No bedbugs? No shit!

On one of our last trips to NYC, where we had gone many, many, times, my husband and I each came home with what looked quite a bit like a bedbug bite. We examined our clothing, flashlight inspected the corners of our roller bags, and pretty much decided that we hadn’t taken any of those critters home with us.

When I say pretty much decided, I mean that Jim pretty much decided. I spent the next couple of months after our return on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I felt bedbugs everywhere. I kept tossing the mattress over, looking for the telltale signs of bedbuggism. I tore my bureau drawers apart to see if I could find any bedbugs lurking in a crevice. I sent away for bedbug repellent, and doused the legs of bed and bureaus. I got some sort of bedbug detection kit that I never really used, but felt comforted just having it around. (It was shipped in a plane brown package, like porn used to – or so I’m told.) I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep until, after a couple of months, I decided one Sunday to get out to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy special anti-bedbug mattress and pillow covers. At last: a good night’s sleep. Big sigh of relief. Jim, he’d been sleeping just fine all along.

During this entire period, I never actually saw a bedbug. Just those initial telltale, three-point bite-marks Jim and I each had on the back of one of our legs. I really do think we were bitten. And I think we were likely bitten at this really old-fashioned French restaurant that we used to go to – now closed – where we were always the youngest customers by about 20 years. If it were nice out, we always ate in their small outdoor seating area – nothing much: just a couple of tables on the sidewalk on Second Avenue - but on that bedbug trip  we dined inside of the La Mediterranee. Sacre bleu! It always smelled a bit mildewy. No wonder they closed.

While our problem (actually, my psychological problem) was resolved by installing anti-bedbug bedding, since then I’ve been careful to leave my suitcase on the luggage stand in a hotel room. Supposedly, bedbugs can’t climb up the metal legs.

Anyway, that’s the sum total of my experience with bed bugs.

So I never encountered the problem in the workplace.

Workplace infestations are apparently quite rare, but they do happen.

One place that suffered a recent infestation occurred at SimpliSafe, a home security outfit with offices in downtown Boston. SimpliSafe brought in exterminators, and had managers meet with their groups, but their employees – at least some of them – don’t think that the company has done enough about it.

In recent days, three employees have protested outside the company’s Downtown Crossing headquarters. “No bedbugs, no [expletive]!” they chanted one morning, passing out fliers that read “Support United SimpliSafe workers.”

The three employees, who work in the company’s call center, said they launched the same chant inside the office last week and were suspended with pay. One employee, Abraham Zamcheck, was arrested on disorderly conduct charges after he stood on his desk to lead the chants, he said. (Source: Boston Globe)

What triggered Zamcheck to jump on his desk for a bit of rabble-rousing was a text from colleague Ryan Costello, one of a trio of employees (Zamcheck and Lauren Galloway were the others) who had circulated a petition that:

…demanded an apology from management and a pledge for more open conversation going forward...“It has come to our attention that there is a bedbug infestation in the office and that management and HR have known about this for some time,” the petition read.

Costello texted Zamcheck after he was called into a senior manager’s office, telling his buddy that he was about to be fired.

After seeing the message,Zamcheck stood on his desk and began to chant: “No bedbugs, no [expletive], and “Hell no, we won’t go.” About 10 others joined in, employees said.

Managers called the police, who arrested him.

Costello wasn’t fired. Along with Zamcheck and Galloway, he was suspended. The three are now protesting outside of SimpliSafe’s offices, and maintain that the bedbug problem, and SimpliSafe’s way of handling it, “was a symptom of deeper problems in its workplace culture”

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to find that a call center full of young, underpaid staffers who had to sit on the phone listening to people complain all day had some pretty deep workplace culture problems. And that employees would be disgruntled.

“I was aware that it was a possibility we’d get fired, but we hoped by standing up together we’d be able to stop [mistreatment] in a meaningful sense,” Costello said. “We are now suspended and are trying to get our jobs back, and continue this struggle for change here.”

The article I read didn’t get into any details on the non-bedbug grievances, but it’s not hard to imagine what they might be: call center, rotten pay, carping customers, ghastly hours. And management at SimpliSafe may be truly dreadful in terms of using up and spitting out employees. It’s been known to happen.

Still, standing on your desk Norma Rae-ing about bedbugs, and then standing outside the building protesting, might not be the way to get their message across. Sure, they got an article in the Boston Globe, but just what are Boston Globe readers who don’t subscribe to SimpliSafe’s services going to do to support the SimpliSafe Three?

In a way, I kind of like the way they’re going about it. It’s sweetly old school. But in this day and age, might it not have been more effective to go on Glassdoor.com, anonymously complain about the company, and then make sure that someone in management looks at Glassdoor?

The protestors say that they only got 35 folks to sign their petition because people were scared about losing their jobs. That certainly could be the case. It can be scary to standup to senior management (wrote the person who was once fired for trying to organize a waitress union and, decades later, as a full-blown professional, was fired for pretty much challenging the company president to a thrown-down in front of the company’s employees to see whether they believed his interpretation of what was happening in the company or mine). But, in an economy where there’s near full employment, and where call center jobs seem to be plentiful, it might just be that people are content working at SimpliSafe.

Maybe it’s time that someone started trying to organize call center workers – what a horrendous job – but standing on your desk screaming about bedbugs might not be the best way to go about it.

Gaillimh Abú? Oh, boo hoo

What better thing to do on a cold and blustery November Sunday than head out to Fenway Park for the afternoon to watch a couple of exhibition matches of a sport you know nearly nothing about?

In this case, the sport is hurling, an Irish game that’s somewhat like lacrosse and somewhat like field hockey. Only faster – I do believe it’s the fastest field game, and I must say there is not a slack, boring moment to be had in it.

Sunday’s matches were part of something called the Players Champions Cup. I don’t know if this Cup is just a made-up Boston one-off, or something that the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) operates when it brings an Irish native game to the States (in addition to hurling, there’s Gaelic football and camogie). But there was a pretty good crowd. Whatever the case, there was a pretty good crowd – I saw an estimate of 28,000, made up what looked like a combination of Irish n-generation Americans and Irish immigrants, many sporting the colors of their County. (In most American cities with significant Irish immigrant presence, there are also plenty of folks who play GAA games. In Boston, they’re actually quite popular.)

In the first preliminary match, Galway (Gaillimh if you want to go native) whipped Dublin. In the second, tighter match, Clare beat Tipperary.

We were rooting for Galway in the first match. Although I have no Galway roots, it’s my favorite place in Ireland, and my niece Molly spent a semester there. So we were all in. I don’t own anything in Galway’s colors, which are maroon and white, but I did find a challis scarf with a lot of reddish purple in it. And I knew better than to wear my blue parka, given that blue and black are Dublin’s colors.

Another everyone-loves-a-winner reason to root for Galway: in September, Galway won the All-Ireland Hurling Championship, which is a really big deal. Each County in Ireland fields teams (at junior and senior levels) in each of the GAA sports and they play matches throughout the year. Then, I think, the ladders run through the four provinces, and it all culminates in a big final match played at Croke Park in Dublin, home of the GAA (and the locale for a killing spree during the Irish Civil War, when 13 fans and 1 Tipperary footballer were gunned down in reprisal for the earlier killing of a number of British soldiers, among others, by the IRA).

September is one of my favorite times to be in Ireland, as the weather is usually quite nice then. Many of the trips my husband and I took were when the All Ireland football final was on, and you could always tell which Counties were in the finals by all the colors flying in the towns we went through. We never went to a game, but we’d always find a pub where we could watch the football final. Always fun when we found ourselves in a County that was playing.

Somehow, we were never there for the hurling final, so I’ve never seen any hurling played. 

