Bookstore-less. (Bereft.)

Late last week I heard the news that the Borders that I walk by every day – and make frequent stops at – will be closing in the next couple of months.

Watching most any store or restaurant go out of business is a pretty depressing process. If it’s a chain store like Borders, especially if it’s one you patronize, there’s the loss of the convenience factor, and the loss of jobs for those who worked there. If it’s a small, local store, it’s not just the convenience and jobs that are lost, there’s probably someone’s dream flying out the window. “My” card store, Copley Flair, a small (3 location) local chain closed this past year. I send a lot of greeting cards, so I was particularly bummed when it went out of business. Where was I going to buy my Christmas cards which, for the last few decades, I’d gotten half-price, the day after Christmas at Copley Flair? Fortunately, I already have my 2011 cards, but what am I supposed to do for 2012 exactly?

“My” Copley Flair was just across the street from “my” Borders, so it was a place I walked by every day, too. They had a great card selection, reasonable prices, and a frequent buyer program. I loved getting my tenth punch on my yellow and black polka-dot customer card, which meant a free card. Yea!

Now the only convenient card store is Papyrus.. Very nice cards, but pretty darned pricey – even with the buy three, get the fourth free deal-io they have going. Whenever I pick up a card and see $6.95 on the back, I have heart palpitations and a flash-back to the time when 25 cents was a lot to pay for a greeting card. Papyrus cards are also over-packaged: most come sealed for freshness in a clear plastic envelope. I suppose that this prevents them from becoming shopworn, yet it seems like complete overkill to me. Maybe they should just issue patrons surgical gloves to wear when handling the cards, in much the same way that shoe stores give out nylon peds.

Anyway, when Copley Flair closed I was very sorry to see them go.

But not half as sorry as I will be to see the downtown Borders shutter its operation.

When I saw the news the other day, I immediately dropped in and spent nearly a hundred bucks on books, boo-hooing all the way.

Having watched the Borders in Back Bay drop out of existence, I know what to expect from the liquidation sale, and it won’t be pretty.

I know we’re supposed to look down our noses at chains of any sort, and mostly I do. But Borders was pretty good

I don’t just buy a lot of greeting cards, I buy a lot of books, and I’d say that, at least once a month, I’d stop in at Borders and pick up at least a couple of them.

I might have just finished up what I had been reading, and not want to sort through my reserve supply of a hundred or so books. Or I might have just felt like taking a break from whatever it was that was sitting on the floor next to the bed. Maybe I was buying a few books to take on a trip – which was the case on my previous Borders visit, when I picked up a couple of novels and a history book to take to Ireland. Maybe it was to buy a gift. Books are my default baby present, not to mention what I pretty much always give my brother Rick for his birthday, and my cousin-in-law Dick for Christmas.

Borders had a pretty good selection, and the folks who worked there were incredibly nice and helpful.

Amazingly, with the demise of Borders, there will be no place in downtown Boston where you can buy a new book. (A couple of used bookshops remain open.)

So there will be no more casual, drop in, browse-and-buy book-buying trips for me.

Going to the Back Bay Barnes and Noble – which I don’t like anywhere near as much as a I like Borders – is a bit out of the way. If I’m going to go there, I might as well go to the Boston Public Library, which is on the way. Which is not a bad idea. I have been telling myself that I really should frequent the library rather than keep on buying books, which do tend to accumulate, even though my sisters and I are pretty good about keeping them in circulation.

The Borders in Cambridge is supposedly staying open, but if I’m going to schlepp to the Cambridgeside Galleria, I might as well go to Harvard Square, where the excellent indie bookseller, the Harvard Bookstore, is located. (I have always loved the Harvard Bookstore, but the bookstore in the square that I really miss is Wordsworth, which went out a couple of years back. In fact, when I read about the Borders’ closing, I had just begun to absorb the news that Wordsworth’s (little) sister store, Curious George, which sold children’s books and toys, is also closing. Maybe there’ll be something interesting going in in its place, although the recent retail history of Harvard Square suggests something wretchedly uninteresting and every-mall-in-America like.)

Rather than stop in The Square, I could always stay on the subway for another stop, and patronize Porter Square Books, another indie. Or head in the opposite direction – Go West, late-middle-aged woman! – and shop at the very fine Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner.

So I do have book-buying options open to me, at least temporarily. I.e., until the only way to buy books will be from Amazon, and/or the printed word is completely subsumed by the digital.

But it’s not the same as having a bookstore that I pass every day and can stop into for an impulse buy.

Why my Borders?

Oh, boo-hoo.

Kidneys, man, kidneys

There was a popular joke when I was a kid that had, as its punch line, “Kidneys, man, kidneys.” The set up was that a moron, when asked how he’d been smart enough to figure something out, pointed to his head and said, “Kidneys, man, kidneys.”

My other kidney story took place in a convention center ladies room where one poor woman was standing over the sinks with her breast pump expressing herself under what could only be described as sub-optimal conditions. A woman at the sink next to her asked her if she were undergoing dialysis. (Ah, yes, the well known portable self-dialysis through the breast technique…)

Other than that, kidneys are no laughing matter – at least not in my family. My father died of kidney disease at the age of 58. The last seven years of his life were off-and-on miserable – mostly on in the last year or so.

Anyway, I was intrigued to read about the 17 year old Chinese boy who sold one of his kidneys for a little over $3K.

Now, I have no idea what a kidney is worth, but it seems to me that, even for a 17 year old kid in China, it’s save-a-life value is a lot higher than $3K. But, of course, there’s the middle-man who’s doing the business development and taking all the risk, and he has to be compensated…

In any case, as PC Magazine has it, the enterprising (I guess) Chinese lad was willing to sell one of his because for an all American, all consumer reason:

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it," the boy told the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

The kid is now ailing:

It turned out that the Chenzhou No. 198 Hospital was not qualified to perform organ transplant. The hospital claimed they had no idea about Zheng's surgery because the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman.

That damned outsourcing’ll get you every time.

The young knucklehead – surprise, surprise – did this without his parents’ permission.

The police have gotten involved, but the broker – surprise, surprise – is nowhere to be found. He’s vamoosed, and his cell phone’s been turned off. (Want to make a bet on whether it’s one of those throw-away ones to begin with.)

Although I’m probably too long in the tooth (and aged in the kidney) to be a donor, I can actually envision the circumstances under which I would surrender on of my kidneys. I’m nowhere near noble enough to give one up for a stranger, but I can certainly imagine doing so for friends and family. Admittedly, I’d have mixed feelings about it, and would likely harbor some secret hope that I wouldn’t be a match, but could still get the brownie points for making the offer. But if someone I loved needed a kidney, if I could save their life, I would certainly hope that I’d be willing to go under the knife.

But for an iPad 2?

I mean, maybe for an iPhone, plus a Mac, plus an iPad 2, plus an iPod, with guarantees for at least ten years worth of annual upgrades.

But for an iPad 2?

Oh, to be a Chinese teenager now that iPad 2’s in the air.

And they said that Harley-Davidson customers who are willing to get tattooed with their product’s name are the world’s most brand loyal consumers…

The article noted that they didn’t know whether the kid had gotten his iPad 2.

You’d think that Apple would come through for the kid, wouldn’t you? Although they no doubt wouldn’t want to set off a wave of similar organ barters.

Selling a kidney – risking your life – for an iPad 2?

Does this kid realize he can’t sell his other kidney for the iPad 3 he’s going to want tomorrow…

All I want to do is point to that kid’s head and say, kidneys, man, kidneys.

Not So Fine Art (you only think it’s an original Campendonk)

I’m not a huge Steve Martin fan, but I like him well enough.

As celebrities go, he’s got talent: he can be very funny, he’s a decent writer, and he’s a star banjo player. Plus he pretty much keeps his nose clean. Take that, Kardashian sisters!

So if I were going to have any sympathy for anyone who’s been a caught up in an art forgery scandal, it would be Steve Martin.

Not that he’s a direct victim.

Martin bought the painting for €700,000 at the Cazeau-Béraudière Gallery in Paris and sold it at a Christie's auction to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000.

It was sold at a loss before it was debunked as a forgery, so I guess you can say that it was a bad investment before it became a worse investment. The work in question is "Landschaft mit Pherden," (Landscape with Horses) by Heinrich Campendonk, one of the lesser figures in [I took a course in Modern Art pretension alert] Der Blaue Reiter school. I actually kind of like the painting, although if I were going to go in for something by one of Der Blaue Reiter artists, I think I’d prefer something with a touch more blaue in it. (Info and picture source: Huffpo.)

Investigators said that the painting was most likely created by Wolfgang Beltracchi, the accused leader of a forgery ring that included his wife, sister-in-law and another accused forger Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus. Beltracchi's forgery ring is suspected of producing paintings attributed to Campendonk, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst and others.

The family that forges together…

The forgers weren’t just skilled painters, they were also pretty darned good at working out fake provenances. Which I suppose you’d have to be if you really wanted to make a go as a forger. After all, you couldn’t keep showing up at Christie’s saying you found something in your grandmother’s attic gathering dust.

All this is part of a large and involved forgery scandal that’s been wreaking havoc and causing panic in the art world since last year.

