Me? I'd live on Pesky Lane. And you?

In my Worcester neighborhood, there was a clutch of streets with Native American names. Or Native American-ish names.
 Wyola. Utica. Delawanda. Alsada. Tallawanda. The only street named for an actual tribe was Seminole. I'm guessing that these streets were laid out in the 1920's, when there was a general fascination with things Native American. In my mind's eye, going up and down these streets, I'd venture a guesss that the houses were all built between the 1920's and 1950's. 

Anway, it was a curiosity and those street names were a lot more interesting in most of those in my 'hood. Blaine Ave. Henderson. Varnum. Sylvan. Brookline. 

The lone fanciful name was Eureka Street. 

But as a kid, I liked the idea of a "themed" neighborhood, and I envied my friends who lived on one of the streets with a cool "Indian" name.

So as a childhood fan of having a street naming scheme, and a lifetime fan of the Boston Red Sox, I was keenly interested in learning of a Herriman, Utah, subdivision that has streets named for Red Sox players. 

These are not necessarily the all-time greatest players. No Ted Williams Boulevard. No Tris Speaker Lane. No David Ortiz Street. No Pedro Martinez Avenue. No Carl Yastrzemski Road. (Well, you can't blame them for that omission. Who wants to spell Yastremski, let alone pay for the longer street sign?)

No the players who had streets named after them were the favorites of one non-Red Sox Nation native Brandon Parr "a land development project manager with EDGEhomes and lifelong Sox fan." 

“I kind of started following [former Red Sox third baseman] Wade Boggs as a kid,” Parr explained in a phone interview. “And he joined the Red Sox in the ’80s, and I’ve been a fan ever since.” (Source: Boston.com)

Thus there's Pedroia Street. And Varitek Drive. Eovaldi Avenue. And, of course, Boggs Way. (All great players, by the way. Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek are in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. And Nathan Eovaldi was a key player on the 2018 World Series championship team.)

The opportunity to name streets must be one of the funner aspects of Parr's job. And he went to town. 

“I thought it was just going to be kind of a fun idea to have something I could see every day that’s related to the Red Sox,” he said. “No one really gave me any pushback. I chose players that I have a connection with as I’ve been watching, and then some historical names like Fisk and Pesky and Remy, just to pay homage to some of the older guys as well.”

There was some pushback on Pesky Lane from someone not familiar with the great Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox Hall of Famer and someone who was associated with the Sox for over 60 years. (His number was retired.) The guy just associated the word pesky with annoyance. Parr set him straight. 

Jerry Remy is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. Carlton Fisk is in the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame. Both of their numbers are retired. 

As for why so many other Red Sox greats didn't make the naming cut: Williams, Ortiz, and Martinez - three Hall of Famers - have common names that were already in use in town. Parr hasn't ruled out naming a street after Yastrzemski. He can always use Yaz instead. 

For Ted Williams, he might want to consider Splender Splinter or Teddy Ballgame. Big Papi would be obvious for Ortiz. There's nothing that obvious for Martinez (one of my personal favorites among Red Sox players). Maybe Petey isn't already in use. 

Anway, this sort of street naming isn't that out of the ordinary in Utah, where:

...quirky street names are actually pretty common around the greater Salt Lake region. In Herriman and other nearby cities and towns, you can find neighborhoods whose street names pay homage to “The Lord of the Rings,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wines, authors, Arthurian legends, and even “Wayne’s World.”

Wayne's World!!! Never would I ever, for Petey's sake, live on a street named for Wayne's World. Or Marvel superheroes, for that matter. To each his own.

But I'd be more than happy to live on Pesky Lane. Just as long as it was in Boston and not Herriman, Utah.

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

Image Source: Boston.com Facebook

It was the best of states, it was the worst of states

I am a complete and utter sucker for state rankings, especially those that are flattering to my home state and the handful of other states I could actually see myself living in.

Massachusetts tends to come out high when things that I value - education, health/healthcare, reproductive rights, worker protections inclusiveness/gay rights, crime rates - are used in the criteria, and not those that are less favorable, like cost of housing and weather.

In a recent CNBC rating of the best states to live in, my beloved Commonwealth was ranked ninth, wedged between Nebraska and North Dakota (as an aside, which I can't resist making, the only red states to make the Top Ten). We came in lower than our fellow New Englanders NH, Connecticut, and Maine, and lower than the #1 state to live in Vermont. Personally, I love Vermont, but my husband (a native) couldn't stand his home state. To each his own...(The other states in this particular Top Ten were Minnesota, NJ, and Hawaii, all places I could at least kinda-sorta imagine myself living, although I think I'd get sick of the perfect balmy weather in Hawaii.)

