Nothing wrong with these paper roses

I almost always have a bouquet of fresh flowers in my living room. Unless I'm getting a gift for someone, I rarely go to one of the expensive local florists. (For me, those would be Rouvalis or Winston.) No, I buy my fleurs at Trader Joe's, where you can get a colorful bouquet for about $15 - a colorful bouquet that (however TJ's manages to do it) will last over a week. And once the bouquet's time is up - the flowers drooping and wilting - as often as not there are a couple of stems I can salvage and put in a small "satellite" vase in my kitchen.

Although I can usually keep a Christmas pointsettia going until July, and my St. Patrick's Day pot o' shamrocks until April at least, I don't have a ton of luck with plants. But I love having fresh flowers in the house. They just cheer me up.

I've never given much thought to where those flowers come from, let alone the environmental impact that the fresh flower biz has. But the founder of FreshCut Paper has. 

In 2021, Peter Hewitt read a New York Times article reporting that nearly 80% of cut flowers sold in the US are imported, traveling thousands of miles. To be kept fresh, they require airfreight and refrigeration - both huge contributors to climate change.

Peter got to work developing a new concept for flowers; a Pop-Up Paper Bouquet. The design aimed to bring beauty without the maintenance, making it a perfect solution for for those looking to conveniently send love. With a simple "pop up", the flowers unfold into a delightful display, making it a memorable gift that is sure to be fondly remembered and long-lasting. (Source: FreshCut Paper)

I had seen their wares around in gift shops, but hadn't given them much notice. Other than thinking that these paper flower "arrangements" were pretty enough. But sort of goofy. Who'd want paper roses when they could have the real thing? Who'd enjoy one-dimensional dust catchers? Who doesn't want to use all the vases they've accumulated over the years to hold actual flowers? 

I tend to rotate vases - of which I have plenty - for my weekly/biweekly Trader Joe's flowers. I also have a couple of vases full of dried flowers - it the Japaneses lanterns in my grandmother's cookie jar, or those pussy willows in the wonderful vase I got at Crate & Barrel decades ago, technically count as flowers, dried or otherwise.

For FreshCut Flowers, you don't need vases. 

They come paper vase with.

And, as noted, I had given nary a thought to any environmental concerns surrounding fresh real flowers.

But, as noted, Peter Hewitt has. 

FreshCut Paper, as it turns out, is a local company, located, in the classic spirit of New England, in an old mill in Concord, Massachusetts. I learned this while watching Chronicle, a program on WCVB Channel 5 that focuses on stories about off-the-beaten track people, places, and businesses in New England. I rarely watch it, but do find it very interesting when I stumble upon it.  

And as a complete and utter sucker for local businesses, I was more than interested in learning about FreshCut Paper.  

Naturally, I ordered a couple of bouquets. They haven't arrived yet, and I don't know if they'll replace or supplement my weekly/biweekly grocery store bouquets. I'll likely gift one to my cousin who's in senior living, hoping that the flowers will indeed be "fondly remembered and long-lasting." We'll see how and if I end up deploying the one I keep for myself.

However that turns out, I'm delighted to know that FreshCut Paper is serious about the environment:

At FreshCut Paper, we are committed to making a positive impact on both people and the planet. Through our partnership with veritree, we’ve helped plant over 5 million trees, restoring vital ecosystems. 1% of sales of our Grande Bouquet Line are donated to 1% for the Planet, supporting environmental initiatives that drive meaningful change. Your support helps us give back and make a lasting difference!

I did not order from the Grande Bouquet Line, as they were just a tad bit too grande for me. I don't want my flowers - fresh cut real blossoms, or fresh cut paper - to overwhelm my living room. While I do have a small container of my husband's ashes on my mantel, I don't want the place looking like a funeral parlor. (Wouldn't mother be please with those gorgeous gladiolas Cousin Bertha sent?) 

Anyway, I received my FreshCut Paper arrangements, without having to worry about the delivery guy leaving them on my front steps to freeze to death. There was, I was told, a tree planted for each bouqet I ordered. 

The very pretty bouquet in the picture is one I ordered for myself. The other one is going to my cousin in senior living. It'll be cheery and low maintenance for her!

As always, I am happy to see a quirkly little business making it in Massachusetts. 

OK. AI is good for some thing(s)

One of the very worst diseases I can imagine is ALS. I had a friend - not a close friend, but a friend nonetheless - who died of ALS, and it was just brutal to see this vibrant, brilliant, funny, kind, generous, irreverent very tough guy suffer through this. That Jake was also an athlete - a rugby player, a multi-multi-multi-multi-marathoner - made his dying of a disease that robs you of your mobility all the more poignant. But even if someone lacked Jake's wonderful character and traits, they wouldn't deserve to die from ALS. There is no one on the face of the earth who I despise more than I do DJT, and I wouldn't even wish ALS on him. 

ALS pretty much robs you of everything, including speech. 

I don't know David Betts, but thanks to a story I saw on the news, I know of him.

He's a Pennsylvania man who, like Jake, was stricken with ALS. David Betts' had enjoyed a highly successful career in consulting (with Deloitte), so he decided to take his analytic mind and problem solving skills to doing something about what was happening to him and, of course, the others who have the misfortune to get stuck with ALS. 

What David Betts did was develop an "AI-powered text-to-speech app. It speaks back in your choice of dozens of voices, but the kicker is, it's your actual voice."

He dubbed the app "Talk to Me, Goose."

"If anyone is a 'Top Gun' fan, it's the very first line in the very first film," David Betts said. "It's what he says when he needs a little dose of courage, and I kind of thought I'm going to need a little dose of courage." (Source: WCVB)

Although I liked 'Top Gun' well enough to also watch (and enjoy) the sequel, I wouldn't say I was exactly a fan, and I had no recall of the movie's opening line. (I did remember that Mav's (Tom Cruise's) best buddy was Goose (Anthony Edwards), and that Goose died in a freak top gun sort of accident. 

Anyway, Goose sure talked to David Betts, and he went out and created an app that will let those with ALS speak in their own voice.

He first looked at what was around for folks with speech limitations. He didn't find much

"They were still predominantly using what I found to be voice technology providers that sounded very robotic, and that's what terrified me. I did not want to sound like a robot," he said.

The technology to make voice clones already existed, so he took it a step further, learning how to create an app and putting it all together.

"I felt like I didn't have anything to lose, like there was no downside," Betts said.

And plenty of upside for those who could use a break.

Having successfully used his own app, Betts asked the question "How can we take this technology and reconnect people with their own voice?" The answer was to partner with an organization with broad reach into the ALS community. So he joined forces with Live Like Lou, an organization that supports those with ALS and their families, to make the app available for free. (The organization honors Lou Gehrig, the Yankees great of the 1930's who died of ALS.)