More than 30 paintings, thought to be by artists including Max Ernst, Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger, have been unmasked as forgeries, the Observer has learned. The fakes have duped leading figures in the art world into parting with at least £30m… The forger's strategy appears to have been to create compositions that would relate to the titles of documented works whose whereabouts are not currently known. (Source: The Guardian.)

Gallery owners, auction houses, collectors and the “experts” who’ve vetted the fakes have to be shaking in their bespoke boots over this. Apparently forgery scandals are nothing new, yet the stakes keep getting higher and higher as the prices of art works get bid up.

It does get me thinking about just what a curious “profession” art forger is.

You have to have some technical skill to pull it off, so what prompts someone to become a forger, rather than an artist?

Are they artists manqués with some technical capabilities but lacking creative vision of their own? Do you just wake up one day, throw off your beret, toss down your own palette, and decide that there’s more money in being a fake Heinrich Campendonk than there is in being the real you?

Or are you one of those with larceny in the heart to begin with, and figure that you’ve got a steady enough hand, were always pretty good at paint-by-numbers, and that the forgery business is safer than bank robbery or home invasion.

However pissed off an art gallery owner might be, they’re unlikely to shoot at you.

It also got me thinking about the intrinsic value of any work of art. But the intersection of mammon and the aesthetic is way, way, way too intense and brainy for the likes of Pink Slip.

Like most of those who like to have something on the wall, but don’t have a bottomless bank account, what’s on my walls are things that I like. And that includes works by Betsey Nelson, who happens to be my sister-in-law. (I don’t have any of her Southwest-themed works; I have two still lifes.)

It also includes several paintings done by guests of St. Francis House, New England’s largest day shelter for the poor and homeless. These are wonderful works for which I have paid a pittance to artists who are just happy to have their work and its worth (and their own worth) recognized and acknowledged.

I’ve also got paintings and prints that I’ve picked up on my travels. And even some posters. (Nothing like a $200 frame to make a $10 poster look like a work of art.)

None of the art works that hang in my home are ever likely to sell for $2.8M at auction at Christie’s, but I can sleep well at night knowing that there are no forgeries among them, and that each one is, to me, worth far more than every penny I paid for it.

Pink Slip vs. Protobrand on New England’s top brands

An outfit called Protobrand recently released its list of the most powerful brands associated with New England.

I only sort of half-glanced at what they were up to, and decided to come up with my own list – without, of course, looking at their criteria. I am, after all, a lifer, a home-town-honey, so I figured it would be no sweat to come up with 25 brands that I personally, as a lifer and home-town-honey, associate with dear old New England.

Right off the bat, my thoughts went to the Big Four brands in this sports besotted region. Just walk around town a bit, and you’d have to be blind not to notice all the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and – after a bit of a hiatus – Bruins gear.  Slam dunk, these have to be on anyone’s list of the top New England brands.

Put them all together, and a more modern sports-related brand comes to the fore: ESPN. I actually thought the “E” stood for “Eastern”. It doesn’t: it’s Entertainment. And, yes, they do cover everything and everybody. So maybe it’s because of Bill (Sports Guy) Simmons’ connection with ESPN, but I think of this network as “ours.”

Back to the Red Sox – the primo New England sports brand – and my mind just leapt to the brand that sponsored their televised games during my early years as a fan: Narragansett Beer. God knows whether anyone still drinks it, other than at Fenway, where it is sold, but if there’s one consumer brand that says “New England Summer” to me, it’s ‘Gansett. (‘Hi, neighbor. Hi, neighbor.’ Wherever you go, people will say, ‘Hi, neighbor, Hi, neighbor. Have a ‘Gansett lager beer.’ Now. whether those words were ever uttered in real life is another story…)

Another proud New England sports sponsor – only this time for the Friday night fights on the radio – was Gillette. Sure, they’re now owned by P&G, but they’ve still got a big facility in South Boston, and it still says Gillette on it, so: New England brand, it is.

Sports, of course, reminds me of the iconic Converse Chucks (Chuck Taylors). Gotta be on anyone’s list. Who’da thunk that the goofy sneakers that boys wore when I was a kid – available in basic black and basic white (one step up from Henry Ford’s Model T choices), and high top and low cut – would be worn by hipsters and wannabes all over the world. If my brothers had saved theirs, they’d be fashionistas!

So, sports exhausted and eight brands down, I have two words for you. Actually, one word and an acronym: Harvard and MIT. And I’m not just putting MIT on there because I did some time there. New England = colleges and universities. I could go on, but these are the top two.

But we’re not all sports and academia. We’ve got our artsy side, too. Think Norman Rockwell, who, I understand is making a comeback. (Not literally. That would really be something.) Talk about an instantly recognizable New England brand.

And who gets small town Mainers better than Stephen King? I was laughing out loud while reading The Dome.

We also do highbrow: Tanglewood. And middlebrow: The Boston Pops. And easy listenin’: James Taylor, who gets extra points for having a song with my birthday mentioned in it. (“The first of December was covered with snow. So was the Turnpike from Boston to Stockbridge…” Rockabye, Sweet Baby James.)

(If you’re wondering why Steven Tyler isn’t on the list: I associate him with cadavers, not New England.)

But you can’t eat or drink culture, and New England runs on Dunkin’. I had a gift card, so I just downed a Starbucks iced coffee. Give me the Dunkin’ Donuts version any old day. Then there’s Vermont’s own Ben and Jerry’s. And Ocean Spray cranberries. And, since you must occasionally eat something solid, other than a Dunkin Donut chocolate honey dip: Trust the Gorton’s Fisherman. (Actually, a fish stick would taste pretty good just about now. Has it really been 40 years since I last ate one?)

We could eat off them off plates, or we could eat them out of a Paul Revere bowl. I have no idea whatsoever if these are actually made around here, but they should be.

And we would eat Gorton’s fish sticks and Ben and Jerry’s Fro-Yo while wearing tee-shirts and khakis from L.L. Bean. If it’s winter, we may chose to complete the look with Timberland boots. Neither of which brand, alas, is likely to be available in Filene’s Basement which, although it has lost a considerable measure of its luster and allure over the years, is still a store that I occasionally look into. (Mostly I just like the idea of it – which I would like even better if it were still in a basement, rather than in an above ground store. But there’s that unfortunate hole in the ground where the late lamented Filene’s (the extinct upper reaches, and the lower depths devoted to The Basement) used to stand. I used to “hit The B” once or twice a week. These decades, I might hit it once or twice a year, generally when I’m looking for an umbrella.)

How we going to pay for all this? From our money market accounts in Fidelity. Or, if we’re a bit more well to do, from State Street (which really only makes the list because I need a 25th brand, plus I just watched HBO’s Too Big to Fail, and, although State Street played a bit role, they still did get $2B in TARP largesse.)

So, how’d I do vs. Protobrand?

I guess I could have done better if I’d looked through their criteria first, and realized what they were after.

To make it onto the study, a brand had to:

1. Be headquartered in New England.
2. Have marketing direction coming from New England.
3. Have a significant portion of revenue coming from consumer markets, which excluded brands that operate primarily business-to-business, such as State Street and Boston Scientific.
4. Have a national footprint.

Plus they asked marketers from outside of New England. So it’s not surprising that we came up with different lists. Here’s theirs:

A bit of overlap: ESPN, Dunkin’, Ben & Jerry’s, Ocean Spray, LL Bean, Timberland, Gillette, and Fidelity.

I know Subway’s HQ is in Connecticut, but I really don’t associate them with New England. And GE says “Schenectady” to me, not Connecticut. I’ll grant you that Sam Adams is a more widely known brand than Gansett, but I’ll stick with my sentimental pick. Nice to see Tom’s of Maine on the list, even though I never quite like the flavor of their toothpaste.

Anyway, a fun little exercise coming up with New England brands. (Next time I’ll compile a list of defunct ones: Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Carling Brewery (“The best beer in the world comes from Carling. On the shores of Lake Cochituate. Da-da-dum-dum. New England.”)

Hey, Walmart, nice to hear from you

I don’t like to brag, but I get an awful of lot of e-mail.

I do have to admit that not all of it’s personally directed to me.

Even if I’m the only name that’s visible in the “To:” box, I have a hunch that some of it – maybe even the notes I get from Joe Biden – go out to an awful lot of folks. (Aside to Joe: If you’re reading this post, please drop me a line and let me know whether my hunch is correct here. I know you’re a busy man, so you don’t need to craft a full note up, just put “It IS personal” or “Sorry, but it’s NOT personal” in the “Subject:” line. Thanks, pal.)

Anyway, the other day I received – are you ready for this – “A Special Invitation from Walmart.”

Given all the junk email I log, I have to say I was capital-D-Delighted to find something in my mailbox that was both special and an invitation.

Talk about “You’ve got mail.” Cowabunga!

Once I opened the invite, however, I have to say I was a tad surprised to read that:

At Walmart, we value customers like you.

Maybe they’re being sarcastic here, or maybe they’re just trying to make me feel guilty, but I do find it hard to believe that Walmart actually values customers who, well, don’t actually spend any money with them. I mean, if they had 1 billion customers like me, their revenues for 2011 would be the same as if they had 2 billion customers like me. Which would be zero.

