Who said embroidery’s a lost art?

If you can crochet, you can make an afghan. (Check!)

If you can knit, you can make a scarf. (Check!)

If you can embroider, you can decorate pillow cases, pimp up some linen guest towels, or create a work of art:

I hate to boast, but knowing how to embroider – how to cross-stitch, blanket stitch, French knot – has enabled me to turn my kitchen into a gallery, where I get to display this early oeuvre (c. 1957).

Oh, I haven’t embroidered anything in a while, so my skills may well be rusty – as rusty as the imprint on a linen dish towel if you leave the metal embroidery hoop on it too long in the evening dews and damps - but I’m guessing it’s like riding a bicycle, driving a stick shift, or blowing a smoke ring. Once you know how…

But what’s the reason to know how?

Knitting and crocheting are at least practical. Embroidery? Not so much. Who bothers to learn it? Who bothers to teach it?

Mothers these days drive their daughters to field hockey practice, use flash cards to improve their vocabulary so they’ll ace their SATs, help them identify a “passion” – real or fake – that will look good on their college app 10 years down the pike, encourage them to build their “brand.” Who has the time or interest to sit with their little girls on a perfectly nice summer day and show them how to place an embroider hoop just so?

Way too Ma Ingalls and Little House-y for today’s girls on the go.

Ah, those growing up years…it was kinder, gentler time (at least if you were straight, white, and middle class).

Anyway, I would truly have thought that embroidery is a lost art, other than in Burano (Venice) where it’s the thing.

But it’s not a lost art if you’re Michael-Birch Pierce:

Pierce is a fiber artist, fashion designer, and teacher at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2010, while earning his master’s in fine arts at Savannah College of Art and Design, he landed a gig embroidering Christmas ornaments for the Obama White House and  discovered that instead of following a set pattern in the studio, he could take his sewing machine on the road for impromptu sessions.

Now, like a first-chair musician, he jets around the world to create embroidered, in situ portraits that he calls “stitchies”—or, stitched selfies—which he sews live, on-the-fly, as a kind of textile art performance piece. At $10,000 per appearance, he’s worlds apart from the stereotypical county fair caricaturist. “It’s not some party trick,” he says. “It’s an intuitive artifact of the moment.” (Source: Bloomberg)

First off, I’m in colossal awe that he’s so deft with the sewing machine that he can make works of art using one.

While I did learn to crochet, knit, and – of course – embroider, I never mastered sewing.

Oh, I can hem a pair of pants, sew on a button, and make a minor repair. But, unlike my sisters, who both became fairly skilled seamstresses, I can’t actually make something that can be worn by an actual person (or even hung on a curtain rod). The one item I ever completed – a dopey sleeveless shift in a ghastly cream, green, and purple calico print – could not, because of the unevenness of the yoke, be worn outside of the house. So I used it as a nightgown which, given the ghastly print, should probably have been its purpose to begin with.

Pierce is in a league of his own. (Check out his site. He’s pretty darned brilliant.)

That league lets him command that $10K per appearance fee. And he gets to work some pretty cool venues. He’s done NY Fashion Week, Art Basel, and:

At the SXSW conference in Austin last year, American Greetings commissioned him as part of its analog message of disruption.

First, there’s the stunning fact that there’s embroidery going down at SXSW. But I’m going do double down on that with the stunning fact that American Greeting (huh?) has a presence there.

Here’s an example of his work:

Okay, it lacks the primitive charm of my Will I Be Poached, Coddled, Hard Boiled masterpiece. But I have to confess that my litte work wasn’t an MER original. I purchased that design pattern, probably for a dime at Woolworth’s. Plus, afraid of running out of embroidery thread, I occasionally used one strand when I should have used two. So I do have to give it up for Pierce in terms of both originality and execution.

And I can pretty much guarantee that no one in the Rogers household wanted to watch me embroider, especially given that I generally ended up with pinprick holes in my fingers and a trace of blood on whatever I was working on. That’s not the case with Pierce:

Part of the appeal is the spectacle. The flamboyant, bald, bearded Pierce drives the foot pedal and spills abstractions into life via spool pin, bobbin, and feed dog. During a four-hour event, he can stitch about 75 portraits on five-inch-by-seven-inch fabric.

Gulp! I’m guessing that it took me four hours to embroider up the dish towel that now takes pride of place over my kitchen sink.

Not that I want a stitchie – at least not of myself - but I’m going to keep my eye on Pierce’s schedule. If he ever comes to Boston, I’d love to see this man at work.

A gig’s a gig, I guess

Some of you are no doubt old enough to remember the day, many years ago – way back in 2015 -  when Donald J. Trump famously came down the escalator. Even if you recall the descent, the pithy “they’re rapists” speech, you may not be aware that many of the folks cheering him on were paid actors. This was before enough folks were heeding the Trumpian dog whistle clarion call  - enough so that Trump no longer has to pay for rabid adulation, which is probably a bad thing for the country but a good thing for actors, given Trump’s reputation for stiffing folks he’d hired. (Pink Slip covered this matter here.)

There’s been so much water under the Bridge Over the River Stress since then that I hadn’t thought much about this incident. Until I saw an article on someone – a New Orleans energy company? a shadow entity acting on their behalf? a shadow entity acting on someone else’s behalf - having hired actors to show up, wearing bright orange tee-shirts that read “Clean Energy. Good Jobs. Reliable Power.” at a hearing to support the building of a power plant.

The purpose of the hearing was to gauge community support for the power plant. But for some of those in the crowd, it was just another acting gig.

At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry.

“It was very shady, very secretive, especially when we got paid. They literally paid us under the table.”

They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.

“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.

He said he thought he was going to shoot a commercial. “I’m not political,” he said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.” (Source: The Lens/NOLA)

The actors were also required to sign NDA’s stating that they wouldn’t reveal that they were paid for their show of support.

I don’t know any actors, but I know people who do. And I know plenty of poets and writers. So I know that making a living at your craft can be tough. One day, walking around my neighborhood, I saw a fellow in painter’s whites walking into a building carrying a ladder. He looked familiar. Then I realized where I’d recognized him from. I’d seen him in a play the weekend before.

If you want to be something other than a starving artist/musician/poet/actor, best to keep your day job.

But a gig’s a gig, I guess. So it’s hard to blame actors for grabbing a few bucks for a walk-on or, better yet, a more lucrative speaking role. And showing up to shill for a power plant – even if it’s going to spew pollution all over its surrounds (and I have not idea whether that’s the case here) – isn’t the same as getting paid to show up at, say, an American Nazi Party rally, or an incel convention. Me? I like to think I wouldn’t have taken this sort of gig. Not that I’ve been offered, but I wouldn’t write copy for the American Nazi Party or an incel convention. Something more innocuous, the writer equivalent of being asked to wear the orange shirt? If I thought about it, I probably wouldn’t take the gig. But I might. So I’m not blame/shaming the actors.

But how colossally shitty of Entergy – the Big Easy energy company supposedly involved here, and the entity that would benefit from permission granted for the new power plant – or whoever it was that actually involved themselves in this bit of fakery. Entergy claims it wasn’t them and that they’re investigating. Whether it was Entergy or, for all we know, Scott Pruitt and the EPA, it’s a nasty sort of business. Especially given that some power plant opponents claim that their (legitimate) supporters couldn’t get into the hearing because the fakes were taking up the seats and monopolizing the microphone.

Apparently, this sort of grassroots trickery is not all that rare. It’s even got its own name:

Paying people to create the illusion of grassroots support is known as astroturfing.

And there are even companies that specialize in it.

“There are hundreds of such firms across the country,” [UCLA professor Edward Walker] told CNN in January. “By my estimate, around 40 percent of the Fortune 500 appears on the client list of at least one such firm.”

Swell.

A gig’s a gig, I guess. But I like the actor who works as a housepainter better than the orange shirt brigade out there astroturfing.

Cheese it, the Brexiteers!

I’m a cheese lover, but not a particularly sophisticated one. My favorite cheese is cheddar which, I guess is a taste upgrade from Velveeta, the cheese of my childhood.

Anyway, cheddar is what you’re most likely to find in my fridge at any given time. Second most likely: mozzarella. (As I right this, both are there. As is a partially used tub of Philadelphia cream cheese with chive and onion.)

