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!

The Amalur Lure

At this point it really does seem like heaping on, but The New York Times last week had a good long piece on Curt Schilling’s stumble on the mound of life.

The article basically recounts how Rhode Island got duped into investing big bucks in Schilling’s misadventure: 38 Studios (named after the number that Schilling wore for the Red Sox), a video game company building a game called “Amalur.”

From the start, his [Schilling’s] goal was to build what gamers call an MMORPG — for a massively multiplayer online role-playing game — along the lines of the crazily popular “World of Warcraft,” and to get what he called “Bill Gates-rich” in the process. (Source, here and throughout: NY Times.)

Can’t blame a guy for wanting to get “Bill Gates-rich”, I suppose.

I spent 10 years of my life working for a company that was going to “the next billion dollar software company” – when the only billion dollar software company was MSFT, and a billion dollar software company was a pretty big deal. We were not all going to get “Bill Gates-rich”, but we were going to personally profit big time. Which made me think it wasn’t a bad idea to take a pretty substantial pay cut to go there.

In the process of not becoming “the next billion dollar software company”, we managed to suck about $40 million out of the wallets of our investors. And just like being a billion dollar software company was once a big thing, so was $40 million in walking around money.

And, even though we’ve all become jaded about what exactly constitutes big bucks, it still is.

Thus, the $75 million that Rhode Island invested in Schilling’s company is significant.

The RI investment resulted from a somewhat chance meeting that David Carcieri, then the state’s governor, had with Schilling.

I said, ‘Well, what are you doing?’ ” Mr. Carcieri recalled .... “And he said, ‘I’ve got this business, this company, creating video games.’ Which I knew nothing about — my grandkids know more about it than I do. But he was describing it. He said: ‘It’s a great little company, it’s growing,’ et cetera. And he was looking to grow it further.”

More to the point, Mr. Schilling let drop that he wasn’t getting much help in Massachusetts when it came to the financing he needed to expand, and he was frustrated. You can imagine the heralding trumpets that must have been blasting in Mr. Carcieri’s ears as he listened to Mr. Schilling dangle hundreds of jobs in front of him.

Within a few weeks, Mr. Schilling, a novice in the gaming field, was wowing other local politicians with his outsize presence and his grand ambitions to build a Microsoft-like behemoth. And soon Rhode Island’s lawmakers were rushing to approve a deal to make the state Mr. Schilling’s angel investor. The tiny, struggling state issued $75 million in bonds so that Mr. Schilling’s company, called 38 Studios, could relocate to Providence and unleash the world’s next killer fantasy game.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time: woo a techie company to the state, with bonus points for it being run by Curt Schilling, he of the iconic bloody sock, he who had broken the curse and brought a World Series championship to sports-besotted New England for the first time in 86 years. It all played into Rhode Island’s desperation to do something about its high unemployment rate, its desire to do something high tech before it was too late, its desire to one-up Massachusetts.

So Rhode Island fell right in, despite the fact that every venture capitalists that had taken a look-see had taken also taken a pass on investing in the company.

“It just felt really good, when this all started, to have the sexy sports celebrity from Boston who seemed to like Rhode Island and showed up in Rhode Island, and who built this exotic new business, even though no one knew what it was,” says the historian Ted Widmer, who grew up in Providence and works at Brown. “It seemed like the digital economy, or biotech, or whatever. But then it turned out that it wasn’t the new digital economy. It was some 13-year-old’s medieval fantasy.”

That’s not really an accurate assessment of Mr. Schilling’s start-up, but neither is it entirely off base.

As it not surprisingly turns out, Schilling – for all his confidence and charisma - didn’t turn out to be much of a businessman. (Perhaps the “ama” in “Amalur” comes from amateur.)

Among the other kinda-sorta-crazy things Schilling did, he brought on a fantasy author, R.A. Salvatore, to “create a fantasy world with 10,000 years of back story, racking up a bill (still unpaid) of almost $2 million.” (This has to be one of the biggest pay-off/non-pay-offs any writer ever received.)

While Salvatore was probably the highest paid/non-paid employee, the average salary for the company was a whopping – and near mystically numbered, given Red Sox lore – $86K.  He also picked up responsibility for the old mortgages the employees he was recruiting were leaving behind when he wooed them to Rhode Island, which is not the norm for start-ups.

He also made wild, hockey still sales projections. (Where have I seen those before????)

Internal folks had encouraged bringing “Amalur” to market in small-bite releases.  But Schilling wanted to go for the brass, massive, multi-player, online whatever ring.

He seemed to think that he could will Amalur into being, in the same way he had always been able to pitch his way out of a bases-loaded jam, even with a throbbing arm. His certainty reassured employees on Empire Street [the company location], who had no idea that he was running out of money.

