Looking for another reason to fear AI?

I have very mixed emotions about artificial intelligence.

On the one hand, it can be a force of good, as when it's used to solve thorny medical diagnostic problems, help the disabled live more independently, make buildings operate more efficiently.

On the other hand, well, it sure has the potential to be a force for no good - which in many situations, it already is. What's the plan for all the jobs that will be replaced? (Any appetite for a guaranteed income that will sustain people who are no longer able to work because the only job they know how to do is now done by a robot?) How are we going to handle all the misinformation and disinformation out there that, thanks to AI, is so rapidly created and disseminated? What about all the deep fakes that are sexualizing and traumatizing middle school kids? And what, what, what about the environmental impacts?

First off, AI is admittedly doing some things that benefit the environment. 

Among other things, the technology is already being used to map the destructive dredging of sand and chart emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, [as] UNEP, for example, uses AI to detect when oil and gas installations vent methane, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change.(Source: UN Environmental Programme)

So, BravAI!

But there's also a horrendous environmental downside.

The proliferating data centres that house AI servers produce electronic waste. They are large consumers of water, which is becoming scarce in many places. They rely on critical minerals and rare elements, which are often mined unsustainably. And they use massive amounts of electricity, spurring the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

How bad is it? For a couple of examples:

The electronics [that the huge data centers that house AI installtions] rely on a staggering amount of grist: making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw materials. 

Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million, according to one estimate. That is a problem when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation. 

...to power their complex electronics, data centres that host AI technology need a lot of energy, which in most places still comes from the burning of fossil fuels, producing planet-warming greenhouse gases. A request made through ChatGPT, an AI-based virtual assistant, consumes 10 times the electricity of a Google Search, reported the International Energy Agency.  

And yet, unless you do something to change it, Google Search now seems to default to an AI-based response. And I've come to rely on giving the AI-based response at least a quick glance as my first stop when search results are concerned. Sometimes I end up looking further. I want more detail. I want to fact check - AI can be wrong. 

And even when AI's right - or right enough - do I really need the insta-search result that AI produces to learn that Boston, Worcester, and Providene all have a ton of triple deckers among their housing stock?

No, I don't.

But I've been too lazy to turn off AI Overview and go with good old-fashioned Google Search.

As I said up front, I have mixed emotions about AI. But if you're looking for another reason to fear it, the environmental impact may well be it. 

May be the best thing Walmart has ever done

Of course, I'd love to have a Birkin bag.

Of course, I wouldn't pay $28K for it (on top of the $100K or so I'd have to spend at Hermès for lurid-colored scarves with gold stirrups on them in order to be allowed to purchase a Birkin bag).

But a Walmart knockoff for short money? Now you're talking.

If only you could get your hands on one of them. And you probably can't, because they instantly sold out.

In case you're not familiar with the Birkin, it's a luxury, iconic handbag/tote originally designed by Hermès in the 1980's for British-French actress-singer Jane Birkin.

Walmart's version, the KAMUGO, is, like the real Birkin, made of leather, but is not available in options like crocodile or ostrich. (Birkin does have a canvas with leather bag.) And the KAMUGO only comes in a few colors. (The colors are Birkin-esque, however.) But the major difference is hand-craftedness and price. Birkins range from $10K-ish to over $400K. The Walmart version was priced from $78 to $102. That's dollars, not K's.

The bag, also being called the "Wirkin," is described as a "large-capacity lychee pattern Kelly platinum bag," and has a "classic temperament, noble European and American style," according to the manufacturer's description. It is made with genuine leather, with the first layer made with cowhide. Akin to the real Birkin, the Wirkin, also features a gold lock button, which the manufacturer says is to "increase the security of bag anti-theft."

The bag... is being seen as a budget-friendly alternative to the Hermès Birkin. However, the manufacturers of the bag have not marketed it or referred to it as a Birkin dupe.(Source: USA Today) 

Why would marketing need to refer to it as "a Birkin dupe?" Isn't that what the Internet is for? (Birkin bag warriors, assemble!)

Of course, the Wirkins aren't artisanally created. They don't have fancy hardware. Or secret numbers stamped on the inside leather. 

But who cares, if it looks enough like the real deal?

Will I try to acquire one? Not likely, even at the supposed low, low price of $40 - a price that's reputedly out there and somewhat available. But I love, love, love the idea of women swanning around with Wirkins slung over their shoulders - and no one getting close enough to see if it's a Birkin or not. This just may be the bet thing that Walmart has ever done!

Take me riding in the car, car

I'm someone who has always enjoyed driving - at least once I got my license nearly 60 years ago. Or I used to enjoy driving.

In the past five years or so, the only time I've driven was to schlepp my sister Trish home from her colonscopy.

I used to say that, if I had all the money in the world, I'd own a car and pay to garage it. That way, I could drive to the places I wanted and/or needed to get to. Having my own car, I would tell myself, eliminated the major reason why I stopped enjoying driving which was that when I rented a car, or more often, took out a ride-share car from Zipcar, I had to learn how everything worked. Where's the trunk pop? Which side's the gas tank on? Just how do you operate a hybrid? It's starting to rain: where are the wipers? How do those side mirrors work? It's starting to fog: where's the defroster? Etc. It became a total PITA to have to get used to a car I was going to drive for a day (or an hour) or so.

Plus I realized that I just plain no longer enjoyed driving as much as I used to. Which made me a tiny bit sad, but not all that much sad.

So I switched to Uber. I still take public transpo a lot. But I really like Ubering. And that's because I like yacking with strangers and hearing their stories - or at least what chapters of their stories they're willing to share with a nosy old lady. And it's also because I really like taking a ride.

I always have liked going to a ride.

My father liked to drive, and every weekend - in the summer, maybe on a weeknight, too - he took the family out for a spin. We drove all over Worcester County, all over the city. We visited "our" cemeteries - where my baby sister and one set of great-grandparents were buried out in Cherry Valley, where my grandfather and another set of great-grandparents were buried out in god-forsaken Barre, Mass. We'd stop for ice cream at the Cherry Bowl. At Verna's. At Smithfield's. At the Dairy Delite. At Jack's.

My father loved driving; I loved riding. Always.

A lot of my Uber rides are familiar routes. But sometimes they're new and sometimes they're surpising. Recently, I was Ubering out to the the bucolic suburb where my cousin is in a rehab facility. We were tootling along, and I realized that this driver was taking a different route than the previous driver had. We stopped for a red light. I looked out the window and saw that we were smack dab in front of St. Bernard's in West Newton, where my cousin had been married nearly 60 years ago, and where I'd attended the funerals of both of her parents. (There was really no reason for the driver to have gone through West Newton on our way to Medfield, but there we were.)

While I have had a (now-ended) love affair with driving, and a never-ending love affair with going for rides, I have never been all that big on car ownership. 