For the first half of the Galway-Dublin match, we tried to figure out the rules by just watching. My brother Rick, who played pretty much every American sport growing up, was able to pick up on some of the rules as we went along, figuring out the difference between a 1 point play, a 3 point play, and a 5 point score, and picking up on the fact that there seemed to be some sort of rule similar to dribbling with respect to how long you could hold the sliotar (the ball) in your hand.  But at half time we gave up and went to the Google. It was just too much of a struggle to try to guess what would be called a foul. Apparently, whacking someone in the head with a hurley is perfectly okay.

And we did get to see something that approached a bench clearing brawl. Great craic!

Then there was the side words on the score board: Sin Bin. At first I thought they were some sort of Irish thing. Sin Bin? Sinn Fein? Then – duh – I got that they were referring to the penalty box. My friend Michele, sitting next to me, was about to ask me whether, in my decades ago attempt to teach myself Irish, I’d learned the words “sin bin” when it dawned on her, too.

Happy to see a Galway win, as did the crowd around us, which seemed to have more Galway girls and boys than it did Dubs.

The second match featured Tipperary and Clare. We were rooting for Clare, mostly because Michele has some connections in that County. So why not. (You really can’t go to a sporting event and not pick someone to cheer for. What’s the fun of that?) It was a pretty exciting game, made the more exciting for us less-than-knowledgeable fans, because the County colors for both Tipp and Clare are yellow and blue. Closer match than Dublin-Galway, and Clare won.

By the time that match ended, it was getting chillier and chillier, and ain’t none of us willing to spring $9.25 for a cup of hot chocolate. So we shivered on. Despite the cold, we decided to soldier on through the final. It helped that these were shorter matches than would normally be played – a bit over 40 minutes each, with a six minute break between the halves. (Is it just me, or does the word “halves” look funny? What’s wrong with “halfs”?)

The first half was all Clare, but Galway came booming back in the second. But not booming back hard enough.

No Gaillimh Abú for us, I’m afraid. So boo hoo.

But all in all, a fun day.

And I’m now something of a hurling expert, having seen three – count ‘em three – matches  Perhaps the word “expert” is too strong. But at least I’m now someone who can more intelligently watch the game and appreciate it. Especially now that I now that Sin Bin isn’t an Irish term. I haven’t felt this same degree of sports authority since the last time I watched the winter Olympics with my late husband, and we found ourselves second-guessing the judges on sports we’d never heard of, let alone seen.

Nice walk home from Fenway, but we were more than happy to get inside, where we warmed up with mulled cider that costs a lot less than $9.25 a cup!

You better W.A.T.C.H. out, I’m telling you why

You blog long enough – in my case, 11 years and counting – you have certain evergreens that you revisit again and again. For instance, I observe most holidays with a holiday-related post. And by the time the first Christmas tree has gone up outside Macy’s, I’ll have started doing a number of gift and/or toy-related posts. Thus, yesterday, I had a piece about this year’s inductees to the Toy Hall of Fame. Probably next week, I’ll be doing a piece on this year’s Neiman Marcus crazy-arse wishbook. And I typically watch out for the annual W.A.T.C.H. List, which each year calls out the most dangerous toys out there.

Like pretty much (but not quite) everyone in the world, I don’t want to hear about any kids getting killed by some spectacularly unsafe toy. A choking hazard. A mismarked age range.

Yet I always feel a bit nanny-state about some of the toys that end up on the annual list, especially when I compare and contrast them to the toys of my childhood. The toddler iron that plugged in and heated up. The stuffed poodle with the easily removable eye that corkscrewed in and out of the stuffed poodle’s eye socket. As for bicycle helmets. Huh?

I’m happy that I grew up in the era of free-range childhood. Folks (such as parents) didn’t spend a ton of time worrying themselves to death about whether their kids were playing themselves (and other kids) to death. Caveat, children, more of less.

I suspect that it’s thanks to organizations like W.A.T.C.H.  (World Against Toys Causing Harm) that those stuffed poodles no longer come equipped with beady little eyes attached to sharp-edge corkscrews. And that’s good…

But the net result is that it looks to me that dangerous toys ain’t what they used to be. Still, on general principles, it would be best to avoid these suckers (info taken from the W.A.T.C.H. list):

HALLMARK “ITTY BITTYS” BABY STACKING TOY:The knock on this toy is that it doesn’t come with any age warnings. Of course, anyone who’s ever known a baby would know by taking just one look at this that it’s for a baby. Plus, it’s called a Baby Stacking Toy, so there’s that cue. But those little hats and bows can come loose, and, thus, become a choking hazard. So it’s really not the age warning so much as those chokables. That’s what caused the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall this product as of August 31, 2017. It’s a pretty cute toy. Everyone loves Disney. They need to figure out a way to secure Donald’s cap, and maybe embroider a bow on Daisy.

PULL ALONG PONY has a pull cord that measures 19 inches. That happens “despite the industry’s standard requiring strings on playpen and crib toys to be less than 12 inches in length.” There’s apparently a loophole that let’s a pull toy have a longer cord, which presents a strangulation hazard. I know that there are occasional stories about little ones being strangled by the cord of blinds, but a pull toy? Could that really happen with a 19 inch piece of string? Me? i wouldn’t want to chance it. Cut the cord to a shorter length to keep on the safe side. How long a pull cord does a one-year-old need?

WONDER WOMAN BATTLE-ACTION SWORD Sure, we had cowgirls like Annie Oakley and Dale Evans, but when it came to the toy weaponry of my childhood, it was all boy. So the girls final get a weapon of their own – a light sword – and, don’t you know, it gets put on the no-no list because it can cause blunt force injury. “The rigid plastic sword blade has the potential to cause facial or other impact injuries.” Would this not be true of any battle-action sword? You don’t have to be Braveheart to understand that when you wield a sword, you’re using a weapon. If Wonder Woman uses a sword – and I don’t know: does she? – why shouldn’t a little wannabe Wonder Woman get to use one? As for impact injuries, anything in the hand of an excited kid – say, a Barbie doll – can do the same.

HAND FIDGETZ SPINNERS The warning on this fidget spinner is that it’s “a novelty gift item. It is not intended to be used as a toys.” But some spinners come with “potential small parts hazards”", which can choke you up. But I wouldn’t worry that much about them. Sure, keep them out of the hands of anyone too young to need a fidget spinner to work out their anxiety and/or boredom, but wait until next year. Fidget spinners will likely have gone the way of the Pet Rock.

SPIDER-MAN SPIDER-DRONE OFFICIAL MOVIE EDITION This pricey toy is for kids over the age of 12, and comes with  a number of warnings: “Drone has rotating blades that move at high speed, posing danger of… injury…Keep spinning rotors away from fingers, hair, eyes, and other body parts”… and other cautions/warnings on package/package insert.” From my point of view, drones in general should be kept out of the hands of pretty much everyone not qualified to use one, let alone kids (even if they are over the age of 12).

NERF ZOMBIE STRIKE DEADBOLT CROSSBOW This is marketed for kids as young as 8. Who are “encouraged to load ‘arrows’ into the ‘deadbolt’ crossbow, pull back the ‘primary pressurized lever’ and fire the projectiles in order to ‘strike back’ at ‘zombies.’ The force of the arrow launch presents the potential for eye and facial injuries.” Who in their right mind would give an 8 year old a crossbow, even if it’s firing Nerf projectiles?

SLACKERS SLACKLINE CLASSIC SERIES KIT “The manufacturer warns of the potential for ‘severe injury’, including ‘a strangulation hazard, especially with children.’” Strangulation? Not to mention fall-related injuries. Fun for all ages, alrighty.

OVAL XYLOPHONE I love the idea of a baby plonking away on a xylophone. But the drumstick used for plonking away “has the potential to be mouthed and occlude a child’s airway.” Guess this one could use a warning that this one requires adult supervision.

