Dead and buried in a bookcase coffin

There was an interesting article in The NY Times a few weeks ago on the growing interest in home funeral-ing.

While I've never been to one, there's certainly nothing new under the full moon here.

My parents both told stories about home wakes held prior to the funeral Mass in the church.

Typically, my mother's featured story was grim.

As a very small child, she was brought by her parents to the wake of a woman who'd died in childbirth. Her baby died, as well. The woman was laid out on her bed, cradling the dead baby in her arms. Needless to say, my mother-the-child was quite upset about this, but in her immigrant family, kids got dragged to everything, and a home wake was no different than a house-warming party. Hard to fathom this occurrence in a day and age when grief counselors are brought into school when the first grade's gerbil dies, isn't it?

Typically, my father's stories were riotous tales of kids running around, of local characters - Shirty Connell is one name I recall - showing up for the midnight feast, and of the mayhem that would ensue when the boys ducked under the casket and pushed up the bottom so that the stiff appeared to be rising from the dead.

His one grim story - which I guess, in the grand scheme, trumps my mother's - was how he and his siblings sat at the kitchen table while the mortician who was preparing my grandfather's body kept walking by them to toss basins-full of my grandfather's blood down the toilet, which was just off the kitchen. My father was 11 at the time.

But these were "just" home wakes, and morticians took care of the details (like bleeding the corpse), and burial was in a cemetery.

According to The Times, some folks are going further back and doing things entirely on their own.

The article featured the funeral of Nathaniel Roe, 92, whose children washed their father's body, laid him out on his bed, then buried him on his New Hampshire farm in a coffin made by his son.

The article doesn't directly mention class here, but we do learn that the deceased was laid out "in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie."

So I think we can make the assumption that we're not talking po' folk here.

But old Ivy League Yankees can be frugal, and Mr. Roe was buried for $250, when the average cost of a funeral is $6K.

It actually sounds like it was a lovely sendoff, but I do have a couple of questions that weren't answered.

First, is "washing the body" a euphemism for other stuff you need to do to take care of precious body fluids - and I'm not just talking my grandfather's blood here. Now, I don't imagine I'll ever need to know this stuff, and I hate to be indelicate, but it did come to mind whether there's more to caring for the dead than meets the washcloth.

Second, what happens when the farm gets sold? Mr. Roe's burial spot doesn't sound like a marked off grave site. While I hope the Roes plan on keeping the 18th century farm in the family for a  good long while, I'd hate to think of someone buying the place without knowing about Nathaniel's absence/presence. Just think about someone doing a bit of excavating for the swimming pool and coming across a swatch of Harrod's tweed or Brooks Brothers tie.  (Of course, given the recent reporting on the Chicago cemetery fiasco - in which workers were exhuming old bodies and reselling the grave sites - there's no guarantee that there's anywhere you'll be able to call home for "eternity," at least not here on earth).

The home funeral has given rise to a new profession, by the way: death midwife. (No mention of death midhusband, but I assume you can be an M or F and do this.) Death midwives help care for the bodies and plan the funerals. One featured in the article, Jerri Lyons of Final Passages, also runs workshops. Her organization's tag line is:

"The Nature of Life includes the Eventual Miracle of Death, a rite of passage that deserves dignity and loving care."

I can get behind these sentiments, except for one single troubling word: miracle.

For the life (and death) of me, I can't think of anything miraculous about dying.

The article also introduced Chuck Lakin, of Waterville, Maine and Last Things, whose site is an excellent resource on home funerals, and who is a woodworker who makes multi-purpose coffins. These coffins, some of which are quite nice looking, can be used as bookcases, coffee tables, display cases or home entertainment centers. (This is before, we're talking here, not after.)

I have just gauged that our old Workbench bookcases are neither deep enough nor sturdy enough to act as coffins. If, when the time comes when Jim and I experience the miracle of death, I were planning on anything other than cremation and scatter, I would consider one of Chuck's creations. I'd probably go for the coffee table version. We can always use more storage.

Ashram to ashram

Well, out with the OMG, and in with the om.

It seems - at least to The New York Times - that "Hard Times are Jamming the Ashrams."

Hey, it's not for everybody, but if you want to meditate, practice hatha yoga, pore over spiritual texts, walk in the woods, and eat organic vegetarian meals that you help prepare, you can live at the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, for $3,000 for a year.

Which is where one pink-slipped Intel technician is riding out the recession. Steven Odnoha thought he'd only be there a year, but time flies when you're picking wild thyme, and he's coming up on his second anniversary.

There are a number of these retreats where you can live very cheaply in exchange for a couple of hours a day of labor "washing dishes, cleaning rooms or weeding gardens." They're reporting an up-tick in applications, full-houses, and a shift in their demographic. Back in the day, they were more apt to see writers and others with free-time kinds of lives. Now it's recent college grads and un-sized professionals.

You can't just walk in and plunk your $3K down and be done with it, of course:

The long-term residencies usually begin with a monthlong foundational program in which participants commit to a full schedule of classes and meditation. At the Himalayan Institute’s 28-day self-transformation program, the day begins with a 6 a.m. meditation and continues with a full roster of hatha yoga classes, breathing and relaxation practicums and about four hours of light chores, like making beds and chopping vegetables.

While this certainly has plenty of appeal to folks between jobs or those who are just plain old-fashioned burnt out, I personally wouldn't be that thrilled with "self-transformation program."  I'd be okay with the four hours of light chores, but I think I'd bog down on the relaxation practicums, unless they involved the relaxation practicums that I already enjoy - reading novels that don't take place in current times, eating Skinny Cow fudge bars, googling people I went to kindergarten with, and not turning on talking-head television .

Somehow, I don't think my practicums would make the Himalayan cut.

And, while I don't eat tons of meat, I'm sure I'd get an occasional jones for a hamburger or buffalo chicken wing. There's also no mention of wine. Hmmmmm.

I also didn't get much of a sense from The Times of how much of your day's your own there. I get the couple of hours of food chopping and toilet swabbing, but I'm not sure how much "me" time you get. And whether that "me" time can be doing Sudoku puzzles and watching re-runs of  the Bob Newhart Show vs. meditation and course work with some swami.

So I'm guessing that this is not a me kind of place.

Too bad, because I wouldn't mind a couple of years of $3K living  (plus health insurance, of course, mustn't let that lapse).

And I've got admit that the idea of being away from smartphones, dumbphones,and  incessant fretting about the economy and climate change for a while sounds pretty darned appealing.

Om mani padme hum.

Hey, Moe. (2-D love in Japan.)

The Sunday NY Times Magazine had a fascinating article a short while back on the phenomenon of 2-D "relationships" in Japan.

The story was so weird that part of me thought it was a spoof - or a "trend" identified based on the aberrational existence of one deeply disturbed individual.

In either case, a featured "character" in the article was a 37-year old technical support guy whose "girlfriend" is:

...a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric.

Nisan drives Nemutan to the beach, takes her on merry-go-round rides, and poses with her for photo-booth stickers. They've been together for three years now, and there's no danger that Nemutan will do what Nisan's former girlfriend did. She dumped him.

And if you're wondering how Nemutan does all this traipsing around without getting worn out - that's synthetic fabric we're talking here, so there's got to be some fading and pilling - Nisan has backup and replacement pillowcase covers.

He knows it’s weird for a grown man to be so obsessed with a video-game character, but he just can’t imagine life without Nemutan. “When I die, I want to be buried with her in my arms.”

Nisan is apparently not alone, but "is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters."

They are called 2-D lovers, and they're obsessional fans of anime, manga, and video games. Not all are as extreme a Nisan - "some are even married" to real people.

But "the experts" believe it stems from the hard times that young Japanese have with modern romance.

According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.

Gotta ask yourself which came first. Can you imagine having a real relationship, real friendships, real live sex with someone who's BFF is a figurine or a stuffed pillowcase.

2-D love even has a lifestyle guru, Toru Honda, who built his movement by railing against a growing social focus on good looks and money being the only thing that matters. Decent guys who had neither were being scorned in the romance market and turned to 2-D instead. Honda's schtick is that 2-D love is an I'm okay-you're okay kind of deal that shouldn't be looked down on. It's even gotten it's own slang name - moe - which, naturally, I found interesting.

In an ideal moe relationship, a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected.

There's even a sliding moe-scale, from those who prefer human women to the anime kind, on up to the 10's who, while they may not want to say it loud/say it proud, want to be left alone to live the life they want.

Moe subculture has spawned a substantial market of goods centered on the desire to live in 2-D, from virtual girlfriends to body pillows to busty desktop-size figurines to cafes with waitresses dressed up as video-game characters. Every day, 2-D lovers come from all over Japan to Tokyo’s Akihabara district just to scour specialty shops and attend fan events in search of new character girlfriends to add to their collections.

Some of the "girlfriends" are just cutesy, some are out and out erotic. All, it seems, have a disturbing kiddy-porn aspect which is not the surprising, given the Hello Kitty, schoolgirl look adopted by real young women there. And, yes, some of those "moes" do just what you think they would with those 2-D girlfriends - minus the pillow talk.

Meanwhile, Nisan would like to get married, but understands that this might not pan out .

..."'Look at me. How can someone who carries this around get married? People are probably wondering what psychiatric ward I escaped from. I would think the same thing if I saw me.”