Oh, I like plenty of other cheeses just fine, and am always delighted when someone’s got a big old spread of fun and interesting cheeses on offer. It’s just that most of what I buy for myself if cheddar.

Cheddar just works. It works in a toasted cheese sandwich. In an omelet. On a cracker.

Most of what I buy is Cabot’s Vermont Sharp.

Works for me.

Since I’m buying locally – Vermont, after all, borders on Massachusetts, and I am, after all, something of a Vermonter by marriage – I wasn’t conscious of the fact that, when it comes to cheddar, Ireland is something of a big cheese, producing 180,000 tons each year (90% of its overall cheese production). Much of that cheddar ends up in Britain which, with the U.S., is one of the only countries where cheddar is popular.

The reliance on the British market may, thanks to Brexit, prove problematic.

If Britain leaves the EU’s single market and customs union, as it intends to, Irish exporters can expect to face regulatory hurdles and perhaps tariffs. Conor Mulvihill of Dairy Industry Ireland, a lobby group, estimates that these barriers could add as much as €0.21 to the cost of cheddar made with each litre of milk; its farm-gate price is only about €0.30. In that worst-case scenario, “there wouldn’t be a gram of Irish cheddar exported,” he says. (Source: The Economist)

Yep, I’d say that nary a gram of exported Irish cheddar would be the worst case scenario. But it’s also, I suspect, unlikely.

Nevertheless, Irish cheesemakers, while hoping for the best, are expecting the worst. They’re making Jarlsberg. And mozzarella. Looking at whether to start making Edam and Gouda.

As anyone who’s been to Ireland knows, there are a lot of cows there. And there’s only so much milk, butter, and ice cream to be consumed. And so, cheese. Glad the output of all those contented cows will continue to find homes.

There are a couple of problems.

All those Irish cows:

…produce far more milk in summer than winter. Cheddar, which can be left to mature for years, allows cheesemakers to smooth their output throughout the year. Switching to softer cheeses could mean summer gluts and winter scarcity.

Then there’s the slight problem that Irish mozzarella – thanks to all that lovely Irish grass that gives Kerry Gold Butter its lovely yellow hue – Irish mozzarella ends up yellow-tinged. Which is too bad, given that we all want mozzarella to be white. (Speaking of white, while my cheddar may be labeled white, it isn’t. It’s off-white, pale yellow. And when someone tries to give me orange cheese, as happens with cheddar and American, I cringe. And, at the Roche Brothers deli counter, refuse. Orange cheese, while it tastes the same, is the color of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese. Of Velveeta. Just say ‘no’ to orange-colored cheddar.)

This news on what Brexit will do to Irish cheesemakers is interesting enough on its own. (All part of a bigger picture on the damage that Brexit, if it actually happens, could do to Ireland, especially given the implications of what it might mean for the wonderfully open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.) But what really caught my eye in this Economist article was the photo that illustrated it.

Nothing to do with Irish cows. Just with Irish cheese.

I give you County Cork’s Johnny Lynch, who makes mozzarella that comes not from Irish cows, but from Irish water buffalo.

No word on whether Irish grass-fed water buffalo have the same yellow cheese issues as their cow cousins.

All I can say is, ride ‘em, cheeseboy!

Moneybags

With all the unrelenting bad news out there, it’s nice to read something that – if not good news in any way,shape, or form – is at least different, somewhat smile-on-the-race inducing, and a good little window into good old human nature.

On Wednesday morning, during rush hour in Indianapolis, the back door of a Brink’s truck opened on I-70, and moneybags flew out onto the highway. The estimate is that $600K was all of a sudden out there for the taking. Some of the moneybags just landed intact. Others spilled their guts, and all of a sudden cash was strewn across the four-lane interstate and piling up on the shoulders.

People being people, they do what people do:

A school bus driver knew what he would do, the police said. He pulled over on the highway, jumped out from the driver’s seat and grabbed some cash before driving away. So did four men in a white pickup truck who snatched an entire bag and then sped off…At some point during the mayhem, word must have spread to people living in the residential area off the interstate in West Indianapolis. They started jumping fences and frantically stuffing their pockets with cash. “Sort of something out of a movie scene, where you have bills, loose bills flying all over the interstate, vehicles stopping, people getting out of their cars,” Cpl. Brock McCooe of the Indiana State Police told WXIN-TV, the Fox affiliate in Indianapolis. (Source: NY Times)

I hope that the school bus was empty. It would hardly have been edifying for the kids to watch while Grandpa Friendly went on his loot grab. Even worse, what if the kiddoes had joined in? How much fun Show & Tell would have been at school that day.

Anyway, I’m going to split a hair here. Scooping up loose cash is one thing. Okay, if that loose cash is appearing in large multiples, it’s obvious that it didn’t just drop out of someone’s pocket. But it’s pretty much human nature to just jump at it without thinking about it. And I’m guessing that plenty of those who hoovered up cash are embarrassed that this was their first impulse.

Who doesn’t like free money?

One of my earliest memories was finding a ten-dollar bill at Crane’s Beach. I was four years old at the time, and ten bucks in 1954 was a lot of moola. My delight in finding that type of fortune was magnified that my father and my sister had both walked by the folded bill, sticking up there, probably blending in with the beach grass. And I spied it with my little eye. (Do I reveal what an odd-ball I am, how devoid my life has apparently been of peak moments, that finding that ten-dollar bill remains a high point of my life?)

A few years ago, I found $40 on the sidewalk on Charles Street. No one was around. And $40 certainly isn’t material enough – at least IMHO – to bring into the police station. Even at this low amount, I would have turned it in it had been in a wallet or pocketbook or even an envelope. And a higher amount – more than $100 or maybe more than $200, an amount someone might have missed - I would have brought it into BPD, even if I knew in my heart of hearts that it was never going to find its way to its rightful owner. But it was spare cash just lying there. Lucky me.

Right after Christmas, I found $50 on Boylston Street. I should have given it all to the guy who was panhandling nearby, but I only gave him ten bucks. The rest went to picking up a few things at the post-Christmas sale at Crate & Barrel.

I feel no guilt about any of these “finds”.

Anyway, maybe those people leaping fences and stuffing their pockets with loosies were just going on impulse. Not thinking about whose money it was, just thinking, ‘hey, free money.’ No doubt many felt remorse after the fact. As in WTF did I just do here? But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that many of them may be fundamentally honest folks who just got caught up in the moment.

Whisking away a Brinks moneybag, however?

Ain’t no impulse in the world that wouldn’t be tempered by the consciousness that if you keep a Brinks bag full of sorted and banded cash you’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you.

So I think those guys in the white van who made off with a bag had larceny in their hearts. But, as I said, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the free-range cash folks.

Many years ago, have a small scale incident somewhat akin to the case of the loose money grabbers.

I was going through the toll at the NH Turnpike which, back then, was a basket system that took your quarters. I tossed in my quarters, but one missed the mark. So I got out of the car and picked it up and tossed it into the basket. But there were a whole bunch of quarters on the ground and, without giving it a thought that these were quarters that had missed the basket, I picked up a few and drove off. In fact, I remember thinking that it was peculiar that there were all those quarters on the ground.A few miles up the road it occurred to me that these quarters had been intended to pay a toll and weren’t just lying around there, free for the taking. Oh.

No, I didn’t drive back and return the quarters – they were worth a dollar or two – but, in retrospect, I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t throw them in the basket next time I used the NH Turnpike. And relieved, all these years later, that there were no security cams, and that I wasn’t pulled over by a state trooper. I can imagine trying to explain that it really hadn’t occurred to me that I was stealing from the Live Free or Die state.

Back home again, in Indiana:

Within minutes, the cash grab was over. State troopers blocked traffic on the highway, helped Brink’s employees collect what remained of the money and warned people that they would be arrested if they pocketed any of it. The officers didn’t find it amusing.

…“People know right from wrong and anyone we track down who kept a dollar of this money will be arrested for theft,” First Sgt. Bill Dalton said in a statement. “The time to do the right thing and call us to turn in the money is now, because once we knock on your door, you won’t be able to avoid being arrested.” 