JETTS HEEL WHEELS This toy comes with these warnings: “USING HEEL WHEELS CAN BE A DANGEROUS ACTIVITY AND MAY RESULT IN INJURY OR DEATH. … USE AT YOUR OWN RISK….” Can you imagine picking up a toy for your kid, reading “may result in death” and casually tossing it in your shopping cart? And yet there are so many toys that can result in death. Maybe all of them. That’s a kind of a problem inherent in toys: they can be stupid and dangerous. And inherent in kids: they do stupid and dangerous things, with or without toys. Still, best not to encourage them. Especially when those Heel Wheels have the special feature that they throw off sparks. And “sparks can burn.”

BRIANNA BABYDOLL The final item on the non-shopping list for responsible toy buyers is this baby doll, that comes with removable ponytail holders, creating a choking hazard. Seriously? A manufacturer can’t figure out how to sew threads on to doll hair. Come on. Even I could figure that one out.

Anyway, this is the W.A.T.C.H. List for this year. With so many toys out there, why would you spend on ones that are known to be hazardous? Even if there probably isn’t any such thing as a non-hazardous toy, especially if they get into the wrong little hands.

Clue, Paper Airplane. And - ta-da– The Wiffle Ball

Each year, just about this time, the Strong Museum, which hosts the National Toy Hall of Fame, announces the toys that are being inducted.

This years winners are paper airplanes, the Wiffle Ball, and Clue. Not quite as excellent as the swing, which was inducted last year, but these are all excellent choices, at least in the humble opinion of this former child.

The paper airplane: I’m good with numbers. I’m good with words. But I have absolutely zero spatial reasoning. When I had my first office job – the summer after I graduated from high school – I was asked to type up some letters and put them in envelopes. I couldn’t figure out how to fold a standard 8 1/2” x 11” piece of letterhead so that it fit in a standard Number 10 business envelope. I folded the paper in half, then in quarters, and awkwardly wedged in into the envelope. Then someone showed me. Fold the paper in thirds. Eureka!

In a more recent incident, my cousin Ellen and I, in the midst of a summer downpour, got ourselves soaked while trying to figure out how to fit an exercise bike that a friend of my Aunt Mary’s was giving her into the back of Ellen’s SUV. Maybe it was the rain, but we couldn’t figure it out until Ellen came up with a brilliant solution: call her sister Laura and have Laura’s husband come over in his truck to pick it up. (Those of us without spatial reason develop compensating skills.)

So it took me quite a while to get even passably good at folding paper airplanes. Nevertheless, I persisted, and, while I wasn’t exactly the Orville Wright of paper airplanes, I could get one to do a bit of a swoop.

A great plaything. All you need is a piece of paper, and you’ve got endless entertainment. Plus you get to fine tune your fine motor skills and your spatial reasoning. Not to mention rudimentary understanding of aerodynamics: a blunt-nosed paper airplane ain’t going nowhere but down. Anyway,Yay, Paper Airplane! Congratulations on your induction.

Wiffle Ball: What would summer be without Wiffle Ball? Sure, a Wiffle Ball is almost impossible to pitch and, even with a regulation Wiffle Bat, almost impossible to hit so that it soared off the bat – at least in my experience. Very easy to whiff. And getting hit on, say, your calf, with a Wiffle Ball – whipped by some big kid who had mastered the art of pitching a Wiffle Ball – really, really hurt. Every bit at much as getting hit by a hardball or a softball. A Wiffle Ball could really sting! And don’t get me going on getting clobbered with a Wiffle Bat.

It would have taken a really psychopathic kid to go after another kid with a Louisville Slugger. But was there ever a kid shown a Wiffle Bat who didn’t try to weaponize it? No, another kid couldn’t go full Al Capone on you and beat your brains out with one, but getting whacked with a Wiffle Bat hurt – a stingy hurt, just like the Wiffle Ball.

But you could play baseball with Wiffle Ball. Yay, Wiffle Ball! Congratulations on your induction.

Clue: I grew up in the Great Age of Board Games. Monopoly (or our cheese-ball version, Easy Money). Scrabble (or our cheese-ball version, Key Word). Sorry. Go To The Head of the Class. You name it, I played it in someone’s backyard, on an old WWII Army or Navy blanket, on a summer’s afternoon, under a tree. And one of our favorites was Clue. Interesting characters. A fancy house – who had a Conservatory? Cool little weapons. The use of deductive reasoning. Taking some risk when you declared “Professor Plum did it in the Conservatory with the candlestick.” Yay, Clue! Congratulations on your induction.

Runners-up: What toys were nominated but didn’t make the cut: the Magic 8 Ball, Matchbox Cars, My Little Pony, PEZ Candy Dispenser, play food, Risk, sand, Transformers, and Uno.

Personally, I can’t stand My Little Pony. But these are all reasonably good choices. Even though, I will observe that, if you have sand, you can make mud pies, and if you have Play-Doh you can make anything, so you really don’t need play food. (And if you lived in an area where there were many trees and bushes around, you had acorns and pignuts, and poisonous red and green berries, and leaves and twigs, all of which made pretty fine play food.) Further, I think if you nominate sand, you really need to nominate the sandbox. Just sayin’

Here’s the full list of toys/playthings in the Hall of Fame. And here’s Pink Slip’s take on last year’s picks, Swing!

Now this gets my goat

According to the Chinese way of doing calendar business, 2015 was the Year of the Goat.

But I’m here to tell Xi Jinping that, in real life, 2017 has been quite the year, goat-wise.

Pink Slip, ever with the eye toward what’s trendy, picked up on this earlier this year, when I noted that there were goats galore. One of the sub-goatish topics of my post was goat yoga, which combines two things I know absolutely nothing about. Well, ignorance has never stopped me from developing an insta-opinion, and holding it for however long it takes me to concoct a piece. Here’s what I had to say about goat yoga in April:

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of mixing goats and yoga.To me, yoga – despite pose names like Downward Dog - always seems kind of humorless. Having a bunch of goats scampering around might lighten things up quite a bit. (Source: Pink Slip)

But the District of Columbia apparently frowns on the combination of goats and yoga:

…the Department of Health (DOH) is aiming to end this menacing mixture of fitness and farm animals. D.C. Brau, a Washington microbrewery, had to cancel two sold-out goat yoga classes—which were to be followed by beer tastings—after the DOH warned that the events would violate a ban on spectators touching animals at public events. (Source: Reason)

A ‘ban on spectators touching animals at public events’? Say wha? I mean, there’s bad touchy. I know that. But there’s also good touchy. Does this mean that, if I attend a public event in Washington – say a march to protest the pardoning of Donald Trump, père ou fils – and someone marches by with a really sweet Lab, I can’t pet the Lab?

DC DOH has shut down goat yoga before.

In June, the department also forbade the Congressional Cemetery from hosting a goat yoga fundraiser.

Organizers were told that they needed to “get a wildlife handling permit for exotic animals.”

Who even knew that goats are exotic?

Maybe in DC, where the plain old animals run more to snakes, rats, and weasels.

Exceptions can be made to the goat fatwa if the event is educational – which the Cemetery folks argued theirs was - but the city “could see no educational merit…Officials even expressed concern that participants might lose their balance and fall on the goats.” They also stressed the same “no touch” policy that ended the goat-yoga-beer tasting event.

But the National Zoo has a petting zoo, and Christian Britschgi, whose post on Reason is the source for this post, looked into Goat-gate:

It’s possible that the "no touch" policy makes some sort of exemption for these petting zoos, but I could find no text of the actual policy to verify this, let alone justify it.

Christian also looked into the city’s rules and came up with nothing that could justify banning goat yoga.

Chalk it up to arbitrary and capricious, I guess.

Now I am not anti-regulation. I thank having a relatively strong regulatory system for the fact that I’m sitting here without having to wear a gas mask, that the water that flows from my tap is potable, and for having been spared being a child laborer (anywhere other than in the home I grew up in). But for every excellent regulation, there’s likely a really stupid one. And sometimes that regulation doesn’t even appear to be written down anywhere. It’s just made up and enforced on an ad hoc basis. Like this one. Which really gets my goat.

