Diamonds (and rubies and emeralds) are a president's best friend?

You don't need me to tell you that the Grifter-in-Chief has vastly increased his wealth during Round Two of an administration that will live in infamy. Or is it ignominy? The latest in griftorama: charging $100K for a service through which subscribers get early releases of Trump's Truth Social market-moving pronouncements, so they'll have a jump on Wall Street (betting on actual instruments) and the prediction markets (betting on nothing). 

I'm old enough to recall the the radio payola scandal, in which record labels bribed dj's to play their records. How. Quaint.

And you don't need me to tell you that the gilt-obsessed (but apparently guilt-feelings-free) Decorator-in-Chief has the design sensibility of Liberace, without Liberace's sense of humor. The word tawdry doesn't do Trump's taste justice. (I'd say that his taste is all in his mouth, but given his daily ingestion of fast food and Diet Coke, I don't think he has much taste there, either.)

The gift to Trump from the Antwerp World Diamond Center may not be the most valuable that Trump has received. It's a ring worth an estimated $25k-35k, which is probably about what Trump spends per month on fast food and Diet Coke. 

But in terms of tackiness, it's gotta be right up there. 

Dozens of diamonds spell out two giant letter T's next to the Stars and Stripes and "1776" and "2026." Dozens more frame the numbers 45 and 47 in the shape of Superman's logo. A diamond-winged eagle carries a ruby shield and clutches an olive branch of emeralds, below a radiant "250" and atop the phrase "250 YEARS USA" etched in 18-karat gold.

All told, 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds and six rubies encrust the watch-sized gold ring presented this week to Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, to give to U.S. President Donald Trump. (Source: PBS)

Atypically, this was something of a tat for tit gift, a quo pro quid reversal, in that Trump had already removed tariffs on diamond imports before the diamond merchants sent him this bauble in thanks. Most of the bribes gifts bestowed on Trump yield a benefit after the fact. Donate a couple of million to some Trumpian effort - his inauguration, the building of the new ballroom - and get a big little something in return. Pave the way for a deal. Get awarded a major contract.

From a corporation's point of view, the return is beyond belief. You'd be crazy not to pay to play.

The ring was given to Ambassador Bill White at some sort of 250th celebration/fundraising event, during which over $5.5 million was collected from mega (MAGA?) US corporate sponsors like Lockheed Martin, Intel, Google, and Meta. And smaller Euro organization like chocolatiers Leonidas and Ferrero, and the Antwerp diamond-eers. 

After the ring was presented on a star-spangled stage in Brussels, musician Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, sang the U.S. national anthem to more than 8,000 people drinking Budweiser and bourbon from Tennessee and Kentucky.

That must have been some treat. I've never had a boilermaker - a glass of beer combined with a shot of whisky - but if I'd had to be at this "star-spangled" event, I might have had to down a few.  

Presidents can, in fact, accept personal gifts from "friends" both domestic and foreign, and can decide for themselves whether the gift is personal or to the nation. (I can just imagine the current decision-making process.) An exception is foreign governments, whose gifts require congressional assent - as if that Constitutional nicety is still operative. Presidents can keep a gift if they reimburse the Treasury for the full value of it. As if...(As in the Qatari jet...)

Hope Trump enjoys his new ring. (/s)

What a colossal embarrasment this regime is.

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

Image Source: PBS

And now, on the election fraud front...

Anne Manning Martin and Michael Walsh were both hoping to appear on the ballot in the upcoming Massachusetts primary, Martin as a candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, Walsh for the Republican nomination for attorney general. 

Unfortunately, there were a number of signatures on their nominating papers that weren't quite legit. Names appeared to be "written by the same person" and were listed on the papers for both candidates in "identical order." 

Moreover, both candidates also had nomination papers that listed signatures in the order they appeared in a voter database used by the Massachusetts Republican Party to help candidates find supporters. (Source: Boston Globe)

An expert - himself a signature gatherer - determined that:

...the mathematical likelihood of this occurring is zero and that these signatures are likely fraudulent.

Oh. 

When the Globe reached out to some of those whose signatures were falsely included on the nomination papers, one voter - who no longer lives in Massachusetts - said, "'I don't trust anybody anymore. It stinks.'" Another non-signer said "'I didn't write that. I don't even vote.'"

As a result of the chicanery, Manning Martin (who was campaigning as the de facto running mate of Mike Minogue who is odds-on likely to win the Republican gubernatorial primary come electionday on September 1) was tossed off the ballot. Due to a complaint-filing technicality, Walsh is still on.   

I can't really blame the candidates here, other than for procedural carelessness in not having someone on their team take a close look - or any look - at the signatures on the nominations petitions they submitted to appear on the ballot. And not notice that an awful lot of folks had the same signature.

Now, in a state where a lot of us olds went to parochial school back in the day, it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that a lot of John Hancocks would show up, not with John Hancock's flowing script, but with drilled-in, never-forgotten Palmer Penmanship.

And you can't blame the candidates for hiring a signature gathering outfit to collect names for them. Yes, the magic number of 10,000 signatures can be gotten via grass roots efforts, but that's a big number, especially for a Republican in Massachusetts, where D's out number R's three-to-one. (Independents, which are the majority of Massachusetts voters, can sign nomination papers for candidates in either party. Thank you, Secretary of State Bill Galvin for your very informative web site.)

But some signature gatherer Joe Bronske, who "was paid thousands of dollars by Walsh and Manning Martin’s campaigns to collect signatures on their behalf, according to state records," turned out to be. 

When confronted, Bronske took the Fifth Amendment, as is done.

Bronske, a Republican operative who has served on the Board of (Election) Registrars in his town, of all things, has also been implicated in collecting bogus signatures for Republican secretary of state wannabe Anne Brensley. Many of her signatures were tossed, and she ended up not getting enough to appear on the ballot. She's now running as a write-in candidate.

Bronske's pitch to Brensley's campaign was:

For your campaign’s 10,000-signature requirement, I can:

• Map and target registered voters to ensure every collected signature is eligible and verifiable
• Recruit, train, and coordinate circulators across required districts
• Verify signatures against official voter registration databases
• Conduct internal audits to identify duplicates, errors, or incomplete entries before filing
• Coordinate filing with local election officials and the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth
• Prepare documentation and records to defend against potential challenges by focusing only on certified voters and using a rigorous accuracy-first process, the campaign maximizes valid signatures while avoiding wasted effort or risk of disqualification. (Source: New Bedford Guide)

Which all would have been fine and dandy if Bronske had actually delivered on his proposal, which he apparently did not.

I'm quite sure that it's not easy to collect 10,000 signatures. That's a lot of spending a lot of Saturdays standing outside the Market Basket trying to get harried shoppers to stop and sign papers. People are in a rush. People are suspicious, they're wary of fraud. People don't want to be bothered.

