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.

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Image Source: Ultimate Globes  

Semiquincentennial? I celebrated on June 18th.

I don't remember all that much about my personal celebration of our nation's bicentennial. The year before, on April 19, 1975, I'd gone to the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, which was quite enjoyable. The night before, my cousin Barbara hosted a big spaghetti supper and pajama party - there must have been a couple dozen of us at her house, occupying every nook and cranny with our sleeping bags - and at dawn we all descended on Lexington Green. Patriots fired at Redcoats. President Gerald Ford was there. It was more or less the kickoff of the 200th anniversary of the United States. 

Eleven days later, the last of the American military was helicoptered out of Saigon, and the Vietnam War was officially over.

On to the next. 

In 1976, I remember plenty of hoopla, but I wasn't all that interested. I had a crappy job, a new boyfriend, and I was still pissed at the government over the Vietnam War, which I'd spent my college years and beyond protesting. 

The Pops concert on the Esplanade had an immense audience, but I wasn't in the crowd. That event, which had previously been lowkey and pleasant, was turning into a thing. No thanks. Did I watch on my little b&w TV? Yes/no/maybe.

The following week, I did see Queen Elizabeth buzz by in her limo when she was on her bicentennial visit to the colonies of yore. I may have even gotten a royal wave. 

I have been dreading, our 250th, the semiquincentennial. I have been dreading seeing Trump taking ownership of it, ego branding it, descretating it. As he did the White House lawn with the tawdry, pay per view UFC event. As he did when he sat there smirking while one of the idiot, punch-drunk racist fighters used a slur against Michelle Obama. As he did when he destroyed the beautiful reflecting pool - paying an inept and/or corrupt contractor a super-inflated fee to botch the job. Trump just had to have it done by the Fourth of July. Well, the contractor sure managed to f it totally up well before our birthday.

I have been dreading the big day-of splash, which Trump has taken over, with promises to turn it into a "classic" Trump rally. That should be uplifting. Me-me-me. More me-me-me. Bragging about saving the country from the destruction wrought by Biden and Obama, being an even more powerful leader than Stalin and Hitler. (Which he has actually done recently.) Grievances, both petty and ginormous. Name calling. (His latest nickname is for Senator Jon Ossoff, who he's dubbed Oss(jerk)off. Ho,ho, ho.) Blame gaming. DJT can't manage to settle on whether Obama or Biden is more responsible for destroying the country. Or maybe it's all us Dumocrats. Get it? Get it? Democrats are Dum(b). Har, har,hardy, har har. (So, Mr. President, is there a "d" in "dumb" of not?)

Mostly I've been "celebrating" the semiquin by losing sleep, fretting over whether we're going to make it as a democracy for the next 900-something days, let alone the next 250 years. 

And then I watched the ceremony opening the Obama Presidential Center, and realized that this - and not Trump's demented, racist, misogynist, dictator-worshipping, ill-informed, stone-stupid, and lying, lying, lying blather and pronouncements - is what our country about. This is what is worth celebrating.

By the time Jennifer Hudson finished her beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, a song that usually doesn't do all that much for me, I had tears in my eyes. From then on out, everything was pure gold. 

The performances - by A-listers AND members of the community - were lovely, stirring, pride-inducing. I knew I was going to like John Legend, but who knew I was going to swoon over Marc Anthony? 

And the speeches by Michelle Obama and Barack Obama were brilliant. Touching, moving, heartfelt, true, measured, uplifting, intelligent. Oh, what we have been missing. Instead of rhetoric that moves the heart, the mind, the soul, we've been subjected to lies and incoherence. Imagine any other president badmouthing prior presidents when meeting with world leaders at the G7?

Speaking of prior presidents, I was very happy to see George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden there, along with their wives. I wasn't much of a W fan, but I never doubted for a moment that he loved our country and did what he thought was best. I just thought that most of the time he was dead wrong. (And I'm thrilled that Trump wasn't invited. A well deserved dis, given that he's been crapping all over Obama and his Center, including sharing a meme that showed the Center in a couple of years time, turned into a trash-strewn homeless encampment.) 

Without even seeing a program, I knew that the last two performers would be Bruce Springsteen, who sang an un-banger version of Land of Hope and Dreams, and that Stevie Wonder would close the show out. And bring down the the house. 

I had to leave for an appointment during Stevie Wonder's part, but listened to the live stream in my Uber. (It's an appointment I normally would have walked to, but I didn't want to miss any of Obama's speech, so...)

This is the America I want to see: intelligent, inclusive, proud, honest, hopeful. This is the America I want to love. This was my semiquincentennial.

Oh, on the Fourth, I'll no doubt read the Declaration of Independence, which I always do. I'll no doubt put on the Pops concert, and watch the fireworks out my window. Or out my sister Kathleen's window, which is a perfect view. 

But the Obamas gave me all the semiquincentennial celebration I need. 

These are the words that are on the Center. They're from Barack Obama's speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march for Civil Rights. 

You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

Ah, the audacity of hope!

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Image Source: People

No Scotland, No Party. (All Hail, the Tartan Army!)

I hadn't been paying particular attention to the World Cup. I'd been keeping a very small eye on it, mostly to see whether futbol teams and fans from countries the US currently doesn't like (i.e., countries with Black people, brown people, Muslims...) were being hassled on their way in. And I'd been laughing and eye-rolling whenever I heard someone on the local news awkwardly using the FIFA-demanded locution for Gillette Staium, which has been renamed Boston Stadium for the duration. (Can't have the name Gillette anywhere in sight unless they're willing to pay FIFA big bucks for the privilege.)

And then the Tartan Army invaded Boston: thousands of kilt- and kit-wearing fans who've descended on our city because Scotland's national team has made it to the show for the first time in nearly 30 years. 