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A tip of the Pink Slip straw hat, with a bite of the brim nibbled out by a goat, to my brother-in-law Rick for sending this one my way.

The City of Cambridge takes flex pricing to a new level

I have a couple of gym buddies who live in Cambridge, and they were all abuzz yesterday about an article on liquor licenses and how they’ve been so patchily issued in their town over the last couple of years. How patchy? Well, the price for a license – depending on whether you were canny enough to find the right lawyer or knew the right question (or person) to ask – was anywhere from free to $450,000.

That’s quite a swing, especially for a low margin business like a restaurant.

Even after reading the article twice, I couldn’t quite follow the thread on how this all worked. (I was going to say that I couldn’t quite follow the “logic”, but that would be absolutely the wrong word to use with respect to how liquor licensing goes down in Cambridge.) Here’s how I think things work:

To get a liquor license, you either need to buy one from an existing owner for whatever the market could bear, or get one from the city for free.

Sometimes, the free licenses depended on what section of the city Cambridge wanted new restaurants to spring up in. Thus, for a while the licensing commission – a paid lead commissioner and the chiefs of the police and fire departments – were more open to new free licenses for up and coming, techie-ville Kendall Square than they were for old, beaten up Central Square. Guess the Cantab Lounge – a dive bar –  and a few other spots where you could get liquored up, or just have a drink with dinner, were good enough for Central.

But this preference for Kendall over Central didn’t work for everyone. Sumaio Chen wanted to open a place in Kendall and ended up paying $200K for one -  a license that other restaurants in Kendall were getting as a freebie

Chen would have loved the same deal, but it was as though she didn’t know the secret handshake. Nothing on the Cambridge License Commission’s website or at its offices explained how to get a free license, and Chen’s advisers told her she had to try to buy one from another restaurant first. (Source: Boston Globe)

That bit about having to “try to buy one from another restaurant first”? Apparently, the decision on whether or not you were trying hard enough was completely arbitrary. Or looked that way.

In all, 95 restaurants, bars, hotels, and clubs in Cambridge operate with free licenses, or 38 percent of the total, city records show. Another 157 hold licenses they bought from other owners, and now worry they overpaid, as free licenses become more available.

This is Massachusetts, and this is Cambridge, from whence Cambridge Favorite Son Tip O’Neil so famously said, “All politics is local”. So, needless to say, there were lawyers – home boyos – with connections who knew the ropes and could show folks around. Sometimes these intermediaries worked for the sellers. Sometimes for the buyers. Sometimes for both. (Oh,  boy…)

No one knew this patchwork of inequity better than the lawyers who made a living navigating the murky system. With so little guidance from the city, many restaurant owners turned to a small cadre of well-connected attorneys who often preached the advantages of buying a license. Other times, they schooled license applicants in how to convince commissioners that they had tried in vain to buy a license, and deserved a free one.

As for those who worry that the liquor license that they paid so dearly for may be worth nothing, given that a license can be had for free. I have just two words to say: taxi medallion.

The relatively new chairman of the commissioner, who was brought in in January 2016 to help clean up the licensing mess, doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for those who got stuck paying big bucks for a license.

[Nicole] Murati Ferrer made no apologies for past policies on issuing licenses, or the negative consequences for owners caught in the middle. She said the commission had no duty at hearings to inform owners of their options, and that people needed to seek information from the city earlier in the process.

Others think differently:

…some City Council members are sympathetic. In a statement in June, they said the city had been giving bad advice to restaurant owners about liquor licenses. They have even weighed possible reparations

Reparations! Wow! Sounds crazy, but I will note that one of the investigative reporters who worked on this story is Sacha Pfeiffer, who was one of the Spotlight Team members who exposed the Boston Archdiocese sex abuse scandal – a story that got made into the Academy Award-winning movie Spotlight. So I suspect there’s more to come on this story.

Again, Murati Ferrer isn’t shedding any tears, crocodile or otherwise, over the issue.

Commission chair Murati Ferrer, however, said the city bears no blame for failing to disclose all license options to restaurant owners. She suggested attorneys were at fault if their clients didn’t understand: “I think it’s shame on the lawyer.”

Caveat restaurateur and all that, but I think there’s plenty of blame to go around on this one. And I wouldn’t bet against more shoes dropping. (C.f., Sacha Pfeiffer)

Me? Why doesn’t Cambridge – or anyplace else: pick a city, any city – just rent the licenses? The cost of a lease might be flex-y, depending on what type of operation we’re talking about – white table-cloth foodie vs. watering hole. Moving forward, that would put everyone on pretty even footing. Except, of course, for those looking for reparations for the $450K they spent on a license when the joint next door got theirs for free.

Sounds like it’s time to lawyer up!

Tune out, turn on, drop in to a psychedelic retreat center

I was reading an article on WeLive, WeWork’s communal living business, and came across the name of one Tricia Eastman, whose profession was described as psychedelic retreat coordinator. Holy Timothy Leary! That’s a job?

Apparently.

When you google “psychedelic retreat coordinator,” you get 377,000 hits.

Ow wow, man.

It’s a thing.

There are all sorts of psychedelic retreat centers out there, each featuring a different variety of hallucinogenic. You can go on a mushroom retreat in Jamaica, which kind of blows my mind. Wouldn’t a retreat in Jamaica be a ganja retreat?

And if you’re interested in finding out what it’s like to achieve the Yaqui Way of Knowledge you read about 50 years ago in Carlos Castaneda’s book, there’s a peyote retreat in Arizona.

In the Netherlands, there’s a retreat center in a Dutch farmhouse where you can partake of:

…river toad, bufo alvarius [which] belongs to a species of toad containing the potent hallucinogen 5-MeO-DMT in its skin. The ‘venom’ is extracted by gently stroking the frog, then smoked, producing a brief but intense altered state of consciousness lasting around 15 minutes, followed by recurrent waves for several hours.)

Eye of newt, skin of toad? That’s the farm house of weird.

I am not a candidate for any of these retreats, as I lived through the psychedelic 1960’s without ever dropping acid.

I did have friends who did LSD, and had one memorable adventure when a friend who was coming down needed someone with her for the duration. “A” had a car, and we drove – she drove, actually; what can I say? I was young and dumb, and I didn’t hesitate for moment to get in a car with someone who was tripping – and rev out to Revere, a ratty working class beach town north of Boston. There we walked on the freezing cold beach for a couple of hours. We then buzzed over to East Boston and visited the Don Orione Shrine to check out the giant statue of the Madonna Queen.

This was a trippy enough experience to be had while completely straight and sober. I can only imagine what it was like for “A.”

Seeing the statue was the second highest point of the day. The highest was tootling around with “A” in her car. Very few “girls” had cars on campus when I was in school. Most of us didn’t have any money and, even if we had,car ownership just wasn’t done. But “A” somehow had permission to keep a car on campus, and what a car it was: a 10 year old navy blue Jaguar convertible.

My other LSD-related experience – quite a bit removed from an actual LSD-related experience – occurred in high school, when Dr. Werner Koella, a scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, spoke at my school. His topic: LSD. I have no recall what he said – way too science-y – but I do remember that he had a thickish German accent, and that he droned on and on. It was a Friday afternoon, last period, and he spoke at our monthly school assembly. As president of the student council, I got to introduce Dr. Koella and sit on stage with Sister Superior while he spoke. It was late in the day, the buses had already pulled up and were idling their engines just outside the auditorium. The students were getting restless. The speaker was boring, the day was getting late, the buses had arrived.

Every time Dr. Koella would pause, we assumed he had completed his talk. Sister Superior and I would stand, the student audience following suit, to give the standard Notre Dame Academy standing ovation. But Dr. Koella would start up again. We would all retake our seats. This happened a couple of times before he finally stopped, much to our collective relief. At that point, his standing ovation was more enthusiastic than it would normally have been for a boring speaker.