Available on iOS and Android, Talk to Me, Goose! helps individuals express themselves and share stories using advanced text-to-speech and personal voice cloning, even if their natural speech changes.

My friend Jake had a fast-moving version of ALS and lived less than a year post-diagnosis. During that year, he raised a ton of money for ALS research, including throwing a 65th birthday party fundraiser for himself that, on a snowy January night in 2020, just before the COVID curtain dropped, brought out about 500 folks to celebrate Jake's life and raise money for ALS. (Amazingly, this was a very fun party: an Irish wake while the person being waked was still alive. Jake's voice was going, but he could still talk to pretty much everyone there.) Jake also continued to run his signature charity (Christmas in the City, which focuses on making the holidays a little merrier and brighter for poor and homeless families in Boston). And I'm pretty sure he ran a half-marathon in there, too.

If I were diagnosed with ALS, I don't know what I'd do, but it probably wouldn't be run a half marathon or invent an app to help others. So bravo, David Betts. (And to Jake: we all still miss you!)

Image Source: Live Like Lou

Palantiranny

One of the most disturbing things to emerge from the current era is the ascendancy of the tech broligarchs. Or whatever they're called these days. Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg. Peter Thiel. Marc Andreessen. Larry Ellison. Alex Karp.

Maybe they've always been awful, but most of them used to at least give some lipservice to making the world a better place for someone other then themselves. Alas, somewhere along the line they all figured out that the bucks don't stop here. The bucks, in fact, never stop. And the thing about the bucks is, once you accrue a goodly enough of them, you realize you never have enough. And you never, ever, ever in a kabillion years want them to stop pouring into your coffers.

Being a millionaire used to be a big deal. Then it was being a one-digit billionaire. Of course, that soon became nothing much. And two-digit billionaire was an equal yawner. Three-digit billionaire-ing - $100B and above - and now you're talking. And all of a sudden we're in the countdown for when Elon Musk becomes the world's first trillionaire. Which will no doubt set off a what's he got that I don't? rapacity spree among those left behind, nursing their $100's of billions and their grievances. 

These guys aren't stupid, and they naturally realized that money isn't just homes everywhere, private submarines, super yachts with helipads, $5M engagement rings, $50M weddings, $100M bunkers, et every bit of cetera the mind can imagine. Money, they all recognized, is also power. And while once it may have been fine to use that power for some sort of benefit for humankind (c.f., Bill Gates' efforts to eradicate malaria), do-gooding is really nothing more than a sort of an amuse bouche for the real meal. Which is expanding and defending your unimaginable (to us plebs, anyway) wealth. And what better way to defend that wealth than to make sure that the government gets to take as small a bite out of it as possible.

So let's make sure our tax rates approach as near to zero as possible, that none of "our" loopholes are closed, that regulations that might actually help the little guy but may come at a cost to the poor little old big guys are eliminated. (C.f., decimation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.) 

No wonder they're all so gungho on AI. After all, if you can replace all those pesky, squawky humans with AI and robotics, there's more money to be made. (That is, I guess, until there are very few human beings left who can afford to buy any of the goods and services that the tech bros are producing.)

Sigh.

Yes, AI promises (promises, promises) to be the great distruptor. And, scarily enough, it probably will be. 

Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp sees a real upside to all the coming disruption. And that upside will benefit the Republican party. Not coincidentally, the party with all the power and the one most likely to enable a full hands-off-the-money policy when it comes to taxing the tech broligarchs and their companies. 

Last month, in a CNBC interview to discuss how Palantir's AI system is being used by the military for target selection  - and we've seen just how foolproof AI technology is when it comes to say, selecting an Iranian girls' school for destruction - Alex Karp opined on how AI's disruption will target women's work:

“The one thing that I think that even now is underestimated by all actors in industry … is how disruptive these technologies are,” Karp said. “If you are going to disrupt the economic and therefore political power significantly of one party’s base – highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat, and military and working-class people who do not feel supported – and you believe that that’s going to work out politically, you’re in an insane asylum.” 

He added: “Like … this technology disrupts humanities-trained – largely Democratic – voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters. These disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society.” (Source: NY Times)

Swell. All those girly-girl history majors who know how to think, write, analyze, and other white-collarly things. And who support reproductive rights, social justice, diversity and equity, gay marriage, environmental concerns, universal healthcare - and vote accordingly. They'll see their economic, social, and political power eclipsed by swing-a-hammer white guys driving F150s to the voting booth to cast their voter-ID'd ballot for Barron Trump. And maybe even for an initiative to repeal the 19th amendment and send us latter-day suffragettes packing. 

But, but, but, what happens next? Having gutted the ranks of those we used to call "knowledge workers," isn't AI going to go after the blue collar guys, too? After all, AI/robotics has done away with millions of manufacturing jobs, and it's going to be gunning for everything else humans used to do as well. Who'll  be calling a plumber when your really smart toilet can unclog itself? Who'll need a roofer when the prefab new roof is dropped into place via drown, and secured via robots?

It's not clear that Karp is advocating for all this disruption. He's just saying it's going to happen. But it's certainly no secret that many of the tech broligarchs don't believe in democracy at all, at all. They view it as an encroachment on their freedom, i.e., the ability to endlessly accumulate.

One of my big questions about AI is just what do the broligarchs and their political henchmen think that people are going to do for work if there are no jobs? 

Easy enough to see a return to a medieval society: nobles at the top, small class of supporting professionals and artisans, and a mass of peasants living in hovels. One shirt to last a lifetime, a diet of cheap foods designed to put us out of our misery young. And unlike our ancestors, who had to rely on storytelling and a flute made out of a dried reed for entertainment, we'll get 24/7 infotainment and rot piped in to our hovels to keep us from noticing that those damned rich just keep getting richer. 

Maybe it won't happen. Maybe things will slow down. Maybe we'll come to our collective senses and decide just how, as a society and an economy, we want to ride the AI wave. Maybe we'll figure out how to have an economy that works for the many, not just the few. Maybe. 

I hope so.

But it sure makes me nervous that so many of these kabillionaire tech gods are using their vast economic power to become more economically and politically powerful. Which seems to be leading inexorably to autocracy and the tyranny of the super-rich.

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

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Image Source: Octopus Intelligence

Yes, chef? Maybe not for much longer

When I was young, I logged a lot of hours as a waitress.

None of those hours were logged in any place fancy: no executive chefs, no sous chefs, no tall white toques. 