I will say that I’ve logged plenty of years working in companies run by super-educated, super-experienced, super- cough, cough – savvy businessmen who had no problems running those companies into the ground, or near ground, saved only by some fire-sale purchase by someone looking to pick a few pieces up on the cheap.

So it’s not as if Schilling’s not being the world’s most astute businessman on the face of the earth is the entire problem here.

I will say, however, that what he does seem to have in common with the failed business boyos of my past is massive ego, massive confidence, massive hubris – and all the other massive attributes that tend to suck people in.  Not to mention a massive inability to listen to voices of caution, which are inevitably viewed as too doomsday, too negative – just way too corrosive and anti-success.

Here are the dimensions of the 38 Studios disaster:

By the time 38 Studios closed its doors for good in June, dismissing hundreds of employees in an e-mail, the company listed $150 million in debt, $22 million in assets and $320 in petty cash.

In the wake of 38 Studios’ demise, Rhode Island is grappling with the decision of whether to default on the bonds, thus screwing with the state’s credit rating, or repaying the bondholders, to whom it has a moral but not technical obligation.

All this has prompted the current governor, Lincoln Chafee – who had gone hands-off on 38 Studios during his early tenure -  to sue Schilling et al, claiming they had hoodwinked poor little Rhode Island.

In his defense, Schilling claims that Chafee deliberately let 38 Studios go bust by not kicking in the survival bit that would have mattered at the company’s hour of need.

This is a circumstance I have lived through several times, and, in my experience, that survival bit in the hour of need tends to matter not, and only prolongs the inevitable.

I suspect that Rhode Island won’t get much financial satisfaction from their suit against Schilling. He may have been a blustering braggart, a piss-poor businessman, but the state of Rhode Island was oh-so-willingly able to buy right in to the vision that 38 Studios was going to save their economy.

Even if they “win” against Schilling, doesn’t sound like there’s much there to be gotten:

Mr. Schilling said he had basically lost his entire baseball fortune in 38 Studios. Months later, he would auction off his bloody sock.

The bloody sock!

Sockless Curt, say it ain’t so!

We don’t need no stinking regulation? Tell that to Rana Plaza and West, Texas.

As I write this, they’re still finding survivors in (and dragging bodies out of) the Rana Plaza building, in Dhaka Bangladesh, where thousands of desperately poor people stitched away. And stitched away so that those of us who live in the more economically advanced parts of the world can stuff our closets and drawers a lot fuller than we could if the people doing the stitching were working under safer conditions.

Wasn’t I just writing about this a couple of months ago?

Yep, that would be last December, when the topic was the late-November Tazreen Fashion fire.

Maybe this time the apparel companies who profit from having their manufacturing done under such horrific conditions will start getting serious about trying to do something about them. As the death toll mounts, my hope is that these companies – which, in the Rana Plaza round appear to include Children’s Place and Benetton – will stop hiding behind the ‘see nothing/hear nothing’ protective coating of working through layer upon layer of middlemen – the coating that gives them deniability, and, in turn, gives us consumers the ability to live in blithe denial.

Question: How often do I think about the conditions under which the clothing I wear is made?

Answer: Only when something like Rana Plaza happens.

Sure, it’s not easy for apparel companies working with countries like Bangladesh, rife with corruption and full of millions of people for whom making the $.25 an hour – half of what I made baby-sitting in 1964 – is worth the risk of death. And that risk is very real. In the past ten years, between fires and building collapses, more than a thousand garment workers in Bangladesh have been killed. The final tally at Rana may well end up doubling that number. (For more on the not-so-wonderful world of sweatshops, see the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights). As I wrote in my December post on Tazreen, I’m not arguing for a return to the days of Pajama Game. Hey, I worked in a boot factory, so I have no illusions about how swell these jobs are.

Industries will move to wherever they can operate most “cost effectively.” That’s going to mean lower wages. But do those wages have to be that low? I’m sure that $.25 an hour goes further in Dhaka than it does in Boston, but still… And does it also have to mean ghastly working conditions?  

Meanwhile,

At the site of a collapsed factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, rescue workers searched among the rubble as distraught family members of missing workers waited for word of their loved ones… 

Rana Plaza was evacuated on Tuesday after a crack appeared on an exterior wall, but factory managers coerced workers to return to their jobs the next day, workers said. Mr. Rana [the owner], who told workers on Tuesday that the building would stand "for another 100 years," according to workers, hasn't made any public comments since the collapse. Attempts to reach him weren't successful….

On Friday, limbs of victims protruded from the fallen masonry and volunteers sprayed scented air freshener around the site to obscure the stench of decomposed flesh.(Source: WSJ Online.)

The factories in Bangladesh could do with a bit more regulation, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time for us to look at our tags and encourage our brands to be a bit more forceful when working with the companies of origin. (Just checked, and I’m wearing clothing made in Cambodia, Tunisia, and Mexico, but I’ve no doubt got some Bangladesh in my closet somewhere.)