I've been to Scotland a couple of times, and found the natives pleasant, but overall, I wouldn't have characterized the Scots personality as particularly friendly, good-humored, or buoyant. Buoy was I wrong.

Scottish fans have thronged our streets, which is something I've witnessed on a daily basis. Living in a tourist area, right down the street from Cheers, I've seen plenty of them making the pilgrimage, walking by my front door. Not only have they all seen the show, they've got a special World Cup anthem - one of nearly two dozen such anthems they've come up with - to the tune of the Cheers "Everybody Knows Your Name." The song, written by comedian Rosco McLleland, is very sweet and funny, name checks the players, and includes the lines "Wouldn't you like to win a game? Or even score a goal?" (It was recorded with the Scotland Symphony Orchestra, btw.)

Which they did both of in the first game of the two they're playing at Gillette, beating Haiti 1-nil. 

The Tartan Army has also been thronging the local pubs. Some of the watering holes - and even some packies (Massachusetts for liquor store) - have run out of beer. 

These fans are getting uniform five-star reviews from everyone who runs into them. Funny, polite, full of brio, full of love of country and team - but not bursting with the obnoxious, bombastic "We're Number One!" and "USA! USA!" chants that 'Muricans bring to every international sporting event.  (In contrast, one of the major Tartan Army chants is "No Scotland, No Party.")

The Scottish fans have no expectations about their team's making it all that far. They know they're not Spain, Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, Portugal, France. (In the rankings I saw on ESPN, Scotland was rated 28 out of 48 participating teams; USA! USA! is 22. So they actual punch above their weight, given their population is a bit over 5 million, and ours is about 70 times that.)

Locally, the Tartan Army has dominated World Cup coverage, and Bostonians can't get enough of them. 

In a city that's been in a sports funk of late - the Pats lost the Super Bowl, the Celts and the Bruins didn't get far in the playoffs, and the Red Sox are unspeakably bad - we are so enjoying the joy of the Scots. We hadn't known we needed it, but we do now, and no one wants to let the Tartan Army go back home. 

Last Sunday, five thousand of them, led by bagpipers, marched en masse to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game. The Sox, predictably, lost, but the Fenway Faithful got to enjoy the game because of the presence of the Scottish brigade, who kept bursting into cheers and songs. 

Over the time they've been there, I've had a number of occasions to chat with some Scottish fans, mostly to tell them how much we're enjoying their visit and wishing them luck. But I've had longer conversations with a few.

One couple said "you don't know what it's like to go so long without making it to the World Cup." I explained to them that I was a lifelong Red Sox fan, and we'd waited 84 years between World Series wins. We commiserated.

In talking with another fellow, I noted that there were an awful lot of Irish names on the team. Sure, they've got an Angus, a Grant, a Kenny. But they've also got a Liam Kelly, a Kieran Tierney, a Ryan Christie, and a John McGinn (which was the name of the decidedly Irish husband of my mother's best friend). 

God knows, the countries are geographically close. God knows, they both have Gaelic native languages. God knows, neither country is wild about England. God know there's not a lot of difference between Mac and Mc. So commonality is not that surprising. And I knew that Scotland had a lot of folks with Irish ancestry. Still, I was surprised by the number of pretty darned Irish names on the team.

But the guy told me that he was from Glasgow - a football hotbed - and said his city was half Irish Catholic and half Scots Presbyterian, so it was no surprise to him that there were some Irish Scotsmen on the team. 

The Scots were thrilled to beat Haiti. The ones I spoke with were realistic about their chances against Morocco. They could win, but not likely. Morocco is just a better team. And lose Scotland did, but they left the stadium in good humor, having made friends with the fans from Morocco. 

Of course, the Scots are totally realistic about their prospects against Brazil, the team they'll be playing tomorrow in Miami. Brazil is not just a better team, they're one of the best teams. But the Tartan Army will have one more opportunity to march in as a clan and sing their lovely unofficial national anthem, Flower of Scotland, which I had never heard before the Scots blew into town.

But, hey - or is it hoot mon - this is sports. Anything can happen.

But whatever happens, All Hail the Tartan Army! You can come back any old time.

(I already miss seeing them around.)

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 Image Source: NY Times

This is just very, very sad

On February 27th, in the early morning hours - a bit before 5 a.m. - there was a gruesome accident at the Davis Square MBTA station in Somerville, a Boston exburb. 

Steven McCluskey, a 40-year carpenter from South Boston, fell on the escalator and became trapped at the bottom. His shirt became stuck in the escalator gears and strangled him.

As video of the incident showed, it was nearly a half hour before the escalator was turne off, and a few minutes after that when Transit and Somerville police arrived on the scene. 

MBTA Transit and Somerville police found McCluskey “pinned at the bottom of the escalator,” the report said. He was “unresponsive, bare-chested, and his clothing was tightly lodged within the escalator steps,” the report said. (Source: Boston Globe)

A few minutes later, a crew from the Somerville Fire Department showed up. They gave McCluskey a dose of Narcan, cut his shirt, and adminstered CPR. McCluskey revived by died in the hospital on March 9th.

The video, which is horrifying in a number of different respects, showed not just McCluskey lying at the bottom of the escalator, strangling to death, but also a number of early morning/late shift commuters ignoring him. 

When they saw McCluskey at the foot of the escalator, his fellow travelers chose to take the steps down rather than stepping over what at that point was his still-alive body. A couple of people were shown pulling out there cell phones, presumably calling for help. This didn't occur until Steven McCluskey had been there for over 20 minutes. Prior to that, the admittedly few folks in the station at that hour just chose to walk on by.

Five a.m.? I'm thinking most of those who saw McCluskey assumed he was drunk or drugged out and just chose not to be bothered. I can't imagine anyone, however callous or preoccupied, would ignore someone if they thought he was dying. But that we'll never know.

