Good news for those who aren't a whiter shade of pale

A couple of weeks ago, I had what is likely my final visit with my dermatologist.

I was there for a periodic skin check, but the doctor found nothing to be worried about. On the one hand, I have very fair skin and skin cancer hits us pale faces more often than it does those with darker skin tones . On the other, although I did suffer a couple of hurty-hurt sunburns when I was a young fool, I've never been much of a sunworshipper. And there's no immediate family history of squamous cell carcinoma (vs. "good" skin cancer, which is basal cell) or melanoma. Plus I'm old. So unless I spot some worrying skin lesion, there's no need to come back. Ever. 

I do have vitiligo, an autoimmune condition that causes white patches to appear on my body. Mine are on my legs, arms, and armpits (of all things), but because I'm so light-skinned those white blotches just blend right in and aren't noticeable unless you're looking. And trust me, ain't nobody looking. Except Dr. Angel - my dermatologist's real name - and she has to look to find it.

Vitiligo can, of course, be awful, especially if it appears on your face. And especially if you have dark skin. For some vitiligo sufferers, it's obvious and disfiguring. 

Anyway, skin tone matters for a lot of reasons, and some of them - like the likelihood of cancer and the impact of vitiligo - are medical. And it's not just in medically obvious ways.  Skin tone is used to help "diagnose low blood oxygen, neonatal jaundice, and hospital-acquired pressure injuries [i.e., bedsores]." And most of the diagnostic tools that look at skin tone have been oriented towards white people. 

There was a standard for measuring skin tone, used from the mid-1970's on, that covered a six point spectrum. But four points on the scale were for those with light-colored skin, with two additional points for brown and Black skin. But those two points didn't incorporate the full spectrum of possibililties.

Enter the Monk Skin Tone (MST) scale which was developed by Ellis Monk  - a Harvard sociology professor - in 2019. Some

of Monk's academic work had focused on colorism (prejudice, often intra-race, towards those with darker skin).  Encouraged by colleagues and his wife (because behind every great man...), Monk began working on a more expansive way of evaluating skin color.

The sociologist ended up developing a 10-tone, open-source scale aimed at improving inclusivity in skin tone classification across technological and clinical domains...Its original form, with colored spheres, reflected a much wider range of skin tones. But Monk settled on a 10-point scale for pragmatic reasons. “Ten points are pretty much the breaking point for having people be able to consistently use it as a subjective scale,” he said. (Source: Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences)

The MST is being used beyond medical applications, and is improving search engine, driverless car, and facial recognition technologies. Facial recognition tecnology in particular is notoriously less effective in differentiating one Black person from the next - which has resulted in many innocent people being accused of crimes they had nothing to do with. Etc. 

But the MST is now being adopted by the medical industry. And this cost-effective device is saving lives. 

Among the life-saving applications are pulse oximeters - you know, the little finger thingies we all bought for ourselves during COVID - which:

...measure blood oxygen by analyzing light as it passes through the skin via a small finger clamp. However, darker skin absorbs light differently than lighter skin. Because pulse oximeters originally used white skin as the standard, people with darker skin would get inaccurate readings. And because these inaccurate readings skewed higher, many people with dangerously low blood oxygen ended up with too-high readings, meaning they would appear to have normal blood oxygen.

Then there are bedsores.  

The[se] injuries are traditionally under-diagnosed in darker-skinned people, but a laminated badge displaying the MST scale, along with 15 minutes of training, is helping nurses recognize more incidents of HAPIs. A 2026 study finds the badge, which costs approximately $2, reducing these injuries by 94 percent at a 900-bed Level I trauma hospital in Los Angeles.

Because of his work, Monk has been "awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award. Monk was the first sociologist to win this $2.5 million grant." Unfortunately, the grant was canceled in 2025, presumably by DOGE know-nothings. Presumably because Monk's work is about color. And we can't have that. So what if a bunch of old Black folks get bedsores? Solving that problem is so patently unfair to whites. 

Despite termination of his NIH grant, Monk intends to continue this work, having seen applications for common medical tests such as EKGs and EEGs, which also take measurements through the skin.

“People have been operating blind to color,” he said. “You can’t do that, because the skin is your interface with the technological world.”

Good for Professor Ellis Monk. And good news for those among us who aren't, like me, a whiter shade of pale. 

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Image Source: Research Gate

For the record, although some days I feel as pallid as an A, I'm pretty sure I'm a B on the scale. 

"Catch me if you can"? Will do!

When I was a kid, I avidly read the book The Great Impostor, which chronicled the exploits of one Ferdinand Waldo Demara, a Massachusetts-born conman who, among other things, forged (fake) careers as a Trappist monk, Benedictine monk, engineer, teacher,  psychologist, prison warden, lawyer, and surgeon. He also founded a college that, miraculously, is still in existence. That many of his exploits involved Catholic institutions made the story all the more interesting to me. (The book formed the loose basis for a movie of the same name, with Demara played by Tony Curtis. I'm sure I saw it at some point, and may look it up one of these days.)

Fast forward to Catch Me If You Can,

a very enjoyable 2002 movie starring Leo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, conman extraordinaire. Like DeMara, Abagnale (supposedly) impersonated a doctor, lawyer, and airline pilot along his merry way. As an airline pilot - which is a little scarier a thought than being a lawyer, and a lot scarier a thought than being a doctor, but is REALLY SCARY, I don't think Abagnale ever actually flew a plane. He just deadheaded (cadged free flights), forged checks, and recruited (and physically examined) potential stewardesses - guess that's where being a fake doctor helped.

(Having found it difficult enough to fake my way through professions I was actually skilled at and/or educated for - like waitress and product marketer - the idea of making a career up out of whole cloth is fascinating to me.)

Frank Abagnale isn't the only one who pretended to be a pilot to fly for free. 

Federal prosecutors accused a Canadian man on [January 20, 2026] of doing just that, charging him with wire fraud for a scheme in which they say he pretended to be a pilot and a flight attendant to get hundreds of trips for free.

The man, Dallas Pokornik, used a false identification badge to defraud three airlines of travel benefits, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Hawaii. Mr. Pokornik, 33, had previously worked for a Toronto-based airline as a flight attendant between 2017 and 2019, court documents said, but not as a pilot. (Source: NY Times)

Impersonating a flight attendant for a free flight - which many airlines provide to colleagues at other airlines - is bad enough. Fraud, sure. Theft, absolutely. But pretty much no harm, no foul. And bad enough he scammed his way into free seats in the cabin. On some of his free flights - and there were many of them over the course of four years, on several different airlines - Pokornik, pretending to be a flyboy, asked for and was given a jump seat in the cockpit. Where, presumably, he could have been called on to assist if something happened to the pilot or copilot. Given that his in-flight experience was as a flight attendant, what was he going to do? Offer the other pilot a Biscoff cookie or a barf bag? 