I have owned only three cars in my life - each time because I needed a car to get to a job in the 'burbs. In the late 1980's I had a used, rusted out Honda Civic. When that collapsed, I got a snappy dark red Mercury Tracer, which I ditched the minute I no longer needed to to get to work. In the late 1990's, I again needed a car and bought the one and only car I can say that I almost loved: a New Beetle, the first year it came out. (That's not my car in the picture, but it's the right color.) And, of course, I went whole Beetle hog: daisy in the flower vase. (If ever there were a car built for an aging Boomer...)

But then I no longer worked in the 'burbs. I hung onto my Beetle for a while, but when I broke my right shoulder and could no longer shift gears - my three cars had one thing in common: all had manual transmissions - it was sayonara, cutie-pie blue Beetle! Volunteers of America, schlepp it away. (Back in the day, it was point of pride among my friends and family to drive a standard rather than an automatic.) 

As a non-car owner, I'm well aware that I am distinctly un-American. Here in the USA:

The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at least one vehicle and 87% of people using their cars daily. Last year, a record 290m vehicles were operated on US streets and highways. (Source: The Guardian)

A record 290m vehicles? That's a lot. Why it's only about 100m fewer than we have guns!

As it turns out, living in a car culture is a mixed blessing, and:

...this extreme car dependence is affecting Americans’ quality of life, with a new study finding there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. [A recent survey] found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.

When the tipping point is reached, the downside of our dependence on the car clicks in. There's:

The stress of continually navigating roads and traffic, the loss of physical activity from not walking anywhere, a reduced engagement with other people and the growing financial burden of owning and maintaining a vehicle.

Yet, as a nation, we remain stuck in neutral (maybe even in reverse) when it comes to car dependency. Historically, we've likely overinvested in highways, and underinvested in public transportation. As Joni Mitchell once told us, "they paved paradise, put up a parking lot." 

Anyway, when it comes to non-car ownership, I'm in a privileged minority:

A small sliver of the American public actively chooses to live without a car because they are able to live in the few remaining walkable communities in the US, but for most of those without a car it is a forced deprivation due to poverty or disability.

And we don't have a great track record when it comes to meeting the needs of the poor and the disabled. Two hours to get to work or healthcare on a crappy bus with a measly schedule? Suck it up!

I can't see any circumstances under which I will ever own another car. And other than my purposeful Uber journeys and the occasional trip to somewhere with a family member or friend, I probably won't ever take a ride for pure pleasure. (Does anyone just go out for a spin anymore?)

But when it comes to cars, I'm still with Woody Guthrie. You can always take me riding in the car, car. 

Something to be said for dying doing that you love

Well, there I was, just the other day, excoriating the parents who took their eye off their toddler while they were volcano-touristing at Kilauea and last-minute managed to save their kiddo when he was one foot away from plummeting into the four-hundred foot deep lava-bubbling calderon. 

So why am I not excoriating the two guys who died in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in the great state o' Washington? Especially when their disappearance resulted in a three-day search that started on Christmas Day and involved drones, Coast Guard helicopters, and on-the-ground human and canine searchers, through treacherous terrain, snowy-rainy weather, raging rivers, downed trees, and bitter cold conditions (which may not have bothered the drones, but likely bothered the humans and the doggos)? And especially since their deaths were the result of a combo of their very own credulity, stupidity, and lack of preparedness?

I guess because, when I thought about it, I suspect that these grown men - aged 59 and 37, so maybe even a father-son duo - were doing something that may seem dumb-arsed and silly to most of us, but may well have been something they loved. Like looking for Sasquatch.

Hey, I'd like to believe as much as the next guy does in the existence of Loch Ness Monster (rather than the more likely explanation that it's just a large fish or a floating log).  That DB Cooper is an old coot alive and living off the land in the forests of Washington (rather than the more likely scenario that he's part of the humus). That Sasquatch, a.k.a. Bigfoot, exists - maybe even that he/she/it is a hirsute D.B. Cooper (rather than the more likely situation that he/she/it is a figment of a lot of credulous, overactive imaginations. Or maybe even a big-footed guy in a gorilla costume.

Anyway, the two fellows who were out hunting Sasquatch, only to die of exposure, were probably out for a purposeful adventure or a lark (perhaps an alcohol or drug-fueld lark). I hope they had a fun time on their drive from their home in Portland, Oregan, to the Gifford Pinchot National Park. I hope they got out of their car and tackled their search in hopes of finding the mythic creature. I hope that, as the trekked along, they kept asking each other "wouldn't it be something if..." I hope they just kind of drifted off in hypothermia-induced bliss, with or without having experienced a brief "holy shit, we really f'd up" moment.

Anyway, I'm guessing/hoping that these fellows, maroons though they may be, were out having fun, doing something dopey, but something they loved. Or at least liked.

Me? While I'd be fine if Sasquatch turned out to be for real, there's no evidence - despite all the supposed sightings - that there is such a creature. The rational belief is that it's a bear walking upright (although that picture looks more like a human in a gorilla costume).

Although there's likely no such thing as Sasquatch, some communities have taken steps to kinda-sorta protect he/she/it:

In Skamania County, harming a Sasquatch carries of fine of $1,000 (£797) and one year in prison. The law, initially passed in 1969, was intended to protect both Sasquatch and elk hunters with particularly large beards, according to the Skamania Chamber of Commerce. (Source: BBC)

No protection possible for doofuses that are just doing something dumb. But there is something to be said for dying while doing something you love.

Which leaves me hoping that I die while reading, watching baseball, or just hanging out with fam and friends (although that might not be so much fun for fam and friends).

Parent of the Year?

Tis the season when all sorts of "of the year's" have been coming out. Since we're now one month into 2025, most of the "of the year" moments have passed. Book of the Year. Word of the Year. Recipe of the Year. Person of the Year. (Errrrr, let's forget about that one.)

But I hope that it's not too late to add another category, because I've got a new one. And while these nimrods are a late entry - having claimed the crown on Christmas Day 2024 -  I'm going to say that for Parents of the Year, there was no contest.

The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii began erupting in late December, with lava fountains that have been acting up. I'm sure it's quite a spectacular site, and it's been drawing damn-the-danger visitors to the Kilauea Overlook to see what's going on.

I'm sure that the folks who run the park are perfectly capable of monitoring volcanic activity, so it's not like Kilauea is going to blow its stack (or what's left of it) and turn all those lookie loos into Insta Pompeii-ites. Still, no one is allowed to get to close to the edge to peer into the boiling bubbling caldera. This is an active volcano, after all, and taking a header, well, talk about Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.  There's an inferno down below, and the area around the crater is roped off to keep people out of danger:

The park service and park rangers remind visitors to stay on the trail, stay out of closed areas and to keep their children close, especially when watching Kilauea from viewpoints along Crater Rim Trail. (Source: Honolulu Star Advertiser)

But one family took their eye off a toddler and he sprinted to the edge before the mom noticed and managed to grab her kiddo just before he reached the rim. 

Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park public affairs specialist Jessica Ferracane said there were roughly six or seven adults in the family standing in an open area.

“They weren’t paying attention, and the child wandered into the closed area,” she said.

I never had kids, but I've spent enough time with toddlers to know that you can't take your eye off them for a nanosecond. Those kiddos can move pretty darned fast on those chubby little legs. There are always horror stories about kids wandering out of the house, out of the backyard, and drowning, getting hit by a car, getting lost in the woods. And that's when it's in a should-be-safe home and backyard. Not in a place where there is clear and present danger. As in the company of an active volcano.

The little boy was within a foot of the edge of the caldera when his mother managed to grab him.

Ferracane said if he had gone over the edge, it would have been a certainly fatal, 400-foot fall into Kaluapele, the volcano’s summit caldera, and “a horrible way to remember Christmas.”

Forget about Christmas. That would have been a pretty horrible way to remember period.

"The hazards that coincide with an eruption are dangerous, and we have safety measures in place including closed areas, barriers, closure signs, and traffic management,” said park Superintendent Rhonda Loh in a written statement. “Your safety is our utmost concern, but we rely on everyone to recreate responsibly. National parks showcase nature’s splendor but they are not playgrounds.”

Maybe if safety is an "utmost concern" there should be an age limit, with signs clearly spelling out exactly why there's an age limit. Or, if there's no will to impose an age limit, maybe at least go with a sign about the dangers. This would presumably get parents thinking about why it's a not-so-good-idea to take small children into perilous situations.

Look, I know that the last thing these parents need is an opionated blogger 5,000 miles from Hawaii hectoring them about their poor parenting skills. And I'm quite sure that these parents are reliving that nightmare morning, noon, and night. Especially the mother who was able to save her son in the nick of time, and who could see for herself what nature may have had in store for her little guy. 

In truth, I'm probably just pissed because it's giving me - an opinionated blogger 5,000 miles from Hawaii - the willies just thinking about this incident. 

Hard not to get a little judge-y, though. Surely among the six or seven adults in this little guy's family at least one could have been the designated child-watcher.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I first saw a referene to this incident in The Guardian , but the Honlulu paper's story was more complete.

 

That's a wrap?

I don't generally end up with organic food in my grocery cart. Sometimes I get a bit pious and buy Bell & Evans chicken, grass-fed organic beef. But mostly I give organic veggies, fruits, eggs, meat, whatever a pass. Yet on a recent stroll through the produce section at Whole Foods, in search of red and yellow peppers, my eyes were drawn to the organic red pepper display. Mostly because some of those organic red peppers were swaddled in plastic wrap.

My reaction was to ask myself a question that trips off my lips (or trips through my synapses) with increasing frequency. In short form: WTF???

I guess I'm behind the times, because when I googled, it turns out that the wrappping o' the pepper has been a thing for quite a while. The first mention I found - first page of search results - was a reference to a 1986 academic study entitled "Film Wrapping to Alleviate Chilling Injury of Bell Peppers."

A 2009 article on My Plastic Free Life asked the question "Organic food in plastic packaging - isn't it ironic?" Needless to say, My Plastic Free Life wasn't enamored with the use of plastic to wrap fruit and veg:

I want to see safe product packaging added to the criteria for organic certification. I want producers to ask what “food grade” really means and for manufacturers of plastic products to be required to reveal all of their additives. I want all manufacturers to follow the principal of Extended Producer Responsibility and plan for a practical cradle to cradle life cycle for their products and packaging BEFORE putting them on the market.

Well, me, too. 

As it turns out, FreshWrap, the wrap that was wrapping those organic Whole Foods red peppers, is "the only reusable wrap on the market infused with organic botanicals proven to keep food fresh for longer."

So there's that.

But that still leaves me asking a variation on the WTF question. And that's Why The Fuck? 

A 2016 article in Sierra  - yes, the Sierra Club's mag - asked and answered the question "Why are so many organic fruits and vegetables plastic-wrapped?"

...there is some justification (mostly economic) for the use of plastic, because organic produce usually costs a lot more to grow than its industrial cousins. Spoilage, known as "shrink" in retail lingo, is a bigger concern with organic fruits and vegetables than with ordinary produce, because shrink drives up prices, which are already the biggest barrier to organics. Since one rotten apple spoils the barrel, it helps to isolate some types of produce.

Packaging also reduces dehydration, while enabling the use of UPC codes for accurate pricing. Even that individual wrapping is about price, in that folks don't want to pay for more than one item if they don't need it. Finally, organic produce in storage is not allowed to be in contact with nonorganic produce, so those pesky plastics serve a prophylactic purpose.

If you can't grow your own food or hoof it to a farmers' market, plastic may be a necessary evil. But it can't hurt to let your grocer know that you don't like it, as some stores manage to sell unwrapped organic produce. And of course, recycle packaging whenever possible.

I still don't like it, but at least I now sort of get it.

But it does remind me of the mother of a good friend of mine from high school. Mrs. H used to wrap the bananas that seemed to make their way into Kathleen's brown bag lunch with some frequency. This was the 1960s. I guess Peg was ahead of her time. She sure wouldn't have been as surprised as I was to see those red peppers all wrapped up and - as far as I'm concerned - no place to go. 

The bird is the word

I'm writing this on December 28th. You're reading it on January 28th.

In that month in between, I know that some awful things have happened. One example: Trump's inauguration. But it may also be the case that the bird flu has spread its wings and taken off, and that we're facing another pandemic. Only this time with more anti-government, anti-vaxxer, pro-conspiracy, execute Fauci lunatics around. And some of them will even be part of the government. Just swell.

But as of December 28th, here's the sitch:

Northwest Naturals, a pet food supplier specializing in raw meats, had to recall its Feline Turkey Recipe because it was contaminated with bird flu. 

The recall comes after the Oregon Department of Agriculture linked the death of a house cat in Washington County to eating the Northwest Naturals chow Tuesday. The pet’s death also comes as concerns over the bird flu have grown. Dozens of people have been infected around the country, California has declared a state of emergency and the spread among livestock has begun impacting the food supply. (Source: USA Today)

If the pet food chain has been impacted, can the food chain for us human types be far behind? Just swell. 

Of course, an occasional bite of sushi aside - or aside the rare licking of the mixing bowl and beaters to grab all the batter that didn't make it into the cake pan, even though there's raw egg in it - most of us humans don't eat raw food. We cook and bake with it. But we don't consume it. And we may even wear gloves when handling it. (At least if it's chicken we do.)

And people shouldn't be feeding their pets raw food, either. Raw food contains all sorts of nasty pathogens.

Sure when the feline and canine precursors were fending for themselves in the wild, they were mowing down raw everything. But our house pets are used to a more pampered life style. No hunting or killing for them. (At least the indoor thems.)