Sad, weird, disturbing, sure. Particular to Japan, however? Maybe this manga-anime manifestation of it. But the more that people let themselves inhabit the virtual world - gaming, second-life-ing, watching porn, or just plain hanging around - the less time they have for the real world, and the taxing, messy, disheartening, exhilarating relationships you can have there.

Imperfect as it is, I'll take the real world most any day.

But I can sure see how a lot of wounded individuals, feeling the harsh rejection by "the market" that demands perfect everything - looks, patter, wealth -  take refuge in another world entirely. Unfortunately, the more time they spend in it, the less likely they are to ever wend their way out of it.

No, everybody doesn't have to live the same sort of life, and there should be room enough on the "lifestyle continuum" to tolerate a fairly wide latitude when it comes to 'do no harm' choices.

Still, hard not to find 2-D love sad, weird, and disturbing.

'I'm Spartacus' - or, why don't the boys of summer just man up about using PEDs

Like most Red Sox fans, I was dismayed, but not shocked, to hear that David Ortiz was on the list of 100 or so MLB players who tested positive for use of performance-enhancing substances in 2003.  This list is a part of a supposed to have been destroyed, supposed to have been sealed, document that MLB was using to gauge the extent of PED abuse in baseball. To date, only a few names on the list have been leaked: Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz.

The Red Sox are a lightning rod organization. In large part their storied and tortured history, and their storied and glorious present, have made them media darlings in some quarters. This - plus the growing reputation of Red Sox fandom - once so hapless and lovable - as a bunch of obnoxious a-holes, second only to fans of the Yankees (or, perhaps, tied). Thus the "news" that the personable, huggable even, clutch slugger of the Red Sox successful 2004 and 2007 seasons was, at least in 2003, juiced - along with his compadre, Manny Ramirez - is prompting many to call for a re-call of the Sox championships. 'They're tainted," we hear. "Send in the asterisk."

Who knows? It could conceivably turn out the Red Sox were prime offenders, with proportionately more players on the "caught list" (which is by no means the same as the "used list"). 

It's also conceivable that - at least when it comes to the bad-substances-of-the-day - it's mostly a Dominican-player problem, since from what I read, you could buy PEDs in the DR as easily as you can buy candy.

"Hey, I'll have a couple of Baby Ruths,  some Skittles, and why don't you throw in some fun-sized packages of testosterone."

By the way, as for the list, it's assumed that many of those on it were using over the counter "supplements" that were okay at the time but have since been banned, and not getting injected with illegal steroids.

But if you listen to the 'in the know' scuttlebutt, it would be a bit naive to believe that it's all guys with a DR connection, or that there's any professional baseball team that has not been at least a bit "tainted." (And not just by the PEDs of the "steroid era", but by the use of whatever the uppers-of the-time were that, over the years, held a lot of ballplayers together through the long seasons these guys play. Let the team that is without sin cast the first box of syringes or bottle of greenies.)

Truly, I can't even keep track of what was legal, what was banned when, but my hunch is that there were so many players doing something during the 1990's and 2000's that the playing field was likely evened.  All teams likely had some combination of clean guys, gonzo juicing guys, occasional user/abusers, and morons who didn't look to closely into what was in that tasty, lip-smacking- good shake that made them so darned invincible at the plate.

And, yes, as a fan who truly enjoys the skill, drama, excitement, boredom, beauty, and poetry of baseball, I'd prefer it if the boys of summer weren't plying themselves with drugs that are doubling the size of their already big heads, and may kill them prematurely.

But those are their bodies, not mine, and the only reasons I can think why performance enhancing drugs should be banned from sports are, first and foremost, that kids will try this at home, and can damage themselves if they emulate unhealthy behavior; and that I'm not all that keen on the idea that these guys are killing themselves, at least indirectly, for my entertainment. (I wouldn't go to a bullfight, cockfight, dogfight, or prizefight, but this is okay?)

Mostly, though, the stakes are so high in terms of the loot these players can demand for their performance - for marginal players, it's the difference between languishing in the minors for chump change, or getting a shot at the bigs, where the minimum wage is $400K; for the super-stars, it's the extra millions in endorsements and merchandise sales - that there's every incentive to work any angle you can.  And once one substance is banned and tested for, there'll likely be a new one to replace it.

We also can't get away from the fact that it's so much a part of the greater culture now. College students with their Adderall to stay sharp - so much more effective, I hear, than the No-Doz of my college days. Memory-enhancers for us aging boomers, which I'm probably only a few senior moments away from looking into. And don't even get me going on Viva Viagra.

But I don't think that baseball can get past its drug problem unless more of the players are willing to come forward and 'fess up.

We need more than Jose Canseco, the egoist tattle-tale who wrote a couple of books that aired the problem, and who is scorned because, well, he's such an egoist tattle-tale. We need more than the "good guys" like Andy Pettit who at least didn't try to BS his way out of it when he was caught. We need more than marginal players like Bronson Arroyo to say that, yeah, well, he bought andro at GNC and took amphetamines.

What the sport really needs is for all of these guys to come out of their drug cabinets and admit what they did during the good old days when everyone was doin' it, doin' it, doin' it.

Come on, boys of summer: man up!  Mark Mcgwire, Roger Clemens, come on down off your high horses. Nomar, Derek, Albert - maybe you did, maybe you didn't. (And I really and truly hope that this trio didn't.) Come out, come out, wherever you are. Just don't bullshit us.

It really won't be like Spartacus. You're all not going to get crucified with Kirk Douglas alongside the Appian Way.

Right now, there are an awful lot of guys playing baseball, or recently retired, who have fear in their eyes - fear that they'll be outed.

But there's also something in the eyes of the fans and that's suspicion. Until we know who's guilty, it's pretty much guilt by association.

And, much as I love the game of baseball, it does take some of the joy out of watching it for me.

So man up, you big babies. Don't leave skinny little Bronson Arroyo standing out there on his own.

Trina, Trina, Trina: suing Monroe College may NOT be the best way to find a job

Trina Thompson graduated, with a BA degree, from Monroe College in the Bronx. She's been out since April, and she hasn't yet found a job in her major, information technology.

So Trina's doing what no one who really and truly wants a job in this day and age should be doing: she's suing the college to get back the $70K she spent on tuition.

Trina, Trina, Trina.

I understand that you're mad as hell.

You no doubt worked hard for that BA, and you've no doubt got some loan payments hanging over your unemployed head.

Whatever Monroe College admissions and career counseling actually said to you, what you no doubt heard was 'when your come out of Monroe, you'll have a job."

But you don't, so you're pissed.

And if you're not going to have an income, you might as well have a little walking around money, so you want your $70K back.

Trina, Trina, Trina.

This is probably not a very good idea on your part.

Because, in this world, before anyone gets hired they get googled. They get bing'd.

And when they google and bing you, the first thing they see is not going to be your smiling face on Facebook. It's not going to be the article in the college news about the Let's-Help-Little-Kids-and-Old-Ladies volunteer initiative you spearheaded. It's not going to be about the bank deposit satchel that you found on the sidewalk returned to the business that dropped it, and refused any reward. It's not going to be about the IT Stars of the Future Scholarship you won.

Now, I obviously made these things up, but there may well be plenty of stuff about you on the 'net that's positive. But I don't know - and neither do any potential recruiters - because all that's on page one is that you're suing Monroe College.

Trina, Trina, Trina.

If I were an IT hiring manager, or an HR recruiter, here's what I'd be telling myself  - and it wouldn't be, 'hey, here's someone with the guts to push back on the establishment'. It'd be, 'I wouldn't touch this candidate with a barge pole. What if someone looked cross-eyed at her? What if we had to lay her off? She's obviously the litigious type. Gosh, she'd probably sue us. I think I'll take a pass on this application.'

Trina, Trina, Trina.

Maybe someone told you that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe someone told you that the best way to get a job in this economy is to separate yourself from the pack, to get yourself known. Maybe suing your college struck you as a nifty way to differentiate yourself from job-seekers who are putting out clever little YouTube's, or standing in Times Square on stilts handing out résumés.

But there's positive differentiation, and there's negative differentiation. And I'm afraid that this falls under the category of negative differentiation.

Sure, there may be someone out there who will, in fact, give you a job because of this. Maybe there's a disgruntled Monroe alum who feels he or she was screwed by the old alma mater. Although I'm going to venture a guess that Monroe College is not all that supremely picky about acceptances, maybe it's someone who didn't get in - or who got kicked out for some reason -  and years later, is still pissed off. Maybe it's someone who's never heard of Monroe College who just decides to give you a chance. So maybe you do get a job offer.

Guess what?

The next time you look for a job, people are still going to be bing-ing and googling. And they're going to find this vapor trail that your law suit is leaving behind. And it's still not going to make you look good.

Trina, Trina, Trina.

You graduate smack dab in the midst of a mighty recession, and there's nowhere near as much hiring going on as there was when you started out to get your degree.

This is a rotten thing to have happen to anybody. And I'm a good enough guesser to guess that you particularly find that it's a rotten thing to have happen to you.

But there might have been better career moves you could have made - and it may not be too late for some of them.

Yes, you may feel that you've burned your bridges with Monroe placement, but if there's anyone there who you think could give you some constructive, non-defensive, non-pissy help, you might want to give that person a holler. Surely, there must be someone at Monroe who can talk to you about improving your résumé, about alternative jobs while you wait out the recession, about volunteer positions that might give you some good, résumé-building experience.