Meanwhile, back on the home front, where some parties seem to believe that our businesses are being stifled, just smothered by unnecessary regulation, we have the horrific fertilizer explosion in West, Texas. Which seems to be the result of a combination of lax regulatory enforcement:

Documents reviewed by The Huffington Post indicate that the last time regulators performed a full safety inspection of the facility was nearly 28 years ago. The entity with primary authority to ensure workplace safety, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, last visited in 1985, according to OSHA records.

Since then, regulators from other agencies have been inside the plant, but they looked only at certain aspects of plant operations, such as whether the facility was abiding by labeling rules when packaging its fertilizer for sale. (Source: Huffington Post.)

And insouciant, feckless, A-OK-ism on the part of the company:

In June 2011 -- less than two years before the explosion -- the private company that owns the plant, the West Fertilizer Co., filed an emergency response plan with the Environmental Protection Agency stating that there was "no" risk of fire or explosion at the facility. The worst scenario that plant officials acknowledged was the possible release of a small amount of ammonia gas into the atmosphere. (Source: Huff-Po again.)

Not that it matters all that much to the families of those who were killed, or to those who had their homes and livelihoods destroyed, but it will be interesting to see whether, on the regulatory end of things, this was caused by incompetence, or a lack of funding because, after all, we don’t need no stinking regulations.

Then there’s this:

The fertilizer plant that blew up in Texas last week warned state and local officials but not federal agencies that it had 270 tons of highly volatile ammonium nitrate on site, according to regulatory records. (Source: CNN.)

It’s certainly interesting to note, however, that the fertilizer plant didn’t mind telling the state and locals that they had such a volatile brew on site, but neglected to let the feds know…

I’m sure that every last one of us could, within five minutes, come up with some totally BS, nonsense regulation. But we can’t let that translate into equating regulation with evil.

All we need is Rana Plaza and West, Texas, to remind us of that.

Home Opener

On Wednesday, I went to see the Red Sox play.

While it was not the home opener – that was a few weeks back: BEFORE – it was my first game of the season. More importantly, it was opening day for Boylston Street, site of the bombings, the first day that cars could pass, pedestrians could amble, and businesses could open.

To me, one of the great pleasures of urban life is walking to and from a ballgame. 

Fenway Park is about a half-hour’s walk from my home: straight shot up Beacon or Comm (lovely residential blocks), hook a slight left at Kenmore Square and you’re there.

Walking to, you walk with optimism, joy, anticipation -  picking up crowd energy and crowd buzz as you near the park, amplified by the scalpers, sausage vendors, tee-shirt and cap hawkers, program sellers, street musicians, open-air bar crowds, and the occasional political/religious pamphleteering crank. Walking home, depending on outcome, can be either a buoyant experience ( W ), or an exercise in the teeth-gnashing, second-guessing, and invective slinging that is familiar to all sports fans ( L ).

Walking to the park on Wednesday to meet up with my old and dear friend Marie, who was driving up from Providence, I veered off my usual path.

I wanted to reclaim Boylston Street.

It could not have been a more gorgeous spring day: mid-sixties, not a cloud in that big blue sky. In the Public Garden, which I walked through on my way to Boylston, the flowering trees were all in full bloom. The forsythia were out. The weeping willows in leaf. The Swan Boats afloat.

I wouldn’t say that Boylston Street was exactly thronged. Weekday normal would be more like it. The outdoor restaurants were full. Most of the shops were open. Lots of pedestrians, lots of cars, plenty of tourists, parents with kids, and, as I moved further up the street, folks in Red Sox gear (and, occasionally, Oakland colors, the A’s being the day’s rivals).

Boylston Street is not my immediate neighborhood, but it’s a short walk, and it’s more commercial than my neck of the woods. It’s where I meet lunch for friends at the Parish Café. Where I poke around Marshall’s, and buy the basics when Talbot’s has its sales. It’s the Lord & Taylor’s where I bought my last business suit (December), the jacket-to-wear-to-the-wedding (September), and a patterned sweater I can’t decide whether I love or hate (July). It’s the nearest Trader Joe’s, where I head when I need to bring appetizers somewhere. It’s City Table, our regular Sunday night go-out-to-eat spot.  It’s the Lindt Shop where I buy the chocolate for my orange-chocolate pound cakes. It’s the CVS and ATM I use when I’m in Back Bay. It’s the library. It’s the Pour House, where I’ve had untold burgers and rum-cokes. It’s the Marathon Sports where I get my Win, the only detergent that gets the sweat out of workout clothes.

Marathon Sports, site of the first explosion – site where many victims were taken, and makeshift tourniquets applied using the stores ware: running shirts and the like - is still closed. There is a small memorial on the spot where the bomb was set off, and the passer-bys all seemed to pause for a second or two, keeping a reverent distance from the memorial, as if it were cordoned off.

