Encore! Encore!

I see it whenever I'm on the train toing-and-froing my sister Trish's n Salem. I see it whenever my brother Rich and I are making a periodic trek to Bertucci's in Medford. 

If you're anywhere near it, it's hard to miss Encore Boston Harbor, looming up over everything around it. Which ain't much.

This casino has now been here for 7 years.

I've been meaning to get there, if only for a look-see, but the closest I've gotten is a look-see out a train car or car car window. And if I ever do get there, it will be via water shuttle, which is kind of a cool way to get to a casino. I guess.

And I will go there, if only because I do like gawking. It's just that gambling's not my thing. The few times I've been to casinos, it's been for however long ten dollars lasts on the quarter slots. 

When Wynn Resorts decided to take a gamble on Boston, the location they chose for Encore was the decidedly unprepossessing blue collar town of Everett, an industrial "suburb" that's not exactly the sort of place that comes to mind when you hear the word "suburb." The only cool (or cool-adjacent) thing about the location is that it's on the Mystic River which, let's face it, is one fabulous name for a river, no?

When you take the water shuttle:

...it passes former scrapyards and gritty warehouses, remnants of the Mystic’s industrial heritage. Then, as it approaches a bend in the river, a bronze and glass tower appears, the single word “Encore” shimmering in gold script at its top like a $2.6 billion monument to the idea that everything in its glow, including the hardscrabble city of Everett, would be transformed.

That was the promise of owner Wynn Resorts, when it opened seven years ago. The casino would replace a contaminated industrial waterfront that had sat empty for a century, create thousands of union jobs, generate millions in tax revenue, and build a luxury destination that would bring visitors to a long-overlooked corner of Greater Boston to stay, eat, and, of course, gamble.

...After winning a hotly contested license to build Greater Boston’s only casino in 2014, Wynn executives promised a destination that would attract travelers from around the world, with high-quality dining and nightlife and entertainment “unlike anything the region has ever seen.” It wasn’t just marketing talk; it’s partly why they prevailed, with state gaming officials weighing the broader boost it would bring to the region’s economy. (Source: Boston Globe)

Let's see how all this has panned out.

When it was being built, the Encore was definitely a boon for local union members in the construction trades. But as I'm writing this, over 1,300 of those promised union workers are striking for wages and benefits that are comparable to what Boston hotels pay. (The local political establishment is pretty much with the workers, and the unions have - here's hoping - put a bit of a dent in operations, even though some positions (like those that take care of the gambling) aren't unionized/striking. My brother-the-union-guy (ret.) has spent a bit of time on the picket line. And I will be deferring any visit to Encore until the strike has settled. Among other things, the free water shuttle isn't running, so there's that.)

As for any transformation of Everett? Hundreds of Everett-onians/Everett-ites are employed there. The environmental cleanup that was part of the development has surely been welcome. Everett has received over $50M a year of payments in lieu of taxes. And there's promises of a new commuter rail stop, which I'm hoping will not be on the Newburyport/Rockport line I take to Salem, as there's already a quick stop in Chelsea, a few minutes out of Boston.) 

But has Everett been transformed? Not from what I can see. (And I have no idea what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has done with the $1B in taxes that Encore has put in our coffers. I'm sure it was put to good use.)

As for creating an international destination that would bring in visitors from around the world?

That, apparently, ain't happening.

International visitors to Boston are nothing new. We're in the Top 10 of destinations that foreign travelers come to in the US, but they're here for Boston. Not for Everett. 

Alas:

Encore lacks the sort of amenities that draw non-gamblers and multiday visitors. With little available land, there’s no golf course, pool, or shopping mall. Nor is there a theater or arena for major concerts or big comedians to perform; state law, designed to protect nearby concert venues, prohibits Encore from operating on-site entertainment facilities of between 1,000 and 3,500 seats.

What Encore is is pretty much a casino for locals. One that faces a lot of compettion from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the well-established tribal casinos in Connecticut that have a lot more of the amenities that draw visitors. There are also casinos in other nearby states. And with all the sports betting opportunities out there, you don't need to go to a casino to satisfy your gamblng jones. 

There are some high rollers who frequent the joint, the most recognizable being professional athletes, who certainly have the coin to fancy sup and high roll at a casino (where they're likely comped on the fancy supping). 

But things may look up yet. The New England Revolution are supposedly building a soccer stadium in Everett, but that won't be opening for a few more years.  

Meanwhile, once the strike's over, I will at least consider taking the water shuttle over, ready, willing, and able to spend my ten bucks on the slots.

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Image Source: Wikipedia

LL Bean steps out

I've been an L.L. Bean fan for a good many years now. 