The airlines Pokornik defrauded weren't named in the article, but "one [was] based in Honolulu, one in Chicago and one in Fort Worth." I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing Hawaiian Airlines, United, and American. I've never flown Hawaiian, but, yeah, I've been on United and American plenty of times. Wonder if Pokornik was ever in the seat next, or maybe even in the cockpit?

Pokornik is in line for a hefty fine and prison sentence. Wonder if it'll end up being worth the free flights he conned his way into?

Pokornik flew down the "catch me if you can" gauntlet, and apparently the airlines took him up on it. 

Anyway, he's grounded now.

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Image Source: Netflix

Assisted living for penguins? Yes!

Years ago, I saw the March of the Penguins, a documentary about the life of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. Talk about nasty, brutish, and (often) short. That's the life of the penguins I'm talking about. As for the film itself, well, talk about nasty, brutish, and way too long. 

March was narrated by Morgan Freeman, but it's a French flick. And when my sisters, nieces, and I reminisce about seeing it - years ago, rainy summer afternoon in Wellfleet - we put on exaggerated French accents, hold an imagined Gauloise between two fingers, and say, "We march, and march, and march. And then we march some more. And then we die."

No, it ain't easy being a penguin.

Unless, of course, you're fortunate enough to be a senior African penguin at the New England Aquarium.

If anything, the life of African penguins is even more dire than that of the marching Antarctic emporers. Over the last century African penguins have experienced a population decline of 97%. The average life span has decreased. In another decade, extinction is predicted. 

But if you're living at the NE Aquarium, penguin life is pretty darned good on a special island of their own. 

“This is our penguin retirement home. We affectionately call it our assisted living community,” says Mia Luzietti, senior penguin trainer. Seven of them are housed here. Many have similar problems, including arthritis, glaucoma, and foot problems. Two are blind in one eye.

At geriatric island, life is easier. They have matted soft pads installed for comfort, helping their mobility.

Trainers work with them on all their needs.

A special bond develops. Life is mellower here away from the rowdy youngins.

Five of the penguins are over 30. The oldest, Good Hope, is 36, the equivalent of 118 human years. (Source: Boston Globe)

The retirees "are pampered." There are special toys. Fresh fish in unlimited quantities. And "volunteers blow bubbles to break the boredom." Some of the penguins pair off with their fellow geezers. Others stay solo. 

In the wild, and even in the other island at the Aquarium where the younger penguins spend their days, weak older penguins can be set upon by the younger crowd, kicked out of the colony. But here on geriatric island:

[Luzietti] says they get better health care than most people. There are vet teams, an ICU, and an operating room. An ophthalmologist and an acupuncturist come as needed. They don’t have to worry about politics and co-pays.

And the staff and volunteers help the elder penguins with end-of-life issues.

“I think it’s great that they’re given an opportunity to live out their lives in comfort and not have to compete with some of the other younger birds,” [volunteer Mark Weber] says. 

...we don’t ever want them to suffer whatsoever,” Luzietti says. “And that goes from the moment that they’re an egg laid to the moment that they take their last breath.’

Damn! Isn't that what we all want?

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Image Source: Wikipedia

The Hills Are Alive, with the sound of nuns escaping

Throughout my Catholic childhood, we were regularly encouraged by the nuns and priests to pray for a vocation (where vocation, of course, meant becoming a nun or a priest). When I was in high school, my friends and I put a spin on it and joked about praying that we not have a vocation. 

For my friends and I, the strategy apparently worked, and no one ended up going in the convent. 

At one point, I was quasi wooed in. Along with girls from throughout our order's province, I was invited my senior year to attend a gathering of student council officers. It was a conference, with a couple of overnights thrown in, at the motherhouse. There we were housed in a rather drab and dreary dorm setting to discuss weighty Catholic school student council issues, like how to punish those who smoked in uniform. We were adjacent to the area where the postulants - these were the girls fresh out of high school who were in formation to decide whether to become professed sisters - and, while we weren't exactly encouraged to mingle with them, we were encouraged to watch them. Look! They're normal girls! They play basketball! They eat ice cream! They sing songs from Sound of Music and the more wholesome numbers from West Side Story, which was pretty much "Maria." They're just like you!

One of my closest friends was also in attendance, and neither of us was all that charmed by our peek at nunnish life. And we knew a failed recruitment effort when we saw one.

That same year I was more personally, albeit lightly, targeted, as often when I was in earshot of a nun at our school, she would smile and say "it's the ones you least expect." 

I can't remember her name, but she was new to my school that year and obviously hadn't heard that one of her colleagues had been telling her classes that I was "preaching dangerous heresy" because in religion class I questioned why taking the birth control pill was the mortal sin equivalent of murder. (One of my friends always said they lost a generation when, morally and mortally-sinnishly speaking, they equated French kissing with mass murder.) According to Sister CP, who was certifiable, I was also a known communist because I'd suggested that the senior class project be raising money to help fund a school in Nicaragua. (This never happened. Our big fundraising project was buying a sign for the school's main gate.)

I suppose this nun thought I'd be a good nun because I was a good student and personable. Oh, and I wasn't boy crazy. (I.e., I didn't have a boy friend.) 

Anyway, the girls in my class who did enter the convent were not in the "least expected" category. Both were in the Sodality, a religious organization that the more pious girls joined. Sodality was one of the few clubs at my school that I didn't participate in.

One of these girls lasted about a year. She married, had a family, and became an artist. (Actually, she always was an artist, and a very talented one.) The other girl - a sweet and gentle soul if ever - is still "in." We were never particularly friendly, but we briefly reconnected a few years ago and had lunch a couple times. After teaching for a while, she has devoted her life to social justice, working with refugees, battered women, poor kids, and any other group in need that came her way. Sweet and gentle she may have been, but plenty tough. 

Anyway, after so many years in Catholic school, I have always looked on nuns with some degree of fascination and interest. 

I find their "career choice" to be quite weird. Who would chose this life? But then, of course, I had successfully prayed away any putative vocation - perhaps the last thing I actually prayed for before I realized that, while I may have been baptized a Catholic, I was pretty much born an atheist.

So, nuns...