If there's no one at Monroe, then try getting some career counsel from someone older (and, perhaps - just perhaps - wiser) who's in your profession, who can give you some advice - and who may even let you piss and moan about the injustice of the royal Monroe College job placement screw job you've suffered through. (Try keeping the p & m to a minimum, however.)

Whether you have someone to talk to or not, try looking in the mirror, and ask yourself honestly if any of the situation you've found yourself in could possibly be about you. Did you do well in your studies? Do you have any relevant experience? Were your references strong? Is it possible that you give off a kind of chip on the shoulder, hostile vibe?

Maybe the answer to the first three questions is 'yes', and to the final question is a decided 'no.'

So maybe you are just a victim of a crappy economy.

But I don't think suing Monroe College - with the attendant bad publicity - was a good idea. (By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, the person who told you that there's no such thing as bad publicity is wrong.)

Anyway, now that you've done your see-you-in-court thing, the genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

But you really do need to see if you can make it so that good stuff surfaces on Bing and Google before the 'sue the bastards' stuff does.

Check out the folks at Brand-Yourself. They specialize in creating a positive web identity. I don't know if they can carry off a 'new you', but if anyone can help you on this front, it's them.

Another alternative is to start putting out 'only kidding' information. Speak with anyone who'll interview you, get on all the online articles and blogs ranking on you and make some comments. Twitter: you can absolutely say 'only kidding/whaddaya think, I'm crazy' in fewer than 140 characters.

Say that you really didn't intend to sue your college, but were just trying to expose the plight of recent grads who can't find work - yourself in particular. Make a point that all publicity is good publicity - just don't make it on my blog, because I don't think it's true, at all, at all.

Good luck with the job search!

I hope it works out better than the law suit, which I'm guessing goes nowhere. And even if it does pay off, that $70K - which may look like a fortune t0 you right now - isn't going to last very long.

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

Source: AP article on boston.com.

Tip of the mortarboard: My sister Trish, who did not sue her college when she got out, even though she had to find her first job without any help from college placement, thank you.

You say blighted to-may-to, I say blighted to-mah-to

One of the great pleasures of New England summer is experiencing those few brief shining moments in August when we have native corn on the cob and tomatoes.  When I still had a car, I would make an annual pilgrimage to the farm stand on Route 9, near Breezy Bend, outside Worcester - Sujan's? Sujin's? Sugean's?  Leicester? Spencer? - for a dozen ears of corn and a few pounds of the tomatoes that would provide the centerpiece for the world's tastiest sandwich: BLT, with or without the B.

Alas, this year's New England tomato crop is coming a cropper, thanks to an ultra-rainy summer, and the blight. The same blight that, in the 1840's, turned the Irish potato crop into suppurating black ooze. Since the Irish were so dependent on their praties as a dietary staple, a dying crop meant a dying populace. The Great Famine - An Gorta Mór - killed a  million or so Irish outright, through starvation, and forced another million onto ships for Amerikay.

My ancestors were not among them. Somehow - luck, pluck, or location - they managed to hang on, and didn't emigrate until the 1870's.

Not to say that they weren't impacted. I'm quite sure that least some of them were.

When PBS ran their Irish in America series some years back, there was a scene that showed the ration card of one Patrick Rogers of Roscommon, who was signing up for the 1840's version of food stamps to keep his family from starving.  As Roscommon is the home turf of the Rogers family, Patrick was likely related. (As far as I know, there are no Protestants in the family tree, so I don't believe that Patrick was a soup-er, i.e., one who converted from Catholicism to ensure that the Protestant missionary ladling out the free soup drew from the bottom of the pot, and didn't just skim the surface.)

Fortunately, no one will be dying of starvation, emigrating, or converting to Protestantism because the New England tomato crop is dying.

Still, what with the wet and the overcast, it's been a bummer enough of a summer, without denying us the meager joys of those few weeks when lush red tomatoes, still smelling of earth and sun, came our way.

But wait - as the late, loud Billy Mays would say - there's more.

It seems our tomato crop is dying at least in part because of cheapo-depot plants purchased at Walmart and Home Depot. (As if we needed another reason for fearing and loathing big box stores!) Blight-bearing plants get planted, blight-bearing spores go airborne, and the fungus is among us.

While both organic and non-organic farmers are hit, it's the organics who suffer the most, since they won't use the potent blight-be-gone chemicals that the non-orgos will resort to.

So, the organic farmers, who - and I'll go out on a bit of a limb here - didn't buy their seedlings from Walmart, get infected by their neighbors who did. Meanwhile, the Walmart gardeners are, I'm guessing, at least marginally more likely to use skull-and-crossbones labeled fungicides to salvage their crop.

I call double no fair for those organic farmers.

Damn!

We suffer through 10-11 long months weighing the tomato options:

• Pink, fibrous TINOs (Tomatoes In Name Only) packaged in cellophane-covered plastic trays
• Grape or cherry tomatoes -  fine in salads not much on a sandwich
• Pricey hydroponic and/or imported tomatoes that taste okay, but are not quite the same as native

Only to find we may have to wait another year to sink our teeth into a prime, juicy, local tomato.

Okay, it's not exactly An Gorta Mór. But, apparently, there was another term the Irish used for the famine - at least according to Wikipedia, and I can't remember the last time they let me down. It was An Drochshaol, The Bad Life.

Sure, it's a just a minor disappointment, and I would never use caps to describe this summer of our tomato discontent.  But, if this isn't the bad life exactly, it's sure not the good life we were all hoping for with our August tomatoes.

It's such a disappointment, I'd almost consider becoming a Proddie for a tomato sandwich.

Hostess-san with the Mostest-san

I was completely intrigued by a recent NY Times story on Japan's hostessing profession.

Hostesses work in gentlemen's clubs, where they serve drinks, bat their eyes, make non-sexual nice, and in general pay all sorts of fawning attention on their customers - all for a pretty penny. (Pretty yenny?)

Hostesses - mostly young women whose lack of education, and general lack of opportunities, lands them in low-paid, dead-end jobs, but increasingly women who might have other opportunities, but now regard hostessing as a desirable, even glamorous, profession - can make $16 an hour or $16K per month, depending on their popularity and the caliber of the establishment where they work. Even the low end is more than most of them could make elsewhere.

Fawning over men has never been my cup of saki, but if a working girl can make $200K a year without being a working girl, why not?

Especially with a major recession on, the old view of hostessing as a non-respectable, one step remove from prostitution has fallen. The profession is now seen as a legitimate one.

In a 2009 survey of 1,154 high school girls, by the Culture Studies Institute in Tokyo, hostessing ranked No. 12 out of the 40 most popular professions, ahead of public servant (18) and nurse (22).

I have no idea whether the Culture Studies Institute is the equivalent of Boston Latin (i.e., an elite academic school) or Inner City High with gangs roving the halls and a drop out rate of 80%. But in either case, it's interesting that hostess surpasses public servant (bor-ing) and nurse (ewwwwww) in popularity.

But why not?

There's not just the big bucks to be earned. There's the fact that hostessing is seen as a gateway profession.

Yes, I'm sure that the gates swing in both directions, and that some of them move into touchy-feely fee-based services for gentlemen.

But some of the hostesses have attained star status. One ex-hostess has been elected to the Japanese Parliament. Some are working their way through college, or saving to start their own business. As one young woman observed, this is a profession for the young.  And there have been true "breakout" hostesses:

Young women are drawn nonetheless to Cinderella stories like that of Eri Momoka, a single mother who became a hostess and worked her way out of penury to start a TV career and her own line of clothing and accessories.

“I often get fan mail from young girls in elementary school who say they want to be like me,” said Ms. Momoka, 27, interviewed in her trademark seven-inch heels. “To a little girl, a hostess is like a modern-day princess.”

Well, those seven-inch heels may scream 'modern day princess', but I generally think of a princess as the pampered, not the pamper-ee.  And I'm betting that the average Japanese businessman falls a bit short of the standard definition of Prince Charming. Still, the hostesses do get to wear fancy dresses - if not puffy pink ballgowns. And, unlike geisha, they don't have to paint their faces white, play the shamisen, and live in a geisha house. (Okay, I admit, I had to look that shamisen thing up: it's three-stringed instrument that looks sort of like a tiny banjo with an elongated neck.)

Princess of no, hostessing is taking off:

Popular culture is also fueling hostessing’s popularity. TV sitcoms are starting to depict cabaret hostesses as women building successful careers. Hostesses are also writing best-selling books, be they on money management or the art of conversation.

A magazine that features hostess fashion has become wildly popular with women outside the trade, who mimic the heavily made-up eyes and big, coiffed hair.

According to the hostesses, who often end up doing all night par-taying with their customers, the biggest downside is the all night par-taying: drinking too much, smoking too much.

“It’s nice to be independent, but it’s very stressful,”[Serina]Hoshino said, speaking through a cloud of hair spray and cigarette smoke.

Drinking, smoking, hair spray, seven inch heels, all-nighters, and pretending that every word that falls from the lips of a drunken businessman is just fascinating. Talk about a profession that won't age well.

It was only an RV, in old LAX...

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was Blue Willow, a novel about a girl whose father was an itinerant farm worker.

Daydreamer that I was (and probably because the protagonist was, like me, a blue eyed blonde), I spent plenty of time imagining that I was that little girl, and what it would be like to live in a camp for farm laborers.

Fortunately, I haven't had to find out. No Hoovervilles, no Tent Cities, no shanties in old shantytowns for me.