The one and only time I stepped toe in a Walmart was to buy some stuff for a customer event held in 2004. And that was only because it was convenient to where I worked. Frankly, I found it pretty darned depressing, but I understand that, since then, they’ll actually put in decent produce departments.

I’m sure if there were a Walmart next door I would drop in occasionally for paper towels or a bag of carrots or a flashlight. But there isn’t a Walmart next door.

In fact, I couldn’t tell you where the nearest Walmart is.

Without wheels, I just don’t get around much.

So I get my paper towels from PeaPod, my bag of carrots from Whole Foods, and my flashlights from the family-owned hardware store around the corner.

By now you may be thinking that I’m something of a bona fide, certifiable, world class snob.

Which, I must confess, I kinda/sorta am.

I understand that Walmart drives prices down and lets a lot of people stretch their dollar. So that’s good. And they do employ a lot of people. But I do suspect that in some purchase cases there’s a decline in quality. And most of the jobs they provide are ill paid and provide poor benefits. Which, I guess, places Walmart in the American employment avant-garde. (Hmmmmm. Let’s play this one out:  At the rate we’re going, the only people who’ll have any money to buy anything will be the rich, and they don’t shop at Walmart. Yep, we’re really in for it.)

And I do believe that Walmart, while certainly not alone, has contributed to the citizen-as-consumer mentality and our collective insatiable need for more junk.

No, they’re certainly not alone. But they’re sure the apotheosis of crapification.

Still, since they did send me a special invitation, I thought I’d give them a quasi RSVP and at least click through to their website.

After all, they almost asked so nice:

We want you to be the first to know about our wide assortment of new products, limited quantity special buys and featured values — available online and at your local store.

Limited quantity special buys?  Available online? What’s not to like? (Although, frankly, this would have made more sense  if they’d said “we want you to be AMONG the first to know,” rather than “THE first to know.” Come on, Walmart, who do you think you’re dealing with here? Some kind of Gullible Gus? Why would you want a non-customer to be “the first to know”? Shouldn’t you be rewarding loyalty?

Anyway, I didn’t have all the time in the world, but I did check out what they’ve got on clearance.

Well, my first thought was: these guys are good.

After all, the first clearance item – of the 1,862 they had on offer that day -  that caught my eye was a Tom Brady shirt. Did they know I’m a band-wagonner Patriots’ fan?

But then I dug down a bit further, and most of the clearance goods were stuff like Kobe Bryant Laker shirts, NASCAR pajama bottoms, and University of Arkansas bedding sets.  Not that I’d be in the market for a Tom Brady anything – much as I worship at the Brady altar -  but Kobe Bryant? NASCAR? University of Arkansas (Wooo, Pig, Sooie )? AS IF…

Plus there was no Tom Brady shirt on sale offer, to begin with. Fraudsters! Talk about bait and switcheroo. Lure me in with Tom Brady, and deliver a bright pink Brett Favre Vikings shirt, marked down from $12 to $10. (If you buy two you can rub them together and start a bonfire if you get cold watching a Vikings game. Which, if you’re watching a Vikings game, will no doubt happen.)

As I read through the communiqué from Walmart, I became increasingly skeptical about it’s being something that was personally directed to me, and that it, indeed, was a “special invitation.”

What tipped me off was this:

This email is a Walmart advertisement.

Which actually makes me kind of sad, in a way.

I suppose I shouldn’t take it personally that the so-called “special invitation” isn’t all that special.  It was, after all, a pretty high quality invitation. No, it wasn’t on Crane’s high grade stock, but when was the last time you got a “special invitation” that was copyright? That tells me that they value what they have to say. (Hope they don’t come after me for copyright violation. This seems like fair usage to me, but, then again, I’m not an IP attorney.)

On the whole, given that I do get an occasional unwelcome, almost spammish e-mail, I’m happy to have heard from Walmart. I’m even thinking of forwarding my special invite on to Joe Biden.

Pointe du Hoc

This being the 67th anniversary of D-Day and everything, I started to think about my visit to Normandy, which occurred about five years ago.

We were in Paris for a week, and, through Farouk, the concierge in our hotel, we hired a driver to take us up to the battle field.

It hadn’t occurred to us to ask for someone who spoke English – I guess because Farouk, who had an Irish wife, was so fluent. And for $500 (What were we thinking? Okay: it turned out to be a 10 hour day, and gasoline prices are high in Europe…), we thought we’d be able to communicate with our driver, But this was not the case.

We were able to have a bit of a back and forth, between his 10 words of English and my single (present) tense but decent vocabulary French (which was not the driver’s first language: he was Pakistani). And he did get us to all the places we wanted to go. Still…

It wasn’t the driver’s fault that the weather was miserable.

When we left Paris it was overcast; by the time we reached Caen it was raining lightly; and by the time we hit Omaha Beach it was pouring, and the winds were whipping in off the Channel. The weather was too much for my husband, who, after we’d seen a bit of the Beach, mostly stayed in the car. But I soldiered on: umbrella blown out, water proof jacket proving to be not so, soaked feet, mud-splattered pants.

The weather was not unlike what it was on D-Day itself.

And if I were miserable, knowing that at any moment I could hop back into the warm and cozy car, and point and grunt that we wanted to get back to our very nice hotel in Paris, imagine what it must have been like for those young  American Rangers rappelling up Pointe du Hoc with German soldiers shooting at them?

After we walked the beach for a bit, and I peered over the edge of Pointe du Hoc, we somehow communicated to our driver that we wanted to go to the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where about 10,000 soldiers lied buried.

This is the classic World War II cemetery: boys from every where, a hodge-podge of ethnic names, a mash up of ranks.

For the most part, if you’re middle class and above, our wars since Vietnam have been somebody else’s business. And not that you’d wish World War II – or any war – on anybody, but they sure don’t make wars like they used to. Our idea of shared sacrifice these days is us doing the sharing and someone else doing the sacrificing.

Case in point on who used to go to war: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a 56-year old President’s son who was in the first wave on Omaha Beach. He died (of a heart attack, not directly from the War) a month later, and is buried at the Normandy cemetery.

The trade-off that we offer our military men and women is giving lip service to the notion that they’re all heroes. They’re not. Which is not to say that they’re not brave and patriotic. Even in a bleak economy where there are precious few decent opportunities for working class kids, and the economic motivations are substantial, my guess is that most of those who sign up factor some measure of bravery and/or patriotism into their equation.

Wars don’t kill as many soldiers as they used to – at least the kind of wars we’re fighting these days. There are more soldiers buried in Colleville-sur-Mer than have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. But that’s scant consolation if it’s your son or daughter who’s been killed.

Our driver had dropped us off at the cemetery, and then just disappeared.

We expected him back in an hour, but he didn’t show.

Worse come to worst, we told ourselves, we could have someone working in the cemetery office call Farouk, who presumably could get a hold of the driver.

As we were making our way towards the office, our driver showed up, and we headed back to Paris.

It was miserable there, too.

Chilled, wet, muddy, tired from the longest day of our trip, and still sorting through all that we’d seen at Normandy, we had an American in Paris meal: Quarter Pounders and fries from the nearest McDonald’s.

Here’s to those who died at Normandy, who never had the luxury of hotel stay in a comfy and pricey Paris Hotel overlooking the Arc de Triomphe.  You done good.

Big Mac Attack: 25,000 and counting

The other day, I was grazing through an Economist when I saw a small article on an initiative by some health activists to get McDonald to stop selling Happy Meals and retire Ronald McDonald.

Personally, I find advertising aimed at small children exceedingly odious. I think that the gimcrackery contained in each and every box o’ Happy Meal is a blight on the world, since it will take about half a millennium for the plastic to decay, all the while sending bad ju-ju chemicals into the ground. And as for Ronald McDonald? The Economist article noted that the word for fear of clowns is coulrophobia. ‘Nuf said.

Still, it really is up to parents to clamp the lid down on Happy Meal consumption – Just Say No! – or at least force their kids to take the little plastic (bio-degradable?) baglet of carrots rather than the fries, and a carton of waxy-tasting milk rather than the bottomless cup of soda, isn’t it? And as creepy as I find Ronald McD, doesn’t he also have all those nice houses where parents of kids with cancer can stay when the kids are in the hospital? So creepiness aside, Ronnie ain’t all bad.

But what really caused me to nearly cough up one of the unsalted almonds I was munching on while reading was the mention that one Donald Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, had reached a Big Mac eating milestone.

Over the past 39 years, Gorske has managed to consume 25,000 Big Macs.

I can count on one finger the number of Big Macs I’ve consumed in my life, so the thought of 25,000 of these suckers fills me with shock and awe.

No, if I’m going to Mickey D’s, I’m going with the more calorically modest Quarter Pounder without cheese (410 calories vs. 540 for the Big Mac). Or, better yet, the entirely more modest original burger, for a meager caloric intake of 250 cals. Of course, unlike Don Gorske, I take fries with that.

So while those fries aren’t as healthy as, say, those salt-free almonds, unlike Don Gorske, I don’t indulge in a McDonald’s splurge all that often. In fact, over the last 39 years that Gorske has been frequenting – and I do mean frequenting – McDonald’s, I suspect I’ve averaged somewhere between 2-5 trips per year. Five is on the high side, but if it’s correct, I’ve been to McDonald’s a bit under 200 times over those years. Factoring out the times when I’ve had something chickenish or saladish there, or even – confession approaching – had a chocolate shake and fries, the maximum number of Quarter Pounders I’ve downed may be somewhere in the 150 range. In truth, this sounds too high. I’m guessing the more likely total is around 75.

