Next stop, Fitchburg?

Worcester County, Massachusetts, was/is full of old industrial towns and cities. Clinton. Uxbridge. Whitinsville. Gardner. Leominster. Fitchburg.

Other than a trip, maybe ten years ago, to visit the Russian icon museum in Clinton, I haven't been to or through most of these places in years. Make that decades. (And don't ask me why there's a Russian icon museum in Clinton, Mass, a town that was so Irish-dominated that its high school mascot is the Galloping Gael, a centaur with the human half a leather-helmeted football player and a shamrock tattooed on its equine haunch. Predictably, on my visit to Clinton with my cousins Barbara and MB, we had lunch in an Irish pub.)

Anyway, my memories of all of these mill towns/mill cities are Rust Belt-y: houses once occupied by mill-owning grandees now all turned into funeral parlors or tenements; abandoned store fronts along the main drag; a general dispirited sense - the word malaise might as well be embossed on the town's crest. 

I know that the lack of housing affordability in Greater Boston and housing price increases in Worcester have given some of these places a boost, with younger folks moving there, especially in those locations fortunate enough to be on the Boston train commuter line. As in Fitchburg, a city of 42,000 about 50 miles from Boston and 30 miles from Worcester. (And the home of a state college: Fitchburg State University.)

Growing up, I never spent much time in Fitchburg. My father liked to take us all out for rides on weekends, but Fitchburg was a bit off our beaten track. When I was in high school, I went to a couple of events in Fitchburg - gatherings of parochial school student councils, basketball games, whatever. I seem to remember a Latin festival at some Fitchburg Catholic school or another, where we dressed up in blue togas and recited Cicero.

Anyway, I don't spend much energy thinking about Clinton, or Leominster, or Fitchburg. But when it's Worcester County- related, a story will always pique my interest. So I was naturally drawn to a recent article about a couple of bookstores, the brainchildren of poet/activist/publisher/entrepreneur Zachary Bos, that will be opening soon on Fitchburg's Main Street. 

Bos’s two upcoming stores — Bonfire Bookshop, which will sell used books, and Goldfinch Mercantile, which will sell new books — are slated to become Fitchburg’s first independent bookstores since the last one shuttered over a decade ago. The old mill city has long battled a shaky economy and business closures. Now, city officials say, it is undergoing its largest makeover yet in the hopes of becoming a destination. (Source: Boston Globe)

OK, Bonfire strikes me as a strange name for a bookstore.  Images of Nazi brownshirts hurling the works of Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann onto towering book infernos...But I'm all for new old and new new bookstores. And I love that Fitchburg is trying to revitalize itself as something of a cultural mecca:

The local public library is undergoing a $40 million renovation and expansion project. Last year, the city completed a $45 million project transforming a former school into affordable housing aimed at artists.

And why not? Stranger things have happened. 

E.g., my husband's hometown of Bellows Falls, VT - as unlovely a place as you're going to find anywhere in New England - has kinda-sorta remade itself as a multi-culti place to live. Bellows Falls isn't even a town; it's a village that's part of the town of Rockingham, and over the years the word that's crossed my mind at the mention of BF has always been downtrodden. But a dozen years ago, when I brought a spoonful of my husband's ashes there to put on his parents' graves, I found it was vibrant little spot in a number of ways. For one thing, it has a very nice indie bookstore. For another, it has a very nice Italian restaurant. 

The town also has an annual roots music festival, and even has an outpost of the Vermont Country Store, a great little emporium if you're in the market for Teaberry chewing gum, Evening in Paris dusting powder, and muumuus. (I've only been to the original VCS in Weston, VT, which is an utter trip. And I find myself regularly ordering oddments for them - a wooden clothes drying rack, reusable bowl covers, licorice All Sorts - so I can keep getting their ultra-fabulous catalog.)

So why NOT Fitchburg?

Affordable housing. Funky old buildings. Train to the Big City. 

Bookstoring is a tough business.