Lap of luxury, maybe not. But lap of solid, middle class comfort, indeed.

These days, there are plenty of folks, mostly men, who are living away from home - under fairly poor conditions - so that they can support their families, and not spend much of their earnings in the process. (In fact, a few weeks ago, I blogged about one such fellow.)

The LA Times reported recently on an encampment that's grown up in a parking lot at LAX, where:

100 trailers and motor homes that form a colony of pilots, mechanics and other airline workers.

Some of the fellows live relatively grandly - Jim Lancaster, a pilot for Alaska Airlines, whose "real home" (and wife) are in Washington State has a luxe rig known as the Chateau.

It has satellite TV, plush carpeting and walnut-stained cabinetry.  Lancaster's wife, a teacher in Seattle, likes the Chateau as well and occasionally flies down on Friday nights to explore Los Angeles over the weekend.

Lancaster is in his particular spot because of the financial troubles that Alaska Airlines in particular, and the airline industry in general, are experiencing. He was downsized from captain to first officer, losing 20% of his pay and his close-to-home assignments in the process.

On the other end, a younger, more junior Alaska first officer, Todd Swenson hangs his pilot cap in a small, cramped "metal box", complete with bathroom the size of an airplane lav. (All the comforts of work...)

The trailer's windows are blacked out with foil and brown paper bags so Swenson can sleep during the day. To muffle the constant din of aircraft, he bought a white-noise machine -- a small tape player with a recording that sounds like a washing machine.

For Swenson, living away from his wife and son is "the cost of being a pilot today."

And lest you think it's just employees of mutt, regional airlines who are suffering, Doug Rogers was a $35 an hour United Airlines mechanic working in Salt Lake City, where he still makes his "home home." Now he's a $30 an hour who, for the last seven years, has called a "26-foot camper built on a Ford truck chassis" his home away from home.

Sure the commute's ideal, but living in a camper, in a broiling parking lot, on the tarmac, with the constant roar of jet engines, can't be any picnic. But it's only $60 a month to rent a space, and there's a waiting list with 10 names on it.

The airport screens applicants. A few years ago, a couple of working girls - camper followers, as it were - moved in. There were other undesirables, including a few who tossed human waste on the pavement. (Apparently there were no "gutter your human" signs around. And perhaps no gutters, either.)

The bad parking lot dwellers were forced out, and the airport now has rules against what one might consider the potential niceties of camper life: no lawn furniture, no barbecues, no parties.

In many respects, of course, it's completely depressing to think of people living under such conditions.

Just the thought of no shade, no green, and all that shimmering jet fuel makes me twitch.

And don't get me going on race-to-the-bottom wages.  Sure, I want to pay $79 plane fare (round-trip) to somewhere far away, but I really would be happy to pay a few bucks more so that a first officer like Todd Swenson could make more than $70K a year to co-pilot a plane.

But there is something rather fun-nish about this. Maybe not swinging bachelor pad fun, but these campers are certainly the ultimate man-cave, no?

And there's definitely something just a tad bit noble about someone living in a crummy little sweat box so that his family can live better somewhere else.

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And a wiggle of the bi-plane wings to my sister Trish, who pointed this story out to me.

Warning: UR TXTing may be hazardous to my health :(

If it's not exactly OFFICIAL, it's now at least official:

The first study of drivers texting inside their vehicles shows that the risk sharply exceeds previous estimates based on laboratory research — and far surpasses the dangers of other driving distractions.

Virginia Tech installed cameras in long-haul trucks. What they found was that:

...when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.

Forget the question about whether the drivers knew they were being observed or not - which you'd of thunk might have gotten them to text more cautiously at least.  A 23 times greater chance of a crash when texting? OMG.

Naturally, it was pointed out in the article I saw in The NY Times that most of us are not cannonballing down the highway in rigs that can't stop on a dime. (Speaking of which, am I the only one who's shocked when some knucklehead cuts in front of a loaded semi on a downgrade?)

But a simulated test done by the University of Utah with college students - presumably the most ardent, adept, and trigger-thumbed members of society - showed that texters were eight times more likely to get in an accident than non-texters.

(Studies of cell phone use, by contrast, show consistent - but less horrific - risks among those talking (1.3 times more likely) or dialing (three times).

Only 14 states outlaw texting, but it seems - IMHO -  like the time has come for the other 36 to hop on board. (My .02 anyway.)

Texting isn't going away - The Times reported a tenfold increase in the last three years. Last December, US phone texters served up 110 billion messages. As more and more people start using smartphones - with their handy-dandy keyboards - things are only going to get worse.

One of the most disturbing aspects of all this is that, while the vast majority of drivers acknowledge that texting is dangerous and unacceptable, 21% have done it anyway. (And if you go by age, 50% of those 16-24 had done it.)

The Times article went on to quote a 22 year old on the subject. (I've withheld the kid's name here. He just got out of college, and he's likely going to have a bad enough google problem with prospective employees over his throwaway line without me adding to it.)

Anyway, our man likes to text because "it's convenient," and he prefers it to a phone call. (Who needs to speak in real sentences, and hear the inflection in someone's voice, when they can say it with emoticons?)

“I put the phone on top of the steering wheel and text with both thumbs,” he said, adding that he often has exchanges of 10 messages or more. Sometimes, “I’ll look up and realize there’s a car sitting there and swerve around it....I’m pretty sure that someday it’s going to come back to bite me,” he said of his behavior.

Well, Mr. X, here's my problem.

It's just as likely that your desire to let your GF know that there's NADT up with you, WU with her, MUSM, is going to bite me, or some other innocent bystander/bydriver, as it is to bite you. Which, if the bite is fatal, would be quite sad for your friends and family, but will not exactly be undeserved.

Now that I think about it, I'm guessing that I'm at greater risk of being killed by a texting driver than I am by a drunken driver, since - carless in the city - I'm rarely on the road at night.

(And, by the way, when I am on the road, I will occasionally make or take a phone call, which I am trying not to do unless I pull over or am stuck in traffic. I cannot conceive of sending or reading a text message while a car I'm driving is in motion.)

Sorry, Mr. X, your "convenience" matters more than someone else's life?

UGTBK, you selfish little twerp.

"Seven Little Girls" was a novelty song when I was a kid. In the song, the driver of the car was miffed because he had seven cute girls in the car, but they all wanted to stay in the back seat making out with Fred. (Ah, those were the days when seven teenaged girls and one teenaged boy could actually fit in the back seat of a car. Oh, those boats of yesteryear. Not to mention that it was a kinder, gentler time, and no one but no one would have thought of this little scene as an eight-way.)  The chorus, as I recall, went:

Keep your mind on the driving,
Keep your hands on the wheel,
Keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead.
We're having fun, sitting in the back seat,
Hugging and a-kissing with Fred.

Time to resurrect this tune, and take it from a 45 RPM single to an iTunes download.

You want to text?

Be my guest.

Just go sit in the back seat to do it, why don't you?

Haul of Fame

Over the weekend, the Red Sox' Jim Rice, alongside Rickey Henderson, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame is a wonderful place, and if anyone doubts the wonders and marvels of "the game," they have merely to browse the list of those few, those precious few, who have been inducted.

From Three Finger Brown to Rollie Fingers. From Elmer Flick to Ford Frick,   (Okay, Ford Frick didn't play, he was an executive. But Elmer Flick to Ford Frick sounds better than Elmer Flick to Frankie Frisch  - a.k.a. the Fordham Flash -  doesn't it?)

From the Goose Goslin to Goose Gossage. From Dizzy Dean to Dazzy Vance. From Catfish Hunter - does one really hunt catfish - to Cool Papa Bell. From Heinie Manush to Cum - short for Cumberland - Posey.

And it's just too darned bad that slugger Harmon Killebrew never faced pitcher Burleigh Grimes. (I just love both of those names.)

Just reading the list of members makes me want to stop by on my next drive to Syracuse. A bit out of the way, but still...

Of all the major sports, baseball is the one where the present is most closely enmeshed with history.

And Major League Baseball is past master at exploiting it all.

Maybe it's because professional baseball has just been around for so darned long, and there's so much more history to exploit. whatever it is, in general, fans don't get as weepy-eyed about NFL or NBA legends like they do about baseball greats of yore.

So the Hall of Fame is sacred ground.

And it's also lucrative ground for the legends who still walk among us.

Just how lucrative it is I learned from a Wall Street Journal article I read last week ("Haul of Fame" was their title, and I just had to borrow it.) In the article, they wrote:

... baseball nostalgia is a multibillion-dollar industry, and the 60 or so living Hall of Famers at its pinnacle are in a unique position to cash in.

Sure, most retired players make at least some walking around money signing baseballs, appearing at clinics, running camps, giving speeches, endorsing local companies and products, and doing community outreach/good will-ish things for insurance companies and banks.

But having the Hall of Fame seal, or, rather plaque, of approval can really up the take for the "marginal immortals", i.e., those not in the same league as mega stars like Hank Aaron.

For Goose Gossage, getting elected meant that the price of a speech tripled from the mere $7.5K to $10K he'd been commanding.

Well, nothing against Goose Gossage, but I've got to question the sanity of any marketing person who'd pay $30K to have him speak at their big customer event.

But what's good for the Goose, I suppose...

