I hate to be judge-y, but...

Fahim Saleh was an American success story. Born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents, he was an immigrant who grew up in New York State and graduated from Bentley University. From the jump, he was entrepreneurial. His first success, while still in high school, was a goofy site called Prank Calls, which automated, well, prank calls. (It got some heat because it was - surprise-surprise used for harrassment, not innocent 'is your refrigerator running' pranking. Anyway, Saleh made some money of it, and plowed it back into more worthy ventures, founding (and getting venture money for) ride share apps in underserved (poor) countries: Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria.

He was only 33, and living a successful tech bro life in a swank Manhattan apartment.

Until, in June of 2020, he was killed and dismembered by one Tyrese Haspil, who had been his personal assistant and who was just 21 at the time he killed his former boss. 

Haspil apparently killed Saleh to cover up the fact that he had been embezzling from Saleh pretty much from when he'd begun working for him a couple of years prior. He used the money to buy lavish gifts for his new girlfriend. 

Less than a year into the scheme, in May 2019, Haspil - figuring out that he was going to be caught - quit working for Saleh. But somehow managed to keep funneling money out of Saleh's account and into his own. 

Haspil's fears were (partially) realized in January 2020, when:

Mr. Haspil’s scheme was detected. Mr. Saleh confronted Mr. Haspil over a $35,000 debt, prosecutors said, and offered to settle it with a two-year repayment plan, instead of bringing criminal charges against him. (Source: NY Times)

No criminal charges? Talk about Mr. Nice Guy!

Mr. Haspil agreed.

And why wouldn't he? 

But Mr. Saleh did not know that Mr. Haspil had stolen far more from him in a different scheme, involving a fraudulent PayPal account. Mr. Haspil began paying him back with those stolen funds even as he continued operating that scheme, eventually amassing about $400,000 in stolen funds, prosecutors said. 

Fearing that the larger theft would be discovered, Haspil decided to murder Saleh, and put a ton of research time into how-to. (When will these morons/killers figure out that those google searches - like "anatomy of the human neck" - may end up tripping them up in court. Duh!) And, based on his research, Haspil went out and bought everything he needed to commit his crime, including contractor-grade trash bags and a Swiffer. 

At the same time he was planning the murder, Haspil was parallel processing, planning:

...a birthday celebration for his girlfriend, buying her luxury handbags and shoes, a private yacht tour, and renting a luxury Airbnb in the Soho neighborhood, according to the release. (From People.)

Four days after Saleh was killed, Haspil was apprehended at that luxury Airbnb.  

And now, despite a defense that rested on the theory that Haspil was suffering from a bad case of "unconditional love" for the French exchange student GF he wanted to impress, and "extreme emotional disturbance," and should only have been charged with manslaughter, Haspil has been found guilty of both his thievery and the gruesome pre-meditated murder of his boss. 

Sam Roberts, Mr. Haspil’s lawyer, said on Monday that he was disappointed by the verdict. He acknowledged that Mr. Haspil had committed the crime and said the killer felt remorse. “We fully believe that Tyrese Haspil is not solely and only the worst thing that he’s done in his life,” he said. “We hope that the court will understand that there are mitigating factors here.” (Back to the NY Times)

I hate to be judge-y - and I sure don't want to be the one to judge people (or be judged) on some isolated one-off rotten deed - but Tyrese Haspil is, in fact, going to "solely and only" defined by "the worst thing that he's done in his life." Embezzlement is one thing. Awful, but maybe the kid's a young knucklehead who's head-over-heels. But researching how to commit a hideous murder well in advance, and carrying it out - against a man who had seemingly been nothing but good to you? (Not pressing charges on a $35K theft, FFS!) That's right up there in the "worst thing" Hall of Fame.

Haspil will be sentenced in a few weeks, and is unlikely to ever see the light of day. 

I truly wish that he gets the mental healthcare he clearly needs. I wish him a productive time in prison, that he becomes a model prisoner, that he takes advantage of whatever opportunities he can find there to learn and grow, that he finds religion or whatever. He's a young man. Maybe in 40 years, he'll be ready and able to rejoin society.

But until and unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to judge him solely and only on what he did to Fahim Saleh. And for that he deserves a good long prison sentence. Lock 'im up!

I can hear my mother now...

Well, the summer vacation season is winding down. Even around here, some of the school systems are back already. But, even though we'll have plenty of summery weather in September, Labor Day is just around the corner. And the curtain's coming down on the Summer of '24.

Anyway, I saw an article in The New York Times last week about families going into debt to bring their kids to Disney World.

Which, of course, put me in mind of a) the family vacations I grew up with; and b) one of my mother's pet peeves.

a) Our vacations were pretty simple.

Every other year, we went to Chicago to visit my mother's family. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of those trips. We always spent a few days at my grandmaother's very Chicago prairie-style, sweltering bungalow in the city, doing touristy things like swimming in Lake Michigan and going to the Museum of Science and Industry. Doing untouristy things like dropping in at my (late) grandfather's grocery store or stopping by the house around the corner which had a yard cluttered with all sorts of elf statues. (Elves playing cards on mushrooms, elves on swings in the trees. It was an absolute magical dreamscape.) Extended family members - all sorts of great aunts and second cousins - would drop by to see us, including some recent arrivals, DPs (displaced persons) from the old country who my grandmother had sponsored.

And then we went out to The Lake, my grandmother's summer house, which was on Sand Lake (better name would have been Muck Lake), in Lake Villa, about 50 miles north of Chicago. There we would meet up with my Aunt Mary's family, and our fabulous Dineen cousins, who were roughly our age, so the house was crammed with kids. My youngest aunt and uncle were only 6 and 10 years older than me, so they were just slightly bigger kids. During those visits, there could be as many as 20 people crammed in a house with one bathroom. Somehow we survived. (We bathed in the lake, and probably did a lot of peeing in there, too.)

Oh, what a paradise it seemed. Lazing in the lake in big old inner tubes, making hollyhock ladies (all you need is a hollyhock and a bobby pin), playing endless games of rummy on the big porch that ran the length of the house. We didn't have elves like Grandma's neighbors did, but my late grandfather had liked his lawn ornaments. So we got to enjoy the fake wishing well, and a miniature lighthouse with tiny colored glass windows that must have opened, because I remember looking in to see all sorts of dead bugs. The only downside to a trip to The Lake was gagging down the wax beans that came from Grandma's garden. (My trick: floating them in a mouthful of milk and sluicing them down without actually having to taste them.)

To get to Chicago, we would either drive or take the train, which, I guess, depended on how flush my parents were at the time.

In the off years, we sometimes went to the Cape for a week or two, where we rented the modest Bass River cottage of my parents friends Mae and Nemo.