The po-po are going to arrest everyone who kept a buck from this weird windfall? Seriously, folks. But if I were the guys with the Brinks bag, I might consider dropping it off somewhere.

Anyway, fun little story to break up the noisome news that’s crowding everything else out of my mindspace.

The Common Good

Yesterday I saw an article in the Boston Globe about an enterprising fellow in South Boston who was making a bit of side income by AirBnB-ing his spare bedroom for $36 a night. The room was pretty much advertised as no frills, the building “ungentrified”, but with the benefit of being close to public transportation and, on a nice day, not a bad walk into downtown. No frills and “ungentrified” didn’t quite capture the full ambience of the digs which were, as it turns out, in the Mary Ellen McCormack housing project.

Not that people living in public housing shouldn’t be encouraged to flex their entrepreneurial pecs, but if someone’s got a spare bedroom in public housing, they should probably be downsizing and letting someone who desperately needs that spare bedroom get the larger flat. Anyway, I’m sure that “the authorities” will be crawling all up and down this guy’s arse and shutting his AirBnB operation down.

I’m of two minds here, mostly because I don’t know the public housing rules. On the one hand, if you don’t need the room, cede the apartment to someone who needs it more and move into a smaller place. On the other hand, if it’s okay for someone to have a larger flat than he technically needs, then it’s okay to rent out the spare room. Don’t know all the details, of course. Maybe the man has a kid away in school, so just lets the room out when it’s free. I also don’t know whether AirBnB is allowed in these buildings. It’s certainly not in plenty of places, as people mostly don’t like unvetted strangers flitting in and out of their buildings. But if it’s allowed…

I would, of course, like to see the looks on the faces of those who showed up for their bargain rental in Boston and find out that it’s in a project.

Not that the McCormack is the worst project in Boston. Historically, it has been the “crown jewel” of Boston public housing. But it does have its share of drugs and shootings. And, oh yeah, Whitey Bulger grew up there.

So, that’s the story about the South Boston AirBnB.

And then there’s the story about the the dog park in Tribeca.

Seems like a decade or so a go, a bunch of Manhattan dog owners took over a public dog park:

…installing a lock, charging fees, banning non-member mutts, and enforcing its 22 rules with an iron fist — yet the city never noticed. (Source: NY Post)

It’s pretty surprising that the coup organized by the Dog Owners of Tribeca (DOOT) didn’t have any initial opposition. You would think that some pooch owners would have been pissed off and reported this to the Parks Department. But apparently the type of pooch owner who would have been pissed off was the type of pooch owner who’d join DOOT.

Founders installed a keypad lock on the gate and sent members a secret 4-digit passcode after they paid a $120 annual fee over Paypal on the group’s Website. The code was updated every few months.

Members were to live by 22 strict rules, the first being that non-members were not allowed into the park and members were mandated to chase them out if they tried. If members failed to do so, they were kicked out of the group.

Those 22 strict rules? They included no kids under 12 and no “socially inept dogs.”

Who sets the standards for a “socially inept dog”? Is butt sniffing and ball licking allowed?

I ask because I was once out walking my sister’s late and still greatly lamented dog Jack when we encountered a woman walking her pooch. The dogs went into meet and greet mode, and the woman pulled her dog back, admonishing her dog that butt sniffing is “disgusting.” Well, it would be if dogs were human. It would, in fact, be “socially inept.” But dogs being dogs…

Anyway, over the years, DOOT – which is set up as a non-profit – took in $83K in dues.

They claimed to use the doggie dough for upkeep, such as pressure-washing the blacktop three times a week, maintenance and repairs, insurance and supplies such as poop bags. Money was often left over after each year, the filings show.

Apparently some of those using the park didn’t know it was a public space:

“That’s crazy,” said John Ellett, 33, a professional dog-walker. “They even require the dogs to wear special tags, so I thought it was totally private.”

It’s back to being public now.

Parks officials snipped the lock Friday, after receiving a complaint.

The NYC Parks Department likes to partner with local groups to maintain its dog parks, but charging a fee (and locking out non-members) is strictly verboten.

DOOT members say that they’ll fight back. I’m guessing that they don’t have a leg to lift stand on. Nice if they want to maintain the park and collect fees to do so, but they can’t shut others out of a public space. And, yeah, there may be some “socially inept” dogs – over aggressive, running wild – but they’re mostly the result of “canine inept” owners. If you want a private space where you can exclude them and theirs, best you look for a slice of land in Tribeca to rent out. (Good luck with that…)

Hanging by a thread

Today, we’re expecting the first summer weather of the year.

Having to date had only a handful of days that can be categorized as even vaguely spring-like – last week I was still wearing a down parka and gloves – we’re expecting temps in the 80’s. Yesterday, the heat was on; today, bring on the AC. And bring out the summer clothing. I’ve got today’s outfit all lined up. Sandals, even though I really need a peddie. And even though it’s before Memorial Day – so you’re not supposed to wear linen - a linen shirt. And a pair of lightweight jeans.

If you’re gutsy or exhibitionistic enough, there are apparently jeans that are even more lightweight. As in these “extreme cut out” jeans from Carmar:

At $168, they’re a bit out of my normal jean price range. But they’re certainly, ah, cool looking. As in stay cool, not look cool. And in a completely uncomfortable, ridiculous way.If it’s skimpy you’re after, wouldn’t it be more practical and cheaper to just hack down a pair of your existing dungarees – maybe the ones with the oh-so-yesterday cut-out knees – and turn them into a pair of Daisy Duke’s that are so short the pockets hang out.

In case you’re interested, here (from the Carmar site) are some of the deets:

• Relax fit, high rise
• Extreme cut outs
• Non-stretch (100% Cotton)
• Hand wash cold
• Lay flat to dry

Relax fit? I guess a birthday suit is relaxed fit, too.

Non-stretch? I’d say non-thanks, but really there’s nothing to stretch.

And hand wash cold? I guess since there’s not much by way of material, they won’t take 40 days and 40 nights to dry, as a standard pair of jeans might – especially if they were wrung out by hand.

If you’re not put off by any of the above – or the fact that the largest size they come in is an 8 – you’d better move fast, as these puppies are only available in limited quantity.

By the way, you shouldn’t give Carmar too much credit as an innovator.

As the HuffPo article I saw this in pointed out, Tokyo designer Thibaut brought out a similar style (dubbed “thong jeans”) last fall:

Looks pretty much like the same dealio, making Carmar a copycat. But the Thibaut’s were only available in Japan (Hello, Kitty), so Carmar is Making America Great Again by making and marketing their wares in the good old US of A.

Carmar is an LA company, so maybe this is a West Coast thing.

I don’t suspect I’ll see any of these barmy things when I’m out and about today, even in our balmy weather. 

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A note of thanks to my sister Trish, head of the Pink Slip Fashion Advisory Council, for pointing this one out to me.

Act Globally, Regret Locally

Many years ago, on a none-too-clean boat touring Donegal Bay, my husband and I sat near a mother with five kids. The youngest was a babe in arms, maybe four or five months old. At some point, the binky – or, as the Irish would have it, the dummy – popped out of the baby’s mouth and landed on the scow’s none-too-clean floor. The baby’s mam didn’t miss a beat. She leaned over, scooped the binky up off that none-too-clean floor, stuck it in her mouth, sucked on it for a couple of seconds, and put it back in the baby’s mouth.

Jim and I laughed. Now there was an experienced mother, not worrying about germs and my kind of gal with respect to the 10-second rule.

(The other good binky story I have is about when my sister Trish decided that it was time for her daughter – then two and change, I think – to surrender her binky collection. The deal made with Molly was that she’d leave her binkies out for the Easter Bunny, and he’d give her a basket full of goodies in return. This was all very reasonable to Molly, who dumped her binkies and didn’t look back. Or so it seemed until a few weeks later when Molly looked around one evening and asked, “What happened my binkies?”)

Anyway, whether you call it a pacifier, a dummy, or a binky, those little plastic suckers are godsends for many parents.

But, as that young Irish mother knew, pacifiers do tend to hit the deck with regularity.

I have noticed that there are workarounds to this. I’ve seen pacifiers incorporated in a stuffed animal that’s presumably easier for a baby to hang on to. And, more practically, seen tethers that attach the binky to the side of a stroller so that when it falls (or is spit) out of a baby’s mouth, it doesn’t land on the ground.