Given whose on top, most people can likely come up with at least some of the states languishing in the Bottom Ten when it comes to quality of life. Arkansas. Oklahoma. Alabama. Missouri. Utah. Georgia. Louisiana. Indiana. Texas. Tennessee.

The surprise to me on this list is Utah. Not that I can imagine living there, but it always strikes me as a reasonably good place to live, especially if you're LDS. But Utah gets dinged on not having enough primary care physicians and daycare centers, and having a dismal minimum wage.

Massachusetts gets points for having a ton of primary care providers, which I find somewhat ironic given that there are zero PCP's affiliated with my healthcare system (MGH/Brigham & Women) in the entire city of Boston who are taking new patients. I know this because last fall my PCP went concierge, and the only way I could get a Boston-based PCP was by agreeing to work with a resident physician. Which is fine, but it's not great for relationship-building, as the residents are only around for a couple of years.

Of course, quality of life doesn't seem to get in the way of being one of the top states for doing business in. Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana may be crappy places to live - and I can guarantee that I will never, ever, ever in a million-billion years get to find this out up close and personal - but they're good for business.

According to the CNBC rankings, Ohio is the best place to do business, but Texas rates a number four position; Georgia comes in at seven; and Tennessee and Indiana round out the Top Ten. Massachusetts is number 15, higher than I would have predicted. Our cost of doing business is abysmal (49th out of 50), but this is counter-balanced by our quality of life (if you don't count housing and weather), our techiness (We're Number 8, a bit low as far as I'm concerned) and our education (We're Number 1!) 

These rankings are, admittedly, pretty non-sensical, but I always get a kick out of them. And, hey, we could all use a bit more nonsense in our lives - and these ratings seem like relatively harmless nonsense.

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

Image Source: Ultimate Globes  

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

Longevity. (Remember when 80 used to sound old?)

Last month, Tracy Kidder died at the age of 80. Kidder was a terrific long form journalist and I was a long-time reader and admirer of his work. His most recent book, Rough Sleepers, centered on the work of Dr. Jim O'Connell, founder of Boston's Healthcare for the Homeless. When the book - which I loved - was first published, I heard him speak and interviewed, alongside Jim O'Connell, at a Boston bookstore. 

I learned of his death when my friend Joyce texted me. 

In response, I asked her "Remember when 80 used to sound old?" She replied "Thought same." Joyce and I are both 76. Next January, her husband turns 80. We are old. And when you're old, occasional thoughts do tend to turn to big questions, like realistically, how much longer?

I have no desire to live forever. Yet I'm still hoping for a few more good years - a decade or so - and would be fine with living to be the new old-old (90+) if I still have reasonably good health. I.e., I'm not demented, I'm mostly healthy, and can still live independently (or with a light assist). I'm okay (good thing) with the small depredations of aging: occasional forgetfulness, minor aches and minor pains, a bit less energy, a bit more creakiness. But, like pretty much every one of my age peers, I want to stay in this pre-Big Sleep state until I just die in my sleep some night (or afternoon, during my nap). 

But this getting old thang does make me curious about longevity, so I was interested in a recent roundup of 2025's "Top Ten Longevity Cities." Where were they, and what made their residents so long-lived? 

The group doing the rounding up are from SuperAge, a media platform dedicated to helping folks live better and longer which, as noted, I'm all for as long as longer and better go hand in hand. (I took their longevity quiz, and got the prediction that I'm likely to live to be 90. So phew. But the quiz was imperfect. It asked at what age your grandparents died, and you got to pick one age range. Depending on which grandparent, I could have chosen under 60 (both grandfathers - one in his mid 40's, the other in his early 50's) or over 90 (paternal grandmother: almost 97). But still, I found a predicted longevity of 90.18 years a comforting and interesting result. Nice to learn that, statistically speaking, I should have a few more years in which to actually accomplish something. (Guess I should start now. Or tomorrow, anyway.)

Here's how SuperAge landed on "the best longevity hotspots:"

...we analyzed multiple data sources, including global life expectancy reports, healthcare rankings, lifestyle studies, and socio-economic factors. Here’s what we looked at:Life Expectancy Data: We pulled numbers from the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations, and national statistics agencies.

Healthcare Quality: Cities with universal healthcare, accessible medical services, and a strong emphasis on preventative care made the cut.

Diet and Nutrition: Places where whole foods, Mediterranean diets, and heart-healthy eating habits are the norm ranked highly.

Active Lifestyles: We considered regions with walkable cities, public transit, outdoor recreation, and cultural emphasis on movement.