Another block up Boylston, there’s a second memorial, in front of the Forum which, like Marathon Sports and a few other places is still closed.

Next door is Abe & Louie’s – where, last summer, I had dinner with a couple of clients, and spotted Carlos Santana at a table near us  - which also remains closed. You could see workers inside, cleaning it up, and, parked in the front corner, a jogging stroller abandoned when a parent swooped their child up and fled.

Any way, things were almost back to normal for those of us for whom things will be able to get back to normal.

At Fenway, there were a few reminders. We were all “wanded” on the way in. And they introduced some Watertown police officers, who stood on the roof of the visitors’ dugout to a heartfelt standing O.

But mostly, the game was good old normalcy. (Other than the fact that, as penance for their sordid showing last season, which followed their late-season swoon into an unprecedented collapse in 2011, the Red Sox were doing two-fers on hot dogs for the month of April.) The game had enough drama and excitement to it. For a weekday, 4 in the afternoon game, there were precious few empty seats. People lustily sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Sweet Caroline.

The Red Sox won, 6-5, putting all – make that most – thoughts of the 13-0 drubbing they’d gotten the night before out of our minds.

Marie offered to drive me home, and while being in her company for another few minutes would have been wonderful, it was out of her way. And I wanted to walk down Boylston Street one more time.

Lots of people out walking, lots of people sitting out eating, lots of people  – Bostonians and out-of-towners alike – reclaiming the city on what was, on Boylston Street, opening day.

Back to normal, pretty much, for those of us who did not lose loved ones, who did not lose limbs, who did not have friends or family members who were harmed, who did not bear witness to this grievous event.

But how long will it be before we are, any of us, able to walk this street without thinking of those for whom there will be no getting back to normal? Without seeing, in our minds’ eyes, little Martin Richard, shyly and proudly holding his sign?

When headline says “When Work Resembles A Video Game, Millennials Thrive”, Baby Boomers gulp

E=mc2 and “This above all, to thine own self be true” aside, I’m enough of an old croaker to believe that not all complex thoughts can be reduced to 140 characters.

That there are such things as too much information and too little privacy.

And that work is work and, unless you work for Electronic Arts or Curt Schilling’s old company, video games are video games.

So, when I see a headline that says “When Work Resembles A Video Game, Millennials Thrive,” I’m a bit taken aback in my granny chair. Would this not be like reading that “When Work Resembles A Pinball Machine, Baby Boomers Thrive?” Would that not have given our forefathers and fore-managers from The Greatest Generation the willies?

The article focuses on folks who work in call centers, which are plagued by high attrition and low morale resulting from:

…dealing almost exclusively with unhappy customers, the agents in a high-volume contact center often receive limited training, low pay, and may have little to look forward to in terms of advancement opportunities or positive feedback (on those rare occasions when their interaction with a customer does go well). (Source: Forbes BrandVoice)

(I must note that, although it’s on the Forbes site, this is not really a Forbes article: it’s a payola “article” from Microsoft Dynamics (which is MSFT’s customer relationship management offering), supposed to demonstrate something that we in the biz call “thought leadership.” (As an aside, and – truly – nothing to do with the video game thougt piece, I am of the considered opinion that a lot of what passes for “thought leadership” is, more or less, “thought followership” and/or what we in the biz call the TVSP, or the thinly veiled sales pitch. But that’s a topic for another day. A day that will occur after I retire.))

Anyway, after setting us up with a catalog of the tough challenges that call centers face – which, having recently spent the better part of two days trying to get Comcast to restore the e-mail address (mine) that someone’s chemo-brained husband (mine) had accidentally deleted, I realize are quite profound – the article, pardon me, the Brand Voice, goes into the particular characteristics of the Millennials who, because of the crappiness of the jobs and the crappiness of the economy, are employed in large numbers by call centers.

Nothing we haven’t heard before. The Millennials are used to constant feedback. (Translation for Baby Boomers: constant stroking and bogus, the wonderfulness of you, praise. Translation for the Greatest Generation: mollycoddling). They spend an awful lot of time playing online games “earning badges, points, and respect as they track their own progress and that of their peers (often quite publicly)”. (Translation for Baby Boomers: give me a break. Translation for the Greatest Generation: frittering away their lives.)

And they supposedly have “an unprecedented ability to multi-task.”

Sorry, unless they can back this up with some statistics, I really don’t believe that the Millennials are any better at multi-tasking than prior generations. I will use my multi-tasking self as Exhibit A, pointing to my childhood ability to watch TV (challenging fare like Wagon Train and My Three Sons), read a book (challenging fare like Nancy Drew and The Mystery of the Old Clock, and Donna Parker, On Her Own), roll my curl-resistant hair into Spoolies, and eat fudge ripple ice cream (out of a Melmac bowl, which has nothing to do with multi-tasking, but I do want to set the scene.  That Melmac bowl was boiled-egg-yolk yellow; the Spoolies were pink.).  Oh, and I could simultaneously carry on a conversation with a sibling, who was also doing some variation-on-a-theme multi-tasking on his or her own. The boys, I will note, were not rolling their crew-cuts into Spoolies.)