Which is not to say that right now I wouldn’t mind tucking into one. (With fries.)

It’s just that….I won’t.

And for a Big Mac, I never. (Too gloppy-sloppy for my taste.)

Needless to say, this record has garnered Gorske an extra helping of 15 minutes of fame. (His first portion was served up in Super Size Me.)

Anyway:

"I plan on eating Big Macs until I die," the Fond du Lac, Wis., man said. "I have no intentions of changing. It's my favorite food. Nothing has changed in 39 years. I look forward to it every day." (Source: ABC News/AP.)

Gorske, who is 59 is, by the way, healthy – not overweight and with low cholesterol, to boot. He averages two Big Macs per diem, and doctors attribute his good health to the luck of the genetic draw. Another by the way: he doesn’t do much of any exercise.

He does, however, have his very own entry in Wikipedia.

Gorske’s long love affair with the Big Mac began when he was 18 and got his first car. His first stop? McDonald’s, where he lunched on three Big Macs. (Okay, he was a bottomless pit 18 year old…) He was so enamored of them – and his new wheels – that he dropped in two more times. Total for the day: nine Big Macs. Talk about a mouthful (and a gutfull).

The man doesn’t lack for eccentricity, that’s for sure:

At first, Don kept all the boxes of Big Macs he ate in the back of his car. He met and proposed to his wife, Mary, at a McDonald's in 1973….He says his taste buds have always fluctuated in sensitivity, so he often eats a Big Mac without being able to taste it.

Well, this taste bud’s for you: I think you can count yourself lucky for not being able to taste a Big Mac. But if you can’t taste something, why bother to eat it?

Ours not to reason why…

He claims that since he ate his first Big Mac, there have only been eight different days in which he did not eat a single Big Mac. One of these days was the day his mother died, and he did not eat a Big Mac to respect her request. Other days included a "Snow Day" when McDonalds was unable to open due to snow, a Thanksgiving, days he was traveling and could not find a McDonalds, and various days Gorske had to stay at work past midnight.

Now, to guard against those snow days and other emergencies, he keeps a stash of Big Macs in the freezer. I bet those glop burgers taste really swell when unfrozen. (Did I mention that what I don’t like about the Big Mac is that gloppy sauce?)  Yum! But maybe they get consumed on the no taste bud days, so it doesn’t matter.

Gorske keeps count of his Big Macs in a special notebook that is always on his person. And, while he no longer keeps the cartons in his car, he does save every receipt. You never know when those’ll come in handy.

The Cougar Industry.

Well, we asked for equality and I guess one area where women are getting what they asked for is with respect to May-December “romances.” After all, men have had, throughout the history of man and womankind, their share of old goats who traded in a 40 for two 20’s (ha-ha). The image of the walrus-mustached, white-thatched tycoon with the knockout blonde on his arm has certainly been around for at least as long as The New Yorker has been printing cartoons. And anyone want to start a pool with me guessing the date when Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear in public squiring a leggy young thing. (Let’s make it more interesting: you have to guess the date and the year of birth of the leggy young thing.)

We’ve come a long way, baby. At least I guess we have.

Cougars, it seems, have come into their own.

And let’s just say that these days, you can’t have any kind of little old trend – in this case the “cougar predator lifestyle” - without an entire economic apparatus growing up around it.

Thus, I give you the Cougar Industry. (Actually, it’s Business Week that’s giving it to you. I’m just the channeling medium.)

Sorry to say that I missed the National Cougar Convention, which was held at a Manhattan nightclub. Then again, I wouldn’t have wanted to stand in the way of Aalsa Lee. At 73, she may not have all that many more opportunities to make a run at the Miss Cougar America title, which she won, beating out over thirty not so young lovelies, including crowd fave “Jerzee”, she of the “very dark, unhealthy-looking tan” and the “extremely short tie-dyed skirt adorned with peace symbols.” (All she is saying, is give piece a chance….)

The Cougar lifestyle has now been with us for ten years.

I'm not quite sure exactly what defines a Cougar, but I don’t think it’s just when there’s a few years difference in ages. I guess it’s when the woman is old enough to be the mother of the object of her affection. (Or, as the article states, perhaps “"cougar" is simply the label society assigns financially independent divorcées.”)

"There is a new archetype that's emerging," says Amy Luna Manderino, the reigning Miss Cougar International. "There have always been free-thinking, vital women over the age of 40. The difference today is our numbers have reached a critical mass."

I’m all for free-thinking, vital women over the age of 40. In fact, I do believe there’s been critical mass of them for quite a long while. That is, if you define the free-thinking women category as broader than those who prefer to play with boy-toys.But if you constrain the definition to those who think young men, there’s apparently an entire “transcontinental economy” designed to cater to their every Cougar desire.

…conventions, dating sites, tourism, and other cougar-themed business ventures. Miss Cougar America is part of a larger pageant hierarchy that includes Miss Cougar Miami, Miss Cougar Las Vegas, and Miss Cougar Sydney…The greater cougar industry has expanded into books (Dating a Cougar, Hot Cougar Sex, A Christian Cougar), television (real-life cougar Courtney Cox's Cougar Town and the reality-TV show The Cougar), and even the big screen.

There’s also a new movie out – Cougar Hunting – that follows a bunch of young guys “on a quest for older women.”

The old me wants to say “as f-ing if”. But the new me – even though, as a married gal who’s a bit long in the fang, I don’t qualify as a cougar – says that, once media constructs are constructed, they sure do have a way of becoming reality. Especially once – ageism rules! – the age of the cub-desired cougar is drifting down from true older gal, like Aalsa Lee, to thirty-early-forty something. And it’s apparently the cubs that are driving the surreality in which the cougar hunting is a “very hot economic trend in the dating world.” And in which Ms. Manderino has:

…already identified six categories of cubs, including "fetish cubs," "mama's boy cubs," and cubs who simply want a story to tell their friends.

“Mama’s boy cubs”?

Sorry, my stomach is roiling. Waste basket, please.

Lucia Demasi, who recently took over Urban Cougar, is enthusiastic about the company's outlook. She is hoping to increase current traffic from 35,000 to 100,000 visitors each month. "In the Jewish tradition," Lucia says, "you become a man with a bar mitzvah. For everybody else, maybe it'll be a cougar."

Today your son’s a man. Mazel tov.

Soon, Urban Cougar will offer VIP memberships, Lucia says, for $7.99 to $12.99 per month.

Or you could save up for the:

Norwegian Cruise Line provides a Cougar Cruise to the Bahamas. (Three- and five-night packages range from $150 to $500.) More modest cross-cultural options include a $195 two-night Celtic Cougar deal at the Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel in Galena, Ill.

I can honestly say that I never thought I would see the words Celtic Cougar, Irish Cottage, and Galena, Ill. used in combination. I do believe that my mother and my aunt Mary took a trip once to Galena, Illinois. Hmmmm. They said they were looking at the old Victorian houses. Wonder what really went on there.

Give me interior design licensing, or give me death

The Economist had a recent piece by “Schumpeter” on the high proportion of professions that are regulated/licensed, on a state by state basis, in the United States. Flower arranging, hair braiding, manicurists. You name it, it’s regulated somewhere.

Now I am one of those nanny-staters who actually believe that we need some regulation and consumer protection. Completely unfettered business gives us poison toys from China, exploding Pintos, and the Love Canal.

Yet it seems as if something as eye-of-the-beholder, and do-no-harm as flower arranging doesn’t require all that much by way of licensing and regulation. As Bob Dylan told us years ago, you don’t need a weatherman to know the way the wind blows. And you don’t need a professional florist to stick stems in an oasis in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Other professions, especially one where the motto first, do no harm should apply – electrician, dentist – I’d just as soon see licensed, thank you.

One licensing bizarrity that Schumpeter called out was Florida’s licensing of commercial interior designers. (No license is needed for residential interior designers, so you can use Hilda next door to do you up if you like her flair with coral and zebra prints.)

Florida is one of only three states to license interior designers – the others are Nevada and Louisiana. (Now that I think about it, Nevada probably should make designers get a license. Can you imagine what Nevada would look like if amateurs could design interiors?) To tear down some bureaucracy, and to free things up for new business formation, Florida did try to pass legislation deregulating commercial interior design.

Not surprisingly, those who benefit from restricting the pool of those who can design office space and hotel lobbies, i.e., the cartel composed of those who already have licenses, came out of the decorator woodwork to oppose the repeal. And they won. The legislature caved, and one still needs a license to practice this specialized craft.

As reported in the Miami Herald, the designers had some pretty interesting things to say when they importuned Florida’s worthy lawmakers to leave the regulation in place.

“Buildings do not burn. Interiors do,” Gail Griffin, a professor at Miami Dade College’s School of Architecture and Interior Design, told the House Appropriations committee Wednesday.

In other words, an unlicensed interior designer might well paper those office walls with dangling strips of newsprint that had been soaked in gasoline, and accent the décor with piles of kindling, matchbooks, and campfire instructions.