There's been some criticism that no one bothered to stop the escalator by pressing one of the red buttons located at the top or the foot of the escalator. I've been in that T station, ridden that escalator (and the escalators in plenty of other T stations, dozens of times. And I don't know if I would have realized that there's a stop button, or whether I'd have had the presence of mind to actually use it.

But I like to think that I would have tried to help Steven McClulskey in some way. As an urban dweller, I've had several occasions when I've seen someone just lying there on the sidewalk. I've given someone a kick to see whether they're at all responsive. I've shaken someone's arm. I've called 911 and waited for them to show up. In one case, I called 911 back to cancel the ambulance when a couple of the buddies of the person lying there streamed out of McDonald's and somehow revived their friend. And then proceeded to yell at me for calling the cops. Oh, well. 

Would I have stopped to help Steven McCluskey? I like to think I would have. But that we'll never know.

I'm also a long-term volunteer in a day shelter, where I've witnessed a few of our guests OD-ing or convulsing, and have had to spring into the very small action of getting help - and then generally staying out of the way, as in a shelter there'll be plenty of folks gathering around the person who's down and out. And they need another lookee-lou with no training in anything other than human sympathy like they need a hole in the head. 

So I like to think I would have helped Stevn McCluskey. But that we'll never know.

This situation brought two things to mind. 

One was the Kitty Genovese incident that took place over 60 years ago.

Genovese was a young Queens NYC woman who was raped and murdered outside of her apartment building. The New York Times ran a major article asserting that several dozen neighbors witnessed/overheard the assault and did nothing. It was later shown that the Times article greatly exaggerated the situation, and that several people did call the police back in the day before 911 existed, back when calling the cops involved finding the local precinct number by dialing information or thumbing through the phone book. 

But the Times article went what we would now call viral and was picked up by television and print news throughout the country. Which is how I heard of it, back in the long ago, when I was in high school. The neighbors' (non)-response to the attack on Kitty Genovese came to represent the terrible apathy of not just residents of Kew Gardens in Queens NY, but of Americans in general. Kitty Genovese became a byword, a complete indictment of the national character, of who we are, of what we'd become.

I seldom get all religiousy, but the second thing the horrifying death of Steven McCluskey brought to mind was Christ in Gethsemane. He asked Peter, who'd fallen asleep while staying with his friend and leader while he awaited his fate, "What, could ye not watch with me but one hour?"

It's just so colossally sad that there was no one who could watch with Steven McCluskey while the life was strangled out of him. Was he in agony or had he passed out? He appeared lifeless, but did anyone kick his leg or shake his arm? Even if they didn't know enough to turn off the escalator, wasn't there someone who could shriek their lungs out trying to get help - even if there was little chance of there being much help around at the Davis Square T Station at 5 a.m.? Wasn't there someone who could stay by Steven McCluskey's side, telling him that help was the way? No one who could watch with him but 20 minutes?

Everyone who saw Steven McCluskey lying there will have to live with what they did or didn't do to help this poor man out.

What would I have done? That we'll never know. But it does get me thinking about my next encounter - and there will no doubt be one - with someone in need.

This is just so very, very sad. 

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Image Source - Davis T Station: Wikimedia Commons

Image Source - Kitty Genovese: Wikipedia

Sure, it's flattering, but...

When it comes to states, I'm an absolute homer. Yes, I can imagine living in other places - elsewhere in New England, New York (NYC), Illinois (Chicago), Minnesota (Minneapolis), the PNW. But that's about it. (Not counting Canada and Ireland.)

I ❤️MASSACHUSETTS. (I'm not sure the emoji is emojing, but that there, between I and MASSACHUSETTS is supposed to be a red heart.)

In fact, if I had to make a choice between my home state and the US or A, I'm going with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, any old day.

Funny, I don't have a ton of sympathy or affection for Robert E. Lee - a sadist, a racist, who took up arms to defend slavery - but I kinda sorta get why he chose to stick with the Commonwealth of Virginia. That was his state, bro. 

It's not that I don't at least small-l love the United States. Despite some crackingly inglorious chapters in our history; despite the gun nuttery, the racism, the parochialism, the numb-nut Know Nothing-ism that we haven't yet been able to outgrow; despite the wrecking ball that's being taken our country - there's an awful lot here to truly like and admire. Maybe even love. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The genius of the Founding Fathers (flaws and all). The inventiveness, the openness to innovation. The breathtaking sea-to-shining-sea beauty. And especially what I feel has (up to now) been one of the absolutely best aspects of America: the ability to take in a whole slew of "others" and let them assimilate their way into becoming bona fide Americans. 

On behalf of my Irish immigrant great-grandparents and my German grandparents and mother, of thee I sing, baby!

But, oh my Massachusetts...

Still, I have to laugh when I see an analysis from something called the Visual Capitalist that rates Massachusetts the best state in the whole wide world. Or at least in the whole wide USA.

Using data from WalletHub, which evaluates 51 metrics across affordability, economic opportunity, safety, and health, this map ranks all 50 U.S. states by quality of life.

...Massachusetts tops the ranking thanks to a combination of high incomes, leading healthcare access, and a dense network of top universities. (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Yes, yes, yes. We rich! We got great hospitals! We got good schools!

Yes, yes, yes. We have a high standard of living. (Some of us, anyway.)

But, but, but...We're also one of the costliest states to live in, so it's a good thing we have those high incomes. Even someone pulling down six-figures is not likely to find affordable housing in the Boston area, that's for sure. (And let's not get into the weather sitch. I happen to enjoy the four seasons, but maybe that's just me.)

Indeed, the "study" acknowledges that affordability is a problem:

...the bottom quartile of the list [shown below] contains many of the nation’s most “affordable” states. This creates a “livability paradox”: states with the lowest costs often rank poorly overall, as weaker healthcare, safety, and economic mobility offset their affordability advantages.