The very nature of the contact center environment makes it an interesting test bed for experiments with incentives, culture changes and other management techniques. As any contact center manager can tell you, the traditional systems of incentives and rewards will change behavior and can improve efficiency and effectiveness, but will do little to create an enjoyable work environment where agents feel excited to come in each day.

The answer, is, not surprisingly, Microsoft’s gamified with partners:

…real-time ‘leader dashboards,’ which show how many points and badges they have achieved today while interacting with customers, and that rank their performance against their friends in the neighboring cubicles. This highly interactive scenario of rewards and incentives, known in the industry as “gamification,” is being adopted in large, high volume contact centers at leading companies with promising results.

Wonder how many gamifying points the customer service reps from Comcast earned while talking to me a few weeks back? Are points taking off when you can hear the customer’s teeth grinding?

Anyway, this gamifying is “incentivizing” (is that even a word?) and it’s “making it more fun for [call center employees"] to go to work everyday.” (Reaction from Baby Boomers: Fun? Suck it up, you wusses. You should enjoy your work, but there should be a Jersey barrier between work, which, however enjoyable, is work, and your outside of work life with, hopefully, entails some fun. Reaction from the Greatest Generation: Candy-ass infants. Work isn’t meant to be fun. That’s why it’s called work and not fun.)

And as more Millenials enter the workforce, we believe that gamification could have implications beyond the contact center and sales force automation.

Can’t wait for a physical or root canal given by a gamifying doctor or dentist! Looking forward to a gamifying lawyer redoing our wills. A gamifying cop answering my 9-1-1 call. A gamifying waiter pouring my wine.

It’s enough to make a Baby Boom gulp.

Belieb it or not

As Amsterdam tourists do,  Justin Bieber paid a visit to the Anne Frank House on his recent trip to that city.

In the House’s guestbook, Bieber famously – since everything Master Bieber does is done famously – wrote:

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

Generally, what people write in guestbooks stays in guestbook, and are read only by the folks who put their comments on the same page, and/or by obsessives who flip through a bunch of pages to see a) where guestbook signers are from, and b) whether it’s possible that anyone ever wrote anything interesting in a guestbook.

I’ve been to the Anne Frank House, and I suppose I signed the guestbook – maybe just my name and “Boston”, maybe with something fascinating, profound, revealing. Like “lest we forget.” Or “never again.” Or “I am moved beyond words.” Which I was: The airless rooms. The thin curtains. The thought of these families locked in together, in fear, in danger for so many years. The picture still tacked to the wall – was it of a movie star? I’ve forgotten. But I do remember that Anne avidly read movie magazines.

My first thought on reading Bieber’s note was ‘what a vacuous, narcissistic twit.’ Hey, I’m at the house of Anne Frank – whoever she was; some girl who kept a diary that my fans read? – because my peeps thought it would be good publicity. Might as well make the most of it.

Callow youth, I told myself. Shallow youth.

What would you expect from someone with little by way of education, surrounded by handlers, unlikely to have any true friends or many people who want to be with him “for himself” – whatever “himself” means beyond being a mega-bucked teen idol who likes $$$ cars and has millions of fans – 37 Twitter followers! – for whom hallowed be his name.

The rest of the world, of course, heaped right on: callow, shallow, narcissist, twit…

But then I started to think about just what Bieber had written, and to ask myself just what was so terrible about it.

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here.”

So maybe he wasn’t the one who initiated the visit. Maybe it wasn’t his idea. Maybe it’s all part of crafting his image.

But maybe before he was discovered, he actually read the book. Or at least saw the movie.

Let’s face it. Except for the hardest of hard-hearts, the Anne Frank House is – well, maybe I would have used the word moving, or heart-breaking – inspiring.

“Anne was a great girl.”

Okay, “great” may seem a bit breezy, but, from what I can tell, she was a great girl, with a lively mind and a good heart. She was also a real girl. She fought with her sister. She had a crush on Peter. She was moody. She didn’t get along with her mother. She liked her father a lot better. She hated being cooped up. She got her period. She had a sense of humor. She had hopes for a better world.

What is it that most of us say about the kids we know and love?

I don’t know about you, but there’s been plenty of times when I’ve said she’s a great girl, or guy, or kid, about someone.

“Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

Admittedly, this is a tad sell-centered and, thus, somewhat clumsy. Maybe he should have written: how awful that she didn’t get to experience what other girls her age did. Or how tragic that she and so many other great girls and boys never got to grow up. But what’s wrong with wishing that a kid who should have been able to be just a kid actually got to be just a kid?

Who doesn’t want a world where kids get to be kids, and not worried about being hunted down by Nazis (or blown up by terrorists)?