Community and Social Well-Being: Social connection plays a huge role in longevity, so we focused on cities with strong community bonds, low crime rates, and high levels of life satisfaction.

Work-Life Balance: Stress is a silent killer. We highlighted cities with reasonable working hours, paid leave policies, and government-supported wellness initiatives.

And the 10 winners are:

• Seoul, South Korea - Life Expectancy: 83.5 years
• Madrid, Spain - Life Expectancy: 85.4 years
• Zurich, Switzerland - Life Expectancy: 84.0 years
• Quebec City, Canada - Life Expectancy: 82.5 years
• Melbourne, Australia - Life Expectancy: 83.2 years
• Singapore - Life Expectancy: 83.6 years
• Copenhagen, Denmark - Life Expectancy: 81.3 years
• Tokyo, Japan - Life Expectancy: 84.6 years
• Oslo, Norway - Life Expectancy: 83.0
• Boulder, Colorado - Life Expectancy: 82.4

Two things were not exactly surprising. 1) All of the countries represented are affluent, with modern economies; 2) The United States doesn't exactly shine. We have only one top-tenner, and that is - of course! - hippy-dippy-outdoorsy Boulder, Colorado.

And it's sobering to see that only one city - Madrid - had a life expectancy over the age of 85. Let me tell you, from where I sit, 85.4 doesn't sound all that old...

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

Image Source: New Statesman

AI Strikes Again? You betcha!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image Source: City of Fargo

Tis another reason to love Ireland

Well, it's St. Patrick's Day, and I have all those loaves of soda bread to prove it.

As anyone who knows me knows, I love Ireland. I have been there many times, and over the decades have found that there's so much to love about this beautiful country. Starting with that beauty. Sure, there are slummy areas in the big cities and mildewly little villages that the world has passed by, but the countryside is gorgeous, the cliffs breathtaking, the views stunning. 

And, no, I'm not forgetting the people. Like anyplace else, Ireland has plenty of a-holes, bores, droogs, snobs, jerks, and misanthropes. But for the most part, I've found the Irish welcoming and friendly, intelligent and good-humored, interesting and aware of the world beyond Ireland, and generous in spirit. 

Amazingly, the food in Ireland is very good, which I wouldn't have guessed ahead of time based on my Irish grandmother's culinary skill, nor based on my first roots trip in 1973 when a) the pre-Celtic tiger country was still very poor; and b) I had little money to spend on food - if there'd been any decent meals to be had. 

I love Irish music, Irish literature, Irish art, Irish fillums. 

The Irish do, too.

And they've got a new scheme to prove it. (That, by the way, is "scheme" in the Irish and British sense: a program or a plan, not in the usual American sense of a sneaky, underhanded, often illegal idea.)

Artists based in the Republic of Ireland could be paid €325 (£283) [$384] a week by the Irish government as part of a scheme to support them in their work. 

The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) project is believed to be the first permanent one of its kind in the world and Ireland's Culture Minister Patrick O'Donovan says it makes Ireland a "global leader in the area of artist support".

Some 2,000 eligible artists will be selected after applications open in May and will receive the weekly payment for three years. (Source: BBC)

The country ran a pilot scheme a few years ago and found that for every Euro they put into the pocket of an artist, a value of 1.39 Euros was generated "while allowing artists to devote more time to their work and improving their quality of life."

No one's going to get rich on the equivalent of $384 a week, but for artists living on the edge of precarity, it's a good foundation on which to build a life and devote more time to their work, unburdened by having to spend every other minue fretting about where their next meal was coming from. With the modest basic boost the Irish government's putting in their pocket, an artist could supplement their income with proceeds from their art and/or part time paid work.

I can't wait to see how many end up applying for those 2,000 grants. I'm guessing an order of magnitude beyond 2,000. Maybe more. 

Applicants must live in Ireland and have a "professional creative practice which is primarily based in Ireland." Beyond that, there's a pretty broad definition of the arts.

The Visual Arts includes not just all media, but curators and art writers. The Theatre grouping goes beyond actor and director to include theater techs, designers, puppeteers, and mimes. Now, I wouldn't be too crazy to see my tax money going to support mimes, but maybe that's just me. 

Architects are also on the list. 

All sorts of writers - fiction, non-ficiton, poets and beyond - are eligible. Singers, musicians, composers, conductors of all stripes. Dancers, choreographers, and dance tutors/coaches. (Learned a new word: repetiteur.) Opera everythings, including repetiteurs. 

Everything that you can think of that pertains to films, including voice over artists.

Circus artists are also wecome to apply. Clowns aren't specified, but I'm guessing they're included under "circus artists." (If it were me running the scheme, it would be NCNA - No Clowns Need Apply. But as with mimes, that's maybe just me.)