Everytime I'm asked, I sign papers for candidates for office. It should come as no surprise that I'm a registered D, but frankly I'd be mostly okay with signing for an R, if allowed. (Or at least I would have been back in the day when Massachusetts R's were mostly palatable to this D's sensiblities.)

In any case, I feel bad for these candidates who trusted (and paid) Bronske to find the signatures they needed to get on the ballot.

I suspect that he'll be out of the signature-gathering biz. Brensley for one was considering legal action against him. There may be civil penalties for Bronske. And there's been some tiny mention of jail time. 

 What a nasty scammer he turned out to be. We really don't need any more a-holes underminng the integrity of our elections, that's for sure.

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

Image Source: AAWU

When patient care be under attack? What do you do? Stand up, fight back!

God knows, there are plenty of problems with health care in this country - access, outcomes, etc. When my much beloved primary care physician bailed to practice concierge medicine, it was difficult to find a primary in the MGH-Brigham system who wasn't located a train, two buses, and a walk uphill (both ways) away from where I live. To stay in walking distance of my medical care (admittedly a luxury) I had to settle for having a resident as my PCP. Which is fine in some respects. She's quite good, very responsive, and I like her a lot. But in another year or so, she'll be moving on. I'm trying to convince her to specialize in geriatric primary care, but she seems hell bent on urology. When Dr. O goes, I'll probably get another resident. There are, at present, no PCP's in Boston in the MGH-Brigham system who are accepting patients.

And this is within the non-profit world of medicine.

Everything, it seems to me, is far worse in the for-profit health care systems, which (most? all?) studies seem to suggest have worse outcomes. 

The pressure to spend less on actually delivering care to individual patients, while seeing more and more of those patients in rushed-through, truncated visits is bad enough in the non-profits, let alone in the systems owned by private equity and/or by doctors focused more on profit maximization than on becoming latter-day Dr. Welbys. 

Case in point is Steward Health Care, which was founded in Massachusetts but, post-bankruptcy, is no longer operating here. Among other choice details of their operation: the system didn't pay the bill on a piece of critical equipment, so it got repossessed. Too bad a woman who'd just given birth needed it to save her life. By the time the Steward hospital transferred her to a hospital (non-profit, of course) that had the key device, it was too late. She bled to death, leaving her devastated husband and perfectly healthy baby girl behind. That and a picture of the glowing new mom holding her beautiful infant a short while before she died. 

This woman is not the only one to alleged to have died due to staffing and/or equipment shortages at Steward hospitals. 

Another nifty feature of Steward was its CEO, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, who used the system to fund an extravagent private jet, swanky yacht(s) lifestyle. 

So, while I'm more than happy to see healthcare professionals make a good living, I'm a believer that healthcare institutions shouldn't be run on a for-profit basis.

Apparently, the doctors at Eugene (Oregon) Emergency Physicians (EEP) agree. This is a smallish (40 doctors and PA's), local, doctor-owned practice that runs the emergency department for some local medical centers. They were about to be replaced by Apollo MD, a national corporate for-profit entity. 

EEP pushed back, arguing that bringing in Apollo would violate a 2025 Oregon law that "bans corporations from taking control of a medical practice's operations and finances."

The case garnered national interest because Oregon's new law targets the loopholes large staffing firms have been employing to circumvent state corporate medicine laws.

Most states have laws requiring that doctors own medical practices, not corporations. These rules aim to put patient interests ahead of profit motives. Over the last several years, companies have used a model where a doctor technically owns the local practice, but as Erin Fuse Brown, a professor at Brown University, explains, those physician owners are often not involved in care and cede hiring, firing and other operational functions to the corporation.

Fuse Brown said these arrangements are attractive to hospitals because these companies often promise more revenue and take over the responsibilities that come with running an ER.

"There's worry that these investors or these corporate management companies should not be totally controlling the operations and the clinical decisions of those who are trained to deliver patient care," Fuse Brown said. (Source: NPR)

These rules aim to put patient interests ahead of profit motives which seems to be the heart of the matter for the doctors at EEP, which feared that patient care would be compromised. They also feared that if Apollo started meddling in the delivery of care and they pushed back, they would lose their hours. Which seems like a reasonable double whammy fear: potentially worse care for the patients, potentially worse income for the doctors. 

The EEP pushback was successful. 

The medical center that had been considering going with Apollo decided to stick with EEP. 

Questions are still whirling around about the long-term viability of physician-owned practices. 

Do they need the investment in business expertise and systems that a corporation can provide?

And, as noted in the NPR article, some practices may be nominally physican owned, but those doctor's are owners, not actually delivering any care. So it's not as if Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney on ER, which I never watched for some reason when he was on it) and Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle on The Pitt, which is pretty much my favorite TV thang) may be owners, but they're hip deep in gore. 

Anyway, happy to see that the little guys at Eugene Emergency Physicians, when they saw that their livelihoods and maybe their patients' lives were under attack, decided to stand up and fight back. 

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

Image Source: Vecteezy

Yo, Yo-Yos!

When I was a kid, I loved playing with my yo-yo.

Not that I was all that good. Sure, I mastered the basics: walk the dog; around the world; getting the yo-yo to sleep; that pendulum thingy. But I wasn't a trick-meister, by any means. Nor was anyone I knew - other than, maybe, my brother Tom. I seem to remember him being pretty adept.  

We all had yo-yos. We used them in the schoolyard during recess. We used them solo, when there was no one around to play with and you didn't feel like reading the latest Nancy Drew.

Everyone had a basic wooden Duncan Yo-Yo, with string-string. I don't remember there being any other options. Those snappy translucent yo-yos in fluorescent green, and the aluminum ones, came later. I don't remember there being any nylon string either.

Other than Duncans, the only yo-yos I remember from my childhood were those ridiculous flimsy little plastic ones that came as the prize in cereal or a box of Cracker Jack. They were in size somewhere between a nickel and a quarter, and the string was thread.

Unlike the swell Navy frogmen that came in Kellogg cereals - the ones where you put baking soda/powder in a little compartment in an outsized flipper and got to watch the frogman buzz around the tub on a very important mission - the cheapo plastic button-sized yo-yos did not work. 

You could yo down, but the yo-yo itself was too light, the thread too flimsy, to be able to yo back up. Let alone do a trick.

In my world, y0-yos were popular in the mid-to-late 1950s, and then had a resurgence when I was in high school in the mid-1960's.

In high school, I owned a red wooden Duncan with a white cloud-like striped design.