Bad things can happen to good buildings. Has nobody seen – and heeded – The Towering Inferno. Still…

I would like to have witnessed Ms. Griffin’s full testimony, which included this:

“Do you know the color schemes that affect your salivation, your autonomic nervous system?” she said. “You don’t even have correct seating. And somebody chose that for you.”

Personally, I was not aware that color schemes affect salivation. I thought that things that smelled good did. But I will start trying to become more observant about what color combos cause me to slobber and which ones give me dry mouth. Is it too obvious that it would be greens and blues that cause you to drool, while a desert color scheme produces cotton mouth?

As for those legislators not having correct seating, why the State of Florida must have broken a law and gone with an amateur designer, like Hilda next door. Or maybe they just let an admin negotiate the whole thing with the chair manufacturer.

One designer – of the 90 who spoke at the hearing – had an even more compelling reason for not deregulating designers.

“Part of my job is to ensure the finishes that I select cannot be made into weapons,” Terra Sherlock, a licensed interior designer from Tallahassee, told lawmakers. “We do that in jails, and we do that in schools.”

Fabrics don’t kill people. People who turn fabrics into weapons kill people.

And speaking of dangerous fabrics…wait there’s more. Interior designer Michelle Earley made the case for her colleagues as near medical practitioners, who are able to:

…avoid fabrics that contribute to the spread of hospital-acquired infections.

“By not allowing interior designers to be specialists and focus on the things they do, what you’re basically doing is contributing to 88,000 deaths every year,” she said.

If 88,000 lives in Florida alone could be saved by licensing interior designers, what are we waiting for? This is even more than the 20,000 or so lives saved nationwide by wearing seatbelts each year. I had no idea.

I am writing my state representative forthwith and ask that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts joins the rank of those progressive titans - Florida, Nevada, and Louisiana - and start regulating commercial interior designers. Lives are at stake here. Oh, the humanity!

Sew what

When we were growing up, my mother sewed a lot of our clothing – the girls’ clothing that is. 

The first items I remember wearing were when I was very young: white shorts and a navy blue dress coat (needless to say not worn together) made from material salvaged from my father’s WWII dress uniforms. This was in the mid-1950’s, so those unis must have been lying around in the cedar chest, surrounded by mothballs, for a good decade or so. Funny, I don’t recall any mothball odor. The material must have been thoroughly aired, blowing in the wind from the clothesline off the porch in our second floor apartment.

The navy blue Sunday coat stands out in my mind because it had very snappy red with white polka dots sateen lining.

The shorts stand out because my mother rarely made play clothes, which must have been cheap enough to buy, but focused on dresses.

The one other foray into sports clothes I recall was a few years later, when my mother stitched up a couple of extraordinarily dowdy bathing suits for my sister Kathleen and me. We were then in our pre-teen/early teen years. And if there’s one thing a girl of that age really wants is an extraordinarily dowdy bathing suit, let me tell you.

When other girls my age were wearing two-piece Madras suits taken from the pages of Seventeen, I was in a modest turquoise, black and white pique number that wouldn’t have been out of place on Eleanor Roosevelt. Pique is not exactly a fabric designed for a romp in the pool, but my sister Kath’s had it even worse. (At least I think it was hers. Maybe it was mine, and I’ve just gone into denial on it. Maybe one of us will have a recovered memory. I think I’m recovering mine now. Was that ticking suit mine? Could we both have had them?) It was made out of blue and white pillow ticking, bordered with red rick-rack.

Ticking! Ticking?

When the suit got wet, it would add about twenty pounds weight to you, which made swimming almost as difficult as if someone had slipped a cement ankle bracelet, or led-filled “water wings” on you.

How is it that she/I didn’t drown? Accidentally or deliberately, to solve the humiliation problem of wearing that bathing suit.

Somehow, even my mother must have realized that she’d gone Little House in the Prairie overboard on these numbers, and she went out and got us each a tank suit – Kath’s red, mine electric blue, which, if not stunningly attractive, were at least moderately normal looking.

Most of the clothing my mother made, if not supremely stylish, was moderately so. Plenty of our friends had home-made clothing, and sometimes we matched things up. One year, my sister Kath and I, and our friends the Shea girls, all wore corduroy jumpers for the first day of school in different colors.

Given the dire clothing situation, it was just as well we wore uniforms, and only got to wear civilian clothing a few days out of the year.

When I went away to college, my “good” dress and jacket – blue green nubby wool, the dress worn with a brushed silver circle pin, was mother-made. As was my bathrobe – a turquoise corduroy number that looked like a medieval monks robe, cowl hood and all. As was the “granny gown” – black, printed with red, white, and yellow rocking chairs – that was the fashion item for hanging around the dorm. I still have an apron made out of that fabric.

Even someone like my young self, sorely lacking in fashion sense, really wanted store-bought clothing like everyone else had.

The minute I managed to accumulate any cash, I made a beeline to Filene’s basement to get last year’s off-priced or irregulars. Who cared? As long as it was Villager, John Meyer or Norwich, or Ladybug. When I graduated to Army surplus dressing, I was in business. As long as it wasn’t home made…

Sewing, like typing, however, was something that girls were supposed to learn, if not exactly master.

I took sewing lessons at the Girls’ Club when I was in seventh grade. I made myself a completely hideous sleeveless – there is no other word for it – housedress, in a beyond-god-awful cream colored cotton pattered with purple and green cats. The yoke was crooked, so it only looked okay if I slanted one of my shoulders to the side. I’m not sure what it’s original intended purpose was. Possibly it was a beach cover up for the ghastly home-made bathing suit. But I only ever wore it as a nightgown.

Both my sisters, however, did learn to sew. Trish – game little junior high schooler that she was – even made me a wool suit. She got through the jacket, but on the skirt, she ran the needle over her thumb, something that 40 years later still makes me queasy to think about. She had to go to the hospital, where she received a tetanus shot and, I believe, a Purple Heart.

While I don’t believe that my sisters make any of their clothing any more, they can run up curtains and do other handy-dandy things that I can’t.

In any event, I found it quite interesting to see a piece in The Wall Street Journal on “sewing’s pop-culture revival.”

Spurred on by the economy, and by shows like Project Runway, there’s been a resurgence of interest in sewing, especially among those in their 20s and 30s. And sales are up for what was once the lowly sewing machine. And Wal-Mart, which had stopped stocking fabric, has now brought it back, along with “notions” (thread, buttons, bias tape…).

This is not your mother’s Singer, however. Today's are high tech, some “equipped with USB ports and high-resolution touch screens.”

New multitasking sewing machines strive to be as accessible as a smartphone. Modern machines have added decorative stitches, automatic threading and touch screens for easier use. There are smartphone apps for matching thread to fabric and software that digitizes embroidery designs. With the USB port on the latest embroidery machines, users can transfer an image from laptop to sewing machine.

So now you have to understand technology and know how to sew. (At least I’d have one of them covered. And while I was never much at sewing, I was pretty good at embroidery.)

Prices for sewing machines are all over the map.

You can get an entry level mechanical for under $100, and a computerized model for $140 or so. At the high end, you could pay well over $10,000.  The high end machines do things like:

…sense fabric thickness and adjusts for an even fabric feed—eliminating uneven stitching that results when newbies press or push fabric along.

Which actually wouldn’t have helped with my uneven yoke, but may well have saved Trish’s impaled thumb.

There are an estimated 39 million American women who own a sewing machine, and, as those machines have teched-up, so have those who sew, with web sites, blogs, and tweets. (Damn. Just ran needle through my thumb.)

As with so many other things, learning to sew is not on my bucket list. I can hem jeans, mend tears, and sew on buttons. That will have to suffice. I can’t imagine making my own clothing, especially as I pretty much live in jeans and sweaters.

Nonetheless, I find the sewing revival interesting, and am happy to see that it’s as much fashion- as frugality-driven. Anything’s possible, but I seriously doubt that there’s any 12 year old girl out there whose mother is making her a bathing suit out of ticking.

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Couldn’t resist including this illustration (“Welsh women and a man with a Singer sewing machine.”) from The Journal article:

Mary Evans/Everett Collection

Memorial Day, 2011

Memorial Day has an awful lot going for it.

For one thing, it signals the start of the summerish things.

Plus, like Labor Day which brackets the summer on the other end, it’s one of those blessed holidays when there’s nothing that you have to do. Now, some of those have-to-do’s are not especially onerous. What’s so hard about turning on the Pops 4th of July Concert, then opening the blinds so we can watch the fireworks when the concert’s over?

Still, Memorial Day is mercifully free of obligation.

I do get up to the cemetery to plant geraniums and make sure that the Vets stuck a flag on my father’s grave, but this year that will have to wait. I was unable to get up to Leicester before Memorial Day – that darned vacation! – so my cousin Barbara and I have to figure out a time when we can get the job done. We do plant tulips on our parents’ graves in the fall, so there’ll be something there. (Dead tulips, unless Babs made a dash out there without me…)

This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.

Civil War: what a name for something so brutal, gruesome and uncivil.

Living in New England, it’s easy to see that our war was the Revolutionary, not the Civil. George Washington slept here, not Abraham Lincoln. (Metaphorically speaking, Abe. I know you did visit here.)