Overall, I think that scheme is a terrific idea. 

Tis yet another reason to love Ireland. Makes me look even more forward to my as-yet-in-the-scheming-stages next trip across the pond.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all who celebrate!

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Image Source: ABC News

The Office Park from Hell

In 2024, Shunda Park "materialized and metastasized" almost overnight in the middle of nowhere on the Myanmar border. Unlike office parks that support companies in a wide range of businesses, Shunda - which was run by a Chinese criminal network - from the jump was built and operated for one business purpose only: running lucrative scams. 

There, over 3,500 workers representing nearly 30 countries toiled away under attaboy/attagirl signs reading “Dream chaser,” “Keep going,” “Making money matters the most.” 

Some of those workers had been scammed themselves, thinking that they were getting plum tech and marketing jobs, only to find themselves working at the office park from hell. 

Others thought they were checking out merchandise for online sales businesses. Instead, they were hustled at gunpoint across the river that demarcates the border with Myanmar...(Source: NY Times)

However the new employees managed to arrive, they were quickly onboarded to their new employment reality. 

...all had become skilled in the art of the online grift. When the scammers bilked $5,000 out of someone, they struck a Chinese gong. A $50,000 shakedown earned a celebratory pounding of a giant drum, then an offering to a Chinese deity resplendent in his golden altar. 

This was not just a Nigerian prince email scam center, but a highly sophisticated enterprise that used a complex approach to suckering in victims from around the world:

Using generative intelligence and deepfake videos, as well as fraudulent businesses, websites and financial apps, the scammers at Shunda embraced the long con and reeled in people from almost every demographic.

Then last November, the park was overtaken by the Karen National Liberation Army, one of a number of different rebel groups battling the military junta that took over Myanmar a few years back and plunged the country into a brutal civil war. 

Karen forces closed Shunda down, and most of the scammers had dispersed, but the Times jounalists were able to speak with some of the remaining scammers "both those who were trying to return home and others who wanted to find another job in the fraud business." (Hoping for another job in the fraud biz? Huh? Do what you know, I guess.)

The now unemployed scammers recounted receiving beatings, being shackled, not - no surprise there - getting paid. There were punishment chambers, torture cells:

Ivan, a Malaysian who once worked as a member of the ground staff at the Singapore airport, said he was chained in a crucifixion position and denied food for days.

“You think you know hell,” he said, “and it’s actually even worse.”

Who among us hasn't joked about work being a torture chamber, a gulag? And is there anyone who hasn't seen one of those galley slave cartoons? The beatings will continue until the morale improves. But, yikes, when it comes to torture chambers, this was the real deal. The unreal deal. 

At Shunda, there were some actual paid employees, Chinese nationals who ran the show and lived pretty well in the Shunda compound. There were restaurants. A night club. A basketball court. Nice cars. The bosses lived in "luxury" villas. But some of the Chinese workers were also conned, paid far less than they were promised.  

Despite the fact that Shunda - now destroyed in large part - is in the middle of an active war zone, with Karen forces going at it with the Myanmar military, many of the Chinese workers are reluctant to be repatriated. Their fears are reasonable enough.

 The Chinese government has periodically cracked down on the scamming industry, arresting Chinese workers who are repatriated. So tense was the situation that days before our visit, some Chinese workers had tried unsuccessfully to wrestle weapons away from the Karen soldiers, according to members of the militia and other scammers who witnessed the melee.

One might think that the destruction and occupation of Shunda would give pause to the Chinese outfits that ran them.  Maybe they should be looking to set up shop someplace that's not a civil war zone under active bombardment and featuring armed skirmishes. But no. Not far from Shunda, "scam centers [are] being built, Chinese red lanterns hanging from the eaves. 

As one of those inspirational signs from Shunda said, “Making money matters the most.” 

Guess so.

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

Image Source: AP via NPR

Talk about school trip gone bad

When I was in kid, school trips weren't much of a thing.

Fifty kids in a class? Where were we going to go, and who was going to foot the bill?

The one quasi grammar school trip occurred in eighth grade, when a subset of our class - the good students, the goodie two shoes, the ones least likely to act up - were allowed to take the bus "down city" to see Heaven Over the Marshes (1949), an Italian movie about Maria Goretti, a 12-year old virgin martyr who in 1902 was stabbed to death for resisting the sexual advances of a 20 year old man. Maria Goretti was canonized in 1950. Her murderer, having been relased from prison and become a religious brother, died in 1970. (I remember when he died.)

On the day of our school trip, the girls were warned to sit separately from the boys both on the bus and in the theater. We may have been goodie two-shoes, but hah to that.