In any case, the latest nunny-bunny object of my fascination and interest is the story about the trio of ancient nuns Sisters Rita (82), Regina (86), and Bernadette (88) in Salzburg, Austria, who recently made the headlines. 

People are calling us the rebellious sisters!" Rita says with a giggle and a glint in her eye.

The three Augustinian sisters — who use only their religious names — recently ran away from a nursing home and, with the help of a local locksmith, broke back into the convent that used to be their home. Rita jokes that they are octogenarian squatters.

Giggles aside, Rita says they were taken to a nursing home against their will two years ago when church authorities shuttered the cloisters as nun numbers diminished. "When the opportunity arose to return to our beloved convent, we didn't wait for his permission" (Source: NPR)

Instead of waiting to (holy) see the priest who was their overlord, the nuns enlisted parishioners who hired a UHaul and move them back into the place they'd called home for decades. Since their move back home, the trio has been supported by a growing cadre of friends, including former students. 

Needless to say, the prelate, Markus Grasl - who stuck them in the nursing home when the convent's numbers dwindled to just the three and it was no longer viable to keep them there - is not happy with the nuns' great escape. Nor with their media-savvy decision to go public. Christina Wirtenberger, a former student, is an adviser and key supporter of "'operation get thee to a nunnery.'"

"We invited the press along to prevent the provost [Grasl] from turfing the sisters out of the convent," Wirtenberger says. "I was told that he would not be so bold in front of the press."

With the nuns growing public exposure and support - and their 70,000 Insta followers - the hierarchy felt they had to fight back. So Grasl "brought in a PR firm specializing in damage control."

Spokesman (PR flak) Harald Schiffl has been pecksniffing the pushback. The nuns were consulted before the move. The move was in their best interest. These nuns on the run are breaking their vows. And in fine pecksniff fettle:

Schiffl says the nuns' social media presence is unbecoming of their order and that their superiors take a dim view of it.

"Without all the media interest, a viable and sustainable solution would have been found long ago, causing far less damage to the church," Schiffl asserts.

Make that Shiffl pecks and sniffs.  

Sister Bernadette - remember that she's 88 - counters that their use of social media is not god-awful. It's god-given:  

"So heaven uses tech to spread the word? God arranged this, not us!"

Then there's this from a priest supporter:

"The church authorities fear the media like the devil fears holy water because they'd rather keep hidden what is going on behind closed doors," [Father Wolfgang] Rothe says.

And of course, what would a story about nuns in Salzburg be without a mention of the Von Trapp family.

As it turns out, Maria's granddaughter Elisabeth, who is singer - runs in the family, I guess - became a friend of Sister Bernadette a while back, and has sung in the convent:

"I believe Sister Bernadette has a message," von Trapp says. "It has a lot to do with how she has taken care of the community and who is now surrounding her."

There's no denying that as you age, you do tend to need more care, and a nursing home may in fact be a reasonable setting for aging nuns from a shrinking-into-oblivion community, from both a health and financial standpoint.  

But the outside-the-convent community VonTrapp mentioned is rising to the occasion. 

Among them is Karin Seidl, another former convent student. She says the sisters have devoted their lives to the community and now it's time to give back.

"This is their home! And although we've organized for 24-hour care starting next week, I live just three minutes away so I'm also on hand," Seidl says. The church is surely about practicing 'love thy neighbor,' not just preaching it."

She says the sisters are as devout as they are defiant and that they deserve agency and dignity in old age.

As do we all. 

Can't help but rooting for them, no?

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Image Source: MSNBC

And a shoutout to my brother Tom who sent me this article.

Talk about a niche profession

This may come as something of a shock to my readers - it does to me - but I have never been to Walden Pond.

Sure, I read Thoreau way back in the way back. And I've been to Concord plenty of times. I've been (multiple times) to the Old Manse, where both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived. (And where Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, charmingly etched messages in the windows using Sophia's diamond ring.) Multiple times to the Louisa May Alcott House, where you can see where and how Louisa and her sisters - the O.G. Little Women - grew up. Multiple times to the North Bridge, my absolute favorite Concord tourist site, "where once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." And multiple times to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, wherein lie the bodies of Ralph, Nathaniel, Sophia, Louisa - and Henry David Thoreau. 

But never have I ever been to Walden Pond. 

And if I were to rectify this and put a visit to Walden Pond on my bucket list - which surely I should - I would miss the opportunity to see Richard Smith, who had been Thoreau's resident impersonator since 1999. Smith, a historian, hung up his tall straw hat for the last time on Septemer 6th, fittingly commermorating the day in 1847 when Thoreau himself left the pond, saying:

...I feel I have accomplished all that I set out to do. I have discovered what living is all about. I have discovered a great deal about solitude, independence and self-reliance. (Source: The New York Times)

Having been Thoreau for 26 years, Smith pretty much dittos these words. 

Richard Smith didn't start out to be a Thoreau impersonator, where his work consisted of hanging out in the one-room cabin and educating all sorts of groups - high school kids, Thoreau buffs, and Unitarian church groups - about Henry David. All while in character. 

A history buff from his childhood in Cleveland, and a history major at the University of Akron, here's how Richard Smith tells the story:

“I got really involved in Akron’s punk scene and started singing in bands,” he said. “It was the Reagan ’80s, and we were standing up to who we thought was this immoral clueless leader. That’s when I started reading Thoreau.”

“Thoreau questioned everything, and that really resonated with the punk rock side of me,” he said. “I became drawn to the transcendentalists, their belief of nature being divine, and it’s still part of my spirituality today.” 

In his thirties, Smith worked at a living history museum in Akron, where he played a brickmaker and a schoolmaster. He took a weekend off and trekked to Concord. There, he was delighted that people understood what he ws talking about when he told them that he was a transcendentalist. He found his way to a job at the Minuteman National Park (home of Concord Bridge) and occasionally came to work dressed up as Thoreau.

The Walden Pond park rangers knew a good thing when they saw it, and soon enough Smith was spending his days there in his little cabin, or outside in his big straw hat. 

The gig had its challenges. Besides having to wear an itchy frock coat on sweltering summer days and forcing himself not to utter contractions, the job meant setting some Thoreau fans straight about certain things. He was not a hermit, for one thing. The cabin on Walden Pond was near train tracks, and he often visited his family in town, where his mother did his laundry for him.

I am not a big fan of historic impersonators. I find the staying in character - not uttering contractions! - cringe, and have always tended to avoid reenactors. I don't mind a guide dressed in period garb talking about whatever went on in whatever ye olde house. But once they start in on the I vouchsafe to impart to thee the receipt for button and wattle soup I tend to lose my shit. 