My first waitressing gig was at the neighborhood Big Boy, where at any given time there were two or three guys manning the line, grilling up the burgers, frying up the onion rings. John. Danny. Timmy. Bob. Don. Mel. The other John, who worked in the basement prepping items for the line. I seem to remember him breading the onion rings.

I don't remember all the fellows - and they were all men (or boys-to-men) - who I met during my two summers and one Christmas vacation working there, but they were a combo of blue collar, hardworking guys and hippies, who weren't quite as hardworking as the blue collars, but tended to be pretty interesting. John (upstairs John), Danny, and Timmy were brothers, and genuinely nice men. (And cute.) Bob was a nasty a-hole. Don was okay, but a bit rough around the edges. (I think he'd just gotten out of jail.) Mel talked about writing a novel called 86 that Dream. John (downstairs John) was a very handsome Jamaican guy who loved Tom Jones, and blared his music.

Sometimes the cooks fought with each other. Sometimes they yelled at the waitresses. But the only violence I ever witnessed at Big Boy was when a busboy had a bit of a breakdown and started beating his head against the cement block wall in the basement.

Union Oyster House, my next waitressing stop, was far fancier and more upscale than Big Boy. It was a big tourist destination, had a full bar, some fancy - or what counted for fancy 50+ years ago - menu items (Oysters Rockefeller, Lobster Thermidor), and had supposedly been a haunt of pre-Jackie JFK when he was a young Congressman representing Boston. (Amazing to think of it now, but when I waitressed at Union Oyster, JFK had been dead less than 10 years.) All that, but no head chef toque-wearing nonsense.

We had cooks, mostly Jamaicans, a couple of Greeks who mostly handled the raw shelfish and steamers, and a salad maker named Willie who made salads and shrimp cocktails with a perpetual stogie hanging out of his mouth. His big line to all the waitresses, which he must have repeated dozens of times each day was, "I had a dream about you last night. We was making love." The Greek guys spoke very little English, but were always inviting the young waitresses out to the Club Plaka. (One night we actually went and had fun slurping down retsina shots and doing some sort of circle dance with a scarf.) 

The Jamaican guys were riotously funny, if you consider occasionally frying up cockroaches in the Fisherman's Platter mix riotously funny. The funniest thing they did happened on a night the power went out. They had a small generator that could keep some lights on, but the AC was gone, and this was a hot August night, and for some reason the busiest night of the summer. The managers put candles out in the dining room and we carried on. The kitchen - as you can imagine - became unbearable, and the Jamaican fellows running the giant gas stoves and fryolators were bearing the brunt of it. 

Their complaints fell on deaf management ears - The house was full! The show must go on! - until the cooks figured out how to shut the place down. They took off all their clothing, and the half of the waitressing staff composed of little old first gen Irish ladies from South Boston weren't going to go into any kitchen where there were a bunch of naked men. Bonus points that these men were all Black.

At the Oyster House, everyone yelled at each other all the time, but most of it was wisecracking, bitching, trashtalking. The only time I saw anyone berated was when I forgot to leave a chit in at the bar for a drink called a Golden Dream. Louie, the bartender, hunted me down in the dining room, grabbed my arm, and screamed at me, "Give me the dupe for that Golden Dream."

To finance a cross-country wander and a four month hitchhiking trek through Europe, I worked after I dropped out of grad school at Durgin Park for a year. Durgin, now closed, was - along with the still-surviving Oyster House - a venerable Boston tourist trap. 

The owner during my time there was a temperamental maniac who put on a daily screaming and yelling performance, with the waitresses being his favorite targets. (His second favorite target: the customers.) It would take a book - or at least a long chapter - to describe just what an insane environment Durgin was. But I don't remember insanity among the cooks. There was Billy B. (Billy B. couldn't read, so couldn't tell what was on the order slips we submitted. But we had to call out the order when we hung the slips, and Billy B. flawlessly took care of everything from memory.) Henry-the-Elder. (Short and rugged, and a truly nice and kind man.) Henry-the-Younger. (Who looked like Ichabod Crane and was a good kid.) Glenn, the maniac owner's son-in-law who sometimes worked the line, was an object of our sympathy and pity. 

Durgin was hectic and loud, and the owner was as nasty as they get. But he was so over the top, and the old gal waitresses, which Durgin was famous for, so knew how to play him like a fiddle (which they regularly did on behalf of the young gal waitresses he went after), that the craziness was pretty much a laughing matter. And I never saw abuse to or from the cooks.

My waitressing career ended over a half century ago, and wasn't at any high-end restaurants to begin with, but things seemed to have changed. The advent of the celebrity chef, the emergence of the international culinary scene, the world of the "must be seen there scene" restaurant, the extreme and extremely fussy food innovations. All this has turned many of the big deal restaurants into wildly intensive environments that are brutal to work in. 

I read all about it in a NY Times article from March that focused on René Redzepi, a world renowned chef I had never heard of, who stepped down from Noma, a world renowned restaurant I had never heard of. Days before Redzepi had announced his down-steping:

The New York Times [had] reported allegations that Mr. Redzepi had punched, slammed and inflicted other physical punishments on cooks from 2009 to 2017. (Source: NY Times)

Yikes!

Okay, yikes!, but something that's a lot more widespread than one chef at Noma.  

The situation at Noma has apparently:

...lent new urgency to a conversation in the global restaurant industry about how to fix professional kitchens once and for all. Although past scandals and the #MeToo movement have resulted in better conditions at many restaurants, chefs said bullying and abuse still persist at too many others.

Dominique Crenn, the first woman in the United States to head a restaurant with three Michelin stars, said it is well past time to change the notion that performing at the highest level in the world’s top kitchens requires humiliation, intimidation or violence.

“We have been talking about this forever,” she said.

The up and coming chefs, it seems, just aren't going to take it any longer. 

A growing cohort of chefs — people who are young, who are not men and who are very online — say they want to hold the industry to account for the abuse and discrimination that have persisted in restaurant kitchens.

...Tiffani Faison, a chef in Boston, said that public awareness of abuse in restaurants has risen since 2017, when celebrity chefs like Mario Batali were accused of sexual misconduct and dethroned, but the reckoning didn’t go far enough.

“We changed the curtains, but we didn’t remodel the house,” she said. “And we still haven’t cleaned out the basement where we hid the skeletons.”

Whether you're working in the unglamorous sorts of restaurants I worked in, or some $1,000 a plate glam spot with an eleven month waiting list to sup on the likes of vaporized truffle gnat eye, restaurant kitchens are going to be hot, tense, noisy, and hectic. Plus dangerous: boiling oil, hot stoves, knives. Comes with the territory. But they don't need to be toxic and abusive. No workplace does. 

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Image Source: Etsy

AI Strikes Again? You betcha!