If we didn't go to the Cape in the off years, we did day trips. One would be to Nantasket Beach or, in later years, Horseneck Beach. Nantasket was fabulous, as it had an amusement park (Paragon Park) and Lahage's Salt Water Taffy. But even back then, the beach was narrow, and at high tide the beach shrunk considerably. Horseneck lacked amusements and taffy, but the beach was very nice - long and wide - and the changing facilities were brand new.

Another day trip would be to someplace doable in a day. Bennington, VT. Old Sturbridge Village.

After a couple of day trips, all my father wanted to do was sit in the backyard reading on the chaise longue, taking a break on good days to go up to Sargent Pond, just up the road in Leicester, for a swim and an ice cream cone.

We never did anything that was very exciting, that's for sure. Our vacations were exceedingly modest, but they were what the family could afford. And they were all absolutely wonderful. My Chicago/Lake memories are cherished. So are the Cape and day trip memories.

Of course, back then, no one (at least in our social circle) did anything very exotic. My friends went for a week or two to the Cape, or Hampton Beach. If they went to a faraway place, it was to see family. My friend Kathy's family had an aunt and uncle in DC, and one summer they visited them. My friend Susan's older cousin Marcia and her husband moved to SF, and Susan and her sister got to fly out there for a visit. (I was so excited, you'd think I was going along in the baggage. Most of my friends had never been on an airplane.)

And, of course, there was no Disney World at the time.

There was a Disneyland, and I remember watching the opening (on our B&W TV) and hoping that someday I could go there. (I did, when I was 22, and I was very happy to ride in those teacups and drive a flivver on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.) But no one went to Disneyland, unless they lived in California or something. No one I knew, anyway.

Which leads me to b) one of my mother's pet peeves.

There was not a lot of discussion/awareness of finances in our house. We lived comfortably; we had what we needed. There were people who lived in nicer houses. Sometimes we drove through their neighborhoods to ogle. My assumption was always that they probably weren't Catholics. But that was them. We were fine where we were. And we knew that there were plenty of people who had less than we did. Plenty of them were in our parish.

When I was in high school, a scholarship girl at the "fancy" Catholic girl school where the doctor-lawyer-funeral parlor daughters went, I became more aware of economic differences, but as a younger kid, I didn't see it at all. (Even in high school, my closest friend was a cop's daughter, also on scholarship.)

While there wasn't a ton of discussion of money in our house - other than that you didn't spend money frivolously - we were all well aware of my mother's pet peeve: no one should ever go into debt to finance a vacation.

Someone in her acquaintanship had done so, and she was forever bringing it up as the nth degree of foolishness. She never named names. Were they family members? Friends? Who was she talking about? I had my suspciion (friends, not family) and wish I'd asked her at some point, but never did.

How could you enjoy a vacation knowing you hadn't paid for it upfront?

You took on a  mortgage for your house. You might have a car loan. You might use your "charge plate" at the store for some reason, but you paid off the bill the second it arrived in the mail.

Borrow to go on a vacation?

What sort of imprudent ninny would do that?

Not my family, that's for sure.

But it's a different world now. People have credit cards, and charge everything. And there's Disney Land AND Disney World, and a divine-right expectation is that, in order to have a happy childhood, your kid will get to see one of them.

Thus, the families who went on trips they couldn't really afford and were happy to tell the NY Times that they were doing so.

Of course, you can't really blame them. Who doesn't want their little ones to meet Mickey and Elsa, etc. Sure, Disney is wildly expensive. But Disney is clean, pretty wholesome, and, let's face it, FUN.

But, but, but...

How can you enjoy a trip, knowing you'll be paying it off for months after. And, yes, I know, it's easier to pay off the trip than it is to save up ahead of time. There's always something to spend that spare $100 on, as much as you want to put it aside in the trip fund.

Still, it seems pretty crazy to go into $6K worth of debt to take a two-year old kid to Disney World because the mom "wanted his first visit to the park to be special." Of course, the kid's only two, so he won't remember a thing. But whatever.

This mom is not, of course, the only one going on a borrowed vacay.

In June, LendingTree, a financial firm, published the results of a survey of over 2,000 people that found that 45 percent of parents with children under 18 who have gone to Disney went into debt for the trip. (Source: NY Times)

Given how many millions of families trke each year to Disney World (with 17.1 million visitors in 2022, the largest amusement park in the world) or (second runner up with 16.8 visitors that year) Disneyland, that's a ton of families going into debt.

Not that I don't get the desire to take your kids to Disney. It really is magical. I would have eaten Disney up with a spoon when I was a kid. 

“Disney does carry a level of nostalgia for people,” said Rachel Cruze, who hosts a personal finance podcast and wrote a personal finance book with her father, Dave Ramsey, geared toward parents. “It’s a lot of people’s childhoods. When you can go to one singular place and have so many of those memories and those characters come to life, it does bring a level of joy.”

And I'm sure if I had had kids, I would have made the Orlando run with the kiddos. Still...

I keep hearing my mother. Even if there'd been Disneyworld when I was a kid. Even if there'd been credit cards. No way our family would have gone to Disneywherever. It would have cost too much, and my parents would sure as hell not have gone into debt to go there. 

Thank god we had Chicago. Thank god we had Paragon Park.

Other places...

The population of my home town, Worcester, Massachusetts, was a bit over 200,000 when I was born. Throughout my childhood, that population drifted down as the factories that had built the city shrunk or shuttered. But although for as long as I can remember, I wanted out of Worcester and into a big city, I recall Worcester as vibrant and bustling.

Despite this bustle - downtown (or down city, as we called it) had lots of stores, coffee shops, movie theaters - I seemed to have been born knowing that I wanted something bigger and better.  

I don't recall the first time I went into Boston - likely for a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in the summer of 1960, when I was ten - but my occasional visits there were plenty exciting, and I was delighted to head there for college. (If Boston was rundown and lacking in the late 1960's-early 1970's, I didn't notice.)

Even as a very small child, I was enthralled by the city of Chicago, where we went every other summer to visit family. Every moment spent in the big city was thrilling to me. 

My first trip - via bus - to NYC was in April of 1967. I can still remember the excitement of being on that Trailways bus, heading down gritty Amsterdam Avenue to the rundown Port Authority station in midtown. 

BIG CITIES, YEAH! I always knew I wanted out of Worcester. 

And that was wanting out of a place where there was actually critical mass of stuff to do and see.

However much I wanted out, I never felt good about Worcester's decline, never gloated over it, never felt smug. I felt awful when Denholm's, our main - and our very own - department store closed. (I still have - and regularly use - a gorgeous covered casserole dish my mother got me there.) I felt terrible when all those Worcester factories closed, including Thompson Wire Company, where my father worked in the mill before being promoted to sales. The factory was near where I grew up, and walking by, it was exciting to feel the thrum of the machines whirling out those coils of fine wire, looking in the basement windows to watch the wire drawers at work. And I can still get emotional when I think of the White House restaurant, the nearest Friendly's, the Ted's Big Boy's where I had my first waitress job, closing. 

