expect) to be.

Thus, it was somewhat disheartening to read a recent article in The New York Times on the emergence of adult day care centers that provide government paid for services – to the tune or nearly $100 per day – to old folks who are capable of taking care of themselves.

That $3K a month is so attractive that all sorts of these centers are popping up all over New York City, luring the elderly in with goodies from the low-cost (and lower goodie) social centers for the elderly run by community organizations, churches, etc.

Even giving away free lunches (ordered off a takeout menu), bags of groceries, free transportation, grocery vouchers, and cash, these scabrous outfits are able to turn a profit. And, hey, who wouldn’t rather have a bunch of fully with-it, able-bodied old folks around – folks who are capable of playing ping-pong and getting themselves to and from the bathroom – rather than having to take care of those truly in need of adult day care services: those with dementia, those with mobility problems, suffering from impaired vision, recovering from strokes, etc.

All coming from the good intentions of providing the elderly-in-need with the ability to get out of the house, have a social life, keep them from having to fall into the maws of that point of no return, the nursing home system.

Such centers have mushroomed, from storefronts and basements to a new development in the Bronx that recently figured in a corruption scandal. With little regulation and less oversight, they grew in two years from eight tiny programs for people with dementia to at least 192 businesses across the city…

Beneficiaries are supposed to be impaired enough to need at least 120 days of help with tasks like walking, bathing or taking medication. But managed care companies, not government agencies, are now mainly in charge of determining eligibility, typically by using nurses to assess each potential member.

“It is being gamed,” said an executive at a managed care company, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “There are just plums in the payment system. And the state will choose to be blind about this until something happens, which is what they did with nursing homes.” (NYTimes.)

Anyway, these “social adult day care centers”  don’t need to be licensed, and all they need to have are two people working there, one of whom can be a volunteer. There is supposed to be some vetting that the elders joining these new centers are in need, but this is apparently exceedingly vulnerable to gaming, given the mutual back-scratching arrangement between managed care providers and these social centers.

Because they’re bringing in the big bucks, the new for-profit day care centers can pay more for rent than city-run or non-profit organizations that operate on shoe-string budgets.

In one recent case, the private management of a federally subsidized senior housing development in Coney Island sent an eviction notice to the longstanding Ocean Parkway Senior Center on its ground floor, and moved to replace it with a social day care center company offering higher rent.

Anyway, with little by way of costs – rent and goodies, little by way of oversight, and lots by way of upside (50 old geezers x $3K per month), and you’ve got a no heavy-lifting, nearly all upside business bringing in nearly $2M per year.

When the marketing executive of one of the managed care providers who works with the adult care centers was asked to “denounce the inducements,” he instead said:

‘This could be kickbacks or this could be marketing.’

Sorry, but there really is a difference between kickbacks and marketing, and this sure looks like kickbacks to this marketer.

What a shame that kickbacks to the well elderly are draining resources that should be going to those truly in need – or staying in the pocket of the taxpayer.

What would you give for a stuffed Rasta banana? Probably not your life savings…

When I was a kid, early spring invariably meant that a seedy “carnival” would set up shop at Webster Square Plaza, Main South Worcester’s equivalent of a mall.

The Plaza wasn’t very fancy – the anchor tenants were Zayre’s and Woolworth’s – but when it opened, when I was eight or nine, it opened up an entirely new world. No longer would shopping be something that you got on the bus once or twice and went “down city” to do, dressed up in your Sunday best. (Not that we didn’t have some shopping that we could do as kids on our own. You could go to Morris Market for your mother. Or go on your own to Sol’s for a candy bar, or Carrera’s for penny candy.)

But the opening of Webster Square Plaza meant that you could go with your friends to Woolworth’s and buy your very own Bobbsey Twin books, or Christmas presents for the entire family. It meant that, for Mother’s Day you could go to Putnam’s and get your mother a fancy flowered tea cup.

And it also meant the carnival.

Just as The Plaza wasn’t much of a shopping center, the spring carnival wasn’t much of a carnival: a couple of food trucks selling cotton candy and fried dough; a couple of sad sack games; a few rides: a Tilt-a-Whirl and the flying swings. A rag-tag, seedy little carnival from somewhere in the Deep South, working the northern clime once spring sprung. But the biggest attraction, as far as I was concerned, was the presence of the carnival workers, folks who my father dismissed as carnie bums. To me, they were so completely and utterly exotic, not to mention a bit scary – I remember one guy with a dirty fedora and a huge goiter – I was in heaven. Here were the kind of folks I read about in books like Blue Willow, and saw in The Grapes of Wrath: poor, itinerant, and most certainly not Catholic.

Carnies came to mind when I read the other day about a carnival in New Hampshire where some poor schnook managed to blow his life savings – $2,600 – trying to win an Xbox Kinect (retail: $300-400) by tossing a couple of softball in a bucket.

I will forego using the fellow’s name – he’s going to have a hard enough time living down those Google search results without my heaping on – so let’s just call him Mr. X.

Here’s what happened to him:

At first, he was only in for $300 worth of ball-tossing loss, in a game called Tubs of Fun, where you pay $5 to toss balls into a tilted bucket. After losing three large, Mr. X went home to get his life savings, $2,300, which was sounds as if it were conveniently at home, under a mattress or in the ice cube tray. Back at the carnival, he started doubling down. So it didn’t take him all that long to lose his entire fortune.