Tennessee grandmother Angela Lipps had lived a pretty uneventful life. At 50, most of that life had been spent in North Central Tennessee. She'd never been to North Dakota. Heck, she'd never been on an airplane. That is until the the city of Fargo, North Dakota - yes, that Fargo - extradited her to face bank fraud charges, and flew her to Fargo free of charge, but not free of charges. And under lock and key (including those nifty waist restraints that seem to be all the rage among the ragers). 

In July, US marshals arrested Lipps at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four children. She said she was taken away at gunpoint and booked into a county jail as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota.

“I’ve never been to North Dakota, I don’t know anyone from North Dakota,” Lipps told WDAY News.

She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft. (Source: The Guardian)

Fargo police had used facial recognition software which analyzed bank "surveillance video of a woman using a fake US army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars." With that AI assist, the crackerjack Fargo sleuths determined that the woman in the video seemed a pretty darned good match to Angela Lipps.

No word on why they left poor Ms. Lipps, bail-less, languishing in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months - which I'm sure was no picnic - before flying her out to Fargo in late October. Or why she was denied bail. I know that tens of thousands of dollars is a lot of loot, but Angela Lipps hardly looked like a hardened criminal. But I guess she did look enough like the Fargo grand thief to keep her locked up.

And I suspect that being poor and having few resources didn't help. Just spitballing here, but if a middle class woman with the ability to hire a lawyer had been nabbed for this crime of the century, she likely wouldn't have been kept in the stir for 108 days waiting for Fargo to get its extradition act together. Even in Tennessee.

Once in Fargo, Angela Lipps fortunately got the help of a court appointed defender, Jay Greenwood, who did his job. He found records that proved that Ms. Lipps was nowhere near Fargo when the fraud occurred. And on Christmas Eve, she was released.

Opening the cell doors was about all that Fargo PD did for her.

...Lipps said Fargo police did not pay for her trip home, leaving her stranded. Local defense attorneys helped cover a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and a local non-profit, the F5 Project, was able to help her return to Tennessee.

Well, that must have been one swell Christmas for Angela Lipps. Lets hear it for those local defense attorneys who made sure she didn't have to spend the holiday in a homeless shelter. Sheesh. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Lipps returned home, and it was no Tennessee Waltz. While income-less in the hoosegow, she "lost her home, her car and her dog." 

A fellow from West Fargo, ND, set up a GoFundMe for her, which contains some very telling details about her situation and the criminal justice system. 

When the U.S. Marshalls picked up her up in Tennessee, they would not let her retrieve her dentures. So for nearly six months in jail, she was toothless. That home she lost was a rental in a trailer park. Her family put her things in storage for her, but couldn't keep up the storage payments. Among the lost possessions Angela Lipps itemized in the GFM were a Chrysler Sebring convertible and a tire inflator. When Fargo PD released her, she was wearing the summer clothing she'd first been arrested in. Which aren't exactly appropriate for Christmas Eve in Fargo, ND. (This is not particular to Fargo, btw. Not sure if it's still the case, but I know that it used to be that when someone was released from county jail in Massachusetts, they were sprung in the same duds they had on when they were arrested. So, if you were arrested in July and did a six-month "bid," they let you out in January in the cutoffs and tee-shirt you were wearing upon entry.)

If you're wondering whether I made a donation to Angela Lipps' GoFundMe. Well, duh!

And if you're wondering whether I think Angea Lipps should sue the Fargo Police Department. As they'd say in Fargo, you betcha!

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Image Source: City of Fargo

Who says there's no honor among thieves

Well, this is Holy Week, the days leading up to Easter, and the week is full of special observances. At least as I recall from my 24/7, ultra-Catholic upbringing. Yesterday was Spy Wednesday, the "anniversary" of Judas' betrayal of Jesus Christ. It was best known among parochial school kids as a half-day, and the day we got out for Easter break.

Today is Holy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, and tomorrow is Good Friday, the day of Christ's crucifixion.

On Good Friday, during my childhood, my family drove around the Diocese of Worcester to pay visits to three churches, which entitled you to a plenary indulgence. (Don't ask.) I think it was mainly an excuse for my 24/7, ultra-Catholic mother to check out three churches she hadn't been into before - bonus points (but not a more plenary indulgence granted) if the church was a new build - so we got in the car, found the churches my mother had plotted, and traipsed around the church for a few. To achieve the indulgence, I believe you had to say a couple of prayers, but it doesn't take all that much effort to rattle off a Hail Mary or two.  

As an ultra 24/7 ex-Catholic, I don't spend a ton of time thinking about Holy Week and Easter. As long as my sister Trish gives me a Peep or two, I'm good.

But a Boston Globe article I saw brought to mind the legend of Dismas, the Good Thief. The Globe story was about a fellow who was busted for drug possession/trafficking after a wannabe car thief discovered cocaine in the trunk of the car he was trying to thieve. The OG article was from January, but things resurfaced when, a couple of weeks ago, there were some follow-on arrests.

The strange sequence of events began on the evening of Jan. 6, when a man notified police that he had found a package of drugs on the side of the road.

But when detectives interviewed the man, he changed his story. According to a police report, he acknowledged that he had found the drugs inside the trunk of a Kia he had broken into.

The car, which police said belongs to Gillespie, was parked at a private commuter parking lot in Hyannis, police said.

The man, whom police did not identify, said he initially planned to steal the car and used a screwdriver to pry open the steering column, but he couldn’t get the car to start, police said.

He opened the trunk to check for valuables and in the tire well found a Target bag containing a duct-taped package that turned out to contain cocaine.

When he realized what it was, he “got scared” and wasn’t sure what to do, so he contacted the police, the report stated.

The owner of the car, Edward Gillespie, 62, of Nantucket, was arrested and charged with trafficking more than 200 grams of cocaine, police in Barnstable said in a statement.

Gillespie was preparing to bring the cocaine from Hyannis to Nantucket when he was arrested on Jan. 8, police said. (Source: Boston Globe)

The bust proved bigger than the initial measly 200 grams.  After a search of Gillespie's home:

In all, police said they seized approximately 1,141 grams of cocaine, 68 grams of amphetamine pills, and approximately $10,000 in cash. 

Like Dismas, the car thief was a criminal. Although death by crucifixion seems a bit harsh for stealing something, there is that "Thou Shall Not Steal" commandment out there. But Dismas had the fortune to be crucified next to Jesus and the two men were said to have struck up a conversation that ended with Christ assuring Dismas that on the day of his death he would be ushered into paradise. 