I'm fortunate to have the Trident Bookstore a short walk away. (There's an Instragram-able bookstore a lot closer, and I have gotten a couple of books there during a book emergency, but it's mostly a tourist trap. Everything is cutsily curated, and it feels like the sort of place some city-fleeing career gal in a Hallmark special would open in her home town - and end up meeting the cutest man in the world, who happens to be rich but rich with a heart - as in he runs an orphanage for three-legged dogs - and who wants to make her home town his home town.) 

But I digress. 

Bookstoring is a tough, low margin buiness.

And yet, bookstores have found vitality post-COVID, despite the rise of online booksellers including Amazon. Many bookshops now offer community events, gift shopping, and what Harvard Business School professor Ryan Raffaelli described as a “third space” — a location where people can gather besides their homes or workplaces.

“A bookstore helps create social capital,” Raffaelli said. “It also sits at the core fabric of most cities or communities, so it’s hard to imagine not having one.”

A third space is what Zachary Bos is trying to build in Fitchburg, and I'm rooting for him.

I also just looked up the train schedule to Fitchburg 

I'm going to make sure the bookstores are open, but I love crummy old milltowns. And I love bookstores. So I do see a trek to Fitchburg in my future.

All aboard!

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Image Source: Facebook

Where's Saint Damien when we need him?

I love armadillos. Like platypuses, armidillos are so damned adorbs. 

And like platypuses - which have a venomous (but not lethal) sting that packs a pretty big punch - armadillos can be hazardous to your health.

As in they're carriers of the leprosy virus.

In commenting on the increasing incidents of leprosy in Florida - where else? - Dr. Norman Beatty, a U of Florida med school prof and infectious disease specialist, noted that when it comes to the spread of leprosy:

'Leprosy in the state of Florida is an ongoing, emerging infectious disease that we are identify more and more.'

... the culprit in Florida is the nine-banded armadillo, which is found in most parts of Florida and can harbor the bacteria that cause leprosy, as well as contaminated soil near armadillo burrows.

'We have found that people who have acquired leprosy here in Florida have had exposure to either soil that has been contaminated with the bacteria and people who have had direct contact with armadillos, either by handling them or eating them,' he said. Source: The Daily Mail)

Not that leprosy has reached epidemic levels in the Sunshine State. Although Florida is a relative hotbed when compared to other states, there are typically only 100-200 cases identified each year in the US. A disproportionate number of those Florida cases can be traced to locallly acquired, native sources, as opposed to leprosy acquired while out of the country. 

The good news is that, if you get to it quickly, leprosy (or, to use its more modern name, Hansen's Disease) can be treated with antibiotics. If you don't get to it quickly, well there's nerve damage, disfiguring lesions, blindness...Not to mention the social stigma. Lepers! Unclean! 

My historic knowledge of leprosy comes from the movie Ben Hur, and the story of Father Damien of Molokai (Hawaii). 

In Ben-Hur, the sister and mother of Judah Ben-Hur (that's Charlton Heston to you, bub) are unjustly imprisoned (political reasons, natch) and while in prison they contract leprosy and end up living in exile in a cave in the Valley of the Lepers. Long movie short - and, at 3 hours, 32 minutes, it was a long movie - Ben-Hur (who had been slaving away on a galley ship) is reunited with mom and sis, who are cured of their leprosy by Jesus Christ (cameo role). 

I retain two very clear images from the movie, which I saw in the theater over six decades ago. One is the grisly body of Ben-Hur's enemy, who was trampled in the chariot race he lost to Ben-Hur. The other is the scene where Ben-Hur finds his leperous mother and daughter in their cave.

Seeing Ben-Hur was pretty much a one-and-done. But in grammar school, we heard plenty about Damien of Molokai, a Catholic priest who ministered to lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Through his close contact with those lepers, Damien acquired and succumbed to the disease. (Leprosy is not easily transmitted between humans, but close, long-term contact can result in leprosy.)