Then there’s the Pop, the brain child of a designer that was brought to market by Nicki Radzely, a New Jersey mother/entrepreneur whose company Doddle offers a new-fangled pacifier which, on its way from mouth to floor, turns from an outie to an innie. This keeps the pacifier clean and reusable without having to sterilize it (or have it sucked clean by the mother). Genius!

The Pop is pricey. One costs about $10 (vs. the non-cleaner pacifiers which go for a buck or two). But Doddle’s business was going along quite nicely. It was selling a lot of Pops in yupscale places like Nordstrom’s and the Cooper-Hewitt museum shop.

And then a few weeks ago, Radzely got a call from her bank (a JPMorgan Chase branch) asking her if she was doing any business with North Korea.

Now, I wouldn’t put it past man-child Kim Jong Un if he pacified himself occasionally with a little hit on a Doddle Pop. But the idea of a $10 binky finding a market in an “economy” that can’t afford to feed its own people is pretty much laughable. So when Radzely got the call from her bank, she laughed.

The day after the call, the humor was gone, and Radzely:

…discovered that her business ATM card wouldn’t work. A teller told her the account appeared to have been blocked. Radzely set up a second call with her JPMorgan Chase business banker, who said the bank had decided to end its relationship with Doddle. Radzely says she was told to come in and pick up a cashier’s check for roughly $150,000. (Source: Bloomberg)

This has left Radzely in a lurch. Bankless – until and unless her application to open an account at a Citibank branch is approved - she can’t pay her bills or her payroll. And Radzely hasn’t been able get a straightforward answer from JPMorgan on why they tossed Doddle on its ear.

JPMorgan hasn’t shared details about what raised the red flag over the Doddle account. Radzely says her only clues are her banker’s email indicating JPMorgan’s back office needed more information about “transactions that have gone through your account,” followed by the questions over the phone about North Korea. But she says her banker did not directly tie the decision to close Doddle’s account to North Korea or anything else. One warning flag may be China, where Doddle’s products, like those of many American businesses, are manufactured.

Oopsa doopsa. The China connection.

“There are many issues with China circumventing North Korean sanctions,” says Joe Salerno, who runs Financial Compliance & Investigative Services, a consulting firm in Lafayette Hill, Pa., that works with financial institutions. “Most banks are very reluctant to talk to a customer if they believe it’s been involved in suspicious activity.” Whatever is behind JPMorgan’s move, the turn of events at Doddle offers an illustration for millions of businesses about how, in an era when electronic payments are the lifeblood of almost every enterprise, financial institutions can sever them at a moment’s notice.

Radzely’s hunch is that something went off track with a “$2,700 wire payment for safety testing in China” that involved the wrong name of a company, and Radzely having her manufacturer pay the testing company and reimbursing them for it later. But she doesn’t know for sure whether it’s this or something else. And she isn’t getting an answer from JPMorgan. They just cut off their relationship with Doddle.

Banking relationships are, it seems, at will. So JPMorgan is within its rights to let Doddle go. But it seems pretty ridiculous for a bank with trillions of dollars worth of assets, and tens of billions of dollars worth of income, to come down on a small business like Doddle. And to do it so abruptly and with no explanation.

If it is the China-North Korea connection, why not call in the Doddlers and tell them they might want to take another look at the manufacturer that they deal with. Or whatever.

But I guess it’s easy enough to stand up to the little guy with a binky in its mouth, and be able to point it out to the Feds as an example of how scrupulously they pursue bad actors. Wonder if they’re so assiduously – and so precipitously dumping – household word organizations they have business relationships with.

I understand why Doddle’s manufacturing its Pops in China. Where better to produce plastic crap? But it’s not the first – or the last – example of acting locally turning into a case of regretting things locally.

Hope it all works out for them. Hate to think of moms having to revert to sucking clean a binky that’s fallen on a filthy boat floor.

America’s Ginsengland stresses out

I can honestly say that, in my many, many years of life, I have given zero conscious thought to ginseng. If we were playing word-association, it would be 1) tea; 2) China; 3) health food stores. If over the course of those many, many years of life, I’ve ingested ginseng I’m guessing it was in Chinese food. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with ginger. (Perhaps I should be taking ginseng for confusion and memory lapses.)

But it I’d grown up in Marathon County, Wisconsin – which, blessedly, I did not – I’d know plenty about ginseng.

Wisconsin, you ask? As in America’s Dairyland?

Yes, that Wisconsin, where it’s not all contented cows, Sargento cheese, and Green Bay Packers fans (a.k.a., Cheeseheads) sporting wedge o’ cheese hats. At least not in Marathon County.

This rural area built an important local industry as a purveyor of a premium product for China’s rising middle class, where its ginseng is sold in boxes bearing the American flag and the line, “Something Special from Wisconsin.”

…Ginseng exports are a $30 million industry in Marathon County, and local economists estimate that each new job in ginseng creates as many as four additional jobs. (Source: Washington Post)

Oh, ginseng isn’t all that Marathon County has going for it. The county’s largest city is Wausau, known for insurance (its eponymous insurance company is now part of Liberty Mutual) and for manufacturing. And there is nearly one dairy cow for each of the county’s 135k two-legged residents. But ginseng is an important product – especially for the 180 local farmers who grow it in America’s Ginsengland:

This rural area built an important local industry as a purveyor of a premium product for China’s rising middle class, where its ginseng is sold in boxes bearing the American flag and the line, “Something Special from Wisconsin.”

…Historically, middle- and upper-class Chinese consumers have given the pricey root as gifts, or used it to brew teas and broths believed to confer health benefits. As the Chinese middle class has grown, however, so has the demand for Wisconsin ginseng — from bitter candies to K-cups.

Bitter candies and ginseng K-cups? Include me out, please. (Side note: this reminds me of the absolutely worst piece of candy I ever ate. It was on a childhood trip to Sturbridge Village – an old timey fake early 1800’s era town – and we were either given a sample or my father bought a bag. Anyway, I remember spitting the terrible candy out immediately, and feeling nauseated for hours after. What a bitter, nasty candy that was. But what do you expect from horehound, which is used, among other things, as a vermifuge. And, yes, I had to look it up to find out it means something that expels intestinal parasites. If that was the big treat available in the 19th century, I’d rather have grow up in Marathon County in the 1950’s than Sturbridge Village in the 1850’s. And that’s even if we spotted Sturbridge Village some indoor plumbing.)

Anyway, Wisconsin ginseng is pricier than more plentiful variants grown in Korea and China, but even with that, making a living off of ginseng is a tough go. And the going’s likely going to get tougher when the 15 percent tariff that China recently leveled on ginseng (among other agricultural products) clicks in. Locals are anticipating – and fearing - a decline in sales.

Growers fear the tariff is likely to reduce demand in China, leading dried roots to pile up stateside and cutting wholesale prices.

…China placed tariffs on U.S. chicken parts in 2009 as part of a trade dispute with the Obama administration. That market never recovered: China turned to Brazil instead.

Wisconsin ginseng growers aren’t afraid of Brazil. It’s Canada that exports a lot of ginseng and could pick up the Wisconsin piece of the action if the tariff prices Marathon County out.

It’s almost gratuitous to say that Marathon County voted overwhelmingly for Trump, perhaps buying into the ‘trade wars are good and easy to win’ philosophy. Sigh.

Be careful what you wish for sounds like something straight out of a fortune cookie, doesn’t it?

Globalization absolutely has winners and losers. And even if it pretty much always aggregates into an overall win, that’s cold comfort to those who lose out on the micro level. Time for a stress-reducing cup of ginseng tea.

Box Dinner

I have a friend – quite a good cook, by the way – who a year or so ago signed up for Blue Apron. He and his husband used it for a while. But it was pricey. And sometimes it turned out that they weren’t in the mood for what sounded like a good idea a few days earlier when they picked it off the menu. They liked not having to invest in some obscure spice that they were never going to use again. And they liked the portion control. Sort of. They didn’t like going through the PITA of cooking – however simple Blue Apron made it – and not having any leftovers.