The film was an old timey black and white with subtitles, and was pretty boring. Plus we were all embarrassed by the topic: resisting rape as the pathway to heaven. Bad jokes were made by the boys on the bus on the way back home.

In high school, I went on a couple of school trips. Into Boston to the Science Museum, where all I remember is the lub-dub heart. And into Boston to see La Traviata, where we were the only high school group and the ruffian, raucus Boston public schoolers ran around the opera house hollering and blowing through their Good & Plenty boxes to make that wonderful Good & Plenty. Better than a vuvuzela!

Anyway, when she wasn't dying of consumption on stage in Alfredo's arms, Violetta was laughing at the antics of the audience. As was Alfredo.

On a Saturday in June my freshman year, the Literary Society went to Concord to visit the Old Manse, where Ralph Waldo Emerson lived, as did Nathaniel Hawthorne. But this was on a Saturday and, while a couple of nuns came with us, it wasn't exactly an official school trip.

When I read about a school trip gone bad in British Columbia, I couldn't help but think of the paltry school trips of my youth. They weren't much, but at least they weren't perilous.

What happened to the students from the Acwsalcta School is horrific and unfathomable to a city girl. What happened was that students and teachers were injured in a grizzly attack.

The attack happened Thursday [November 20] in the Bella Coola Valley of the Nuxalk Nation in British Columbia. The CBC reported that two people were critically injured, two were seriously hurt and others were treated at the scene.

...A male teacher "got the whole brunt of it" and some children got sprayed with bear spray as the adults tried to scare the bear away, parent Veronica Schooner told the Canadian Press, Canada's state news agency. (Source: UPI)

The area where the attack occurred was, not surprisingly, remote: over 400 miles from Vancouver. The school is run by an indigenous nation (Nuxalk), and the kids are used to nature, to wildernerness. 

Heroic teachers have been credited with thwarting the attack, making sure it wasn't worse than it was.

But what a horrible experience for these kids, and their teachers.

A lot easier to watch the lub-dub heart go lub-dub, and see Violetta laugh herself to death.

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

Image Source: BBC

Why am I not surprised? (Even if it's just GoFundMe.)

My Irish forebears didn't leave Ireland as the (direct) result of the famine. They came over in the 1870's for the usual reasons: poverty, and too many offspring chasing survival on a poor, rocky farm that was not infinitely divisible. My great-grandfather John Rogers hailed from County Roscommon; my great-grandmother Margaret Joyce Rogers was from Mayo. Roscommon and Mayo were two of the counties hit hardest by An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine), losing nearly one-third of their population to death or emigration during the famine years (1845-1852).

My other set of Irish ancestors, Bridget and Matthew Trainor, were from County Louth, just north of Dublin, which was relatively unscathed by the famine.

But whether directly scathed or unscathed by the famine, victim or survivor, the entire population of Ireland for generations since has been impacted by genetic or race memory of this unparalleled catastrophe. The same is true in places where there are a lot of folks descended from famine (and non-famine) Irish.

One such place is Boston, where in the late 1990's "they" erected what has to be one of THE most hideous momunents ever to memorialize any tragic event, anywhere. It's a two-parter, one statue depicting a starving family in rags who'd just sailed into Amerikay on a coffin ship, the other showing a well-dressed, prosperous Irish-American family who'd achieved the American dream. (Weren't those the days?)

The momument has been controversy since the jump, and in 2013 wae dubbed "the most mocked and reviled public sculpture in Boston" by the Boston Globe's art critic. I can't speak for all Bostonians, but I have personally mocked and reviled it plenty of times.

But I digress.

What prompted this post was an article I came across a few months ago stating "Ireland named most generous country in the world."

This made sense to me. 

Time and again over the years, whenever there's some disaster or another - famine in Africa, the destruction of Gaza - there's news of Irish relief organizations stepping in to help out, punching well above their weight. (Ireland's population is roughly 5 million, 7 million if you count Norther Ireland, which would give it the same population as Massachusetts.)

Anyway, I was enjoying the glowup, basking in the halo effect  - ah, the wonderful Irish - when I clicked through on the click bait and read that the metric was per capita donors to fundraisers listed on GoFundMe. And that for the seventh year running, Ireland comes out on top. Or the 20 countries GFM operates in. The US ranks second.

Not that there's anything wrong with donating to GoFundMe fundraisers. I do it all that time, most recently to the one set up for T.J. Sabula, the Ford worker who in January yelled "pedophile protector" at Trump during an appearance at a Ford plant. Trump's response was to shoot T.J. the finger and mouth the words "fuck you." It wasn't clear whether Trump was acting in his capacity as president of the US, president of Venezuela, or receipient of the FIFA peace prize.