Damien - not yet a saint back then, but just plain old Father - was frequently held up by the nuns as a role model, as he was a martyr. Oh, he was only a martyr to charity, not one of the traditionally-worshipped martyrs who died unbelievably gruesome deaths for not renouncing their faith. Having your eyes plucked out, being roasted on a spit, being shot up with arrows, having your fingers gnawed off. Oh, we would probably have easier deaths if we stood up for Catholicism. We'd just get a bullet in the head from an anti-Christ Commie. But martyrdom was something to aspire for, that's for sure.

But Damien was a good model because he was relatively modern and easier to identify with than someone who'd had her eyes gouged out in the year 300 AD. Damien died in 1889. One of my grandmothers was born in 1882. So Father Damien was pretty damned close. He could have been one of us. 

And his biography, Father Damien and the Bells, which recounted his life on Molokai, was a very popular book back in my day. It was part of the Vision Book series of children's books about Catholics, primarily saints but not always. My family of great readers subscribed to Vision Books, and received one monthly. I liked the Father Damien book, but my favorites were Lydia Longley: First American Nun, and the Champions in Sport and Spirit books about American Catholic athletes. Like Herb Score, whose career as a pitcher went sideways when he was hit in the eye by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald, a fellow Catholic. Sigh.

Back to the lepers, back to the armadillos. 

To avoid contracting leprosy, Beatty urges Floridians to avoid any contact with nine-banded armadillos, which includes touching, hunting or eating them. People with armadillo burrows in their yards should also avoid touching the surrounding soil, especially if they have open wounds in which the bacteria can enter.

'Awareness of this emerging infectious disease is important, but we also want to not raise any alarms,' Beatty said.

Not that I'm planning on contact with nine-banded armadillos, let alone supping on curried armadillo, but, Dr. Beatty, you have indeed raised an alarm.

I have old friends in Dallas, and they live on the edge of a nature preserve and have seen armadillos on their property plenty of times. I must away to warn them.

Meanwhile, if there is a worse breakout of leprosy here in The States, where's Father Damien when we need him? 

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Image Source: National Wildlife Federation

Making license plates is so yesterday

Up in Maine, there's a store that's part of the state prison system. The Maine Prison Showroom sells items made by  incarcerated folks. Wooden items (that's where I got my toast tongs), jewelry, apparel (anyone interested in a Shawshank Prison cap?), other goods.

Prisoners get paid an hourly wage to produce the goods, and hopefully pick up a skill or craft while they're at it. State license plates, by the way, have historically been manufactured in Maine's prisons, but manufacture is being temporatily offshored to Canada - of all places - because the equipment and facility need to be modernized.

Massachusetts also has manufacturing facilities in its prisons, producing a variety of goods, including clothing (for Department of Corrections employees only), mattresses, and flags. And license plates. Most states do. 

Neither Maine nor Massachusetts has call centers where prisoners work, which I'm thankful for, because it seems kind of creepy to me. Even though I can appreciate that it is important for inmates to have work, and I'm all in favor of having opportunities for prisoners to do something productive (work, attend classes, etc.), I still wouldn't be all that comfortable talking to someone imprisoned when I was looking for support for something or other. Or to be on the receiving end of a spam sales call being made by someone doing time. I'm sure they screen folks who get these jobs, and I'm sure the prisoners have limited access to the personal and financial data of those of us on the outside, but I still find the idea a bit offputting. (This said even though, through my volunteer work, I regularly interact with folks who've been in prison. I know they've been in prison, btw, because they tell me. I don't have access to any shelter guests' files.)

But Oklahoma does run prison-based call centers: 

As of Aug. 21, call centers are active at four state prisons: James Crabtree in Helena, Mabel Bassett in McLoud, Lexington Correctional in Lexington and Joseph Harp in Lexington.

The contracts specify that the call centers may engage in “telemarketing and political polling activity.” HBW Leads agreed to pay the Department of Corrections $10 per inmate hour worked. Prisoners employed at the call centers earn $2 per hour, plus possible bonuses for generating leads or completing surveys.