So they subscribed for a while. And then they went back to doing what they’d always done: planning their meals, shopping, chopping, cooking and, occasionally, deciding to hell with it and ordering a pizza.

Me?I can see the appeal of Blue Apron, and the other biggie on the scene, HelloFresh. Subscribing would certainly make my cooking more varied and interesting. I probably really cook something like once or twice a week. And that includes throwing a chicken breast on my George Foreman Grill, whipping up some pasta aglio et olio (with some walnuts tossed in for good measure), or making myself an omelet (or, if I’m feeling really lazy, scrambled eggs – a decison sometimes made mid-omelet).

Most nights, I make myself a salad. Or have whatever’s left over from the night I cooked. If I’ve gone out to eat, I may well have a doggy bag in there. Sometimes I pick up a MRE at the grocery store. (Roche Bros. has a very tasty shepherd’s pie that lasts for two meals.) I’ve been known to sup on a PBJ or toasted cheese.

I can rise to the occasion and prepare an edible meal, but I’m not someone who enjoys cooking. Maybe if it all came in a box, I’d like it better. But, if I’m being honest here, probably not. Not enough to make a commitment to a subscription service, however short term that commitment would have to be.

Whether I’m the audience or not, the box dinner providers aren’t doing all that well.

Blue Apron in America and Germany’s HelloFresh, deliver boxes of pre-portioned ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes to doorsteps worldwide for a fee of around $60 a week.

Blue Apron is also serving up a belly full of woe to investors. Less than a year after it went public in June with a $1.9bn valuation, its share price has fallen by 80%. Although the shares of HelloFresh, which debuted on Frankfurt’s stock exchange in November, have risen by 24%, analysts are concerned that both services may fall prey to competition not from rival startups, but from big grocers. (Source: The Economist)

Supermarkets are a natural. Most of them already have all sorts of MREs and other take-out options. You’re already in there for something or other. They’ve got all sorts of fresh ingredients on hand. Nothing needs to get shipped to your doorstep, so you don’t have to worry about thieves making off with your meal kit or raccoons getting into it. And from a consumer perspective, you don’t need to subscribe to anything. You can go in and commit in your moment of hunger and need and just throw what strikes your fancy into your cart and proceed to checkout.

On the grocery store front, Albertsons acquired Plated, a meal-kit provider, last fall. They’ll be rolling it out to some of their stores this year. There are no Albertsons named Albertsons around here, but they do own Stop & Shop and Shaws, so we may be seeing meal kits on nearby shelves any day now. So I might give it a try. (Walmart is also getting into the act, but there’s no Walmart in my ‘hood and, even if there were, I probably wouldn’t be shopping there.)

Not having to rely on the subscription model will be a real boon to the supermarkets, given that they get around the big challenge that every subscription-based brand needs to overcome: acquiring customers and retaining them.

HelloFresh doubled its customers to 890,000 last year, as well as the number of delivered meals to 20m. But, one year after joining, 89% of its American clients had stopped using the service on a monthly basis, says Second Measure, an analytics firm.

Blue Apron also has attrition problems.

At its peak it boasted 1m subscribers. Its client list shrank by 15% in 2017.

My friend was among them.

Blue Apron has plans to get into the retail channel, but it may be too little too late.

Now that Big Grocery has figured things out, I’m guessing that all the meal-kit providers will get out of it is a) being acquired or b) thanks for the product idea.

Five stars! Love, love, love!

I do a fair amount of online shopping, and I do pay some attention to reviews. If something gets Amazon 1’s across the board, well, I’m probably not going to order it. And I like to see an occasional warning about an otherwise great product. Thus, I would have liked to have gotten a head’s up that the arms on that otherwise great Helly Hansen rain jacket were designed for someone with ape arms.

I do tend to give some credence to reviews. But I’ll judge for myself whether I think that lone 1 rating (and accompanying ranting) is just someone getting stuck with a lemon, is someone who either just likes to spew or someone who is such a domain expert on the product that they can’t deal with anything short of perfection. So if someone who actually cares about woofers and tweeters, and writes a detailed and elaborate review of the boombox that I – as the last person in America who still listens to CDs – am about to buy, and goes nuts about some nuance I can’t begin to understand, I tend to roll my eyes and move on over to checkout.

Anyway, although I’m happy enough (in a casual way) to read what the masses have to say, especially when it’s a product/brand I’m not familiar with, I seldom write reviews myself. I’ve occasionally done a hotel or restaurant review, I don’t know if I’ve actually ever reviewed a product-product.

Turns out that a lot of those reviews, whether I pay attention to them or not, are bogus – and pay for play. And there’s demand for the bogus comments because they can have an impact on sales. While most (estimate: 99%+) of reviews are legit:

…a Washington Post examination found that for some popular product categories, such as bluetooth headphones and speakers, the vast majority of reviews appear to violate Amazon’s prohibition on paid reviews. They have certain characteristics, such as repetitive wording that people likely cut and paste in.

Many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers on dozens of networks, including Amazon Review Club and Amazon Reviewers Group, to give glowing feedback in exchange for money or other compensation. The practice artificially inflates the ranking of thousands of products, experts say, misleading consumers.(Source: Boston Globe)

Facebook, huh? They seem to be quite the source of fakery, don’t they? Not satisfied to half-wreck the world, it’s now hell-bent on ruining our lives as consumers? Come on, Marky-mark Z.

Paid reviews were allowed up until a year and a half ago.

But the ban, say sellers and experts, merely pushed an activity that used to take place openly into dispersed and harder-to-track online communities.

Some of the opportunities pay pretty well - direct payment via PayPal plus tips like gift cards. All  this unlevels the selling field:

‘‘These days it is very hard to sell anything on Amazon if you play fairly,’’ said Tommy Noonan, who operates ReviewMeta, a website that helps consumers spot suspicious Amazon reviews. ‘‘If you want your product to be competitive, you have to somehow manufacture reviews.’’

This seems a bit of an exaggeration. I trust the good reviews for Asics sneakers because a) Asics is a known brand; b) they’re not cheap, so I expect them to have a somewhat decent level of quality; and c) they dovetail with my own experience. And why did I buy Asics to begin with? Because a) Asics is a known brand; and b) they’re not cheap, so I expect them to have a somewhat decent level of quality; and c) they come in the all important narrow width.

But I’m not trying to sell anything on line, so what do I know?

Sellers say the flood of inauthentic reviews makes it harder for them to compete legitimately and can crush profits. ‘‘It’s devastating, devastating,’’ said Mark Caldeira, owner of the baby products company Mayapple Baby. He said his product rankings have plummeted in the last year and a half, which he attributes to competitors using paid reviews. ‘‘We just can’t keep up.’’

I did check out a couple of the FB sites that solicit reviewers. The ones I looked at offer steep discounts in return for a review. How great to get all kinds of crap – the sites I looked at were higher on promoting callus removers, lemon reamers, and Snuggies than on high end (or even low end) electronics – and, human nature being human nature, I’m sure that those on the receiving end of discount reamers are grateful for them. And their gratitude inclines them to make their masters happy with nicey-nice reviews.

Wasn’t life a lot easier when you could just out and out ask someone you knew for a recommendation? Or – get this – just go to a store and examine an item before you bought it? And if it turns out, the product sucks, you could bring it back for a refund and/or write a customer complaint letter and get a refund?

Anyway, I don’t need any more crap, thank you. And I really don’t want to make my living writing fake reviews for that crap.

Meh all round!

 

Standing room only?

Fortunately – or unfortunately – I don’t fly all that often.

Unfortunate, in that not flying means I’m not going very many places. Sure, there was Ireland last May and Ireland last month, and Dallas coming up in a few weeks. (Dallas R/T covered by my late husband’s frequent flyer miles. Thanks, hon.) But I’m largely a stay at home.

Which is a good thing, because flying is not a tremendous amount of fun.

On the recent Aer Lingus flight, my sister claimed that the meal on the way over was the worst she’d ever had on a plane. It was pretty ghastly, I’ll give her that, but I’d have to rank a piece of beef on an Al Italia flight to Rome about 20 years ago a bit higher/lower on the worst ever scale. Having broken our plastic forks on the tough little food stuff, my husband and I concluded that the meal was actually half hockey puck.