As I said, I wasn't all that good at it, but I wasn't out-and-out terrible, either. I just didn't excel in yo-yo as I had in playing jacks, the one "sport" I was ever any good at. (A few years ago, I tried to see if I still had my mojo working, but my hands were too big. And it was too damned uncomfortable sitting on a hard floor, let alone getting up from it.)

Back in the day, if there were any yo-yo contests around, I wasn't aware of them.

I do recall a hula hoop contest in the parking lot of the Stop 'n Shop when I was in fourth or fifth grade or so - whenever the hula hoop craze was at its peak. I went with my sister Kath and our friends, but we didn't arrive in time to contest. There were hundreds of kids there, and we just milled around the perimeter, hoops in hand, before getting bored and heading home.

But as I learned recently, competitive yo-yo is a thing, and in late June the nationals, run by the good folks at the National Yo-Yo Contest, were held in Las Vegas.

Lots of divisions and sub-divisions. So lots of contestants, and lots of winners. It's a sport dominated by males -  young males -  and, let me tell you, what these kids can do with a yo-yo is pretty phenomenal. 

Ryan Connolly, a local from North Easton, Mass., was crowned champion of the 4A Division. 4A is described as yo-yo-ing off the string. I couldn't quite picture what stringless yo-yo-ing is, but seeing is understanding. The string is not attached to the yo-yo. You toss the yo-yo and catch it on the string, in the air, and do tricks with it. 

Connolly is what I would call a quasi-professional. There doesn't appear to be any prize money in these contests. You win your medal and a bag o' yo-yo-related prizes. But Connolly - who graduated from UMass Amherst a couple of years ago and who works as a financial analyst - has a side gig coming up with product ideas for a Korean yo-yo maker. Mostly, I'm guessing he's in it for love of the game. And as side-hustles go, this is a pretty fun and interesting.  (And quirky enough to make it to Connolly's LinkedIn profile.) Beats being an influencer!

Connolly is also the World 4A Champion, and will be defending his title in Japan later this month. Good luck, Ryan!

Me? I think I may have a yo-yo around here somewhere. I don't think I have my trusty high-school Duncan, but I seem to remember a more yup-scale yo-yo I got at Sharper Image (oh, those were the days). Anyway, I'm going to scout around and see if I've still got it. (The yo-yo, and my former mad "skills.")

I don't think I'll be trying any 4A tricks, but I'd like to see if I can still walk the dog.

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

Image Source:  National YoYo Hall of Fame

Send in the Indianapolis Clowns.

When it comes to baseball, I'm not a 100% purist, longing for the return of men in baggy wool unis sweltering through a double header. I like that they've sped up the game by putting a stopwatch on the pitcher, and an automatic runner at second when game's go to extras. At Fenway, I enjoy singing Sweet Caroline between the top and bottom of the eighth, even when the Red Sox are losing, which these days they're mostly doing. And I actually like Banana Ball.

For those unfamiliar with Banana Ball, it's a Harlem Globe Trotter style game, centered on the Savannah Bananas.

The team tours the country playing what it calls Banana Ball: a family-friendly, souped-up, TikTok-ready version of the national pastime. Games feature singing and dancing and celebrity cameos, plus backflipping outfielders, stilt-walking batters, and the occasional double to the gap. Last year, according to the organization’s own data, the Bananas and their affiliated teams sold 2.2 million tickets—more than 11 different MLB franchises. (Source: The Atlantic)

I wasn't among those 2.2 million ticket buyers. The Bananas came to Fenway, and I entered the lottery, but didn't make it through to ticket purchase. I didn't score this season, either, although just as well. Walking to Fenway for a game is one thing, trekking to Gillette Stadium, where this year's games are being played, is quite another.

Still, I do like the Bananas. 

I also like baseball history. And if there's one sport that's full o' history, it's baseball. 

Part of this history is its sordid history of segregation, and the glorious history of the Negro Leagues. 

The most famous of the Negro League teams was probably the Homestead Grays, which featured superstars like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. Pitcher Satchel Paige played for a couple of Negro League teams, including the Kansas City Monarchs.  (In the early 1940s, my father saw Paige and the Monarchs play an exhibition game at Holy Cross' Fitton Field in Worcester.) Say Hey, Willie Mays started out playing with the Birmingham Black Barons. 

The Indianapolis Clowns, one of the lesser known Negro League teams, is being resurrected as one of the teams that plays as a foil for the Savannah Bananas. (The other teams are the Party Animals, the Firefighters, the Texas Tailgaters, and the Loco Beach Coconuts.)

The revival of the Clowns, which is being done in conjunction with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is interesting on a number of different fronts. 

One is that the Clowns in their heyday did a lot of clowning around that played into racial stereotypes - shuffling Stepin Fetchits of the diamond. The Banana Ballers are well aware of the stereotype, and have to walk the tightrope between presenting their players as athletes and performers. This is the case across all their teams, but has particular resonance for the Indianpolis Clowns, given their legacy as a Negro League team. (Their most famous player was none other than Hank Aaron, who briefly played for the Clowns before signing on with the Boston Braves.)

Another thread of the new Banana Ball Indianapolis Clowns story is the desire to promote baseball to Black kids. The Clowns are a diverse team, but they prominantly feature Black players. Former Red Sox player (and fan favorite) Jackie Bradley, Jr., is one of them, as he's now playing fo the Clowns. As is Mo'ne Davis, who famously made news a decade ago for being the first girl to pitch and win a game at the Little League World Series. Mo'ne, by the way, has a master's degree in sports management from Columbia University.

Black players dominate the NBA and NFL, but their representation in Major League Baseball has fallen over the last few decades from a high of nearly 20% to a bit under 7% this season. There are a number of reasons for this, including a lack of urban organizations enccouraging partcipation in baseball, and thus a lack of opportunities to play, and the expenses associated with playing the game at a competitive youth level. 

While Black participation has declined, the number of Hispanics (many from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela) playing in the majors has grown to nearly 30%. Asian players are also coming on - Shohei Otani, anyone? - and now make up about 3% of the current rosters. 

I love the idea of increasing Black participation in baseball. More Mookie Betts, please! And I love the idea of anything that promotes interest in baseball, IMHO the best game ever. Even if it's the Banana Ball which, let's face it, is kind of silly. But it's entertaining. And it's baseball. 

So yay Indianapolis Clowns. LFG!

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

Image Source: eBay

Ford doesn't always have a better idea

Growing up, my family had Fords. Fairlanes. Galaxies. In the mid-1950s, we had a two-tone, turqouise and white Fairlane. My father wasn't the flashy type, but when it came to his wheels, he sometimes indulged in surprisingly out-there colors. A bit later - early 1960's - we had a two-tone yellow and white number. I loved the colorful cars, but learned to drive with Black Beauty, a black Galaxy 500. (Somewhere along the line, we started giving our cars names. Black Beauty was followed by the Green Hornet.)