A while back, my sister Trish and I went to the Farmers' Museum (now the  Fenimore Farm & Country Village) in Cooperstown, NY. We were in Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame (of course). But we had very fond childhood memories of a visit to the Farmers' Museum (when our family took a long weekend vacation to Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame (of course)). So we went.

It was on the cusp on the off season, so all the houses didn't have impersonators present. But we looked in every window, and if we saw someone who looked hell bent on impersonating, we took a pass.

But even I might have enjoyed meeting Henry David Thoreau.

Seriously, what's not to like about fringies, eccentrics? And I suspect Richard Smith topples headlong into this category.

Congratulations to him on a job well done in his very niche profession.

Tomorrow is Halloween. I'll be at my volunteer job, doing my customary candy give out. I was thinking of going as an old lady, which doesn't require much of a costume, and maybe adding a witch's hat to complete the look.

But if I had a nice tall straw hat and an itchy frock coat I would consider dressing up as Henry David Thoreau. 

Happy Halloween to all who observe.

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Image Source:  Metro Daily News

Those lousy things we said about Galileo? Didn't mean a word of it!

Summers can be hot in Rome, at the Vatican. Fortunately, the popes can escape the heat by grabbing the popemobile and bopping down to Castel Gandolfo, a nice little spot fifteen or so miles south of Rome. There they can get some R&R in, enjoying a mansion "which overlooks a volcanic lake and is surrounded by spectacular terraced gardens." And if the pope is scientifically inclined he can meander on over to the Vatican Observatory "which since its founding, in 1891, has been dedicated to the scientific study of the heavens."

The Catholic Church's interest in star gazing goes back to the papacy of Gregory XIII, who wanted to make sure that the Church could figure out, astronomically speaking, when Easter and other holy days that didn't have a permanent designation (as Christmas does) should be observed. On Gregory's watch, and observation tower was built and:

...a meridian line was installed in the Vatican to illustrate the need to reform the Julian calendar. A Jesuit, Christopher Clavius, helped propose that the Vatican adopt the Gregorian calendar, which it did in 1582. According to the historian Jonathan Wright’s book “The Jesuits,” when the realignment caused ten days to be subtracted from the year, mobs across Europe attacked Jesuit houses to protest the time stolen from them. (Source: The New Yorker)

Those were the days! Today, people piss and moan about Daylight Saving Time and a one-hour adjustment. Can you imagine if we had to whack 10 days off the calendar? It might work if they were all workdays, but, knowing how things work, it would be all weekends and holidays.

Rigorous science wasn't always the Church's thang, of course. Fast forward a few decades from the building of the Gregorian Tower, and there's the Church inquisitioning all over Galileo, who spent the last years of his life under house arrest. Slow forward a few centuries to 1992, when on Halloween, Pope Jonh Paul II admitted that the Inquisition had been wrong to condemn Galileo for having boldly asserted that the earth revolves around the sun. 

But during those in between centuries, the Vatican set up a number of observatories and became one of the top astronomical institutions in the world. In the 1930s, due to smoke and light pollution in Rome, the Observatory was relocated from Rome to Castel Gandolfo.

Keeping up with the times - and with the light pollution that the times brought with - the Vatican Observatory developed a relationship in Tucson with the University of Arizona, locating a research group there to use their observatory. 

Today, half of the Vatican Observatory's team (all Jesuits, all scientists) works out of Arizona, where: 

In the early nineties, at the Mt. Graham International Observatory, near Tucson, the Vatican installed a powerful four-million-dollar telescope and an astrophysics facility, together known as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, or VATT. 

The current director of the Vatican Observatory is an American Jesuit Brother, Guy Consolmagno. (But not for long. He's retiring this coming Friday.) 

Brother Guy is a serious scientist, with a PhD from the University of Arizona and post-doc work at Harvard and MIT. And the Observatory is a serious scientific outfit. I mean, they didn't invest $4M (30+ years ago) in a telescope so they could watch the man in the moon. Or the man on the moon. Pope Paul VI did watch the 1969 moon landing through a telescope at the Observatory. 

[The organizations they've collaborated with] have included, in recent years, NASA, whose OSIRIS-REx mission (2016-23) collected samples from the Bennu asteroid, which measures a third of a mile across and has been calculated to have a not infinitesimal chance of colliding with Earth in the twenty-second century. Bob Macke, another Jesuit brother in Castel Gandolfo, has developed a specialty in documenting the properties of meteorites, and several years ago he was invited to join an international team analyzing the Bennu samples; in 2023, he built a device specifically adapted for carrying out these delicate measurements. “NASA needed help with a mission. The Vatican came to the rescue,” read one headline about the collaboration.

Glad that the Vatican Observatory is doing serious science. Not that putting a nuclear facility on the moon isn't serious. No siree, Bob. And it may well make sense. But I really don't trust this administration, which is better known for its pseudo science, witch-doctoring, and general scorn for and ignorance of the scientific method to be able to pull something off that doesn't end up, say, destroying the moon. Which would not be a particularly good thing, were it to happen. 

Meanwhile, it's too bad that the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope wasn't around in the first century A.D./Common Era. They might have been able to observe Christ ascending into heaven, and Mary his mother being assumed into heaven. After all, Holy Seeing is believing!

Kidding/not kidding...

Anyway, I'm just as happy that the Church finally came around to exonerating Galileo.

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Image Source: Clerical Whispers

Still going strong in their 80's: Exhibit A, Exhibit B

A few weeks ago, there was a cute little article in The Boston Globe about a cute old guy - Jim "Caino" Cain - who, at the age of 80, is still fast at work at F.W. Webb, a plumbing supply company. Caino apparently knows how to locate every part in Webb's "labyrinthine" storeroom in Watertown, making him the ultimate plumber's helper. (F.W. Webb is a local - throughout the Northeast - supplier and showroom, and I know personally that they have everything. When I did my reno 10 years ago, I picked out my plumbing stuff for two bathrooms and my kitchen at F.W. Webb and could barely wrap my mind around the choices.)

One of Caino's specialities is apparently finding ancient parts for ancient fixtures. 

To those he's rescued, he's a hero "who can help a plumber or a homeowner eke another decade out of a faucet or toilet."

“Caino?” said a plumber who, on a recent morning, was being helped by the man himself. “One of my instructors said, ‘If you ever have a question you can’t answer, there’s a guy in Watertown.’”