The remaining $8 per hour is allocated as overhead for Oklahoma Correctional Industries, a self-supporting sub-entity of the Department of Corrections that provides work programs and job training to inmates. (Source: Oklahoma Voice)

Well, take home - take cell? - pay of $2 an hour sounds a bit skimpy, but it's more than prisoners in Maine and Massachusetts make for factory work.

But political polling seems like an ultra-creepy use of inmate time, and it turns out that, what the prisoners are doing isn't exactly polling. The calls are directly political. Which is a not supposed to happen.

Steve Wilbanks is one of the four prisoners interviewed for the article I saw. And the only one willing to use his name. The others feared reprisals. (Not that that would happen. Especially not in a righteous state like Oklahoma.)

Wilbanks said there were statements specifying that calls were paid for by Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based super PAC that aims to help elect conservative lawmakers.

“They weren’t surveys at all, they were campaigning,” he said. “They just had one question at the end of the call: ‘Do we have your vote for such and such?’”

Multiple inmates said they felt uneasy making partisan phone calls. Two indicated that they had been in prison so long that they were not familiar with the names of political candidates. One was unsure what MAGA or a Trump Republican was.

“We were talking about the swamp and everything like that,” Wilbanks said. “I don’t even know what a swamp is. I’ve been in prison too long to catch up on some of these terms.

...“They definitely know what they’re doing is a no-no,” one of the inmates said.

The calls coming from inside the Big House were pretty much push-polling, "in which the caller masquerades as a pollster but intends to influence voters."

But the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has stated that what the inmates are doing falls technically within the description of political polling, and that they are in full compliance with state and federal law. 

Make Liberty Win, the PAC in question here, works through an outfit called Visible Trends, which does live campaign calling. 

“We go directly to the voters’ doorsteps, cellphones, and mailboxes to mobilize them to oust RINOs and socialist Democrats alike,” reads Make Liberty Win’s mission statement.

Which is probably easy-peasier in some states than in others. C.f., Okalahoma, although I can't imagine that there all that many RINOs and socialist Democrats to oust there. (The PAC didn't know that Visible Trends was using prison call centers.)

It's not just right-wing political outfits that have used prison call centers. Mike Bloomberg's go-nowhere campaign for president worked through a third party that, unbeknownst to campaign staff, hired prisoners. 

In terms of what data inmates had access to, for political calls it was just name and phone number. But the Oklahoma crew also did calls for an insurance company, and they had access to names, addresses, current insurers, and sometimes dates of birth and email addresses. TMI, in my book.

Prison telemarketing has its champions. Call center organizations cite reduced recidivism rates, durable and transferable skills, and opportunities for inmates who are anxious to learn.

All in favor of that, but still creeped out by potential access to private data. And absolutely not in favor of them doing campaigning calls. 

...By way of contrast, an ACLU report on prison labor highlighted legislation nationwide that enabled various industries to exploit workers behind bars.

“The United States has put in place a system of domestic laws and policies designed to exploit the labor of those incarcerated rather than to strengthen their capacity to productively participate in society,” the report said.

Gotta say that I'm leaning ACLU here. All in favor of work for prisoners, but maybe don't make it so exploitative. And pay them reasonable wages so they have something more for their families, or a nest egg accumulated for when they're released. 

On balance, the Oklahoma prisoners liked the fact that doing call center work was relatively lucrative when compared with the other in-prison options. Which in Oklahoma, as it turns out, is not much. It may even be zip. So there's that. 

I occasionally pick up the phone and answer a political poll. Mostly not. That "potential spam" warning can be a deal breaker. 

But years ago, I received regular polling calls - looking for donations - from the Republican Party. I have no idea where they got my information to begin with, as I've been a registered Democrat since the jump. I'm guessing it was because at one point I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Anyway, in the presidential election year of 2012, I got regular calls which all began with an unhinged, pre-recorded, over the top message from Newt Gingrich, attacking President Obama every which way, while stopping a bit short of using the n-word. After listening to Newt, an actual human came on the line and asked what my reaction to what I'd heard was. I'd mostly say I thought it was untrue and way too nasty, but - hoping for a donation - the human on the other end of the line kept with me, asking me who my candidate of choice was. We didn't have the word "troll" in 2012, other than the troll under the bridge in Three Billy Goats Gruff. But my trollish answer was always Michele Bachmann who, back in the day, was considered something of a kook, even by Republican standards. (She should have hung in there!)