In any case, it's unnerving to learn that the bird flu may be coming for our food supply.  

Ain't no one wants a repeat of the first horrid year of the covid. I'm five years older, and thus have five fewer trips around the sun left. And I really don't want to lose another one of those precious trips to trying to avoid the bird flu.

I want to see my family. I want to see my friends. Although I am wearing a mask when I'm volunteering in my homeless shelter - at least for the winter, during prime germ season - I really don't want to have to mask up everywhere. And I don't want my volunteering job to go away, as it did during the first year of covid. 

I don't want to go back to obsessive handwashing. (Twenty seconds? An eternity!) I don't want to shop for groceries during the crack-of-dawn geezer hour.

I don't want to read the death counts every day in the paper. 

I don't want to battle to get an appointment for vaccine. If there's even a vaccine this time around. 

Oh, there probably will be, but what if the government doesn't back development and distribution as enthusiastically as they did in 2020? What if you have to pay a lot for the privilege of access? How much would I be willing to pay? And how effective will it be in tamping down the spread if all the nimrods out there won't get vaccinated - even if it's free - as they'll figure that vaccination programs are just a scheme to make them more stupider, or turn them into libtards, or track their every movement. Because big gubmint should only be used to deport brown people. Or however the "thinking" goes.

I hope that the dead kitty cat in Oregon is it for pet or human death from the bird flu.

2025 is going to be awful enough without having to worry about whether the bird is the word of the year.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Don't you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word. Papa-oom-mow-mow. Take a listen to one of the big hits of 1963.

Beware of hero worship

It's not that it's a big surprise when a someone you admire turns out to be a behind-the-scenes POS. 

For me, the someones I admire are usually writers.

I'm an admirer of the work of James Joyce, especially his early works. The short stories in The Dubliners are beyond brilliant. Has there ever been a short story written in the English language that can surpass "The Dead," which I reread every year (generally during a snowstorm, while drinking a cup of Barry's tea)? But I also know that, in order to fuel his genius, Joyce exploited those who loved him, namely his lover (later wife) Nora Barnicle and his brother John Stanislaus. Someone's gotta worry about buying the toilet paper and boiling the potatoes while genius is at work. 

I just don't let knowing that Joyce was an often nasty exploiter prevent me from loving his work. (Although I will say that I found reading Ulysses a slog, and for the life of me, Finnegan's Wake is just incomprehensible. I just don't understand how someone who doesn't know Ireland and the Irish, didn't grow up Catholic, doesn't have a smattering of Latin, French, German, etc. and a bit-een of the ol' Irish - all of which I possess - can even begin to get Finnegan's. And yet it's even been translated into Japanese and Hungarian. For me, I've read dribs and drabs, and making my through it in its entirety is on my bucket list. I should probably get cracking. (Forgive a Joycean pun: get craicing?))

Anyway, in addition to Joyce, there are two other members of my pantheon of short story writers. One is the Anglo-Irish writer William Trevor. I wasn't wild about his novels, but, man, could he pack a novel into a short story. As could my other short story writer, Alice Munro, at whose writing altar I have long worshipped. Her stories were/are just gems. 

I'm a reader, but I don't typically hang on to books after I've read them. I give them away to fellow readers, or drop them off at the free book cabinet outside of the Walgreen's that years ago replaced a truly wonderful Borders, where I bought an awful lot of books.

But damned if I haven't hung on to my Alice Munro's.

And they're not going anywhere. I'm not one to re-read - other than my annual stationary pilgrimage with "The Dead" - but once in a blue moon, I pull out a volume of Munro and read a few of her brilliant works. And, while I was not especially happy to learn that her personal life left a great deal to be desired, I won't be dumping her - or jettisoning my opinion of her talent.

If you haven't been keeping up with the story behind the stories, Alice Munro was divorced from the man who had fathered her three daughters, and took up with Gerald Fremlin, a man she was with for 40 years (up until his death). Fremlin was a terrible man.

This July, two months after Munro’s death at the age of 92, Andrea Skinner, the youngest of her three daughters, revealed in an essay in The Toronto Star that Fremlin had sexually abused her. In the summer of 1976, Andrea wrote, she went to visit Munro and Fremlin at their home in Ontario. (According to her parents’ custody agreement, she spent the rest of the year in Victoria, British Columbia, with her father, Jim Munro, and his new wife.) One night, while Munro was away, Andrea awoke to discover that Fremlin had climbed into bed next to her. He was rubbing her genitals and pressing her hand over his penis. She was 9 years old.

Fremlin warned Andrea not to tell her mother: The news would kill her, he said. Andrea obeyed... (Source: NY Times)

But on her return to Victoria, she told her stepbrother, and word made it's way back to Andrea's father. And what did Jim Munro do? Concerned that the revelation would kill Alice's new relationship and that he would be blamed for the failure, he told the family to stay mum. When the girls went back to spend the next summer with their mother and Fremlin, Jim Munro told one of Andrea's older sisters to keep an eye on the situation. 

Andrea did what a lot of children who are abused did. She tried to keep her distance from Fremlin, making sure they were never alone. 

...but she had to balance her fear against a competing imperative: to shield her mother from the truth. Munro knew that Andrea loved to swim, so on the occasions when Fremlin offered to drive her to a nearby river, it felt impossible to refuse without arousing suspicion. During one such outing, he propositioned her for sex. Andrea turned bright red as she managed to walk away. On the drive home, Fremlin complained to her about how unsatisfying he found his sex life with Munro. The harassment ended only when Andrea reached puberty.

As a young adult, Andrea - who had suffered numerous psychological and physical ailments due to the abuse - finally told her mother what had happened.  

Alice Munro's reaction was self-pity. Rather than view the abuse of her daughter as a terrible, depraved, criminal act against the child, she saw it through the prism of self, and defined it all as a betrayal of herself. When confronted, Fremlin admitted "the abuse but claimed that it was Andrea who seduced him." Andrea at 9 was recast as Lolita, Fremlin is poor, innocent Humbert Humbert. 

Alice Munro left Fremlin, but only for a couple of weeks. 

The family carried on, with Andrea continuing to visit her mother and Fremlin. Only when her own children were born did things become really clear to Andrea. 

Andrea told her mother she didn’t want Fremlin anywhere near them. Munro objected that visiting without Fremlin would be inconvenient, because she couldn’t drive. “I blew my top,” Andrea told a reporter for The Star. “I started to scream into the phone about having to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze that penis, and at some point I asked her how she could have sex with someone who’d done that to her daughter.” The next day, Munro called her back — not to apologize but to forgive Andrea for how she had spoken to her. It was the end of their relationship. 

But Andrea developed some new strengths. She reported Fremlin to the police - her evidence was the letters Fremlin had sent admitting to the abuse.