Not picking on Aer Lingus – I actually kind of like them as an airline – but that recent flight to Ireland was only about half full. So why did they pack all those noisy college kids from Nebraska around us? I think they were good enough kids. (Weirdly, they were on some sort of Christian proselytizing mission to Northern Ireland.) But some of them had never been on a plane before, so they were all revved up. And they were doing what college kids do when two or more are gathered together, and that’s make noise and generally behave like jackasses. Which was the case with these kids until my sister gave them her best mother-of-a-college kid (a college kid who, in fact, knows how to travel without acting up and out) stink eye and stink voice, so the kids calmed down.

On the return flight, the food was actually edible. But the young Irish guy next to me sneezed in my direction throughout the entire flight. So I ended up bringing back a sweater for myself, a baby gift, and a two-week head cold.

So, no, flying – unless you’re in a bed on Emirates – is not a lot of fun. (Not that I would know this up close and personal, but I have seen the ads.)

Maybe flying never was, at least for those of us who missed out on the Golden Age of Air Travel, where everyone dressed up, everyone got a seat the size of a Barcalounger, and the food (presumably edible) was served on china plates. But I don’t remember it being quite so unpleasant in my days of business trips and regular vacations.

The airlines, of course, seem to continuously conspire to make flying even more awful, especially for those of us relegated to steerage. (Note to self: check out how many miles it would take to upgrade that Dallas flight to business.)

Legroom gets stingier. Food – appalling as it is – is sometimes not even given out. And now this:

I get annoyed when I have to straphang on a 20 minute T-ride from Brookline to Boston, always putting on a combo aggrieved/resigned expression and positioning myself in front of someone young, prominently flashing my senior T-pass. Imagine flying on the red-eye in one of these.

Meet the Skyrider 2.0. The name, right down to the 2.0, makes it sound like a cool device out of “Star Wars.” Who wouldn’t want to climb upon something called the Skyrider and zoom through the air? I’ll tell you who: Anyone in their right mind.

The Skyrider 2.0, engineered by Italian aerospace interior design company AvioInteriors Group and introduced at Hamburg’s Airplane Interiors Expo this month, puts passengers in a near-standing position, with their backsides positioned on sharply tilted polyester saddle/bike seat. It’s like a petite perch that puts you in a near-standing position for the duration of the flight. (Source: Boston Globe)

Installing these puppies will let an airline add 20 percent more passengers. Plus it will save on fuel.

“Skyrider 2.0 is the new frontier of low-cost tickets,” Aviointeriors declares on its website. It continues on an altruistic note, saying that these seats will allow those who couldn’t afford to fly in the past an opportunity to finally do so.

I’m guessing that these seats are aimed at short haul budget flights, like Ryanair, and not on trans-ocean flights. Still, I don’t think I’d want to spend even an hour strapped onto a bicycle seat.

I do see a few advantages. You don’t have the kid in the seat behind you kicking the back of your seat throughout the flight, or have the knucklehead in front of you jolt back his seat so that his head is reclining in your lap. You’d never have to listen to an announcement asking you to put your seat in an upright position – you’ll be there already! Plus it looks like it would be impossible to feed the masses, so there’s no worry about rotten food. And it doesn’t look like there’d be room for the person next to you to whip out a smelly tuna sub – which they should not allow to be sold in airports, by the way – a few minutes into the flight.

On the other hand, it would do absolutely nothing to prevent the person next to you from sneezing your way for six hours.

Let me know when each of these comes equipped with some sort of gumbometer – maybe one with mild laughing gas piped in; you know, the good stuff they give you when you have your colonoscopy – that protects you from the germs, squirms, and moans of your fellow straphangers.

Better yet, if air travel goes SRO, maybe I’ll just stay home.

What’s in a name?

I decided to take a break from reading about Trump’s mendacity, his venality, his dangerous lack of impulse control, his fecklessness, his recklessness, his ignorance, his paranoia, etc. etc.  And, lo and WaPo behold, there was a nicely distracting article on Trump’s merchandising deals, most of which – you will be shocked to learn – are no longer.

When The Apprentice was first on, I watched an occasional episode. In one, two teams were pitted against each other in a contest to see who could sell the most Trump bottled water.

I’ve never seen it anywhere in real life - Boston wouldn’t be the natural watering hole for anything with the Trump label on it – but apparently it’s what they put on the credenza for you if you stay at a Trump hotel.

Not clear whether there’s anyplace you can buy Trump wine around here, either. Not that you’d want to. I’ve seen the red described as “Welch’s grape juice with alcohol.” But it can be ordered online, and it’s on the menu at Trump hotels.

You can also buy Trump hats, polo shirts, glassware, teddy bears and other stuff at the Trump Store, if one were so inclined. And there is, of course, the MAGA-based store, where you can get merch like a MAGA cap (fetchingly modeled by an African American, but not the same guy who Trump pointed out at one of his rallies as “my African American over there”; must be the other one) and a cap labeled American Dreamer. Ahem.

But back in the day, there used to be a whole lot of Trump products that, while they bore the Trump name, were designed and marketed by outside parties. These entities paid Trump hefty licensing fees in hopes that this would confer luxury on their wares and pump up sales. Trump made a lot of money over the years, something that’s absolutely unfathomable to me, of course. But there is no accounting for taste.

Anyway, Trump products included:

Trump deodorant. Trump ties. Trump steaks. Trump underwear. Trump furniture. At one time, there was even a Trump-branded urine test.

Now, almost all of them are gone.

In recent weeks, only two said they are still selling Trump-branded goods. One is a Panamanian company selling Trump bed linens and home goods. The other is a Turkish company selling Trump furniture. (Source: Washington Post)

There was also Trump vodka, coffee, and pillows. (I’d have to have quaffed plenty of that vodka to lay me down to sleep on Trump linens on a Trump pillow, that’s for sure.)

Oh, some of the stuff is still out there on discount web sites. Trump deodorant – “EMPIRE’s confident stride begins with crisp notes of peppermint, rich chai accord and a hint of juicy apple. It’s addictive aroma continues to unfold into the heart of the fragrance with a masculine blend of orange flower and jasmine that mingles with exotic tonka bean. Veiled beneath the elegance and structure, is an all-enveloping warmth and charm accentuated by elements of rich amber and seductive musk” – can be had at $2.99, marked down from $14.

Of course, in real life the fragrance would be part Big Mac, part bile.

Anyway, even though I don’t think a penny of that $2.99 would accrue to Trump – I’m sure he made his on this years ago – and I do think that something like this would make an excellent Yankee Swap gift, I’ll take a pass. (I already have my 2018 Yankee Swap, by the way…)

Trump steaks are long gone – Sharper Image 86’d them in 2007 because they weren’t selling. Too much fat? Whiff of BS?

As for the Trump urine test... The test – based on junk science, as it not surprisingly turns out – was used to determine which Trump nutritional supplements/vitamins you needed. These were available through a multi-level marketing scheme that went bust in 2012, after a whole bunch of folks – perhaps grads of Trump University? – had lost money buying their sales kits.

All I can say is that, if the Steele Dossier pans out, the urine test could sure make a comeback.

Of the few products that licensed the Trump name that are still on the market, the furniture doesn’t actually promote the Trump name anymore. I took a look at it, and most of it was not to my liking. This chair looks like something that Superman’s father, Jor-El might have had in his living room on Krypton.

And it’s not gold, so how would the purchaser know it had anything to do with Trump?

Not that slapping your name on stuff didn’t make a lot of sense, and bring in a lot of revenue at one point in time

During the high times of The Apprentice, a Trump men’s clothing line – even one that featured sack suits and overlong ties – sold at Macy’s would certainly have held appeal to some folks.

Overall,

In 2009, Trump reported that his licensing partners had sold $215 million worth of Trump-licensed goods worldwide.

Admittedly, “Trump reported” is no guarantee that this number is anything close to reality. But even if it’s off by an order of magnitude, that’s a lot of money coming in for doing nothing other than letting someone else use your name.

But the licensing revenue seems to have dwindled to $370K.

No need to shed any tears. While the licensing business may have dried up, being president comes with an upside.

…it has allowed his Mar-a-Lago Club and his D.C. hotel to mon­etize his political alliances, raking in money from evangelical Christian groups and GOP campaigns.