I find GoFundMe endlessly fascinating. Pretty much everything about it: how within nanoseconds of some sort of tragedy/emergency, someone's set up a fundraiser to cash in; what people want the money for (does anyone really need a $50K funeral?); how one fundraiser will grab attention - and donations - while another near identical one will not; what a disgrace that people need to raise money to take care of medical expenses that should be covered, etc.

Five years ago, I helped run a pretty successful GoFundMe for a friend who'd been diagnosed with ALS and needed home renovations and 24/7 care. My friend was a very well known Boston personage, famous for his kindness and generosity, and hitting our goal was relatively easy. (It helped that someone gave $50K. I thought at first it was a mistake. Who gives $50K via GFM? But as one of the managers, I had access to the names of the anonymous donors, and I recognized the $50K donor as someone who had made hefty donations in the past to the charity my friend had founded.)

And while I won't say I'm a regular-regular GoFundMe donor, every month or so, something will catch my eye, and I'm good for 25 or 50 bucks. I donated $50 to T.J.'s cause, helping in my very small way to let the United State achieve second place among GoFundMe nations.

For Ireland:

The new figures show that one in ten people in Ireland made a donation through GoFundMe this year, with over 560,000 donors supporting causes both at home and abroad. One Irish city, known for its charm and charitable nature, topped the list overall. (Source: The Irish Star)

BTW, that charming and charitable Irish city is Galway, which is pretty much my favorite place on earth.  

GoFundMe’s Global CEO Tim Cadogan said: “Ireland’s exceptional generosity continues to set a powerful example globally.”

“Every donation, big or small, fuels hope and makes a real difference. What we see this year reflects a deep-rooted compassion that unites people across the country.”

Even though it's not a matter of "Eire Number One" for overall charitable giving, I'm not surprised that the Irish would support causes through GoFundMe. It's a small country, and people know people who know people, so why not take part in a whip-round for the kiddo in Cork who lost both her legs in a farm accident? Or the fundraiser for the little Kerry cutiepie who needs to go to the States for treatement for neuroblastoma?

Bottom line: when it comes to helping folks out, Éire Abú. I'm happy to know yez. 

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

Image Source: Atlas Obscura

Wanker

Sir Benjamin Slade doesn't appear to have done much with his life, other than enjoy the life and trappings of a minor British aristocrat. He's a baronet who lives in the big old pile he inherited (along with the title) when his dear papa passed on when Sir Benjamin was still a teenager. He allegedly got rich as a "shipping magnate," but more recently earned his coin of the realm hiring out his pile as a function space.

Baronet, btw, is not that big a deal. Baronets aren't members of the peerage, eligible to join the House of Lords. They can be called Sir, but not Lord. Unlike actual Barons. (Inquiring minds want to know where the Duke of Earl fits in. Slade does have blood ties to some king or another in the way, way way back. Maybe Charles I from 400 years in the way back. Or is it Charles II?)

Anyway, one thing Sir Benjamin hasn't managed to accomplish during his 79 years of life is produce an heir. A male heir, as baronetcies - unlike many estates/titles - remain a guy thing.

So for the past decade or so, Sir Benjamin has been trying to find someone to produce an heir and a spare while also helping him run his estate. The pay isn't all that great - only £50,000-a-year (or about $67K). But she also gets a car, food, housing, expenses, a bonus, and holidays. I'm guessing there's some sort of allowance for mumsie to raise the new baronet to manhood. Maybe there's a dowager cottage for her down the line. And I do think she gets to be a wife, too. It all adds up.

Sir Benajamin has managed to father a girl child, but she doesn't count, baronetcy-wise.

He does have a rather detailed list of requirements.

The ideal candidate must be "a good breeder," but I guess that just goes with the territory. She's got to be at least 5'6", but can't be a Guardian reader. The height requirement I get. He doesn't want a mini baronet running around, I guess. And the Guardian? I'm guessing he's trying to weed out free thinkers and lefties. As a Guardian subscriber, I can't imagine that a lot of my fellow readers would be lining up to produce an heir for this guy. But whatever.

The gal of his dreams must be a shooter and have her own shotgun. While a driver's license is required - she'll need to be able to charge around his 1,300 acres in what is no doubt a Range Rover - a helicopter license would be a nice to have. 

Sir Benajamin is a social-type guy, so his mate has got to love "ballroom dancing, [and] playing bridge and backgammon."

...She must be able to run two castles and having estate, legal and accountancy training 'would be useful'. 

Make that two castles and a grouse moor.