When an officer arrived at their house to arrest him, he reported that Munro was apoplectic, denouncing her daughter as a liar. In March 2005, Fremlin, then 80, quietly pleaded guilty to indecent assault and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Andrea tried for years to get her story out, but academics who studied Alice Munro's work didn't want to hear about it. They were interested in the text, not the person who wrote the text. Even though "violated children, negligent mothers and marriages founded on secrets and lies" figured prominently in the stories she wrote after she learned of Fremlin's abuse of her child. (He was also accused of sexually abusing other children.) 

In Canada, Munro was known as “Saint Alice,” a paragon of virtue and compassion. Now she has come to symbolize something else: maternal dereliction. In the days after news of the abuse broke, social media filled up with photos of Munro’s books discarded in recycling bins. The University of Western Ontario, her alma mater, announced that it was “pausing” its Alice Munro Chair in Creativity so as to “carefully consider Munro’s legacy and her ties to Western.” Writers who once celebrated her work and openly acknowledged its influence on their own began to reconsider their allegiance. “These revelations not only crush Munro’s legacy as a person, but they make the stories that were, in retrospect, so clearly about those unfathomable betrayals basically unreadable as anything but half-realized confessions,” the author Rebecca Makkai, who is herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, reacted in The Times. “To me, that makes them unreadable at all.”

I haven't picked up Alice Munro since all this came out. But those who have now see that so much of her work is peopled by characters like Fremlin-the-molester. And characters who are the wife who somehow can't tear herself away from the terrible man she has entwined her life with. The woman remains enthralled, totally dependent on the rotter she's with. 

Will I reread Alice Munro? Probably not anytime soon. Too painful. But at some point, I will want to assure myself that, however f'd up some of her stories are, they are still brilliantly written. I'm not sure if that'll be enough. But it will sure make me leery of hero worship.

On my Christmas tree, I have an ornament of James Joyce which I got on a trip to Ireland a couple of years back. I don't think I'll be getting an Alice Munro ornament anytime soon. And I sure hope that nothing comes out about William Trevor...

How could you NOT love this story?

I love, love, love this story, which ran as a heart-warming non-Christmas tale in the Boston Globe on Chrismtas morning.  

Tim Almeida is a barber, but he doesn't operate out of neighborhood storefront with a striped barber pole on the sidewalk outside its doors. 

No, Almeida owns The Clippership, a "mobile barber shop, [which] was renovated to resemble a cozy wooden sailboat cabin."

First off, props for the clever name! Love, love, love...

Here's how his thriving business came about: 

When covid struck in 2020, the barbering biz pretty much dried up. Who wanted to risk death for a fade? 

I know what I did hair-wise during covid. I let my hair go gray. And when I saw my hairdresser for a trim, it was in my sister's backyard, where Rita came to give me and Kath haircuts and my brother-in-law a trim beard. We all wore masks.

Like Rita, when covid came along, Almeida began making house calls. And then:

He saw a YouTube video about a mobile barbershop and decided to piggy back off the concept by starting one of his own. To stand out, Almeida, a self-described “boat guy,” wanted the inside of his van to resemble a sailboat cabin. (Source: Boston Globe)

He found a guy to help him figure out how to kit out his van, and he was soon on the road. 

One reason for Almeida's success is that he specializes: men's fades and straight razor shaves. He also specializes in a certain Cambridge market: life science campuses. When he realized that a lot of his clients were in the life sciences, he "set up contracts with several campus management companies for weekly walk-in periods."

Tim Almeida just seems like a naturally smart business man and entrepreneur, attributing:

...part of his success to his ability to figure out the logistics of a mobile business. He maps concentric routes around the city, starting close to home and building out the route to maximize the number of daily appointments he can schedule. He learned how to be his own handyman, repairing things like frozen pipes and reinsulating the van after his first winter.

According to his clients, it helps that he's a great barber with a very likeable personality. But underneath that talent with the clippers, his likeable personality, he remains a savvy business guy who hopes someday to franchise his business. I hope he succeeds. And I hope he also franchises his concept to hairdressers, not just barbers. 

Go, Tim Almeida!

--------------------------------------------------------

A link to The Clippership

Anyone surprised by this?

Twenty-some years ago, when I began driving up to Syracuse on business a few times a year, the thruway in Upstate New York was packed with Walmart semis. 

I can't remember the exact wording, but the slogan on the side of those Walmart trucks was something about everything sold there being made in America. And then those slogans were replaced by ones touting the low prices.

Whether their products are made in America (making for American manufacturing jobs) or easy on the pocket book (making it cheaper for consumers to consume), the jury's always been out - or delivering a split verdict - on whether Walmart is a benefit for anyone not from the Walmart family.

For years, the big argument has been that when a Walmart appeared - invariably on the outskirts of town - the town center was hollowed out, the long-standing small independent businesses died, the town lost its heart, soul and character. We also learned that Walmart coached employees on how to apply for foodstamps and Medicaid, letting the taxpayers foot the bill for Walmart's low wages. 

But low prices for consumers countered all arguments. 

Still, it was hard not to get the unsettling feeling that Walmart was and is soul-crushing. 

And yet, we keep returning to the low price "fact" of life: that Walmart's:

...dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. Indeed, Walmart’s many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there. (Source: The Atlantic)

Even some progressive economists jumped on the All Hail, Walmart bandwagon, pushing the theory that low prices trump any ill effects that Walmart might also be dragging in.

Not so fast, some new research claims that "the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all."

One group of resesarachers (Lukas Lehner, Zachary Parolin, Clemente Pignatti, and Rafael Pintro Sschmitt) ran something akin to "the economics euqilavelent of a clinical trial for medicine." They looked at a rich set of data and came up with two groups, on who lived where a new Walmart was opening, the other of which lived Walmart-free. 

Their conclusion: In the 10 years after a Walmart Supercenter opened in a given community, the average household in that community experienced a 6 percent decline in yearly income—equivalent to about $5,000 a year in 2024 dollars—compared with households that didn’t have a Walmart open near them...

In theory, however, those people could still be better off if the money that they saved by shopping at Walmart was greater than the hit to their incomes. According to a 2005 study commissioned by Walmart itself, for example, the store saves households an average of $3,100 a year in 2024 dollars. Many economists think that estimate is generous (which isn’t surprising, given who funded the study), but even if it were accurate, Parolin and his co-authors find that the savings would be dwarfed by the lost income. They calculate that poverty increases by about 8 percent in places where a Walmart opens relative to places without one even when factoring in the most optimistic cost-savings scenarios.

There are flaws in the Parolin et al. analysis. Maybe other things were going on that caused on area to suffer economic losses. 

But anothe paper (by Justin Wiltshire) took a different approach and found "five years after Walmart enters a given county, total employment falls by about 3 percent, with most of the decline concentrated in “goods-producing establishments.”" These goods-producers were likely driven out of business by Walmart finding sources of goods (e.g., China) that could meet their low-price demands. And Walmart, having driven so many local job-producers out of business, can keep its wages down because they're the only game in town, employment-wise. 