Anyway,

“‘HoF’ after a signature is the single best predictor of baseball price,” says Steve Verkman, proprietor of Clean Sweep Auctions, one of the country’s largest memorabilia dealerships. He estimates there are about 10,000 collectors around the world interested exclusively in Hall of Famer items, and many more general collectors who covet them. There is an active market in Cooperstown futures, and when someone unexpected is chosen by the Hall of Fame, prices go through the roof. “When Bruce Sutter went in, that changed everything for him,” Mr. Verkman told me. “The demand for his autograph increased a thousand-fold.”

It will be interesting to see if the annuities that Hall of Famers can garner - for marginal immortals, it can be in "'the low six figures'" - continues to be a draw for potential members when today's boys of summer become eligible. (This assumes that there will be enough of them out there who "played clean," without getting plumped up with steroids. Or whether the "boys on HGH" will be okayed when the time comes. So far, Mark McGwire is the most prominent steroid-implicated start to get stiff-armed by the voters. We'll see what happens when Roger Clemens hits the ballot in a couple of years.)

For now, however, the money really talks.

And to put that money in context,  the most Jim Rice ever made was $2.3 million in his last season in 1989. And that was after some early seasons when he was making $50K. These days, $10 million a year is no longer an eye-popping contract. The "minimum wage" is $400K, and the average salary is over $3M.  (Source: Baseball Almanac.) 

The contrast to earlier players is even more stark: Ted Williams, who retired in 1961 and was the last player to hit over .400, never made more than $100K a year.

The commercial benefits of Hall of Fame stature has had a couple of interesting side effects.

For one, ex-players now lobby aggressively to get elected  - some going as far as hiring political consultants. (Lobbying efforts by Jim Rice and his supporters certainly played a strong role in his election.) Another one may be that the H of F's Veterans Committee - all H of F-ers themselves - puts the brakes on electing "previously overlooked old-timers."*

In the words of Marvin Miller:

'Nobody wants to dilute the value of his stock.”

There article mentioned one lobby effort that's being run by the government of Venezuela. Apparently Hugo Chávez’s favorite player was Dave Concepcion, so the Venezuelan's are lobbying mightily to get him in.

Pink Slip to Dave Concepcion: He may be no Kim Il Jong or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but if I were you I'd want someone other than Hugo Chávez fronting my cause.

Meanwhile, even with all the side action with the $$$, I'm sure that it remains a special honor to get elected to the Hall of Fame that - if it doesn't actually mean a lot more than the money, still means an awful lot. Congratulations, Jim Ed. (You, too, Rickey. I always got a kick out of watching you on the base paths.)

______________________________________________________

*The traditional, and more prestigious, way to get into the Hall is to be elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America. If you don't make it in this way (and you can be on the ballot for a limited number of years), the other method is via the Veterans Committee.

e-smoke 'em if you e-got 'em

I have no idea how I missed this one - perhaps it's because I'm not a smoker - but I hadn't really been aware of e-cigarettes until my husband showed me an article he'd seen on the FDA's analysis of them.

The e-Surgeon General has not yet issued a warning that e-cigarettes can be e-hazardous to your very real health, but I'm sure that will be e-coming.

But first, the e-cig itself.

e-Cigarette manufacture Smoking Everywhere -  is that a terrible thought or what - seems to have post position when you go to the google.  According to their web site, an e-cigarette is:

...a non –flammable product that uses state of the art classy micro-electronic technology which provides smokers a real "smoking" experience without the fire, flame, tobacco, tar, carbon monoxide, ash, stub or smell found in real cigarettes.

Smoking Everywhere E-Cig offers smokers a tar-free way to enjoy smoking and the freedom to smoke most everywhere. The smokers still get their nicotine, but don’t get the side effects attributable to tar which contains real tobacco.

Gotta love that use of the word "classy" to define the technology underlying the e-cig. While I have certainly resorted to "world-class" on many descriptive occasions, I've never used "classy" in the B2B context. I will be looking for the opportunity, however. Perhaps someday I'll be able to describe a product I'm marketing as "world classy."

For now, classy e-cigarettes look like the real thing, more or less. They're lithium battery operated, and work by heating up a solution of nicotine in propylene glycol, which produces a mist that e-smokers ehale. The cigarette tip is an LED device that glows red, and the e-cig gives off fake e-smoke (that's supposedly neither first or second hand in terms of hazard). An e-cigarette costs $40-70, but that's pretty cheap if you consider how much a pack costs. (Not that I've looked recently, but $7 - 10 a pack sticks in my mind.) E-cigs come in flavors, the better to hook kids on them. (Way to go! Whatever happened to the chalky sugar "candy cigarettes", or the cardboard cylinders that blew talcum powder smoke?)

As for the claims of no side effects, I don't know whether Smoking Everywhere's product was on the FDA, but a lot of the e-cigs were implicated:

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday released an analysis of 19 varieties of electronic cigarettes that said half contained nitrosamines (the same carcinogen found in real cigarettes) and many contained diethylene glycol, the poisonous ingredient in antifreeze. Some that claimed to have no nicotine were found to have low levels of the drug. (Source of this para, and info on how they work and what they cost: LA Times.)

The Electronic Cigarette Association - you really didn't think they would be without a trade association, did you? - is countering the FDA report, of course:

“I’m a little shocked that the FDA would release a study that is so narrow in its scope and target a specific industry when there are a number of nicotine products on the market today not in the FDA’s crosshairs. Are they saying that those products and cigarettes themselves are safer to use,” said Matt Salmon, former Arizona Congressman and president of the ECA. “Our member companies have taken a responsible approach by ensuring that those who use their
products are well-informed about their products and to ensure that their products are not marketed or accessible to children.”

All I can say is a) where have we heard this before?; and b) why am I not surprised that a former congressman is in on this deal. (And I wrote this before knowing whether he's a R or a D. For the record, he's an R, but it certainly could have gone either way.)

We'll see how this turns out, but I'm guessing that e-cigarettes won't be any panacea to smoking-related problems. (Although if it gets rid of second hand smoke, that can't be a good thing. I do have to ask just what's in the fake smoke coming out of the e-cig. Do we really need more chemicals in the air?)

Still, if you're a smoker, it's hard not to see the attraction in being able to smoke and do so "healthily."

But there is, of course, something mighty weird about the e-cigarette.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if they came up with e-exercise? Or an e-hot fudge sundae? The e-glass of chardonnay. All pleasure, no pain. Ah, something really classy to look forward to.

Meanwhile, I guess that e-cigarettes - like the real thing - can't be advertised on TV.

If they were, we surely would have been bombarded by ads resurrected from the Golden Age of Television Cigarette Advertising.

Take an e-puff, it's springtime.

Tweet for Philip Morris!

e-Sold American!

I'd walk a virtual mile for an e-Camel.

It is hard, however, to imagine the Marlboro man, riding the range, looking for a place to recharge his e-cigarette, isn't it?

Sorry for your troubles (but thrilled with the hole-in-one)

When I went to check one of my many e-mail accounts the other day - this one over on AOL - a headline about the best miniature golf courses in the country caught my eye. As someone who enjoys a good round of mini-golf, I wondered if any of my favorites made the cut.

Alas, the wonderful course in Naples, Maine, with the beautiful replicas of things Maine - Portland Light, the Casco Bay Ferry - on each hole wasn't there. Nor was the nicely landscaped course in Eastham/Orleans on Cape Cod with the koi pond. It did give a shout out to the Pirates Cove chain, which is fun but hokey. I've played the one on the Cape a few times.

But it was an embedded link to a "mortuary-themed" mini-golf that really intrigued me.

Ahlgrim Family Funeral Services, in Lake Zurich and Palatine Illinois, has been in business since 1892.

But it took them three generations and more than 70 years to figure out that the dead space in the basement could be used for a mini-golf course, which is precisely what Roger Ahlgrim did in 1964.

It actually wasn't created to be an integral part of the funeral parlor, with people heading down stairs for a few holes after paying their respects, or where the bereaved family could kill some time between the afternoon and evening sessions of the wake.

No, there wasn't much to do in Palatine, Illinois in 1964, so Roger decided to build a community room, centered around a haunted-themed mini-golf course.

Over the years the miniature golf course took on a life of its own. By the time his children became school age, the basement housed a 9 hole miniature golf course, a full size shuffle board coarse [sic], ping pong table, bumper pool table and a foosball table made by Roger during his high school years.

(It's not clear whether the Ahlgrim logo, which includes a windmill, pre- or post-dated the mini-golf.)

More recently, they've added video games to the mix, as you can see here.

I don't know if Ahlgrim raised his family over the store, but what kid wouldn't want this in his basement?

We just had a warped old upright piano, a piece of plywood haphazardly balanced on an old table that we used for playing ping-pong, and a "strike zone" painted on the white-washed walls by one of my brothers so he could practice his pitching. But our cellar was large enough for tricycle races, in which the big kids used the little kids trikes as scooters, and careened around screaming our lungs out. Wheeeeeee!

Unlike the Ahlgrims', our cellar wasn't at all alluring.

If being located under a funeral home isn’t special enough, Halloween makes the Community Room even more alluring.

Unfortunately, we don't get the scoop on what makes it even more alluring on Halloween.

Maybe some of the "guests" make a guest appearance?

Hey, it's a true haunted house happening! You get your bowl of cold spaghetti guts, your jello mold human brain, and - eke! - that cold and creepy old arm you just touched is actually the cold and creepy old arm of someone's late Aunt Mechtilde!