There is no info on the Hyannis car thief's motives for calling the police. (It is doubtful that he struck up a convo with a Christ figure. Not on a January night in a Cape Cod parking lot.) Was he afraid that he would be tied to the drugs through fingerprint evidence or crime-watch cameras? Did he just say to himself "hey, stealing a car and petty theft from a trunk is one thing, but this looks like some serious criming?" And was he at all concerned that the Cape Cod drug lords would figure out who dimed them and come after him? (C.f., snitches get stitches.) Did his good-thief/good citizen conscience outweigh his fear? The car thief's identity was not revealed, but I suspect that bad guys have a way of finding these things out.

Anyway, I hope that the Hyannis Dismas is okay. I hope that he has seen the error of his ways and is on the path of righteousness. This is, after all, the season of redemption, no?

Meanwhile, Happy Easter to all and to all a good night. And please do enjoy biting the head off of a Peep.

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Image Source: Freepik

Wanna bet?

It's no secret that you can bet on pretty much anything. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket provide a forum for wagering on the outcomes of "traditional" events and occurrences, like golf matches and basketball games, elections and Oscar winners. But you can also bet on what the temperature in LA is going to be tomorrow, where Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will tie the knot, and when and if the Straits of Hormuz will reopen.

Sports betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings are sucking folks - mostly young men - into addictive always-on wagering on every nuance of pretty much every sporting event known to man, including darts, chess and ping pong. (The general purpose sites cover sports betting as well.) A lot of the eyes on sports are not those of fans, but of gamblers, riveted on whether the next pitch will be a called strike or not - and whether they've won $200 on that bet.

While the sports betting is not good for the particular or general soul - gambling's always been addictive, but when you're holding your own personal bookie in your hand 24/7, well, truly awful things can happen. And more athletes themselves will be sucked into the easy money of a point here, a point there, which will end up corrupting sports more than they're already corrupted.

But the truly nefarious stuff goes on when insiders on the economic or geopolitical front, those who have knowledge of and/or control over potential outcomes, decide they want to make a bit of coin. Reputedly, there were White House insiders who cashed in on bets on when Iran's Ayatollah would be taken out. (Would any be surprised that members of the Merrily Grifting Trump family wagered an easy-money bet or two. On second thought, maybe not, when there are far larger grifts to grift.)

Then there are the smaller scale betting pools, the kind that a lot of us have been involved with. How many pounds will you your colleague's baby weigh? What team will be left standing in the March Madness bracket? A few bucks thrown in at work or the gym. It can be fun. And pretty harmless

But it's pretty odious when the pool at work is making life-and-death wagers, as is reportedly the case at Camp East Montana, and ICE detention center in Texas that's the nation's largest. (Everything really is bigger in Texas.) At Camp East Montana, guards allegedly have betting pools on who among the detainees under their "care" will be the next to commit suicide. I mean, it's not as if the guards have the power to make someone's life worse, to deprive them of care, to encourage them to kill themselves. Even to report a homicide as a suicide. Nah, ICE guys wouldn't do anything like that, would they?

Predictably, the DHS - an organizational just full to the brim of those of sterling character and moral rectitude - denies that there's any betting going on.

Look, not everyone who works for ICE or Border Patrol is an evil, violent, ill-trained thug. But enough of them are to reinforce such a sordid reputation. And with the decline in recruitment standards and training, the administration's encouragement of maltreatment of those rounded up and detained, out of control thug does appear in many cases to be the profile that the government is looking for and rewarding.

Factor in the amoral/immoral/money-grubbing malaise plaguing our society, and it seems entirely plausible that detention facility guards would try to make some bank betting on which detainee - whether a down and dirty member of Tren de Aragua who deserves deportation (but not maltreatment and torture) or some poor brown-skinned schnook who's been working under the table as a gardner for thirty years - is next for the coroner's wagon.

You don't think it could happen? You think DHS is telling the truth?

I say, wanna bet? 

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Info source: Mother Jones

Image Source: Amazon

I got shoes, you got shoes. All Trump's minions got shoes.

It's certainly no secret that Trump is a bully, a mean-spirited louse who extracts a goodly portion of the little joy he ekes out of life by humiliating others. Sometimes the humiliation is passive, as in the nauseating Cabinet meetings where his minions shamelessly fall all over themselves to praise Dear Leader - performances that wouldn't be out of place at a table headed by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jon Un, or Idi Amin. 

(Decades ago, I saw a documentary on Amin that featured a meeting of his underlings. There was also a scene in which Amin "won" a swimming race in which he walked across the waist-high part of a swimming pool using his arms to mimic taking strokes. When he got to the pool's edge, he looked up at the camera grinning and declared "I won." Sounds a lot like all those golf tournaments - and peace prizes - that Trump brags about.)

One of Trump's latest forays into the wonderful world of underling humiliation was gifting shoes to his Cabinet members and expecting them to wear them. Even if, because Trump ordered whatever sizes he thought would be best, the shoes don't fit.

The shoes that were the biggest misfits seemed to be those of the feet of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Whatever size Lil Marco - a pet name bestowed by Trump during the 2016 Republican primary season - wears in real life, it's apparently not the "big shoes to fill" Trump gave him.

“Trump has been buying $145 Florsheim dress shoes for allies, using the gifts as a lighthearted way to encourage loyalty and unity within his circle,” posted media X account Clash Report, citing The Times as a source. (Source: MSN)

These are the same shiny black dress shoes that Trump himself wears. 

It's certainly no surprise that Trump favors shoes made in China (or somewhere non-US-y). But it's a bit shocking that his shoe of choice is from Florsheim, a rather pedestrian brand. (On a side note, my father wore Florsheim's - black or brown wingtips. He sometimes converted old ones to golf shoes by having spikes put on them.)

After all, Trump is fabulously wealthy, with his wealth having increased over the past year - the first year of his second presidency - by a cool $1.4B. Surely, he could afford whatever shoes he wants. So why not look into Allen Edmonds? Sure, they're more than double the price of Florsheim's, but they're actually made in the US of A. Or he could have a bespoke cobbler hand make him his shoes. 

Of course, what he probably really wants is to be carried around on a sedan chair while wearing dem golden slippers.

Given that Trump's notoriously cheap when it comes to reaching into his own pocket, perhaps he just didn't want to spend a lot of gifts for his cabinet. At the same time, he didn't want them to think he was gifting them second best by giving them shoes that he himself doesn't wear. (On second thought, there's no reason to believe the cost of the shoes was personally borne by Trump.)

“All the boys have them,” said one unnamed White House official, while another told the WSJ, “It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.”

“Recipients have taken to wearing their Florsheims around Trump, some apparently begrudgingly,” the WSJ reported. “One cabinet secretary has grumbled that he had to shelve his Louis Vuittons, according to people who heard the complaint.”