Maybe she would have been a belieber of her day, the Dutch equivalent of a Frank Sinatra-swooning bobby-soxer. Maybe she would have been a snob, looking down her nose at pop-culture and rolling her eyes when her friends went nuts over the Dutch equivalent of the Tommy Dorsey Band, while secretly admitting that Benny Goodman played a mean clarinet.

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

That’s Anne Frank, by the way, not Justin Bieber.

I’m not a belieber, but, belieb it or not, I’m giving him a pass on this one.

I spy with my dummy little eye

Somehow, I missed the news last November about the mannequin spies, but I’m making up for lost time now.

At first, I thought they were talking about surveillance dummies on the lookout for shoplifters, but, no, these dummies serve a higher purpose.

Fashion brands are deploying mannequins equipped with technology used to identify criminals at airports to watch over shoppers in their stores. Retailers are introducing the EyeSee, sold by Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA, to glean data on customers much as online merchants are able to do.

Five companies are using a total of “a few dozen” of the mannequins with orders for at least that many more, Almax Chief Executive Officer Max Catanese said. The 4,000-euro ($5,130) device has spurred shops to adjust window displays, store layouts and promotions to keep consumers walking in the door and spending…

To give the EyeSee ears as well as eyes, Almax is testing technology that recognizes words to allow retailers to eavesdrop on what shoppers say about the mannequin’s attire. Catanese says the company also plans to add screens next to the dummies to prompt customers about products relevant to their profile, much like cookies and pop-up ads on a website.  (Source: Business Week.)

So, bad enough they have dummies watching us, they’re listening in on our conversations, too.

Not that I have all that much to worry about. After all, if you take away AARP and Centrum Silver, I’m no one’s idea of the ideal demographic.  I can’t imagine Talbot’s is going to spend $5K to try to figure out whether I’m going to take the navy turtleneck, the teal turtleneck, or both.

And that name EyeSee? A little too much “I see, said the blind man, but he didn’t see at all” to my way of thinking.

This story, of course, raises all sorts of questions. I won’t even bother with the invasion of the privacy snatcher ones.

My burning question is: when did the French-ified word mannequin replace the less genteel manikin? And when did manikin replace the word dummy, which was what these folks(?) were called in my long-ago youth.

Is dummy a pejorative? Is it non PC? Is it possible to insult an inanimate object? (Or what used to be an inanimate object.)

Whatever they were called, the dummies of my youth were nowhere near as smart as those of today. Nor were they as “real” looking.

Dummies back then were all this kind of pinky-beige color, more beige than pink, and just a shade darker than the decidedly non-inclusive Crayola color “flesh.” The female of the dummy species were all blonde, if painted on butter-cup yellow can be said to be blonde. They all had blue eyes, too. The male dummies – man and boy a like – had medium brown hair, and medium brown eyes. To me, they all looked like Protestants, and they all seemed to be stuck in amber. They all had the look and feel of having been produced in 1946, when the good old U.S. of A. got back into manufacturing all the goods we’d been deprived of during Big W-W-II.

Dummies were, I believe, made out of plaster, as I seem to recall some low-rent Worcester department store with a dummy with a broken wrist, exposing its chalky white innards and metal rod bone.

In any event, the dummies I grew up with were a far cry from the pricey – and diverse – mannequins from Almax. Sure, they make blondes. But they also make dark-haired beauties, which, while you can’t exactly say look real, look more real than mannequins did when they were known as dummies. One thing that’s stayed constant: they all look bored. Maybe the ones that see and hear will perk up a tad now that there’s something going on in their heads.

What’s going on in their heads is software and sensor-driven:

This software analyzes the facial features of people passing through the front and provides statistical and contextual information useful to the development of targeted marketing strategies. (Source: Almax)

I’m a marketer, and I’m all over targeted marketing strategies. But in this context, are there three more dreaded words in the English language?

I don’t even like it when Amazon suggests a book.

Almax, by the way offers about 800 different models, “variously sized and positioned, representing various ethnic and physical features, with more than 1,500 realistic, stylized and semi-abstract heads.”

Good to hear, given that variety – and the availability of the semi-abstract head – is the spice of life.

After reading up on them, I thought it would be good to take a quick, haphazard inventory of mannequins while strolling around Boston on Sunday (enjoying the beautiful weather and the blessedly large crowds).

Neiman Marcus has “real” dummies, but a lot of stores seem to have dummies without heads (semi-abstract or otherwise).

Then there was this rather interesting mannequin, which I spied with my very own eyes on Newbury Street. I was relieved that it was headless, eyeless, and earless and, thus, could not be checking me out. But then it occurred to me that the shark might be so armed.

Far more disturbing – with or without sensors and software – was the mannequin next door to son-of-Jaws.

I had to press my nose up to the window to see that those were, indeed, exposed ribs and not shadows. What’s the message here? Anorexia or bust? Anorexia or no bust? Very disturbing.