The Biden administration has been trying to turn the tables on the belief that all that matters is lower prices for consumers by examining how mergers would impact workers. How likely is a Trump administration to keep the Biden focus on worker welfare? Guess it depends on what Elon and the tech bros want...

Recent history shows the political danger in threatening low consumer prices. The public’s reaction to the inflation of the past few years suggests that many Americans would rather be slightly poorer but have price stability than be richer but with more inflation. That will tempt policy makers to prioritize low prices above all else and embrace the companies that offer them. But if Walmart’s example reveals anything, it is that, in the long term, low prices can have costs of their own.

Is anyone surprised by any of this? 

Bottom of the barrel at Cracker Barrel

Although I've been to a Cracker Barrel a couple of times, I'll never be a regular. 

1. There aren't many around here
2. The calories
3. I'm way too much of a snob

But what's not to like (other than the calories) about those biscuits, those fried apples? And I will say that when I've been to a Cracker Barrel (last time, over 20 years ago while on a business trip to South Carolina) the service was fine (although probably a bit too chirpy for my liking).

But the service wasn't so fine for a group of Maryland special ed students - kiddos with severe cognitive disabilities and/or autism - who were snubbed, denied service, treated poorly, while on a field trip. 

On Tuesday [December 3rd], a group of 11 students and seven staff members from Maryland's Charles County Public Schools District were "refused service" at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Waldorf, Maryland, Superintendent Maria Navarro said in a statement. The outing was a part of community-based instruction for students at the district's Dr. James Craik Elementary School. The instruction allows students in special education programs to perform practical skills and socialize with the public. (Source: USA Today)

The school had called ahead and got the okay that they wouldn't need a reservation for their party, despite its size; had informed the Cracker Barrel people of the purpose of the visit; and had also told them that they were willing to split up if needed. 

But, no. When the group showed up - after doing some Christmas shopping at a Dollar Store - the teachers were told not only that they couldn't be seated, but that Cracker Barrel should be taken off the list of restaurants approved "for community-based instruction."

Cracker Barrel? Wouldn't you think that an informal, inexpensive, family-friendly, nothing fancy restaurant - especially one that specializes in exuding real fake cornpone charm - would be an ideal venue for a bunch of kids who might be messy, make funny noises, act weird. Hmmm. When I look at it at this way, wouldn't this describe most groups of kids?

The staff and students were allowed to place a take out order, but taking out and eating back at school is not the same experience as sitting down in a restaurant and being waited on. So Cracker Barrel was willing to deprive the crew of their money - feel free to pay for takeout! - and their experience. Shameful!

Both servers and management, the school staff said, were rude and ignored the kids. Althought the place wasn't busy, it took what seemed like forever for the takeout meals to be prepared, so the kids ended up waiting on the bus. (By the way, it's not like the 11 students were free-ranging in the restaurant. There were 7 staff members to support those 11 students.)

The parents - naturally furious - threatened a protest and, as news of the incident spread, the Cracker Barrel was flooded with negative Yelp reviews. (Served them right.)

Cracker Barrel apologized, claiming blah-di-blah. The store's general manager and two servers were fired. (And, yes, I do have a scintilla of sympathy for anyone getting fired from what has to be a pretty crummy, bottom of the barrel job to begin with, especially around the holidays. But they really should have known better.)

And just how awful is awful? I can only imagine how much those kids were anticipating their big day out. I can only imagine how the staff prepped them for it. How very awful.

If I were a patron of Cracker Barrel, I'd sure be boycotting. But, as I said, there are none nearby and I'm way, way, way too much of a snob. 

God help us...

 

There are no words, other than to say that this occurs on the day on which we honor Martin Luther King makes today an especial form of travesty. 

And yet another good idea

In my personal life, I have known only a couple of people who've been in prison. One was a childhood neighbor (kiddie porn on this hard drive), the other a former colleague who snapped and stabbed her children. These individuals were both released back into society while in their mid-to-late sixties, so they didn't have all the re-entry problems - like finding a job - that so many prisoners do face.

But in my volunteer life, working in a homeless shelter, I see plenty of folks with criminal records. 

Sometimes I know that they've been to jail or prison because they tell me. Sometimes they tell me directly, as in "I just got out of prison," to which I always say, "Welcome back!" Sometimes I learn indirectly, as when someone will say "Thank God you don't still give out Bob Barker soap." (Bob Barker is a mega-supplier to the prison system, and while some guys like the Bob Barker soap, claiming that it's good for hand-washing clothing, a lot more of our guests find Bob Barker brand triggering. So we try not to stock it.) Sometimes the guests have tear-drop or other prison tats, which are dead giveaways that someone's been on the inside. And sometimes I'm just curious about a guest and I google their name. (And sometimes I wish I hadn't.)

Anyway, I know that many of those who are coming out of jail or prison have an especially difficult time finding work. Yes, there are plenty of "CORI-friendly" employers who will hire those with CORIs (Criminal Offender Record Information).  But it's still harder than it should be. Even if they worked while in prison, the jobs they held - like making license plates - may not come with skills that are easily transferrable to the outside world. Plus the money that prisoners get paid for their work is typically pretty pathetic. 

Which is what makes a remote work program for prisoners in the state of Maine so worthwhile and wonderful.

Unlike incarcerated residents with jobs in the kitchen or woodshop who earn just a few hundred dollars a month, remote workers make fair-market wages, allowing them to pay victim restitution fees and legal costs, provide child support, and contribute to Social Security and other retirement funds.

Like inmates in work-release programs who have jobs out in the community, 10 percent of remote workers’ wages go to the state to offset the cost of room and board. All Maine DOC residents get re-entry support for housing and job searches before they’re released, and remote workers leave with even more: up-to-date résumés, a nest egg — and the hope that they’re less likely to need food or housing assistance, or resort to crime to get by. (Source: Boston Globe)

Not that the Maine woodworking program isn't great. I've been to the Maine State Prison Showroom (sensibly placed on Route 1 to capture the tourist trade) a couple of times and have gotten a few things there, including my toast tongs. But the ability to work remotely at a job more current and techie - and make market wages while you're at it - is far better preparation for re-entry, and it enables prisoners to actually help support their families and/or save up for the future. 

About 40 prisoners participate in the Maine program  "some of whom work full time from their cells and earn more than the correctional officers who guard them."

There are downsides to the program, of course. Crime victims and their familes may see the job opportunities, the market wages, as way, way, way too cushy. And friction has been known to build beween the haves with the high-end jobs and the have-nots working in the kitchen, carving duck decoys, and making license plates. (The good news on the latter front is that those who land the remote work jobs have often held the more desirable and glam prison jobs, which now become up for grabs.)

The benefits are undeniable, [Maine DOC’s director of adult educationLaura]Rodas said. "The systems that we’ve set up to send people home with virtually nothing makes no sense at all if we want them to become good neighbor.