And I've been delighted to watch Worcester's resurgence (from a modest distance, anyway): bio-tech and med hub, foodie paradise, minor league baseball mecca.

But Worcester always had, as they say, good bones: colleges and universities, a core of loyal civic promoters, proximity to Boston. Plus critical mass. It wasn't going to drop from a population of over 200,00 to a ghost town now, was it? And it didn't. The current population - 206K - is Worcester's highest ever.

I kid with my siblings that I'm going to end up there. They just roll their eyes, but it is not unimaginable.

Other places aren't as fortunate as Worcester. 

They're smaller, more remote, less endowed. And they are ending up as ghost towns.

Which was depressingly brought back to me by an article I saw a while back in the Washington Post that focused on the town of Sheffield, Pennsylvania.

Across rural Pennsylvania, there is a deepening sense of fear about the future as population loss accelerates. The sharp decline has put the state at the forefront of a national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture. (Source: WaPo)

I think that small town as the culture pillar has been largely exaggerated. The US has been more urban than rural since 1920. But the myth of the sweet and wholesome, all American life lived in Andy Hardy's small town of Carvel, in Andy and Opie Taylor's Mayberry, prevails. Despite today's roughly 80/20 urban-suburban to rural mix, it's those rural small towns that always seem to dictate what the real America is.

If they're the real America, the reality is grim. Despite a small uptick in rural living during the pandemic:

A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.

Sheffield PA is in the middle of nowhere. The nearest city of any size, Erie PA (pop. 93,500), is 75 miles away. 

Once home to the largest sawmill east of the Mississippi, it's been on the skids for quite a while. ("It is now home to 1,805 residents, a 23 percent decline compared with 20 years ago.")

The town’s decline started decades ago as the lumber mills and tannery shops started closing. But it’s been only in the last decade or so that the full weight of the community’s future challenges began to be felt in intimate ways.

Sheffield’s only ambulance was taken out of service about two years ago, around the same time the community’s only day care closed due to low enrollment. Starting this school year, teens are being bused to a distant high school because there are not enough teachers to staff the local one.

Residents are peeved that the local bank branch and liquor store have closed. The organizers of the town’s beloved Johnny Appleseed Festival recently announced they don’t have enough volunteers or money to continue. And many of Sheffield’s churches no longer have full-time priests or pastors, deepening residents’ sense of malaise.

 What else has gone out of Sheffield, sucking life with it? 

A bowling alley. Car dealerships. Doctors. Pool halls. 

Today, downtown boasts "a small grocery store, a 150-year-old bar, one restaurant, two convenience stores, an antique shop and a small video-gambling room." The bar, by the way, closes at 9 p.m. for lack of business. So Sheffielders can't even drown their sorrows. 

Each mornng, the school district buses high school students to a larger school 30-minutes away, where they study core subjects. In the afternoon, they're back to pokey Sheffield High to take their electives. The Class of 2024 had 32 students. It's probably a matter of time before they close Sheffield High. In the 1980's, high school football games drew 1,000 fans.

What can you do to keep a dying town from dying? 

There are only so many prisons and landfills needed. So many meat processing plants. Only so many towns that can turn themselves into arts hub-lets, or places where work-from-homers actually want to live. What can be done to keep the Sheffields from dying out? What should be done?

I feel terrible for the folks living there, watching their town die.

Having grown up - having fled - Worcester, I know a tiny bit of how they feel. 

Sad, ain't it?

Amazing Amazon, cheese powder edition

A few weeks ago, I decided to make a King Arthur Flour recipe recommended to me by my friend Joyce, an excellent cook. The galette sounded delish - zucchini, tomatoes, ricotta - but the crust called for cheese powder.

Cheese powder? I'd never even heard of cheese powder. It was an optional ingredient, but I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I couldn't find it at my grocery store, but I may not have been looking in all the wrong places. E.g., baking needs. 

So I turned to Amazing Amazon. 

I'm a regular Amazon user. Not insanely so. Just regular regular. Most of the time, I try to find the object of my desire locally, brick & mortarly. Sometimes it's just not there. Other times, the object of my desire can be ordered by my locally, brick & mortarly outlet. But it just won't arrive as quickly as I need to get my needy little hands on it. 

So, cheese powder.

I wanted to make my galette the next morning, so I wanted it - not really needed it: optional ingredient, after all - the next morning. Early. Arriving at 10 p.m., the typical Amazon Prime guarantee, wasn't going to cut it. But for a few bucks extra, Amazon could get it here early early. One window was 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., the other was 8 a.m. to noon. Although I didn't like the idea of the delivery person buzzing my buzzer at 4 a.m., I grabbed the early slot. 

This meant that within 12 hours of when I ordered it, I was going to have my cheese powder.

This is absolutely amazing. 

Amazon, like Walmart, is a company that most of us love to hate and/or hate to love. With me, with Walmart, it's love to hate, even though I have been in a Walmart exactly one time in my life. With me, with Amazon, it's hate to love. And a lot of time I do hate to love it. 

My local indie didn't have an oldie-but-still-goodie collection of Heinrich Böll short stories. Ordering it through them would take forever, and I wanted it more quickly than forever. It wasn't available next-day-at-4 a.m. from Amazon, but it arrived (through a third party) in plenty of time to gift a friend. 

Ditto for the adapter I needed for a recent impromptu trip to Stockholm. I couldn't find my most-of-Europe adapter, and didn't have time to run to TJ Maxx and see what they had. So Amazon it was!

And I don't know where I would have gotten the bulk packages of granola bars and salty snacks we needed for the Juneteenth goody bags we gave to the guests at the homeless shelter where I volunteer. Thank you, Amazon...

Amazon may be ruining the world. Jeff Bezos may have way too much money for anyone's damned good. But you have to give the company (and, I guess, Jeff Bezos) credit for having set up such a brilliant logistics system, capable of the instant consumer gratification that all of us are sometimes looking for.

King Arthur Cheese Powder in hand - I wanted to stay brand consistent, and I was using King Arthur Flour - I went ahead with my galette. 

Surprisingly, for someone who loves to bake, I have never made a pie crust before.

Oh, I've made pies. And I've made quiches. But I've used pre-fab crusts.

My mother was a terrific pie-maker, and many decades ago, she tried to show me how to roll out a pie crust.

She attacked her ball o' dough with vigor, and with just a couple of swipes with the rolling pin, she'd have a near perfect crust rolled out.

In short order, my ball o' dough was sweaty, globs of it attached to the rolling pin. After I while, I'd had enough.

So I gave up on pie-crust making.

Until the galette recipe.

And the crust came out just fine. It was maybe a tad uneven. But fine. Just fine. (From a crust-use point of view, galettes are pretty forgiving.)

I'm not sure what the difference was. 

My mother used Crisco, I used butter?

My mother didn't let her dough stand covered in the fridge for a half-hour before rolling out?

I'm my pie-making mother's daughter, and I just got to be pretty good at this?