The state rankings are shown just below. The numbers (rounded) are the scores based on a number of metrics, which seem to favor Massachusetts. Or sort of favor Massachusetts. Because if I were going to pick a first-runner-up to Massachusetts, it sure wouldn't be Idaho. 

Idaho? Maybe it's affordability that gets them a heartbeat away from the #1 ranking, which I guess they will move into if for whatever reason, Massachusetts is unable to fulfill its duties... Like if we secede and become a Canadian province or Irish county. 

Idaho? Land of preppers, of right-wing zealots, of a ban on flying the Pride flag on government property. That Idaho? 

New Mexico comes in 50th, but I'd rather live there than in Idaho. 

1 Massachusetts 60.2
2 Idaho 60.2
3 New Jersey 59.8
4 Wisconsin 59.7
5 Minnesota 58.7
6 Florida 58.5
7 New Hampshire 58.2
8 Utah 57.9
9 New York 57.9
10 Pennsylvania 57.9
11 Wyoming 57.9
12 Iowa 56.2
13 Maine 56.2
14 Virginia 56.2
15 Montana 55.2
16 North Dakota 54.6
17 Illinois 54.6
18 South Dakota 54.1
19 Colorado 53.6
20 Nebraska 52.9
21 Vermont 52.7
22 North Carolina 52.3
23 Kansas 52.2
24 Connecticut 52.1
25 Rhode Island 52.1
26 Ohio 51.6
27 Georgia 51.6
28 Missouri 51.2
29 Indiana 51.2
30 Michigan 51.1
30 Arizona 51.0
32 California 50.5
33 Delaware 50.0
34 Maryland 49.8
35 Hawaii 49.4
36 Washington 49.2
37 Kentucky 47.5
38 Texas 47.2
39 Oregon 47.2
40 Tennessee 47.0
41 Alabama 47.0
42 West Virginia 47.0
43 Oklahoma 46.3
44 South Carolina 45.7
45 Nevada 44.6
46 Alaska 44.2
47 Mississippi 43.5
48 Arkansas 42.1
49 Louisiana 40.6
50 New Mexico 39.7

I would, of course, not be particularly comfortable living in a red state, so that colors my thinking. And I'm quite sure that there are plenty of folks who would hate living in a blue state. 

Anyway, it's flattering to have my feelings that Massachusetts is a great place to live confirmed. (Helps that we bought our condo 35 years ago...) In this case, flattery does get you somewhere.

But when it comes to the greatest place to live, the standards are somewhat subjective. 

Still,  I'm only human. Massachusetts? I like it. I love it. Can't get enough of it.

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Image Source: Gallopade

Triple deckers

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

In any case, it was definitely a three flat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a bit on the history of deckers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just sayin'.

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

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Image 1 Source: Google Maps
Image 2 Source: Wikipedia 

Johnny we hardly knew ya!

There's a pub not far from where I live called the 21st Amendment, afer the amendment that provided for the repeal of prohibition. It's on Bowdoin Street, just across the way from a side entrance to the Masschusetts State House, and I haven't been there in years. Back in the day when I dropped in once in a while, it was called the Golden Dome, named after the golden dome that crowns (if that's the right word, given No Kings) our lovely, Bullfinch-designed state house. 

The Dome was a nothing fancy pub, but it was a fun and convivial place. 

When I was an occasional patron, the Dome was frequented by state workers and state and local pols. Not that I'd recognized most state pols, but sometimes I'd spot a familiar face in there. One time, I saw Ray Flynn. Ray had been a state rep, but at the point I saw him there, he was a member of the Boston City Counil, and was running for mayor. Ray was in his cups, and walking from table to table schmoozing voters up. When he got to us, my BF (later husband) said to Ray that I had told him that Ray was an honest pol. Ray's answer: "I am honest. I just drink too much." 

Ah, Ray. 

Anyway, he went on to become the mayor, and held that office until Bill Clinton appointed him Ambassador to the Holy See (Vatican). 

The big kahuna pol who had supposedly frequented the Golden Dome was JFK, whose Boston apartment was a couple of doors down on Bowdoin Street. Or so it was rumored.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I spotted this sign on the sidewalk on the corner of Bowdoin and Beacon, inviting passers-by to stop in for a libation at JFK's local tavern.

This raised a couple of questions in my mind.

First off, just how much time did Congressman (and later Senator) John Fitzgerald Kennedy spend in Boston? His parents were native Bostonians - his maternal grandfather had been the mayor - but JFK was born in Brookline, just oustide of Boston. The family moved to NY when he was still a child. He went to prep school in Connecticut. And Harvard is in Cambridge. The Kennedy family spent their summers in Hyannis, so Massachusetts, but not exactly Boston. 

JFK was famously in the South Pacific during WWII. 

JFK was someting of a war hero, and in the absence of his golden boy older brother, who was killed during the war, he was designated by the family to get on the path to the presidency. First step: Congress.

In order to run for Congress, JFK had to establish a residency here. Thus he rented a pied a terre on Beacon Hill. 

Once elected to the House, and later the Senate, his center of gravity was Washington, DC. Not Boston. 

So did he ever really spend any more time than necessary here?

Oh, I don't doubt he popped in occasionally to his local for a pop, especially as a couple of his inner circle were boyos, not fellow Harvardites. And his grandfather had been a tavern owner. (As was mine, btw.) But was it truly his watering hole?

Rather than hanging out at an Irish-y local pub, I could see young JFK - rich, handsome, well-educated, well-traveled, sophisticated - at the Ritz or at Locke-Ober. Not at whatever the Golden Dome 21st Amendment was called back in the way back. 

But, hey, JFK may have been anticipating the advice Robert Frost gave him on the occasion of his inauguration: Be more Irish than Harvard. Which translates into local pub, not Locke-Ober.