“Caino?” said that instructor, Nicholas Nocifora, of Wakefield’s PLUMR, when reached later by phone. “He’s a [expletive] legend.”

“Caino?” said Drew Pilarski, a 48-year-old colleague. “A lot of stuff he knows predates the internet. AI has not yet been trained on his brain.” (Source: Boston Globe)

So I was reading along about Jim Cain, smiling to myself, what a great old geezer. If I were the type who said "God love 'im," well, I'd be saying that about Caino.

And then I had the 'wait just a darned minute' moment when I realized that Caino may be an old geezer still doing what's he's long done - and doing it extraordinarily well - but he's pretty much an age peer.

I'm "only" 75, so 80 still sounds sort of old. But realistically, I'm a geezer. An awful lot of my friends are in their 70's. A few are in their 80's. We old. If my husband were alive, he'd be 81. By anyone's definition, an old man. (Can't imagine. When he died, he was the youngest 70-year-old I've ever known. And that still holds.)

A few days after I read about Jim Cain, there was another article about another local old geezer still plying his trade. 

So let's make Jim Cain Exhibit A for how to be a geezer who keeps going. And let's make Ralph DeLeo Exhbit B on a geezer still at it. Only DeLeo is an example of how you can be an old geezer who's still got his boots on, but is hardly anyone that you'd say "God love 'im" about.

No, Ralph DeLeo may still have his boots on, but, watch out, there's a shiv shoved in that boot.

DeLeo, who's 82, ran a crew that was part of the Colombo crime family. In May 2024, he was released from prison, on probation, after serving a 15-year "bid" - did I get the criming lingo right? - on racketeering and gun charges. As with Caino, retirement is apparently not DeLeo's thing. In May of this year, he was arrested at his condo in Watertown, of all places. (Not far from where Caino works.)

Caino is old school, relying on his memory to take care of business, but DeLeo is a more tech savvy old geezer.

Former Mafia “street boss” Ralph F. DeLeo tried to delete his text messages and browsing history, but evidence of his alleged plot to kill a federal judge, prosecutor and retired FBI agent was recovered from his cell phone, according to testimony Thursday by a Massachusetts State Police trooper.

The 82-year-old Mafioso’s phone revealed Google searches for where to buy spy gear and lock-picking kits, as well as a schedule of upcoming gun shows in New Hampshire and Maine, said Trooper Elvis Nguyen, who is assigned to an FBI task force.

DeLeo allegedly shopped for “door breaching power tools” on Amazon, and for handmade silicone masks with “real hair” on Etsy.

The phone also allegedly revealed repeated internet searches for the addresses of a judge, prosecutor and agent who played a role in the 2009 federal racketeering case that sent him to prison for 15 years, according to Nguyen.

“Mr. DeLeo was actively planning to kill multiple individuals,” said Nguyen, who testified during a hearing in federal court in Boston. (Source: Boston Globe)

I know they say you're better off staying active in your old age, but YIKES!

DeLeo is looking to be released from custody, his lawyer maintaining that DeLeo "is no longer dangerous" and has serious health issues. Cough, cough. 

There is no indication of his continued association with the Mafia “and the members of his crew are also too old,” [attorney Kevin] Barron wrote.

But the Feds have counter-argued that DeLeo is still in contact with local gangsters, even if they're not members of his old old crew. And in their search of his home:

Agents also recovered a handwritten note regarding silicone masks; a “burglary kit” containing a pry bar, mini crow bar, bolt cutters, and a lock-picking kit; small amounts of marijuana and several vials of apparent steroids, according to the filings.

Sounds like Ralph DeLeo, like Jim Caino, is still going strong in his old geezerhood. Unlike Caino, who's doing good and making a lot of plumbers happy, Ralph DeLeo is the bum he's always been. I won't be surprised if he pulls an Uncle Junior Soprano, pretending he's senile. Or, for a real life example, do a Vincent "The Chin" Gigante and avoid prison by wandering around the streets of Little Italy in a filthy bathrobe acting out mental illness. Anyway, I bet Ralph DeLeo be back in the stir, and it sound like that's where he belongs. 

Meanwhile, if it's what he wants to do, I bet Jim Cain has plenty of years left at F.W. Webb, remembering just where to find the right thingamajig. Go, Jim Cain! You're making your fellow old geezers proud!

--------------------------------------------------------------------Image Sources: Etsy, Mob Museum

Of course this caught my attention...

I've got to believe that, like the policeman in Pirate's of Penzance, a priest man's job is not a happy one.

Since the high point of American Catholicism - the election of JFK (one of "our" very own) - it's been an arse-over-teakettle downhill tumble for the men in black. Most of the young men who entered in the glow and afterglow of Vatican II revolving-doored their way out. Fewer and fewer men went in. There were fewer and fewer parishioners in fewer and fewer pews as more and more churches closed. 

Some of what happened to the Catholic Church was modernity catching up with it - and the Church's refusal to accept the immutable fact that things change. And plenty of the decline in the last twenty years can be laid on the altar of the lid on the jar containing all that info on all those years of rampant sexual abuse and coverups.

So, I can't imagine the life of a modern priest is an especially happy one. It's always been a lonely one, with plenty of depression and alcoholism to go around, plenty of overeating and addictive behavior, but now it's lacking one of the aspects that helped make it worthwhile and sustainable: the companionship of fellow priests. There are too few of them left, and a lot of the new guys going in (from what I understand) are a bit off. And it's also lacking the deference and respect once accorded priest. That's out the door. Instead, everyone's looking at someone wearing a Roman collar and wondering whether he's one of the guys who did it or one of the guys who ignored it.

(As an aside: I'm working on a novel, The Sins Against Hope, that explores the contemporary priesthood through the eyes and experiences of a good priest who somehow stuck with it and made it to his 50th anniversary.)

Anyway, I get that it's a tough and lonely life. And I get that there's a lot of odd guys drawn to it, and a lot of weird behaviors associated with it. And some pathetic behaviors that seem inevitable, given the isolation and loneliness that riddle the life of a priest. As in the case of Pennsylvania's Father Lawrence Kozak, accused of felony theft for spending over $40K in parish funds on online gaming (and a couple of rather innocent, nerdy gifts for his goddaughter, including a chemistry set).

Police found evidence that Kozak had spent more than $214,000 between 2018 and 2022 on Apple charges, mostly on credits for cell phone video games, among them Wizard of Oz slots, Cash Frenzy slots, Mario Kart Tour, Pokemon GO, Candy Crush Friends Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, Credit Sesame, and Willy Wonka Slots Vegas Casino. 