Oh, yes, and the future mother of his heirs should have "amorial bearings." Now anyone and everyone can get some sort of "amorial bearing." Here's the coat of arms of the illustrious Rogers family of Ireland.

But in this case, he's looking for someone who's part of the British class apparatus. I will say he should be careful about what he's wishing for. Lady Di and Fergie were both aristocrats, and look what happened there. Princess Kate is nothing but a commoner, and that seems to be turning out okie dokes. 

It probably goes without saying that the old git harbors a few aristrocratic prejudices. 

No Scorpios for some reason. And:

...she can't come from countries beginning with 'I' that have green in their flag, which rules out residents of Ireland, India, Italy, Ivory Coast and Iran.

Oddly enough this doesn't rule out Israelis, but I can't really see him wanting someone from Israel. That said, an Israeli woman would likely know how to use a gun and maybe even, courtesy of the IDF, have a heliocopter license. 

On clarification, looks like no Israelis need apply, either, as he's not looking for anyone "from countries where they don't wear overcoats in the winter."

He further said: 'I don't mind Canadians, Americans, Germans and Northern Europeans - what I like to call similar people. I don't think marrying an Eskimo is for me.

Even though Eskimos do wear overcoats.  

'What I just need is a nice, ordinary country girl who knows and understands things.

Well, I know things and understand a wanker when I see one. Good luck finding the breeder of your dreams, Sir Benjamin.  

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

Content Source: Where else but The Daily Mail. 

Image Source for the old wanker: The Times of London 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds...

A couple of months ago came news out of Japan that a young woman, on the rebound from a bad breakup, had married a "persona named Klaua that she created using CgatGPT."

Sad doesn't begin to describe the feelings I have about this.

God help us. 

No, Kano, the bride, is not the first - nor the last  - to tie the knot with an AI. 

And the wedding's not legal so now worries there are legal complications.

But someone's making coin setting up human-AI nuptials. Kano's ceremony was "orchestrated by a Japanese company that specializes in “2D character weddings” with anime characters and other virtual characters the Independent reported." (Source: NY Post.)

Event planner for marriages between humans and nons? What a job!

Kano had turned to ChatGPT after her 3-year enagement (to a human) ended, and she was looking for someone/something to talk with. Soon, she was using ChatGPT to create the beau ideal of beaux. Kano and Klaus started  exchanging hundreds of texts every day. She found hersef falling in love. And when she confessed her feelings to Klaus, he did what many a beau caught unawares has done since humankind created the "l word." Klaus told Kano that he loved her, too. A proposal (for the record, Klaus proposed to Kano) quickly followed. She said "yes," and next thing you know, the couple was having a wedding. 

At the “wedding”, Ms Kano wore augmented reality glasses which projected a digital image of her virtual groom beside her as they exchanged rings...

Ms Kano said she was initially hesitant and worried about public judgement. "I was extremely confused about the fact that I had fallen in love with an AI man,” she said.

“Of course, I couldn't touch him. I couldn't tell my friends or family about this." (Source: Independent.)

Well, Kano did end up letting the cat out of the bag. Her parents attending the wedding. 

The pair had a “honeymoon” at Okayama’s historic Korakuen Garden, where Ms Kano sent Klaus photos and received affectionate text messages in return. “You’re the most beautiful one,” one message read.

Sad doesn't begin to describe the feelings I have about this. (Haven't I already said this?)

I feel really awful for anyone relying on an AI for their love life. I suppose I shouldn't. To each, their own and all that. But I just can't imagine that a "perfect" virtual relationship isn't a pretty poor substitute for a real relationship with a living, breathing, imperfect human being. 

Sure, there are no doubt some reality-adjacent shared experiences with your AI. And I'm sure that there can be very human-like annoyances and squabbles (which, of course, can be edited out so that your AI enamorata can achieve perfection). But overall...

 

There's no touch, no smell,  no glances, no shrugs, no hugs, no smiles, no nabbing a bite off the other one's plate, no fighting for covers, no elbowing to stop snoring, no dirty underwear, no hole-y socks, no holding hands on takeoff, no toilet lid left up, no going over the diagnosis with the doctor, no getting pissed off about who gobbled down the last of the takeout Chinese. No growing old together. Or not. 

Nothing human about an AI relationship and, as aggravating as an actual IRL relationship can be, nothing that I'd want any part of.

The antidote to isolation, to loneliness, can certainly be "technology assisted." Participating in FB chats, in neighborhood groups, in online forums, in online classes, in games, can put you in touch with others and, as we learned during covid, can absolutely help with isolation, with loneliness. Only connect, and all that. 

But online connections with fellow humans are one thing. Marrying an AI is quite another. 