Still, there's a question of whether that sign is false advertising or creative marketing. Little of both, I suspect. And just plain fun.

But I'm also wondering just how much the JFK name still resonates with young folks - the prime constituency for the 21st Amendment - or with tourists, even. He has, after all, been dead for a good long time. It reminds me of the "George Washington slept here" signs of my youth - there was actually one on a house near where I grew up that had been a tavern  - that were sort of interesting, but didn't really drawn you in. More of a good to know, shrug sort of thing. 

Or are people (young folks, tourists) still drawn to JFK. 

I suppose tourists may be. After all, Cheers, which takes place in Boston, has been off the air for 30+ years, and there's still a line out front most of the time. And I guess JFK would and should be more of a draw than Sam, Norm, or Carla. 

Anyway, when I spotted the sign there, I was curious. And I did find it amusing. A few weeks after I first saw it, the sign was down. 

Maybe it didn't work. Maybe it just kept blowing down.

Did JFK really hang out at the 21st Amendment? 

I don't really see it, but Johnny we hardly knew ya!

Heartbreaking. Enraging.

I suppose I should have followed up yesterday's grim post with something a bit lighter, but, hey, in for a dime, in for a dollar. So today we take a look at homelessness.  

Two days one week, three weeks the next, I volunteer in a day shelter. Mostly what I do is give out socks and toothbrushes, give out information, give out directions, and sometimes just lend an ear to someone who just wants and needs to talk. 

Not everyone who comes through our door is experiencing homelessness - some are just plain old poor - but most of the folks we see aren't housed. And whenever someone finds a place to hang their hat, we are jumping for joy. SRO (hopefully not a wretched one) with shared bath and kitchen, or a full apartment, when someone's where they can lock the door, keep their stuff, stay in bed in the morning, they're happy to get up in the morning worrying about where they're going to lay themsleves down to sleep that night. Surprisingly - to some - many of the folks we serve have jobs. They may be poorly paid, low benefit, crappy jobs, but, let me tell you, people do seem to love saying "I just got a job" or "I have to get to work."

The parents who head the five Atlanta families that Brian Goldstone writes about in his brilliant (compelling, depressing) book There Is No Place for Us, all work, often holding multiple jobs. Sometimes they've been at the same job for years, other times their work is temporary or sporadic. The commonality is that the jobs are poorly paid, low benefit, and crappy. (Hmmm. Where have I heard that before?)

The families, for the most part, had - at least at some point - housing stability in a rented apartment where they could celebrate a birthday, put up a Christmas tree, cook a Thanksgiving dinner. But then something rent wrong. 

Someone got cancer. Someone got divorced. Someone lost their job. Someone had their hours cut back. Someone was two days late with their rent check and lost their lease. (Georgia has very few tenant protections.)

Lives are lived pretty precariously when you're living paycheck to paycheck and don't have any cushion to fall back on. 

All of the families Goldstone chronicles fell into wretched housing situations in extended stay facilities (bleak hotels) or living with a family member or friend. Extended stay facilities means that your family is likely living in one room: parent(s) and kiddos crammed into crowded quarters with no privacy, no place for the kids to play, kiddos jammed into bed together, a hot plate and/or microwave to cook on. 

Staying with family or friends sounds better. But when you're poor, your family and friends don't tend to be much better off than you are. So you end up sleeping on the living room couch or a sleeping bag on the floor. Again no privacy, no nothing. No room to breathe, let alone work, let alone go to school.

And, as the time Goldstone spent with the Georgia families overlapped with covid, folks were trying to work and get their kids to learn from "home."

Picture this: you're trying to work a grueling but poorly paid call center job while your seven year old and nine year old are "going to school" over unreliable wi-fi, and your toddler is doing what toddlers do. Which is not giving anyone a moment's peace. 

But since some of the folks in the book were essential workers, they had to go into their jobs as, say, hospital cleaners, even with an epidemic raging. And the jobs they went into were mostly poorly accessible by public transportation, adding a few hours commuter time getting to, waiting for, and riding on buses. Late too many times? You're fired, girlfriend. 

Then there's the wonderful gig work. Door Dash? Talk about slave-driving. You're pellmelling around, getting docked (or fired) when traffic makes you a nano-second late with a delivery, and - of course - your car is old and unreliable.

All of Goldstone's families were hardworking. They were always on the lookout for ways to lemons into lemonade. (Good luck with that, when you lack sugar and water, let alone a pitcher.) They all loved their children. They all hated the lives they were giving those children. They all wanted better for them. And for themselves.

I was having a nervous breakdown just reading about their lives. I can only imagine the lived reality.

My lived reality includes talking with homeless individuals. So I know that what triggers homelessness is a mixed brew of mental illness, substance abuse, past incarceration, childhood trauma, bad schools, poor choices (absolutely), and - the one thing that's 100% in common - bad luck. And, of course, the lack of affordable housing. 

Back in the not so recent past, single folks with (or without) crappy jobs could always live in an SRO. Sure, many of them were god-awful, but it was a place to call home and it beat sleeping in a mylar blanket over a heating grate. 

Back in the not so recent past, poor families could afford to rent an apartment. If they were lucky, they had a good landlord. If they were really lucky, they had a Section 8 voucher. If they were maybe not all that lucky, they were in a project. But wherever it was, it was home.

Alas, other than for scarce vouchers and bogus set asides for affordable housing, the government has long been going out of the housing business. And "the market" has not kept up with the demand for housing for the poor and, increasingly, the middle class. Especially in big cities where the jobs are and where a lot of people want to live. Like Atlanta. (Like Boston.)

The problem, as Goldstone points out quite eloquently and forcefully, is precisely that we have left housing to "the market." Which could not give a rat's arse about anything other than making a profit. 