The human would then ask me for a donation, starting with a $100 ask, and moving down by increments to as low a $5. 

Finally, after about four or five calls - truly, they were relentless, probably because I was one of the few people to actually hang on after the Gingrich screed rather than hang up- the human asked, "You're not a Republican, are you?" 

Well, B-I-N-G-O.

That was the last call I received. 

Wonder whether he was an inmate. 

And wonder what they're vicious, over the top screed is this time around. 

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Image Source: Correction Enterprises

Jobs of the job-bereft future

Olivia Ferney, who is 25, is a "luxury-travel specialist." She doesn't have any particular background in mondo deluxe. Her parents were school teachers. 

But a couple of years ago, she was in a club in Miami where she met Troy Arnold, the founder of Top Tier Travel, an agency that specializes in luxury travel. She was job hunting, he was hiring, and, as it turned out, it was a marriage made in heaven. (Well, it's not a marriage yet, but the couple's engaged.)

Turns out, Top Tier was doing just fine, working with billionaires who wanted someone else to make sure they could "go places and eat things,"* without having to rub shoulders with any of the hoi or the polloi. But the business wasn't really taking off. 

Prior to the arrival of Ferney on the scene, Top Tier had gotten its business based on "word of mouth and discretion." Turns out that Ferney was pretty darned good at social media and began posting videos of the over-the-top trips and events she was planning. She now has 2 million followers who gobble up her videos. 

Of course, those 2 million followers aren't buying what Top Tier is selling. They're gawkers. But all those gawkers have been good for building Ferney's brand, and that of Top Tier. 

Ferney is on Time's list of this year's "top 100 digital influencers."

And Fifth Season, the production company behind “Severance” and “Killing Eve,” has signed a deal with Ferney and her business partner and fiancé, Troy Arnold, for a scripted series based on their agency, Top Tier Travel. (Source: NY Times)

Clients pay through the nose for the privilege of having Ferney and the Top Tier team cater to their every whim. 

Each client of Top Tier Travel must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel. 

Make that travel or whim execution. And while $1 million may seem like a lot to devote to ultra-non-discretionary spending in any given year, it all adds up if you're a billionaire who wants Ferney to fly to Paris to pick up the largest croissant that the City of Light has to offer because your daughter wants one. Or you're willing to shell out $2.25 million for a week's rental of a yacht so you can cruise around the Côte d'Azur,

Then there was the med-tech entrepreneur who wanted to make a big splash to celebrate closing a mega business deal. 

That big splash involved uncorking $226K worth of champagne - 125 bottles of Perrier Jouet Grand Brut, 50 bottles of Dom Pérignon Brut Luminus and five bottles of Dos Hombres Blanco tequila - and setting the Guinness world record for "largest champagne presentation."

“No one is really even going to drink the champagne,” Ferney said, noting that her plan called for scores of servers to blast the partygoers with bubbly.

...They hoisted bottles of Dom Pérignon above their heads. At a signal from Diplo [celebrity DJ], corks popped. Some servers began hosing down a dancer ensconced in a prop Martini glass, while others sprayed champagne at the crowd, thus achieving a Guinness-worthy feat that was the equivalent, in terms of pointless excess, to scaling Mt. Everest.

It almost goes without saying that this happened in Vegas, demonstrating yet again that there's plenty that happens in Vegas that doesn't stay in Vegas. (Although the party animal entrepreneur paying for this spray spree wanted to remain anonymous.)

Re all this excess, Arnold says:

"Basically, we have normalized what’s insane.”

That seems to be happening a lot lately. (C.f., Washington DC.) 

Ferney's take: 

“Our job is to execute, not judge.” 

She also says that, when it comes to the wealthy, there's "at least one misconception:"

“People think the superrich are unhappy,” she said. “They’re not.”