But as Mr. X kept playing – baby needs a new pair of Xboxes – he claims that the person running the game (a.k.a., the carnie bum) told him that he was “going to get all his money back.” And win an Xbox. Neither of which happened.

He returned to the carnival, run by Fiesta Shows, the next day to complain, and the game operator gave him $600 and a large stuffed banana with a hat and dreadlocks. The operator said that was "all they could do" for him, [Mr. X] told the [Manchester] Union Leader. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Well, there is a sucker born every day. So I guess Mr. X just had the ill luck to be the sucker born on the day he arrived on planet earth.

And – even worse ill luck for Mr. X – he hadn’t brushed up on Tubs of Fun before he dashed back to the fair with his nest egg. If only he’d been a wise investor and researched Tubs  of Fun, he might have found:

… a book called "Carnival Fraud Investigations 101" [that] details how the "Tubs of Fun" game fools patrons: A carnival employee places a ball into the bucket, then invites potential players to toss one in. With the first ball weighing the bucket down, the practice ball stays in the bucket easily.

When the game begins, however, the employee removes both balls, and without the weight of the first ball, most tosses bounce out of the bucket.

It’s Mr. X’s next step, however, that I believe will haunt him the rest of his life. Mr. X went public. He:

… filed a report with Manchester police.

"It will be assigned to the detective division, but where it goes from here is uncertain right now," said Manchester police Lt. Mike Hurley. "It may be difficult to track the people down, because I believe they may be from out of state, but the detectives will get started on it this week. We'll see how it plays out." (Source: Manchester Union Leader.)

Good that the Manchester PD has nothing bigger on their plate than tracking down a schnook who got suckered, but are they really going to solve this kinda-maybe-sorta crime?

And if they do find the fast-talked who fast talked Mr. X out of $2.6K?  Won’t this just be a case of Mr. X say – carnie bum say?

I’m pretty certain that if I had spent a net of $2K ($2.6K minus the $600 Mr. X got back) on a ball-tossing game and ended up with a stuffed banana – however winning the dreadlocks are -  I don’t think I’d be going public with it. But Mr. X is, I guess, trying to serve a higher purpose.

[Mr. X] said he hopes by getting his story out there, he may help someone avoid being swindled.

"Since Saturday, I've seen stories on the internet about this," said [Mr. X]. "It's happened to a lot of people." 

Interesting, the outfit that ran the fair to remember, which is a local outfit that runs most of the fairs in New England, including the wonderful Topsfield Fair, doesn’t actually run the Tubs of Fun. It’s outsourced to another company. Although in Fiesta Show’s own words:

Fiesta Shows carries a full line-up of exciting midway games. Our games are fun, easy to play and fair. 

We believe it's important to provide games that award a high quality prize to just about every player! We feature many play to you win games which guarantee a prize to every player.

Fiesta Shows' distinguished history in the gaming business allows us to set a standard that all our game concessionaires must follow. We believe the happiest customers are the winning customers and the winners will generate more players. (Source: Fiesta Shows)

I do not believe that Mr. X would agree that the games are all that fair, and I can’t imagine that this brouhaha will “generate more players.”

Meanwhile, back at New Hampshire’s paper of record, the Manchester Union Leader, Mr. X – or someone who’s expropriated his name – is adding to the commenting fray, pushing back at those who are calling him God's (or P.T. Barnum’s) fool:

in response to these absolutely ridiculous comments, i have never been to a carnival , and with there motto fun, fair, and friendly you never expect a legal business to openly scam you and work in unicin with other workers to take your money . so yes i may have been naive to the concept of carny scams but being that it was a legal ligitament business i wasnt looking for it there . so for once in my life i wasnt looking for it, they smooth talked me to the fullest extent and blantenly lied to me convincing me i would get all my $ back plus prize and x box . then asked if once i got all my money back would i tip him out well.THIS IS AN AABSOLUTLY UNACCEPTABLE BUSINESS PRACTICE IN NH. IT IS ILLEGAL IMMORAL AND AN OUTRIGHT SCUMBAG MOVE. so for all the ladies and gentlmen supporting this type of buisness practice,this is not foxwood,nor a gambling resort.this is a childrens carnavle.i might have had the extra means to get further in with these conmen,but these scams r designed for swindeling ur child out of there summer job savings so it dont take a rocket scientist to figure that these ciomments r coming from these carnys tthat pulled these scummy scams,freinds their of.or just didnt consider the fact that ur neice or nephew,son or daughter could ,would,or just became the next person to lose it all under completly false pretenses.so i look forward to hearing people defend this scummy behavior.have a good day ladies and gentlmen

And on and on…

Mr. X, Mr. X, Mr. X. I understand the desire to keep doubling down, but there’s a point where you’re throwing good money after bad, and you went way, way, way beyond that point.

But to triple down?

As I said, if this had been me, I would not be going public with my folly.

Perhaps, however, Mr. X is right. Maybe he ends up on TV. Or with a book contract, a made for TV movie, a crusade to shut down rigged games of chance.

But I can’t help but think that, even if he does get his money back, even if he does get an Xbox Kinect, even if he does get to keep the Rastafarian banana, going public is not the smartest thing that Mr. X will ever do in his life.

Good luck living this one down, Mr. X.

Or, as your banana might say, Jah mon!