Not that I’d want it spaying or listening in on me, but give me this statuesque Swedish dummy, any old day.

Look like anyone you know?

That was the week that was…

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the past week, and what it’s meant for Boston and the country.

The shock, horror, sadness, and outrage we all felt after Monday’s bomb attack on our friends and family, our city, our special holiday, our Marathon.

I’ve already forgotten whether I even set foot outside the house on Tuesday, so all-consuming was the news. (So crushing the pictures of little Martin Richard, and, as they were identified, of Krystal Campbell and Lingzi Lu. Heartbreaking.)

On Wednesday, I ventured out early. As I walked through the Boston Common, I passed a few National Guard members (including a couple hauling a major league Dunkin’ Donuts bag; America really does run on Dunkin’),and their vehicles (not quite sure what they were: jeepish-tankish), and their tents. 

As I usually do, I picked up some trash along the way.* As I stooped to pick up a mega-Burger King cup, the thought did occur to me that it might be booby-trapped.

But I decided not to live in fear, picked it up – cursing the slob who’d dropped it within 20 feet of a trash can – and threw it away.

My morning’s destination – the gym – was in a building a couple of doors down from the Mexican Consulate. Which had a guy posted out front carrying a machine gun.

This may have made the Mexican Consul feel safer, but it did not make me feel safer. On the contrary, it made me feel frightened.

I expected the armed camp to be in full evidence when, later in the day, I took a train from North Station to visit my sister. I was carrying with me some information on the chemistry of fire – info that my husband (the former chemist) had pulled together for our niece, who has a paper on the topic due soon. The info included a chemistry book, generously outlined and commented in my husband’s red pen, which, admittedly, some might take for the work of a madman. When I was leaving the house, Jim warned me that, if I were searched at North Station, the searcher might think I was up to no good. Hard to believe you have to worry about a high school chemistry project, but you never know. I tucked it under the Tupperware I was returning to Trish.  But there was no – blessed relief –  mega security presence at North Station, and I was able to hop my train without delay, which made me feel far better than the armed guard at the Mexican Consulate.

The next morning, on my return to Boston, I took my usual cut-through Mass General Hospital on my way home from North Station. I knew there were bombing victims still being treated there, but was nonetheless surprised/unnerved to see men – were they Homeland Security? – stationed out front of the hospital carrying machine guns. As with the Mexican Consulate, this did not make me feel safe. It made me feel sorry. (Later in the day, the President paid a visit to MGH to meet with some of the bombing victims, so perhaps that was the reason for the souped-up security. I will say, however, that the back of the hospital was not thus secured.)

By Thursday, Boston was all a-vigil. I didn’t participate in any of them “live”, but I did watch some of the very moving memorial service on TV.

By this point, all the Boston Strong “stuff” was starting to irk me a bit. As if wearing a tee-shirt that says Boston Strong is really going to do or prove much of anything. As if there were ever any possibility that Bostonians were going to go collectively to pieces. (Fat f-in’ chance of that.) I was about to call BS, when I realized that I was the one choking up a bit when I saw this tribute that had appeared in The Chicago Trib, especially since just before I came across it, I’d seen a picture of Martin Richard that had been taken at a Bruins game.

And that I completely thought it was sweet and touching that the Yankees sang Sweet Caroline – a Red Sox anthem of sorts – during their Tuesday game.

Boston Strong, Sweet Caroline.

Time like these, we’re all entitled to gather our comforts where we may.

Then there was this one – which pretty well expresses the general ethos and essence of this city. Needless to say, it didn’t make me tear up . It made me laugh:

Especially when you realize that three of the victims, Martin, Krystle, and Sean Collier, the MIT cop murdered Thursday night, have Irish lineage.

(Boston is, of course, more than just Irish, or even Irish-by-osmosis, as one local African-American politician once claimed was true of all our citizens. And, thus, we were cheered when Red Sox great David Ortiz, Bostonian by way of the Dominican Republic, told the crowd at Fenway on Saturday: “This is our f-in’ city.” Right you are, David. Right you are.)

What also made me laugh was the fact that, by special request of the authorities, Dunkin’ Donuts throughout the area were kept open on Friday while other businesses were asked to close. (Maybe all of America doesn’t run on Dunkin’, but Boston does – and so do the PD’s around here.)

Thursday night, of course, the FBI revealed the pictures of the suspects, and a bit later it was search-on.

Friday, like everyone else in the area, I was glued to the television. We were, after all, on city-wide lockdown, with little else to do but spin between one TV station and the next, one website and the next, one Twitter feed and the next. A disquieting quiet in the city: no car noise, few people seen on the streets.