Whatever the reason, pie crust and galette success!

I'm thinking of making my mother's blueberry pie recipe this summer, only using a real crust rather than the pre-fab Grahman cracker crust I've gone with in the past. Then there's my Aunt Margaret's pecan pie for Thanksgiving. My next quiche will have homemade crust.

Of course, none of these crusts will call for cheese powder, so I hope that's not the secret to the latter-day emergence of my dough-rolling skill. (I think the stand in the fridge might have made the dough easier to handle.)

But none of this is to take away from the amazing logistics of Amazing Amazon. It's really quite something.

Reenactors? So not cool.

I am not wild about reenactors.

I find it espeically cringe when they slip into ye olde spake thee-thou-thoust. When they were little, my sister Kath and I took our nieces Molly and Caroline to Plimouth Plantation, and we were mortified by the reenactors. Other than the indigenous woman off in the native village off to the side. I don't recall anything phoney about her presentation, maybe because she was actually a tribal member, and not someone who couldn't trace their lineage to the Mayflower who'd just been hired to play a Pilgrim.

Years later, my sister Trish and I were at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY, which is a recreated early 19th century village. It was getting to be the off-season and there weren't a lot of visitors or employees around. But before we went into any one of the buildings, we'd peek in to make sure there was no costumed person lurking there who might want to engage with us while in character.

I don't mind having experts around in these historic museums who have knowledge to share, who can answer questions. I don't even mind if they're in costume. I just can't stand their pretending to be back in the day. The best guides I ever encountered  in an historic site were at the home of Washington Irving House in Tarryton, NY. I can't remember if they were in early 19th century garb, but they were all great. 

Anyway, why I personally don't go for reenactors, I do get that there are history buffs and/or actors who enjoy the gig.

And some of them are floating around Boston, especially this time of year, giving guided tours while dressed up as historical figures. I don't know whtether these folks do ye-olde speak or not. I see them regularly, but I'm always just passing by.

What does strike me when I see them is how uncomfortable it must be to be in period costume, especially during the summer months. During winter, you can at least throw a cloak on. But in summer, you can't exactly strip down to shorts, flipflops, and a tee. 

This past June, when we were experiencing a brief but rotten heat wave - with real-feel temps well over 100 degrees - the Boston Globe caught up with a some of our local costumed reenactors. sweltering away in their frock coats, their waistcoats, their tri-cornerd hats, their multi-layered and petticoated dresses, their mobcaps. 

While Boston chafes under an oppressive heat wave that is bringing metro-area temperatures to the mid-90s, living history guides are among the many workers who can’t afford to spend the day in air conditioned offices. Their tour groups come from all across the world, and are often booked weeks or months in advance.

Considering their stifling wool-and-cotton outfits, working through the heat becomes even more of an occupational hazard. (Source: Boston Globe)

It makes me hot just looking at them when I'm passing by.

Back in the actual ye olde times, of course, those in their heavy clothing wouldn't have been as overheated as we would be in today's oven weather.

...there is historical evidence to suggest that the colonists around the time of the American Revolution lived through summers that were generally cooler and drier than today’s.

Summers were in the 70's anid low 80's, and, "thanks to fewer greenhouse gases trapping daytime heat," nights were cooler.

When there's a heat emergency in Boston, the reenactor-tour guides don't have to stay in costume. Most do. They believe it's a more enertaining experience for the tourists, especially the kids. (And, I'm guessing, being in historic garb may translate nto higher tips.) Plus one reenactor said that his being hot made his audiences feel less hot. 

While I'm never thought that reenactors were in the least bit cool, I hadn't given much (any?) thought to how so not cool they physically are in their punishing costumes when it's hot out. I have a new found, if grudging, respect for them. And I'd still rather see than be one. 

They should be going to prison for their cheesy logo alone

I have Netflix. And Amazon Prime. HBO and a bunch of other non-streaming stuff are part of my cable package. (No, I haven't cut the cord.) Occasionally, there's something that catches my interest on Hulu or AppleTV, but the interest is only fleeting and I don't want to sign up for yet another service.

So I wouldn't have been a candidate for Jetflicks, even if I'd heard of them. Which I hadn't. At least not until I read that five guys who've been running this illicit streaming service since 2007 have been convicted by the Feds in - where else? - Las Vegas.

The streaming service could be subscribed to and provide users with illegal copies of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted television episodes. The five men used "sophisticated computer scripts and software to scour pirate websites" for the copies, officials said in a news release.

Jetflicks had a streaming catalog larger than that of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime combined, authorities said. (Source: MSN.)

First: Vudu. What in god's name is Vudu?

Second: There's already too much to choose from on Netflix and Prime to sign up for an even larger streaming catalogue. Sure, I'd like to see every episode of Route 66 and Spenser: for Hire when I want them - and they can't always be had - but still not worth adding another subscription. And the moment of desire always passes, anyway. (Intersting, however, that even with choices to infinity and beyond, half the time there's still nothing on.)

The service generated millions in subscription revenue, court documents said, with "tens of thousands" of people subscribing to the service every month.

I wonder whether the subscribers knew they were getting the streaming equivalent of hot goods. Probably not. They probably just thought they were getting a good deal. 

After all, there are folks too naive to understand that some good deals fell off the back of the truck. My mother was one of them.

We had a family friend - the long time girlfriend of my Uncle Charlie - who had a nephew who was a fringe member of the Worcester mob. Sue was always lining up some bargain for my mother. One item was a gorgeous winter coat with a fur collar; another was a Selectric typewriter. We would point out to my mother that the bargains were too good to be true, and that whatever it was had fallen off the truck. 

My mother was an unfailingly honest person. On more than one occasion, I had to trek over, dime in hand, to the neighborhood grocery store when my mother discovered that they had undercharged her ten cents for a jar of pickles. 

But she couldn't believe that the bargains Sue lined up where a bit on the shady side. (Her role as a second order black marketer - and her notorious chain smoking - aside, Sue was actually a wonderful woman who'd had a successful career and a rather glamorous life, compared to my mother, anyway. Why she put up with my feckless uncle for all those years remains a mystery. They were together for 25 years before he died; she survived him by 30 years. Interestingly, my parents were married for 25 years, and my mother survived my father by 30 years.)

My mother, of course, asked Sue whether the bargains were honestly gotten, and Sue always insisted that her nephew was just good at getting deals. 

Anyway, purchasers of hot goods (and services) may be completely unaware that they're dealing with purveyors of hot good (and services). 

But the Jetflicks Five sure knew that what they were doing was illegal. Four of the five are facing up to five years in prison for "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement." The fifth man was convicted of additional counts for money laundering. He's looking at up to 48 years.

Me? As a marketer, if I were the judge doing the sentencing, I might just tack on a few months for that cheesy logo. Not to mention the cheesy play on Netflix. 