In 1972, before my friend Joyce and I embarked on our cross-country camping trip, we made a pilgrimage to their store in Freeport, Maine, and bought a tent and some other camping gear. I also brought a hunter-green rain jacket, which saw me through the cross-country trek (2 months) and the longer Euro trip (5 months) the following year.

I don't remember L.L. Bean being that big a deal back in the day. I think it was mostly a New England thing, and it was mainly camping gear, hunting/fishing stuff, birdseye sweaters, tote bags, and duck boots.

I did have a birdseye sweater at one point, but I was never one for the duck boots. I did try the low cut version once, to wear in the rain, but they were pretty much the most uncomfortable shoe I'd ever owned. I think I wore them once.

But I have plenty of L.L. Bean clothing: jeans, tees, turtle necks, cords, sweaters, shirts, khakis, fleeces, parkas, hoodies, PJs, slippers. And tote bags. In multiple sizes. 

I've been to that flagship store in Freeport a few times, and to their local stores (Boston, Burlington) a few times as well. But I'm mostly a catalog shopper. 

Although I haven't been up there in years, and have no plans to get to L.L. Bean's mothership any time soon, I was still interested to read that the store has been undergoing a total do-over, and was recently re-opened. I was unaware that it had been closed for two years. (The reno had cost $50M. That's a lot of duck boots - high or low cut.)

The makeover isn't just for the flagship store:

The bet goes well beyond Freeport. L.L. Bean is opening stores in new markets, refreshing its classic products, courting younger shoppers, and looking for new ways to connect with customers — all as it tries to break out of a decade of sluggish growth without losing what made it beloved in the first place. (Source: Boston Globe)

Because L.L. Bean is a local company, and because it's a privately (family) held company that hasn't been scarfed up by some ravenous PE crew hell bent on wringing out any profits while firing as many employees as they can and wrecking the brand, I'm rooting for L.L. Bean.

I'm all in favor of refreshing classic products and appealing to the youngs, but I hope they don't do too much refreshing. I hope they remember us loyal olds, even though we're dying out and even though we maybe don't order all that much anymore, mostly because we're still wearing clothing we bought decades ago. 

I just got rid of a pair of khaki capri pants that I've had for at least 25 years. I know they're that old because I have a picture of me and my sisters, taken shortly after my mother's death in 2001, when we gathered at Kath's house for a couple of days R&R. In the picture we're all wearing the same L.L. Bean capris and different color versions of the same L.L. Bean checked shirt. My capris were still in pretty good shape. I was just sick of them and haven't worn them in a couple of years. 

Among the innovations L.L. Bean has introduced is letting folks add phrases to their tote bags, and not just stick to initials and names. 

Now younger consumers are opting for phrases such as “cool mom” or “hot mess.” (Others are too provocative to print in a family-owned newspaper.)

Oh, you kids!

But I can get behind this, as long as - in memory of my husband - they still sell plaid flannel shirts. 

The company is also emphasizing that some of their products - most notably those iconic duck boots and tote bags - are home grown: made in Maine. 

As for the newly tricked out Freeport store, they're fulling getting behind personalization:

An entire floor is devoted to customization, where shoppers can embellish totes, coats, denim, and other items with embroidery, keychains, bandanas, and patches that lean into New England identity.

Which should definitely appeal to the Instagram all-about-me generation. Not that I didn't love personalization when I was a kid. Not much was personalized back then, as we all wore hand me downs, and it was hard to hand them down something with someone else's name on it. But two of my most memorable childhood possessions were a little red umbrella with Maureen written on it, and a very cute tee-shirt that featured little bears and Maureen spelled out in peppermint striped letters. (My mother must have used it for dust rags once I outgrew it. She was hardly going to have my brother Tom, who was next in line, wear it. And I know I never had to wear my sister's peppermint lettering Kathleen tee.)

With the newly jazzed up store, it looks like the company is trying to make the store a destination. (As if it's very L.L. Bean-ness isn't destination-y enough!)

There’s a trout pond, a tank of fish kids can view through a crawl space, an expanded café, and a children’s area modeled after Maine summer camps. They expanded their green space in front of the store for community events and outdoor programs. There will even be a beer garden with local brews.

L.L. Bean is also expanding its retail footprint, focusing on opening new stores in the Midwest and Southeast.

I wish them luck, but hope they never lose their New England charm. 

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Image Source: LL Bean

For kiddos with a really sophisticated aesthetic

If you have kids or grandkids, or know anyone who has kids or grandkids, or have ever walked by a daycare center and seen what's in the playground, you will be familiar with Little Tikes toys. They're cute. They're fun. And they're brightly colored. Brightly primary colored. 

Kids, as anyone who's ever had a kid or a grandkid, or known anyone who had a kid or a grandkid, are drawn to toys with bright colors. 