I'm sure that my parents were drawn to Ford for its affordability. We were by no means poor, but as the ditty of the day went:

Rich man drives a Cadillac. Poor man drives a Ford.

But my old man goes down the street on four wheels and a board

It may also be that the company my father spent his working life, Thompson Wire, sold wire to Ford. Or to companies that made components for Ford. My father had started out on the shop floor, but became a salesman and I remember him going on trips to Dearborn, Michigan, world HQ for the Ford Company.

In any case, we were a Ford family, and I've always been partial to the Ford brand. (In much the same way, because my father interrupted his Thompson Wire career during WWII to serve, I root for Navy in the Army-Navy game. Not that my father was so gung-ho on the Navy. Most of his war stories were about officer idiocies and Mickey Mouse regulations. (My father did not see combat, and was pretty much only in harm's way (or in the way of German UBoats) only when he was being shipped to and from Trinidad where he spent a couple of years before being stationed at Chicago's Navy Pier. As he always told us, you went where Uncle Sam sent you.))

So Ford. 

Not that I've been a big Ford owner. I've only owned three cars in my life, but one was a Ford (a Mercury Tracer).

So, Ford.

You may recall that a while back, Ford's CEO Jim Farley was making some headlines declaring/speculating/wishfully thinking that AI was going to do away with half of the country's white-collar jobs.

And I guess that Ford thought it'd get a jump on things by letting go of a raft of experienced quality engineers and technicians - only to have to bring them back.  

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” the automaker’s VP of vehicle hardware engineering Charles Poon told reporters, per The Verge. (Source: Futurism)

What happened should have been predictable. (They might have asked ChatGPT.) Among other things, Ford deployed:

...900 AI-powered cameras in its plants "to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions", [COO Kumar] Galhotra told investors. 

But Poon told reporters on Wednesday the firm's AI-driven checks had failed to live up to expectations.

"Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," he said.(Source; BBC)

Instead, the company slipped in the quality rankings. Oopsa doopsa.

But you can't blame lil' old AI. 

Instead, it all went wrong because its experienced workers left before Ford could get them to transfer their valuable knowledge to Ford’s AI systems and help refine the tech intended to obviate them. (Back to: Futurism)

Ah, for the good old days, when Ford used to brag that "quality is job one."

Of course, they've only dragooned their engineers back so that they can improve AI enough to replace themselves and all the other workers that Ford's CEO predicts are going down.

My fear and loathing of AI is no secret. I'm no Luddite, and well understand that AI has and will continue to have many positive uses. But I just don't see why it's worth despoiling the environment and destroying the livelihood of millions of people so that some lazy-arsed kid can "write" a book report on a book they haven't read. So that someone's smarty-pants fridge can alert them that they're out of milk. So that a bunch of tech bros can become multi-billionaires while most folks are just trying to keep a meal on the table, a roof over their heads, and a Ford in their garage. 

Something tells me that Ford doesn't always have a better idea.

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

Image Source: Sotheby's

And you thought Lyme disease was bad...

New England is pretty much ground zero for Lyme disease. (The name itself comes from the town of Lyme, Connecticut.) And I know a couple of folks who've been diagnosed with it. It's the No Fun Zone, for sure. The friends I know "just" have the long-run joint pain, but there are all sorts of pretty serious symptoms associated with Lyme.

I'm not out in tick territory very often, but have had a couple of scares over the years. 

The bulls-eye rash was probably from a spider bite acquired in the wilds of Maine, but my doctor prescribed an antiobiotic just to be on the safe side. 

With the second scare, the rash wasn't so bulls-eye-ish, but I sent a picture in and had a tele-appointment with a doctor. Turned out to be big nothing. Phew!

Who wants Lyme disease?

Not I, said the fly. Or the tick. Or whatever.

And if I thought Lyme disease was a must-avoid, what am I to make of alpha-gal syndrome, brought to you by the lone star tick and now breaking out in Massachusetts' elite island environs:

Likely brought to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket by migrating birds, lone star ticks are native to the American South, but climate change has allowed them to survive in northern coastal areas and given them a longer active season. Their typical period runs from April through September. (Source: Boston Globe)

Which, natch, is vacation time for the rich and famous, and everyone else who loves these islands. Although I've only been to MVY and ACK - I see cars in my 'hood with the airport designation stickers on the rear window -  a few times, and not in years, they're both beautiful, charming, and all sorts of other good things.  

And they are more likely than deer ticks, which carry Lyme, to be found in the short grass of a mown lawn. 

As in just outside your front door. Supah! 

Alpha-gal syndrome sounds sort of jaunty. Kind of like girlboss. But the gal is for galactose (a simple sugar), and the syndrome is anything but jaunty. A tick bite can result in an "incurable allergy to red meat, dairy, even some medicines found in everyday life across the island. " While some folks aren't affected, in others:

 ...sugar primes their immune system to wildly overreact when they eat food that contains that same molecule, such as red meat and dairy. Symptoms range from a mild rash, hives, itching, stomach pain, and diarrhea to, in some, anaphylaxis. It is believed that repeated bites from lone star ticks can worsen the allergic reaction.

Swell!

And, unlike the deer tick which brings us the gift of Lyme disease, the lone star tick doesn't just dwell in woods and tall grasses, which you can kinda-sorta avoid. Or wear long pants and socks pulled up over the pants legs. (A nice look which I have sported on occasion in walks in the scrub on the Cape.) The lone star tick is everywhere, including lawns. 

Longtime islanders have to be wary of going in their own yards, and school lunches pose a threat to kids who might be allergic. Even some medicines pose a risk if the gel caps they come in are derived from animal proteins that could trigger an outbreak.

Residents are trying all sorts of things - chemical and organic sprays.  But also:

...pesticide-treated clothes, acupuncture, herbal medicine, even genetically engineered mice — all are on the table as preventatives or cures.

Pesticide treated clothing? Yikes. I'm sure that's a real joy for parents. Does this come in a onesie?

And there are the inevitable tensions between the chemical and organic advocates. 

The lone star ticks are, of course, on the march. Some have been spotted in Massachusetts. Good thing I don't have a lawn, I guess. 

Culling the local deer population is also under consideration. But the lone star tick is wilier than the deer tick that's responsible for so much of Lyme disease. And:

Lone star ticks are also faster and more aggressive than other species. Their larva cluster into what’s called a tick bomb. When disturbed, the larva, about the size of a grain of sand, can swarm a person by the hundreds.

Restaurants are responding with "alpha-gal friendly" menus, but some folks are so sensitive that even a whiff of a hamburger broiling away on the grill can cause a reaction. And forget taking a gel capsule medicine. Chalky tablets for you, my friend. 