And for a while in college, I did have this Dylan poster on my wall for a while. The one that came free in the “Greatest Hits” album.

Other than that, I was not a psychedelic kind of gal.

Nonetheless, I am intrigued by the notion of the psychedelic retreat, and the profession of psychedelic retreat coordinator.

Here’s what Tricia Eastman’s LinkedIn profile, for her business Love Juju says:

Love Juju is a platform for alchemy, infusing ancient traditions with gamification along with modern psychology through retreats, workshops, discussions, & one-on-one coaching.

Love Juju is a meta-hacked program that mirrors the creative process, for inspired, passionate people are ready for breakthroughs in their path to self-mastery.

-Use Regenerative Productivity to catapult your energy and success levels
-Unlock new levels of abundance and creativity through Energetic Responsibility
-Access your full capacity for emotional intelligence
-Infuse new levels of self awareness into your life while discovering your sense of play and innocence (Source: LinkedIn)

I must confess that I’m way too unenlightened to actually understand much of this. A platform for alchemy infused with gamification? A meta-hacked program? Regenerative Productivity? Energetic Responsibility. I didn’t get much of anything until I hit the point about emotional intelligence.

Maybe I need to expand my mind. Maybe I need to tune in and turn one. Maybe I need to head to the Netherlands and smoke me some bufo alvarius.

 

The Billionaire Boys Club just lost a member

There was a joke during the inflationary years of the Carter Administration that went something like this:

A fellow with $10,000 to his name falls into some type of Rip Van Winkle sleep. When he awakes 20 years later, he learns that his $10,000 has turned into a cool million. He finds a pay phone and goes to call a friend to tell him the good news. He deposits his dime, and the operator comes on and tells him that it’ll be $35,000 to complete his call.

This joke is quaint for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is the existence of a pay phone that you could drop a dime into, and the voice of an operator who comes on to tell you what you owe. Do pay phones even exist anymore? Do operators?

The other, of course, is that, in modern memory, there was a time when having a million dollars made you rich.

That was then and this is now, and a million bucks just ain’t what it used to be. Even multi-millions – multi-hundreds-of-millions – is, in some circles, sneered at.

And even being a uni-billionaire isn’t enough to get you onto the Forbes list of the wealthiest 400 Americans. To make it onto that list, you have to have at least $2 billion. Last year, the cut off was $1.7 billion.

One of those who fell off the list was Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Jr.

Actually,Ross didn’t so much fall off the list as get kicked off of it.

It seems that, for years, he has been BS-ing about his wealth, letting slide an initial error that attributed the money invested in funds he managed to personal assets. And, once on the billionaire glide based on that error, Ross just kept upping the ante and, each year, claimed to have mo’ better money than he had the year before.

Then Ross had something of a senior moment and decided to join the Trump Cabinet. Which meant disclosing his financials. Which revealed that he had less than $700 million.

Now most of us would be happy with $700 million. Or $70 million. Or even a relatively paltry $7 million.

But not, apparently, if you’re a wannabe play-ah.

Anyway, when Forbes let Ross know that he was falling off the list, he pushed back:

…citing trusts for his family that he said he did not have to disclose in federal filings. "You're apparently not counting those, which are more than $2 billion," he said. When asked for documentation, the 79-year-old demurred, citing "privacy issues." Told that Forbes nonetheless planned to remove him from the list for the first time in 13 years, he responded: "As long as you explain that the reason is that assets were put into trust, I'm fine with that." And when did he make the transfer that allowed him to not disclose over $2 billion? "Between the election and the nomination." (Source: Forbes)

Now, if Ross wants to gift his offspring and their offspring with $2 billion worth of largesse, that’s his business. But you do need to question how this would make sense, given that such a transfer would be taxable at that point in time, but untaxable in the longer run if Congress decides to do away with the inheritance tax. It seems dumb for any old anybody to fork over $800 million in taxes that might be going away, let alone the purported financial genius/fiscal shrewdy who heads up the Department of Commerce.

Despite the seeming stupidity of Ross taking this moment to play Big Daddy Bigbucks, nevertheless, he persisted in pushing back on Forbes.

So began the mystery of Wilbur Ross' missing $2 billion. And after one month of digging, Forbes is confident it has found the answer: That money never existed. It seems clear that Ross lied to us, the latest in an apparent sequence of fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications and whoppers that have been going on with Forbes since 2004. In addition to just padding his ego, Ross' machinations helped bolster his standing in a way that translated into business opportunities. And based on our interviews with ten former employees at Ross' private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., who all confirmed parts of the same story line, his penchant for misleading extended to colleagues and investors, resulting in millions of dollars in fines, tens of millions refunded to backers and numerous lawsuits. Additionally, according to six U.S. senators, Ross failed to initially mention 19 suits in response to a questionnaire during his confirmation process.

Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

And this from a graduate of my friend Sean’s alma mater, Xavier High School in Manhattan, a Jesuit high school heretofore best known for having the late Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia among its illustrious alumni ranks.

Not, apparently, a surprise to those who knew him best:

"Wilbur doesn't have an issue with bending the truth," says David Wax, who worked alongside Ross for 25 years and served as the No. 3 person in his firm. Another former colleague, who requested anonymity, was less circumspect: "He's lied to a lot of people."

It may be his that his undisclosed dealings with Putin cronies is what topples him from his post at Commerce, but the fall from the grace of a slot on the Forbes 400 list may prove the greater embarrassment. In addition to being an ego blow, there may be the matter of his third wife, who apparently set her cap for Ross because she wanted to be married to someone on the Forbes 400. (Ha, I say, ha ha.) Wouldn’t you like to be in on that pillow talk?

Meanwhile:

The Department of Commerce issued a statement saying the $2 billion gift never happened. "Contrary to the report in Forbes, there was no major asset transfer to a trust in the period between the election and Secretary Ross's confirmation."

All well and good but, as Forbes pointed out, they didn’t pull that “$2 billion gift” canard out of thin air. They heard it directly from Ross himself.

I sometimes debate with myself over just how bad schadenfreude is for the soul. But it sure is fun. And it would be even shadenfreud-ier if, come next year, another certain New York someone – his financials now fully disclosed – were also to fall, ignominiously, off the Forbes list.

Come on down!

Privatized prisons? Bring on the public policy debatae!

I always have to laugh whenever someone touts how much better it would be if the private sector ran everything. Services would be cheaper (to the providers running them to provide, of course, not to the consumers who consume them or the taxpayers who pay for them), operate more efficiently (just look at the bang-up job Keolis does with the Boston metro train system), and altogether offer an undeniable, every day proof statement underscoring the private sector’s superiority to the public sector. (A corollary to this, of course, is that we should have businessmen hold high public office. Ahem.)

Maybe I’m just jaded because so much of my private sector career was spent in companies where the products and services always cost more than those of those offered by the competition, where we were not particularly efficient, and as for effective... Let’s just say most of the places I worked are no longer standing.

Ah, but you might well be thinking, these companies were drummed out of existence – as they should have been – by the ruthless efficiencies of The Market. And that is absolutely true.

But we were never providing necessary citizen services. And when it comes to necessary citizen services, there are plenty of then that should be run by the government, not by profiteers.

The most notable example of this is the prison system, which is increasingly owned and operated by private companies.

Their incentive is, of course, to increase the demand for prisons. Which means increasing the supply of prisoners. So it’s in their interest to collude with the prison guard unions, anti-immigrant groups, and communities where there’s no other viable employment opportunities, to promote “law and order”, three strikes you’re in for good, kick the brown folks out, and schemes to throw people in jail for a $50 unpaid traffic fine that over the course of time manages to balloon into 30 days or $3K.