There's moonlighting, and then there's MOONLIGHTING

I know, I know. Most of the time you're in the air, it's not as if Captain Bob is actually flying the plane. Other than a few minutes at take off, a few minutes on landing, planes run on autopilot.

Admittedly, it's not as if the flesh-and-blood real pilots like Captain Bob get to goof off when autopilot is autopiloting. They actually have to manage autopilot and make sure nothing gang agly.  

In any case, flesh-and-blood real pilots need to be on their game. That's why there are limitations on the number of hours a pilot can fly. Who wants a flesh-and-blood real pilot nodding off if and when auto decides to act up. Or something.

But one flesh-and-blood real pilot decided that she was the one who was going to go rogue. 

According to the Shift, First Officer Danica Theuma was employed by both KM Malta Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. It appears that she has been working for both airlines simultaneously, at least since December 2023. (Source: Simple Flying)

Theuma's main airline squeeze was the KM Malta gig; Virgin Atlantic was her side hustle. 

While the breach of contract is obvious, the main issue with this situation is that Theuma was breaking her rest and duty limitations by working for Virgin Atlantic during her mandatory rest period.

Not having adequate rest severely reduces performance and can lead to impaired decision-making, which can result in disastrous emergency results. In addition to breaking airline regulations, Theuma also broke ICAO and EU regulations, putting both airlines at risk of fines and penalties and possibly compromising the airline’s insurance and liability.

Not surprisingly, Theuma was fired by Virgin. Surprisingly - given that she could have had her license revoked - KM Malta Airlines suspended her for a brief time but she has been reinstated. 

There's plenty of things a pilot could do if they wanted to moonlight during their off hours. And pilots flying in the EU have plenty of those off hours, as their flight hours are capped at 100 per month. 

They could sell stuff on real estate. Or eBay. (In Theuma's Pinterest profile, she lists real estate as in interest, so she may have been double-dipping on her moonlighting. She also lists traveling...) They could flip houses. Or drive an Uber. They could, of course, be influencers. Or they could go old-school like the moonlighting firefighters of my youth and do painting and wallpapering. (Firemen were the only people I knew back then who moonlighted, at least as far as I know - other than teachers who might do something or other over the summer. One job seemed like plenty enough for most people.)

Meanwhile, I'm wondering whether Theuma had been hoping to catch on full time with Virgin Air. 

KM Malta has a fleet of eight planes, and pretty much flies from Malta - population 531,000 - to destinations in Europe. Virgin Air has about five times that number of plane and flies to lots of places. Just not Malta.

So, despite not flying to Malta, there would have been a lot more opportunity for professional development at Virgin Atlantic, likely a better payday, and quite a bit more glam. Not exactly a genius move to screw up a possible career with Virgin. 

Wonder if Danica Theuma is having any regrets now that the skies aren't quite so friendly for her. At least she'll be able to get more rest. 

The bees knees

Bees are wondrous creatures.

They pollinate our fruit! Our veggies! Our flowers! And they produce honey!

Oh, honey, those bees are the bees knees! Sure, you have to put up with an occasional sting - and I did hear somewhere that you're more likely to die from a bee sting than you are from a snake bite - but the buzz is that bees rock.

As it turns out, bees are bees-knees-ier than I thought.

They have acted as “biomarkers” at airports to monitor air quality, and to detect whether munitions testing at an Army base in Maryland was causing pollution. They have been trained to detect illicit drugs, and to track elephants with a goal of combating poaching. (Source: Boston Globe)

And there's a lab farm in Virginia where they're figuring out how to deploy bees to find dead bodies. (You've heard of cadaver dogs? I give you cadaver bees.) 

The scientists/academics and law enforcement types working on the farm use donated bodies that they place in different settings. As the donated bodies start decomposing:

...organic matter will permeate the air and the surrounding foliage. Bees will alight on native goldenrod and coneflowers, planted in a circle around the bodies to entice the insects.

A teaching assistant, Molly Kilcarr, and a forensics professor, Emily Rancourt, visit regularly, recording data on insect activity and collecting hair tufts, fingerprints and nail trimmings to document the unfolding decay.

The team will examine the beehives, placed just outside the locked gates, to see if the honey contains traces of the volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that are released by decomposing human bodies, Eckenrode said. By determining which compounds are from humans, and differentiating them from VOCs produced by other animals, the researchers hope their efforts can help investigators narrow the search area.

Personally, I'd prefer my honey to be free of human VOCs. And, while I'm at it, animal VOCs. But this is all very interesting, no? And if it were my body that they were trying to find, I'd be delighted - if posthumous delight is possible - to have been discovered by bees. (Plus I'm sure any honey containing my VOCs would be delish.)

Bees aren't the only insect that's forensically useful. 

 ...insects have long been studied for the roles they play as tiny sleuths.

Blow flies flock to carcasses like, well, flies to honey.  

The developmental age of blow flies and their larvae has helped to determine timelines and whether a body has been moved, clues that can guide investigators, according to forensic entomology research in Europe, the United States and other countries. In Britain, entomologists have studied blow fly larvae on decaying corpses, including one zipped inside a suitcase, to determine how long a person has been dead.

There's also a bee that specializes in dead bodies. Vulture bees are carnivores, so it'll be no surprise if they're enlisted as tiny sleuths, too. And, yes, they do produce honey. So yuck. On the plus side, vulture bees don't sting. You gotta take the good with the bad.

Wiliams Sonoma? Not so made in the USA.

I don't buy all that much from Williams-Sonoma. When they had a store in Copley Place, I dropped in on occasion and bought something (small) or another - for myself (when I was still in acquire-for-the-kitchen mode) or as a host(ess) gift.

But I like their merch just fine.

Mostly ditto for Pottery Barn, which is part of the Williams-Sonoma empire, although with Pottery Barn, I've been as apt to order online as go into a store. Take my duvet cover and pillow shams, which were new last year. (I just got sick of the "old" Pottery Barn duvet cover and pillow shams. But I've hung onto them for when I tire of the current look.)

My main association with Williams-Sonoma, however, is through my cousin.

She has an old and very close friend - an excellent cook and entertainer - who, after she retired, went to work at Williams-Sonoma, largely for the employee discount. 

Not only did G fit out her kitchen with fabulous W-S cookware, dishware, and other kitchen-y items, she stocked up on it to use as Christmas, birthday, wedding, and engagement gifts. And stock up she did. 

Many years ago, the old friend had done an extensive renovation at her home on the Cape, and invited my cousin over for a tour. I was visiting, so went along for the ride. Part of the show-and-tell was a trip through G's basement, which looked like a W-S storeroom. Boxes were piled to the ceiling, and the only free space in the basement was a path to the washer and dryer. 

For years, every Christmas, my cousin and her daughters-in-law could count on something-or-other from W-S. One year they all got a pizzelle maker. 

Anyway, I do know both first and second hand that, while the stores are plenty pricey, items from Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn, tend to be plenty high-quality, too.