The good news is, once you're on the beach, there are no ticks. Just don't walk through scrub and dune grass to get there. But once you're in the sand, it's still okay to go barefootin' and flip-floppin'. 

But overall, alpha-gal syndrome sounds just ghastly. Sure, you can convert to being a vegan, but if just smelling a burger being cooked can set you off, this one is a must avoid. 

And I thought Lyme disease was bad...

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

Image Source: Fortune

What's a kitchen for, anyway?

Eleven years ago, I gut reno'd my kitchen. In a small-footprint, greenhouse galley kitchen, there's not much choice about what goes where, but I got to pick out all new: appliances, cabinetry, countertops flooring. Everything plus the kitchen sink. 

For colors, I went basic: gray and white, with an a pretty mid-turquoise as my accent color. You can't see much of that accent color in this pic, but there are other spots where there's more wall space. The accent color was dictated by my sister having given me a Caribbean blue Le Creuset Dutch oven. (That color is now discontinued, but not before I was able to acquire a large skillet and a small skillet. I love me my Le Creuset. Bonus feature: upper-body workout to lift it.) After I decided on the blue walls, I unearthed two decorative tiles I've been gifted with by some friends. They're above the stovetop, and have the same Caribbean blue in them.

The one mistake I made with my kitchen was not having a pull-out drawer for pots and pans. So every time I need to get out a pot or a pan or a lid, I have to unpile them from their shelves. I do keep the Dutch oven and large skillet on the stove top, as they are my most used items, and are probably used for a good 80% of my cooking. 

I keep a lot of stuff out.

All my utensils are contained in three decorative pitchers. I should weed out the ones I don't use and get that down to two, but it's fine for now. Flanking the stovetop, there's a spoon rest on both sides. 

I keep out my food processor, paper towel holder, knife rack, most-used salad bowls. Water bottles, and some aluminum cups - the old timey kind, which I like for drinking cold water out of. Trivets. A couple of small vases that I sometimes put a flower in. Sometimes. Cutting board(s), including the titanium one which I recently ordered after reading about how dangerous wood and plasticky ones are. I just haven't unboxed it yet.

Over my sink, I have a strainer, which is especially useful for washing fruits and veggies. 

Next to the stove there's a box of Kosher salt, which I use pretty much whenever I cook. 

Other stuff on my counters: toaster oven, bread box, electric tea kettle, tea caddy, a couple of mugs, my Keurig for the occasional coffee drinker stopping by, a few smallish bowls - various sizes, various uses. Salt and pepper shakers - some old timers that were my mother's. My recipe box.

In addition to the ones hanging in front of the oven, I typically have a few dishtowels, keeping them handy on the counter. 

Even though the kitchen is small, I like having things at the ready for when I need them. Who wants to go rooting around in their time of need?

I love my kitchen, and although it is now nearing its 11th birthday (this fall), I've never grown tired of it. And although I deliberately went with a never-in-style-never-out-of-style design, I still think of it as very up to date and modern.

Think again! 

In the country’s wealthiest enclaves, like New York City and Miami, concealment has become the defining aspect of the contemporary kitchen. What began with “appliance garages” and refrigerators and dishwashers that look like cabinets has evolved into a far more ambitious practice of disguise, with custom millwork and technology obscuring everything from sinks and cooktops to electrical outlets and small appliances...

Sharon Dranko, the former chief executive of Isla Porter cabinetry and a consultant for kitchen brands including Nobilia, said the rise of open-plan living has helped fuel the trend. “Kitchens are more open and visible than they used to be, so people want all the capability without every appliance becoming part of the aesthetic.” (Source: NY Times)

Never thought of it that way, but I guess my appliances and all that other kitchen stuff is part of my aesthetic.  

But if you're going with a luxe "hyper kitchen" - which will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not scooting above and beyond the million dollar mark - you want things hidden.

At one NYC design firm:

Its most popular offering is a marble island with a mechanized sliding countertop that glides open to reveal a sink and induction cooktop. Other pieces include cabinetry with retractable panels that completely obscure shelving, storage or appliances. 

OK. My trash can is hidden away in a pull-out drawer cabinet. And I known plenty of folks with Sub Zero refrigerators that have a cabinet front. But a hidden sink???? If I want to rinse some blueberries, the last thing I want to do is try to remember how to retract the "sliding countertop" to find the sink. 

As it turns out, a lot of these "hyper kitchens" aren't for use. They're for show, or for entertaining. Some of the folks that have them have secondary or even tertiary kitchens were the work of preparing food gets done. Plenty of them don't cook period. And if these modern kitchens are in second or third or infinity and beyond houses, they'd only be used a few weeks a year, anyway. 

One designer created a space with yet another hidden sink and cooktop:

The island portion features a sink and cooktop hidden by a retractable winged countertop that lifts and disappears into its body; the piece also incorporates A.I.-controlled lighting and voice activation. The refrigerator, oven and dishwasher are housed in a separate component: a massive box coated in metallic black lacquer. 

Because nothing says homey, says comfy cozy, like "a massive box coated in metallic black lacquer." 

The one thing I don't like about my kitchen - other than not having a pull-out drawer for pots and pans - is that there's no room for a table in it. No place to hang around in.

Some of my most cherished memories are of time spent in the kitchen.

Cups of sweet milky tea at the table in my grandmother's shambly old kitchen. (She never fully replaced the linoleum when it wore out, so her kitchen floor was a patchwork of unmatched pieces - red, yellow, green, gray - that she used to patch worn spots.) 

Until I was 6, we lived in a flat in my grandmother's three decker. The kitchen was so large (same footprint as Nanny's shambly kitchen, which was directly below it) that it doubled as the guest room, with a studio couch that opened up into two beds. 

Playing Canasta and Boggle around the table in my mother's crowded little kitchen. Endless cups of tea in my friend Marie's kitchen in Providence. (I did my kitchen reno the year after Marie died. She had a couple of kitchen renos under her belt and I'm sure she would have advised my about the pots and pans drawer!) Arguing (as adults!) about who was going to get to sit at the children's table - the kitchen table at my cousin Barbara's - when she hosted Christmas dinner. 

Cooking and socializing. Isn't that what a kitchen's supposed to be for?

Hyper - and hyper pricey - kitchens with everything hidden away? Phooey!!!

I truly want this 3D house printing thing to work...

God knows, Cairo, Illinois, isn't the only community in dire need of housing. After all, I live in Boston - one of the most expensive cities in the country to rent or own in - AND I volunteer in a homeless shelter. 

The other day, I spoke with a young woman originally from Alabama who came to Boston because, she told me, there was no help for folks like her - a poor Black woman fleeing an abusive relationship - in Birmingham, Alabama, and she heard she might find some in Boston. She's been her a few weeks, and is living in her car, hoping to find a place to call home. I hope she finds what she's looking for - she's sweet and funny, and incredibly proud of her daughter, a sophomore at an HBCU - but it may not come quickly and easily. We just don't have anywhere near enough affordable housing. 