Every day, I walk past the site of the Boston Massacre, and the Old State House, which was once a the seat of the  British Royal Government in Boston. It still sports the lion and the unicorn, symbols of The Crown.

I’m not a far walking piece from Bunker Hill, or Boston Harbor (of Tea Party fame), or Old North one-if-by-day Church and Paul Revere’s House. And I’m not a far driving piece from Lexington and Concord.

Revolutionary War ‘R Us.

Civil War, not so much.

Other than the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial – he of Glory fame, for leading the African-American troops in battle – there’s not a lot of Civil War “stuff” in these parts.

Other than in the cemeteries, where even in the Irish immigrant cemeteries where my people lay a-mouldering in their graves there are a few Civil War vets. And, of course, there’s Memorial Hall at Harvard University. I know, I know, the rich and privileged men during Civil War could buy their way out of the military. (Sounds kinda-sorta familiar doesn’t it? Although these days there’s not an out and out buy…) But a lot of rich and privileged men didn’t, as a stroll through Mem Hall will tell you.

This memorial space boasts a 2,600 square foot marble floor, a sixty foot high wooden gothic vault, two stained glass windows spanning 708 square feet each, black walnut paneling, stenciled walls and 28 white marble tablets bearing the names of 136 Harvard associates who fell on behalf of the Union cause during the Civil War. The youngest, Sumner Paine, class of 1865, fell at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, two years before his intended graduation. The Paul Joseph Revere listed is the grandson of the famous Paul Revere. (Source: Fair Harvard)

They died at Wilderness, Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Antietam. Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, Fort Wagner – which is where Robert Gould Shaw fell.

So, here’s to those who have died in our wars, especially those who fought in the Civil War. And here’s hoping we never go there again….

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Earlier Memorial Day posts:

Decoration Day

Six Degrees of Separation from the Military

Memorial Day, 2009

Memorial Day, 2010

Throughly addicted

I first noticed it at the airport last Thursday night, while we were waiting to leave for Ireland.

My husband went to the men's room, and I had a few minutes to sneak in a bit of e-mail check and browsing, so I instinctively reached for my Blackberry.

Not there!

Of course not.

Having made a half-hearted inquiry at Verizon, I had decided that it was going to be too much of a P.I.T.A. - and probably too expensive - to get myself Blackberried for a week in Ireland. Besides, wasn't getting unBlackberried precisely the reason you go on vacation. Besides, all my clients knew I was gone for the week, and mostly unavailable for e-mailing, and definitely unavailble for work. Besides, there was a computer in the house we were renting. So...no biggy. I'd just download Skype.

There's something about having one of those smarty-pants phones, however. Throughout the trip, there've been times when I've made a move to grab and go with my Blackberry. One afternoon it was the ash cloud to check in on. At dinner the other evening, it was trying to remember the name of a singer that was eluding us. (Fortunately, I was able to retrive it from the original computer: the human brain: Etta James.)

Even if relying on a smartphone is highly addictive, it actually is possible to go cold turkey - or luke-warm turkey - from using one. Sure, there are withdrawal symptoms - patting my jeans pocket and reaching into my Healthy Backpack whenever something that merits a google popped into my head.

Information (and e-mail) retrieval is one thing; no plain vanilla mobile phone is another.

It turned out that having a phone is pretty darned useful - and there wasn't one in the house we rented.

So, after two full days of bare naked wandering around Galway without a phone number to our names, we took ourselves to the Vodaphone store and bought a throw-away for 20 Euros that included 35 minutes of talk. Plenty enough to make restaurant reservations, arrange a cab, and call our landlady when we had a question about how the screwball locks or the screwball heat or the screwball recylcing worked. Besides, with no phone in the house, we were worried about how we were going to get help in case of an emergency. (The things you start thinking about as you get older. Did I really use to go camping deep in the woods in the pre-cell phone days? What was I thinking? Clearly not about mortality or thieves in the night.)

When I paid for the phone, I mentioned to the clerk that I felt like a criminal, since in the U.S., only criminals use throw-away phones. (I watch an awful lot of Law and Orders.) Same here, she assured us. (What a relief!)

Why not Skype, you might ask?

After all, since I'm occasionally doing a post from Eirann, I must have a computer even though I had made the incredibly wrenching decision to go on vacation without my laptop.

This is not a decision that I could easily have made if there was not the promise of a computer in the house we were renting.

Yes, indeed, Liz-the-Landlady assured us: there'd be a computer for us, and wireless access throughout the house.

The computer did not materialize until Monday afternoon, so we actually had a couple of days of unconnected, thoroughly unattached "bliss", with the exception of the Sunday Vodaphone cave-in.

Ah, the computer.

A vintage Dell desktop, running XP (with a 1995-2001 copyright notice on it, no less).

You forget what a dinosaur a ten year old computer can be.

"Hop" on to the Internet, and wait. And wait. And wait. We're paying for all those images, that's for sure.

Periodically, a pop-up appears, informing me that running IE sucks up 92% of the CPU. Feels more like 192%.

Just putting up this brief post is a laborious task. Sometimes you can type normally, but much of the time you can type 2-6 characters and the PC heaves a sigh and takes a long pause. Sometimes it just gets really and truly tired and just stops dead in its tracks, throwing us off the 'Net or going straight into reboot mode. This technology nag should be heading for the technology glue factory. And soon. We advised Liz to stop advertising that her otherwise extremely well-equipped digs come with a computer. Just say wi-fi, we tell her, and people will know they need to bring a laptop/netbook/iPad... Trust us, we tell her, they'll be happier.

In any case, the quasi-electronics-free vacation came off. Kinda sorta.

Without my laptop, there's been no temptation to get any work done, which is a plus. Without my Blackberry, I'm actually using my personal long term memory to figure things like Etta James' name out, which is a plus. With such crappy access, I'm doing more reading and less aggravating myself glancing through online comments to news articles, which is a plus.

Bottom line: I wouldn't travel again without my laptop. I'm pretty sure I could take a non-working vacation, even with the laptop available. And it is convenient to check e-mails, read the news from home (Go, Red Sox!), and have access to Skype, which we couldn't possibly get on the T-Rex of a Dell we've got here. I'm just too 'Net-addicted to do without a computer, I'm afraid - although there are still Internet cafes where I could get my fix.

I still wouldn't bother with my Blackberry. Although I might pimp my vacation with another throw-away phone - just for emergencies, mind you.

Anyway, I'm obviously as technology addicted as the next guy.

How was it that we used to actually have vacations that were of the 'get away from it all' variety.

They were really bliss, weren't they?

Alas, there's no going back...

Ain’t nobody’s business (degree) but my own…

A couple of weeks back, I went to my 30th reunion dinner for the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where I received a Master’s of Science in Management in those way-back days when MIT oh so quaintly didn’t award an MBA. Interestingly, we seemed to have been awarded MBA’s ex post facto. Our name tags listed our class year and read “MBA”.

We were a small class – not much over 100 students – and about 30-35 came back, from all over, for the event, which was great fun (as had been our 25th reunion). Our small size made us pretty tight, as did the accommodations we had back in the day. Sloan has expanded greatly since our time there –the are more students and mo’ better space – and, while I didn’t head over to MIT to see the new building, I suspect that there are more gathering spaces for students than we had. The fact that, other than the library, the only place to hang between classes was the area outside the administrative offices, where there were two beat up round tables. So we all got to know each other pretty well.

Much of our reminiscing was, of course, about the courses we took. Sloan – at least when I was there – had a quantitative bent. You had to pass a calculus exam to qualify to take the intro economics course, which was required; if you failed, you had to take some remedial math and pre-intro econ. Fortunately, I skin-of-my-teethed it on the calculus qualifier. Whew! Even in marketing, things could get pretty wonky. One of my concentrations was in “applied marketing”, which was mostly about marketing (statistical) analysis.

By business school standards, this was all pretty rigorous.

Not that there weren’t gut courses. In fact, one of the best courses I took was “Business Ethics.” Certainly a gut (especially at Sloan) in that nothing in it made your head explode. But the course required reading, thinking and writing, so I loved it.

When we were hanging around those round tables, of course, we were often times pretty stressed.

But someone could always be counted on to remind us that was “only” business school – not nuclear physics, neurobiology, or electrical engineering.

On the other hand, in my case, it was a lot harder (mentally, if not physically) than waiting tables at Durgin-Park.

My Sloan reunion reminded me that, a while back, The New York Times had an interesting article, done in conjunction with The Chronicle of Higher Education, on what a “gut” undergraduate major business is, once you’re out of the realm of the top undergraduate business schools.

Business is the “default” major for many, and a lot of business students are disengaged. They’re not reading textbooks, they’re texting -  just doing their time until they can graduate with their “practical” degree.

Business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field, according to the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement: nearly half of seniors majoring in business say they spend fewer than 11 hours a week studying outside class. …And when business students take the GMAT, the entry examination for M.B.A. programs, they score lower than students in every other major.

Well, I don’t find the not studying all that shocking, but scoring lower on the GMAT? Wouldn’t you think that a business major would have absorbed just a tad more business knowledge than your average sociology or English major?

Worse than their doping it on the GMATs is the fact that there are so many of these business majors.