Not to mention that, in keeping costs down, they feed prisoners even worse swill than they used to get, and have fewer opportunities for anything that might keep them out of trouble in the stir or prepare them for life outside of the stir.

Anyway, the last thing I read about private prisons was a story on a class action suit behalf of ICE detainees – 60,000 of them – who were held in Geo Group, Inc. facilities where they were allegedly forced to chose one of two options: work for free or get thrown into solitary confinement. The plaintiffs claim that Geo was violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Their lawsuit argues that Geo violated the law’s prohibition on using threats to obtain labor.

“It would be forced labor for someone to say, ‘We’ll arrest you for not working for me,’ ” says David Seligman, who represents the plaintiffs. “It’s similarly forced labor to say, ‘We’re going to remove you from all contact with other people.’ ” The lawsuit also argues that Geo, through an optional work program that pays $1 a day, violated common law against “unjust enrichment,” since extensive use of low-paid detainee labor has saved the company money; it employs only one janitor in Aurora who isn’t in custody, the plaintiffs say. (Source: Bloomberg)

Geo is, of course, pushing back, maintaining that this is “really a public-policy dispute.”

And, yep, there’s some truth to that assertion.

They also claim that, if the suit goes in the plaintiffs’ favor, they’re ability to operate viable and profitably will be jeopardized.

And, yep, there may be some truth to that one, too. To which I say too bad.

I’m a big believer that those in prison should have the opportunity to work, to build their skills, and make a little money. And that money doesn’t have to be what they’d make on the outside. But their pay shouldn’t be anything that approaches zero or looks in any way, shape, or form like slave wages. And they sure shouldn’t be forced into an either-or decision between being a slave or being held in solitary confinement.

Privatized prisons?

Whether the plaintiffs win their case or not, I say bring on the public policy debate!

Sheer nonsense

For the third time this week – three, count ‘em – my sister Trish has been the fodder spotter for Pink Slip. Well played, Trixie.

Today’s suggestiopn is a complete and utter doozy.

Not since Ricky and Fred made faux couture dresses out of feed sacks, and tricked Lucy and Ethel into believing they were straight off the Paris runway, has there been a more ridiculous fashion statement than Moschino’s dry cleaning bag dress.

Perhaps I should be thanking my lucky fashionista stars that I already have a couple of these in my possession.

Technically speaking, one of these should go back to my sister Kath, since it encases a trench coat that she’s donating to St. Francis House. (Promise: I’ll bring it in next week, when I’m doing a shift in the clothing room.)

But I do have dry cleaning bags that are mine, all mine.

Such potential. Gifts for sisters, cousins, nieces. One size fits all. An even better Yankee Swap item than a Snuggie. 

Seriously, folks. I used to feel that the most absurd fashion of the year was the thousand dollar pair of inside-out ripped jeans. Hah. In comparison to the dry cleaning bag o’ fashion, I’d fill a wardrobe with those puppies.

The dry cleaning bag is, I must say, less costly than the inside-out ripped jeans. It’s only $736 (give or take). So you could take the extra couple hundred bucks you don’t spend on the inside-out ripped jeans on a slip to go underneath that bare-naked dry cleaning bag. Because, of course, slip not included.

The paper-looking shoulder treatment –
“We ♥️ our customers” – is a nice enough touch. Although it does seem a bit working girl to walk around advertising love for customers. And who wants to parade around with “Free pick up and delivery” stamped across their body?

So on balance, weird. Weirdy-weird.

I don’t imagine they’ll sell many/any of these. It may just be an attention getting device. But does Moschino want my attention? It’s not like I’m going to be so intrigued by this piece that I’ll look into what else they offer.

Okay. That’s not exactly true. I was curious enough to dig this up. I’m definitely not their demographic, even if I did have dress-up places to go, which I most decidedly do not.

I suppose that, given all that’s going on in the world, it’s actually enjoyable to have a bit of outre fashion levity out there.

Still, hard to see Moschino’s “cape sheer overlay dress” as anything other than sheer nonsense.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------Source: HuffPo – via my sister Trish.

Taking the everyday out of everyday objects

Nothing says holiday season to me like the release of the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, which always has some fabulous – and fabulously ridiculous – “fantasy gifts.”

Well, the 2017 Christmas Book is out, and I almost had my hands on an actual physical copy of it. A woman in my building, who gets somewhere between 50 to 75 catalogs a week, leaves 49 to 74 of those catalogs on the table in the foyer for me to recycle. Alas, the only one she was interested in this week was the N-M. So I’ll have to do what I always do: download and “thumb” through the pdf version. Damn!

Anyway, as befits an outfit from Texas, the N-M gifts will be outrageously over the top, and I can’t wait to peek inside.

But until I get around to N-M, I thought I’d take a look at a lower-key, more subdued set of “fantasy gifts.” These are the everyday objects that Tiffany, bless their pale blue little hearts, has swanked up and turned into Everyday Objects. And Everyday Objects cost some serious coin, my friends.

What would you pay for a pencil sharpener? A couple of bucks for one of the little plastic ones from Staples? Nine dollars for a crank-handle wall mount? If you were my husband, you’d bag pencil sharpeners entirely and just find the best utility knife in the kitchen and go to town. But if you want a Tiffany’s pencil sharpener, it’s $275.

Some of the everyday objects they’ve turned into Everyday Objects are not even things that you’d pay for. Like a Band-aid box. Of course, they no longer make those old metal Band-aid boxes – just the flimsy cardboard ones. So I suppose if you really have a hankering for an old-timey Band-aid box, and you have $600 to spare, this one’s for you. Too bad they didn’t partner with Johnson & Johnson to use the Band-aid name. Bet they would sell a lot more of these suckers.

Another used-to-be-free item is a sterling ($600) or vermeil ($900) of the little Tiffany box.

THen there’s my personal favorite, the silver and vermeil coffee can. That’ll set you back $1,500, but it will look so much smarter on your desk than a rinsed-out Chock Full o’ Nuts can.

Talk about gifts for the person who has everything, including money. Maybe these are what Melania Trump uses for stocking stuffers? I mean, Barron could sure use a $300 yo-yo, no? Or drive his father crazy – yes! – blowing some tunes on a $385 harmonica. I vote that Barron starts with “Thunder Road.” Not that his father would recognize the song – it’s not “Cat Scratch Fever” by Ted Nugent – but what joy to the world if a reporter got to ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders how Mr. Trump liked hearing Barron play a song by that old leftie Bruce Springsteen.

Shop on, Melania!

Plenty more where the $385 harmonica came from: ping-pong paddles in Tiffany blue ($650). For the STEM girls (and boys) on your list, a triangle ($400) and a protractor ($425). Me? I’m holding out for a compass so I can have a full matched set.

I was also intrigued by the $9,000 (limited edition) ball of sterling silver yarn. Is it actually usable? Does this ball unwind? And what would one make with it? A chain mail vest? My sister Kath is a serious knitter. Her thought was that there might be enough in the ball to make a headband. Which I can actually picture on Gwyneth Paltrow’s head.

Ah, the things you can buy if you have the right attitude and wallet size.

But, given that the aesthetics are pretty darned similar, why not just display the real everyday object, rather than a surreal EVERYDAY OBJECT? Guess I’m just lacking in consuming imagination.

But it has certainly whet my appetite for a good deep dive into the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Book.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to my sister Trish, who spotted an article on this on Buzzfeed.

Dying for a “wow experience”?

Sorry to have missed it, but last week, Boston hosted the National Funeral Directors Association convention. Damn!