Neither does Cairo, Illinois, a rundown, poor, largely Black river town on the banks of the Mississippi. (Pronounced KAY-ro, if you're not familiar with it.)

There, two local men decided to take out a loan, invest in a 3D construction printer, and build 30 duplex houses for the city of Cairo - the first new homes built there in 30 years or so.

Sadly, things didn't quite work out. In 2024, work began, and the first duplex was kinda sorta almost done. Then cracks started to appear in the walls. The project skidded to a halt and now "the parts of a massive 3D construction printer sat disassembled on a flatbed trailer, weeds climbing the wheels."

Propublica decided to take a close look at this project gone bad, and found out that it had pretty much had fiasco written all over it from the jump. The fellows who had gotten the project off the ground were way in over their heads, and their are rumors of fraud. 

It wasn't just Propublica that started poking around the situation. The FBI is also investigating. To date, no charges/arrests. So not clear whether this is a case of the road to hell paved with good intentions - those OG guys with the 3D printer idea and others (individuals, organizations, and busineses) that got in on the action along the way - or something more nefarious or a combination of naivete and bad-acting. Not to mention governmental screw ups, of which there is no short supply of. 

The story is long and complicated, and worth a read, if you've got the time for long and complicated. 

But back to 3D printing of houses.

I truly want this concept to work out. I don't know whether it'll be able to do much for the chronic housing needs of Boston and surrounds. One of the problems with housing in older, built-out, and densely populated areas is that there's not a lot of open ground to build on. Thos of us in old-timey cities need to forget about the notion of single-familyl homes (or duplexes) as the ideal and grab that available space and build up. 

"My" shelter - Saint Francis House - has been involved in creating affordable housing for years, and is now in the process of welcoming folks into 100+ spiffy new apartments. Studios, 1BR, 2BR - they're going to some who have been homeless and to others who just need a place to live. There will here will be support services on site to help those making the transition from homeless to homed. And nice communal space I got a tour the other day, and the apartments are terrific. And so much in demand!

But I'm hopeful that where there's room to build, in places like Cairo, 3D will turn out to be a boon for housing. Decent, reliable housing that's cost-effective to build. 

The Cairo project didn't work out, but here's hoping. 

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

Image Source: Crafts and Art on You Tube

Shut this startup down!

The last thing in the world I would consider doing is renting my home out as an Airbnb, VRBO, or Home Away. Even if I had a spare place to spare for transient, paying guests, I wouldn't want to be a landlord.

I'm saying this even though I've always enjoyed my short term rentals, which go back to the pre-Airbnb days, when we were finding apartments in Paris and Rome through the classified ads in Harvard Magazine. It just wouldn't be for me.

I don't want anyone nosing around my stuff. Criticizing my taste. Thumbing through my books. Swiping that cute little lemon bowl that cost four bucks at Home Goods. Trying to pry their way into the locked owners closet in an unobvious way. (Of these things, I am guilty of nosing, criticizing, and thumbing, but never of swiping or prying.)

The most interesting things I've come across were in a short term rental on the East Side of NYC. The apartment was owned by an heir to the W.R. Grace fortune. The fortune had petered out over the generations, but this particular scion had inherited a very nice small Degas ballerina painting, which they didn't bother to lock away.

Weirdly, in the same apartment, I went to put my clothes away in the dresser in the bedroom, only to find that the drawers were stuffed with the owner's clothing, or, rather, his wife's. (There was no indication that the dresser was off limits. In every other place I've stayed, there have been drawers that are empty and available.) Anyway, the drawer I opened was stuffed - and I do mean stuffed - with every color imaginable of thongs. Ewwwww. Needless to say, my clothing stayed in my suitcase for the duration.

So while I stay in them on occasion, I don't like what these short term rentals have become. And that's a big business in which some owners have multiple places that they use for transients because they can make more money than they could renting to permanent residents. In many cities, they take scarce apartments off the market for "real people," making it harder for "real people" to live in their own cities. So, a pox on a lot of these short term rentals. I don't blame cities (like NYC) where Airbnb is heavily regulated, limiting the number of days a home may be rented, limiting occupancy, limiting the type of place you can rent (e.g., must be your primary resident - not a secondary home or vacation property).

Anyway, however he does it, Sean Donovan runs an Airbnb in San Francisco (a city that does have significant regulations on Airbnb rentals, even if it's the city where Airbnb was founded and is headquartered).

He thought he was renting to a group of colleagues who needed a place to stay while on business in SF. But things were a bit mysterious from the jump. Donovan's doorbell camera captured the renters moving in large black cases. Then the security system was turned off.

Two days later, Donovan stopped by the house to take out the trash. He looked through a window and saw black cables taped to the walls. A man was typing on a laptop sitting next to what appeared to be a robot.

When his guests checked out 11 days later, the house was a mess, Donovan claims. Glasses and dishes had been removed from kitchen cabinets and left elsewhere. The dishwasher, refrigerator, and washing machine were scratched. Dishwasher racks were bent and removed. Wooden furniture was scratched and stained. Bathroom tiles were chipped. A shoe rack and several pairs of shoes were missing from a locked bedroom closet.

"What the hell is going on here?” Donovan recalled thinking. (Source: SF Standard)

What the hell, indeed.  

After a bit of detective work, Donovan was pretty sure he had solved the mystery. The renters were, indeed, colleagues. But they worked for the Bot Company, a San Francisco robotics outfit headquartered, oddly enough, on the same street as Airbnb. 

The group had, Donovan alleges, taken the place "under false pretenses." They weren't using it as their bed and breakfast They were using it to "conduct prototype testing on robots they’re training to do household chores." So Donovan's suing them for the relatively modest amount of $12,383.50, which he figures will cover the damages and lost income he would have received if the renters had been honest about wanting to use his place for commercial activity.

“The dishonesty is really what upsets me the most,” he said. “If they had come straight up, ‘Hey, we would like to rent your house for testing of our robot,’ then we could have come to an agreement. But it’s the lying and the misrepresentation that makes me feel violated.”

He's apparently not the only Airbnb host to be violated. 

...at least 12 other Airbnb hosts alleging they damaged the property and personal belongings, failed to clean up, exceeded the limit on the number of guests, or violated other house rules during their stays.

But, but, but, the Bot people are geniuses, above and beyond the rest of us.  