Even back in olden days, when playing Mr. Potato Head actually required your mother's giving you a potato, kids wanted the Radio Flyer red wagon. We wanted the shiny blue bike. The bright yellow hula hoop. We loved playing Cootie. All those bright shiny colors. 

In my house, we had a few giant sets of wooden building/alphabet blocks, all of which came in large mesh sacks. The OG set was made up of very nice alphabet blocks, primarily plain wood with muted red, blue, yellow, and green lettering in trim. They were great, and we had a lot of fun playing with them. And we also had a sack of non-alphabet blocks - plain wood that may have been painted a muted blue, red, and green but had faded to nothingness. 

Then one Christmas, one of my brothers got a new sack o'blocks: bright purple, red, and yellow. We'd have all the blocks laid out on the braided run in the family room, and we'd all go for the newbies. It helped that the set included cylinders. But mostly it was the vibrant colors that set them apart.

Little Tikes toys didn't exist when I was a kid, but nowadays they're ubiquitous. And it isn't just Little Tikes. PlaySkool. Play-doh. Fisher Price. Legos. They all use bright colors, with some pastel pink thrown in for the girlies. 

But now Little Tikes has just introduced a new concept.

The Little Tikes Cloud Collection, which launches Sept. 15, is aimed at allowing parents "to create inviting play spaces that fit within the colors and design of every home without sacrificing the fun kids love," the company said in a news release.

"The collection was designed with both children and parents in mind, and responds to the growing popularity of neutral, design-conscious children's products," Little Tikes said. (Source: USA Today)

Because nothing says fun like white, grey, and beige toys.  

The new collection is presumably in response to the "beige moms" trend, "beige moms" being "a term for parents who curate their children's toys and clothes with exclusively neutral colors."

Dressing and toying your kids with "exclusively neutral colors?" Yikes, just yikes!

Reaction on social media was mostly from those who aren't in favor of this curated childhood thang:

"Mom here! this is awful & depressing, kids need color!" one person wrote on TikTok, while another commented, "Nothing says childhood like 47 shades of oatmeal."

..."Why are we taking color out of kid’s lives??" one [Instagram] user commented.

"Sad beige baby toys. Babies need color in their lives! Sad beige parents sucking out all the fun," said another.

True confession: I may or may not have gotten one of my nieces an environmentally-friendly upscale wooden dollhouse that was just plain wood. It came from a fancy toy store that specialized in toys for folks who hate plastic and watch PBS. I truly can't remember whether I bought it or just considered it. 

But I didn't stick with plain wood toys. I went all in on VW Beetles for Barbies. Groovy Girls' everything, in the fab wild colors they used - orange, chartreuse, bubble gum pink, and royal purple; lots of purple - for the doll clothing and accessories. (Just saw that the Groovy Girls had been discontinued in 2018, but are now back. Yay!)

In response to the pushback, Little Tikes has emphasized that they're not replacing their classics, but are just giving those "beige moms" something to curate: 

"The Cloud Collection is simply a new option for families who love a softer palette," it said.

Wonder if these curators allow their kids to have colored markers. If they're not verboten, I can see the kiddos going after those bland, depressing toys with a vengeance. 

It'll be interesting to see whether the Cloud Collection takes off, or ends up in the discount bin. 

Oops! (I see a lawsuit or two in this future.)

Developers in New York have been converting what had been Pfizer HQ in Midtown Manhattan to residential use. (Pfizer has decamped to a spiffier, hipper more happen' new build in NYC's Hudson Yards.) The old Pfizer building, located in fairly prime real estate on East 42nd, is being turned into 1600, with 25 percent of the units designated for affordable housing.

The conversion has been interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it's New York City's (and maybe even the country's) largest ever commercial-to-residential conversion; and second, they were adding 19 more floors to one part of the existing structure, and a few new floors will be topping off the more recent, higher section. (The original building, over 100 years old, had ten floors; the new part of the building, constructed in the early 1960's, had 32 or 33 floors - I've seen both figuress.)

In order to add floors to the OG structure, and to the newer 1960s-vintage building, they needed to add support columns.

In early July, a couple of columns buckled and the building started to sag. It was in danger of becoming "dangerously unstable." The building and it surrounds were evacuated, and construction was shut down. 

Initially, it was reported that only two columns were compromised. 

But a review of public documents obtained by The Times through a records request to the New York City Department of Buildings shows that steel plates were missing or inadequate on eight more columns that were supposed to be strengthened to support floors being added above.

In the documents, the insufficient reinforcements were referred to as “missing/partial length,” which could include missing plates intended to strengthen steel columns, or smaller plates — called “stiffener plates” — to ensure structural continuity through floors. Plates that were shorter than designed could also have been mistakenly put up. (Source: NY Times)

Hmmmm. That doesn't sound good.  