As it turned out, I almost missed the climax, my husband and I having turned on House Hunters International to see if the woman from Los Angeles would go with the fixer-upper near the Louvre or the over-budget place in Saint Germain (spoiler alert: fixer upper); and whether the family from South Carolina would take the infinity pool or the gated community in Belize (spoiler alert: gated community). We did not find out which place the Walshes of Summit, NJ, chose in Anguilla, as my sister Trish texted me to let me know things were coming to a head in Watertown.

It goes without saying that, like every other decent person on the face of the earth, I am thrilled that they got Suspect Number Two. And that they got him alive.

The less said about Suspect Number One and Suspect Number Two – those evil POS - the better. But I will admit to being curious about what’s going on in that 19 year-old’s head just about now. Terrorism with your bro seemed like a cool idea at the time, eh pal? Well, no more girl friends, pickup soccer games, tweeting, or joints for you, you little bastard. Martin Richard’s life stopped at 8 years of age, thanks to you. Now yours- whether physically or metaphorically we have yet to learn – will stop at 19. Doesn’t seem like quite a fair exchange though, does it? What we all wouldn’t give to give Martin the gift of years. There’s really no payback here that’s quite enough of a bitch.

(At first I thought there was some possibility that the younger brother was duped by the older brother into thinking it was a prank, a statement, a smoke bomb. No harm, no foul. Of course, after Monday at 2:50 p.m. he would have certainly known that this was the real deal. At which point, it would have been time for the 19 year old boy to man-up and turn his brother in. But this fleeting thought was before I heard that the younger brother, hiding in the Watertown backyard boat, had scrawled on the tarp something about his brother’s being a hero…)

But, grateful as I am that they got their man, and thankful I am that they did so without any further loss of life, and acknowledging as I will that the the forces amassed for the manhunt were all there with at least some possibility that they could lose their lives, while I was watching the Watertown manhunt, I couldn’t help but think that deploying all those forces, locking down all these cities and towns (sure, maybe Watertown and the places adjacent to Watertown made sense, but all of Boston?), was maybe just a bit over the top.

Maybe if I’d lost a child or a leg I’d feel differently, or if I lived in Watertown, but when I saw all those state troopers lined up next to the Arsenal Mall, standing there with their Smokey hats, arms folded behind there backs, doing – well, there’s no other word for it – nothing, my first thought was ‘this is overkill.’  As I did when I saw those thousands of “forces” massed for the hunt.

And I have plenty of concerns when I think about how for every Officer Friendly, there now seems to be an Officer Hardass wearing combat boots and carrying an assault weapon.

We really need to think long and hard – as a city and a country - about whether all this show of force makes us any safer, or whether having the force to show means that we’ll just naturally find more occasions when we feel forced to show it.

Anyway, we’re now back to normal, or near normal, or new normal. (At least those of us who didn’t lose a child or a leg, who will never get back what they lost.)

I really hope that, come next Marathon Monday, come next Patriots Day, people don’t have to go through patdown security to get to the finish line. That the 26.2 mile route from Hopkinton to Boston isn’t lined with staties with their hands behind their backs. That twice as many people will run, and twice as many people will watch. That Boston Strong – it’s starting to grow on me - means that we won’t be cowed. And that we won’t need – and don’t want – an armed guard on every corner so that we can feel safe. Even if it does mean that there may well be another nihilistic, cowardly bastard out there, with some pathetic axe and the need to irrationally grind it by screwing with us.

We’re a long way, fortunately, from being a police state.

Let’s see if we can keep it that way.

Meanwhile, if you want to make a donation to benefit all of the victims of the Patriots Day bombing, you can do it here.

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*I know, I know: goodie-two-shoes. But I’ll tell you just what inspired me to do become a regular trash-picker.

A couple of years ago, on a frigid February day, I was walking across Boston Common when I saw an elderly woman paused at the opposite end of a long path that was thickly iced over. (The city actually does a good job of keeping these paths clear, but there had been a melt the day before, and a freeze overnight, and it was early…) I was cutting around, walking through the crusty snow, and I hollered to the woman to wait up, that I’d help her over the moderately-difficult-to-navigate snow.

The woman – both beautiful and beautifully dressed: a real Beacon Hill grande dame - gratefully took my arm, introduced herself – Nancy Ellis – and told me it was her 85th birthday. We chatted for a while, and she told me that she was on her way over to the New England Medical Center, where she was a regular volunteer. I told her that I hoped that when I’m 85, I’ll be going out on a cold, icy day to volunteer.

Nancy Ellis looked a bit familiar, and after a moment or two I realized that she was George Bush’ sister. When I asked her if this were so, she smiled and said, ‘Yes, and George Bush’s aunt, too.’

Anyway, Nancy Ellis had an empty Poland Springs bottle tucked under her arm, and I offered to toss it for her.

She then told me that, whenever she walked through The Common, she would pick up some trash along her way.

Heading out to volunteer on your 85th birthday, in the dead of winter, and cheerfully picking up after some slob while you’re doing so.

Now that’s Boston Strong…