...More than anything, incarcerated residents say, these jobs give them a sense of purpose and dignity. And hope.

To have prisons focused solely or just overwhelmingly on the punishment aspect of incarceration is so short-sighted. Most prisoners will go back into their communities, and how much better if they arrive back with well-developed skills, jobs lined up, money set aside to get them back up and running. 

Something seems to be working. In Maine, 10 percent of people who served time in state prisons are back in custody within a year, on average, compared to 31 percent in a survey of 18 states.

Here's how the system works:

Remote workers’ paychecks are sent to the state, which deducts room and board, child support, and other court-ordered fees, then transferred into personal accounts that can be accessed to buy snacks and supplies at the canteen or to send money home. Workers are also required to build up at least $1,000 in savings.

...In the Maine prison system, residents who want to work for private companies must comply with treatment plans and behavioral standards, and abide by internet limits and laptop monitoring. Phones aren’t allowed, but video calls are. The corrections department is also considering finding a way to designate an additional portion of their salaries for funds to assist fellow inmates, though some remote workers don’t like the idea of having more of their earnings taken away.

While Maine is the gold standard, a number of other states - but still far too few - have implemented or are considering similar programs. Massachusetts, alas, is not among them. (Massachusetts is not totally unenlightened. We do have a number of other training, work, and educational programs in place for prisoners. Just not enough. Nowhere are there enough.)

With all the remote work opportunities out there, having prisoners take advantage of some of them seems like an excellent idea. I know that call centers have for years operated out of some prisons, but, while call center jobs do teach transferrable skills, they pay low wages, not the market rate. The remote work jobs in Maine are real jobs, with the same compensation that those jobs would demand in the outside world.

Definitely an idea whose time has come!

Now here's an idea!

Throughout my career, I invariably worked for organizations that were in perpetual reorgnization mode. The word "reorganize" was always used, but one colleague observed that it wasn't quite the right word, as "reorganized" would imply that the company was organized to begin with. Which was seldom (never?) the case.

In one company, with a re-org looming, the managers tasked us rank and file workers with coming up with suggestions for how our group - a 100 person outpost of a larger organization - should be set up. Permission granted to officially do what we'd been doing all day anyway, i.e., sitting around speculating on how the re-org was going to go down, my buddies and I happily commandeered a meeting room and spent the workday with a little set of cards we'd created - one with each employee's name on it - laying out possible organization structures. 

I can't remember if we ever submitted a suggested org, and, if we did, whether anything came of it. I also don't remember if this was the reorganization when I overheard my boss and another manager debating who would get me on his team. My boss wanted to keep me, if only because everyone wanted to bail out of his group and join that other manager's team and he wanted to keep at least some sort of respectable headcount under him. 

My boss' argument for keeping me wasn't that I was so great. On the contrary, as I clearly overheard, he was telling the other manager - who ran the group of financial consultants where all my buds were heading - "she doesn't know anything about finance." Which was mostly true, yet still.

Anyway, I ended up staying under my original boss. I liked him well enough, even though he was something of a stiff. Case in point: one year when it came to reviews, HR told all the managers that the vast majority of employees - as near as possible to 100% - should be rated a "3," and that only the most exceptional should be rated a "4" or a "5." My goody-two-shoes boss gave us all "3's." Every other manager gave their peeps "4's" or "5's." 

Although the party line was always that raises and reviews are decoupled - hah! - when the raises came down, all the "4's" and "5's" got good raises, while us "3's" got a pittance.

This stroll down re-org/de-org lane was prompted by an article I'd seen (from Fortune, as picked up by Yahoo) on a pretty radical step that Bayer took: it got rid of its managers and let the rank and filers organize themselves.

Things have not been going well for Bayer for a while now. 

The company has a colossal amount of debt. In 2024, its maket cap plummeted. The company - known for that life saving, health preserving miracle we call the aspirin - had paid a boatload to acquire Monsanto - better known for death-dealing products like the weed killer Roundup. With the acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer also acquired a boatload of lawsuits claiming that Roundup causes cancer. (Personal aside: my husband's wonderful Aunt Ruth worked for years for Monsanto, and died, not young-young, but relatively so, from a cancer related to the products she had worked on.) On top of everything else, Bayer's patent for its blood-clot medication, Xarelto, expires next year, opening the door for competitors and closing the window on unbridled profits. 

With lots of not such good stuff going on, why not fire the managers? After all, so many of them are nothing more than paper-shuffling bureaucrats, no? (Not that I was ever a paper-shuffling bureaucrat of a manager...)

In place of managers, Bayer got rid of annual budgets and asked staff to organize themselves into 90-day “sprints” in self-directed teams. Anderson promised the vast majority of his staff would be operating under this model by the end of 2024.

“Rather than a lumbering corporation, Bayer will emerge as agile and bold as a startup—but one with operations in more than 100 countries. I’m convinced that this dramatic change will accelerate and unlock the value creation in each of our businesses,” Anderson wrote in a commentary piece for Fortune in March.

The good news for Bayer is that, when it comes to employees that Bayer does not want to attrit, attrition is down. Which is a good thing - between recruiting, onboarding, time to effectiveness, training, it costs a lot more to bring in someone new than it is to retain the services of someone you want to keep - but may not be enough to get Bayer fully back on track.

Still, eliminating the managerial layer - except, obviously, in the upper echelons - is an interesting approach. Mid-level managers have been under the gun since forever, but now, if the Bayer approach takes off, it looks like there's even more reason for those middies to make sure that they're working managers, not just paper-shuffling budgeters; "3," "4," and "5" review conductors; powermongers hell bent on keeping folks in their fiefdoms. 

Caveat, managers! (Take two aspirins and call us in the morning.) 

Unmade Men

Like pretty much every city of any size in the Northeast (and the Midwest, for that matter), my hometown of Worcester had it's share of organized crime. Cosa Nostra, it was called then, and Raymond Patriarca, who ran the Providence mob and had his hand in the Worcester mob as well, was Worcester-born.

But most of what I knew about gangsters came from watching The Untouchables. (Rico! Youngfellow!) I loved the show, but wasn't always able to see it, as my mother thought it was too explicit and violent for a ten year old. Somehow, though, I guess when she was distracted, I was able to watch. My father enjoyed it, and I became a fan, too.)

I also knew about organized crime from reading the newspapers and magazines like Newsweek, and from watching the televised news as well. (I was an avid consumer of the news pretty much from the time I could read.)

Once I reached the age of reason and moved to Boston, I became more aware of the Mafia, which had a major local presence. The Irish mob - Winter Hill Gang, Whitey Bulger - did, too. (That's a Whitey Bulger mug shot.)

The mobs were big news, so I learned plenty about the local gangs. 

In addition to reading about organized crime in the Boston Globe, there was plenty of popular culture to consume. 