As you can see in the photo of Marco sporting his new Florsheim's, they appear to be too big by about half an inch. Not quite clown shoes, but not exactly comfy. And what a win for Trump that Rubio has been "ruthlessly mocked" for clomping around in them. Social media. Late night comedians. Marco Rubio, ha, ha, ha. 

Who among us hasn't worn (at least once, in the gift-givers presence) something we're not wild about - the color, the cut - because it was given to us by someone we cared aout. But that ain't what's happening here.

Nope. Ain't no one wearing those shoes out of fondness for their boss. And to think that no one has the guts to say, "Thanks for the nifty gift, boss, but I'd like to exchange them for something that fits." Because that would be suggesting that Trump had made a mistake, gotten something wrong. Talk about that ain't happening. Not with King Infallible on the throne.

Others who have been beneficiaries of Trump's shoe largesse include Cabinet members Pete Hegseth, Howard Lutnick, and Sean Duffy. (No word on whether Scott Bessent was on the gift list, but I can't see that insufferable imperious snob voluntarily wearing Florsheim's.) Which means it would be delicious if Trump decided to do it. Steven Cheung, Lindsey Graham, and Sean Hannity have also been giftees. 

In terms of everything else Trump is doing to destroy the country and the world, forcing someone to wear unwanted, ill-fitting shoes is pretty small potatoes. But it does provide us with yet another example of Trump's rancid personality. 

Meanwhile, I can draw some comfort from learning that Florsheim's parent company, Weyco, is suing Trump over tariffs. 

Duck and cover

I remember plenty of school fire drills. Back in the day, kids were actually killed in school fires - as happened to 92 kiddos (and 3 nuns) at Our Lady of the Angels (same name as my school!) in Chicago in 1958. This was before there was such a thing as a mass school shootings, so there was no such thing as active shooter drills. Just fire drills.

If there were any Civil Defense "Duck and Cover" drills at my OLA, I don't recall any. But this was the 1950's-1960's, so there must have been a time or two when the fire alarm went off and the nuns told us to stick our heads under our desks and make a perfect Act of Contrition. I just don't remember any. 

I think there was a black and yellow Fallout Shelter sign somewhere in the vestibule of our church, indicating that we could hide from an A-bomb in the church's basement. The nuns may have walked us down the hill, in a patrol line, to the church to point it out to us, but I don't think they went so far as to take us into the basement. 

Not that we weren't being constantly warned about an impending attack by Russian or Chinese Communists. This was the Cold War we're talking. But mostly the nuns were preparing us for a ground war, not bombs dropping from the heavens skies. What would we do, we were asked, if Commies stormed into our classroom, pointed Kalishnikovs at us, and asked us to deny our faith? Who among us would stand and declare "I am a Catholic" and join the ranks of martydom? 

It didn't occur to us to wonder why they'd bother asking, given that they had marauded their way into a classroom to find 50 or so parochial school uniformed kiddos jammed in. A classroom presided over by a nun with giant rosary beads swinging from her waist. A classroom with a prominently displayed crucifix and other religious paraphernalia all over the walls. Even the dullest Commie soldier could probably figure out we were all Catholics. 

This was also the era of backyard bomb shelters, but I didn't know anyone who had one. Bomb shelters were middle-class suburban, not blue-collar urban I guess. Maybe it was an economic thing, maybe it was philosophical, with us working stiff types deciding that if A-bombs and, later, nukes were being rained down on our heads, the world just might not be worth surviving.

At least that's how I like to think of it, because that's my philosophical stance on surviving a nuclear apolcalypse. Maybe it's because I don't have kids or grandkids, but when it comes to creating a survival shelter - and, in truth, where would I put one in my 1240 square foot downtown condo - I'm Team What, Me Worry? If the end of the world as we know it is upon us, I want to be at Ground Zero wearing a propeller beanie that says "me first."

Anyway, despite the threats heading our way from Iran, I haven't given a ton of thought to just how much terror we're in for, and whether Trump and/or the Ayatollah are actually capable of unleashing nukes. 

Apparently not so for those closer to the know.  As I saw in the news a couple of weeks back: 

...at least two top Trump administration officials have raced to purchase their own survival shelters designed to withstand an apocalyptic nuclear war scenario, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.

The revelation comes from Texas resident Ron Hubbard, who owns Atlas, a company that manufactures survival bunkers designed to withstand "biological [or] nuclear fallout, EMP attacks” and other catastrophic scenarios. Hubbard spoke with The Telegraph and revealed that since the U.S. attack on Iran, inquiries had gone up “tenfold,” including inquiries from two senior Trump administration Cabinet members.

“One of them texted me yesterday, asking me: ‘When will my bunker be ready?’” Hubbard told The Telegraph, referring to one of the officials. (Source: Raw Story)

Maybe they know something we don't know. After all, plenty of politicos and politico-adjacent swells have been making bank on insider info through both "savvy" stock market trading and making moves in betting-on-anything markets. Didn't I read that a couple of White House-ers made bank by betting on when the old Ayatollah was going to be taken out?

It's not just administration officials, of course. Hubbard has stated "that his recent clients were almost all “Christian, conservative CEOs,” which included “several of the wealthiest men on the planet,” though he declined to identify them."

Hmmmm. Thought these folks were looking forward to The Rapture.

Me? If the doomsday scenarios play out, I hope to rapturously (or not) enter the Big Sleep and call it a day.  

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Image Source: New Hope Free Press

I knew it all along!

I am a keeper of written lists.

Yes, I keep my calendar online, but each and every Sunday, I write out my macro level to-do list on a large (8 1/2" x 11") yellow pad. 

w/o whatever. Su-M-Tu-W-Th-F-Sa - with whatever's on the calendar for each day. Then a list of things I want/need to do for the week that aren't scheduled events. Items like order Orthofeet, organize tax info.

Every evening, I write out the to-do list for the next day on a small (5" x 7") yellow pad. This list covers scheduled events (my volunteer work, a dentist appointment, lunch with a friend); DuoLingo (I'm not learning much español, but I like to keep my streak going); and miscellaneous to-dos (laundry, mail out Easter cards, ping K, library). Needless to say, it's very satisfying to cross to-dos off the list once they're to-done. 

Before I go grocery shopping, I write out a shopping list. For this, I use a small red spiral notebook, and set things out - more or less - by where things are located in the store. Veggies and fruits grouped together; baking stuff; butter-eggs-cheese-milk; and so on.

When I go to the drugstore or hardware store for more than one thing, I either write those things down on a Post-it note and tuck it into my wallet, or - if there are enough items - use my small red spiral grocery notebook.

For all my lists, I use pen, but pencil would work just fine.