The family of majors under the business umbrella — including finance, accounting, marketing, management and “general business” — accounts for just over 20 percent, or more than 325,000, of all bachelor’s degrees awarded annually in the United States, making it the most popular field of study.

This is not a recent phenomenon.

… as long ago as 1959, a Ford Foundation report warned that too many undergraduate business students chose their majors “by default.” Business programs also attract more than their share of students who approach college in purely instrumental terms, as a plausible path to a job, not out of curiosity about, say, Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm.

The squishiness of the undergraduate business degree doesn’t hold for the elite business programs, like Wharton and Babson.

Still, most of the undergraduate business majors aren’t matriculating at Wharton, Babson, or one of the other Top 50/Top Tier programs where there’s plenty of rigor and the students work hard.

One senior majoring in business at a lower end school said:

“A lot of classes I’ve been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book,” he says. “It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you’re probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it.”

As for how much time he spends hitting the books:

“Well, this week I don’t have any tests, so probably zero,” he says. “Next week I’ll have a test, so maybe 10 hours then.”

He adds: “It seems like now, every take-home test you get, you can just go and Google. If the question is from a test bank, you can just type the text in, and somebody out there will have it and you can just use that.”

This is not senioritis, he says: this is the way all four years have been. In a typical day, “I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day.” He says his grade-point average is 3.3.

Now, I am not going to say that I exactly killed myself as an undergraduate sociology major, but I can pretty much guarantee that there were no weeks when I spent zero hours reading/writing/studying, and damned few where I did as few as ten. If you’re just googling to find questions and answers in a test bank, well, what’s the point of even pretending that part of the function that college should serve is that you actually learn something that you didn’t know before you got there (other than how to compute how much to charge for a kegger).

I can’t say that I’m at that surprised that so many business majors are a waste. That said, two of the most successful business men I know were undergraduate business majors, back in the day. (Both at Top Tier schools.)

But as a future senior citizen who’s counting on the economy holding together, I’m somewhat aghast that so many colleges are churning out so many graduates who can’t “write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data,” which is what employers say they want.

A mind used to be a terrible thing to waste. Maybe it still is.

Anyway, I suspect that the next couple of decades are going to shake out the entire higher education business, business undergraduate major or not.

A college education is a terrible thing to waste on googling for canned answers to canned questions.

Makes me kind of  happy to have held off on that business school education until after I’d gone the entirely impractical sociology, political science, and whatever else struck me as interesting academic route. And makes me kind of happy that, when I did go to B-school, it was kind of hard. We really did have to work, even if we did spend an awful lot of time hanging around those scarred, round tables just getting to know each other.

The News from Ireland

In many ways, it seems much the same as last we left it, in September 2006.

And yet...

When we mentioned the weekend crowds thronging High and Shop Streets - the main commercial drag in Galway City - our friends Michael and Jo said, "Yes, but they're not buying."

This was echoed by the young clerk in Anthony Ryan's who helped us with our purchase of a warmer shirt for my husband - Jim hadn't packed for the unseasonably cool weather. Business, he told us even though we hadn't asked, was really off, what with the economy.

At dinner with our friends Michael and Jo, they filled us in on the doings of their children. One daughter and her fiancé both work in banking. They have been on tenter hooks for months. Redundancies - Irish for lay-offs - were announced in March, but the pink slips have yet to be slipped in. July, they think. These two have always worked in banking. Unlike in some other industries, these types of jobs won't be coming back, and there aren't many places to go with those résumés.

Another of Michael and Jo's daughters bought her house five years or so ago for 270,000 Euros. Between her down payment and what she's managed to pay off, she owes 140,000 on it - which is now the house's value. Fortunately, her job - at least for now - is secure. Still, how disheartening, and at least she's not under water, unless you think about the 130,000 Euros she's out...

Michael himself has a construction business. It was booming - of course - during the champagne bubble years - but there's little of it now. Michael was nearing retirement age, so he's okay. It's the younger men that he employed who are hurting - and leaving Ireland. We've seen some of the "leavers" in Boston. The construction/deconstruction going on next door to us back at home is manned largely by Irish guys. (We saw the the remnants of the construction boom during Friday's drive from Shannon to Galway. Even though the trip is now mostly on the highway, we did pass a number of abandoned projects, scaffolding still up but nary a working man in sight.)

Suicides in the country are up, Michael and Jo tell us. Some people just can't see a way out. The older folks, they say, have it easier. They grew up poor, in the pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland. They never really trusted the prosperity, they never thought it would last. For the younger people, though, it's especially devastating.

Liz, our landlady for the beautiful, we-could-live-here, completely modernized coach house we've taken for the week, talks about the hits that the well-to-do professional class have taken, financially. The doctors, she tells us, are the only ones doing brilliantly. (But even the medical establishment, we see in the papers, is under some siege, as government cutbacks set in.)

Liz talks about the crazy unseemly greed that so many people got caught up in during the go-go years, the oneupsmanship, the egos. An auctioneer (real estate) of her distant acquaintance ended up ruined, and killed himself in spectacular fashion. Not content with a private suicide, he knotted the rope around his neck, secured it to a beam, and threw himself out the upper-story window of one of his failing properties.

Yet there are things that have palpably raised the national mood, however temporarily...

The Queen visited the country last week - her first trip over. She and Philip were well and warmly received. The Irish and the English have a curious relationship, of course, but with so many of the diaspora Irish living in England (our friends Michael and Jo lived for years in Manchester; when they were first starting out, there was no work in Ireland for them), the Anglo-Irish relationship has gotten more fluid. And, as far as we can tell, the Irish take a back seat to no one when it comes to Royal Watching. There seems to be pretty widespread and genuine affection for Queen Elizabeth, and although there was some grumbling over the 30 million Euros that went in to her security, people seemed proud that the visit had gone off so well, and that the Queen enjoyed herself.

In the wake of the Royal Departure, Ireland got another boost. Leinster, one of its rugby teams, scored a big win over Northampton in the Heinekin Cup. The pubs were thronged on Saturday to watch the match and, even though Leinster is not Galway's province (which is Connacht as in "to hell or Connacht", which Oliver Cromwell once declared was where Ireland's Catholics could go), there was joy spilling out into Galway's narrow and winding streets once the match was won.

The pièce de résistance, of course, was Monday's blow-through visit by Barack and Michelle Obama.

You could not go into a shop or pub without the visit being closely monitored on TV or radio. One shopkeeper - in one of the many charmingly old-fashioned little corner markets that still dot the retail landscape here - was bursting his buttons that the U.S. President was here. "Imagine, him coming to this little country. We've only four-and-a-half million people. Why, Poland has 90 million and he's not going there." This shopkeeper had one of those "map of Ireland" faces, a real old-timer. And it looked like his green-grocers shop had been there forever. The interesting thing was what he was selling. Sure, he had the usual cabbage and carrots, but he was also selling all sorts of exotic teas. Indian sauces. (Chicken tikka, anyone?) Italian pastas. All sorts of gourmet foods.

We bought a bottle of Prosecco and a Green & Black dark chocolate bar - the same brand you can get at Whole Foods.

This is not your grandfather's Ireland, that's for sure.

The affection for the Obamas, the pride and enthusiasm with which their visit was received, exceeded that for the Queen. (And this is not just the Yank in me speaking. There's no denying that ties that bind the green with the red, white, and blue.)

Is féidir linn, Obama told the crowd at Dublin's College Green. Yes, we can.

Sure, it's just words. And it's not as if Obama can lay hands (or words) on and cure the Irish economy. Hell, if he's going to cure an economy, let him start with ours.

Still, it's nice to see the small, palpable elevation to the Irish national mood, no matter how temporary it is.

As if anyone needed another reason to dislike the NY Yankees

I know, I know.

It’s not like the Boston Red Sox are anyone’s darlings, other than those of use who are card-carrying members of Red Sox Nation.

But as long as the Olde Towne Team can retain the moral high ground by having a smaller payroll, then the Bronx Bombers will remain the bad boys of summer. (For the record, the Yankees payroll of 2011 opening day payroll of $201.7M greatly exceeds that of the number two Phillies ($173.0M), and the second runner up Red Sox, who come in at $161.4M.)

Arguably, neither Red Sox nor Yankees fans are getting exactly what they paid for, at least so far this season. But that’s a story for another day. And, as the say, the season is a long one.

What’s emanating from Yankee Stadium that’s most interesting of late is the brouhaha (or is it brewhaha) over who gets the “service fee” added to the price of a beer and a dog served to those sitting in the swank and pricey field-level seats. These are the ones you see, at least partially empty, behind home plate, where you also get to watch the servers scurry back and forth carrying food to the “haves” so that they don’t have to hit the concession stands with the hoi poloi. (At least they haven’t figured out a way for the swells to relieve themselves after all those cold ones without having to head to a restroom. At least not yet.)

There may well be seats with waiter service at Fenway Park, but I’m usually in the get-in-line-if-you-want-a-hot-dog seats, which are also serviced by the kids who race up and down stairs all game long carrying heavy aluminum boxes full of hot dogs or Sports Bars (incredibly shrinking ice cream bars) or cases of soda. The kids hawking the cotton candy have it easy: their wares are light.

I don’t buy all that often from the kids who work the stands, but always tip them when I do.

The folks working the premium seats at Yankee Stadium also work for tips.