Good to know. Damn!

Anyway, I was thinking what an inane job Freny has, what a foolish use of someone's energy, brains, and creativity - talents that could be put to something a bit more for the good. (Unlike Top Tier, Pink Slip's unpaid job is to both execute and judge.)

And then I got to thinking, and my thinking is the Ferney is really onto something. Once AI ingests all the jobs out there, the only jobs in the job-bereft future may well be those that cater to the ultra-wealthy, the only folks who'll be able to afford to hire actual humans. For the rest of us, the kids will be taught by AI. Robots will provide our healthcare. ChatGPT will be our shrink. 

How often am I going to have to write "O brave new world?"

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*This is a nod to the Three Stooges. Like most women, I was not a huge fan. Like most men, my husband was. There's a classic line from one of their movies - a line my husband often quoted when we were heading out to dinner - in which one of the Stooges' dates gets in the car and says "Let's go places and eat things." Now you know. 

Image Source: Vector Stock

Me? I'd live on Pesky Lane. And you?

In my Worcester neighborhood, there was a clutch of streets with Native American names. Or Native American-ish names.
 Wyola. Utica. Delawanda. Alsada. Tallawanda. The only street named for an actual tribe was Seminole. I'm guessing that these streets were laid out in the 1920's, when there was a general fascination with things Native American. In my mind's eye, going up and down these streets, I'd venture a guesss that the houses were all built between the 1920's and 1950's. 

Anway, it was a curiosity and those street names were a lot more interesting in most of those in my 'hood. Blaine Ave. Henderson. Varnum. Sylvan. Brookline. 

The lone fanciful name was Eureka Street. 

But as a kid, I liked the idea of a "themed" neighborhood, and I envied my friends who lived on one of the streets with a cool "Indian" name.

So as a childhood fan of having a street naming scheme, and a lifetime fan of the Boston Red Sox, I was keenly interested in learning of a Herriman, Utah, subdivision that has streets named for Red Sox players. 

These are not necessarily the all-time greatest players. No Ted Williams Boulevard. No Tris Speaker Lane. No David Ortiz Street. No Pedro Martinez Avenue. No Carl Yastrzemski Road. (Well, you can't blame them for that omission. Who wants to spell Yastremski, let alone pay for the longer street sign?)

No the players who had streets named after them were the favorites of one non-Red Sox Nation native Brandon Parr "a land development project manager with EDGEhomes and lifelong Sox fan." 

“I kind of started following [former Red Sox third baseman] Wade Boggs as a kid,” Parr explained in a phone interview. “And he joined the Red Sox in the ’80s, and I’ve been a fan ever since.” (Source: Boston.com)

Thus there's Pedroia Street. And Varitek Drive. Eovaldi Avenue. And, of course, Boggs Way. (All great players, by the way. Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek are in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. And Nathan Eovaldi was a key player on the 2018 World Series championship team.)

The opportunity to name streets must be one of the funner aspects of Parr's job. And he went to town. 

“I thought it was just going to be kind of a fun idea to have something I could see every day that’s related to the Red Sox,” he said. “No one really gave me any pushback. I chose players that I have a connection with as I’ve been watching, and then some historical names like Fisk and Pesky and Remy, just to pay homage to some of the older guys as well.”

There was some pushback on Pesky Lane from someone not familiar with the great Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox Hall of Famer and someone who was associated with the Sox for over 60 years. (His number was retired.) The guy just associated the word pesky with annoyance. Parr set him straight. 

Jerry Remy is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. Carlton Fisk is in the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame. Both of their numbers are retired. 

As for why so many other Red Sox greats didn't make the naming cut: Williams, Ortiz, and Martinez - three Hall of Famers - have common names that were already in use in town. Parr hasn't ruled out naming a street after Yastrzemski. He can always use Yaz instead. 

For Ted Williams, he might want to consider Splender Splinter or Teddy Ballgame. Big Papi would be obvious for Ortiz. There's nothing that obvious for Martinez (one of my personal favorites among Red Sox players). Maybe Petey isn't already in use. 