Someone was supposed to be checking out those columns to make sure they were up to spec. As Daniel Linzell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute's engineering dean, noted:

“It appears that whoever’s eyes were supposed to be confirming that the columns’ strengthening was completed were not.” He said he did not believe that this happens regularly in the construction industry.

Good to know!

“This appears to be a lack of oversight,” he said.

I'd say. 

Shutting down a project of this magnitude is costly, even if it's only for a short time. (The structure has been declared stable.) Then there's having to go in and rectify what should have been done right the first time. 

The columns buckling mid-construction is actually a godsend. They get to make the repairs before anyone's living in the building. Imagine if it had been occupied? 

I'm no clairvoyant, but I can see a ton of fingerpointing and plenty of lawsuits before this one is settled. Financial and reputational damages, coming right up!

And how'd you like to be a member of the sales and marketing team responsible for selling/renting these 1,600 apartments? This situation has got to knock prices down, one would think. And, whatever the price, you'd have to be desperate to take a flyer on a building that had experienced a mini-collapse. I sure wouldn't be comfortable living there, hoping every creak wasn't signaling a floor caving in. Or something.

The thought of a building collapse is particularly front-of-mind, given that the recent 25th anniversary of 9/11 has brought up all those images of the World Trade Center Towers going to ashes and dust. (By the way, according to my construction engineer brother Tom, the Towers were well built, and actually held up remarkably well. It's just that they hadn't been engineered for the unimaginable - huge airliners, fully loaded with jet fuel, deliberately crashing into them.)

Not that I'm ever going to be living in Manhattan, but a newer build and likely a much higher rise than the 5-storey, 160 year old building I've been living in for 35 years now, is in my future. Hope nothing collapses around my ears!

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Image Source: Reddit

What's Danish for holy moly?

A fellow in the small northern Danish city of Rebild was digging around in his backyard, making way for a terrace he's planning on putting in. After a couple of hours of "hard gardening work," his spade hit something and he heard a strange noise.

The backyard gardener (who wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons soon to become obvious) figured it was a piece of old fencing, or a pottery shard. He started rooting around with his hands and began pulling out some pretty magnificent buried treasure - 700 pieces (over 40 pounds worth) of Viking Era silver objects.  

Among the pieces were a small Thor's hammer, bracelets, many silver bars, cut-up objects and 47 coins, some whole and some fragmented, the [Nordjyske Museermuseum] group said in a statement. (Source: WCVB)

Wow! What's Danish for holey moley?

I haven't done much gardening, but before my green thumb neighbor took over our building's front garden, I used to plant crocuses, daffodils, and tulips every fall so we'd have a colorful spring in our little front "yard." But all I ever unearthed when I was troweling away were earth worms. Oh, and once I found that a box turtle had taken up residence. 

But no spectacular finds. Nothing from the 1860's, the vintage of our building, let alone something from the before times. 

As for the Danish discovery, it's estimated that the treasure trove has been there since the 10th century. Now that's a while back.

And since some of the coins were of Anglo-Saxon and Arabic origin, it's pretty safe to say that those Vikings got around. Which we knew, of course, given that Leif Erikson was the first European to step toe in North America, hundreds of years before "we" were "discovered" by Christopher Columbus, whose day we will be celebrating shortly. Or not. 

And anyone who's been in Dublin with their eyes open for more than a day are aware that Vikings founded that city way in the wayback. 

This year has apparently been a banner on for the discovery of Viking hoards in the Scandinavian countries. 

Last month, Kalle Lappinen was buzzing around southern Finland with his metal detector and he detected 10 pounds of Viking Era coins and jewelry. Norway also posted quite a find when last April their country's biggest hoard ever - nearly 3,000 silver coins - was unearthed.

However, none of the record-setting finds of 2026—the 10 pounds of Viking silver from Finland, the thousands of Viking Age silver coins in Norway, nor the 40-pound Viking hoard in Denmark—can claim to be the largest Viking hoard ever discovered in Scandinavia or the world. The largest Viking treasure ever found remains a 150-pound hoard discovered on the Swedish island of Gotland. Known as the Spillings Hoard, the 1999 discovery featured more than 14,000 silver coins. In that find, most of the coins came from Islamic countries or other European sources, which allowed archaeologists and historians to reconstruct trade routes and learn the sources of Viking Age wealth. (Source: Popular Mechanics)

One interesting aspect of the finds is how contemporary the designs of the Viking objects are. When you look at items individually, they aren't that far off from the modern Scandinavian aesthetic. A look that has always appealed to me. (I'd be quite happy to live in a mid-century modern house furnished entirely in "Danish Modern.")

By the way, holy moly in Danish is hold da helt op, which translates back as "wow."

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 Image Source: Nordjyske Museer via Archaeology Magazine

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