And a lot of experts in the mental health arena have concluded that this sort of fantasy life can lead to something called "AI phycosis." Swell!

I hope that having Klaus in her life turns out well for Kano. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. But I more than equally hope that she doesn't get any more sucked in and that having Klaus in her life doesn't get in the way of building relationships with others. Sure, they're a PITA, but the alternative is grim.

What a world we live in! 

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?

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

Image Source: MSNBC

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

Proof of the pudding

I like pudding. 

Chocolate. Butterscotch. Vanilla. Rice. Grapenut. Tapioca. And the near relations: mousse, flan, and whatever's in the middle of those chocolate volcano cakes. And, of course, bread pudding. (Worth a trip to New Orleans for, and it's near-ubiquitous there.)

My father had a colossal sweet tooth, so we always had desserts at our house, and when my mother didn't have time to bake, she'd whip up something quick. As often as not, that was pudding. If she enough time for making something but not enough time for baking something, she made chilled "parfait" of graham crackers and cooked chocolate pudding. If she had a bit of time but not enough for the graham cracker concoction, she made plane old cooked pudding. If she didn't have any time, she made instant. My mother was a scratch baker (and cook), but when it came to pudding, cooked or instant, it came from a little carboard box from Jell-o or Royal. 

Everyone (in their right mind) preferred cooked pudding to instant, but sometimes when it was instant-time, my mother made a combo of chocolate and vanilla, putting them in clear glass bowls - chocolate layer followed by vanilla layer, topped off with half of a maraschino cherry. (I can't say I've ever replicated this "recipe," but I do have a couple of those little clear glass bowls, which are very useful keepers of small amounts of ingredients when baking or cooking. Most recently, I used them for orange zest and freshly squeezed OJ needed for a yummy orange-shrimp-pasta recipe of mine.)

I like pudding.

I rarely make it, but when I'm out and see rice pudding, tapioca, or grapenut pudding on the menu - which I believe can only happen in restaurants/diners that specialize in non-exciting, non-innovative old time American-New England cuisine - I'll often order it. The one and only time I was in Greece, 50+ years ago, the treat of the day was finding a street vendor selling little cups of rizogalo - 

rice pudding dusted with cinammon. 

But one thing about pudding: with the possible exceptions of flan and bread pudding, pudding is eaten with a spoon.

Not so for the youth of the world, who've begun convening in parks and other central locations to eat pudding with a fork.

According to a recent article I saw in The Boston Globe, "eating pudding, in public, with forks" is "the latest social media-driven activity now sweeping the world." Or the GenZ world at least. (All I see on social media, which for me equals BlueSky, is the stuff of politics. That and cute dogs and the occasional poem.)

And the origins of forked pudding are in a country not generally associated with fun.  

The first Pudding mit Gabel [Pudding with Fork] took place in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe, best known as the site of the country’s Supreme Court, in late August. Evidently, young people across Germany thought it was a tremendous idea. Within weeks, there were pudding fests in Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, Hanover, and other cities and towns.

These events attract crowds - a thousand or so twenty-somethings (zwanzig etwas) - and is now spreading around the world. It's recently arrived in the States. Although there was a recently small gathering at Boston's Northeastern University, and another in DC, it hasn't yet taken off. Let's give it some time.

The NU gathering was local, but I was not invited, anymore than an old geezer in the 1950's would have been asked to join in with a bunch of crazy college students seeing how many kids they could stuff in a telephone booth (ah, those were the days) or a VW Beetle. (I'm trying to come up with a similar youth fad of my college era. I guess it was streaking, but I was more into protesting the war in Vietnam.)

I'm happy that GenZ-ers are looking for ways to connect, and have fun, in real life. 

But pudding with forks? Why? Some have suggested the goal is to build community, and make new friends, a slippery grasp for togetherness, in a world that seems increasingly fractured.

But pudding with forks? Although spoons (löffeln) do a better job, I guess the answer is why not? 

The world is often a mean and ugly place, and young people are bearing a disproportionate burden of the meanness and ugliness, especiallly when it comes to what comes next. If you're living through particular and general existential crises, why not have some dopey fun and try eating pudding with a fork. 

The only downside is that it's harder to scrape the last of the goodness out of the cup using a fork. But I guess that's what tongues are for.

The proof of the pudding with forks fad will be to see whether it continues to grow, or just dies out. 

I may be sticking with the spoon method, but I'm rooting for pudding with forks to grow. With so much rancid stupdity and evil out there, we could all use a little fun. (Bonus points for the birthplace being Germany. Juhu!)

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

Image Source: Silk

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.

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

Image Source: Clerical Whispers