Anway, this sort of street naming isn't that out of the ordinary in Utah, where:

...quirky street names are actually pretty common around the greater Salt Lake region. In Herriman and other nearby cities and towns, you can find neighborhoods whose street names pay homage to “The Lord of the Rings,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wines, authors, Arthurian legends, and even “Wayne’s World.”

Wayne's World!!! Never would I ever, for Petey's sake, live on a street named for Wayne's World. Or Marvel superheroes, for that matter. To each his own.

But I'd be more than happy to live on Pesky Lane. Just as long as it was in Boston and not Herriman, Utah.

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Image Source: Boston.com Facebook

Guinness Adjudicator. Now there's a job for you.

I have a post coming up in which I pinkslip about a young woman (an influencer) whose company specializes in running over-the-top travel and events. One of the recent events she came up with made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest champagne bottle service presentation. Who even knew this was something one would compete for? 

There are, of course, dumber records than number of champagne corks popped. Like walking on beer bottles. Stuffing matches up your nose. And wearing the most ever pairs of socks put on in 30 seconds. (I've put on two pairs, which may or may not have taken 30 seconds to accomplish, but for the record, the record is 28 pairs.) 

But what I found interesting in doing a bit of poking around regarding Guinness, is that there is a professional position involved in all this record setting, and it's the job of Guinness Adjudicator. 

Based in 15 countries and speaking 18 languages, our 69 adjudicators are accomplished public speakers and are fully media-trained. They also create a highly effective focal point for photo opportunities and audience engagement.

If your event is taking place online or needs to reach multiple audiences in more than one location, our remote adjudicator services and video announcements are ideal for creating an air of prestige and positioning your online event as an authentic Guinness World Records attempt.

As well as verifying and announcing the record results, the adjudicator performs many other important roles including:

• Explaining the record guidelines and answering any questions ahead of the event
• Checking all measurements and any equipment required for the attempt
• Briefing stewards and carrying out spot checks (mass participation events only)
• Assessing and verifying the record attempt on the day
• Engaging the audience
• Participating in media interviews

Source: Guinness World Records 

Adjudicators are either staff members or contractors, and the pay doesn't sound all that great. According to the latest from ZipRecruiter, staffers make an average of about 62K (in Boston, $67K), but there's a pretty wide range of actual salaries. Contractors are paid by the gig, and can stand to make more. 

But what a strange job.

They make money because Guinness makes money from corporations who pay to have an adjudicator on hand so that they can make a backed-up claim in their marketing materials. E.g., Russell Stover set the record for the largest box of chocolates. For whatever reason, HSBC Global Procurement wanted to set an employee participation rate for "most people in a Mexican wave video relay." Lenovo? They set the record for "most laptops toppled in a domino fashion." What will they think of next?

Rather than ask what they would think of next, I tried to come up any records that the companies I worked for might have had a reasonable shot at setting.

While surely the record would have been broken by now, for its time, the product launch for Genuity's Black Rocket web-related services might have set the record for largest high-tech product launch expenditure that yielded nothing in return. (I believe that was the year before the company had its failed IPO - at the time the largest failed IPO in history - and started to descend into bankurptcy. Talk about bragging rights!)

One company I worked for had a product centered on IBM's OS/2 technology. (OS/2 was an operating system.) I think we could have set a record for how many times sales and marketing employees sat around pissing and moaning about our dependency on OS/2. Especially in the days after the cover story for one of the premiere tech magazines was about the demise of OS/2. The cover itself showed an Boot Hill style coffin labeled OS/2, with a lily on its top. Sigh.

I'm sure I could come up with a few more record setters that I was personally involved with back in the wayback of a day. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

I do know that I never would have had the interest, let alone the budget, for hiring an adjudicator to adjudicate a record for us. 

I'm sure that at some point Guinness will figure out how to replace its adjudicators with AI, setting some sort of record in the process - "most Guinness adjudicators laid off by an AI in 60 second time slot" - but for now I'm guessing their jobs are safe.