Our team comes from Tesla, Cruise, OpenAI, Google, Pixar, and many other great companies. (Source: bot.co)

They wouldn't even have had to mention that they come from Tesla and other genius hangouts. Just using the .co extension tells us that they're special. They're the cool kids. Using .com as your extension? How pedestrian. How boring. How yesterday. (Okay, they couldn't have used bot.com if they'd wanted to, as it's already taken by a Canadian board of trade.  Still...) 

And it goes without saying, they're a VC darling (and are currently valued at $2B).

We are backed by Greenoaks, NFDG, Spark, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, and many others who share our belief that robots belong in our everyday lives.

And even if the investors really don't give a hoot if robots belong in our everyday lives, at least they're all hoping that bot.co is a unicorn that will make them all richy rich richer. (Who wants to be a millionaire billionaire trillionaire?)

But for now, the geniuses (or genius-adjacent workers) trashing these short terms rentals sure look to me like a bunch of entitled, ahole, feckless, slobs.

There is no danger, of course, of this startup getting shut down. But geez Louise, pick up after your robots, why don't you? Maybe you can find a better robot - or better yet - an actual human to take care of it for you.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------
Image Source: Popular Mechanics

A note on Popular Mechanics. This magazine was founded and, until the early 1960s, was headquartered in Chicago. It's now located in NY. During the 1940s, my mother worked there as an admin/assistant editor.  In January 1945, she met my father - who was in the Navy, stationed in downtown Chicago and working out of Navy Pier - on a blind date and they hit it off. They were married in November of that year and moved to my father's home town, Worcester, Massachusetts. So she was something of an intra-country war bride. Anyway, I did get a kick out of finding an image on her magazine's website. 

The road to hell (and stupidity) is paved with AI

For years, I've been reading about how our abundance of technology is changing the way we think - and not in good ways. Cursive writing, using maps, reading books and pretty much any other form longer than the average tweet, making to-do lists on yellow pads. All of these skills aren't just lost arts. They're important, as they help us with cognitive development, memory retention, critical thinking, analytical ability...

And this was even before AI use cases started soaring. 

With AI making inroads, the law of unintended consequences is clearly being enforced. It's not just that folks relying on technology to do just about everything for them involved in thinking and doing won't develop key capabilities. It's that using AI will cause their existing skills to erode. 

In one study, doctors who'd gotten used to relying on AI to identify pre-cancerous growths during colonoscopies saw a decrease in their own ability to do so. 

This deskilling is worrisome to a lot of folks:

That possibility is a growing concern for medical specialists, computer scientists and other workers. Seventy per cent of nurses and 77% of physicians, for example, are worried about losing their skills because of over-reliance on AI systems, according to a survey of US health-care workers published earlier this month1.

Their fear might be justified. Evidence suggests that AI-driven ‘deskilling’ is starting to happen in medicine, computer science and other fields. Researchers are now discussing how to preserve important human expertise in the age of AI. (Source: Nature)

On the one hand, what of it? If from here on out there'll always be AI around to do the growth spotting, what difference does in make if a doctor's not as good? 

Good question, but I'd prefer my physicians to be able to, if not heal themselves, then heal me without all the heavy lifting being done by an AI. What if we're stranded on a desert island? Although on a desert island, I'm not likely to undergo a colonoscopy, I'd still want a doctor who knows how to do things the old-fashioned way. 

I have a friend who's a retired physician. She takes her blood pressure using her old hand-pump BP device, the one with the squeeze bulb. She trusts its reliability more than she trusts the swanky new digital machines.

Overall, the growing reliance on AI is not an unalloyed good for the wonderful world of health:

The study authors say that continuous exposure to such [AI] tools can cause clinicians to become “less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance”.

Less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance? That doesn't sound good.

Another example from my friend the doctor: She recently had a healthscare based on a misreading of a result. (Not sure if the situation involved human or machine error.) There was a slight problem, but not the major one initially reported, which had her writing her obituary in her head. Anyway, my friend's PCP was not particularly well-versed in what was happening to my friend and why. This is perfectly understandable, as the situation was a bit off the beaten path and no PCP can be expected to know everything.

The PCP went to the google and, we're guessing, AI'd her way into ordering a bunch of diagnostic tests for my friend, most of which my friend knew had nothing to do with the condition her condition was in. She played a bit of a waiting game, pushed back a bit, and ended up only with the tests she needed.

The situation is not, of course, perfectly analogous to the AI colonoscopy one, but it does demonstrate how a doctor might rely on what the technology is guiding them to do because it's quicker and easier than trying to figure out what actually makes sense in a given situation.

Then there's the impact of AI on coders.

By now, we're well aware of the looming coding takeover by AI. Folks used to look to computer science, to IT, to software development, for solid, lucrative careers. Now students are advised against studying much beyond how to work with AI.

Anthropic (an AI research company) recognizes the inherent problem at play:

AI creates a potential tension: as coding grows more automated and speeds up work, humans will still need the skills to catch errors, guide output, and ultimately provide oversight for AI deployed in high-stakes environments. (Source: Anthropic)

Anthropic decided to see how AI would help and/or hinder codes. So they set out to test the assumption about whether there were tradeoffs when it comes to using AI to assist - note, not replace - coders. 

Study participants were sorted into two groups, one using AI and the other "manually" coding, and were tested afterwards to see how rapidly they picked up a new coding skill 

The AI group was faster, but in the tests adminstered after the trial, they found:

...a significant differences in test scores the AI group averaged 50% on the quiz, compared to 67% in the hand-coding group—or the equivalent of nearly two letter grades (Cohen's d=0.738, p=0.01). The largest gap in scores between the two groups was on debugging questions, suggesting that the ability to understand when code is incorrect and why it fails may be a particular area of concern if AI impedes coding development.

The good news, I guess, is that AI is not quite ready and able to replace all of us humans. The bad news is that while it's making its way to full readiness and human-ish capability, it's making us dumber.

Swell!

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

Image Source: Parker's Ponderings

Hypochondriacs, assemble!

Just when I think I've said everything I have to say about the perils of AI, up pops another one. And this pop up is a doozy. A not surprising doozy, but a doozy nonetheless.

A couple of years back, Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a medical researcher at a Swedish university (and an "AI strategist") came to the realization that an awful lot of folks - including brainiacs who should know better, given how cavalierly so many of them are using AI - hadn't a clue how it works. (Bad enough that innocent bystanders, naive googlers, mere consumers of misinfo are blissfully ignorant.)

“It was interesting how few of them [her students], or how few even people within A.I., understand how large language models (LLMs) are built,” [she said]. (Source: The Smithsonian)

So she decided to teach her class how the AI systems that produce the info we get when we google are constructed. (Not all AI stems from LLMs, but when we amateurs are out there googling, the information/misinformation regurgitated to us on a platter of convenience and speed likely comes from an
LLM.) 

And what better way for a medical researcher to do so than to concoct a fake disease and see what AI could do with it.  