In Atlanta (as in Boston), neighborhoods that once provided affordable housing for the working class have been gentrified. And capitalism in general, and private equity in particular, has jumped in to make matters worse. Those extended stay facilities are a big and lucrative business. Families in them are pretty much paying what they'd been paying when they had an actual apartment in their former, real life. 

Airbnb's knock a lot of potential housing off the market. Why rent to a family who'll actually live there, when you can make more doing temp rentals to tourists?

Corporations scoop up affordable properties, renting them out, dumping families out of them when they can get someone new (and desperate) in them for a couple of hundred bucks more a month. With so many houses taken out of play, home ownership out of the question for many families (poor, working, middle class). 

How many homeless people are there in the US? Who knows. The government says about 800,000. Goldstone points out that the government doesn't count people living in extended stay dumps or sleeping on their aunt's floor. He argues that the true number of homeless folks is closer to 4 million.

Through my volunteer work at the shelter, and with a holiday charity for poor and homeless families, I've gotten to learn up close and personal how tough people's lives can be. But not that up close and personal. I really have no idea what it's like not to have privacy, a warm bed, a comfy couch, a stocked fridge, a set of keys to a door that locks. Sure, I've had times in my younger days when I was pretty skint. But was I ever worried about not having a roof over my head? No. If I had to no place to call home,

I'd probably have a nervous breakdown on day one.

Anyway, go read Brian Goldstone. 

I thought I knew a lot about this problem. I had no idea.

Heartbreaking. Enraging. 

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Image Source: Penguin Random House

I'm not usually the jealous type, but...

A flat in Galway. A flat in Dublin. 

Sure, I have my fantasies about living in Ireland. As someone whose great-grandparents emigrated, I can't do the grandparent-born-there citizenship thing. But maybe I could go for extended stays. Maybe I could have a pied a terre to flee to if things get super ugly here. (Or super uglier.)

Is an Irish home-away what I'm going to spend my retirement savings on?

Probably not.

But if I won a place - a well-located city flat, or even a wee cottage somewhere - well, I wouldn't say no.

So while I'm usually not the jealous type, I'm feeling a bit green-eyed monstrous when I saw an article on an American woman who'd just won a cottage in the sweet County Leitrim. Sweet! (This isn't the cottage, but close enough...)

Anyway, Kathleen Spangler is the lucky colleen who's now the proud owner of a little bit o' heaven. Make that an updated little bit o' heaven, as the owner had recently swanked up her 2 BR cottage. (New kitchen, etc.)

Spangler had recently secured her Irish citizenship, thanks to a County Mayo grandmother. (Damn! Why couldn't County Mayo's Margaret Joyce have been my grandmother, not my great-grandmother. She was poking around Irish real estate sites and came across a raffle that looked interesting. She's not a gambler, but took a flyer and bought $12.67 worth of tickets. One of those tickets was the winner.

Spangler is not in danger of decamping to Ireland any time soon. She's so incredibly busy, I'm exhausted just reading about it.

She's a Marine Corps officer and mother of three, two toddlers and an infant. She and her husband (also a Marine officer) recently transferred to a new post, where they'll both be pursuing graduate degrees in engineering. Yikes!

Still, Spangler likes the idea of having the new place.

“My husband and I have talked about someday, when we are out of the military, getting property overseas and splitting time between the United States,” she said. “But that was obviously a future goal.” (Source: NY Times)

Mission accomplished! Good on yez, Kathleen and Michael Spangler.

And good for Monica Collins, who raffled the house to fund a move to Italy. 

Her deal with Raffall, the British raffle site Collins worked through, was that she would sell 150,000 tickets.

But in the end, Ms. Collins said, 206,815 tickets were sold, grossing 1,034,705 pounds (about $1.4 million). Besides the 10 percent to Raffall, she has about 2,600 euros to pay in affiliate fees, plus a 33 percent capital gains tax, 1 percent of the value of the house for stamp duty, and fees for her lawyers and the Spanglers’ lawyers.

Fair play, Monica Collins!

Personally, I wouldn't want to be in the back arse of Leitrim, even if the cottage is only 12 miles from Sligo Town. Sligo isn't my favorite place in Ireland, but it does have critical mass in terms of stores, restaurants, pubs. And just outside of town, there's Rosses Point which to me is the most beautiful place in Ireland. 

But I may start meandering around Irish real estate sites and see what's up for raffle grabs. You never know. Maybe I'll have the luck of the (partial) American Irish. 

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Image Source: Irish American Mom

Is private equity good for anyone other than the PE gods themselves?

I know, I know. As economist Paul Krugman has it, "Not all private equity people are evil. Only some."

But I'm scratching my head here, trying to think of the last time I read anything about a time when private equity stepped in and took over that has had a positive outcome: Jobs saved! The town prospers! Everybody's happy!

Instead, the story pretty much always goes like this:

Private equity spots a business or industry where they can swoop in, play around with the financials, destroy the capacity of a business to survive (e.g., set up a separate real estate entity that now "owns" the company's property; the company has to rent from the entity and goes broke while their PE masters rake in big money). The PE gods are masters of the spot an opportunity and sharpen the pencil approach that has crippled/destroyed plenty of companies.

Hospitals? Steward Healthcare, come on down. Retail? Sears, anybody? Neiman-Marcus, anybody higher up the retail foodchain? Restaurant chains? We're not quite at "Last Night at the Red Lobster," but almost. Mobile home parks, grocery stores, prison services? 

Increasingly, PE's got their eye on businesses that cater to the elderly. There are plenty of us, and our ranks, while thinning on one end, are growing on the other. So PE firms are grabbing up nursing homes and, for the old folks who aren't yet ready for nursing homes (or fortunately won't ever need them), senior living communities.