Yellow pads (large and small), Post-it notes, small red spiral notebook. Handwritten. (Even though my once near-perfect Palmer Penmanship has deteriorated to the point where I have to really focus on what I'm writing if I want to decipher the words.)

Yes, I know. Old school. (Old fogey.) After all, there's an app for everything, including list-making. So I could just type things into my calendar or some task-keeping, list-making app. Or even voice them in.

But as it turns out, the old-fahioned manual way of doing is good for you!

Recent research shows that handwriting enhances brain connectivity across regions associated with learning and memory, whereas typing doesn’t produce the same effect. Think about that for a second. The simple act of moving a pen across paper creates neural pathways that tapping on glass never will.

Isabelle Thibaud, a psychologist, puts it perfectly: “The physical act of writing activates different brain regions than typing. But it goes deeper.”

...Studies confirm that handwriting engages a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing compared to typing, leading to more active cognitive engagement and better memory retention. (Source: Global English Editing)

When I do my Christmas cards, I used to write out the addresses, but decided that was too time consuming so I now use labels. A couple of weeks back, when I sent out my St. Patrick's Day cards - and there are only a dozen of them vs. 60 or so for Christmas - I got lazy and did labels. (Christmas. Valentine's Day. Paddy's Day. Easter. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Birthdays of course. I'm an inveterate card-sender.) Now I'll have to rethink the use of labels, as it would be better for the sake of my brain to hand-address the cards. I guess the tradeoff would be boosting memory and learning vs. how long it takes. And then there's the worrying about whether the Post Office will be able to interpret my scrawls and D-Liver D-Letter D-Sooner D-Better. 

Consider me D-Lighted to find out that old fashioned list-making is beneficial to the brain. 

Not that I didn't know it all along, but there's knowing and then there's knowing. 

Bravo, handwritten lists!

AI AI AI AI (Part 2)

There are so many AI failures and atrocities, it's difficult to know where to begin. Chatbots are coaching vulnerable folks to commit suicide, to commit crimes. The government wants the cooperation of AI vendors to accelerate the completion of the compleat surveillance state. (Can't wait.) There've been AI misdiagnoses. AI job losses - even when the AIs are nowhere near as good as the workers who've been replaced. AI mistargeting. (What's a hundred or so Iranian schoolgirls?)

Not all of AI's failures and atrocities are dire.

The other day, I had to call a bank for some information that required my speaking with a human. The first "human" I was connected to was clearly an AI. Either that, or someone doing a mighty good impression of an AI. Anyway, the AI "human" was able to finally get me to a human human. 

This encounter wasn't life threatening. Just annoying.

And there's no doubt plenty more where that came from.

Meanwhile, there are many (and increasing) instances of AIs that are just plain soul-crushing. And high on my list of the soul-crushers are AI when it starts tampering with the arts.

Last month I wrote about a Revolutionary War "series" concocted via AI. 

Ken Burns has nothing to worry about, but if folks start accepting AI slop wherever they may find it...I don't even want to think about it.

And one place where I sure don't want to see AI slop rearing its ugly little non-head is the written word, especially when it comes to fiction.

Even if that fiction is just romance novels, where AI is apparently making some headway.

Take Coral Hart.

There is no Coral Hart for reals. It's one of the many pennames of a modestly successful legit romance novel writer whose "real" work had been published by Harlequin. Hart started playing around with AI and found that she could churn out hundreds of titles a year and pull down six figure earnings. Sure, she's had to tweak the prose. AI is apparently not all that good at sex scenes and the nuances of true love, romance novel edition.

But once she's entered her prompts and high level outline, AI can churn a book out in less than an hour.

There are also certain phrases that AI uses to death. Those not-so-great sex scenes often include the heroes uttering his enamorata's name "like a ragged prayer." Whatever that means. (Maybe I'm just jelly because no one's ragged prayering the name Maureen.)

Romance novels are a big business, accounting for over one-fifth of adult fiction sales. And the big biz of romance is growing. Unlike, say, literary fiction, which is not. (Other than among us discerning readers.)

The genre may be especially vulnerable to disruption by A.I., for all the reasons that readers love it. Romance relies on familiar narrative formulas, like the guarantee of an “H.E.A.” or “happily ever after.” And romance novels are often built around popular plot tropes — like enemies-to-lovers or forced proximity — that can be fed into a chatbot.

A.I. remains contentious in the romance community. A vocal contingent of readers oppose its use and are quick to call out suspected transgressions. Furor erupted on social media last year when two romance authors published works with A.I. prompts accidentally left in. “You’re an opportunist hack using a theft machine,” the fantasy writer Rebecca Crunden wrote in an expletive-laced message on Bluesky. (Source: NY Times)

When it comes to writing fiction, you can put me in Camp Crunden. 

If an AI is doing the "writing," just who are you, Coral Hart. You're an outliner. A prompter. But you're sure as hell not a writer. Or not much of one. 

Maybe she doesn't care. She's added teaching to her repertoire, offering classes on how "writers" can use AI. She sees AI as the absolute wave of the future.

“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” she said.

There's a lot of junk out there that's not written by AI, but produced the old fashioned way. And it's god-awful. I read a couple of books a week. (Thank you, Boston Public Library.) Some whodunits, but mostly serious (or quasi-serious) fiction. (No romance novels, no obvious beach reads. I.e., if "Nantucket's" in the title, I'll take a hard pass.)

I tend towards writers I know who are good because I've read them in the past. Or come recommended by friends and families I know to be good, serious-y readers. If I've seen a review, I'll try someone new. Or I'll just pick something off the shelf and give it a go. 

Some of the off-the-shelf writers turn into writers I'll be looking for. Others aren't all that well written, leaving me to ask "how in god's name did this get published?" (And, of course, giving my hope for my coming - ahem - literary career.)

The poorly written books I stumble across put me in mind of Truman Capote's words for those he found lacking: "that's not writing, it's just typing."

What does that make AI novels? They're not even typing! (Wonder if Coral Hart even types in her prompts. Or does she use voice?)

Romance novel fans consume a lot of books. The word ingest if probably closer to the true experience than is reading. 

As Elizabeth Ann West, an AI romance writer notes that, while many readers disparage the idea of AI generated novels, the reality may be different. 

“If you hide that there’s A.I., [a book] sells just fine,” she said.

Ms. West, who also teaches classes on how to write with A.I., has gotten blowback from opponents of the technology, including occasional death threats on social media. But she believes that in time, A.I. generated fiction will become widespread and popular.

“Eventually” Ms. West said, “readers will not care.”

Since I haven't read any AI-generated fiction, I can't tell you waht separates human writing from AI slop. Character authenticity? Nuanced interactions? True emotion? Original ways of describing things. Novel situations?