“...I really wanted to have a clear case that leaves breadcrumbs throughout the whole system to show both how data is processed, how data is churned out, and how the prediction model and training model works when it comes to distributing information,” adds Osmanovic Thunström.

The condition that she and her team came up with was bixonimania, a malady associated with computer screen use.  (And who among us hasn't searched a time or two to see if we could figure out how all our screen time was impacting us mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?)

They unleashed bixonimania on a searching, unsuspecting world in early 2024.

They put out two blog posts on the website Medium and two research reports on a preprint server, where scientists post studies that have not been peer-reviewed... The papers’ lead author was named Lazljiv Izgubljenovic—which translates to “lying loser”—and one of the studies’ titles says something akin to “Hyperpigmentation: A Real B.S. Design.” (Both reports have since been taken down by the preprint server.)

In defense of AI - and this may be my one and only defense of AI - maybe it would have picked up on the fakery if the author's name was given as "Lying Loser" in English, rather than in Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian. Maybe.

Anyway, LLMs started to run with it. You searched on your symptoms and Microsoft Bing's Copilot would tell you that “Bixonimania is indeed an intriguing and relatively rare condition." Indeed!

Naturally, Chat GPT got in the act. And Google's Gemini attributed the condition to too much exposure to blue light. (By the way, those eyeglass lenses that are supposed to help prevent occurrences of bad things associated with blue light? They're apparently as dubious as bixonimania. As I found out when I ordered them - and paid a couple of hundred bucks extra - without checking with my eye doctor first.)

Worse yet, a number of scientists crazily/lazily went ahead and cited the BS apparently without having drilled down on the "research." Or even read it. (I'm guessing those gulled by the fakery were using Chat GPT to author their own work. Full circle!)

This despite the fact that Osmanovic Thunström's team threw in a bunch of Easter eggs that gave away the fakery - or should have. References to financial support from Lord of the Rings, and intellectual support from fellow scientists at the Starship Enterprise. 

At least one of the papers even explicitly stated, “This entire paper is made up,” reports Nature.

And that wasn't enough for the LLM to pick up on? Maybe the AI's eyesight was faltering due to bixonimania. Oh, wait...

“This is a master class on how mis- and disinformation operates,” says Alex Ruani, a misinformation researcher at University College London who wasn’t involved in the project, to Nature. “If the scientific process itself and the systems that support that process are skilled, and they aren’t capturing and filtering out chunks like these, we’re doomed.”

Doomed? Yikes! (And what a job title: misinformation researcher.  Bet that position didn't exist ten years ago. Maybe it's one of those swell jobs they keep telling us AI will create once it kills off all the current jobs.)

Meanwhile, I can think of one group of folks who might just delight in having a bunch of fake but harmless conditions out there. Hypochondriacs, assemble!

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

Image source:  Amazon

Wii Bowling. (Wheeeeeee...)

I don't have a non-bucket list, but if I were to maintain one, two items that would safely be on it:

• I will never join a bowling league
• I will never live in Tulsa, Oklahoma

I also hope never to have to live in a senior living community - that's just no country for old introverts - but I don't really know what the future holds. So never say never on senior living. But I'm pretty confident saying never to bowling and Tulsa. 

Still, I was delighted to read a recent story in The New York Times on the U.V. Okies, a bowling team from University Village senior living who are the hottest bowlers in a senior league that bowls via Nintendo Wii Sports.

I must note that I am not against bowlng per se. Every time I've been bowling - which is maybe a few dozen times in my life - I've enjoyed it. Even that first time in eighth grade when I went candlepin bowling with the Junior Catholic Daughters of America (girls spinout of the Knights of Columbus) and managed to knock down 11 pins in total. Now candlepin is a lot harder than "big ball" bowling. Still, 11 is pretty embarrassing. 

I've managed to score over 100 - even well over 100 - in big ball bowling, but the only way I'll go bowling nowadays is using bumpers. 

Maybe I'd be better using Wii, but I doubt it. 

Tulsa is another story. If Oklahoma isn't exactly my cup on tea, state-wise, I would be fine visiting Tulsa to see the Black Wall Street History Center, which commemorates the 1921 race massacre, and to see the Woody Guthrie Center, which commemorates Woody Guthrie. (Fun fact: I'm friends with the former curator of the Woody Guthrie archives. She was an archivist for the collection when it was housed in NYC and was responsible for moving it to Tulsa.)

But there aren't many places in the United States where I can less imagine myself living than Oklahoma. (It might be tied for rock-bottom with Mississippi, but that's factoring out Texas and Florida.)

Yet I delighted in reading about my age peers having such a good time Wii bowling. 

The Okies are the league champeens, and have been so through six seasons. They rarely if ever lose. This season's record was 10-0.

Their team includes Phyllis the Killer Wimer, a.k.a., the GOAT, who is 95; Charlene "the Grasshopper" Giles; Marvelous Marcia Ness; Rollin' Ron Remaree; Ron Pogue; and Dandy Don Alcorn. They're all, like me, old geezers. But I would have guessed that just by looking at their decidedly old-fashioned names. Does anyone get named Charlene or Ron anymore? They're a couple of Maureen-ish names if ever. 

The league was founded 20 years ago, just about when the Wii first came out, and gives folks an opportunity to get together and have some fun while getting some exercise in as well. And compete for bragging rights - and 100 Grand candy bars. 

There are as many as 40 players at a time on the U.V. team, folks competing in-house to earn one of eight places for the week's league game. 

“There are some things I do where I feel ageless,” Ms. Giles, 75, said. She added: “It’s like I could just as well be 13 standing up there. It’s fun to have those things.”

Wii bowling helps them socialize and form friendships, navigate the aches and pains and grief and loss of aging, and encourages them to try new things. “This is the way older people survive,” Pat Winkle, known as “Nana Pat,” 87, said. (Source: NY Times)

Aches, pains, grief, loss. Yep/yelp!, they got aging right!

Players sport team shirts. They cheer on their teammates with pompoms. They decorate their bowling lanes (actually the facility's rec room) with posters. Smells Like Teen Spirit to me!

And if you're wondering whether the bowlers would be mssing the sounds of pins clattering when they go down, wonder no more. Wii comes with special effects: sounds of pins getting knocked down and visuals like "Strike" flashing on the screen when someone knocks down all ten pins. 

And if you're wondering whether real-life bowling alley skills automatically transfer to the virtual game, not really. 

When he first started playing, Mr. Alcorn had to unlearn the techniques and stances he knew from real-life bowling.

“That won’t work,” he said. “You’ve got to go up and out to get the strike.”

Hmmm. Maybe there'd be hope for me as a virtual bowler! 

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

Image Source: Barstool Sports