(Cue screams! Cue older girl saying, "Gross." Cue older boy saying, "Cool.")

In case you're wondering:

The Community Room is strictly never used during funeral business.

And if you're ever in the neighborhood, keep in mind that:

Families have planned a visit to us into their vacation and vacations have been planned around a visit to this unique Community Room. This room has as many memories as those made with the people we serve.

I went to high school with a girl who's family lived over their funeral parlor. I was at their house a couple of times, and it was very nice, although eerily quiet. (Maybe there was an "event" on the times I was there.)

Anyway, there's no reason why perfectly good space should go to waste, so I'm all in favor of the Ahlgrim Community Room.

And, let's face it, death is as much a part of life a mini-golf is. Maybe even more so.

George Clooney, turnaround guy. (What the Croc?)

Rumors of Crocs impending bankruptcy have been lurking for months.

In fact, the noise has been as persistent and ominous as the tick-tock from the alarm clock in the belly of the crocodile that stalked Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

The economic downturn. The inevitable boom-bust of a trendy product once the flash mob is on to the next. The problem inherent in a product that just doesn't seem to breakdown or wear out. (Sheeesh! Didn't these guys get the memo on built-in obsolescence?)

Were Crocs just a flash in the not-so-Peter pan?

But the decibel level increased last week when the Washington Post published an article suggesting that Crocs was doomed - an idea sharply countered by Crocs CEO John Deurden on his blog, not surprisingly.

What I found most interesting in the Post article, however, was this line:

Actor George Clooney has promised to work with the company, Duerden told analysts.

George Clooney, turnaround guy? Say what?

Now, I like George Clooney as much as the next gal.  He's cute and I've always been a sucker for the parochial school wise-guy with a heart of gold sort.  And even though I'd actually never seen the show ER when he was on it, I so missed Dr. Doug Ross when he left the hospital. I mean, who wouldn't?

But what, exactly, is George Clooney going to do for Crocs?

Is he going to wear them? Will this inspire others to wear them?

Other than the middle-aged women who are already wearing them, what demographic is George Clooney going to inspire?

I say this not because George is so ghastly long in the tooth. But he is pushing hard on 50, and I really don't think that George Clooney in Crocs is going to cause hip young shoe wearers, for whom Crocs have long jumped the fashion shark, to don this antimicrobial foam apparel.

I have never owned a pair of Crocs, but I am not one of those anti-Crocs-ists who takes the Captain Hook approach to them. I don't believe that their "existence is quite unforgivable."*

In fact, they always make me kind of smile - other when I see them on a grown man who is not in his garden or backyard, or at the beach, that is. (Call me a sexist, but I wasn't thrilled either to see a guy in Boston Common yesterday wearing turquoise espadrilles. Black or navy, maybe. Even striped, for a bit of Mediterranean je ne sais quois.  But turquoise. What was his girlfriend thinking? Must have been a couple of those darned hipsters.)

Turquoise espadrilles and men wearing Crocs in public-public aside, I'm personally in favor of any shoe that's comfortable. (And, by the way, those espadrilles did not look comfortable. Talk about no support.)

While others may swear at them, those who wear Crocs swear by them.

Thus, I hope they remain in business.

Since they don't seem to come in narrow widths - my foot being the one narrow part of my body -  I am unlikely to ever buy a pair for myself. Even if George Clooney knocks on my bedroom door and asks me to buy them, pretty please. (Well, maybe then.)

But I do defend the right of people - I guess even men in public-public - to wear them.

Hey, if I'm going to join the fashion police, first up will be women of a certain age and size wearing Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts.

As for George Clooney, I actually don't mind when actors step out of role for political or humanitarian reasons. But I don't like it when they take work that could go to less employable and wealthy actors. So I don't like to hear the voice of Martin Sheen or Michael Douglas coming at me on behalf of some product. I'd rather the work went to an off-off-Broadway type with a similarly comfy voice.

Same goes for George Clooney as a turnaround guy.

With all the unemployed MBAs out there, surely there's someone who can help turn Crocs around.

Maybe not. (Tick-tock, tick-tock.)

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

*"Captain Hook's Waltz", from Peter Pan.

The AK-47 is nice and all, but I'd rather have a sun roof

Despite what its Chamber of Commerce says, there's not much to put Butler, Missouri on the map.

It was the first city west of the Mississippi to have electricity.

It is, at least in the eyes of its C0fC , "known as the city where the Civil War began."  (I believe that, in the eyes of most, Charleston SC would be the first 'city where the Civil War began' that comes to mind.)

It's the gateway to Branson, Missouri's down-home, good clean livin' resort center. (I heard they have an anti-snob covenant, so I doubt I'll ever get there. If I want to see Andy Williams or Yakov Smirnoff perform, I'll just have to wait for them to come here.)

It is also the birthplace to science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. (Second most famous native (according to Wikipedia):  Adam Joe Appleberry - wonder if his folks were Bonanza fans and couldn't decide whether to name their son after the brainy Cartwright brother or the cute on. The no doubt have another son called Ben Hoss. You may be more familiar with the denizens of the Ponderosa than you are with Adam Joe Appleberry, but he's famous for saving some children in a day care center fire a few years back. Which is, of course, more than the fictional Cartwrights ever did for anybody.)

But if anything's going to really put Butler on the map, it is likely to be Max Motors, which - come August - will be giving away a voucher for an AK-47 assault rifle when you buy a new car. (Source: KCTV5.)

The reason for the voucher, by the way, is that old familiar spoilsport: liability.

"That way it separates you from anything bad that could happen," [owner Mark] Muller said. "We'll put it in the hands of professionals who do this every day."

Oh, yes, and we know just how good gun dealers are at figuring out who's going to go the proverbial postal and shoot up a McDonald's or a school.

Not that I am an anti-gun zealot. (Proof statement: Guns Don't Kill People.)

But, perhaps because I am a city girl, I don't make an automatic connection between guns and cars - other than police cars and the cars gang-bangers use for drive-bys.

As Muller says,

"We really are different than the big city dealers."

I do suspect there aren't a lot of gang-bangers in Butler, Missouri. And I know, I know: guns in cars don't kill people, people with guns in cars kill people.

Still, the Midwest is where all those meth labs are, isn't it?

It will be interesting to see how this promotion stacks up against last year's August promo, for handguns (or a $250 gas card option), which boosted business by 35 cars over the norm.

This year, Mad Mark wanted to up the caliber a bit.

"We already did handguns," Muller said. "Let's do something more fun -- AKs. You ever shot an AK? Oh, they're a blast."

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that a heart-of-the-nation car dealership would find it "fun" to traffic in the pinko-ish AK-47. Come on: a Russian assault weapon? Used throughout the Cold War by the Evil Empire? You'd think that this would be more in keeping with the Commie-loving, socialista Northeast or West Coast regions. But I guess our car dealerships would go in more for more elitist giveaways like a coupon for fromage, an autographed picture of Jane Fonda, or a white flag of surrender.

Anticipating my surprise, you can put the coupon - worth $450 - toward the purchase of an American-made gun, like the AR-15.

If nothing else, Mark Muller is a very savvy marketer, who's gotten publicity all over the beyond-Butler map.  And he will no doubt sell a lot of cars.

But what's he going to do next year to top the AK-47? Surface-to-air missiles?

Until then, all I can say is, Max Motors is giving new meaning to the term "riding shotgun".

The zebra mussel: from Russia, with love

One of the many great things about living is New England is our drinking water.

Turn on the tap, out it comes: mostly pure, mostly (blessedly) taste-free, mostly (nearly) cost-free.

So I was moderately disturbed to see on Boston.com the other day that Quabbin Reservoir, the source of Boston's finest - our tap water - is in danger of being invaded by a ghastly little sucker with the friendly little moniker of zebra mussel. Thar she blows - thanks to a picture that I found on the Lower Colorado River Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force site. (Aquatic Nuisance Species. Enough said.)

Sure, it looks like something that you might pick up on the beach and save (as long as the mussel had exited the shell)  - awww, it's so purdy - but:

The menacing zebra mussel species that has taken over a Berkshires lake has been found in a stream that feeds into the Housatonic River in Western Massachusetts, amplifying fears that the invasive freshwater mollusk could contaminate drinking water supplies and other waterways throughout the state.

What exactly can the zebra mussel do? Well, it can:

...wipe out native aquatic life, clog water intake pipes, and foul drinking water supplies.

It's been on the march in the US since the late 1980's. Or, rather, on the "cling" - it gets around attached to the bottom of boats, and it reached these shores, I gather, via the St. Lawrence Seaway. On the bottom or in the ballast water of some freighter or the other that had gotten infected in the Black or Caspian sea.

Commie bastards!

They couldn't win through economic, military, or moral superiority, so they sabotage us with the zebra mollusk.

They don't call them the Evil Empire for nothing.

And all we've done to get back at them is introduce McDonald's, blue jeans, and jazz. Talk about a trade imbalance.

W may have looked in Putin's eyes and seen his soul, but if he looked again, I bet he'd see zebra mussels.

What Massachusetts is doing to keep the mussel from spreading to Quabbin (our Quabbin! our beautiful Quabbin!) is to ban recreational boating. So that folks can keep fishing on Quabbin:

The Department of Conservation and Recreation will maintain a rental boat fleet at the reservoir, allowing some sort of boating and fishing to continue. But the private boat ramps at the reservoir will remain closed for at least 45 days, until the state can design a way to regulate private boating and make sure all boats that enter the water are cleansed.