George Clark owns a North Carolina company called Funeral Home Gifts. Here’s their online pitch:

Personalized gifts that celebrate a life well lived

CREATE A WOW EXPERIENCE THAT YOUR
FAMILIES WILL REMEMBER FOREVER

HEIRLOOM QUALITY BEREAVEMENT PRODUCTS

Delivered Overnight

In terms of staying on message, Clark is a marketing manager’s dream. The proof? Here’s what he had to say when he was interviewed on the convention floor:

“If you’re a funeral director, you’ve got only a couple of days to create a wow experience,” Clark said. “These guys have to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ready at a moment’s notice to throw a party for 300 people that’s the most special party that celebrates somebody’s life. What we do is help the funeral director answer the question: How do I celebrate a life overnight?” (Source: Boston Globe)

The bolding in mine, but wow, just wow. Admittedly, I received a lot of compliments on the memorial service I had for my husband – done without any assistance from a funeral parlor – but I didn’t feel compelled to celebrate Jim’s life overnight. I took a month – ample time to line up a Unitarian church that would also let me have an after-party on prem, hire a caterer, meet the organist who happened to specialize in Irish music, and print out the words and music to “The Parting Glass” for the Unitarian minister trainee who just happened to have had a past life as a singer in touring company musicals, etc. It was a pretty good memorial service, if I do say so myself. But I had never thought of a funeral as being a “wow experience,” and wouldn’t have used those words to describe Jim’s “do.” Nor would I use it describe any funeral or memorial service I’ve ever gone to.

Most of them have been more traditional than “wow”, and the experience was typically some combination of sad and bittersweet.

The last funeral I attended was for my mother’s closest friend. It was held in the church of my childhood, the ancestral parish of my father’s family, and the place where both my parents, and my grandmother, were buried out of. My mother’s friend Ethel was in her 90’s, so her passing wasn’t weeping and wailing sad-sad. And yet it was still sad, and absolutely bittersweet. Nothing “wow” about it. Sure, it was an experience. But it wasn’t an experience.

But these days, everything has to be both a “wow” and and “experience.”

And, I guess, a “wow experience” is always enhanced when there’s a gift involved.

Of course, the gifts that Funeral Home Gifts offers aren’t party favors. They’re one-offs. Personalized urns, keepsake pillows, memorial blankets.

Somewhere around here, I have a memorial blanket, sent to me a month after my husband died by the funeral parlor that took care of the removal, the notice, the legal stuff, the cremation. It was not, thankfully, one of these pictorial memorial blankets. I’m sure that there are people who are very happy to have one of these. To each their own. But me? I wasn’t even interested in the relatively tasteful and subdued blanket I did receive – a cream-colored throw with Jim’s birth and death dates on it. But it was something of a “wow experience” when I opened the package up. (Do I even have to say that I blogged about it at the time?)

Anyway, the funeral biz ain’t what it used to be.

Not that it hasn’t changed before.

My parents both spoke of the at-home wakes they’d been growing up. Typically, my mother’s stories were grim: the wake of a woman who’d died in childbirth, laid out on her bed, holding her baby. (My mother wasn’t even 10 when she was hauled to this event. A “wow experience” if ever.) My father’s stories, on the other hand, were about the raucous fun he and the other kids had at the at home wakes. Kids got to stay up late, watch their elders in the jar, and do things like crawl under the casket and push it up so that the body appeared to be moving.

It wasn’t all hilarity for my father, of course. His father died when he was 11, and while my father and his sibs sat at the kitchen table, one of the O’Connor Brothers from O’Connor Brothers Funeral Parlor emptied the blood out of my grandfather’s corpse and ported it, basin-full at a time, to the bathroom that was just off the kitchen to flush it down the toilet.

But back in the days of my early wake and funeral-going, if you were a Catholic, there was a two-day wake (2-4 p.m., 7-9 p.m.) in a funeral parlor, followed the next day by the funeral. Which was followed by the burial. Which was followed by some sort of gathering back at some family member’s house or at a restaurant.

Now even Catholic’s don’t have two-day wakes. They have one four-hour “viewing”, or just an hour before the funeral as wake time.

And as more and more people leave the neighborhoods, churches, and traditions they grew up with, there’s a lot more latitude.

Speaking of O’Connor Brothers, another fellow, Bob Biggins, interviewed for the Globe article credited Frank O’Connor of O’Connor Brothers (one of the sons of the founding brothers, I believe) fame with his decision to become a funeral director.

Biggins, of the funeral home in Rockland, found his calling as a 12-year-old boy grieving his grandmother, Ella, who was bedridden by crippling arthritis in her final years.

Frank O’Connor of O’Connor Brothers Funeral Home in Worcester handled her funeral, and in the process, charted a career path for Biggins, who recalled his grandmother as looking “better in the casket than I had seen her in 10 years.”

“Frank answered every single call, every question that I had. He really helped my family out,” Biggins said. “I was just intrigued by the whole process, but I was more so comforted by his caregiving.”

Well, that Frank O’Connor was a friend of my father’s. Not besties, but they’d grown up in the same ‘hood. And my father, who lived in that ‘hood his entire life, went to plenty of wakes and funerals at O’Connor Brothers, where most of the wakes and funerals of parishioners were held. And that “’better in a casket’” bit? How many times did I hear someone comment on what a “good job” Frank did with the late lamented. At my father’s wake, folks kept coming up to us kids and mentioning just how good my father looked. Me? I thought he looked awful, like Galen in Planet of the Apes. But who was I to argue with some guy who’d probably horsed around with my father at those at-home wakes of yore.

In any event, Frank O’Connor didn’t inspire me to open a funeral parlor.

I must content myself to provide “wow experiences” in other formats.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A funereal, Irish whisper shout out to my sister Trish, who spotted this article (and the O’Connor Brothers shout out).

The air in Ayer

There’s not to much to Ayer, Massachusetts. It’s most well known (at least locally) as the home of Fort Devens. Devens was a big deal at one point, but now it’s a relatively small US Army Reserves installation. There’s also a Federal prison facility there – it’s most notorious resident was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Patriots Day bomber, who was housed at Devens while on trial.

In our family, Fort Devens was famous for having been the spot where my Uncle Charlie served during his short-lived Army career during World War II.

The Army was pretty hard up for soldiers by the time they got around to drafting Charlie.

He was well into his thirties, and the Selective Service was no longer being quite as selective as they had been at the outset of the war.

Amazingly, my father – three years Charlie’s junior – had been rejected (for flat feet) by the Army when he tried to join up shortly after Pearl Harbor. The Navy did take my father, and the rest is (family) history.

But Charlie was not an eager beaver when it came to the service. In fact, pretty much the only thing the man was an eager beaver for was goldbricking and cadgery, which he had down to fine arts.

By the time Uncle Sam caught up with him in late 1944/early 1945, they didn’t even have any uniforms or arms to issue, at least not to the likes of him. The stories were that Charlie trained for a few months wearing his Chesterfield overcoat, and carrying a fake wooden rifle. Or was it a broomstick? In any case, Charlie was only in a couple of months when he received a medical discharge for being hard of hearing. I believe that, thanks to this, he collected Army benefits for the rest of his life.

Anyway, that’s pretty much the sum total of what I know about Ayer, Massachusetts.

But it’s apparently home to a few factories, one of which is a plant that produces tofu. Which is not such a great thing, Ayer air-wise.

The smell reminds [residents] of rotten eggs, sewage, or fermented dairy. Neighbors also used words like rancid, nauseating, and foul.

The source of this stench? A tofu plant, whose emissions have been assaulting the town’s olfactory senses off and on since May.

“It’s ungodly,” said John Doherty, 19 . “It just smells rotten.” (Source: Boston Globe)

As they say, a factory smell means jobs. As does despoiling the environment. But at least Nasoya Foods isn’t doing that.

I know what a factory-smelling town smells like.

My friend Joyce’s sister was married to an attorney who, early in his career, was a Legal Aide lawyer in Berlin, NH in the 1970’s.

Berlin was home to paper mills, and not only did the town smell awful, the river that ran through it, the Androscoggin, was a roiling mass of putrid looking white and yellow guck.

I was only in Berlin a couple of times, and never during the height of summer, but, boy, did that town reek.