What I never bothered to notice was where those pricey, high-quality items were said to be made.

Come to find out, some of them were made in the USA. Or not.

As it happened, in late April, the Department of Justice hit Williams-Sonoma with a $3.17 M fine:

...for violating a 2020 order that required the company to be truthful about where its products were made. That order stemmed from a previous lawsuit against Williams-Sonoma that also ended with the company agreeing to a $1 million fine. 

Most of the products that Williams-Sonoma (and, under that umbrella brand, Pottery Barn and West Elm, among others) were claiming were home-grown had been made in China. 

What the company had been doing was using its catalogue and website to promote products as "Made in the USA," using phrasing like “crafted in America from domestic and imported materials.” I guess their definition of "crafted" was to slap something into W-S or PB or whatever packaging. When the items were delivered, it was clear from the labeling that they had been "Made in China." (The FTC had been tipped off by someone who bought a Pottery Barn mattress pad.)

The $3.17M fine is the largest levied to date for deceptive "Made in USA." 

“Williams-Sonoma’s deception misled consumers and harmed honest American businesses," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said in a statement last week. "Today’s record-setting civil penalty makes clear that firms committing Made-in-USA fraud will not get a free pass.”

The company will also be required to "submit annual compliance certifications." 

I always think of Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn as pretty high end brands. (By my standards, anyway.) But this is just sleezy behavior that's making me rethink these "names."

There are plenty of folks who don't mind paying extra for something that's USA-made. (Sometimes, but not always, I'm one of them.) They/we should be able to without worrying about whether the store is trying to slip something by them/us.

Shame on Williams-Sonoma. 

Ice ice, baby

I have an automated ice-maker in my fridge, but I don't use a lot of ice. Maybe for an occasional iced-coffee, but that's about it for personal use. When I'm having company who may be interested in a drink-drink, I check to make sure that the ice that has been automatically made hasn't shriveled up, and usually end up pressing the button to make more-better ice.

But mostly, I'm not all that fussy about ice. 

Other than that I don't like ice that "smells funny," which was what generally came out of my mother's freezer. I don't know what caused her funny smelling ice, but the joke was that you had to wash it before using it. And we did, in fact, rinse the ice at her house.

But I've never given a thought to clear ice vs. cloudy ice. 

Among drink purists, among ice purists, there is apparently a distinction, and a strong preference for clear ice. 

One of the drink/ice purists is retired attorney Jim Blakey, who lives in Hingham, an upscale town on Boston's South Shore where one can imagine wind-down drinks and cocktail parties happening with some regularity. 

Nearly a decade ago, Blakey began experimenting with clear ice making, and over that near-decade, clear ice has become a thing.. 

“It’s a phenomenon,” he said. “If you were to go onto Amazon and type in clear ice six years ago, you’d find a handful of products that would make clear ice at home. Now you can find page after page of products.” (Source: Boston Globe)

One of those products is Blakey's Clearly Frozen ice trays. So far he's sold "nearly 50,000 ice trays to more than 300 bars and restaurants across the country, along with consumers worldwide." A tray retails for $44, and if clear ice in general is a "phenomenon," Clearly Frozen is a particular phenomenon, garnering rave reviews from consumers and the pros: 

Wine Enthusiast named it “Best for Clear Ice” last year, and Food & Wine named it “Best for Clear Cocktail Ice.” 

Blakey began futzing around for his own personal use, but somewhere along the time, he had a lightbulb moment:

His breakthrough came when he discovered the concept of directional freezing, where water can be frozen from top down instead of from the sides toward the center of an ice cube. Blakey said this is the key to his product’s viability, as this process forces cloudy impurities from the cubes.

And he also realized that he might have a business there. Which he clearly did. 

So now:

His second professional act has become all-consuming: He spends a lot of time answering ice-related emails, and even his kitchen cabinet knobs are cube-shaped. The company officially launched in 2018 and is growing at a time when the cocktail industry is booming post-pandemic, and more and more people want the true bar experience — with mixed drinks paired with clear ice — at home.

Good for Blakey. Sounds like a fun and maybe even lucrative way to spend your retirement. 

Clearly Frozen isn't as simple to use as, say, just pressing the button for an automated delivery, or just flooding an old fashioned ice cube tray (flexible plastic that you twist and turn to dislodge the cubes, or the old-school aluminum ones of yore with the lever to unleash the ice cubes). But if you're looking for clear ice, sounds like Clearly Frozen is worth the $44. 

Me? I'll stick with the meh ice my freezer produces for free. 

But the next time I have a drink-drink out, I'll be giving the ice cubes a once over to see if they're clear.

Moola moola!

I couldn't get the story. Business Insider has a paywall. But I was able to grab the lede:

College donors are feeling pressure to donate to NIL "collectives" to attract the best athletes. The NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said he's tired of his alma mater asking for donations. Donors are getting fatigued in part because of a lack of transparency about how the money is spent.

And it was interesting enough that, as we near the professional amateur college football season, to be folowed by the professional amateur college basketball season, I thought it might be a good topic for Pink Slip. A bit of a google bounced me to a NY Times article from last October that talked about these NIL collectives, with their "rich donors and loose rules" that are "transforming college sports."

A few years ago, the Supremes ruled against the NCAA and allowed for "student athletes" to make money from use of their "name, image, and likeness" (NIL). As well they should be. Sure, Rah-Rah U is giving these "student athletes" a free ride, but if Rah-Rah U is selling jerseys with the "student athletes'" names and numbers, why shouldn't the "student athletes" get to pocket a bit of coin? Why shouldn't those "student athletes" be allowed to sell championships rings that they were awarded? Etc.

But there are, of course, unintended consequences to unleashing NIL, and one of these is the emergence of donor collectives with bogus charitable wings that let tax-deductible donations flow in one door, and out the other door and into the pockets of "student athletes."

The rapid rise of big-dollar payments to student-athletes from so-called donor collectives has emerged as one of the biggest issues in college sports, transforming how players are recruited and encouraging a form of free agency for those looking to transfer. And because many of the groups are set up as charities or with charitable arms that make donations tax-deductible, they are drawing scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service.

The shift stems from a decision forced on the N.C.A.A. two years ago to allow payments to student-athletes. The system that has grown out of that change is reshaping college football and other major sports by unexpectedly empowering collectives, little-regulated groups that raise money from alumni and other die-hard fans and channel the proceeds to players, ostensibly for charitable work, social media posts or other small tasks. (Source: NY Times)

I'm all for some of the money flowing into the big money, big time college sports programs flowing to the players, not just the programs. But it's gone well beyond NIL and into the realm of the "student athletes" actually being paid to play, which remains verboten. 

The average starter at a big-time football program now takes in about $103,000 a year, according to Opendorse, a company that processes payments to the players for the collectives. This year, Opendorse said it expects to process over $100 million in payments for athletes, with about 80 percent coming through collectives.