Despite the sometimes terrible Boston accents, I loved The Departed, which was loosely based on the life and times of Whitey Bulger. And although they were not Massachusetts-mobbed up related, I also loved the Godfather movies (the first two, anyway), Married to the Mob, Wise Guys, etc. And I adored The Sopranos.

In terms of knowing much about the gangs, it was the Boston Mafia and the adjacent Irish mob that I knew most about. And I grew to understand that - as the wire taps and other surveillance methods worked, as the head guys went to prison and/or died, as the underlings decided that omerta wasn't worth it if you could acquire a get-out-of-jail-free card for ratting out the top dogs - organized crime in Boston wasn't what it used to be. 

(Steven O'Donnell, the former head of the RI State Police has recently "estimated there are currently only about 30 “made” members of the New England Mafia, compared to hundreds during its heyday decades ago.")

The local FBI has apparently come to the same understanding about the local branches of the mob dying out. 

So much so that the FBI’s Boston office, which oversees much of New England, quietly disbanded its organized crime squad recently and re-assigned agents to other priorities, according to several people familiar with the move.

The agency will still monitor any organized crime groups, as needed. But the disbandment of a unit that was largely built to target the Mafia signaled a death notice of sorts — an end of a dark era — for what was once one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the region, as well as the storied unit that was built to combat it.

“I don’t think there’s much of anything left with traditional organized crime,” said Fred Wyshak, a former federal prosecutor who won the convictions of local Italian and Irish organized crime figures, including the late former Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, notorious gangster Stephen Flemmi, and South Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger. “I think the leadership was destroyed and nobody really has the strength to step in and fill that void. I don’t think there’s a lot of desire to do so.” (Source: Boston Globe)

That these ruthless hoods are out of business is certainly for the better. While they were in their shoot-'em-up prime, there were plenty of stories in The Globe about cold blooded mob hits - often in broad daylight- and about mysterious disappearances. 

Organized crime may be romantic when the bad guys are played by Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. It may provide some comic relief like the episode of The Sopranos when Christopher Moltisanti and Paulie Walnuts are stranded overnight in the NJ Pine Barrens with nothing to eat but the dried up contents of a ketchup packet, found in the glove compartment. 

But in real life, organized crime is bloody, violent, sickening, and really, really stupid.

And there's no forgetting that some of G-men in the local Boston FBI office were pretty much running a Whitey Bulger protection racket out of said office. (FBI Agent John "Zip" Connolly went to prison for his involvement. He  had, like Whitey, grown up in South Boston. And, hey, what are friends for?)

In any event, it's good to see that the FBI will be focusing on terrorism, cybercrime, and other dangers that are clearer and more present than the old school mob. After all:

...the New England Mafia is now “a shell of itself,” said Steve Johnson, a retired Massachusetts State Police detective lieutenant and longtime organized crime investigator.

“It’s mostly figurehead people and wannabes ... people pretending they are doing their best Sopranos act,” he said. “It’s mostly just in name. They are certainly not what they used to be.”

I'm happy to see that fewer of these men, both made and unmade, remain in our midst. But they live on within a few degrees of separation.

My cousin's grandson had a classmate/teammate who was the grandson of the man who was responsible for 20 or so murders while he served as Whitey Bulger's trigger man. Another classmate/teammate was the great-nephew of another member of Whitey's gang. The uncle was a member in good standing until he pissed Whitey off. Bad move! The man who finished the uncle off was none other than Whitey's trigger man, who was just following orders. 

Good riddance to them all. (The hoods, not the classmates/teammates.)

Sugaring Off

We're still a month or so away from sugaring off season, when New England's maple trees are tapped and the sap boiled down to make maple syrup and maple sugar. Is there anything better for breakfast than pancakes with real maple syrup - not the corn syrup abomination you get in crappy restaurants? Yummer! And I'm also partial to maple sugar candy, with its tooth enamel piercing, diabetic coma inducing, sweetness. 

I've never seen sugaring off. But I sure do like the idea of it. 

Most real maple syrup in the United States comes from the Northeast, with Vermont being the Number 1 producing state. 

But New Hampshire's right up there, too, and one of the farms that's still producing the real deal is North Family Farm, which Tim Meeh and his wife Jill McCullough have been doing for 50 years now, since 1974 when they took over the Meeh family farm. And now the couple is facing the facts of all life, but especially farming life:

Now 72, Meeh and McCullough won’t be able to farm forever, and the farm’s future is to be determined. Like many aging farmers in the region, the couple is facing the thorny problem of how to hand off their life’s work — a complicated task involving money, family, and a deep connection to the land.

Farmers around New England are facing this precarious situation in the top region for maple syrup production in the country. The transition to the next generation will determine how much of the region’s agricultural roots — and identity — remain intact.

Maple farming is part of a multimillion dollar industry in New Hampshire but many farms are on the brink of disappearing. As of 2022, more than 40 percent of New Hampshire farmers are over 65 years old, while only 7 percent are under 35, according to the latest Census of Agriculture by the US Department of Agriculture. And some small farms are struggling to stay in business. (Source: Boston Globe)

Meeh and McCullough are hoping that one or both of their sons, Gemini and Daimon, will take over. (Gemini, huh? Ya think Meeh and McCullough might have been on the hippy spectrum back in the day?) 

Certainly, Meeh and McCullough have done everything they can to keep the operation going and self-supporting. 

Their operation now taps around 2,500 trees, producing about 1,250 gallons of organic syrup a year, according to Meeh. The maple syrup, maple cream, and maple candies they produce are sold online and at farmer’s markets, in addition to being distributed around the state to restaurants, grocery stores, and food co-ops. The couple has made the finances work through a diversified operation, growing hay and selling firewood in addition to making maple syrup.

Still, they're concerned about the farm's future.  Over the last few years, the number of maple farm operations in NH has declined by roughly 10%, from 528 to 471. 

While neither of the Meeh boys has fully declared, it sounds as if Gemini is leaning toward taking over the farm. A carpenter, hes been working the farm a few days a week. 

“There’s nothing like farming,” he said. “It’s the most enjoyable and fun work that I could imagine.”

He said he wants his young daughter to grow up around the same farm that he did. 

I'm sure that there is nothing like farming. I'm sure there aren't a lot of professions that are more demanding and just plain bone-wearying hard. (My husband's Uncle Bill grew up on a tobacco farm in Western Massachusetts, and farmed it for many years before turning it into a golf course. Uncle Bill made no bones about how hard farming is. In comparison, running the golf course was a breeze.) Still, tapping trees, the smell of maple during sugaring off...There sure is plenty of romance associated with it.

Good luck to North Family Farm. 

If I needed maple syrup, I'd order me some. But I think that the gift jug I have in my fridge is still good to go. Pancake dinner, coming right up!

_________________________________________

That painting Sugaring Off? Who else but Grandma Moses?