But they have a particularly difficult time trying to extract them. So they’re going to court to try to even the tip-giving playing field up a bit. Here’s the story:

When you order something at Yankee for delivery to your seat – say, a $10.50 beer – a 20 percent “service fee” is added.

Legends Hospitality, the concessionaire co-owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and Goldman Sachs, allegedly pockets the 20 percent service fee attached to food and drink in violation of New York law, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the company by three Yankee Stadium servers this week. If certified as class action, the suit could involve more than a hundred servers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims.

Servers do a small portion of that service fee, and can also receive tips, but, given how the 20% service charge is presented, it’s not surprising that most fans think they’re covered, tip-wise:

According to the suit, the menus field-level spectators find in their cupholders include this disclaimer: "A 20% service charge will be added to the listed prices. Additional gratuity is at your discretion." That phrase "additional gratuity" would seem to imply that the 20 percent is, in fact, a gratuity, but [plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian] Schaffer says his clients don’t get that money.

Instead, they get that a far more meager 4-6%.

No wonder they’re saying now wait just a darned New York minute.

And, this being the New York Yankees, and the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs, for that matter, things are even worse.

While technically the servers can receive tips, they’re not allowed to answer the question if a fan asks them where the 20% service fee goes. If they tell the truth – which is most of it doesn’t go to me – they can get fired. Instead, they can only murmur that ‘additional gratuity is at your discretion.’ Words never uttered in the course of natural human conversation in the history of mankind.

People in the bleachers tip the servers, and I’m guessing that at least some of those in the gold-plated seats at Yankee would want to do so, as well. After all, if you’re already in for $350 for your seat, and $10.50 + 20% service fee for a beer, it’s no big deal to throw a few bucks at someone who’s trying to make a living selling refreshments at the ball park.

If Legends wants to sell a beer for $12.60 rather than a lousy $10.50, why don’ t they just charge that much to begin with? Come explicitly clean about what proportion of that is allocated to server compensation. That same piece of paper that mealy-mouths about “additional gratuity” could be up front and say “4-6% (depending on volume) of this price goes to your server; any other tip is up to you.”

No doubt they’ve spent millions of dollars on focus groups and surveys that have told them that people feel like they’re getting a better deal, and feel more like spending, if they’re charged $10.50 plus and additional 20%, than if they’re charged $12.60. Especially if they’re being misled into thinking that the 20% is a tip.

Here’s how Legends Hospitality positions itself:

Legends’ highly innovative approach is reshaping the sports business landscape, and our award-winning service has helped increase revenue in every Legends venue.

Experience sports and entertainment in a whole new way — the Legends way — where it’s all about the fan.

That innovative approach – the con job – may be helping increase revenue in all of their venues, but that “it’s all about the fan” kind of makes you choke on my hot dog, doesn’t it?

Needless to say, in this contest, I’m gonna root, root, root for the servers. If they don’t win it’s a shame.

Source: Huffington Post.

Things I Like About Ireland

I don’t know if I’ll be able to post regularly during my week in Ireland, or whether I’ll have to save ideas up and use them when I get back.  But for starters, there are a few things I really like about Ireland (other than the obvious: the beauty and the people).  Here’s what’s top o’ mind:

• You can order a cup of tea in a pub and not have them look at you as if you have two heads. Not that I’m only drinking tea in pubs. There’s G&T’s, Bailey’s, and an occasional glass – or even pint – of Guinness. (Guinness, after all, is good for you.) But I do occasionally just want a cup of tea. Not that it will be fancy, mind you. It will just be a string-less tea bag, served in a flimsy aluminum tea pot, with a chipped, heavy, white china mug to drink the tea from. Still, there is nothing like a nice cup of tea in an Irish pub – especially now that smoking in pubs is outlawed. (I started to type “drinking in pubs is outlawed” – now that would be something else entirely…)
• Irish brown bread. A cup of tea is even better when accompanied by a slab of brown bread slathered with butter.  Although there are some places in Boston where you can buy brown bread, they don’t tend to be supremely convenient to where I live. So, after I go through the loaf I will no doubt bring home with me, I’m out of luck. I have tried to bake it a couple of times, only to have my efforts end in failure. The recipe I got from the owner of O’Malley’s clothing shop in Galway was perhaps too complex, and the bread didn’t come out right. I had another recipe, which I got from a fellow who owned a B&B-cum-restaurant in Dingle. This man – what the Irish might call a cute hoor – sneered when I asked him for his recipe. “You won’t be able to make it,” he told me. He then produced a pre-printed version – so it’s not as if her were guarding his dear mither’s secret. His point was that an American couldn’t make it. And, even though I brought some special flour (brown mix) home with me, damned if he wasn’t right. No doubt he left something crucial out. Cute hoor, indeed. (My brown bread failure is despite that fact that I’m a good baker, and make a spectacular Irish soda bread with raisins. Hmmmmm.)
• The way they pronounce my name. It was only when I first began traveling to Ireland that I realized that, over the years, the pronunciation of my first name had changed from accent on the first syllable – as in MAUR-een – to accent on the second syllable – as in Maur-EEN. When I was growing up, most people pronounced my name MAUR-een, which makes sense. MAUR is the “real” part of the name (Maura is Irish for Mary), while een is the diminutive add-on. And then I moved out of Worcester and into a world where 75% of the people I knew were no longer of Irish descent. And those folks in the outside world mostly used the Americanized version of my name. Anyway, when I first heard me-self called MAUR-een, I realized that this was actually the correct (and sensible) way to say my name.

I may be able to sneak another Made-in-Ireland post or two in. Whether I do or not, I have queued up posts for each day this week, so you won’t go Pink Slip-less.

Slán for now.

Tomorrow may be it. But let’s see how Robert Fitzpatrick feels on Sunday.

According to some fringe religious group, Saturday (May 21st) is going to be Judgment Day. Major earthquakes are going to start in Jerusalem, and then start shucking and jiving worldwide. Damn that globalization...

I don’t quite get how it’s all going to go down, but I think the story is that the earthquakes shake things up; we then have five months of – there’s no other way to put it – hell on earth. And finally, on October 21st, everything’s kaput.

Well, that gives us a while to clean up our acts. If there are no atheists in foxholes, I’m betting there won’t be many atheists on planet earth if tomorrow actually does bring a rash o’ earthquakes. (Where do I sign up? Where did I put my mother’s rosary beads? Does the fact that I hung onto the picture of Cardinal Cushing that he gave my father count for anything?)

Personally, I’m not too worried about the endgame happening – at least not for a couple of billion years. If it does, I guess I’ll die in Ireland. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world. (Actually, it will be the end of the world….If this is the case, T.S. Eliot’s got it wrong. The world will be ending with a bang AND a whimper. But what do poets know?)

Some folks, of course, are taking this seriously.

One who’s taking it more seriously than most is Robert Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick is a retired transpo worker from New York City who’s supporting his old employer by placing $140K worth of ads giving his fellow New Yorkers a head’s up on what’s coming next. (Source info and picture: NY Daily News.) The $140K is Fitzpatrick’s life savings, so if the greatest earthquake ever doesn’t occur, he may be facing a personal, look-in-the-mirror-and-ask-yourself-what-you-just-did-with-your-life-savings personal day of judgment on May 22, 2011.

“I'm trying to warn people about what's coming," the 60-year-old Staten Island resident said. "People who have an understanding [of end times] have an obligation to warn everyone."

His doomsday warning has appeared on 1,000 placards on subway cars, at a cost of $90,000, and at bus shelters around the city, for $50,000 more.

There are certainly plenty of times when unswerving and unswervable belief comes in handy: Convincing yourself that the new company you’ve joined is not going to turn out to be yet another dysfunctional crazy factory. Getting on an airplane. Reposing on your deathbed. And it’s certainly laudable (I guess) that Fitzpatrick is willing to put his money where his unswervable belief is.

But I can’t help but believe (unswervingly) that this is not a good thing to do with your life savings.

Pretty much the only lives Fitzpatrick’s changing here – other than his own -  are those who got his business. That would be the printer (and the printer’s devil) – this is a good sized job; can’t tell if that’s 4-color or spot, but this wasn’t a total cheapo -  especially given the decline in printed matter; no pdf poster downloads here. A real, honest to goodness print run.

And the ad salesman for the subway and bus stop ads. I bet this made someone’s quarterly quota for him. Too bad there’s not likely to be any follow-on business (either way).

The outfit – I was going to quite uncharitably say “nutters” – who are behind the doomsday/gloomsday prognostication is something called Family Radio. Alas, they do not have a station in Massachusetts. Their only New England outlet is in Connecticut, of all places.

Family Radio is run by Harold Camping.

Using head-spinning numerological calculations, Camping has determined that the world will end on Saturday, May 21. He's used similar biblical math to pinpoint when Abraham was circumcised (2068 B.C.) and when earth was created (11,083 B.C.).

Camping has predicted the end of world once before - on Sept. 6, 1994. When the sun rose on Sept. 7, Camping admitted he might have had that one wrong.

That circumcision date sounds like it could be right, but I’ve got to go with the scientific community on the age of the earth, which is 4.5 billion years, plus or minus.

Anyway, if the earth opens up tomorrow and swallows Galway, it’s been nice bloggin’ for yez.