Just like I recognized the bank bot when I encountered him it, I'm pretty sure I'll know it when I see it. And I sure hope that AI doesn't put human creatives out of business any time soon.

AI AI AI AI! (Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh!)

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Image Source: KosMosaicBooks

Triple deckers

I always tell people that I grew up in a triple decker, which is kinda-sorta true. I only lived there until I was six-and-a-half, when we moved to a modest one-family ranch on a street full of VA-loan new-builds on the street behind Winchester Avenue in Worcester. And that triple decker, with the gabled, pitched roof third floor, may technically be a two-and-a-half decker. 

In any case, it was definitely a three flat.

When I was a baby, we lived on the top floor, with the slanted ceilings in pretty much every thus-crampy room. Then the tenants on the second floor moved out, and we moved down. (Those tenants, the Deignans, now occupy a gravesite kitty-corner to where my parents, my grandmother, and my Uncle Charlie are buried.)

The third floor was never again occupied, but when I was a kid, it was a fun place to explore. As was the second floor flat, which remained empty after we moved out.

This was my grandmother's house, and although she could have used the rental income, once we decamped, Nanny and her boon companion, my feckless Uncle Charlie, stayed put on the first floor, the big old house otherwise empty. The story told was that Nanny didn't want the noise of tenants clomping around over her head, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that my father did 100% of the maintenance, yardwork, snow shoveling, and everything else that needed to get done at 5 Winchester Avenue, including shoveling coal into the furnaces. Now he had a home and yard of his own to maintain, and could now do only 75% of the work at Nanny's that needed to get done and may not have been satisfied with whatever level attention Charlie was paying to keeping the place in shape.

Not that he had to do all that much. The heating was converted to oil, sparing Charlie for having to stir his lazy stumps and shovel coal. I believe that the only work around the house he did was mow the strip of grass that flanked the left side of the house, and scythe the clumps of grass on the steep front lawn. He must have shoveled, too. But my father dropped by to visit Nanny pretty much every day and took care of a lot of things for her.

The house I grew up in - at least until I was six-and-a-half (technically six-years-seven-months) - looked a lot different from the one in the Google Maps picture. 

For one thing, it was a dark chocolately brown with creamy yellow trim. The iron pipe railing going down the front steps looks the same, but that wrought iron design on the front porch is "new." As is the pachysandra or myrtle or whatever it is on the front lawn. We had grass tuffets, like the one that Little Miss Muffet sat on.

Whoever bought the house when my grandmother moved in with my aunt in 1974 made some "improvements" over the years. (The house, by then falling down around their ears - no surprise given that my father was dead and had been ill for many years before he died - was sold after Charlie died and Nanny no longer had his stellar companionship. Other than doing Nanny's grocery shopping - with her money - Charlie was pretty much useless. A freeloader. A low-end con man. A handsome, charming, sweet-talking rogue. But Nanny's golden boy to the end.)

For one thing, they painted the house white and pretty much dumped the trim. They replaced the retaining wall - which, in my memory was at least three feet high - with what looks like a one-footer. They closed in the two side porches (first and second floor), which were wondrous places to sit and watch the world go by. (These porches were known in Worcester parlance as "piazzas." As if.)

Somewhere along the line, we learned that, rather than do upkeep on plaster, the new owners dropped the ceilings. I suppose they replaced the toilets with new-fangled ones that didn't have the raised tank and the pull-chain flusher. I suppose they replaced that iron stove/oven, the size of a VW Beetle.

I hope they kept the pantries, the pocket doors, the hardwood floors. I hope they didn't paint over the magnificent mahogany banister in the front hallway - a hallway used once a year, on Christmas Day, when we walked down to Nanny's for dinner. Other than that, we were back entry/back stairs folks. 

I loved that house, and it holds pride of place in my Worcester memories.

But was it a true triple decker? Like this one? There were, in fact, plenty of triple deckers in my neighborhood. If you jigger with the Google Map, you can see a few of them just across Main Street from Nanny's. (As a side note: some claim that the triple decker was "invented" in Worcester by one Francis Gallagher. The claim has been disputed, but it certainly could be that some enterprising Irishman came up with the idea as a way to house his fellow Irishmen and women who were coming to Worcester in droves.)

I had friends who lived in triple deckers. I had more friends who, like me, had started out in triple deckers before their families graduated to single-family homes. I had a lot more friends whose parents had grown up in triple deckers, and whose grandparents still lived there.

My closest high school friend, Marie, live in a very nice but very small house, not all that far from the decker where her mother had grown up and where her grandfather still lived. Her mother's sister and her family lived above him. When she finished school, Marie's sister lived in a flat there.

This post on triple deckers was prompted by a recent article I saw in The Harvard Crimson. 

I don't regularly read The Crimson, although it's an excellent college paper and I do stumble across articles there every once in a while. This was one of those once in a whiles. 

The article focuses a bit on the iconic status of three deckers. Seriously, is there a movie made about working class, often criminal, Irish boyos that doesn't have triple deckers as a co-star. (C.f., as the Crimson story notes, “The Departed,” “Good Will Hunting,” and “Gone Baby Gone.”

And a bit on the history of deckers:

Historically, triple-deckers were built to house factory workers. Over time, they became a crucial form of upward mobility for working class families, especially immigrants who came to call Massachusetts home. But, as nativist sentiment in Boston grew between 1910 and 1930, the triple-decker became maligned for its association with these groups and it was slowly banned from zoning codes. (Source: The Crimson)

One of the issues wasn't just "nativist sentiment." A lot of those deckers were built quite flimsily and were fire traps. Anyway:

Today, many areas of Boston...are zoned for no more than two and a half stories. Building higher than that requires the same expensive special permission as an apartment building, making apartments a better investment for developers. 

Most of the Crimson story is about the role deckers can/will play in helping alleviate the housing crisis. They are, in fact, "poised for a comeback in many municipalities."

In 2024, the ex-urb city of Somerville okayed construction of three-unit buildings. Last year, Cambridge made four-story housing legal. Boston is debating whether to start permitting triple-deckers "— or even taller buildings —."

Will triple deckers solve the housing crisis? No, but sentimental old me welcomes their revival. There's just something about them...

But I'll end with this, the Crimson writer is named Jack Reardon. On a hunch, I gave him a google and found out that he grew up in the Boston area, and graduated from a well-known local boys Catholic high school. Now, for all I know, Jack Reardon's antecedents were lace-curtain grandees from the moment they arrived. But I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing that there's a triple decker or two in his background. 

Just sayin'.

By the way, good, well-written article, Jack.

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Image 1 Source: Google Maps
Image 2 Source: Wikipedia