In one example cited in the article, a football player at the University of Iowa (who had been lured from Michigan with the promise of money-making) got "a job delivering meals to seniors and visiting children in hospitals. It pays about $600 an hour."

Talk about moola-moola!

I'll have to check in with my cousin Ellen, who has a granddaughter at Iowa who actually is a student-athlete getting an excellent education while playing for a varsity team, whether the average student job at Iowa pays $600 an hour. And whether doing meals-on-wheels to old geezers or visiting kids in hospitals tends to be a paid gig, rather than a goodness-of-heart (or resume-builder) activity. 

But my question is: why on god's green turf should the "donations" that fund these collectives be tax deductible?

How about this:

• Acknowledge that the major football programs are the minor league for the National Football League. 
• Acknowledge that, to perhaps a lesser extent - many players go pro directly out of high school, and the NBA does have a development (minor) league - the major basketball programs are the minor league for the National Basketball Association. (While we're at it, acknowledge that there are a handful of women's basketball programs that are the minor league for the WNBA.)
• Make a list of the Division 1 college programs that comprise these minor leagues. Call it D-0, or semi-pro, but stop pretending that the athletes playing in these leagues are students. 
• Have the NFL and NBA/WNBA pay for their minor leagues.
• Pay the young folks who play in them. 
• Offer those who want an education an education, either at the time they're playing in the minor leagues, OR if they fail to make it to the professional leagues. Make it so that the kids who don't go pro have something to fall back on other than their unrealized visions of end-zone dances or their unrealized hoop dreams.

How about ending the situations where "student athlete" is an absolute farce, and let the true student athletes be just that. 

Moola moola indeed. 

All liquor licensed up

Theoretically, the cost of a Boston liquor license is not prohibitive. A couple thousand bucks? Something like that. You can make that up in a night or so.

Problem is there's not all that many available liquor licenses "minted" to begin with -  maybe 1,400 across the entire city. So if you want to open a bar or restaurant, you will likely need to buy a license on the open, secondary market, where the licenses are now going for up to $600K. That's an awful lot of liquor flowing.

I'm not 100% sure how the system works, but for some reason,  that Massachusetts state government sets the number of licenses in Boston, not the city itself. This gives the state oversight over city, a situation that I suppose dates back to the time when the bluenoses in charge thought that the Irish immigrants overrunning Boston would be setting up licensed shebeens in every other building. And if nothing else, those bluenoses wanted to exercise tight control over those rampaging Irishman. At least I'm guessing that something like this is at the root of the reason the Commonwealth regulates Boston's ability to regulate liquor licenses. 

And every time overthrowing oversight and letting Boston create more licenses comes up, those who own the existing licenses scream bloody blue murder, as additional license will dilute the value of the ones they hold, and may have paid $600K for.

Not surprisingly, the systems lends itself to a bit of corruption.

A while back, a state senator was caught accepting a bribe of $23,500 to help a business nab a liquor license. She ended up doing a few years in federal prison. (This was a very notorious case that featured an FBI video capture of the pol taking a wad of cash and stuffing it into her bra. The incident took place in one of the highest-end restaurants in the city.)

This time, the miscreant isn't a state senator. It's an attorney with a niche practice in liquor license work, an attorney who had also served as the general counsel of the Boston Licensing Board. So a true insider who will now be on the outside looking in, as she "was recently fired by her firm for allegedly falsifying a liquor license for an Allston-Brighton food hall."

Lesley Hawkins was terminated by Boston law firm Prince Lobel several weeks ago after a client alleged that the liquor license she arranged for them was invalid, said Tom Elcock, a partner at Prince Lobel and the firm’s in-house counsel. The decision to fire Hawkins followed an internal investigation. (Source: Boston Globe)

Oopsie!

The scheme allegedly involved Hawkins giving Craft Food Halls "a liquor license with a fake serial number." Things fell apart when Craft Food Halls tried to use the number to make a 

liquor purchase from a wholesaler. The sale couldn't go through because the number was fabricated. 

Craft Food Halls has shuttered its Allston site, and Prince Lobel has stated their belief that Craft Food Halls is fully innocent here, and were in the dark -not in cahoots with Hawkins. The firm also believes that this fake license issuance was a one-off, with no other clients involved. 

Maybe there's some sort of explanation here, some sort of defense here. Unlikely, given that Prince Lobel conducted a presumably thorough investigation. But maybe, just maybe there's an explanation, a defense. Maybe there's an underling to blame. Maybe someone went a bit dyslexic and transposed a number. Maybe, just maybe.

Hard to believe that a well-educated, barely-fortyish lawyer with a good reputation and track record would throw that repuration and track record away for a few bucks. (No bribe amount has been mentioned. Is it possible that she did it for nothing, and just made an illegal shortcut out of sheer laziness???)

And not that I'm any expert in legal ethics, but I'm guessing that Leslie Hawkins may be facing another type of bar licensing problem. This sure sounds to me like something that could get your law license suspended, or even end you up disbarred.

Why would someone who went to the trouble of passing the bar get caught up in trying pass off a fake bar license?

Wee kirk for sale.

When I was a kid, I wanted to live in the apartment above a gas station out of Route 9.

It was the only gas station I knew of where there was a flat above the pumps. In this case, the apartment was built on stone pillars over a porte cochère that sheltered the pumps. One of the big attractions to me was being able to live near the smell of gasoline - which I loved - and near the rainbows that formed when some gas sploshed out of the nozzle. How beautiful those gasoline rainbows were! And that heavenly smell of gasoline...

Eventually, I put away my childish things, deciding that living over a gas station would be dangerous. And that sniffing gasoline probably wasn't good for my health. So my sights shifted to old schools and - better yet - decomissioned churches. (Preferably Catholic. Because...)

There are a few former schools around that have been converted to condos, and when I pass by, I always think about how interesting it would be live there, with what would no doubt be the original wide-plank wood floors, the high ceilings, the tall windows. But I reserve most of my longing for the converted churches. There's St. Peter's and Paul's in South Boston that piques my curiosity. Then there's the tony Lucas, which used to be Holy Trinity and which looks gorgeous. Expensive but gorgeous. Our Lady of Victories in the South End is being turned into condos, too.

Then there are churches that could be converted into single family homes. Not that I'm interested in single family living - not at this stage in the game - and most Catholic churches I'm familiar with are too large to be converted into standalone houses. Still, I cast an occasional wistful eye on those small-ish small town New England Protestant outlets, with their pristine white wooden walls and prim steeples.

With my interest in church living, I was naturally drawn to an article I saw on the Church of Scotland, which is selling off 100 church properties across the country.

The Church of Scotland is selling 100 historic buildings to free up funds after a drastic decline in the number of worshippers and ministers.

Churches, plots of land and former council houses, some dating back to the 1700s, have been listed for sale at prices ranging from £35,000 in what the Church has described as a “painful” move. (Source: The Telegraph, via Anglican Mainstream)

(The church pictured above is priced at £39,999.)