While Trump is highly unlikely to be the mega-billionaire he claims to be – and fear of this being confirmed is, I suspect, what’s motivating some of his paranoia about what all the investigations might reveal – he certainly has a certain feral genius for making money without doing much heavy lifting.

It helps, of course that he has a distinctive name. While it holds no cachet for me – way too Atlantic City, even if its bearer weren’t a POTUS I abhor – it’s strong, punchy, and memorable. All good things when it comes to marketing. But conferring “luxury”? I really don’t see it at all, at all. And I’m not alone.

“A caricature of what wealth is — as opposed to what real wealth is,” said Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a consultant to luxury brands. Trump sold to those, he said, “who didn’t know the difference,” he said.

Well, that’s pretty condescending, Milton, but you did read my mind here.

Pedraza also pointed out that one of the problems with Trump’s approach was that he:

…...began to undermine his own success by “label-slapping” — sticking his name on anything he could, even the farfetched and ridiculous. Emeril Lagasse sold pots. Greg Norman sold golf shirts. Trump sold. . . everything.

“There was no strategy,” Pedraza said.

“No strategy” is starting to sound like a rather familiar refrain, isn’t it?

Forget ‘where’s the beef?’ It’s going to be ‘where’s the heme?’

I read somewhere that the food missed the most by former carnivores who’d converted to vegetarianism is bacon. I can see that. But I’m guessing that a good old burger would run a close second. It would for me, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. I like meat. I like steak. And duck. Baby lamb chops. Veal piccata. Pork chops. Chicken. I really like chicken.

I like stuff made with meat: beef stew, chicken noodle soup, shepherd’s pie, chili, spaghetti Carbonara.  BLT’s. Gus sandwiches. (A Gus was invented by me and my brother Tom when we were kids: bacon, lettuce, cheese, dill pickle and mayo. Yum!)

But I could become a vegetarian. I’m already about a 90% in-house vegetarian.

What I could never be is a vegan. No dairy? No eggs? No honey? Fuggedaboutit.

But vegetarian? Yeah.

There are plenty of good reasons to become a vegetarian. Health, for  one. Then there’s the yuck factor about where most of our meat comes from. Sure, I look for the free range chicken and grass-fed beef. But those meat factories? The slaughterhouses? Just thinking about the yuck factor…

What I don’t tend to think about is the environmental implications of eating meat. All that meat consumption – and as wealth increases worldwide, there’s a lot more of it – ain’t all that good for Mother Earth. Greenhouse gases, water pollution. We should be eating less meat, not more.

For Patrick Brown, beef is the biggest culprit.

Animal agriculture eats up an astonishing 30 percent of the earth’s land. Brown says he’s tackling the problem with a burger that uses 95 percent less land and 75 percent less water than ground beef.(Source: Bloomberg).

And his company, Impossible Foods, is trying to do something about it. He’s come up with a “magic ingredient” that makes a veggie burger taste like a real burger.

The ingredient, made from soybean roots and genetically engineered yeast, goes into vegetarian Impossible Burgers, which are available in a growing number of restaurants -- even fast-food stalwart White Castle. It contains heme (pronounced HEEM), a key part of red meat and a source of iron, which humans can’t live without. Think of Brown’s discovery as plant-based blood. Brown, 63, says it makes the Impossible Burger sizzle, smell and taste like real red meat…

“The way to solve this big global problem is not by ordering people to change their diets, it’s realizing that we’re using the wrong technology,” Brown said. “You can’t make meat that satisfies the craving that meat-lovers have without heme. It’s the magic ingredient.’

Ah, heme. (Is there anyone else out there of a certain age who’s thinking about Hemo the Magnificent, an animated film all about blood that educated us kiddos in the late 1950’s. I don’t believe that Hemo the Magnificent had anything to say about why we like those drippy, juicy, medium-rare burgers. I’m pretty sure it focused on the blood coursing through our veins. Guess by the time you get to a certain age, pretty much anything and everything can dredge up a reference to something from childhood. All I an say is, expect more of the same.)

The idea of a vegetarian burger that closely resembles a meaty-burger almost gets me to see if there’s a White Castle in Boston where I can get one. Almost, but not quite.

Anyway, I’m all for meatless-meat, and Impossible Burger’s impossible burger sounds more appetizing than that meat grown in a petri dish.

Couple of problems.

Impossible is looking for FDA approval, and the FDA says that plant-based heme is too new for them to sign off on it. Then there’s this:

The heme molecule is also involved in another controversy. Studies have shown that steak lovers are at risk of colon cancer while chicken breast junkies aren’t. Heme makes red meat red, so some researchers think it could be a culprit, said Robert Turesky, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

Oh, no. Will vegetarians have to turn to fake chicken McNuggets?

Brown disputes this, dismissing reports on the possibility that heme is a carcinogen as “garbage science.”

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of smart money backing Impossible Foods, including Bill Gates and Google Ventures.

Fake meat will be one of the year’s hottest food trends. An increasing number of flexitarians -- people not looking to eat meat at every meal -- are helping to drive interest, according to Rabobank. Sales of alternative proteins are dwarfed by the $49 billion red meat and chicken market, but they’re expected to grow about 17 percent a year to $863 million in 2021, according to a CoBank estimate.

Ah, flexitarian. Guess that’s what I am. Always nice to have another modifier…

Meanwhile, go Impossible Foods. Forget ‘where’s the beef?’ Looks like we’ll be asking ‘where’s the heme?’

This price ain’t right

My doctor recently advised me to get a shot for pneumonia. I’m over 65. I volunteer in a homeless shelter. And I’ve had two pretty formidable head colds this year.

She didn’t have the drug in her office, but told me I could get the shot at CVS.

When, prescription in hand, I got to CVS, I found that Prevnar wasn’t covered under my drug plan. The shot would cost me $230. We did a bit of back and forth with my doctor and the insurance provider, but I decided to go ahead and get the shot. Amortized across five years, $230 is not much if it prevents me from getting pneumonia.

The bottom line was my bottom line: I can afford it. (And, miraculously, I had just won $230 by winning the NCAA March Madness bracket at the gym. So I even had the cash in my pocket.)

Lucky me.

But for a lot of folks, $230 is a big deal, especially if they’re elderly and on a fixed income.

When my husband was undergoing cancer treatment, we didn’t bother to keep track of all the drug-related costs – prescriptions, chemo – or any costs for that matter. When we’d get the periodic reports from Medicare and Blue Cross, thick files that no one could possibly understand or interpret, we’d just go to the bottom line and find that – hip, hip, hooray! – we owed nothing.

Over two years of fairly intense treatment, I don’t think that Jim’s accumulated out-of-pocket expenses came anywhere near the $230 I paid for the Prevnar shot.

Lucky us. (Sort of. Jim wasn’t all that lucky…)

But for a lot of folks, even those covered by Medicare and/or other insurance, those thick reports include a notice of how much you owe. And for many of those folks, what they owe can be plenty.

Anyway, with the recent nothing-to-do-with-cancer Prevnar episode and Jim’s treatment not all that far in the rearview mirror, I read an article on one cancer drug in the Washington Post with great interest.

There’s a blood cancer drug, Imbruvica, that costs $148K a year. Some physicians looked into whether they could lower costs by lowering the dosage. Turns out, it looked like they could. Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia seemed to do just as well taking fewer pills once they’d gone through an initial higher-dosage round. Which would mean a big money saver for those with high deductibles, and for insurance providers. Looked like a win-win. But not a win-win-win.

While the researchers were thinking about celebrating that win-win:

…they learned of a new pricing strategy by Janssen and Pharmacyclics, the companies that sell Imbruvica through a partnership. Within the next three months, the companies will stop making the original 140-milligram capsule, a spokeswoman confirmed. They will instead offer tablets in four strengths — each of which has the same flat price of about $400, or triple the original cost of the pill.

Just as scientific momentum was building to test the effectiveness of lower doses, the new pricing scheme ensures dose reductions won't save patients money or erode companies' revenue from selling the drug. In fact, patients who had been doing well on a low dose of the drug would now pay more for their treatment. Those who stay on the dose equivalent to three pills a day won't see a change in price. (Source: Washington Post)

The pharmas are, of course, defending this move as innovative and convenient. While – mirabile dictu – keeping their profits.