Police identified that of those charges, $43,397 were incurred on the parish credit card. (Source: The Pillar)

In his defense, most of the money came out of Kozak's own pocket, and the charges to the parish credit card were incurred when his personal card hit its limit and charges rolled over to the parish card. Before he was arrested, he had already begun making restitution. He's in therapy for his mental health. And further in his defense, he became a Candy Crush etc. addict after he was in an accident where he sustained severe brain damage and nearly lost his leg. 

But there is something very sad about developing a gaming addiction - especially, it seems to me, if the gaming you're doing is "just" gambling without the possibility of winning any money. At least if you're betting the ponies or the point spread for the Monday Night Football game, you stand the chance of

making a little dough. Two-hundred and ten thousand dollars worth of Candy Crush Jelly Saga? Huh? (On the other hand, if you lose a bundle on Candy Crush, you've paid for it and there are no leg-breakers coming after you.)

It's unlikely that Kozak will end up behind bars. And why should he? Not condoning embezzlement, but by Catholic Church scandals this is nothing much more than a hill of beans Candy Crush icons. 

These online games are, like Oreos, built to get users hooked. 

Researchers say that mobile phone games are designed to stimulate reward pathways in the brain, and can alter the perception of time. People with mental health issues, like depression or anxiety, can be especially exploited by the neurological effects of such games. 

But psychologist Lisa Strohman told NBC News that anyone can become addicted to mobile phone games.

“Mobile games like Candy Crush are particularly addictive because everything shuffles and changes and then you level up so if you have any competitive nature, you can feel successful,” Strohman told NBC News.

“The [mobile gaming] industry knows that, so they take highly engaging colors and sounds and create a classical conditioning loop that increases the dopamine rewards push,” she added.

Some media reports have documented an increasing number of players who have lost substantial amounts of money on gambling components of cell phone games, or on power-ups, upgrades, and other costly add-ons to usually free games. 

Kozak was apparently sucked in by power-ups, which give a player the temporary ability to get extra "benefits" or whatever good stuff that you wouldn't have if you were content to play the free version of the game.

Hope he's got a decent lawyer, although with his level of pathetic criming, he really doesn't need a Clarence Darrow. (Ironically, the parish he stole from is named for St. Thomas More, Henry the VIIIth's martyred lawyer.)

As noted, it's not likely that Father Kozak will end up in the hoosegow. Nor should he, as he's no doubt living in a prison in his mind and of his very own making. He's no longer running a parish - which was his job AND his vocation - and he's got to pay back the church, and his personal credit card debt. Not to mention the public humiliation. Hard enough being a priest these days...

Amazon, the great job-creator!

I may not like Amazon, but I do order plenty of stuff off their site. Yes, I always (mostly always) try to get what I want locally, in a brick & mortar. Or directly through the vendor. But sometimes you just gotta do what you just gotta do. And I have to admit, it's great when that little smiley package lands on the doorstep the very next day. 

And Amazon is a job creator. It has over 1.6M employees. Plus the small businesses that have expanded the market for their wares thanks to Amazon. Of course, it's also a destroyer of jobs, and there are some studies that maintain that it has destroyed more jobs than it's created, leveling local retailers all over the place. Is Amazon a net job creator? Maybe yes, maybe no.

But Bezos is responsible for creating at least one oddball job, one fellow has struck gold in the Amazon.

He looks like a billion bucks.

A German ex-electrician went from watts to wealth after quitting his gig and becoming a professional Jeff Bezos lookalike.

Now, much like his celebrity doppelgänger, he lives a lavish lifestyle as an entrepreneur.

“I look like his twin brother,” Cagdas Halicilar, 46, told Jam Press of his uncanny resemblance to the Amazon founder, who is the world’s second-richest person with just over a cool $201 billion dollars. (Source: NY Post)

Halicilar does have another source of income. A while ago, he had swapped out being an electrician for running his own transport company. But who couldn't use a side hustle? So a while back, he signed up with a "doppelgänger agency." (Imagine such a thing.)

Moonlighting as Bezos part-time has allowed the mogul impersonator to land some eye-popping opportunities, including various gigs on German TV stations and at events.

The shiny bald head obviously helps, but Halicilar does look an awful lot like Bezos. On a trip to Seattle, he strolled around the Amazon campus and was asked for a selfie by a number of employees who thought he was the big mahoff. Many of them also took the opportunity for a bit of suck-up, telling the faux Bezos how proud they were to work for Amazon. Turns out that effort was a misdirected waste of breath.

Some folks who've asked for selfies have been so tongue-tied and shy in the presence of Bezonian greatness they've been rendered speechless. I guess they communicate with the universal language of holding up their phone and raising their eyebrows in an 'ask' that they wanted a selfie.

Between his transort business and his side gig, Halicilar is living pretty large. Not Bezos large, of course. Not bunch of $90M homes large. Not personal space flight large. Not invitest to state dinners at the White House. But large enough to hire a butler, drink top shelf whisky, and travel in style. 

He even did a guest spot on the German Netflix mini-series “King of Stonks.”

Never heard of "Stonks." Probably because it's a German thing. I'll have to look it up and may even decide to binge it.

But whether it's Bezos of Halicilar, I doubt if I spot him on the street I'd ask for a selfie. Too busy trying to think of what I'd say to John Roberts if I ever saw him out and about - and it sure wouldn't be asking him for a selfie. But that's another story altogether...

Now that's a slimey business

I don't have much experience with slime.

It just wasn't a thing when I was a kid.

We had modeling clay, which came in dull colors - brick red, battleship grey - and wasn't all that pliable. So while Auguste Rodin, or a professional potter, might have been right at home with it, I remember finding it hard to work with. The best I could do was roll it out into a string and then coil it around to create something boring or other.

Play-Doh, in comparison, was a revelation. When colored Play-Doh was introduced in the mid-1950s, I was all in. I loved pretty much everything about Play-Doh, including the memorable smell. I loved the fact that, with just the basics - a can of red, yellow, blue, and white - you had the entire rainbow, plus - with that white - the ability to create pastels. And it was a lot easier to work with. My favorite thing to do was make fruits and veggies with it. The only downside with Play-Doh is that, if you let it dry out, it developed a crystaline coat and was useless. The trick with Play-Doh was to dismantle your project and stuff it back in the can, where it inevitably dried out anyway. (Oh, you could pour warm water on it, but that wasn't a perfect solution.) Plus, once you made purple, there was no magic to unmix the mix to get it back to red and blue. 