I am quite happy to see this ban enacted - but I'm a little concerned. It's exceedingly easy for me to imagine some half-in-the-bag goofballs deciding that the ban doesn't really apply to them, that their boat is clean as a whistle...And away we'll go.

The Quabbin, fortunately, may not have the same biochemical makeup that would make it a receptive host for the zebra mussel. Still...

"The Quabbin is pretty close to our last wilderness in Massachusetts and I think we should keep it that way,’’ said Paul Godfrey, a member of the Friends of Quabbin Inc., a nonprofit group. ‘‘Zebra mussels are an incredible threat to that place. They tend to clog up pipes, and there are a lot of them — all the way to Boston.’’

The Quabbin Reservoir is quite beautiful, and I would really hate to see harm come to it.

Last winter, it was feral hogs rampaging through the country.

What's the f next?

Rent Party

There was an article on Boston.com last week on whether still-standing employees should pass the hat for those who are pink slipped.

Frankly, through all the lay-offs I've lived through, I had never heard of this practice. But apparently it's been done at least once.

Not that I'm any stranger to the office collection. Getting married, having a baby, voluntarily leaving the company for a new job or a new whatever... (No retirement parties in my past - no company I worked for ever lived long enough, or had old enough employees for that.)

So, we all chip in, buy a sheet cake, and give a gift.

I had very mixed feelings about these events.

If we were honoring someone I was friendly with to begin with, chances are I was going to give them a little something or other to mark the occasion, anyway. Thus, I often contributed a bit for the sheet cake, and brought my own gift.

If I wasn't that friendly with someone, well, I always threw a few bucks in anyway, if only so that I could claim a frosting-plus end piece of the sheet cake.

But I generally refused to be the one collecting, and always advised folks that, rather than go cubicle to cubicle, it was a better practice to get an interoffice envelope, staple a circulation list and a note about the occasion and the gift-ee on it, and pass it around. No one would have to know whether someone contributed or not. The only rule: when you pass the envelope on to the next guy, it better not have any less money in it than when you got it.

I just always hated, hated, hated the idea of anyone feeling coerced into donating for good old Bob.

Especially if they were someone who it was never going to come around for: they were already married, already had kids, were never going to leave, whatever.

Of course, most of the 'already have kids' got their due by selling whatever it was their kids were hawking at school.

Actually, I never minded these sales, since most folks just put an order sheet up on their door or in the kitchen, and didn't go door to door like a glad-handing vacuum cleaner or Bible salesmen. Low key was the key here.

My only objection to the 'help my kids' sales was that I don't particularly like scented candles and, once my mother died I had no one to give them to. That and the fact that those wrapping paper packages were always so chintzy, you might be able to wrap two earring boxes out of them.

The other office collection I never minded was the 'I'm in a marathon-bikeathon-walkathon for some good cause' shakedowns.

I pretty much always felt that if someone was willing to pedal a unicycle backwards up Mt. Washington, the least I could do was pledge 5 cents a mile.

Still, I absolutely understand that some people despise any intra-office chip-in deals.

As for someone passing the hat for those hit in a lay-off, I've never heard of this being done. Maybe that's because of the high-end industry I worked in, and the general existence of some type of (often pretty generous) severance package. Not to mention that most/all of the lay-offs I experienced were 'today's the day' events. You get your pink slip, you get your box, you get your waiver to sign, you get your buddy escort to your car. And you are gone, baby gone. No time to take up a collection: you were late-and-lamented within an hour or so.

What I have done for those who've been laid off is buy them lunch.

And what goes around does come around here: when I've been an unemployment check collecting, down in the dumps-ter, friends have sprung for lunch for me.

The article I read pretty much came down on the side of it not being a very good idea to collect for someone laid off: it might embarrass the person, it might embarrass the company...

But I can imagine circumstances in which it would be a good and welcome thing to do.

Think of someone laid off from a small company, in which everyone knew everyone else, and knew that there was little chance for severance, and knew - just knew - that someone could use a few extra bucks.

How's this any different that friends offering their sick or vacation days to help someone out who's exhausted hers? Or chipping in for a trip to Atlantic City for Harold in Accounting who's retiring after 45 years at Acme, Inc?

Maybe you don't do this for the EVP of Sales who's about to gun out of the parking lot in a bright red Ferrari. But you do do it for the guy who tooled and died next to you for 10 years. Or for Irma the receptionist who's been supporting her grandson.

Why not?

Same rules should apply: no pressure on anyone to contribute.

But why isn't this the mensch thing to do?

Maybe you give cash - so much more precious than any gift of the magi. Maybe, if the circumstances are presumed to be a bit less dire, you give a gift certificate to Borders, or Home Depot, or Target, or the (gag) Olive Garden, so that that laid-off someone can enjoy the sort of treat that goes out the window when you're collecting.

Why shouldn't the world be a mutual aid society?

I pretty much doubt I'll ever be there, but you really never know, do you? If I were in dire straits, I wouldn't have any problem if someone threw a rent party for me.

In fact, I'd probably be pretty darned pleased.

What's eaten in Vegas...

Surely, there is no one in this country who does not know by now that recession victims are everywhere (except, just possibly, North Dakota, and even they've probably got a late, lamented Pontiac dealership or two).

And lard on to the pure-play recession victims the many folks tangled up in a set of concurrent circumstances that may or may not be directly related to the recession:

• The newstand guy near the shell of Filene's who's not selling too many Globes or Heralds these days. He might as well start a sideline in buggy-whips.
• All of those who got Ponzi'd by Bernie Madoff or Sir Alan Stanford.
• Employees at my favorite Talbot's store - the one on Boston's School Street,  that just closed its bright, red door

There are several epi-centers for the recession, and, fortunately, I don't live in one of them. Because we don't have much of a manufacturing base (that went the way of the textile mill and shoe factory), nor did we get caught up in the construction BOOM, New England, while certainly ailing, is no Detroit. Nor are we, baby, a Las Vegas. (Just the thought of comparing and contrasting New England to Las Vegas and I ROTFLMAO. Hot, dry, glitz, lounge acts, and boomtown ain't never been us. Although I've been to Plimouth Plantation, and the Pilgrims may have liked lounge acts...)

Las Vegas is one of those places that has had a big hurtin' placed on it.

And some of that hurtin' is happening in the luxe restaurants that have been springing up in Vegas over the last decade or so.

I've only been to Las Vegas a couple of times, once on personal, twice for business.

The personal trip was part of a post-college, cross-country-in-a-Karmann-Ghia jaunt with my roommate, thirty-plus years ago. I think we stayed in Las Vegas one night, and I can absolutely picture the seedy, off-the-strip motel we stayed in. The highlight was when one of us opened a chest of drawers and found a rolled up pair of jockey shorts. What happened in the chest of drawers stayed in the chest of drawers.

I had no recall of where we ate, but we hadn't gone to Las Vegas with any plans to hit a big, fancy restaurant, as we had done at a couple of junctures on our trip. (In New Orleans, we had dinner at Antoine's, where the waiters were very nice to a couple of young Yankee girls, and I had Oysters Rockefeller.)

In the early 1970's, I don't think people went to Vegas to eat.

You went to gamble or for the shows.

We spent about $10 a piece playing the slots in some non-prime casino - probably the Golden Nugget - and walked in to a couple of others. Yawn.

We considered trying to get tickets for an Elvis show, but neither one of us was a particularly adoring fan, and it would have meant another night in the tawdry motel where, no doubt, we would have been tempted to check on those rolled up jockey shorts...

My two business trips to Las Vegas were in the past decade, when there were excellent - and pricey - meals to be had.

On one of these trips, most of our meals were in the hotel (MGM Grand) where Genuity's annual sales meeting was being held. On our one "free night," the VP of each group took their team out. Lamely, our boss took us to the Harley-Davidson Cafe. Vroom!

On the other business trip, I was attending the user group of a company that my company partnered with.

Lamely, on our free night, we had no customer to take out, so the four NaviSite attendees decided to go out together. The event was held in the rehabbed, and quite nice, Caesars Palace. So we decided to take the path of the least resistance and eat there.

Somehow, we ended up in their priciest restaurant.

Once we sat down and looked at the menu, I realized that, with no customer or prospect in tow, we really weren't going to be able to justify the expense.

So I told my colleagues - a product manager, a sales guy/partner manager, and a sales VP - that I would be happy, and not embarrassed at all, to get up and leave. But there was no way in Las Vegas that the sales VP was going to walk out of there.

As was customary, the senior person in a party paid - and, as a director, I was tied with the sales VP (which was an external title, internalized as a lowly director position).

No way I was going to pick this one up.

You wanna stay? You gonnna pay, pal!

Even eating and drinking modestly - one drink each, cheapish-side entree-only - we managed to rack up quite a charge.

I'm sure the sales guy bog'd up some fake customer.

The meal, by the way, was pretty good.

Thus ends my Las Vegas dining experiences.

And for many a luxe restaurant, luxe dining experiences have ended with a thud.

So sayeth a recent NY Times article, which reported that, once upon a time, waiters were bringing home $150K per year, waiting on big spenders known as "the whales."

A waiter from Rao's in Caesars - which may well have been where we supped - lamented the passing of $100 bills handed out to "everyone on the staff", and power tips on $12K and $15K meals. (I assure you, ours was nowhere near that. No, we were no whales - merely blowfish.)