River Glen of St. Charles is an attractive, pleasant senior community outside of Chicago. When Martha Bray and her husband Richard Ryjacek moved there in 2013, they figured this was their last move. They paid an entry fee ($314)K and a monthly "maintenance" fee. 

They didn’t own the property, but if they decided to leave, their contract promised they’d receive 85% of the current value determined by a local realtor. (Source: NBC News)

Well, for Richard it was his last move. He died in 2016. But Martha stayed on, "thriving" in the community. 

But all that changed with a knock at Bray’s door in late June 2023. River Glen had been sold to a private equity firm and real estate investment group, she was told, and her financial contract was changing.

River Glen’s new owners, Jaybird Capital of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Citrine Investment Group of Chicago, were jacking up Bray’s monthly maintenance from $1,395 to $6,500, a 365% increase, Bray said. And if she didn’t like the deal and left the community, she would receive only 75% of the entry fee she’d paid more than a decade earlier.“We had to agree to their conditions by Sept. 1 or move,” Bray recalled.

She decided to move. But she estimates that she lost out on at least $100,000 because even though her home had risen in value, she only received 75% of the original entry fee.

I just want people to know not to believe a damn word anybody says,” Bray said, referring to senior living contracts. “Your money is not safe.”

But the money PE makes seems to be.

To quote Serene Highness Donald J. Trump, "All very legal..."

But it doesn't seem "all very cool." In fact, it seems pretty damned lousy. And is it just me or does the name "Jaybird" sound a lot like "Jailbird?" Which a lot PE people aren't but maybe ought to be. 

Oh, yeah. I get it.  Market based...increasing demand...fair market value...blah-di-blah... 

But there's plenty of downside when it comes to unfettered capitalism, where all that matters is profit making/profit taking. For the owners, of course, it's half the meat and all the gravy. And just the leavings for the little guy, who - in the case of senior living communities - sees their nut (their buy-in costs) dwindle while their monthly fees increase. Rock, meet hard place. 

Lucas Hammonds, a specialist in senior living facility financing, said changes like those seen at River Glen are increasingly common and driven by investors in search of profits, with residents often ending up as casualties.

“For the people affected by this, these are big issues,” added Hammonds, who is a senior legal analyst at Octus, a provider of in-depth credit analysis. “The bargain has changed. It’s destabilizing.”

As if getting old isn't destabilizing enough. Health issues. Wealth (or lack thereof) issues. And it, of course, promises to get worse. 

(MAGAs may think that croaking Medicaid is just going to kick all those non-deserving poor/near-poor in the head, the rear, the pocketbook - wherever the non-deserving poor/near poor deserve to be kicked. But somewhere between half and two-thirds of long-term nursing home care is paid for by Medicaid. That's a lot of old folks.)

Kevin Russell is the founder of Jaybird, named for his mother, whose nickname it was. 

“For me, the Jaybird brand is a reminder that we are taking care of someone’s mother or father,” Russell says in a quote on the site.

But sometimes it's not much of a reminder. 

There's Martha Bray et al. being screwed out of a good part of their nest eggs, and forced out of their homes in their old age.

And then there's the fact that:

In 2021 and 2022, two residents of Jaybird communities in Iowa froze to death when they wandered away from their memory care facilities, state regulatory records show. A 95-year-old woman at Keelson Harbour in Spirit Lake died in December 2021. The following month, a 77-year-old woman died at Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing in Bondurant.

Maybe neither was anyone's mother, but they still didn't deserve to die because of shoddy care at a Jaybird facility. (The company has been hit with several civil penalties over the last few years.) 

I don't hate capitalism. Mostly, I believe the old epigram that capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

Still, capitalism these days is sorely trying my patience. And a lot of my antipathy is due to the rise of private equity. Seriously, is private equity good for anyone other than the PE gods themselves?

Shocking, but not surprising

The housing crisis in this country is bad and getting worse. I see it up close and personal every day I'm at my volunteer job in a day shelter, where those without permanent housing can come, get basic services (food, clothing, shower, medical) and just hang out.  

Whatever the reason behind it - mental illness, substance abuse, bad choices, bad luck, or just plain poverty - homelessness is terrible. If I ever fell into this circumstance, I think I'd have a nervous breakdown on Day One. 

But I find homelessness especially disheartening when those without a place to call home do have a place to call work. Sure, they're working, but they don't make enough to find a place to call home. And there are plenty of them. (In an expensive old city like Boston, it's not just the working poor who can't find affordable housing. There are plenty of folks - young, college-educated people in their twenties and early thirties - making salaries that, in a lot of other places, could pay for very nice homes. Not here. They just don't tend to be homeless. They're living with their parents, or sharing with roommates when they'd rather be on their own.)

Back to the working homeless, I can't tell you how many times a client of St. Francis House has excitedly told me that they got the job. Or that they can't sign up for a clothing appointment that day because they have to get to work. Just hearing the pride in their voices, I can't tell you how happy it makes me. Unless they tell me where they're living, I never have the heart to ask where they're staying these days. Because I know the answer, as often as not, is going to be a shelter. 

A recent article on a type of homeless shelter (a.k.a. an employment shelter) dedicated to those with jobs in The New York Times brought the situation of the working homeless into relief. It chronicled the lives of those with the sorts of non-glamorous jobs held by people with few other options. For whatever reason - mostly being mired in poverty from the jump - many of these folks are just trying to eke out a living, not pursue some high-end professional career. But plenty are in jobs that one would consider solid middle class, you-should-be-able-to-afford-a-place to live jobs. 

They are line cooks, librarians, home health aides, bartenders, truck drivers, janitors and nurses. They drive ambulances and Ubers and work in construction and in concessions at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. They wheel teetering piles of Amazon packages into apartment buildings.

They work with children and adults with disabilities and often conceal their housing situation from their co-workers and clients.