Whatever its deficits, I adored Play-Doh. 

I also loved Silly Putty. You didn't make anything out of it, but you could stretch it, knead it, punch at it, scrunch it, hurl it...And, most wonderously, if you pressed it against a newspaper comic strip, the comic strip panel was transferred to the Silly Putty. How about that?

But, alas, we didn't have slime, which I know I would have fully and unreservedly embraced. 

So if I envy kids of today anything, slime might be it.

Thus, I was interested to learn about the Sloomoo Institute, a place in NYC that promises:

Escape! Get off your screens and immerse yourself in our mesmerizing world of #satisfying joy. The Sloomooverse is full of never-ending, hand-crafted slime, yummy scents, vivid colors, and soothing ASMR delights.

What? You don't know what ASMR is? Tsk, tsk! It is, of course, this:

An autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Personally, this sounds more like nerve damage to me, but it's supposed to result in a feeling of moderate euphoria. 

Contributing to the experience at the Sloomoo Institute is the crazy variety of slime available to play around if - a variety that Sloomoo is always expanding on.

Twenty-year old slime "savant" Chase Kellebrew is one of the folks that the Institute counts on to come up with new slime versions. 

He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 2022 and said that he earns “a very comfortable salary” as a full-time employee of the institute, which is within walking distance of Stuyvesant Town, where he lives with his mother.

“It’s easy to create a prototype,” he said. “But it can sometimes be a long, hard process to figure out how to make all this in bulk. We make about thirty-five thousand gallons a year. Each time I create a new slime recipe, I write down everything I’m using.” He has his co-workers test it out. “On any given day, there are one to two running the mixers and anywhere from five to fifteen packing the slime,” he said. (Source: New Yorker.)

We're not just talking about slime that smells like lemons, or is the color of a maple leaf. We're talking wild combos. For The New Yorker visit:

That day’s prototype was geared toward the spring holidays. Kellebrew removed some yellow cellophane from a plate that had six circular indentations, each filled with a different slime. He explained that it was a Seder plate, with the six traditional Passover foods translated into slime: haroseth (“peach clear slime with small foam cubes, apple scent”), horseradish (“dark-red snow-fizz slime, with a lemon-ginger scent”), parsley (“light-green clear slime”), an egg (“clear slime with one yellow felt pompom to represent the yolk, unscented”), bitter herbs (“light-green butter slime”), and, not to be forgotten, a shank bone (“made out of clay”).

And, in case you're wondering, this slime is K for Kosher. And because the Institute is equal opportunity, Kellebrew also came up with slime that smells like honey-baked ham in time for Easter. 

You can buy all sorts of the Insitute's slime in their gift shop or online. For $35 a month, you can purchase a subscription box full of surprises. 

Slimes can be pretty, and they can smell good - peach, pineapple, watermelon. And some of them can even make sounds:

Kellebrew is an expert at giving his slime sound effects, “gorgeous pops” being the most requested, with “fart sounds” a close second.

I searched their site and couldn't find any "fart smell" slime, which would likely be a best-seller with little boys. Bet Kellebrew could come up with that if he put his mastermind to it. 

Ready for your closeup, Sandy? ARF!

Rudd Weatherwax.

Now there's a name from my childhood. My childhood and that of every Baby Boomer who grew up watching Lassie on three-channel TV.

Weatherwax was Lassie's trainer, and his name appeared in the credits of each and every Lassie episode where the brave and brilliant pooch rescued Jeff or Timmy from some perilous situation or otherwise staved off doom in the mythic town of Calverton.

There were plenty of other animals - mostly dogs and horses - on the TV shows of my childhood. Rin-Tin-Tin starred in the eponymous series. (I liked Rinty just fine. I was amused by one of his co-stars who played the character Sargeant Biff O'Hara. I had a crush on the guy who played Lieutenant Rip Masters. But for some reason I was colossally creeped out by the kid who played "Corporal Rusty." I was generally enthralled by child actors, but for some reason, Lee Aaker was an exception. But. I. Digress.)

Roy Rogers had both horses (Trigger and Buttermilk), and a dog (Bullet). Gene Autry had his horse, Champion.

After Lassie, the most famous dog of my era had to be Old Yeller, another eponymous star - this time of a tear-jerking Disney film. 

Over the years, I've seen plenty of animals on the small and large screen, but none of them standout in my mind - other than the cutie-pie in Marley & Me.

And there are plenty of animal "stars" that I've never seen "act." The rats Willard, Ben top this list.

What I've never done, other than knowing the name of Rudd Weatherwax, is given a moment's thought to the human behind the animal. Until I read a recent New Yorker article featuring "Bill Berloni, who has been supplying, hiring, and coaching animals for stage and screen for nearly fifty years."

Berloni was recently brought in to manage Bing, the Great Dane who'll be co-starring with Naomi Watts in an upcoming film, The Friend. 

Berloni has had one hell of an interesting career. 

Berloni started out, nearly fifty years ago, wanting to be an actor. When he couldn't afford drama school, he got work at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House building scenery. In 1976, Goodspeed was premiering Annie, and they needed a dog to play Sandy. 

“There was a part for a dog, but they had no trainer,” Berloni said. “I was nineteen. I had no experience. They gave me thirty-five dollars to buy a dog and feed it all summer. I went down to the Connecticut Humane Society and found a dog that was going to be put to sleep the next day. They wanted seven dollars for the dog. That was the first Sandy.” Sandy had apparently suffered abuse and spooked easily, so Berloni kept the dog with him at all times, leashing him to the stage while he built sets.

That first attempt to musicalize the Little Orphan Annie comic strip flopped, but Sandy's performance wasn't panned, and the following year, when Annie was given another go, "Sandy and Berloni were asked to reprise their roles." 

This time, the show took off, and if it wasn't a matter of a star is born, it sure was a matter of a professional theatrical animal trainer is born.

And Bill Berloni's charter goes way beyond just the Sandies and Apollos (the dog Bing plays) of the world. While filming The Friend, here's what else he was up to:

“On Monday morning, I have a go-see in New Jersey,” he said one afternoon. “It’s a cow I’ve never met. A milking cow.” He had to drop off his bulldog Myrtle, who is a regular on “And Just Like That . . . ,” the sequel to “Sex and the City,” for an A.T. & T. commercial shoot in New Jersey. He was also rehearsing “an animal” (an N.D.A. prevented him from saying what kind) for “Only Murders in the Building” and arranging a falcon shoot for a show called “The Savant” (which he referred to as “the hawk job” when he mistakenly texted me about it).