So if you like to travel, measure, promote, and adjudicate, there might be a job for you out there.

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Image Source: The Smithsonian

I love the smell of Play-Doh in the morning

Few smells are as evocative of my childhood as the unmistakable smell of Play-Doh.

In the latter stages of the 1950s Play-Doh became available, and my parents - no one's idea of early adopters - glommed on to it, and Play-Doh quickly became a staple in our house, showing up in everyone's Christmas stocking.  (Interesting, I just found out - thanks, Wikipedia - that Play-Doh began life as a putty used to remove coal soot stains from wallpaper. Demand dropped off when folks switched from coal to natural gas or oil for heating.)

Ah, the smell of Play-Doh. 

And I'm apparently not the only one that finds an olfactory Rosebud moment in Play-Doh. In fact, in 2018, Play-Doh maker Hasbro trademarked the smell, which the company:

...formally describes as a unique scent formed through the combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough. (Source: Hasbro)

I couldn't have come up with anything quite so wine-loverly. All I know is that my appreciation of the perfume that Play-Doh emits is the nose version of what a judge once said about smut. He couldn't quite describe it, but Potter Stewart said "I know it when I see it." Well, Play-Doh-wise: I know it when I breathe in that delectable aroma, an aroma that:

...makes the PLAY-DOH brand one of the few active and certainly most famous scent trademarks in the country.

On beyond the wonderful Play-Doh smell, I loved the fact that, when modeling clay came in dull, muted colors, Play-Doh was vibrant. Back in the day, it came in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. But as anyone who held a color wheel in kindergarten knew, with those colors you could make orange, green, and purple. Alas, you couldn't unmake the colors, so once you'd committed to those extra colors, you had less of the basics. 

Another advantage of Play-Doh over modeling clay was that it was more flexible, more pliable than clay. 

The only downside of Play-Doh was that if you didn't get it back into its cardboard container pdq - and if the jar wasn't hermetically sealed - it hardened up and got all crusty. You could quasi-restore it with a bit of water, but Play-Doh got stale fast. 

Play-Doh has, of course, morphed over the years with all sorts of brand extensions. For one thing, there are a lot more colors to work with, including pastels and sparkly ones. You can get all sorts of accessories, like cookie cutter molds, and there are kits along a lot of different themes: cooking, playing vet, etc. Inevitably, there are tie-ins to other kiddo brands, e.g., Peppa Pig Play-Doh kits. 

The company has also been climbing up the age ladder, with themed kits - Star Wars, Mandalorian - aimed at older kids and "kidults", 13 on up. 

And now "Hasbro is unveiling its most grown-up brand to date."

The new line comprises a series of modeling compound kits that guide users through the process of turning putty into floral arrangements designed to be displayed. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Unlike the Star Wars and Mandalorian, Blooms - the new product line - is aimed at crafters. Female crafters. 

Hasbro's CMO, Jason Bunge, has this to say about the market:

“We’re not manufacturing a new need state...We feel Blooms is meeting something that consumers are looking for.”

I'm only putting this bit in because of the term "new need state," which I guess is what we used to call a manufactured need. Anyway, Hasbro's marketing plans include:

...enlisting more than 200 creators, from professional influencers to niche fans of pottery, crafts or flower arranging. It’s also planning a full-day creator event in Brooklyn and hosting a hands-on crafting experience at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to stoke media buzz.

With Blooms, Hasbro may well be on to something. A lot of folks I know - including adults young and old - have taken up crafting with a vengance. It's engaging, stress-reducing, and entertaining, and, if the makers don't feel compelled to Insta everything they make, gets people away from their screens. (A while back, Legos launched a line of bouquet-crafting kits that are pretty pricey and have been pretty popular.)

Although I won't be buying a Blooms kit, I hope that Hasbro succeeds. As long as they don't try to tamper with the wonderfully evocative smell of Play-Doh. Reminds me of victory childhood, and I absolutely love it.

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Image Source: Smithsonian Mag