Some work for the city or state: as cleaners and fare evasion beaters on the subways and buses, mental health counselors, exterminators in public housing, school teachers and police officers. (Source: NY Times)

And they're living in shelters that aren't like the shelters where you have to exit with your possessions in the morning, and queue up to get back in come evening. You can leave your stuff behind, and lock the door to your room. But they aren't exactly like home, either. 

On such shelter is the Blue Sky Residence in Queens. 

Who lives there?

A woman who works at LaGuardia, "directing travelers to their gates." She makes $22 an hour, but because of her work schedule and bus schedules, she has to walk part of the way along the side of a highway in order to get to work. She leaves for work at 4 a.m.

Another woman living there works the overnight shift at a Target for $19 an hour, with a buck extra for hours worked after midnight. 

Then there's the cab driver who picks up fares at Kennedy Airport. He's the son of immigrants - his father was a cabbie as well - who dropped out of college when his parents became ill and he became their caretaker, and the sole family breadwinner. Things fell apart, as they do, especially when you're living on the edge. His father died, covid crushed the taxi business, the family lost their home - the sort of modest home that working-class families used to be able to afford. 

About a third of the families living in New York City’s homeless shelters, not including migrants, have at least one adult who gets up and goes to work. But their salaries — some as high as $40,000 or $50,000 or more — are outmatched by the depth of the city’s affordability crisis and the severity of its housing crunch.

And, the system being the system, those salaries often mean that people make to much to be eligible for any sort of assistance: housing vouchers, public housing, food stamps. So they find themselves figuring out how to play the game. Don't take that overtime shift, don't take that promotion, because you'll lose whateer help you're getting and fall off the cliff. But you're trapped, big time. You have a couple of kids, so you need a two bedroom. But you take home $3K a month and the two BR's rent for $3K a month. You do the math. 

A no-win situation, that's for sure. 

Boston, like NY, also has a housing crisis, a shocking but not surprising situation when the working- and middle-class people who make the cities run can't afford to live there. The cities are hollowed out: the totally impoverished, through subsidies, can still hang in. And the rich, well, they'll survive. 

One thing we're sure of,
The rich gets richer and the poor get poorer.
In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun!

Well, true dat about the rich and the poor. But 'ain't we got fun?' Not really. 

Just depressing. 

That's the Woody Woodpecker Song

I don't imagine there are many Baby Boomers who didn't, at some point in their childhoods, use the Woody Woodpecker laugh. The online version of that laugh - which was the vamp to The Woody Woodpecker song - says that the laugh sounded like: Ho-ho-ho ho ho, ho-ho-ho ho ho.

But Woody's "ho" was not a hardy Santa Clausian "ho." It was more of a dirty laugh "ho", more like a "ha-ha-ha heh heh ha-ha-ha heh heh" kinda "ho." (Judge for yourself: Woody Woodpecker laugh.)

Imitating the Woody Woodpecker laugh served a dual purpose: it was just plain fun; and, as if just plain fun weren't enough, it was something that adults found ultra annoying. And Woody himself was a pretty annoying, abrasive character to begin with, so extra points for that.

Everyone loved Woody Woodpecker, and my sibs and I had a special fondness for him because there were woodpeckers in the woods next to our house, with plenty of wood to peck on. 

It's been a while since I gave woodpeckers in general, or Woody Woodpecker in particular, much thought. But then I saw a wonderful article in The Boston Globe that reported on a pileated woodpecker - the kind of woodpecker that Woody is - that's up to no good in the town of Rockport. 

Day after day, a pileated woodpecker has been smashing the side view mirrors on cars throughout the [Squam Hill] neighborhood. A rough count is about 20 mirrors, based on interviews with neighbors, but it’s hard to keep up because it’s still happening.

In one instance, the woodpecker cracked the windshield of a pickup truck while the driver was sitting inside. (Source: Boston Globe)

Residents are pushing their side mirrors in. They're swaddlng those mirrors in plastic bags and towels. This is no sweet little birdie they're dealing with. And there may be more than one of the avian miscreants out there. 

“This thing is huge, and it doesn’t sound like a normal bird, it sounds like a monkey in a tree,” said Devin Mock, who said he came out of his Squam Road house recently to find four of them on the windshield of his brother’s truck. “I’ve seen little woodpeckers before, but these suckers are gigantic.”

They may not exactly be gigantic, but pileated woodpeckers can run up to 19" long. (Tall?) Other types of woodpeckers, which are more common in Massachusetts than our feathered pileated friends, tend to be a lot smaller. (The pileated ones are roughly the size of crows while the other guys are closer in size to robins.)

Anyway, here's what/why is happening up in the quiet seaside town of Rockport, which is perhaps best known for being the location of Motif Number 1, a fishing shack that's been called the most often-painted building in America. As in painted by art students and amateur painters, not as in the walls are painted to keep the shack standing. 

...it is well-known that songbirds will mistake a reflection for a rival and attack, especially during spring mating season. And this is a bird-friendly neighborhood, with feeders everywhere and abutting the massive Dogtown Commons, a five-square-mile wooded conservation area that covers much of Rockport and Gloucester.

“It’s likely a single male bird, establishing territory, perhaps for the first time, and when they see a reflection in the mirror, they view it as a competitive male,” said John Herbert, the director of bird conservation at Mass Audubon. “And this is the time of the year when their hormones and testosterone are at peak levels for aggression.”

Turns out, most birds peck at windows. It's that the pileated woodpecker is big and macho enough to break glass. (Wild turkeys have been known to do the same in many Boston and suburban neighborhoods.) Unfortunately, there are still a few more weeks left to mating season. The upside, say the neighbors, is that they're all talking to each other about it.

Me? I'm just wondering whether the pileated woodpecker has a Woody Woodpecker laugh.

Ha-ha-ha heh heh, ha-ha-ha heh heh.