He was consulting on a hit play from London, “The Hunt,” which was opening at St. Ann’s Warehouse. He showed me a photo of the setup on his phone. (As he did so, a text popped up on his screen, from Nguyen: “You texted the wrong thread.”) In the play, a hunting dog has to sit patiently inside a glass house, with a trapdoor underneath, without moving or turning his head, while men with deer heads run around the stage. 

When I was at the peak of my tech my freelance tech product marketing writing career, I sometimes found myself juggling a dozen projects from ten or twelve clients. It was hard enough shifting my mindset from one project to the other, let alone experiencing everything like this. And my work never involved cows, let alone men running around wearing deer heads. (Metaphorical chickens running around with their heads cut off, but sure. But never anything as intense as Berloni's work.)

Berloni is both an animal trainer/manager and an agent. His animal roster includes, but is not limited to:

Dogs and cats: most breeds or mutts, all sizes and colors.

Farm Animals: Horses, Donkeys, Cows, Pigs, Sheep, Goats, Llamas, Ducks ,Chickens

Small Animals: Rabbits, Hamsters, Guinea Pigs, Rats, Mice

Birds: Macaws, Parrots, Cockatoos, Parakeets, Finches, Canaries, Pigeons, Doves, Owls, Hawks, Falcons, Crows

Reptiles: Snakes, Lizards, Frogs, Turtles, Iquanas

Insects: Spiders, Butterflies, Cockroaches

Please Note: We do not handle big cats, bears or primates. (Source: Theatrical Animals) 

I have some questions. As in, how do you train a cockroach? But mostly, I'm pretty impressed. I'm also impressed that he's dedicated to rescues, "animals of all species and sizes, found in shelters, humane societies or rescue leagues, for Broadway, off-Broadway, national tours, regional theatres, special events, the New York City Ballet, motion pictures, television and commercials."

Then there's this:

"When their careers are over, the animals return to Bill’s Connecticut farm."

This is remarkable, admirable, fascinating. But I still have some questions. How do you return a cockroach to the farm?

When dreams die hard

After I graduated from college, I started out in a PhD program in political science at Columbia. 

I can't remember what I was thinking, other than that I wanted to live in New York City. But I must have envisioned myself as a college professor.

It didn't take me long to figure out that, although I did enjoy living in NYC, I wasn't cut out to get a PhD.

Given the era, and the demand for professors, and the fact that my PhD would have been a prestigious, Ivy League one, I might have landed a job teaching somewhere. Probably not at a particularly high-end school, but maybe at a nice, middle-tier liberal arts college somewhere.

But other folks near and dear to me were cut out to get their PhD.

My husband was a PhD economist; my brother Tom -  mid-career as an engineer on large scale construction projects -  got his doctorate in civil engineering. 

Although he took a couple of occasional adjunct jobs at BU and Brandeis as favors, and enjoyed his teaching stints, Jim never pursued a career as professor. Tom ended up shifting to academia and spent many years happily teaching at Northern Arizona University. 

And a friend of mine from business school had a doctorate from Stanford, and had been a tenure-track professor at BU when she decided that she'd had it with academia.

But PhD was just not for me. I had no idea where my ambitions lay - 50+ years on, I'm still trying to figure that one out - but it wasn't with me in the baby-blue and black Columbia doctoral robes and a natty velvet beret.

There are plenty of folks out there who do want to get PhDs, who do want to teach. And most of them, in the current environment, are out of luck, stuck on the boulevard of broken dreams.

Maren Wood, who founded a firm that helps those with doctorates find jobs, says that the market for full-time professors has collapsed. Between 2007 and 2020, the number of openings in philosophy dropped by roughly half. The number of openings in English fell by about 60 percent.

Universities staffed up to accommodate millennials, she says, and now they’re trying to cope with declining enrollments, which are predicted to continue indefinitely. “There’s nothing wrong with a PhD,” says Wood, chief executive of Beyond the Professoriate, whose platform is currently used by Harvard and BC. “The problem is there are no jobs.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Which leaves those who so dearly want to teach hustling for whatever part-time, adjunct jobs they can string together, scuttling from one ill-paid job at College A to another ill-paid job at College B. 

Wood comes by her knowledge the hard way: up close and personal. With a PhD in history.

... her breaking point was in 2011 when she came in second place for a job thousands of miles away. The gig was a one-year position. In Reno. And she was told the pay wouldn’t even be enough to live on.

The woman doing the hiring encouraged Wood. “You came in second place!” she exclaimed.

“For what?” Wood asked.

Wood was smart to get out, and smarter still to figure out a business that would help PhDs find work outside of academia.

Over 30 percent of nontenure-track educators in higher education make under $25,000 a year, according to a 2019 survey by the American Federation of Teachers. Another 30 percent make between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. But over the past few decades, the number of adjuncts has grown much faster than the ranks of full-time faculty.

I know a number of poets and writers who are adjuncts, and it can be brutal. They stay in for love of writing. Those with PhDs stick with it for love of the field they've chosen. 

It's easy to see why the schools keep the PhD pipeline going. The students they're churning out with degrees are a source of cheap labor while they're pursuing their degrees. My husband, like all graduate students of his era (mid-1970's) taught sections of economics classes when he was at Harvard; I actually don't recall if he got paid, or whether it was a requirement at the time. And, once they've earned their doctorates, those newly minted PhD's are a cheap source of labor as adjuncts off the tenure track.

And for the full, tenured professors who work with grad students, advising them on their research and theses, well, it's probably more satisfying than teaching grade-grubbing undergrads who may only be taking their course because it's required. And in many fields, it's a great source of free/cheap labor to work as research assistants. 

But given that so few are going to be professors, the students are better off looking elsewhere for employment. 

In some fields, there are many lucrative positions in industry. I don't imagine that there are many biochemistry PhDs who can't find a job in pharma. 

Others will end up in positions that may only be tangentially related to their interests. (My friend from business school was a Jane Austen scholar. She ended up in tech product management.)

I feel bad for those who'd set their sights on jobs as professors when there are so few of those jobs out there. But that's life. And while they were pursuing their PhDs, they at least got to spend their time working on a topic that they were likely passionately interested in, which is more than a lot of folks ever get to experience. 

Still, hard to see dreams die hard for anyone. Glad I was never such a dreamer (but maybe, just maybe, I should have been...). Too late now! I'll have to live and die content with my little old non-academic master's.