Those were the days.

These days, there are over 5,000 food and restaurant workers without jobs.

Alas, Las Vegas got caught up not just in the construction boom, and the elephantine casino boom, but in the 5-star, celebrity chef boom, as well.

All kinds of multi-billion dollar projects - that included all kinds of multi-million dollar restaurants - have gone bust.

On the Strip, near Circus Circus, is the yawning emptiness of the $4.8 billion, 87-acre Echelon project, halted last August along with its 12 to 15 new restaurants, including those of chefs such as David Chang of Momofuku Ko in Manhattan.

(I just put that in there so you could read the name "Momofuku Ko". Whatever it sounds like, I gather that Momofuku means lucky peach, and Ko means son of.  By the way, if you break a reservation at their New York edition without giving them a 24 hour in advance heads up, you're out $150 per head. Harsh! No lucky peach for you!)

But the $8,5 billion CityCenter project is forging on, where celebrity chefs (the only one I'd heard of was the ubiquitous Wolfgang Puck) will celebrity chef-ize in 30 restaurants designed by celebrity architects like Daniel Libeskind.

The CityCenter project is the spawn of the no doubt apty-named MGM Mirage and Dubai World. (It's Dubai's world: we just live in it.)

The good news is that the project's "on". The bad news is that, with all those shiny new celebrity cheffed up restaurants, the existing celeb-chef boites will be cannibalized. (This is a Times word, but isn't it a wonderful one to use when writing about restaurants? What's in your sauce pot?)

If you're heading to Vegas - and who wouldn't be, in the dead of summer; it's a dry heat, after all - some of the swank restaurants have come a bit down market with "summer tasting menus," and other price-off options.

It's not clear how things will shake out in Las Vegas, restaurant-wise. Some places are still doing the same headcount, but with a lesser spend. Some say that things have "stabilized", others that "'being down 10 percent, that's the new flat."

One can assume that most of the celebrity chefs (and their architect friends) will somehow manage to withstand the "new flat."

For the waiters who've lost their jobs, or seen their incomes plummet, well under flat is the new reality.

As it is for the not-so-celebrity assistant chefs who actually do the chopping and sauteeing.

Hours have been cut back, cooks have found themselves demoted to lower end restaurants in their hotels, where they've displaced other cooks with less experience/seniority.

But it's not as if luxe-y restaurants have fully stopped luxe-ing.

The 300-seat Carnevino offers source-verified grass-fed beef, dry-aged for seven weeks in its own Las Vegas aging facility where computer chips control air flow and humidity.

And the 230-seat Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the Wynn flies in a ton of seafood every week from the Mediterranean, including soft-shell crabs from Venice and imperial red shrimp from Morocco.

(I guess if you're an imperial red shrimp, what happens in Morocco doesn't get to stay there.)

But there is, of course, some sentiment that what goes bust will eventually go boom again.

Robert Goldstein, one of the restaurateurs interviewed mentioned:

...a Life magazine cover article of June 20, 1955, that he had framed, depicting casino cancan dancers and proclaiming: “Las Vegas — Is Boom Overextended?”

He added: “Las Vegas is down a bit now, and right now the town is overbuilt. But do you really think all of this is going to fade away and go to black?”

Well, given the world's appetite for heat, glitz, and luxury, probably not.

Check, please!

There's a moon out tonight

Well, today's the fortieth anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon.

I was never a huge space buff.

Oh, sure, I watched in awe when Alan Shephard was shot into space, but my awe was equally due to the fact that someone had brought a TV into the classroom. Wow! That never happened. And Alan Shephard wasn't even a Catholic....

And I was interested enough when John Glenn spun around the earth a couple of years later.

Much later on, I did really like the movie The Right Stuff. (Still do.)

But I was never a huge space buff.

I think it ran in the family.

For a while, my father and my aunt had been the paper boy and girl for Dr. Robert Goddard, delivering the Worcester Telegram (or the Evening Gazette) to the Goddards house on Brookline Street. Goddard was a rocket scientist, inventor of the liquid fuel rocket, and the father of the American space program.

None of this inspired awe in my father.

No, most references to the good doctor came when we were taking a "spin" and went up Packachoag Hill. We'd pass the spot where Goddard had done his experimenting, and my father would remind us that the expression of the day when he was a lad was "as crazy as Dr. Goddard."

But on the evening of July 16, 2009, it was hard not to be in awe.

I came home from my shift as a waitress at the Big Boy's in Webster Square, tossed my greasy, reeking uniform - hideous brown cotton skirt, hideous white cotton blouse, hideous orange cotton bow tie - into the washing machine, entered my day's tips in the little red spiral notebook I kept, and sat with the rest of the family to watch "it" on our own little black and white TV.

(If my father wasn't interested in rocketry, he wasn't interested in having a colored TV, either. He'd always say he'd buy one when the color was as good as a Technicolor movie. Well, that didn't happen in his lifetime, apparently, but the family did get one shortly after my father died a couple of years later.)

I don't remember whether we were watching in real-time, or a re-run of the days events, but at one point, my sister Kathleen and I - was her boyfriend with us? what an interloper I was! - went out and sat on the front steps and looked up at the moon.

It was, as I recall, a soft July night.  Very, very black. Our front lawn - my father's pride and joy: who needed a color TV when they had a front yard to groom? - was soft, too. And very, very green. Not a blade of yetchy crab grass. Walking on it felt better than walking on velvet. We were probably drinking lemonade, maybe with grape-juice ice cubes, which turned the lemonade a very, very nice shade of pink.

We all looked up at the moon, as if, if we really looked hard enough, we could see Neil Armstrong setting the flag, and Buzz Aldrin doing whatever Buzz Aldrin did as he followed in Neil Armstrong's footsteps. (Figures, I'm sure we said, that Michael Collins - the Irish guy, and probably a Catholic - stayed in space while the two wasps got to toe the ground on the moon.)

But what was important, of course, was what Neil Armstrong said.

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Forty years one, we sure could use some of both, couldn't we?

Nabokov from the grave

Apparently, this is both old news and pre-news, but when Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions with his son, Dmitri, to destroy his final, uncompleted novel.

Now, while I bow to literary genius, I'm not a colossal Nabokov fan. But this is an interesting story.

And it comes to the fore because someone in the Writers' Room of Boston, my hangout, posted a 'what do you think?' question about it on our social media forum: the chalkboard the hangs over the toilet.

Anyway, having put aside any number of interesting Pink Slip topics that have presented themselves in the last couple of days - the threatened euthanasia of some animals at Boston's Franklin Park Zoo due to state budget cuts; Bernie Madoff's fleeting time served in the same Federal pen in Atlanta where Charles Ponzi did time; the well-timed share dumping of some Goldman execs - I'll offer up a brief musing on this topic.

Vlad the Father apparently had a last wish that Dmitri the Son burn the manuscript for The Original of Laura. After agonizing over his decision for a scant 30 years, Dmitri decided to save the work from its eve of destruction.  It will be published next fall.

Dmitri has supposedly claimed that the ghost of literary giant past appeared to him, giving him the okie-dokie to go ahead and let the presses roll.

Now Dmitri, who was his father's translator, was not in this to do the business thang and make a buck. Obviously, 30 years of agonizing is 30 years of agonizing, and whatever he makes off the sales of the book, well, probably won't amount to much payback if you figure it on a per annum basis.

What he has done is allowed the literary world - especially those Nabokov aficionados who actually know him for more than Lolita - to be able to read more of a brilliant, treasured author. It would have been a shame if his final, almost-but-not-quite-finished work had ended up being licked by the flames of a Duraflame log.

Now, I wouldn't make myself crazy or distraught over it, but if there were some remnants of my favorite writers  - the still with us William Trevor, Alice Munro, and a few others - lying around, I would be thrilled to be able to read them.

Last winter, The New Yorker published an end-of-life poem that John Updike had written while in the hospital a few weeks before he died. To me, it was a wondrous gift, showing us how a writer who'd always grappled with the ages of man was dealing with the final one.

Of course, Updike had written the poem for publication - he hadn't asked his executors to toss it on the fire.

Although the circumstances are different, I laud Dmitri Nabokov's decision to go ahead and publish his father's last work.

It is highly unlikely that Vladimir Nabokov's whatever has any idea whatsoever what's happening with the last words.

I'm sure that Dmitri Nabokov wouldn't have allowed the publication to occur if the writing had been sub-par, the literary shadow of his father's former self. We certainly don't anticipate anything along the lines of, "It was a dark and stormy night. The beautiful, buxom, raven-tressed, ruby-lipped Laura pressed her pert nose against the leaded-glass window of the castle turret where her evil guardian had kept her imprisoned for nearly a year now. 'I really hope that my knight in shining armor rides up on a big white steed and gets me out of here,' she sighed."

So, 30 years after the fact, Dmitri, in my read, is truly honoring his father's legacy.

Life and literature - you heard it here - belongs to the living.

Not that I'll leave any coveted literary estate, but whoever cleans up after me is free to toss out, eBay, and laugh at whatever they want. (I would like Nanny's cookie jar, Grandma's sampler, the steer horns from my grandfather's saloon, and a few other treasured objects to stay en famille. But, in truth, my ashes will be in no position to tut-tut if someone decides to toss  my treasures in a dumpster.)

I actually may go out and buy a copy of The Original of Laura.

Just because.