Nasoya acknowledges that they’re the ones causing the problem:

“We apologize to the neighborhood and I empathize with the neighborhood. It’s unacceptable,” Gatta said Thursday in a telephone interview. “We have zero tolerance for this kind of thing.”

Well, neither do the folks in air who can’t breathe the air, and who categorize it as a “serious quality of life issue.”

Unfortunately, despite the two scrubbers that Nasoya has going, things sometimes gang agley and smelly. And sometimes the smell disappears immediately, while other times it lingers – and floats into neighboring towns.

They’re working on it, including looking at replacing the existing scrubbers with something more high tech.

Meanwhile, residents  - in their homes and businesses - are “burning patchouli-scented incense” and “pumpkin pie scented candles.”

Patchouli? Scented candles?

Remind me to stay out of Ayer.

Let the pea soup spew!

I don’t know how I missed this when The Economist took it up last summer, but it appears that there’s an increasing demand for exorcists in Europe. Yes, Europe. Post-modern, irreligious, cathedrals-for-tourists-only Europe. And because the Catholic Church has been a bit neglectful of the practice, openings have occurred for independent operators – independent of The Church, that is.

One such indie is Philippe Moscato.

In casual clothes and chatting about the tools of his trade—a “Vogel” crystal, compass, steel crucifix, pendulum and bag of salt from Jerusalem—he says he can deliver unreal results. (Source: The Economist)

I’m guessing that this is truth in advertising, and that the results that he gets are unreal.

Hired to exorcise an apartment in a wealthy district of central Paris, he predicts that the air will change. In the winter, he says, the owners will no longer need their central heating, the result of beneficial vibrations.

Hmmm. Think of how great it would be to have beneficial vibrations vibrating in your home, so beneficial that you didn’t need to put the heat on when there’s a wind chill of –10 degrees come January. I just knew Moscato’s results would be unreal.

Mr Moscato’s work involves first waggling a pendulum, supposedly to assess the flat’s readiness, then lighting a candle, reciting from an exorcism manual, before blessing salty water that he splashes in every room. As he sprinkles, he delivers a flow of incantations.

Actually, this sounds kind of boring. I mean, waggling a pendulum and sprinkling salty water around. In the old days, didn’t exorcists have to do things like hold levitating bodies down, and dodge spewing pea soup from Linda Blair?.

It’s reasonably lucrative work – €155 ($178) for an hour’s work, and between property and human exorcisms, Moscato gets about 4-5 gigs a week. Not a great living, a good hourly rate. Maybe he has a day job? Other non-priest exorcists mentioned in the article charge more, and one claims that in a good month, he has pre-tax income of €12,000. But that’s working at 15 hour day.

The rising demand is attributed to TV shows like Fox’s “The Exorcist”, which is popular in France. And to the fact that there are more African immigrants around, who believe in things spiritual while not necessarily believing in things Catholic, thus making them more open to lay exorcists. Fear factor also plays a role. After terrorist attacks in Paris and Marseilles, demand surged. And then there’s the internet, where people can now easily find someone to rid them of the devil. (“Who you gonna call? Fantôme busters!)

House and business exorcisms and blessings are more popular than those involving humans, which are quite a bit riskier:

…occasionally victims of violent rituals, including children, have been killed in beatings that are supposed to chase evil spirits from a person. The more responsible fee-charging exorcists say a diagnosis or exorcism of a person should happen only after a patient has consulted a doctor or psychiatrist. (Source: The Economist)

This could get dangerous. If I were M. Moscato, or one of the other exorcists – in the article, all were male, I believe – I’d stick with waving my pendulum and salt water around people’s homes, in hope of freeing them from the thermostat and heating bill.

Meanwhile, if you’re one of those folks who accept no substitutes, and wants a real bona fide exorcist straight out of The Exorcist - the movie, not the Fox show – the International Catholic Association of Exorcists does have “200 members on 6 continents,” and a “mission to provide relief to those impacted by Satan and his minions.” Ordained clergy, only, thanks (Catholic, Orthodox, et al. – no Protestants need apply). And a “strict validation process.”

No word on whether they can lower your heating bills. I think their focus is more on the Linda Blair situations…

Not to early to start planning for Halloween 2018

Today may be All Saints Day, but why spend anytime thinking about all those saints, especially the martyrs, and the gruesome way they died? St. Sebastian with all those arrows sticking out of him. St. Dymphna, who’s father cut her head off because she wouldn’t marry him. St. Lawrence, roasted alive. (And crying out to the pagans killing him to “Turn me over, I’m done on this side.) So: no dwelling on saints today, my friends.

And don’t for even one moment think that buying candy corn on sale at CVS today counts as planning for next year. You know full well that, between now and then, you’ll gobble that candy corn down while watching a rerun on HGTV.

Anyway, what you do want to put in the back of your mind is that, come next year, you won’t have to do any of the heavy holiday lifting that attends Halloween now that it’s become a “thing.”
Alas, it’s a day late and a thousand or so dollars short, but I do want you to now that:

Halloween whisperers are earning as much as $125 an hour to shop for severed heads, advise clients on his-and-hers costumes, and spray bushes with spider webs. (Source: Boston Globe)

Advise clients on his and hers costumes? What???? There are actually people out there too unimaginative to think Fred and Wilma, or Jared and Ivanka? Salt & Pepper Shakers? Yin and Yang? Pasta and Red Sauce? Witch and Broomstick?

And if shopping for a severed head – I assume we’re talking fake heads here – is worth $125 an hour, I’m in the wrong business.

In Chestnut Hill, personal concierge Lisa Schreider spent hours scooping out 10 large pumpkins for a driveway display, a job that left her with a modern workplace injury: pumpkin elbow.
“The original goal was to have the [clients’] kids help, but they were not interested,” Schreider said, adding cheerfully: “I couldn’t use my right arm for two days afterwards.”

Am I the only one thinking that if the kids aren’t interested in scooping out pumpkin innards – and I really can’t blame them for not wanting to deal with that messy gloop – the remedy calls for fewer (or none, even) large pumpkins for the driveway display?
Halloween seems to be a busy season for Schreider.

One client needed a last-minute pirate’s hat, another realized she didn’t have enough candy.

Gee, when folks I know need a last-minute pirate’s hat, they run out and get one. (Party City? Walmart? Pirates ‘R Us?) Ditto for candy.

And, of course, if your kids, like those little Chestnut Hill-ers, don’t want to get their hands messy with pumpkin gloop and you let them get away with that, we all know that no one in the household is going to be satisfied with the rat-ass jack-o-lantern carving that most kids (and most adults, for that matter) are capable of. A couple of triangle eyes and a snaggle-toothed grin? Even if you can manage it, that’s just BO-RING.

If you really want to do it up right, you can hire Brooklyn’s Maniac Pumpkin Carvers.I’ll admit: their work looks mighty professional. That’s because the Maniac Pumpkin Carvers are professionals. A custom, artisanal pumpkin could set you back $1.5K (shipping and handling not included).
All concierge’s don’t have fees of $125/hour. The more reasonable Kristin Cantu only charges $65. But that can add up, as it did when she was hired to find “a Soviet-style military costume for a client, a Harvard Business School graduate.”

“I did a lot of online searches, and it turns out these sorts of costumes are really hard to come by,” she said. She went to multiple stores — including army surplus shops in Boston and Saugus — and rented part of the outfit from a costume shop.

More than $1,000 later — not counting the cost of the costume itself — the client got what he needed. “He said he was a big hit at the party,” Cantu said.

I’ll just bet it was.

Anyway, in the interests of advance destressing about next year’s Halloween - what if you need a pirate hat? what if your kids won’t touch that icky pirate gloop – now you know that help is available. You only have to ask – and pay – for it.
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Thanks to my sister Kath for spying this article. (She would, by the way, make an excellent Halloween concierge. Just sayin’)