I’m all in favor of pharmaceutical companies being able to recoup their research costs. But this sounds pretty darned nastily rapacious and f’d up.

Because high out-of-pocket costs are a big barrier to folks staying on their drugs. Someone who had been paying $5K under the prior regimen would now being paying nearly twice that. The average Social Security payment is a bit over $1.1K. And there it could go in one fell swoop. Or worse:

…Despite efforts to connect patients with resources to help them afford co-pays, some will request a drug that is cheaper but maybe less effective — or even push to discontinue the medicine.

I don’t know what the answer is to the high cost of drugs in particular and healthcare in general. And I’m not arguing that it should all be free. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if there were Medicare copays for those who can afford them. And there comes a point where, I believe, someone who elects extraordinary measures should expect to pay for them. (E.g., organ transplants for 80 year olds.)

As gouges go, this move by Janssen and Pharmacyclics, while not quite rising to the Martin Shkreli level, seems a bit much. The new price just ain’t right.

Got the blues? Got the reds? Got the Yinmins?

My favorite color is now and always has been blue. Maybe it’s because I was the blue-eyed tow-head who – when the clothing wasn’t hand-me-down, which more often than not it was – was automatically assigned something blue. I was bummed that both my grammar and high school uniforms were forest green, not navy blue. I craved a blue-frosted birthday cake, but my mother didn’t approve of blue as a food color (other than blueberries and Easter eggs). One of the highlights of my childhood was attending a birthday party where not only did the cake have blue icing, but the ginger-ale was died blue, too.

And things haven’t changed all that much. I still gravitate towards blue clothing. My bedroom, foyer, hall, kitchen, and upstairs bathroom all are painted some shade of blue. Two chairs in the living room are blue. (What would my mother say? She didn’t like blue as a decorating color, either.)

I’m enough of a blue person that I’m relieved that, when they assigned a color to indicate the political leaning of a state, left-ish states got blue. (Phew!)

Although in many respects, I’m an oddball, my affection for blue is hardly unique:

It’s overwhelmingly America’s favorite color, according to Pressman of the Pantone Color Institute. “Blue is that concept of hope, promise, dependability, stability, calm, and cool,” she says. “We think of it as a color of constancy and truth. It’s one of the most approachable colors, the color that’s the most comfortable.” Blue is central to the brand imaging of Ikea, Ford, Walmart, and Facebook. It’s on our refrigerator shelves, our walls, our clothes. Two-thirds of Major League Baseball teams feature blue on their uniforms. Blue is everywhere. (Source: Bloomberg)

When it comes to blue, there’s an awful lot of choices out there. Having gone through not one but two Benjamin Moore fan decks when I picked the colors for my 2015 reno, I can vouch for that.

Despite my interest in things blue, I haven’t given a lot of thought to how we get all those color choices. Sure, I was in marketing so I know all about CYMK and Pantone PMS. All those formulae out there…But what’s really behind colors? Hmmmm.

As it turns out, there’s an awful lot, going way back in time, back to before there were MLB teams with some blue in their uniforms.

Blue is one of nature’s most abundant tones, but it’s proved hard for human hands to create. When the ancient Egyptians tried to replicate the deep, oceanic tone of ultramarine to adorn tombs, papyrus, and art, they wound up with something more like turquoise. During the Renaissance, ultramarine could be costlier than gold, because the lapis lazuli from which it derives was mined in remote Afghanistan. (Michelangelo nevertheless scored some for the Sistine Chapel ceiling.) The first modern synthetic pigment, Prussian blue, or ferric ferrocyanide, wasn’t discovered until the early 18th century, by a German chemist trying to make red. Since then, many common blues (cerulean, midnight, aquamarine, smalt) have contained traces of cobalt, a suspected carcinogen.

So there are scientists who focus on developing new pigments. A pigment is “a substance capable of imparting color onto another material.” In other words, you need pigments to make colors. One such scientist is Mas Subramanian, who discovered/invented YInMn blue “the first blue pigment discovered in more than 200 years”. And a pigment that seems to be better, less dangerous, than the blues that are out there.

Pigments get patented, and can turn into big business. The pigment “responsible for the crisp whiteness of traffic lines, toothpaste, and powdered doughnuts” is worth a cool $13.2B per annum. The overall market for pigments is $30B. (Pretty good market share for that powdered doughnut pigment…)

YInMn is wending it’s way through the approval process – it has been approved for industrial coatings and plastics. And Crayola has recently introduced Bluetiful, its first new color in years, which is “inspired” by YInMn.

What might get in YInMn’s way of mass commercialization is that, because of the scarcity of one of its chemical components, it’s pretty pricey.

Anyway, price aside, blue seems to be on a good path. Not so red, which has always been something of a color problem child. Remember when they had to take red M&M’s out of the bag? And I learned from the article, the Red Coats who the embattled farmers took on at Lexington and Concord wore red coats “infused with crushed cochineal beetles.” Well, yuck.

More than 200 natural and synthetic red pigments exist today, but each has issues with safety, stability, chromaticity, and/or opacity. Red 254, aka Ferrari red, for example, is safe and popular, but it’s also carbon-based, leaving it susceptible to fading in the rain or the heat…The world lacks a great all-around red. Always has.

Pigment scientists are working on it, but, as a non-red person – other than red Chuckles and jelly beans - I’m not all that concerned.

Red’s problem is just one more reason I’m happy to be blue.

On the 18th of April in ‘75…

I had something else lined up for today’s post, but then presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted out this image – Grant Wood’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. This, quite naturally, put me in mind of Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” the first two stanzas of which we had to memorize in grammar school.

And, so, every April 18th, these words pop into my head, unbidden:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive 
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.

I grew up, of course, in what was likely the last era when schoolchildren were required to memorize stuff. Lots of poetry – much of it doggerel. The times-tables up to 12. And, if you went to parochial school, lots of catechism answers (many of which made no sense whatsoever). 

And this stuff sticks with you. I’ve got those two first stanzas of “Paul Revere’s Ride” down cold. Not to mention the entirety of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” which commemorates the dead of the Battle of Concord. (Those dead being the “country-folk” who got “up and to arm” thanks to Paul Revere’s midnight ride.) The Battle of Concord occurred on the 19th of April in ‘75. And these words will pop into my head, unbidden, tomorrow. 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Concord Bridge is a really lovely spot. If we ever get a lovely spring day, I just might zip out there and pay it a visit. (And recite this poem, silently, to myself.)

What else do I know, thanks to the nuns?

Other first Longfellow stanzas – “Hiawatha” and “Evangeline.” For some reason, bits of Robert W. Service (“The Spell of the Yukon.”), bits of Alfred Noyes (“The Highwayman,” “The Moon Is Up.”), bits of John Greenleaf Whittier (“Snow-Bound”). Henry Holcomb Bennett (“The Flag Goes By”) And, yes, I had to look up the poet’s name for this one. I would have sworn it was Helen Hunt Jackson. But, no, she was “October’s Bright Blue Weather.”

Occasionally, we memorized a poem in its entirety:

William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.” Emily Dickinson’s “I Never Saw a Moor” – an easy-peasy one: 8 lines. Robert Frost “Stopping by the Woods.” Carl Sandburg’s “Fog” – even better than “I Never Saw a Moor” in terms of easy-peasy: 6 lines.

Most memorable was “O Captain! My Captain” by Walt Whitman, which we recited, all together, in ultra-dramatic tones, and with a beat that presaged rap (until Sister Saint Wilhelmina stopped us). I remember my fifth grade class – nearly 50 strong – pounding our hearts as we moaned, “But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.” Who were we to make fun of Walt Whitman? A bunch of smart-alecky 10 years old at Our Lady of the Angels in Worcester.

I don’t know what all this memorization was worth, but nearly 60 years on, I can still dredge up plenty of it.

And today I’ll be dredging up “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Maybe I’ll even walk down to the North End, to Old North Church, to Paul Revere’s House, to Paul Revere’s statue. Which is one of the benefits of living in a city that’s chocked full of history. And a bit of poetry.

Thanks, Michael Beschloss, for putting this in my mind.