Like many (most?) European countries, the Scots are losing their religion. In the 21st cntury, the Church of Scotland is down a million members "and the majority of Scots now say they have no religion, according to the latest census data." As of 2022, the ranks of Church of Scotland clergy are down 40%. 

Much as I see this decline rational, sensible, and inevitable, I do feel bad for those whose churches are on the chopping block - even if the only time they set foot in the door is for a wedding, a funeral, or Christmas. 

I grew up in a time, place, and family that was centered on our parish. We all went to parochial school, and my parents were very involved in with the church and school. Holy Name Society. St. Vincent de Paul Society. Mother's Club. When we were in high school, both my sister Kath and I, along with a group of friends, opened the envelopes and counted the collections each Sunday. (I inherited the job from Kath when she graduated and went off to college.) One of my brother's played CYO basketball. 

After all her kids were gone (from Worcester and from the Catholic Church), the parish remained central to my mother's spiritual and social life. She taught catechism, participated in Bible study, took part in parish "old folks" variety shows, volunteered in the parish food pantry, and was one of the first two women in the parish invited to join the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a charitable group that took care parishioners in need of material assistance. My father had been a long time Vincentian, and after he died, my mother and her friend Lucille - another Vincentian widow - were asked to become members. 

So I get that the loss of a church is major for its parishioners. 

If my mother's parish had closed on her - it had been her home since 1946 when, as a young married woman, she moved with my father from Chicago (where he had been stationed in the Navy) back to his hometown of Worcester - the bottom would have fallen out of her life. (Her/mine/our old parish is still going strong, by the way.)

A Church of Scotland spokesman said: “We understand fully the wide range of emotions – anger, guilt, sorrow and relief that the burden of trying to keep a place of worship open with few people and little, if any contribution from other community sources, has finally been lifted.

“The Church owns thousands of properties, far more than required to achieve our primary mission of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ."

You can look at all the Church of Scotland properties for sale can be found here. 

As charming as I find these wee kirks, and although I do like Scotland, I can't imagine living there.

Ireland, on the other hand...

Maybe I'll find a Church of Ireland sale somewhere near my heart's home in Galway. 

Better yet, maybe there's a retired Catholic church I can get my hands of for short money. How fab if it included a stained glass window or two. I wouldn't even mind being surrounded by cemeteries.bNot that I'm looking for a single-family house at my age, let alone one that needs to be converted into a home, let alone one in a foreign country Still, the idea is intriguing. Once a Catholic, after all...

I'm sure those Scots wee kirks will be snapped up by rich folks from Edinburgh (or from England) looking for weekend getaways. Not that I'll remember to look, but if I do remember, it'll be interesting. 

All the stage's a stage

At some point in the next few years, I am going to be selling the condo where I have have now lived for 33 years.

In many ways, my home would be fine for my aging in place. The location is fabulous, and one of the fab aspects of the location is its proximity to everything - 10 minute walk to my primary care physician, my dentist, my eye doctor, "my" hospital (MGH) that - god forbid - I may actually need someday. I'm a quick walk to several grocery stores, including a wonderful new Trade Joe's. There's an independent drugstore, an independent hardware store - where I know the folks - just around the corner. I'm 10 minutes from St. Francis House where I hope to be volunteering until I'm about to drop.

I have two - count 'em - two bathrooms, and a den I could easily convert to a second bedroom if I needed, say, live in help for what would hopefully be a short while (either way).

But...

My condo is on two floors, and the staircase - despite the railing I had put in - is treacherous. We're a self-managed condo association, and I self-manage the finances. It's a drag. I'm the only owner who lives here, and there's only one other owner who lives nearby. I count his proximity (and his friendship) as most fortunate, as he oversees all the upkeep of the building. (Not to mention anything that needs to get done in my unit, bless 'im.) He's younger than I am, but he's no kid, either. And if he decided to bail, living here would be exceedingly difficult for me.

The building I'm in is 160+ years old. So always in need of something or other. And the landing on the front steps isn't wide enough for comfort. 

So...

I love my condo. It's home. It's warm. It's comfy. It's memories. It's me. But I'm pretty sure that when the realtor comes by, they'll tell me that no one's going to want my blue bedroom, my green bathroom. 

While I (and those who love and admire me) find my eclectic and personal decor, my art, my stuff, ultra-interesting and ultra-attractive, that realtor is no doubt going to tell me to put everything on ice and stage the place so that a prospective buyer can see more of themselves in the place and less of me. 

As someone who watches a fair amount of HG-TV, I'm familiar with staging. That's when professionals bring in furniture and carefully curated decorative items that on the one hand neutralizes a space while at the same time makesingit more seductive to the buyer. 

I always find that there's a bit of a nice hotel or VRBO look about a staged home. But the argument is that this look helps sell. And once I decide (however regretfully) to dodge out of my own personal Dodge, I'll probably call in a stager.

Maybe that stager will be Jess Harrington, who was recently profiled in the Boston Globe. 

For the story, Jess and her team were staging a "moderately" priced home ($750K worth of "moderately") in a Boston suburb.

They walked through the three-bedroom, two-bathroom residence one June morning, carefully assessing every room to plan each piece of furniture and decor. In the kitchen, the sellers’ mismatched stools and high-backed chairs had to go. One hardwood-floored bedroom was crying out to become a baby’s nursery. And another window-filled bedroom, they felt, would work better as a family room.

“It’s like a giant puzzle sometimes,” said Harrington.

According to local brokers, staging - which can run as much as (gulp!) $30K - pays off in terms of quicker sales at higher prices. (Harrington's scale ranges from $4K to $30K, pricing dependent on "size, scope, and staging duration." She has her own warehouse where she keeps the furnitures and accessories (e.g., pillows). She also stores her clients' furniture and clutter while staging's going on. 

Harrington's team is currently juggling 38 staged properties, and it's not all on the "moderate" end of the continuum. She's also staging a $5.6M home on Beacon Hill. (When it goes, my condo will be closer to that low-end suburban home than to my BH high-end neighbor.)

When Harrington stages, she goes right down to the smallest of details, including the books that go in the bookcases. 

I'd prefer to draw the line here. Nothing wrong with my taste in books. Still, if someone will offer $50K more if my non-my books are grouped by cover art and color, I guess I won't care if there's no Alice Munro or Henrich Böll on the shelves. 

The goal is "to create an enriching experience for the buyer."

I'll be more interested in an enriching experience for the seller, but that's just me. 

We'll see how I feel in a few years when I whistle in a Jess Harrington to come in and give the thumbs down to my grandmother's cookie jar, the steer horns that hung in my grandfather's saloon.  To tell me to jettison that Bullwinkle figurine, the plaster mold of my husband's teeth. (Don't ask.)

Not that I'm looking forward to it, but it'll be interesting to see how it all comes down. 

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Image source: Professional Staging